"What are you guys talking about?" Ryou asked with his usual kind, slightly bashful smile.
"Nothing much, Ryou," Yugi returned in kind.
It was a lie. It was always a lie.
Because they were talking about it, always, and Ryou knew that.
He just didn't know what it was.
"If he's forgotten, there's a reason for it! His mind is protecting him! If we tell him, we'll cause him pain! We can't do that to him!"
"But what if he's ready for it? What if he didn't want to forget no matter how much it hurt? He didn't agree to lose his memory. It happened."
"I don't know... I just don't know. I think we have to leave it up to him..."
He dreamed, sometimes, of a desert that burned the moisture from his eyes, an endless stretch of sand that was all he ate for days at a time, the grit in his teeth no matter how much he spit, whirling around him with every breath of wind. But he was not really there, he knew that, and the world couldn't be real because it rang with the feel of false gold. He was insubstantial and the sand and the heat was the feeling of others, the feeling of the man in the scarlet coat.
The man was beside him, always vibrant and alive even when just barely escaping death, sometimes talking to him, sometimes yelling at the world, sometimes silent as the tombs he robbed.
His body on the ground before him, his coat dyed with blood like rust and supernovas, and a glint of false gold on the faceless god in the body of a human that watched them and judged as he was commanded to do.
What gave these gods the right?
"Yugi..."
"Hm?"
"Nevermind, it was a silly question..."
"Ask it if you want, Ryou."
"Have you ever lied to me?"
"No." His voice shined with conviction. "I'll always tell you the truth, Ryou. You just have to ask."
He dreamed, sometimes.
Then he woke up, and his life was the same. The sun was always pleasant, the dust always settled, his body always solid.
But sometimes, he could see the insubstantial body of a man beside him, his coat the colour of blood, his eyes bright with supernovas.