This will be the last chapter before I leave for home. Enjoy it. From now on updates will be much farther apart - probably a week apart at least. I apologise, but there's not much I can do about that. (Take note that this is NOT A HIATUS: I will still be writing in my free time. I'm just going to have less of it, as well as limited Internet access.)

Title: Written in the Stars
Chapter: 04/??
Author: Nina/TechnicolorNina
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Pairing/Characters: This chapter has some hinted pairings, including past Atem/OC of the mildest kind
Word Count: 4 313
Story Rating: R/M for sexual situations, language, and violence.
Chapter Rating: PG-13/T for violence, language and implied sexuality.
Genre: General
Story Summary: When Yuugi's class gets to study a new panel from a pharaoh's tomb, Yuugi walks straight into trouble. Can he stay alive? And can he find his way home?
Chapter Summary: Yuugi sticks his foot in his mouth, and plays for his life.
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise? Totally not mine.
Spoilers: For the end of the series.
Warnings: . . . Yuugi is naked. Again.
Notes: I would like to take note that in Yuugi's country of origin, as well as in my home state, Yuugi is above the age of statutory consent. If you have a problem with a seventeen-year-old having sex, this is not the story for you.
Feedback: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)
Special Thanks/Dedications: For olesia.love, who puts up with my incessant questions.

Yuugi slid the last earthen bowl into a stack and sat back with a sigh. Some days he wondered if Atem went to bed drunk every night, or if he was just so used to drinking alcohol with every meal that it failed to affect him anymore. He heard laughter inside.

"I'll be back. Make sure he's upstairs."

Yuugi scrambled to his feet as Atem appeared in the doorway leading between the slaves' quarters and the outdoor kitchens. He bowed, and then felt a hand under his chin.

Atem's face was no more than an inch from his own, studying him intently. Yuugi froze. Atem drew away. Yuugi let out a breath he hadn't even been aware he was holding.

"Your eyes are strange, Aibou," Atem said. Yuugi cast his glance down at the hand still suspended between them in the air, rings glittering on dark, slender fingers. They were softer than any other hands he'd encountered in this world. He pulled his eyes even further away. Atem made some kind of amused noise and walked away, bare feet soft and sure on the hardpan. Yuugi watched him swing onto the horse already waiting for him and ride away, the wind blowing his hair back from his face, the sheer embodiment of freedom.

"I wouldn't catch his eye, if I were you." Yuugi jumped and turned around. Shemei was standing behind him, arms folded, eyes on Atem's retreating back, a frown fixed firmly on her face.

"What – why not?" Why did it matter if Atem took a liking to him? He could do worse for friends, even if that friendship was limited to games he'd always have to lose.

The look Shemei turned on him could have cracked stone. "Your lying skills are even worse than your acting skills, Aibou," she said. "You know why." She lowered her voice. "You don't want to attract undue attention. Not from him."

Yuugi looked down and bit his lip. Shemei left him and headed back inside.

"You'd better get in before it gets too cold. There's nothing left for you to stare at."

Yuugi turned around to protest, then decided not to bother. What did it matter if she thought he was staring? It wasn't his fault he'd been free most of his life, and then ended up chained to the inside of an ancient palace where he had no friends. The closest thing to a semblance of his old life was the man who'd just ridden away from him on a horse that was way too fast for nighttime. The priests mostly refused to acknowledge him, and Yuugi wasn't sure he could have dealt with the unfamiliarity in their eyes anyway.

No matter. Yuugi turned his eyes resolutely away, and picked up the stack of clean bowls to take inside as the desert wind whipped the tears off his face.

When Yuugi was five years old – very shortly before the accident that would claim his father's life – he'd knocked over a glass lamp trying to get his shoe out from under the depths of the sofa.

"You don't go looking for trouble, Yuugi," Papa had said. "I think trouble comes looking for you."

It was true; all his life Yuugi had been plagued by mishaps both major and minor. Even the Millennium Puzzle had been an accident – a small gold box dislodged right onto his foot while he was trying to get a deck of playing cards. If he needed further proof, the fact that he'd one day woken up in ancient Egypt was plenty. Yuugi had kept his father's maxim firmly in mind during his three months in this hell of a purgatory, and in that amount of time he'd miraculously avoided anything worse than breaking a dish. Only one, and an old one at that.

Yuugi was long overdue for some kind of misadventure, and as Shemei might have said, its circumstances only went to prove that at least one of the gods had a very, very sick sense of humour.

The problem began in the ridiculous maze of corridors outside the throne room. Yuugi had survived another day relatively unscathed – he'd fallen and left red marks on his hands while racing from the slaves' quarters to the throne room that morning, but he hadn't even skinned his knees when he landed. He'd managed to slip out of the throne room without attracting Atem's notice. And had he not stopped long enough to take a drink from the bowl Madu was passing around for the parched slaves who'd spent their day around Atem's throne, he would have stayed out of trouble altogether.

Unfortunately, he stopped, and so he heard the entire exchange between Atem and a slave girl named Ruia.

"I can't – I promised my husband!"

It was that word – husband – that caught Yuugi's attention. He hadn't been aware any of the slaves were married.

"You'd defy me?" Atem raised a single eyebrow, and in that moment Yuugi could gladly have killed him. The girl standing in front of him could be no more than sixteen, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, tears on her face.

"My husband's agreement with Pharaoh – "

"You were given into my service as a means of paying a debt. Your husband is aware that I will take payment as I see fit. And – " Atem grabbed her wrist.

"You can't!"

Yuugi clapped his hands over his mouth a moment too late. Silence rang through the hallway; even Set, that most stoic and blank-faced of men, looked shocked. Atem let go of Ruia's wrist and turned his attention on Yuugi. Shemei's warning echoed in Yuugi's head.

I wouldn't catch his eye, if I were you.

"Excuse me?"

Yuugi took a step backward, his eyes large above his hands. Atem's eyes were dark, and in them Yuugi could see a war being fought between anger and amusement.

"Who set you among the gods, slave Aibou?"

"I – "

Yuugi never managed to finish the sentence. I'm sorry, Great Pharaoh; I spoke out of turn, he meant to say, but he choked on the words. Speaking under stress was not one of Yuugi's strong points. Then Atem was directly in front of him. Yuugi cast his eyes downward.

"You should be killed for your impudence," Atem remarked; his voice was bored. Yuugi felt someone grab his wrists and pull him backward, and he bit his tongue.

Don't make me die screaming. That's all I want. Please.

"But . . ." Atem held up a hand. He looked thoughtful. For some reason, that look – deep and ponderous – scared Yuugi even more than the idea of being dragged into the city, whipped, and killed. Atem smiled, a large and dangerous cat in front of cornered prey.

"I have a proposition for you. I challenge you to a game. If you win, you get to take this girl's place, and inflict a penalty. If you lose, your punishment stands." He tilted Yuugi's chin up with his hand.

"Do we have a deal?"

At first Yuugi couldn't comprehend what he'd just heard – already convinced he'd be dead within twenty-four hours, he was too full of adrenaline to take in words. Then someone poked him in the back, and the spell broke. He met Atem's stare, unafraid. If Atem got pissed and decided to change his mind, Yuugi would be back in the same situation he'd been in less than a minute before. It wouldn't change anything. He took a deep breath.

"All right."

Shemei made disapproving noises as Yuugi sat down in the slaves' quarters.

"Didn't I tell you?" she said, and Yuugi thought of the chickens running around outside the palace. "Didn't I tell you to stay away from him? But no, don't listen to Shemei, she only raised the boy, she wouldn't know – "

"Wait, raised him?" Yuugi spun around, losing whatever marginal interest the bread and dried onion in front of him might once have held.

"Well, it certainly wasn't his mother giving him suck," Shemei answered, her tone derisive. Yuugi was glad for the perpetual sunburn that was hopefully hiding his blush. "She died too soon for that."

Yuugi looked down at the dried onion and took a bite. He didn't want it – it tasted horrible – but the time for Atem's game had been given as the very next morning, and he knew he'd need his strength.

"What were you doing, putting yourself in his business, anyway?" Shemei queried, reverting to her original topic. "And after I told you to stay away from him."

"It's not my fault he was harassing that girl," Yuugi snapped. His nerves were frayed like old wires. Really, every single time he tried to do something right . . .

"What girl?"

"Ruia. I think she – "

Shemei groaned and put her hands over her face, positively rocking with agitation.

"Stupid, idiot boy! Don't you know he hasn't touched a woman since his wife died?"

Yuugi goggled. There was just too much information to process. A thousand questions ran through his head, and finally he settled for the most concrete one.

"The pharaoh was – married?"

Shemei stopped and leaned forward. "You're really not of this country, are you, Aibou?"

Yuugi shook his head. Shemei sighed, leaned back, and took a drink from her bowl.

"Atem was married to his cousin when he was eleven," she said. Yuugi's mind tried to fly away in disbelief, and he clamped down on it firmly. Jii-chan had told him years ago about pharaohs getting married young. He thought King Tut might have been seven, although he couldn't remember for sure. He only remembered being told right before a wedding, and thinking it would be absolutely disgusting to have to kiss any of the girls at the wedding on the mouth. Sometimes he wondered if there was some serious truth in "be careful what you wish for."

"And that was it," Shemei finished, her voice low and sad. Yuugi came back to earth with a sudden bump.

"Er – sorry. I kind of missed a little of that."

"You didn't pay attention to a single word is more like it," Shemei groused. "You're just like Atem."

Yuugi could feel his eyes narrowing. He didn't want to be compared to that – that –

That man I looked up to, once. That man who lied to all of us.

Shemei shook her head and settled back with her onion. "What I said is that he had two girls by the time he was fifteen – " Yuugi forced the voice in his head to stop throwing a fit long enough to hear the story he was sure Shemei wouldn't tell a third time – "and people were going absolutely crazy over whether or not he'd produce an heir." She sighed. "And then sometime near the end of that year, Akana was possessed of a multiplying demon – the kind that grows and infests others." Yuugi took advantage of Shemei's pause to consider what kind of illness Atem's wife might have contracted. Cholera seemed most likely, given the state of the water, although malaria was also a distinct possibility.

"What – what happened to her?" Yuugi regretted the question as soon as he asked it; he could see tears in Shemei's eyes.

"They died," she said. "Wife and children both." She took a bite of her bread. "Atem survived," she said, the waver dying out of her voice. "Some say it would have been the mercy of the gods if he'd followed them. He always was wild, but after that he became downright unmanageable. You can't talk a word of sense to him. There was talk for awhile that he'd marry that girl Mana – there wasn't even a marriageable child anymore, of course – and – "

"What about Merishu?" Yuugi cut in, not afraid of being rude. He wasn't blind. They had the same mouth, the same long and slanting eyes. If they weren't related, then Yuugi was a sphinx.

"What about him?"

"Well, he's – "

"He's mine," Shemei said, and Yuugi felt his own eyes go wide. He wouldn't have. Even someone as screwed-up in the head as Atem wouldn't dare –

"He – he's yours?"

Shemei looked offended. "I suppose you're one of those who says it's immoral to serve a man twice."

Yuugi bit his tongue. He'd already narrowly escaped death once today; given the choice between being killed by Atem and being killed by Shemei, he considered Atem the much-preferred option. Shemei took another bite of bread.

"Although I have to confess it was a stretch, taking care of both of them at once."

Yuugi shook his head and blinked. "Taking care of – what?"

Shemei's look was reproving. "Atem and little Meri. Atem was only nine at the time. I could tell you stories about keeping him still in one place that would – " Shemei broke off and shook her head. "I swear I never saw a boy better at disappearing. Especially at bathtime. It must have come through their father, because Merishu is exactly the same." She sighed. "And speaking of disappearing, that's what your food needs to do. Atem is absolutely notorious for making deceptive rules, and what looks easy now could look impossible tomorrow."

Yuugi turned back to the onion distastefully. Necessity might demand, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

Yuugi stared at the setup in front of him. He'd been marched out here by two slaves he'd never seen before, and now he was just waiting for Atem to arrive and explain why there were two stakes in a circle of brush. He had a very bad feeling about this whole thing.

"At least you're punctual, slave Aibou," Yuugi heard. He turned around. Atem and the priests stood behind him. The priests looked grave. Yuugi nodded, never looking away from Atem's eyes. If he was going to be a challenger, he refused to do it as a slave. Atem made some kind of indeterminate gesture with his head, and then Yuugi's waist-wrap was missing.

Damn it, why do I keep ending up in front of him naked?

Atem paid no noticeable attention to Yuugi's undress – he simply nodded again. Set and Mahado stepped forward. They each took one of Yuugi's arms and led him to the stake in the middle of the ring of brush. Set grabbed his wrists and held them out. Yuugi felt something heavy and cold wrap around them. There was a click. Mahado put the keys on the stake near the inner edge of the brush ring. When they had resumed their places, Atem stepped into the ring.

"You are aware why you are here, slave Aibou."

He didn't phrase it as a question, but Yuugi nodded anyway.

"This is a game of skill. Your objective is to take that key – " Atem pointed to the key on the ring now hanging from the post maybe a foot inside the ring – "and unlock this chain." He pointed to the iron rings, attached to a long and heavy chain, around Yuugi's wrists. "You will then exit over the ring of fire."

Fire! Yuugi could feel his mind trying to curl up in a fetal position and whimper. He didn't let it.

"There is only one rule to this game, but failure to comply will result in your automatic loss. You may not use your hands to free yourself."

Yuugi nodded. Atem turned away from him, and then turned back.

"Call off," he said, his voice low. "Call off, and I'll forget."

Yuugi met his eyes, steel against fire. "I don't call off."

Atem's gaze turned cold, and he turned his back. Yuugi was tempted to call something rude after him as he walked away, but recognized the danger inherent in doing so and held his tongue.

He heard the first crackle as someone – he didn't bother looking to see who – set a coal in the brush. Instead he set his eyes on the post with the keys, and made for it.

The chain was heavy, and it took all of his strength to move it. By the time he got to the post the fire was already too high for him to just step over. Yuugi stopped to think quickly. He didn't even want to attempt the balancing act that using his feet would require, and his arms were mostly immobilized by the chain. There was only one thing for it. He bent his head forward and grabbed the keyring with his teeth.

Pain seared over his lips and tongue. He flung his head toward the inside of the circle, aware even as he cried out that if the keyring went in the other direction it was Game Over, Atem Wins. He chanced one glance out over the flames, at least chest-high now. He could just see Atem's eyes looking in at him through the heat haze as he struggled back toward the keyring he'd flung. The emotion he saw in them sickened him.

It wasn't fear, or disgust, or even an absence of emotion.

It was victory.

Yuugi dropped to his knees next to the keyring and reached for it. Then he jerked his hands back. The heat was making it hard to think. Even the cuffs on his wrists were getting hot.

And then the answer came to him.

That's why he thinks he's won. That's it.

Yuugi turned his face into his shoulder to wipe sweat out of his eyes and leaned forward. He could taste sand and dirt as he grabbed the key with his teeth. He fumbled for the lock. At last the key slid in, and turned. Yuugi planted his feet firmly on the chain, as close to the wrist cuffs as he could get, and stood up. They slid over his hands and hit the ground.

And then he realized that cuffs or no cuffs, he was surrounded by a ring of fire taller than he was.

Too late.

No. I didn't get this far to lose. Even if he's a lying bastard, Yuugi, he was right about one thing: You can't give up!

Yuugi picked his spot and started running. He clapped his arms over his face just before he jumped, and hit the ground painfully on his knees. What little hair he had was on fire, and he rolled. Somewhere a thousand miles away someone was reaching to pull him to his feet. He looked up and saw Isis, the one high priestess in the bunch. He let her drag him mostly upright. His skin stung terribly all over, and the world was moving in directions he hadn't known possible. Atem was staring back at him, stunned. Yuugi took two painful breaths, and then started laughing. He'd done it. It hadn't been a Dark Game – no, not that – but it had been close enough, and he had survived.

And then he hit the ground again, and there was darkness.

Someone was washing his face. Maybe his mother, trying to wake him for school, or Jii-chan. His face was very hot. Maybe he had a fever. He reached up to push the cloth away. His arms protested painfully.

"Now stop that," he heard, and whimpered as he realized it hadn't all been a bad dream. He was still in Egypt, and yes, he'd jumped through a solid wall of fire. He wondered how bad the burns were. He forced his eyes open. What he could see looked lightly pink, like a bad sunburn. He supposed he was lucky it wasn't worse.

Shemei was rubbing something cold and slimy over his shoulders. To Yuugi it looked something like a small green octopus arm, cut in half lengthwise. Aloe. Fresh from the plant.

"It's about time you woke up. I was beginning to think you weren't going to." The slimy octopus arm traveled down one arm. Yuugi took a breath. The air travelling over his lips hurt terribly, but it wasn't painful in his throat or lungs, and that was a good sign.

"I won."

Shemei's lips pressed together; even in the semi-darkness of a room lit by only a single torch, Yuugi could see the displeasure on her face.

"Yes. You did." She sighed and applied herself to his other arm. "You do know it was rigged. Either way, he wins."

Yuugi closed his eyes. Had he literally walked – well, run – through fire only to die anyway?

"Atem said you're to be removed from duty until you're able to walk without pain," Shemei commented. "And that he looks forward to your judgment."

"You know, somehow I doubt that." Yuugi tried to keep his comments short. He could feel where the ring had burned his tongue. Shemei made a clucking noise with her tongue, and Yuugi thought again of chickens.

"Oh, he doesn't like being beaten, but he recognizes it when he's beaten fairly. I imagine he won't sleep well tonight. He wanted you to call off."

"He mentioned something about that."

Shemei snorted. "If you expect me to be impressed, I'm not. You're a pair of children, both of you, playing games too big for yourselves. You could have been killed."

Had he been standing – and not mostly naked – Yuugi might have shrugged, burns or no burns. Instead he just turned his head meekly to let Shemei slime up his neck. It was anything but dignified, but he didn't care. It helped.

"Er – "

"I suppose you're hungry," she commented. Yuugi's eyes widened. He had no idea what time it was, but he guessed it was still somewhere around midday. Nobody ate then – except Atem, once in awhile.

Shemei produced half a pomegranate. "This is yours." Yuugi didn't have to ask to know it was actually Atem's. His reward for getting away with his life. If he hadn't been so hungry, he would have given it back or thrown it away, but the juice in the seeds was soothing on his tongue, and it quelled his hunger at least a little. Then the world drifted away again on prisms of light and dark.

Yuugi stepped into the throne room. He hadn't been there in a week; he'd spent the time sitting in a cool room, practically begging Shemei for light work because he was bored out of his mind. At last he'd reached Atem's all-important benchmark – walking without pain from the burns on his legs – and had promptly demanded to be allowed to work again. He'd probably lost any chance he ever had of getting back to Domino, and the idea stabbed at him painfully, but that didn't give him an excuse to be lazy.

Atem was already seated for the day; Yuugi had been reassigned, at least temporarily, to kitchen work.

"Slave Aibou."

Yuugi bowed shortly, not even bothering to make an attempt at hiding his irritation. Atem's eyes were too dark, too relaxed. Yuugi suspected he'd been into whatever substance had been used to make the disgusting brew Yuugi had drunk on his first day here.

"I assume you've used your time wisely."

Yuugi nodded. "I think I have."

He could see the irritation on Set's face, but withheld the honorific all the same. Set, after all, had not been the one wrestling with a hot iron key with no clothes on.

Atem raised an eyebrow. Yuugi took it as his cue to go on.

"You have to remember."

Atem chuckled, but Yuugi didn't miss the nervous, sidelong glance he sent in Mahado's direction.

"I'm afraid I don't understand, slave Aibou."

"I'm not stupid," Yuugi answered. "You've been waiting because you promised me a penalty, but what you've been thinking is that you can just submit to whatever stupid little penalty I give you and then have some spell cast so you can forget any of this ever happened. And that's your penalty. You have to remember it."

Yuugi saw the look that flitted through Atem's eyes before his face returned to its former half-dreamy mask. He might have drugged himself out for this encounter, but the real Atem was still in there somewhere, and Yuugi had cut deep.

"Fair enough." Atem raised that single sardonic eyebrow, and Yuugi resisted the urge to slap the look right off his face. "Anything else?"

"I think that's enough." And it would be – once the effects of whatever Atem was smoking or drinking or eating had worn off, it would be more than enough. Maybe enough to make him actually stop and think about what he'd done, although Yuugi thought that might be too much to hope for.

"Then you're dismissed."

Yuugi bowed again and turned to leave. He'd actually done it. Nobody had yet attempted to kill him for traumatizing the poor little pharaoh.

"Slave Aibou."

Yuugi stopped, turned partly back.

"You're expected upstairs tonight."

Yuugi's eyes went wide. "What?"

Atem favored him only with a flick of the head. "Shemei will explain."

Yuugi left, feeling most of his victory had been taken from him.

You do know it was rigged.

Yes, he knew that now. And if he'd only stopped to think before taking Atem up on his offer, he would have realized it. Ruia was safe – of that he was sure. Atem's interest in her had never been more than a sick joke to begin with, according to Shemei. But Yuugi? Himself? Slave Aibou?

The scene behind the kitchen building replayed in a nauseating loop in his head. Had he really thought he was looking at someone who was slightly spoiled, but otherwise perfectly all right? Had he really looked at that hand and thought it belonged to someone kind? Someone with an incredibly strange sense of humour, but a good heart?

I was blind. No – I let myself be blind.

No matter. He had agreed to the terms and played the game.

And now he would reap the bitter reward that was his.