Please let me know what you think. I've always felt (there's poem that said this) that until it's been read, a story is just ink on a page – so I'd like to hear from you.
MANGA NOTE: Yami and Kaiba have two duels that either don't appear in the anime, or appear in a radically different form. Their first shadow game occurs when Kaiba steals Sugoroku's BEWD from Yugi. Yami challenges him to a shadow game (or penalty game) to get it back. Yami wins when Kaiba summons the BEWD, but the dragon destroys itself rather than follow his commands. Yami inflicts a penalty game on Kaiba where he is trapped in the illusion that he is in the Duel Monsters world and is killed by his own monsters. Kaiba creates Death-T to avenge this loss. Mokuba insists on being one of Yami's challengers. Kaiba misreads this as a personal attack on him, and when Mokuba loses he forces him to go through the Death Simulation chamber he had designed for Yami. Yami rescues Mokuba, and defeats Kaiba by summoning Exodia. He shatters Kaiba's heart, giving Kaiba the opportunity to rebuild it without the darkness that was destroying him.
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CHAPTER 7: MIRROR, MIRROR
Have you ever noticed how many fairy tales deal in death, or at least with its semblance – yet how few linger on the grieving victims left behind? Nor do they truly deal with the departed even as they hold them spellbound within death's trance.
What of Snow White, lying in her glass coffin? After escaping from her stepmother only to be trapped again, was she glad of a chance to rest? Did memories of the dwarves or her eventual prince keep her company through her journey and tempt her to rejoin the living?
Maybe fairy tales are meant for children after all. The good come alive again after true love's kiss, the bad die, and nobody mourns, except the poor dwarves who sit over Snow White's glass tomb, eternally vigilant, eternally faithful – only to lose her again to some Johnny-come-lately prince.
It is, I suppose, a lie by omission, a merciful falsity, for times when reality is unpalatable. But it feels like a cheat, like a different way to stack the deck… to parade death through a story, without ever alluding to the emotions that come to the wake and follow the mourners home.
KAIBA'S NARRATIVE
We had fought three true duels. (Duelists' Kingdom didn't count.)
I'd lost them all.
I should have hated Yami.
I had, at first.
Not because he had beaten me, although that had been unpleasant enough. But because every time I looked at Yami, I saw our first shadow game. I saw my dragon vanish in my hands, as if she couldn't bear to be held in them. I saw the look of contempt in my relatives' eyes as they dumped us in that orphanage. I saw the sneer in Gozaburo's.
I should have hated Yami more with each loss.
Instead, each time, I felt a piece of my past fade. I came a little closer with each defeat to the true future that was the prize in all my games.
I had tried to fill the losses in my life with victories. It didn't work, but I couldn't stop trying because soon, there was nothing in my life but endless winning. I had let go of everything crucial to me in pursuit of meaningless trophies. Somehow, those defeats to Yami had filled a void left empty by all my relentless victories.
And then there were the times we had fought side by side.
Three times.
(Unless you count the time he had combined my deck with his own in Noa's World.)
By the Grand Prix, it didn't matter. His duels had started to feel like mine, and I wasn't dueling anymore. I no longer needed to tally my life in carefully staged victories and defeats… or rather, I had found a new battlefield. What mattered now was keeping hold of those crucial things: rebuilding my life, keeping my promises, fulfilling my dream of a Kaiba Land where kids could play at the games that had never been fun to me – and most of all, being Mokuba's brother. These things were all the victory I needed. This was the true future I had been straining for, and it had been within my grasp all along.
I owed Yami.
And now he was dead and all I could do was ask him why.
Or scream it.
I had meant to be reasonable. But every time I saw him, the anger… at him for lying to me, at myself for believing in him… had risen up in my throat, choking all softer words.
Anger had been the emotion that had kept me company throughout the years at the orphanage, it had carried me through my time with Gozaburo. Whenever I had needed it, it had been there for me – my old, reliable friend. It wasn't until Yami, that I began to question its presence at the center of my life.
And then Yami had left, like everyone else.
Knowing there was a reason didn't help. There's always a reason, and they're never good enough.
At least Yami had had the decency to do it in front of my face.
When my mother had died, my dad had disappeared. Oh, he had still lived at our address, on those rare occasions when he wasn't at work. But even when he had been home, he hadn't been there, but off somewhere with my mother… as if without her, our family didn't exist. Even though me and Mokuba were sitting on the floor in front of him, we were never really in his field of vision.
I seldom bothered reminiscing. But sometimes I wondered if right before he had died, he had started to look at us and see us again; if he had remembered that he had a family, or if that was just another fairy tale – one I had told myself. It was hard to know the truth. Right after our adoption, before I had closed the book on that part of my life, I had checked the police report. His car had skidded on a patch of ice and swerved into a tree. I guess I would never know if he had tried to avoid the collision, or if he had seen a door of his own, and run through it as fast as he could.
Just as Yami had.
I could say, as I had said to Pegasus when he taunted me at Duelists' Kingdom, that it was my own fault – that betrayal is the wages of trust. I could say that Yami had been a fraud all along; his lessons, lies.
But I couldn't. They had become a part of me.
'The road to our future is open.'
Yami had told me that before our last duel. I had given those words back to him as I left the ruins of my past at Alcatraz. It was a promise. Whatever Yami had done, or why, I would be faithful to it.
I missed him.
My anger was tainted with loss. Here, in a dragon's lair, I could admit that to myself.
I was sitting on the edge of Kisara's cliff, staring at the palace. Mokuba came over. I guess he'd decided that I'd brooded long enough.
"C'mon," he said, tugging on my sleeve. "It's time for bed."
I turned and saw Kisara, curled up in place. So yesterday's sleeping arrangements had become routine. I can't say I objected. There'd been something… nice about lying in the darkness, breathing in Kisara's scent, hearing her strong heartbeat as I drifted off to sleep. I'd liked waking up to the realization she was still at my side.
"I'll even tell you a story," Mokuba added, as if he had to sweeten the deal. I didn't correct him. We sat down, leaning against Kisara. Mokuba was true to his promise. The first words out of his mouth were, "Once upon a time, there was this guy, Orpheus…"
"Orpheus? Isn't that a myth, not a fairy tale?" I asked.
"Myth, fairy tale – what's the difference? Do you want to hear the story, or not?"
He sounded just like the staff at the orphanage. I bit back a smile.
"Anyway this guy, Orpheus, had this wife. And they were really in love," Mokuba continued.
"Of course they were in love. It's a fairy tale," I couldn't resist saying.
That got a smile from Mokuba, but he didn't stop his story to respond. "And Orpheus was the best musician in the world, so everything was perfect. Until his wife died. Now most people would have given up at that. But Orpheus wasn't most people. There was one thing he could do better than anyone else on earth…" Mokuba grinned at me, then added, "Music was his signature card, in a way. And he figured if mortals loved his songs so much, maybe he could use it to bargain – even with the gods."
"If you've got it – flaunt it," I agreed. "But there are some flaws in your analogy. Yami's not my lover."
"Did I say he was? But how many stories do you think there are about guys waltzing into the underworld and demanding people back? And you've got to admit the important part's right on target."
I nodded. I was enjoying this. I knew who Orpheus was, of course. Since so many of Kaiba Corporation's business ties were in the West, my education had included memorizing common figures from Greek mythology, on the theory this would make me appear well-rounded. I didn't let on that I probably knew the story better than Mokuba. I didn't want to disappoint him. Besides, I wanted to hear his take on things.
"So," Mokuba said with a theatrical sigh, "Orpheus snuck into the underworld. There was this three-headed dog named Cerberus guarding the door to the underworld. But Orpheus played so beautifully, that Cerberus just rolled over like a puppy and let him go past. And he walked right up to the King of the Dead, Hades, and his queen, Persephone, and launched into another song. And his song was so beautiful and so sad that they both started crying– and do you know how hard it is to make the King of the Dead cry? When the music'd softened them up, Orpheus started bargaining, and he kept singing and asking for his wife back until Hades finally agreed she could go home with him. There was a catch, of course – there always is. Orpheus couldn't look back to see if she was following, or the deal was off. He had to trust that everything would work out."
Mokuba stopped and looked at me.
"So how does the story end?" I asked.
"Does it matter?"
"If you're not saying, I'm guessing it didn't work out too well," I commented, as if I didn't already know the ending. I frowned. Yami probably would have said that the story had a fitting moral: Orpheus's wife was dead and destined to remain so. I thought Orpheus's failures rested on his own shoulders. Coming up with the perfect plan is one thing. The true test is whether you can pull it off. Orpheus had managed to outwit death, only to be defeated by his own hopes and fears, instead. I wondered which view Mokuba subscribed to… after all, he had picked the story. "Are you trying to tell me that like Orpheus, I came on a fool's errand; that I should just accept Yami's death?" I asked.
"Would I ever tell you that?" he asked indignantly.
"Guess not." I smiled slightly. "But you cheated, Mokuba. This wasn't a story. It was a vote of confidence from my vice president and partner. You know, once we get home I can look up the ending for myself."
"By then the official version won't matter. You'll have written a new ending for yourself, just like you always do. I like watching you fight fate, Nisama. It reminds me that every now and then, it can be whipped. I've never seen anyone beat death before. Today wouldn't be a bad day to start."
We sat in silence after that. Eventually Mokuba slumped down until he was curled up at my side, his head leaning against my lap. I listened to his breathing and stared at the sky. One thing I'd always liked about the mansion was that the grounds were large enough and far enough from Domino's streetlights for me to see the stars. Here, they were even clearer. And however strange this place was, the constellations above me were familiar.
"Mokuba is wise," Kisara said.
I nodded. I wondered how a being as big as Kisara could have, when it suited her, so soft a voice.
"The Holy Elf spoke truly when she said that if one is to seek for the core of your heart, they must look to Mokuba."
"I couldn't have found a safer place to store it," I said.
"It is strange. Perhaps your soul was made to exist in separate parts."
I didn't understand that, nor could I think of a response. That was okay, because Kisara accepted my silence until I was ready to break it, just like she always did. "I was just like Orpheus," I finally said. "I had fucking beaten Gozaburo. Mokuba should have been safe. Instead I almost killed him."
"Mokuba survived," she answered. "You did what Orpheus could not."
"Not alone," I pointed out. "Not under my own power. Not without Yugi and Yami."
"Then Orpheus should have brought a friend," she said.
I could have argued that whatever had followed, neither Yugi nor Yami had been my friend at Death-T, but I didn't. A companionable silence fell between Kisara and I. My eyelids drifted shut, and for once I didn't feel the need to snap them open. I wasn't letting down my guard. I was resting. There really was a difference. It was interesting, this comfortably drowsy feeling; part of me wanted to delay sleep for as long as I could to enjoy it.
"I'm glad I got to meet you," I said to Kisara, impending sleep slurring my words slightly.
"And I, you," she answered. "There are some roads it is well to walk down, little one, however they end."
Her words weren't exactly optimistic, but I took comfort in them nonetheless. They felt like absolution.
YAMI'S NARRATIVE
Memory is truly a double-edged sword. I remembered Seto, my High Priest… remembered loving him… wanting him… I remembered living with the knowledge that he had felt the same. We never once spoke of it. My responsibilities and Seto's pride had proven an effective gag. For if he did not speak, how could I? Any declaration of desire would have been tantamount to ordering him to my bed. It was where we both wanted to be… but I gloried in his reckless, soaring, stubborn pride. How could I be the one to clip his wings?
Of all the memories I had struggled so hard to regain, only those of Seto seemed real. But when I looked back on my high priest, my mind played tricks on me. I saw him, not in ceremonial robes, but in a trench coat.
I had come so far to regain my past, my memories, my name… only to have them turn into the dust that they were. Only to wonder if I'd spent what chance I had at a second life on a fool's quest. Why did finding my past seem to require me to turn my back on all that I had learned since being reborn, to renounce the friends I had made?
I had thought that I was leaving the world to them, that we were each where we belonged. But Yugi had come all this way to tell me, however gently, that I had been wrong. As in his way, had Kaiba. I'd been stunned to realize he considered my death a betrayal, and I was surprised by the ease at which I could read each conflicting emotion, as if this place had stripped a layer from his façade.
And from my own.
I couldn't deny Kaiba's emotions, and I couldn't discount his words, however conscious I was of the hypocrisy evident in both.
If there was one trait I objected to most in Kaiba – it was the way, belying his seeming selfishness, he would treat his life as if it had no meaning; as if it truly was, as he had once claimed, a single meaningless chip to be staked in pursuit of his goals. I hated seeing the way he so routinely discarded himself. The way he stubbornly refused to see that he had succeeded, that it was time to let go of the safety net of protecting Mokuba, and live to his own life… if he could find it.
We were more alike than I had been willing to admit.
I too had seen my life in term of missions accomplished rather than days savored. I had a country and later a world to protect, I told myself… only to wonder if this was an evasion as well as a duty.
Coming here was the only decision I could have made. But, I could not deny that Kaiba's words at our meeting harried me. Because following the predetermined path had felt smothering, if safe. It had felt like a surrender as well as a homecoming. And Kaiba's challenge, like Kaiba himself, was dangerous and unpredictable… just as life is.
Tonight should have been yet one more triumph – because in the face of Exodia's words, even Kaiba had to admit that my choice was just. And yet that did not feel satisfying. For the number of times Kaiba was wrong was balanced by those few times when he was devastatingly right.
"When does necessity become an excuse?" Kaiba had asked me.
I was afraid that, as far as I was concerned, it was on the day I had turned my back on the chance for my own life.
I was glad when Yugi interrupted my thoughts.
"What happened back in Egypt after I left?" I asked him. "How was everyone?"
"Okay. Shaken. Upset." Yugi laughed. "Jounouchi and Kaiba got into a fight. Jounouchi asked Kaiba why you would have thrown away your life if you didn't want to. Then Isis started talking about destiny. I thought Kaiba was going to test her reincarnation theories out right on the spot."
"I wish I had been there to see it."
"I wish you'd been there, too," he answered.
"Aibou," I said, serious once more, "there was a reason for me… for us to be here."
"Yeah, I know. It's just like old times. And you were right – we couldn't have gone back to the way things were. We'd both come so far together – but it was time for each of us to truly become the people we were meant to be. But everything's different now. You are your own person. You just have to decide where that person belongs. You know," Yugi said awkwardly, "when this is over, you'll have a choice to make."
"I know." I paused, then took a deep breath and said, "You've come all this way, and you haven't told me once what you're thinking, and I can't sense it anymore. Do you think I should come back with you?"
"What I think," Yugi said earnestly, almost impatiently, "is that you need to make that decision for yourself. I want you to forget me and this world and our mission, and think about yourself, for once."
I stared at him. How was I supposed to do that?
Yugi smiled at the look on my face. "Don't worry," he said. "Whatever answer you come up with, it'll be the right one. Look at all you've done, Yami. You taught everyone around you to believe in themselves… me… Jounouchi… even Kaiba. Now you just need to have a little faith in yourself."
YUGI'S NARRATIVE
I guess it made sense that after leaving Yami, I ran smack into Mahaado. I didn't have Isis's blind dependence on faith, or Kaiba's need to deny it. It was more that I couldn't help noticing how weird life was sometimes. And another thing I'd noticed was that once coincidences got started, they weren't going to stop any time soon.
"Hi," I said, knowing as the word left my mouth, that Mahaado was probably used to a more formal greeting.
"Well met," he responded. "I was on my way back to my quarters. Will you join me? It is just myself and my ward."
Except for his servants. I guess Mahaado was so used to them, he didn't notice.
"Mana, I have brought one of the outlanders home," he called as we entered.
There was a strangled cry and then an awkward wait. A servant came and brought fruit. Even Yami felt at home being waited on. It made me feel like I was in a restaurant. And Kaiba, who must have had an army of servants in that mansion of his, preferred (if Mokuba was right) to sleep in a dragon's nest.
"Oh, it's you. I was expecting… never mind… well met, Yugi," Mana said as she entered the room.
She wasn't what I expected either. I'd seen her in the Memory World, and in my deck of course, but she looked different – or rather like a mix between the two. She was in more, well, Egyptian clothes, than the Black Magician Girl's sparkly outfit, but fancier than usual, like something Isis might have worn, and her hair was Black Magician Girl blonde. She looked almost like she had gotten dressed up for someone, except that didn't make any sense.
"Hi," I said. I wasn't sure what else to say.
"Hi, Yugi," she replied, smiling. "It's funny seeing you here, after all the times I've been in your world."
"Yeah," I agreed. "I'm glad I came though, whatever happens. I feel better knowing I did the right thing following Yami; and knowing that Yami made the right choice."
"How so?" Mahaado asked.
"I was afraid that I had pushed Yami into leaving… that I hadn't been a good enough friend. I was afraid that after all he did for me, I let him down. But it wasn't like that. There was a reason all along. I should have had more faith in Yami… Atemu, I mean."
"It is natural for you to think of him as 'Yami.' I have never thanked you for being such a faithful friend to the pharaoh. He was surely blessed to have been reborn into your household," Mahaado said.
"Thanks," I answered awkwardly. "But that's just what friends do for one another. It's a little freaky though… I should have trusted that Yami came here for a purpose. But if I had, I wouldn't have come myself. And Exodia said that we were needed too – not just Yami. So in a weird way, Kaiba was right too – for all the wrong reasons. He's good at that." I shook my head. "I don't know. It makes you wonder when you're making your own decisions, and when something's giving you a push."
"Well, whatever your reasons, I'm glad you're here. I'd like to see the others too. Well, maybe not the High Priest…" Mana said.
"He is not the High Priest, but an even more obstreperous incarnation. I have no interest in him. Or his cub," Mahaado announced stiffly.
"Mokuba?" I asked.
"He bothers me. He is a reminder of how much things have changed," Mahaado said.
"He's loyal. Some virtues remain the same," Mana said, unexpectedly. The two of us stared at her and she added defensively, "I've seen him at every duel, just the same as you have."
Mahaado sighed. "And yet if I read what Exodia said correctly, change is needed if we are to defeat Set; if we are to continue in peace. It is a hard road to walk."
"I'm sorry," I said. "Either way, I think you're going to end up facing some changes. And I didn't think about how much you'll miss Yami – if he comes back with us."
"I expected his life with you to slip like water through his fingers. I expected him to let it go as easily. I thought it would start to feel like a dream from which he would gladly awaken. Now I am not sure." Mahaado shook his head. "All I have ever asked is to serve my pharaoh as he needs me, in whatever guise I must take. I had hoped it would be as his councilor and the leader of his guard. Yet, it is the pharaoh's life to spend as he will. Exodia, who speaks for the gods, has decreed it so. I am not his warden."
"No," I said, "you're his friend. And I know how tough it was to watch him leave. It'll be even harder if I have to do it a second time."
"But you will, if it is what is required of you. As will I," Mahaado said somberly.
"Well, I think the cub's kind of cute," Mana burst out. If it was a distraction, it worked amazingly well.
Mahaado let out a roar of laughter. "Mana, the things you say! What will I do with you child?" he chided gently.
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Thanks to Bnomiko, especially for reminding me if one of your characters is going to tell fairy tales (or in this case myths) they have to include the ending.
REVIEW NOTE: I reply to all signed reviews or reviews that have an email address directly. I reply to all unsigned reviews and post a summary of all replies on my LJ. The link is the first one on my Biopage. I generally post replies there when I update the next chapter.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Kaiba's holding on to a lot of anger. But that's one of his basic operating styles. In the tag team duel he fights with Yami against Malik's henchmen, when Yami tells him to control his anger, that it will only cloud his judgment, Kaiba yells back that battle is anger and that anger makes him stronger. I think this is partly true in that his rage fueled his determination never to yield – which is what allowed him to not only survive all the blows his life handed him – but to triumph against so many of them. It's only at Alcatraz, when he tries to use his anger to almost literally destroy his past, that he starts to understand it is his devotion to Mokuba and Mokuba's love for him, and his dreams that give him his true strength. Even so, I think under stress anger is the first card in his deck that he'd reach for. Interestingly High Priest Seto comes to a somewhat similar conclusion in that he decides that Bakura's anger has made him stronger.
Yami often comes across as being supremely self-confident. But I think that's true only when he's in his element, so to speak – dueling, protecting Yugi and saving the world. In fact – that's about the only times when we do see him. Even in DOMA, when he is on his own – he has his mission of saving Yugi and defeating Dartz. But I don't think he has much experience just being as opposed to doing. In the manga, just about the only time we see Yami with any leisure time is when Yugi pushes him on that sort-of-date with Anzu. And as she notices he's uncomfortable and unsure of what to do until she takes him to a card shop.
