The Others: Odd Happenings
Disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. All names were changed to the characters of this fandom in order to protect the real people involved in the following incidents.
Seventh Page: Parents
It's amazing how a tiny little symbol could change his life. It's wasn't even that big, those two lines on a strip of plastic. But they, followed shortly by the words that his girlfriend said, changed everything.
"I'm pregnant," Serenity whispered late at night, curling up against Duke on the couch. They'd been watching a movie, he can't remember what it was exactly. He thinks he misheard at first, but then she passes him the test with the pink equals sign that told him again that he was going to be a father, his heart stops completely.
"Oh," there isn't much more that he could say. His brain is melting. Duke wouldn't be surprised if it started pouring out of his ears. She's pregnant. Serenity is pregnant.
She's nineteen. He's twenty-one. They're essentially war veterans. His parents are two inches away from disowning him. She's nineteen. Nineteen. That's far too young to be a mother.
"Duke," he can hear the shacking in her voice. She's scared, far more than he was. "Duke, say something. Please."
"How?" He forces out. "We were being careful. It was one time. You're on the pill. How are you...?"
"I don't know," she buries her head in his shoulder. Her whole body is quaking. His whole body is quaking. She's just nineteen.
Duke tries his best to breathe. He can't believe it. He'd stared death in the face. He'd been there, on the final battlefield, when the Devil first stepped out of her cage. And he's never been as frightened as he is now. He doesn't seem to understand how that makes sense.
Maybe its because he knew the war would end, on way or another. Being a parent didn't stop. Ever.
"What do you want to do?" He asks. She makes a noise, half whimper half confusion. He continues, "It's your body, Serenity, not mine. If you want to abort -"
"No!" She sits up quickly, staring at him intently, "No. No, no, no. Not aborting. I can't do that, I just can't."
She clutched her stomach - no. She was holding her child. Then it hits him.
Child. Serenity's child. Duke suddenly gets visions of her holding a baby, clothed in pure white sheets, auburn hair aglow. His heart pounds, not out of fear but out of longing. He wants that, he really does. It scares him how much he wants that.
Serenity's child was Duke's child. His child. Their baby.
"If you want to keep it - her, him...whatever it is," he takes a breath, pulling her towards him in a hug, "I'll be there. I'll definitely be there. Even if you don't. I'm not leaving you, Serenity. We've been through so much together and I'll be beside you to the end."
"Even if I want to give the baby up for adoption?" She looks down for a moment.
"Even then."
Serenity looks up, staring into his eyes. She's beautiful, utterly beautiful. He doesn't even understand why she's with him sometimes. She is so out of his league, so utterly beyond him, but she loves him anyways.
"Duke," she kisses him softly, arms around his neck. She pulls back, "I should have told you earlier. I was just scared."
"Earlier? How long have you known?"
"About a week and a half," she admits. He thinks back to that time and remembers that it was in the middle of his college exams. He probably would have failed miserably if he'd known and silently thanks Serenity for that. At least this way, if she keeps the kid, he'll be able to support it.
He can't help it. Duke cracks. It comes out as a near hysterical laugh that works it's way past any barrier he might have, out past his lips. His laugh, for once in his life, is not the joyous happy thing that would have once made girls swoon and turn to mush at his feet. It is rare uncertainty in its truest form but Duke knows that there isn't a force on earth that will keep him away from Serenity.
He tells his parents first. This is probably the largest mistake he's made in his entire life. Looking back on it, Duke wonders why the hell he didn't tell Bakura or Amane. Even breaking the news to Joey - "Hey, man. I know we were supposed to meet up over the weekend to go to that bar and all, but I think I got your sister pregnant. Yeah. Whoops. Please don't kill me in my sleep." - would have been better than this.
"She will get an abortion," his mother says through gritted teeth. His father nods stiffly.
It feels like he's been dumped in the Antarctic Ocean. They don't care. They don't care about their grandchild. They don't care about Serenity. They'd made their decision about not approving of here by reading a fucking report by some guy they hired to tail her for a month. They thought she was some gold digger, convinced that a bun in the oven would be the only thing that would keep him from leaving her. His parents didn't care. They'd never cared about anything but their own money.
After he'd returned to them from the war, all they'd spoken about what how, under the regime of the Orichalcos, they'd been unable to get some of their supplies from some sweatshop in China. They didn't give a damn about anything but themselves.
The resulting argument is loud, utterly boiling over with rage. It ends with Duke storming up to his room, packing his bags and thumping down the staircase. He doesn't make much of a show about leaving, though. He's just tired of it all at that point.
He gets a call from his parent's lawyer a few days later. The woman says that his parents have written him out of the will. She also passes on the message that they don't want to see him as long as Serenity and her child are in his life. Duke tells her that he has a message for them as well.
"Just because you've never loved anything other than yourselves doesn't mean that I have to as well. So go fuck yourself on a cactus. Yes, tell them that. Those exact words."
Duke never speaks to his parents again.
"I'm keeping it," Serenity tells him as he puts away his clothes. They've been renting a small apartment for the last three years together, but they've always kept most of their stuff at their houses. But now that Duke doesn't have that option, this will become his home.
He glances over at her, before his eyes travel down to her stomach. He can't see anything yet, not even the faintest hint of a swell, but he knows. He just knows.
"Keep it, keep it?" He asks.
"Yeah," she smiles sweetly. Her long hair is tied back at the base of her neck because she just hopped out of the shower, her tang top is ill-fitting because he accidentally shrunk it in the wash, and a pair of his boxers barely managing to stay around her waist. He wonders if Serenity will give him that look again if he blurts out that she's probably the most beautiful woman he's ever laid eyes on, even when she's dressed like this.
Then the full gravity of the situation descends on him, but for the life of him he can't see any form of negative in it, "You're keeping it. You're keeping the baby. You're keeping...keeping...I'm going to be a father!"
Duke leaps up, does a fist pump midair and then let's out the loudest whoop of joy in the history of the world. Serenity bursts out laughing at his antics, but he can't seem to care.
She's only nineteen and he's only twenty-one. They're not going to be perfect, but somehow they're going to make it work.
Needless to say, her father, Joseph Wheeler, hits the roof. However, he doesn't implement the usual reaction to finding out your teenaged daughter is pregnant and that you're going to become a grandfather before your fortieth birthday. Instead of getting angry and threatening to castrate Duke, the man walks across the room and hugs him.
"Thank you," he says, taking the soon-to-be father (and he still can't get over referring to himself as that) completely by surprise.
"For what?" Duke stammers, not knowing how to take this reaction.
"You could have abandoned her. But you didn't. You'll make a great dad."
Duke looks at Joseph, who's got nothing more than a 'Fifteen Years Sober' AA medallion and a job as a mechanic to his name, and wonders how such a man could be so amazing. He wishes, not for the first time, that Joseph were his actual father.
Joey doesn't say much; he only smiles and tells Duke to take care of his sister. He doesn't add in an 'or else.' He knows that he doesn't have to.
Later that night, Duke takes Serenity's dad aside and quietly asks him a question. Something on the man's face just screams that he's known that this was how things were going to turn out, but he doesn't question it. To be honest, he's seen far to many things that he would consider to be impossible in the last few years to even start questioning something as small as this now.
He goes to the mall the very next day and picks out a ring.
He plans for it to be romantic. He plans for it to be memorable. But Duke should have learned from years of hanging out with Bakura and his merry band of crazies that plans usually go out the window five minutes into their beginnings.
He plans for a candle-lit dinner, one that he would cook himself. But there is a reason why Serenity never lets Duke anywhere near a stove. In her words, "Duke, I love you, but if there was a way to burn water, you'd find it."
He tries, though. Fails miserably, but tries anyways. Ends up throwing the dirty pots and pans into the sink to wash later and goes to the local grocery store to buy something instead. Through some freak catastrophe, everything except the sushi is sold out. While Duke could practically live off of the stuff, Serenity can barely be in the same room as it without turning green. He quickly considers a dial-a-meal approach. Delivery it is.
He's halfway through punching in the numbers for Pizza Pizza when Serenity walks in the door. Duke nearly swears, but holds it back because the words just seem to catch in his throat. Her eyes travel towards the dishes that he has yet to do back to him. Him, in a t-shirt that he hasn't run through the laundry in about a month. Him, unshaven with his five o'clock shadow quickly morphing into the nine o'clock version. Him, looking absolutely ridiculous with his mouth hanging open and phone almost to his ear.
Her eyes then travel to the tiny little box on the table. It's open and the ring is very, very visible. He'd been running his lines a few minutes previous.
"Duke? What...?" Serenity stammers, hand slipping over her stomach in a habit that she'd developed lately. He can barely make out the slight bulge - their child, right there. Right there.
He had been planning to basically recite their entire life together, telling her how much he loved her and how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But now he realizes, through some blinding moment of clarity, that she already knows that and saying it again would just be redundant. So Duke just asks.
"Serenity, can we talk?"
"About what?" She smiles, falling into their old habit of saying these words when something big has or is about to happen.
"Anything. Just anything."
She laughs, sits down in the chair across from him and smiles. She nudges the ring, "What's this for?"
"Well, you see, I've got the amazing girlfriend and I was wondering if she, uh, wanted to marry me?"
"Duke?"
"Yep?"
"You suck at proposals."
"Regardless, the question still stands," he will never admit how clammy his hands are at the moment or the fact that they are shaking uncontrollably.
Serenity leans forwards, pulling the box towards her. It's not a big ring, but it's got a diamond on it (it was her birthstone after all). She stares at it for a while before a tear rolls down her cheek.
"Yes," she whispers. "Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I will, god, yes."
He slips the ring onto the correct finger, before getting up and moving around the table. She leaps into his arms, hugging him for all he was worth.
"It's so stupid," Serenity gasped into his shoulder. "I never thought this would happens. Never."
"Really?" He asks. He's down right confused because he's wanted to pop the question to her since he was in the ninth grade.
"I was always worried that you'd end up leaving me in high school for another girl, that I'd just be another on of your ex's. I was so dumb back then," she laughs.
"You were scared that I'd love another woman?" He shakes his head, "Of course I'll end up loving another woman."
Serenity looks at him strangely, but Duke spreads his hand over her stomach. He gives her one of his winning grins, "A few months from now, she'll be calling you mom."
Needless to say, the two of them end up in a sweaty, tangled mass of sheets later that night. Duke thinks, to this day, that while his proposals may be sucky, his lines are criminally smooth.
The moment that Duke tells Bakura, he honestly believes that this is the first time that he's shocked the (in his opinion) near demi-god into silence. He thinks back to the tiny little kid from that first gym class all those years ago and wonders how the person in front of him could possibly be the same person. He shakes his head, clearing his thoughts.
"Duke, I must be hallucinating because I could have sworn that you just said that Serenity was pregnant," Bakura gapes openly. Behind him, Atem freezes halfway in the middle of taking a step. For a moment, he doesn't think she's breathing.
"Yeah, she is," he says again. "We're getting married, too."
"Does this have anything to do with your family finally giving you the boot?" Bakura's fingers clench in his shirt, almost uncomfortably. Duke recognizes the signs: he's remembering something from his past, though which past is unknown.
"I don't want to talk about that," he grumbles. "Either way, I've got something I need to ask you."
It takes a few moments for Bakura to collect himself and re-enter the present. Duke let's him, having seen this a few times before. When the legendary warrior nods, he takes a breath.
"Do you want to be best man?"
Bakura's head snaps up, "Me?"
"You."
"W-what? Why? Why me? Why not...god, there are tonnes of other people. Why me?"
"I hate to remind you of this, but you were the person who basically got the two of us together. If anyone deserves that spot, it's you," Duke grins when he gets a chuckle out of the Shattered Soul. "Also, if you refuse, I'll lock you in a room with Serenity while she's having a craving. And those are not fun."
Bakura breaks out laughing at that, before agreeing between gasps.
"This means I'm going to have to wear a dress, doesn't it?" Atem sighs, her wildly coloured hair recently cut. It's only an inch and a half long now, the shortest he's ever scene it. She's grinning wildly, despite the fact that she hates wearing dresses. It makes her look much younger than she actually is.
Duke nods, "I guess I'll add you both to the guest list then."
"Have you told the others yet?" Atem asks.
"Joey and Joseph already do. Serenity is at Amane's now. Magic already knows, but give that he's...well, God, that's a given. I yelled it towards the sky yesterday, just in case. I was going to head over to Strings' place after this."
Atem and Bakura share a look before the man turns towards him with a wicked smirk, "We're coming, too. I can't wait to see the looks on their faces."
Tea promised that she wouldn't cry. This promise goes out the window as Serenity says her vows. Duke can see her from where she sits in the first row. Joey shifts beside his sister, standing in the place of a bridesmaid. Bridesman is his official title. Serenity didn't want anyone aside from her brother up there with her.
Duke nearly forgot how to function when he saw her in her dress, walking down the aisle. Thankfully, Bakura kept him upright. He heard the man chuckling behind him, though it wasn't mocking. Just before Serenity reached him in front of the priest, Bakura whispers, "You are one lucky guy."
"Don't I know it," he said back.
The wedding was simple, taking place in a small park. Their friends help to fund it. Duke manages - just manages - to talk Serenity into it. The chairs are filled with her family and their friends. Even Magic turned out, sitting with Amane, arm in arm. She murmurs something in his ear and it makes the God smile warmly in a way he probably hasn't done in over a millennia.
He takes a glance towards the back, where a woman with startling auburn hair sits without gazing at the front. She isn't dressed for a wedding in her jeans and pull over sweater. Her knees bounce erratically as her hands thread together.
The woman glances upwards once, though they aren't trained on the bride. Instead, she looks at Joseph Wheeler.
Serenity doesn't realize until much later, when she goes through the guest book, that her mother attended her wedding. The woman's gift is a lottery ticket. While most people would consider it to be an incredibly cheep present, they both get the message that is sent with it: good luck.
They win ten bucks.
The other wedding gifts, however, change their lives.
The first one is a gift from Seto and Mokuba, along with Kisara. It consists of a single note, written in Seto Kaiba's directly-to-the-point letters, on the inside of a card. It says "Please forward all of your educational expenses to KaibaCorp."
Serenity drops the card in surprise, hands sliding over her belly. It's become obvious that she's pregnant now as she enters her fourth month. She had been considering dropping out of college, where she is majoring in journalism, because they had more important things to use their money for. But now...
"Holy crap," Duke says breathlessly as he reads the note. He notes that Kaiba has underlines the word 'all' three times.
The next comes from Atem, Bakura, and (to their surprise) Marik Ishtar. It's a house.
The morons bought them a fucking house. Duke actually faints.
They drive up there the next day. Their friends are waiting for them on the front steps. Rex and Weevil are the first to greet them, whisking them inside with over-the-top, frankly flamboyant, impressions of a pair of real estate agents. Duke doesn't know who's moving his feet, but he's pretty sure it isn't him. He never knew that shock could induce out-of-body experiences. He'll write about this in his thesis.
The house is a small bungalow located not far from the college that both of them are going to. It's a two bedroom-single bath, with a finished basement and modernized kitchen.
"I didn't know you could get these places fully furnished," he spits out suddenly.
Bakura appears quite literally out of no where, "You don't."
And then it hits him. This is it. Their friends gotten together and given them a place to raise their child. Serenity breaks down in tears of joy, whispering, "Bless you. God bless you all."
Duke looks around at all of them, all those who'd stood on the field of battle with him and his wife not so long ago. He remembers being covered in grime, the weight of his gun in his hand. He remembers that his throat was raw from shouting orders. He remembers the smell of death. He remembers the faces that not longer walk amongst them.
He remembers all of that and realizes why they are doing this.
Duke and Serenity's child is the first bit of good news that they've heard in a long time. It's a beacon of hope for a new start.
"Thank you," he says to all of them.
Magic grins, "Don't thank us yet. Wait until you see the backyard."
Serenity's nineteen. Duke's twenty-one. And looking back to the day they first met, they'd never expect that it would turn out like this.
They aren't the perfect couple, but they make it work. Their daughter doesn't grow up in the most normal of households, though it's difficult to have it any other way when her godparents were Ryou Bakura and Atem of Tikal. Normal doesn't really happen when your extended family consisted of internationally infamous hackers, insane inventors, CEOs, government officials, spy masters, leaders in world in peace, rock stars, and a freaking god.
But then again, the Devlin family never did normal.
Duke sometimes thinks back to a set of very wise words that were said to him once. He remembers Bakura's red eyes, the scent of freshly cut park grass, and the feeling of utter dread.
"You're lucky enough to know what love feels like," Bakura had told him so long ago, "so don't you dare mess up this chance you have with her."
He turns to his wife, holding her close. They watch their daughter lovingly as Hope lays silently in her crib.
"Thank you," he says softly.
Serenity smiles, "Always."
Hello everyone!
I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: InsanityByDefinition and ilovemanicures.
This obviously takes place after The Second War of the Orichalcos occurs. It starts off about two years after The Third Year will end. Believe it or not, but I do have most of my characters lives planned out all the way until their deaths.
For example, Marik and Mana do eventually get married (Marik at twenty five and Mana a year younger). They will have two kids, the eldest of which is their biological son and the younger daughter is adopted. Mana will find her parents in Mexico and bring them to the States, getting them their citizenship and helping her little sister (one that she didn't know about as she was separated from her family when she was only a few months old) get some help with her cocaine addiction.
Marik visits his father about twice a year: once on the man's birthday and once on the anniversary of the day that Khalid carved the scars into his back. They don't speak during these visits, only sit across from each other in silence. Marik has never fully forgiven his father for what he did and probably never will. At least, though, he understands why Khalid did what he did now. That has worked miracles on Marik's relationship with his father.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to leave a review, post a question on my forum, or send me a PM.
Until next time,
AlcatrazOutpatient
