Summary: AU where Yuuto was 'motivated' back into his own body during the Xyz arc, and decides to go separate ways from his involuntary aibou.


Yuuto clicked his suitcase shut. "Done."

Well—it was less of a suitcase and more of a snap bag, but wartime did that—condensed possessions, snatched away friends, ushered in grieving. Turned people into unrecognizable forms of themselves.

Sometimes in actuality.

Sayaka was looking mournfully at him as he moved around gathering rations. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

He nodded shortly. It wasn't his intention to hurt her again by leaving her behind once more, but recently he'd realized that sitting still here was also not an option for him.

"You don't have to go," Sayaka persisted. "None of us want… to be without you again."

She looked as though she might say more, but trailed off. Yuuto recognized the look and the feeling from a few hours ago, when the sight of violence against his home and his friends and his duel style brought him roaring out of hibernation and incorporeality like a dragon reasserting claim of its hoard. Though he'd been stuck intimately within his unintentional host for months, he too could not find any words to say to Yuuya beyond a long-overdue farewell.

Not words that would have encompassed all his feelings, anyway.

So instead Yuuto said, "I don't want to leave again either. But we still haven't found Ruri and… I mean, I've lost a lot of time."

That phrase was littered with multiple meanings.

Sayaka paused before nodding slowly and sitting down in the hollowed-out shell of some lost soul's home. "I understand. But—the ones from Standard, those Lancers, are here now. If you don't go with them to take Heartland back, where will you go? Back to Standard? To that Synchro city?"

He closed his eyes.

That's the part I didn't want to tell you.

Since Academia had invaded their shores, Yuuto had done his best to follow Shun's example in taking the fight back to them—meaning wipe out enemies, clear the path for rebuilding much later, find Ruri, and definitely not let their friends know how dire and dangerous things were for them in the other dimensions.

The thing was, that involved lying to their friends—making the world seem better than reality—and Yuuto was just as tired of lying as he was tired of fighting. He was tired of everything.

(The past few months' rest notwithstanding.)

"Where, Yuuto?"

Yuuto held up a card that still hurt to look at—one with Kozuki Allen's terrified upper profile frozen forever in time on its front. Sayaka flinched as he replied: "I'm going to Fusion. To get all our friends back."

This sick present had been 'gifted' to Yuuya, and Yuuto through Yuuya, while they were out on a desperate mission to rescue some helpless families and reclaim territory for Xyz. Allen had gone along to guide Yuuya (unnecessarily; Yuuto was there, he knew Heartland), and it had all gone wrong from there.

And right, too, for though Allen had lost his life, Yuuto had gained his back in the face of such vicious injustice. And he'd grown strong enough to never be locked behind anyone or thing in the pursuit of justice again.

The sound of another pack hitting the floor startled him out of his thoughts: Sayaka had hopped up from her seat and started throwing granola bars into it, and blankets, and a couple of pants…

"I understand why you don't want to travel with Yuuya right now, but if you go by yourself, you're as good as dead," she said. "I'm coming too."

Yuuto looked out the windows at his half-empty home. In his mind's eye, he replayed the scene from earlier today, where he had to walk through the door of the safehouse across the way, look Sayaka in the eyes, and shake his head at her in the code every rebel understood meant one more comrade down.

He imagined telling her it was still too dangerous for her to come along, and then coming back home again in some not-so-distant future where Kaito held her likeness up to him on a flat card and shook his head in the same way.

He imagined it, and then chose another path.

"…Then you'd better get your deck and finish packing," he said.

She was right, after all; on this journey, only a different kind of teamwork would bring success. And Yuuto was looking forward to a little something different.