Author's Notes: Holy fandango! Yet more reviews. I suppose I'm learning from this experiment that things actually need a little time to pick up speed.

All right, first order of business is this: The 'main' pairing of this fanfic is undecided, and may never be decided on at all. I did not start writing this with the intent of having two characters snogging be my happy ending. The omote halves are paired because I think it makes for a good background pairing, is cute, and adds depth to several characters. Yes, Atem and Bakura are going to spend a lot of time around eachother. They're going to spend more time around their other halves, seeign that they live with them. At this point, I may pair anybody with anybody, or nobody at all.

Second order of business is that I have submitted two Atem chapters in a row. This may disrupt the pattern of switching every chapter, but I felt it was the right thing to do. So, have a short chapter filled with Atem being cute.

Sesen Chapter Ten: Nyquil Symbolism

Atem sniffled pitifully and pulled the blankets over his head. He had been suffering from a severe cold for the past two days, and thanks to the weekend coming to an end, he could now add inescapable boredom to his growing list of discomforts. Yuugi had been more than willing to keep him company on the weekend, but he was at school. He would bother Jiichan, but he was too busy keeping the shop running smoothly, and Yuugi's mother was being... doing whatever the hell it was that she did that kept her out of the house most days. Bored, bored, bored.

He poked his head out of the blankets and reached over to the small folding tray that was serving as his bedside table. The plain tea that Yuugi had made for him before leaving for school had gone cold hours ago, which was his fault for hating tea without sugar and milk, so he sat up to pour himself a cup of ice water from the half-emptied pitcher next to his neglected tea. He gulped it down quickly and held the ice-filled glass to his forehead before putting it up and flopping back onto the futon.

He hadn't spoken to Bakura since Friday night, and it was irritating him. The least the thief could do was keep him updated on the situation. Ideally, he could do that as well as explain his recent behavior. It seemed suspicious that Bakura would take such a sudden interest in his welfare. Then again, Bakura had been acting strangely since they arrived. Perhaps a second chance at life had changed his perspective. No, that didn't make any sense. Even with a healthier philosophy on life, Atem doubted that Bakura's attitude toward him had changed enough for him to care whether or not he was sick.

It was raining again; he could smell that unique rain smell through to cracked window. Jiichan had been going on earlier about how fresh air was better for sick people than the 'dirty' air inside, but Yuugi's mother had convinced him to leave cracked instead of opening it, arguing that the damp, chilled air outside would probably make Atem worse. Neither hypothesis made much sense to him, but the medicine he was taking might have been to blame.

Rain... It had been raining on and off since he and Bakura left the tiny park on Friday. Bakura had acted strangely at the park, too. He had looked almost wistful when he started swinging out of nowhere, then... then he had asked why Atem bothered to work with him if he hated him so much. Then he had answered, then Bakura had snapped at him, and then...

Did he hate Bakura? No? Maybe? He should have, shouldn't he? Bakura had done so many awful things, hurt so many people... but all for a purpose. Revenge, his ultimate goal. Atem had done terrible things when he was first released from the Puzzle, and for much more trivial reasons than Bakura. No. He had been out of his mind at that time. No memories, no identity, nothing else to protect or care for than the one that had released him from an eternity of solitude.

But wasn't Bakura out of his mind all the time? Didn't he have every right to be after what he had been through? Left all alone after seeing his entire family killed. Looking at Bakura now, he couldn't have been any more than six when it had happened. He simply couldn't fathom that situation.

'How did he deal with that? How can someone, especially someone so young, even go on after that...'

His head was starting to ache again. He took that as his cue to push those thoughts from his mind. All he had to do was find some way to occupy himself, right? He looked around the room for the umpteenth time since he had been ordered to remain in bed until he was well again. Shockingly, he noticed something he had passed over before; a handheld video game system of some kind resting temptingly on Yuugi's desk. He practically hopped out of his bed and grabbed it up.

No cartridge. Great. Undeterred, he began rummaging through the desk drawers in search of anything remotely resembling a video game cartridge. Success! A small black rectangle at the bottom of the bottom-most drawer. He pulled it out and examined it. The label read "Oasis" and featured a deeply-tanned warrior brandishing a scimitar at a menacing group of skeletons. It fit perfectly when he tried to insert it into the handheld contraption. Satisfied, he lied back down on the futon, pulled the thickest of his two blankets over him, and switched the game on.

He could worry about Bakura later.

Atem whipped his head from side to side. He had just been playing a video game, and... and now he was somewhere else. It was night, and he was in a desert, though he had no idea how he had gotten there. He could feel the cool sand under his bare feet. Bare feet? He looked down at himself to find that he was completely nude. He shuddered, suddenly accutely aware of the chilly air around him. There was a pool of steaming water some yards ahead of him, with a figure wading waist-deep in it. Atem began walking toward the water, feeling compelled to join the figure bathing in its warmth.

The figure in the water became clearer as he approached; better built and much taller than himself, with wild white hair. What was Bakura doing there? There was another odd detail. Bakura was wearing bandages from his neck to his waist. It was confusing, but it seemed right, though Atem couldn't quite fathom why. He decided to call out to the other boy before stepping into the pool.

"Bakura!"

No reply. Bakura simply stood there, gazing down into the pool. Suddenly very concerned for Bakura, Atem ran into the water, finding that it had a rather slippery, slick bottom, probably of some kind of worn stone. The water that only reached Bakura's waist soon reached his chest.

"Bakura!"

Again, no reply. He reached out to the other boy, meaning to grab his arm and shake him out of whatever trance had fallen into. That was when the bottom of the pool seemed to disappear from under his feet. He sank like a lead balloon. Atem watched as the shocked exclamation he had let out floated to the surface in the form of a great mass of bubbles. All the air in his lungs.

He looked around in a panic, almost certain that he had done a flip on his way down, that the surface was below him instead of above. It was black around him. He could hear and feel water running, feel invisible currents slowly carrying his body in random directions.

"Atem," a voice behind him beckoned.

With some effort, Atem spun around in the water to face the voice. He wasn't entirely surprised to see Bakura suspended in the water, no more than ten feet away, smiling intently at him.

Sinuous, translucent forms floated between the two of them, obscuring Bakura almost entirely from his view. The faceless, human-shaped forms danced and writhed, and no matter how he tried to bypass them and reach Bakura before they both drowned, the things obstructed him.

"Atem," another voice called, this one muffled and distant.

The spiky-headed boy groaned as his eyelids fluttered open. A dream; it had all been a dream. Yuugi was there now, and the dream was dissolving into fragments by the time he managed to say anything.

"You're home early...?" he murmured.

Yuugi smiled and stood up from his kneeling position by the futon. "You've been asleep all day. And you ran my game's batteries out."

Atem averted his eyes to the darkened window when Yuugi dangled the toy in front of his face playfully. It wasn't as if he had meant to fall into a sort of miniature coma. Rain was still pouring down outside, which was a relief. At least there wasn't a beautiful, clear night to be missed by lying in bed sick.