Semicolon Tattoo (sequel to Bra, mentions to Broken coin)

The announcement board at the Domino high school entrance rarely gave Tea much reason to stop and look it over when it was off-season for many dance and theater projects going on around town, sometimes she was known to pin up some flyers for a show that she would be preforming in, but it really didn't hold much significance for her… save for one flyer.

The flyer in question had impacted her greatly once upon a time, though she often felt uncomfortable and embarrassed about how the series of events had transpired to lead her to taking a small little flyer's printed words to heart and eventually feeling… a sort of reluctant sensation of owing that flyer her life… which was an odd concept that again Tea didn't really like to think too hard about it and only showed any outward gratitude to said flyer by moving it to a less populated section of the announcement board, so that it had a less likely chance of being torn down by the janitorial staff, and every so often relocated other flyers that tried to cover the flyer she reluctantly owed her life to.

She really should have thought more of it when she had caught Yugi, who never paid any attention to the announcement board and probably was surprised to find that the school had one, staring with wide(r), spooked eyes at the flyer that she both owed her life to, and tried to pretend didn't exist most days.

He seemed to stare at her more often than usual that day, which a few weeks ago would have made her panic because she would have been petrified that he was working up the courage to ask her out on a date and that her immediate and necessary refusal to do so would end up in all of her best friends banning together as a group of guys and demanding that either she lie to Yugi and tell him that she liked him back or that they would leave her friendless and alone-

Tea inhaled deeply, calmly, subtly hugging herself until those thoughts settled because she, Yugi, and the spirit of the puzzle already had a surprisingly successful talk which entailed Tea admitting that she had no romantic feelings towards any of her male friends but still loved them all dearly in a completely platonic sibling sort of way and both Yugi and the spirit had been fine with that. Which was fantastic because if those two were fine with her just being their platonic friend for now and into the very far future then she didn't have to be so scared anymore and really, it was beyond wonderful that she could do things like hug and ruffle their hair without either one of them misinterpreting it as a romantic come on.

Tea was distracted from the issue of Yugi staring at her like he was fearful that she would disappear into a puff of smoke, by the realization that the last time she had felt safe enough to hug the stuffing out of Yugi was… well it was before her boobs had gotten so big, and it was before that one day that had very nearly shattered Tea's heart completely when Yugi had wriggled out of her hold like she had some sort of horrible disease and shyly stuttered that it wasn't right for a girl who was just a friend to hug him like that.

That day had been one situation of many that had led her into a downward spiral that Tea hated remembering just how… horrible it had been.

But that had been before Tea had made it completely clear that she had no interest in her friends romantically like that, and she was determined to show all of her friends that she didn't give a damn whether or not idiots who didn't matter thought that she was trying to seduce them by demanding platonic human contact that made her feel more secure and connected both personally and towards them.

Her thoughts trailed off for the rest of the day on that tangent; thinking about how Yugi seemed to not mind returning her hugs, and the spirit (who was obviously deprived of much human contact aside from Yugi) had little qualms with initiating hugs or putting an arm companionably around her shoulders or waist, and just seemed to try to absorb as much friendly human contact as he could.

Once he caught onto the fact that it was now safe to touch Tea Joey seemed to jump at the chance of Tea letting him put her in a fake headlock and petting her hair diabolically at Kiaba (something that never seemed to fail in distracting the CEO during one of their spats long enough for Kiaba to remember that they were all crazy in their own ways and that if he stuck around to argue with Joey the crazy just might latch on to him). When the blond boy had discovered last week that Tea was strong enough to lift him up with little difficulty he had no shame in demanding piggy back rides or for her to grab his arms and swing him in the air around in circles like he was just an overgrown six-year-old (she sensed that those were things that his father had done before the bastard had turned to booze and basically abandoned Joey at a young age). Oddly enough she didn't find herself objecting to Joey's demands as much as she thought she would have (not that she would have ever thought that she'd be put into that kind of situation with a nearly grown young man…).

Tristan (predictably) had been the one who seemed to have the most issues with her sudden campaign to be more tactile with her male friends. Often shooting Yugi terrified looks of apology whenever she hugged him when she said hello (never mind that she was also giving Joey a hug at the same time), and going completely ridged when she sometimes hooked her arm with his while their group was walking somewhere.

It would have become awkward enough for her to stop if Joey and Yami hadn't silently caught on to the real reason why Tristan was trying to stutteringly incorporate what was proper for high school girls to be doing when males were present and almost gleefully hooked their arms around Tristan's other one or (if the brunette male was being particularly unintentionally offensive) wrap an arm around his hip effectively making Tristan squeal like a girl and go back to acting normal.

The other boys must have had a private talk with Tristan sometime in the past week because he seemed more resigned about her giving him a hug or linking their arms and didn't try to say anything about what was proper for a girl, to which she was very thankful for.

Her thoughts had been forcibly brought back to the reasons why Yugi had been staring at the flyer and then at her for the rest of the day was while they were all on their way home from school and after Joey and Tristan had left them to go to their respective homes.

Yugi had a fiercely determined look in his eye when he had asked her if she would accompany him to the park for a little while to talk.

He didn't say a word after that save for when they had ordered grilled sandwiches and cheese stuffed giant pretzels from a street vender.

They had found an empty bench to sit on, Tea found herself torn between, eyeing Yugi worriedly, blissfully watching the buds and blossoms of the cherry trees all around them, and eating her food.

Yugi still didn't speak but after a while he reached into his bag and gave Tea a familiar looking flyer, the same flyer that talked about the semicolon tattoo project and what it stood for, as well as a number to a help line if anybody needed it.

Tea stared at the paper her friend had presented to her blankly, as blank as her mind had become until a tidbit of a memory swam forward and presented itself at the front of her brain.

"That's right, I never did tell you the story behind my tattoo." Tea's voice came out surprisingly nonchalant as she put the remainder of her food in her bag and deftly took the flyer from the boy's fingers, proceeding to stare at it in bewilderment.

"You've got a semicolon." Yugi pointed at her, sounding a little frayed.

"And some writing and some rainbow background colors behind the semicolon." Tea hummed. "After seeing this flyer I did some research into some ideas of what my little daily reminder should look like, after all I wanted something that I could stand having on my skin for the rest of my life."

"The flyer says that the people who get those tattoos are because they… because they…" Yugi couldn't finish, Tea looked over to see the fear on his face.

"Because they are depressed, suicidal, and/or have a mental illness." Tea finished humorlessly with a nod. "Or in my case, it was just depressed and suicidal."

She saw Yugi try to speak but his voice caught and he looked dangerously close to bursting into tears, so Tea took the initiative to answer his unspoken question.

"For as far back as I can remember I've always… been seen as a disgrace for not acting like how people think that a girl should act, like I said a few weeks ago, you… had been my only friend until we met Joey and Tristan."

Tea shrugged awkwardly. "I was able to ignore other people talking behind my back like I was some sort of monstrosity, I mean I had at least one best friend and that had been enough for me. But then puberty hit and I was suddenly hit from all sides with all of these expectations, of forcing my body to look like the girl's in the magazines, having crushes on boys, getting a boyfriend, spending middle school and high school walking the precarious line between being an ice queen for not giving it all up for some idiot boy and being a slut for doing just that, give up my dreams to become a dancer by getting married after high school graduation, becoming a frustrated housewife, and having nothing better to do with the rest of my life than pop out babies… and if I just so happen to follow the Gardener women family tradition, spend a few years of choking down tranquilizers so that I can be mellow enough to pretend that I'm happy until I get lucky enough for an accidental overdose… or arrange for my husband to… have a fatal accident."

The look Yugi gave her was a very special mix between disbelief and horror.

Tea shifted uncomfortably. "When I got my first… monthly cycle, My grandmother took me aside and showed me how to make this special powder out of the poisonous plants that she grows in her garden- let's just say that if you want to ever enjoy eating her special cookies you like so much, ever again, it would be for the best that I don't tell you how that all went down…"

Yugi continued to stare at her with that same look as before.

"Back on track." Tea redirected the conversation. "The point of all of this was that I had started feeling like a freak because I never found myself attracted to boys, or interested in girly things… and after a while I started getting scared that I'd lose the only friend that I had and end up all alone if I didn't… conform to how the other girls were acting. So I bought a bunch of girl and men's magazines and wrote down a list of observations of how the other girls I was observing at the time acted and started trying to act like a combination of the popular girls and the people in the magazines. I know that it sounds ridiculous but at the time I was almost paralyzed by the fear of being abandoned for not being the way everyone else seemed to want me to be."

"Which did not end up going well for me." Tea pointed out. "I gave up dancing in favor of dieting which had resulted in me losing a worrying unhealthy amount of weight, started acting like a jerk to you because all the popular girls were jerks with each other, and I got a job that paid terribly and had an incredibly ugly uniform, but I put up with that because the men's magazines said that there was nothing better than a girl who wore one of those uniforms and served food."

"The major problem that I ran into though was that even after going through all of that I was still considered weird by the other girls and boys because I had a bunch of guy friends and I wasn't trying to seduce any of you, and I was internally freaking out more and more each day because I just… I never found boys or men attractive! And no matter how much I stared at the magazine pictures I just couldn't manage to squeeze out the right emotions to make all of those love songs and poetry make sense! Now I still had the presence of mind not to use you, Joey, or Tristan to try to turn myself normal, I may have turned myself into a jerk, but I wasn't that far gone to be willing to risk losing you guys for the sake of trying to force myself to have a crush on one of you… but then the spirit came into the picture… who was obviously not my best friend but I kind of figured that he might have been some sort of… split personality… he seemed like a safe enough bet at the time for me to attempt to force myself into feeling feelings that I did not possess… and who at first glance appeared to be what girls seemed to be after in a silent, brooding, mysterious type…"

Yugi winced.

"Yeah, I agree that it wasn't one of my best ideas, and for the record I'd just like to say that I am very, very sorry for all the trouble that I had caused and any hurt, confused emotions that I made Yugi feel in the process. And I am very, very glad that Yami never turned out to be anywhere close to being a brooding, mysterious clichéd. Because Yami is a nice guy and an awesome platonic friend, and I'd much prefer feeling safe being around how he actually is… over how those mysterious types tend to side more towards physical and mental abuse towards their romantic girlfriends. Again I'm terribly sorry for those first few months that you awoke." Tea winced herself. "I just thought that if I could finagle feelings for the other Yugi then… maybe I could form feelings for Yugi and end up with the fairytale happily ever after that Tristan, Joey, and your family were all trying to hint to me that we should become."

"Grandpa didn't say anything that was out of line to you did he?" Yugi piped up, a long-suffering look crossing his face. "Because I know that mama would never say anything like that to you."

"He just wanted what was best for you, he's like almost any other traditional elderly figure that I've run into who wants their grandchild to have a halfway decent future wife, and he approves of me as your potential future one… he's been really hoping for that sort of development… though it will be completely heartbreaking now when I have to break the news to him that I won't ever be sporting your late grandmother's wedding ring, or have any use of the bridal magazines that he keeps sneaking into my bag-… but I'm sure he'll get over it." Tea tried to assure.

"He what?" Yugi yelped in outrage. "No wonder you were getting depressed and scared of losing me as a friend! Oooh I am going to have words with him…"

"Please don't!" Tea begged. "He meant well! A little bit overly enthusiastic maybe, but he didn't mean anything mean like that I had to marry his grandson or else I was a demon woman who had to be cast out! Come on, you know how things were like in his generation and the need to marry the person your supposed to spend the rest of your life with while people were still young. At our age and younger in fact."

"He's the one who didn't marry my grandmother until my father was my age!" Yugi snapped, looking vexed. "And I'm still not convinced that there probably isn't an old lady with a small tribe of children and grandchildren with spikey multi-colored hair living out in the rural parts of Egypt!"

"I'm sure he meant well?" Tea tried again.

"No, he just wants to see you in a wedding dress, and a bunch of Japanese great-grandkids running around with your looks and my hair!" Yugi gritted out savagely. "He never got over the fact that none of his other children had kids, that my parents decided to stop at one kid, and that my mama never took it upon herself to give him any more grandchildren, even after papa passed. He is not allowed to go behind my back and try to arrange my life and my best friend's life for us just so that he can be a grandpa again!"

"At least that's probably the better part of it." Yugi grumbled suspiciously, casting a jaundiced eye around him. "He probably thinks that I'm incapable of finding a date all on may own…"

"Well we all that's not true." Tea cooed sympathetically. "Vivian, Rebecca, and Kiaba all practically throw themselves at you constantly."

"I don't think that a ten-year-old and Viv- wait, Kiaba?" Yugi looked sharply over to his friend.

"I've seen his video library of practically every single duel you've ever played near a camera. He's got to have over a hundred hours of nothing but you, playing his favorite game. And a bookcase devoted to folders with things that were labeled with stuff like; "Yugi eating hamburgers", or "Yugi wears star print pajama set" and he had pictures! You'll have to forgive me of at least giving him the benefit of the doubt in thinking that he's into you and just so far into the closet that he really, really, really doesn't know what to do, because if he isn't then that puts him in the creepy stalker territory and I've got some issues with that." Tea revealed in serious tones.

"I'm sure that there's a logical explanation for that?" Yugi squeaked, looking spooked.

"What does your other self think about this?" Tea asked, because the issue of Kiaba having all that stuff on her best friend was disturbing to her.

"I think that Kiaba and I are going to have a little talk about that very soon." Yami Yugi clasped his hands together, putting them between his knees, and stared out into the distance, not looking at all happy.

The conversation had gone off track, along with Tea's courage to continue on with dredging up the painful parts of her past.

"Well it's been nice getting all that off my chest, I'll be seeing you tomorrow." She started to get up.

"You still haven't explained why you got the tattoo." The spirit pointed out, casting her a knowing look.

Tea slumped back down into her seat. "You remember very well that whole catastrophe with the Ferris wheel." She mumbled at the ground sullenly.

"You jumped onto that Ferris wheel intentionally." The spirit spoke softly, knowingly.

"I jumped onto that Ferris wheel intentionally." Tea nodded not looking at the boy. "No matter how hard I tried I just could not fall in love with you, and if I couldn't fall for someone that even Tristan admits to being exotically handsome then what hope did I have for falling for any boy and being normal? You have to understand that at the time I was scared, tired from lack of sleep, and really hungry from having almost nothing to eat aside from diet juice and rabbit food for weeks, I could have easily been diagnosed a certifiably insane… and at the time it sounded like a good idea in my head. I risk my life doing something stupid, hoping that in the midst of all the danger I would feel… something towards you that was of somewhat romantic nature, perhaps even die in the process of trying to achieve this but at the very least I would have an answer as to whether or not I was defective."

"And… I'm guessing that it didn't work?" The spirit asked, his tone sounded odd, like he didn't know how to feel about all of this, but Tea kept her head down.

"It did not." She confirmed. "And… that's when something really weird happened… you see my body was screaming at me to get off the exploding ride and back to safety on the ground, but… as I looked down at you, feeling nothing but platonic friendship and sisterly affection for you I-I…"

Tea squeezed her eyes shut. "I started to hope that you would never figure out that psycho's game in time to save me. All my life I had been told that there is only one good thing that a girl was born for and… I did not possess it; in the long minutes that it took you to solve the game I had managed to convince myself that I didn't deserve to stick around and continue to cause the people I cared about disappointment because I didn't fit perfectly into the expectations of how they wanted me to be."

The girl shook her head scrubbing her dry eyes with her hands (she had stopped crying over the issue long ago). "It was really weird seeing my hands hitting the side of the door demanding to get out and live while on the inside I had no conscious control over what my body was doing because my mind was too busy making peace with the fact that I was going to die soon."

"But I did save you." The spirit pointed out.

"For a long while I didn't know whether to thank you and kiss you, or hate you and hit you." Tea cast the surprised spirit a wry smirk. "I don't recall when I stopped wandering around in a shocked stupor, being half starved from actual food has this tendency to make remembering time frames difficult, but I do remember sometime that week I literally threw my salad and diet drink out the window and headed to the nearest place that would serve me a proper meatball sub and extra large chocolate strawberry ice cream, that I devoured with a gusto." Tea smiled at the memory, it was the most delicious sandwich and ice cream she had ever had.

"And while taking advantage of everybody including Yugi trying to figure out whether or not he had a double personality… I found myself doing the exact opposite of trying to fall for guys… Which had been fun, though I'll admit that I had been pretty reckless..." Tea found herself blushing at the memory of what she and Miho used to do for fun before the other girl broke Tea's heart.

"Then… another reality check slapped me across the face and I realized that all of those people who had ever told me, and would still continue telling me that I was somehow defective for not being who they expected me to be, it wasn't my problem. If they were so determined to make me out to be the bad guy for just being my natural self then that was their issue not mine. But I was always kind of scared that I might revert back to that destructive state, then one day I saw this flyer and decided to get a permanent reminder that I never had to feel like I had to conform to other's ideals." Tea shrugged innocently.

Tea startled when she was suddenly enveloped in a very tight hug her face suddenly found itself buried in a surprisingly soft head of spikey hair.

"Don't scare us like that again okay?" Tea didn't know whom the muffled voice belonged to, Yami or Yugi (it could have been both of them for all she knew). She noticed that there was a growing dampness on her shoulder. "If you ever feel that bad ever again you tell us yes?"

Tea tentatively returned the embrace. "Yes, I promise." The girl swore after a stunned moment. "I'm sorry for giving you two such a fright."

"You are loved for the person that you are Tea Gardener. Don't forget that your friends care about you too." The boy sniffled.

"Okay." Tea nodded. "I won't forget."

XXX

Firebirds live their own damn lives in their own damn ways.

Tea smiled fondly at the backward image of the words written on her chest, right over where her heart beat beneath the skin and bone, she stood topless in front of the bathroom mirror and just let herself bask in the feeling of being loved enough to feel like she fit into her own skin.