Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh Arc V, or any of its plot, characters or related franchise.

So I'm not dead... Sorry about the long wait - I will try to get a few more chapters up in the next few months (Christmas is coming up and I've got some other writing that is taking priority, but I swear I won't abandon this fic for as long again).

Following the last one shot, I'm delving back into Yuri for this one. Yusho and Yuya also feature (and so does the chick mama bird currently wants to get revenge on). This is set just before the last one shot: 'Something to surrender to' (i.e. Yuto and his lack of umbrellas are to blame once again).

It was impossible. Unfeasible. Implausible. Illogical. Ludicrous. Impossible. Completely and utterly impossible.

Or so Yuri kept telling himself for whenever he pieced together the facts in his head the result always turned out the same: it was impossible.

Sick. He was sick.

It is an abomination.

The teacup in front of Yuri was empty, mocking the pink haired boy in such a way that no one else would dare. His head throbbed steadily, long since past the forgetful relaxation that had come with losing himself in a careful brew of leaves and dried fruit (there were more types of tea available in this dimension, the only thing it had going for it – aside from certain pets and curiously warm smiles from even stranger women). He sniffed as delicately as one could ever sniff and winced internally at the sound.

To think that this is what he had been reduced to, snorting like a pig.

One hand reached out to absently scratch at the feline purring on the table in front of him. It was like the creature could sense his sickness, his weakened state, a highly unpleasant thought. It was clear that…Core the Sakaki's called her, was an intelligent being. So why had she not attacked him in his vulnerability?

Because an inferior animal would clearly not think of such a thing. Yuri felt a little better for thinking that.

He had been excused from chores the night before, when his…condition had become apparent to the others in the house. That in itself was both a blessing and a curse: on one hand, he did not have to lower himself to cleaning floors and doing dishes, and on the other it meant he had joined his least favourite counterpart as bearing the status of an invalid.

Strong people were not invalid. Yuri had never been invalid in his life.

Until now.

Or so he would let them think, the boy reassured himself. Control was key to victory, and manipulation key to control. He would let these people think he was weak, that he needed help while he bided his time and found a duel disk…

(He would not admit that Yoko Sakaki's hand had felt good on his forehead, motherly almost in the same way he had mothered his plants back at Academia, when she had checked for a temperature. The action had confused him, or more so his reaction to it. He had leaned into it, leaned into the touch like a starving beast that would absorb every ounce of… What exactly?

And therein lied the confusion. It was clear his actions portrayed the idea he was starving, but starving for what? To be touched? He hated being touched by anyone except when he initiated it, and he initiated it rarely for a reason. So it was something else. Yoko's smile perhaps? But she had not smiled at him that small, warm, intoxicating curve of her lips. Rather, a small frown had curved her forehead, something like…concern set inside the creases.

Concern was a weakness indeed, but that woman was a rose. Weak, but strong. To be respected. Perhaps even feared.

But Yuri feared no one for no one would ever match him in his skills. And questions of fear did not answer his original question. Nor did it alleviate the strange disappointment he had felt in that same moment when she had relieved him of his duties of the house, the same duties he used to please her, to take that warmth she so readily gave.

The touch had felt nice, good even and Yuri wanted more as hungrily as he had wanted to have everyone in cards at his feet.)

A paw battered Yuri's hand, pulling the appendage closer to where Core laid. The boy obliged and absently scratched the hollow between the cat's cheek jaw and ear receiving a purr of contentment for his efforts. It was one of the nicer sounds he had heard the former Fusion soldier had long since decided, all rumbling and rough and calm and strangely graceful in its consistent, erratic nature. It was better than the shrieks of those confounded birds that had flew outside his window in Academia before they had learnt to avoid said window. It was, perhaps, even as great as the shrieks of those he had conquered and inevitably put into a card.

Once again a paw demanded and a boy readily obliged. Yuri sniffed.

To be sick – that was a weakness reserved only for the weak, for the pathetic and hopelessly vulnerable. For the scum who was now holed up in his room, almost crippled by the illness he had succumbed to.

The pink eyed boy sniffed again and rethought his previous conclusions on his current condition. Perhaps he was not sick after all, or at least only a little besot by illness; it was the only thing that made sense. He could think clearly enough, even if his thoughts seemed to be dragging for one reason or another. The moves he made in the duels in his own head came as swiftly as they had ever (though the last move that followed all Yuri's victories was always hindered, left to come lagging behind each defeat if it came behind at all, a rose's warm smile the interferer. Or perhaps it was simply that the boy had been unable to practice even once in the last few weeks; Reiji Akaba would pay for depriving him of the teeth and claws that had made him so feared in Academia and other, inferior places).

It took several moments before Yuri realised someone had entered the loungeroom.

"Yes?" he drawled without looking.

The only being other than Core who dared invade his space bounced nervously from foot to foot. "Do you…do you need anything?"

Yuri smirked. How amusing. The child thought that he could help the sick Fusion user, the inferior thing that the smiling fool was. But Yuri was not sick. No, only the weak get sick. Only the weak need help.

Zarc's most manipulative reincarnation allowed Core to weave her tail through his fingers. Then again…

Yuri considered the Standard boy in front of him, a mirror image save for his too naïve smile and foolhardy kindness and general inferiority in every way that counted.

Yuya Sakaki had intrigued the Fusion user upon their first meeting and subsequent ones after that, the boy with words like a honeyed fly trap that could ensnare almost any victim it chose. He was obviously a gifted manipulator (though the fool did not know it) and had some talent for duels, but that was it. Emotions ruled the boy too strongly, made him as easy to manipulate as he obliviously found other people. Yuri had wondered if the boy could ever trap him with his words, but that fear had proved to be unfounded (almost unfounded; the wariness was still there deeply ingrained into his predatory instincts for a predator knew another predator, no matter how much smaller or weaker, when they saw one).

Instead, it seemed that mere prey had been his downfall. Or would have been. If he was indeed truly sick.

Yuri held in a sneeze, moving his lips in its place and with no small amount of effort into a calculated smile. It was only now that he broke the silence he had allowed to fall between him and his Standard counterpart (and how amusing it had been to watch the boy squirm beneath the weight of that silence).

"I do not need anything from you," he said in his paced, measured way. Yuya almost looked relieved. "Save information. If you would care to give it."

A smile followed those words, snakelike but impossible to prove its true nature. Another mask, another feigned round of politeness. Manipulation came as easily to him as breathing, more easily sometimes and it was more rewarding. Breathing gave him life. Manipulation gave him his every desire.

"What information?" The fool was more wary now. Suspicious.

Good. He's learning.

"Oh, it's nothing that would concern you," Yuri assured in a tone that would have been sickly from anyone less masterful than he. "I just wish to know how the other one is doing."

"You mean Yuto?"

"Ah, yes." The smile Yuri gave was not a pleasant one. A slip in his mask, however brief, upon hearing the name. "That one. There are so many of us I lose track. How is he?"

Yuya smiled, wariness still tainting the otherwise genuine arc of his lips. "In bed sleeping. Dad thinks he's got the flu."

Ah. That was news. It seemed the Xyz scum who had given him this infernal cold was affected worse by it. Still, that did not change the fact that said scum had given it to him in the first place.

The Fusion user's fingers itched for a rematch with cards which he would undoubtedly win as the back of his throat itched to cough. Yuri held both urges back. Core was rubbing her head against his fingers, an unconscious reminder of a smile and voice that had awoken a new hunger in him several weeks ago. As for the second sensation… Only weak people coughed and he was far from being weak. His multiple victories when Academia still stood was testament to that.

Yuri coughed anyway.

"Water?"

"Yes."

It burned, knowing that he was no better than this boy, that he was worse than this fool in front of him. It burned even more that he had to accept help from said fool.

A strong person needed no help.

Yuri coughed again.

"Here you go."

Yuri gritted his teeth. He could hear the obnoxiously cheery smile his Standard counterpart was bearing, even with his eyes closed as he accepted the glass. Core purred happily in his lap. He continued to scratch behind her ears.

For a while a silence filled the room, no doubt awkward for Yuya, but merely grating for the Fusion user. He was a solitary person. He needed no one, not least a fool's poor attempts at comforting someone he scarcely knew anything about other than that he was to be feared (roses were perhaps different, but then roses weren't fools). Someone cleared their throat. Yuri coughed again and sipped delicately from his glass.

If only the idiot would take some initiative and go away. But what could one expect from inferior beings? Yuri set his expectations of others, especially his counterparts, low for a reason.

Finally, the stagnation of the room was broken as the only adult home entered with a faded specter in tow (roses gone off somewhere on business pertaining to themselves, a thought that sparked something green and jealous inside Yuri's heart).

"Yuto!" Yuya dashed to the side of his obviously favourite counterpart, but hastily stayed himself as he took in the exhaustion of the other. It was an awkward transition from a crushing embrace to a pat on the shoulder that occurred, containing none of the grace that Yuri, in his superiority, possessed (or that ghosts found came with ease).

Yuri quietly snorted to himself. It appeared the fool had some sense after all. Dull grey eyes frowned at him from across the room as though they had heard his thoughts. The boy they belonged to said nothing however, merely watching the Fusion user just as he always did.

"I'm taking Yuto to the doctor's," the Sakaki patriarch told his son. "I may as well take Yuri too, check that it is just a cold and won't also turn into the flu."

Yuri smiled to himself a smile of victory. It was all too clear what the man was thinking, yet did not want to say in front of him (was too kindhearted to – a weakness if there ever was one); that he was too dangerous and thus untrustworthy to leave alone with his dear son, Yuya. The implication did not insult Yuri in the slightest. That such thoughts existed around him spoke only of his success in making his name both renowned and feared throughout the Dimensions.

(Absently, almost unconsciously he wondered what certain green eyes paired with a gentle smile would think of his pleasure at such a feat.)

Still, going to the doctor's would be to admit that he was sick, inferior. Weak. And Yuri knew he was far from weak.

He stifled a cough.

"As grateful as I am for your concern, I am fine," the pink haired boy said.

Yusho Sakaki frowned. "I insist."

Yuri fought back a frown of his own at the very instant tone of those words, the too insistent tone. He could not refuse it and maintain the mask of a gentleman he had conjured for his stay (did not want to upset the husband of that warm smile and thus be subject to disappointment that seemed to cut deeper than even losing).

How irritating.

"Very well," he finally strung out slowly, pleasantly, imagining gritting his teeth together instead. "If only to ease your worries and assure you of my ability to accurately judge my own condition."

Yusho nodded his head but said nothing, too preoccupied with writing a note in case any who were out returned before them. Yuya buzzed about their Xyz lookalike like an annoying gnat, asking him one thing then another, tugging at infernal red scarf wrapped around the sick one's neck, just begging to be snatched up by the maw of a greater carnivorous plant. How the Xyz scum stood it Yuri didn't know. Perhaps he was sicker than the former Academia soldier had originally thought.

Pathetic.

Yuri sniffed delicately as the Sakaki patriarch ushered all three boys out the door, Core following as far as the house's threshold once he had stood. The other two Zarc fragments dragged behind. The more inferior of the two (for prey was always more inferior than predators, even predators who were utter fools) had taken to leaning on Yuya for support in the short distance it took to reach the family car.

"Help Yuto into the back please, son." The famed dueltainer turned to look at Yuri. "You may sit in the front."

Yuri smiled charmingly and stepped to hold the door open for Yuya as he struggled to help their exhausted Xyz counterpart into the car. Said counterpart winced with every movement as though bruises had been inserted into each of his joints. No doubt his healing leg also ached (really, only an inferior dueler would have been injured when they had fought Zarc). By comparison, Yuya's movements were like a ballerina's as he too entered the car. Closing the door and sending a smile, unseen by Yusho, that made Yuya shift in discomfort closer to his pathetic 'bodyguard', Yuri slipped ever gracefully into his own seat.

"Hopefully this won't take too long," Yusho said as he started the engine.

The man's words fell into the silence it was clear the man was trying to break and sank like a stone without a ripple to show for the effort that was made (really, a pathetic attempt for someone supposed to be famous for dueltaining – the words of roses would have succeeded quietly with far less effort and awkwardness, instead drawing each into the folds of her petals to calm and soften). Yuya was still too unsettled to respond and the scum beside him even quieter than usual. Yuri sniffed and simply looked out the window. He doubted Yusho would welcome his response in any case, with the tension that held the man's shoulders in a stiff line every time his gaze drifted towards the most superior of those who bore his son's face.

It was going to be a boring drive.

If Yuri had been raised with any less etiquette he might have sighed. As it was he simply stared out of the window and imaged the gardens he could have planted in each sordid excuse for one they passed. The long tube-like, white and burgundy spotted Sarracenia leucophylla in front of the large windows of a yellow stoned house. Pinguicula vulgaris and its purple blooms scattered amongst the courtyard of another residence. For the more modern looking buildings, the vibrant orange-red Nepenthes ventricosa. In front of older styles of architecture, the plain greenery offered by the Drosophyllum lusitanicum. And perhaps, amongst them all, a rose or two to bring in some further, softer colour. It was relaxing mind-work. Pleasant even.

Yuri sneezed and a slight frown deigned to grace his face, no longer content. The former Fusion soldier flicked his eyes to the rear-view mirror where he could see said Xyz scum leaning on Yuya like a pathetic excuse. Not a heartbeat later a pair of grey eyes opened and stared right back at him, in their silvery depths lurking only a strangely burning coldness dulled by lethargic edges. There was no visible fear, no easily decipherable anger or hatred. Just that burning cold as always. The boy's mask was almost as good as his own.

Yuri would not say he was unnerved. Superior duelists were not unnerved by weaker opponents. Superior people were not made sick by their weaker counterparts. Superior people did not succumb to the false appearances of Belladonna. Still, it was as though his predatory instincts were readying themselves to combat a threat that was something more than a mere fly was to a Dionaea muscipula.

The Fusion user looked away smoothly.

The boy internally cursed the scum behind him for making him do so. Who did that Xyz user think he was to force a predator to avert its gaze from the weaker prey? It was incomprehensible behaviour, despicable that one of his status and skill should bow to a duelist who was not even second-rate, and sick at that!

Yuri coughed delicately into his hand, unable to hold it back any longer.

He gave no thought to the contrite shadow that had barely traced the edges of his mind upon being caught by two somber grey wells. For him, such shadows did not exist.

"Everyone alright?" Yusho asked for the tenth agonizing time.

"Quite alright, thank you," Yuri said charmingly, his mask once more settling back into place.

A series of hacking coughs from behind answered for the Xyz scum. Yuri refrained from rolling his eyes and turned his attention back out the window. By now the gardens had faded into the harsh, unrefined concrete of the city hub where traffic was steadily increasing. The noise was raucous. The sights were obscenely vibrant and lively. No doubt Belladonna would thrive amongst the chaos with its poisonous ways, if it could find the strength to break through the pavement and avoid being crushed underfoot. (As it rightfully should be, was the opinion Yuri had recently come to hold. For all the esteem the second-rate plant was regarded with, its passive poison paled in comparison to the hungry might and maw of the carnivorous botany Yuri had spent many long hours studying. If that infernal Akaba had not taken his duel disk, than the former Academia soldier would have carded every Belladonna plant in existence and then torn each card in two, starting with the ghostly specimen behind him.)

"Yuya, are you alright?" Yusho asked.

Yuya seemed to whine. "I think Yuto's getting sicker, dad."

The tension in the man's shoulders increased. "We're almost there. That's just the fever growing."

"Hmm," Yuto agreed or at least seemed to. "I'll be fine, Yuya. Just tired."

Those who were strong would never admit a weakness. Yuri coughed again then sniffed, smoothly avoiding Yusho's sidelong glance. He focused on the streets blurring past and imagined crushing little black berries beneath his feet.

So the Fusion user passed the rest of the trip in silence save for the polite responses his mask called for him to give to the nurse at the front desk, to the doctor when he enquired about his health (despite the man knowing nothing at all; he was most adamantly not sick), when he escorted his counterparts from and to the car acting the part of any charming manipulator. It was more tiring than it should have been, the ache in his head having steadily grown from interacting with such inferior people. The stuffiness of his nose – an inexplicable thing for it could not be the impossible – did not help matters. Nor did Yusho's insistence that they buy him medicine as well.

"Your concern is appreciated, but I do not need it," Yuri had said, his voice a touch irater for the throbbing by his temples.

Yusho had just looked away. "I'll get it just in case."

Soon enough (and nowhere near it) the former Academia soldier was back where he had starts: the Sakaki loungeroom with Core purring atop his lap as well as he had ever been.

Yuri sniffed daintily, dabbing more than blowing his nose with a tissue.

He knew that his infernal lookalike who had reduced him to this state was asleep once more. That thought was not a bother to Yuri. The drive back to the Sakaki household from the doctor's had reassured him of the Xyz user's inferiority, the grey eyed boy failing to fight an increasingly slumber-like doze. His fatigue (a definite sign of his weakness when Yuri barely felt tired himself despite his subtly pounding head) had gotten to such a stage that Yusho Sakaki had forgone permission to carry the flu ridden and dully protesting boy back to the room he shared with Yuya (although Yuya was now temporarily bunking with Yugo).

No, there was no doubt his Xyz counterpart had fallen prey to the clutches of an irresponsible slumber. It was such a sign of feebleness when he himself was still wide awake. Doubly so that the boy had been reduced to relying almost completely on others to get from the car to the house.

Yuri refused to dwell on the fact that Yuya had not fallen sick; that other than him, no one had, not even his loud and obnoxiously annoying Synchro counterpart. Instead he focused on the man in front of him, watching, waiting for him to say something.

"Was there anything you needed? Tea perhaps? I noticed you were drinking some before." Yusho's words were almost hesitant, a performer's air all that kept them from being truly so.

Pathetic.

The boy's mask was growing more and more tiring to maintain. His head still throbbed, he was still sneezing for some unfathomable reason and the incitation that he was anything less than perfect-

Yuri coughed and fought back a scowl. He would sooner lick the boots of that Xyz scum sleeping in a bout of unending weakness than beg help from the man before him. (If it had been roses that had offered- Oh, if only it had been roses…)

"No," the Fusion user said tightly.

"Are you sure?" Yusho did not look convinced, instead a light that looked awfully, disturbingly like sympathy turning on in his eyes.

"I am fine. Thank you." He almost spat the last words like he had seen a heathen toddler spitting in fury at the doctor's office.

Why the man had deigned to come to him after placing Yuto in his room, Yuri did not know. He certainly did not care for it. This man was no rose. Perhaps a fool, perhaps something a bit more than a fool – what Yuya could be should he ever realise he possessed the power of a predator (but certainly the man was inferior to every fragment of Zarc that had retained a hunter's spirit). Yet, he was no rose (and, perhaps, in Yuri's aching eyes that was enough to condemn the man for).

An awkwardness had stolen over the room and unease, in all its revoltingness, crawled across Yuri's skin like a bug. How he would have loved to snap it up like his beloved Starving Venom or the Dionaea muscipula he had been forced to leave abandoned in his old Academia quarters. (It was just another reason to loath that Akaba spawn, that no-good, inferior, arrogant bastard who paraded about like he was better than Yuri when in fact his callous manipulations were almost a mirror image of Yuri's own, even if they were not as perfect.)

"If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask." Yusho still had not given up, a trait it seemed he shared with the annoying son he had raised.

"I will remember." The words were as dismissing as any could be.

A sigh filled the air, like it had expected something more but was not surprised by what it had received instead. Yuri focused his attention on where Core's demanding head was butting against his fingertips, seemingly ignoring the footsteps that had begun to move away. Those footsteps were beneath him.

Almost at the room's door, they stopped. Yuri, subtly, tensed.

"It is alright to be sick, you know. Everyone gets sick."

It was a horrible thought. That he was just like everyone else, every weaker person he despised.

"It doesn't make you weak," Yusho continued. It was as if the man could read his mind (another horrible thought).

For a moment there was silence. Then Yuri's voice came as smooth and calculated as it always was. "I thank you for your concern. If you do not mind, I would like to retire now."

"Of course."

And if there was a sigh as the man exited the room Yuri did not dwell on it. Nor did he dwell on what it meant.

Such dwelling was, after all, for the weak.

Ye Gods, I forgot how hard Yuri was to write. I had to reread the previous chapters with him in it several times to write this...

This was a suggestion from forever ago from Durbe the Barian: a moment between Yuri and Yusho where Yusho and Yuya looking after a sick Yuri whose superiority complex makes him say he can't be sick, etc. It was a pretty good suggestion and interesting, although hard, to write (and Yuri's voice is getting more fun to write too, although clearly no less hard) - indeed that was what kicked off this cold plot arc ;) I hope I did it justice at least somewhat. I'm not too happy with the latter half of this, but oh well.

I thought having Yuto be kind of responsible for Yuri getting sick ('responsible' being debatable: Yuto has the flu where Shun & Yuri have colds. So they could have caught something else at the same time, which is more likely, otherwise they would have flus too - not that either of them see it that way ;) would be an interesting (funny really, if I'm being honest) concept since I think Yuri would personally see it as Yuto getting one up on him so to speak. And this would be coming from someone with a superiority complex and innate desire to a) card everyone and/or b) get the most praise, who also c) came from a place with a very low opinion on those from the Xyz Dimension. In any case, this would not be helping Yuto's case with him. Doubly so if only Yuri is infected and not Yuya or Yugo - and if Yuto already made him uneasy, which I think he would.

I hope that you enjoyed this. Please leave a review if you feel so inclined; they are much appreciated. I also love hearing what you thought of my stories.