AN: Hi everyone! So sorry this is so late, and sorry for vanishing for the best part of three months. Uni has been Hell this year in so many ways (massive workload, housemate whom we'd been mates with all last year turned out to be a queen bitch, unable to get internet, the list goes on), and even after I'd finished this my Beta had too much work to do before she could focus on this. Anyway, I'm home for Christmas now, and hoping to get some writing done before I have to go back! So, enjoy this!
At last. Explanations Ahoy!
Phoenix's Ashes
Chapter Nine
Nothing happened.
The golden shadows danced boldly on the walls, taunting him with macabre images and silhouettes of the past. The Shadows hissed in his ears like smoke rising from a fire of dry leaves, but he could not tell what they were saying. Taunting, comforting, arguing; they could be doing anything to him right now without his notice.
The completed Sennen Puzzle rested in his cupped palms and looked like nothing more than a hunk of gaudy jewellery, the golden house of power reduced to a sad little pendant. Yami felt his hands begin to tremble in a way they hadn't since he arrived in Domino as his final hope was torn from him with a set of rusted iron claws.
It hadn't worked. The Puzzle's warmth had cooled and the echo of a presence was gone. Nothing had happened, the strings tugging his fingers had been severed so he sat with the feeling that he was a puppet without a puppeteer to give it an impression of life. He had lived only that impression of life for so long now, and suddenly he found that he didn't have the strength even for that anymore.
He had fallen into the trap he had told himself to avoid. He had begun to hope when he knew he shouldn't. And he was paying for it now as his hands trembled where they lay in his lap and the chasm in his chest seemed to expand until it threatened to consume him entirely.
Shadowed figures danced on the wall. The warmth that had exited the Puzzle seemed to condense and grow stronger, not in his hands, but at his side, where the bed dropped off. The threadbare string that connected his head and neck to the puppeteer's control tugged weakly. Yami looked up.
A choked sound escaped his constricting throat, and suddenly Yami couldn't breathe.
Malik had been sat in his living room staring at nothing for quite some time now. The radio was on, but he clearly wasn't listening to either the music or the presenters. He just sat and stared at a painting on the wall, an exact replicate of the tomb paintings in Atemu's lost tomb, with a look of deep thought on his face.
This annoyed Mariku, who knew that his other half simply had to be planning something evil to prank him with. Not to be outdone, Mariku had placed himself in the opposite chair and attempted to mimic Malik's thoughtful look by trying to think of something equally as evil to get him back with.
It wasn't going too well. Mariku knew that Isis would never let him bring ferrets into the house. He couldn't even hide them, that woman had a nose like a bloodhound. Mariku glared at Malik from across the room and tried not to blink, he'd have to psych Malik out while he thought of a plan. He was back to square one of 'How to scare one's Hikari shitless' without those ferrets. He should write a book.
Malik broke the staring contest he didn't even know he was in when the phone rang. Pulling himself reluctantly out of his suspicious thoughts, he crossed the room and picked up the receiver, frowning immediately when he heard his sister's voice.
"Malik?" Isis sounded impatient.
"Yeah?" he said slowly, "What is it?"
"Nothing much. I'm going to be late home, probably very late, and I need to you to make dinner. Rice is in the cupboard above the microwave, and there should be a jar of something next to the glasses cupboard, just put them together in a pan. You know how to boil rice, right?"
"Yes." Malik spoke, not really listening to the cooking instructions, "Why will you be late?"
"Curator stuff. Just make sure the rice is cooked before you add the sauce. Got to go, and don't burn the house down, Malik."
"Wait, Sister!" But the dial tone was his response. Malik's frown deepened.
Placing the handset back on its cradle, Malik contemplated his sister's brief conversation. What on earth was going on? This had proved his suspicions that something big was going on that he had not yet been made a part of. First Bakura, and now his own sister.
Change in her most ambiguous form was waving her hand over the city.
A wide smile stretched rouge lips in a display of simple and undulated joy, half-translucent eyes lowered in a saddened regret. A paradox of emotions played his features like a game, but the effect was both instantaneous and startling.
"Congratulations." Was the only word that passed his lightly trembling lips and escaped into a room filled with foggy shadows that clung to his body and blurred his outline.
And in return, Yami could only find enough voice for one word, "Yuugi."
The smile slipped into a melancholy curve, Yuugi tilted his head ever so slightly to the side as if to better contemplate the figure on the bed.
The trembling that always seemed to plague Yami's hands had spread, until his whole body was lightly shivering as if from cold. He barely breathed as he forced the next words from between his lips, "Are you real?"
A slight laugh animated Yuugi's face at the question, "I should hope so. I wouldn't want to be a figment of a madman's daydream."
A madman. That was what he was, Yami had known it for a long while, but this… this was real. His dry eyes itched with the sudden infusion of water, the world tilted dangerously until he was almost blind and sick, but despite this, Yami stood. Eventually the world righted itself and he was capable, with a number of deep breaths, of movement.
A dying man with the Sennen Puzzle clenched with vice-like hands, he stumbled to where Yuugi stood and let his knees buckle under him so that he knelt before the apparition of the reason he was still here, panting to try and regain the surprising amount of energy that small amount of movement had stolen. When he could, he looked up at Yuugi's beautiful face and felt his chest constrict with the reminder of all the small and large memories Yuugi had given him.
Then, Yuugi answered his question for him, "I do not know exactly how. But in the last seconds I was still alive, the Puzzle helped me achieve something in its perverse and obscure way," he lifted an almost see-through hand and gazed at the palm, "In doing so it both empowered and hopelessly weakened me. It split my soul into three rough parts."
Yami listened intently, there were questions burning on his tongue but his heart would not listen, instead he settled for letting his gaze wander over the ghostly image of his partner. It was exactly as he remembered.
"I'm sorry." Abruptly, the words spilled from his mouth, Yuugi looked down at him in curious confusion, "I gave up. I didn't consider that you could still be here, trapped. I never thought that perhaps you hadn't left this world; I was too consumed in selfish mourning. If I had stayed, none of this would have gotten so out of control, would it?"
With a pained look of adoration, Yuugi knelt before him on shadow-obscured knees, "Mou hitori no boku…"
"No, I'm right. You've been here, alone and waiting ever since I left. I was an idiot. But without you… without you I couldn't cope. I was nothing, and you weren't there to help make me something."
Yuugi let a small, sad smile pull at his lips, reaching up to touch Yami's cheeks even though both knew it was impossible, the translucent hands would just pass through Yami's skin without any resistance, "But I've been with you all this time. Ever since Kyushu, when the things in your apartment moved and your phone had that static message left on it. It was all me, trying to get to you. Trying to make you realise I was still here, needing you. But I was too weak and all I could manage were those cryptic little things that made you think you were going mad. I'm sorry for that, so sorry."
Yami was silent for a moment, overcome with the sudden emotion triggered by learning Yuugi had never left him, and he had been too stupid, too blind, to see it. All this time.
"The graveyard…" he whispered, "The shop."
Yuugi nodded once, slowly, "Me, my other, in the moments I was strong enough to reach you."
The question didn't matter anymore, but just to hear Yuugi's voice in his ears he asked, "How?"
Tears stung Yuugi's eyes as he spoke a desperate, "Forgive me! I never meant to tease you like that, to tear us apart after reuniting us, but it was the only way I could find to get us to this point. When the puzzle tore my soul apart, it sealed a third of me within its maze. Yami, I would have come so much sooner, but being so disjointed, my thoughts and awareness fluctuated so wildly I could barely concentrate at all. Seeing your world was like looking up at the sky from below water." He paused to draw a fake breath, for ghosts could not breathe, and dropped his gaze to the Puzzle in Yami's hands, "Aside from the part of me that the Puzzle kept, another part was chained to the hill and the oak where you scattered my ashes, and the final part chained itself to you. Wherever you went, I was there, at least in part.
"I refused to move on, to die, to be in a place where you were not. I suppose I did this to myself. Alone, the portions of my soul were too weak to leave this world. Thus, when you visited my grave, two parts of my soul reunited and could visually manifest, at least for a little while. The same with the shop, except, since I had the Puzzle's help, I was much stronger there."
Yami tried to make his drowning mind make sense of Yuugi's words, "Then, you are complete now?"
Yuugi shook his head; "A part of me is still chained to my grave, when you left the hill it stayed there."
While Yuugi spoke, Yami noticed but thought nothing of the glance Yuugi gave the door, as if seeing through the wood into the house behind, even though his Hikari's eyes slid to narrow slits and his gentle mouth moved into an expression that could have been sinister. He thought nothing of what he thought were the sounds of other voices raised in some emotion that he couldn't pinpoint, because Yuugi's gaze was back on him in a moment with a look that contained all the love in the world, and that was all his mind and heart had room for.
Yami asked in a small voice, "What must I do?"
Yuugi's eyes darkened and narrowed strangely when he whispered, "Follow me."
Jounouchi cupped the hot porcelain in his hands, slowly rotating the coffee cup, watching the dark liquid shift and swirl and letting the heat seep into his palms. Conversation had lulled to a stop a while ago, but it wasn't exactly an awkward silence, Anzu had gotten them all hot drinks to keep them awake while they thought, even if the thinking was entirely to themselves.
Bitterly, Jounouchi almost cursed Yami for coming back. Life had been fine without him, everything had been running smoothly and normally, it may have been a little dull at times compared to all of their old adventures, and it may have been miserable at times when he remembered that his best friend was no longer there. But it was a life, and he had made it for himself. Only for an ex-king to stumble into it and confuse everything they had done to try and move on.
No one could live while constantly mourning as if each day the same grief was fresh and new. Even if the pain never went, it would have to lessen, it would have to take a backseat, because at the end of the day you were still here, and you had to find a way to give your own life a front seat. Yami had never learnt how to do that, and they could all see it.
His grief was killing him.
Jounouchi smiled grimly, it was a miracle he had lasted long enough for them to see him again, really.
Jounouchi took a gulp of the strong caffeine, letting the taste roll luxuriously over his tongue before swallowing. Just what exactly was that man doing in that bedroom? Most likely, he was manically trying to fit the pieces of the Puzzle back together, deliriously and obsessively believing that alone would bring Yuugi back to life. It wouldn't work. And even if it did, it took Yuugi eight years to complete that thing.
Jounouchi doubted the Pharaoh would last another eight days.
He closed his eyes against a stab of grief and hoped that, in the next life, Yuugi wouldn't hate him for not being able to do more for his partner. They had tried helping Yami, but he was having none of it, and he doubted that admitting him to a psychiatric ward would help. It would probably do more damage to the ward.
Then, as Jounouchi was smiling in grim humour at the image of Yami in a white hospital gown with no back to it, some strange and gentle feeling echoed down from upstairs. It was one of those inexplicable sensations that was often as confusing as it was reassuring. A light warmth suffused around his heavy shoulders and familiar affection tingled in his chest.
He looked up towards the ceiling, seeing Ryou do the same as Anzu paused in what she had been doing. They didn't move for what seemed like forever, staring where their eyes had fixed and trying to make sense of what they were feeling.
Trying to ignore what it reminded them of. Trying to block out the sudden memories as clear as yesterday and ignore that rush in their hearts that was hope mingled with disbelief.
Unspoken between them, they ignored the question on all of their tongues: what had the broken Puzzle, if Yami finished it, contained?
Suddenly, with a loud crack that had to be the sound of the lock breaking, and with a resounding bang as the wood bounced back from the wall it was thrown against, the front door of the house burst open. It broke the spell of still silence and discarded its shattered remains carelessly into a bed of disarray and uncertainty.
The sound was so loud and unwelcome that the shock caused Jounouchi to leap from his chair, sending the full mug of coffee spilling to the carpet. Anzu leapt up, and with a moment's hesitation, sprang forward to see who had forced their way into her home. She didn't get far, only just reaching the threshold into the hall when the two intruders burst through into the living room.
"Bakura!" Ryou shouted, disbelieving, as Anzu staggered back from the push Bakura had given her. And, an even bigger source for Ryou's incredulity was who appeared behind Bakura with a mixture of a displeased scowl and worried turn of the lips, Isis.
"Where is he?" Isis asked quickly. No sooner had the words left her than a thump and another subtle wave of warmth floated down from upstairs, and without so much as an explanation, Bakura turned and began dragging Isis down the hall towards the stairs by a bruising grip on her arm.
"Hey! Wait!" Anzu shouted, rushing to follow, the other two behind her she continued, "What are you doing? Breaking into my – "
Her words were cut short. Bakura had taken the first stair, but as his foot had touched it a violent heat blasted like wind down the staircase, as if pushing them back.
"He is here." Isis said, as if half surprised. Bakura's sharp mouth twitched in a victorious sneer. The hot air swarmed like angry wasps, warning, hissing danger.
"What's going on?" Anzu was half hysterical as the glass in numerous photos hung on the wall cracked.
Ignoring the blatant warnings, Bakura began running up the stairs, taking them two at a time. With what little else they could do, the rest followed him. Ryou, at the back of the group, glanced behind when a slight sound caught his attention, and swearing when he saw the small hall table being eaten by bright yellow flames. Turning to yell to Bakura to stop, he didn't have a chance to get the words out, because Bakura had reached the top stair, and in reaction the wooden banister that ran the length of the staircase erupted in similar flames. Like a snake, the fire had run down from the top to the bottom and now lay writhing before them. Anzu shrieked, throwing herself back from the fire and into the wall. Jounouchi swore as he did the same.
"If you're that scared then get out! I don't have time to babysit!" Bakura's growling shout came from above, unimpeded by the heat and terror.
He began down the landing where at the end Yami's closed and locked door sat innocently. The glass of picture frames hung on the wall exploded as he passed, throwing glass shards over him and forcing him to stagger away and cover his face. They nicked his skin and shredded parts of his clothes, but gritting his teeth, he carried on. The violently swirling air and the sound and heat from the fires being lit all around him was joined by the mutterings and distant laughter of strange and sinister things, words and warnings he couldn't understand from voices that sounded half-familiar.
He was nearly there now, the journey from the staircase to the end room felt like a trek across the desert. But as he drew close, something much larger drew itself into existence, blocking his way. A tall plume of red fire gathered before the door and while the carpet and wallpaper caught and blazed around it, it condensed into a vague, but recognisable shape.
Gasps and exclamations of shock from behind him alerted Bakura to the knowledge that the others had followed him after all. He stood his ground against the distorting flame-made figure of a young man with narrowed eyes.
"Yuugi." Isis said breathlessly, her voice laced with fear, "What are you doing? Stop this."
"Let us pass!" Bakura shouted with much greater authority.
The thing's almost-mouth smiled strangely at him, then its body dissolved into shapeless fire that left the door burning, its paint peeling and blistering. The house groaned and creaked under the assault of the spreading blaze.
With the snarl of a trapped wolf, Bakura balanced himself and with one mighty kick, managed to break the door to Yami's room open. Flames roared and licked around them, more bursting forth from the now open room. Arms held up to protect his face from the flames, Bakura staggered out of the blazing hallway and into the room.
The bed, the cabinet, the wardrobe were all on fire. And between a pair of blazing curtains, an open window stood gaping. Nothing was here other than fire. No spirit, no Puzzle, no ex-Pharaoh.
Only them; now trapped in a house being rapidly eaten by flames, and an open second floor window.
AN: Right, well I am desperately hoping that Yuugi's explanation made some sense, 'coz I don't think I handled that scene particularly well, or at least as well as it should have been handled. Well anyway, if anyone is confused then just ask because I know it wasn't quite how I envisioned it in my head.
Penultimate chapter this is everybody! Which means that with the next chapter PA will finally be finished! Wow, that took a lot longer than I planned.
Review Please!