Holy freaking shit. It's back. I am able to write this fic once again. It's been a month since the muse left, but now it's back!! I'm so excited. I may have never been happier than I am right now, it feels like my baby's back! (Yeah… um…) So I've written the epilogue, and now I'm going to go back and do some re-writing, then do the chapters that I didn't finish. YAY! And in other good news, this is the last emo chapter! I know, you are all cheering like there's no tomorrow, and guess what, so am I! Re-reading the shit I wrote made me feel really bad about life. But now my favorite part of the story is coming up because, unlike the rest of the story, IT HAS PLOT! YES! WOOT! HA TO YOU ALL! Okay, that's it. Enjoy.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or Yu-Gi-Oh GX, because if I did, Bakura would have done a tap dance at one point and Atticus would have actually been a fantastic singer.
When I woke up I wondered how I had gotten back to my hotel room. I seriously had no idea. At all. I got up, stretched and stumbled. My head hurt worse than it ever had before. I just got back into bed.
I didn't know what I had become.
I looked at the clock, I was dueling Zane at 3:00, and it was 11:25 right now. I sighed and put my pillow over my head. I didn't want to deal with the real world, and I especially didn't want to deal with Zane. And if Zane were there, it would probably mean that Claire would be in the audience cheering him on. Like she had cheered me on for so long.
Crap.
I with the pillow still on my head I reached for the phone to order breakfast again, but instead I found myself wrapping my fingers around a metal loop with a cold protruding rock on it. A ring. I ripped the pillow off of my head to look at it. It was the ring that I had given to Claire, the same ring that my father had given my mother, and his father had given his mother. There was a note next to it. I looked at Claire's chicken scratch writing, an almost inaudiable note, with pain in my heart.
Dear Aster,
I guess that this belongs to you, so I thought I'd return it. I was hoping to talk to you face to face, but you were out, so I'll just tell you here. I'm so sorry that it ended like this. I hope that one day you'll forgive me and we can be friends. Good luck at your duel tomorrow.
Love,
Claire
There were tearstains on the paper.
I enclosed the ring in my hand, holding it tightly, not caring that it probably wasn't good for the ring, and that it was leaving an imprint in my hand. I closed my eyes, and for a moment, the pain was gone.
--
The room was dark and cold, though there was a fire in the corner. There was a sense of déjà vu and familiarity to it. There was a shadow in the corner, of a young man, by the looks of it. The only thing that was visible to it was its dark brown eyes, which almost appeared to be burning on the inside. A laugh came from it, though it had no mouth.
Suddenly the room changed.
The lights went on and I recognized the barren walls and small amounts of furniture. It was Sartorius's fortune telling room. I looked to see where the shadow was, but it was gone. In its place was a card, The Magician of Chaos. I tried to pick it up, but I couldn't grasp it. Another hand came out of nowhere and picked it up. I looked up to see Zane standing there with the card, ripping it into shreds. From behind Zane's tall structure was a small crying noise, one that was all too familiar to me. Thorough the years I had never forgotten the sound that Claire made the first time I heard her cry.
I ran behind Zane, still ripping the card, to find Claire and to help her, but standing where Claire should have been was Dieter Multov, the guy who lost to Zane in the first round. He was smiling maliciously and also held a card in his hands. He gave a quick chuckle and went in to rip the card.
I don't know why, but I pounced on him. And even more curiously, Zane did too. Zane got to him first and Dieter instantly disappeared. I picked up the card he held. Claire's face was on it. The card seemed unharmed, except for a small tear at the corner of it. I was inspecting the damage to the card when I heard a loud noise and my head turned.
--
The door to my room flew open loudly to reveal Sartorius. I hadn't even realized that I had fallen asleep until he woke me up.
"Aster, your duel starts in twenty minutes." He said, while I stretched, realizing that the ring was still in my hand. "Get up!" I dropped the ring on the nearby table as soon as I could. I could feel its imprint in my hand. Sartorius glared at me.
"I'm up, I'm up!" I said with a yawn as I gripped my head. The hangover would not go away.
"Come on Aster, you have to go. I've got a car outside." I got up and followed Sartorius outside. It was a good thing that I was still wearing my clothes from the night before, because I didn't have time to change, let alone shower.
--
The car ride was fast, but awkward. I was thankful to Sartorius for getting me out of bed, but I still didn't think that we had forgiven each other from the day before.
I knew that I hadn't.
"Tell me about your dream Aster." He said in his eerily calm voice. I looked at him in surprise, how did he know about the dream? "Remember Aster, I know things that the average person does not."
"We were in your fortune telling room…" I said before he cut me off.
"We? Who else was there?" He asked, a concerned look in his eyes. I knew that he was going to take the dream to seriously, and find some prophetic thing about it, but it was good just to tell someone about the dream. It freaked me out.
"I'll get to that. We were in your fortune telling room, and everything was dark. There was a shadow with brown eyes laughing in the corner." It surprised me how easily I remembered everything. It was almost as if the dream was real. "Then the lights flipped on, and the shadow was gone. But there was a card in his place… it was a magician, the Magician of Chaos, I think. And I couldn't pick up the card, even though I tried. But then Zane came in from behind me, picked it up, and began to rip it apart." Sartorius stopped me again.
"How did you know it was Zane, did you have to look, or did you just know?" He asked, his eyes wide with something that looked almost like fear.
"I had to look." I told him. He didn't speak, so I continued with the story. "Then I heard…" I didn't want to say Claire, I don't know why, but I felt embarrassed about knowing how she cried. "Someone crying behind Zane. But instead of being a young girl, like how it sounded, Dieter Multov was standing there. He was smiling and was beginning to rip a card apart, but Zane and I both jumped on him at the same time, then he disappeared." I didn't say the thing about Claire's face being on the card, and the small rip in it. It probably didn't matter. "That's it."
Sartorius looked puzzled about something. "Is that it Aster, did you leave anything out?" I shook my head, knowing that I was lying, but I didn't believe in the destiny stuff as much as I used to, not telling him about Claire's face on the card probably wouldn't mean anything.
The car stopped in front of the dueling arena, and I looked out into the sunshine. My head ached and I looked like crap, but I was going to have to go out there and face everything. I closed my eyes and opened the door.
"Live without your sunlight, love without your heartbeat. I can't live within you."
–David Bowie, Within You (From Labyrinth)
