Chapter 55

I know now there is no turning back.

Even as I step through this immense stone doorway, my eyes strain to turn themselves to their twins, the mirror images I have been longing for. The only way to restrain myself is to forget.

He calls me still, but I must turn my back and run; a coward seeking to end his suffering? Am I rationalizing by telling myself that this is the only way to stop it? I wish I knew. Perhaps he would tell me- but then, a second later and he will no longer exist for me. A single step and none of this will have happened.

Yet it is this fact which makes me hesistate on this threshold- What questions could be answered, what memories unlocked and what burdens could be lifted if I let him stay freely within my mind? It is this that will haunt me for the rest of my near immortal life, and I will never again remember the source of my pain.

He will stay there in that chamber, Dueling behind my back and dealing out the Shadow Games he has been condemned to play with the sinners of this world. I cannot save him, ever. I could save him now, but the weight of his actions lies heavier on my heart than my love for him. Am I rationalizing again? Could he ever redeem himself? The deaths he is now responsible for have sentenced him for eternity. There is nothing I can do.

I cannot condemn him for wanting to come back to the land of light. But his means of returning have disrupted the balance almost beyond repair, and have resulted in the deaths of many innocents. I have been torn between my duties as a Pharaoh and my love for a friend and partner; and in the end, I had the shadows numb my heart to him. I am besot with regret and other conflicted emotions- but above all, there is the presence of darkness which blots out that which would prevent me from carrying out my tasks.

And there is the fact that I would never exchange places with him. I am too afraid; truly, cowardice is something that should not be felt by any ruler. But the darkness, the infinite depth of the shadows... I fear it, and I think I may have feared its master. We were born at almost the exact moment, light and dark, the eternal soulmates- but in the end, I realized that I had always been too weak for him. Perhaps he scorns me, perhaps he pitied me. There had always been a strange look in his eyes when we were together, whenever he looked at me... I was too blind to know what it was, and now I am too weak to look any further into his gaze.

This secret weakness of mine is so well hidden, I think, that no amount of prying with any key will unearth it. It is locked away with him, in that stone room; he is the only one now that will know what it is, and he will mock me for it. But I, too helpless and fearful, will be too far beyond his walls to hear him.

It is ironic, that the one fated to play the Shadow Games should be so afraid of the dark.

So I will walk out of this place, never to return to it again. I will be that chamber's last glimpse of the light, leaving for a brighter partner. It seems humorous, that my role is now of the dark. Times have changed.

Yugi Mutou waits for me now. I am re-burying the past and its dry corpses, in order to awaken to a new life. The ghosts haunt me ever after, but this burial site shall remain untouched in my soul. I wonder if my newest partner will remember the incidents of the last few days, although I doubt it. We reside in eachother's souls, each inflicting upon the other, and his memories are probably even more susceptible to negation than mine.

I am nearly dead with the horror of what I am about to do. The shadows are judges, hanging over me and watching with a cold and accusing eye. I want to scream at them, tell them to let me be, to cease their malevolent hover over my soul. But my lips are as silent as theirs, and all I can hear as I walk out the door are the tortured sobs of my second voice.

They die away soon enough.