Kaiba
"Are we-" Atem paused for thought, his eyebrows tensing together like he was trying to figure something out. "-'Good'?" He settled on.
Were we 'good?' That sounded like something Wheeler would come out with.
Not very, but as good as we ever were. Him blaming me for losing his own Duel Disk was as idiotic as it was irritating but he'd 'conceded' that to me. His surrender was better than any sullen apology would ever be. That made us even.
I snorted back. Yeah, we were 'good' enough. For now. Until the next time he decided to blame me for his own incompetence.
"That's good." He added, slowly blinking at me like I was some half-feral cat.
We stared at each other in the almost-comfortable-but-not lull of our mutual agreement that we were 'good'. I'd missed a Friendship 101 class somewhere in Gozaburo's curriculum and without being able to speak I had no idea what to do next. I could count the seconds tick by in drips echoing from some far off chamber to my right and with each one of them the silence became incrementally more awkward.
Atem blinked twice, as though he'd just woken up from some daydream.
"Do you hear that?" he questioned. His chunky earrings jingled against the sharp contours of his cheek as he turned his head and glanced off toward the sound of my makeshift clock.
"Yeah." I growled out. It sounded more like a hum. "So what?"
"That's the sound of our way through this cave." Atem declared - so certain he might as well have been putting a card into play or commanding a monster to attack. His stance became rigid with that dueling confidence that locked every line in his body into place as he pointed us onward, down an opening in the cave wall that could only have been about six foot tall and five wide.
Fine for him, but even if I was still a human I'd have had to stoop to go through it. In my current form he was just being delusional; especially when a comfortably dragon-sized tunnel was right beside it. I nudged him in the back with my nose toward the clearly superior option. He staggered forward as I almost knocked him over again, only this time it wasn't deliberate. His sandals slapped against the cave floor as he steadied himself and glanced back at me in reprimand but at least this time he didn't shout at me to 'control myself' again. As if he was one to talk.
"Not that way, Kaiba." He'd decided. I narrowed my eyes at him as he took a step back toward the smaller tunnel, planting one leg on its opening like he was claiming it as new land for his kingdom and didn't have a flag handy. "We need to follow the sound of the water. I'm sure of it." He flicked his wrist at me, beckoning me over. I had my doubts in the wisdom of that.
"And what? You've got a dowsing rod hidden somewhere up your skirt?" I didn't think he'd understand all of that, but he seemed to read the dubiousness in my tone if his pensive frown was anything to go by.
"I know it to be true." He insisted, holding out his hand in some misguided invitation even though he knew damn well I didn't have a hand of my own to spare right now and wouldn't have grabbed onto his even if I did.
"Fine. Whatever." Impracticality aside I couldn't deny I was brutally interested in confirming an earlier suspicion.
I jerked my right arm at the tunnel as an invitation for him to go first. He caught onto it and inclined his head regally - as though he was thanking me for my service. The eye of the Millennium Puzzle lit up like a night light as he palmed it and flooded the chamber with that irritating bright golden glow that I'd spent whole nights recreating for his custom Duel Disk. I doubt he'd noticed the effort; but it'd pleased me anyway. I'd managed to make the simulation a perfect replica of the real thing. The new makeshift flashlight gleamed steadily against his torso as he let it go and pointed his body down the narrow opening in the cave wall.
As a dragon approximately twice my normal height and likely four times my normal weight going down the larger tunnel suited me best, but that wasn't the only reason for my vote. It would suit Atem better too. He just didn't know it yet. If he thought I'd missed it his strange reaction in the forest, or that it hadn't aroused my curiosity, then he was dead wrong.
Atem paused at the cave's mouth and I drank in that heady rush that comes with being proven right as a small shiver ran the length of his spine. His breath caught in his throat and he glanced back at me.
I smirked in reply and nodded him on down the cavern. Despite having a dragon's face I must have managed to make my expression every bit as challenging as I wanted it to be - challenging enough to make sure he stuck with his decision. He was too prideful to back out now with me goading him.
"You made the choice Pharaoh; deal with it." I growled.
I guess he heard the amusement in my tone. He scowled at me and with a prissy furl of his cape squared his shoulders and marched forward down his chosen path, the whites of his eyes just a little bit brighter than normal.
Sure. Let him go charging off into that tight, dark little cave with a dragon boxing him in behind. If I was right and he really was remotely claustrophobic it would serve him right for being an arrogant blowhard. Knowing Atem even if he was terrified he'd probably refuse to react, just to prove how superior he was.
What would he even look like, crushed in true fear's iron grip?
Terror was an emotion I'd never personally managed to put on his face - or Yugi's face, to be accurate. Hell, did he even feel fear? Fear was just another sort of weakness and I'd searched well enough for something to exploit to know the King of Games was just about as infuriatingly infallible as they came. In fact, the very thought of Atem showing weakness of any kind under any circumstance repulsed me, but was somehow also compelling at the same time.
Would he turn pale and wide-eyed? I didn't like that idea. He'd look too much like Yugi that way. Maybe his pupils would shrink to pin-pricks and his lips would crack open as his teeth gritted together, the stupid Puzzle buffeting again that slim chest of his as it worked itself overtime and he sweated out from the temples down.
I liked that thought better. I kept poking at the image in my mind, getting a jolt back from it every time I did. There really was an appeal in breaking down the mighty; even in my own imagination.
Shit.
Whatever misplaced hormones were fueling this fucking weird little tangent evaporated as Gozaburo's victorious leer smacked me in the brain. I shut it down. Shut the whole train of thought down, decommissioned it and melted it down for scrap. My jaw was clenched so tightly together it took effort to reopen the vice.
Atem's hair swayed like he'd been looking at me in the few nanoseconds I'd been distracted and quickly turned his head back around so he wouldn't get caught. He covered it up by starting to talk - largely to himself. I suspected it was to keep his own nerves steady rather than to make conversation with me, since the best response he was going to get would be some variation of 'garoo'. Plus it figured he'd take comfort in the sound of his own voice.
"The canyon is full of caves like this." The cavern hollowly echoed his words back to him. He stretched out his long dark fingers and ran his fingertips against the cave wall as we walked. "They feed water into a grand oasis." Some dust and grit came back on them and he wiped it off on his outfit like a little kid would.
He glanced back at me and there was this lukewarm heat that I didn't recognize in his eyes.
"Father named it the Queen's Jewel in my mother's honor." He reminisced aloud, clearly not caring that I clearly didn't care. "It was her favorite place in our kingdom." Either forgetting it was dirty or not caring he placed his palm flat against the cave wall again and leaned against it nonchalantly, but I could still see his chest rise and fall irregularly in the half-light. He was trying to steady himself, and trying to do it under the radar without me noticing. It was way too late for that, but whatever. I'd let him curb his little mini freakout in private as repayment for back in the pod.
There was a pause as his eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "I learned to swim here." He realized with a hollow note of disbelief, like he'd just remembered the fact. "And it was the destination of my first ride as a boy." With a shake of his head and with a self-depreciating huff of laughter he smirked wistfully at me and added, "I had forgotten that."
Hnh. Interesting. If you could make it here and back within a day then we probably weren't as far away from where we'd started as I thought - so long as his wild interpretation of this dimension's geography didn't come back to bite us. Atem patted the wall and finished grounding himself. With another overly-dramatic flip of his cloak he turned away from me and took off down an adjacent tunnel, leaving me to tag along behind him like some useless sidekick.
"It seemed like such a long way to ride when I was small." He mused as my claws skittered across the floor to close the distance between us again. "It was my family's most private place. Beyond my Father's priests and guards few knew the trails to reach it."
Sure. Wouldn't want the commoners washing their dirt off in the royal swimming hole.
I thought of him as a duelist first and a Pharaoh second - if at all. Was that why it suddenly felt so damn weird to think that he'd been born a prince, vacationing in private oases and surrounded by whatever else passed as luxury in this backwards time? It was hard to imagine someone so infuriatingly capable had been born a coddled 'old money' aristocrat with a silver spoon in his mouth. He'd probably been just as haughty and smug as a little kid as he was now, and with good reason. He'd been spat out into the world already knowing exactly who he was supposed to be and what he was meant to do. I could guarantee he'd never needed to be beaten down and manually course-corrected, or reset to factory standard in a neat little coma. As a little Pharaoh-to-be I'd bet he'd never had to snatch the world up in his hands and bend it until either he it broke or it broke him. No wonder he was the sort if dolt who fell for the idea of 'destiny' and 'fate'. If 'fate' did exist, it had been damn good to him.
"Mother and I spent all day here celebrating the anniversary of my birth each year." He continued to recall out loud again, annoyingly. What the hell had brought all this on?
"She had poor health and rarely left the palace, but each year on that day she would always claim to feel strong enough to leave her chambers so we could come." His tone was smooth, but lacked his usual theatrical projection. That was for the best - last thing we needed was another one of his loud-mouth proclamations causing a real cave in. What a way to die.
I didn't have anything to say in response, so I grunted just to show I was listening. Ironically it was the first semi-human sound I'd manage to vocalize with any degree of accuracy since polymerizing into a Blue-Eyes. I guessed that was approximately what I resembled right now. I needed a mirror.
Atem didn't even notice my noise. He kept barrelling on down memory lane like a steamroller.
"She died here, as I turned ten years old." He remarked.
Well that took a sharp right turn.
I heard his breathing level out but couldn't see his face. He kept it turned away and continued casually marching on down the cave as though he'd just thrown out a comment about the weather or a lackluster product review.
He looked at his hand and flexed his fingers in the gloom.
"I held her hand as she departed the living world for the next. It was peaceful." He added, sounding almost serene about it.
He turned to me slightly, just enough for me to make out some plaintive smile. Whatever he thought the point of telling me all this was I didn't like it. Right now looked more like Yugi than he did himself and that really got under my skin. He lifted one hand and cradled the Puzzle in it with a far off look that was so alien to his usual hyper-calibrated focus.
I didn't like how he was acting, and I also didn't like how he was talking. He'd almost made death sound like a relief instead of an escape or a weapon, like it really was.
Moronic.
"I suppose we have that in common." He surmised.
"Grtch." Think again, Pharaoh.
So we might both have lost our mothers, but I couldn't empathize. Apparently the circumstances couldn't have been more opposite. My last memory of my mom was her energetically laughing and joking she was lucky to still fit through the door of our crummy little apartment as my dad ran around the house packing a bag for her to use in the maternity ward. Her excitement had been contagious and looking back on it, that was probably the last time I saw my biological father smile. I didn't really get it when he came back with just a baby and not my mom. I didn't understand how someone like her who'd been so vigorously present could suddenly be 'gone'. I hadn't thought about that in a long time. I'd conditioned myself not to. Each time I did it felt like I was betraying Mokuba. It wasn't his fault. People die.
I couldn't tell what Atem was thinking as he mindlessly traced the eye on the front of the Puzzle with his thumb but he didn't keep me in suspense for long. "It's hard to believe I could have ever forgotten such memories." He added, completely lost in his own thoughts as he stared down into its yellow glow.
I stayed quiet, just letting him have his moment. His tone was somber, but not exactly mournful and his breathing was back to normal. Guess despite the depressing subject matter, the nostalgia had calmed him down.
Or not.
Atem glanced back at me with a troubled frown a second later. His expression set my teeth on edge, but that wasn't enough to prepare me for his follow up question.
"At what age did you lose yours?" He asked, eyebrow slightly perking with either sympathetic interest or grim curiosity - it was hard to tell.
"Grrrrrrn." I growled out a little warning before I could get ahead of the impulse and squash it.
I didn't like the focus of this one-sided conversation suddenly shifting onto me, but I'd still take whatever this morbid grieve-a-thon was to the freakout he'd been building up to before. What Atem freaking out would be like I had no idea, but I didn't want to have to deal with it. The thought of him showing that sort of weakness outright disgusted me.
I could just go ahead and not answer the question. I could ignore him until he got the message that swapping stories about dead parents was right at the bottom of my bucket list, one down from being bludgeoned to death with a socket wrench, but there was no point. Any mystery about my origins was already known to him - at least in part - no thanks to Noah. Both he and Yugi had already seen far too much of the shit show that was my childhood thanks to that prepubescent punk's asinine little recreations in his virtual world. I hated that Atem had seen me like that; that Noah had muddied his image of me that way. Showing me off as some miserable puny runt being kicked around by the world. That was all a long time ago. Now I was Seto Kaiba, the Pharaoh's fiercest opponent, and he better not forget it. After he got his answer he'd probably lose interest. It's not like I could ever hold his attention for more than a duel's length of time anyway.
Blue-Eyes' claws didn't fully bend or flex like human fingers. I had to stop limping around behind him and re-balance my center of gravity before I could apply them to the cave wall with any sort of precision. Atem paused, his frivolous gold headband glittering in the half-light as he turned around fully to see what I was doing.
With a few swipes I managed to scratch five grooves into the rocks and just about make them level within an acceptable variance. Striking through the tally with a diagonal line was the hardest part.
"Five." Atem noted in understanding.
Good.
Discovering that the King of Games was useless at charades was eyebrow raising and amusing but sure sucked when I couldn't shout the real meaning at him, or grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he either figured it out or died of a concussion.
I settled on nodding in confirmation, dipping Blue-Eyes' elongated neck a few inches downwards and then raising my head back up again.
"I see." He stroked the gouges I'd made with a look I couldn't even start to decode but shut up at least.
Funny how simple it was to co-exist with Atem when I was reduced to just nodding or shaking my head like a cheap dashboard ornament. Silence settled between us again but before I could celebrate the end to the uncomfortable conversation he prodded me again, like he was trying to squeeze me for information that he had no right to.
"Do you remember her well?" He asked in a tone that was clearly designed to be as unassumingly neutral as physically possible. It fell short. There was nothing unassuming about Atem at all - ever.
"Mind your own business." My words came out as a hiss of warning.
What was with him?
I'd already answered one pointless question and I wasn't going to do it again. He should have quit while he was ahead.
He chuckled, soberly.
"I can almost hear you telling me to keep my questions to myself." He mocked, recovering his normal volume slightly and throwing an oh-so-superior grin at me. Arrogant know it all.
I snapped at him with my teeth, not really to bite him - though if I did by accident then he deserved it - but to communicate clearly in the best way I had left that I didn't find anything about this funny. He was so light of his feet he effortlessly dodged out of the way of my teeth even in the narrow space and glared at me for that. I glared the hell back. I wasn't the one who was suddenly determined to talk about my dead mom. He needed to back off.
My past was off-limits and besides that, totally irrelevant. Only my future mattered - the future that Mokuba and I were going to keep playing out. If 'fate' was a thing and really had dealt us such pathetic cards then it must be pretty pissed to know I'd turned them into a winning hand. I felt my jaw twist into a decidedly inhuman smirk. The muscles and bones all pulled in strange ways.
Atem recovered his footing and side-eyed me, the same way you would a bomb with a faulty detonator.
The aggressive impulse living at the back of my head woke up after sleeping off the satisfaction of cutting up Atem with a sword earlier and pitched that I'd feel better if I'd actually bitten him. Another part of me better calibrated for self-assessment reluctantly conceded that my sudden surge of anger wasn't totally his fault. The answer to his question was what had really irritated me. I knew that if I paused and really contemplated it, the answer would be 'no'.
No, I didn't remember my mother well.
Not when compared to the detail I'd recalled Atem in when building his AI counterpart. Almost every one of those memories was perfect in clarity and absolute in accuracy. By comparison I wasn't sure of much about my mom and the memories that were left over could just be a byproduct of wishful thinking.
I could remember her smile, but couldn't draw it with drafting paper in front of me. I knew she used to laugh all the time, but I couldn't hear what it sounded like anymore. She had Mokuba's eyes and I'd inherited her paler complexion. That was just about the only two things I was sure of. I couldn't recall if her hair matched Mokuba's too.
It didn't matter. It was useless information. She was dead. My brain had no reason to store the data and absolutely no need to retrieve it. Dead people were irrelevant. Technically Atem was dead too - but he didn't count. He was still frowning, but kept watching me expectantly through the corner of his eye so I shook my head at him. At least that would shut him up.
He dipped his in acknowledgment and didn't comment or follow up.
Smart guy. It was better that way.
The steady narrowing of the tunnel came as a relief from this mindless conversation.
Five foot of space became four and a half - then four and a quarter. My wings were so cramped against my back that they began to ache in protest. Looks like being compressed so tightly against the body wasn't whatever counted as 'natural' for them. The only point scored was the dislocated one didn't have enough room to jostle around in anymore and by proxy wasn't bothering me as much.
What bothered me now was Blue-Eyes' instincts.
Compact spaces didn't phase me - most of my favorite places like the cockpit of my jet and drivers seat of my cars were smaller than this, but that was as a human. Now that I was polymerized some primordial alarm bell was shrieking at the back of my lizard-brain that being in a place too tight to turn around in and being unable to open my wings out fully with no obvious way out other than Atem's 'follow the sound of water' theory was a fucking terrible idea. I ignored it. Not being able to turn around wasn't going to be a problem. Turning back wasn't my thing. Instead I watched Atem plow on down the tunnel with steps that became stiffer by the second. The production hadn't begun yet, but I had a front row seat to a live performance of 'The Pharaoh's Freakout: A One Man Show.'
He turned back to chastise me with a suitably up-tight look as I scoffed with amusement. There was a new flush of heat across his face that was obvious even in the low light and against his darker Egyptian complexion.
Oh relax, Pharaoh. Wipe that stupid look off your face and just be smug that your plan was going to work out.
Narrowing or not, the further through the tunnel we got the more likely the idea they acted as a feeder for some mythical paddling pool became. The floor of the cave was beginning to smooth out as if there'd been water flowing over it at some point to erode away all of the hard edges and the dripping noise had been joined by the muffled sound of some stream rushing around somewhere.
"Oh great." I snorted to myself as the light from the Puzzle's eye slid over the next obstacle in this farcical misadventure.
Up ahead a partial cave-in had lowered the ceiling, dropping the height of the tunnel by a few feet. Atem slid his arms over his chest to cross them and stared at the collapse as though that alone would clear it. There was an air of calculation in the look he shot me and then back at the gap between the stones.
"You're not going to fit." He deduced thoughtfully, as if I'd played a new trap card on him and he was deciding the best countermove.
"Oof. Shocker." I grunted back as sarcastically dead pan as a dragon's limited vocal cords were capable of sounding. It was too late for him to come to that conclusion. Caves were a terrible place for a dragon. Whatever idiot was responsible for dreaming up the stereotype that dragons should live in caves needed a reality check.
"Stay here, I'll see what's ahead." He commanded, tossing me a firm look to convince me to do what he wanted while ducking down stiffly like an old man with aching knees to get through the opening. That seemed weird. Usually he moved with a haughty grace. I growled back at him and his stupid order. Of course I was going to 'stay here.' I couldn't go anywhere.
The light of the Puzzle disappeared with him as he reached the other side, leaving me to stand around quietly in the dark like a moron. My tail thumped in irritation. I'd have to get a better grip on it - it seemed to have a mind of it's own. Holding it still as it tried doing it again distracted me for a few milliseconds, until-
"-Hn!" From behind the rocks I heard Atem inhale sharply first, and then grunt. His sandals slapped around irregularly like he'd staggered off balance and then there was just a deep labored gasping noise.
Hearing that - from him - set me on edge.
"What?" I snapped - gritting my teeth so hard my jaw hurt.
He didn't reply.
"Hey!" I snarled, throwing away all of the fucks I gave about causing a cave in as I blasted the opening wider with my breath and jammed my head and neck through the hole, half digging out and half wriggling my good arm and a section of my torso through before my wings snagged on the rocks.
He'd reached a makeshift hub in the cave network; tunnels and passages were everywhere - veering off in every direction like synapses from a brain and Atem was just standing there right in the middle, staring forward at nothing - fists clenched, svelte muscles straining against his sweat-slicked skin as if a fight was about to break out.
"What the hell is up with you?" I roared, blasting away at more of the rock and squeezing through my wings and back-end. I didn't even bother trying to fight the instinct as my tail thrashed like a whip as I closed in on him.
We weren't 'friends' or anything so pathetic but even to an outlier it was obvious something was wrong with him.
"This is-"
His hand reached for the material of his robe, snatching up a tight fist of linen right over his heart. His knuckles turned almost white as he just stood there, holding the fabric in a death grip so hard his hand started to shake. Those shudders spread down his arm and through his body like a thousand volts. Within seconds he was trembling from his jaw to his knees.
"I -" He choked out, strangling the rest of the sentence off like he couldn't breathe.
A new sheet of sweat broke out over his forehead as a wet shine on his skin reflected in the low light.
Great. So he was going to freak out anyway, making all that nostalgic nonsense about our dead moms totally worthless. That figured.
His head swiveled back and forth looking around the room and with each abrupt turn his footing shifted off-balance as though he was dizzy or drunk. Hormone-fueled or not, it looked like my earlier guess was on the money. His pupils sure shrank until they were so small I almost couldn't make them out anymore, but somehow they also managed to pulsate in the darkness. The stare he was giving the cavern was unfocused. Distressed. There was nothing but the sound of his ragged half-breaths - just loud enough to be annoying and irregular enough to be a concern.
So this was what Atem freaking out looked like. He startled at the sound of my claws scraping against the rocks and spun on his heel to stare back at me, blankly.
I snatched up the neckline of his cape and pulled him against me to right him as he lost his balance and almost fell flat on his ass. His flailing arms smacked me across the face as he scrambled at my neck for purchase, reeling himself against me like a fish on a line until we were so damn close he could lean his forehead against mine - or the spot on my skull between my eyes that best equated to a dragon's forehead anyway.
"Grhn."
A short quiet hum was the only protest I could come up with while he was being so distracting. We stayed static like that for what felt like an eternity - me stood against him like a statue with my nose pressed into the cloak at his neck, feeling his pulse race against my snout and listening to him fail to inhale in a cave full of air. Somehow it felt like I was suffocating along with him in the pauses between his gasps; like we were in another tag team duel and forced to share each other's fate.
"Nhhhhhhggggr." "Just breathe already."
His lips opened and closed without saying anything and those freakish red eyes I couldn't look away from snapped back into focus for a second at the sound I was making - momentarily pulled out of his meltdown. They jumped over my face but didn't really land anywhere in particular. It was disturbing to see him of all people lose it. I didn't like watching this. That in itself surprised me.
"You're having a panic attack." I told him with zero uncertainty. My intended grunt was just a harsh vaguely lizard-ish chirp by the time Blue Eyes' mouth finished parsing out the words, but once again his eyes sharply focused on me.
Fine.
Very deliberately I breathed in through my nostrils and out through my mouth, ignoring the stabbing humiliation of pantomiming the action with such embarrassing exaggeration. It took me repeating it over a few times until the motions finally caught Atem's full attention and he got it into his head that I wasn't doing this fun little breathing exercise for my own damn amusement. He started trying to copy me.
"Good. Keep doing that." I grumbled out as he got into the rhythm, irritated. I was glad to quit the stupid act. His eyes locked on my mouth, staring at it as though hanging on my every tone and if he looked away he'd be sucked out of existence.
Interesting.
Now that he was choking out and I was a dragon incapable of human speech this was my chance to finally let loose on him without being interrupted or reprimanded like some snot-nosed kid; to feel that rush that comes with shouting the big-headed windbag back down to size. Hell, it might even distract him long enough for his body to get a clue and remember how to fully inhale.
It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Seizing those was what I did best.
"I hate you." I told him in a stupidly soft growl. The sentence jumped out of my mouth like an over-keen intern given a coffee order and just like one of those air-headed dolts I wasn't sure if it darted out the door with the right information. I needed to clarify.
"I hate everything you've done to me." Better, but still not exact enough. My declaration came out as a soft huffy sound - closer to a coo than the snarl I'd wanted it to be.
"Every humiliating defeat you've handed me. Every pompous lecture. Every. Single. Scar."
This time I got what I wanted. Aggression soaked into my vocalizations - adding enough heat to the pathetic little noises I'd been making before to make it a sound worthy of being made by a dragon! Atem was like a lightning rod when it came to attracting trouble - it figured that adding hostility to my tone got his attention. It raised his proverbial hackles. The fog in his eyes receded a bit as he lifted them to mine to figure me out.
"I hate your friends, and your cards, and your genuine belief in total nonsense." I snapped, throwing out the sentiment as a real snarl and that commanded his full attention. Call it luck, destiny, fate, the will of the divine - all of it was hot garbage not even fit to produce a direct-to-video B movie.
Focus came back into his eyes as he really looked at me, reigning in his breathing as he sized me up, his right eyebrow raising slightly in some half-formed challenge.
"I hate that you walked out on our battle, to go and what? Be dead?" I pressed, hissing at him so hard it blew his bangs back from his face for a second. It was such a stupid waste. No goodbye. No last will and testament. Nothing left behind. Just like my mom. I couldn't even stand to look at him. I whipped my head away. In the corner of my eye Atem opened his mouth to say something, but then thought twice about it and closed it down again.
What else? There was more. There had to be. I'd spent too many sleepless nights lying paralyzed in bed under the weight of exactly how much I hated this 'other Yugi' to be short on grievances to finally voice.
"I hate everything about you."
"Kaiba-"
That was lame. I was loosing my momentum, and my fighting spirit from the sound of the tepid draconic murmur.
"-But beyond all that, most of all I hate your ridiculous hairdo; you pharaoh-themed troll doll." I sneered out in conclusion - the sound just as gravelly and soft as the first simpering coo had been.
He was in the process of catching his breath, but still somehow managed to sound haughty as he chortled, dryly.
"Kaiba, that had best not have been an insult." His words were hoarse, barely audible and mildly chiding.
"Tch." He clearly didn't understand me so that had to be a lucky guess.
"I thought so." Atem weakly smirked, his pupils were still small so he was clearly still shaken up but recovering from it quickly if this was anything to go by. I grunted at him and his irritating ability to figure me out only when it was least useful, to me anyway.
"Your tone betrays you." He added in tight warm words, wiping away some of the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand and then trying to pull his cloak smooth. It was a pointless gesture - he was still sweating buckets but there was a vague relief in watching him go through the mechanical motions of fixing himself up. "Don't think the veil of dragon-speak allows you to slander me at will."
My reply was a hollow snort.
"And what the hell was all of that anyway?" I demanded, flipping my nose at him like an over-eager dolphin so he'd get the question. Atem placed his own hand in his chest, breathing deeply and slowly to try bringing himself back under control and then grimaced and looked away. He was still shaking.
"For just a moment, I thought -" he hesitated, swallowed thickly and muttered the rest against my scales with hot breath. "- I thought I was imprisoned within the Puzzle once more." All his usual swagger and confidence was out to lunch and I now discovered that smugness was just as irritating when it was missing as when it was at full power.
So that was it, huh? Spend a few thousand years inside the worlds most impractical necklace and you get an exotic tan, a private paradise and a healthy dose of claustrophobia or whatever this was as a severance package.
"How foolish." He whispered to himself, ruefully.
"It's not." I reluctantly murmured back.
Of course the one time he was actually making sense he'd dismiss it as 'foolish'. In comparison to most of his usual nonsense this was damn sensible. At least as sensible as any phobia could be. I couldn't imagine what it was like to be trapped forever in some oversized trinket swinging from Yugi's pencil neck, but I did know what it felt like to be a prisoner.
No wonder he was freaked out.
I could relate to him for once, though my way of dealing with it wasn't exactly the same. Unlike Atem I willingly returned to the site of my prior incarceration every night after work. Although I hated the place I'd succeeded in making the Kaiba mansion into a home for Mokuba, and I needed somewhere to store my coats and cards.
"It's fine." I added. Or tried to. The words this time didn't translate as a growl or a roar, instead they became a deep humming noise. The sound was far too soft. I could never imagine an actual dragon making it, but it would do given the situation.
"Ha." Atem laughed to himself scornfully and then took a deep breath. "The feeling has passed." he tried to assure me as he shakily stepped away from me to finish tidying his outfit. "I've never - ghn - experienced anything like that before." Kneeling down to straighten out of the gold band around his ankles that had somehow gone askew made him wince briefly in the middle of his sentence but he ignored it, shooting the tired remains of his usual prideful grin back at me. "Thank you."
"Save it." I huffed, illogically talking back like we were still capable of having a real conversation. "I'm not like Yugi. I wasn't trying to help you." I just didn't want to watch him lose his proverbial shit.
I didn't want to see him, the unbeatable King of Games, afraid or venerable. I couldn't stomach weakness. Yet, it hadn't been as annoying to deal with as I'd thought. In anyone else I'd find a panic attack pathetic - but then, Atem wasn't like 'anyone else'. He was anything but weak. The Pharaoh was utterly untouchable. Relentlessly powerful. Demanding so. He'd stood up against Pegasus, against Noah, against Anubis and Dartz; carving out a path to victory as I was knocked unconscious or comatose, or legitimately petrified. He was so formidable it was almost palpable. Unattainable.
This didn't make him seem weak to me. It made him seem...'Comparable'.
"It helped, regardless of your intentions." He belatedly noted his dry lips quirking into almost a smile - apparently continuing the already one-sided conversation I'd been distracted from and guessing what my reply had been with some sudden burst of expert accuracy.
Smug bastard.
"You should know, I can understand you." Those red eyes of his turned on mine, thicker than blood.
"Is that a fact?" I tested, supremely doubtful. If he really could understand me with any degree of accuracy there was no way he'd just calmly stand there after everything I'd just shouted at him.
"Yes."
Tch. 'Yes' was a generic answer with a wide pool of applications - him replying with it was just a lucky guess.
He chuckled at me, still a little breathless but apparently feeling good enough now to try pissing me off. "Not the words. But your feelings."
My feelings? He was bluffing. There was no way that was true.
"Snarl at me all you wish, but I don't return them." He added with self-satisfied confidence. I sneered at him. This was starting to sound far too personal for my tastes, again. Atem's answer to my disbelieving glower was just a mild little smirk.
"Your anger. Your bitterness. They're wasted on me. I don't return them". It sounded like such a simple conclusion coming from his mouth. As if I could just throw them away as 'waste' and still be me. I might be talking to Atem version 2.0 since he got his memories back but the rest of us didn't get to download system-wide personality updates like that.
He closed his eyes slowly, his long dark eyelashes shuttering against cheek before flicking back open with a challenging gleam.
"You may resent me but I'm fond of you, Kaiba." Came the smug declaration to back up his expression. "Foolhardy as that may be." He taunted.
My heart rate leaped nonsensically as if we were about to duel.
Definitely too personal. I snapped at him angrily for trying to mess with my head but he didn't even flinch, knowing that I wouldn't actually bite him.
Atem could lecture me over a dueling arena about being stubborn or arrogant, selfish and just generally unlikable until he used up all the oxygen on Earth, but 'fond'. What did that even mean? 'Fond' was a word that meant everything or nothing. It could be equated to loving something, or liking it, or even just a vaguely positive indifference. He'd chosen it to be intentionally confusing.
I didn't know why I even cared. What did it matter? I growled at him, hoping he got the message to shut the hell up and stop saying ridiculous things.
He laughed in my face at that and shook his head, the motion making his feathery gold bangs lazily sway back and forth. With a flick of his hand he waved the comment away, instead stretching his arm up to pat my side like I was an oversized horse. It was strategic I realized as he left his hand poised next to my bad shoulder. It trembled slightly against my scales. He ignored it. His eyebrow arched questioningly, mockingly, "I know you believe in the repaying of debts."
"Grrrrrrr." Was that it? He'd said what he had so I'd lower my guard and he could fulfill some pressing need to try his hand at being an amateur physiotherapist? A panic attack and a dislocated shoulder were hardly equals.
Shrugging my shoulder hurt but threw him off of it at least. The surface of his bracelet flashed in the Puzzle's light as he held his arm aloft for a long minute before dropping it back to his side. A contemplative frown slid over his face as Atem opened his mouth to ask a question and then hesitated.
"Do you think less of me now?" was the eventual question, somehow still managing to sound proud and cavalier. Did I think less of him? For freaking out on me? It's not like I hadn't done it to him before and hypocrisy was for idiots. I rolled my eyes at him.
With a soft "Nnn" of amusement he hummed to himself, one of his copper fingers gesturing toward my left wing again. "Then trust I won't think less of you either." There was an easy finality to the statement but I wasn't buying it. "I'll make it quick." He added, his tone was determinedly firm with all the self-assurance of an actual trained medical professional - which he was not. My hiss of reply didn't deter him even slightly. This wasn't about trust or speed. Popping it back into position would be painful regardless of how 'quick' he did it - it always was.
"Let me help you." He added, side-eyeing me carefully as his shadow quivered on the cavern wall. "Please."
"Fine!" I snapped. He was still shivering, though it wasn't so obvious any more. It was likely he needed to do this to take back some slice of control in this ludicrous situation. I'd done worse things for the same reason. Either way if the mighty Pharaoh was so uptight that he was rolling out 'pleases' then he'd probably tie himself into a knot before he gave up on the preposterous fixation. I straightened up my spine and leveled him with a warning glare. I'd give him one shot at it. Just one.
The message got through. Atem inclined his head like he was genuinely grateful and fluidly stepped back into my personal space.
A minute ago he was barely standing on his own damn feet, but just like in a duel, with him everything could change in a minute or less. He seemed surefooted as he hopped up from an outcropping and hoisted himself up onto my back with a flex of his biceps. I coiled my neck around and observed him as leaned forward and reverently stroked down the length of the bone connecting my wing to my shoulder blade.
"It'll be better if you don't watch." He noted with neutrality, for once as a suggestion rather than some trite command.
Tch. I shook my head. It wasn't like this was the first time I'd had this done.
"Alright." He nodded in acknowledgment and didn't try to talk me out of it again.
My scales felt warm as he pressed his fingers over them, swirling them around my joint in sweeping concentric circles until "-Graaah!" I flinched as Atem found the spot he was looking for, feeling my tail lash out behind me to relieve the agony. So gently I almost couldn't feel it his hands palpated the area almost as if he actually knew what he was doing.
"Kaiba." His tone was deeper and rich in a way I had no idea how to quantify. He leaned forward, his strong thighs tensing around my sides to anchor him to my back. "Your dueling is predictable and you'll never defeat me."
"What!" My yell was a sharp bark that could have cut steel, followed by a long anguished "Gah-roooooooooooouuu!" as he used my outrage as a distraction and relocated my shoulder with the loud hollow grinding noise of bones rubbing together. The adrenaline from my surge of pure unfiltered fury fought back the throbbing sting, just like he was hoping for.
"Well done." Atem praised, testing the joint with his hands until he had to use them as leverage as I thrashed, roaring for him to get the fuck off me so I could blast his face off.
"You bastard!" I snapped at his feet and then at his knees as he pulled them away out of my reach. His legs squeezed my sides even harder as I tried to throw him, stretching up on my four now perfectly serviceable legs and arching my back to squash him like an insect between my back and the cave ceiling. He laughed - deeply - like he was having the time of his life. My wings spread open as wide as they could in the cavern's limited space and I flapped them them without even needing to think to dislodge him. It felt good - damn near divine - to be able to maneuver both of them at once for the first time. Their leather brushed against the stone of the cavern's ceiling and suddenly I longed for open sky with an intensity that defied all common sense.
Atem's weight on my back was suddenly negligible. Almost non-existent.
It was as if I was trapped in another board meeting listening to yet another droning presentation while the perfect weather for flying my jet heckled me from outside of the floor-to-ceiling length windows of the Kaiba Corporation tower. The drive to get out of this cave flooded back, twice as strong as it had been ever before. The feeling was primeval, fundamental, instinctive. I could practically feel the wind howling across my scales and smell the air.
Fine! If Atem wanted a rodeo ride he'd damn well get one.
My talons crunched down into the rocks underneath my body and then loosened, raking thin white scratches into the cavern floor and inhaled deeply through my nostrils. Blue-Eyes' body didn't need any other direction than that. I lunged down one of the adjacent tunnels, my claws and tail chilling as I vaulted into a frigid subterranean river and sprinted for some far off speck of light at the end of the tunnel and the promise of sunlight, sky and fucking freedom.
