AN, April 4th: I was editing some chapters the other day and it looks like I accidentally re-uploaded chapter 7 twice as both chapter 6 and 7, so if you read this story for the first time over the first few days of April then chapter 6 may have been temporarily missing - which is especially embarrassing because it's basically the chapter that sets up the whole plot. I've fixed that now. Sorry for any confusion!
Kaiba
This was flying. This, and nothing else. There was no comparison.
My jet was quicker, but the wind didn't sting my skin or howl in my ears from inside of the cockpit. My airship had been more comfortable and could sustain higher altitudes for longer but to hell with comfort! The feeling of the air through Blue-Eyes' scales; the strong rhythm of it's heart in my chest pumping in time to my wing beats as I climbed higher into the sky; it was damn near godly. The muscles still felt alien and they ached with the effort but it was a good burn, like the afterglow of an intense workout. Even with holograms I'd never recapture this feeling. It was a shot of pure adrenaline - the boost so overwhelming it wiped out everything else in existence. I couldn't even feel Atem on my back anymore, though I could hear him laughing as if he was in the seat behind me on a roller coaster.
He had no business being that stupidly short while also having a voice that deep.
His laughter carried over the wind and my own growl of amusement. The tone was much richer than I'd been able to replicate with my AI clone. I listened to it as closely as I could through my dragon's ears, trying to commit the timbre and pitch to memory as one laugh rolled into another. Abruptly the rhythm of it was broken. His laughter hitched oddly, climbing in pitch and softness to sound far away and slightly hysterical. I glanced to him on my back.
He looked flushed. The air at this altitude was cold, but drops of sweat still raced down his cheek and dripped from his chin onto the thick folds of the cape that hung across his neck. That wasn't right.
"Atem?"
In pseudo slow-motion his eyelids lowered halfway and his gaze became dull, unfocused. He wavered in place a little, the ridiculous yellow stalks of hair that were so eager to defy gravity swaying with him and then wilting. The pressure of his thighs against my back eased off and his body began to droop like a dying plant. My wingspan was too large and my wings were too heavy – I couldn't change their angle in time to right him against me. As the final note of his eerie laughter turned silent he slipped from my back like a stringless puppet and fell off of me, straight down through the sky.
He was out of the range of my claws before I could react and the tail of this body was still difficult to control – great for smacking him with, not great for anything that needed any degree of finesse. I ended up lashing him across the forehead with it instead of catching him.
While flying Blue-Eyes' body came with a completely different set of instincts and every single one of them roared at me to stop as I pulled my wings toward my body mid-wing beat and pressed them to my back, streamlining my form. The effect was somewhere between a free-fall and a dive as I plunged vertically down through the air toward the ground, chasing after the purple of Atem's cape as it snarled up his body and hurtled downward.
I beat my wings several times to close the distance between us; the thermals that I had used to increase my altitude working against me as I tried to cut through them. With each second I got closer to him as we both got closer to the ground, but unless I could get him to wake up and grab me that was the least of my problems. I shouted at him as I was finally able to stretch out my neck within range, the pissed off roar having no effect. Atem's features remained slack and his half-lidded eyes didn't even twitch despite the wind rushing into them.
Great. Just great.
I snarled to myself, using one last wing beat to angle Blue-Eyes' body against him and within arms length. My dragons were powerful engines of destruction; they weren't built for purpose or equipped with any tools for daintily plucking unconscious midgets out of the sky. My claws scrambled against Atem's chest; trying to hook into the paper-thin fabric of his tunic without sinking into his skin, all while being slapped at by the wind rushing through his stupid cape. That would have made for a much easier target, but clamping down on it might accidentally hang him, or the inertia of grabbing onto it without properly supporting his body could break his spine.
My talons floundered, managing to snag a good amount of his tunic and cloak around the neckline before the material shredded against my claws. Shit.
There was no choice left.
Abandoning his clothes I pushed Blue-Eyes' arms under his armpits. I had no way of holding him; not without seriously damaging him. The bone structure of my dragon's elbow and wrists didn't work the same way as a humans; they moved more like an animals and lacked a lot of the rotation and flexibility needed to keep him braced. There wasn't any other choice. I crushed his body to my own torso, lashed my tail around one of his ankles and clamped my neck around his opposite shoulder to keep him locked in place.
The wind roared through my wings as I opened them as wide as possible, holding them out to slow our decent, catching the currents in them like parachutes. We slowed – substantially, but it was too little too late. We'd already lost too much altitude and gained too much momentum. The ground was rushing up to us.
I was about to find out just how thick Blue-Eye's scales really were. I coiled my neck and tail tighter and braced.
The impact bent one of Blue-Eyes' wings back on itself and even my most muted yell of pain managed to rip out as a scream. The friction as I collided with the floor was so hot it scalded me; it felt like my fingernails were being wrenched backwards and yanked off as it flayed the scales from my tail and knocked the breath out of my lungs. I skidded and then lurched and slowly rolled to a stop, cutting a deep trench into the ground behind me like a crater left behind by a meteor strike. All of my muscles twitched in a state of raw agony.
"Arg!"
One wing flailed weakly and only the tip of my tail spasmed as I tried to thrash the length of it around. I couldn't move. Why the fuck couldn't I move?!
My claws twitched a little as they started to go numb, digging into something meaty. Atem moaned, which I guess meant he was still alive by some measure of the word, until I lost all motor control on this body and crushed him to death that is. Pushing him away from me was harder than I thought it would be; all of Blue-Eyes' body was broken and its arms had hardly ever been its strongest feature to begin with, just a mechanism for delivering claws. The effort of doing so made my vision turn black and the relief was almost instant...
...
"...Kaiba... wake-up..." I could feel his breath as Atem murmured against my torso, only half-conscious at best.
"...Gn..."
I didn't remember closing my eyes... I opened them, only enough to squint... there was no point in wasting energy. The sky was orange. It had been blue just a minute ago, and now it was orange. I must have blacked out. That was the only explanation for it.
Something long and dark stretched out across the ground in front of me, loosely hanging over Atem's side. It was wrapped in leather, or PVC or something similar - something glossy enough to reflect the dusky tones of the sunset. On the end was something pale and familiar that twitched at my command.
I was staring at my arm, and my hand.
Blue-Eyes' and me must have separated.
All that power, that freedom, the elation of actually being a real damn dragon was ... gone. Just as I'd been getting into it too... figures. My arm and hand seemed fine, still much in the same condition they'd been in before I got fused; a bit dirty and sliced up but otherwise okay. They didn't look damaged but my Duel Disk still was. It was blinking some warning at me.
The card log obnoxiously mocked me with the news that my Blue-Eyes had been sent to the graveyard, but that wasn't the worst of it.
'Death Counter added.' the readout read.
Of all the stupid bullshit... What a ridiculous way to die.
Moving was currently an unnecessary operation so I didn't bother despite the embarrassment of being remade right where my fused body had previously been. I was lying on the floor parallel to Atem, my arm was still draped over him, a strange trembling feeling reverberating from him up the length of it. He was just inches away from being pressed up against my chest and from being so close I could see beads of sweat form on his forehead and drip down the side of his face and watch his teeth chatter like we were in the arctic circle instead of the desert.
He was staring at me dully.
His eyes were far from the polished and penetrating ones I was comfortable with. They looked glassy. The flush of red across his cheeks I'd noticed was now a deep blush that his dark skin didn't hide.
"Kaiba." He blinked at me sluggishly.
"What?" I replied testily, my voice still sounding gravelly from being a dragon. He was so out of it. I'd never seen him like this. A little sharpness came back into his eyes, his wet gaze trying to focus on me as I sat up, waiting for him to answer. I was sore, too sore to happily waste my time waiting around for Atem to get around to answering.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I pressed. I didn't bother to put in the additional effort needed to raise my voice. I wasn't sure why I felt I needed to shout in the first place. I didn't like him being so close, that was probably why.
He didn't come up with a reply, instead he just shook feverishly.
I usually wouldn't do this, but he was lying limp on the floor like a dead fish and didn't seem to be capable of lifting up his own head, forget anything else. I slowly moved my hand toward his forehead, giving him ample time to react if he wanted to even if it was just to tell me to knock it off. I lowered it beneath his hairline and felt for his temperature.
"Damn it." He was burning up.
He hummed contentedly as though he'd been presented with an appealing business plan and lazily lifted his hand to cover the one I was pressing against his forehead. I tried not to react at the touch. The difference in our current body temperatures probably made me feel cool against his skin. I exhaled between my teeth and took a look around our surroundings, already knowing this was going to be troublesome as he quivered against the ground in my peripheral vision.
This wasn't something I was equipped for.
Mokuba got sick sometimes but it was rare and he always bounced back quickly. Both of us had good immune systems. We'd always been the last to catch it and first to recover whenever a bout of flu or some cold went around the orphanage. It'd made us stronger. Beyond that, we were Kaibas. We had instant access to our own private doctor and any medication imaginable, be it illicit or otherwise. All this added up to the inscrutable fact that I was no one's nurse maid.
So what was the priority for a fever? Biologically speaking, shade and proper hydration was always a strong start for any sort of illness, and I suppose if this was Mokuba instead I'd probably tell him to go to bed with a cold compress. A tree beside the bank of the oasis waters made as good a place as any shade-wise, and I could carry Atem that far without any issue if he couldn't walk. He was staring at the sky like he'd never seen clouds before so I guessed that it would be necessary.
"Hey." I snapped my fingers in front of him.
His listless eyes peeled away from the stratosphere and met mine, though he frowned a little to communicate that he didn't like me snapping my fingers at him like a dog, just like my Pharaoh hologram had done.
"I'm gonna pick you up." I told him, clearly. Laying out my intent for him because if he struggled I wasn't sure I wouldn't abruptly recall one of his stupid speeches and drop him out of spite.
He frowned like he was remembering something before opening his mouth and pissing me off. "I'm the Pharaoh, and I forbid you from picking me up." He replied, tone suddenly so level and serious it was as though he was faking the fever.
What? Why? What a dumb thing to be weird about. And he had the nerve to lecture me about being too proud. Bad luck for him though; there was nothing on earth he could have said that would have made me want to pick him up more.
He anticipated that.
Despite his verbal protest, struggling against me was apparently beneath him. I hooked one hand under his knees and the other at his back and lifted. It was easy. Atem weighed almost nothing. He sighed against my neck but otherwise managed not to complain for the twelve steps it took me to set him down by a tree. His head lolled as I propped him up against it. It was weird seeing him so limp. Everything about him was always so poised and angular. 'Regal' was the word, but like hell I'd ever tell him that.
Almost so quietly I didn't hear it he moaned in pain and his hand moved to his side to absently ghost his fingers across the spot where the red of his blood had stained the purple of his makeshift belt.
Suddenly I was suspicious of his 'just a cut'.
I smacked his hand away and untied the fabric. He replied with a fuzzy glare of reprimand but no real form of protest. I already knew that the wound was going to be both gross and bad as the fabric stuck to his side like adhesive tape and I had to tug it to dislodge it. He hissed through his teeth a little as it came away.
"Urgh." The smell alone. "So, 'just a cut' huh?" I sarcastically sneered at Atem.
Turned out he was just as bad at playing nurse maid as I was.
Without the sash to cover it the span of the injury became clear. The cut on his side had half kitted itself together over time but oozed with pus. The area around it was red and swollen with tiny spider-like veins angrily raised up against the surface of his skin. I felt myself cringe at the sight of the gore. This was Pegasus and his damn disgusting empty eye socket all over again. Why the hell did he have to show me that? Holding my gag-reflex in check I tossed away the cloth with the scab of his infected blood still clinging to it.
It was so disgusting to look at but it explained the fever at least.
"You have an infection." I told him, I wasn't a doctor but I was sure of the diagnosis. "Try dodging next time."
Atem hummed in agreement, half-asleep as he began to fade back into unconsciousness against the tree with his head slumped on his chest. I tapped him on the cheek to keep him awake; several more beads of sweat raced down his forehead and his eyebrows pulsed with irritation as I did so. Fuck him. If I had to be awake and deal with this then he did too.
What the hell even happens if you die in your own afterlife? Does the world just disappear with everything in it? Including me? As if I'd just let that happen.
"I'm taking this off." I told him, grabbing the swath of tattered purple fabric around his neck that kept his cape in place. My Blue-Eyes' claws had almost ripped through it anyway. It took only a good grip and a bit of brute force to finish the job, the sweat-soaked fibers coming apart at his clavicle. I pushed the two halves of the cloak backwards over his shoulders and it fell away from him to pool dead on the floor.
With the cape cut free I could see he was wearing some sort of golden choker and then a looser necklace that hung above his chest. I'd thought it was all a single piece. How much jewellery did he need? "We get it already, you're a Pharaoh." I muttered, not really expecting him to hear or answer. It would have hardly mattered normally, but I needed to get all this garbage off of him and after lifting the Puzzle over his head I had no idea where to start. I pulled him forward and away from the tree he was resting against to get a better look at the back of his neck, hoping for some sort of latch or fastener for either piece.
"Why are you undressing me?"Atem mumbled, not bothering to open his eyes, just leaning into me and resting his chin on my shoulder like he was thinking of getting comfortable there. I gritted my teeth, not appreciating the suggestion that this situation was somehow in my fucking favor.
"You have a fever. I'm getting all this crap off you so I can bring down your temperature." I bit out as an explanation.
His fingers retreated to rest over his right collarbone and fumbled around for something for a moment, before deciding it was too much effort and delegating the job to me.
"Here." His shivering hand slowly met mine, his still strangely-dark fingers corded around my own and then guided my hand to the space he'd been swatting at ineffectually. He went back to resting against me as I tried to mimic what he had been aiming to do, finding a small catch on the underside of the looser necklace. It came apart with a bit of pressure and I yanked it from his chest. The choker fastened in the same place, though it was a tighter fit to get to the latch and I could feel Atem's carotid artery beat against my fingers as I tried to work the fastener free.
"Magnificent..." He muttered absently, his adam's apple bobbed against my shoulder as he spoke and I had no idea what he was talking about, or what he even thought was going on right now.
"Kaiba?" he added belatedly, wanting my attention for some reason.
"Just shut up." I countered, hoping to put the next conversation down before it could start.
He hummed in response as I plunged a scrap of his ridiculous cape into the water beside us. The oasis looked clean enough for that. For lack of an actual cold compress a torn up damp rag slapped across his head and neck would have to do. There was a deep sigh of relief as I dropped the wet weight across his forehead, muttering "Hope your tacky tiara is waterproof."
Alright. Now what? I could clean the cut, but treating the surface-level injury wasn't going to be enough. He had an infection so the problem was already inside of his body, probably racing around his bloodstream like a slip n' slide. What he really needed was medicine.
So a card then? If they were determined to occupy the uncanny valley between being my holograms and being actual 'magical' entities that function as described, then maybe one would do the job. It was a stretch, and because we could only play each card once it was also a gamble. If it didn't work each card pulled out of our decks decreased our ability to adapt to future situations – or mitigate future fuck ups. There wasn't a choice. Risky as it was to potentially waste them I was even less keen on my chances of happening by an old timey Egyptian dispensary for a round of antibiotics.
Blue Medicine and Red Medicine were in my deck. They came to mind.
Normally I wouldn't have bothered with either of these cards. I only had them to balance out our life points and facilitate playing Green Medicine as part of my original master plan. If they didn't work is was hardly a big loss.
Fine.
Letting him lean against me was easier now that I had a plan in place.
"You're gonna owe me for this, Pharaoh." I told him, seriously.
One of his arms coiled around the back of my neck like a noose to stop his chin slipping off of my shoulder as he absent-mindedly hummed back in reply. That felt weird. I didn't like people touching my head or neck. I had only one barber on staff in the mansion who had the best job security in the whole of Domino because he was the only person I could stand touching my skull.
I concentrated on not following up on the instinct to shake Atem's fingers away.
"You were a magnificent dragon." He decided to tell me, emphasizing each word as though it was the most important piece of information in the world to date.
That took me off-guard. I had no idea why but it made me blush and I hated that my body was still capable of doing that without my permission. The only good thing was he was far too out of it to notice.
"Lie down and stop saying stupid things!" I snapped at him. Stupid, and embarrassing things. "You're sick. You're not thinking straight!" I wish he'd hurry up and get his head back together because this whole situation was just surreal. My bones felt like they wanted to jump out of my skin and I had no idea how to quantify that.
"You dare to tell me my own mind?" He countered, raising his voice like he was trying to scold me. He clearly had no idea what was going on right now.
"You're feverish, probably delirious and were unconscious just a minute ago. So yeah," I paused for effect. "I dare." I scoffed and pressed him back down to lie back against the tree by his shoulders. The cloth on his forehead slipped a bit as I did. He caught it and readjusted it back into place with a natural deftness that not even bacterial infection could sap away. His other arm flapped to the wound at his side and he craned his neck a little to get a look at it, like that was going to help.
"Just relax and let me take care of you." I snapped at him. 'This', I should have said 'this'. Why did I say 'you'? That made it sound all personal and affectionate.
"I didn't know you cared so much, Kaiba." Atem taunted, catching the slip. His jaw weakly twitched into a mocking little grin.
"Tch! I just don't need the thing I'm trying to work on writhing around on the floor like a half-dead rat." I bit back. This is why machines were so much better than people, and why I would always enjoy working with them more. Atem nodded in a barely there inclination of his head and tried to relax back against the tree.
"I play the magic card Blue Medicine" I announced, to apparently no one since Atem was barely coherent at best. The image of the card flashed into the 'played' log on my Duel Disk as a matching green vase identical to the one depicted on the card appeared beside me, along with a crystal cup. It was bigger than I'd thought it would be.
The liquid on the card looked like water, but as I poured it out it was a gaudy shade of bright blue. Not water then. I made it a personal philosophy never to drink anything florescent or damn near close to it. I was glad I was gonna be using this on Atem and not myself.
The medicine sloshed out of the glass as I tried to pour with one hand while keeping him leaning against the tree with the other, having to splay my fingers across his abdomen to keep him in place. I could feel the contours of his surprisingly well-defined abdominal muscles twitch against my fingers through the thin material of his tunic as he wriggled like that was going to throw me off. It was a lame attempt but feeling his six-pack churn under my hand was distracting so I moved my grip to his chin, tilting his head at an angle that seemed about right and resting lip of the glass against his mouth.
"You better swallow this." I threatened, even though he was now unconscious.
If he didn't then blocking an airway was a risk but the human body was an efficient machine and there wasn't a system that I couldn't figure out if I wanted to. I was betting all this would take is the right angle of his mouth in relation to the Medicine and maybe a little extra pressure applied to the throat. The deglutition reflex would kick in to protect the rest if I applied the liquid in small enough increments.
He stirred a little and muttered something incomprehensible but didn't open his eyes.
"Fine." I bit out to myself, irritated at him for not coming around.
I nudged the glass into his mouth and tipped it slightly, trying to send the medicine directly to the back of his throat. True to form he decided to thwart my strategy. The moment the liquid hit his tongue he grimaced at the taste like a fucking child and reflexively coughed it back out into my face.
"You punk!" I wished he was awake so I could shout at him.
Gross. I spat onto grass to get the taste out of my mouth.
The stuff tasted awful; like budget cough medicine with a taste deliberately made as vile as possible to stop delinquents from buying it in bulk and getting high.
He smirked in his sleep as if aware of just how much of a pain in my ass he was. He wasn't going to get the best of me while he was fucking unconscious.
I threw the potion as far back into his throat as possible and as he opened his mouth to eject it I sealed it shut with my hand, the only tool I could think of in the heat of the moment. He frowned as I vacuum sealed his big mouth shut and tried to squirm around it, so I grabbed his jaw and tilted his head back to give him no choice and then finally he swallowed the damn stuff.
Looks like it wasn't going to be a waste of a card after all. Though it was impractical and unhygienic it did the job. The Medicine went to work on gross cut on his side with an immediate effect that seemed like it hurt – or that was the impression I got from his grimace and the fizzy hissing noise. His skin sizzled, a slight smoke that smelt like disinfectant wafting back up at me as it purged his wound and knitted the flesh back together. The angry red swelling around the wound soothed, gradually returning his skin to its natural bronze color that still didn't look totally right, but I was getting used to. Even his expression relaxed, like he actually could have been asleep instead of knocked out.
I'd never seen him unconscious before. I bet Yugi and his idiotic friends hadn't either.
It was a strange and obvious thought. Of course I'd never seen Atem unconscious – up until coming to this dimension I'd never 'seen' him at all. I could edit out all the sweat and deep breathing and other symptoms of sickness in my mind and then apply that data to my hologram back in the real world.
I sat there next to him watching him rest and was half way through planning out the various algorithms I'd need to control the sleep-awake cycle for the AI, before realizing how moronic the idea was. A dueling hologram didn't need to know how to sleep. What an asinine waste of my mental energy. I had to pay close attention to my thoughts every time the Pharaoh was around or else they spun off on useless tangents like that.
Despite how obvious it was his body was overheating it was his relentless shivering in my peripheral vision brought me back to the here and now. I would have thrown his cloak back over him but it was covered in dirt and his back sweat and it wasn't going to dry out any time soon - the temperature was dropping too quickly as the sun set.
I had my lighter. If there was anything half way decent to burn around here I could make a fire. I snagged it out of my coat pocket, just to make sure it hadn't been crushed or something equally moronic in the crash. My other hand went for my cigarette case, until something snared my wrist and yanked on it mid-motion.
"The hell?" I pulled back, trying to get the weird green coil off of me. It didn't budge.
I was on my feet, standing over Atem with one foot on either side of his body ready for whatever this next thing was in less than a second. Atem moaned and stirred, shaking his head back and forth but didn't do much other than that - which was best for the both of us while I was straddling him.
She announced herself with a simpering, malicious giggle.
"Teleia." I growled without needing a second guess. This was getting boring.
I stared at the growth wrapped around my arm, making out the sharp pointed leaves and jagged barbs lining it even in the twilight. She'd summoned in something new and I had no idea what or when. Curse this wrecked Duel Disk. I fought it, twisting my arm to get out of its hold but instead of breaking free it lurched upwards, dragging me into the air. It lifted me over and away from Atem, further away from the shoreline into a thicket of the oasis's undergrowth and eight more vines shot from the foliage to immobilize me spread eagle in mid air, bound at my wrists and ankles as well as my waist and shoulders. For such a deviant she didn't have much originality.
Teleia fixed me with a lewd stare from beside her new Rose Tentacles. I must have been losing my touch if she thought I'd be intimidated by such a pitiful look.
Clearly she had something big in mind, judging by her sadistic cackle. She'd brought her whole entourage. Bird of Roses screeched behind her and flapped its wings as her Botanical Lion prowled back and forth like it wanted to eat me alive.
"My my my, I should be thanking you for your kindness, Ano-" She didn't look away from me, but she clearly wasn't addressing me either. Who was she talking to? "-You have led me straight to them." There was no one else here. No one I could see. "Now go away. Your delicate sensibilities will not like what I have planned." I wouldn't have figured it out if she hadn't messed up. For just a single second her eyes darted over to a palm a few feet away. The slip-up was so quick she probably hadn't even known she'd made it, but I caught it. She was talking to a fat white bird. I'd seen it before.
Her monster new distracted me. The tendril it'd slithered around my shoulders tensed, constricting around my coat collar until it snagged the base of my throat and my senses honed in deliriously on the smell of non-existent leather and the chafe of a cold metal buckle against my neck.
"Once more and again we meet. If we continue like this, tongues may start to wag." Teleia droned, "And the Gods have been good enough to return you to your original body." Her tongue darted out of her sleazy mouth to wet her lips. "And what a body it is."
"Get this thing off me!" I demanded.
I damn well didn't care that the thorns were digging into my skin, or that wrestling my hand free and grabbing it made me bleed – the thing coiling around my neck needed to go. Right. Now. I yanked it away from my throat and pulled it apart with every bit of my strength, ripping and shredding apart the tough internal fibers holding the vine together with a set of audible snaps.
"Such a strong one. I shall enjoy this more than you know." Teleia cooed appraising me and tapping her finger against her lip as I scowled at her. My throat was off limits – especially to this twisted bitch. She waved her false concern away with a casual declaration. "Fortunately, my Rose Tentacles is rather... hardy." The vine tentacle I'd snapped in half regrew from both ends, her monster sprouting new limbs and doubled down on me with twice the pressure.
Shit. I fought back with whatever maneuverability I had left but it was pointless. Struggling against the damn vines was doing nothing except wasting calories. I cut my losses and went still, fixing her with my darkest glare - the one that promised her that after I was free I was coming for her and nothing in this dimension or any other would save her from me.
"Such a handsome expression." She purred. I gritted my teeth as she stepped up to me, her monster lowering me down to her through the air so she could stroke one finger over my face. "I would have you know, my Mark of the Rose was meant for you, not the little Pharaoh." She taunted, flicking my nose like I was some childhood crush. Meeting Ishizu ever again was going to be damn uncomfortable after seeing the lecherous leer that crossed over Teleia's face next. "But I can make do without it." Her expression was sadistic and filthy, the same as one of Gozaburo's. She glanced to the ugly cephalopodic features that made up her monster's face and nodded at it.
Rose Tentacles tightened its limbs around me, really living up to the card's name as the vines shackled my wrists and ankles like the arms of a squid, wrapping themselves around my knees, biceps and thighs. She wasn't done. With a flick of her fingers the pathetic flower monster dragged my legs apart and her hand slipped between them to paw at my inner thigh like a gold-digging mistress. There was basic, primitive sort of interest in the follow-through that my body reacted to, but it wasn't enough to get me hot and bothered. I stamped the feeling out on reflex. It was effortless. I'd had years of practice.
I'd accidentally walked in on Mokuba's perverted cartoons once or twice. That was enough for me to suspect where Teleia thought this whole scene was going to go. It had been weird to realize my 'tween' brother was more interested in 'that' sort of stuff than I was, but speaking mechanically it wasn't going to work if that's what she had planned. The necessary components weren't in the right position and mine damn well never would be, but she didn't know that and just like with Gozaburo what she didn't know I could turn to my advantage. I just needed to postulate a solution.
Her fingers dug into the meat of my thigh. It made me hiss uncomfortably before I could stop myself. It was a fucking relief Atem was out cold and couldn't watch this. Having him be so ill now seemed like an advantage.
That gave me the idea.
A plan clicked into place; all the pieces coming together quickly as if I was reading from a blueprint in my brain. All I'd need was one single card, and time enough to play it.
"Is this really it, you snake?" I baited, smirking at her, "Tie me up and try to have your way with me? That's your master plan?" I laughed in her face as her lusty expression turned wary. "I thought you were supposed to be killing us – does your boss know you've gone rogue on him just to get your rocks off?" I goaded.
I needed her up close and personal to seal this deal. Based on how she'd been throwing herself at me every other time we'd met I assumed that was going to be easy, but I must have given the game away somehow. She took one calculating look into my eyes and sensed my sudden eagerness. The abrupt one-eighty put her on high alert. Teleia took a step backward to reassess me, even as Rose Tentacles bound me even more tightly in place.
It figured that now I actually wanted her all over me she was actually showing some self-restraint.
That didn't matter; I had to lure her back in no matter what it took.
I didn't know what to do exactly – my 'accelerated education' had included variations on this theme, but this exact situation hadn't ever been laid out in front of me in textbook format and I'd never felt the need to do an independent study. I glanced over to Atem, just to make sure he was still unconscious and couldn't possibly watch the debasing show I was about to put on. It wouldn't be the first time the Pharaoh had seen me put on a sickly sweet act to get what I wanted- or maybe it would- it was hard to tell how much attention he'd been paying outside of opportunities to pop out of Yugi's head and spring his penalty games on people back in those early days. It didn't matter, that was a long time ago and I didn't want him witnessing anything so humiliating now.
He was still exactly the same as before; panting, sweating and shivering but with no signs of coming to. Whatever. I'd make this quick anyway. There was no way I was risking him waking up and catching me in this next pathetic little act.
"Come on then; let's get this over with." I demanded, straining against the tentacles of her monster. "But I'm gonna need my hands-" I flexed my fingers, curling them at her suggestively, hating the grotesque insinuation. "-If you want me at my best."
She wasn't buying it - I could see it in her eyes, but the performance must have been provocative. She bit her lip and eyed my digits with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
Her interest was obvious. It was all over her face like I was dangling a rare card just out of her reach. Teleia licked her lips and sauntered back to me, leaning her body flush against mine and blowing hot air across my ear before whispering into it' "I find it difficult to believe a boy with reactions as prudish as yours suddenly knows his way around a woman's body."
Tch! Who was she calling a 'boy'! I swallowed back the indignation of that and tried to copy the barely there chaste whisper she was going for. My voice came out low and gritty.
"Let me go and you'll find out." I sounded ridiculous.
She eyed me with a lascivious enthusiasm. "Seduction, is it? Now now, you see, I know the game you are trying to play." She tapped my chin with her finger, once, twice, like she was considering it all. "It is a risky one. Very risky indeed." Her eyes trailed up to the vines around my wrist keeping my hands in lock-down. "I've devoured many men far better at it than you-"
"-Try me. I'm good at games." I interrupted, not caring or needing to know exactly where she was going with that story. "And I play to win." I always had.
A bubble of dark genuine laughter too grim to call a giggle burst from her mouth. "Is that so? Well you have aroused my curiosity." She complimented, rolling the word 'aroused' around on her tongue like a pig in mud. "So let us play." Teleia hissed into my ear. With a flick of her fingers Rose Tentacles unraveled itself from my right hand. Just my right hand.
She went straight for my abdomen like she was going to disembowel me and I went straight for my Duel Disk. Running around the desert in a flight suit was about as stupid an idea as ideas came. I'd been cooking alive in the damn thing since the moment I got here, but finally wearing it started working in my favor. Her hunt for a buckle or latch to get it open with gave me the precious few seconds I needed to call my card out and set it face down behind her while she obliviously played 'find the zip'.
Now I just had to keep her interested enough not to look back over her shoulder and notice it hovering there until I could spring my trap.
Her monsters called out to her in screeches and roars of warning, but her focus was on me. They didn't stand a chance as the 'zzzzzzrp' sound of a zip being pulled down its track drowned out everything else from her attention. She was so single minded it was embarrassing.
The tentacles of her monster actually helped. Being strung up like this stopped me from straight up smacking her on instinct as she pulled apart my suit and attacked my abs with her tongue, laving it over them like they were meant for her - which they fucking weren't. Her hand found my crotch, ghosting over it with false coyness, until she felt my reaction... Or lack of one. She grinned up at me, finally noticing the calls of her monsters now that she wasn't so enthralled with her task.
"If this is your 'best', then I will simply have to skip forward and consume you immediately instead." Teleia purred.
Shit. I had years of conditioning. Every stupid sexual impulse that she threw at me I'd batted away without even needing to think about in some subconscious game of hormonal table tennis, but it was time to put down my racket and catch the damn ball.
"Skraaaawwwww!"
"Roaaaaourrr!"
I gripped her chin with my hand as she turned to see what her monsters were calling about and turned her face back up to mine, trying to pull her mouth towards me. It stalled her, right up until she swatted my hand away, slashing at my face at the same time.
"Ghn." It stung.
"Such a shame. A true shame" Teleia drawled, "After chasing you all this way I was hoping for so much more. You made for such delectable prey, but perhaps the Gods blessed me by eliminating you as my Master's new host-" Her lips curled into a rabid smile. "- as I refuse to waste my time on impotent men."
"Tch!" I was losing her attention.
Damn it. This wasn't working. Why the hell wasn't it working?
Ishizu or Isis or whoever was hardly unattractive, even with the deranged way Teleia had reconfigured her usual look. Her hair was dark and glossy, her cleavage was decent - Isis had maybe a bit more than I remembered being a thing on Ishizu; through the damage Teleia had done to her clothing I could see her breasts spill out of her ye olde undergarments like she was wearing a size too small. That was conventionally erotic. Her figure was trim, it curved in and out at all the right places, though her dress clung slightly too tightly across her waist like she was mildly bloated or -
And just like that whatever arousal I'd managed to build up slipped through my fingers, even as the heel of Teleia's hand pressed against my junk. Think of something else; quickly! When was even the last time I felt aroused?
A flash of sensation hit me with a jolt of electricity as I remembered back in the cave. What was it that had set me off back then?
Atem, terrified.
I called up the image I'd made in my mind as easily as summoning a hologram from my Duel Disk and every bit as vivid. I watched his toned chest rise and fall in panic, his eyes slicing around as tiny pin pricks and I felt... almost nothing.
Not that then. Fine.
I swapped out some of the assets, just letting my imagination take the lead. It replaced down-turned lips with his signature smirk and frightened eyes with his usual red laser pointers. The chunk of hair I'd clipped off the end of one of his blonde bangs was back and standing up as unnaturally erect as they always did. His dark skin was clean and his pale clothes were fresh, his Egyptian cosplay looking just like it had back in his palace; covering him in gold and a self-satisfied smugness. The new avatar re-positioned itself, confidently placing a hand on its narrow hips and watching me with some taunting amusement.
It was good. I could feel that. Why was it good? Atem didn't 'do it' for me. That was complete nonsense! I wasn't... So he couldn't – and he didn't. Shit. The more I thought about it the more the fucking weird fantasy Pharaoh started to break apart under my scrutiny. Fine. I'd have to deal whatever the hell was spurring this nonsensical little tangent later. For now I just focused on the feeling, no matter how shameful the object generating it was. It was still good, but it wasn't finished yet; something was missing.
Audio. What was even the point of imagining the Pharaoh without giving him the chance to run his mouth. My brain queried its internal database for some snippet to play back to me to finish the illusion.
"I'm fond of you, Kaiba." It told me.
It felt like I'd jammed my finger into a wall socket. My body shuddered completely out of my control and a quart of blood that was more useful to me in my brain decided it had an urgent meeting to attend somewhere else. I hissed through my teeth, but this time not because I was in pain.
I still didn't know what he'd meant when he said that.
The phantom crossed into my personal space like it owned it and rubbed a copper hand against me, touching my -
"That's better." Teleia purred encouragingly.
"Shut up!"
She was already ruining it by being too tall, if she started yacking at me as well I'd definitely lose the image.
He rubbed his hand against me, firmly. His hand dragged my thighs further apart with an insistent push in a bid for better access and I could feel my pulse hammering under my flight suit's fly. His hands trailed up my torso, snagging my chin between his fingers and darting his tongue around my mouth. His pace was a bit quicker than I would have liked but this was... 'not bad'. I'd always found the idea of kissing and licking unpleasant but this wasn't half as disgusting as it should have been, considering someone else's mouth was on mine. His movements were almost punishing in intensity as he kept teasing my lips without ever coming close to landing the finishing blow. He was mocking me! I wished he'd just get on with it already.
"Atem." I growled.
"Oh?" a womanly voice chuckled darkly.
I crashed back to reality.
Teleia smashed her mouth against mine hard enough to chip a tooth, the fingers holding my jaw becoming crushing and she raked into my skin with her nails. I thrashed against her but I didn't know why so I forced myself to stop. This was what I'd been waiting for, after all.
My Duel Disk chimed as my trap card activated.
Teleia must have guessed something was up the moment my mouth smirked against hers. She pulled away from me like I was poisonous - and I was. She'd just realized that fact too late. A bridge of drool left behind by her sloppy make-out session broke between us as her eyes flicked over mine, trying to figure out what was about it to happen. Like that would help.
My trap card was quick to take hold.
With a wracking cough she bent double. Thick black ooze splattered onto the palms of her hands as she held them out in front of her.
"Mhahahah!" I laughed in her face.
"W- What is this?! What have you done!" She screamed. The eyes she'd stolen from Ishizu went wide and her pupils shrank until they were almost microscopic as her slimy guts pooled in her cupped hands.
"You've just activated my Crush Card Virus." I declared. Screw being touched up and fondled by some misplaced figment of my own imagination – this was my greatest pleasure!
I wasn't sure if playing the card on myself would work since I wasn't a dark type monster, but Saggi wasn't in my deck to take the hit this time. I threw my head back and roared with laughter at her pitiful panicked expression as the monsters at her back started exploding out of existence. Rose Tentacles gave me one final squeeze just to aggravate me before its vines started to disintegrate and it lost its grip on my body. Disentangling myself was easy as it fell apart. I rubbed my wrists and stepped away from it, watching it turn into dust at my feet; just like everything else that thought it had the better of me.
"Thanks to you the Virus has spread from my body into your deck, destroying every monster you have with more than fifteen thousand attack points." I explained, drinking in the familiar sight of my enemy's absolute terror as Teleia watched her Botanical Lion crash defeated onto the floor and her Bird of Roses be eagerly devoured by my Virus.
I could practically taste her fear as she hacked up another puddle of slime and it started leaking out of her nostrils and eyes like tar tears. "And as a monster yourself with a punishing two thousand five hundred attack points, I guess that includes you too." I narrowed my eyes and smirked at her.
"But wait. There's more-" I taunted, a victory rush of adrenaline soaking though every cell in my body as she tried to get a word in, only to be silenced by the river of bile pouring out of her mouth each time she opened it. Fitting. "-Since you and your boss are sharing the same deck, that also wipes out all of Anubis's monster too." It was master stroke.
Teleia's eyes brimmed with sludge, but somehow she could still make out her phony Duel Disk in the last few seconds before it melted off of her arm. I could see it in her face as it twisted in the understanding of utterly beaten she was. Every card of Anubis's side of the field blew apart, with the exception of the two face down cards that had been hanging around since game start. For them to have escaped the wrath of my Virus meant they either had to be traps, magic cards, or monsters too measly for my card to bother infecting. Insignificant.
"Game's over Teleia. You lose." They were finished – she and Anubis both. My Duel Disk might be half broken but that was nothing compared to the damage I'd just done to their deck. Now all I had to do was find her boss and deliver my killing blow.
Teleia just shrieked at me as the stuff started dribbling out of her ears and hell knows what other orifices I was spared from looking at. She'd been a tedious opponent, hardly worth my valuable time in the end, but it was a dramatic death at least.
As she choked out more and more her expression started to ease up and she staggered and stumbled until I had to snatch up her arm to keep her from falling over. By the end of it I was the only thing holding her up as the rest of her sagged down onto her knees and her hair closed around her head as heavy black curtains.
This was what I lived for.
Atem
My dream had been...strange. A blurred nightmare of indistinct proportions with only the central tenant of Kaiba held aloft in bondage and softly growling my name as memorable. Dreams were fleeting, fickle things that defied any real explanation even in Yugi's time so I excused the oddity, even as the image anchored itself in my mind.
The crackle and fitful spitting of a fire greeted me as I began to wake fully. The heat from it was a welcome guard against the chill in the air. The coolness breezed over my cheeks and neck before scattering harmlessly across an thin blanket covering me from the shoulders down. I tugged at it, lifting it toward my chin to cover my exposed skin and recognized what it was as the hem of it approached my nose. Kaiba's smell was all over it - the smell I had known him to carry from all of our few minutes in close quarters back in the living world without the adulteration of cigarettes or necromancy to stain it. It was strong, and sharp. Mint of some sort, but acrid in a way that stung the inside of my nose. Something artificial. I opened my eyes and confirmed my suspicion that it was Kaiba's coat draped over me, the collar of which I had been intently pulling further toward my face.
My arms felt too heavy as I tried brushing it back down and away from my nose so I turned my head to escape the aggressive scent instead.
The stars twinkled above as silent sentries, stalwartly aloft over my head while a camp fire's glow warmed the earth to my side, almost too bright to stare comfortably at for any length of time with the pounding in my head. Kaiba had done well to assemble and light it so quickly. My body felt so peculiar. I was ill, I realized. Distant memories of being ill times before came back to me in a steady stream. Across from me lay Isis, very much in need of a bath but sleeping soundly and breathing well from what I could tell.
Kaiba's voice cut through the calm and the quiet of the scene before it could settle with a steely declaration of "Teleia's dead."
His back was to me, poking at the camp fire in obvious boredom with a long piece of wood.
Apparently he could sense I was awake. Continuing to lie prone beneath his coat seemed inappropriate somehow, given the strength-based relationship we shared. My arms ached and my head swam uneasily as I pushed myself to sit up and watched Kaiba's coat slide from my chest to pool in my lap. It was surprisingly warm; the inner material deceptively soft. "How?" I questioned casually, catching a wet scrap of rolled up cloth as it fell from my forehead. Hazily I could remember Kaiba putting it there, harshly demanding I submit to his nursing. In all my years of knowing Kaiba I could never have anticipated such a thing.
"I beat her, obviously." His stoic tone was standoffish - even more so than usual.
Such explained the presence of my unconscious priestess resting well on the other side of the camp fire.
"Of course." I relied matter-of-factly. In truth I was sorry to have missed Kaiba's victory. They had a habit of being ruthless and spectacular in equal measure, like the final moments of gladiatorial combat, filled with that same roaring energy and aggressive elation.
The soft light of the flames flickered and danced, finding each ridge and hollow cast by his slender ribs and angular spine in the dark material that covered his body. He looked strange without his coat. It was as though I was seeing a tortoise missing its shell with all its usually protected parts exposed.
I peeled back the white cover from my legs and gathered it up in my hands. He stiffened as he sensed I was about to approach him, his body becoming rigid. It was hardly normal, but it also wasn't unexpected. For people like Kaiba and I even in the company of close friends there would forever be a barrier of pride protecting us against the risk of being seen at anything less than our best. This was especially true when around someone whose respect was a hard earned and fragile thing. "It's not easy, to be venerable." I commented to myself as I moved toward him.
His eyes avoided me as I crossed in front of them. "No, it's not." Kaiba agreed dismissively. I wonder if he understood what I had been thinking.
He didn't thank me, or react at all beyond taking his coat out of my hand as I offered it back to him. He slipped it on over his shoulders and across his back like a second skin and without pausing for a single moment covered one of my shoulders with his hand as though expecting me to run off without it there to tether me in place and slid the other over my brow.
I was unsure if I should frown or chuckle at the terrifying and endearing intensity with which he scowled and assessed me. "You're not shaking so much anymore." I hummed in reply and stayed still, letting him do his work. He looked deeply unhappy and considerably irritated as he went about his obviously self-inflicted doctoral duties. I gasped and almost flinched as his long white fingers abruptly swept over my side. "And your cut's healing." If this was the sort of ferocious care that Mokuba received when sickly then I truly wished him good health for the rest of his life.
"But you're still too hot." He grumbled finally, as though more the victim of my temperate than I was. "You should go back to sleep." He decided for me, fixing me with an unimpressed blue eyed stare.
I'd just woken up. I felt overly warm, light-headed, appalled by the sticky layer of dried sweat coating my skin and physically fatigued but far from tired enough to return to bed.
"Later." I decided.
I joined him by the fire, slowly lowering myself to sit by his side before my strength failed me at the last minute. He watched me through narrowed eyes as if expecting me to keel over but didn't otherwise object to me ignoring his prescribed treatment.
"Your funeral." He noted with dead pan delivery and quickly looked away from me again as I settled next to him.
Was he trying to 'blank' me again? "I haven't been sick in thousands of years." I mused, testing that theory.
A body was necessary for such a thing and since arriving in my afterlife I'd known only health. Kaiba grunted before eventually replying, confirming that though he was avoiding my eyes he wasn't ignoring me.
"Aren't Pharaoh's supposed to be living gods?" He snarked, his words muffled by the cigarette held captive between his lips as he negotiated his coat pockets for his lighter. "You'd think a thing like getting sick would make your toadies wake up and call bull." The metallic flick of the tighter punctuated the end of his sentence as he lit his latest habit.
It didn't work that way, but I suspected Kaiba already knew that and was simply trying to antagonize me.
"Why do you pronounce it like that?" I suddenly wondered. I cast my eyes over him as Kaiba absent-mindedly exhaled his first huff of smoke.
He peeled open his coat slightly to return the lighter to its original place before finally giving me his full attention, momentarily re-revealing the tapered bones and corded muscles beneath. Kaiba's new musculature intrigued me. Though he had always been slim and toned he hadn't been as well built as this the last time I 'd seen him in the living world. Now he looked fit and strong; more like a grown man than a long-limbed teenager. The muscles of his chest and abdomen were obvious even at rest. It seemed as though he'd been unsure what sort of contest awaited him in my world and had over-prepared his body to match his new Duel Disk and deck.
"Pronounce what, like what?" He questioned, returning me to my original line of inquiry, ending my suddenly voyeuristic inspection of his body before he could notice. I felt the need to cover my actions behind a guise of pure neutrality, but I couldn't place why. How had just looking at him come to feel so incriminating?
"Like what?" Kaiba demanded again, irritation at having to repeat himself heating his tone and returning me to my question.
Surely he could hear the difference in pronunciation? He may be willfully ignorant but he wasn't deaf. "Kaiba, repeat the word 'Pharaoh'." I tested, smirking as my request was met with a short, clipped. "No." His tone was nonplussed and matter-of-fact, but he still turned to bestow an unimpressed glower upon me for good measure.
"Indulge me." I pressed, taunting him with a tone of voice equal parts calm and mocking.
"I already am doing. This whole conversation is me indulging you." Came his gruff reply, his expression suitably unimpressed by my teasing question.
The camp fire danced in front of us, filling the lull with quiet snaps and cracks that reminded me of the braziers in my palace and were soothing to listen to despite their irregularity. It made the otherwise unyielding silence companionable instead of jarring. "Then a trade." I proposed, watching a stray ember flit about.
"A trade?" Kaiba echoed skeptically, but I sensed his curiosity beneath the surface of his projected dubiousness.
"A question for a question." I explained.
He hummed, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the air which drifted lazily away from us as he contemplated my game. "How do you know I won't lie?"
"You can try, but I'll know." Of that I was certain. Kaiba wasn't even half as good at bluffing as he clearly believed himself to be. Watching his stony face for any amount of time eventually revealed the molten rock beneath it when peering through the cracks.
"Tch." He manipulated the cigarette between his fingers as he considered it, the display skillful despite being absent-minded. "You're really that curious?" His eyes appraised me , meeting mine for the first time in a minute.
"Yes." I nodded, perking my eyebrow at him curiously. "You're the only one who pronounces it the way you do. Even Mokuba doesn't." I paused, if only to enjoy his terse grimace. "Is it unintentional, or are you waging a war on language for the sake of it?" I teased.
Kaiba grumbled something under his breath that I suspected was a coarse insult and took another breath of his cigarette before replying. "It's a regional accent- or what's left of it anyway." He broke my gaze, trailing off to stare up at the sky as he watched the grey tendrils of smoke drift away. It was a gesture of discomfort, disguised as disinterest. He didn't want to continue this conversation.
"From outside of Domino." I noted, mirroring Kaiba's feigned boredom for the subject.
"Nhn."
The reply was thought-provoking, as Kaiba often could be when be wasn't being totally belligerent. "Why doesn't Mokuba share it?"
"We moved into Domino right before he was born, so he sounds like the rest of them." Kaiba took a final gasp from it and busied himself stubbing out the cigarette on the ground beneath him, not caring that the stick had only been partially burned.
That made some sense. For the pronunciation to be so ingrained that it had persisted all the way to his current age Kaiba must have learned the word while he was very young.
"Where did you move from?" I tested, suspected this would be the end of the conversation. It had become too revealing for him.
The response was a surly "Does it matter?" confirming that suspicion. Despite the conclusion a rush of victorious satisfaction followed the conversations end; I was becoming better at recognizing his limits.
"No." I agreed, diplomatically.
Kaiba paused all movement and hesitated. He opened his mouth to ask a question, "What did-" then snapped it shut, cutting off his words as a mild flush of heat bloomed curiously across his lean cheeks. He abruptly shied away to an obviously alternative inquiry.
"What would you do if you were back in Domino?"
The question took me by surprise. I stared at him, unsure how to answer. Clearly he misinterpreted this as reticence.
"A question for a question - and that's mine. If you had to live in Domino now, what would you do?" He demanded, his strange blush fading away so quickly it was as though it had never been there.
"I don't know." I truly didn't. I could guess why Kaiba was asking - he wanted to know what the aftermath of his gambit to return me to life would have looked like had his plan been successful - but I had no answer to give him.
"You've never thought about it?" Kaiba scoffed at that.
"Not with any deep consideration." I admitted. His expression was unimpressed, like he doubted my intelligence. I waved my hand around the oasis; a paradise within a paradise, crafted for me by the God's themselves. "This is where I belong, I haven't had a reason to think differently." I wanted him to understand, but I could tell by the way his eyes narrowed and his teeth gritted that he didn't, or wouldn't.
"You're dead. You know that, right?" Kaiba snapped.
"Kaiba, I've been dead for thousands of years." I parried, kept calm and level against Kaiba's rising temper only because of the outcome of our last conversation about this topic back in his pod.
"Funny how that worked out for you." His tone was bitter and his anger abruptly broke into only deep exasperated scorn as he looked away from me.
I suppressed a sigh. Kaiba felt very strongly about this, as did I. There wouldn't be any victors if we kept debating it so I changed the subject.
"Do I have a body of my own?" I asked, retreating to his previous question.
"Hn?"
"In your hypothetical situation?"
Kaiba huffed, his eyes trailing his boot as he crushed the corpse of his modern day cigarette into the earth of my afterlife with his boot. "Sure, why not."
I contemplated it carefully. Kaiba deserved a thorough answer to his question, even though he'd avoided fully answering my own. "In the short term I suppose have a meal at Burger World with my friends." I decided. I could conjure the image of it in my mind easily - Joey and Tristan mock fighting over a stolen french fry with whatever condiments were closest as their weapons of choice while Téa and Yugi made softer conversation punctuated by gentle laughter and the clinking sound of a stirring implement hitting the narrow sides of Téa's drink as she habitually swirled it around her glass.
"Urgh. You eat fast food?" Kaiba's tone was mildly disgusted and guilelessly chiding. It made me grin.
"It's more about the company than the menu." I summarized. I'd only ever experienced hamburgers through Yugi's body and I wondered what one would taste like on my own tongue, though with many of my own customs and cultural beliefs having returned to me I knew for a fact I would prefer it not to have any lettuce.
"You and Mokuba could come too." I teased. The Kaiba brothers were an effortless addition to the scene; sat perhaps a booth away so the elder wouldn't have to make conversation with anyone else as he scowled behind a hot beverage, while the younger flitted between entertaining his brother and the others.
"Pass." Kaiba grunted, then smirked to himself as though about to play a winning card. "The company's lame and the food's greasy. And vice-versa."
Despite slandering my friends his gibe lacked any true venom so I chuckled at his retort and a bit of the tension trapped in his pose lessened.
A comfortable pause embraced us as I thought about it.
"In the long run... I don't know what I'd do." I turned my head to the stars, gazing up at them as though the Gods would move them about to draft an answer out for me. Reclaiming my place in the world as the Duel Monsters champion had its appeal, and its flaws. Kaiba had retired from dueling, removing one of my greatest challengers from play and "Returning to professional dueling would be difficult- my likeness could throw Yugi's victories into question." I thought aloud.
Kaiba scoffed but didn't otherwise interrupt.
"And Domino's schooling system is of no interest to me." Of that I was certain.
Kaiba's bark of laughter was abrupt and unexpected but very welcome to hear. "What did you even do all day while Yugi was in class?" A condescending amusement was thick in his words, warming them.
I doubted he'd like the answer, but at least this question I had a definitive reply for. "Sometimes I walked the halls of the Millennium Puzzle... " So many dark corridors and branching paths. Despite the heat of my body thinking about it chilled my blood. "But most of the time I just... 'wasn't'." I recalled, struggling for a proper way to phrase exactly what I was trying to say in Japanese.
"You 'wasn't'." Kaiba repeated. He turned to me with a sarcastic twist of his lips. "Who's 'waging a war on language' now?"
"It's difficult to describe." Was my defense. "I was capable of just not 'being'. I could come and go as I pleased." Most likely being able to do so was the only thing that had stopped me from losing my mind in all the thousands years between my time and Kaiba's.
"So you slept?"
The conclusion was so simple and Kaiba's delivery so factual it took me a moment to react.
"You're saying you could just turn being conscious on and off, right?" Kaiba pushed, seeming disinterested.
I supposed so, when boiled down to such simple terms. "Yes, I guess." That was accurate.
"Great. Defeated by a chronic layabout." His jeer was sharp but not harsh, so some sort of dark joke.
"Multiple times." I noted, my tone every bit as self-satisfied as such an achievement deserved. I'd interpreted him correctly as he merely huffed in abject irritation; but though Kaiba seemed tame at present rubbing my victories any further in his face was ill advised. There was no point in poking a dragon in the eye. "I don't know what I would do if I returned to Domino. That's my answer." I concluded.
Our conversations were duels I was beginning to understand exactly how much of my attack Kaiba would endure before his temper rushed to his defense. "Fortunately such a scenario is beyond my concern." I announced with surety.
Kaiba's expression cooled considerably, replying with only a stiff "Hnh."
As was typical for Kaiba he'd tried to cheat to get the better of me in our trade. I'd permitted it by answering each additional question he'd layered on top, answering three of his in return for just one of my own, but I couldn't help but wonder what his original question had been - the one he so quickly denied himself from asking.
"What was it that you were going to ask first?" He rarely hesitated and he wasn't foolish enough to believe I'd missed it.
"I don't know what you're talking about." He bit back, suddenly calling his rage to his side to protect him from my question. I was far from deterred. My interest increased ten-fold.
Any other words weren't necessary, just my stern, unflinching look.
"It's nothing." In a whirl of white he snapped to his feet, striding away from me and the fire for a few steps. Just as quickly he stopped in his tracks and scowled to himself, as though debating something viciously within his own mind.
There was a lingering pause and then Kaiba surprised me. Instead of stiffening into stone his ire was slowly replaced by a morbid curiosity. The stare he fixed me with was impossibly blue; the color of his eyes seeming to glow luminous in the night against his pale skin.
"What did you mean before; when you said you were 'fond' of me?" he eventually asked.
The suddenly growing blush on his face made mine answer in kind.
It also made me realize that Kaiba might be waiting for a different answer than the one I had intended. I had meant no more than I had said. I was fond of him. Though he loathed the term Kaiba was my friend and I liked him, even more-so with the time we were spending together, yet Kaiba seemed to be asking if it had been a confession of sorts. Did he want it to have been? Kaiba's mind had a propensity for twisting otherwise unassuming words into objections and slander... I hadn't realized it might also do the very opposite. Abruptly a feeling I was rarely prey to since Yugi and I parted made my reacquaintance: awkwardness.
Kaiba watched me intently, grimly curious and troubled in equal measure as though waiting for an execution. Possibly his own. We both knew that whatever answer I was to give would be the definitive outcome and there would be no room for a rematch to change the score.
I stood up slowly and took a step towards him, unsure what I wished to say, or how I wished to say it. In response he crossed his arms tightly over his chest as if to shield himself from me.
"Forget it. It's not like it matters." He decided, tilting his head so his hair overshadowed his eyes and made them impossible to read. "We part ways at the end this stupid game anyway. You made that clear." He smirked, bitterly.
Kaiba's right hand was a flash of white as he sharply turned on his heel away from me. Catching it was almost like fishing as I grasped it in my own at the last moment before it escaped and held onto it firmly as it thrashed in my grip. As I refused to release it Kaiba turned back to me, his coat flying just as angrily as his expression.
It was true. By Kaiba's absolute way of thinking no matter what I said, our association was doomed to end and so worthless - yet here he was, rolling the dice regardless by asking me this question.
"Get off." He stated, bluntly. He leaned back against me trying to pull himself free before instantly stilling as I demanded his attention with only the sound of this name.
"Kaiba." I stalled, saying it alone as though it could truly delay me from having to answer him while my mind raced.
"What?" He snapped back, simply glaring down at my hand as it held his as though he were a jackal with its paw in a trap and was considering the merits of gnawing it off to escape.
"I am fond of you." I repeated. I really was.
What answer had he hoped to hear? Beyond that, what had driven him so fiercely that he was here in my world at all? I couldn't guess. I also couldn't answer his query properly until I knew. "What is it that you want from me?" I questioned. For once Seto Kaiba's intentions were utterly veiled to me.
"To beat you in a duel - to get my revenge - the same thing I've always wanted!" He shouted back, his gaze finally meeting my own in clear reprimand.
"And then?" I pressed, unimpressed by the obvious answer.
"And then nothing. That's it." His words were clipped and short but didn't lack conviction.
A cold breeze gusted between us, tussling our hair, my robe and his coat.
"Why? What do you want from me?" He parried, warily and through narrowed eyes.
His counter question surprised me.
I wasn't accustom to wanting anything from Kaiba, other than for him to walk a path of self-improvement as I had told him many times in our duels. No answer came to mind.
Kaiba rolled his eyes at my pause. "Everyone wants something from me." He added with a sneer.
I frowned, turning the inquiry inward. What was my greatest desire for Kaiba? Put simply I wanted him to be happy, and if that wasn't possible for him then I wanted him to be at least contented. It was selfish, a way to relieve the guilt that had planted itself within me while I'd watched Kaiba's tears fall inside of his pod. I wanted him to find his peace. To live a full life without the wound our association had left on him continuing to cause him the pain that had brought him to my afterlife in the first place.
"I want you to leave my world with whatever it is you came here looking for." I explained, ensuring I used no words Kaiba deemed weak or could be easily twisted in his mind.
"Tch." His thankless scoff was immediate, petulant and pricked my temper.
"What is it you want me to say?" I demanded, heatedly this time.
"I don't know!" Kaiba raised his voice and tightened his stance as though about to duel and I did the same.
"Then just listen." I declared, choosing to take a stand and make the first move, or else we'd no doubt be here arguing about nothing until the same time tomorrow.
I opened my mouth, not yet sure what would come out of it. Trusting in my friends came easy; as did trusting in the Heart of the Cards. This time I had to trust the heart within my own chest to make sense of all of this.
"I am fond of you! As a trusted friend and a formidable rival." I began, emphasizing 'am' to the extreme. From the bottom of my heart, truly I was. "I'm fond of your willfulness and your determination. Your paradoxical stubborn mutability!" Now that I had started it was easy to continue. There were many things I liked about Kaiba; though naturally most of them were also his greatest flaws. "I'm fond of your pride, though it does me no favors." Despite shouting my lips slid into a grin. "I'm fond of the peculiar way to pronounce 'Pharaoh' and how recklessly you throw yourself at everything in your way."
Kaiba watched me intently. He hung on my every word as though he had never been complimented before and had no idea how to react.
I smirked in amusement at having found the proverbial carrot to tame this particular stallion. "I'm fond-" then I could continue no longer as Kaiba swooped down to press his lips against mine, harshly, desperately.
My breath caught in my throat. My pulse rushed deafeningly in my ears. I could taste the cigarette he'd just finished in his mouth and feel a crack the arid desert air had left on his dry lips. His left hand held the side of my jaw, locking me in place while his fingers pressed down onto my skin with enough force to bruise if left too long. The blood that Kaiba's oblivious actions had sent racing to the lower half of my body twice in as many days was redirected once again. My hand tightened around Kaiba's own and then -
And then the pressure was gone. I opened my eyes, unsure when I'd closed them, and was reminded of exactly how quickly Kaiba could move when he wanted to. He stood tense, every muscle coiled like a serpent about to strike or a horse about to bolt at least three feet away from me as though he'd magically teleported. Every part of his face was at war with the rest; his expression shocked and angry, his cheeks flushed with an awkward heat and his narrowed blue eyes hostile and deep with shame.
It appeared his offering had been revoked just as quickly as it had been given. That disappointed me, I realized.
Was this the answer that Kaiba was looking for? The one he so desperately craved?
Kaiba snorted dryly and turned his head away from me, the roiling mortification at his actions so clearly shining in his eyes dulling into something calm and solemn.
"Just forget that happened." He decided.
A curious choice of words, and something I wouldn't permit. After spending thousands of years separated from my own memories I couldn't allow myself to 'forget' anything ever again. Let alone something so... unexpected.
"Lie down. Go back to sleep." Kaiba pressed, trying to move the conversation along with the subtly of a raging hippopotamus.
I didn't know if this was what Kaiba had come to my world to find and by his reaction I could tell he didn't know either, yet despite being impulsive I could taste the brutal honesty in his actions. It was uniquely him. Utterly Seto Kaiba. I'd never felt anything like it with anyone else. It was Kaiba pouring out all his furious feelings and pent up pains across the holographic coliseum he'd created for our duel in Battle City, it was him beckoning my to slit his throat with my cards atop the castle walls of Duelist Kingdom, it was every duel we'd fought with or against each other and every argument we'd ever had polymerized together into one singular expression of his feelings so sudden it clearly surprised him as much as me.
Kaiba shifted, hitching his shoulders as regret and humiliation pooled in his gaze and abruptly I knew what I wanted from him: to fight away the dejected look from his proud face.
"You could wait for my reaction - rather than simply rejecting yourself on my behalf." I noted. I raised an eyebrow at Kaiba as he shrugged back, the white leather across his shoulders glowing silver in the moonlight, now once more as composed as he ever was.
"I believe in efficiency." He replied, smirking cruelly at himself. "The result would be the same either way."
Is that what he thought?
I crossed the distance between us, a truer smirk than his pulling at my lips in challenge.
"Does it become tiring, Kaiba?" I taunted as I stood at his feet, his eyes icing over into a protective glare as he gritted his teeth against whatever words he suspected I was going to attack him with next. "Being wrong all the time?" I finished.
His eyes narrowed in confusion for the moment between my hand reaching up the back of his neck, and it guiding his head down to mine.
AN: After finishing writing this chapter I realized there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance in it, because although Kaiba is Japanese and their supposedly speaking Japanese, I'm very much using the English dub version of Kaiba and referencing Eric Stuart's pronunciation of the word 'Pharaoh'. Just go with, I guess? Anyway, I like this chapter, but I'm not sure if it started to stray into being a little too OOC at times? Let me know your thoughts! Moving forward this fic will probably bump up to an M rating, just so you guys know.
And thank you so much for all the new reviews, they're wonderful!
