Momento
Inspiration: Brin de Reglisse, photos of Times Square in the early morning hours, and tiny, delicate collarbone tattoos, all to the tune of Halsey's Ghosts. Not mine.
Disclaimer: do not own YGO.
Someone's done the Yugi hates mirrors trope already, so that's not original. Not sure if anyone's dragged holiday display windows through the mud like I'm going to, though...
...
Yugi's gone again.
He's always gone this time of the night, wandering through the throng of lights below, searching for him.
It's a diaphanous quest, one he'll never complete, and yet he tries anyway, no matter how many times I find him crumpled by our cat-shaped Welcome Mat in the morning, shriveled, drunk, and disappointed.
We don't need mirrors, he slurs as he stumbles in our tiny kitchenette while pounding back discount coffee, careful to turn the rusted side of the stainless steel cup towards his face and the shiny side towards mine. You're beautiful, Tea, he mumbles. No amount of reflections are going to help mine, he whispers. I'm here. He's not. My hair does what it wants, just like him.
Him.
Atem.
Atem's the reason Yugi avoids the saccharine-dripped display windows when we're walking down 34th. The cheery holiday mannequins don't catch his eye anymore. Too much commercialism, his lips say. No one actually needs thousand dollar boots. We sure as hell don't on our broke as hell diet of instant noodles and broken dreams.
There's more to it than the sheer commercialism, though.
Yugi's heart says he's lying. He's not actually seeing the neon-colored puffers in the window. He sees Atem, he with the face just a little more angular, eyes a bit narrower, shoulders a bit broader, voice a smidge smokier, dry heat like roasted lavender hung with a leather-clad dueling glove above a murmuring flame. Eyes steely, determined, sharp like a thorn slicing through the cheap imitation butter in our empty fridge.
Yugi's eyes are never dry, though. They're always a little bit moist, like a waxy moonlit sprawl through the city after the rain. Purple with flecks of blue, gray, and red, lit from the inside with eternal longing.
For Atem.
Who is never, ever coming back to us. The Pharaoh who was. The ideal that was. The person they both could have been, encouraging the other to become the best version of themselves. All of the visions dotting Yugi's landscape. Shifting, twisting. Always out of reach, just a little bit too far from the mortal hands holding mine as we avoid the throng of Christmas shoppers.
I miss him too, but not as much as I miss the old (young, really) Yugi. The one that actually laughed when the first blush of snow descended upon Domino in flurries and gales. The one who raced me to McDonalds despite being at least a foot shorter for their annual Christmas Turkey Burgers which were really a hodgepodge of lentils and cranberries and stuffing mixed with Ra knows what else. Holiday KFC is the normal tradition, apparently, but Yugi grew up watching dubbed movies with me and Grandpa so he's always associated Christmas with Macy's and balloons and holiday display windows.
Or at least he used to.
Now he just mopes.
I thought moving away from Domino would help. You know, being removed, at least physically, from Kaiba's twelve hundred million Battle City Re-runs on the Card Game Channel.
But no.
That doesn't help at all. Yugi sees Atem everywhere he goes. The Statue of Liberty? Cairo in all of her regal glory. Manhattanhenge? Cotton-candy sunrises over the Nile. Thanksgiving Day Parade? The actual parade of people that jostled their way to Atem's side after the Ceremonial Duel.
(Don't even get me started on reflexive surfaces.)
Wherever we go, it's always Ooh! Atem would have liked this! or Aah! I wonder if Atem would have liked this as we're strolling down the 5th, avoiding tourist traps, or waltzing through the Met. Yugi just parks himself in front of the ancient Egypt and Mesopotamian exhibit and just does not leave. Security had to escort him out once, when the Tablet of Memories made its worldwide tour to New York City.
Yuge, I coo, we've seen the damn tablet at least thirty times already. Please let it go. You have a life to live. Joey. Tristan. Mai. Serenity. Hell, even Duke's here with all his Dungeon Dice Monsters tournament.
You've got me, Yugi.
He just stares.
Apparently I don't understand how the only reflection he can bare to see is the one on the security glass over that damn tablet. How he feels like he left the best part of himself go into the afterlife four years ago, because he's wanted to be Atem more than Atem wanted to be Atem.
But, Oh, Ra, I do understand. I understand better than anyone else what it's like to miss someone, to love someone, to long for someone who's not 100% with you. They're off in some wonderland where they're searching for themselves in places they're never going to find them, at least not on this plane.
Doesn't stop Yugi from trying, though. I had to drag him back from Millennium Tattoos last night. He got a cartouche above his heart with Atem's name.
I have one, too.
With a face.
Yugi's.
...
Feedback? Please?
