Healing
Four days after the Flock of Bennu had been sent out to spy, Atem was still living in Set's chambers, leaving everyone both worried and puzzled. He had at least begun attending his usual lessons, gradually over those four days, but only on the fourth day did he actually attend every lesson he should have that day. As he was putting away his gear from his weapons practice that day, a familiar voice interrupted him.
"Hiding won't make it go away, Your Highness," his weapons trainer, Taopo, informed him from the door to the weapons shed.
Turning to face the man, the Prince answered, "I can't really do anything else because I can't change anything..."
"No one said you have to change things around you," the man told him. "What you have to change is how you see the things around you. The Gods put restrictions on you, so you have no control over that. No, it's not fair, but you can't change it, so instead of hiding from it or fighting it, just accept it. That alone will go a long way towards settling yourself down again."
"You have no idea what you're asking me to accept!" Atem yelled at him, crossing his arms defensively over his chest.
"How quickly did little Yuugi recover from what you did to him, to the point where he treats you just like normal?" Taopo asked sharply, standing straight and stalking towards the Prince with a dangerously prowling stance. Suddenly, Atem felt afraid of this man he'd always taken as no different from the rest of the guard force. "If I could have had my way, you'd have suffered what you did to him, because normally, that would have devastated a person, possibly beyond repair."
As the larger man advanced, Atem backed into the wall in fear, realizing he was trapped, knowing he could get free with his magic, but feeling the crushing weight of his actions and all desire to fight left him. The man continued harshly, "If you'd done it to my daughter or sons, you'd have gotten it back tenfold, but Yuugi has no one to defend him that way. That travesty went virtually unpunished..."
Then Taopo stopped and stood over the Prince like a looming shadow. "But you're the Prince, so naturally, you aren't punished the same way another man who had committed the same crimes would have been. I see a crime I've seen my sister suffer from go unpunished, and there's nothing I can do about it. How do you think I feel, Your Highness? This is a betrayal to me, and I have no choice but to accept it. Will it help me to stay angry with you? Should I bother wasting my time and energy on someone not worthy of it?"
He stepped closer to the smaller, younger man so he was pressing the Prince against the wall with his body, and hearing a whimper, leaned down to whisper in his ear, "You should have been punished, but were spared. Do you think you deserve the right to hide from your own crimes?"
"Then punish me!" Atem burst out suddenly, tears running down his cheeks. "I know I should have been punished, so punish me!"
"And then what would you do? Forget about what you did wrong, and repeat it later?" Taopo asked softly with a smirk, still pressed against the smaller body.
"What? I could never—" the Prince gasped, wide-eyed.
"Why not?" the weapons master retorted with a hard voice. "Punishment absolves you of guilt. Your own guilt is far greater a punishment, isn't it?"
At the words, Atem began sobbing, falling to his knees, still trapped between the man and the wall. He didn't realize his position, just knew this was a repeated trend—he did something to harm Yuugi and never actually received direct punishment for it, but what he got instead was a loss of his other half and crippling guilt. Collective guilt he'd never dealt with.
"Why am I fated to hurt him over and over again?" the Prince asked helplessly through his tears.
"...Over and over again?" Taopo asked with a frown, taking a step back from the Prince and kneeling on one knee in front of him.
"What the Gods gave me...my future memories...I can count every time I'll harm him in some way, and I've never been punished...not for any of those times...Yuugi..." Atem wept, eyes wide and blank.
Suddenly, the weapons master sighed and said, "So now we come to the crux of the matter." When the Prince met his eyes without comprehension, he went on, "Everyone makes mistakes. You make far fewer of them than normal people, but My Prince, you've never learned to learn from the mistake and let it go. You keep carrying a burden of guilt which you don't need to carry—even Yuugi has absolved you of that guilt, so why do you keep holding it? Because you feel you need punishment...or because that guilt is the only punishment you'll ever get?"
Chills ran down Atem's spine at the words, then his eyes slid shut. "What are you doing? What's your purpose? Are you trying to push me to end my own life, because that's how I feel right now..."
Something touched the back of the Prince's hand, making him open his eyes and look down—to see his weapons master holding the hilt of a sword out to him. "Then end your life if you feel that's what you need to do."
Atem lifted his hand to the hilt, intending to do just that—then yanked his hand back like he'd been burned as his fingers touched the leather binding on the hilt. He blinked, and blinked, and blinked a third time as his eyes cleared, then he looked up at the older man questioningly.
"Back with me now?" Taopo asked the younger man calmly.
The Prince slowly looked down at his hands, then back up at the man, and said, "I don't think I've been fully 'with' anyone since the Gods gave me those memories, except maybe Set...I feel like I've come home after a long time away..."
"Good, that's one step in a positive direction," the weapons master answered, setting the sword back on the rack. His gaze went back to Atem as he sat on the floor of the shed in front of him. "How do you feel?"
"...I don't know...Confused, but somehow calmer and lighter...?" the younger man answered slowly, clearly puzzled by his own current state. "What was that all about?"
"You were getting lost in your own mind. Every time you do that is when you hurt people without really meaning to, or so seems to be the trend, so I wanted to shock you out of it—no one else's methods were working," Taopo replied.
"...Then, were the things you said all lies?" Atem frowned in even more confusion.
"No," the man answered with a raised brow. "Everything I said was true, but I said it deliberately in a way I didn't necessarily mean it, because you so obviously needed to be figuratively punched in the gut. There are two points you need to take away from this. One is that you still value your own life, so you need to keep living it, and the other is that no one but you can absolve you of your own guilt, by choosing to let it go."
Atem stared as the man rose and headed for the door, but he called before the weapons master stepped out of the shed, "But what you said about me being punished for what I did to Yuugi—"
Turning back to him, Taopo cut him off with, "And you have been. Unfortunately, you are the only one who can't seem to see just how much punishment you've gotten for what you did. When will you feel you've had enough punishment? If I was to do to you what you did to Yuugi, I daresay you'd never get out of that rut and just keep punishing yourself more and more. That won't help anyone. Forgive yourself, Prince Atem, because everyone else has already forgiven you."
He was gone before Atem could answer, leaving the Prince in turmoil but with a much clearer mind and sense of self than he'd had since getting those memories of his own future.
Slowly, Atem rose and wandered from the shed, blinking in the sunlight like he was seeing it for the first time in his life. Compared to when he'd left the dungeons after several days there, this was on a completely different level, and he wasn't just seeing something as superficial as 'light', or as 'dirt', or as 'sand', or as 'stone'. He was seeing a stunning array of energy, life, and essence which he'd either never noticed before or always taken for granted and stopped noticing. When he saw a frond tree which nearly glowed green with its own life energy, he realized he wasn't actively thinking—just truly appreciating and understanding the preciousness of life, of the things he saw around him every day.
Before he realized what he'd done, he was at his own room, leaning on the jamb as he watched Yuugi sorting out several sheets of paper—notes of some sort?
"Come in, Atem," Yuugi called to him after a minute, not looking at him. The younger's voice sounded amused. "It's your room, after all."
Pushing off the jamb and walking slowly into the room, the Prince asked, "When you look at the stone walls, or the potted plants, or the sunlight, what do they look like to you?"
Yuugi looked up at him in mild confusion, asking, "What do you mean?"
"I had always...They looked flat, dull..." Atem began, trying to explain what he meant but not really having any idea how.
"How could something with a color as vivid as a plant ever look 'dull'?" the younger teen asked in confusion. "I've never seen anything flat or dull, because everything's always been bright and vivid and full of color and life to me. Other people, I don't know about, but...Seeing the trees and animals so bright and full of life always gave me peace after my father would...Well, you know..."
After a pause, the Prince went to his cushion bed and dropped onto it, staring up at the ceiling—in an exact copy of something Yuugi had always done quite happily and readily. Now, there was something to see there. "...Have you already forgiven me for hurting you so much, so many times?"
"There was never anything for me to forgive you for," the smaller teen replied simply.
"Not even when I nearly killed Kaiba, or nearly raped you?"
"Keyword: 'nearly'. You didn't, so it's moot. One time, you were trying desperately to protect me, and the other, you weren't clinically sane. Of course, to me, even clinically sane people are insane, to varying degrees, so I just don't pay much attention to minor insanity. What you had wasn't minor, so you're not at fault."
"Clinically insane? Anyone else would usually have called it a fit of rage."
"Anyone else wouldn't have had thousands of years' worth of their own memories dumped on them before they even happened and had to deal with the accompanying emotions at the same time. You'd been behaving oddly right from the first moment I arrived, so the signs were already there—Set and I just happened to trigger them."
"...Do I have the right to forgive myself for such...?"
"No, you have a responsibility to forgive yourself so you can live again and truly be able to make amends for those errors. If you don't forgive yourself, you're preventing yourself from changing fully and properly, coming closer to your true self. Let it go, Atem. Mou Hitori no Boku."
Closing his eyes, the Prince thought about the words, the resonance he felt from the younger teen calling him 'Other Me' again. His soul, and a responsibility to heal...? In a way, it made a lot of sense, especially by Yuugi's pure view of the world. This was the first time his light's logic actually made sense to him. Discard the past, the future, and everything but the inner, true soul...
Live in the current moment.
His punishment hadn't been to be put in the dungeons, or to be kept out of the meetings with the foreigners, or any of those things...It had been to lose his own sense of self so thoroughly he had truly contemplated suicide.
Opening his eyes again, he looked at Yuugi and said, "I think I'm starting to understand your strength. If Taopo hadn't pushed me, backed me into a corner and forced me to face my own guilt, I might even have validated suicide, and that thought in the back of my mind wouldn't have come to light until too late."
With a sad sigh, Yuugi told him, "As much as that would really have been a waste of a good life, Atem, no one would ever actually have the right to stop you if you truly felt that was the path you had to take. What you do with your life is your own choice, no one else's, and you're not actually responsible for anyone but yourself."
"Says the goody-two-shoes."
"Not because anyone's put that responsibility on me. Where I live in the moment is my home, too. If I don't protect my own home, what will become of it? But my way of protecting it might be different from someone else's—like Isis protects it by being a Seer and a Healer, but you protect it by commanding troops and fighting against tangible threats. Isis is no less a protector of her home than you are, Atem. I choose to do what I can, because it's what I want to do and what feels right to me, truly right, not a bid for power or selfish gain."
"...Your logic is impossible..." Atem sighed, closing his eyes again.
He felt the smaller teen rise and move over to sit beside him, and felt Yuugi hug him tightly. "I'm glad you didn't choose suicide, because it still would have hurt, a lot, to lose you...I already lost you once, when I sent you on to the spirit world...To do it again...I couldn't bear it, I don't think."
"You could have. You've borne worse than that."
"That depends on your definition of 'worse'."
Snorting, the Prince admitted, "I guess that's true." He was silent for a minute, then said softly, "I've missed you so much, but I was so afraid I'd hurt you again..."
"Like I said, you never make the same mistake twice."
"No, I just find new mistakes to make."
"So does everyone. Your point?"
Suddenly, Atem felt like a huge weight lifted off him and began laughing, loud, full, and true, something he hadn't done for weeks. "I've been a fool, haven't I?" he asked when his laughter was reduced to chuckles.
"Yup. But, so have I, so it's not a state singular to you," Yuugi answered, voice full of amusement.
"Thank you, Yuugi."
"Of course, Other Me."
PA-HPS-YM-SK
After that conversation, another five days passed. In that time, Yuugi had recovered and Atem could stop feeding him energy. The Prince began alternating nights in his own room and in Set's, and began joining everyone in the Hall for meals again, returning to his usual self. Everyone was heaving sighs of relief for his return to all his usual behaviors, and Yuugi had even returned to his own lessons with Set and Shada.
The Bennus had begun to return to Set with information from all over Egypt and out deep into the Sahara, but had only traces of oddities to report, most of those from the lands across the Nile in what Yuugi told the Priests was called 'the Middle East'. Those were only in untimely movements of small groups of people, mostly away from the Egyptian border, but nothing concrete or directly related to Egypt's safety. Then again, only about fifteen had returned.
Late one evening, Atem was crossing the front courtyard where the main gates were, and looked up at the curtain wall to see Mana up there. Confused and curious by why she was up on the curtain wall, the Prince walked up there and stopped beside where she sat looking out over the city, legs dangling down the outside of the wall.
"All right, Mana?" he asked her curiously.
She looked up at him in surprise, then gave a small smile and said, "I'm fine, My Prince. I just...I can't do it...I feel like I'm failing my Master because he's trying so hard to teach me and I still can't manage to summon properly..."
After a pause, Atem sat beside her and asked, "Do you know where in the process you're losing it?"
"No...It just doesn't form at the very end, even though I'm sure everything else in the energy flow is working right..." she sighed. "Maybe I just can't summon, and Master would have wasted so much time on training me when someone else would have been better..."
"You can summon," the Prince told her quietly. "I'm sure of that. He didn't choose wrong when he chose to train you—just the fact that you can paralyze and blind a whole quarter of the population of the Palace is proof of that. But tell me, what are you trying to picture when you try to summon?"
"...I sort of...picture someone like Master," Mana told him softly, blushing a bit. "He's so strong, and he's been more like a father to me than mine ever was..."
"Then that's actually your problem, and if Mahad didn't realize that, he's losing his touch. You can't imagine something already living as a human or attached directly to a currently-living human. Kaiser Seahorse is Set's soul, or part of it, so you can't summon it, because you can't summon part of his soul while he's still alive. You have two choices then. Search your soul for what form it would take if part of it separated from you, or summon one of the summons we've appropriated from criminals, such as Sagi the Dark Clown, or which are spirits who reside in the spirit realm, like Kuribo."
"Oh...Well, I never really told him what I was trying to imagine..." the girl answered quietly, then perked up a bit. "But I'll try that. Thank you, Your Highness. How about you? How are you feeling after everything that's happened?"
"After everything?" he mused softly, considering the question. "Worn out, and a combination of glad I have those memories and hatred for the fact that I do."
"That's really mixed up..." Mana replied, blinking at him in concern.
"Yes, it is," he agreed. "Having Yuugi here...That makes me glad I have them, but all the insane things I've done...May still do...make me hate having to have them."
She cocked her head to the side in curious concern as she asked, "There's still something you might do like that? What is it, My Prince?"
With a deep sigh, Atem braced his hands behind him on the wall, turned backwards so he could lean on them. "I've...The destruction, the evil, the hatred, the torture I've seen others force on innocents...I can't banish any of those memories, any of those images...And yet, despite knowing that destruction is coming, I can't change it. I have to carry the burden...of letting innocent people die when I have the knowledge to save them..."
Mana gasped in horror, hand over her mouth, but she wasn't the one who answered him, it was Mahad—whose voice startled both teens and nearly made them fall from the wall—saying, "But you know as well as I do that there are times where, if one incident doesn't kill those innocents, another one will."
Atem faced the Priest and asked in surprise, "What? I thought prophesy allowed things to be changed!"
"It does—depending on which part of the prophesy is the inevitable part of it," the man answered. "In the case of a natural disaster, the likelihood of the people surviving merely by leaving the zone of the disaster until it passes is very, very high. In man-made destruction, the opposite is often the case, and the inevitable part of the event is the deaths of the people, and all you would do is change the method of death and give them a slightly longer life span. I would advise you not to worry so much about those lives, as it was the Gods themselves who told you the events could not be changed."
"That doesn't make it less of a burden..." the Prince sighed.
"My view on that is that there are two reasons you were told not to change things," Mahad informed him. "One is as you said, that Yuugi will never exist without those events. The other is that Isis and Anubis, and the other Gods, have seen the paths of the future, and have seen how those people would die, even if the event happened two weeks later and was different from the first one. If their fates are to die, they will, and if you were to try to save them, only for them to die soon after anyway, how much worse would you feel?"
Slowly, the younger man gave a small nod and said, "I guess you have a point in saying that. I guess...I'm starting to feel how Priestess Isis feels when she sees something she can't change. The difference is that all my emotion of the time is still attached to it, while Isis merely sees images free of personal emotion."
"Then distance yourself from the emotion."
"...How?"
"Allocate it to the past and leave it there. Or have Shada summon Time Wizard to adjust your personal time so things don't feel so fresh and painful."
"...Mahad, that's the first time someone's given me a quick fix for something..."
"Hardly. It only works for emotion you're willing to set aside."