Authoress's Note: YAY! Here's the next chapter! I want to thank everyone for the good reviews. I'm sorry for not updating regularly, and I don't really have any excuses at the moment… I have all of Part II done, half of Part III… and an idea for the epilogue. I don't think I've said this before: this is a companion to my other story, The Light in the Dark. That was my first fanfiction story and it wasn't really that good (I messed up a transitional between several chapters; it wasn't very Pegasus-centered, more Bakura in that one.) Well, anyway… I don't own "Yu-Gi-Oh!" However, I do own the excerpt from the poem I am using.
"(He holds the darkness in his soul,
Never empty, never whole.
Don't you see it in his eyes?
Don't you hear it in his cries?)
Forever is gone, forever is long,
And a heartbeat fades in a brassy gong
Only to find itself here – now –
Only to be gone like a shadow
That was never there."
- from "The White Shadow"
It was dark when I awoke.
I felt like someone that was lost in the desert. My throat felt like it was on fire. It was like all my bodily fluids had been taken from me by the scorching sun. I needed something to drink.
The only problem was that I could barely move.
Someone pressed a cup to my lips. I felt Midnight's presence; he tipped the cup of water until it spilled into my mouth. It made me feel only slightly better. I was very weak still from the draining, and the puncture wounds were very sore.
"You will die soon if you don't have a blood transfusion," he told me. "There is no one here who has the technology to give you one. I am giving you a choice. My blood in your system will only work for so long; there isn't enough of it in there to prevent you from dying."
I didn't have the strength to speak.
"I promised I wouldn't let you die; I won't lose you."
I opened my eyes just enough to see his face. Beyond him was darkness, but there was someone calling out to me with an angelic tone in her voice – Cynthia. She was holding onto me and I wanted to go to her.
The pain in that movement was almost unbearable.
"She wouldn't want you do die so needlessly." He tried to keep his voice even, but I heard his voice crack. Something was embedded in it – pain – so subtle that I wasn't even sure I was really hearing in.
Yes, I was very sure he was saying something else and there was no way it was about Cynthia, but I couldn't waste my time. My vision was fading in and out and the cold was trying to engulf me in a dark fog. I couldn't breathe, and I panicked and tried to take in enough oxygen; it sounded like I was choking.
I was going numb when he finally decided that asking me was out of the question. I would never have let him do it; I tried to resist as much as I could, but when you're dying, it's not that easy to fight off someone who's about ten times stronger than you are in normal conditions.
My eyes were closed, but I could see everything, but I wasn't conscious. It was a very passive seeing, like everything is a dream, and I was only numbly aware of my throat making swallowing motions. I was so numb that I didn't even feel the wetness at my lips.
And I was not even in the room anymore, but we were back in our large flat in Paris during one of the bitter winters that we used to get back then; now that period is referred to as a "little ice age," but back then it was life.
Cerberus was playing the violin and Midnight whapped his fingers with a stick every time he messed up the notes. I could see the tears in my son's eyes; he was only four, after all. He had learned how to hold emotion at a distance. With Midnight, you could never tell when you were going to be struck or when you would be let go. I spared Cerberus the bad beatings by taking them upon myself.
He choked back another sob and his fingers missed a note. I closed my eyes and heard a small thwack followed by more sounds.
"Midnight!" I screamed.
He sneered. "I have spared the young one long enough. He's spoiled; he takes after you. He is my son as much as he is yours; I don't see why I should spare him anything. You act like his mother."
"Have you always been heartless or is this just a recent development?"
My son's eyes jerked back and forth between us. The skin on his face was already starting to bruise as a side affect from his malnourishment; Midnight hardly ever gave us money for food, and I needed it less than I needed light.
He snickered and raised his hand to hit me; I closed my eyes, expecting to be hit hard enough to make me fly into the wall. Instead, I felt his fingers caressing my face. My eyes snapped open and he gave me a smile.
"Pegasus," he whispered. His lips brushed against mine.
I cringed and he scowled at me; I knew what he meant to do even as he was moving toward my son. His eyes fell on Cerberus's neck with cold hunger. I believe I screamed; Cerberus tried to run.
The sound of his scream when the fangs plunged in was almost unbearable. Those minutes were an eternity as I waited for him to stop; would my son live or die? A small gasp filtered through the air as Midnight relinquished his hold; my son was alive. I thanked the God I had recently begun to believe in.
But it didn't stop there. The room shifted and I was no longer in the present I dreamed of, but my son was standing before me as an adult. He was very beautiful with long hair in soft curls; it went halfway down his back. His eyes bored into me with a ferocious intelligence. His mouth opened and blood spewed out. He fell backward, dead, and I caught his body to find myself holding the Cerberus I knew. His innocent eyes, the eyes of children, stared up at me, and that was the only thing that forced me to realize this was a dream. Never had he looked upon me in innocence so pure; Midnight had tainted him…
And I was on the floor of the cell with Midnight standing over me; blood was streaming from my lips, and a searing pain went through my body. I was horrified when I looked at him, and he smiled at me.
"What… have… you… done…?" I whispered. Too pale, these hands I held before me; the darkness was too bright. "You condemned me to Hell."
"There is no Hell."
"Yes, there is."