Author's Note: I wasn't particularly pleased with the sugary sweet ending that I originally wrote for Unwell, so I felt a more bitter epilogue was needed to fit the context of the whole fic better.
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Mutou residence
5:30 a.m.
Fearing that Kaiba could not be left to his own devices, Jounouchi carried him to his best friend's house in the heart of Domino City. There, in Yugi's bedroom, the worried blond laid his former rival to rest. To ensure the brown-haired male's security, Katsuya gently wound some sheets around Seto's limbs as a clumsy form of restraints. Now, the bound and broken heir of KaibaCorp. stares dumbly out into the horror of alien terrain, still trapped within nightmares that has been haunting him since childhood…
Epilogue: Waters of Enlightenment
Darkness…I can't see anything. I've fallen into this limitless void of shadows, somewhere without a location on a map, an unexplored territory, an arctic desert where the sun refuses to shine. Like a blind man inventing enlightenment, I discover the identity of the nameless and faceless monster that lurks in the boundaries of tainted love--myself.
It is me who carries the vow of uncertain destiny, who cares nothing for fate or romance. I am responsible for discouraging my mind from wandering to more affectionate thoughts that warps reason into the only attribute I know sentimental feelings to be, who comprehends the joy of emotions as just ones and zeros on a computer monitor which reflects a numerical background. This is me, as I know me, and how others have come to understand me as well: a barely living android that functions strictly off of processed data. Am I nothing more than a beast built on technology? Is this truly a mark of my personal character? How can acquaintances impose such critical judgments on my behavior and arrive at horribly illiterate evaluations of my temperament? If they could look at me now, those harsh and hypercritical eyes of society, they would see that I'm just the opposite…
My wrists--I can't observe their precarious state at the moment, for they are stretched out to my sides--but I feel them suspended in the air. Both of my bony limbs are hanging limply by my head, sagging by their joints, reminding me of the classic depiction of Christ hanging from a cross. An unsettling feeling gurgles in the pit of my stomach, making me dizzy and sick simultaneously. The last image I want roaming free in my mind is someone nailed to a set of intersecting boards left to die a forsaken death.
In spite of myself, I experienced a moment of weakness. Abandoned--I couldn't help but feel so utterly alone at this point in my existence--and I hated that I was allowing myself to bask in the light of pity. Sympathy was my least favorite emotion to show; however, I surrendered my soul to its seemingly bottomless depths. It was as if I had been treading on a glass ceiling and the pane shattered beneath me, leaving my broken form to dive into a place I never wanted to revisit in my nightmares, much less in reality. Looming over the edge of my breaking point, I closed my eyes, buried my chin into my chest, and expelled my last breath from the plane of materialism. If I was to be the next Lamb of God, then I at least wished to fade from this realm with a peaceful bearing. Immediately, I doubted that I could enter the Creator's golden gates, so hoped for something a little more attainable. I may not be eligible to receive archangel wings or the status of a saint, but I am uninterested in what dimension I'll be transported to in the after-life. There is another cross I'd rather construct, carry, and be held up on by barbed wire.
Tensing from the uncomfortable starvation of oxygen, I snapped my jaws shut and squeezed my lids together. This treatment would only last a few agonizing seconds longer before I perish from destructive inhalation technique. It is also a necessary evil to me, so I took up the task with as much enthusiasm as a tired and weary spirit could muster. Desperation had a funny way of making me act out my inhibitions, allowing my voice box to open and close at will, and letting impulsive reactions become quite tangible theories. For the first time in all my teenage years, my one and only selfish wish was about to evolve into more than a much sought-after dream--it held the promise of physical awareness.
Struggling under the pressure, my body scrunched itself into a tight mass of flesh, my knees jumping up towards my chest while pulling a pair of anxiety-ridden feet with them. Nails of mine scraped the surface of my palms, and even my elevated arms felt rigid, the muscles underneath my transparent skin throbbing madly as they braced themselves for the worst. Ignoring the rapid increase of pain in my structure, my mouth stretched itself into a languid smile. There was an obvious battle between the desires of my physical and emotional states, a tragic conflict of interests that would boast a single victor from their brutal brawl, but I couldn't permit my essence to be drawn into an infantile fight like that. The true importance was not placed upon the basic instincts to survive or on its opposite devil, emotions, that required personal happiness, but on a unique quality altogether.
Spirituality is what I crave, the factor that has been missing from my estranged self, an attribute that I yearned to rediscover on my way to exiting this world, and I am going to obtain that feature, no matter what the cost--
Picking up my own crucifix, I mount myself to the splintering wood with imagined rope, turn my countenance towards the textured surface above, and pray to whatever god there is beyond the holy veil that they would be just and loving enough to guide me through the waters of enlightenment.