STORY ARC TWO: THE PARTING OF LOST SOULS
Chapter Eight: Reunion
After kissing Emrys' hand, Kaiba stood up from his chair, stroked her hair, and kissed her on the cheek. Yes, he did vow to himself not to get too close to her or anyone other than Mokuba. However, there was something about his feelings for her that he could no longer hold back.
For the first time since Kaiba came to Emrys' rescue, he relaxed from guarding his emotions. He waited to see what her reaction would be.
Emrys gazed into Kaiba's azure eyes, giving as generous of a smile as she could manage in her weakened condition. Although she was unsure on whether the fond emotions she recalled seconds ago were really for him, she knew that she also had feelings for him.
Their gazes locked.
Through Emrys' eyes, Kaiba confirmed that there was a place for him in her heart. He bent down to kiss her lips and she was not going to stop him.
Before Kaiba was able to express his deepest feelings for Emrys through a long lingering kiss, he saw a presence from the corner of his eye watching and glaring at him.
Kaiba glanced sideways and identified the owner of the shadow that stood behind him.
The figure stood there for the past minute with hands slipped inside his pocket. He had been intently watching the entire scene, externally keeping his calm demeanor even though he was infuriated with the sable-haired young man.
Kaiba planted the intended lingering kiss on Emrys' cheek, giving his rival a glare before straightening up.
The duelist with the tri-colored mane, not wanting to make a scandalous scene in front of Emrys, acknowledged Kaiba's startled greeting with a slight nod. He then walked by her bedside opposite from where Kaiba stood. He returned her gaze with his expressive amethyst eyes, gave her a gentle smile, and caressed her cheek with the back of his hand...never leaving his sight on her for a second.
Emrys' eyes closed once she felt the other Yugi's touch. Her fogged memory was slightly jogged once more as it tried to make sense of the incoherent and random pieces. "This is so familiar..."
Once Emrys opened her eyes, the other Yugi smiled more generously and affectionately. However, he still could not shake off the odd feeling he had within him since he stepped inside her hospital room. Clearing his throat, he looked at Kaiba and asked, "May I have a word with you?"
The other Yugi then looked at Emrys, held her hand, kissed her on the cheek, and said, "We'll be back. Excuse us for a minute."
Keeping her eyes on the other Yugi, Emrys nodded.
With the other Yugi leading the way, the two young men stepped out of her room. They walked until the amethyst-eyed duelist was sure that the conversation they were about to have at the hallway was beyond Emrys' earshot.
"What the hell is going on?" the other Yugi intently asked his rival as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
"Nothing is going on..." Kaiba responded with a cocky strain in his voice.
"That wasn't all, Kaiba. I was about to see more than that."
Kaiba dismissively flung his right hand. "Spare me! If I kiss her, it's my own damn business to do so."
The other Yugi's eyes gave Kaiba an angry and penetrating look.
A middle-aged nurse who saw the bottled-up fury in the other Yugi's eyes glowered at the young men. "If you guys want to pummel each other, take it outside..." She then disappeared as she entered a patient's room.
There was a minute of silent tension between the two duelists who were respectively seething in anger. Eventually, the young men calmed down.
Breaking the ice, Kaiba murmured, "She has amnesia. She doesn't remember any of us."
The other Yugi's eyes went wide in shock. He pushed his anger away as he focused on this latest revelation. A frown crept on his face as his gaze intensified. "If you're saying she doesn't remember anything, then why is she afraid of Jonouchi?"
The CEO, visibly tired from the ongoing ordeal, resignedly sighed. "I don't know. I don't have much respect for the mutt, but I know he's harmless. I wouldn't trust him to stay with Mokuba if I didn't believe so."
After his sable-haired rival explained the entire incident, the other Yugi pondered aloud, "So you made the decision you thought was best...taking her somewhere safe..."
Kaiba nodded in quiet confirmation, still sounding so matter-of-factly. "I don't know if I'm really the intended target. Before last night, she kept mentioning about shadows trying to kill her. I dismissed it as delirium." After briefly pausing, he then said, "Things changed since last night. She almost died this morning. Somebody - or something - tried to kill her last night."
"Ghost?"
"Yes..."
With a much calmer voice, the other Yugi asked, "What did you see?"
"Three robed and hooded figures surrounding her bed. One of them had his hand inside her chest. She couldn't breathe. I tried to stop them, but my hand just passed through them. She stopped breathing, but I was able to resuscitate her."
The other Yugi shuddered. Recalling the spectral apparition at the loft, he now realized that the object that she was clutching and crushing was Emrys' heart. "I saw one of them in the middle of the night, too."
"At the loft?" Kaiba asked as fear struck within him.
Seeing the CEO's worried reaction, the amethyst-eyed duelist said, "Jonouchi will do everything to protect Mokuba."
Upon hearing his brother's name, Kaiba's demeanor lightened a little. "How's my brother doing?"
"He's doing well. He misses and worries about you and Emrys a lot. Have you had any luck in finding out who's responsible for all of this?"
"None. Dodging bullets and fighting is one thing. Ghosts are another matter. I still don't want to believe what I saw last night."
"You have to believe it, Kaiba. Emrys did."
The sable-haired duelist sarcastically spat, "You convinced her to believe in that superstitious garbage. Only imbeciles spend time believing in that nonsense."
"Then you don't know Emrys as much as you think you do."
Kaiba's scowl deepened as he retorted, "What was that supposed to mean?"
Choosing to have his incensed rival ponder over his own question, the other Yugi turned around walked back to her room.
The other Yugi's footsteps were calculated. His heart was heavy for he empathized with her current dilemma. He was, after all, on a quest to recover his lost memory as well. He had times wherein not knowing who he really was brought dark times within his heart. From time to time, his lapse of memory caused him to momentarily question himself.
Whenever those times of doubt came, the Spirit's drive to rise above the occasion was constantly rekindled...thanks to the support that Yugi, his vessel's friends, and Sugoroku gave him. They, to him, were his beacons of light. If he wanted to save Emrys from her own dark demon-ridden world, he knew that he needed to be that same beacon of light for her.
Emrys stirred from a short nap as the other Yugi walked in the room and approached her bedside.
"I told you I'm coming back," the other Yugi said to Emrys with a wide smile on his face.
"I'm not very good at remembering anything right now - "
"Yugi. You called me Yugi..."
"Yugi..." Emrys echoed back as she gazed into the Spirit's amethyst eyes.
Approaching closer and sitting by Emrys' bedside, the other Yugi tenderly stroked her hair. "Sooner or later, everything will come back to you. You'll see..."
"When and where did we meet?" Emrys inquired curiously as she felt more drawn towards him.
The Spirit gave Emrys a split-second puzzled look and then gently grinned. "A couple of months ago at Domino City, Japan...the same time you've met Jonouchi, Honda, Bakura, Anzu, and Grandpa..."
"Is it almost the same time that I met Kaiba and his brother?"
The Spirit nodded and then asked, "Speaking of Kaiba, how has he been treating you?"
"He saved me a couple of times now. He's been taking care of me since I couldn't do it myself."
And how are you feeling?"
After a brief pause, Emrys then said, "I feel so lost. There are too many things going on that I don't understand. I woke up in the hospital and saw two people sleeping by my bedside - a little boy and a blonde-haired bloke named - "
"Jonouchi...and the little boy is Kaiba's brother, Mokuba," the other Yugi interjected. After a brief moment of silence between them, he then asked, "Why are you scared of Jonouchi?"
Emrys' face became paler. "I remember little things here and there. He hurt me before. Everything was dark at the time. I just kept seeing his eyes at that time."
A spark of revelation dawned upon the other Yugi's eyes.
Yugi mentally said to his other self, "Of course! She recalled that Shadow Realm duel we had against Grandpa and Jonouchi when they were brainwashed."
"No wonder she was scared," the other Yugi agreed.
Refocusing back on Emrys, the other Yugi calmly explained, "That was a memory of yours, but Jonouchi wasn't really himself that time. It's rather hard to explain. Please trust me when I say that Jonouchi's a good friend of yours. He'll never deliberately hurt anyone he cares about..."
Something in the other Yugi's words struck another chord of memory for Emrys. She tightly closed her eyes as she tried to dig deep down. The word trust pierced right through her heart like a knife.
But how could Emrys trust the other Yugi about Jonouchi,when her mind kept replaying that dreadful snippet of memory? She kept seeing the blonde-haired young man's malevolently glowing red eyes. She could remember the pain he subjected her in, the memory making her shudder in fear. Part of her, however, was screaming inside to reconsider what her mind's eye kept seeing and feeling.
"Trust. I trust him. Something inside me tells me that I do trust him..." Emrys pondered as tears began to form at the corner of her eyes.
"Are you okay?"
Emrys opened her eyes again and the tears intermittently flowed. "I trust you."
Faint footsteps belonging to Kaiba left Emrys' room. He was standing by the doorway, observing and listening to what was going on between the other Yugi and Emrys.
Kaiba just needed to walk away and get some air.
"Isn't that the reason why she's here in the first place...for me to go out and get some air?" Kaiba pondered as he continued his slow and calculated strides. With hands inside his pockets, he walked towards the hospital's side door entrance.
The side entrance was the perfect haven for Kaiba. Hardly anyone used that entrance and it was located closest to her room. He planned to get some air, call Mokuba to inform him of the other Yugi's arrival, and return to her room. At this juncture, he would return to Emrys' room whether or not it bothered him so much that his rival was also there.
After a couple of minutes of pacing back and forth at the side entrance, Kaiba's head began to clear from the fresh air. He noticed someone coming from the parking lot and approaching the side door entrance.
As Kaiba instinctively glanced up, he was startled to recognize the figure.
"What are you doing here?" Kaiba asked with a semi-raised and surprised voice as his forehead crinkled. His deep sapphire eyes were locked on the figure that continued its approach toward him.
Everything then happened quickly...too quickly.
Before Kaiba could react, defend, or notice, the figure's presence provided a perfect distraction for another to quietly lurk from behind him.
Armed with a stun gun, the figure from behind shocked Kaiba into unconsciousness.
The attacker and the figure who Kaiba saw earlier hauled and locked the CEO inside the trunk of a black BMW. They drove off the hospital parking lot as inconspicuously as they drove in.
End of Chapter Eight
Although this story arc stands independently from The Encounter of Lost Souls and There Will Come Soft Rain, the three stories are inter-connected. This fact will also apply to most of the subsequent Yu-Gi-Oh fan fiction stories that I will post in the future.
Normal Disclaimer
Yu-Gi-Oh is the property copyrighted by Kazuki Takahashi. This fan fiction, as well as the original characters, is the author's property.
Enjoy reading!
PJ Zatken