TITLE: GutterSwing
AUTHOR: Kami Beverly
FANDOM: YuGiOh
GENRE: Angst
RATING: G
WARNING: depressed, semi-suicidal Jou
DISCLAMER: I don't own anything.
Creak
Creak
Creaaaaaaaaaak
It was a lovely sound. A painful sound. It was a sound, at least. And he could here it. He could cause it. This sound was the only thing left to control in his life. He couldn't control his losses. He couldn't control his home life. He could control his friends' reactions. For the Gods' sakes, he couldn't even control his own heart. He wasn't intending on sitting on a swing in an abandoned park in the middle of the night, when the only reason he could see anything at all was the dull orange glow the streetlights set off. But it was his choice to move the swing to create the grating sound, and he was thankful for it.
He had no idea what would happen tomorrow. Would a bomb set off? Would some robbers sneak into the game shop and leave Yugi and his Grandfather unable to fend for themselves? Would his father fall into a drunken coma? Would some old gangs he'd pissed off in Junior High find him and choose to extract revenge? Would Honda 'disown' him for his dual preferences (who's fault was it that he liked both men and women anyway)? Would someone try to kidnap Mokuba again? Would- Would Seto Kaiba find out about him and decide something needed to be done?
No matter how hard he tried, his mind never seem to supply him with something good that might happen the next day. No matter how hard he tried, his mind would memorize every bad thing that happened to him that day, and erase the good. That's why he clung to Yugi, Yami, Honda, Anzu and the others. That's what he told himself. But everyday, he felt as though he was weighing them down. He felt as though, somehow, just his presence was what held them from reaching their goals, his horrible karma that tugged all of them towards hell.
Sometimes he wondered if it might not be better for him to just melt into the darkness, to just run away. But then the others would worry, and that would be another way he'd just left everybody down. At least in his days as a proper punk, he could disappear whenever he chose to- none of the others would care. Now it made a difference. Sometimes he wonder- no, no need to wonder. It was true and he knew it- things would have been better if he would have just stayed a rough punk, and if Honda would never had noticed him. If it wasn't for Honda looking up to him, he never would have bothered going to high school. Every day, he felt it might be better to disappear without a trace. It might be better to just stop trying to fight back- fight the way he had against Malik, against Marik, against Bakura. Against Seto.
More and more often his problems were coming back to Seto. That's how it was. But for now, though, he could still control the sound of an old moving swing.