Yami is Life

Disclaimer: I should make up a disclaimer song. All "These are not my characters, summat, summat, summat, I only made this plot, and stuff and things!" ...maybe not then.

A/N: Stuffles... Shounen-ai/yaoi. Yami/Yugi, Bakura/Ryou and possibly Seto/Joey. AU, OOC-ness, will be using mostly American-type names, cause tis be the version I get. Some swearing!

Three cheers to Silvershadowfire, Nekostar 2, It'sHardToBelieve, Latias gang (Sorry 'bout that), lucidscreamer, Yami-Yugi3, Hero Genkaku (It's complicated. Heh.), Panseru, Maryna, Thyrin (I've had this title for too long to change it. Heh, then there's the fact that it fits really well), bast4 (Answers to all that and more – okay, maybe less – in this chapter!) and Zoe (Well, it's off hiatus now) for reviewing this poor little fic that is my third most ignored of all of them (by myself)!

Rewrite!

Reborn:

Maximillian Pegasus stared at the man in front of him, eyes narrowed dangerously. His words were laced with venom as he spoke: "What did you say?"

"S-sir," the man said, trembling slightly. "Sennen Lab, the one in the mountains, was destroyed."

"What do you mean, destroyed?!" the silver-haired man snapped.

"Completely vaporized. And everything around where it was for a radius of half a kilometre," the man clarified. "There was nothing left."

To say that Pegasus was pissed would be the understatement of the century. No, he was beyond pissed. He had a special interest in that lab, and to find that it had been destroyed, vaporized, was unacceptable. He refused to believe that all had been lost.

"Do you have any idea what happened?"

"The computers were still recording and transferring data to our main database when the incident happened. It appears the phenomenon that destroyed the base originated from level five..." The man trailed off.

A calculating look had replaced the enraged one on Pegasus' face. "Level 5... I visited there not too long ago. A most interesting project on that level, I believe you called it Game King? Would the records happen to show that the event originated from that area?"

"I- sir! The power it would take to create that much destruction... The Game King doesn't- didn't exhibit the capabilities!"

"My dear man," Pegasus spoke. "There are many things that a human mind is capable of that few ever 'exhibit'. And the Game King is far beyond a mere human. It is quite possible that this... reaction was a self defence mechanism, and if so, it may still be alive."

The silver haired man turned his chair to face the wall-length window that over-looked the city. "Send out a search party immediately to comb the forest surrounding the site. If it's still alive, it couldn't have gotten far."

Violet eyes blinked open, staring blindly at the ground. It shook its head slightly, focussing on the floor displayed between its parted legs. Only... it didn't look like the floor... it was all brown and gritty and full of bits of stuff. Something black darted across the patch of strange floor, and it recoiled and yelped.

The black stopped suddenly, and it got a closer look at it. It looked familiar somehow...

"A... beetle?" it said out loud, and the now identified little black thing darted off. Its doctor had taught it all about the living organisms of Earth. But what was a beetle doing here? Beetles and organisms all... lived...

It became suddenly aware of its surroundings, staring wide-eyed at the trees and ferns that enclosed it. "...Away."

It remembered now, the new doctor, the boredom, the pain and then... nothing. It had escaped. It must have, because it wasn't here anymore, wasn't with the doctors, it was away, only now away was here and the place with the doctors was somewhere else, and it was free.

And then all the fuzziness remaining in its head washed away and its senses were assaulted with the sights and noises and scents of this place. There were so many new things, all layered on top of each other. The noises it could handle, there weren't so many of those, birdsong like the clips its doctor had played, and a whooshing that rustled through the trees was just moving air. It could handle the sights, the strange trees that rose up high above him and the vegetation, all were things the doctor had taught it of.

But the smells-! There was nothing that could have prepared it for that. The only scents it new were those of itself, and of the futon and of metal and plastic, nothing more. But here, here there were so many and they were so strong.

There was a burning sensation in its nostrils and a slight ache in its temples, though neither were enough to be considered real pain. Overwhelmed by the onslaught it staggered to its feet, ignoring the twinges and numbness in its limbs. Moving forward, it stumbled, have lost all feeling in one foot, but that didn't stop it and so it started to run. It had to get away from all the smells.

It then started to realize that it had nowhere to run. I didn't know where it was, or where to go, or how it could ever escape the smells. It thought it could escape, thought it could live without the doctors. Thought it could get its own food and water. But it didn't know how, it didn't know what to do, and there was no one just trees and trees and trees!

It stopped running suddenly, and trembled. There was no one. It had always thought it only had itself, that all it needed was itself, but no, it was wrong. Because there was always the doctors, always someone. The doctors were always there, but now they weren't and for the first time ever it was alone.

The trembling increased and for some reason water began to fill its eyes. It was free, but it was alone. And it was wrong, itself wasn't all it needed, in needed someone, but there was no one now, no one to help it, no one to keep it alive. The doctors had been life in a way, but they couldn't be life, not anymore. It didn't want them to be. But it needed someone, but there was no one. And so it sobbed.

It stood in one place for a while, sobbing. It had never done this before, didn't know why it was making the strange wailing noises, or why salty water was pouring from its eyes. All it knew was that it made it hard to breath and it scared it and that just made it happened more. It forced itself to take deep breaths, and eventually calmed down.

Flopping down onto the gritty, mossy ground it stared dejectedly at the ground, refusing to think about how it was alone for fear of another one of those fits. Something chattered at it and it looked over to see a small, furry animal – a squirrel? Sitting on a tree stump.

"What to do?" it asked the squirrel.

The creature chattered again and set off up a tree, and its gaze followed the bouncing mammal. It went up and up and up and-

The breath froze in its chest and its eyes widened. Then it started to scream.

"Joey," Yami said, panting for breath. "Please explain why the campsite you chose is 50 freakin' kilometres from the place where we parked the truck?!"

"Stop overreacting, man!" the tall blonde teen replied. "It ain't anywhere near that far!"

"Well it certainly feels like it when you're carrying the damned tent on your back!"

Tristan and Joey laughed, hefting their own loads of supplies, while the reddish-eyed youth glared daggers at them. Some friends they were, making the bloody smallest of them carry what was probably the heaviest thing they packed.

"C'mon, Yami-kins," his friend teased, golden-brown eyes twinkling. "You could use the exercise."

"...the kuribos will eat you in your sleep," Yami muttered. He hated pet names.

"I'm terrified," Tristan said.

"As right you should be! No one can withstand the cute and fuzzy death that is a hoard of enraged kuribos!"

The trio continued to banter on about duel monsters and other things until Joey stopped suddenly and announced, "We're here!"

"Here where?" Tristan asked.

"Our campsite!"

Yami looked sceptically at the area before him. It didn't look much different from the rest of the forest around them as far as he could tell. Whatever. With a grunt, the short teen heaved his burden onto the ground, and took a few deep breaths.

"Alright," the blonde haired youth began, "Yami help me set up the tent-"

"Oh no!" the dark-haired teen interrupted. "I just carried that thing who-know-how-far, I am not going to set it up."

And that was how he ended up on firewood duty.

"I am going to kill them," Yami muttered to himself. "I'll wait 'til they're all nice and cozy in that cursed tent and then I'll strangle them in their sleep..."

You wouldn't think that it'd be hard to find firewood in a forest, no, what with all the freakin' trees. But he wasn't allowed to chop any of the damn things down, and apparently someone had been to the campsite before and picked the place clean.

Following the small river than ran past their campsite, the spiky haired teen glanced around for stray logs. He wasn't sure how far he had wandered from where they were camping, but as long as he stayed next to the river he should be fine.

He kicked idly at a rock, then swore when it turned out to be more firmly rooted than he thought. Dropping his sparse bundle of wood he bent down, hopping on one foot, and snatched up the rock before pitching it as far as he could. It landed in the river with a ploosh.

Favouring his injured toe, he looked up at the sky and shouting, "What the hell else can go wrong?"

On the good side, nature didn't decide to spite him and started raining, on the bad side, it was about that time that he heard the screaming.

Startled, he stopped moving, holding his breath. Oh yeah, that was definitely screaming. Listening harder he pinpointed the direction it was coming from and set off running.

Sneakers pounding the dirt, Yami sprinted steadily towards the sound, stopping now and then to make sure he was still going the right way. Whoever it was had one hell of a set of lungs, because he hadn't heard them stop screaming yet.

He found the person huddled under a tree, and he approached cautiously, wincing fiercely at the assault on his ears.

It was a he, that much was made obvious given the person's complete lack of clothes. A boy, smaller than himself, with strangely pale skin and an even stranger total absence of any body hair, even eyelashes. He was curled up on himself, hands covering his bald scalp protectively while his eyes were clenched tightly shut. Tears streaked his pallid cheeks and his pale pink lips were stretched wide as he continued to scream.

"Hey!" Yami tried shouting. "Kid!"

The reddish-eyed teen was staring at the boy's hands. They were wrong, fingers bent in ways that obviously meant they were broken. His feet were in much the same condition and on several parts of his body were red streaks that might have been burns.

Holy shit, he thought to himself, what the hell happened to this kid?

Naked and injured in the middle of the forest, it made absolutely no sense. Had someone dragged the boy out here and raped him or something? But there was no blood and no bruises, though that didn't necessarily mean anything...

"Hey, kid!" he shouted again, then reached out a hand to touch the screaming boy's arm. "Calm down!"

Clenched eyes shot open at Yami's touch, and the teenager had a glimpse of violet eyes before deceptively skinny arms wrapped around him in a vice-like grip, clinging to him as though for dear life.

It hadn't been aware of the other being at first, too caught up in its screaming, in its denial of reality. Because it had looked up, and when it did it had looked into nothingness. Up was filled by an endless blue that stretched up and up and up and never stopped and there was nothing above him. No ceiling, just... air. It had to go up to outer space, the black void its doctor had told it about where nothing could live.

And it had panicked, because there was nothing above it, nothing to stop it from going up if it ever started. What if it jumped and it just kept going up until it died and was lost in that endless blue nothing. Compared to that, it was just a speck and it knew that if it had the chance the endless blue would swallow it up and it would be nothing.

That was why it was now curled beneath a tree, back pressing into the trunk, and fiercely denying the existence of what was – or in this case, wasn't above it. So fierce was its denial, that it didn't notice the other being until it touched it.

At that point its eyes had shot open and stared into purple-red eyes. It new what it was, the doctor had taught it. A human. The dominant species of Earth. It was supposed to look like a human itself. The doctor had told it that all the doctors were humans. The doctors were someone, the doctors were human, humans were someone. This human was someone. It wasn't alone.

All this passed through its mind in under a second, and without another moments thought, it threw itself forward and anchored itself to the human. The human lived here, it would know what to do, it wouldn't let him fall into the blue emptiness. The human would keep it alive as the doctors had before.

This human, with its purple-red eyes would be its new life.

With an overwhelming feeling of relief, it passed out.

Joey and Tristan had just finished setting up the tent, after many hardships, when they heard familiar footsteps approaching.

Turning to look at his short friend, the tall blonde grinned, "Finished gettin' the firewood are we?"

"Not exactly," Yami said and stood there as his friend's stared at him.

Or more specifically at the boy cradled in his arms, his black coat wrapped about otherwise naked flesh.

"Look what I found."