Chapter 37: What was Wanted in Return

Warm. The air was warm. And Earthy. Warm and Earthy. It had a motherly caress. Something out of a dream. He wondered if this was what it was like to be dead. It had to be, right? In the blackness of somewhere he could smell Earth, feel it beneath his finger tips, not sand but soil. Must be in the caves. They finally got him in the caves, he decided. They followed him back to his loot, his lair, and killed him like an old dragon. 5,000 years ago. All the other stuff had been a dream. He could rest now. He could sleep now.

Someone said his name.

His real name.

The Thief King opened his eyes.

He was met with a red gaze. A piercing red gaze that studied him coolly, before wandering off at the sound of a male agitated voice.

"Has he come around, yet?"

"Yes." T.R blinked as the red gaze lifted, revealing a humanoid face that was serious and framed with emerald green hair. He could only say it was humanoid since the length of its hair, and facial features were neither male or female. Or even a mixture of both. He blinked at the white tunic the red-eyed person was wearing, laced with black. Its pants were much the same. T.R also noticed the lean greatly tall figure of the humanoid.

"Where am I?" T.R asked, trying to get up. The angry look of a yellowed eyed person made him stop.

"Quiet, human." Growled the second person with the glowing gold eyes, before turning back to the red-eyed one. It was wearing a dark brown with black spirals sown into it. Its hair was curved and looked like a greenish brownish color.

"Beore, listen to me, we can't make the same mistake again. If you would just listen-"

"No. How many times have I told you, Lapu? She is my great niece. You should take care to remember she's yours too."

"Beore, Lapu, please. You're quarreling is giving me a headache." Said another male sounding creature with dark green needle like hair that was incredibly thick. His eyes were mud brown. He wore a fluffy shirt and coffee colored pants. He was also holding his head with elegant long fingers. It was easier to think of them as male, the thief found after a moment.

"I mean, this isn't the reason why we are here, isn't it?"

"No, Daru, but its part of the reason we're here." Snapped Lapu.

"Only in your mind." Replied another one sarcastically. His eyes were tan. More green hair and weird clothes. A white shirt with a different darker shade of brown.

"You know as well as the rest of us that you just don't like the fact that Acer called a human her daughter."

"Shut up, Elman. No one asked you!" Lapu snarled.

"But that is the reason." Beore retorted coldly.

"Look at what they do, Beore, they destroy everything! Even our kind. Mother is dying at their hands-"

"But not all of them are like that!" Beore angrily with hands curled into fists.

"Prove it."

The look of red-hot fury on the called Beore's face went beyond any rage T.R had ever known of himself. Yet, Beore was silent. He looked down to the green grassy ground that they all stood on. All of them barefoot. Including the three others who hadn't spoke yet, but watched with keen different colored eyes. Gray, Coffee, and Orange.

TombRobber started to wonder what kind of strange dream he had wandered into. Who where these people? They looked like no one he had ever seen. Strange and alien, yet somehow familiar.

The Gray eyed one met his gaze fully when he looked. He looked like the others with their green hair and odd styled clothes. He was the first one to look at him with real meaning. Somehow that look was unsettling. T.R felt defensive anger well up in him.

"What are you staring at?" He asked the gray-eyed one. He smiled at him, despite the fury laced in his voice, and approached quietly with the same daunting stare. He stopped a foot away from him, looking down at him until he waved his hand delicately.

TombRobber was narrowing his eyes confused when something under him shuddered before something gently slipped around his waist and lifted him up so he was eye-to-eye with this gray eyed stranger. It left his feet dangling. He would've stood on his own and shaken off the holdings had he not been so suddenly tired.

"You're close to Withering." Announced the gray eyed stranger. TombRobber stared into his eyes with the seriousness he felt inside, and seen in this stranger.

"I know, I…was told I would die at this time." He said slowly.

"And you greet your withering time willfully?" TombRobber narrowed his eyes at him.

"Yes…If I can have one thing in return."

"Lian! What the hell are you playing at!" demanded Lapu in a growling voice. But no one was paying any more attention to him. The six remaining people, what T.R was slowly figuring out must be something like brothers by the way they bickered, stared with wide interested eyes.

T.R watched those gray eyes look at him with a shining that was eerie.

"What would you want in return?" Lian asked T.R, seeming to already know the answer. He knew many things. T.R could see it in his eyes. Something lurking strongly there. T.R wasn't sure if he wanted to answer, starting to think this was stupid every second that went by, but looked around and found more and more staring eyes.

"If she can live." Beore turned smugly to his brother, red eyes bright as he crossed his arms. Lapu scowled at him murderously. Lapu opened his mouth to start battling with his brother when Lian suddenly interrupted the on coming fight, stopping it dead in its tracks.

"I know what happened to Acer."

Dead silence. Lian let them all breathe for a moment, two, three. Then opened his mouth and explained. Explained what Kaede's grandmother had explained without all the tears and pain. Explained how he saw it, how he figured it out, how when he looked at the child he could sometimes see a flicker of Acer inside her. And how not helping the girl-child would be like killing their sister.

And everyone remained silent.

For a time.

"What would you have us do?" asked Beore. Lian smiled at him, then smiled at T.R. Smiled around at Elman, Daru, Aesctun, Lapu, Hikkori, and finally back to Beore and T.R again. He settled on T.R was the grandest of eyes.

"So, my friend, what would you say if we could give you this wish?" Lian asked. T.R looked at him for a moment. Then finally smiled deviously.

"Tell me how."

(…)

Yami watched Mat blast, dodge, blast dodge. Run. And kept struggling, kept forcing his body to move, when the wall suddenly shuddered under him. He blinked, confused, turned and found Marik standing next to him, panting so hard it was like he was trying to suck all the air into his mouth at once. He had Joey on his back, who was still unthinking, like Bakura who was under his arm. His dark purple eyes grinned when he grinned in this grim time.

"You stuck?" Marik asked playfully. Yami wondered if he had lost his mind.

"Where the hell were you!"

"Somebody had to let Bakura out of that cage, didn't they?" He put down Joey and Bakura and took the pocket knife out of his belt that he snatched off the floor when no one was looking and started hacking away at the white shit pinning the Pharaoh to the wall.

"Marik, I can barely move. I think I used all the energy in the puzzle. I'm not even sure I can stand up." Yami whispered feverishly. Marik looked calm and collected. He had already had his near-death experience what felt like ages ago, back in the hall with that thing, and was just not letting his emotions get too entangled in the conflict. He had the headphones off and around his neck while Yami's were missing and probably disintegrated from that blast of energy.

Kaiba was bound to be pissed.

"You're good at thinking of ways out of messes. You saved my life more than once, and my ass to for that matter. Don't tell me you've given up now…"

"Marik, listen to me! I can't do anything in this state. I can't even get off this wall to help Mat over there who's going to be down on the ground soon. I couldn't even help TombRobber when he-" Marik punched him.

And for a moment, he couldn't believe he did it. Yami just stared at him dumbfounded, staring into the stark deadly serious eyes, while Marik lowered his fist when he saw the Pharaoh was recovering from his second flip out session this week and started cutting again while he talked a bit angrily.

"Pharaoh, you've done things a lot grander than this. Saved the world right? He died protecting her. It had been his choice to bring her mother here, and that consequence why he is dead now. Not because he was thief you wronged. Not cause you tried to use her to tame that wild rage that had dwelled in him. Sometimes, Yami, there are thing you can't fix. Sometimes that pot you knock over for the hundredth time means you can't put it together again. Sometimes you have to let go…"

Yami watched him keep cutting the white thread-like sticky silk from his body and felt Yugi there in, in the center of his mind, hearing the reasons of that pain and knowing it ran even deeper than that. It ran all the way back to Tea leaving him with their only son. Found it there, in his head, and heard his vessel laugh. Laugh very quiet.

"You're still bothered about Tea?" Yugi asked. Yami squirmed.

"...The wound wouldn't go away, you know that, but it's really not your fault Yami, it really wasn't at all. She had warned me. And I let her go. I will find her again, that much I know, but it won't be for a long time, because she too needs to heal."

"Yugi…"

"It's alright buddy." And there was an understanding silence. That Yami, too, needed to heal. Let the pain go. Let the horrible guilt go and be whole again. Yugi helped him to do that so many times before, fixed him up like brand new, and now he'd do it again.

Yami smiled.

The last thread snapped, and Yami practically fell forward. Marik caught him, held his arm over his shoulder to keep him standing. Marik was turning them back to the Beast ahead of them, swinging around every which way trying to get Mat, and Mat who was a lot stronger than either of them had first thought jumping and fighting. He was much like his father in that way, they both guessed at the same moment without even speaking of it.

And in that way they had always lent help.

"What do you want to do, Pharaoh?"

"Well, what have we got to work with?" Marik looked around.

"Two unconscious people, one damsel in distress, a boy giving a hell of a fight, one very big and scary black thing trying to eat the damsel, one drained item, three decks of useless cards against this thing, and a pocket knife.

Marik held it up as he spoke, grinning a little, knowing full well they probably won't live through this. Yami was amazed by his sense of humor in a time like this, and was even more surprised to find it was in him as well. Yugi wasn't going to leave no matter how many times he said to. And it was a little comforting, he supposed. Fine, if you want to stay, Yugi, you can stay.

Then the pocket knife jerked. Marik and Yami looked at it, confused for a few moments. It was a regular pocketknife wasn't it?

"Did you-" Marik began to ask but never finished as the knife was suddenly ripped out of his hand. Marik winced and put his fingers in his mouth, noticing at how hot it had suddenly gotten. Yami watched it float, or rather zoom through the air as if it were on fire, watched it go toward the spot under the tree and watched it stop.

Could he hope?

The grin forming around Marik's fingers as he sucked them was comical. He pulled them out and the grin widened grander when the knife glowed a steady green. Glowed with the green of the body. Watched the roots of the tree jolt, watch the stray bits of plant from the chaos twitch and slowly inch towards the body that had housed the TombRobber, it actually being made of that type of magic. Yami started grinning like Marik.

"That son of a bitch." Marik said warmly.

And Yami laughed.

Book Dragon: "Please Review."