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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Chapters 44 & 45 are being posted together.

CHAPTER 44: THE TIES THAT BIND

KAIBA'S POV

Everyone had gone back to the mansion to celebrate our victory… and to ignore what tomorrow would bring. Mokuba had managed to keep Seto at the party downstairs. But I left as soon as I could. I told myself that I had a lot of work to do.

I had to put the finishing touches on the game, get it ready for production. The characters were anonymous avatars once more – ready for each new player to imprint their own personality on them. Reluctantly, I changed the Demon King, at least outwardly. If he had resembled Gozaburo in life before, now he was a facsimile for my adoptive father's true form; the monster that had been revealed in Noa's World. I looked at the screen and grinned.

Although my back was to the door, I felt his shadow. Yami was here. He looked over my shoulder at the computer monitor; at my name on the credits. Instead of Seto Kaiba, it read: Seto + Kaiba. I shrugged. "No one will be sure if I've finally made a typo, or if it was deliberate. Then they'll argue about it on message boards and forums for weeks."

I logged off, stepped away from my keyboard, and faced him. "The party's downstairs. Why are you here?"

"Because this is where my lover is," he answered.

"You don't need to be here. Your mission's been accomplished. The stuff's been returned to its crypt. Seto and Kouma are going back tomorrow. You got what you wanted. There's no need for you to stick around."

I didn't believe what I was saying anymore. I said it for the sheer pleasure of knowing… really knowing, that he was going to contradict me.

YAMI'S POV

I could have flashed the smirk that said I'd finally won our duel, but I kept my face as impassive as his. Kaiba was waiting for me to argue with him. He didn't mean what he was saying; he wasn't even bothering to pretend that he did. He just wanted to hear me tell him that I loved him. I paused, enjoying the moment. But I must have taken too long to answer, because as though to remind me that, with Kaiba, no victory was ever truly final, he began to press me, a note of genuine panic coming into his voice.

"You don't have to pretend you want to be here. I know better. I'm a genius, remember?"

I stepped forward then; took his face in my hands; looked deeply into his eyes, "I've known you through two lifetimes – and you've been a fool in both of them."

I don't think I could ever get tired of cupping his face in my hands; of his leaning into my touch as if he was coming home… of his hand stealing up my back to twine in my hair, to hold me still for his kiss… as if he couldn't believe I was in his arms… as if he would never let me go… as if we were destined to find each other no matter how many lifetimes separated us.

I grounded Kaiba in the past that he tried so unceasingly and so mistakenly to outrun. Kaiba pulled me into the future… made me believe in its possibilities as surely as I had come to believe in my own body.

"I don't know how long this lifetime will last – three years – or three thousand," I said "And I don't think either of us was made for longevity. But for as long as I live, I will live by your side. I will love you. Will that content you?"

"Are you asking me if I need you to survive?" he asked almost angrily, although his grip had tightened at my words.

"No. That was Gozaburo's question – not mine. What I'm asking is simpler. Do you want me?"

"God," he said, suddenly, huskily. "Always. Forever. I live for you and Mokuba."

I smiled sadly, as his words lodged somewhere in the back of my throat. Kaiba meant every word, absolutely. He would live or die at my command. And I would treasure his words; I would treasure him all my life. But I wanted so much more for him. I wanted him to live for himself.

Suddenly, in his words I heard an echo of his past self, of my High Priest. How often had I chided Kaiba for his blindness? Now I was stunned by my own. I realized, with a sense of wonder, that from the beginning, Seto had loved me. It had taken me 3,000 years to decipher what he had been saying every time he risked his life for mine, and told me it was for duty's sake. And so, it was fitting that I reached back through the millennia, for my response: "Then will you remember that your life is precious to me? Will you remember to guard it well?"

Wordlessly, eyes wide, he nodded.

Kaiba pulled me into his arms, as he had that first night. "Tomorrow," he said, his lips inches from mine, "Tomorrow, I'll probably be back to my usual asshole self… but tonight, I want you to know that I could ask for nothing more than to have you with me… than to live by your side… each night… every day…"

His lips came down on mine, cutting off the words he couldn't bring himself to say. His tongue was searching, giving… his mouth was so gentle on mine, as his hands unwrapped me… as we fell slowly until I felt the softness of the bed beneath me. Kaiba was tasting me, as if he would never be sated, no matter how deeply he drank me in. He was filling my senses with the sight, feel, and sound of him. There was something to be said for having a lover who could only express himself through touch.

I had wanted desperately, passionately to be my own person… only to have the most solitary man I knew teach me that existence is meaningless unless shared. That just as Yugi had always known, just as Kaiba had so recently relearned: in this life we are meant to hold to one another... that it is not our promises but the people we make them to that gives meaning to our lives… for in the end, these are the ties that bind us.

I looked into Kaiba's blue eyes, and thought of the name he had rejected as too long for a video game avatar. I suppose for two people who had found each other across a span of three millennia, Elvish was an oddly appropriate language. He was my Ninquiloce Luinehendu, my beautiful Blue Eyes White dragon. And he would fly again, as he was meant to. I was glad.

Kaiba had long accepted that in its most basic form, life is an exchange; and the most any mortal could hope for was that by the end of the day the scales balanced. But life is rarely that simple. And I knew that no gift – even such a joyous one as his restored sight – would ever truly cancel out the loss he was about to face.

That was how I knew where he was, the moment I awoke, alone in our bed. I went to the room next door. As I had expected, he was sprawled out on the giant bed… the bed Seto and Kouma shared. Except this time, it wasn't Kouma in his arms, but Seto. He was cradling the boy, as if he couldn't bear to let him go, even in sleep; holding to him as tightly as he held to me.

I hesitated. When Kaiba woke up, he might be angry I had seen what I knew he would consider a moment of weakness. He would probably be looking for an excuse to lash out; to release his ready anger.

I had walked the path of his soul, but he was still shy of revealing its vulnerabilities. He had given his heart to my keeping, but still guarded its secrets. There were some lessons that could not be undone. Well, what ever happened, would happen, I thought, as I got into bed next to him, held him in my arms as tightly as he clasped Seto. I had also made a promise: that he would wake besides me; that my arms would be the first thing he felt in the morning.

I hugged him tighter. I heard him murmur my name, as if he was aware of me, even in sleep; and was comforted by my presence. He had offered his life so casually… for me… for Mokuba… and even, in the end, for himself. And yet Kaiba would never be able to tell us that he loved us. And I knew that if a day went by when I did not assure him of my own love, he would begin to doubt… would remind himself of all his flaws and failures… would tell himself how little he deserved to be loved.

He would never be easy. He would always be stubborn, and reckless, and gloat just a little too soon. His first impulse would always be to withdraw; his last to trust.

And yet…

He would always see me; he would always call me to life just as surely as the first time we had dueled. He would always hear me; he would always listen. He would teach me to treasure my darkness, where he had made his home. He would love me more than his life; would stand as my champion – although I needed a defender as little, and as much, as he. He filled the part of me that searched not for an 'other me,' but for a rival, and a mate. We would always bring out the best in each other – would live in that place where good rivals and lovers were one.

I didn't need the Sennen Necklace to know… this was the future I wanted.