Unforsaken

by Scribbler

Anzu's soul has vanished into the ether, but getting it back means first overcoming how losing her has changed the group. [A tiein with Variation on a Theme. Some way down the other leg of the Trousers of Time.]

Disclaimer: All your YGO are belong to Kazuki Takahashi.

Continuity: This could be considered a sequel to my other fic, Variation on a Theme (FFN id: 2630951), but I don't think 'sequel' is really an accurate term. This is more of a spin-off; a little look into what happened when Anzu was out of the picture during the Oricalchos arc (Ch. 5). Were VoaT not uniformly from Anzu's point of view, this could easily be slipped into that chapter; but it is, and so this gets its own little segment.

A/N: Written for LeDiz, who is not only a splendid author in her own right, but who also drew some tremendous fanart of Yami Anzu from the original fic (which can be found at ), and turned back in March. Happy Birthday, babs. If it hadn't been for Real Life screwing around and my own miscreant perfectionism, it would have arrived when it was supposed to, I swear. This one (and anything dubious it contains) is for you, Lee.

Feedback: Ooh, matron! (Translation: Yes, I'd love some feedback.)

---

Started: December 2005

Finished: May 2006.

---

Unforsaken

© Scribbler, 2006

---

Don't confront me with my failures,

I've not forgotten them.

-- From These Days, by Jackson Browne/Griffin House

---

"What in the hell happened?"

Mai stood with her arms folded, eyes narrowed against a mixture of sunlight and temper. She'd found time to dress and brush her hair, but there was a definite air of hurriedness about her, as though she physically couldn't wait for the car to pull to a stop before she started firing questions at them.

"I wake up in my bunk to find the four of you have run off and left me – again. Am I totally surplus to requirements? Are you trying to give me a fu- a freaking hint? I thought we already talked about this, Anzu." This last sentence was aimed at the only returning figure not in the car.

The horse was nervy, and whinnied, taking a few side steps before Anzu brought it back into line. It tossed its head, only quieting when a small figure came dashing down the steps of the camper van.

"You're okay!" Rebecca cooed, and nobody was quite sure if she meant her horse or them. With practiced ease, she slid a splayed palm down the horse's neck and slipped the other around part of the bridle, muttering soothing noises to quiet it. "Hush, hush, boy. I was so worried. Honestly, you come all the way out here and then wander off in the night without so much as a note? And forcing the others to chase you, too. And taking Schmoopy without permission. Do you realise how dangerous the desert can be if you don't know the terrain? Especially if you're a novice in the saddle! You're so selfish, Anzu- "

"Don't," Anzu said, but there was something strange about her voice. It had a curious catch to it, like she wanted to cry but couldn't, and sounded slightly deeper than usual. She slid from the saddle and didn't even bother to massage her legs, even though everyone knew she'd never ridden a horse before in her life. When she walked away a few steps to stand looking out across the scrubland, she didn't even limp.

Rebecca blinked. She had a childish urge to shout 'Don't you walk away from me when I'm talking to you!' but knew this would make her sound like a kid playing dress-up. So instead, she settled for "Don't what?" infusing it with all the accusation she could muster, as though she'd just been insulted. Anzu had no right to tell her to shush after doing what she'd done. Of all the nerve!

Anzu didn't even turn around.

When no answer was forthcoming, Rebecca looked at Otogi, Ryou and Yuugi, who were slowly getting out of the car. "What?"

"There's been an … an accident," Ryou replied, haltingly, as though testing out the words.

"What sort of accident?" demanded Mai, all annoyance instantly melting into brusque concern.

Rebecca wasn't sure she liked Mai much. She'd been snappy since she woke up, and though she didn't talk to Rebecca like a child, that was only because she didn't talk to her at all. Instead, the older woman had plied Dr. Hawkins with questions he obviously couldn't answer, then sat in the corner, muttering into her coffee until they heard the drone of an engine outside.

Mai caught Ryou's eye. He turned his face away. She stalked forward, out of the van's shadow. "What's happened?"

Anzu's shoulders were sort of … slumped. She wasn't looking at any of them, wasn't making even an attempt at a pithy comment. Instead she radiated sadness in the same way people had at Mrs. Hawkins's funeral, when women in black veils kept coming over to pet Rebecca on the head and tell her what a brave girl she was. Seeing it in Anzu, whose emotions, Rebecca reckoned, stretched only from cheerful, to angry, to downright vicious, was unusual enough that Rebecca sort of stiffened all over, looking to the others for support. She relaxed only when the last member of their party, Professor Hawkins, emerged from the van with a cup of tea still in his hand.

"Grandpa, they're back," she called needlessly.

"Yes, I can see that." Professor Hawkins stifled a yawn and frowned vaguely at the group. "Would anyone mind supplying me with an explanation as to what exactly went on last night? Only, I'm rather certain I went to sleep with several extraordinary teenagers and young adults in my care, only to wake some hours later to a mostly empty space and not so much as a by-your-leave."

"It's my fault," Anzu said suddenly. Then she added in a softer voice, one that only Rebecca could hear, "It's all my fault…"

"Anzu - "

"You're right it's all your fault!"

Rebecca's hand snapped backwards from where it had been reaching for Anzu's shoulder as though on a piece of elastic. Schmoopy whuffed at her, alarmed at the sudden movement. She swivelled her head to look at who had spoken, stroking him absently. "H-Honey-bunch?"

Yuugi practically fizzed at the edges. He started to ball his hands into fists, bending his arms at the elbows, and then stopped. He looked down, shaking his head. Ryou moved towards him, but he pulled away, bristling and sputtering with something nobody had ever heard from him before: Rage.

"We watched you play that card! We saw what you did!"

"Yuugi - "

"Leave me alone, Ryuuji."

Otogi pursed his lips and made no move to go anywhere. "Look, niblet, shouting isn't going to help anything. The best thing we can do right now is to go inside, explain everything, and try and figure out what we do next - "

"I know exactly what we do next! We find Anzu, rescue her, then we take apart that stupid Puzzle, drive out into the desert, and leave it there."

Yuugi's voice sent something cold washing through Rebecca. She'd never heard him talk like that. She didn't think she liked it, either. And besides which, find Anzu?

She looked at the girl with the short brown hair and inappropriate black pleather – honestly, had she not thought at all about desert heat before packing her suitcase? That was Anzu, right there; standing bold as brass and with no apology, having run off with Schmoopy and then brought him back again, frightened and covered in old sweat. The smell of it suffused Rebecca's nostrils, so close was she to the horse.

Schmoopy sidestepped again, agitation bubbling beneath the calm her touch and his return to familiar territory had inspired.

What frightened him so badly? she wondered abruptly. Schmoopy was a docile enough horse. Grandpa had made sure he wasn't buying a high-strung creature as his granddaughter's first mount, and so had plumped for the slightly podgy gelding with the insurmountable passion for sugar-lumps when they saw him at the state fair. When faced with danger, Schmoopy's first response was the freeze up, not bolt like other horses, and he could even be tempted out of that for sugar. For him to be so jumpy was unheard of, and made Rebecca wonder just what had gone on while she was sleeping.

"What. Accident?" Mai commanded.

Ryou rubbed the back of his neck. "We … we met those bikers again. Or two of them, at least. When we … we went as fast as we could, you see, but Anzu already had a head start, and we had to stick to the track because we didn't have an off-road vehicle. So when we got there, they were already duelling, and then … something … it was difficult to see - "

"No it wasn't," Yuugi hissed. "Don't defend him."

"Him?" Rebecca knew about the spirit of the puzzle thing Anzu wore around her waist, but only in the vaguest of details. She'd been very sceptical about it all when Grandpa tried to explain. She was too married to facts and figures to appreciate that magick was more than trickery and slights of hand. Personally, she would've been quite happy to write Anzu off as messed up in the head – always poking her nose into things, never leaving Yuugi's side when they were near. It would have been a relief to have something concrete to hold against her, instead of just formless resentment.

Still, there had to be something to the story. With all that had happened in the past few days – all over the world – there was enough evidence to dictate something screwy was going on. Why not add some spirits and ancient magick to all of that? It was no more far-fetched than some of the conspiracy theories she'd read on Internet message boards.

The frown was an easy twist of her mouth. "You mean 'the spirit' is in control right now?" She spoke in the manner of someone who could pronounce quotation marks without crooking their fingers.

Otogi nodded. He'd always seemed the most … not accepting, that wasn't the right word. 'Accepting' was like saying her genius was a bad thing people had to work to accommodate, like a disfiguring disease. Otogi hadn't even quibbled about her age and immaturity when he met her, he'd just asked her something about the stock exchange and then nodded with a little half-smile when she shot back the correct answer. He never showed any outward signs that it was odd to defer to a prepubescent for technical advice – something she still got from Grandpa, never mind anyone else.

Otogi wasn't smiling now. He looked frustrated and wretched, but not as wretched as Ryou, and not as frustrated as Yuugi – who was walking over to Anzu and –

"Hey! Don't walk behind a horse! That's the best way to get kicked!" Rebecca exclaimed.

Yuugi reversed direction, walking in front of her and Schmoopy instead. Anzu half-turned, then took a step away when she saw him.

She'd never taken a step away from Yuugi before.

"Yuugi, I - "

He just glared at her.

Anzu swallowed so hard Rebecca could see her throat bobbing. "I … I'm so sorry - "

More glaring.

"I didn't … I never intended for this to happen. I'm so … gods, I'm so very sorry."

Yuugi stared into Anzu's eyes. She was much taller than him – at least a head and a half – yet he didn't stand on tiptoes. He didn't have to. It was more like she shrank.

"It's not me you should be apologising to," he snapped.

Anzu flinched. "I know." She bowed her head. "This wasn't supposed to happen …"

"Well what did you expect to happen? You played the Oricalchos! In a duel against someone who knows it far better than any of us. Did you think you could win something like that? Did you think you were invincible?"

"No, I - "

"So you knew what you were risking when you played it? Is that it? Is that what you intended?"

"Of course not!"

"Was it the thrill of the game? Were you gambling everything because he wounded your pride?" Yuugi curled one lip, and it was possibly the most frightening thing Rebecca had ever seen – including the explosion.

Anzu didn't answer – no, not Anzu. Someone looking through her eyes.

Rebecca jolted when she realised she didn't recognise the person she'd spent several months quietly and not-so-quietly loathing. The face was still the same, the sweep of her hair just as it had been when she cheered from the sidelines for Sugoroku Mutou and Yuugi, but the hand movements, the inflection, the look in those eyes …

Rebecca felt a shiver race up and down her spine.

"Partly. I thought I could beat him. I thought I could end one threat now, quickly, in preparation for what's ahead. I thought I was capable enough for that."

"Yeah, well, now we get to face what's ahead minus one. And it's all – your – fault!"

The slap came out of nowhere. A bigger guy, someone more used to the macho way of solving problems, might have punched, but Yuugi slapped, open palm colliding with cheek before anyone could react. He had to jump a little to reach.

The spirit controlling Anzu's body staggered a bit, but didn't raise a hand to touch the reddening area. Could it actually feel that? Was it so in tune with its stolen flesh that it could feel everything the same way Anzu did? Those weird almost-purple eyes fixed on Yuugi with nothing short of … of outright anguish.

Yuugi let out a funny strangled noise and made to slap again, but the others were running over. Mai reached him first, grabbing his shoulders and yanking him backwards. He almost fell over in his attempts to wrench himself free of her, still trying to get off another hit, so she wrapped her arms around his chest, pinning his elbows to his sides from behind.

"Yuugi," said the Anzu-creature, reaching for him.

"Shut up," Yuugi snapped, but it was the snap of a soggy twig.

He was crying, and Rebecca was trying to make sure Schmoopy wouldn't freak out, but she could see the tears on his cheeks, and boys weren't supposed to cry, but he was anyway, and Otogi was talking while Ryou ran over and Grandpa stuttered into his tea and she could hear, even though Mai was making weird hushy noises like she'd made to calm Schmoopy, she could hear him mumbling and it made her feel all funny and burning and cold in her tummy all at once, like when the shrapnel went whizzing past her head and she thought she'd never see Grandpa again …

"It's all my fault. I was supposed to protect her. I made a promise. A promise! I said I'd protect her, just like she's always protecting me. And I botched it. And now she's gone … Oh … oh, Anzu…"

---

If you listened closely, Mai thought, you could hear her heart cracking. It wasn't broken yet – heaven knew it was too damned hard to go easily – but it was close. Damned close.

She half expected the mug to shatter between her hands, but it was almost as tough as she was, though maybe more resilient. Dr. Hawkins had poured the last of the bourbon into it before, but she'd dumped it in a plant pot when he wasn't looking. Last thing she needed was that kind of shit in her system along with everything else. He sat across from her now, puffing away at a pipe that wasn't even lit, like he'd decided to lengthen his life a little but couldn't give up on the feel of it pressed between his lips.

After much coaxing, Rebecca had gone to bed to catch up on what sleep she'd missed. Yuugi was outside on the steps. He couldn't bring himself to be in the same room as Yami, and in a way Mai couldn't blame him. It was so easy to hate these days. The part of her that was still bitter snatched up any opportunity and whispered poison in her ear.

For his part, Yami seemed completely broken. He'd been pushed into a chair by Dr. Hawkins and just sat there ever since, staring into space and not responding to anyone. Sometimes Mai thought she saw his eyes shift to the door, but he was too still to be certain. Instead of the razor-sharp stare she'd come to associate with him, his gaze was unfocussed and almost … soft. Had she not known different, she would have sworn it was Anzu sitting there, daydreaming about Julliard, or Seto Kaiba, or whatever else she dreamed about.

Yet more fucking mind games.

Otogi and Ryou brought over identical mugs to the one Mai nursed. Ryou crouched by Yami and held one under his nose. Yami flinched, obviously startled. It was deeply wrong for anyone to be able to sneak up on him in only a few square feet of space.

"Drink this," Ryou said gently, almost fucking sympathetically.

Yami stared uncomprehendingly at him and the coffee.

Abandoning her mug, Mai got up and opened the door to outside, banging it shut behind her.

It was cold – far colder than she would've expected in a desert, though she supposed the nighttime chill had yet to properly wear off. You could freeze to death in the desert at night if you didn't know what you were doing. She pulled her blazer tight around her and stalked forward a few steps before she realised something was missing.

"Yuugi?" Great. Just fucking great if he'd wandered off too. The poor kid was a mess after what had happened, and for the first time in what felt like years, Mai found herself worried about someone else's mental health more than her own. "Yuugi?"

"I'm here."

And he was. There was a slight drop-off not ten feet from where they'd parked the car, and Yuugi was perched below it, arms around his shins. He didn't look around at her approach. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." Mai hunkered down, and the part of her that was still concerned with fashion screeched at the dirt that was sure to rub off on her shorts. She squashed it and gingerly placed a hand on Yuugi's shoulder. She wasn't a tactile person anyway, but after Malik … well, she hadn't exactly been generous with the welcome hugs.

"You too?"

"Me too what?"

"Couldn't you stand to look at him either?"

Mai baulked, but gritted her teeth and left her hand where it was. "He says he didn't mean for it to happen."

"Huh." Yuugi rested his chin on his knees. "He says."

"This isn't helping, you know."

"It's helping me feel better."

"No it isn't."

He shot her a glance that was supposed to be sharp, but which just looked hurt and kind of defeated. Mai felt something within her spike, though she couldn't give it a name. It made her feel like slapping him, which was about the stupidest thing she could've done with him in this state. The kid had just lost his childhood friend and been left with her body walking around like someone else owned it. That had to sting.

Still, Anzu wasn't dead …

"If we want her back, we're going to have to work with him."

"I don't want anything to do with him."

"You really think she'd leave him behind if he were the one stolen? Or any of us?"

"Of course not! Anzu would never - "

"So there you go."

"What? That's completely different. Anzu wouldn't let anyone get taken in the first place. She wouldn't have gambled someone else's soul on a … a stupid game!" Yuugi wiped at his eyes with one sleeve.

It meant something more when Yuugi said that. Mai knew he'd lived a lot of his life with only games for company, structuring his day and basic approach to life around them. Anzu had confessed it once, and how guilty it made her feel that she hadn't always been the great friend Yuugi pegged her as. Anzu was always free with that sharing emotions crap.

"It's my fault," Yuugi said in a small voice.

"No," Mai said brusquely, shaking him before she even realised what she was doing. Her palm prickled against the shoulder of his jacket. "It's not your fault. You hear me? This is not your fault, Yuugi. You will not martyr yourself over this."

"But I promised to protect her - "

"Even if Yami was the one to challenge that Raphael creep, Anzu would have gone along with it. It's her body. If they went, they went because she allowed it. Yami's not entirely to blame for this."

"Don't you dare say that!" Yuugi shoved Mai's hand off and scrambled to his feet. "Don't you dare try and make this her fault! She didn't ask to be … to be abducted! She didn't ask Yami to play the Oricalchos!"

"Yeah," Mai replied, not getting up and allowing him his psychological height, though it made her skin prickle not to take the advantage in an argument, "but she did let herself be put in a dangerous position by letting Yami go to Raphael in the first place. You said it yourself, Yuugi; these guys are dangerous. You don't take them on lightly. If she went, she went willingly, no matter what happened afterwards. She's not just some victim. She made a mistake, and now she's paying for it in the worst way possible. I'm not saying it's fair or just or any of that sh- stuff. Hell knows she's got enough karma under her belt that this sort of thing should leave her the hell alone. But it didn't, and that's the way it is."

"Why are you saying this?" Yuugi asked, eyes wet.

"Because it's true. And the sooner you can get this image of Anzu as some perfect creature and Yami as the devil that sacrificed her out of your head, the sooner you can start working with him and the rest of us on how to get her back."

"Shut up."

"You think I don't want her back too? Be realistic, Yuugi."

"You're just trying to excuse what Yami did because you like him better!"

"Oh, grow up." The pit of her belly expanding in relief, Mai also got up. She towered over Yuugi, arms akimbo and hips canted to one side. It was her 'don't fuck with me' posture. She'd perfected when she lived alone, years before she even met Anzu and her posse. Back then, Mai had thought she didn't need anyone – that life was a bitch but she had a scalpel and knew how to spay it. Now she knew better. Life was hard. Bad things happened to good people. Shit happened. It didn't matter how tough you were, or how self-sufficient. When basic human pack-animal instinct kicked in, people were the only salve.

However, that didn't mean she'd gone soft. Not a bit of it.

"Yami was a complete retard, yes. He acted like a Grade A asshole, yes. Do I want to punch him in the mouth? A big damn yes. But will it help anything? No. Getting off my butt and doing something towards finding Anzu and rescuing her soul will. So until further notice, that's what I'm going to do. You know why? Because it's what she'd fucking well do for me. Now you can sit here and bawl if you like, but if you're really the great friend she says you are, you'll put aside your feelings and help."

Yuugi met her glare for a second. Then he wilted, as though all the fight had been sucked out of him.

Mai's belly contracted again.

"Of course," she said, "after we find her – when we find the fuckers responsible, there's no reason we can't pin them down and rip their fucking hearts out."

Yuugi's eyes widened at the viciousness of her words. There was a terrifying moment where Mai thought he was actually going to agree with her, but when nearing the post he couldn't bring himself to cross the line. Instead, he turned away and went back towards the camper van, hands jammed deep in his pockets.

Mai followed him with her eyes.

---

Otogi had tried to talk to Yuugi when he came back in, but after the first few rebuffs he stopped. It was pointless to talk to the little guy right now. Yuugi had the single desire for his best friend to be safe and with him. Beyond that, anything else was just an invasion he was determined to sidestep.

Ryou seemed more hurt by it than anyone. He, Yuugi and Anzu were always such a tight-knit trio – though if he weren't so dazed the Pharaoh might have had something so say. Otogi was used to the Pharaoh's smart mouth and sometimes-brutal manner. Having him stare ineffectually into space like that was just plain wrong.

Unlike the others, who had drawn away to be with their own thoughts, Otogi took a more active approach. Pushing unwelcome thoughts from his brain he went and tapped Professor Hawkins on the shoulder. "Got anything stronger than coffee in this place?"

"It's a little early for that, isn't it?" But the old man pointed to a knee-high cupboard in the kitchenette.

Otogi found a glass and poured the tiniest amount of pure whiskey into it. This he presented to the Pharaoh without preamble. "Drink this. Might wake you up a bit."

He actively ignored the Anzu-eyes that looked up at him, and the Anzu-way those hands curled around the glass. This was not Anzu. This was the Pharaoh. This was a millennia-old dead guy who just happened to look like one of the most unusual and meddlesome gamers he'd ever met. It didn't really make the situation any less surreal, but it at least let him think clearly.

The Pharaoh didn't drink, just toyed with the glass a little and raised it to his lips without tasting. Then the door to the little bedroom opened and Rebecca marched in. The glass descended.

"I couldn't sleep."

Her grandfather sighed and got creakily to his feet. "Would you like something to eat?"

Instantly Ryou was there, obviously glad to have something to do. They were all caught in some strange twilight world of indecision, nobody wanting to say they should leave even though they had nothing to stay for, and it sat uneasily – with some more than others. This was a group whose primary way of solving problems was to face them head on.

"I'll make it! What would you like, Rebecca?"

For a second Rebecca looked like she was going to refuse the offer of food. Then her eyes ticked over Ryou's drawn, eager face and instead she mumbled, "Just oatmeal, please. With a little brown sugar on top."

Professor Hawkins sank back into his seat. "There should be a box of instant in the - "

"I know, I saw it earlier." Ryou scuttled into the kitchenette and began bustling about with milk, bowls and the little microwave in the corner.

Rebecca looked over at the Pharaoh. Then she slid behind the pullout table where Mai had been sitting before. Mai had elected to stay outside when Yuugi came in, and her abandoned mug looked forlorn. Rebecca picked it up to inspect the contents, then started picking at the already-chipped orange glaze.

Otogi liked Rebecca. He'd been a child prodigy himself, and knew how tough it was to be accepted when you were 'gifted'. She was maybe a little prickly, and she had some real arrogance to her, but it was nothing more than he might have expected. Compared with that wannabe tycoon he'd tangled with last March, she was practically angelic, even with that scythe-like tongue.

Anzu had verbally sparred with Rebecca since they met up again – although 'spar' was possibly not the best word for it. Anzu had attempted to be civil, as she'd promised Yuugi and Ryou back in Japan, but Rebecca obviously saw her as competition for Yuugi's affections and so treated her to the kind of welcome usually reserved for a fart in a spacesuit.

The microwave clicked on. The low buzz filled the silence so much you could almost ignore the strained atmosphere and the fact that Yuugi had locked himself in the tiny bathroom. Quite possibly he was crying – little guy always did wear his heart on his sleeve – but after that scene when they first arrived Otogi wondered whether Yuugi was just avoiding all chance of speaking to the Pharaoh.

Outside, the sun started to warm the sand and rocks.

Otogi had been to America before. He'd mostly seen the insides of skyscrapers and hotels, or the asphalt upward climbs and downward slopes of San Francisco. He'd never seen the desert before this trip, and he wasn't sure he'd ever want to again. For all Rebecca and her grandfather were good people, he liked the dynamic that had sprung up back in Domino. He liked having people to hang around with like a normal teenager – even if they were the most abnormal people a teenager could have.

Rebecca would learn that, as she got older – if she hadn't already.

---

When Rebecca's spoon clinked into the empty bowl Ryou took a deep breath. He had to ask it. There was no other way, and if Yuugi wasn't going to reappear …

"What do we do now?"

Nobody answered, though he knew they'd all heard. Otogi kind of … flinched. He probably thought nobody had noticed. Ryou allowed him that.

Rebecca and her grandfather both looked so thoughtful. It was easy to see the family resemblance when they sat like that, one hand raised to the chin, eyes slightly unfocussed, as if concentrating on some point in the middle-distance. Professor Hawkins's pipe remained unlit, though his lips worked tirelessly around it. He was the only true adult amongst them, and he'd been through only a fraction of what they had.

Ryou hated feeling helpless. He'd had too much of that in his life already, and though he didn't like to dwell on it, a lot of what he did these days was geared towards making his own choices – and mistakes – without being influenced by anything or anyone else. His father lived so far away, and he had no other real family to speak of, so he was free to do what he wanted to a degree. And since Yami freed him from the Spirit of the Ring, he'd finally learned what freedom meant.

His head ached a little when he thought too hard about the Spirit, and he already had enough to stress over without remembering something that was over and done with. He forced himself to put aside thoughts of that narrow escape before he needed aspirin and looked at everyone else, waiting for an answer.

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" Otogi said, business-like. "We have to find Anzu's soul and find a way of restoring it to her body."

"And saving the world," Rebecca murmured, as if not quite believing what she was saying. "Don't forget about that."

"Right. See? Easy."

"Perhaps you could contact young Mr. Kaiba," Professor Hawkins tentatively suggested. "You said last night that he has one of these, uh, dragon cards that are so important?"

Ryou blinked. He'd forgotten about that – and Pegasus, too. It was strange to think that he was the reason they'd even come to America in the first place, whatever they'd been up to since. Pegasus had caused them so much grief in the past, and yet he'd expected them to just jump to attention and come help when he snapped his fingers.

Ryou was not Yuugi. Since he started hanging around with Anzu and she started getting media attention, it had become 'Anzu Mazaki and her two friends'. Reporters saw him and Yuugi as extensions of her, placeholders in their pigeonholing – the cheerleaders, the comforting shoulders, the support network. Everyone seemed to lump him and Yuugi together as a bit of background masculinity to balance Anzu's … assets. They were interchangeable as far as the rest of the world was concerned.

But Ryou was not Yuugi.

Though he didn't speak his thoughts aloud, he didn't have the same compulsion Yuugi did to think the best of everyone. Yuugi had wanted to buy gifts for bullies who had made his life miserable, had felt sorry for reporters sat out in the rain around Anzu's house; and it was Yuugi who insisted they fly to Pegasus's aid. Ryou went along with it because he could see the nobility of such acts – maybe not condone them, but see them nonetheless – and he'd waited so long for friends who didn't run off, or go mad, or drop dead after they met him that he didn't want to offend anyone by scuppering their plans out of his own misplaced resentment.

Perhaps that was why he'd been so drawn to Anzu after Duellist Kingdom. Beyond the favour Yami had done him, beyond the connection they shared over Millennium Items, Ryou liked Anzu's bluntness. If she didn't like you, she told you. She seemed to feel no impulse to hide who she was from those who knew her. Perhaps it was a throwback of living with Yami, but it balanced nicely with Yuugi's naïveté. Ryou slotted somewhere in the middle, the voice of reason when either one of them went too far down their respective paths. For the first time in what felt like forever, he'd had a sense of belonging.

Anzu had been furious with Pegasus before Yuugi talked her around. And yet … somehow Ryou couldn't summon enough energy to be as angry with the billionaire as he perhaps should have. If they hadn't come to see Pegasus, Anzu would never have come to this horrible place; and if she'd never come here, she and Yami would never have gone out last night; and if they hadn't gone out last night…

Yet Pegasus was gone, his soul ripped from his body and sacrificed in the name of some ancient evil, just like Anzu's. Ryou couldn't condemn him any more than that.

Briefly, he wondered if it hurt, having your soul removed. Maybe it was like having your appendix or your tonsils out. He'd had an appendectomy when he was ten, and his scar had only twinged when he laughed or moved too quickly. Having his soul crushed under the weight of the Spirit, fighting against it and being squashed anyway, that had hurt – a deep-seated, limitless pain that was hard to describe to anyone who hadn't also experienced it. If having your soul removed was anything like that…

Anzu …

He shook his head. He didn't want to think about things like that. Not now. He needed to keep it together now. He wasn't as weak as people thought. He would survive this, just as he had everything else – more than survive it, even. No more passivity. He would help save the world, and afterwards they would all go home, whole and safe and together, just as they should. Yuugi would be naïve, Anzu would be audacious, and he, Ryou, would be …

He would be.

"Do you really think Kaiba would help us?" Otogi wanted to know. "He isn't exactly Anzu's biggest fan."

"If the world really is in danger, then he has just as big a stake as anyone else," Rebecca pointed out.

"If he even believes us. He doesn't have a spectacular record for this kind of thing. Seto Kaiba can't suspend his disbelief – he has it chained up and nailed to the floor in a basement somewhere."

"If Kaiba doesn't believe us," Yami said softly, "then we will make him believe." It was the first time he'd spoken since Yuugi slapped him. Since then he'd been in a sort of stupor. He still didn't sound quite like himself.

Ryou shivered.

"Do you have his email address?" Rebecca asked. Even she sounded subdued in the face of Yami's strangeness. She and Otogi exchanged a few words on how best to contact the remote Seto Kaiba without appointment, and then she put her dish in the washing-up bowl and went to fetch her laptop, presumably to work some of that whiz-kid magic on getting hold of him.

Ryou kept his eyes on Yami. Yami was still slumped, still staring, and still looked like someone had killed a bag full of puppies in front of him, but his shoulders were beyond tense. His entire demeanour screamed 'don't even touch me' like a distressed five-year-old. Battle plans were where he usually excelled, but he seemed to want no part of this one.

Eventually Otogi, Rebecca and her grandfather retreated to work on one of their many problems, leaving Yami and Ryou to not stare at each other.

Anzu had told Ryou about what happened on the Battleship, after Malik and the Spirit duelled. She'd told him about how angry Yami got, the vengeance he'd sworn, the way he'd only cracked but not broken, human but strong. Ryou knew how to read between the lines – he knew Yami had been Anzu's prop while they rest of them were incapacitated. She wasn't as strong as him, she'd said without saying. She loved them, but she'd tasted despair and it had nearly ruined her. Yami had kept her afloat during that time, reminding her what she was fighting for – what she stood to lose if they failed. In Anzu's mind it had been him who was the driving force behind getting them all back.

So why was this time any different? Why was he choosing to break down now, when they needed him the most? When Anzu needed him the most. Surely she meant more to him than that?

Ryou opened his mouth to speak.

Suddenly Yami raised his head and met his eyes. His gaze seemed hopeless, as if he'd grasped what the rest of them were choosing not to think about – that trying to find a single lost soul was like trying to find a needle in a field of haystacks by searching for the cotton it was threaded with. He looked like he'd lost something very important and not realised quite how important it was until it was gone – or else he'd been mourning the wrong thing and now hated himself for it.

Ryou knew how to read between the lines.

He shut his mouth again.

---

Yuugi sat on the toilet with the lid down and tried to get his breathing under control. He wasn't claustrophobic, but the tiny bathroom seemed to press in on all sides. When he moved the floor creaked ominously.

Emotions swirled around his head like party lights – dizzying, confusing, nauseating. He'd been fine after talking to Mai – well, not really, but he'd convinced himself he was – and he'd made it all the way into the camper van before his blinkers fell off and he looked at Yami. Then suddenly the weight of everyone's eyes on him had proved too much. He'd bowed politely, apologised, and retreated to the only room with a lock.

Mai had the kind of razor-edged directness that haemophiliacs feared. Her words, though brutal, had forced Yuugi out of his damp haze and made him confront the situation plainly: Anzu was gone, so was Pegasus, Yami was not, Dr. Hawkins's research had been plundered, the biker gang was still loose, the corporate arm of an ancient evil was stalking the land and they still didn't have Egyptian God Cards back.

Nothing at all to worry about, then.

Yuugi fought against anger, bitterness and resentment – emotions he was not used to. They made his head ache and the backs of his eyeballs hot and dry. When sliding the bolt into place he'd actually thought they were going to make him sick – all that bile forcing its way out of him seemed better than letting it fester.

Intellectually, he knew they shouldn't still be here. They should have moved on, made a plan of attack or something. Nevertheless, how were they supposed to do that when he, the most easygoing of them all, couldn't force himself over that first hurdle?

Yuugi was an expert in forgiveness. He'd survived his short but troubled life by not letting bad stuff stick. There was no point to it; whether you stewed over things or not, they still happened. It was better to just dust yourself off and get on with the good stuff. It usually balanced out, or at least one cancelled out the other. He liked the idea of karma – or he would have, had he not worried about people being hurt too badly by their own comeuppance. It was both his greatest strength and his greatest flaw.

Anzu hadn't understood when he tried to explain it to her. She was too focussed on overcoming problems, not letting them wash over her. She didn't understand Yuugi's philosophy that passivity in bad situations was the best way of coming out of them unscathed. She'd rather go and bash a few heads together than sit back and just take life as it came.

Thinking about his best friend made Yuugi's stomach clench. They were a trio – he, Anzu and Ryou – inseparable in all the ways that counted (hadn't it been them who first started calling him Ryou instead of Bakura like everyone else?) but to Yuugi there would always be something special about the relationship between Anzu and himself. She'd been his first real friend. That meant a lot – more than she perhaps realised.

He supposed he'd been kind of in love with her since then. Not that he'd ever act on it, of course. He valued the friendship they had too much to complicate and possibly spoil it, but his feelings for Anzu were the closest he'd ever come to something like love. She was special. She'd always been there for him to fall back on, early memories of her sustaining him when she wasn't around or was too busy to see him. Nobody could be at your side all the time. And she had had other friends back then – popular girls who'd never been seen dead with someone like Yuugi Mutou. But when it counted, when it really mattered, she'd defended him when nobody else would.

And now she was gone.

Yuugi remembered telling her about his dream. He remembered how she'd ruffled his hair and called him a doofus for worrying about her. Anzu didn't believe she needed looking after. Sometimes Yuugi got the feeling she thought she was paying some kind of penance, putting him and others before her more often than not. He couldn't imagine what she thought she'd done, or why she thought he needed protecting all the time.

If anything, this whole situation had proved that Anzu wasn't as tough as she insisted she was.

Or maybe … He chewed his lower lip. Maybe it proved she was far tougher than any of them had thought. Even her.

And she called him a martyr?

Pulling off a sheet of toilet paper and shredding it between nervous fingers, Yuugi wondered distractedly whether Yami had grasped these elements of Anzu's behaviour, and, if he had, to what extent he knew what motivated her to do what she did. Yami was closer to Anzu than any of them – he shared her head, for goodness' sake. If he hadn't heard her snark and complain about him every now and then, Yuugi might have been jealous a long time ago.

A bubble of emotion welled inside him at the thought of Yami. Yuugi abruptly felt sick again, picturing the pharaoh as he'd seen him since they got back. Yami was obviously suffering, but somehow it just wasn't … it wasn't enough. It wasn't right. Yami had done great things since Anzu released him from his prison – he'd saved the world more than once, and the lives of everyone in this camper van even more than that. Yuugi knew that. He knew that Yami had been hurt, too, and distasteful as it was to think, he realised that Anzu had made a terrible decision in allowing them to go out last night.

For all his protestations, Yami was (or at least had been) human, and humans made mistakes. But this was a Yami mistake. Yami mistakes were bigger than other people's. The last time Yami made a mistake, he'd nearly killed Seto Kaiba!

"The sooner you can get this image of Anzu as some perfect creature and Yami as the devil that sacrificed her out of your head, the sooner you can start working with him and the rest of us on how to get her back."

What was it with him and hanging around bossy women? a part of Yuugi briefly wondered.

He suddenly found himself wanting to know what Anzu had said at the end, when she took Yami's place. Had she said something uplifting, one of her friendship speeches perhaps? Or had she just cursed him out for being the idiot no amount of empathy could deny he was? Had she screamed when her soul was taken? Did it hurt her?

Yuugi recognised he'd made two fists when the nails of his left hand cut into his palm. They hadn't broken the skin, but a line of half-moons dotted his hand. Consciously, he unclenched, straightened his fingers, breathed. He looked at the chipped ceiling, the flimsy walls, and the frosted glass window with its broken hinge. He concentrated on the here and now, the physical objects around him: basin, cubbyhole, towels, portapotty. You couldn't think of the word 'portapotty' and still keep up a good bout of existential angst.

Despite this, a dim thread of memory wound its way through his mind; a piece of flute music, slow and measured. Anzu had danced to it in the first recital he ever went to watch her in. Circumstance meant neither of her parents had been able to go, and though she hadn't talked about it Yuugi could see, even back then, that this upset her. Though she wasn't as close a friend as she'd become, he'd still resolved to go and watch her in their place.

It was the first time he'd seen her dance more than a few steps when she thought nobody was looking, and though Yuugi was famous for his clumsiness he'd been enchanted by the grace of ballet. The music was sparse and sort of sad. He often found it going around inside his head when he was especially troubled, though he couldn't fathom why. That was the only time he'd ever heard it, and Anzu had been so taken aback to see him at her recital that he'd never plucked up the nerve to ask its name.

Yuugi breathed in, held it, and then let the air out. He did this twice more, centring himself. He wasn't completely calm, but it was the best he was going to get.

The problems were many and complex, but his goal was simple: He wanted Anzu back.

The trick was how to do that.

---

Yami was not prone to depression. Given his history (or lack thereof) he probably had more reason than anyone else in the world, but it wasn't in his nature to be depressed. He was a doer, an instigator – he confronted problems head on and crushed them by whatever means necessary. True, lately he'd come to accept that some situations called for more finesse than brute strength allowed, but his mindset remained unchanged. You didn't sit and weep over setbacks; you removed them from your path and carried on regardless.

Yami had endured millennia trapped inside an inanimate object. He'd lost his body, his life, his memories, his sense of self, his sanity, then gained the last two back again. He wasn't too far off with the memories, either, if Isis Ishtar and the Visions he'd Seen with Seto Kaiba could be believed. He'd claimed back some semblance of life for himself, too, receiving an avatar to work through, a purpose with Duel Monsters, and a reward in the form of friends to care for. He'd learned and he'd taught, he'd triumphed over evil that wore many masks and uncovered the good in souls though beyond redemption. He'd seen those same precious friends beaten, nearly killed, emotionally and mentally tortured, manipulated by several madmen and all but completely annihilated by forces of magick even he'd had trouble defeating. And he'd survived it all intact – in a manner of speaking.

Right now, though, Yami was closer to despair than he'd ever been before.

His cheek still stung.

He was aware of the others around him, but they moved like they were underwater. Every word seemed slurred, every movement protracted and difficult. Sometimes one of them would come over, touch his arm to drag him back and time would right itself. They'd speak perfectly normally, if in hushed tones that simultaneously irritated him and inflamed his already swollen sense of … of hopelessness. He'd stare at them, not caring that they tried to comfort him, or that his expression drove them off.

Yami had spent thousands of years alone, and less than twelve months in his current state; yet the loss he suddenly felt was immutable. He felt … empty.

Anzu was gone.

That stupid, infuriating pest of a girl, who had done him the greatest of favours but beleaguered him ceaselessly with her modern principles and ideas since he Woke Up; the person he had been closest to and wanted as far away from him as possible … was gone.

The parts of the world that hadn't already gone to hell were well on their way. Yami was too wrapped up in his own drama to care that in losing to Raphael he'd done more than just lose Anzu – he'd actually helped Dartz to fuel the Leviathan's resurrection. That the apocalypse was rolling towards them with alarming speed seemed almost trivial.

Anzu was gone.

He'd unhooked the Millennium Puzzle and its belt and now cradled it in one hand. He was locked out of Anzu's Soul Room. He knew where it was – had been there before when defending them from Shadi – but the doors that were once thrown wide were closed to him. He'd searched the corridors looking for another entrance; a chink that would prove some part of her was still present, but to no avail. Whether the Room beyond the door was even still there was uncertain. Thwarted, Yami had returned to the body he'd shared for so long to find its lungs burning. With no essence to make it breathe it had started to shut down. None of the other soulless bodies had asphyxiated, which led him to believe that because his soul was there, departing into the Puzzle for any length of time was simply depriving the body of its basic impulse to exist. It was worse than if there were no soul to fill it – in his own ignorance, Yami had become a liability.

It was the second time today he could think that.

He was tethered to the mortal realm in a way he hadn't been in several millennia. He was, in effect, alive again. This body was his now – he was its sole occupant. If he didn't use its lungs, it would die. If he didn't feed it, it would starve. If he didn't work the muscles, stretch the sinew, they'd atrophy. He was now responsible for all the things he'd previously left up to Anzu. It worried him in a totally different way than the threat of Doma had.

It didn't help that he could feel strange shadows rippling at the edges of his vision.

Yami was a conduit for darkness. He knew that. He'd accepted it a long time ago – long before Anzu became conscious of him enough to give him a name that exemplified it. He suspected he was allowed to remain in the world only by a process of dark magick, and though Anzu has recoiled at the idea, it didn't bother him overmuch. He was confident he could keep the darkness in check. He was master of his own actions.

Except that he hadn't been, and everything had fallen apart because of his conceit.

Stupid girl. Stupid condescending, interfering, overassertive, meddlesome … female. What right had she to take his place? What right had she to dishonour him by implying he couldn't handle the consequences of his own mistakes? It was degrading. It was shameful.

The shadows pulsed a little more.

Yami got angry easily, and his anger was spectacular. His rages could change the landscape. His anger had almost consumed him before, just as it had almost consumed others in their attempts to stop him – to help him. Yet the anger that he now felt was hollow, an echo reverberating around inside his skull, folding back in on itself until he returned to the old refrain.

Anzu was gone.

And it was all his fault.

Somewhere, an unoiled hinge squeaked. The sudden absence of whispers was more noticeable than the noise of them had been. Yami didn't look up. Whatever it was didn't interest him as much as suppressing the shadows trying to prise up his fingernails and leak from his bones.

The fingernails were painted a deep purple, the polish chipped and lumpy in places. He looked hard at them, though the shadows hadn't yet reached a visible level. One nail had broken completely, leaving behind nine shapely curves and one ugly stump. He remembered Anzu catching it on the reins when she mounted the horse. She'd never ridden before, so he'd taken over, somehow knowing what to do. Anzu had been surprised, questioning him on this knowledge.

"Does this mean you're getting your memories back?"

Hopeful. He recalled the exact pitch and tone of her voice, rising at the end, eager yet hesitant. His answer had been less emotive.

"No. I know this in much the same way I know duelling. It is simply present in my mind when I need it."

"Oh."

Just that word. Barely even a word, actually – just a sound she'd made because she always felt like she had to say something. Silence wasn't Anzu's friend. Even when her mouth stopped moving her brain was always racing, always full. He'd learned it was better to stay in the Puzzle when she was dreaming. Her dreams washed through him, and her nightmares knotted him up until he acted against character and nudged her mind awake to spare her. The weakness had irked him at first.

That night at Mai's, Anzu had said that those tiny acts of kindness made her feel like nothing could touch her.

These weren't his nails. The bones suffused with darkness weren't his bones. This was not his body. He was just a tenant. This was not his …

The silence held. Absence of sound shouldn't be so loud, but this one was deafening. A shadow fell across Yami – an actual shadow, not a magickal one. He looked up, ready to stare down yet more well-intentioned platitudes.

Yuugi gazed down at him.

Yami sat up a little straighter. The glass Otogi had given him tipped, spilling whiskey over his lap. He might have cursed, but Yuugi's eyes held him, and he barely acknowledged the strong-smelling wet patch spreading across one of Anzu's favourite outfits.

Yami was aware of the others watching them. Even Rebecca had stopped typing, eyes wary behind her glasses. Ryou looked like he wanted to either wring his hands or jump up and offer everyone a snack. His eyes ticked back and forth and helpless frustration rolled off him in waves. He wanted to fix the rift that had sprung up between Yami and Yuugi as much as he wanted Anzu back, but he didn't know how to achieve either goal.

Yuugi looked awful. The skin around his eyes was puffy and red. His clothes were dishevelled and smeared with orangey dust. Even his hair seemed to droop.

Yami's thoughts were fragmented where Yuugi was concerned. The part of him not concerned with the loss of Anzu was hurting over Yuugi's hostility towards him – justified as it may be. Not one scrap of Anzu's objections had ever dimmed Yami's feelings for Yuugi. If anything, an urge to rebel against her had made them stronger, and yet now, with the tenuous bond between them cracked … Yami was starting to realise that he missed his bond with Anzu more.

He didn't love her. It wasn't as simple as that. Yet he wanted her there. He needed her to be there. Yuugi was still there, and if he hated Yami now then it didn't matter because he was safe enough to stand there and hate him. Anzu wasn't. Yami didn't deserve to yearn after anyone so pure after what he'd done; how he'd let her down …

Guilt made the shadows bloat. Yami's gaze unfocussed for a second while he restrained them. They didn't retreat all the way, but throbbed gently on the fringes of his mind, like a wolf pack waiting for a sickly moose to give up and lay down.

The last time he felt like this had been on Kaiba's airship. He'd had to comfort Anzu then, too, but rather than irritate him, it had helped that he knew his wasn't the only pain. For all their speeches about friendship, he and Anzu were both used to dealing with pain on their own. Having to take over, reassuring her with promises of rescue and reprisal had given him an outlet. Instead of having only the shadows to concentrate on, he'd had a crumbling girl-child to take care of. Her frailties made him feel strong; they centred his resolve, honing his mind to a point and aiming it directly at Malik.

He couldn't care for Yuugi, Ryou and the others in the same way. He couldn't just take over and wade in to fix things. He couldn't use their pain to blot out his own. If anything, their pain made him feel worse – they made him feel even more accountable for his actions, the consequences of which he hadn't even considered when he played the Oricalchos.

Was he really that cemented in evil? The Oricalchos stripped players of their inhibitions, revealing the impulses beneath. It had barely scratched his surface before malevolence welled up and out, like poison oozing from an open wound. He'd always reasoned he was the one controlling the dark magick; that his actions when the Puzzle was first solved were part of the jumble that came from millennia of imprisonment.

But what if they hadn't been? What if the Oricalchos hadn't twisted him, but instead revealed his true nature?

What if he'd lied to Anzu when he told her he wasn't evil?

"I could ask you why you played that card," Yuugi said, quiet voice like a scalpel through Yami's thoughts. "I could make some more accusations, or hit you again."

"It wouldn't be unwarranted," Yami fumbled.

Yuugi bit his bottom lip. "Stop it."

"What?"

"Stop … stop doing that. I'm trying to … I … Look, I can't just forget what happened – what I saw. I can't absolve you."

Yami's throat constricted. He forced himself to breathe properly anyway.

"But … Anzu ..." Yuugi bit his lip again. "She trusts you. And I want her back, so I'll trust you too. I don't like …" He seemed to be choosing his words incredibly carefully, as though sorting through unmarked filing cabinets in his mind to find what he wanted. All around them hung that horrible silence, as if the world had paused and was waiting to see the outcome of this little exchange. "You have to understand. I want to forgive you. You've saved my life before – saved all our lives. You're my friend. You've done more to help me than I'll ever be able to repay. But while she's still gone, I just can't forget what you did."

Yami nodded.

Yuugi took a breath. The muscles in his folded arms tensed for a second. "I was charged with keeping Anzu safe, and no inconvenience like losing her soul is going to stop me doing that. She's my responsibility." His voice dropped to an even softer tone. "She's my friend."

Ryou looked about to say something.

"I know what you're going to say, Ryou. But it's true – I was supposed to protect her and I couldn't. So I have to do what I can and get her back."

Ryou's hands dropped. He murmured something inaudible.

"I do have to do this," Yuugi said again. He looked directly at Yami, as if daring him to challenge the statement. His tone was soft, but there was something diamond-hard under his words. For once, it wasn't the innocence of his eyes that was the most obvious, but the sheer intensity suddenly burning there, fierce against his previous determined, puffy-eyed composure.

"It's not your fault," Yami replied. It wasn't Yuugi's fault. It was his. His hand, his actions, his damned weakness –

Yuugi didn't say anything, though he obviously wanted to. The mental filing cabinets refused to yield an appropriate response, however, and he instead flexed his arms outward, away from his body. His narrow chest swelled with air, the conclusion of their conversation. Yuugi had said his piece. He wasn't ready to make further discussion just yet – maybe couldn't trust himself not to say more things he'd later regret. Yuugi was almost unnaturally loyal to his friends and always so eager to see the good in people. Yami had pushed that to its limits today. It would take time for Yuugi to reconcile the one with the other.

Perhaps, if they couldn't save Anzu, he never would. After all, there was no ironclad law that said she would be saved if they defeated Dartz and his minions. The captured souls might already be spent.

Yami looked at Yuugi's swollen eyes and thin frame. He looked very tired, despite sleeping some of the night. Yami remembered Anzu being so protective of him. He half believed she would've wrapped Yuugi up in cotton wool and spoon-fed him for the rest of his life if she could. Yuugi had continually exhibited a kind of inner-strength that negated this approach. His wild courage was a byword. Yuugi would hurl himself into conflict against impossible odds without so much as a second thought. Yet his friends still sought to guard him like some precious, fragile figurine. Even Ryou had done it – not initially wanting to hang out with Anzu or Yuugi, despite the absence of the Millennium Ring, because he feared his 'weirdness' might re-attract Yuugi's old bullies.

Grief was a thing, Yami realised. It was heavy and cold, and its edges were hard and jagged. It could kill, if it got a proper foothold.

He couldn't let Yuugi die.

Glancing around, Yami came to a further realisation; he couldn't let any of them die. Anzu would never forgive him, whether she returned or not. He might one day travel into the afterlife to find her with a grudge and a two-by-four.

Were sacrificed souls allowed passage into the afterlife?

Yami shook his head to dislodge the unwelcome thought. As he did so, the Millennium Puzzle shifted in his hand, sliding forward over his knees and onto the floor.

Yami's reaction was instinctive. Unfortunately, so was Yuugi's. He jerked forward and caught the bottom in the flat of his hand, just as Yami's fingers closed around the sides.

For a heartbeat nothing happened. That dreadful silence clung at them like fog. Yami noticed the awkwardness on Yuugi's face at his automatic response. He was already starting to flush pink and loosen his grip.

Then the world exploded.

Images unfurled in Yami's mind. He was sure he'd never seen them before, but each one carried a ring of familiarity. He recognised the tricky corners of the bedroom as his own, knew the feel of the sheets against his skin and the sound of the chair scraping back from the desk. He tasted saltwater from when he visited the beach as a child, Mom and Dad holding his hands and Grandpa wearing a 'Kiss Me Quick' hat that made Mom roll her eyes. They were all very tall; then suddenly they weren't, or maybe it was him who was taller. Mom made a motion by her armpit, indicating how tall her little boy now was, and Dad laughed because he was taller than both of them.

"He's throwing up again."

"Well just make sure it's not in my briefcase this time."

Mommy, Daddy, I don't feel so good.

The ambulance has bright lights. I can just see them over the edge of the blanket. Am I heavy? Should I get down and walk? It's a valve in my stomach that's wrong, not my legs. The doctors talked about it when I was small, remember? It's why I'm still kind of small now, even though I'm getting older. Even I know that you don't walk with your stomach.

Yami recognised the tiny, rectangular box of grey plastic. Gameboy, he thought immediately, and was then inundated with images of the same device smashing, and a replacement that glowed and beeped and came in a box that Dad brought home from the big electronics store in town one day. Grandpa was a little put out, but the Kame Game Store didn't stock Nintendo, and everyone was so pleased that he was safe and had come out of his operation okay, all valves in his stomach pointing the right way for once, that he didn't say anything.

Yami had the insurmountable feeling that he needed to show the new Gameboy to someone – someone very important …

A wild night, rain punching the windows and pain in his gut like when the painkillers wore off in hospital. Can't have happened, can't be true. He'll wake up in the morning and he'll be in his own house, and they'll be there in the kitchen, breakfast and coffee smells wafting up to his bedroom like always.

Grandpa pads about. He doesn't know how to look after kids anymore. Grandma Kiri did the raising while he was on digs, looking for buried treasure. He was more like an uncle than a father. Grandpa's scared of the spare room now – scared of what's in it and the hastily packed suitcase left open in the corner. He offers chocolate and treats, trying to tempt a smile when his own eyes are always glazed with anxiety.

Teachers wear sad faces. They feel sorry for him, make allowances when kids steal his homework and drop it in the mud. He doesn't tell them about that, doesn't correct them when they assume he was just too upset to do math problems. He doesn't care, just sits on the steps outside the games stockroom and rocks back and forth, back and forth, trying to count all the stairs in the school. Except he can't remember how many steps make up the big staircase to the library, which makes him forget all those already counted, and he's just starting over when a shadow falls across him and doesn't taunt or grab his scruff or move away again.

"I'm sorry," Anzu says, pitch-perfect, slight tremor, like her voice caught on a rusty nail on the way up her throat. Twelve years old and mostly thin as a rake, but her top is already getting a little snug under its bow. Arms forward, weight rocked back on heels – uncomfortable, doesn't know what to say, but here anyway. Where are the other girls? Where are her friends? "I'm so sorry."

Everybody's sorry. Why? They didn't make the road wet. They didn't make the tyres skid. Mommy, Daddy, where are you? Mommy's lying still in the hospital, resting while the doctors take care of her. Daddy? Are you there, Daddy? Where'd you go? Come back, Daddy, come back!

Arms hugging him tight, boys don't cry but he's crying, crying so hard his shoulders hurt. Cold steps, school uniform no protection, but the arms are warm. Don't cry, Anzu, don't cry. Your parents are fine, don't worry. They're at home, safe. It's not your fault. Don't cry. Don't let go, please, stay here and don't let go. Friends forever, right? Pinky swear it.

You're the only one who's touched me. Everyone else is afraid, like I'll break or something. Please don't let go again. Go back to your friends afterwards, be with the popular crowd, walk back to class with them, I'll get there on my own, but please don't let go of me now. Please don't leave me alone …

"I won't. I promise. I won't leave you alone."

A knotted ball, like yarn, beat like a heart. Red and violet and yellow, it radiated safety the way a fire radiates heat. Yami felt it like he would anything physical – a cool breeze, the scratch of gloves, the tiny bump of the Millennium Puzzle against his hip. It felt wonderfully intimate, but at the same time, a little unpredictable – a destination without a set route of getting there. He liked that combination, and instinctively moved toward the ball, reaching out to touch and understand the pattern like he would a card game …

Running through a ballroom made of ice. So cold, so cold, but got to keep moving, got to follow the voice. Who are you? Why am I here?

"Are you chosen?"

Sounds like icicles snapping. Chosen for what? Tell me! I don't know what you want me to say. Are you hurt? Can I help?

"Are you pure of heart?"

"And you think that means you're supposed to protect me?"

He looks like me. How can he look so much like me? It's impossible. I look like a freak, but he looks almost exactly the same as me. What does that mean? Did she know that? Did she ever wonder this, too? Did she look at him and see what I could've been? Did she only hang out with me because I look like him? No, she wouldn't do that to me. Would she? She's my best friend. She's my … she's my …

Oh god, I need her back so badly –

A madhouse jangle of images; vague impressions and flashes of more solid things. Ryou's head bent over a history textbook. The jab of a biro on a passage that doesn't make sense. Peeping through the curtains at a sea of reporters. Seto Kaiba's sneer. Grandpa collapsed at his well-heeled feet. The smell of antiseptic. Mom in the doorway, looking both guilty and worried about her father. Slender hands holding a bunch of flowers. Rain buffeting a window. An unruly mass of black hair dragged up by a sweatband. The Millennium Ring. A DDR machine. A duel deck. Mai's devastated apartment. A growing point of light. Swishing purple robes. Black Magician Girl. The Egyptian God cards. A defiant figure in Domino Square, holding up a card as if to shield herself. Troubled blue eyes. A hand ruffling his hair. Anzu.

Anzu!

ANZU!

Yami heard a gasp. The mental slideshow shattered, flinging broken shards of memory across his mind as Otogi's face swam into view.

"Pharaoh! Yami, dude, snap out of it."

Somewhere else, Rebecca was demanding of Yuugi, "Let go!"

"Mffzzn," Yami mumbled, blinking. His fingers spasmed and something heavy knocked against his shin, dangling on a chain. He could feel the metal links pressing against his palms. "Hn?"

Everyone was clustered around his chair, tending Yuugi while Otogi took up the bat for Yami. His green eyes bored into Yami's, reasserting reality over the maelstrom that had passed. Behind him, Yuugi sat down heavily on the floor, a dazed expression on his face.

For a second Yami thought he saw a mark like a stylised eye shimmer on Yuugi's forehead, but it vanished so fast he couldn't be sure it wasn't an afterimage of something else.

Hollowness surged through his chest. He suddenly had the irrevocable feeling that he had been a hairsbreadth away from something far greater than himself – a path not taken, and one that never would be. It ratcheted off his ribcage, burrowed through his guts and arrowed straight into his heart. The sense of missed opportunity was almost overwhelming.

The darkness beat in time with his triphammering heart. He could almost see it out the corners of his eyes. It wasn't black, as one might expect, but the colour of late sunset and old blood.

With supreme effort, Yami shoved it backwards, absorbing and storing it. Panic tried to replace his current feelings – panic that he might endanger his friends, panic that the effects of the Oricalchos were longer-lasting than a single duel, panic that he was too weak, too inadequate to do anything useful that didn't involve destruction, panic that Isis had been wrong, that this was all he was, a tool for the darkness – but it was such an alien emotion that it tripped flat on its face as it tried to cross the threshold. Still, containing the darkness was like trying to get toothpaste back into the tube.

Yuugi stared at him, ignoring Rebecca as she pawed and asked if he was okay. There was raw fear in his face. Yami couldn't decide whether it was fear of what he'd seen in Yami, or fear of what Yami had seen in him during their brief spiritual collision. As with Anzu, the path had to have been open both ways.

Yami would have been lying if he said he'd never considered what life would have been like if Yuugi had solved the Puzzle instead of Anzu. He knew the story of how she'd come to possess it, and you couldn't be around Yuugi without wondering what went on in his head. And yet … other people had touched the Puzzle with bare hands before, and not one of them had engendered this kind of reaction. Hell, Yuugi himself had touched it before and nothing had happened. Why in Ra's name had they been opened up to each other now?

Maybe because Yami was now the only mind in residence on his side of the divide. Anzu wasn't there to fill her role – to block the way. Maybe the Puzzle had decided he needed a new host, even though he refused to leave this body to oxygen starvation.

Or maybe it was something else entirely.

Apparently satisfied that Yami was okay, Otogi moved to pick the Puzzle up off the floor. Immediately Yami leaned forward, bent double with his lower half still in the chair while he groped for the Item. "Don't touch that!" he barked.

Otogi's hand snapped back as if on elastic. "Possessive much?"

"It's not that," Yuugi murmured. "It's … dangerous."

Ryou's face was also filled with fear. "Are you okay?" he asked, briefly touching Yuugi's shoulder. It was a tiny act, but signified how much they'd been through together and how close they'd become. Ryou used to hate touching people. It also emphasised that a crucial piece of their usual tableau was missing. "Can you stand?"

"I'm fine," Yuugi replied, though it was easy to see nobody believed him. "I just … saw things I wasn't meant to."

Something about the way he said it made Yami wonder which memories he'd gained access to. Had he seen the darkness trying to pry its way out of Yami through Anzu's body? Had he seen the moment of Yami's greatest disgrace, when he gave in and played the Oricalchos – felt the rush of power and the warped brilliance it'd temporarily granted him? Suddenly a thousand images swarmed into Yami's mind – things he'd rather Yuugi never see, alongside things Anzu had said and done in private that she would be mortified to learn Yuugi knew about. The palms of Yami's hands (Anzu's hands!) felt hot and prickly. Embarrassment was about as natural to him as altruism to a cat.

"I promise. I won't leave you alone."

The prickliness abated and a chill swept over him instead, making his scalp crawl. Deep, wrenching grief shone in Yuugi's expressive eyes at the childhood memory he'd been forced to relive, coupled with all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

We die alone.

The thought appeared in Yami's mind, unbidden and unwelcome. For a second he had an urge to snap at Anzu for making another of her inappropriate comments. Then he remembered that he was alone in her skull – entirely alone after the Puzzle briefly smashed him into Yuugi's memories. If anything, he felt even more alone after that – almost as alone as he'd felt when he came to on the cliff and couldn't feel the warm petulance of another mind nestled next to his own. The thought was his.

People deny it all their lives. They fall in love. They make families and friends. But the fact is, we die alone.

Anzu set a lot of store by keeping promises.

"I won't. I promise. I won't leave you alone."

Yami had made her break that impossible one.

He couldn't deal with this much emotion. Not all at once. He couldn't. It was choking him. He wanted to just get angry at the problem, scythe through it with fury and reduce it to component parts that could be crushed without difficulty. Anger. Anger! Anger!

Guilt.

Remorse.

Loss.

Rejection.

Yami turned in on himself again. It may be self-destructive, and it may be unappetising, but dealing with your own guilt is always easier than dealing with the pain you've caused others.

The sound of twelve-year-old Yuugi's crying rang in his ears.

---

Mai had never wanted a cigarette so much in her life.

Nope, not even after Malik – though she'd bought a pack of Marlboro Lights and stared at them for countless hours, resting unopened on the dresser. It had felt like something she should do, but the draw of nicotine hadn't been strong enough then. She'd been too numb inside to recognise echoes of cravings she'd last felt as a teenager.

Now, though … now she could imagine a little white stick pressed between her lips, sucking desperately on it as if trying to get thick milkshake through a thin straw.

She drew her blazer tighter, even though the air wasn't so chill anymore. It was a defensive posture, but that was okay because there was nobody out here to see it. That was one useful thing about the desert, at least – when you wanted to be alone, you were really alone.

Once upon a time, being alone was Mai's dearest wish. The house she grew up in always seemed too small, the walls too thin and the ceilings forever pressing down on top of her, crushing her. When she ran away at sixteen the world had seemed large and imposing, but at least out in the unknown she had space to breathe and more room to dodge flying objects. Solitude had come to represent everything she yearned for, eventually becoming so entangled with her dreams of independence that they were practically synonymous; and privacy, even when true loneliness bit deep, was far to precious to sacrifice. Relying on people for anything was taking a step backwards. She'd believed that people – all people – had a chameleon impulse, reflecting those around them, mimicking others in a concerted attempt to fit in and be liked. You could only really be yourself if you weren't reflecting other people.

Of course, that was before Battle City – before Malik made her realise she did crave human contact by systematically stripping her of the few connections she had made. Those tenuous bonds of friendship, she'd never recognised them for what they were before then. Anzu was a cute kid, kind of reminded Mai of herself, both Yuugi and Ryou were sweeties, and you could count on Otogi to be honest with you, but none of them were what she'd term 'friends'. Friends were a sign of weakness, like you couldn't depend on yourself and had to pass the buck to someone else. When she woke from her coma she'd been disorientated, wanting nothing more than to get out of there and sort out her head on her own – and, more importantly, on her own terms. She wasn't about to be fenced in anymore than she had to, so she'd run. Quite magnificently, of course, and with great decorum, but she had run.

And when the nightmares started, she'd been in her element. She'd been alone.

It had worked about as well as could be expected.

Mai didn't fear being alone now, but these days seclusion had lost its allure. Once again, she had Anzu and her crew to thank for that. Or perhaps it was fate she should be thanking. Mai had no idea how she'd ended up on that side of town, the day she walked into Café La Terre where Anzu worked. It wasn't as though she'd had any pressing engagements over there. She preferred her own turf when she was in Domino. There were holes in her memory from that time; long stretches in which she'd gone places and done things she had no recollection of later. Perhaps that had been another aimless walk, or perhaps some greater guiding hand had sent her in that direction, through that particular tinkling doorway, on that particular evening.

Whatever the reason, something had drawn her to that place and, by corollary, to her salvation. She hated to think where she might have ended up had she resisted the impulse and stayed in that evening.

Mai briefly wondered whether Anzu was alone wherever she'd gone. Then she shook the thought away. It tasted acrid. There was nothing more frustrating in the world than being helpless to stop a tragedy because you weren't there.

I will get you back, she thought fiercely. That's a promise. As if to make it more real, she repeated this last part aloud. "That's a promise."

"What is?"

Mai instantly spun on her heel at the sound of the voice. It wasn't familiar, but it was one she recognised. It filled her with surprise – and a little alarm. Here? Now? "You!"

The figure by the car stood up where she could see him better. "Yup. Me."

There were a million different reactions she could have employed at that moment. She could have yelled for the others, had them come pouring out of the camper van to present a united front. She could have thrown herself at the newcomer, wrestled him to the ground and then bounced his skull off it a few times. She could have screamed, could have thrown questions at him, could have pulled out her deck and challenged him right there. She had a Sacred Dragon card, after all.

What she actually did was clench her jaw, press her lips together and hiss, "You bastard."

"Hey, now." He raised his hands. "No need to get personal."

"How long have you been squatting there?" It was incredible, but she actually felt outraged that her privacy had been invaded. She'd thought that in scenarios following the loss of a loved one, petty things like privacy lost their importance. Apparently she'd been wrong. Old habits died hard. She still wasn't as open as she might've liked.

He shrugged. "Long enough. And I wasn't squatting, that makes it sound like I was taking a dump. I was spying."

"On me?"

"No, on the purple flying piglets. Yes on you." His words indicated an eye-roll should come next, but he just grinned at her. It wasn't a very nice grin, though it didn't look as dangerous as Malik in full psycho mode. Malik's was the smile of someone who crept into nurseries and left messages on walls smeared with blood. This guy's was more like something that lay on sandbanks waiting for incautious swimmers. "Did you know you're cute when you angst? The little guy was charming, but you're obviously a pro at this."

"Piss off." Mai immediately regretted saying this. If he did leave, she might have thrown away an important opportunity. "Wait!"

"Like I was going anywhere? You're not the boss of me." He linked his hands behind his head. All the bits of metal on his clothes clanked. Mai couldn't see the point of a lot of them – there weren't enough to be protective, they were just there, like something the dog left on the carpet while you were out. "You weren't out there this morning."

"What?"

He nodded at the distant horizon. Immediately Mai knew what he meant, and resisted the urge to grind her teeth.

"At first I thought it was the demise of that solidarity you people value so much, but then this little drama unfolded and … well, it's not nice is it? Being left behind?"

"You mean you were? What, was spying the short straw, and you drew it? Rather be jetting off, back to your boss with the goods?"

"Meh."

Mai narrowed her eyes. "What do you want?"

"To parley."

"Yeah, right."

"No, really. I'm not here to fight or cause trouble."

A humourless little laugh burst from Mai's lips. "Of course, your buddy already took care of that part. So that must mean you're just here to kick us while we're down. Should I fetch some salt for you to rub in the wound, or did you bring your own? You look like the kind of asshole who likes irony."

For a second the guy looked faintly irritated, then he shook it off. "I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I'm Valon."

"And I'm not impressed." Mai gauged the distance between them. If she rushed him, could he get out his duel disk before she pinned his arms? She'd worked out most of her life to keep herself in shape, but that was mainly vanity. She didn't actually have much upper-body strength. Enough with the banter, already, she thought fiercely, I need to focus on the most important matter. Namely- "Where's Anzu?"

"Hm? I'm not too hot on names, but if you're talking about that enchanting little brunette, then I'm pretty sure I saw her through that window there."

"You know what I mean. That is, if you really are working with Raphael, and not just stringing everyone along. I saw you back in Domino, when the God Cards were stolen. You never did any actual duelling; you just stood on the sidelines like a heckler. So is that what you are, or are you just a little fanboy? Do you have a crush on one of the actual duellists? Raphael, perhaps? Or how about that Amelda? Nice body, if you're into that whole flowing coat, vaguely homoerotic schtick. Do you follow them around like a bad smell? Are you a glorified caddy?"

All humour drained from his face. It looked a whole lot darker, and though a quiet spark still burned in his blue eyes, suddenly Mai got a sense of just how dangerous this guy could be. He was short, and he didn't have Raphael's build, but there was a presence about him, like he knew how to hurt people.

She squared her shoulders and took up her 'don't fuck with me' pose, willing him to understand how intimidated she was not. He wasn't a Malik. He wasn't even a Pegasus. He was just some punk in a Halloween costume.

Still, she cursed her own mouth. You'd think after all this time she'd learn that there are times to heckle and times to shut the hell up.

The standoff lasted a few seconds – long seconds, far longer than physics demanded they should be.

Then the guy – Valon – smirked and patted his thigh with an open palm. "You're really something, toots. Most people would've run for the hills, or at least thrown down a challenge, but you? You just stand there like you're ready to flick-knife me."

"Who says I'm not?"

"Come off it, darling."

"Don't act like you know me."

"I know more about you than you think, Mai Kujaku."

She froze. A sour taste rose in the back of her mouth. Inwardly she shrugged. So he knew her name, big deal, she was quite a famous duellist in her own right. She'd been champion of the European circuit before Anzu Mazaki so much as looked at a deck, and she'd charted in the top ten of two separate tournaments alongside the illustrious Miss Mazaki and Seto Kaiba. Even if it was just reflected celebrity, it was still celebrity.

"If you know so much, then you must know where my friend is being kept."

"I already told you, she's in there - "

"Don't play games with me. You know what I'm talking about."

He sighed. "All right. Let's say I do. What exactly do you expect me to do about it?"

"Tell me where she is."

"Oh, and it's just that simple, is it?" He was using a voice reserved for adults speaking to slow kindergarteners, with a fine edge in sarcasm.

Mai was undeterred. "You can make it that simple."

He shook his head. "No, I can't."

"How about I make you make it that simple? Or would it damage your rep to get beaten up by a woman?"

"My rep?" He actually laughed at that. "That's pretty funny. Oh, my rep was cemented a long time ago, toots. I don't think a few bitch-slaps from you would change what I've done in my lifetime."

"You're right. Murderers do tend to carry the label until they die."

For a millisecond he looked at her with eyes that seemed able to penetrate steel. Mai wondered if she'd hit enough of a nerve to make him talk, but then that insufferable smirk descended once again.

"Your friend isn't dead. She's moving around just fine, last I checked."

Mai snorted.

"Actually, I was wondering how she managed to pull that one off. The Oricalchos has never failed yet. Neither has Raphael, come to that, and since I know he's still walking around with his soul intact - "

"So that's why you're here. You just want to know whether your trump card - " Mai almost grimaced at her poor choice of words " – has stopped working."

He held up his hands, palms facing her. "You caught me. Though given the tone of this little tête-à-tête, I doubt you're all that willing to fill in those annoying blanks for me, are you?"

"So you can go running back to your boss with inside secrets? Fuck off."

"Spoken like a true rough diamond. Ah, well, I guess it's back to the subterfuge for me." He grinned wickedly.

Mai wanted to smack him so hard he landed in the middle of next week with a broken jaw.

"If the wind changes, your face will stick like that."

"I'm going to ask you one last time: Where. Is. Anzu?"

"In. Side."

Mai made a disgusted noise, which did absolutely squat to help the situation, and didn't even make her feel better.

"You really thought it would be that simple? 'Grr, give me all the answers, Mr. Cute Biker Man,' 'Sure, sugar-pie, and would you like whipped cream with your bowl of Easy Pie?' If you're not careful, toots, you'll start to disappoint me."

"So what would make you tell me where she is?"

Valon shook his head again. "Look, even if I told you, there's no way you'd be able to do anything."

"I'll be the judge of that."

He linked his hands behind his head and observed her dubiously. "I'll bet you would, too. But frankly, I don't really fancy the idea of seeing you stripped of your soul and your body tossed on the garbage heap to starve to death."

Mai shivered, recalling the events of the Battleship, but kept up her glare.

Then an unpleasant thought struck her. She replayed the conversation in her head, and lurched a little. Was this Valon jerk coming on to her? He'd been instrumental in the loss of Anzu's soul, he'd openly aligned himself with people intent on the apocalypse, and now he was trying to play nice and come on to her?

Well, maybe instrumental was incorrect. It was Raphael who'd wrecked things, but Valon was his cohort, which made him guilty by proxy. It was more than enough for Mai to justify hating his guts. Besides, there was still the whole apocalypse thing.

Nevertheless …

She drew herself up and did one of the hardest things she'd ever done. It actually felt like squeezing broken glass out of her windpipe. "Please," she said in a small voice.

"What?"

"Please, just tell me where the stolen souls go. If I choose to charge in to rescue them, then that's my business, but I'm going to go looking anyway, and it'd make things a lot easier if you just told me now. I'm going to find out somehow."

Valon rolled his eyes. "Do you have any idea what would happen to me if I did what you're asking?"

"We could protect you."

"You and your bunch of merry idiots? They don't look to be in much shape to protect an unwary native from getting squashed under an elephant's bum, let alone deal with the kind of big magick that'd be involved if I did what you're asking. Besides which, why should I even consider doing as you say? The Oricalchos reaps unworthy souls for a much higher purpose than you can even imagine. What possible reason could I have for betraying my side of proceedings?"

"Because your 'side of proceedings' only causes pain and misery wherever it goes."

"So?"

"It needs to be stopped."

"Why?"

"Because … because it does. You can't just go around stealing souls and threatening the fucking planet because your mother didn't give you enough hugs as a baby, or whatever reason you're using to justify what you do. You talk about reasons to help us, but what possible reason could you have to stay where you are? Why the hell would anyone want to do what you and your cronies are fixing to do?"

"You have no idea."

"You're right. I don't." She lowered her eyes. "Maybe … maybe I did once, but not anymore. But whatever reason you think you have, it's not good enough to justify what you're proposing. What gives you the right to judge other people? What makes you so morally superior?"

"Nothing." He shrugged. "That's why I'm the dogsbody and not the big boss." He didn't sound in the least bit perturbed by her words. "Every time one of us gets involved in a duel, we risk becoming the next sacrifice. It's a risk we're prepared to take. We know that, in the end, we're serving a higher purpose in some way."

"A higher … The apocalypse is not a higher purpose. It's … it's lunacy."

"No, it's not. It's the ultimate solution for the world's problems. Humanity has spent thousands of years messing up the planet. Now it's time to pay the piper."

"On whose authority?"

Valon just shrugged, though it was unclear whether this was because he didn't want to tell her the answer, or because he didn't know.

And what did she expect? Immediate contrition, him falling to his knees and declaring that she'd made him see the light, and oh, how had he ever considered turning away from the path of righteousness?

Yeah, right. Only in the movies. Bad movies, at that.

"Please," she tried once more, injecting the word with enough submissiveness to sink a barge and turn an ironclad stomach.

"No."

"Look, just fucking tell me!" Mai snapped. Her voice caught. It was humiliating, how pathetic she sounded. "For fuck's sake, haven't you ever lost anyone before?"

He flinched – barely. Really it was the barely discernible flicker of his eyelids, but to someone searching desperately for a weak spot, it resounded loud and clear. "Now looky here - "

"No, now you look here," Mai retorted. "I don't care why you do what you do, I really don't. Take your higher purposes, roll them in a ball and shove them up your ass. All I care about is getting my friend back and stopping the end of the world. And yeah, that sounds like a line from a bad B-movie, but I don't freaking care how I sound anymore. If I have to trek the whole world to save her; if I have to march right into the lion's den, roll myself in raw mince and then stick my head in its mouth, well fuck, then that's what I'll do. I've been through too much to just walk away now, and Anzu's done more for me than anyone else alive. You wouldn't understand what she's given to me, but I'd never forgive myself if I didn't at least try to save her. Fuck it, she has dreams, and I'm going to make sure she lives them. If you're not going to help me, fine, fuck you. But if you're going to stand in my way, then we'd better get this over with right now so I can get on with what I need to do." Mai popped the compartment attached to her belt and pulled out her duel deck.

Valon watched her dispassionately, arms folded. "Are you quite finished?" He sounded bored.

"Let's duel."

"I have a better idea. Let's not."

"Duel me!"

"No!"

"Duel me!"

"No!"

The force of his shout took Mai aback.

Valon frowned at her, the expression morphing his handsome face into something else. He looked almost pained, but it was short-lived and covered over quickly. He seemed a master of disguising his true feelings, though his reflexes needed work – two tricks Mai had learned over the years.

"You know, Mai, you're a lot like me," he went on in a much more subdued tone. "In another world, in another time and place, perhaps we could've been on the same side. But we're not, and despite what you might think of me, I have no interest in harvesting your soul for the Leviathan."

"The Leviathan?"

He ignored the question. "I wasn't lying when I said I know more about you than you realise. Crazy-stalker-ish as it might sound, once upon a time I believed I was the best hope you had of getting your life back. I didn't set out to make circumstances what they were, and heck knows I didn't go looking for damsels in distress. But then I saw you on TV at the Battle City Tournament. You caught my attention, and I thought, 'Hey, maybe there's someone who'd understand how the universe can screw you over so royally that lying in the gutter with an open stomach wound would be an improvement'. I thought I could connect with you. But then that lot," he jabbed a thumb at the camper van and its contents, "swept you up and spirited you off, back into the life you'd left behind. Instead of going forward, with me, you went backwards. You didn't need my help anymore. They got in my way. So I went back to my boss, and I got on with my job, and I tried to forget about you. It worked, too. Maybe you don't approve of it, but it's what I've been doing for years now, and I have to say, I'm very good at it.

"Then, lo and behind, our paths crossed again, and wouldn't you know it? Once more I'm the best hope you have of setting your little world back on its axis. So the question is, what do I do with this position of power? Do I give you what you want, screwing myself over yet again, or do I get on with what I do best and wreak a little revenge on your 'friends' as a bonus?"

Mai was speechless. The hand clutching her deck trembled a little as she struggled to process this information. "You've … since … I'm not an object … got my own mind … Battle City?" she said lamely.

"You had potential back then. You knew what it was like to be so miserable and alone that it hurt your very soul. You could've been one of us."

She shook her head so vehemently her vertebrae protested. "No," she murmured. "Never. I'd never join people like you. I'm not like that."

Valon just looked at her. His gaze was very eloquent, but Mai refused to believe what it was saying.

"So, I say again, what do I do?"

"You're expecting me to answer that for you?" she asked incredulously.

"No. But let me ask you one more question." His eyes burned. Mai could almost feel her skin sizzle and her hair start to shrivel. "This Anzu chick, the one who started the ball rolling for your grand recovery into the craptitude of everyday life: Would you die for her?"

"What?" Instinctively, Mai moved into a defensive posture.

"Don't be so tense. I'm not going to shoot you. Just answer the question. After everything you've been through, all the pain and suffering you survived, would you give it all up? Give up everything you've worked towards for someone else's dreams? Is she so important to you that you'd sacrifice your life to save hers?"

Mai swallowed, but considered this. It was easy enough to make wild claims like that when you thought nobody was listening, but when there was the possibility that someone might actually take you up on it …

She'd worked so hard to get her life back on track. She'd been clinically depressed after Malik – she knew that now, and was more ready to admit it to herself. A lot of people thought depression was just a vague, neurotic concept, like an updated version of 'suffering from nerves', which everyone knew translated as 'feeling sorry for yourself for no good reason'. After all, you're alive, right? She'd survived a terrible ordeal, but she hadn't died from it. She was still around and kicking. At her lowest ebb, she'd thought that people would deem her as merely indulging herself, wallowing in pathetic teenage angst that was well past its use-by date, and that all she needed to do was 'pull herself together' and 'snap out of it'.

Anzu and her friends had forced her to realise that she had a real problem. They didn't think she was overreacting, and they'd helped her come to terms with herself and her troubles.

Mai remembered that first night, when Anzu stayed over and tended to her in small hours, sometimes waking her from a nightmare, sometimes just sitting there and stroking her hand so she wouldn't be alone as she fell asleep. She remembered Anzu tumbling into the apartment using the spare key from under the welcome mat, dumping groceries on the table and refusing to rub at the bags that sagged under her eyes when she smiled. She remembered little things – the way Anzu always put her left shoe on first; the way she plucked discontentedly at her fringe but never changed it; her idealistic view of friendship and myopic faith in her friends; the way she didn't always know the right thing to say, but said the wrong thing with such conviction that you wanted her to believe it was right.

Mai remembered going to Anzu's house at her invitation, sitting on Anzu's sofa and watching Anzu's TV with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. She remembered the feeling of safety that had enveloped her then; of thinking that perhaps she could get better, and that perhaps she didn't need to be alone to be strong.

Mai took a deep breath. "Yes."

Valon nodded. "Wasn't sure for a minute there." Then he turned and walked away.

"Hey!" Mai started to sprint after him, but he whipped around so suddenly that she all but cannoned into his arms.

"Whoa, Nelly. I'm not leaving."

"You bas- wait, you're not?" Mai was confused – and embarrassed. Angrily she disentangled herself from him, inching backwards to get further away from his creepy hands, with their half-assed gauntlets and invisible bloodstains. "What the hell kind of game are you playing, you arrogant - "

"Don't say anything you might regret, toots, otherwise I might just do what you said and get out of your way without helping you."

"Excuse me?"

"Typical. She spends all this time screaming at me, and then forgets about it five seconds later."

Mai's brain was working overtime. "You mean … you're going to help us? But what about all that stuff about working for a higher purpose, and your boss, and being good at your job?"

"All of that still matters, just not as much as this. Let's say you've convinced, ooh, about seventy-three percent of me." He shrugged. "Call me a dumbass, but I like you, Mai Kujaku. You're irreplaceable. The thought of you dying doesn't fill me with joy, and the thought of you dying pointlessly makes me downright sad. And I think I've had enough of being sad." His wicked grin was back. "Maybe when this is all over – provided we both survive and the world's still turning – I could take you out for coffee?"

And for the second time in as many minutes, Mai found he'd made her speechless.

---

FINIS.

---

Well I keep on moving – moving on.

Things are bound to be improving, these days.

One of these days.

-- From These Days, by Jackson Browne/Griffin House.

---

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

Unforsaken.

-- I went through so many titles for this fic – I spent six months writing it, and they tend to wrack up over a time period like that. The first was Broken Triangle, which comes from something Seraphwalker said in a review of the original fic, Variation on a Theme: To wit 'Most fiction, there's some sort of love triangle going on. But in this fic, it looks like someone took a hammer to said triangle and bashed it beyond recognition. Leaving the rest of us to look at it in morbid fascination, wondering if we we even WANT any of the pieces to fit', and this title seemed perfectly acceptable until Mai, Otogi, Ryou and the rest demanded some screen time and the focus moved beyond just the Yami-Anzu-Yuugi trois-from-hell. So then I went with I'm Sorry I'm Not Perfect, adapted from song lyrics by Simple Plan.

Did you know you used to be my hero?
All the days you spent with me
Now seem so far away.

We lost it all -
Nothing lasts forever.
I'm sorry,
I can't be perfect.
Now it's just too late
And we can't go back.

Thisworked well for the whole trois theme again, but those pesky secondary characters weren't happy at all. Enter Facing Failure, a reference to the song These Days, by Jackson Browne (and covered by Griffin House for the Treat Williams show Everwood), a few sumptuous lyrics of which stayed on as bookends in the final fic. Very nice, I thought. This'll do, I thought. Bloody hell, I thought, because it still wasn't quite right. Then I read a song rec on orin's Livejournal account. Sockity-sock to the head, Miss Scribbler, that fanfic you've been agonising over might just be titled at last. And it ties in quite nicely with the chapter titles in Variation on a Theme. Feckin' yes! So while the bookends are courtesy of Jackson Browne, the actual title of the fic finds its roots in Lies by Evanescence.

Rest in me and I'll comfort you
I have lived and I died for you
Abide in me and I vow to you
I will never forsake you.

Yes, I know, I've committed the cardinal sin of using Evanescence to title a fic; I should hand in my author card and write my name on the fanbrat roll call. But remember one thing; it could be worse. I could have made it a songfic.

Schmoopy was a docile enough horse.

-- Was Rebecca's horse ever given a name in canon? I'm not sure, but for what it's worth, Schmoopy was one of her nicknames for Yuugi in the dub. For all her intelligence, I imagine her as being the kind of girl who'd name her cat Fluffy without thinking about the cliché factor.

Mai had the kind of razor-edged directness that haemophiliacs feared.

-- Inspired by an exchange in the webcomic Queen of Wands by Aeire (w w w . queenofwands . net). The actual lines went: "You're serious, aren't you?" "Like a haemophiliac in a razorblade factory."

When Rebecca's spoon clinked into the empty bowl Ryou took a deep breath.

-- As I recall, Ryou always had an affinity for food in canon, so it stands to reason he'd use it as a comforter in times of dire stress - whether eating, or just preparing meals for other people.I imagine him as a real comfort eater who never gains an ounce and so is the envy of all his female friends.

"He's throwing up again." … It's why I'm still kind of small now, even though I'm getting older. Even I know that you don't walk with your stomach.

-- Reference to a short fic of mine called Reality Always Knocks Twice, though you don't have to have read it to get the gist of what memory Yami's seeing here. It's just a bit of trivia, since I'm marking down informational titbits and side-flings in these notes. Wouldn't want to be accused of plagiarising myself (which has, actually, happened before).

Grandma Kiri did the raising while he was on digs, looking for buried treasure.

-- Kiri also showed up briefly in another short fic of mine, Another Roll of the Dice: Five Things That Never Happened in Yu-Gi-Oh. She's Yuugi's mother's mother, since canonical resemblance would seem to indicate Sugoroku is from the maternal side of Yuugi's family tree.

His wild courage was a byword. Yuugi would hurl himself into conflict against impossible odds without so much as a second thought.

-- From Protector of the Small IV, by Tamora Pierce.

People deny it all their lives. They fall in love. They make families and friends. But the fact is, we die alone.

-- Partly taken from Immortal, by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder.

It may be self-destructive, and it may be unappetising, but dealing with your own guilt is always easier than dealing with the pain you've caused others.

-- An idea that's very prevelant in My Legendary Girlfriend, by Mike Gayle.

This guy's was more like something that lay on sandbanks waiting for incautious swimmers.

-- I think I picked this up from a Terry Pratchett novel, but I forget which one.

"I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I'm Valon."

-- Yes, I'm aware that many people rename him 'Varon' in fanfic, but since 'l' and 'r' are often interchangeable when Romanising Japanese names, and since I got to know him through the dub, he'll always be Valon to me, and so he's Valon here, too. Hang, draw and quarter me if you must (though I'd really rather you didn't), but it isn't like the violently different dub name-changes that struck Honda and turned him into Tristan, or morphed Anzu into Téa. It really can go either way, and this is my preference.

She'd been champion of the European circuit before Anzu Mazaki so much as looked at a deck.

-- Side-fling to the Revival series, a succession of top quality YGO fanfics by MyAibou.

A lot of people thought depression was just a vague, neurotic concept … all she needed to do was 'pull herself together' and 'snap out of it'.

-- Though not strictly taken from it, this segment wouldn't exist without help from Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, by Marian Keyes.