Author's Note:

I've long been fascinated by Jounouchi's past. I'm a sucker for a good redemption story, and Jounouchi's is interesting because we meet him at his exact turning point, his moment of clarity. It is only through flashbacks and bits and pieces of past history that we get to glimpse what it was he needed redeeming from.

When we meet Jounouchi and Honda, they're petty bullies, tormenting Yugi by taking his Puzzle from him and teasing him, but they are a much lesser threat than the violent and terrifying Ushio, from whom Yugi must defend them. Later, however, we find out how violent Jounouchi's past really was; at one point, he was on the path to being Ushio.

What's interesting to me is that this means that even before returning the Puzzle piece and setting the entire premise of the series in motion, Jounouchi had already decided he didn't want to be what he once was. Somewhere along the way, he must've had another moment of clarity, something to get him from being Hirutani's Number Two to being nothing worse than the annoying punk we meet on page one of the first Yu-gi-oh manga. Meeting Yugi was the final step for him, but what was the first?

This is my attempt at delving into that question, at looking at what could make Jounouchi hit rock bottom so that he could come back far enough that when Yugi finally does enter his life, he recognizes the value of the grace he's being offered and seizes it. It's Jounouchi's dark night of the soul.

But dawn is coming.

Rating: M (language, suggested adult themes)

#5 "Ano sa…" (Hey you know)

"Hey Jounouchi, wait up!"

Jounouchi turned around to find Hirutani coming toward him and Honda as they walked away from the middle school on their way to find something to do to fill up the rest of their Saturday. Honda made a small sound in the back of his throat, but Jounouchi ignored him and greeted Hirutani with a bump of their fists.

"Hey Hirutani, what's up?"

"I've been looking for you all morning. Where ya been?"

"Around," Jounouchi shrugged. He liked hanging out with Hirutani and the gang, but sometimes he got the feeling Hirutani thought he owned him, and no one owned Jounouchi Katsuya. He could do what he wanted, when he wanted, and with whom he wanted, and today he wanted to hang out with Honda Hiroto.

"Well, I've got awesome news," Hirutani enthused. "The 'rents are out of town. They left this morning and aren't coming back until Monday. My brother's supposed to be in charge, but he doesn't give a shit what I do, so I'm throwing a big-ass party. Booze, babes, cigarettes, music—it's gonna be off the hook!"

"Whoa, I'm totally there!" Jounouchi grinned, bumping fists with Hirutani again. His father spent Saturday nights either at the bar or the casino—or more likely, the bar at the casino—and wouldn't come stumbling home until sometime Sunday afternoon, so Jounouchi was free to do whatever he liked with his Saturday nights. Usually that meant tangling with some rival gang, asserting their authority, but a party sounded way better.

"There's gonna be some older kids from Rintama High School there, gonna give us the scoop for next year. We are so gonna run the place, Jou. Those high school gangs are already afraid of us after what we did to that eleventh-grader. He's still in the hospital."

Jounouchi saw Honda shift his weight from one foot to the other.

Hirutani noticed, too. "Hey Honda, you going to Rintama next year?"

It was an innocent enough question, but Jounouchi understood what he was really asking, and Honda did too. For the teachers and parents, choice of high school was about the future; you went to industrial-track Rintama if you were going straight into the workforce with no plans for college, and to the more integrated Domino High if you wanted to keep your options for college open.

For students, however, choice of high school was purely political. Hirutani and the rest of his gang were going to Rintama and it was assumed that they would control the turf. They'd spent the better part of ninth grade challenging high school gangs just to stake their claim in advance. Choosing to go to Rintama, therefore, implied aligning yourself with Hirutani, or at the very least, accepting his authority.

To not go to Rintama, to choose Domino High instead, was to reject Hirutani's gang. Honda, Jounouchi already knew, was planning on going to Domino. To Hirutani, however, he answered, "I dunno. Haven't decided yet."

"What's to decide?" Hirutani pressed. "Domino is for dorks and rich kids."

Honda shrugged. "Wanna keep my options open."

Hirutani didn't particularly like Honda. While Honda was as tough as any of the guys in the gang and loyal to a fault—there wasn't anyone Jounouchi would rather have backing him up in a fight—he had resisted getting involved or even hanging out with anyone in the gang other than Jounouchi, and this grated on Hirutani. He didn't like it when he couldn't completely control someone and Jounouchi suspected he especially didn't like that Jounouchi had someone who was more loyal to him than to Hirutani. Because of this, Jounouchi bristled in defense of his friend.

"Oh, quit making such a thing of it, Hirutani. Who cares what high school anyone goes to? Maybe I'll even go to Domino."

Hirutani raised his eyebrows at the direct challenge. "Careful, Jou." Know your place. They stood facing each other, eyes locked in a battle of wills. Then Hirutani laughed. "You just heard that rich bastard Kaiba goes there and are hoping to get in good with him." A truce.

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. "As if." Truce accepted.

"Anyway, be at my place around seven tonight, and bring some beer if you can snag some from your old man's stash."

"No way," Jounouchi shook his head. "I could disappear for a week and the old man wouldn't even know I was gone, but if so much as a drop of his booze disappeared, he'd be all over me like that," he snapped his fingers.

"Oh well, never mind. Bring money, then. My brother will buy the booze." Hirutani glanced at Honda. "You can bring your friend, too, if you want."

"That's okay," Honda replied quickly. "My sister just had a baby and we're gonna go visit them. Thanks anyway."

Hirutani narrowed his eyes for a moment, and then shrugged. "Your loss." Turning back to Jounouchi he said, "Okay, I gotta go get ready. See you tonight."

"You know it," Jounouchi replied, and Hirutani ambled off.

Jounouchi turned to Honda. "You told me you're not leaving until tomorrow morning to go to your sister's."

Honda gritted his teeth. "I just don't wanna go, okay? I'm not like you, Jounouchi. I don't fit in with those guys."

"You could if you wanted to," Jounouchi told him. "You're great in a fight—you've always got my back, anyway. You wouldn't be so nervous around them if you were one of us."

"I'm not nervous," Honda huffed.

"Eh, whatever," Jounouchi replied, clapping him on the back. He liked Honda, even if he wouldn't join the gang and was gonna go to Domino High. "Let's go to the arcade or something."

The party was everything Hirutani had promised it would be. Most of the kids were fourteen like him and Hirutani, but there were some older kids from Rintama just as Hirutani had promised, and a few younger kids from their middle school as well. The beer flowed freely along with some harder stuff, and Jounouchi, who had never really drank much before—his dad had always made getting drunk seem pretty unappealing—had already made his way through three bottles of Kirin Light. There were cigarettes, too; Hirutani seemed to have one perpetually dangling from his lips, but Jounouchi wasn't really interested.

And there were girls. Thousands of them, it seemed like. Giggling and bouncy and just begging to be kissed… or more.

"Hey you know, Jou," Hirutani mumbled through his cigarette as he threw his arm around Jounouchi's shoulders. "There's a girl here who likes you. Name's Aiko. Let me introduce you." He led Jounouchi through the throng of people to a corner where a girl waited. Jounouchi blinked. She was petite and looked a little younger than him with long red hair and green eyes.

She reminded him of Shizuka.

Naturally, the last thing he wanted to do was make out with a girl who looked like his sister, but he couldn't exactly tell Hirutani that. No one even knew he had a sister, not even Honda, so if he pulled her out of the air now, it would sound like a lame excuse, like he was afraid of being alone with a girl, which was so not true. And he didn't want Hirutani to know about Shizuka anyway. Even having her name out there in this world, his world, seemed wrong.

To make matters worse, thinking of Shizuka made him feel instantly guilty. After that first time she'd sent him a videotape, he'd gotten out an old tape recorder and rambled into it for a while to make a cassette to send back to her since he didn't have a video camera. She'd sent a few more videos over the past three years, but he'd stopped answering and eventually she'd stopped sending them. How could he send tapes back to her when he'd failed her? He'd first joined Hirutani's gang to get money to pay for her operation, but as it turned out, Hirutani had vastly overstated the wealth they could accumulate with the kinds of petty crimes they pulled. Mostly they just beat up rival gangs, posturing for territory and for street cred and for power.

As time went on, Jounouchi had stopped caring about the money that wasn't coming. He liked being in the gang. He liked the power and the feeling of being in control; Lord knew it was the only place in his life where he had any control. Hirutani was their leader, but Jounouchi knew that the rest of the gang looked up to him almost as much. Hell, by high school he could probably oust Hirutani altogether if he had half a mind to. Even kids outside the gang, like Honda, looked up to him and damn that felt good. But Shizuka would never understand that. She would never approve, never get why he needed this so much and a part of him was too ashamed to tell her the truth, and he couldn't make a tape for her and not tell her the truth, so he stopped making tapes and stopped trying to save money for her and tried not to think about her at all.

But now here was this girl that reminded him of her and he was acutely aware that a huge chunk of the gang was pressing around them, waiting to see what he would do, and he certainly wasn't going to be respected as anything close to a leader if they thought he was too chicken to even kiss a girl—which, come to think of it, might have been Hirutani's plan in the first place—so when she gave Jounouchi a nervous smile and said hi, he gave her his best cocky grin, closed his eyes and pretended she was a blonde instead of a redhead, then leaned over and kissed her. When the gang started whooping and catcalling behind him, he whispered in her ear, "Wanna go somewhere more private?" and without waiting for an answer, he pulled her by the arm into Hirutani's dad's den and closed the door behind them.

He was on her as soon as the door was closed, kissing her hard like he'd seen in those videos Hirutani had given him. He had no clue what he was doing and he had to keep his eyes closed and picture her as a blonde to keep going, but it felt good and powerful, almost like fighting. Clumsily, he reached into her shirt, and she backed away with a start.

"N-no, that's a little fast," she said, her voice small and tremulous, but Jounouchi didn't want that powerful feeling to stop, so he pulled her to him and kissed her again, making a move for her shirt once more, this time with a little more force.

It took her a moment, but she managed to twist away from him, pushing hard against his chest. "No! I don't wanna do that!" she said, and before he could grab her again, she stormed out of the den and through his mob of friends, her red hair flying out behind her in a way that made him think of how Shizuka used to run into her bedroom when their father got home. Suddenly it was no longer possible for him to pretend this girl was a blonde.

"Jounouchi, dude, what happened?" Hirutani laughed, and the rest of the gang followed him like sheep, bleating along with him.

"Eh, I was too much man for her," Jounouchi postured, putting all the cockiness he could muster into his voice.

Hirutani stopped laughing and got a cold glint in his eye. "Should we go after her? Teach her who's boss?"

Jounouchi thought of Shizuka running away when their father got home and suppressed a shudder. "Nah," he said breezily. "She's not worth the effort. Stupid worthless bitch."

It was almost three in the morning when Jounouchi stumbled home. It took him three tries to get the key into the lock and when he finally did he got no further than the living room before he collapsed in a heap. But damn he felt good. After the rough start with the redhead he'd had a few more beers and then switched to Jägermeister, even though he was vaguely aware you weren't supposed to mix drinks. But he was pleasantly surprised to find how easily the alcohol made everything else go away. He didn't think about the girl. He didn't think about Shizuka. He didn't think about Hirutani and who was in charge of the gang, or Rintama or Honda going to Domino, or much of anything at all. He just floated in nothingness, feeling blissful. While other guys who'd had as much to drink as he'd had were sick and throwing up in a corner, he still felt great, like he could take on the world. He knew he should go to bed, so he staggered to his feet and started to head toward his room, but when he passed the kitchen, he thought of the fridge and the beers his father had there. He wavered a moment, unsure what he should do. His father would kill him if any of his precious stash was gone, but the buzz was starting to wear off and Jounouchi wanted it back.

"Fuck it, I need another drink," he decided, then tottered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He was practically drooling as soon as his hand was on the bottle. Damn. No wonder Dad likes this stuff so much!

As soon as the thought floated through his head, the blissful feeling went away, replaced by a cold dread in the pit of his stomach. Where his mind had been pleasantly blank a moment before, it was now crowded with voices and memories.

You have done quite a good job into turning him into a little clone of you! his mother's voice came to him from the last fight she'd had with his father before she had taken Shizuka and left for good.

Stupid worthless bitch! That was his father, railing about Shizuka and how her vision problems and even her very existence had been the cause of everything that was bad in his life.

Fuck it, I need another drink. His father again, the night they'd found out for certain that Shizuka was going to go blind.

Jounouchi's mouth went dry and his hand started shaking. Slowly, he put the beer back into the fridge and then backed away as if it were something alive and feral stalking him. I'm not like him, I'm nothing like him, he thought frantically, but he knew that it wasn't true. He'd abandoned Shizuka, just like their father had, just because she made him feel guilty and powerless and he'd rather fight and drink and feel powerful than take care of her. Shit. Shit shit shit shit… "SHIT!" he screamed, grabbing the nearest thing he could find on the kitchen counter, which turned out to be the lid to a pot, and hurling it across the room. It clattered against the wall and he turned away, the refrigerator coming into view again. That beer, it would make all this go away…

"NO IT WON'T!" he shouted to himself, pounding his fists on the counter. "I AM NOT HIM AND I WILL NOT BECOME HIM!"

A moment later he had the phone in his hand and was dialing. A half-sleepy, half-panicked woman's voice answered, and he asked, "Is Hon—I mean, is Hiroto-kun there?"

There was a brief pause and then Honda's mother started shouting into the phone. Jounouchi pulled it away from his ear but still could catch the gist of her rant about the hour and scaring people in the middle of the night when they had a new grandbaby and thought all manner of things could be happening. Eventually the screaming stopped and Jounouchi put the receiver back to his ear to hear Honda trying to wrestle the phone away from his mother.

"I've got it, Ma, go back to bed."

"You tell your no-good friends they'd better not call in the middle of the night—"

"I know Ma, I'll handle it," Honda assured her, then he was talking into the phone. "Hello?"

"It's me."

"Jesus Christ, Jounouchi, what the hell is the matter with you! It's three o'clock in the goddamn morning, you idiot! My mom is gonna kill us both for this! She thought there was something wrong with the baby!"

"I know, Honda, I know, I'm sorry, but I…" He stopped, not sure what to say.

"What's wrong?" Honda asked, the irritation gone, replaced with concern. "You in jail or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Jounouchi assured him. "I… listen, I need your help."

"You got it, bro, whatever you need."

And Jounouchi told him everything, only leaving out anything that had to do with Shizuka. But he told him about the redhead and the beer and his father and how his mother had called him his clone and everything else. "Honda, I have watched my stupid father drink himself into oblivion my whole life and for the first time I got it. It felt so good to just drink everything away. But I… I don't wanna get it and I don't wanna be like him. Not ever. So help me. Don't let me do this again, okay? A beer here and there, fine, whatever, but don't ever let me drink like this again."

"Dude, I'm not your mother," Honda protested.

"I know, but you're… you're my best friend," he said, realizing even as he said it that it was true, even though he'd never said or even thought it before. Prior to this moment, if asked, he would have claimed Hirutani as his best friend.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. "Okay."

"You'll help me? You'll stop me from doing this again?"

"Yeah, if that's what you want. But you'd better not be a dick about it if I do, okay? You asked."

"No, definitely not, I swear. Thanks, Honda. I owe you man, really."

"Yeah you do. And don't call in the middle of the night anymore or my mom will kill us both."

"I won't."

"Okay, dude. See you at school Monday."

"Yeah, 'bye."

He hung up the phone, already feeling better. Just knowing that he had to be accountable to someone made it easier to walk away from the kitchen and to his bedroom. He was going to flop on the bed and go to sleep with his clothes on, but instead he went to his dresser. Digging through his underwear drawer, he found his stash of videotapes. Not the ones Hirutani had given him, but the important ones. The ones from Shizuka.

There were only four of them, and she'd sent the last one more than a year ago. He took them back out into the living room and put that one in the VCR first. In the video, she was eleven and starting to fill out a little. Her hair was long and loose over her shoulders, but her eyes were sad.

"I miss you, Big Brother. I… I guess you don't have time for a little sister you never see anymore, so I won't bother you again. But I wanted to say good-bye and tell you I love you and I miss you, and anytime you wanna send me a tape, or even a letter if that's easier—I can get someone at school to read it to me. But if you don't wanna, that's okay, too. I understand. Take care, Katsuya."

He wanted to make a tape for her, but he couldn't. She deserved better than him. Better than a drunken imitation of his father. Better than someone who felt up girls who didn't want to be felt up and who beat up other kids just because he could and… better than him.

"I'm sorry, Shizuka-chan," he whispered, putting his hand to the now empty TV screen.

It was four o'clock before he finally went to bed, trying not to think of Shizuka and how he'd let her down and suddenly more than anything he just wanted to get out. Out of this apartment, out of Hirutani's gang, out of his life. He thought about that for a moment. With high school just a few months away, maybe he could get out. Not out of everything, but out of the gang at least, out from under Hirutani's control.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. Forget Rintama and the industrial track. Forget Hirutani and the gang. He would go to school with Honda. He would go to Domino High. And for some reason, just deciding that made him feel a little better, as if going to Domino High would somehow completely change his life.

Well, it was a start anyway.