Author's note: With the last chapter, we've officially reached the end of canon. The remaining seven themes will be my own vision of what everyone might be doing in the next couple of post-canon years. Your mileage may vary. For what it's worth, this fits within the same continuity as my other post-canon fics. SPOILERS for the end of the series.

Rating: K+

#24 Good night

The night Jounouchi Katsuya graduated from high school was a good night. He hadn't expected it to be. He'd thought the afternoon ceremony in particular would be completely anti-climactic with him standing alone to the side while his friends took pictures with their family members. Anzu's parents would make a huge fuss. Honda's mother and sister would weep loudly and embarrass him. Even Yugi's mostly absent mother and Bakura's distant father were both flying in from overseas to attend. Jounouchi alone would be the one who was, well, alone.

Except… that's now how it happened. When the graduating seniors entered the gymnasium, single-file in their blue caps and gowns, there in the third row right between Yugi's mother and Honda's sister sat Shizuka and… his mother. Jounouchi blinked as Shizuka gave a small proud wave and his mother smiled nervously.

It had been mostly Anzu's doing, he found out later. Each student had been given a handful of tickets to give to family members for the ceremony and as Anzu had both sets of grandparents plus at least a dozen aunts and uncles coming in for the occasion, he thought his would go to better use in her hands. His mother and sister wouldn't come because his father would be there, only his father had no interest in being there at all. Jounouchi had shrugged it off as unimportant, but she'd seen through him and sent two tickets on to Shizuka, who had then pestered their mother, insisting their father wouldn't be there and someone needed to be. And so they'd come.

"I'm proud of you, Katsuya," his mother said after the ceremony. "You've grown into a fine young man. I… I wish I could take some credit for that," she said, faltering.

He wasn't sure what to say to that. "Thanks Ma," was all he could manage, as he leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. It was, he realized at that moment, the first time he'd given or received a kiss from his mother since the morning she left him, taking his sister with her.

Shizuka, naturally, was much less reserved. She threw her arms around his neck, unabashedly sobbing. "I can't believe you're a high school graduate!" she cried.

"Never thought I'd make it, huh Sis?" he joked.

"What? Of course I knew you'd make it, you moron!" she shot back. "I'm just so happy you're going to be moving out and I can come and visit you whenever I want!"

"You better believe it, Sis. Anytime."

Both his mother and sister came to the party Yugi's grandfather and mother threw at the game shop that evening. With cheeks aching from smiling for all the pictures and necks stiff from bowing in gratitude over congratulations received, the graduates along with Shizuka made their escape upstairs to Yugi's bedroom. My bedroom soon, Jounouchi thought with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

He couldn't wait to get away from his father, to come and work for Gramps and live here in a place where he was wanted, where he wouldn't have to trip over empty beer and bourbon bottles or worry about disturbing yet another hangover. But when he did come here, it would mean Yugi was gone, off to Cairo with Professor Hawkins to study Egyptology. Honda and Anzu would be gone, too. Anzu had enrolled in a dance school in New York, her lifelong dream. Honda had joined the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force and would be off to boot camp.

But there was time yet. It was only the end of March and Yugi and Honda weren't leaving until the beginning of May, with Anzu leaving a couple weeks later. For now they had six weeks. Six weeks of freedom. No school. No work. No hassles.

No other Yugi.

But that was okay, too. In the three months since his… departure, for lack of a better word, they'd adjusted. It hadn't even been that hard, at least not for him and Honda. Yugi was as Yugi had always been and the other Yugi—Atem—had been not entirely separate to them, so things didn't seem nearly as hard as he thought they'd be.

For Yugi himself, it had been more difficult, but he'd accepted his other self's absence with greater aplomb than Jounouchi would've thought possible. "It's weird how it doesn't feel as different as I thought it would," he'd told them. "I'd thought it would be like before he came, but I don't feel like that person at all anymore. In some ways, it's like he's still with me."

Jounouchi wasn't surprised. How could Yugi possibly feel the same as he had before his other self had entered his life? Their time together had changed him, changed both of them. He was no longer the person he was before Atem, nor was he the person he was with Atem. He was a new being altogether. One that was a little bit the old Yugi, a little bit the King of Games, and a little bit something else entirely.

Even Anzu had adjusted. After spending a week avoiding them so she could grieve alone, she'd allowed Yugi to pull her back into their circle and everything seemed good. Normal. Too normal, actually, since the bulk of their friendship over the last three years consisted of fighting off psychotic creeps with nothing more than a deck of cards and a holographic duel disk.

God, he was gonna miss it.

But tonight was a night for celebration. They were high school graduates. They were alive. They were together, for six more weeks anyway. And even Shizuka was with them and he didn't have to worry about her getting swallowed up by some living version of a Duel Monster or a dark game.

"I'm so jealous of all you guys," Shizuka told them. "I wish I was done with school."

"It's only two more years," Anzu said.

"Do you know what you wanna do after high school?" Honda asked, sliding a little too close to Shizuka. Jounouchi glared at him.

Shizuka lowered her head, embarrassed. "Well, I dunno. I kinda want…" She took a breath and started again. "I've been going to doctors my whole life and they've always been kinda big and scary. Eventually I got used to them and even would joke around with my regular Ophthalmologist a lot, but still, when I think of doctors, I always have this impression of kind of mean gods. They hold life in their hands and they know it.

"That's part of why I was afraid to have the surgery, I think. Well, it was way more complicated than that, but it was part of it. Then after the surgery when I was still in the hospital, I met a little boy named Kento who was there for a bunch of tests he was afraid to take. He ran into my room to escape the nurses and I helped him hide and then we watched Big Brother's duel with Insector Haga online. He kept thinking Big Brother would lose every time he got in a tight spot, but I kept telling him to have faith, that you can't give up. When Big Brother won the duel, it really motivated Kento to be brave and to not let the doctors intimidate him just because they're so big and powerful, just like Big Brother didn't let Haga intimidate him just because he had more powerful cards."

"Hey!" Jounouchi protested. "He did not have more powerful cards! I could kick his—"

"Oh, shut up, Jounouchi, and let her continue," Anzu chastised him.

"Then when we were on Kaiba's air ship for the Battle City finals and everyone was getting hurt, I kept remembering how the doctors were so cold and matter-of-fact about how Mai and Big Brother were doing. I keep remembering Honda shouting at them to do something, and even though I know they're not all-powerful, it was like they didn't care that they couldn't help. It was so frustrating.

"Ever since then, I've been thinking that it shouldn't be that way. Doctors are supposed to be healers, right? They're not gods. They're just people with a lot of skill and training. And I was thinking, I could have that skill and that training. I could do what they do, only I could do it in a way that comforted people, too. And then, I dunno." She looked down, embarrassed again. "Then maybe I could help people the way you all have."

"So you wanna be doctor?" Yugi asked. "That's really cool, Shizuka. I think you'd be really good at it."

"Me too," Honda hastened to add, and Jounouchi glared at him again.

Anzu also chimed in with support for the idea, but Bakura and Jounouchi were silent.

"Bakura-kun?" Yugi asked, noticing their friend's silence. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Yugi," Bakura said quietly. "It's just… she's right about all the things you all have done, and it bothers me to know that I caused so much of it."

"It wasn't you," Yugi protested, and they all added their agreement.

"Not completely," Bakura capitulated, "but I don't feel as if I'm entirely without blame, either. Everything that happened over the last couple of years is going to take me some time to process, you know? I wish… I just wish that I had been stronger. That I had been able to control it."

"It wasn't your fault," Yugi insisted. "No one could've controlled something like that."

"You did."

Yugi looked down, his blond forelocks falling in front of his face and shielding his eyes. "Not really. I didn't even know the other… Atem was there at first. And then later we worked as a team, but only because he allowed it. I wouldn't have been strong enough to stop him if he really didn't want me to."

It wasn't true, Jounouchi knew, and all the others knew it, too, but arguing with him would've just made Bakura feel worse, so no one said anything.

"I should go," Bakura said suddenly. "I'm leaving for England in a few days and there are a million things I need to do first."

"Please stay, Bakura-kun," Yugi said, reaching out to him. "Who knows when we'll see you again once you leave. This is our night to celebrate our accomplishments, not to dwell on painful memories."

Bakura met his eyes for a moment, and then Anzu added, "Yes, Bakura, please stay."

"Yeah, dude, it's graduation night, you don't wanna be packing tonight," Honda said.

Bakura gave them a weak smile. "All right, if you insist. Thank you."

They changed the subject, sharing school memories that had nothing to do with Duel Monsters, Egyptian artifacts, or possessing spirits, but Jounouchi mostly stayed on the periphery, his thoughts far away. Shizuka wanted to be a doctor. That meant six years of undergraduate work at university—and a real university, not just a community college like where he was thinking of maybe taking a class here and there. And then after that, four years doctoral work.

That was ten years of schooling. Who was going to pay for all that? Their mother? Certainly she'd want to, but Jounouchi knew she was still in debt from all of Shizuka's medical expenses for the first thirteen years of her life. The Duelist Kingdom prize money had paid for all the expenses related to the operation itself, but there had been nothing left over to help pay off earlier debts. How was she going to be able to afford ten years of medical school?

Their father wasn't even worth thinking about. Even without taking into account his complete unwillingness to recognize any obligation toward his daughter whatsoever, any money that he might have saved for her education had been spent at the horse track or casino long ago.

But if Shizuka wanted to be a doctor, then by God she was going to be a doctor, Jounouchi vowed. There were still two years for him to start saving up. And once all his friends left Domino, he would have nothing to do in his spare time but look into scholarships and tuition reductions at various universities around Japan. Maybe even Domino University…

"You're awfully quiet," Shizuka said, and he was surprised to see that she had slipped up beside him.

He smiled. "I'm just thinking about what you said about wanting to be a doctor. That is so cool. You'd be really good at it."

She smiled and blushed. "Thanks. That means a lot to me, that you believe in me, Big Brother."

"Always." He took her hand and squeezed it. "We're a team, right?"

"Right," she agreed, squeezing his hand back.

There was a knock on the door and then Yugi's grandfather poked his head in. "All right you high school graduates. Us old folks are getting tired. Your folks are all getting ready to head home, but you kids can stay up if you'd like, or even go out and celebrate. Just come down and say good night, first."

"Thanks, Grandpa," Yugi said. "We'll be right down."

Gramps nodded and withdrew, closing the door behind him and they all got up and stretched.

"I'm starved," Jounouchi announced. "Let's go get some pizza or something."

"You're always hungry," Anzu complained.

"I'd rather do Burger World," Yugi put in, but Anzu groaned.

"Not on my night off, please!"

"Tempura?" Shizuka suggested.

"No, Okonomiyaki," Honda put in.

"We can figure it out after we say good night to everyone," Yugi said, cutting off the brewing argument as he headed for the door. The others followed him out of the room and through the house to the stairs that led down into the game shop.

"It is a good night, isn't it?" Shizuka asked.

"You made it one, Sis. Thanks for coming. And even for bringing Mom."

She took his hand again and gave it another squeeze. "We had to be here. I'm so proud of you, Big Brother."

"Not as proud as I am of you, Dr. Kawai," he grinned, and she giggled. "Now let's go see off the old people so we can go get some food."