Disclaimer: Like the moon and sun, these are only mine in the sense that I can see and appreciate them, but trying to take them for myself will result in ashes for retinas. Or something like that.
A/N: So ... I wrote a thing. And because I can't leave well enough alone, it features the Anzu of Variation on a Theme-verse. And it's also a crossover with one of my other big fandoms. As I said, because I can't leave well enough alone. Did I mention that I can't leave well enough alone?
Feedback: Most welcome from all quarters.
Hand of Friendship
© Scribbler, July 2006.
There's a time for everything, and right now, it's time for nail polish. Or, more specifically, a time for buying new nail polish, since hers has run out and her hands feel naked without it. She wonders why that is, since she never used to wear polish before Yami came into her life, but the thoughts are quickly swept away by unfamiliar names in an unfamiliar store.
She lifts bottles from their niches: Gypsy Rose, Twilit Tryst, Empathy - what's wrong with just calling a spade a spade? Pink, Blue and ... some sort of bland peachy thing. Blech. They'e all too pastel anyway. She puts them back and resumes searching for black, or at the very least dark purple - yet more echoes of the changes in her since her life B.Y. (Before Yami). Though she still clung to the odd pink scrap, most pastel has been exorcised from her wardrobe, to be replaced by a whole lot of pleather and vinyl that made her suitcase weight a ton when she finally boarded the plane to New York.
She makes a frustrated noise. Almost immediatly someone thrusts a tiny glass bottle under her nose.
"Here."
It's marked 'Dark Dreamer', and is full of black polish.
"Hey, thanks." She straightens up. "But how did you know I was - "
"You just looked the type." Her rescuer from the romanticism of modern cosmetics looks like she fell out of a gothic manga; brunette hair with a strategically bleached splash, gauzy clothes over practically every inch of exposed whiter-shade-of-pale flesh, thick-soled boots, and a wariness in her eyes that reminds Anzu of Ryou right after he realised the Millenium Ring wasn't as gone as they all thought.
"Well ... thanks."
Suddenly Yami is there at her shoulder, scrutinising the girl. Anzu tastes his suspicion like old tea in the back of her throat. "There is something ... different about this one. She's known the touch of dark magic ... the fingerprints of evil are all over her, but she herself ... has no magic within her at all. She feels used ..."
He barely said a word about her roommates at the dance academy, though she knows he was assessing each and every one of them in the weirdly protective way that has pervaded his behaviour since the business with Dartz. That he chooses to comment now makes Anzu's proverbial ears prick. She misses her friends back in Domino so much it actually hurts, and somehow this, plus her appearance and habit of talking to herself, carried over into the Friendship Queen being practically friendless in the Land of the Free. Any hint of human connection has her radar bleeping, and it would be so much easier if that connection could be made with someone who might understand about the millenia-old dead pharoah living inside her head.
"You're not from around here, are you?" the girl asks.
Anzu shakes her head. "Not an easy accent to hide, is it? I'm from out of town. Way out of town. New York is pretty intimidating after the little place I grew up in. Everyone's so indifferent around here. Sometimes I feel like I could drop dead in the street and the only people who'd bother their heads would be the pickpockets and the trash sweepers."
At this, the girl gives a wary half-smile. "I'm not originally from around here either, but I live in a town close by. I just came in on a shopping trip for my roommate's birthday."
"She really likes pink, I take it." Anzu smirks at the fluffy pink hairband, fluffy pink pencil and pink (though unfluffy) nail polish in the girl's basket. "Bet that's fun to share personal space with."
"You have no idea."
Bet I do, Anzu thought privately, but said nothing. Sometimes the ghost of who she used to be felt like a third presence in her head.
"If you're overwhelmed or anything, I can ... show you around. If you like." This last sentence arrives with such veiled apprehension that Anzu automatically feels her heart clench and battered old friendship speeches rearing up in her brain. "I know a couple of cool stores ..."
"Be careful," Yami says. "I don't think she's ... all that she seems. And she feels hungry."
Anzu senses he isn't talking just about wanting tempura, and her heart clenches again. She thrusts out her hand. "I'd love that. The name's Mazaki, but you can call me Anzu."
The girl takes it. She's wearing gloves. Very affected, but the fabric feels nice under Anzu's palm. "I'm Rogue."
FINIS.