Stolen Innocence
Summary:
A vicious attack leaves Yugi broken, but Yami's determined to pick
up the pieces. Yaoi
Fandom:
Yu-gi-oh
Pairings:
Mainly Yami/Yugi, some side-pairings
Warnings:
Yaoi, non-con, bad language
Disclaimer:
Don't own shit - poor me. Except Hiroko, Yoji and Kaori…they're
all mine, and I'll kill anyone who tries to steal them. I own
Tenchi too, but you're welcome to him. He's an asshole
Author's
Note: Just clarifying a point here – although Yami is plotting
revenge, his main concern at the moment is making sure Yugi doesn't
break down completely. Much as I enjoy constructive mutilation, the
main point of this fic is to provide an excuse for shameless fluff.
Although I suppose I could add some constructive mutilation if you really want me to…
Chapter 2
Yami's first instinctive reaction was anger. But after, inevitably, came guilt. It was almost four in the morning when he got home. He was exhausted, but his conscience wouldn't let him sleep. I was supposed to protect him. I should have been there. He lay awake for hours. The only way to silence his conscience was to drown it, and it was with the aid of a bottle of whiskey that he finally slipped into a shallow, nightmare-haunted sleep.
When he woke the next morning – or possibly afternoon – there was a brief, blissful moment in which he remembered absolutely nothing about the previous day. Then reality came flooding back in merciless detail, bringing a wicked headache with it. He moaned and buried his head in his arms – the real world was currently an unfriendly place, full of pain and unpleasant memories.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Yugi needs you.
Ah, there was that damned conscience again. But irritating and intrusive though it may have been, Yami was forced to admit that it was right. He took a couple of painkillers and went searching for fresh clothes – screw visiting hours.
XxXxXxX
Doctor Tenchi Okama was twenty-four, and it was barely six months since he had graduated from university. He was determined to excel at his first job – admittedly mainly in the hopes of getting a reference for a more prestigious hospital. To this end, he had read the rule book from cover to cover.
His immediate superior was Doctor Hiroko Shima, and her sometimes blatant disregard for the rules…or rather; The Rules, irritated him immensely. He had yet to grasp that the rules were in most cases guidelines, to be bent slightly or ignored completely at the discretion of the experienced official. Fortunately they now worked separate shifts, so their very different approaches to their profession could only clash on the occasional day where one or the other worked overtime.
Tenchi was convinced that the world would be a better place if everyone followed The Rules.
And as such, he was nothing short of shocked to find someone who was neither patient nor staff in the hospital outside of normal visiting hours. It was an outrage! He hurried after the offending person as they walked purposefully down the corridor.
"I
wouldn't," said a voice to his left. He stopped and looked over.
Kaori, a motherly middle-aged nurse, was sitting at the Duty Nurse's
desk, idly leafing though some records. She glanced up at him again
and shook her head warningly.
"Why
not?" he asked, confused. She clearly didn't understand the
situation – The Rules stated quite clearly that no visitors were to
be allowed outside of visiting hours.
"For
various reasons," she replied, setting the records aside and
regarding him intently; "Firstly – the young man you seem to want
to apprehend is currently very angry at the world in general, and it
would be extremely stupid to make yourself too easy a target."
"I
hardly think –"
"Secondly,"
she continued as if she hadn't heard him; "Doctor Shima seems to
have taken this case personally, and she wouldn't be happy to hear
that you had been interfering."
"I
am the senior official on duty," Tenchi said irritably, "It's
my decision."
Kaori
scowled. She'd been on duty since midnight, and she was in no mood
to put up with any wet-behind-the-ears doctor barely out of
university. "Don't you dare try to pull rank on me," she
snapped; "I've been nursing for more than thirty years – I was
working in this hospital before you were born, you jumped-up
bureaucratic incompetent."
"But
the rules say…" he protested feebly.
"The
rules say we are to care for the patient's physical and
mental health, don't they?" she cut him off with the air of
someone explaining to a recalcitrant four-year-old why he had to eat
his vegetables.
"Well,
yes, but…"
"I've
seen cases like this before, and right now that patient is going to
need a familiar face around. You have no idea how messed-up his head
must be right now."
"Look,
I'm sorry, but I have to…"
Kaori pursed her lips thoughtfully, then gave an evil smile; "I told you that Doctor Shima – your immediate superior – had taken this case personally. Wouldn't it be…tragic…if this incident was clouding her judgment when the time came for her to write your reference?"
Tenchi went white.
"I…er…I'll be in my office." He stalked away, muttering to himself. Kaori smirked. It was easy to manipulate people – you just had to know which buttons to press.
XxXxXxX
Hiroko was completely unsurprised to find Yami already there when she came on duty at 8pm. She suspected that he wouldn't have left at all if she hadn't made him.
She had gone home and went straight to bed when she finally clocked off at six in the morning. There was nothing quite like working night-shift to irrevocably screw up a person's internal clock – it was worse than jet-lag. By the time she had woken up, she'd only been able to get some probably-breakfast-but-technically-dinner before she had to leave for work again. For quite some time now, her routine had seemed to consist purely of either working or sleeping.
Life? What would I want with one of those?
She picked up a schedule from the young male trainee nurse who was working the desk – she did a quick mental search for his name and eventually come up with Yoji. Hiroko breathed a sigh of relief as she looked it over. There were no surgeries planned, so - barring emergencies - it would be a quiet night. Just doing the rounds…and making sure none of their current patients died unexpectedly. That was always so embarrassing.
"Kaori
told me that new doctor was trying to throw his weight around," the
trainee nurse said conversationally as she handed the clipboard back.
Hiroko groaned.
"Oh
gods, not again…" She stopped; "Wait, 'trying to'?" The
nurse grinned.
"You
know what Kaori's like - jerked him up short," he said, "I
think he's got a clearer idea of who's really running
things on his shift."
"About
time too," Hiroko muttered.
XxXxXxX
Things settled into a routine after that. Yami was always there when Hiroko came on duty, and it was invariably in the early hours of the morning that she finally convinced him to go home. By the end of the week, he was on friendly terms with almost all of the staff…except from, to quote Yami directly, "that idiot Okama".
He was also, Hiroko noted with approval, very protective of Yugi. It was fascinating to watch the two together. They didn't seem to have any sense of personal space – almost as if they weren't entirely two separate people…Which was, as any normal person would have said, ridiculous. Hiroko wasn't really sure what to believe. Her medical training had taught her not to look beyond the material world, and physical evidence. But she had seen things that shook that conviction – someone in a coma responding to the touch or voice of a friend, or a mortally injured person making a miraculous recovery at the plea of a loved one.
She still wasn't entirely clear on the exact nature of their relationship. Brothers? Unlikely. They certainly didn't act like it. If it wasn't for their resemblance, it probably wouldn't even have occurred to her. Friends? Unquestionably. But were they just friends? There was certainly something possessive about Yami's attitude, and a level of devotion beyond anything their other friends had shown. They visited the hospital – Yami was a step away from taking up residence.
The pathetically inadequate part of her mind that handled her conscience was pointing out that it really wasn't any of her business. It was lucky, in that case, that Hiroko had long ago perfected the art of completely ignoring her conscience. Screw you – I'm curious. Yeah, it's unprofessional…and I bet you can hear me caring from all the way over there.
TO BE CONTINUED
Damn, that was a hard chapter to write. So I'll understand if you hate it – I'm not even sure if I particularly like the stupid thing myself.
Review or I'll set Yami on you