Chapter 30: Left Behind

As the ceiling opened and Kaiba and Marik rose out of sight beyond it, Yami's stomach fell. Marik shot a smirk his way just before disappearing. From far below, the referee declared the first match of the finals would be held between Seto Kaiba and Marik Ishtar, immediately following the conclusion of the Qualifier.

He'd lost. And now it would be one more match before he could face Marik. Who knew what fate Kaiba would suffer in the meantime.

The dueling field hung in silence, like it echoed his devastation. Only he, Joey, and Mai remained. Joey was at 350 lifepoints; he was at 600. Mai was still at a full 4000. It was clear what the next match would be. What was the point in even continuing?

Below him, Mai drew a card in the silence.

"I equip my Cyber Harpie Lady with Rose Whip," she declared. Her harpie rose to 2100 attack points.

And then Yami felt the burn in his arm as she attacked. His Celtic Guard wasn't destroyed by the attack thanks to his special effect, but it didn't matter; it was enough to drain his lifepoints to zero.

It was over.

The ceiling above him opened, and his cart rose into another small room. Faint lights glowed at the edges of the ceiling, the only light in the room as the floor closed and the cart powered down. At the corner of the room, a small exit staircase waited, no doubt to take him to the roof of the tower.

Yami gathered his cards. Stacked them. Replaced them in his deck holder. But he didn't leave. He leaned against the back edge of the cart and sighed, rubbing his hands over his face.

He almost wasn't surprised when Shadi appeared.

They stood in silence, just looking at each other until Yami said, "Go on."

"Perhaps now you see my point." Shadi's face was expressionless. "As long as she is a distraction for you, you can accomplish nothing."

Yami unlatched his Duel Disk and set it beside him on the metal edge of the cart. His skin had faint red lines to show where the cuff had been.

"Marik is being controlled by his item," he said slowly. "That's what Ishizu told us."

The Millennium Puzzle seemed heavier on its chain. Yami pictured the shadows within, the swirling red skulls in the dark.

"Where does it come from? The dark power in the items?"

Shadi said nothing.

"You're always eager to share knowledge." Yami narrowed his eyes. "So share it."

But Shadi looked away. His thick gold earrings reflected dimly in the low light.

"Another question, then. You said within the rod is the mind that will never forget. So is everything he says about the past true?"

"Grind my bones." Marik's crooked smile seemed to lurk just outside his vision. "Set my blood in gold. You've sung that tune before."

"I could tell you about your life, Pharaoh. Wouldn't you like to know?"

Shadi moved to speak, hesitated. His earrings rotated just a bit, cast the reflection of gold across the shoulders of his white robe.

"3,000 years ago, you killed her. As you killed me."

"Speak," Yami ordered, his voice more commanding than it had ever been.

And Shadi sighed. "My pharaoh, there are events in the past that have been sealed even for those of us who lived them."

"For everyone who lived them—you're certain of that?"

Shadi looked down. "I thought I was. But perhaps the scales are more unbalanced than I ever imagined."

"You . . ." Yami started chuckling, low and drawn out and completely unamused. "You play god every time you appear, but you're just making it up as you go, aren't you? Stumbling in the dark as much as the rest of us."

"I never imagined I was. Even knowing that every Millennium Item holder is at times blinded by the shadows, I thought awareness alone kept me exempt."

"You're a fool. We all are." Yami rubbed his neck beneath the chain, and the puzzle swung gently against his chest. If he could have, he would have removed the item, set it aside even for a few minutes. But the chain was an appropriate symbol of the cold reality—without the puzzle, he couldn't stand in the real world at all. Without it, he couldn't live a single moment.

Which meant his every moment was tainted by shadows, even when he thought he was free of the influence.

"The shadows," Yami said, "tell me I'm justice incarnate. Incapable of mistake. That I can hold the very world together by my bare hands if I will it. Too often, I believe it, and then I stumble just when it's most important to walk straight. What do yours tell you?"

The spirit looked even paler than death. "That I can balance the scales. That I alone can tip and measure and ensure equality."

"So I run headfirst into my worst mistakes, and you create the very chaos you're attempting to avoid."

What did Yori's tell her?

Did she listen?

"I believe the prophecies," Shadi said, though his voice wasn't very convincing.

"These 'prophecies' you tombkeepers hold to—how are they given?" Yami raised an eyebrow. "Through the Millennium Necklace?"

"Not all," Shadi said.

Answer enough.

"Tell me about the past. Don't tell me prophecies. Tell me what you remember. What you actually lived." Yami hesitated. "Please."

After a few moments of silence, Shadi walked to the side of the cart. He leaned against the wall next to the track, stared straight ahead rather than meeting Yami's eyes.

"There isn't much," he said. "3,000 years of living is like a constant sandstorm against the past, eroding even the most precious of memories. Sometimes I wonder if what I do remember is even real or if I've reinvented it through the years of silent retellings."

Yami swallowed. "Tell me anyway."

"We had a courtyard." The spirit's eyes glazed, as if he were staring into a distant mirror Yami couldn't see. "My mother would scold me for dipping my hands in the fountain. She was afraid I would drown. I was much younger than you, so during most of the final events of your life, I was in that courtyard. Hiding from my mother. Dipping my hands in a fountain."

Yami scarcely breathed. "Was I pharaoh when you were born?"

"No, I don't believe so. But I can't remember when you took the throne, so perhaps." Shadi pursed his lips, thought for a few moments more, then continued, "I never saw my father without the Millennium Bracelet, so the items were created at least before my recollection, likely before my birth."

"Your father—" Yami nearly choked. "Your father had the bracelet? What of Yori?"

"Yaara?" Shadi smiled. "She was no priest. She was born a slave."

At Yami's expression, his smile softened. "Perhaps the best recommendation of your past character I can make is that you loved her anyway. I can't remember ever seeing you in person, but I remember Yaara's stories. The shadow of them, at least. I believe she single-handedly shaped my impression of the pharaoh from a silhouette on a palace balcony into someone fiercely human."

"Was she . . . ?" Yami's voice strangled itself into silence as his mind raced.

"From the beginning, then. She served first as a slave at the palace, a stranger to me, and if I was ever told of her duties there, the details are lost to me now. When I was perhaps six years of age, she came to serve in our household. The others in the house used to gossip about her, and though I can't remember what was said, I know I was warned not to trust her."

"Clearly you obeyed." Despite himself, Yami smiled. He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to hold in his jittering heart. Marik had told him he'd killed Yori. In truth, he'd loved her.

Perhaps his identity in the past wasn't to be feared after all.

"She was charming," Shadi said, as if that explained it all. "Outspoken. Witty. It will likely come as no surprise when I tell you that slave or no slave, she was not the type to keep her head down. But she was also kind. She never resented me for being born to a higher station, and she never talked down to me for being a child. She was my friend."

"Have you told her this?"

"Not the full details. Perhaps I should." For the first time, Shadi looked at him. "We have started with happiness, but I remember times beyond that."

It was enough to steal the energy from Yami's heart. But he forced himself to face the truth he had asked for. "What else?"

"I remember the first attack on the palace. I don't remember when it happened, but I saw the smoke from our courtyard. I thought I saw monsters clash within it—who knows if they were real monsters or my imagination of people. The guards said it was a man who called himself a king, that he'd come to declare war against the pharaoh. My mother hoped it was exaggerated. We were in the time of Egypt's greatest peace, and she had never imagined a war within my lifetime. Her hopes were in vain."

"That's the war," Yami said, "that never ended. The one you say has started over again in Domino."

"The very same, my pharaoh."

"What happened?"

Shadi looked away again. "Those memories have been sealed. I know it claimed the life of everyone I loved, but I can't remember how. 3,000 years I've asked myself how my father died, and only silence has answered back."

Yami's heart pinched. "There's a feeling I know well."

"There is one image. The impression of an idea I at times catch in my dreams." Shadi looked to the ceiling, or perhaps beyond it. He hesitated. "The idea that my father was killed not by an enemy, but by a fellow priest."

Silence fell in the dim room, and goosebumps rose on Yami's arms.

"Perhaps I cling to prophecy," Shadi said, "because I am confused by my own mind. Or perhaps the truth is our Egypt rotted from the head."

He cast Yami a pointed look, and Yami wished he could deny the possibility with confidence.

"Perhaps your priests betrayed you, my pharaoh, and they orchestrated your death and sealing within the Millennium Puzzle. Perhaps the betrayal came first from you, and the court supported your actions because we trusted Pharaoh to be God on Earth. Perhaps my own father was the traitor, and my household was killed in punishment. Perhaps the truth is something else entirely." He smiled tightly. "It is a terrible thing to wonder at the very ground one stands upon."

Another feeling Yami knew well.

"The rest of my memory, then: My father gave the bracelet to Yaara. I remember that, although I cannot picture his face as he did so. I remember he told her she held the hopes of all Egypt, that she was the unexpected key that prophecy had overlooked. I remember the day news broke within the city that the pharaoh and all his court was dead. I cannot remember if the cry was true, nor what had caused the tragedy besides 'war.' I remember the day I was anointed as a tombkeeper and given charge to guard the Millennium Items with my life, a life which, through the blessing of Ra, was extended to that future time when the nameless pharaoh returned."

"It must have been hard," Yami said. He'd lived those years in darkness. Shadi had watched time creep by in excruciating detail.

"All lives are," Shadi said.

"Thank you." Yami swallowed. "For your honesty and your service."

Shadi blinked. After a moment, he gave a nod.

"You said . . ." Yami hesitated, then pressed on, "the war of the past was a war between gods. The man who attacked the palace—which god did he champion?"

"The names have been sealed."

Of course. Shadi's memories hadn't given him many answers, but he would take what he could get. And though the man was at times irritating, Yami trusted him far more than possessed Marik (or normal Marik, for that matter).

Shadi stepped away from the wall. Then he turned back. "Speculation is no replacement for truth, but I do remember one thing about the monsters I saw the day the palace was attacked."

Yami waited.

"One was a god monster. The God of the Obelisk, commandable only by a pharaoh."

Had it been a duel? Ishizu had hinted as much at the museum—that dueling had existed in a very real form in Ancient Egypt, through magic tied to the Millennium Items.

"What of the other?" Yami asked.

Shadi opened his mouth, paused, then said simply, "It was gold."

Not the answer Yami had expected. "I'm afraid I fail to see the significance."

"There is a certain god who claims the color as his own."

Yami frowned. As he racked his limited memory, it was Sugoroku's voice that came to mind, the day Yori had first come to the game shop. "Gold is representative of the sun god, Ra, who was believed to be partially incarnated into each new pharaoh."

"No." Yami shook his head. "That wouldn't make sense."

"It wouldn't," Shadi agreed.

"You told me I was Ra's champion." Mr. Mutou had said that Ra's power was incarnated into each pharaoh.

"I told you every pharaoh is chosen of Ra. Such is our belief."

Yami remembered all too well the fury he'd felt at seeing Marik's copy of the phoenix god card, how seeing a soulless Ra had felt like a crime against his own soul. Surely the reason had to be that part of himself, however small, stemmed from Ra.

But he also remembered sitting with Yori on the floor of the game shop late at night while she told him, "Apparently I stole from Ra, and he wants me dead."

Yami had made a casual joke about beating Pegasus and said he could help her beat another creator, but he hadn't put real thought into the implications. There had been so much happening at the time. His mind had been on Kaiba's challenge, on the upcoming tournament, on the recent discoveries at the Egyptian exhibit.

What if Ra wasn't only against her but against him?

What if Ra had started the war?

"Ra is the great god of Egypt," Yami said, like that meant something. His mind tumbled over itself in an attempt to understand.

Shadi shook his head. "It was Osiris who flooded the Nile to lend fertility to the land of Egypt, Osiris who tended her soils and her people. Ra is the god of all creation, the god of all humanity."

"But he was called father to the pharaohs."

"In my experience, a father is as bound to scold as to encourage."

Somehow, Yami had thought there were a few things he could be certain of. Even without direct memory of his religion, of the gods he'd once worshipped, he'd heard Sugoroku speak of them often enough, and each mention had comforted his soul. He'd faced enemies in the mortal item holders; he'd never once looked to the heavens and expected to find enemies there.

"It is not my place to speak for the gods," Shadi said, "and not their obligation to speak to me. Therefore, with truth so hard to come by, I will continue to trust in prophecy over my own wild speculation."

"Yuugi's there," Yami whispered in sudden dawning horror.

When he'd used the necklace to see the boy with Ra, he'd shied from Ra's presence, even though he'd had no reason for the action.

Perhaps the reason was that an unremembered corner of his soul recognized in Ra his enemy.

"Ra has Yuugi. He's been there since Yori's duel." Yami swung the cart railing open, one foot already raised to run, only realizing after he'd done so that it was a pointless action. It wasn't like he could go charging after his partner.

When he glanced at Shadi, something in the tombkeeper's expression gave him pause.

"Did you know?" he demanded, another pointless action since it wasn't like the spirit could have done anything about it.

"I have not the link to the child which you possess," Shadi said. There was still something there, in his tone, in his rigidly blank expression. Yami was used to standing across the field from the best and worst poker faces.

"What is it?" he said. "What are you not saying?"

"I felt the imbalance when I visited you at Yori's bedside. I assumed you were aware, assumed it was impossible you couldn't know." Shadi reached within his robe, extracted the Millennium Scales. The item trembled in his hand, and one basket drooped dangerously low.

"Aware of what?"

"Of Yuugi's death."

As the world crashed around him, the silence rang in Yami's ears.

Joey tensed as the pharaoh's cart rose out of sight. It was just him and Mai left. He had to scoot forward and peer over the edge of his cart a bit to see her, and she had on a fierce scowl that made him sweat. Even with him only at 350 lifepoints and her at the full 4000, he had no doubt she had tricks up her sleeve to flip everything on its head. She wouldn't have sent Yami ahead otherwise. He was obviously the opponent she wanted to face.

And she deserved to. Joey'd done it again—gotten tunnel vision and played right into Kaiba's hands. Rich-boy had gotten what he'd wanted, and Joey was about to get eliminated.

"Well now, mon cher." Mai raised her voice, and it echoed up the metal tower. "It is a new duel."

He tried for a smile, tried to be happy for her. Honestly, she deserved the finals more than he did anyway. Kaiba was right, and Joey kept proving it.

She activated her facedown card. As it rose and cast shining light across the tower, Joey swallowed. Would it be a trap to flip their lifepoints? Maybe Swords of Revealing Light to keep him from doing anything for three turns?

It was a spell card, not a trap. Something called Gallant Gift, with a picture of a ribbon-wrapped box bursting at the seams with sunlight. Beyond the familiar blue-green border that marked all spell cards, Joey didn't recognize it.

Mai was quick to tell him. "If my opponent's lifepoints are below mine, I may draw cards. But for each card I draw, my opponent gains 2000 lifepoints."

Joey blinked. "Hang on. That—"

She drew a card.

Joey's stomach rose as his cart lowered down the wall like an elevator. He gripped the side rail with his empty hand—going down in an open cart was much worse than going up. He released a breath as he came to a stop just below the 2000-point marker.

"Hmm. Not quite the card I hoped for." Mai glanced up at him, and she drew another card.

"Mai—" The cart dropped again, and he grabbed the railing.

He reached the bottom, back to the starting point, and Mai met his gaze evenly from across the tower.

"There now." Her expression softened. "A fair fight."

His face burned. "Just go to the finals, Mai. You don't gotta fight me for it; I'll withdraw."

"Don't you dare!" she snapped. "I have chosen my opponent just as Monsieur Kaiba did. Only a coward would rob me of it."

"You don't wanna fight me."

"Why not?"

"I'm a hack! You heard Kaiba. I only got this far by clingin' to Yuugi. You deserve a real opponent."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Serenity, saw her crestfallen expression and drooping banner. He couldn't bear to look right at her; it had been better to be thirty feet in the air.

Mai just stared at him until he finally met her eyes again. Then she said, "The duelist I met on the boat to Pegasus's island is not the same duelist who won such an outstanding victory last night in the semi-finals. You have grown, mon cher. More than you can see from inside the reflection."

"Nah," Joey said tightly, "I ain't grown at all."

He'd thought he had, but he still had the same weaknesses, the same problems. He still couldn't survive on his own.

She shook her head. "Then prove it. If you fight your best against me and lose, I will believe your self-pity. But not until I see it with my own eyes."

He sighed. Even the idea of drawing a card felt like more effort than he could give, but the arguing was draining, too, and Mai was stubborn.

"Fine," he said. What was one more public humiliation when he already had so many?

"The use of Gallant Gift automatically ends my turn. Your move, mon cher."

Joey drew a card. He could barely even see it. Most of him just wanted to give up and lie down; it was the same feeling he got after one of his dad's beatings. But he took a deep breath just like he did at those times, and he blinked hard, and he looked at his hand.

He had Magical Arm Shield facedown on the field. He had no monsters, thanks to his own Time Wizard. Just thinking of it made that zero-energy feeling stronger.

"Baby Dragon [1200/700]," he announced. "Attack mode."

He pressed the card to a monster slot, and the small orange dragon gave a happy chirp as it appeared on the field. If Kaiba had still been in the room, he would have made some quip about how Joey couldn't even muster a full dragon. Joey looked up at the ceiling. Any time you wanna fall in on me, he thought, be my guest.

Mai had four monsters on the field, all of them stronger than his pathetic dragon.

He could just end his turn. He had no other monsters in his hand, and he only had one normal summon per turn anyway. There was no way he'd catch up to Mai's monster army.

But dropping to zero meant going to the finals. And Joey couldn't stand the thought of facing Yami in a fight. There were some humiliations he drew the line at. So he plucked another card from his hand and slid it into a spell slot.

"I play Scapegoat."

Four little balls of fluff with curled ram's horns appeared before him, each one a different color. They couldn't attack, and they couldn't be used for a tribute summon, but they had to be destroyed individually before his other monsters could be attacked. Four trash monsters to delay the inevitable.

"Turn end."

As Mai drew her card, Joey stuck his empty hand in his pocket out of force of habit. His fingers hit something hard, and he blinked in surprise.

It was the glass piglet, the one Kris had given him.

He pulled his hand from his pocket, gripped the railing instead.

He was glad she hadn't come to watch.

Note: There's a lot happening in the story, and I'm never sure I'm balancing it well, just doing my best. I hope you guys enjoyed!