Hey guys! It's been a while, huh? Super, super sorry about that.

But, as always, I have returned from my extended absence with a gift! I missed the anniversary again, but AHL has now turned a whopping three years old, so consider this a late present for all of you who have been here from the start, and all of my new readers! Hopefully this one satisfies your hunger for more until the next one goes up.

Once again, thanks for all of the reviews on the other chapters, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this one!

There's not much else to say, so I'll just leave you to it.

Enjoy!

Within seconds of hugging him, Landon's arms around me tensed. I looked up to see his face, and found that he was staring very hard at Atem, who Mom had invited in despite knowing how Landon was.

"Hey, Peach Fuzz," I said to get his attention - and also to poke fun at the stubble growing around his mouth and jawline - "you need to clean your jeep."

Landon's eyes shifted back down to me, and noticeably warmed. He let go of me and messed up my hair. "You need to clean your room."

I scoffed in mock offense, glaring at him from beneath my now-crazy hair. "I bet you haven't even been here long enough to see my room!"

"I don't need to see it to know you're a slob, dweeb," he winked at me, then laughed when I punched him in the arm for his insult, as true as it may have been. He looked much older than when I had last seen him a few months ago. His eyes were sharper, surrounded by fine lines that shouldn't have been on the face of a nineteen-year-old.

It also may have had to do with the fact that he frowned every time he glanced over at Atem.

"Oh!" Finally coming to my senses and realizing I hadn't introduced the two yet, I moved back over to Atem and grabbed his arm to pull him closer to Landon. Atem's expression mirrored my brother's, distrust emphasized by a rigid composure, even though I could tell he was trying to hide it behind his famous poker face. He didn't seem the least bit intimidated by Landon's suspicion, a quality none of my previous gentleman callers had demonstrated. "Landon," I spoke slowly to once again draw his attention away from glaring down at my boyfriend, who, though taller than me by a few inches, was still much shorter than the men in my family. When Landon's eyes fell to me again, I raised both eyebrows to indicate that I was a little annoyed at his behavior. "This is Atem, my boyfriend," Landon's expression darkened as I looked to Atem, "Atem, this is my brother, Landon. The one who plays Duel Monsters."

Atem held out his hand to shake Landon's. "Pleasure to meet you," he said, the strain in his voice audible evidence that it was taking a lot of effort not to return Landon's cold demeanor with an equally icy tone.

Landon raised his head just a bit so he could look down his nose at Atem, then took Atem's hand in a firm shake. I rolled my eyes. "And you," he said, eyes narrowed.

I glanced exasperatedly at Miri, who had been leaning against the couch since we'd shown up and biting back a smirk at my situation. She was much too familiar with scenes like this.

Knowing it would only get worse if she chose not to do something about it, Mom piped up in the sweetest voice possible, "Would anyone like tea? Coffee?"

It took a few moments of tense silence for Atem and Landon to break their manly staring contest. When they did, Atem was the first to speak up. "Actually, I should be heading home. It's very late and I still have some work to finish." His voice had lost its frostiness when he spoke to her, but I could still feel the discomfort radiating off him.

"Right," I added, knowing he was only using that as an excuse to get away from the predatory eyes of my older brother, "you've still got history homework. Do you want me to walk you to your car?"

Atem's relieved micro-expression did not escape my notice, and I smiled reassuringly at him. "No, that's alright. That would defeat the purpose of me walking you to your door."

"You'd just have to do it all over again," I teased, grabbing his hand. "Compromise. I'll walk you to the door to say goodbye."

The corner of his lips turned up, and he nodded.

"Shame you can't stay for a bit. I'd like to get to know you," Landon said, tone flat.

Atem's relief faded just a bit as he looked back to Landon. "And I you. I apologize."

Landon crossed his arms. "How about dinner with us next week? I grill some mean burgers."

"Landon!" I hissed. This time, when I looked to Mom for backup, she simply shrugged. Landon was a good cook, we hadn't actually sat down for a real dinner together in a while, and she really hadn't gotten much of a chance to talk to Atem either. I was fighting a losing battle.

Atem's eyes darted to me and my worried expression, and then returned to Landon. He had a lot on his plate next week; I had completely forgotten he'd mentioned that Kaiba's tournament began on Friday night. Seeming to come to an agreement with himself, he replied, "That would be great."

"Wonderful," Landon said, grin not quite reaching his eyes. "See you on Tuesday."

I sighed as Atem said his goodbyes to my family, trying his hardest to be polite even though he could feel Landon's eyes boring into him. Finally, when the formalities were over, I pulled him outside my front door and closed it behind us. "I'm so sorry. I should have warned you." I murmured.

He let out a breath he'd probably been holding since he first saw Landon in the room. "It's not your fault."

"Yeah, but I should have known he would give you trouble. He's really protective."

Atem smirked. "Understandable. His sister is beautiful. Not just any man should be able to claim her."

My cheeks flushed, and I grinned. "You're such a loser," I joked as I pulled him in for a kiss on the cheek. It was his turn to blush.

"Speaking of losing," he segwayed - though I was unsure whether he was trying to be funny or not - "The pre-tournament publicity event is on Thursday night. I'm allowed to bring a plus one."

"I'm sure Grandpa Muto would be honored to be your plus one," I teased.

He shook his head in amusement, then raised his eyebrows in a meaningful look. "I'm bringing you, fava-brain."

"Name calling? Now?" I scoffed, putting my hands on my hips, though his use of our childhood slander had me laughing internally. "How regal of you, your highness."

With a small chuckle, he placed a chaste kiss on my lips. "We have to be dressed nicely. Something about a black tie?" His eyes darted to the side, and his nose scrunched a bit as his brow furrowed. "I don't even know what a tie is."

I snorted. "It's something you wear around your neck, usually when you're dressed formally. In regards to dress code, it means you'll probably be wearing a tux and I'll have to find a nice dress." Just the idea of having to shop for one by myself - or worse, with Mom or Miri - made me cringe. Hopefully Yugi was bringing Tea as his plus-one so I could try on dresses with someone more sane.

Atem smirked. "I haven't seen you in a dress in three thousand years."

"An improvement, really," I blew a strand of hair out of my face. "It'll be a trek remembering not to step on the hem."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but a knock interrupted him. We both turned to find Miri at the living room window, giving me a significant look, a sign that we were taking too long to say goodbye. I hoped Miri hadn't been watching the two of us this whole time. "I take it I should probably go," Atem murmured, looking back to me.

"Sorry," I said again, shooting a glare at the window, which was now vacant.

"Again, not your fault," he pulled me in for a short embrace. "I'll see you tomorrow."

After saying our goodbyes, me thanking Atem for the amazing dinner he'd prepared for me, and then planning when he would pick me up for school in the morning (my car was still parked in front of the Game Shop), we went our separate ways, and I stepped back inside. Landon's cold gaze greeted me.

"Good evening, dear brother," I said in a comically solemn tone, hoping I could at least get him to unfold his arms so he didn't look so intimidating. Mom and Miri had left the room; I could hear clattering in the kitchen, and I assumed Mom was making coffee.

Landon's brow fell. "How long have you two been dating?"

I sighed. "A couple of weeks."

He nodded slowly. "He seems decent. A bit standoffish, though."

"Probably because you were trying to murder him with your eyes," I deadpanned, raising an eyebrow. "He's actually a really nice guy."

"I'll decide that for myself," He uncrossed his arms and stretched. His dominating stance suddenly dissipated, and he grinned lazily at me. "Think I'm gonna crash. It was a long drive, and I'm beat."

As he strode down the hall to the guest bedroom and shut the door, I rolled my eyes. I loved my brother, but he was too much sometimes.

The smell of coffee hit my nose, and I turned to find Mom standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "Everything alright?" She asked hopefully.

I nodded, then smiled. "I just can't wait until he meets Mokuba."

"Are you going to give me an opinion, or are you just going to keep staring at me with that blank look in your eyes?"

Seeming to realize I was talking to her, Tea shook herself out of the strange trance she had been in and smiled sheepishly at me. "Sorry. I'm a little tired." The lie would have been convincing if there wasn't a faint tone of frustration evident in her voice.

I frowned. "There's something you're not telling me."

"No!" She answered a bit too quickly - and loudly - for my liking. Clearing her throat, she adjusted her tone and softened her worried expression. "It's just...the dress seems a bit…"

My lips pursed before I finished her sentence for her. "Unsubtle?"

Her smile faltered. "Yeah."

I smoothed out the fabric of the white empire-waisted dress, glancing at the faux gold detailing around my chest in the mirror. In a way, it was a thicker, mass-produced version of the kinds of dresses I remembered Isis - and, on special occasions, myself - wearing in ancient Egypt. My eyes went back to Tea. Maybe starting with this one hadn't been such a good idea. Whatever was bothering her, I had deduced from the pattern of her odd behavior that it had something to do with Atem and me.

"Yours looks really good, though." I repeated the words I said when we first stepped out of our dressing rooms, gesturing to her blush pink ensemble, which glittered at the torso and ended with a long, swishy skirt of tulle. "You should definitely set it aside just in case."

For a moment, the old Tea emerged and gave me a happy nod. "We should probably try on the others, then."

"Good plan," I said, turning back into my little cubicle and shutting the door behind me. I heard her do the same to my right.

We continued like that for another hour, struggling to get in and out of fancy dresses, and then struggling some more to get past the seemingly impenetrable barrier between the two of us. I would manage to coax her out of her shell for a short time, but then, at even the faintest mention of Atem - or Yugi, for some reason - she went careening back into herself. It was a constant game of conversational Jenga, and I was losing.

When we finally chose our gowns, I was relieved. It would be much easier to talk to my friend face-to-face at the lunch we planned on getting together.

We exchanged superficial small talk the entire way down there, and by the time we had sat in our booth and received our food, I was growing impatient. The empty restaurant might be the only place I would get to be alone with her. "Tea, no offense, but you've been acting really weird lately."

She looked up from her fingers, which she had been twiddling in her lap. "How so?"

I shot her a deadpan look. "Seriously? It's like you've got a switch in your brain that keeps turning you from my best friend to a sad, spiteful shell of her every time I mention Yugi or Atem."

With a slight shrug of her shoulders, she murmured, "I just…" After her words trailed off, she didn't elaborate for a full minute.

I raised my eyebrows. "Tea, you know you can tell me anything, right? I am the least likely person to judge you."

I waited for her to spill it, but all I got was a, "I don't know if I should say anything." Her blue eyes refused to meet mine.

"Say anything about what? We're friends, Tea. I'm not going to rip your throat out."

She squeezed her eyes shut, taking a long, drawn-out breath. When her eyes opened again twenty seconds later, they were gleaming with unshed tears. Presumably, something I said had made her crack. "Exactly. We're friends. I don't like doing this to my friends."

My eyebrows furrowed. That hadn't been the answer I was expecting. "What do you mean?"

"Keeping secrets. Especially when those secrets can seriously hurt you."

My heart pounded in my chest as realization crept in. This was it. This was what she'd been about to tell me at the museum, the reason she seemed to be getting so fed up with the group. I knew it hadn't been jealousy - Tea wasn't the jealous type.

"It's about Atem, isn't it? There's something the whole group has been hiding from me, and no one - not even Atem - will tell me what it is." I had known since the moment Atem began making imperceptible subject changes and frowning when I asked a question too many that there was a crucial piece of information I wasn't getting.

But if it had to do with Sagira and getting my memories back, why wouldn't they tell me?

She nodded, lips trembling.

"What is it?"

"Please understand, Erin...we - I never wanted to hurt you. We kept it from you because we didn't want you to freak out."

That wasn't a good sign. However, curiosity was still my middle name. "What have you been keeping from me?"

She closed her eyes for a moment, tears still falling silently down her face, and when she opened them again, they were shining with resignation. Voice low, she replied, "You're supposed to die, Erin."

My heart fluttered at those words, but my brain couldn't seem to comprehend their meaning. My blood ran cold as my mouth formed a small o. "What?" It was all I could do to not shout and attract unwanted attention.

Tea looked around the still-empty restaurant, and then back to me. "Please don't get mad at me."

I gave her a dubious look, but nonetheless quieted my voice so I didn't alert the waitress who had been startled by my sudden outburst. "I'm not mad at you. I just...I don't get it."

"Neither did we. We kept learning about your past lives, and no one really knows how or why you disappeared three thousand years ago...it was like a puzzle, and Yugi kind of...solved it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Atem told you when he was standing at the gates of the afterlife, Mahad gave him that riddle. What he didn't tell you were the conditions of his return to the world of the living," she took a deep, shaky breath, then shot another nervous glance around the room. The waitress had gone back to refilling salt and pepper containers. "Do you remember the lines of the riddle that talked about how time means nothing to you, but it still rules your fate?"

I nodded. "I thought it referred to the fact that even though my soul kept living, I was still mortal and would be reborn over and over again." The words sounded strange coming from my mouth. Why would Sagira have asked for this?

Tea shook her head. "That's what Yugi and Atem thought at first, too. But then we kept finding evidence that you were dying around the same age every time you were reborn."

"We don't know that for sure, though," I protested, though her words made much more sense than I was ready to admit.

She gave me a meaningful look. "Atem told us about Celeste. It was obvious that she was around your age, and she was about to die. And then there was Genevieve, who - on top of you remembering her death vividly - we have actual records of. And Sagira."

My eyes lowered to the table, choosing to focus on my half-eaten muffin. This was a lot to process. I was sure that later, when I had fully grasped the gravity of the situation, I would actually react like a normal human being. For now, it only made sense after everything else that had turned my life topsy-turvy that there would also be a stipulation like this. "So, if they all died at the same age Sagira was...which, according to Genevieve's records, is around eighteen and three months...then I should be dead by April."

An odd thing it was, to be talking about the date of my death so casually. I wonder if it was because I had no more room left in my brain for surprises.

Tea seemed to be thinking the same thing, because she frowned. "Aren't you scared?"

My lips pursed, and I leaned back in my booth. "To be honest, I'm more concerned about why Atem wouldn't tell me."

"He didn't want to -"

"Freak me out? Remind me of past heartache that I'm going to have to experience all over again? Make me fall in love with him one more time before I inevitably die for the hundredth time? I don't know if you've been paying attention, Tea, but he's already done those things." I didn't know why, but anger was beginning to bubble inside me. I could hear my own voice in my head, though slightly older and much wiser than me, murmuring curse words in a language I shouldn't have been able to understand. He was supposed to be safe. But like always, he stuck his nose where he knew it didn't belong for the sake of the Gods.

Tea looked to the side. "When you put it like that, the next part is going to piss you off even more."

"There's more?" Sagira was literally burning with rage in the back of my mind. This was the first time I could literally feel this ancient part of my soul, and it was slightly off-putting.

She sighed. "Atem didn't tell you this, either. Probably for the same reason he didn't tell you about your death. I assume he didn't want you to feel rushed or pressured, but I think you need to know now more than ever." She paused for a moment, leaning forward even more, though I was still slouched in my seat. "The lines that talk about how the Gods are apparently angry at you for what you did...and how you need to regain your memories and return to the afterlife. They weren't metaphorical."

"Lovely," I murmured, trying to keep my voice even despite the fire spreading to the rest of my body. I knew my expression had grown sharper, and something in my eyes made Tea flinch.

"Erin-" she began, but I cut her off.

"So what did Atem think I was going to do after he made me fall in love with him again? Did he think I would just let him take me back there? That I would just up and leave my family and my life here behind?" Next thing I knew, my tone had become aggressive, and I suddenly realized that it was no longer me who was speaking, but Sagira - the one who knew exactly what had happened three thousand years ago, and was defending her decision to the grave. "Does he have any idea what kind of punishment the Gods could have in store for me, considering what I've done? He's not going to get to spend eternity with me. They're going to rip us apart just like they did back then, and this time, I won't be able to do anything about it because I'll have already been fed to Ammut!"

Tea sat back, stunned at my eruption. It took me a moment to realize what I had just said. The hot tingling of Sagira's anger slowly faded from my limbs, bringing with it a sense of numbness and lethargy. I blinked. What...what had just happened?

Tea's brow creased in worry. "What you've done?" She muttered. Her eyes grew wide. "You know what you did!"

I shook my head, my breath matching the trembling of my hands as I tried to clasp them in my lap. "No...I don't." I whispered. The presence in the back of my mind was gone, leaving a hollow gap in my memory once more. If I had forced her to stay longer, would I have been able to remember what she was talking about?

"You just said…" her voice trailed off when she noticed my shaking limbs. "That wasn't you, was it?"

I shook my head again.

Another moment of silence passed, and then Tea dug around in her purse. "We should get out of here. You look like you need to rest." As she spoke, she placed enough bills to cover both of our meals and the tip for the waitress. "Come on."

She waited for me to slide out of the booth, and then placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. Once we had made it outside, she turned to me. "I'm sorry I told you all of that. You should have heard it from Atem." Genuine regret thickened her voice.

I looked up at her, giving her a small, though half-assed, smile. "It's okay. I'd rather Sagira not snap at him like she did to you. That argument would have sucked to go through."

Tea sighed. "Still, I don't think he or Yugi will be too happy when they find out."

Linking an arm with hers, I took in a deep breath of the cold winter air. "Don't worry. Whatever they say, I'll take your side."

She smiled and murmured her thanks as we began the trip back to my car. For a moment - despite the tension - everything seemed to be okay. We were finally talking the way we had before, and I was happy that she had opened up to me and told me the truth. The action served to make our friendship stronger.

Now, if only I could keep my super-pissed ancient self from exploding on my boyfriend the next time I saw him.

Tuesday night rolled around much too quickly for my liking. Between the heightening anxiety I was experiencing due to certain Sagira-related events and avoiding long conversations with Atem like the plague at school (which was hard, considering we were, you know, dating), I was definitely not ready to eat dinner while my brother tried to tear him to pieces.

"So, Atem," Landon said, breaking the silence that had fallen over the table while we took the first bites of our food. "Erin says you play Duel Monsters."

Atem gave him a curt nod and put down the french fry he had been about to eat, even though it had been halfway to his mouth. "I do."

Landon smiled knowingly. "I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, considering your twin brother is the King of Games."

"I guess not," Atem replied as politely as he could. I knew he was on edge from both the tournament and my odd behavior when he spoke to me. Still, he kept a casual air about him that deceived everyone but me.

"King of Games?" Mom asked in interest, cocking her head. "What does that mean?"

"He won Pegasus' Duel Monsters tournament a few years ago, and has been undefeated ever since," Landon explained. "Not even Seto Kaiba has been able to beat him at the game."

Mom nodded with a small, "Oh," but I knew she was just as lost as I was on the whole Duel Monsters thing. That was Landon's forte.

I half-wished I could be Miri at that moment; she had gone on another date with Mokuba after school, and therefore didn't have to deal with all of this. Of course, when she got home, she would have to answer to our brother, but she was probably having more fun than I was.

"Have you ever dueled your brother?" Landon asked, voice verging on genuinely curious.

I bit the inside of my cheek and looked to Atem, who sat right beside me. He nodded. "A few times. I have yet to come out on the winning side."

"Are you any good?"

If the expression I directed towards my brother at that question could have been translated into a noise, it would be our mother's voice warning, "That was rude!" I immediately came to Atem's defense. "Actually, he was invited to Kaiba's tournament this weekend."

"Really?" My brother's voice piqued in actual interest this time. When Atem nodded the affirmative, Landon's face broke into a sly smile. "Well, then I guess I'll see you there. I came to watch a friend of mine duel."

I silently cursed whatever powers may be. Of course he would be going to the tournament. As if juggling Kaiba's disdain for my very existence, Miri's involvement with his little brother, and the cult - which had been eerily silent - wasn't already enough. Now my brother had also been thrown into the equation for a quadruple whammy. A queasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

"-you two don't look exactly alike?" I shook myself out of my thoughts. I had missed some of the conversation while I had been lost in my own head.

Atem shot me a lightning-fast glance, and then I realized what Landon had asked. I glared at my brother for prying so obviously. "He and Yugi are fraternal twins. Atem looks more like their dad." I'd personally never met Yugi's dad, so I assumed he was out of the picture, and therefore Landon had no way of knowing whether I was telling the truth or not.

"Huh," was all my brother said in response to my slightly-rushed answer. Then, he abruptly changed the subject back to Duel Monsters: what Atem's favorite cards were, whether he believed that Yugi's Egyptian God Cards were actually gone or if it was a conspiracy (Atem was seemingly amused by this question, seeing as he had them hidden in his room at home), who he thought was going to be competing in the tournament. For a while, the two were getting along like they had been friends for years.

"So, Erin," Landon finally turned the conversation to me, "considering you're now dating an apparently talented duelist like Atem, surely you've learned a thing or two about Duel Monsters?"

I ignored Landon's backhanded comment about Atem. "Yeah, actually. He and Yugi have been teaching me how to use the card you gave me, and we've been working on my deck since the day we became friends."

"Interesting," Landon said, a smirk pulling on his face.

I gulped. If he brought up what I thought he was going to, I was dead meat.

"Because I specifically remember you saying a year ago that 'Magical Pokemon'" - he used his fingers to create air quotes around the phrase I had used to describe Duel Monsters - "was boring and useless. Funny how all it takes for you to change your mind is a pretty boy, huh?" I knew he was teasing, but he didn't know the intimate connection that Atem - and, by extension, I - shared with the game. I imagined stabbing sixteen-year-old Erin right in her stupid, uninformed face.

Atem sent an odd look my way, and I took a deep breath and glared at Landon. "People change," I said in a low voice. Thus began my own little staring contest with my brother. He seemed to realize his words hit a little below the belt, even if he didn't know exactly why.

Mom, sensing the tension as she had last week, clapped her hands together. "Let's have some dessert, shall we?"

"Yes," Landon said, breaking eye contact with me, "let's."

Another half-hour passed while we devoured the perfectly-baked carrot cake Mom had made, sharing small talk and diverting attention away from Landon's earlier jab and my cold reaction. Mom and Landon got to learn what Atem's favorite food was, what he liked to do outside of school (besides play Duel Monsters), and what he wanted to go to college for. Which, even though he was planning on whisking me off to the afterlife before I even began considering what my own major was going to be, he surprisingly had an answer for: politics, apparently.

Though I didn't take that seriously, considering his one-sided wink at me when he said it.

We hit the last straw in the small talk when Mom brought up what I wanted to be when I was little, and I groaned with my face in my hands.

With a chuckle, Atem turned to me. "A birdfeeder?"

Huffing at my mother, I tried to dive into my explanation despite Landon's overly-obnoxious snickers. "Not a birdfeeder as in those things you put out in your garden. I meant I wanted to feed the birds. Like, deliver food to the birds at the zoo." Kicking Landon under the table, I added, "I really liked birds as a kid."

"Really liked?" Landon asked, recovering swiftly from his laughing fit. "You were borderline obsessed. What was that one bird you always wanted to go see at the zoo? The big, greyish-blue one?"

I sighed. "The heron?"

Mom piped in fondly, grinning. "I remember! You would always run right up to it in the aviary and talk to it like the two of you were best friends."

Cringing at the memory, I nodded. "Yeah, yeah. I used to talk to birds. Thought I was a regular Snow White."

Atem was watching me with a strange twinkle in his eyes now. I could tell he was no longer invested in this conversation, but deep in thought. I wasn't sure how I felt about the barely-contained triumph on his face, like he had just solved a thousand-piece puzzle in ten minutes.

Our conversation continued as we cleared the table, turning instead to college choices and the pros and cons of choosing a local school versus one that was farther away. Atem didn't speak much on the subject, and I tried to talk around the lump in my throat as Mom rambled on about how excited she was for me to start going to a university next fall.

If what Tea had said was correct, I wouldn't make it to the fall.

Finally, Atem mentioned his curfew of ten o'clock, saving me from bursting into tears in front of my mother. It was already nine fifteen, and he needed to get home. Mom and Landon said their goodbyes - the latter sounding much more sincere this time after getting to know Atem better - and I walked Atem out to the front porch once again.

I didn't want to dwell for too long out there. I could feel my emotions crumpling themselves up inside of me; it was only a matter of time before I simply stopped trying to hide them.

Of course, Atem had never been a fool when it came to minute changes in my expressions. Once I had closed the door behind us, he let his concern show on his face. "Is there something bothering you?"

Shaking my head, I forced a smile. "Not at all."

"Erin," the chastising tone in his voice told me that this time, he wasn't taking no for an answer.

I took a deep breath. "It's nothing, really."

"It doesn't sound like nothing."

Excuses shot through my mind. I didn't want to ruin things this week. Not right before we were supposed to show up at a publicity event looking happy to be there. Not right before he dueled in Kaiba's tournament. He needed a clear head, and I needed time to mull over how to bring it up to him later. For now, I had to just let it be.

After all, I still had four months left, right?

Using the anxiety I was feeling to add credibility to my half-lie, I let my smile fade and glanced worriedly at the door, like someone was standing on the other side listening. "Did you see her at dinner? That's the happiest I've seen her since…"

Atem's frown softened, and he took my hand. "Your mom will get better. I promise."

"She can't wait until I go to college next year," I continued, more to see if he would say something about me not making it to my college years than to actually add to my previous statement. "I hope she goes into recession before then so she can help me move in."

He visibly stiffened.

I watched him closely, seeing the war going on behind his sharp purple eyes. Was he going to tell me?

A full minute of silence stretched between us, and I waited. Surely if he cared about my feelings as much as I thought he did, he would tell me.

Then, when another minute passed, a ghost of a smile darted across his face and disappeared. "I do, too."

The disappointment was heavy, but I tried to keep it from weighing down my features. I didn't say anything else, instead choosing to look anywhere but his face. Remnants of my anger from the weekend began to bubble up in my chest.

"I should get going," he murmured softly.

I nodded. "You should."

He narrowed his eyes a bit at my curt agreement, but didn't say anything about it. "Let me know if you need anything."

"I will." My voice was roughly the same temperature as a water bottle left in the back of a freezer.

After a moment of hesitation, he leaned in and placed a kiss on my forehead, then mumbled a goodbye. I mumbled one back.

An icy wind picked up just then, and he ducked out from the safety of my porch to get to his - Yugi's - car, throwing confused glances at me over his shoulder as he went. I wrapped my cardigan tighter around myself, following his movements until he was in the car. He pulled out of the driveway a bit too quickly.

As the shiny black chariot of Pharaoh Atem disappeared into the night, I couldn't help but wonder why I felt like there was still someone standing outside with me.

Talk about angst, huh?

But, I mean, can you blame Erin (or Sagira) for being so mad?

So Tea has finally come clean, and her friendship with Erin is right back on track. But what does this new revelation mean for the leading couple?

What will happen at Kaiba's tournament? What will the publicity event be like?

And, finally, do you think Erin's being paranoid now? Or is there really someone watching her?

As I said above, I apologize for my extra-long break. I have a lot on my plate right now, and very little time. However, now that we're getting into the juicy bits of the story, I am excited to write the next chapters. Keep your fingers crossed for a slightly quicker update time!

Thanks again to everyone who has reviewed so far, and will review in the future. Your words of encouragement keep me going past writer's block!

See you next time!

-creativelybored