Yu-Gi-Oh!

Falling Out of Time

By Lucky_Ladybug

Notes: The characters from the show are not mine. Other characters and the story are mine! This is part of my Pendulum Swings verse that redeems the Big Five. It's a direct sequel to Fade Into the Rising Sun and continues plot points introduced in it and in Light the Sky With Silver, although probably the main thing readers should know is that there's a series of Chinese magical objects and two are still missing.

Chapter One

It was a quietly peaceful night at Lector's house, something all of the Big Five sorely needed after the recent calamity of Seto being stabbed by a magical dagger. They had spent the day at Penguin World and Lector had just returned from dutifully taking Vivian Wong to dinner—something he had promised her he would consider if she helped them find the antidote to the poison on the dagger. The others had all been anxiously waiting for his return, hoping that Vivian wouldn't have made any inappropriate advances or propositions again, and Lector had tried to dissuade their concerns upon his arrival. Now he was sorting through the day's mail. When he saw an envelope from his sister Evangeline, he opened it in surprise. She didn't usually write, preferring to call or text.

Several old pictures fell out across the kitchen counter, along with a note. Lector looked at the note first.

I found these while going through the hotel's pictures. I thought you should have them, Démas.

You were such a cute kid! The other one's cute too. You two sure hit it off. I wonder what happened to him?

Love, Evangeline

Lector picked up the nearest picture to him, a subconscious smile tugging at his lips. He had been six then. The other boy looked about two. He remembered when these had been taken. A family had been vacationing in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and their little boy had kept sitting in Lector's family's hotel lobby, playing with oversized building blocks over and over again. He formed them into towers, bridges, houses, anything that was possible. According to his parents, he wasn't social at all and preferred to stay alone and just build things. They had been a little concerned, but hoped it was just a phase he'd grow out of as he got older.

Lector had been bored and wandered over and the younger boy had looked up defensively, as if thinking this bigger kid was going to take his blocks. Lector still remembered the strange way his entire face had lit up upon really seeing Lector. He had instantly taken a liking to Lector and had actually pushed some of his blocks over to him, wanting him to play. They had played for some time until both had tired out. Then they had just curled up on the floor with the blocks and fallen asleep. One of the pictures showed the kid snuggled against Lector and draping an arm around him.

Lector turned it over. Démas and Robbie, was the inscription.

He always wondered what had happened to the boy too. All of their parents had thought the bonding adorable, and Robbie's parents had been overjoyed that he actually wanted to be with another kid. Why hadn't they stayed in contact?

Probably because the family didn't have the money to travel a lot and Robbie was too young to write. By the time he was old enough to do so, he likely didn't even remember the encounter. Still, it was a shame. The friendship should have been encouraged and developed. There would have been ways. The parents could have written for Robbie until he was old enough. And Lector had been old enough to write.

He sighed and shook his head. Hopeless wishes, like so many things.

Nesbitt wandered into the kitchen. "What's that?" he asked.

"Evangeline sent some pictures she found of me playing with another boy," Lector explained. "I've always wondered what happened to him. I wish we could have stayed in touch."

Nesbitt took the picture from him and then went completely stiff, the color draining from his face. "That's you?!" he choked out.

"Yes," Lector frowned. "I don't look that funny, do I?"

Nesbitt just shook his head and set the picture down, his hands trembling. As Lector stared in shock, Nesbitt opened his wallet and took out a well-worn identical picture, placing it next to the first.

Lector looked back and forth between the copies. It was unbelievable, but now the truth was obvious. He picked up Nesbitt's picture and turned it over. The ink-written inscription had long ago faded into an unreadable mass.

"Robbie," Lector whispered in disbelief. "Robert Nesbitt. . . ." He stared at his friend. "It was you! . . ."

Nesbitt sat down next to him. "My parents kept the pictures they'd been given and told me the story all the time," he said. "I wanted to have a picture too and I've kept it all these years. A memento of one of the few times I was like other kids," he added with a wry grunt.

Lector started to smile. ". . . That day, you looked at me like you already knew me," he mused. "Like I was an old friend returning at last."

Nesbitt shook his head. "I can't explain that."

"You must have sensed that it was special for us to be together . . . that we would form an unbreakable bond," Lector said. "As much as I never really believed in fate, we must have been meant to meet."

"I actually do remember that day . . . vaguely," Nesbitt said. "It's one of the few memories I have dating back that far. It did feel like you were my friend . . . that I'd come home, even, and I belonged there with you. I wanted to be with you more than I wanted to join the parties and parades. I was devastated when it was time for us to go home."

"You cried and cried," Lector agreed. "And I was upset too. I knew I was losing something very special. I remember running up to the attic and just hiding there for a while." He shook his head. "I wish our parents had found ways for us to keep in touch. . . ."

"Instead, mine wanted to focus on finding ways to get me interested in the kids back home," Nesbitt said. "They thought that since I finally liked someone, maybe there was hope." He frowned. ". . . I wonder if I met any of the others as a kid. I know I went right back to being unsociable when we got home, maybe partially out of defiance at having to leave you . . . although it seems like I kind of liked a kid I met in one of the playgroups. I remember he had glasses. Now I wonder if that was Johnson."

Lector chuckled. "I suppose that's possible. All the rest of you grew up in the same city and probably not that far apart from each other. Why couldn't you have met sometimes?"

"But by the time you and I met again, we had no idea we'd met in the past and we didn't even like each other." Nesbitt clenched a fist on the countertop. "Why couldn't we have sensed what we did as kids?"

"I suppose because we were all grown-up and we didn't listen to such feelings anymore, especially when we were each so annoyed by the other," Lector said. "Although I did know I had to move to Domino City to find work. Somehow I knew it couldn't be any other place. And I did sense something special about you as well as all the others, even though I could scarcely believe it at first."

"At least there was that," Nesbitt said.

Lector hesitated. "Did you ever feel that way about any of us?"

Nesbitt pondered on that. "I think I did," he realized. "I didn't understand what I was feeling, but when I was around one or more of you, I felt . . . like I was home."

"Even with me?" Lector countered.

"Yes," Nesbitt said. "Oh, I denied it tooth and nail at first, but when I started to see that you weren't the cold and hard person I'd thought, I couldn't deny it any more."

Lector smiled a bit.

"Although I never did connect that feeling with the kid I still missed," Nesbitt frowned. "I never once thought it was you."

"Well, at least we like each other now," Lector said. "We finally found again what we had back then."

Nesbitt nodded. "That's something to be grateful for."

Lector smiled a bit as he looked at the pictures. "Look at that. You even fell asleep the same way you do now if we ever happen to be on the same bed." He pointed to the arm draped over him. That only happened during traumatic experiences—but they went through so many that sometimes it seemed like it happened more often than it did.

Nesbitt flushed a bit in embarrassment. "I just wanted to be as close to you as possible. It was unusual for me to be that affectionate with anyone."

"It still is," Crump chirped as he and the others wandered into the kitchen. "But we're glad you've been lettin' us see you're a big softie. What's this?" He peered at the pictures on the counter.

"Nesbitt and I have been discovering we met as children," Lector explained.

"This is the two of you?" Johnson picked up a picture in surprise.

"Yeah," Nesbitt said.

Gansley smiled a bit. "Somehow I'm not surprised. With how close you are, it suits you."

"No kidding," Crump said. "Wow, you kids were really nuts about each other."

"I wonder what might have changed in our lives had our parents made sure we kept in touch," Lector mused.

"Maybe you never would've had trouble getting along," Crump said. "But maybe you would've, as you got older and realized you had opposite views on how to deal with stuff."

"There's no way to know," Nesbitt said. "It's probably better we didn't stay in touch. My mother would have pushed for us to get together as a couple." He grimaced. "She just can't grasp that any true relationship can be as close and as important as something romantic."

"But we know differently," Lector said.

Nesbitt hesitated. ". . . In spite of the trouble she would have caused, I wish I'd had my friend with me all through my life," he confessed. "I wish I'd had all my friends."

Lector smiled a bit sadly. "I certainly do."

"Boy, I'm sure we all do!" Crump exclaimed. "You might have been antisocial because you wanted to be, Nesbitt, but I sure wasn't. Everybody hated me and I hated that!"

"Do you suppose most, if not all, of us could have met as children?" Johnson wondered.

"I was just wondering if I met you at a playgroup my parents made me go to," Nesbitt said. "There was only one kid there I kind of liked, and he had glasses."

"It could have been me," Johnson said. "I'll have to ask my parents about the playgroups they took me to."

"I was already 19 when you were born, Nesbitt," Gansley mused.

"And I was 14," Crump added.

"But it's still not impossible that we could have met," Gansley said. "We could have passed each other in a store or sat near each other in a restaurant and we wouldn't have ever known."

"That's true," Nesbitt said.

"Anyway, the most important thing is that we know each other now," Lector said.

Everyone agreed on that.

"And you've known Lector for over twenty years, Nesbitt," Johnson said. "That's not bad at all."

"No, it isn't," Nesbitt said. "Although I know we both wish we'd liked each other from the first."

Lector nodded. "I wish a lot of things that can't ever be. But I'm glad that I finally know what became of Robbie." He smiled.

"I'm glad I know the truth now too," Nesbitt said. He took back his old picture, staring at it in a new round of disbelief. To think that he had been carrying this around all these years, never knowing the other boy had been by his side for so long now. . . .

"So," Crump said as he sank down on another stool at the counter, "any word on what the other missing Chinese magical items do?" He picked up one of the pictures, staring at the two kids while smiling fondly behind his moustache.

"When I took Vivian Wong to dinner, she said the other two are a crane and a fox," Lector said. "The crane is on a tiara and it's similar to the phoenix in Chinese mythology. The fox is on a whip handle, and that item represents death."

"Life and death?" Crump grimaced. "That's pretty hefty stuff."

"What exactly do they do?" Gansley frowned. "Grant life and take it away?"

"Something like that, I suppose," Lector said. "She didn't tell me more. I had the feeling she might not have known more and was too prideful to say so. Or I could be wrong and she wanted to proposition me for that information, but she decided to save that for later."

"If she'd clean up her act, I might be interested in her," Crump said. "She really is a pretty girl."

"Well, she didn't try to proposition me at all at dinner," Lector said. "She was actually on very good behavior. But whether or not that will last is something I wouldn't count on."

"That figures," Crump sighed.

"I wouldn't trust her from here to the refrigerator," Gansley said flatly. "But hopefully she was telling the truth about the other items."

"That doesn't solve the problem of where they are, though," Johnson said. He worriedly pushed up his glasses.

"It sure doesn't," Lector drawled with a sigh. "Let's just hope they haven't fallen into the wrong hands."

xxxx

Mokuba sighed happily as he walked down the street on the winter's night. It was cold and snowy and more snow was forecast, so he hoped he could have a fun snow day with Marik on the morrow. Seto was still recovering from being poisoned and stabbed, and Mokuba wanted to make sure he kept resting, so he hadn't even asked Seto to join in. He knew Seto would try to do so, even if he shouldn't.

Mokuba knew he probably shouldn't be out this late, but he wanted to check on Lector. The man didn't live that far away and Mokuba knew he'd taken Vivian out to dinner out of politeness. Mokuba couldn't help wanting to know how it had gone.

He wanted to believe things were going to be peaceful for a while, although he doubted it when there were still magical items at large. If it wasn't for that, however, things were seeming more and more amazing, with Seto and Téa drawing closer together and Seto and Joey coming to a better understanding. If only the disasters would stop happening, life would be incredible. Mokuba had to take whatever enjoyment he could in between problems.

Movement up ahead caught his eye and he jumped. He had almost reached Lector's house, and someone seemed to be loitering about the gates. Someone who looked all-too-familiar, and yet he was someone who surely wouldn't be there. Mokuba shook his head, but the sight remained.

"It's gotta be all the stress," he said to himself. "It's really getting to me."

Still, he came closer. As he crunched through the snow, the figure violently flinched and turned. Now he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "Mokuba . . ."

Mokuba gasped. "It is you! Noa . . ." He perked up. "Are you here for another visit? I guess the barrier between the worlds must be pretty thin again after what just happened, huh?"

Noa stared at him. "What just happened?!" he exclaimed.

"Seto being poisoned," Mokuba said in confused surprise. "Didn't you already know about that? Isn't that why you're here, to check up on everybody?"

Noa's gaze darted from side to side. "I . . ." He looked back at the house. "I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry, Mokuba. Please forget I was here!" With that, he turned and ran back through the snow into the darkness of the night.

Mokuba stared after him. "Noa . . ."

It was then that he saw the impossible. Noa had left footprints in the snow. But . . . a ghost wouldn't leave footprints. . . .

"No way," he gasped. "Noa's alive?!"

He started to chase after Noa, running alongside the footprints. But up ahead they stopped and Noa darted into a waiting cab. It pealed off, spraying snow in all directions. Mokuba stood staring, his heart pounding in his disbelief.

"Noa can't be alive," he said aloud to the scenery. "And if he is . . . why doesn't he want anyone to know it?!"