Series: To Accept Fate's Will||Story: Fire and Water
Characters: O'Brien, Sea God's Priestess, Shou||Pair: O'Brien x Sea God's Priestess
Chapters: 2-4||Words: 2,070||Total: 4,593
Genre: Romance, Drama||Rated: PG
Challenges: Diversity Writing: YGO soulmate AUs: H8: 4 chapters; Valentine's Day to White Day 2016, day #1, write a soulmate!AU; Easter Egg Basket Advent 2016, #11, write from a Duel Spiprit's POV
Timeframe: Season 3, episode 141 and after, set in a soulmate universe
Summary: She searches for two people: a hero who can defeat Haou and the soulmate she fears to find. And she may well find them in the very same person.
She carried gloves on her, of course. There were more reasons to have them than just not wanting to touch her soulmate with her bare hands. That was a reason she hadn't even thought of when she started carrying them.
But now she slid them on and started to go through her pack for other supplies. She wasn't a professional healer, not like a Holy Elf or some of the other healers she'd heard of, but she knew enough to take care of this.
I hope I do. Those claws had sunk in deep and been sharper than most she'd ever seen before. A few quick glances told her that there would be scars and the wounds would take time to heal.
Would it be time that he would have? That she couldn't say. She hoped that he would. She still hoped that he would take up the fight against Haou. But for now, she busied herself with settling him into a small cave, one with a tiny streamlet of water cascading out of it.
She gathered up enough wood to get a fire going and set a pan of water near it to heat up. She could see him watching her, staying quiet, but watching with fascination in his eyes.
"How long have you been here?" She asked, wanting to hear something aside from their mutual breathing. He shrugged, wincing at that. She would have to wash those wounds before she did anything else to them.
"Weeks. We came to search for a friend." He didn't seem to look up often, really. "But we found out that he died before we could find him."
She winced; she'd lost many friends of her own over the years. To think there had been a chance to save one and to be too late…
He hesitated as she set another pan of water down to heat. Something else was on his mind.
"Most of the rest of us died just before we found that out." He stared down again. She picked up a clean cloth, dampened it, and then began to carefully wipe his wounds. More blood came out when she did, but not as much as had been before.
"You were lucky," she said, but couldn't have said if she meant for not having died or because his wounds weren't fatal now.
He said nothing. Perhaps he wasn't sure of which she meant either. Instead, he grit his teeth and let her get along with cleaning.
There had to be something else that they could speak of that wasn't the war or the lost or anything like that. Or their bond. That would have been a reasonable topic, if he weren't so clearly dead set on going away once she took care of him.
"What world are you from?" She'd met people from other worlds since visitors began to drop in. He had to be from another such world.
Again he took his time before he answered but when he did, she was a bit surprised.
"We call it Earth. Dueling there… it's not like it is here." He laid a hand on his duel disk for a few seconds. "If you lose, you don't die."
She held her own silence as she made certain that the wounds wouldn't bleed anymore. She didn't s tart to talk again until she picked up the second pan of water and began to add herbs to it.
"That's not how it is where I come from as well." She let out a long sigh, remembering. "I come from a world of islands and oceans. This isn't at all like what I'm used to." A tiny twitch of a smile brushed across her lips. "My power – my effect – it's considered useless at home. Because almost everything is the ocean there."
He turned towards her, eyes tinted with confusion now. "It might be so there but you helped me here."
She ducked her head, cheeks tinging the faintest bits of red, and focused her attention on what she was doing. "That reminds me. I can see you are a duelist of fire. But you have a card like Anchor Bind. Why is that?"
She wasn't sure what she expected for an answer. She wasn't even certain if she expected an answer at all.
A long stretch of silence was all she heard at first. Then he spoke.
"My mother gave it to me when I was ready to leave for school. She told me that it might be useful. I wasn't certain if I believed her or not, but..." He offered a shrug. "It did come in handy this time."
She nodded. There was no way to argue about that, after all. Another question flicked across her thoughts.
"Is it allowed to tell your name in your world? It isn't quite in mine." She began to wind a strip of bandage around one of his arms. "I can tell you the name of the card based off of me, but my true name? I can only tell you that in rare cases."
That got a small tilt of his head and she offered a smile back.
"O'Brien," he said at last. "Austin O'Brien."
She nodded, tasting it softly on her tongue. A beautiful name, one that hummed with strength and commitment. Perhaps a taste of fear at the moment, but if he'd seen Haou kill his partner, that was only to be expected. What sort of fool wouldn't fear Haou?
"I can tell you mine," she said quietly. "But only if we touch. Names are sacred. Special. For my people, only the closest of friends or bonded soulmates may know them."
Again his head turned down. He shook it in denial and she didn't argue, just worked harder on getting him taken care of. Finally she had the last of the injuries all wrapped and tended.
"They'll need to be cleaned at least once a day," she told him. "And the dressing changed, of course."
When he started to get up, she pressed one gloved hand onto his shoulder. "You should eat first. It'll help you feel better."
She didn't have much food with her; she'd mostly gathered it while searching for a hero to fight Haou. But what she had would be enough for the two of them.
O'Brien gave her another look and she returned it with all of the calm she could manage. She didn't give him that much time to think about matters and perhaps turn her down. Instead, she started to pull her provisions out of her pack. Fruits and nuts and a few edible mushrooms; she settled those by the fire to get warm, since they tasted best like that. Then she dug deeper in and pulled out two large fish and a knife.
"Where did you find those?" O'Brien asked, a touch more curiosity in his tone than for anything else he'd asked of her so far.
She grinned as she picked one of the fish and began to carefully prepare it for cooking. "The village I came from had more than a temple to the sea god. Most of the people there fish and gather gemstones from the sea. I learned how to do this before I joined the temple."
He started to get up and she delivered a stare she'd seen her mother give her father several times. "Stay where you are. You don't need to do anything. You're healing."
O'Brien looked as if he were going to say something, probably in protest. She pressed her lips together for a moment before she gestured to the warming mushrooms.
"You can watch those. Turn them over and make sure they don't burn."
She set out two of the fruits as well. She wasn't sure of what they were called – she hadn't seen them before arriving in this area and no one had been able to tell her – but they were tasty and filling. "Peel these."
While he did that, she took care of the fish, settling them over the fire once they were ready. These fish cooked relatively fast and by the time the mushrooms were heated and the fruit peeled and sliced, everything was ready.
Together the two of them sat and ate, keeping a careful eye outside in case of any approaching soldiers of Haou. It wasn't something they could afford to let their guard down about.
But the whole meal passed, all of them filling their stomachs, without a single hint that anything at all dangerous lurked out there. When she finished, she rose up and started for the door. She hated to leave him like this, but the few words they'd exchanged told her that he had no intentions of being the hero who would help them.
"Be careful," she said at last, removing her gloves and putting them in her bag. "And I hope that you find your way home."
O'Brien bent his head briefly. "The same for you." He glanced at his wrist then at hers. She wondered for a few moments if he would relent, but if the thought occurred to him, he said nothing about it, and remained where he was.
She wanted to move slowly, to ensure that she remained in sight of him as long as she could. But another point occurred: if she wasted too much time, then she might miss someone who could indeed be their savior.
As much as she wanted not to, she began to hurry her steps, aiming for the village she'd heard of where the remainders of the refugees gathered.
The comet's light dimmed and brightened twice more before she reached there, passing through the stockade gates with many others. Less than an hour after that, she wished that she'd remained with O'Brien. Afraid as he might be, he at least did not take food from the mouths of wounded, elderly, or children, nor did he order anyone to dig useless trenches.
But those were things that Watchman of the Underworld and Demonic Sky Elder were doing. She didn't trust either of them for those reasons alone.
"Look! Look!" Her fairy companions squeaked in sudden surprised. They'd been very quiet when she'd eaten with O'Brien, accepting their share, but letting the two of them attempt to know one another better. But now they waved towards someone coming closer.
It was O'Brien. He glanced over to them, then looked away, shoulders hunching. She wanted to ask if he'd changed his mind, but from the way he moved, she didn't think that he had.
Her heart beat faster as he exchanged a few heated words with Watchman of the Underworld, then backed down, stepping to one side. She gathered her courage and moved over towards him.
"No one here will fight," she murmured. "They will defend if they must but there's no true courage in them." She'd not been here long, but she'd seen that already. It was quite hard to miss. "And I don't trust them." She cast her gaze up to where the village leader stepped out of sight.
O'Brien's gaze followed hers. "Who are they?"
"Watchman of the Underworld. I gather he's been the leader here for several days. Demonic Sky Elder has been his assistant only for a little while, though." She'd learned several things wandering around the village, and her friends learned even more.
But O'Brien frowned. "Demonic Sky Elder. Isn't he a Fusion Material monster? For..."
Both of them froze in the same moment. She didn't duel often or well, but she knew what Fusion Material monsters were and what could be done with them.
O'Brien knew more. He stared up at where they were, torn visibly. She passed one hand near his eyes, knowing better than to touch him.
"Whatever they're planning, these people are in danger. Can you just walk away from that?"
Part of him wanted to. She saw that in the way he looked toward the gate. But another part wanted to do something else, and without a single word, he started indoors.
She watched him go and refused to follow along, despite her desire to. He would need help if he won, and she would have to be down here to give that help.
Especially since if he won, there would have to be a new leader for the village and if he didn't nominate himself, then by the tidal waves, she would!
To Be Continued
Notes: Next chapter, O'Brien has to say good-bye and go fight Haou. What does Sea God's Priestess do when he never comes back?