Interpol- No I in Threesome
Yuugi knew that he couldn't keep pretending that nothing was wrong. He had known from the beginning that, eventually, a stale, dismal day would have to come when he confronted reality as it had chosen to become. He had just always gripped tightly to a golden glimmer of hope that that sun would never rise, that the pages on the calendar would stop spinning. He had hoped against all reason that the earth would keep turning and this problem would slowly fade into the dusty dark hallways of distant memory.
That didn't happen. Things had only gotten worse. His goals and expectations, his hopes and aspirations, were the things that dissolved on the wind, and the past seemed more immediate that ever.
He watched Anzu from across the dining table. Her eyes were sunken, low, detached. When she caught his gaze she smiled brightly, but Yuugi had seen too many of those warm, glowing smiles to fool himself into believing that there was any genuine emotion behind them. At least, not for him.
The problem had started early, but Yuugi hadn't seen it. How could he? In the days following Yam—Atem's—departure into the afterlife, they had all been silently shattered without really realizing it. There had been a notable dimming in their greetings, a subtle tweaking in their behavior that indicated that something had been misplaced—something valuable was missing and would never be returned. It had lasted for weeks—maybe months, he couldn't rightly remember. A dreary gray cloud had swarmed over them all, making their words bleaks and their thoughts flat and empty. There were no more worlds to save, so now they had so save themselves.
Eventually, and with effort, the storm had passed. Just as they had always promised each other, the strong, thick foundation of their friendship withstood the rampages of trying times and extraordinary experiences, and their collective sense of loss, wonder, and awe had brought them all back together like tiny drops of water returning the sea. Life would never be the same, he had known that, but he hadn't expected it to mutate into something that he was so completely unprepared for.
Despite the mending, the filling of the holes that had temporarily stood between them, Anzu seemed eternally unaffected. By everything. Almost everything. She had cried when he left their little world, cried on and off during the months that followed. She had smiled and laughed when they all recounted the most memorable times they had shared. Laughed about how they had almost lost their lives. It seemed funny now, now that they knew they would make it. But, Yuugi wondered, where had those emotions gone?
He couldn't remember the last time had seen Anzu smile—really smile. She would move her lips and bare her teeth, but Yuugi knew as intuitively as he knew to eat when he was hungry that her expressions and mannerisms were merely shadows of her former self. He knew her old smile. It had made his stomach churn and cheeks ignite in junior high—especially when she had bestowed that smile on him with the benevolence that a sun pours onto a flower. Now her face was nothing but a blank page, empty space, the silence that always seemed to engulf them, even when they were speaking.
She hadn't even cried at their own wedding. But she cried for him.
He knew because she did it with the doors locked, and he had to press his ear to the keyhole.
Yuugi had felt the first stirrings of trouble when, five months into their marriage, Anzu had accidentally set the toaster on fire. Yuugi had been surprised when she stood, petrified, watching the flames roar and snap at her, helplessly awaiting his intervention. Anzu wasn't the kind of girl to sit around waiting to be rescued by a white knight to carry her to safety. But faced with a small kitchen fire her voice went raw with screaming and her hands flailed madly like bats until Yuugi rushed in from the next room wielding the fire extinguisher.
Amid the torrents of soft, creamy clouds that cascaded from the device like falling snow, he had peered over his shoulder to look at her. Her face was masked by smoke and fear, but he could see something sharp and strong under the trembling pools of panic. She was looking, waiting, for something to materialize. For something to change. To change inside of him.
He knew that she had set the fire on purpose. He chose not to mention it.
Hints gently came to tap on him on the shoulder. Small, sneaky voices pointed out whenever something wasn't quite right, whenever the air tasted stale or the sun shone a cold, painful white. He had to ignore it.
Anzu came and cleared the plates away, the glassy clinks they made as she staked them as sweet and as hollow as her enchanting voice. Yuugi barely noticed when she spoke anymore. Her voice was faded and limp, like a creature struggling for life in an iron snare, knowing that it's only hope lies in the heroic generosity of strangers. The only time her voice had color was when she brought up the past—gently unwrapped it and laid it out for admiration like it was a priceless artifact that wasn't to be touched. When she told the stories she would do more than look at him, she would cautiously and artfully peer inside him and try to sort him out into the person that she thought he still was. Or who she thought he should still be.
Under the rapid descent of nightfall they brushed their teeth, changed their clothes, huddled under the covers as if hiding from someone very far away. With the shadows looming over him and the world as smooth and silent as if the universe had never been born, Yuugi felt the stirring of knowledge within him that he had for a long time dreaded having to confront: He could not go one with things as they were.
Aware at every moment that the darkness was listening with attentive ears and bated breath, he ran his fingers slowly around his neck, feeling the ghost of a memory where the physical thing no longer existed. It gave him a small degree of confidence, and he finally voiced the nightmares that had hounded him even in the daytime.
"Anzu," he whispered gently. "Anzu, are you awake?" There was no reply. Not even the sound of her breathing. Nevertheless, some focused, sensitive awareness that filtered through the air told him that she was still awake and listening. He continued. "I—I really don't know what to say, Anzu. We've known each other for forever. We're best friends. I've always loved you—even before I knew it myself…" he released something that was halfway between a laugh and sigh. "I just thought that that was enough. I'm really sorry, Anzu, but I'm—I'm only me. I know that me and Atem shared the same body for a long time, and I know that it changed me. It changed both of us.
"It scared me at first, and I didn't want to tell anyone because I didn't understand it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And even now, every time I think about it I see it a little differently. I'll probably never understand completely, Anzu, I don't think that any of us really will. But there's one thing Anzu, one thing that I know for sure. No matter how close we were and how much we learned from each other…I'm not him, Anzu. I'm just me, I'm just Yuugi. No matter how much we think or believe or trick ourselves into believing otherwise, he's not going to come back, and I'm not going to become someone else. I'm one person…and there's all there is."
For a moment he watched the dust float through the air and settle on the bed sheets. He slowly turned to Anzu on the bed beside him. There were gaping holes in the darkness where the muddy light reflected off her skin, but her form was lost in a maze of starving, desperate shadows.
From across an impossible, invisible void, the kind as thin and clear as a glass window that no one sees until they run directly into it, he heard her choked and tremulous voice echo through a cavern of reserved, respectable silence.
"I know."
Her words fell like fragile fall leaves and stung like acid. Yuugi didn't know what to say. He only looked up at the shadows that lurked across the ceiling. They always seemed to be watching him, watching over them both.
Yuugi shut his eyes and prayed for morning.
Poor Anzu, Yami totally ruined her for 21st century men xD.
