Summary taken from the title of an Lj-community, playthedamncard. YuGiOh and all related characters are copyrighted to Kazuki Takahashi as of 1996 and are not my own.

"I just want to thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the sleepless nights and for tearing me apart."

- Pink, "A Long Way to Happy" Lyrics.

Chapter Six.

He kept on thinking about Yugi's speech for a long time after it was over.

When the moment had come for it, they hadn't actually bothered to lower the arena. Yugi just climbed right up onto it and stood there with his glass held out and a smile on his face. By this point Seto had decided that the very small quantity of alcohol he'd already had was probably getting to him. Just how the mutt had managed to achieve a draw when he was already completely-intoxicated was beyond Kaiba but given the circumstances, he had decided complaining would just be a waste of energy.

So Yugi stood up to do his speech, and Kaiba watched, and waited. He was... preoccupied.

They arrived too late by about forty-five minutes and yet somehow; they were still the first people there, asides from Wheeler.

Out of the chair again, Kaiba noted. And yelling at anyone and everything within distance. The hand of a younger woman (what was her name again… Valerie?) Gripped in his the whole time round, with no respect for the thirty-five year olds need to be separate.

Or maybe she really had no need. She clung onto her father's jacket constantly, Kaiba noticed, as if ready to catch him and drag him back to the wheelchair at the very first signs of a stumble. Her purple eyes were tired and frightened. Familiar, really, in the sense that they so much echoed Mokuba's after a fifteen hour day at the office. But still she refused to let go.

Just like her father, really. Though perhaps not quite as ridiculous.

For the thirteenth time she asked him to leave. A logical recourse, really. After all, there was no reason for any of them to be here any longer unless one of them was willing to sign for the body and…

And Kaiba was fairly certain that he wasn't going to be the one to do that. Mokuba, however, probably would if Wheeler didn't get a fucking grip on himself and settle down already. As if ranting and raving like this would change anything.

Kaiba ignored the smell of antiseptic, because it was just too stark and reminiscent. It reminded him of too many hospitals and too many trips. One in particular. So he focussed his eyes on the walls instead, black and white tile following black and while tile which he stared at firmly until their images begin to blur into golden blocks of stone and sand and…

…No. That wasn't right.

There shouldn't be sand in here.

Kaiba had tried for so long to avoid it and yet now, it seemed as if he were right there again. As if the hospital was just a dream and he was really sitting in the dunes of a distant land across the oceans. He was sitting… no, not sitting, he realised: standing. Walking. Walking beneath the desert sun as a second figure walked besides him. And then the figure stepped forwards and walked away ahead of him, shining with gold as he vanished through the door of hospital intensive care room one-oh-three where the constant whir of a flat line had not sounded in over half an hour. Seto can still hear it, though. Somehow.

The figure in the doorway paused and stepped back to smile at him. A familiar, arrogant, self-ascertained smile that Kaiba had not seen for fifty years.

In that instant it seemed like everything was happening at once.

It was an out of body experience; probably. Kaiba had never denied the possibility of them occurring, particularly in moments of high emotive tension. He'd often thought that Yugi Mutou's entire friendship circle had been based on just such ridiculous self-delusions. Only now he was actually experiencing one for himself and…

And he didn't feel so certain any longer.

For in that very moment, sitting in a hospital waiting room, Seto Kaiba's entire life was laid out before him in the sand in one, single instant, its form shaped like a golden star. A flash of blue. Virtual systems fighting and battling in overdone arenas, performing to packed out crowds. A girl with white hair that he didn't remember. A dragon. A ring of hands that he'd never been a part of and never wanted…

'Not real…'

Then the images moved faster, and he remembered more. The skin of a dragon glaring and ripping in the evening sun. an ocean and a helicopter and a cold, dark prison, as deep as hell itself. A glaring, golden eye staring at him firmly, while a girl with brown hair asked him in a loud and angry voice exactly what he'd gained from it.

And right in the middle of it all, as much as he resented it, and as much as he had spent the last fifty years trying to shake them away, were two bright pairs of violet eyes, shining in a single young and smiling face.

And then the pharaoh vanished. The world became real and tangible again. The pain of old joints came back and along with it, another pain which it took a while for him to recognize as something other than just a fault in his pacemaker. Right in his heart. Joey Wheeler had finally collapsed into the plastic chair besides him, clutching his daughter tightly in both arms. A doctor bowed and walked away into a nearby corridor.

Kaiba didn't try to shake the memories away any longer as a bitter, painful, exasperating thought tugged at the corner of his consciousness, making him frown and smile in the very same instant.

Maybe it was better late than never.

'It's not his fault, really,' Yugi looked up mid sentence and Kaiba was starting to see exactly why he'd been limiting his alcohol intake. Yugi was still short. Obviously. So his natural tolerance was probably a great deal lower than most. As it happened then, Yugi and Kaiba were the only people in the room not intoxicated to a level at which none of this would matter tomorrow morning. Whatever Yugi said right now, Kaiba realised, nobody would think on it too much.

Which somehow still didn't feel like much of a comfort. 'It's just… the way he is. It's the way a lot of people are, really. It's confident, and individual, but sometimes it can go too far and then you forget a lot of the other important stuff… A long time ago, he told me that the world gives you a single chip and that that's what you use to play the game of living…'

The exact circumstances under which that phrase was spoken had either been forgotten, or else Yugi didn't wish to invoke them. 'You play it because it's all you can do. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll play the game well. We're all so different,' he smiled vaguely into his glass. 'All of us. Different lives, different backgrounds, different ideas of how the game is supposed to be played… But we all play it, in the end, don't we? Sometimes, if we're really lucky, we might even win it. We might even find out what winning really means. I hope you all get the chance to do that. I really do'

Yugi looked at Kaiba firmly. Also not much of a comfort, but Kaiba kept looking all the same.

And that was how they stayed. For what felt like hours, when it was probably actually little more than a second, before Yugi looked up from his glass at the sound of clapping.

Somebody was standing up in the audience and if Kaiba had looked closely, he would have seen sooner that it was Yukai. And then Rhodes. Then Joey. And then following her seemed to be every other name of every other member of the academy. A ballroom-turned-arena full of students, all standing and raising empty drinks to the sky in a carphony of clinking, shining glass. The drumming echo of clapping.

It took a while before things died down for Yugi to get another word in, and all that time, Kaiba continued to gaze in Yugi's direction.

Yugi's gaze was suddenly familiar. Rather like the same look Seto once saw many years ago, gazing at him firmly from inside a Pharaoh's tomb. A voice whispered in his head for the millionth time, asking him quietly: what did he have?

'What do I have, girl? Hm. Wouldn't you like to know…'

Yugi Mutou wasn't laughing any longer but he was still smiling. Grinning, in fact, as he looked around the room and finally finished his speech. 'I guess… I guess we all have one thing in common, don't we?' He said, softly, in a voice Kaiba figured only half the room could hear, if even that many. 'Can't believe I forgot about that. Silly really, given why we're all here…

'…We're Duellists.'

"Now I say again: Two remain. But, of course, they're a part of you now. "

- Battle Royale.

Fin.

Reviews and concrit are appreciated. Thanks for reading.