Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh. LeDiz or Chibizoo would have written the script, and then people of humbler intelligence wouldn't understand it and I'd be shot.

Summary: Ironically he started to look for him his whole life in more ways than one after he left, but it never, ever works out: there is no happy-ending with a ribbon in real life. Not Y/YY, but that stuff always walks the line.

After Atem left Yuugi something very bad began to happen… One-shot.

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Can we climb this mountain
I don't know
Higher now than ever before
I know we can make it if we take it slow
Let's take it easy
Easy now, watch it go

Watch it now ... here he comes!

-- The Killers

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"Vision with action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare."
- old Japanese proverb

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Mexico, Desert Area

"So, you are what I'll become." The twelve-year old Yuugi concluded thoughtfully. It had taken a while, but he was getting it. Gran'pa always said he was quick! He winced when he tried to smile, that was too much pressure for his left eye just yet. Owie.

The older of the two had downed a beer in a matter of gulps immediately after processing the other's frightened, confused "arrival," and then put the bottle out of view as if to cancel out the experience or something. "Mhm," The Yuugi 'that would be' said now, reaching over to grab two small bottles of water from a large pack. He unscrewed one of the lids and handed it to him, before guzzling down his own. The boy played with the cap, waiting for him to say something more earth-shattering but he didn't, so they both stared up at the stars in companionable silence.

"Does this happen to you too, then?" He asked in a small voice, lowering his eyes to the crackling fire. He tried not to breathe so deeply either, touching his side gently. Honda had big feet and hard shoes.

Yuugi gripped his bottle tighter until it indented. "Not 'does'…it only…" He looked at him, an unreadable expression weaving in his eyes. "But you are me, so, yes. Still does." Does and did…oh hell…

He sounded tired when he sighed and said to the pre-teen, "All the time." He looked up to watch the smaller boy adjust to wrap the blanket tighter, saw the small body physically weaken a little when he heard the unfortunate answer.

The boy asked, "Why?"

Ironic. This question he was ready to answer, engrained when he heard it but hadn't because what was happening now and in all the years of his life hadn't happened to him. "'You' are only half a person," he said, smiling sadly and opening one arm for him join him, which he did, as if to contradict the 'alone' part and make it more bearable. He mentally sighed. "And… it's not right. So you're existence is compensating by doing as much as you can; but it doesn't work that way because the rest of you isn't physically possible to find; it's not in this plane." It's on the other side of a gods forsaken door. "So you can't… stick." Stick, that was good. He was smart at that age, he remembered, but 'stick' was still the best analogy he could come up with yet.

Which could have been confusing on so many levels if he hadn't started drinking or smoking the moment the younger him had arrived. "Think of it this way: Normal people are a foot of Velcro to keep them in a specific existence, or place on a wall. You are only six inches—not enough to stick."

He used to think he was looking for someone, especially since he'd been raised with Grandpa every day saying that 'he was special, that there was a plan for him.' And especially after he'd been told 'this puzzle I want you to solve will give you anything.' But then he was given… and then he found… That feeling of incompleteness stopped and he thought it was over until the result of the Ceremonial duel brought it back again. When the confusion began to physically manifest and started to literally be unable to stay in one place for very long, he originally thought it was another adventure, involving destiny and finding him again…

But life doesn't work out that way. He was alone. He smirked. He was alone with only versions of his half-self, panicked, along for the ride.

His fingers were itching for a cigarette. But the younger him wouldn't appreciate or understand his need for them yet. He looked down and decided against explaining the concepts of ba and ka in a paganistic BS of a religion.

"So… who was it?" He asked, gesturing with his chin to the bruises.

"Eh?" He smiled up at him. "Oh, Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun." He chewed on his bottom lip absently. "They're trying to teach me to be a man!"

Yuugi closed his eyes, trying not to laugh. "Really," he said, conversationally as possible. "Being a man is important. Where did the tuna can come in?" He didn't have to blush when Yuugi at twelve was doing it for them; the older Yuugi knew without even looking that he was because he remembered doing it. Even though it hadn't.

…Good thing he drank a beer and a half, otherwise he would be so confused with this constant re-living/re-playing thing, half of which he hadn't lived.

Even after six years after the Battle, Yuugi never "slipped" and wound up to wander around where someone he knew was or knew him, or where… uh, he had been, or whatever. He never "slipped" into an old classroom or a familiar park or apartment. A part of him wondered what he would do if he came across the old, violent Jounouchi or Honda… but then he knew would never, ever lay a finger on either of them. He relaxed. "Hang in there," he said. "Hang in there for them and you will be a man."

The twelve year old eyes could have turned rivaled headlights with their happiness. "They are my friends!"

He ruffled his hair. "The best," and it was ironic because even though he still had that scar under his ear, he meant it with all his heart, all his half-soul. "They've got your back."

He felt the boy shift and look up at him with his oblivious, scarred face and wild hair. "Um," he began, and Yuugi braced himself. "Where is this… rest of me? Of us?"

This Yuugi was twelve. He'd been working on the Puzzle for three years. Again, Yuugi reviewed his suspicions involving a golden door, but sucking on his cheeks he was able to push it down. He couldn't change anything. And there was no way he could warn himself: 'Well, you see, the darling, and supposedly responsible other side of you was really tired and said 'well this blows, I'm off! Later love!' and then walked off into the sunset. And it all came from this magical Puzzle that you're so obsessed about you'd burn in a warehouse for…' No, definitely not the right thing to say.

"Dunno," he lied instead. "Prolly why it's still happening." He realized this him didn't understand the lie yet, even though he could see them in other people. Reading people, Anzu said, reading people was a thing all ages of himself were supposedly good at, like breathing lie detectors. But it was dark, they were both tired, and since this was him, the kid trusted the older one completely.

"Ah," the younger Yuugi said, breaking his thoughts. He nuzzled into his shoulder, sniffling as if he could feel the bruises appearing, and trying not to rub at the disinfectant the older him had bandaged his face with. "Mkay." He said with blank, wide eyes and a bloody nose. "Does it ever stop?"

"Yeah, for an absolutely amazing few number of years you… become whole. But it ends, and, ah, we revert back to where we started." He couldn't exactly say 'it starts' because now this was a completely different time line.

…Kami-sama, thank God for the beer.

He smirked into the fire, deciding it was probably not okay either to tell his twelve-year old self how he popped naked in 1847 Georgia the other week, and was attacked with rakes for sexual indecency. He was declared a witch for his abnormal appearance metaphysically (appearing in the street) and literally (naked and with weird hair), and was tied to a rock to test the witch theory by seeing if he could swim. He didn't stick long enough when they tried to push it over the hill. Thank the fucking gods. Christ, but it happened in harsher settings and improper locations the longer the period after His Highness left.

Yuugi took another swig of water, waiting and stewing. He rolled his eyes: maybe it was "the power of Friendship" that made the 'slippings' so much more intense after his OMGBESTFRIEND and Morning Star left. Or lack thereof said… friendship; maybe he missed Atem so much his soul was literally combing the living plains to find him now that it had tasted unity. He thought of his normal (albeit bloody) life as a child, looking at this very different case of kid form the corner of his eye. It hadn't happened when he was small, only after he stabbed a sword through his other self's heart. You can't miss what you've never had, after all. And… damn it all… he had found him, every jealous, mind-crushing, psychotic part of him… and then lost him.

Willingly.

And apparently screwed up the rest of his life, until it rippled both ways.

Both parts of that contributing as to possibly why it got so much worse; the longer he was without him the greater his particle's turmoil and depression. It was odd, and maybe it was because of the beer and whatever else he could find to shoot up his system, but particle angst and random bouts of 'unstickiness' aside Yuugi felt quite fine.

"How long does it last?" the younger him yawned, nuzzling a bit deeper into the jacket covered with cold Mexican earth, fighting the urge to suck his thumb pop.

Before the quiet cackling of the fire, and sleeping dessert night, Yuugi wrapped his arms brought his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He didn't look at the space beside him that he knew was empty, a fallen blanket and lingering young scent the only evidence another had really been there. His shoulders gave out and he pressed his forehead to block out the world like he did when he was older than the version that just left, and younger the first night he was truly alone again (I am no longer the other you…).

Liar, he thought dully. He wondered if the Other had known about this. Unlikely, but he needed someone to blame, and who else but the missing part of him that had left Yuugi behind, and caused all other parts of him in the past and present to pop around looking for him in this dimension (or whatever this was)? Could Yuugi himself have prevented this? In his knees, he gripped a fist of his hair tightly as his shut eyes in frustration. Had he messed something up, again?

How long does it last?

"Only forever," he whispered to no one, and praying that just once he could appear in ancient Egypt, but that was just one over too many possibilities. "Not long at all."

Yuugi knew that in five months during a silent crying session in his room after his dad left for business (yelling on the way out he wanted a son who would play soccer or baseball instead of Pokemon Gold), that twelve year old would 'pop' again, and an older him would let his emotions slip (because he was so wasted) when his twelve-year old voice asked what he had been too afraid to in the lonely desert…and what the kind and slightly more sober one wouldn't have said anyway:

"Just who am I looking for?"

It was dark room and there were suitcases all around. "I'll give you a boootyful hint," the older, sex-filled voice slurred with his older, angled eyes while a blonde woman stared incredulously from a hotel bed, "he sure as hell doesn't look a thing like Jesus."

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We're burning down the highway skyline
On the back of a hurricane that started turning
When you were young
-- The Killers

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It all started turning on you when you were young, dear Yuugi…seventeen to be exact, when you said goodbye.

And Yami sure as hell wasn't the saint he was painted as later in the anime. He was scary, messed up as all (censored).