24. Back

Joey paced around Serenity's living room, feeling caged and completely helpless. Serenity was asleep in her bedroom, Mai was in God knew what condition in her bedroom, and Yugi still hadn't come to tell him she was okay. What the hell was going on in there?

"Dude, you're making me seasick," Tristan said from where he was lying on Serenity's couch, a blanket thrown over him. "Chill, wouldja?"

"Chill?" Joey gaped at him. "I've got a sister with a concussion and a girlfriend in the middle of some freaky-ass Dark Game, and you expect me to chill?"

"Then go find out what's going on."

"Serenity—"

"Will be fine. I'll watch over her and wake her in a little bit to make sure she's okay."

Joey's eyes narrowed. "I don't think so."

Tristan clenched his jaw and glared up at him. "You'd better not be thinking what I think you're thinking. She's hurt. What kind of sleazebag do you think I am?"

Joey blew a breath out in frustration. "I don't think you're a sleazebag. I'm just… argh! I don't like feeling so helpless. Serenity… and Mai…"

"I will look out for Serenity. Go check on Mai and Yugi."

Joey considered this. "I don't know…." He looked from the door out of Serenity's apartment to the door into her bedroom and back.

"Just go. Serenity will be fine."

"I… yeah, I think you're right. I gotta know what's going on in there." He looked down at Tristan. "You'll wake Serenity in a little bit?"

Tristan looked at his watch. "In one hour and seventeen minutes. I set an alarm."

"Okay then, I'm going. Thanks, pal."

"You got it, bro."

Joey left Serenity's apartment and walked quickly down the hall. By the time he reached the library at the top of the stairs, he was jogging. Mai's door was the first one on the east side of the building, closest to the library. As he approached her door, he automatically reached into his back pocket for the keycard to her room… and stopped short. He was wearing pajama pants with no pockets. He'd left the keycard inside, and a quick check of the door handle showed that the door was indeed locked. Damn. He let his head hit the door in frustration, banged it a few more times for good measure, then pressed his ear to the wood to see if he could hear anything inside, but there was nothing. Damn damn damn damn damn.

Not sure what else to do, he turned around and went back to the landing, flopping down on the loveseat there, giving him a good view of Mai's door. Five minutes. He'd give it five minutes and then he was calling security downstairs and having someone open the door for him.

Five minutes.

Something was moving beneath him. There was a groan, then more movement, and slowly Yugi began regaining a sense of himself in space. He was sprawled on his stomach, his face pressed flat against something soft—a down comforter?—but underneath was a shifting lumpy mass.

"Not that I'm not grateful, but people are gonna talk."

Yugi finally managed to open his eyes and realized where he was: Mai's bedroom.

Lying on top of Mai.

As if struck by lightning, he bolted upright and backed away from her, almost falling off the bed. "Mai! Are you all right?"

She struggled to sit up, but it seemed to take a lot of effort, and she only made it into a slouch against the headboard. "Really tired. And I could live without ever seeing someone melt again, but yeah."

"Yeah, right with you there. You did it, though. You beat it."

"Yeah, I did. I—" She stopped as if she'd just realized something and looked around, panicky. "Wait, where's Joey? Why isn't he here?"

Yugi reached out and put a hand on your shoulder. "It's okay. He's with Serenity. He was a little hysterical when you went limp, so I sent him off to take care of her."

She frowned. "Take care of her? Why? What happened?"

"She tried to summon Mystical Elf, and we all got blown backwards like something exploded on top of us. Serenity hit her head on the wall."

"What? Is she okay?" Mai struggled to sit up all the way, but Yugi restrained her with his hand.

"She's fine, Mai. Just a little dazed, that's all. But you're exhausted."

"Don't give me that crap. She must've been hurt pretty bad for Joey not to have come back."

"I told him not to." Yugi pushed her more firmly back down. "You need to lie down. I'll go get him and tell him you're all right."

At last she relented, slumping back against the headboard once more. "Why would summoning Mystical Elf knock you all on your asses like that? That's never happened before."

Yugi shook his head. "I'm not sure, but it seems like somehow we were locked out."

"Locked out? I don't get it."

"I'm not sure I do, either," he said. "I don't know how Ramesses found a way to use your nightmare to start a Dark Game against you, but he obviously didn't want any of us to be able to help you by summoning our monsters. He found some way to block us."

"But you got in."

He nodded. "I told you, I was the bearer of the Millennium Puzzle."

She leaned back further, fighting to keep her eyes opened. "What the hell was the whole Wes Craven thing anyway? How did he get into my dreams and turn them into a Shadow Game?"

"I don't know. But we'll find out. And I don't think it will happen again, do you? You beat it."

She lost the battle with fatigue and closed her eyes, nodding slightly. "Yeah, I feel…different, like maybe I can sleep again for the first time in a week."

"I think that's just what you need." Yugi got up off the bed. "I'll go find Joey and Serenity and tell them you're okay, but you sleep."

"Mm hm." She opened her eyes again and looked up at him. "Yugi?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for coming after me. I think I would've forfeited if you hadn't been there. Anything to not do that to Joey again."

"I know," he said softly.

"I'm so grateful for all of Joey's friends."

"Not Joey's friends, Mai. Your friends. And we'll always come after you. That's a promise." He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she was already asleep.

"Joey, is everything all right?"

Joey started, sitting up quickly. "Mai?" he asked, bleary, then realized it was Téa hovering over him. "Oh, it's you." He slumped down in his seat, disappointed. He must've dozed off. How long had he been out, and where the hell were Mai and Yugi?

"Thanks a lot," Téa said dryly, and Joey looked up at her.

"Oh, hey, no, I'm sorry Téa." He shook his head, then got a good look at her and frowned. She was wearing dance clothes and was sweaty, so she'd obviously been downstairs in the practice room dancing, which usually made her practically glow. But instead she looked… faded, somehow. Her eyes were puffy and red and her face was drawn and pinched like she ached everywhere, and not from pulling a muscle. He reached out and touched her arm. "Hey, are you okay? 'Cause I haven't seen you since we went over to Kaiba's the other day and, no offense, but you don't look too good."

"Yeah, well a day spent wallowing in self-loathing will do that to you." She sat down beside him with a huff.

His frown deepened and he put a hand on her knee. "Okay, that definitely don't sound good."

She sighed. "I don't know, I think it might've been long overdue." Then she tilted her head and looked at him. "But I'm not the one sleeping on the couch in the hallway. And you don't look great yourself, by the way. What's going on? You and Mai have a fight or something?"

Joey choked out a strangled laugh. "A fight, yeah." He rubbed his eyes. "Actually, she—"

Téa cut him off with a gasp, her gaze drifting past him to something over his shoulder. "Yugi?"

Joey shot up out of his seat and spun around to face the east hallway so quickly he almost toppled over. Yugi stood frozen beside Mai's door, his hand on the doorknob.

"Yuge!" Joey wasn't sure whether to be relieved or alarmed by Yugi's odd expression. "You're… and Mai… is she… she… what the hell is going on?"

"Yeah, I'd kinda like to hear that myself," Téa said behind him in a voice so tight it sounded like it might crack, and it suddenly hit Joey exactly how this looked.

"Oh crap." Groaning, he spun back to face her as quickly as he'd turned toward Yugi before. She had also gotten to her feet and looked a little sick. He grabbed her shoulders. "No no no, Téa, listen, this is so not what it looks like. Mai, she's been having nightmares again and somehow it turned into a Shadow Game and Yugi was trying to help her—"

"What?" Téa's focus shifted from Yugi to Joey. "A Shadow Game?" She looked back over Joey's shoulder toward Yugi, her expression less accusatory but even more alarmed. "Yugi?"

Joey let go of her and faced Yugi once. "What happened, Yuge? Is she okay?"

Yugi nodded, walking toward them. "She's asleep."

"Asleep?" Joey moved toward her door. "How do you know she's just asleep and not still in some Shadow Game? I gotta go see—"

"She's fine, Joey." Yugi stepped in his way and putting a hand out to stop him. "She won. Let her sleep. We need to talk."

"She…? Wait. How do you know?"

"Because I was in the Shadow Game with her."

"You—?" Joey sucked in a breath. "Say what?"

"Would somebody please explain what's going on? How did you and Mai end up in a Shadow Game?" Téa's hands were on her hips, and she had that look she got when she was ready to knock one of them upside the head.

"I'm not exactly sure." Yugi sat down in one of the chairs beside the loveseat. He looked exhausted, Joey realized as he and Téa both sat back down in the loveseat together. Yugi gave Téa a brief summary of Mai's nightmares, how at times she seemed unaware of hers or Joey's existence, a rundown of Joey and Mai's trip to see Rafael, and finally what had happened in Mai's apartment up until the point Joey had left with Serenity. "How is Serenity, by the way?"

"She's okay. Thinks she has a concussion. Tristan's watching over her. But tell me what happened to Mai." Joey squeezed his hands on his knees trying to drain off some of his agitation.

"Somehow her nightmare became a Dark Game that was a re-creation of her Orichalcos duel with you." Yugi then went on to detail the duel, how he had managed to enter the game as Dark Magician, and the final outcome. Téa's eyes grew rounder and rounder as he talked, her hand covering her mouth.

Joey was bouncing his knees up and down, his fists banging on them harder and harder, and when Yugi described how the duel ended, rattling his legs was no longer enough to dispel the angry energy. He jumped to his feet, snarling. "I'll kill him. So help me, God, when we figure out who this son of a bitch is, I'm gonna kill him. I… fuck. I gotta go make sure she's okay—"

Yugi got to his feet as well, putting himself between Joey and Mai's door once more. "Not until you calm down."

Joey almost laughed in his face—like a guy Yugi's size was gonna stand in his way—but Yugi's eyes had that don't fuck with me expression he'd managed to inherit from the Pharaoh, and Joey didn't move. "You don't understand, Yuge. That bastard took the one moment in her life she wished she could have back and do differently, and he forced her to make the same choice again. It took her three years to get over it the first time, and to top it off, he makes it look like I freaking melted like the goddamn Wicked Witch of the West. She needs to see I'm okay right now, that she didn't do anything to me!"

"She knows. When it ended, he turned into Reshef."

Joey exploded. "You don't get it! You weren't there when she won that duel. You didn't see how it affected her!"

"I of all people get it," Yugi said in a voice that seemed to ring out despite the fact that he was speaking somewhat quietly. "The whole point was making her relive the one fight she'd want to lose. But she didn't lose, because she remembered. She had all our guardian cards, and she remembered who she is today and who her friends are, and she beat it. He can't ever use that against her again. She won, Joey, do you understand? It's over."

Joey shook his head. "I don't get it, Yuge. How did he do this? And why Mai?"

"I don't know. That's what we need to figure out."

Joey sat down again and Téa put a comforting hand on his knee. He put his own hand on top of hers and squeezed it.

As Yugi sat back down as well, Téa asked, "So is this somehow related to—" She hesitated, then tried again. "Is this related to what happened to Atem and Seto?"

"Well, I doubt the timing is coincidence." Yugi's eyes seemed to turn inward as he thought about it, reminding Joey of when Atem was still with him and they would hold their conversations that no one else could hear. "But whether or not there's a cause/effect relationship or if the one is a distraction from the other, I don't know. And like Joey said, why Mai? She wasn't one of the four of us most affected by what happened to the tombs."

"But all of us have been messed up since then," Joey said. "When was the last time any one of us got a good night sleep?"

Téa leaned forward. "But were we all feeling the desecrations and that's why Mai was vulnerable, or were we all feeling what was happening to Mai?"

Yugi nodded. "Exactly. We don't know. And what triggered Mai's nightmares in the first place? We still don't know anything more than we did before, except that Ramesses is definitely involved, and he can somehow turn a nightmare into a Dark Game."

"Well, hopefully Marik will have the missing piece when he gets here," Joey said.

Téa frowned. "When Marik gets here? Since when is Marik coming here?"

"I called him this morning, or I guess now it was yesterday morning." Yugi shifted in his seat slightly. "I wanted to see if he could shed some light onto why Mai keeps having nightmares because of her Shadow Game with him, and he thought he should come out and see for himself. He'll be here by Friday."

"Listen, Yuge, we can talk about this until we're blue in the face, but we're not gonna figure anything more out tonight, and I really just wanna be with Mai."

Yugi nodded. "Yes, I don't think there's anything more we can do right now. First thing in the morning we'll get everyone together and hash this all out."

Joey started to rise, and then groaned. "Oh crap, I just remembered. I don't have the keycard to her room."

"I left the door unlocked when I came out."

Joey smiled in relief and gave a nod of thanks as he left and went back to Mai's room.

In her bedroom, he found her sleeping, just as Yugi said. For the first time since before they'd left for London, she looked peaceful. Quietly, he slipped into the bed beside her, wrapping his arms around her. She turned into his embrace, nuzzling against him.

"Hey, you," she said without opening her eyes.

"Hey, yourself." He stroked her hair. "You okay?"

"I won."

"I know. You done good, Mai."

"Mmmmm. I knew you were really on the dragon. At first I forgot, but the you on the dragon made me remember how we danced on the cliff, and I then knew which you was real."

"Uh, okay." He kissed her forehead, not bothering to try to follow her train of thought.

"I knew it wasn't really you when I played the Phoenix Formation. I wouldn't have done it again if it was really you."

"Shh, I know baby, I know. Go back to sleep. It's all over now. Everything's fine."

"Mmm." She snuggled closer him. "I know."