Yugi immediately dropped his attempt to force his way through the mind link, and ran over to the fallen king's side, as Yami inhaled deeply in relief as the grinding pressure slackened into a dull, deep ache.
Yami's tears flowed in the scar that now marred his cheek, as he buried his face in his hands.
Yugi stood still, as if transfixed, the numbing shock still evident from his silence and agog eyes, before he moved forward.
Hesitantly, Yugi draped an arm over Yami's shoulder, in awkward soothing, as Yami only coiled tighter against his knees.
A shoulder that was covered with his tears, and the soft, comforting murmurs that Yugi uttered in his awkard attempt to ease Yami's undeniable anguish.
"Yami..." The Pharoah's eyes slowly opened, and glowed up at Yugi from the crook of his elbow.
Yugi's voice was cracked and hollow, as he knelt down beside Yami, the horrified regret melding in with his guilt, as he made his stumbling attempt at an apology.
"I am so sorry, Yami. I didn't mean to hurt you. I am sorry I didn't believe you!" With a grunt, Yami shoved him away, weakly, still too engulfed with the dizzying, clawing aftermath of the brutality to tolerate any sort of touch. His entire frame quivered in rememberance of past experience.
He felt Yugi's timid fingers uncertainly edge its way around his bent shoulders, but stopped when Yami seized his wrist in a sweating, white-knuckled fist, and gave him a pleading shake of his head.
"Yami?" Yami could only writhe hopelessly, the grip on Yugi's wrist going slack as his body was violated again by another ripple of sensation. Yami
just whimpered, and writhed, his head lulling, and his arms bracing against his body in ever tightening reflex.
Thought, heavy, dark, and strangely light as obsidian cloud came trickling over the link at a slow pace. Yugi blanched. It was nothing like the familiar light, quick thoughts that Yami normally sent over through the link.
"Leave me." The voice was sluggish, cruel, and growled as Yami groaned again under the unbearable strain even from something so mundane.
Yugi stared down at Yami, the tears rising to his eyes, as he stooped to cradle Yami, to offer reassurance and comfort.
"No! Don-" The familiar anguish of fire laced up Yami's flesh, the choking burn searing his throat, the helpless paralysis as his pleas crumbled uselessly, brought down by the cage of Yugi's arms. He felt himself surrounded-trapped, and terrorized, the last of his breath bleeding out in strangled heaving,being leeched from his trembling, shattered flesh. Yami found himself again, at
the mercy of one he called 'friend', while he could only wait for the torture to stop, the amusement brought forth from his agony to leave the
cruel thirst for it appeased.
Yami did the only thing he could to save himself. With a sigh of resignation, he yielded the body to the surrender of the shadows, only begging them to take the sensations of pain as far away as they could. It was a devil's bargain, bought with his own tears, and the promise of uncompromising submission to their wishes later. He saw from their bared teeth and tongues hungrily lapping at their drawn snarls, he would pay--
dearly. But, it couldn't be any more painful that this.
It was the sensation of Yugi's hands pawing at his own that brought him back to awareness. The physical torture and mental violation had stopped, leaving him with a bone-deep ache and emptiness that seemed to echo from within his own broken center, as he slowly exhaled.
Yugi was rocked back on his haunches, his face tense and teary as he continued the useless entreaties for Yami to wake up. Yugi had felt the rapidly decaying state of Yami's sanity, and the panicked escape, clawing out of the abyss, only to feel Yami's hope being swallowed by the hungry
beasts that were merrily feasting on his misery now.
It was the last, relatively minor violation that finally broke him.
"Do with me what you will." Yami's voice was hallow, resigned, and dead, and so resolute.
"What?" Yami just shuddered, willing his heart to stop, his breath to cease, anything to save him from this...
"Yami, what do you mean?"
Yami opened his eyes at this, the wry amusement perversely sparkling in them before it yielded to his broken will and complete acceptance of his fate--what he believed to be nothing but torture until he finally had the strength to end it all.
"You are going to, anyway. It's my fate, isn't it? To always be the sacrifice. And what does a sacrifice do, Yugi? It does nothing but endure until
its use is exhausted, and then it is cast away."
He couldn't help the bitter snarl, or the chilled wet of a tear as it slid down one drawn cheek, useless and ignored as the rest he had wept.
Yugi stood over him, hands reaching forward, but abruptly yanked back as if he had been slapped. Even though Yugi was demunitive, he now towered over the broken wreck at his knees who was making a rather futile effort to fade into the unyielding concrete wall behind him.
Hesitantly, Yugi lowered himself again in an awkward squat until he was eye-level with Yami. Yami's head jerked up from his concealing arms, at the movement, and he made a pathetic attempt to shy away. Yami didn't even have the strength to drag his aching body away from Yugi's outstretched hands for more than a few feet. Yugi felt his gut clench in slimed revulsion to see the Pharoah's bleeding, crawling lurch away on hands and knees, as he finally settled himself. With hands that were shaking dangerously, Yami arranged the long shirt to hide his scars, and then set his trembling, bowed back against the wall, the old regal mask slid neatly into place, and he forced his voice out with its magificant cadence.
"I am defenseless, and at your mercy, Yugi. If you attempt to force my defenses down now, it will kill me. But, I will not fight you any more, and I will not submit to any more torture. I do not understand why you have called me your friend, and seemed so intent on wounding me so brutally, but that is of little consequence now. Do with me what you will, but end this...please."
Yami took a deep breath, bowed his head, closed his eyes, and then looked at Yugi, his eyes full of the memories of savage torment.
"I was a slave and a plaything to the Puzzle for five thousand years, Yugi. My memories were reduced to little more than manipulated fragments of the people that I loved, and my soul was shattered and sealed away for a reason that not even I could ever understand. Mayhaps I did something evil to deserve this existance, or maybe not, and if your torture of me was part of that retribution, I would bear it as my due punishment. I could even understand your inflicting pain out of idle curiosity to see my reaction..."
Yami shuddered, as the bitter realization tore its exposing shards through the shaky remains of his reason. Yugi noted with alarm Yami's rapidly narrowing eyes, and the alien hardness that turned his agonized features into gritted teeth of betrayal, and eyes glittering with suspcion.
"But you are more cruel than any torture that the Puzzle has ever devised. I always knew that the Puzzle delighted in breaking me. I have come to expect its evil. But you-" Yami's lips curled, and Yugi gulped to see his eyes darken and close to bloody slits, and then widen with fire dancing across his irises. "You knew! I was sobbing in pain, and I begged you to stop hurting me, but you continued your attack until I was too broken to do anything!
Do you see me as only your plaything to torture at your leisure as well? Is that all that I am to you?"
Yami's voice climbed higher with his emotions, and he studied Yugi with obvious waiting. Yugi could only stare down at him, his imploring hands
flung open wide. Yami saw the pleading torment and a pain that ran even deeper than his own. Yugi bit his lip, hesitated, then opened his mouth to speak, softy, angrily.
"Yami, I am so sorry! I didn't know that you were hurt so much. I never would deliberately hurt you. How was I to know that this was going to happen? You never told me anything about pain traveling through the mindlink! I didn't know the Puzzle could hurt you like this! Why didn't you tell me any of this?" Yugi raised a perturbed eyebrow in absolute frustration, and helpless anger.
Yami only cringed, as he folded his knees to his stomache in instinctive protection as his jaw quivered, and he swallowed hard.
"Yami? What-" He felt Yugi's hands tugging at his sleeve, and opened his eyes to see Yugi now standing over him, deeply troubled, and confused,
as he saw Yami start to tremble in horrible anticipation of his old stomache element.
Why now? Yami thought helplessly, as the warning shudder in his gut and the burning already rising from his throat forced him into prompt action.
"Yugi..." Yami squeaked his name, as he doubled over with a moan,and desperately tried to remove himself from Yugi's insistant clutching.
" Yugi, let me go! Please, let me go!" Yami's voice climbed higher in panic as he was swept over with the overwhelming nausea, as he twisted
away to spare his and Yugi the disgusting mixture he would shortly spew.
"Yami! What is wrong with you?! You can't just-"
Yugi watched in shock as Yami swallowed with considerable effort, his mouth grimacing at the horrific bile that was searing its way upward. From the sickening quivering that now gripped his stomach,to the bitter taste of the bile that was rapidly announcing its presence, Yami knew that he was going to empty his stomache in a matter of seconds.
Yugi looked stricken when Yami shoved him away with the flat of his hand, the other hand clapped over his mouth as he lurched around.
Yugi understood his reaction when he saw poor Yami bow his head, brace himself and retch. Yami felt the violent heaves in their earthquakes across his stomache, winced from the searing of his throat, and sat back on his haunches, waiting for the horrible sensation to leave. Yami's throat felt slimed and filthy, and Yami could not fathom how this indignity could still embarrass him so much. He
wiped away the aftermath with his sleeve, and shuddered in absolute humiliation.
He did not see Yugi approach from behind, and he was too distracted by his own misery to care.
He cringed at the contact of Yugi's hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see the violet eyes full of tears. Yugi was on his knees, asking silently for absolution, as he slowly engulfed the Pharoah in an embrace. Yami surrendered to the touch, too exhausted to do anything else.
"I am so sorry, Yami. I didn't know that I was hurting you. Honest!"
Yugi felt, rather than saw Yami's head slowly shake in negation, and saw Yami push himself away with a grunt. The naked hurt that glittered in Yami's eyes, and his physically seperating himself made Yugi stiffen, as fresh tears slowly trickled down Yami's cheeks.
"Twice it happened, Yugi. You attacked me twice. My reaction to the first one should have been a slight indication that it was painful. But that didn't stop you! I was already defenseless."
His eyes narrowed, and his voice grew soft, and harsh.
"That second attack on me hurt you, as well, did it not? Tell me, Yugi. Do you think that was my twisted attempt at retaliation?"
Yugi flinched, uncertainly, not knowing how to answer. "Yes. It hurt me a lot, but it didn't last long. But, Yami, you were defending yourself! I deserved that!"
Yami shook his head slowly with a bitter, broken chuckle. The misplaced blame and guilt that Yugi was unwittingly trying to burden him with was almost amusing, if it didn't break his heart...
"You misunderstand me, Yugi. I didn't attack you."
Yugi raised an eyebrow, the confusion marring his wide, inocent face into a strange grimace that mirrored Yami's worn brutality. Yami shuddered at the resemblance.
"The pain you experienced was the result of your attack on me. I was already drained from restraining the Puzzle, and I didn't have the energy to maintain both my shields, and protect you. When you attacked me the second time, my shields were functionally useless, but so was my ability to absorb any more energy. What you felt was the overflow of your own attack that deflected from me, since I couldn't do anything else but divert it, even if it was only for a moment. I am sorry that you experienced that, but at least now you know what you have done to me, and what you are capable of doing to me in the future."
Yami raised his regal head, flung out shaking arms to pull his long shirt down and preserve some vestige of his crumbling pride, as a distraction to how absolutely blind, and stupid and unwittingly callous his supposedly kind partner was. The ghosts of old wounds rose, bore their teeth down into his gut, and heart. Ripping open the fragile scars and forcing him to remember the bleeding anew. Beneith the buckle of the collar around his neck, he could feel the jagged wound of Seth's reopening. His hands and wrists burned with the fresh pain of gnawing ropes and bindings when he fought that futile, strangling battle at the hands of those he once trusted. Bound with honor like a willing sacrifice, drugged into tortured submission by chalice, by sleeping spells, by brute force. Dead before he even had the chance to live his life, only to serve his time as a prisoner to a golden Puzzle.
The injustice of it had hardened him, since he had nothing but mindless years to brood on it, and the Puzzle to reinforce his beliefs that he was nothing to the people around him but a thing to provoke for their own selfishness, or to torture for their amusement, or to break him, or just because... it mattered little to him, now. He felt Yugi's apologetic hands moving over his bent shoulders, gliding gently as buttefly wings, in an effort, Yami assumed, to keep him from that troubled, anguished brooding that Yami was quite inept at slipping into now. Even now, Yami fought the instinct to summon an energy blast and fling that small body across the room until it was shattered. Even now, he fought the urge to recoil, and shudder and wail loudly enough for God to end this fate of forced victimization. He would have preferred a warrior's death...quick, decisive, and mercifully over with. It couldn't be any worse than being shackled to a piece of gold and at the mercy of a child who seemed to feel free to abuse him at will. At least then he would not have to choke down these pathetic tears, tears that so openly showed his fraility.
