Hey beautifuls! We're now officially half way through Act 1 with this update! Act 2 starts in Chapter 8 so keep your eyes out~ Sorry though. Unfortunately, I was wrong, the cutesy stuff is next chapter. Sincere apologies!
Chapter 4: The Truth About Pandora?
Atemu hadn't been on a hunt for days. So when Yami fell asleep Wednesday night and found himself Atemu once again it was both relief and curse for his over-cooked noodle.
Atemu phased in to something of a basement. It reminded him of Yami's old university, the one he'd dropped out from, with long pale hallways. There was something of a screening room, like a lecture theatre, to one side where beings who looked human were meeting for a club of sorts. To the other side a bathroom door in pale skin pink which a young man darted out of instantaneously to Atemu's arrival to the scene.
Atemu only got half a look at him before he spoke in sharp whispers:
"Come in," Atreyu ordered, back to the bathroom door while only being half out of it, beckoning him to follow inside.
It was a women's room and Atreyu, in a fluster, ignored Atemu's puzzlement to shove them into a stall. He climbed up the porcelain seat of the toilet, boots amazingly quiet in their clinking, and gestured briskly for Atemu to lock the door. Atemu knew he wasn't moving quickly enough for Atreyu's tastes when the Faen grasped his coat by the scuff and dragged him up onto the toilet after him. It was a tight fit the pair of them standing on the seat but Atreyu had miraculous balance that came with the expressed power of the magic in his body great for a centre of gravity.
It was at times like this where, if Atemu didn't know any better, he would've thought they were on the Natural side of the Veil rather than in the Supernatural realms in some pocket dimension. He asked himself too if all of Atreyu's hunts were this to the point. Did the Gate Keeper give Atreyu some preliminary explanation or did the Faen truly need nothing but the energy flow of a dimension to tell him all its troubles?
"What's going on?"
"Don't make a sound. We've got three seconds," Atreyu whispered feverishly, "just watch."
Atemu pressed his lips together in compliance and waited as, just as promised, three heartbeats later a girl and boy rushed into the bathroom and took refuge in the stall beside them. They were blissfully unaware of Atreyu and Atemu watching them as the boy fumbled, panicked, with a rifle between his inexperienced fingers. Atemu's heart began racing, adrenaline returned, but it was the thrill of danger that intoxicated him rather than the terror of fear. He had no context for what was happening as the bathroom door pounded open several more times children rushing inside and squashing themselves in stalls.
After two or three long, tense, minutes the stall to their right had two girls in it, one how was sobbing and another who was frightfully ordering her to be silent, while the stall to their left had the armed boy quaking with the shot gun and his female companion. At least three of the other stalls were filled, the remaining empty four with their doors half open, but as they were across the room in an opposing row Atemu had only glimpsed who had entered them in a flight.
Atreyu had stretched his arms till his fingers were touching the opposing walls of their stalls and, his chest pressed into Atemu's back as the Reaper crouched to try and maintain his view without his head peaking too obviously over the top of their stall, Atreyu took deeply steadied breaths. He was casting a spell, wordlessly, Atemu could be sure but to what end he wasn't entirely clear. To protect them?
The door of the women's room was thrown open uproariously as Atemu considered it and flapped shut, rattling in its frame, as the newest occupant to their sanctuary stood outside the stalls. Atemu raised his crouch slightly to catch a glimpse of the harshly panting girl standing there. Her mouth was hanging open grossly, face ruined by a disgusting progression of slices, and she rocked under the force of her own inhalations as she smiled through cracked teeth. She rocked him with the general repulsion of her appearance but that counted for nothing here. As unsightly as she was this girl might have no power at all that he should be concerned of but still there was no way to tell. Power here could be in anything, appearance meant little, but the other children hidden began to shake in the opposing stalls and behind him Atreyu stiffened.
Atreyu's stance gave Atemu more fear than any remaining factor he might make note of. Atreyu knew what was dangerous so Atemu held himself tighter, suddenly weary of falling, and watched as he'd been instructed.
To their right the crying girl, who the other was attempting to stifle, let out a terrified wail despite herself and the horror-faced young woman outside contorted her destroyed visage immediately in that direction like a dog on a scent. She lunged then, beating at the door with her bruised fists, roaring, while the two terrified young girls inside began to cry and panic in unison. Atemu wanted to help but darned not move without Atreyu's permission.
The destroyed, monstrous, young woman was unnaturally strong for her size because her poundings at the door began to splinter the wood, forcing it in, to the terror of the girls within. The door gave way in the next throw of her fists, groaning like a ship's hull, and in a frenzy the disgusting woman rushed into the stall to fall upon the trapped girls in a grizzly mashing of teeth.
Atemu's stomach turned in disgust, spine tensing, but as the distorted woman ripped the girls apart, alive and screaming, all at once they vanished.
The room rippled, like reality was contorting, and then settled.
Atemu's head twitched, birdlike, to find the stalls on either side of them empty and undamaged.
Atreyu pushed at his back. Forcing him off the seat and dragged them hurriedly out of the bathroom and round the far bend of the hallway. Atemu found himself forced to crouch beside a set of lockers and watch as the armed boy and girl from before darted into the bathroom they had just vacated.
"What?" He reeled terribly. "What on Earth?"
"The time stream's been damaged," Atreyu explained in a soft whisper by his shoulder, "it's looping through this sequence of events endlessly."
"Is there a tear in the Veil?" Was Atemu's most immediate question because, surely, only something as extreme as a fully formed rip between the Natural and Supernatural boundary could cause something so stupendous.
"I can't find one." The Faen asserted and if there was one Atreyu would've found it. "I've been here for at least fifty loops in the time stream. Every time it jumps it's putting pressure on the Veil. If we don't stop the time loop it's going to form a tear."
"But how on Earth is it happening?"
"Something has to be causing it." He replied and Atemu immediately noticed the horrible disfigured girl charging into the women's room for the second time. "No, it's not her, I already checked."
"What could cause something like that?" Atemu mumbled uselessly. "That's incredible magic."
"You can't imagine anything?" Atreyu appeared surprised at his admission.
"No," he confessed stupidly, though there were in-fact several entities perhaps capable of such a thing.
Time was one of the few fixtures of the Universe that was stable on both sides of the Veil. Yes time was often slower or irrelevant on the Supernatural side of the boundary but you couldn't simply go back in time. There was a linear, unchangeable, sequence of events. Once something was done it was done.
The only entities Atemu knew who may be able to manipulate time were intensely powerful. The Gate Keeper or some other Supervisor, that is to say some other God, perhaps could but none of them would. They used time to keep order and work towards some end goal because after all everything on either side of the Veil was orchestrated using time and dependent upon Fate. Without time there was no consequence, no Fate, no way to act out cycles. Time had been the first fixture of order in the universe.
Forces, spirits, like those governing the wind or the sea in the Natural world certainly wouldn't have power on this pocket dimension on the Supernatural side of the Veil either.
Atemu pressed his mind carefully because Atreyu, diligently watching the progress of the bathroom drama loop for the third time, had teased at an expectation that Atemu should be able to come to the conclusion of some culprit on his own. It was not an unreasonable quiz but Atemu was aware that they needed to work quickly through his lesson or else Atreyu would have to mend a tear in the Veil. Still Atemu did not want to fail this, Atreyu's faith in his ability to come to his own answer, of all things.
This was, he considered, only a small dimension and only this few moments was being looped. That was still powerful magic but it was contained. It would probably only last until a tear was made in the Veil. Atemu knew that, if he really wanted to, Atreyu would be capable of something like this but once more, like the Gate Keeper, Atreyu would never use his magic for this purpose. Atreyu was an embodiment of order. He kept these systems running and these rules functioning.
Then, Atemu realized, perhaps Atreyu's opposition was a logical conclusion? The Seers were embodiments, pieces, of chaos just as Atreyu was of universal order. The Seers were nasty creations who only possessed tangible forms on this side of the Veil and there were legions of them who together were quite powerful. The Seers lived to damage the Veil, the damage the Faens and Reapers and Champion Reapers who protected it, to cause disruption and devastation. As a fledgling Atemu had rarely been sent to deal with them directly himself but these were Atreyu's hunts he was escorting. It was perfectly reasonable, in fact completely inevitable, that the Gate Keeper would send Atreyu to attend something so dire.
"Seers?" He voiced sharply to Atreyu the adrenaline in his gut now twisting in a more significantly immediate sense of fear.
"Of course." Atreyu sighed, patient as ever, but served him a smile for his correct answer. "We had to find them. There will be a few of them. They must be somewhere nearby and we'll have to expose them."
"I…" Atemu was a Reaper. He should be brave.
"I'm here." Atreyu soothed dropping to his knees beside Atemu's crouched body, cupping his face in his perfect, cool, hands. Even with his true face hidden behind another costume to keep them undercover his eyes were still as disarmingly true. "I won't lose to vermin."
"I know you won't." Atemu asserted. "I just…" He inhaled sharply. He was panicking. The last time he'd faced a Seer alone had been a traumatising accident. The last time he'd faced many it had been with an army of Reapers beside him, a Champion and two Faens.
"Don't be afraid." The Faen murmured softly, fingers working over his cheekbones delicately till really Atreyu's touch might've barely been there at all. "You can defeat them. You're a Specialist, a Champion of some description, even if you can't unlock all your power yet. Remember that."
"I'll try."
"Good," Atreyu stood smoothly, "we don't have much time."
From soft vision of hope, like the Angel to Joan, Atreyu was then quick footed and nearly militaristic. Atemu had seen this transformation before on the battle field. Atreyu was truly amazing in real combat but the whiplash effect of the older, more aware, Reapers and Faens was never lost on him being so young himself. He was sure they felt their soft emotions and their blank emotions more passionately than Atemu himself but they had felt them so many times that moving between them was no longer a process for the elders. At least that was his outside intelligence of it.
"If they're anywhere," Atreyu whispered strictly, "they'll be near the source of the disturbance, in this case the time loop. The majority of it is condensed in this hallway and that bathroom."
"How do we expose them?" Atemu followed as Atreyu lead them down the line of lockers away from the bathroom.
"We need to throw a challenge into their loop." He answered. "We've got to disrupt the spell."
"How?"
"Watch," he ordered kindly, as they came round a second corner and Atemu realized they were now at the opposing end of the original hallway where the women's room in question was located. "Three…two…"
The girl and the boy with the shot gun emerged from thin air it seemed, trapped in the time loop, and scampered wildly into the bathroom. Atemu exhaled in amazement.
"The time loop starts here." Atreyu explained beside him as they moved into clear view. The two girls emerged from the ether two or three feet before them and without glancing back ran to the women's room themselves.
"Then…" The thought came together in his mind slowly and Atreyu's benevolent smile widened proudly as he clasped both his hands before himself and waited. "Should I…?"
"You stop her," Atreyu nodded, "but don't stray too far from me and unless I tell you too don't take off your disguise. This is about to get deadly. It's not the gentlest way to break a complex spell."
"Understood," anxious nerve and fatal excitement condensed in him, as Atemu spread his hands before himself and inhaled deeply waiting for the disgusting girl to manifest.
"Three…" the Faen whispered helpfully for his inexperienced companion. "Two…"
"REPEL!" Atemu cried both palms flat before him.
The disgusting girl was swept off her feet, rolled, tossed like a ragdoll down past the lecture room of club members. Coughing teeth she gave a spitting roar and rounded in Atemu's direction instinctively.
"ENTRAP!" He called trying to rattle the spell further.
The girl sagged, hissing blood, stuck in her awkwardly contorted motion of running unable to shift a muscle. Atreyu began to tighten beside Atemu into a combat pose, his legs parting to steady his weight between his feet, one palm raised with delicate fingers before him as all around them the walls of the facility started to rumble. Atemu tried to keep his eyes focused on the disgusting girl, keeping her secure, as the air around her began to solidify and crackle into fragments.
He might have never been able to explain why the entities which inhabited these pocket dimensions on the Supernatural side of the Veil only sometimes seemed to have magic they were conscious of or why they only sometimes seemed to recognise Reapers but he could explain what was happening now. The spell constructed in this part of the pocket dimension was breaking as Atreyu had planned and sure enough widening gaps were forming before them to a dark subspace that had not been exposed until now.
Now Atemu's excitement truly declined as that familiar sensation of frigid, tingling, cold infused the atmosphere.
The air was crackling, electric, in a very literal sense and Atreyu's hair whipped back from his cheeks as Atemu glanced to him for reassurance. The dark void widened and slowly the writhing creatures forced their way into the mundane hallways scape that didn't suit them.
Seers hid in many forms and came in many shapes but these were fairly common manifestations. Their long, spider like, contortions of human legs saw them as tall as Atemu walking on their hands and feet. They were pale, translucent, creatures blue veined, white haired, with wide gaping mouths and dark featureless eyes. Atemu's spine rippled. His first instinct was to attack, he was a Reaper, these were his natural enemies and competitors for the top of the food chain but with Atreyu beside him he was afraid.
"Intruders!" one hissed stupidly, head flailing, eyes blank, but using a much too human voice. Atemu was sure it had been stolen from an attractive young woman. "Ruiners!"
The second of the Seers, the gangly beasts, sniffed the air like a stoic witch turning into the wind and turned her sharp face towards Atreyu with noticeable focus.
"I know your smell Star," it rasped purring over the words, "I know your nature Star, I know your name Faen."
"Well," Atreyu eased, "if we're all friends here."
His glamor washed from him, silver water off a duck's back, revealing the sparkling form which matched those stunning eyes. His hair fell round his cheek bones which were peppered with what were either tears or diamonds. His costume fell tangibly to strip away down to the white perfection of the straps of flowing linen which only half hid his skin. Atreyu Damestaire revealed himself in all his glory and the Seers, as was their nature, turned away as if disgustingly appalled, offended, by such a sight.
Atemu could not think of anything more perfect as Atreyu's Needle, his primary weapon, flittered into being between his hands once more a delicate and almost glowing sword.
"You've brought a nice boy," the same Seer appraised tauntingly of Atemu tilting it's had farther than an owl till it's limp crone's hair hung in clumps scraping the floor, "but where's your man?"
Atreyu's fingers tightened visibly round the scabbard of his Needle, beautiful eyes tightening, and rather than a spell Atemu had the great pleasure of watching Atreyu lunge at them with his blade. The Seer's scattered back like beetles on the linoleum of the hallway, Atreyu's blade sending thick purplish pus over the walls spraying from his initial strike on the translucent skin of the sneering Seer.
Atreyu drew the blade back, close to his hip, clutched between his fingers and released it with one hand to spread his arm before him as if inviting the Seers to dance.
He was mad.
The Seers roared. It was a sound Yami often fooled himself into hearing late at night when he was uneasy. That guttural moaning that transformed from a woman's scream into the airy roar of a predator. Atreyu didn't flinch but then he had heard it millions of times. The nearest two bore down on the Faen, to Atemu's horror, but he had no time to respond in kind as the third, finding itself with nothing to do, rounded on Atemu and bounded towards him.
Atemu pivoted to fly well before he thought to fight and he was almost round the next corner before he forced himself to skid to a halt, his Reaper's pride bubbling, and wage a battle rather than a retreat.
"OBLITERATE!" Destructive spells were part of a strong offensive, Atemu was well versed, but as Amar Seirramoura the Champion had educated him you didn't want to go throwing them around liberally.
The more you used a word the less power it contracted, summoned, within your mind through connotative ideas. You could decrease the power of great spells by being too heavy handed and damage delicate systems. Reapers weren't intended to swipe clean dimensions they were intended to keep order in complicated ecosystems by causing as little injury and intrusion as possible. It was precise work and one of the reasons Atemu appreciated working with others where he could pick up their unique, interesting, word combos.
The Seer however did not waver like Atemu hoped. It rolled back but had enough loose limbs to immediately be back on its feet even if its arms were bent backwards. Atemu's spell had sliced it but not at all slowed it down.
"MAIM!" He attempted, nothing significant appeared to change, it forced the Seer back out of grabbing reach true but didn't cease Atemu's swelling panic. "DESTROY!"
It was increasingly difficult to construct spells when this blank headed by confusion and trepidation. To make matters worse the Seer found the entire enterprise a hilarious failure and took great joy in laughing at him.
"DIE!" Nothing, he didn't have the right strength in his emphasis, Atemu was forced down a tunnel of alliteration to try and ferret something affective out as he backed up under the Seer's parrying lunges. "DESTROY!"
As before it sliced the amused beast but hardly solved his problem.
"DISARM!"
It slid back a foot or so on the linoleum.
"DISABLE! DIFFUSE!"
It lurched to a halt, hacking, and Atemu's chest tightened.
'Enforce some order on them,' Amar's knowing voice ordered, 'they're Chaos. Fight back with order.'
"PURIFY!" He compelled passionately and, to his relieved amazement, the Seer contorted wailing as though its skin were tightening as it curled on itself like a burning snake.
"SANCTIFY!"
Another beautiful contortion the lethal body hissing, cracking…
"ABSOLVE!"
Atemu found himself channelling every religiously loaded movie he'd ever watched in the real world as the Seer began to crack spewing purple pus and smoke like a carnival attraction.
"EXCORCISE!" He hounded that one home, verbose, passion and thrill coursing back through him as the security of a victory in sight presented itself for his claiming.
The Seer screamed, a woman's noise, and seemed to crackle and splutter into nothing but dried, shrivelled, pieces. As Atemu watched they smoked, evaporating, all stains phasing into utter void and nothingness.
He was shaking with the sheer weight of exhaustion when he forced himself to jog back to Atreyu's conflict. His feet might as well have turned to lead and it was one of the first occasions he'd ever experienced a physically draining sensation here on the opposing side of the Veil. As nothing here was truly physical he had never really been tired but his energy was depleted now without an unlocked core to draw on. He would only get that enduring energy of a Specialist, a Champion, when he unlocked the memories of his past lives and discovered his true calling within the ranks. He sincerely hoped however that it was not to fight Seers.
Atreyu's shoulders were bobbing when Atemu returned to him. His Needle had become a lance, long, thin and precisely sharp hued in the most brilliant metallic indigo. The Seers were fragments, utterly obliterated, and the battle seemed not to have truly exhausted him as much as some other pain.
Atemu waited, quiet but assured Atreyu was aware of him as, with the loving hands of a craftsmen, the Faen mended the wounds the Seers had inflicted upon the reality of this pocket dimension. He took to re-sewing the Veil's minor tear with his Needle which was, at once, very small and brilliantly sparkling between his fingers. Drawing back together the fractures where reality split open in the hallway scene to expose a dark void world which he slowly eradicated from their view.
Atemu was sure it was very glorious to watch this Fairy slay the dragons and the nightmares but as Atreyu gave the very meekest, tender, sound that was to him something of a choked sniff Atemu was radically reminded of the implications of this all. Atreyu still had no Champion. Jenzar Fraveous had still yet to manifest, to emerge or return to him since their last reincarnation on the Natural side of the Veil. Atemu could not imagine why or what would keep a creature the same form as Amar Seirramoura from its purpose and he wasn't sure if Atreyu could either. Worse than that Atreyu and Jenzar had been lovers since before the term existed, since before the Veil existed, since before time or structure or anything had taken a consistent shape…
He couldn't appreciate a love that vast. How two people could adore each other so righteously through an immortal eternity without drifting or hating was a mystery to him in the modern Natural world he came from. Not even Yami's parents had a perfect love that could last such a length of time let alone one that could cross the breadth of the universe in its stride. Why Jenzar Fraveous had vanished, why Atreyu could not find him, were mysteries bizarre even for the Supernaturalists. The relationship between a Faen and their Champion was one of the most enduring, unchanging, fixtures of the universe. That was, from an outsider's perspective of course, because when Atemu considered it internally how could Atreyu bear to be, bear to stand or fight, without knowing where Jenzar was? Without having Jenzar to support him through trials like tonight's hunt? If they loved each other so much, and Atemu had no doubt they did from how Atreyu spoke of Jenzar and how perfectly idolatrous Atreyu was himself, how could they stand to be apart?
"Congratulations," Atreyu rewarded through Atemu's musings, "you dissected a Seer all by yourself."
"Dissected?" He frowned. The old ones were always very particular with their language. "Not killed?"
"Seers had no physical form to kill," the Faen reminded him, "and you can't kill a soul because it's immortal. When we stop Seers we force them into pieces. We take them out of the game for a limited amount of time as they are forced to reform but you can't destroy matter or create it sadly. The universe needs them causing mayhem just like it needs us to fix it. If we were really meant to eradicate them like vermin there wouldn't be so precious few Faens."
"Of course," it only made sense to Atemu but he rued it wearily.
"Go rest," Atreyu instructed, "you deserve it."
Atemu was glad for the sincerity that Atreyu always carried but despite his kindness the Faen was still aloof to him. That tender intimacy of their friendship had vanished recently since Atreyu had confessed he was upset with Atemu. Atreyu was once again as obscure to Atemu as the Angel was to Joan.
Yami hadn't been on a bus in yonks. He hadn't exactly day dreamed about the miseries of Atreyu Damestaire recently either for that matter. Today was exceptional however. It drew attention that really merited he stop day dreaming because he had another one of his strange dates with Yugi today.
Yugi himself seemed a little distant but at least on the front of his health Yami could discern no new wounds and there was that original pep in his step that suggested he'd had some invigorating rest since their last meeting. Something Yami himself rather desperately needed. He threw his arm over the back of the bus seat and Yugi rather covertly leant into him. It was a just a fraction, something done for desire rather than need which both greatly pleased Yami and seemed to remind him all at once of Yugi's indomitable independence from aid.
Still Yugi had been revealing to a point. He was, after all, taking Yami to somewhere more his own space than shared ground. He was taking Yami somewhere he wanted to go, somewhere he knew, somewhere Yami had never taken the incentive to go see himself. Yami wasn't quite sure what he was expecting from the Botanic Gardens but he pictured they'd be as pretty and prim as any other garden. He'd been through a Prime Minister's garden of some sort on a brief tangle in Australia which had been a very grand kind of picturesque posh.
Once Yami settled that, deciding he was passing through Yugi's wall, the young man felt all the warmer, all the closer, pressed back into him. Yami eased his arm off the back of the seat to rest round Yugi's shoulders rather cautious of how this authoritative sprite might redirect him if the action wasn't to his tastes but Yugi mercifully allowed it. More than that Yugi let his head lull back into Yami's shoulder as he locked his eyes on the passing landscape and the author took the intrinsic permission to hold him tighter.
It was beyond perplexing the exact stripe of Yugi's control over him. He was dignified while possessing a relatable mundaneness. Subtly unyielding while being utterly compassionate. That old description of the dark, unknowable, but nurturing sea seemed an appropriate metaphor. Truthfully Yami's desire to be close to Yugi was perhaps better explained using Atreyu however. It really was the same concept: a divinely delicate, almost a cult idol, which Yami revered, loved, ached for intimacy with but was so reverent of that it had the power to paralyse him. Atemu would never intrude to touch Atreyu without permission, it was akin to defiling sacred ground, and in the same way Yugi had proclaimed himself worthy of the same respect and was to Yami equally sacred. He was equally precious.
Yami suppressed that line of reasoning. Thinking about Atemu was becoming frightening. It gave him a headache. He was sure he was losing his mind, honestly, in a way he'd never experienced. He was getting far too transfixed in his fantasy by translating it to reality. Really, what proof did he have that his dreams were anything but dreams? What proof had he ever had? At most a few odd coincidences, ridiculous theories about Yugi's secrets and the young man's similarities to a being too fictional to be real…
Yami was too heavy headed to talk but he needed to become more sociable before they reached their destination. He plucked at Yugi's shoulder and the young man blinked back to him tugging an ear piece loose.
"Can I listen?" Yami asked.
"Sure," Yugi smiled, he moved one ear piece from his outer ear to press into the one beside Yami's cheek and handed the author the free headphone ear-bud to place in his own.
What on earth was that? He frowned. The first song was bizarre till he caught the dialect of the English lyrics. Some Vocaloid cover of Katy Perry's ET he finally deciphered. He had to chuckle, easing, when Carry on my Wayward Son began and Yugi mouthed along beside him.
Carry on my wayward son there'll be peace when you are done, lay your weary head to rest, don't you cry no more… though my eyes could see I still was a blind man, I hear the voices when I'm dreaming…
He found himself unpacking the narrative: charades, journeys over mysterious seas, new purpose, hidden knowledge… Beautiful, momentarily unsettling, themes to Yami but Yugi loved it too much for him to ask for a change of pace.
Sweeter English next, some American country singer, Yami didn't mind it. He didn't catch the chorus till it came round the second time.
Gravity is gravity, it doesn't try to pull you down, stone is stone, it can't help but hold it's ground… light is light it just known how to fill a room…and dark is dark so the stars have a place to shine…
Then it was over. Dance tracks, the Ataris, more Vocalnoid, then something filthy Yami half recognised a second in as Darren Hayes Irresistible. That turned his mood right around but even then he had this acute uncertainty about whether or not Yugi was pursuing the same sexual line of thought as it played. Yugi wasn't embarrassed enough to change it, so, was that teasing? Somehow Yami couldn't picture Yugi as sexual and to his own surprise found it hard to picture a sexual fantasy starring Yugi. Again that imagine of defiling something precious came to him which seemed silly. Yugi wasn't delicate.
The next song started soft and assaulted him. There was no other word for the fish-hook way it immediately yanked Yami's attention to focus on the tail end of the smutty notes of the previous tune which had lulled him.
My heart is a weapon of war. My voice is my weapon of choice. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart, a soul for a soul. We fight for the dream, we fight to the death, we fight for controool!
It was gone, it startled him, he was half dissecting it when Yugi flicked to the next track unceremoniously. Why change that one when the smut hadn't fazed him? Yami was over reading this but he knew he'd bee goggling it later. He was fast becoming a detective, a Sherlock Holmes, mad, obsessed…
The Botanic Gardens was an ultimately misleading title if ever Yami heard one. They weren't gardens at all. Yami, who as previously mention was about as healthy as a first year art student, was going to die from an effort induced heart attack after a leisurely stroll through these
'gardens' (he'd call readers to notice the use of massive sarcasm quotations).
"They're not literally called gardens are they?" He demanded as he faced down where Yugi was suggesting, ordering really, they head. "You're messing with me. That was artistic flourish on your part."
"Nope, they're actually called the Botanic Gardens," he answered smugly. Yugi found Yami's hesitant horror quite amusing.
"That's not a garden. That's a mountain."
"It's a hill."
"It's a mountain covered in Red Riding Hood's forest."
"It's a hill covered in segmented but seamlessly flowing patches of vegetation styled after different types of gardens and wildernesses: gullies, woodlands, European forests… there's even a rose garden and a rock garden up there somewhere." Yugi elaborated beautifully spreading his hands out over the manmade lake where they were currently observing the main, non-field, portion of the reserve as the ducks and a particularly nasty black swan were hassled by children below their incline.
"'Somewhere' and 'Up There'being the key words," Yami baulked before adding at the compulsion of his inner little girl: "it looks steep."
"There are paths and signs." Yugi stressed his reassurance lightly. "It's gorgeous."
"Is it too late to mention I have a serious heart condition?" Yami added. "The layman's terminology for it is: Fat-man's Fear."
"It's not too late," the smaller purred patiently, "if you want you can stay here and I'll abandon you."
"You'd seriously abandon me?" He returned stressing the particularly dire choice of words as if he were some desperately vulnerable newborn Yugi was tossing to the wolves.
"I freaking love this place." Yugi warned. "I will leave you behind like the fat kid at dodge ball practice. This is not Saving Private Ryan. I will leave a man behind."
"You have the shrivelled heart of an ogre."
"Better find your man balls and follow me then." He teased.
This was not, Yami realized, some lounge date round the good ol' entertainment box. Once they passed the initial thicket of trees onto the first trail, little more than some narrow set cobble stones, the rest of the world faded from view. Yami caught only distant traces of other wanderers but that might've been more because Yugi chose the steepest, darkest, looking paths into the heart of the mountain scape dragging them up higher and higher. Yugi pulled them through patches Yami was sure weren't official paths given how they had to duck and how mossed, glossed, over the path was or how inhospitably steep.
"If we keep going this way," Yami panted stubbornly behind Yugi's spry, deft, feet, "we're going to run into an goblin."
"Let me deal with the riddles then." Yugi joked but he'd softened his voice considerably since entering the thick.
The panting passed. Yami acclimatised himself and began to realize there was no destination just a long string of increasingly obscure walkways. Once that very human expectation for a goal dissipated, once Yami let it go, he started to sink into the atmosphere of the place.
The trees were massive, overgrown and closed in. In parts he was sure they were in the Black Forest among the oak trees and in others some fairy grove. They passed a walkway or two of chicken wire covered wood bridges over tiny streams running down the mountain side they were rising up. Everything was violently, vibrantly, green. It was camo then lime and viridian but it soaked the air till Yami's lungs were filled with the fresh, pungent, and mingled scent of seclusion. The children down by the lake had been wiped form existence, the birds chirped indecisively but for the most part left he and Yugi in intensely penetrating silence.
The higher they got, the deeper they reached, the more Yugi seemed to glow. His shoulders eased, he beamed to himself, and Yami found the difficulty of his own tension easing significantly the further he lead them. Yami was slow going, at times Yugi a good twenty feet ahead of him on light feet that darted off under trees where the path forked into a significantly tighter trail. Yami would heave himself up after him and Yugi would stay close for a little longer before racing ahead at his own pace once again.
You could forget how old the world was here. It was easy to imagine mankind was still young and this was the only ancient part of the world. Yami very unconsciously found himself convinced he was trying to follow a teasing, luring, Fairy like a lost traveller in an old sonnet by Keats or Wordsworth. The light interplayed between trees, some which were covered brilliantly in red plumage, some which had toppled over and some which exploded with foliage. Yugi brushed everything as he passed, visible but distant, gloriously contented. Yugi drifted one way then, through a patchwork of trees, directly off the path and cautious Yami was still uncomfortable at the idea of calling out so was forced to follow.
Now they were utterly in a thicket, beyond human contact, but Yami discovered he actually quite appreciated the diversion away. There was a deeply comforting element of superstition to being away from the world in a mystifying place like this. The atmosphere radiated, soaked with unconscious natural magic, blotting them to utter insignificance till they were completely enfolded. The reserve couldn't have been as sprawling as it seemed to Yami then but it did feel, distance obscured and closed in, massive. The air felt arcane.
It went without saying there was some unspoken rule about this. The gardeners running the reserve obviously didn't intend for them to go off the path but Yugi was already even further into the artificial wilderness and had plucked his shoes off, to hold them by the heels in one hand, as if they were too human for him.
The landscape dipped naturally into a damp little gully. A natural nest of grass, mushrooms, and orchids bounded by the maples where everything was lush and verdigris but the combinations were nearly unnatural. Yugi found a little patch of the grass to nestle down on. Legs twisted under him, bag and shoes to one side, staring up at the light crisscrossing, breaking, through the church like ceiling towering overhead. Sound was perplexing here. Yami was almost aware of the sound of people laughing but it was vague under the bird calls.
"There's a path a little more that way." Yugi gestured over his shoulder to Yami's confusion then settled right back down sighing, dozing, cooing.
Yami very cautiously took a stiff seat on the ground pulling his knees to his chest. He couldn't deny it was soothing, cathartically beautiful and with the grasses so thick Yugi looked like he was sinking into them wreathed by stubborn little flowering weeds.
"You come here often?" Yami whispered.
"As much as I can get away with," he recollected. "Entry's free, bus fare's cheap, life just gets in the way. It's so replenishing."
"Yeah," he murmured eyes straying, "you're right. It's safe."
There was an element of intensely childish innocence and truth to that idea. It was, at least for the imaginative, the second best embodiment of the ancient world you could find without running off to Europe. Yami supposed he was a little in awe of the effect of the atmosphere.
"Have you ever travelled?" Yami quirked with sudden interest, he slunk onto his hands and knees to lay down beside Yugi in an intrinsic symbol of submission to this whole affair, slumping next him in the damp grass.
"A bit," Yugi admitted, "France, Ireland, Scotland, England…you?"
"Egypt, American, Australia…" Yami answered, it seemed an unnecessary and stupid question on second reflection. What did he want to get at here? Yugi might consent to a little interrogation here. "How's your friend? Ryou?"
"Well his boyfriend didn't break his jaw after all," he snorted, "so he's alright."
"I don't know what to talk about," the author reflected, chuckling but thoroughly frustrated.
Was there any way to ask a meaningful question without being unsubtle or sounding mad? Had Yugi trapped him in a corner? Yami felt increasingly warded off today like their connection was dying. It was terribly frustrating because he couldn't figure out where the source of the thought was. What did he expect to happen today? Did he expect all the answers today?
"Don't have to talk." Yugi reassured him, rolling languidly onto his stomach, little flower flecks still clinging to his hair as he slung one arm over Yami's chest and rested his jaw atop it. "What's wrong?"
"I feel like an idiot again." He confessed childishly.
"This place is kind of disarming." The smaller sighed reverently. "Just relax. Did you ever learn about Romantic poetry, the Sublime, all that conferring with nature stuff? Makes me think of that."
Thank lord, a life line, Yami could talk literature.
"Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge…" he recited knowingly. "I guess you're right. I feel like I'm on the cusp of some big thought I keep skirting. It feels like one of those old fairy tales where a man wanders off into the woods and at some point or another realizes he's gone over the Veil into some fairy space."
"Or some goblin territory, or the home of the Mountain King, or wolves." Yugi grinned. "Or he meets a mysterious women or stranger who charms him and is peculiar-"
"-And inevitably turns out to be something else?"
"Like always," Yugi laughed, "I love old stories like that."
"Me too. I can't get away from writing down that vein," Yami elaborate and found himself shifting under Yugi's weight to place one palm behind his head and let the other rest round Yugi's waist. It was easy. He didn't over think it. This was moving back in the right direction somehow.
"I wish I grew out of it sometimes," Yugi muttered, "that whole fascination with the supernatural, with old stories, with myths and religion and cult knowledge feels like it's going to eat me up sometimes. I really tried to go off it in High School."
"Why?" He frowned. The aesthetic of the pagan utterly suited Yugi. It seemed part of him to associate old elements and fragments of history into his style which he revelled in confidently in front of Yami.
"It's not all good. That's sort of obvious. All the dark things: voodoo, human sacrifice, cannibalism, vampires, body snatchers…I read a lot about them too when I started high school, started exploring that darker aspect, and…" Yugi paused carefully, frowning, "I started to scare myself. I started seeing things and I got freaked out. I thought I was going nuts so I tried to run away from it."
"Seeing things?" Yami whispered. "Like what?"
"Shapes, shadows, dark figures, ambiguous animals, things on top of cupboards looking at me…" he trailed off softly. "I'd think it was raining and it wasn't. I'd hear music at night. I'd feel like all this energy was trying to burst out of me. I was so moody, I'd do little mundane things and I would get this images in my head and they'd just set me off."
"Images? Like junkies? When they see bugs on things?" He attempted to elaborate uselessly as Yugi struggled through the explanation.
"No, like memories, like…" Yugi fumbled for an example. "Once in class we talked about the Black Plague and I was convinced I remembered dying in it. I could feel the boils. Then, another time, I heard this song and I…I just broke down… I had this thought in my head that I'd been a mother, that I'd had a stillborn, that mybaby had died…funny things like that. Like my whole mind was cut up in pieces of different people with their own opinions. I didn't ever get multiple personalities or anything like that but it was like the whole universe unfurled and everything was massive, scary, multi-layered."
"Did you tell your parents?" Yami found himself scared, not for Yugi but more selfishly for himself. Was this the kind of thing he was creeping towards? Losing the boundary of fact and fantasy? Convincing himself his characters were real?
"My Grandpa found out." He answered. "I tried just putting all my occult stuff in a box under the bed and ignoring all of it but… he came home one day and I'd broken down crying about wanting to 'go home' and 'being lost' and 'missing him so much'… all this gibberish. I don't remember it well. It was like a fit."
"What'd he do?"
"Took me doctors." Yugi laughed. "I was so scared no one would believe it was actually happening to me and then I was scared they'd put me in some asylum. They tested me silly and then gave my Grandpa, poor guy, that: 'well we don't know but it sounds like this maybe' answer. They wanted to put me on medication."
"Did you take it?"
"Grandpa and I talked about it. He didn't want to make me and I didn't want to take something that was going to change me. I didn't want something alien in my body messing with my hormones." He gestured at the contagious thought. Like medicine was Voodoo. "So Grandpa and I tried to find different ways to deal with it, home remedies, alternative medicine stuff."
"Did it help?"
"Well…" He sighed. "I was a mess for most of the beginning of high school. Definitely didn't have any friends. So I did a lot of reading. I decided if I knew what was happening to me then maybe I could stop it. Ended up reading more myths and fables and bibles till eventually I just sort of consolidated this idea that there's dark and there's light but what scared me wasn't necessarily trying to hurt me. I tried to listen to it, to live with it, and it turned out that everything was okay, that I could handle it, that my 'delusions' weren't going to break me. Then I meet Kaiba and Ryou-"
"Kaiba?"
"He thought he was going nuts, so did Ryou, and we all sort of leant on each other. We talked about it and we decided that if this stuff was real to us then it was as real as anything could be so we were just going to deal with it. Makes me feel like an alien sometimes, because people don't really get it, but I like to think that I can just see a little more of the universe and now I'm not so overwhelmed by it I love it. It makes everything richer. It made me feel so loved after my parents died."
"What do you mean?"
"I meet Kaiba and Ryou, I figured out I could do all these things I didn't ever think I could," he beamed softly, "when I thought I was a good for nothing mouse. Then I realized I could handle living with all this and I could get other people through it. I felt stronger, I had friends, I have all these presences everywhere that make the world seem bigger and more beautiful. I guess it's like how some monks feel closer to God. I feel like there's this universal current I can tap into and it makes me feel less lonely. I feel like there are forces watching over me. When I was little I was always so terrified that when I died there'd be nothing but this black void but I don't feel like that anymore. I don't want to say that it's all real, that there's magic or something, but it's real to me and that's about as good as it gets."
"Lord," Yami muttered but he felt steadily relieved by the concept that, maybe, he wasn't the only one experiencing this sensation. He felt more akin to Atemu, braver and more natural in his assurances. "No wonder you make me feel like an idiot. It's a miracle your head doesn't explode."
"You think I'm nuts?" It wasn't an accusation. It wasn't even nervous after that confession. Yugi was just curious.
"No," he promised, "I just wish I was clearer about what Ibelieve. I wish I felt like I knew. I wish I could experience something reaffirming like that. I keep scaring myself off dealing with it. I keep touching the nerve, getting lost and then feeling like I'm losing my grip on reality. I'm worried I'm going to fall over and never be able to pick myself up in the right order again if I look too closely at what I believe is real or not."
"It's easier when you're not the only one going nuts." Yugi laughed. "Having to keep Ryou and Kaiba from falling apart made me pull myself together. It made me be tough, made me know what I was capable of, it was this baptism of fire."
"I'm surprised you don't talk about this more. I mean, it's still happening, isn't it? You still see things, experience things, feel things like that?"
"Yeah but of course I don't talk about it," he shrugged. "It's personal. It scares people. I don't care if someone doesn't believe me when I say the things I see exist but at the same time it's none of their business how I see the world. I don't want to be converted. I don't want someone to save me. I don't want to me be medicated. Sometimes when I let someone in on this they just think I need to take some pills. That it's a problem and not a lifestyle. I just want people to accept me the real me even if it is eccentric and if they won't it's better they don't know at all so I won't get hurt by friends thinking I'm crazy or overzealous."
"I don't." Yami found it poignant to reaffirm his loyalty. Yugi seemed to appreciate it and slipped his head off his arm and onto Yami's chest.
"I'm glad."
"Why'd you tell me?" He whispered.
"Because I figured you'd be open to it. You sort of seemed to be onto me anyway or at least sense it." Yugi muttered. "It dictates a big part of my life and my long relationships, this whole secret, so it's hard to really be honest without putting the fact I see things, which I believe in, on the table. At the same time I don't want to scare you off and I don't want you knowing that unless I know you're not going to use it against me or laugh at me. You just…I figured you'd be responsive, you'd listen…"
"You're very cautious, aren't you?" Yami realized for himself. Yugi had been screening him for this initiation into the Cult of the Surreal he figured. This was the big impenetrable wall of secrecy. This was why Yugi wavered from the totally truth because, like Yami, he didn't want to be called mad. He'd told Yami the greatest secret only now because he'd deemed him worthy. "You…you really do like me, don't you?"
Yugi must've. Yami felt it sink in.
"Duh," Yuig whispered hoarsely, raising his head just a fraction to catch Yami's eyes with his nearly colouring, utterly smiling, till the older man melted with beaming satisfaction.
It was a key in the lock moment. Yami knew Yugi wanted him, knew Yugi adored him on some level just like he returned or at least Yugi accepted his affection. Everything was stellar. He wasn't the only one falling here, not at all, Yugi must've been tumbling.
1 All the songs are actual songs. You can listen to them if you want plot hints or a soundtrack to the fic (I might even post a full soundtrack later if you guys want?) in order in this chapter we heard: Vocaloid Luka's rendition of ET (a cover of the Katy Perry song), Kansass Carry on my Wayward Son, Jewel What You Are (which was part of a great Victoria's secret show~), Darren Hayes Irresistible (thank you Chiro!), Emilie Autumn FLAG (Yugi's theme song~).
2 I live near these Botanic Gardens in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. They're lovely.
3 I try not to give you guys anything I don't know about so I'm sorry if Yugi's mental breakdown sounds unrealistic. It was difficult to write but: I did experience this, as Yugi describes, during the early part of high school and I'm currently still on medication for a combination of things including something my medical practitioners loosely refer to under the umbrella of terms 'psychosis' or 'schizophrenia'. (I'm absolutely peachy though guys so don't worry at all)
4 Remember kids: we don't have to trust Yugi. He can lie. About how much and about what, well…that's up to you to guess~