Slow chapter this week kiddos but it will pick up again soon. Figured you lot needed a little breather after last week.

Currently working on some lovely new stuff for you outside of Fantastic Parallels which I think you should all enjoy. That surprise I mentioned last chapter should be ready to hit the shelves by the end of this week coming and I think I might put it on FFn for you after all (I'm a little bipolar). More details will be coming out of my account around Wednesday if it's ready for publishing by next Friday.

Welcome, by the way, to Act 2!

Chapter 1: Act 2: Welcome to Wonderland

When Yugi exhaled, softening the air, the entire atmosphere of the room lifted from round Yami's shoulders. Yugi's gaze relented from over his face, becoming vague and gooey, but there was a cool, deep, ripple through the irises. The ocean was inside him, Yami couldn't deny that anymore, but shrinking that vastness back inside himself Yugi's extremity became once more unclear and inconsequential to his senses. Yugi was still so powerfully regal but it had dissipated to the obscurity of a distant pagan idol. The god had descended but now retreated back to a petite fairy, a wisp, mysterious, mythic and unknowable to a trembling beggar of a man like Yami.

Yugi sighed. Atreyu shimmered just beneath the surface overlapping and completely consuming Yami's current visage of the young man. Yugi wasn't some eccentric, eclectic, student Yami had plucked out of the ether he was a creature Yami had history with. He was an entity, being, Yami had learnt to appreciate and revere. Yugi was the expert, the mastery of elements Yami was still foolishly lost amongst, and Yami owed him allegiance and sacrifice.

Yugi had hinted now to all of Yami's misgivings, to every consequence Yami's misstep had wrought upon his life and that guilt coursed through Atemu inside him, just beneath the surface, till it was more that old Reaper part of Yami appealing to Atreyu through Yugi. The sides of the Faen were more innately unified than he or Atemu. Yami's books had wrought hell on Atreyu, on Yugi's, life in the Natural World. Demons were real. His friends were real. His adventure and duty was real.

He had put everyone in danger.

Yami's buried his face back into the Faen's knees, grasping the supple sides of his calves, a Knight who'd failed and Yugi, gently, placed his hand atop Yami's head to stroke his delicate fingers through Yami's dishevelled hair.

"Everything will be alright," Yugi breathed with a numbed affection that was deep but unapproachable. The Faen was lost in thought but nonetheless his hands stroked Yami's hair and soothed the tendons of his neck like a musician. "It'll all be okay."

"I swear…" Yami muttered weakly.

"I believe you." Yugi assured. "You didn't know any better. It's alright. All's well that ends well, all's forgiven, I'll make this right again."

"I put all of you in danger." He repeated to himself. "I've put the Veil round Earth in danger."

"We'll fix it." The Faen promised. "You and I will clean this up and move on with our lives. We can be proper friends together now. I can get to know you properly now. I…" Yugi sighed heavily, arm round Yami's shoulder, leaning in to cradle his scalp and curl over him protectively. "I'm so sorry Atemu. I'm so sorry."

Yami understood what he meant and that was perhaps the worst element of this disaster. Yugi wasn't his to love, protect and cloister anymore. The boundary of how far their friendship could stretch was now established in stone. Atreyu was Excalibur, he would only yield to the one true Champion, and Yami would never be Jenzar Fraveous so Yugi would never do more than love him like a brother, a mother, a confidant and confessor. Yugi would never be his to hold after tonight.

So Yugi apologised. Yugi had known they would never be anything and that Yami would never amount to much in his heart because he had a set destiny. Yugi hadn't cared. Yugi had given Yami license to pursue him only so he could have this moment to torture Yami for his misgivings. Yami had made living for Yugi more inhospitable than it had been in centuries and Yugi had found him to torture him into understanding.

It was a very righteous kind of Fairy punishment really. It made sense. Atreyu would not destroy him or imprison him as Yami may have unwillingly anticipated, no that was crass, instead filled with rage Yugi had decided to take the more insidious path of breaking Yami's heart as part of an illustrative fable. Now Yami could appreciate Yugi's painful undying longing for Jenzar Fraveous. Now Yami would endure the deepest kind of wound the Faen could inflict upon him and redeem himself through it. Now Yami would know what it was like to lose perfect love or the potential for it.

Yet perhaps Atreyu, Yugi, had been wrong in punishing him now that it came to light that Yami had no knowledge of the intimate reality of the situation until tonight. Yami actually supposed Yugi had every right to punish him or at least be hateful and spiteful to him. Not even Faens were perfectly loving and forgiving. Just like the ocean, just like Gaia. The truth of it was Atemu had given Yami every chance to note that it had all been real but Yami had used no discretion, happy to potter along, happy to get rich and famed off the stories of others. Inside Yami suspected he had always had that niggling knowledge, the doubt and certainty, of this world lying outside the mundane that he had enfolded in. He suspected deep down he had always known this parallel world existed in more than just his mind but he had denied the depth of those implications for his own comfort.

Now Yami had to grow up, not by dismantling his fantasy, but rather by taking on the responsibilities it entrusted.

Now was the time to be a Reaper in mind, body and spirit.

"I'm so sorry Yami," Yugi repeated sincerely to him, to him. "I'm so sorry."

They may both have been wrong here. Yami had known better in his heart and Yugi, even weakened by creeping madness and never ending pain, should have been more restrained.

"I don't blame you," Yami realized, "I'm just so mad at myself."

"I've always liked you Atemu," the Faen assured, "I've been furious at you these past few months but I've never not cared about your future or your life. I'd protect you from harm but I guess… I wanted you to know what you'd done to the rest of us. I shouldn't have started a vendetta. I'm sorry."

"No," the shake of Yami's head nuzzled him into Yugi's knees and he couldn't bring himself to raise his head because the warmth of Yugi alone still tempted him to cry. It repeated in his head that he could never hold Yugi, never have him, as his. "You warned me."

"Of course you didn't believe me," Yugi scoffed. "I mean, come on, emails from a fucking weirdo fan? I wouldn't believe them either unless I knew that any of this was real. You didn't. I should've picked up on that in your replies but I was so pissed off I thought you were yanking me round. I kept thinking you were some two faced prick who was all comfort and then all gossip the second you let your guard down. I should have known better."

"I'm so stupid," he spat at himself. "Fuck!"

Yami swore loudly and abruptly. It rattled the atmosphere, broke the tension, and Yugi flexed round him startling then comforting to clutch him as Yami rippled with self-loathing. He'd fucked everything up and only yelling about it seemed to help.

"Hey," Yugi ordered grasping Yami's clammy cheeks in his palms to force the elder's face up to his as he leant in, "it's going to be alright. Everything will be alright. If I have to warp time I will make this alright. Okay?"

Yami forced what little trace of a smile he could through the ache and Yugi replied with that universal understanding of the same pain.

"I'm Yugi," he reintroduced jokingly but the intent could not have been realer, "and it's so good to finally meet you Yami-Atemu. You can call me Trey. Friends?"

Yami nodded. He found himself laughing stupidly, crying desperately, choked and mumbling and lurched to wrap his arms round Yugi's waist and bury up against him as the pair of them fought the wound that had been so brutally exposed. Yugi's optimism would not falter, Yami knew that much, and God he would need it.

The air had somehow reformed in the night. What was left of the few hours before dawn and into the midmorning had broken like a dam to give way to a new picture of the world for Yami. He was settled into a grief that stabbed but it carried with it an empowerment, a re-establishment, of reality that was all at once dazing and redemptive. There'd been a rebirth of Yami's mundane existence which must now transpire in an utterly reformed way.

There was in all the wreckage and rubble of Yami's romantic heart a kind of clear, lifted, contentment that came over him in the aftermath.

The anxiety that overcame him as he descended the stairs to where Yugi had eventually slept on the couch, the throb that wasn't physical but ached acutely, gave way in the warm sunlight that was beaming through the windows and the clunking of pottery in the kitchen. The world had woken refreshed and brighter and Yugi had somehow made it so with his way of being. All of Yami's pain, present and attended, did not diminish but numbed somewhat with a childish Christmas joy when he found the young man in the kitchen making himself entirely at home.

"I'm making pancakes," Yugi laughed, casual and smooth.

He was a mother again, a 'once upon a time' kind of fifties perfect, as he pottered round the kitchen with the flour and the glass bowls spread out clunking with the mixer. Yami couldn't imagine where he found the energy but Yugi's secure confidence, rightness, comforted him.

Yami slouched into a stool by the island counter where Yugi had laid the plates and soaked up the sleep-over adolescent vibe seeping through the air radiating from some combination of elements and slack attire. He had a sense that the house was safe. That Victorian 'Angel in the Home' stereotype planted itself upon Yugi till he didn't belong to a single set era. Somehow Yami found himself falling in love with the change in Yugi's gait. Everything was exposed to him now: Yugi was Atreyu and rather than decimate their bond it reinforced it as Yami feared it might crumble under the cancer of his attraction.

There was the silence of chemistry and personal history. Yugi was no longer a mystery, he was vast and powerful with a new set of rules, but Yami knew Atreyu and had for years and so now he really knew Yugi as he had been praying to.

He'd been cleansed, reborn, as Yami had. It was all awash until now and now Yami felt they were truly meeting at a nexus of time and space in the physical Natural World as they had in the Supernatural. The dimensions of his life were starting to overlap in a form he could comprehend and it was so very cakelike to his imagination with Yugi flipping the little flat discs of golden flour in the pan.

"Get em while their hot." Yugi recounted the vague mingling of stereotypes to his own lazy humour, smiling, as he clamoured into the seat beside Yami and lay down the warm dough to dip the tip of his knife into the jam. "You okay?"

Yami felt automation come back to his limbs, sagged with mild exhaustion, as if Yugi's glance repowered him.

"I'm a little shell shocked I think." He had the most beautiful feeling that they'd spoke like this countless times before as though they'd been dear friends for years. He supposed they had. "I still can't believe it's you."

He had to chuckle. It came unthinkingly like Yugi, Atreyu's, serene morning smile.

"You're just as sweet as I thought you'd be," Yugi grinned something of a giggle escaping, "I swear I feel like we've been pen pals or something. It's been really surreal these past few weeks. Especially, well, being the only one in on it…."

"I can imagine." Yami shrugged happy to soak in Yugi's alchemy to turn the bitter into the forgiving. "It was weird for me thinking my fictional character might've escaped my book."

"You know," he reminded as Yami revelled in how easily his butter knife ran through the yielding golden dough Yugi had handmade effortlessly, "you can be as pissed at me as you want, right? I deserve some shit after that stunt."

"I don't want to fight." He surrendered. The joy, this pleasure, this intimacy with Yugi was more satisfying to his healing than forcing the beauty out of his life and leaving it all cold and decimated with frigid sterility. Yugi's presence was warm and numbing. "This is really good."

"Good," Yugi laughed, though it lacked arrogance. It was that mother's wish to provide sustenance and pleasure to their family that was emitted not egotism. "I must make those every day. You ever need a meal you just have to drop in. I'm usually stuck home baking something."

"Am I allowed to come over now?" He chuckled.

"Any time," the student swore with tenderness, "for anything at all. You're family now."

Yami had that at least. He was one of the inner circle now in this Natural World conspiracy. He was privy to more than most of mankind. Even with all the responsibilities that brought it implied these secret century long friendships he could rely on.

"Hey…" It occurred to him with tight, curious, remorse. "That hunt we had the other night…?"

"At Aperture?" Yugi snorted and it was still mildly stunning to know they'd shared the same dream.

"Yeah," Yami implied weakly.

"You mean when I called you…" he focused upon his plate as they trailed into caution.

"Yeah," Yami murmured, dipping his own knife into the spreads to add a little butter to his plate.

"Sorry about that." Yugi appealed. "It was an accident. I got carried away. It was fun."

"No, it's cool, just-" Yami sighed "-these last few weeks, all the dates, do I…I don't know. Do I remind you of him? Have you ever liked me a little like that? Or was it all just pretend to hurt me?"

"Oh fuck yeah," he exhaled with a weak laugh, "you remind me of Jenzar loads. That's part of why I've always liked you so much. When I was being a bitch, all this lying and shit, did I fall for you a little? Yeah. You're an amazing guy Yami, you're Atemu, you're fantastic and so sosweet. If it wasn't for Jenz and the books I'd be all over you. I just…yeah…you know. He's gone and I was so angry at you."

"Yeah I know," that helped somehow, "you love him. I… this is going to sound really selfish but don't you ever get mad at him for not being here? Don't you ever want someone else? I mean he's fucked off for four hundred years. That's not much of an accident, you know?"

"I know," Yugi sighed slipping down his cutlery to slump his cheek into his palm. "It hurts so fucking much to not have him here with me. It's scary and lonely and I get so pissed sometimes. I mean, he didn't give me any warning and for all I know he's just…given up on me or something. Maybe it got too much for him. If he did I swear to fucking God I'll…argh." Yugi groaned twisting inside. "I don't even know what I'll do but…I can't imagine him doing that and, well, I love him. It sounds stupid but for me four hundred years isn't that long. If that makes sense?"

"It's four hundred fucking years." Yami stressed angrily on his behalf. "Little long to go without a post-it."

"I know," Yugi sighed, folding his arms laxly on the counter. "Think about it though. I mean, I've been round for four billion years right? You're… what? Let's just pretend you're thirty. Look, thirty years is a pretty long time. If something happened to you, if you went missing, you'd hope your family would look for you for as long as it took right? You'd definitely expect that they'd at least not just give up after four hours. It's like that. Four hundred years is a lot for a body but for Jenz and me we're talking minutes. He's just really late by our standards."

"I just can't fathom it," he confessed, "I still don't remember jack before this life."

"It'll happen." The smaller chuckled. "It's taking a while for you but it'll hit you like a ton of bricks one morning and then you'll wish it'd just shut up."

"Did it take you this long?" Yami frowned slouching into his own palm. "When'd you know you were Atreyu Damestaire?"

"I got it in bits," Yugi shrugged, "didn't put it all together till I was about fourteen or fifteen or something… there was a shit load going on at the time. I found these stories I wrote when I was tiny and I know they're memories of incarns of me now but it all came in chunks. I knew about Jenz before I knew about Trey. Before I knew who or what I was I knew I'd been reincarnated a tonne but it took a whole lot of reading and detective work to bake up the whole narrative from First Life till now."

"Incarns?" He snorted. Yugi had such casual lingo.

"Incarnations, reincarnations, you know what I mean." He replied flippantly plucking the juice. "Ryou doesn't remember anything. Not meant to though with his type. Kaiba definitely does. Not that he'll chat about it. Both of them just knew what they were after the hunts started. Everyone just seems to."

"Kaiba's Cobalt." Yami cringed groaning. "Right?"

"Yep," Yugi laughed round the rim of the glass, as Yami threw his head back sighing.

"Fucker," he snorted weakly, "should've known. Bet he'd been laughing his ass off at me."

"Oh hell yeah," the smaller grinned, "he is so smug."

"Dick weed," Yami retorted more at the idea of Kaiba than Yugi, now he and Kaiba had a history as well. The bizarre had become mundane in the condensing of his universe at that second. It was less some grand conspiracy than some old pen pals playing a joke on him. "Fucking Watchers. Why do you like him again?"

"Stuck with him," Yugi giggled stoutly, "jack ass's family now. His brother's nice and he's not that bad when he's human. You know those Atlantians though. Only so much you can do. Reliable though, definitely can depend on Kaiba, now that you're in the circle. So don't worry too much you just learn to love him as he is."

"Or with a bus." He sneered nastily over his fork. Not to any real affect. It was more gossip than true intention.

"I tried that," Yugi confessed, face contorting into something of a smirk or giggle as he tried to stitch up his composure. "When we ran a convent one life, it was so-o bad, I nearly lobotomised him."

"Thank God I didn't know you then," Yami chortled as a smile broke through, "you two? Nuns? Fuck me!"

"I cry a little inside every time I think about it." Yugi spluttered round himself good humouredly. "I have been worse though."

"How could you be worse?" The author challenged.

"Well, there once was a whore named Jezebelle…" Yugi began trailing off to illustrate, though he hardly needed to continue, as cracking Yami let his face fall into his forearms and twisted with juvenile amusement. "I wishI was making this shit up."

"Oh sweet Jesus," Yami snorted.

"Hey!" The smaller laughed shoving at him. "Don't look so happy with yourself! We've all been a six year old girl once!"

"Casa del Trey," the smaller snorted lazily as he slid the key into the final lock languidly.

How many locks did Yami count? Four was it?

"You get a lot of unwanted visitors?" He supposed.

"Seers aren't the only things that want to eat me or the only things that can steal bodies." Yugi shrugged dismissively as he threw open the door and slid into the enveloping darkness to toss his satchel on the side table immediately facing them. "Come on in. It doesn't bite. Mind the rock salt!"

Yami crept through the gap Yugi had tightly left, head peeking round to discover said line of rock salt thick along the carpet a foot or two back from the door. Any haphazard intruder who pushed the door apart would disturb it had they no prior knowledge of exactly where it rested in the plush cream carpet under Yami's boots.

He let the door click shut behind him as Yugi kicked off his sneakers. Tugging his necklace over his head to abandon beside his satchel on the massive Victorian style side table that hugged the darkly papered wall Yugi began fishing for his phone in his pockets. Yami felt five locks digging into his back and fumbled with them lopsidedly as light glittered through the stain glass panel of Yugi's front door.

"Just do three," Yugi ordered languidly, already lifting his top over his head in a way that captured all of Yami's focus upon the contorting tendons of flesh along Yugi's navel as the boy's arms stretched over his head without the slightest glimmer of self-consciousness. "I'm just going to pop upstairs and change. Make yourself at home, kay?"

Yugi was already three steps up the carpeted flight, tucking his hair behind his ear, shirt in hand, the small of his back flashing temptingly to Yami over the hem of his slacks as he disappeared into the gloom.

If Atreyu, if Yugi, was like the sea then his house was a fish tank and Yami had yet to cross the preliminary strip rock salt in to it before he was assaulted by the scent, by the composition and juxtaposition of at least five different eras.

The carpet was thick modern fifties cream. The wallpaper had raised tiny floral designs under a thick, inexperienced, application of deep crimson paint. The side table was darkly veneered and chipped, stolen, from some Victorian country manor after World War II. Yugi's clothes, jackets, hung over the thin white washed banister of the staircase and his shoes littered the floor near the door: the regal blue fairy caplet with the fur collar that Yami loved, a pair of knee high superhero black leather boots propped against the wall, a pair of Indian beaded slippers tucked under one corner of the side board, a timeless tan tunic higher up the stairs, a purple scarf, a blazer from a British 60s rock bank…

Eclectic was an author's understatement. It was no surprise then how Yami drifted, bemused and fascinated, through the high ceilinged enclosure of Atreyu Damestaire's mundane life in the soft moments immediately following Yugi's abandonment.

The space was intensely private, it radiated thick plush security, like his grandmother's home while still pulsing with the scent of a religious temple and all of the sunlight broken darkness of a French boudoir.

The chairs in the lounge were uneven: the man's thick studded chocolate armchair, the ladies' little green and white wood and cushion throne, the pharaoh's stolen daybed... Round the covered baulked head of a disused fireplace mounted with a mantle delectably decorated with old ornaments and jewellery. The curtains were so thick they swept from floor to ceiling without ever allowing more than a tomb like slither of midday sun into the lounge.

The kitchen was a time share between a fifties show house and witches' cottage. Chairs form the same manor the side board had been stolen from sat round a kitchen table from the Brady bunch. Dried flowers in varying stages from fresh to mummified sat in the crystal vase. Little pots perched on the counter in a lone one read Sugar in ugly copper while the rest were modern little rounded things covered in pink and white gingham with cherries print.

The cupboards were lovingly full. So much so their contents were escaping round the black, terribly nineties, modern fridge and the French white wash cottage cupboard doors over the counter and steel sink. The fruit stacked on the counter, round the little plastic tubbed flower beds, and the skittles by the kettle compounded the colour till the food stuffs seemed to be growing still. Yami could see herbs amongst Yugi's dandelions, ginger and garlic amongst the potatoes in the basket to one corner, American candy and witches' spices infused in the clutter.

Light electrified here in the kitchen but was distorted through the crystal wind chimes and Chinese paper lanterns which continued that darkened, underwater, atmosphere that filled Yami's lungs with syrup.

There were modern anachronisms lurking like hulking, moored, turtles of course: the plasma TV, the microwave, the laptop, the sandwich press, the towering stack of Disney DVDs, the retro radio…but they felt peripheral and unnecessary contrasting to the point of becoming alien and altogether futuristic as if the modern had invaded a century or so back.

More than any of that however, more deeply apparent than anything parading before Yami's vision, were the books. They were infectious, rabbited, there seemed to be more every time Yami took a trepidatious step. Hulking story books were thrown open on the dining table, magazines sprawled like lovers all over the sideboard, cooking books, penny-dreadfuls, Trance, worn leather bound oldies, textbooks…

Trance?

Yep, sure enough, one of Yami's original ten thousand first-run prints of Trance sat well-worn besides it's equally bent but fresher looking brother Lapse just atop a fallen pile of Sailor Moon mangas. He plucked them carefully from the kitchen counter and flicking through the pages found the beach library scent of a school yard favourite. Yugi's final year school ID served as a bookmark in Trance and he had written across every page in a tight sprawling script. Gingerly Yami replaced them where he had found them. Yugi had read them. Yugi, Atreyu, had devoured every page of them repeatedly from cover to cover. It was flattering and depressing all at once. The first book had come out when Yugi was sixteen or seventeen. Only a little while after figuring out who he was. These books, these little things, had driven Yugi into a life of vicious, dangerous, seclusion after centuries of weathering the storm without Jenzar. These books had started them on a path to meeting and hurting each other.

This house was mythic. It was an ocean of time, memory and magic. He could feel Yugi's presence wafting soft, bright and warm, like a candle, in every millimetre of the house. Atreyu's magic was a rich, tangible, current which was almost invasive. It fell on Yami in waves he could almost taste settling with a scent somewhere floral yet akin to baked goods.

Yugi's bare feet padded briskly down the stairs as Yami fumbled over his breathing and Yami inhaled deeply as the sight of him glided back into view: jeans with a loose, white, femininely embroidered tee and one of those twinkling-sparkling earrings Yami had so often caught Atreyu wearing on their hunts. Yami exhaled in the moment, head shaking, as Yugi's hands slipped nonchalantly into his pockets during his approach.

"What?" He muttered as if Yami's adoring little smile was mysterious in origin to him.

"How did I not figure out you were Atreyu the second I laid eyes on you?" Yami snorted flicking the little glass bead of an earring with his index finger as Yugi skirted into reach.

"Took a lotof effort." Yugi groaned reaching after Yami's hand, "seriously, feel this."

Yami had touched Yugi. He had held Yugi and had felt the solid, tangible, warmth of his human presence infolded in his arms but as Yugi's fingers curled gently round his Yami had just a second before-

"Ow!" He whipped his hand back.

A shiver ran doggishly up Yami's spine and he found himself shaking his head to regain himself. It was like a shock, cold water, that shot straight to his stomach and down the small of his back to the carpet like a lightning rod.

"The hell was that?" He breathed.

"Sorry," Yugi snorted, hand still extended. "Seriously though, it's not that bad, try again."

"No way!"

"Come on," he ordered, fingers beckoning. "Don't be a pussy."

"What is it?" He demanded.

"My core, my soul," Yugi grinned. "Remember? Faens are a source of never ending self-perpetuating magic."

"The Living Star," Yami recounted in realization, "that's it? You can feel it!"

"Go on," he pestered, "shouldn't hurt you big weakling."

"Yeah but," Yami took his digits gingerly with his, shivering at the buzz that radiated in the tiniest part of Yugi's pinkie. "Wow, so, you toned that down for me?"

"Basically," Yugi smiled, shifting a little closer in encouragement as Yami accustomed himself the current tumbling out of Yugi. "That okay? It was a pain to do. Figure if you sensed it you'd work out who I was."

"That's amazing," he muttered mystified, the initial rush was off putting but the aftermath tingled without aching.

"Doesn't hurt?" The smaller checked insistently. "I can tone it down."

"No don't," Yami ordered, "that's amazing. It's great."

Yugi laughed, evidently relieved, hand tensing in an energetic squeeze between Yami's longer fingers. Yami liked it. He liked feeling how real Atreyu was.

"We better get you kitted out," Yugi decided eventually, "set you up with a little more than a protection box. Sound good?"

"After last night," he cringed, "I want whatever you can give me. You got another pair of those silver gloves?"

"Somewhere." Yugi shrugged cocking his thumb over his shoulder. "This place is a mess."

"I love it." Yami beamed. "I want to live here."

"I have bi-monthly Disney nights." He offered flippantly. "Ryou and I sing along really loudly. It's fabulously obnoxious. Come on, we'll try my room first, I think they're in the dresser."

Yugi's hand slipped from his, his warmth left Yami's grip, and it was instinct that ached for Yami to express the freedom to throw his arms round the Faen and press him to his chest like a rose bud. That wasn't going to happen.

Upstairs Yugi shuffled a stack of CDs to one side on the bedside table. He rustled on his knees through the drawers and under the bed as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Yami should have followed him into his room. Yugi really mustn't have held a sexual thought in his head, half under the bed, as Yami took in the latest layer of the Faen's enclosure: a four poster vined with fairy lights clad in thick blankets of a very Tudor print. A handmade blanket scrunched over the blanket box at the end of the bed. Books were double stacked in book shelves all the way to the towel hung en suite door, the silver knifes and rock salt ran along the window ledge, there was even a terracotta Protection Box on the dressing table.

The bed, oh sweet lord, the bed...

The bed where Yami, if he'd been luckier, might've made love to Yugi. He could picture being naked, sheened with sweat and nestled like kittens with Yugi's wiry pale body in his arms. He could picture Atreyu's sleeping face, he could feel him in his arms like he had been just last night when Yami was unawares, but in this new fantasy glowing freely with the magic of his exposed core that Yugi had kept obscured from him till now. He could imagine holding that bursting star and finding it docile, sweet, and precious.

"One pair of silver gloves," Yugi grunted victoriously, tossing them onto the blankets before diving under the bed again. "Feels kind of like the start of a Harry Potter book. Fuck me, that's lame huh?"

"A little," Yami chuckled weakly, stomach turning. "Little bit old for Hogwarts aren't we?"

"Eh, they have a terrible curriculum anyway, stuff em."

On the front step Yami's shoulder burnt under the weight of the bag as Yugi chattered up behind him languidly.

"If anything happens call me." He ordered strictly. "I'll change your ringtone so I know to pick up first ring. You going to be alright?"

"Yeah sure," Yami shrugged, "Seers don't break in two nights in a row do they?"

"Not normally." Yugi snorted, half amused but largely sympathetic. "Ryou and I are dragging Kaiba to the beach soon. I'm abusing my authority to bring you and Joey in on it. Sound good?"

"Great. Sorry," he sighed, "I think I'm a little too shell shocked to be super keen about anything. I'm all jumpy about sleeping back at my place tonight."

"You'll be fine," the smaller swore, "you've got an arsenal. Just be confident. That's the secret. Unconscious magic remember? It'll be okay. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"I know you won't," he groaned, "but what if-"

"Senses," Yugi interrupted keenly, "Yami I'll know if anything happens. Trust me."

"Okay." Stiff, grunting, and lethargic Yami was finding it hard to think in full sentences. Really he was more a mingling of heartbreak, love and desperate anxiety. The most acute desire was to hide at Yugi's place like a little boy running back to his mother's bed. Men dragged their feet however and, as Atemu, he felt a lingering pang of pride to take his sorry ass home. "I'll see you soon."

"You will," the smaller promised, "if not in a day or two I'll be there tonight if we get rostered for a hunt anyway."

"It's going to be weird knowing it's you know." He muttered. Maybe the pain would double or maybe when he was synced up with his truest self Atemu he would be calmer. Like Amar had said Atreyu was calmer over his current incarnation Yugi. Maybe without the influences of the Natural World his mind would be easier.

"I'm the same person either way." Yugi smiled weakly. "Hey, about that other Hunt a little while ago…"

"Which one?"

"When you saved me," he muttered. Yugi's fingers seemed to have curled tighter round the door frame as he leant into the opposing side. "I just…I didn't think Jenz would come for me. It was scary. I've always known he'd come and get me if anything happened. For the first time I just remember saying over and over in my head: Amar will get Atemu, Amar and Atemu will come and get you, and then…" he laughed, shoulders twitching indecisively, "you did. I was so glad to see you. I don't know. I just wanted to say thank you properly."

It was an odd overlap. To have Yugi and Atreyu finally correlated into one being with the same layers of memories. It altered so much inside Yami: he and Yugi suddenly had history, he had kissed Atreyu, and he had saved Yugi from demons. It sounded surreal when he switched or reapplied the two names to scenarios he'd associated with the other. Weirder was now, Yugi-Atreyu, almost embarrassed and sincerely grateful for Yami's existence upon which he admitted some leaning of faith.

He loved both of sides of him. Yami was boundlessly assured now that Atreyu and Yugi were the same entity and both its faces were perfect to him.

"I was so worried about you." Yami fell into saying. It came out without pretence or much delicate placing of action. More like a school boy on a date than a man or a Reaper talking about a mission. "I was so pissed at myself for not being there when you got hurt. I'm just glad you're okay. Sides, I guess you already said thanks anyway, right? I mean that was the day you came over and made me the Protection Box wasn't it? Even though you must've still thought I was a lying, manipulative, jack ass."

"Yeah," Yugi sighed, "I still thought you were a dick-weed but I wanted to…I don't know, I couldn't help myself and I came over to make sure you were okay. Even after sending that nasty email. I didn't want to give up the game but I was grateful. I'm not good at being a bad guy spose."

"Depends," he chuckled, "was it part of your evil plan to kiss me at the gardens?"

"Sorta?" Yugi cringed with miserable compassion. "I'm sorry."

"It'll be alright." Yami convinced himself. "Hey…"

"Yeah?"

"Have Faens ever switched Specialists? Has one ever made another Reaper Specialist a Champion?" It was a heavy unspoken thought between them and that was about as tactful as Yami could get. Still, he needed to say it, to air the metaphorical elephant in the room.

"A few times." Yugi admitted though he seemed unwilling to do so given the tightness of his voice.

"I don't mean you should." Yami shoved his hand in his pockets, lost and needy. "Just, if it turns out Jenzar has ditched you, I… I want you."

How he found the nerve or the conviction to say it Yami couldn't fathom but he hadto say it. Yugi seemed to wither and bloom under the weight of the promise in a peculiar juxtaposition of emotions. It only made sense really: one Prince Charming may be dead and gone and another might have stepped up to the mantle willingly. How should Yugi feel? Yami supposed that, being Atreyu, Yugi had never truly, unknowingly, been courted in four billion years. Atreyu, in his long life, would have doubtlessly been intimate with other souls in the Natural World but they would've, surely, seemed like seconds of time to him and totally inconsequential in the grander picture. What about the intimacy of switching Reapers? What about Atreyu's pride as part of an indomitable pair?

"Okay," Yugi nodded solemnly, "if he's given up then…But I need to find him first and you do know it might be something totally different? He might be missing me too. If he is then you know I can't just…?"

Leave, give up, and stop loving Jenzar Fravoeus. Yami could fill in that blank with plenty of things.

"I know." He promised. "Just, if he's given up, then I want you to know you're not alone."

"I know."

Yami plucked Trance out of the bottom drawer of his bedside table and plopped cross legged on his bed like a school boy with a text book. At one in the morning he should sleep but laying his head down seemed to only turn the volume of his thoughts up higher. Sitting with the laptop over his thighs now, for the first time in weeks, sent his fingers tap dancing but it was hardly the most effective way to unwind. Anyway, his writer's block may have evaporated but his latest trail of storytelling wasn't getting him any closer to a third book. It was cracking the shell of a completely new egg rather.

Should Yami even write the third book? Was he allowed? He couldn't risk exposing more Reaper Core secrets that was sure. His entire writing pattern would have to change, tighten, but that was a thought for drafts in the morning.

Page 76, Yami slouched with his elbows in his lap, propping the book open with his index finger and thumb like millions of others did every time they picked up a paperback. It had been so long since he'd read any section of Trance to himself in private it felt, re-lensed in his mind by time and new information, like someone else's work entirely.

"Atemu was acclimatising himself to the touristy nature of the affair." He mumbled, savouring the slow nearly whispering tangent of his voice. It had been a while.

"He seemed to have no purpose here. Dream logic pervaded with a pointlessness heavily imbued with an alien foreignness that rendered the popping in and out more like reloading a video game than experiencing a spirit journey. Still in the simplicity lingered the acute awareness that he was indeed dreaming. Plied with the intense reality of the sensation here he found himself revelling in the simplest things.

The coastline of the beach stretched straight to the horizon unbroken on three sides: behind him, before him and to his right where it was vastly deep ultramarine. The mountains swept up to his left, almost cutting the blue of the sky, and obscured any intelligence of a greater humanity outside himself. Seagulls cawed in and out of hearing as they flittered. The wind ruffled him. The scent of salt was tangible and thick on his tongue but he neglected that to absorb himself in the realness of the sand between his toes as he curled them. He could note the grinding of every grain against his skin, clammy, as he stood with his boots in his hands.

He could have been six, snuck from his mother's towel at the local shore, yet here he was garbed once more in the practicalities of thick cotton armour like an Aztec.

The only thing which faulted his vision was the stretch of his eyes and the roving they had taken to as he walked along the rim of the sea soaking the detailed sensation of the water brushing, lapping, back and forth like a dragged blanket tickling his ankles.

A rock outcrop sprung up in the sand before him, just ten or twenty feet off when he really took note of it. It was inconsequential in regard to the creature in the water beside it. The water just out was hardly deep. In the mossy foam Atemu could make out the legs curled atop the sand but the creature still occurred to his mind as a Mermaid.

Dark haired, bright eyed, wreathed in shells, startlingly naked, arm gone almost to the shoulder into some groove in the rock in search of something. It ducked its head under the rim of the rock shelf to try and search in the hole it was currently fumbling and at Atemu's amazed sigh of delight twitched, a startled deer at a gunshot, to him.

Tangled hair weaved over its shoulders, cupping its cheeks as it turned to Atemu, and its sweeping expression moved from shock, to frown, to an impartial, polite, smile as if a neighbour nodding to a passing paper boy as they put the cat out. Immediately that glittering face, those stunning indigo eyes, turned back to the stone utterly expecting Atemu to continue about his business."

Yami skipped 78 and 79. He knew this part: Atemu wandered into the wood, Atemu found the monster which was a Seer he didn't recognise at the time and in a panic was driven back to the sea where it almost drowned him. Then the mermaid saved him, the 'how' of that was vague, more because Yami himself had little memory of it. The pain of the attack, when the Seer had crushed him under it in the sand with the tide whooshing into his ears, was sloppy in his mind's eye.

Page 80, Chapter 6, 'The First Star I See Tonight'.

Atemu wakes in the Hive for the first time (not that it was immediately explained to Atemu or Yami, actually, where they were) and finds himself with his re-costumed Mermaid...

"It was the mermaid wasn't it? Unmistakable in the alteration of his design was the same darkness of his hair, the paleness of his skin and the deep royal indigo of his eyes. Yet the mermaid was different here in this light. Here in this catacomb beehive structure where the earth was warm and soft under Atemu's aching form. It was as if in the changing light the creature had distorted like a mirage, pushing its bounds, but maintaining relatively the same shape.

'What were you trying brave little Hero?' It chastised filially, nimble little fingers ripping off the last of Atemu's stained and torn cotton armour with surprising practicality and strength. 'Didn't your elder brothers ever tell you not to face a Seer?'

'Seer?' Atemu mulled over the word. Did it carry a vague familiarity? Why couldn't he move?

The creature followed his face, every twitch, with the same observant quality of a hungry cat.

'Don't you know your nursery rhymes?' It supposed warily. 'Hasn't anyone brought you home to the Hive and given you an introduction to your lot in life?'

'Is this the Hive?'

'Fledgling then,' it laughed. 'Well then; hello little cousin. Consider yourself lucky I found you. Now stay still for me won't you?'

Atemu cringed as the sweet little fingers turned in the gaping, brackish, wound contorting his chest where the Seer's spire had lacerated him. The mermaid opened the hole a little where the wound had collapsed in on itself, stained purple and navy and sludge filled round some artery. That sweet face ducked down, tight lips round the burning core of Atemu's agony and suckled in a long, thick, slurp.

The creature, mermaid or vampire, sat back, cheeks puffed and spat up the fluid it had sucked onto the dirt beside it where the venom sizzled the earth. Before Atemu could protest or question the pretty face was down again, its lips sucking at the wound, twisting him in searing pain as the mermaid drew at still more of the thick, pussy, venom. It spat twice, then, on a third time what the lovely thing spat up was half blood and deciding it had done its duty wiped at the inky stain marring its lips and jaw.

Warm, soft, perfect little palms ran over Atemu's face, down his clavicle, down his torso. The touch was so detached in its holistic focus Atemu may as well have not been inhabiting this body in the eyes of the little creature as it traced his bones. Finally one hand rested on his heart, the other over his navel, warm and firm as the beautiful creature inhaled, seemed to glow, and exhaled through its limbs into Atemu. At that tangible heat spread in tendrils under his skin from the mermaid's fingertips. The warmth soothed, it cleansed, the wound boiled into nothingness and through two or three more meditative exhalations Atemu found himself breathing with the creature till all the pain, the hardly physical ache, had evaporated to the gooey security of sleeping in a mother's lap.

'We'll have them show you around the Hive when you're back to yourself. Your brother's will want to give you a proper Initiation little fledgling Reaper,' it consoled, gently jovial.

'What are you?' Atemu supposed in childish fascination.

'A Faen,' it answered, 'you may call me Atreyu and you?'

'Atemu Pheramora,' the words rolled fully formed off his tongue without the slightest thought and seemed utterly right. That was somehow more his name than any other had ever been. It was true and right somehow he should introduce himself so.

'A pleasure to meet you Atemu Pheramora,' Atreyu cooed, one hand still docile upon his flexing navel as he lulled."

Atreyu would reveal his full name only later when their friendship merited it but he had, from the first, been enchantingly aloof and pervasive to Yami's imagination. Transfixing creatures as Faens were Yami couldn't imagine how Yugi remembered the event. He hoped it was fondly but at the time Atemu couldn't at all comprehend what might or might not have been drifting through Atreyu's merciful spirit.

Later he would find out that Atreyu had specifically asked for Amar to show Atemu the ropes. To collect him when he next phased in and tell him the whole beautiful story of how the Reapers came to be and what they did. Atreyu had asked the closest thing to his own Reaper to relate to Atemu how to work spells and how to survive. Whether that was because he deemed Atemu needed special help, being so fanciful and clueless, or if it was out of some sympathetic tingling compassion was still mysterious to Yami four years later. That was how he really met Yugi now he thought to word it that way.

Maybe it was delusional to think he could ever hold a candle to Jenzar Fraveous. Maybe it was silly to still, after all this heartache throbbing inside him, to want to be close to Yugi-Atreyu. Maybe it was naïve to try to be friends but the love which had been burning inside Yami was not about to subside and he was, he would admit, desperate for any way to stay with Yugi. Even if they would never fall in love like he could imagine in half a dozen little day dreams Yami could still love him like this.

It was a peculiar turn. Yami had never been one to picture himself like this. It occurred to him though that, perhaps, you could love a person enough to not give a damn who or what you had to be or do just to have their company. Yugi might never love him like he adored the missing Jenzar Fraveous but Yami would take what he could have. Anything was better somehow than being utterly divorced from Yugi's life. He would endure this bullshit just for them to stay close, just to have Yugi's number in his phone, even if it hurt. Anything was better than no Yugi. Anything was better than fighting or hating or being removed. Yugi gave him a light, a centre of gravity, and Yami would do anything to hold onto the magic of it.

Atemu rippled inside him. Atemu was, he supposed, the deepest truest part of his identity and they seemed to have synced more now in an awareness of each other. It brought with it a profound unity of Yami's will and heart. Atemu, Yami, whatever name he gave himself he wanted that soul that was Yugi, was Atreyu, was perfectly beautiful in his life and he would protect it.

With that though came a well of empathy for the mysterious Jenzar Fraveous. Yami could picture the Champion a little better now in his mind: a man who had loved Yugi for billions of years, who would do anything for him, who was bosom allies with the ever flawlessly moral Amar, who could stand among all these archetypes and paragons and not be afraid but rather could feel at home. Yami pictured somehow that Jenzar Fraveous would be an enviably humble, loving, kind of man. Amar or Seviticus had called him a philosopher, hardly a warrior, and Atreyu always spoke more of his affection than his vengeance if Atemu could make Atreyu speak of Jenzar at all. If Yami met Jenzar he would probably like him too. If Yami met Jenzar he could probably concede who was more worthy of Yugi but until then he would hold on with a reverent respect for Jenzar Fraveous. It wouldn't do anyone any good for Yami to wish him ill.

1 Anyone know where Chrino's gone? I seem to have lost her!

2 When Yugi speaks about how the others 'just seem to know' that the Supernatural world is real it's a trend. The only person who seems to oddly not have figured it out after a little while is Yami.

3 We won't get many excerpts from Yami's books but this one sort of replaced our hunt for the chapter.

4 I can understand if Yami's… willingnessto try to stay with Yugi might seem odd. I hope it wasn't too strange for you lovelies. Again, I tried to go off what I know and when I was young I was dumped by someone I loved so much that, even if she didn't love me romantically anymore, I still desperately wanted her in my life. We stayed best buds. So I tried to pump my understanding of that here into Yami.

5 On the plus side of above: now Yugi/Atreyu and Yami/Atemu can properly get to know each other.

6 The chase for Jenzar Fraveous begins in full swing next chapter! I'm curious about what you guys think: has he given up on being a Champion? Stopped loving Yugi? Been trapped?

As always, hope you enjoyed!