Disclaimer: YuGiOh! Is so totally not mine, it's not even funny.

Yugi breathed a great sigh of relief once they made it to the safe house. This time it was really a house, at least in a loosely applied term. They had found it by accident. At the time, it had been just a shack hidden behind boulders and brush. With a little time and effort, however, they were able to enlarge it and patch up all the holes in the walls and roof.

Yugi stood admiring the job his family had done, he hadn't been around to see the final stages of work. He did recognize the carved panels over and around the door. He had made them specifically for this purpose, and was glad they were still there.

"Did you do those?" Yami asked, coming up behind his aibou. He examined the wood work. It was incredible. At the bottom was grass, then looking up there were trees, deer, mountains, and the panel over the door had a sun burst on the left and moon and stars on the right. Yugi nodded. "Yep. Took me a bit, but I got it done."

"Wow. I never knew you could do this."

"Jii-chan was nervous about it. He seemed to think that me + knives = danger Will Robinson. Plus, I really enjoy doing it for others. I didn't really know anyone besides him back in Domino. So I stuck with games and puzzles. Good thing too, huh?" he added, smirking just a little. Yami elbowed him playfully, dodging the retaliation successfully.

"You know Yugi, if anyone else found out half as much about you as I have, they'd wonder if they even knew you," Yami told him. Yugi didn't show it, but that hurt just a little. It was true, he did keep things under tight wraps. He had had someone LIVING in his HEAD and that person hadn't known. True, they had kept a nice line of privacy, but still.

It was almost funny, if you thought about it. And they wondered how he managed to be such a good strategist. He had been planning operations, making the best out of the worst possible situations, protecting others at the cost of protecting himself, sacrificing, risking, long before he ever slipped on a duel disk. Duel monsters was really just a game version of his earlier life. Right down to the last-minute lucky draws.

The kids were fed, and put to bed. The older kids, though Yami hesitated to use the word 'kid' to describe any of them, even the youngsters, briefly planned the next stretch, then were left to their own devices as they prepared for the early-morning dash.

"It'll be foggy in the morning," Dmitri said softly, so as to not wake anyone up. Yugi nodded. That both helped and hindered. They were better hidden, but so were all the patrols with jumpy trigger fingers.

"How do you know it'll be foggy?" Mokuba asked. He was older, technically, and was sitting quietly with his brother. Dmitri gave what he thought was a mysterious smile. "Ah, but that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

Eliana rolled her eyes. "He's our weather man. Don't ask us to explain it, but Dmitri just knows what the weather will be like. And with better accuracy than a TV weatherman, if Yugi is to be believed about it. And trust us," she said, smacking Dmitri upside the head, "Dmitri has always been this way. And this annoying as well."

Dmitri rubbed the back of his head. "Annoying? Me? You're the one who keeps hitting people."

Dodging another smack, Dmitri settled behind Yugi, who was busy whittling. "But she is, amazingly, right about one thing. I'm not sure how I know what I do, I just do. Something in the air tells me that fog will come. And it almost always does. I get a feeling when it's going to rain, another when it's going to blow hard, and yet another when cold is expected. It's a gift. Non-refundable, non-transferable."

Dmitri's' normally serious brown eyes were smiling. Mokuba opened his mouth to ask another question when Yugi interrupted. "Careful, Mokuba. Dmitri loves to talk about this. Only ask the question if you care for a few hours' worth of theories and descriptions about his so-called 'gift'."

Dmitri looked indignant for a moment, but as Mokuba asked the question anyway, he was mollified and the two talked in a strange half play half dead serious way, moving from Dmitri's barometric skills to showing where they were on the map.

Yugi sat, counting down mentally until his watch came up. He was on auto-pilot as his knife cut into the wood and a Dark Magician figure was formed. Seto, surprisingly, actually seemed interested in what he was doing. In a very Kaiba, it's just because I have nothing more important to do sort of way. But Yugi did discuss his favorite woods and carving techniques.

"Did you pick it up for yourself, or did someone get you started?" Dmitri asked. He truly didn't know. They generally didn't talk about the past, before they joined up as a group. Heck, they didn't talk much about certain things they had experienced as a group. But seeing how Yugi seemed a bit more…well, both more stressed and yet more relaxed around his Domino friends, Dmitri figured he'd risk it. Darn his curiosity.

"My dad got me started. He gave me my first knife and taught me the proper way to use it. It was actually a month of learning the proper cleaning and safety and care of a knife before I was actually allowed to do more than look at it." He gave a wry grin.

"I was threatened six ways to Sunday about what would happen if I mis-used it. It was really all my mom's idea though, all that extra caution. She was such a safety nut. Always worried about sun burn, mosquito bites, rusty nails. Dad was really laid back about 'childhood trouble', as he called it. They balanced out rather well."

Okay, so that was more than Yugi had actually intended to say. Still, he had managed to actually talk about his parents, so he figured he was doing pretty good. Fortunately, his turn to keep watch came and he bid them all good night.

Sitting alone outside, Yugi couldn't help but wonder if he was avoiding Yami. It felt wrong that he had kept this whole life to himself. But at the time, it had felt even wronger (was that proper? Worse, perhaps? Argh, stop! Focus!) to tell the others about it. If Jii-chan hadn't even known everything, well, why should Yami?

Besides, they had been a bit busy saving the world from 5,000 year old evil beings intent on universe destruction.

And he wasn't making excuses, was he?