Author's Note: I didn't intend on writing a second part. But as it turns out this story isn't done with me yet. The style remains the same but this time speaking is denoted with "". Chapter title inspired by the title of an Evanescence song of the same name.

Before the Dawn

**

Fear. It's not a new concept to you, nor a stranger within the world in which you inhabit. Fear is what plays on the edges of your mind. It's the spark and spike of the adrenaline in your body (his body, not mine, never mine), as you draw a card. It's in the thrum of your heart (his heart, not mine, never mine) as it pounds against your chest and inside the sweat in the creases of your palms (his palms, not mine, never mine). Despite your arrogance, your confidence, there is still that one second before you turn over that trap card, or watch as your life points diminish from a blow dealt by your adversary. You think for a moment you might not make it… that maybe this time you've met your match and you're scared, scared, scared, and you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be… because you're learning. You're learning that there are far more frightening things in the world to be afraid of, that are worth being afraid of. The fate of the world never so much matters to you less than meeting up against an enemy so small you cannot see it, yet is so strong it can weaken and topple even the strongest and most resilient of human beings.

Secretly, you are ashamed to admit it, but your deepest fear of your own weakness comes to fruition this night as you watch Yugi breathe through his mouth because he can't breathe through his nose. The dark circles under his eyes stand out against the pallor of his skin, his eyes at half-mast as he tries to answer the nurse's questions. They close briefly in dismay when he discovers he has to stay overnight for observation. He just wants to go home, go home so much, and they're not letting him, and he wants to cry again, because he's sick and his head hurts.

You offer to switch again, though you know he will say no. He does, and tiredly, in a mental tone he has never used on you before, orders you not to ask him again. His head hangs and rests in his hands. You are stunned… not so much by the tone, as by the way he feels when he says it. After having sought you out moments ago for comfort, this sudden rejection puzzles you. You remind yourself, he's sick, it's okay to be cranky when you're sick. He doesn't mean it.

But it still hurts. Yugi is your world… your be all and end all. Sometimes you think he's aware of that, and maybe right now he's thinking about it. You don't know. He's closed off from you now. His thoughts have retreated behind a mental shield you cannot penetrate. And you won't. In many ways, ways never to be spoken of, you are very aware who truly is in control of this relationship. The power, all of the power, lies with Yugi. There is nothing you can do if he decides to smash you into a million pieces if things go south. You are more dependent on him than he is on you.

You need him to get better. His mortality is your enemy.

"Go away. Please. I need… Please."

You retreat into the Puzzle. You've been overbearing again, without wanting to be, without trying to be. You don't show your own pain, nor do you allow it to taint any part of your retreat. Yugi doesn't need this right now. He needs to get better, and if he feels he can fight his invisible enemies alone, then you have no right to stand in the way of that. Still, upon the steps of your mind, staring at the cold stone between your feet, you wonder.

Soon the quiet of his mind and body let you know he has fallen asleep. You emerge from the Puzzle and take in the situation. The dawn-tinted darkness spilling through the too wide windows of the hospital room whisper that morning will be in a few hours. The grayish light falls over the form of the slight boy lying on a small hospital bed. He frowns in his sleep, disturbed, and turns his head away from the encroaching light. Your gaze lingers briefly on the partly open blinds covering the window; you almost raise your hand to close them. You stop, smile faintly, and allow your fingers to close into a loose fist. That's how it is being a spirit after all.

Yet you wonder…

Whipping on the blinds, you focus on them, and command the shadows that always hover around waiting for your beck and call. The blinds swiftly shut with such force, they gently rock back and forth, lightly bumping in the window frame. You pan the room, making sure the sudden movement wasn't noticed.

It is. The rapping noise of the blinds startles Yugi awake and he sits up sharply. His alarm aggravates his cough and he hacks a few times into the cup of his hands before eyeing the now barely swinging blinds.

"Mou hitori no boku?"

You don't answer. Usually when you emerge from the Puzzle, Yugi can see you. But this time you don't let him see you and instead remain silent, watching as he looks through you, in sleepy confusion. It hurts to look at him… his complexion is pallid, stark white even in the darkness. He sighs when you don't answer him, though he waits long enough, prodding at your walls inquiringly. When he gets nothing, he gives up, and turns over away from the window.

He's upset. He thinks he's made you angry and he starts to sniffle. Realizing your mistake, you appear on the opposite side of the bed and kneel down so you are level with him. You softly speak his name so he opens his eyes.

Hot guilt stabs through you at the wet streaks running down his face, as he watches you through the darkness, smiling when your eyes lock. You smile back gently. "Hello aibou." You're a little surprised when he blushes – or it could be the flush from the fever, you don't know – and turns his face shyly into the pillow. Amused, you tilt your head to the side, and inquire in a teasing manner, and he begins to snicker, before snatching another glance at you. When he sees your perplexed reaction, he has to fight a coughing fit and laughter, shaking his head when you softly demand, "What is it that is so funny?"

"Nothing," he manages, still battling with his mirth and the congestion in his chest. Then he just smiles and gazes at you with such affection it's all you can do to avoid a transient flush yourself. Even sick as he is, looking as awful, and feeling as awful as he does, Yugi manages to bear it all with the same unwavering, iron resolve he does when he grips your elbow during a card battle.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs suddenly, his hand shifting across the mattress, fingers twitching toward you. Your hand slips over his and he smiles again faintly, briefly. Yugi is the only one you can touch and you are so glad. The warmth of his hand is like nothing else you've ever felt before – or can remember feeling.

You ask him sorry for what and he says for pushing you away. You shake your head and tell him: "There is no need to apologize, least of all to me. You owe me no such courtesy, aibou, don't even think of it."

"Yes, I do!" Yugi sits up some and shakes his head, his vehemence touching and so very strangely passionate. "You do everything for me and ask for nothing in return! It was wrong me to push you away when you were only trying to help."

"Aibou, you're ill. It's okay. People always say things they don't mean when they're sick."

Yugi smiles again. "Now you're just saying what my mother just told me."

"She's right."

Yugi's gaze lowers, and the smile vanishes. "But… people also say and do things they do mean, even if…if… they normally wouldn't do them." He snatches a quick glance at you, blushes again, and briefly in a ghost of a second, appears so miserable. It's so fleeting, weren't you watching him so closely, you would have missed it. Something lurks just there beneath the surface. It's part of that thing you both don't talk about… the thing hiding amongst the shadows of the sunshine and butterflies. It simmers just under the surface, its image distorted yet this is the closest you two come to it. He knows you've picked up on this and begins to back away. You let him… because you're still too afraid to move.

Suddenly he stops. Trembles. His eyes remain fastened on a space faraway from you, and a singular resolve lights behind his intense fear. It's so huge, so overwhelming you don't know what to do. Slowly he turns to you. His fingers touch the Puzzle he still wears and his hard gaze intrigues you.

"Your soul room. Now."

A bit perplexed, you nonetheless do as he commands, because how can you not when he looks and sounds like that? Yugi has made a decision about this thing and plans to address it in some way. You cannot apprehend his design of purpose – that he keeps hidden from you – yet you know somehow.

He finds you seated on a stair when he enters and approaches. He stands at the bottom of the stair and simply waits. Silently you stand and descend until you are standing right before one another. For a long time, neither of you speaks.

At length, Yugi begins, very softly. "If I were… to ask you about… would you answer me?"

You have the good grace to play dumb. "About what, aibou?"

Yugi seems to lose his nerve for a moment, then his small fists tighten at his sides and he gives an almost involuntary stamp of his foot. He struggles, starts and stops several times, and growls under his breath in frustration. "I don't know!" he moans. "It's hard to ask about something when you don't know what you're asking about!"

You reach in between the small space separating your bodies and rest your palm against his heart. "Ask me here. Tell me here."

Yugi stares at you wide eyed, but unerringly without hesitation. He reaches out to you, and with both hands lays them over your heart. His eyes slide closed, as do yours, and he sends his feelings through your shared connection. Tentatively you tap back before reaching across the link and opening your own heart. Yugi suddenly seizes forward with such ferocity and demand you temporarily waver. You forget yourself. It causes you to slip.

And that slip it is all Yugi needs in order to see. Both of your eyes fly open at the same time and for a long, unblinking moment, neither of you is able to move.

"You…"

You can barely stand, because you want to run, and god, there's nowhere to go. You're trapped, and you have to deal with this.

"You…" He does not know what to say. "I… How… Why…"

You cannot answer. This was not supposed to have been. You begin to back away, relinquishing his hands from where they still lay on your chest.

Yugi panics. "Wait! Mou h…" He stumbles forward, trips over his feet, stops abruptly when you stop unexpectedly, and causing him to fall against you. You catch his arms just above his elbows to balance him. His forehead connects with yours and briefly, so briefly, his lips ghost over yours.

Shock envelops both of you. Frozen into stillness, you stare at and through each other. His eyes focus into yours and his fingers curl into the material of your shirt. Both of you tremble ever so slightly. You can feel his warm, heated breath caress your lips and nose, count every fleck in his purplish blue eyes. Every inch of his body is pressed against your own. But these are not what frighten you. It's he isn't moving away, that he isn't laughing this off, or pretending confusion. He knows what this is. He wants to know that this is what he knows this is.

And it is… and you need to do something right now. You're standing on a precipice way beyond where the ground can't be seen and it's jump time. Your hands, almost as if possessed, raise and cup Yugi's face between your palms. Your heart cannot silence itself tonight. Yugi's eyes lower to half-mast and he leans in.

It surprises both of you the ferocity in which you cover his mouth with your own. He falls further into you and clings almost helplessly to you as your ravenous tongue slips past his quietly willing lips. You moan at the slick heat of him and press forward, both with your mouth and your link. The floodgates open and every emotion held in check plunges into the fray. Yugi whimpers against your onslaught, bracing against your tides, before meeting you with a savagery equal to your own. He pulls and yanks at your body, your clothes, newborn desire rapidly overcoming his hesitancy, his sense of propriety. His head rocks back as you make love to his neck and shoulders with your mouth. He moans, begs, and pleads, without sound, without words.

Your minds and souls push at each other, frantically trying to merge in a way they have not managed to before. There isn't just a need to connect anymore there is a need to be the same, to be one, to be indistinguishable from one another. Light wants to become dark, and dark wants to become light. Show me your world, show me you and show me me.

Yugi is unable to reign in himself anymore and he moans and moans like he's dying of pleasure. They rise and fall, becoming more frequent, harsh, needier, and you can't stop drawing them out of him, you can't stop taking, and taking, and taking. His inhibitions have been obliterated, his walls are gone, and he's shamelessly seizing you everywhere he can touch, in mind, in body, in soul. It's almost invasive, the way he treats your link, and your body, and you let him because you love it. When you think to dominate, he concedes. His grip on your hair and your grip on his stirs and you become nearly mindless with need.

Yugi senses this loss of control and gently reaches to steady you. You let him guide you and are grateful for the surrender. You shake and cry and don't care. He cries too, yet, the gentle glow of joy that surrounds you, that light you envy him so much, for the first time you become it, you feel it as an embodiment, and not a mere envelopment.

"Oh aibou…" you whisper in awe.

As with all storms, this one eventually breaks, gently rolling like thunder before the crashes between thunder and lightning separate into two completely different beings again. Yugi's arms are around you, and out in the real world, your spirit is twined around his real body. He is soaked with sweat, and the evidence of the encounter is on his body, but he is smiling in a sort of sleepy, dopey way that you cannot help but return. You notice he no longer looks sick. Tired, yes, but the heavy weight of his illness has been lifted.

This was probably the worst mistake either of you has made. One day you will have to hurt each other and you both will have to live with that in each his own separate, desperately cold and alone ways. But even knowing this, you do not unwish the moment, or the deed. More importantly, neither does he. You now know he knows what this might mean for the future – and he accepts it… because that was a part of it.

You touch his cheek and gently ghost your mouth and lips next to the shell of his ear. You tell him what you both need to know. More tears slip unbidden down his cheeks but he nods, and understands, because he can… because he does. And he says what you need to know.

One day you will have to leave his soul… and one day he will return to you. If death couldn't keep you from him, then death can only bring him back to you.

And knowing this, you realize you are no longer afraid.