The Sweet Intoxication of the Fall

It is strange, as you step over the threshold toward the welcoming light, that as you do so, you don't think of what lies ahead of you, or even what you're leaving behind. You're not afraid – you've reconciled yourself for facing this moment long before – nor are you even happy in the broadest sense of the term. You feel relief, sadness for sure, and definitely some measure of anticipation.

'And she's buying a stairway to heaven…' A smile flits across your lips. Imagine how honored the band that wrote that song might have been if they'd known that lyric is the last coherent thought you have in the earthly realm before... before…

This is usually where the story stops, where the scene in the book ends as the character leaves this life for the next. The writer doesn't know what lies ahead so he or she dares not speculate or belabor the point further. After all, the story of that character has ended, and no one need know what lies ahead for him in the next course of his existence. For you know better than most no one does ever stop existing, not even after death.

It's odd you should think yourself dead now, truly dead, as you've never felt dead, not once in the entire existence of yourself. Until it truly hits you as you are encompassed by light – sweet light – and you realize, for the first time, for all those times you told Yugi you were dead, part of you couldn't grasp the truth of it yourself.

Until now.

The revelation is staggering. You shield your eyes to the intoxicating embrace of the in between and feel fear for the first time. You freeze, unable to move forward, or backward, or at all, and you suddenly are filled with sudden intense sorrow, you don't know what to do.

A hand pierces the light. The face ahead of you is familiar, loving, and you smile, and grasp the hand, allowing it to pull you forward. Then… Then…

You are standing on a hilltop and the land is spread below you. At first you think you're looking across the sands of the Egypt you called home, until you realize it's not one country you're seeing, but the whole world, its oceans, deserts, forests, and plains, and cities… and when you gaze into the sky above you see everything. Stars, planets, supernovas, things you cannot explain, or understand, or know, because you have to be a spirit to see this, you have to be gone, and you… you… oh god, you…

It's overwhelming. You cannot possibly grasp of it all at once. You gasp for air you cannot breathe, and the heart you no longer have crawls into your throat, and then you just want… And what you want in the presence of the entire universe, what you yearn for, is both what you expect, and do not, because you imagined it would have been something like this in the back of your mind.

Tears run from your eyes and you sink to your knees as you close them shut tightly. You regret nothing, and everything, you rage and you rejoice, and you end by laughing, as you have never laughed before. The scale balances and then you feel a heavy weight lift from within. The feather and your heart are equals and you feel lighter than you ever did before. You've passed, yet you do not know why, as light as you feel, a heavier thread entwines you to that which has been left behind. And it's okay. For some reason, you are being told it's okay, because we all feel this way, and it isn't an evil thing.

Go on. They wait for you.

You do. They are waiting for you.

Every day in the Field of Reeds is beautiful. You see the others, your father, your mother, your cousin, and your friends. They are happy, and you are happy, as the Western Land is all you have expected, and all that you desire. You meet those you never knew, and those you have yet to know. The afterlife is no one heaven or hell, it is what you expect it to be, as your heart leads you to. Darkness only conquers those unwilling or who are afraid of the light… and as you died in love with the light, it is the only place you can be.

Or you think. Sitting here in a boat on the Nile that seems to run even in the world beyond, the lazy waters reflecting the image of you as you know of yourself back at you, you feel a strange lack of being. You find your heart is wild and untamed, and you are a horrified to find a deep chasm within.

"Yugi…" The name leaves you without your permission and you withdraw your fingers from the river you caress. What time has passed, you do not know, but you would give to know the hour of the day. It cannot be soon enough, for your pain is still new, and the hole in your heart is still fresh. You cradle your head in your arms and weep. The yearnings of your twisted soul will not be eased, for you are but one in a universe of countless others.

You can still feel him. His distant thrum connects to you thread-like only so you know that he still dwells in the world you left behind. It is a paltry connection at best, the only one you have. He will come to you, he has only to tug, and you will be at his side to lead him here. Your love for him has proven to transcend death, and you will honor his one wish to wait for him. And as you can see all from where you dwell in the warmth and comfort of eternity, you choose then to turn your eyes to the mortal world. For as long as Yugi lives, you will not begin another existence. It would require you to forget Yugi and the existence you shared with him, require forgetting Yugi as the name you know him by, forgetting the face and the eyes and the body you love so dearly. You always want to be Atem, you always want to remember being his mou hitori no boku. No rebirth can entice you to forget the bliss of that earthbound heaven that had been Yugi/Atem. For nowhere else in eternity exists a place like the one you shared in the space between your soul and Yugi's.

No. To return would mean the sacrifice of two lifetimes, and you cannot forsake them for another. Despite the yearnings of your heart that are so intense you nearly wish you had never known this sort of love, you desire nothing less than this sweet torture and the exquisite pain that comes with it.