Yu-Gi-Oh is the property of Konami and Kazuki Takahashi, and this work is only a very appreciative celebration, from which we hope to derive no profit of any kind.

"We kept your room exactly as you left it," Yuugi said, as he opened the door at the top of the stairs. That was obvious, Yami thought, as he walked in. All around him, there was evidence of the young man he was pretending to be. It was there in the Rugby pennants pinned to the wall above the bed, and in the bookshelf full of travel and adventure stories. It was there in the desk under the window, with the pile of schoolbooks and the open inkwell still sitting on it. They'd kept the room a little too much like Donald had left it, he thought. It was more like a museum, than like someplace where someone was going to sleep.

Yuugi crossed the room and plopped himself down on the bed like he belonged there. "I can't wrap my head around your being so brown, Donald," he said. "You look like you're an Indian yourself," he said, laughing.

Indian… Or Egyptian maybe. Yami laughed too. "How funny," he said. "When of course I'm a Scotsman through and through."

Yuugi gazed at him, hero-worship all over his face. "You look like an adventurer," he said. "You look like you've traveled the whole world, and seen things the rest of us here in Galloway have only read about. You'll tell me all about it all, won't you, Donald?"

Even with all Mother's insistence, that the room be kept cleaned and aired, Donald's bedroom had a musty smell to it, Yuugi thought. It smelled like a memorial, he couldn't help thinking, and it looked like a memorial too, like the withered wreath of flowers on a dead boy's grave. It gave him the shivers a little bit, and he had to look over at his brother, to remind himself that Donald wasn't dead, he was right here, and now he would be using his room again.

He liked being in here. Only five when his brother went away to school, he could barely remember back when the room had been used every day, but he had good memories of the summers while Donald had been at Rugby. He remembered the excitement he'd always felt the night his brother came home, the curiosity he'd felt, just looking at his closed-up school trunk, waiting eagerly for the next morning, when Donald would open it up and show him all the presents he'd brought him: Tattered copies of Strand Magazine with Sherlock Holmes stories in them, and of The Magnet, which featured the adventures of Billy Bunter, and the other boys at Greyfriars School, - Once, Donald, who'd known how his brother loved science fiction, had brought him a copy of H. G. Wells' First Men In The Moon, and they'd read it together then and there, cuddled up together under his brown wool coverlet, against the cold of the foggy morning. Once he'd brought him the football he'd used when he led the Fifth Form to victory against the much stronger, much bigger, Sixth Form team; Yuugi still had it, a wilted, saggy relic of its former glory.

Those summers had been too short, he'd always thought, and he'd looked forward to the time when Donald would leave school and come home for always. He'd been naive then, only eleven himself, and the last thing he'd expected, was that his brother would finish Rugby and then take a job right away with the East India Company, and go off to the other side of the world for seven years. He'd only been back once since then, just for one too-short holiday the second year after he'd gone. He'd sent letters, and a few packages (the Ganesh statuette had a proud place in Yuugi's room), but that wasn't the same as him actually being here.

And now, finally, here he was, after all these years. - After everyone had ...well, he didn't want to even think that some people might have given up hope, but Yuugi had heard a few people saying that maybe something might have happened to him. Joey Wheeler at school had talked about all the dangers that could befall a man in India, tiger-attacks, and plagues, and cholera. Joey did talk a lot, and he hadn't always been sensitive about what he'd said when Yuugi was about. - Yuugi sat on his brother's bed, eating one of the fairy cakes he'd brought in with him, and watching as Donald went right away to his bookshelf, flipping through the collected travel books and adventure stories for something to read just like he'd always done.

"Let's not talk about India right away," Donald said. He came over to sit next to his brother on the scratchy wool coverlet, and took a fairy cake from the napkin on the desk. "I know it's all new to you, Yuugi, but it's home I want to hear about right now. It's been so long since I got even a letter. I don't know what happened, they must have got lost. It was because I was traveling to all those out-of-the-way places, probably. But now I'm back, and I want to hear all about what's been happening with you, Yuugi. Tell me everything, about school, and your friends, and," - He smiled. - "and the young ladies you've noticed."

Yuugi blushed, and tried to hide his reddish face behind his fairy cake. To no avail, he knew of course, because Donald knew him better than anyone.. but seven years was a long time, and even though it all felt deceptively the same, some things were different. Yuugi couldn't remember if Donald's eyes were so.. typical before. There was a certain harshness to it, a maturity that went beyond 'normal' adulthood, and Yuugi couldn't really identify it. Was it because Donald had spend so much time in another country, so far away from home? Donald's manners were still graceful, elegant, yet there was some kind of unfamiliarity to them, as if he didn't know his way around. Yuugi was all but eager to chalk it up to the seven years of absence, and he was too delighted to be in his brother's presence to really pay attention to something that small. He took another bite of his fairy cake, trying to form a coherent sentence.

"Do you still remember Miss Gardner?" he asked.

"Téa Gardner?" Yami was glad for Pegasus' profound research. Some people would have contented themselves with what they could read in Debrett's Peerage, but Pegasus had hunted down every shred of detail he could find, about Drumfries, and Jardine family. He'd even found somebody who knew the family somewhere, and charmed them into telling him all about them. Now all that knowledge was coming in handy.

Yuugi blushed. 'Then you do remember her?" he said.

"Of course." Yami's voice was playful. "A little thing with pigtails and a scrape on her knee. I'll bet you're cute together," he said.

"Donald!" Yuugi almost spit out his cupcake. He blushed deeper. "She wants to become a dancer," he said.

"I do not think her parents would agree, do you?" Yami offered Yuugi the napkin and he took it gratefully.

"Oh, they don't approve at all," Yuugi said. "They say it's indecent, going onstage, not to mention all the leg she'd show in her costumes. It's a shame though," he said. "She's awfully good."

Yami nodded. The Gardner family wasn't interesting; they didn't have an interesting heirloom like the Emerald, and Yami didn't care if the girl wanted to become a dancer or not. She meant something to his 'brother', and that was all that mattered.

"Did you.. did you meet anyone in India?" Yuugi asked carefully, and he didn't need to elaborate on the 'anyone'. Yami had thought out this answer beforehand, as he was sure that he was going to receive this question from his "parents" as well.

"No one in particular," he said. "The women there are beautiful, Yuugi, beautiful and graceful. It's like poetry in motion, watching them. And their dresses hold so much color, it's unbelievable. Compared to that, this room looks like a mausoleum."

Yuugi had finished his cake and looked at Yami, rather upset. "You don't regret coming home, do you?"

"Of course not!" Yami put his hand on Yuugi's shoulder. "I came back especially to celebrate Christmas with my younger brother. I missed you, Yuugi."

"I missed you too," Yuugi said, beaming up at him.