The smell was the first thing to bring the memories back—scalding, sharp, and bitter. The sticky stench of sweaty latex gloves, the faint musk of dead skin, puss, and blood that was impossible to fully wash out of the sheets. The caustic wafts of antibacterial soaps and cleansers that slimed up every surface. No matter how much they sprayed and sanitized, the air still felt dirty, the beds still stank like coffins.

Jounouchi was thankful that at least none of those beds were for him this time.

It had felt strange to him to enter the hospital without being first rushed through emergency. He liked to pretend that the world of extended hospital stays, sometimes interrupted by only a few restless nights curled up at the foot of a bed, was firmly locked behind a rigid, impenetrable door. But sitting at his father's bedside, scrutinizing the rise and fall of his boxy chest, that world felt unbearably close.

He cracked his knuckles and gazed around the room for the sixth or seventh time since his arrival, trying to fix his eyes on anything but the unconscious and helpless figure stretched out before him.

"So, you found yourself incapacitated again, did you? Figures, you and your reckless lifestyle and idiot brain. You couldn't take care of yourself for a minute." He mimicked the words that his father had hurled at him so often when their verbal confrontations had turned hot and harsh, in the older days when their roles had been reversed. Or, almost reversed —Jounouchi sporting a limp and a colorful collage of cuts and bruises, his father wielding a disapproving scowl and an arm that was stronger than Jounouchi would ever care to admit. He spoke, however, without malice .

When the news that his father had been hospitalized had reached him upon his return to Domino, Jounouchi had wondered whether he ought to feel happy. He had become, by almost any meaningful measure, an amazing success, outshining both society's expectations of him and his expectations of himself. And in the process of silencing his critics and expunging their doubts, he had silenced the harsh words and suspended the heavy hands of the man who had always tormented him the most.

But upon his first visit to the hospital, laying eyes on his father's immobile face, his heart had not sung with triumph. The moment had hung empty, stupid and silent out before him, and in place of the solid iron moral superiority that Jounouchi sensed he ought to be feeling he found only a gossamer veil of discomfort and unease. If this was a victory, it was cheap and hollow. And if Jounouchi regularly admonished his father with the same disparagements that he had so often been dealt, it was merely for the sake of having a script to follow.

He sighed, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling.

"Do you want me tell you I'm sorry? That I shouldn't have left? I didn't have a choice. I'm sure you would understand if you listened—if you tried to believe me. But you wouldn't have believed me, would you? If I had told you where I was going. And honestly, I'm surprised you even noticed I was gone. I've been longer without coming home." He laughed, softly and bitterly. "And now who's the one that can't make it on their own?"

He was interrupted by a soft knock on the door, followed by Shizuka's cautious footsteps to take a seat beside him.

"How is he doing, Katsuya?" she asked, trying to smother the urgency and concern that caught in the back of her throat.

"Same as last time, more or less."

She nodded, then turned her attention to Jounouchi. "How are you?" She squeezed his shoulder gently.

He smiled, trying to speak with enough sunshine to wipe the storm clouds from her eyes. "I'm good. Yuugi has a nice place. You don't have to worry about me."

"Of course." She smiled weakly, but her eyes fluttered over to the bed, and a tremor seemed to steal through her spine down to her fingertips.

"Hey," Jounouchi gently turned her face away and stared earnestly into her eyes. "You don't need to worry about me." He laughed "I think at this point I could handle almost anything that life decides to throw at me."

"I know," she sighed. "I know you'll be alright, but…I want you to be better than alright ."

He chuckled. "As far as I'm concerned I already am. But thanks for the concern." He ruffled her hair, encouraging her to burrow her face against his chest.

"How are you holding up? And mom?"

"We're fine. Well, she's fine. She acts like it doesn't bother her at all. I only wish she would come to see him…"

Jounouchi sighed, stroking the hair that draped over her sloping shoulders. "I know you do, but if she doesn't want to then that's her decision."

"But how can she not want to see him?! I mean, they loved each other once, didn't they? They loved each other enough to want to have us. How…how can that all go away so quickly? How can she hate him so much that she lets it keep her away, at a time like this ?" She whispered, voice simmering with desolate indignation.

"Maybe it's not hate that's keeping her away?"

"What is it then?"

Jounouchi thought for a moment, watching his fingers weave through the silky waves of Shizuka's hair. This time of year it glowed like amber and wine, the way it seemed to capture heat and set the whole sky on fire. There was still Egyptian sand caked under his nails.

"Maybe," he suggested. " Maybe she's angry at herself. And it makes her sad . Maybe she's afraid of having to think too much about it."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jounouchi listening to the mechanical melody of their father's life support system, Shizuka listening to the fortitudinous rhythm of his heart .

"Do you think they regret having us?" Shizuka asked.

"Psh, who could regret having you ?" Jounouchi scoffed. "That's the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard."

He could feel Shizuka smile into his chest, though her happiness soon dissipated. "Sometimes I just wonder if they might have been happier—their lives might have been easier…"

" Easier doesn't equal better ."

"It's just that, you used to say that mom and dad would have had a better life if you had never been born. "

Jounouchi felt a wave of ice rush directly to his stomach as his arms and legs turned cold and rigid. He urgently grasped Shizuka's shoulders and turned her to face him. "Hey, we were kids when I said that, alright?! Don't let those kinds of things change how you feel about yourself. Do you understand?"

Shizuka nodded, but didn't untie the knots in her brow. "So you don't feel that way anymore?"

Jounouchi shrugged. " When does having kids ever make anyone's life easier? The fact is, they didn't get married for the best reasons and I don't think there's much we ever could have done to keep them together. It just wasn't in their nature. The only thing we can really do is be there for them when they need us, and be there for each other."

"I just wish I could do more," she sighed. "He looks so helpless, tied up to all these machines. I don't like it…it reminds me of when—" her voice broke suddenly, and a wave of tears rushed down her cheeks like a river surging over a dam. "I don't want anything like that to happen again! I couldn't…I can't…"

She pulled away abruptly, as if the intimacy of the contact between them was crowding her mind with dark and repulsive thoughts, memories of a time when that connection between them had rattled along the edge of rupture.

"I couldn't bear it," she spoke into the floor.

"I know, I know. That was scary for both of us. But it was a one-time thing! All that is over now…"

He grasped at words with the naïve and helpless confidence of plunging headlong into the dark. His sister, usually so eager to be comforted, had turned her back to him and was limply hugging her own slumped shoulders.

" Was it?" She whispered, a stony shadow creeping into the corners of her voice.

"Shizuka—"

"And how can you know it will never happen again?!" she cried, still refusing to look at him. " How can you know that you'll never be in danger again?"

"No one can know that for sure, Shizuka. The chance of getting hurt is part of life; it's just something that you have to accept."

She sniffed and wiped her cheeks with the end of her sleeve, then turned to glance sidelong at their father, eyes beseeching. "I don't want anyone to get hurt," she spoke half to herself.

"I know, neither do I. And I don't plan on it anytime soon , okay? I promise you can look forward to many more years of me being around to beat the boys off of you."

She smiled, a smile as dim and pale as sunlight filtered to the ocean floor. And she was still trembling, as if consciously holding every cell of her body together. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Me either." He gently grasped her shoulder again, surprised, as always, by the delicacy of her bones. "So we'll both take good care of each other. Let's get out of here, okay? Dad's certainly not going anywhere."

Jounouchi didn't realize how cold and stale the air of the hospital room had been until they entered the courtyard, though it was hardly the reprieve he had expected. Peppered as it was with old ladies clinging to walkers and grey-skinned nurses sucking on cigarettes—and lined on all sides with heavy beige walls—Jounouchi could not completely shake off the oppressive gloom of age and illness .

"You never did tell me everything you did in Egypt." Shizuka noted as they set off down the cobblestone path that lined the perimeter.

"You're right." He chuckled. "If I told all that then we would be here all night."

"Well, try."

He sighed and spoke, half to himself, "I don't even know where to start."

When Jounouchi looked back on his life it felt like it had progressed in large, discontinuous, and completely unpredictable jumps. Nothing had happened and then everything had happened, all at once. And when he tried to disentangle the end from the beginning, everything seemed to blur and run together, abandoning any sense of linearity in space and time.

In some ways, then, it seemed easier and more natural to start at the end of the story than the beginning.

"You remember Kaiba? I saw him the other day."

Shizuka's eyes narrowed. " What does that have to do with anything ?"

Jounouchi stepped off the path and began to meander into the center of the courtyard, only half paying attention to where his feet were taking him. "Well, he was there, you know? In Egypt. He kind of saved us . Well, it was Atem—that was his name, Atem—that really saved us physically. But Kaiba did too, or, the guy he used to be did. And they were kind of the same, in that moment …"

"Katsuya, what are you talking about?"

He turned to see that Shizuka had not followed him. She was standing still, rigid, several paces behind. Eyes wide, voice shadowy. 'How much danger were you in?"

His first thought was to shrug it off the same way he let cuts, bruises, and fractured bones roll off his back when Shizuka scrutinized his health. When faced with danger his first instinct was to diminish it, reduce its potency, laugh at it—if not for his sake then for hers. If Shizuka didn't know that he was in danger, or in pain, then he couldn't be. So long as she was ignorant then he was immortal . That was just how things worked, how they had always been.

"A lot." He replied. "We, we did stuff that I never could have imagined. And it was terrifying." He gulped, swallowing the memories of festering shadows and fiery blasts, the sound of death ringing in his ears. "We almost died. All of us. And if we had died then none of this would be here. Nothing."

Shizuka nodded. Her expression remained steady but her hands were trembling, rapidly flexing and grasping at the air as if searching for something to hold onto.

"We re-wrote history, literally." He laughed at the ridiculous sound of the statement. "But we made it better. We made it the way it was supposed to be."

"Better in what way?"

"Well…" Trying to piece together his transient sensory impressions into a coherent narrative was like mining the clouds for diamonds. He sank into one of the low wooden benches, resting his chin on his fist. "Atem explained it pretty well, I think. He said that he was taught to rule without compassion—that everyone in his time had been raised like that. And so when they were in danger, like when they were threatened by Bakura's army, they acted in anger and hate. But that only made it worse, because it set a precedent of defeating evil with more evil, and that continues up until time today—at least it did—it would have—if it hadn't been for us. He said that meeting us taught him a new way of seeing things, a kinder way of treating people, and that encouraged him to rule differently when he went back to the world of his memories. So this time, he didn't defeat Bakura with hate or anger—he got him to change his mind, by emphasizing with him. And that's the new precedent now, I guess. That's the legacy we have now."

Shizuka sat next to him, slightly stunned by the earnestness of his countenance. " Do you think that's true ?"

He shrugged. "It's hard to say. I feel…different, though. Ever since I got back, things don't seem the same to me anymore. And people." He shook his head. "It could be a coincidence, though."

She leaned her head against his shoulder. " Do you think it's a coincidence ?"

"I hope not." He paused. "But at the same time, it's kind of scary to think that it's true, isn't it? That the entire world is an entirely different place now than it was when we left it. The rules are scrambled. Anything could happen."

"Scary or exciting?"

He chuckled. "I guess it's both. We get a chance to start over ."

Shizuka nodded. "I wish mom and dad would see it that way."

"Aw, me too." He leaned forward, lightly pressing his lips to the crown of her head. "Some people you just can't get to stick together, I guess."

They bathed in silence for a few moments, watching the hospital patients stumble along on crutches and listening to the whispers in the leaves.

"You never explained with Kaiba," Shizuka reminded him. "How did he save you?"

"He became the new pharaoh, or his former self did. It was his job to make sure that Atem's memory was respected. He had to ensure that the legacy wasn't forgotten."

Jounouchi cautiously let his mind drift back to some of his final moments in Egypt. The coronation of the new pharaoh—despite its triumphant grandeur—could not escape the shadows of shock and sadness that hung in the eyes and around the shoulders of everyone in attendance. The simultaneous disappearance of Atem and Bakura had been so sudden and so surreal that the people of Egypt largely felt that their newfound peace had not been earned but brusquely thrust upon them. They flocked to the temples, staggered through the streets with weak knees and fluttering hearts, staring hard at the world around them as if in an effort to determine whether they were truly awake .

The absence of a body made the news that much harder to comprehend. With nothing to entomb, nothing to cherish and sanctify, the people felt as if they had been robbed, and consequently a wave of indignation and despair had rippled through the populace. There had been whispers that it was improper to appoint a new pharaoh when their former ruler had not yet been laid to rest, but as the days after the war ripened and turned rotten, they seemed to come to a general understanding that their country could not continue to charge into the future without the firm grip and steady hand of a new ruler.

Jounouchi had been inundated by deep blue waves of grief throughout the duration of the ceremony—the scars of the battle were still too sharp and cut too deep for him to see things clearly. The one tangible memory he had—which stood out in such pointed relief that it was almost painful for him to recall—was Kaiba's stricken face. Atem and Bakura might have been gone, but Kaiba looked like he had risen himself from the dead in order to attend—in order to witness the ascension of the former bearer of his soul. His eyes were hooded, his face pale, rigid, and sallow, and until their return to Domino he had spoken only in coarse and turbid whispers—when he could be cajoled into speaking at all.

Jounouchi had locked those memories away—they had been too dark and confusing to look at directly. But now, as he slowly began to chip away at the walls he had built around them in his mind, he found himself thinking of a different kind of box— a box that had sat under Kaiba's bed collecting dust for years, packed to the brim with iron shadows and steel fangs—that he had just happened to have unearthed a few days prior, along with, it seemed, a plethora of heavily suppressed and unpleasant emotions .

"That's a lot of responsibility for one person." Shizuka replied. "To have to make a change so big."

"Yeah." Jounouchi replied. " You've got to wonder how he held up ."

Note: title for this chapter comes from the song Fast Car by Tracy Chapman