Chapter LXI: Bastion's Awakening
Hello again, Darkness Falls fans! We're very glad you came back and haven't gone medieval on our behinds. Anyhow, we're glad if you enjoyed the actual resolution to Annie and Violet's situation. And for those of you who are wondering, the duel is being redone. Thanks to Higuchimon for taking the time to make the simulations for us. We thank you all, as always, for your reviews and for continuing to read! And now, onto a moment many of you have been waiting for! We are pleased to bring you Bastion's fight with his inner shadows. Will he defeat them finally? Read on!
Disclaimer:Peach and Ani check their legal papers. Okay, again… We don't own the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. We wish we did. We just own our OCs, our interpretations of things, and this version of the Yugi-verse. Thanks!
Hiro blinked at the sudden actions, but he smiled a little and squeezed the hand. "It's all right, son. She'll be back soon and I'm certain that she'll be better. And hopefully, you will be too," he murmured.
Bastion chose this moment to open his eyes. "Dad?" he asked weakly. The room was a little blurry, but came into focus rather quickly.
Hiro's smile grew. "Son, you're awake..."
"Dad? Violet... she's in trouble..." Somehow, in his unconsciousness, he'd sensed her battle with whatever it was. In fact, he had had what he thought was a very odd dream. "Where is she?"
"Calm down, Bastion. She's fine... Violet went with the group to face her problems. They should be back soon, in fact," the older man explained calmly.
"That's it... She's in trouble doing that... Get me to her..." Bastion forced himself to sit up, as weak as he was. "She's fighting something... I have to be with her..." There was a fire in his gray eyes that hadn't been there in weeks.
Hiro knew that fire was a good sign, but what Bastion wanted to do was out of the question. Pressing a strong hand against his sick child's chest, he gently made his son lay back down. "Bastion, my boy, I know how you feel. But you are far too weak to do anything right now aside from staying in bed. Now, I'm certain that everything is fine now, even if something has happened. If not, I'd know about it."
"Dad..." The young man wasn't about to take no for an answer. "Help me... or I'll drag myself..." He kept struggling. The impulse to get to Violet was unshakeable.
Hiro sighed, realizing that Bastion wouldn't calm down until he saw his love. "All right... let me go get a wheelchair, son..." Standing, he went and found one, then returned and helped the sick boy into it.
"Thanks, Dad," Bastion said as his father began to push him. "I just... felt something wrong... I could feel you holding my hand and... I felt something like a shockwave... I thought we were having an earthquake..."
"Well, Bastion, I did feel a little something... but I dismissed it. Perhaps I should have called your mother to check up on things," Hiro murmured, frowning worriedly now.
They moved quickly down the hall and to the room. And Bastion yelped at the sight in front of him. His mother was holding Violet, sitting on the ground. His fiancée's face was pale, but at least she was conscious. "Violet!" he called out to her.
"Bastion?" Violet asked in surprise, stunned to see her fiancé and his father in the doorway.
"Darling... Dad, help me walk to her..." Bastion put his hands on the armrests of the chair and used his feet to push back the footrests so his feet could touch the floor. He would get out of the chair with or without his father's help.
"Careful, son," Hiro muttered as he helped him up, aiding him in the short walk to both of their loves.
Katai lifted Violet and the parents got both kids to a couch where Bastion threw his arms around Violet. "Darling... Are you all right?" At the same time, Katai wordlessly threw her arms around Hiro.
Violet nodded, leaning as far into Bastion as physically possible and closing her eyes. The real thing was so much better than her imagination. "I'm okay... at least now I am. I fought it off, Bastion," she murmured. Meanwhile, Hiro held his wife close and asked her much the same question. The worry in his eyes was obvious.
"I'm okay," Katai murmured. "Violet's okay... One of her decks, though... it was out of control... And a monster possessed Annie... And Violet, Mary and Annie fought that monster..."
"My goodness... No wonder we felt something," Hiro muttered, kissing the top of her head. Katai enjoyed the warm hug, letting her husband's presence reenergize her.
Bastion, too, let himself enjoy the feel of his love in his arms. "Oh, darling, I felt that... I was worried you were going to..." He couldn't complete the thought.
Violet moved up to give him a light, short kiss. "I'm sorry I worried you, Bastion-baby... But if it wasn't for Annie and Mary, I don't think I could have done what I did..."
"I... saw the battle..." His voice took on a dreamy quality. He'd thought it was a dream, but now he wasn't so sure...
"What??" she asked, confused.
Bastion blinked, still not believing the possibility that he had not been dreaming. "I saw the battle... You and Mary, facing down Alien Mother... I wanted to help... And then... I was there in your hand... A sword..."
Violet's eyes went wide. "Wha... But how... That was you?!"
Bastion shivered a little. "I don't know how... but it was..."
"Okay, that is just frakkin' weird!" Chazz exclaimed from his seat. "Can't we ever have a normal confrontation between good and evil?"
"No," several voices answered simultaneously.
"Okay, then," the exclaimer responded, bemused.
Bastion looked a bit stunned himself. "I don't know how it happened, but it did, love... And you finished her perfectly..."
Violet smiled sheepishly. "I just... did what I saw in anime, manga, and video games. Lucky shot, I guess..."
"Was Mary all right?" he asked, remembering the hit the spirit girl had taken.
"For the last time, I'm fine. I'll have a scar, but that's no big," Mary stated, standing in her spirit form beside the couple.
"Glad to hear it... What about Annie?" And then he looked over at the other couch where the girl had been moved. Syrus was keeping vigil at her side until she came around.
"She's going to be okay. It'll just be a while before she wakes up," Violet explained, the relief obvious in her tone.
"But..."
"Bastion, you remember learning in Dueling History about the Battle City Tournament and one case of a person being knocked out, don't you?" Fonda asked.
"Of course, Miss Fontaine... Odion Ishtar was knocked out, but woke up on his own after significant mental... stress..."
"That's right... And you can call me Fonda now, Bastion, okay?"
"Okay," the young man said gently. "Violet... darling, is there anymore you need to get off your chest?" he asked slowly.
Violet shook her head. "No... I don't think so, Bastion."
"Then... it's my turn..." Bastion's face tightened a little. "Can we do this without Annie, though?"
"We can... we've got to," Jaden asserted calmly. "Right, Lex?"
Alexis nodded. "The sooner, the better. Bastion, are you sure you feel up to it?"
Bastion nodded, feeling better than he had in quite some time. Physically, he was still very weak, but mentally and emotionally, he was stronger than he'd been since before Darkness attacked. "Tell me what to do..."
"Just... tell what's been hurting you," Jaden explained, remembering what they'd all done while he was away. "And we'll help you through it..."
Violet took Bastion's hands into her own and squeezed. "I'll stay right here with you, Bastion-baby..."
"Thank you, love... I'm glad you're here..." Bastion took a deep breath. "All right, everyone.... Mum, Dad... I'm glad you're here too... Perhaps there are things I never really discussed..." Katai cuddled a little closer to Hiro, wondering just what was on Bastion's mind. "I guess the biggest issue was not being able to protect Violet," he began shakily. "First, it was that... thing that now is dealing with Ohio's justice system... And then it was Taniya.... And then Darkness... Violet, I kept feeling like I failed you, love... And it ate at me..."
Violet frowned a bit. "But Bastion... you didn't. I mean, think about what could have happened, especially if you hadn't been there. No one could have stopped any of it from happening, but... you did your best to save and help me afterward. You helped put Mike away where he could be changed... You saved me from Taniya... And you stopped me from falling to Darkness. And each time, you put your own life at risk and got hurt in some way... If that's failing me, then I'm glad you failed."
"I realize that now... and... this time I was able to help, though I'm still not sure how I did it," he said, referring to Violet destroying Alien Mother with him as a sword.
She gave a small grin. "Neither am I, Bastion. But you did, and that's what matters. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you... Who knows what would have happened..?"
"You would've found a way to stop her, darling," he said with a smile. "I know it..." He sat in thought for a long moment and then took a deep breath. "Another thing... Everyone... I always feared on some level that you would be as every other group of friends has been with me since I was very young... Until two Slifers treated me like I was normal, I had not had friends whom I could truly rely upon..."
"Why not, Bastion?" Syrus asked, confused. He couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't like the kind, loyal genius.
"Well... It started, really, when I was at the Albert Einstein School... I was in kindergarten and had a study session with another boy. We were to work on a science project and we went to my room to play for a bit. By then, I had been writing equations on my walls for about 3 years. He took a look and began laughing. The truth was that he was disturbed by it... We finished our work and the next day at school, he told the other children what a freak I was. It spread quickly..." Some bitterness crept into his voice at that.
Violet got a thoughtful look on her face. "Bastion, is that why you were so worried when I first visited your room in our first year?"
Jaden and Syrus exchanged glances too. "That's it, wasn't it?" Jaden asked, knowing all too well, albeit for different reasons what it is was like to be labeled a freak.
Bastion nodded. "I was worried, Violet, that you would think that, and I'd be an outcast again... But the fact that you reacted so well gave me the strength to let Syrus and Jaden in on my secret... And then Annie and everyone else."
Violet pecked his cheek reassuringly. "Well, I still think it's cute that you draw on the walls." Of course, by "draw" she meant "write."
Bastion smiled a little more. "But I started feeling better... until that evening when... everything changed," he said, drifting away to the Shadow Riders incident.
Violet somehow sensed what he'd meant, and squeezed his hand. "In our first year... the first big challenge everyone faced," she murmured.
"That night... was hell," he murmured, going back.
Bastion had never really gone into detail about what had happened that night, even with repeated coaxing from Violet. They had all feared something had happened, and now he was going to tell them....
Over two years previously, Bastion watched as his friends ran from the ancient coliseum, pursued by Bast the tiger, leaving him and Taniya alone. While it was true he'd been pretty much stripped of his free will by this woman, a part of him found her very attractive. After all, he still was a teenage boy with all the potential desires therein. "So... we're... married?" he asked curiously as Taniya paced around him, sizing him up.
"That's right, cutie... we are... I think we're going to have a lot of fun tonight..."
Back in the present, the expressions in the room varied from bemused to outright disgusted. Reading their expressions correctly, Bastion stated with a rather frustrated look on his face, "For the 50th time, nothing of an adult nature happened..."
"Then why were you screaming so much, Bastion?" Chazz asked. His teenage brain had imagined some rather interesting scenarios.
"Well," Bastion continued his narrative...
"Lost again, kid! Come on! Show me some fight already!" Taniya grinned and then frowned as Bastion lost duel after duel to her.
"I'm trying! I can't figure out your deck!" he shouted in frustration. This continued until dawn when at last he was dueling in exhaustion.
Taniya turned away from him, disgusted. "Your dueling sucks, kid! Maybe I need someone else..." With that, she had lifted the spell.
When he returned to himself... "I'm a failure," he muttered as he walked toward his friends and a purple-haired girl in particular.
In the present, Bastion shivered at the memory. "I felt like such a failure..."
Violet's brows furrowed. "You weren't. I can't believe she just toyed with you like that! And for what? Her entertainment? She just used you..." Her anger at this fact was clear as day. It had been very hard for her to forgive the tiger woman for that night and then the fact that her final act had been to kill Violet, it was understandable.
"The odd thing was... I think she might've had feelings... But she didn't go about it right," he stated softly, sounding as if he were in a trance. He took another deep breath. "While I was... away while I was so sick... something happened..."
It had been the night that Bastion had almost died... The last thing he remembered was hearing Violet say, "I'm with you, Bastion-baby..."
And then he could hear nothing more. His body was cold and his mind was shutting down. 'Where am I?' he thought as he felt himself hurtling in the darkness. It was a different sort of darkness than what he'd fallen into in late April, but it was darkness that would obliterate him just the same. And then he heard a feminine voice.
"BASTION!!" the voice called. It wasn't any of his friends… But the voice was familiar to him.
And then he felt himself being caught by a very strong arm. He whipped back from the abyss, hitting against the edge of a cliff. He was being pulled up onto the ledge. "What the devil?" he muttered as he landed on it.
And then he saw the face belonging to the voice. "Hey, kid," Taniya greeted.
Bastion sputtered at the sight of her. She seemed safe and unharmed. "You're... you're... I," he stammered.
"Bastion... you freed me... I let jealousy get the better of me, and I couldn't stop the duel," she said calmly. "Toward the end, I wanted to be released... You didn't have a choice but to stop me the way you did, and I knew it. And it was right to end it. I was wrong and I was sorry... And now, I'm going to help you get back, okay? Violet loves you, Bastion... Go back to her... And for heaven's sake! Stop blaming yourself for stuff you can't control!" She gave him a tight hug, devoid of animalistic passion, but clearly imbued with friendship and yes, love. "Forgive yourself... I know you're going to be stubborn, but when the time comes, you've got to..."
And then she released him from the hug and he felt himself floating upward. "Taniya! Are you...?"
"Yeah! I'm okay! Let yourself be okay!" And she disappeared in a column of light....
With that, Bastion finished his tale. "And then I heard you, love, calling me back as the heat returned..."
The shock and awe in the room was so thick that one could practically feel it. "Wow... Bastion, I... I don't know what to say," Violet murmured, unable to find the words.
Bastion wasn't sure what to say either. It took a very long moment of silence for him to find the right words. "She knew... Perhaps in those last moments of her life she knew... And perhaps she's been watching and knowing that I couldn't live with the guilt of killing her..." He met Violet's eyes. "I know I had to, but... I guess part of me was locked in wishing there'd been another way to save you and free her of her madness..." He pulled his love into a tight hug. "And now... I feel as if I could fly... I am free of it, darling... And..." Bastion felt a familiar wetness down his cheeks.
Violet hugged back just as tightly, smiling as she felt the wetness drip onto her hair. "You're okay now..."
And within Bastion's heart, the darkness that had held him disappeared like mist before the sun, pulling into his consciousness, becoming harmless shadows. "I am.... Mum... Dad... I'm sorry," he said as they moved close to hug him.
Hiro smiled as he wrapped his arms around his only child. "No, no, son... There's no need to apologize for anything... We're just glad that you're all right."
"And... Violet too... You're okay, love..." And then, Bastion felt the room spin a little. "But perhaps... I need to get back in bed..."
"I think that's a good idea for both of you," Fonda smiled from where she was sitting, close to Annie's still form.
Katai grinned, hugging both her children. "I think that's a wonderful idea. Okay, Violet?"
Violet nodded, smiling sheepishly. "Sounds good to me..."
Bastion has finally conquered his inner darkness. It may not entirely dissipate, but for him, like the others, it is now safely contained. Next time, join us for "Break!" As always, please read and review. Thank you!