Good crap, I'm hungry...

But besides that, homies, check out my non-fanfiction work on fictionpress! I am pseudo pleased with myself with how they turned out, and they are better edited than these. But what YOU think is way more useful than what my megalomaniac self thinks. So check 'em out! Leave a review! They'll be worth more than gold to me.

Chapter 5: A Running Memory

Though it had let up during the day to haze over the world like a grey blanket, the rain came down in torrents late that afternoon, bringing with it an early nightfall. Yugi didn't mind the rain. There was something comforting about being safe and warm inside while a storm raged outside. Finding himself feeling awkward and tongue twisted before the quiet Aleah, he escaped upstairs to his room, where he sat wrapped up tightly in his comforter. A flash of light with an accompanying boom gave the impression of a sky warring with itself. Sighing, he tucked the comfort up to his chin, and just watched.

Yami felt no need to disturb his peace. He had his own thoughts to turn to. So Yugi found one of the rare occasions when he was truly alone, but not in a bad way.

He didn't know what the white girl's place was. Was she to be a friend? A stranger who came and went? So far he still knew little to nothing about her besides the fact that she somehow found comfort in his presence. It was probably because he appeared so harmless. In a way, he was. Completely harmless. It didn't bother him thought. Still…who was this girl? Should he even bother?

A flash lit up his world. Slowly, he began to count. Three seconds later a boom rattled the house. He smiled as he felt it. He almost missed the quiet knock on his door.

"Come in!"

A pale face peered in. Before he could reconsider allowing her in, Aleah slipped in, still dressed in the shorts and shirt Tea had leant her. They hung on her a few sizes too big.

"Aleah." he said as greeting. "There's another blanket in the closet if you want to watch the storm with me. It can get rather cold up here."

With a bashful smile she retrieved said blanket and wrapped up across from him to the point he could only see the puff of her white hair and those big round eyes.

"Yugi…" she said hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"I…" her voice trembled. "I don't know what to do."

He tried to give her a reassuring smile, because in all honesty, he didn't know what to do either. It was a feeling he was use to, though.

Another flash of lightening lit up the room. This time Yugi counted two and a half seconds between the boom and the flash. The storm had to be right above them.

"I…I think I'm remembering." she continued softly. "But...it hurts. It's making my head spin. One minute I'm remembering running in the rain, a lot like this, and the next I'm standing in a sun so hot with sand going on as far as the eye can see. Then I'm, then I'm…" the bundle of blankets shook. "Then things I don't remember at all. It sounds so true, but…they're things that are me, memory of me, but…not of me."

Yugi stared at her. The last paragraph had been the most she had spoken at one time since they had found her.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. But it…it scares me. I feel like I know myself, but right before I can grasp an exact memory, it tends to slip away. It's becoming more solid though and," she looked up from the floor to look at him. Her eyes were bright in the dim streetlights. "I'm not suppose to be here, Yugi. I meant…I meant to go home. But now I'm farther from home than ever before, and after how hard I tried to get out…get out…"

"Get out where?"

"Out of the past…where he was."

Instantly he felt Yami in him awaken and tune his attention in. He inwardly squirmed beneath the attention and hoped Yami had the sense to not come out and ruin the progress.

Seeing that she looked rather uncomfortable, Yugi looked for a change in topic.

"Maybe if you don't think so hard about it, it will come to you. Sort of like a hard math question. How about we talk about something else?"

She looked surprised for a moment, but smiled. "I have been meaning to get to know you."

He flinched. "Me?"

"Of course. I'm sorry I've been so out of it the past few days."

"You did get your brains scrambled pretty good by whatever happened."

"First off, you're really Japanese, right?"

He chuckled. "That should be obvious. What are you? Do you remember where you're from?"

Her eyebrows furrowed for a moment in concentration. Only a second later, though, she said, "North Dakota. In America."

"America! I knew you were from somewhere over there. How can you speak Japanese so well then?"

"I…I don't know." and as thought to drive his attention from that fact, she quickly added, "But you don't really look Japanese."

He shrugged. "Yami and I do look a lot alike."

"Yami?"

"That spirit that you've been seeing sometimes. He is a really nice guy when you get to know him."

"I'm sure he is."

When she fell silent after this, he felt a twinge of unease. "Do you…do you perchance remember something about him that could explain why you don't like him?"

She looked to the side and brought the blanket up to the bottom of her eyes. Inside him, if Yami had fingers, he would've been gripping Yugi's shoulders to the point he couldn't feel them.

"He…" and with an air of hesitancy, "but he's dead, isn't he?"

"Well, he is a spirit. Just being spirit usually implies that one is dead."

"But it's more than that. He's old now, isn't he? Maybe four thousand years old."

Yugi raised his eyebrow. "How do you know that?"

"I knew him once."

White blazed through the room. Only a split second later came an earth shattering boom shook the house. Aleah squeaked and ducked beneath her blankets. Admittedly, he had jumped too, but at the same time the sound had been thrilling. It was part of being a boy to love loud noises and huge explosions.

"Aleah?"

All that remained of her was a curl of blond bangs. He tipped over onto all fours and made his way over to her as another flash and accompanying boom rocketed the earth, his blanket trailing behind him.

"Are you okay?"

He dared to set a hand on her knee. She held perfectly still. Feeling the cold air he reached behind him and rewrapped himself up in the blanket, waiting.

"He was a cruel man."

"Yami?"

"He was a pharaoh back then, and with all the arrogance and blindness that comes with being such. He thought I was a spy, then a foreigner who had lost its way, and finally a slave who thought nothing of royalty. When he didn't keep me in chains he kept me on a silk cushion like some prize pet or a treasure made of glass."

Yugi felt his blood chill and something within him tremble. He could feel Yami's presence as well, frozen against the door of his soul room. Was this really Yami? Had Dartz been right about him through and through?

Aleah's voice was steady, yet the pause she gave after this shook with hesitation. Rain pattered loudly on the window, sending drippeling, melting shadows against the walls.

She took a shuddering breath. "But he was so kind. He was so fierce in his loyalty to his friends and wouldn't have hesitated to protect that which he loved, or to stand up for what he believed in. He was passionate—he felt everything on a much deeper level than anyone, whether it was anger or happiness or sadness. Roaring with anger. Leaping with joy. But the one time I saw him cry was when he was absolutely silent…"

"Aleah…" he said, surprised when his voice came out a croak. She sounded so sincere and warm. She didn't just know him, she sounded like she had…like she had…

Suddenly she dropped the blanket cover. Behind it her eyes were bright and burning with inner fire. He knew if he could see the rest of her face her teeth would be bared and her cheeks flushed with passion.

"But he wouldn't stand up for me! Oh no! I should have known he would just be an arrogant pharaoh in the end. I should have known I wouldn't be anything more than a slave. You can't help how people are raised. Traitor."

"Aleah did you—are you sure he would've done something like that? You sounded like you were friends—"

"Friends?!" she gave an angry cough of a laugh. "He lied to me. I don't know what we were, and I don't really care."

Thunder rumbled in the silence that followed. Yugi eventually pulled his hand back from her knee and looked down at the floor, as though ashamed. What could have Yami done to make such an enemy of a girl who knew him so well? Somehow, this bothered him more than the fact that a girl who had been alive four thousand years ago was somehow sitting before him now.

Within him, he could feel the soul of Yami quivering. He could barely comprehend the emotions shifting through the link between them. He had a feeling that not even Yami himself could comprehend what was going on in his head right now. At the end of the roll of thunder, right before the sound of rain took over, Yugi heard him whisper into his mind.

What did I do?

But Yugi wasn't sure he wanted to ask that question. Instead, he could see the tears begin to trickle down her face and become preoccupied by the ache in his chest. Without thinking he reached out to her and hugged her quilted form against his own blanketed one.

"I'm not from this time." she whispered. "I wasn't from his time either. I don't belong."

"When are you from then?"

"2016. I just wanted…I don't know how I went back so many thousands of years, nor do I know how I even got back. I just remember leaping into the gap in the air and wanting so badly to just go home. Please, Yugi, I'm not insane and I'm not some freak either. I'm just…man, I don't even know how I'm going to catch up with all my homework."

"I've had the feeling before." he said, pulling back to wipe a wad of blanket down her cheeks. "On some of the adventures I've been pulled into, I often wondered if I'd ever get home again, let alone graduate."

She gave a watery sniff. "What kind of stuff happened to you?"

This gave him pause. He had never actually had to recant all his adventures before to a stranger. Feeling hesitant, he scratched his cheek under the blanket.

"I don't know. You'll probably think I'm insane."

"You don't think I'm insane, do you?"

The big blue eyes were watching him. He felt his palms begin to sweat.

"No! No, of course not. I mean, if half the stuff that happened around my puzzle could happen, why not time travel?"

The gracious smile she gave him made his palms sweat more.

"Ah, yeah, that golden pyramid thing. He wore that all the time too. I think he told me that's why he could understand what I was saying."

Yugi gaped. "The puzzle can do that?"

"I guess—but tell me about these things that happened to you! I do love stories."

And as she nested deeper into her blankets with another sniff, he couldn't see how he could refuse her. He had so many more question to ask her—like what was Yami's true name? What had it been like back then? And even more importantly, how had Yami gotten stuck in the Millennium Puzzle in the first place?

And yet all her attention was on him. Solely him, as though he were the only person in the world.

He grinned. "Well, for starts, when I first got the puzzle I got all these blackouts where I couldn't remember what had happened. I later found out that that was when Yami took over to take revenge on whoever was, well, in need of some straightening out, I guess. He had a certain term for it."

They were hurting you, abiou, he heard faintly in his head. Of course I would do something to bring justice to them.

She frowned. "I saw that once. You changed to him. Only sort of. How does that all work?"

And as the flashes of lightening grew less frequent and the thunder more distant, Yugi explained himself in a way he hadn't had to before. When new people were introduced to his shifting personalities, they usually took it as some strange change of faces, as Kaiba had, or took the fact that he was sharing his body with some other spirit in stride. And of course they'd end up focused on Yami, curious as to what this other person was. Even in Kaiba's case he was more interested in the serious gamer than Yugi himself.

But for once, it was the other way around. Aleah was someone who already knew Yami completely and didn't care to know more. Yugi, on the other hand, she knew nothing about.

And…he liked that.

! #%$%%^$#%^&%$##&(&*)*&^%$^#

When he entered his chambers he caught Aleah stepping as though in a game along the lines of the stone tiles. Any uneasiness he had concerning her—her hatred, her feet, the fact he didn't even notice- left him, and he sighed.

"Aleah, what have I said about staying off your feet?"

She flinched and the shock caused her to lose her balance. She toppled to the floor where she proceeded to pout at him angrily.

"I'm sorry, Pharaoh. It's just…" she scrunched up her face. "Have you ever tried to sit all day long? It's torture."

"Actually, I have. And yes, it is." He closed the door behind him. "Now, if you're so eager to be up, I would like you to help cleanse myself. I feel filthy." As he pulled off his delicate royal coat he caught sight of her bright red face. This gave him an impression of a young maiden rather than a child—a young girl still yet untouched by man.

"You mean just, you know, your legs and feet as always, right your highness?"

He blinked at her. Feeling slightly mischievous, though he didn't know why for it was her duty as his slave, or any other slave he requested for that matter, he said, "No. More than thus. I'd like a bath."

Red crawled up to the very roots of her hair and her eyes stood out like jewels amongst it all. She covered her face in her hands. He felt a laugh beginning to shake him. What had she to be so embarrassed about? Did she think he asked her to fondle him or something? Dance naked? But, once she lowered her hands, she moved back to her feet and waited for him to peel the rest of his jewelry off until all he wore was his kilt and the Millennium Puzzle about his neck. Fetching a fresh kilt from a basket besides his bed, he ushered her on.

"Come on. You know where it is."

She jumped nervously into action, going towards a statue of Bastet in a small, offset hall in the room. Behind the catlike goddess hung a thick, woven tapestry of various dyed wools. Lifting up a side of the tapestry she disappeared behind it with him following closely. Behind the tapestry was a cool, tunnel like stairway curving down to a manmade, granite lined pool filled in by a carved trench of the Nile River. Tightly woven pillars and trees made an impenetrable wall all the way around the pool, allowing only a low cut hole near the bottom with a wooden screen to allow water in and keep crocodiles out. The wall provided upmost privacy. Atem had often had the caretakers bring Aleah down here to bathe, hoping to knock some sense into her as to how magnanimous he really was. This was his private pool after all.

Now, he wasn't quite sure what to say. Yes, this was her job as his personal slave, and if she felt she was well enough to walk might as well put her to work. Yet he still felt like he should do something, anything, as the burning emotion in his chest demanded. And for the first time she would be walking down into the waters with him, blushing as though…as though knowing, as Pharaoh, he could really do as he pleased with her.

Into the cool water he stepped, watching the light fraction and flicker upon its surface. How did taking a bath become so confusing? When he walked waist deep into the water and she didn't follow, he turned around. Aleah stood in a patch of sunlight clutching towels and lye to her chest which she had gathered from alcoves in the tunnel. Her hair burned white-gold and brilliant; her face pink like a pond lily in her shyness.

A sensation as though his ka was escaping came over him. This couldn't be a girl. This couldn't even be a woman. Even as she tried to hide her face behind the bundle of towels, bright blue eyes peeking out over the linen, he couldn't reclaim his escaped ka.

This creature had to be a goddess.

He beckoned her down.

Her slender body tensed, but she placed the towels down at the side and took up the lye and washcloth. Instead of undressing to the necessaries, however, she plunged in fully dressed, bandages and all, and legs pinched in as far as they could go and still allow movement. First, he stared. Then, as she gave him the full brunt of her embarrassed, reproachful face, he threw his head back and laughed. He knew she did her best not to glower at him.

"Isis, Aleah, what was all that?"

"What?"

"You look, good gods, like you tried dying your face with pomegranate juice while trying not to wet yourself. And you didn't have to keep your dress on."

She hid her face. Her voice, however, held a biting tone. "For your information, Pharaoh, I may be a slave, but where I come from no one dresses like those slave dancer whores of yours in public or for any king, for that matter."

He smiled weakly, still trying hard not to laugh. "Though you were once poor, you certainly don't have the manner of one. Only the nobility have such modesty as you. But I guess it would be so with your people if it's as cold as I think it is in your homeland. Surely you are from the north, and is there not snow there?"

"Only in the winter."

"Nonetheless, if it's cold enough for ice to fall from the sky, it's unnaturally cold. Thus, more clothing."

She lifted up the lye and cloth gingerly, as though trying to keep water from getting on her still dry top. "Do you want me to do my duty or what, your highness?"

"Of course." He stepped down to the floor of the pool and turned his hands outward to her in invitation. She grimaced when water reached even higher on her as she stepped towards him and rubbed lye all over the rag. The touch of her fingers as she placed her rag sent an unbidden shiver of goose bumps across his skin, which he ignored. He didn't want to think too much about the fact that she now touched him all over. The end of her white hair floated across the top of the water as she moved about him, catching momentary flickers of sunlight through the canopy. He watched it in faint fascination.

By the time she came back around to the front, her blush had faded away. Pale lashes fanned across her slightly darker cheeks, and her lips were parted as she worked. What could he do? He had been treating her as a slave since she had gotten here. She hated him! That much he could see in her glower, no matter the kindness in her newly released words. He had still refused her lesson in Egyptian, to her increasing frustration, but it had reached the point why even he didn't know why he clung to her dependency so tenaciously.

Who was this person? Why did he long for the fire of her eyes? Why did he long for the snap of her words? All they brought him was dishonor. No. He refused to let himself be swayed.

But then her lashes lifted and he was caught in the blue. Such peculiar eyes, so unlike the dark ones common to people of the desert. Air became sticky in his lungs.

"Care to lift up your arms?"

He did so and she proceeded to scrub along his sides and the undersides of his arms. Suds lined her arms like fluffy, creamy sleeves. The strange warmth from the day before burned his chest. Before he knew what he was doing, he moved by it, needing to do something, anything.

"What do you want?" he murmured.

She paused and looked at him uncertainly. Diamonds of light played over her face, reflected from the water.

"What was that?"

"What do you want? Nobility? Jewels? A white Arabian steed? Shadow powers?"

She ogled at him, lowering her hand from his raised arm uncertainly. After a few brief seconds of him watching her, tracing the lines of her long, blond lashes and platinum curls with his eyes, she frowned.

"Are…you okay, your highness? Did something happen? I've heard a hint from Set that there's some crazy thief guy killing people and setting monsters on the loose—did you see something? Did someone really important die?"

"No. No, I…I just want to know. What do you want? I…" Feeling the heat rising up his neck and constricting his throat, he lowered his arm to rinse it off and draw for time. He should have said nothing. Why did he always have to act so idiotic? It was unseemly of a pharaoh. But before he could recant his words, she spoke.

"Well, I'd really like my shoes back, your majesty."

His heart leapt. Was that all?

"Those strange things?"

"Hey, Egyptian shoes are really rough and make my feet smell. They're also hard to run in." She turned to fetch a bottle of oils and lye still on the steps for his hair. He caught a brief glimpse of the transparent, wet portion of her dress sticking to her waist before she came back and he did his best to not draw her attention to the affects it had on him.

"Hard to run in? How is that important?"

"I like running." she simply said, the bottle in her hands. "It's something I use to do when I was back home."

"You ran? What do you mean? Were you a messenger?" He curiously glanced at her body. Instead of seeing the lean, skinny machine of a runner, however, he made out supple softness and curves which sent the hair on his arms prickling. Noticing his gaze, she blushed.

"No, not like that. I wasn't even a real athlete. My parents moved too much for me to do that. I just…whenever I got frustrated or was upset, I'd like to run, and sometimes if the track team was out practicing I'd go race them. I'm a sprinter, your highness."

Forcing himself to look away from her rippling figure beneath the water, he furrowed his eyebrows at her. "Moved? Track team? Sprinter? Forgive me, I'm afraid I do not understand."

"A track team was, um, crap I guess those type of sports are for the Greeks, um…they were a group of people that like to race for sport. You know, like competitively. They practice and train to try and make themselves as fast as possible."

"That sounds like children and soldier's play."

"Whatever. The point is, they were a bunch of people that liked to run and it's sort of a big deal where I'm from. There's two different types of running: long distance running, which depends mainly on endurance, and sprinting, which focuses on speed. Due to I don't really train, I don't have the endurance to be a long distance runner, so I'm more of a sprinter."

Atem scratched his neck in bemusement. "So strange. Having running as a…wait, did you do this for your living?"

"A hobby. Athletes are those who do it for a living. And there really isn't any way to make a living off of it, I would think, your highness."

"So very, very strange…and moving? From place to place? Were your family nomads?"

"No, your majesty. My step father just had a job that jumped all over the place, so we had to move from town to town where his work went."

"Sounds difficult."

"It was." She paused, unstopping the bottle. Water licked at the bottom curve of her breasts as she stared into its depths. "It is."

He bowed his head to allow her to rub the lye and fragrant oil through his hair into a wispy lather. He had had others wash his hair before, but what he did not expect were her nails, which weren't rubbed away like most working servants or slaves. Surprise overtook him as they pleasantly scratched his head. He wanted to melt to the bottom of the pool. Already he could feel his knees bending.

"Uh, pharaoh, you're going to drown yourself."

He didn't care. Drowning didn't sound so bad. Why hadn't any of the servants had any sort of long nails? Then again, they're line of work had to be grueling, and all Aleah had to pass her time was cleaning up his quarters and whatever else he required of her.

Once she had finished scrubbing him, he leaned back and allowed himself to float peaceably across the pool, watching the great palm leaves shift in an almost non-existent breeze and feeling his puzzle weight down gently at his neck. Aleah, however, quickly got out while he wasn't looking and when he had the chance to turn back to her she had a long towel tucked tightly about her. Her face was pink again. He chuckled.

"What are you so nervous about showing?"

She glared. "I'm not comfortable with all my assists showing through a wet, white dress, okay?"

He shrugged, though, secretly, he was somewhat disappointed. Her determination to hide herself just made him want to see all the more. The covering of a woman's body was considered to be both modest and sensual, depending on the occasion. He wondered if she knew that. But then again, what 'occasion' was it anyways?

She waited impatiently for him at the edge of the pool. He sighed heavily at her poor etiquette before finding his feet on the bottom of the pool again and making his way towards her. Her hair was still half dry, and it gleamed once more in the scattered sunshine. As he stepped into the towel she held out for him, he reached out a hand to touch it. Silk ran against his fingertips. She appeared to ignore his touch as she tied the towel about him and it encouraged him to step closer and greedily reach his hands through her hair. Before he knew what he was doing he had his face in that mass of beautiful, gleaming silk, breathing in her scent. It was sweet, like the aroma of an exotic flower he had yet to place.

It was her sudden trembling that woke him up. He stepped away quickly. Those blue eyes were wide…fearful.

He cursed. Angry with himself he brushed passed her and back up the steps. On reaching his room he moved to the golden chest in the corner where he had stashed her strange items among other prized possessions. When Aleah finally had the courage to follow, towel still wrapped tightly about her dripping form, he had her strange, pale shoes held out to her as though in offering, feeling stupid and flustered.

"Here," he mumbled.

She reached out to touch them and looked up at him questioningly. Before he could think of what to say, she seemed to reconsider and pulled back her hand, her expression suddenly suspicious.

"What do you want from me, Pharaoh?"

"Nothing." he said, quite sincerely. "You just said…I thought it would be useful if you were able to walk with more ease. Besides, they are just taking up room and are of no use to me."

Still, she kept her hands pressed to her chest, curling around the edge of her towel. She even took a step back as though to return to her cushion, or if her face predicted anything, under his bed. He sighed. Throwing propriety to the wind he placed the strange shoes on the floor before her.

"You may take them or refuse them. They'll stay here until you decide."

And with that, he left to change into the dry kilt. She purposefully kept her eyes to the floor as he peeled off the wet kilt behind the pseudo-screen next to the chest. When he came back out she was crouched on the floor, poking at them.

"If you're wondering if I hid scorpions in them I can assure you I did not. If I had wanted to kill you, you would know."

Oddly enough, this gave her courage enough to pick up the shoes and pull out the strange, woven sacks within them. She smiled at them.

"You kept the socks too?"

"Is that what those are?"

Satisfied, she took the shoes with her back to her cushion, where she proceeded to peel off her wet bandages. Warmth filled his chest at her acceptance and the happy smile on her face gave him a sense of accomplishment. After finding her a new, dry dress and commanding her to change into it, she took her precious shoes and the cloth behind the tapestry by the Bastet statue to change—again showing her strange, over-done modesty. He couldn't help but roll his eyes. And yet…and yet…

Ra…he must love this girl.

But what good did that do if she still hated him so much?