The ending! Not sure how good it is. If you want me to write a fluff chapter with Aleah ending up with either Yugi or Yami, send up a message. Sorry if this ending seems a bit rushed. X.X It's like I have no time to write for fun anymore.

Anyhoo, as usual, please forgive my mistakes. I'm using a simple program that doesn't fix my mistakes like Word does and I am lucky to get you to you patient readers. I do have a wonderful idea for another Yugioh fanfiction though. :3 Tune in, I'm thinking of posting it soon.

Oh, and I found a tick in my hair. I freaked out and threw it on the bathroom floor. My husband just looked at me like, 'really?' and flushed it down the toilet. I'm still traumatized. I mean, what if I get lyme disease or what if it had buried itself into my flesh like some alien spawn and stayed there?

Please, review.

Chapter 13: The Light

Yugi felt nothing. One could have almost called it peace that held him in suspense, not breathing, not feeling, not anything. The mud filled his ears, his eyes, and his very soul.

But somehow, he heard her.

"Yugi,"

He tried to ignore her. What was some random female voice in his ear?

"Yugi, your friends need you."

He had no friends. Didn't she know they had all abandoned him? No one needed him.

"Wake up. You have to be the light for them now, as only you can be."

Light, pfft. He had heard whispers of that so many times, that like Yami was to the shadows, he was to the light. But then where were his powers? Why couldn't he summon monsters out of the blue, banish people's souls, smash minds, or, in a word, actually defend anyone? All he could do was be a vessel, a body, and for what? To be crushed by the shadows and abandoned.

"Yugi, listen to your faith. Would your friends ever abandon you?"

He didn't know who this lady was, but she had a point. He perked up, thinking of Joey and his fierce loyalty. Even in the face of Marik's mind control he had pulled through, fought for him, when he was suppose to not have a mind at all. Yami had fiercely protected him from the beginning, and though he muttered it was only to protect the body that housed his soul, Yami had fought against much more than that. Anyone who had hurt his feelings, trespassed his heart, or even Tea, who had tried to date Yami without thinking of how it was Yugi's body, had received the blunt end of Yami's protectiveness. And his grandfather? He loved him. Simple as that. And what reason would Tristan have to leave him? He thought Yami was creepy and had fought beside Yugi time after time. Tea, maybe, but Yami was with Aleah, wasn't he? Why would she leave Yugi as well?

His chest throbbed with pain. It hurt. He didn't want to leave this mud. Aleah would never look at him as any more than a friend, like any other girl. He was too...Yugi. Here he wouldn't have to face that.

But he did know one thing, and it shone out in his mind with blaring truth: what he saw had been an illusion. He trusted his friends. That trust and faith had gotten him through a lot more then whatever was trying to keep him under this mud.

The pain in his chest became bearable. He lifted his head and felt the edge of the muck.

"Your friends need you. You are the light."

He reached up broke through. Something that felt like thick ice pushed back at him, trying to deter him, but he couldn't feel the mud anymore. It wasn't mud at all. It was shadows, thick and grimey. As he pulled apart the pasty feeling cocoon about him, the strength of the truth warmed him and warded off the cold, and light started emanating from him. He took a ragged gasp of air. The sound of rain faded away.

"Light their way."

"Who are you?"

But nobody answered back.

!#$#^&^%$#!# $%^

It was cold down here, wherever here was. But she liked it that way. At least it wasn't the hot desert sun. At least it meant she was alone.

Why couldn't she have stayed in North Dakota? Why couldn't she be left to run past the fields of corn and grains and laugh at the thunder storms without Atem interfering in her life? Now she'd never see her mother or brothers again. Now she'd never know what it meant to be loved completely. She would never be good enough. Love was just a stupid lie.

She'd never know any of her children. The mud had her now, and she could feel her heart slowing. The quiet was like a blanket, and she wrapped in tight around her, but the cold just pressed in tighter as well.

She couldn't breathe.

"Aleah! What are you doing down there?"

A hand she couldn't see wrapped about her wrist she hadn't realized had been floating somewhere above her head. Against her will the hand yanked her out into the sun, coughing and gasping for air she didn't want. She rubbed silt out of her eyes, her legs still in the muddy pond bottom and leaves from olive trees sticking to her.

Yugi crouched beside her and wiped mud out of her eyes with his soft fingertips.

"Come on, Aleah, it can't be that bad."

"Yugi?" she blinked hard, but the slender boy didn't vanish. His large amethyst eyes were looking right at her and crinkled with worry.

"Please, don't give up. It will be all right."

He continued to wipe mud of her face, smoothing back her hair and occasionally dipping his hand into the water to wash her off. At one point she started to shiver again as she finally started wanting to be warm and threw herself around Yugi's waist. He jumped.

"Aleah?"

"Yugi, please don't-I don't want to-" and then she started to sob into his chest, which was somehow warmer than the Egyptian air. She clung to him hard. Yugi would never hurt her. Yugi she could trust. He had only ever been kind, compassionate, and earnest. She had almost forgotten about him, though she couldn't see how she could have when he had taken such a big part of her life in such a short time.

Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and leaned his cheek against her head.

"I don't know how you got here," she said into his chest, "but I'm so, so, so glad to see you. I wanted to die, Yugi, I was going to and I can't believe I was just going to let myself."

"It's all right-"

"No, it isn't. Atem lied to me, Yugi, just as I knew he always would, and now, now I'm…" she couldn't even bring herself to break her pregnancy to him. It was too awful. She choked and wept in earnest once more.

Yugi just held to her tighter. "Aleah, whatever Atem-that is Yami, I'm guessing-but whatever he did, that wasn't him."

"Yes it was! Shadi said so-"

"Forget Shadi, Atem loves you. Please, trust me, I've been sharing a mind with him for a year now and I've seen the way he looks at you and talks about you and thinks about you since the moment he saw you. He can't remember any of his life, but he can remember you. Have some faith in love again, Aleah."

She snorted. "Yeah right,"

"And even if Atem ever does betray you," Yugi hesitated, "I'll always be here. And you will be okay. You're strong."

"I don't feel like it."

"That's okay. But you mustn't let the shadows take you, you mustn't let the illusions scare you."

"Illusions?" she sniffed. "Is that really…?"

Yugi gave her a wide smile, expression soft. The plant life and pond around her began to blur. The harsh heat of the sun began to fade and she realized it had never been there in the first place.

"Wake up, Aleah."

The cocoon of shadows about her shattered, but Yugi's arms stayed tight around her. The cool, plain light of time began to shine around her once more, but now it paled in comparison to Yugi's golden glow. He let her go and helped her to stand up. She let out an enormous sigh of relief when she felt her flat stomach and the warmth of Yugi's hand.

"We should find Yami, now." he said.

"Wait, Yugi,"

"Yeah?"

She felt herself smile at the warmth Yugi brought into her chest. She squeezed his hand. The cold couldn't touch her with him. He had saved her once more from the darkness.

"Thank you. I just want you to know you are the kindest, most selfless, most generous person I have ever met. I can't believe how lucky I was for you to find me." she looked him in the eyes, the emotion in her heart so soft. "I love you, Yugi. Anyone who can call you friend is blessed."

Yugi's eyes widened and for a moment she thought he was just about to gape at her. The golden color of his own light reflected in the purple of his eyes. She gave his hand another squeeze and went to ask how he had found her in the first place when Yugi jerked forward and kissed her hard on the mouth. Before she could even register what had happened, he pulled away sharply and turned around.

"Yami should be close by, though I guess distance is all relative in the shadow realm." he said.

"He was right in front of me before," she said, trying to blink past the daze, "Yugi-"

"There!"

He pulled her forward. She got the vague feeling that Yugi was trying to avoid talking about what had happened, as though afraid of something. But before she could think more on it the mucky film like sensation of the shadows brushed over her and the world burst into cloudy light and shades of grey.

! #$%^&%$# $%

As the smaller hand pulled him out, Yami tried to leave all his feelings and pain behind as well. For a while he just stared at his hands as the burning, smoke tasting rain washed the mud off of his arms and dripped off his hair. Why was he brought back here? Why wasn't he left to vanish into peace? Who could be so cruel? Couldn't they see the bodies of his friends scattered about?

He brought his head up, taking a deep breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, but the curse stuck in his throat. Crouching before him, arms draped over his knees, was his Yugi, grinning in encouragement.

"Come on, partner. It's not over yet."

"Yugi, what is this?" he looked over to see that the dead Yugi still lay on the ground. "How are you-are you a spirit?"

"It's an illusion, Atem." And Aleah stepped into his view, beautiful and whole.

He looked back at the other Aleah, still dead, then back to her, and it snapped. He gritted his teeth. "Damn him."

"Yep," said Aleah, smirking. "Damn him indeed. You should've seen the number he pulled on me! If he wasn't a million times my size I'd kick him for all he was worth."

Yugi had his hand out to him. "Wake up time. Let's go and finish this."

Smothering weight gone, Yami breathed deeply, took Yugi's hand, and let him heave him to his feet. He turned back on the sky and raised his hand to it. The millenium puzzle, which he had lost sight of in the mud, gleamed bright. As Yami closed his fingers into a tight fist, the illusion shattered into numberless pieces and the shadows came rushing back in.

The moment they did Yami's knees wobbled and he collapsed, the weakness of before returning. Yugi and Aleah caught him.

"Energy isn't limitless." murmured the sticky voice of Zorc. "And you've only quickened yours and your friends' destruction, little light."

Yami looked up at Yugi, who glowed a brilliant gold, but had sweat on his face. He scowled at the darkness as the face of Zorc was illuminated along with his endless wings and slobbering chest dragon. Usually his first instinct would be to deny anything his enemy said as mere intimidation, but looking up at the face of Yugi, who had truly served him as a light, he couldn't see how Zorc could be lying. While he believed his abiou could achieve anything and had more faith in him than anyone else, he simply couldn't ignore how tiny Yugi looked compared to the monstrous lord of the Shadow Realm.

Without a word the jaw of the dragon dropped and something blacker than the shadows and churning appeared in the back of it's throat. Zorc lifted up a hand, wicked claws outstretched.

"Die, oh little light."

The claws came down right as the dragon belched forth the beam of utter blackness. Yugi, Yami, and Aleah only had time to reach for each other, each with the instinct to protect, before Zorc's attack was upon them. Yami clenched his eyes, arms in front of his friends.

But he felt nothing.

Wondering if his death had been so quick he didn't feel a thing, he opened his eyes.

A tall woman with gleaming gold skin and wings of glass stood before them, radiating the same colorless, plain light of Aleah. Silver hair wrapped about her and the clothes she wore looked a lot like his own as Pharaoh. Zorc's claws hovered a mere inch from her, trembling. The red eyes glaring down were narrowed with displeasure as other people, also like Aleah, of different ethnicities, both female and male, stepped out of the darkness, all radiating that strange light. Looking out at them all it hit him that it wasn't light they radiated, but simply an absence of the shadow realm. It was something else that surrounded them. Something neutral, neither good nor bad, but powerful.

Even as he stared on, hand on Yugi he now recognized as the only true source of light in the room, Aleah stepped forward and took her place at the statuesque woman's side.

"You're the one who's been whispering to me," she said, face open in amazement.

Without taking her eyes off of Zorc, she smiled and turned her face ever so slightly to her. "You've done well, Aleah. I am sorry I didn't come earlier. The nature of time is change and I had to wait until the last minute to see how things turn out."

"Rules are rules," said Aleah rather breathlessly.

"What is this?!" cried Zorc at a volume that made Yami and Yugi buckle over with hands over their ears. "Time is neutral! How can you possibly be taking the side of the light!"

"You mean what little of it that you've allowed to defend itself?" the woman sneered and her glass-like wings rustled. "Yes, time is neutral, but you have damaged it beyond my capability to ignore."

The lipless jaws of the demon dropped in a vague, toothy imitation of a smile. "That was not me. One of your own guardians did that."

Out of the shadows appeared Shadi once more, blank faced and pale. He made no moved to show he recognized that others were there, and Yami feared the worst.

The woman's eyes narrowed. "And that key of yours had nothing to do with it."

"He let himself be influenced."

"You're a greedy fool, but I expected nothing less of the shadows." she then turned around and took a step towards Yami and Yugi. The moment she turned around the dragon head in Zorc's chest spat out another ball of shadow, spraying saliva in the process. In that instant the guardians scattered around him raised their hands and the ball of shadow stopped in mid-air. The demon took a step back.

"What are you going to do then? Freeze me in time forever? You can't do that."

"Stop telling me what I can and can not do, I was there when those laws were written. I can't say the same about you." she looked down at Yami and Yugi. "Yugi, give some of your strength to Yami."

"Wha-how?"

"Just touch him and think on your friendship. Bring up your desire to help him."

"Um...okay?"

Yugi awkwardly put his hands on Yami's shoulders.

"What are you doing?" shouted Zorc.

But as Yugi touched him, he felt his energy return. With a deep breath he stood up, adjusting the bracelet around his wrist. Aleah smiled.

"Now, summon all three gods." the woman told him.

"You can't do that!" cried Zorc. "How dare you! That is out of your place, Isis!"

She ignored him. "Come now, Atem."

Yami's eyes widened. Isis? The goddess Isis? Wife of Osiris and goddess of magic? Was she goddes of time as well? He looked up into her gold face and obsidian eyes and felt himself tremble. He didn't know how, but just looking into that face she could sense her apathy for him, as well as her anger at Zorc. It was that anger he feared more than he ever feared anything before, for against Zorc he only felt hopeless, but against Isis he knew he'd never stand a chance should she turn that anger on him.

Obediently, he lifted up his summoning disc and called out the god's names. As he did so he could feel the boundaries of the shadow realm tremble and the millenium puzzle against his chest burn. Yugi kept his hand on his shoulder, giving him the strength to summon the greatest beasts in duel monsters.

One by one, Slifer the Sky Dragon, Obelisk the Tormentor, and the Winged Dragon of Ra burst for against the blackness in an explosion of color.

Zorc roared, "You can't do this!"

"Now, Atem, command them to combine." said Isis, as though Zorc had not said a thing.

"Do what?" asked Yugi, looking at Aleah, who had her wide eyes on the ginormous gods crowding around Zorc.

Yami was just as lost as they were, but he wasn't about to argue with the woman who made even him shake in his shoes, so he drew on the power thrumming within him and called on each god by name and commanded them to combine. He wondered if anything would happen and why he hadn't thought of trying to combine the gods before. Perhaps it was because the idea of trying to control that much power terrified him.

But surely enough, with various roars and cries of dragons and beasts the gods pressed in on each other, wrapping about one another until they began to glow with a blinding light.

"No!" shouted Zorc. "Stop!"

"Stop what?" said Isis, golden face sharp. "Leveling the playing field? How pathetic of you to pit yourself against one child of the light. It is more fitting for you to face the light itself."

"This battle was between me and that bastard son of the pharaoh who released me! You have no right-"

"I have every right when the river of time tears itself apart because you stuck your fingers into the mind of one of my guardians!" she thundered, and somehow her voice sounded even louder than Zorc's. "It is you who have lost the right! How dare you meddle in the laws of life for your own pathetic battle with the realm of light."

"I care not for life!"

"You will."

The blinding light exploded, shattering the shadow realm and bringing the time torn Egypt and Domino city back into their surroundings. As it faded a brilliant being as Yami had never before beheld came into view, human in shape with the armor and wings of the Winged Dragon of God. With brilliant eyes of light, the being looked down upon Zorc, who both coward and snarled like a lion in its wake.

"Ra," breathed Yami.

"What is that?" asked Yugi.

"Horakhty," said Isis, arms folded across her chest, "Creator God of Light."

"I… I summoned the god of light?" said Yami, and his knees felt weak.

"Only with Yugi, a child of light's help." said Isis.

One by one the other guardians of time were beginning to fade in Horakhty's light, but Isis stayed put, and Aleah, looking both awestruck and terrified, took shelter behind one of the woman's glass wings without really noticing, though her own wings had vanished with the disappearance of the shadow realm.

"How dare you summon him!" screeched Zorc. "No right, Isis, no right!"

"All I did was share the secrets of a future you never gave the chance to happen." said Isis.

And with that the god of light lifted up it's staff, eyes narrowed down at the pitiful blackness beneath it. A new sun burst forth from the tip and Zorc screamed in agony as the light grew brighter and brighter till all Yami could feel and see was the light and heat of the sun. With a shatter like thunder the light swallowed up the darkness. When the light finally faded, making the ordinary sun above them seem dim, both Horakhty and Zorc had vanished.

Ahead of them, a familiar turbaned body lay on the ground, forgotten and perfectly still. Isis approached it with a regal frown.

"Shadi," she said, "you have failed to understand your duty. In trying to prevent change and manipulating a fellow guardian for your own selfish desires, you allowed Zorc to have power over your mind. But," she sighed and lifted out her hand, as though giving a gift to the air above him. "It is not your time to die."

Shadi groaned and Aleah flinched. He coughed, rolled into a sitting position, and looked up to see a god looking back. Yami never saw a man move so fast to get his face to the dirt as Shadi did.

"Oh great one," he said.

"You are to leave Aleah alone, Shadi. You should have from the start."

"But, your grace, she fell into my period, threatened that natural flow of time." Yami flinched at the word 'but' and watched apprehensively. 'But' shouldn't be in the vocabulary in speaking to any god.

And by the look on her face, she had no need for patience.

"Do you have so little faith in my choice of guardians and where I send them?" her snap was like a whip crack and Shadi flinched and fell onto his stomach. "Because of your lack of obedience to the laws and your pride, the damage done to all three realms is irreversible. If it weren't for me intervening time would have been destroyed completely. Do you know what that would've meant?" Without waiting for him to answer, she swept her golden arm over the landscape. "Look at that! Because of you trying to urge rifts of time out of their natural revolution, you have made a mess of the cycle. Your so called Egypt clashing with 21st century Japan, ha!"

Smoke curled over the city of Thebes, with small flickers of flame still licking patches along the fringes. The Egyptian palace had turned into an unnatural chimera of skyscraper and stone. People stood outside of their cars in the pouring rain, staring out at the sunlit ancient city just a few steps away from them, while in turn linen clad Egyptians stared back at the rain and black stone town patching their city. Lightning flashed from one part of the cloud torn sky just to disappear the moment in reached a tear of blue skies.

"Do you know how many minds and memories I'll have to trespass in order to set things right? Do you know how many guardians I will need to sacrifice to realign the river of time?"

Shadi hands trembled and clenched in the dirt as though containing the desire to bury himself in the earth. Even though Shadi had taken Aleah from him, both in the past and future, he couldn't help but feel sorry for the man. The force of the goddess's displeasure was palpable

"For your foolishness, I am suspending your abilities. From now on you will stay in your own time, and yes, you do have your own time. I can't believe the foolishness you tried to feed to that poor girl."

Giving the pathetic, quavering Shadi one last disgruntled look, she turned back to Aleah, giving Yugi and Yami mere courtesy glances.

"Young one," she said in a much softer and gentler tone than what she had used on Shadi, "I need you to understand a few things before I return to the heavens. Are listening well?"

Aleah nodded nervously, hands clenched in front of her. She looked especially frail next to the tall goddess, who smiled magnanimously at her tremblings.

Isis lifted her hands out flat before her. "In order to understand your duty, you must understand the realm of time. Change is it's heart. Destiny is its mind. Unpredictability is its nature. As a guardian you are to uphold all three of these, for that is what you are."

Aleah looked at her feet. "How do I do that?"

"By maintaining the balance between light and shadow."

"Excuse me, I don't mean to ask so many questions, but…"

"Yes?"

"Why is that so important?"

Isis crouched down before the slender Aleah, features kind. Yami understood a bit about her, then: Isis was a teacher at heart, and though she only had one child as far as he knew of in Horus, she was also a mother as well.

"Don't fear me, Aleah. You have done nothing wrong as Shadi has."

"He didn't mean to."

"That doesn't matter." her smile flickered. "But balance between light and shadow is important because should one or the other prevail, one or more of the three traits of time would be threatened. When light prevails, conflict ceases and so thus change is threatened, destiny becomes irrelevant, and unpredictability is miniscule. If shadow prevails, conflict is never ending, misery is always predictable, and destiny has no power. Destiny exists to maintain balance. As a mortal you naturally fear change, for it is needed to maintain the balance for good or bad, but Aleah," her golden expression softened and the wings of glass folded about her, "do not fear change." Then, much more quietly, so quiet Yami wasn't sure he heard her voice or his imagination, she said, "if you want to go back to Egypt of the past to be with the pharaoh, that is okay. It will cause change, but that is a part of life. Whether for good or bad, you cannot predict how it will turn out. But be assured that destiny will remain the same." Her wings pulled back and Yami suddenly found himself under the sharp gaze of the goddess. "Yugi was destined to meet Atem. Atem's father was destined to create the millenium puzzles. No matter what choice you make, Aleah, unless light or shadow overcomes the other, destiny will never change."

Isis stood, giving one last kind touch to Aleah and a glare to Shadi. Then, without a word to either Yami or Yugi, she simply vanished as though she had never been there in the first place. Where she stood had grown blurry and Yami went to rub his suddenly itching eyes. When he opened them he was back in the puzzle, watching as Yugi glanced around his bedroom, very confused. He kept to himself as Yugi's emotions rolled over him. He felt numb, surprised, exhausted, and more than overwhelmed.

"How did we get back here Yami? Yami? Yami?"

But Yami had retreated back into the dark chamber of his soul room, where he sat down in a corner and leaned his aching soul against the wall.

The next thing he knew he woke up, though he never slept, feeling like he was missing something and wondering what the name of the white girl was who had sat down in the living room below and why Tea would have the nerve to assume he would ever take such advantage over Yugi's body. Any memory of a goddess, Zorc, or wings of time had been effortlessly and calmly erased.

! #$%^$# %^&*%

Yugi woke up in his bedroom, not entirely sure how he had gotten there. When he tried to call Yami out to see if he could remember, all that answered was silence. Feeling uneasy, he made his way to the window and looked outside.

Just Domino city as usual, the sun shining bright beams through cracks in the clouds. So it had finally stopped raining.

A throb rain through his head and he shook it. What was that beautiful girl's name again? The one with the kind blue eyes, who had said that she loved him in a dark, shadowy world? He knew her. With an extra painful throb he remembered and kiss and blushed deeply. How could that be? Why would he ever kiss her? She loved the pharaoh, not him. Speaking of which...where was she? Hadn't she been downstairs just a moment ago?

As his head began to ache harder, he decided to grab an advil and try not to think about it for a time. Instantly, the memory slipped away, and by the time he had gone half way down the stairs he had forgotten what he had intended to get in the first place.

But still the memory of a kiss and blue eyes lingered.

! #$%^&*&^%$#

Aleah sat on a flat stone next to the irrigation creek in her backyard. Besides her the neighbors long rippling green field of wheat swallowed up the creek before she could see where it led. Sighing, she put her feet in the water and tried not to think. Inside the double-wide behind her she could hear her step father and mother arguing over what, she didn't care. Her brothers had evacuated the moment it had all started and sat a ways away up an old oak tree, throwing twigs down into the water to float down to where she was. She watched them bump into rocks and dirt until finally being accepted into the flock of wheat with the rest of the water.

Here she was. Back home. Back in her own time.

The shouting escalated behind her. Her stepfather could sound so scary. At least he wasn't Zorc, which she remembered all too clearly. There was no need to fix a guardian's memory.

Her brothers got louder with the yelling behind them in their attempts to block it out. They teased each other and attempted to boss the other into getting certain twigs for them. They knew Aleah well enough to know when she wanted to be left alone.

The screen door slammed and her mother came flying out, tears in her eyes.

"We're leaving," she said, "get your stuff."

"Does that include us?" asked one of her brothers, looking annoyed.

Her mother sniffed and somehow managed to look threatening with a blotchy face and watery eyes. "Yes! I want you in the car and with your bags in five minutes."

As her brothers murmured and grumbled down the tree, Aleah stayed where she was, staring at the last twig making its way down the creek. She remembered so much more than this: boats down the Nile, a sun so hot and burning it was like metal against her skin, waves upon waves of papyrus with hand-like leaves reaching up to Ra. She remembered a kind boy with peculiar purple eyes who had a grandpa who made her soup and talked to her softly. She remembered…

And it made it unbearable when her mother came to her, sobbing, but demanding.

"Come on, Aleah, I can't handle all this right now. I need you to help me with your brothers."

"Where are we going."

Her mother hesitated. "I don't know yet."

She kept looking into the water, hoping to see something. This happened so often. Her mother needed her. She couldn't take care of her brothers by herself, and with her stepfather being the way he was, she needed Aleah. But all she saw when she looked into the steady water was a wavering image of herself.

Her mother walked away without another word, assuming Aleah to be there in the car with her brothers. It had only been two weeks since she had come back, and already she ached so much. Was she ungrateful? She had been ungrateful so often. Was she being one of those selfish, spoiled teenagers who thought their lives were worse than they really were? Was she being whiny for not being happy and wishing her mother would just stop and leave for good and that her stepfather would disappear? But what a horrible thing to wish. Murderers wanted a person to disappear.

But as she heard her brothers banging around in their rooms angrily and she stood up in resignation, a voice, like a memory, seemed to echo in her mind:

Don't be afraid of change.

"Aleah?" called her mother, her voice breaking as though on the edge of hysteria. She had lingered so long by the water she had forgotten to get any of her stuff. She couldn't see the point. They'd be back tonight anyways.

But she couldn't move. The memories of Egypt flipped through her mind. Atem had wanted her to marry him. Would he had asked that of a child? Yugi had believed in her and pulled her out of the mud of despair, encouraging her to not give up, to have faith in love and people. What would he think to see her sticking here in the mud once more?

Was this really a sinkhole? But...this was her home, and mother needed her…

"Aleah!"

A cool, familiar sensation washed over her like a breeze and she looked up. Off in the distance, like the afterimage of a lightning strike, a rift moved towards her. It induced images of bronze, ages, skies, mountains, skyscrapers, and pyramids.

She walked towards the car, a sturdy honda civic, where her brothers waited with their heads bent over gameboys, and where her mother slipped on sunglasses to hide her red eyes. She didn't even bother to notice that Aleah had brought nothing with her, but got into the car and turned on the engine. She left the passenger door open for her.

The rift was drawing closer. The feeling of muscles lifting prickled her back, as though she had some sort of wings. She wished she did, for she'd have to jump pretty high to reach this one-but of course she wasn't going to jump for it. Mother, her brothers, her life….

The front door slammed open and her stepfather came out, eyes popping as they did when he was in a fury. "Going to leave me, then? Going to leave me and cheat on me just like you did to Rus?"

Mother broke into a new wave of tears. Her brothers ducked their heads lower.

But her brothers...who would protect them?

And yet, watching as her stepfather stomped out onto the porch with that familiar scary expression on his face, she realized that if she stayed, nothing would change. She couldn't protect her brothers. But her mother could. If she stayed here, mother wouldn't wake up enough to figure out how to fix whatever was wrong with this picture. The aching would continue in not just her heart, but everyone's.

And she realized more deeply than ever, with a thrilling sense of elation rising like a balloon against her collarbone, that there was somewhere else she wanted to be, and for once, wonderfully, magically, spectacularly for once she had the power to do something about it.

The rift was almost upon her. Ignoring her step father, she ran to her mother and opened up the car door. Her mother looked up at her, tears pouring out from beneath the sunglasses. Aleah smiled at her and kissed her on the cheek, something she never did as she wasn't one for mushy antics.

"I love you with all my heart, mom." she said.

Then, turning around on the spot, feeling her mother's surprised and hopeless gaze on her back, she took a running leap towards the rift. Somehow, a wind caught her and the sensation of wings tightened on her back, lifting her the last foot or so to the cracked light in the air. She could feel her long hair fluffing about her with the wind, as though she really did have wings hidden beneath them.

The last thing she heard was her mother shouting her name.

But it was all right. She would see her mother again. And hopefully, next time, something will have changed.