CHAPTER 6: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN CLICHÉ

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN CLICHÉ: Gwyneth Paltrow races for a train in the 1998 movie "Sliding Doors," and her reality splits in two. She boards the train and arrives home in time to catch her boyfriend cheating on her. Or she misses the train and continues on as part of an unintentional triangle, living in a not-so-blissful ignorance. The movie hopscotches back and forth between realities as we try to guess which one we'd choose – until the inevitable ending settles the question for good.

MORAL: Are we defined by the roads not taken – or by the ones we chose to walk down?

Atem stared at Yugi, trying to shake off his momentary disorientation before his partner noticed. Yugi was older and stockier than he remembered. If he added a bandana, the resemblance to his grandfather would have been even more pronounced. Yugi moved around the store as though he owned it. Atem took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Of course, Yugi owned the Kame Game Shop. He'd inherited it from Sugoroku. How had Atem forgotten? Atem frowned, trying to recall the threads of his dream. It had felt important, like something he needed to remember.

"Partner?" Yugi asked. "Is everything okay?"

"Of course. I don't know what came over me. For a second, I thought you were a teenager again."

Yugi laughed. "Believe me, I'm glad those days are gone for good!"

Despite his words, Yugi's smile turned wistful as he thought back to the Ceremonial Duel. He'd lost and won at the same time. They'd embraced. Atem's body had melted into Yugi's arms. His shouted thanks had faded into a voice only Yugi could hear. But Atem had grown quieter with each year and somewhere around their tenth anniversary, Yugi had begun relaying the duel in his mind, searching for the moves he should have made.

"Partner?" Atem said tentatively.

"You spend too much time alone in your soul room," Yugi scolded. "You can use our body, even if it's just to say 'Hello,' to our friends."

"It's not our body," Atem replied quickly. "The world's safe. You're a champion in your own right, just as you were meant to be. There's no need for me to appear. Why would I even duel, anymore?"

For a moment, Kaiba's name hung between them.

Yugi didn't answer. He turned away with a sigh of relief as Jounouchi bounced into the store and joined him behind the counter, shaking leaves out of his hair.

"Wow! It's windy out there! Regular fall weather!"

Yugi smiled and swept up the bits of leaves Jounouchi had tracked in. After a play fight, Jounouchi grabbed the broom and stomped outside with it. Yugi began his morning routine: taking inventory, restocking shelves, ordering merchandise. Atem retreated to his soul room.

Jounouchi swept the sidewalk, re-entered the store, put the broom away and headed back for the door. "Time for a coffee run! I'm volunteering to buy, in case you missed it."

Jounouchi returned a few minutes later and slid a cup to Yugi. "Think of it as my apology for being late. Again."

"Maybe I should meet you on the corner first," Yugi said, remembering Jounouchi's and Honda's running joke, back in high school, about Jounouchi needing Yugi to show up on time.

"Not you too! I get enough of that from Honda. But I showed him! I did graduate!"

"I even have the pictures to prove it!" Yugi joked.

Jounouchi took a swig of coffee. "Speaking of Honda, I was at his and Miho's yesterday. Their second one is growing like a weed. Did you hear the latest?" Jounouchi coughed. "I mean, I guess you did. Anzu's coming back for a visit… well… her and her family."

Yugi smiled. Jounouchi pretended to believe it reached his eyes.

"She texted me," Yugi said. "We still keep in touch, even though I haven't seen her in years. I tell her I'm still her biggest fan. I can't wait to see her… and her kids."

Jounouchi clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You're a good guy, Yugi. I get that she's the one that got away, but you know, you're still a catch."

"She was never mine enough to be the one I lost." Yugi forced another smile onto his face. "I'm fine. And what am I supposed to tell a potential girlfriend?"

Yugi could hear Atem sigh, even from the depths of his soul room.

"I didn't mean that, Other Me!" Yugi said to him. "I'm happy. I needed you. I wasn't ready. Otherwise, I would have won. But I've never regretted losing, not if it meant we could stay together. There could only be one King of Games – and that's you!"

Jounouchi watched Yugi. "Talking with your other self, again?"

Yugi nodded.

"Haven't seen him around lately," Jounouchi observed.

Yugi shrugged. "You have to admit it's been peaceful."

Jounouchi laughed. "Yeah, no evil overlord has tried to destroy the world for years. Even Kaiba's been radio silent. Remember how he kept trying to challenge your other self to a duel, even after we got back from Egypt? I thought he'd never give up. Now, he runs tournaments and all, but it's clearly just business. He spends more time on his movie stuff."

Yugi nodded. Before he could reply, a mother and her two preschool kids came in. By the time they left, Jounouchi had moved on to talking about the latest baseball standings. They closed the shop for lunch. Yugi had gotten good at cooking and sharing an afternoon meal with his best friend never failed to raise his spirits. The rest of the afternoon passed pleasantly enough, the way all their afternoons did, in equal helpings of routine tasks, sales and hanging out. It wasn't a bad life, Yugi thought, as he locked the shop and waved goodbye to Jounouchi for the night.

Sometime during the afternoon, lulled by the aimless chatter, Atem's thoughts drifted to the Ceremonial Duel.

He'd won. They'd both gotten what they'd secretly wanted. In that first flush of victory, the future had stretched out before them, golden, ready to be seized.

When had it all gone wrong?

Had it been when Anzu had left for dance school? Or when she didn't return? Or when it became clear that for Anzu, there were one too many Yugis in their shared body, and none of them were sure which was the one she wanted?

Or maybe it was simply that over the slow passing of the years, their connection was no longer enough, a mockery of life, rather than life itself.

Atem had done the only thing he could, hiding away, giving Yugi the only gift he had left to offer: the illusion of privacy.

Kaiba had once preached that losing was death. It had taken over a decade for Atem to learn that sometimes, the same was true of winning.

Across town, Kaiba was at work at his office. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at the financial data on his computer. Duel Disk sales had plateaued. He frowned. It made sense that they had settled into a middle-aged product trajectory… steady but unexciting. He felt the same way himself.

Kaiba tapped his fingers on his desk top. It was almost time for his weekly phone call from Mokuba. He sighed. He'd always expected Mokuba to leave; everybody did. But he'd pictured something dramatic: Mokuba screaming accusations of neglect, of attempted murder, taking on his rightful role as judge, jury and executioner. Reality had been laughably, relentlessly, depressingly mundane. Not an inferno, but a hairline crack that had widened year by insidious year into an unbridgeable gap.

His phone rang. Kaiba hesitated until the third ring. Even Mokuba's call – the highlight of his week – had begun to feel perfunctory as well.

"Hi," Mokuba said.

"Hi. How are you?"

"Fine. You?"

"Fine."

There was a pause. Kaiba remembered Mokuba's words to him when he'd moved out: "I once thought there couldn't be anything worse than watching you throw yourself into everything without thinking once about the consequences. I was wrong. You've retreated into some shadowy place where I can't follow, and I don't know why. You've shut me out and I can't live with it anymore."

Kaiba had agreed. The world had gotten progressively grayer.

The silence stretched between them as Kaiba replayed Mokuba's words; they were unchangeable and true. It was as if the puzzle of his soul, the one he'd painfully rebuilt, had turned out to be hollow inside and he couldn't work up the energy to care if it shattered. He cleared his throat.

"Why don't you duel?" Mokuba blurted out.

"I'm thinking of selling off our Duel Disk division," Kaiba said at the same time.

"What?" Mokuba shouted into the phone.

"There's no point in dueling any more. There hasn't been for a long time."

"There are other duelists besides Yugi."

"Not Yugi. Atem." Kaiba said the name softly. "And there aren't. He owed me a duel."

"When are you going to let that go?"

Kaiba didn't respond.

"Maybe you should sell," Mokuba said suddenly. "Maybe then you could stop living this half-life as if you're a ghost, too."

There was another pause. Mokuba cleared his throat. "Oh well… I should get going. Talk to you next week!"

"Love you," Kaiba said after the connection had ended.

Kaiba raised his hand to his forehead. Another migraine was coming on. He closed his eyes, surrendering to the pain, relieved to feel something, anything, to escape from the monotony of his world.

Kaiba drew in a breath and opened his eyes. His migraine was gone. He took a second, longer breath, grateful to be back in limbo, to see Atem – once again a glorious, golden brown – staring back at him, his hands on his hips, his blood dark eyes narrowed to angry slits.

"Is this what you wanted when you came barging into the Ceremonial Duel? When you grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving?" Atem demanded. "I ruined Yugi's life! I ended up even more ghostlike than ever before!"

"Of course not!" Kaiba turned away, still shaken. He'd been so consumed by Atem, he hadn't noticed his bond with Mokuba straining until it had broken. "I didn't think that far ahead," Kaiba muttered. He swiveled to face Atem. "But just because you didn't find a third way, doesn't mean I can't."

Atem's laughter was quick and taunting. He waved an arm around them. "Is this an example of your spectacular planning? Don't you get it? This is what I was afraid of, this whole time! It's why I had to leave. Yugi had to win. He had to live free of me."

"Listen to yourself! You're talking as if you were a disease!"

"Wasn't I? What more proof do you need that I was meant to go? What was your life like in that world?"

"It was a disaster. But it was a fucked-up mess of my own making. I'm not laying my shitty decisions at your door. And unless Yugi's more of a coward than I think, he wouldn't either."

"He's not! He's the bravest person I know! He gets that people are more important than games! He knew that things couldn't keep going the way they were. Even if it meant separating forever, even if it meant my leaving his world for the after-life, we needed to set each other free.

Kaiba tapped his fingers against his side. He wondered, for the first time, if he'd been wrong. He'd seen himself as Atem's savior, as the person who could get Atem to stop and think, to realize he was on the wrong track. Kaiba had wanted to do all the things for Atem that Atem had done for him. He'd wanted to be special. Instead, he'd blundered in, acting as if he had all the answers when he hadn't had a clue.

Kaiba had always known that Atem's fine speeches were just talk, as heartfelt as a Kaiba Corporation press release. He'd known ever since reading Isis' email that Atem and him weren't friends, not really, not like Atem was with everyone else. Realizing just how much of an outsider he'd been (although he'd never wanted to be an insider) hurt.

And despite everything, he still wanted Atem to notice him. That hadn't changed and Kaiba was starting to wonder if it ever would.

"Why do you always assume you know better than everyone?" Atem raged.

"You kept me in the dark and now you're mad I couldn't see?" Kaiba shot back.

"Admit Yugi was right! He made the right choice, just like always!"

"Did he? We've seen worlds of possibilities. How do we know there isn't another one out there that nobody thought of because nobody tried? How do we know that this…" Kaiba waved a hand around him… "isn't part of a different – no, a better – choice? You keep talking about the gods giving us a second chance. Why do you need one if you liked the first one so much?"

"Yugi…"

"Has to be right?" Kaiba pressed. "Why? Is the world going to fall apart if he's wrong?" Kaiba laughed. "Or is it just that your world will fall apart if you don't have the idea of a perfect Yugi to cling to? You look to him like he's your North Star and you can't set a course without him!"

"Who should I look to?"

"Yourself!

"But I'm flawed! Look at me! I hurt you," Atem said.

"Don't change the subject!"

"I'm not!"

Kaiba snapped his lips together. He paused, then nodded. "Yes, you did."

"Going to the after-life… I couldn't see a place in Domino without Yugi. But I knew he was right, that we had… no, that he had to be his own person. I know how to do things for others." Atem looked around and slumped to the ground. His laugh was close to a howl. "I can only be myself in a formless space between worlds."

Kaiba had wanted to beat Atem, to crush Atem's pride under his boots, to brand his name into Atem's mind so deeply it could never be removed.

But now Atem was sitting, hunched into himself, hair drooping, staring down at the ground as if he could dissolve into nothingness like the stupid flowers he was idly plucking.

And Kaiba couldn't stand seeing him defeated.

Not like this. Never like this.

Kaiba held out a hand and hauled Atem to his feet. He wrapped his arms around his rival and pulled Atem close, surprising them both. Kaiba rested his head on the top of Atem's for a moment, suppressing the urge to press a kiss on the crown of his head. "He wasn't you, just like that unthinking, idiot pharaoh wasn't you. You knew that so clearly then. Why can't you see it now?"

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because you've never let anything beat you, and God knows I've tried. Even when you lose you find a way to win, to overcome everything standing in your way. I know my stuck-up, self-righteous, charismatic rival."

Atem's shoulders shook. With his face buried in Kaiba's chest it was hard to tell if he was sobbing or laughing.

"Charismatic, huh?" Atem asked.

"In an obnoxious, can't-admit-you're-wrong kind of way."

Atem looked up, eyes bright with unshed tears and laughter. "Which of us are you describing?"

"You," Kaiba said firmly.

Atem's face grew pensive again as if the jolt he'd gotten from Kaiba had started to fade.

"I don't get it," Kaiba said. "This was bad… yeah… but we've seen bad before. You went through a Death Simulation chamber. I died."

"I know."

"So why is this the world that got under your skin?"

"You forgot to add relentless to your list."

"Do I need to?" Kaiba scoffed. He paused, then said in a quieter tone, "C'mon, Rival… what gives?"

Atem drew in a breath, then caught and held Kaiba's eyes. "I fought so hard to win that duel. Even though I knew leaving was my duty, I wanted to stay, I wanted to be part of Yugi forever, I wanted to live. This wasn't a world I dreaded or hated or had outgrown. I got my heart's desire only to watch it shatter at my feet."

"Then it wasn't your heart's desire. Find a better one."

Atem laughed. He reached up to pull Kaiba's face down to his and brushed Kaiba's lips with his own. It was a chaste kiss, petal soft; its weight was in its promise and that it had happened at all. So simple a gesture to awaken a storm. Atem's lips burned, as if by kissing Kaiba, he'd allowed Kaiba to brand Atem's lips with his own. Atem could almost hear his heart booming; his hands shook the way they never had in a duel. Was this charged feeling merely his body's newness? But Kaiba was breathing just as loudly, looked just as stunned, just as shaken by the sudden awareness of his body's own capacity for pleasure.

"Thank you," Atem murmured.

"For what?" Kaiba asked, his voice unsteady.

"For reminding me yet again to get off my knees. For being the person I'm honored to be stuck in limbo with, Seto."

Kaiba smiled. It was inevitable. Eventually they'd reach a world where Atem called him by his given name instead of the one he'd bought and paid for. He was glad it had happened here, where they were simply themselves. He was glad it had happened in the aftermath of a fight, after he'd waged and lost another battle to remind himself how little Atem cared. He was glad it had happened after they'd kissed.

Kaiba paused, wondering if Atem would kiss him again. A moment passed and then another. Kaiba leaned down and returned Atem's kiss. It lasted a little longer the second time. "You asked what there was to choice besides regret and death? There's opportunity as well."

"Opportunity? To do what?"

"To be more than you thought you could be, to push yourself past your own self-imposed limits. To carve out a life, instead of following a path someone else laid out." Kaiba swung his arms. "And the prize: a true future."

"How will you know?" Atem asked.

Kaiba shrugged. "I'm not sure. I haven't reached it yet." He smiled, a fleeting twist of his lips. "I always figured it feels like breathing free, with nothing to prove, nothing to earn, just you and the world, like you belonged, like you owned it."

Atem nodded. He ran his hands along his body from shoulder to hip and then back again. Kaiba watched, dry mouthed. "That's how I knew that this is my body."

They lay down, side by side, amid purple flowers. The sky darkened to match their violet softness. Stars glittered overhead. It was peaceful, a temporary haven as they waited to be sucked, willy-nilly into the next world.

Atem's voice was as gentle as the flowers, as velvet as the sky. "I spent so much time in the Puzzle resting. Now, I wish we could sleep. I'd like to close my eyes and let unconsciousness take us together."

Kaiba stiffened at his words. He swallowed against the sudden pressure at his throat, against the riding crop under his chin, afraid of where it would land if his head drooped. Kaiba closed his eyes, "Sleep is overrated. It's a luxury we haven't earned."

Atem lifted himself on one elbow. "What?"

Kaiba tried to corral his thoughts into an answer. He'd just ranted at Atem about finding your own road and here he was traveling down a well-worn path, backwards.

He was somewhere completely new. Sleep was irrelevant here. So was food and drink and just about every physical need. So, why did he hunger and thirst for Atem? Why did he want to lie down with Atem in his arms and close his eyes, to feel Atem's weight on him, to let Atem seep into his bones? To clear his mind of everything but the remembered feel of Atem's lips on his?

Kaiba swallowed again. He pulled Atem to him. "Nothing. It's just that… lying here with you… closing my eyes… that's peace… and it's enough."

.

Thanks to Bnomiko for betaing this chapter!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Ceremonial Duel presents only two options: for Atem to go to the after-life or for things to continue as they are, with Atem sharing Yugi's body when he's not in the Puzzle. Post-canon stories often manage to find a third option. But I really wanted to go back to the original choice from the duel and look at one version of what could have happened if Atem had won, since in the Duel itself, as Yugi notes, Atem is trying his hardest to win – not just for duelist's pride or to give Yugi a fair fight – but because he wants desperately to stay.

Ironically, Kaiba goes for the fanfiction writer's route: If you don't like the choices you have, make some new ones.

Stay safe everyone!

SOCIAL MEDIA NOTE: I am on Tumblr, Dreamwidth and Pillowfort as Nenya85. Come check me out there!

To paraphrase Louise Rosenblatt, "A story's just ink on the page until a reader comes along to give it life." This is my way of saying that I'd really like to hear what you think. Please comment.