CHAPTER 3: THE WHAT IF I'D NEVER BEEN BORN CLICHÉ

THE WHAT IF I'D NEVER BEEN BORN CLICHÉ: In 1946, Frank Capra's doomed production company released a feel-good Christmas movie about a man who tries to kill himself. When George Bailey looks back on his life all he sees is a wasteland. His apprentice guardian angel saves him by showing him just how much he's meant to everyone around him in time for the "I don't care how many times I've seen it; it still makes me cry," ending.

"It's a Wonderful Life" manages to be warm and fuzzy and unsettling all at the same time, depending on how you answer the central question: what would happen if you'd never been born? We like George. We want him to look in the mirror and see the person his friends do. Rooting for George is like rooting for ourselves; we both want to hear that our lives have value.

MORAL: Sometimes the impact your life has had depends on who's narrating the story.

Atem sat on Yugi's bed and breathed a sigh of relief. He was home. He swallowed, suddenly dizzy, as if he'd jumped up too quickly after a long night's sleep. He shook his head, confused. Of course, he was home. Where else would he be? Why had he expected to find Kaiba, of all people, in Yugi's bedroom? He sighed, closed his eyes and opened them to Yugi's worried face.

"What do you mean, 'Where's Kaiba?' Did you forget? Is that why you disappeared into the Puzzle right after it happened?" Yugi bit his lip. Tears stood in his eyes. "You came out in time to help me beat Mai and Pegasus and then you vanished. You're my other self and I was afraid I'd never see you again!"

At Yugi's words, the last fragments of that strange dream of duels and doors, of flower clouds and alien skies vanished, taking the lingering memory of Atem's name with them.

"I'm sorry," Yami no Yugi replied. "I never meant to… I'd never hurt you, Yugi."

Yugi sniffled. "I know. It was terrible. There was Kaiba all smashed up under Pegasus' tower. I should have stopped your attack, but I was scared about grandpa and I didn't really think Kaiba would jump. And then we still had everyone to save. At least we freed Mokuba. That means something, right?"

"Of course, it does," Yami said.

Yugi smiled tentatively as he dressed and finished getting ready for school.

"How long have I been away?" Yami asked, as Yugi put on his uniform jacket.

"A couple of weeks. It's all okay, now! I can't wait to tell the others."

Yami smiled at Yugi's eagerness. He'd missed this. He'd missed their friends. It felt like he'd been gone for a lifetime instead of days. "Let's go!" he said.

"Sure thing!" Yugi grabbed his backpack and raced out the door.

"Anzu!" Yugi called as he met her at the corner. "Look who's back!"

Yami surfaced briefly. He bowed to her. "I'm sorry."

She smiled. "You were there to help Yugi win. That's what matters. And you're here, now."

"Where I belong," Yami confirmed.

"So, it's all good!" Jounouchi chimed in as he and Honda joined them. "Shizuka's got her eye operation scheduled for next month, thanks to you two. Gramps is back on his feet. All's well that ends well, right? I'm gonna miss those giant holograms though."

"You didn't seem to appreciate them at the time," Anzu scoffed.

"What else have I missed?" Yami asked Yugi.

"Oh… yeah… well… with Kaiba and Pegasus gone, the Big 5 took over again. They're going back to building weapons," Yugi told him.

Anzu bit her lip, worried by Yami's abstracted silence. She put her hand on Yami's shoulder but they both knew it was Yugi she was trying to reach.

"It was Kaiba's life card, not yours. He was the one who chose to throw it away," she insisted.

Yugi surfaced to say, "But maybe I should have held on to it for him."

"Bullshit! Forget about Kaiba, already!" Jounouchi ordered, throwing his arm around Yugi's shoulders.

Yugi nodded up at Jounouchi.

"It was awful," Honda said, shuddering. "None of us thought he'd really do it. But it's over. From now on, good times only, right? Even Bakura's back to normal."

Jounouchi laughed. "Or what passes for normal with him. But Honda's right, Yugi."

"I'm always right," Honda said smugly. "Just like I told you meeting Yugi before school each day was a good idea. You haven't been late once since I suggested it."

"So, if I graduate, it's all thanks to you?"

"That's a big if," Honda teased. He and Jounouchi kept up a mock fight until they reached the school doors.

Once inside, Yami let the familiar sounds of Yugi's lessons wash over him. Yugi apparently found them as boring as he did.

"You know Pegasus was wrong about the Millennium Items being evil, right?" Yugi said urgently in the middle of their math lesson. "I was afraid you believed him and that's why you wouldn't come out."

Yami shuddered, remembering his last sight of Kaiba, staring into some horror only he could see, stepping off the parapet with a hideous casualness. "I failed you all. I promised Mokuba. Twice."

"Stop it!" Yugi hissed, his face hardening until his expression was as fierce and commanding as Yami's. "Anzu's right! You couldn't save Kaiba from himself. No one could. It wasn't your fault…. or mine." He choked back a sob; his face crumpled back into Yugi-ness. "Please. I just want everything to go back to the way it was."

Yami nodded. "It will. We're together again. I'm sorry I missed your grandfather coming home from the hospital."

Yugi smiled. "He's already back at the shop!"

"That's wonderful! But I wasn't there to help." Yami's lips twisted. "What kind of partner does that make me?"

"The kind that needed some time. And I learned that I can handle things on my own. I'm glad I got to be the strong one for once."

"You always were!" Yami insisted.

"Yeah, but now I know it too." Yugi smiled again and then froze and blushed as he caught the teacher frowning at him. Yugi wondered if she'd asked him a question. "I'm sorry," he mumbled to the class, ignoring Jounouchi snickering behind him.

"Yugi's getting in trouble for zoning out. It's nice to see everything's back to normal," Jounouchi said to Honda.

Some part of Yami deep in the Puzzle wanted to scream, "How can this be normal?"

As soon as the thought formed in his head, the world dissolved around him, as if his question had washed away the glue that held it together. Atem found himself in the midst of a raging current, swept up in a dimensional riptide. He was dragged under, only to be spat out, half drowned, shaken and sick, back in limbo.

Atem sank to his knees, surrounded by white flowers. He stared sightlessly at the tinge of pale yellow at their hearts. The narrow petals and puff ball shapes were vaguely familiar. The clouds above were tinged with lavender, as if they too were in mourning. Kaiba towered over him, his eyes just as blank and empty, just as lost, as they'd been that day on Pegasus' tower.

"I was… gone…" Kaiba whispered. "It wasn't like being in a coma, piecing myself back together. It wasn't being stuck, helpless on a playing card, taunted by my own failure. This was nothingness; the total absence of being. I was here, wherever here is, and then I was nowhere."

"You're alive!" Atem sobbed, launching himself at Kaiba.

Kaiba stiffened; Atem was left embracing a board. He leaned against Kaiba as if Kaiba's body was a lamp post or a pillar, something unhuggable and unfeeling.

Kaiba relaxed slowly, warmed to life by Atem's touch. He sank into Atem's hold. After being caught in the grip of a nonexistence so profound he could barely encompass it, even in retrospect, Kaiba needed Atem to hang on to him – to grip Kaiba's life card and refuse to let go – too badly to deny himself the comfort of being held, of listening to Atem make soothing noises against his chest. In the moment before Kaiba had disappeared, Atem had yelled that no one wanted him. Kaiba gulped in air, hoping Atem's embrace proved that he had lied.

Atem sighed against Kaiba's chest. "I didn't kill you. You're not dead."

Atem shuddered and stepped away. Kaiba took a step backwards as well, adjusting with the ease of long practice, to standing on his own.

Atem shook himself a final time, trying to escape the memory that, like any nightmare, wanted to drag him back. His voice was hollow, stripped of emotion. "I was in a world without you, where Duelists Kingdom happened. Where Yugi didn't stop me. Where you…" Atem faltered,

Kaiba took another step backwards and crossed his arms in front of his chest, trying to match Atem's tone, indifference for indifference. "Stepped off of Pegasus' tower?"

"Yes."

"What happened to Mokuba?"

"Yugi rescued him."

Kaiba smiled. "Good."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"What's the problem?"

Atem stared at him, flushing dark with anger. "You were dead!" he screamed.

Kaiba shivered, a quickly controlled shake of his shoulders and arms. "Yeah," he said, taking another step backwards until they were dueling distance apart. "I got that from the whole non-existence thing. So what?"

"You expect me to act like that doesn't matter? Like my life would just roll merrily on?" Atem flushed again, suddenly aware that, in that alien, unwanted reality, that's exactly what happened. Within a couple of years, Kaiba would have been a footnote, his name summoning an awkward pause before the conversation started up again, like a car slowing down for a speed bump before resuming its course. "No!" Atem screamed.

Kaiba snorted. Atem had taunted him, had told him no one would miss him. Which counted for more: Atem's words or his embrace? "Stop claiming friendship," Kaiba challenged. The thought, "Prove to me that it exists," went unspoken. Kaiba scowled. "I might not know much about it, but the one thing I know is that I wasn't on the invite list to your little death party. Whatever friendship is, gate-crashers don't count."

"Kaiba…" Atem said.

Kaiba shrugged. "Anyway, my life has always been my responsibility and nobody else's."

Atem stared at Kaiba, trying to corral his thoughts. He didn't remember the millennia he'd spent, disembodied and solitary, but they hung on him nonetheless. Yugi had found him, had given him a toehold on life. Yugi's friendship became his world; one where he wasn't alone. He'd escaped nothingness.

But Kaiba had been alone even when surrounded by relatives, by Gozaburo, by Pegasus. In all the times Atem had preached friendship and unity, he'd never truly understood what he'd been running towards, what Kaiba had been running from.

"It was my choice." Kaiba insisted.

"All I've seen of choice is recrimination and guilt and consequences and death!" Atem spat out. "I won't believe that's all there is. I refuse! I barely remember living, but there has to be more."

Kaiba stared at him, waiting, just as he'd once waited for Atem to prove that friendship was real, before he'd proved it false, holding his breath for the next flip of the coin.

Atem continued more softly. Kaiba leaned in to hear him, tension in his frame, as though balanced on a tower's parapet and tilting forward anyway.

"The gods must have brought us here for a reason. We're retracing our history. Maybe they want us to learn from the choices we made, from the ones we didn't."

Kaiba snorted, glad to be back on stable ground. "Three data points is hardly a basis for a conclusion."

"You think this is going to keep happening?"

"Regardless of whether this is some cosmic lesson arranged solely for our benefit or a naturally occurring phenomenon that we've yet to understand, I can't see why it would stop just because we want to go home."

"I don't even know where home is," Atem said. "And I can't help but feel that this is a place for questions, not answers. Who built this world? Who brought us here? And why?"

"Just because we don't know, it doesn't mean the answer is mystical in nature," Kaiba pointed out.

"It doesn't mean it isn't, either," Atem returned.

They stared at each other for a moment, exhausted. Neither wanted to continue the argument but backing down was unacceptable.

Atem drew in a breath. "Kaiba, why did you do it?"

"Step off of Pegasus' tower? You know why."

"No. Back at the Ceremonial Duel. Why did you grab my arm?"

Kaiba's sudden howl was caught halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I don't know! Isn't that a bitch? You were leaving. You were going to go die. I reached out. The craziest thing I've ever done, and I have no idea why." Kaiba shook his head. "I left Mokuba just as surely as if I'd jumped off of Pegasus' tower."

"I promise. We'll figure this out together. I'll see that you make it back to Mokuba."

"What about you? Where will you go?"

"I don't know. The only thing I'm sure of is I never want to see a world where you don't exist, ever again."

"What did you think would happen when you walked through that door?"

"You'd still be alive!"

"But you wouldn't!"

Kaiba wanted to scream at Atem's sudden gentleness, he wanted to go back to fighting, he wanted to yell at Atem to stop believing in his own lies.

He wanted everything Atem had said to be true.

For a second time, Atem reached out to Kaiba, raising a hand to caress Kaiba's cheek.

For a second time, Kaiba stiffened and then relaxed. Atem had said that he didn't want Kaiba. Then, he'd almost tackled Kaiba to the ground in his relief at finding him again.

Atem's hands cradled Kaiba's face.

"Kaiba… I'll march off to every mirage with you… we can sit here sticking pins in each other and watching each other bleed or whatever you need to do – as long as you take a moment to stop and think first. We're not strangers."

For a moment, the flower clouds beneath Kaiba's feet, their pale-yellow centers still seeming to mourn his death, turned into the glass roof of a skyscraper. He and Atem were facing Lumos and Umbra at Battle City. Atem was telling him not to let anger cloud his judgment, he was promising to attack if that would ease Kaiba's pain. For once, Atem wasn't yelling. For once, he was waiting for Kaiba without trying to force the pace.

The wind stung Kaiba's eyes. He closed them and opened them to limbo, to Atem's worried face.

"You'd really let me slice you open to prove a point?" Kaiba asked.

Atem held his hand out, palm upward.

Kaiba smiled. "Maybe later. I've got a better idea, first." Kaiba knelt in the flowers. They were soft yet sturdy, yellow dots on a padded moss green mat. He slid his duel disk off, fished a small tool case out of the pocket in his white duster, selected a screwdriver and opened the back of his duel disk.

"What are you doing?" Atem asked.

"Getting some answers," Kaiba replied without looking up. "We need to figure out how this place works. Either we really have been traveling to alternative dimensions, or this place is somehow creating the illusion of other worlds. The past three times we found ourselves in an alternative scenario, we ended up wearing different clothes. We didn't have our duel disks on." Kaiba exchanged the screwdriver for a pair of pliers, and made a small adjustment. "The chronometer on the duel disk activates at the start of each match. It keeps track of how long the match is, length of time between draws, and other similar data."

Kaiba's face glowed in the reflected silver light of his duel disk. He stared at the disk, oblivious to everything else now that he had a way to move forwards. This was the part of Kaiba that attracted and repelled Atem, in sometimes equal measure: this unwavering focus, this relentless concentration, the way Kaiba refused to accept that things were the way they were, that there was a reason, a balance, even if he couldn't see it. The way he had to know, to act, to defy.

The sky had brightened, framing Kaiba in its light. He suddenly seemed an unearthly creature, a demon or angel, consecrated to the gods of persistence and will.

Kaiba glanced up to find Atem staring at him. He grinned triumphantly, breaking the spell, all too human once again. He put the duel disk back on his arm and slid his deck into place. Atem drew in a breath, feeling a tug of destiny, a rightness to this moment where everything else was wrong,

"There. I've fooled the chronometer into thinking a duel is going on. It'll keep collecting data as long as the disk remains on my arm. I set an alarm so that it'll prompt me to draw a card every 15 minutes. If these other realities are some sort of illusion created by this place, then even if I'm unaware of it, my duel disk will remain on my arm and the chronometer will keep counting. If we're actually traveling to other dimensions, and our duel disks really are temporarily disappearing and reappearing back here, just like us, then mine will register a break in time. I can check the results if and when we wind up back here again."

"How will that help?"

"It'll give us something to work with. We'll know what's real and what isn't."

"I guess that's progress. At least you're not dismissing it all as one giant hallucination."

Kaiba frowned. That was a possibility, of course. He could have had some kind of mental or physical break: his sudden need to grab Atem, to stop him from leaving, had certainly been startling enough to suggest something deeper. He could have stroked out. Everything – this limbo, Atem – could all be the result of cerebral anoxia or an endorphin-fueled illusion, as his mind desperately raced for a way out, as the memory and sensory centers in his brain misfired and finally died.

"No!" Kaiba shouted. "If this is all a hallucination then there's nothing I can do. And I won't accept helplessness as an answer. You keep telling me I got us into this. Just you wait, I'm going to get us out the same way."

"Watch me… duel me… notice me…" in one way or another, Kaiba had been saying that since they'd met. "You don't have to do it alone," Atem said, feeling like a fraud, even before Kaiba rolled his eyes. "Decisions… choices… they don't happen in a vacuum," Atem added, stumbling his way through forming and explaining his thoughts all at once, under Kaiba's skeptical scrutiny. "My choices… sealing myself in the Puzzle in the first place… leaving Yugi… leaving you… how can I pretend these were all made in isolation? Would you have created Death-T if we hadn't played a penalty game first? Would you have done something worse? Would I? There has to be more to choice than destruction and death. The people we meet, the bonds we form, how can they not be a part of everything we do?"

Kaiba pressed his lips together. He'd been prepared to throw Atem's words back in his face as though playing a trap card, repelling them as absolutely as Mirror Force, but they'd managed to seep into the very air he breathed. Would he have chosen Gozaburo if he hadn't needed to find a home for Mokuba?

"If I wasn't making each decision, who was?" Kaiba spat out, resisting the urge to run away again. "Call it what you want, destiny, the past, random circumstance – I'm not giving anything power over me. I won't. I can't!" Kaiba's voice rose with each word until he was screaming.

Kaiba wanted to throw up, but he refused to show that much weakness, not in front of Atem. He closed his eyes, slammed by a sudden wave of disorientation. "Not now," he muttered. He wanted to stay in one place. He wanted to fight with Atem until Atem admitted that Kaiba was right, that his running away from everything was pure cowardice. Instead, as if Atem had orchestrated the moment to prove his point, to showcase just how powerless Kaiba was, he was being pulled into another reality, even more unwanted than his own.

Kaiba glanced around. The room was small and unfamiliar. It had a single bed with a dark blue comforter and light blue sheets. There was a home-built computer on the desk. He recognized the baseball players on the posters hanging over the desk and bed, but he had no idea why they were there or who had taped them to the walls. At least there was a small mirror. He was roughly the same age as always. His bangs were shorter, his haircut less tapered. He was in a Domino High School uniform. Automatically he buttoned it up to his chin and tugged the cuffs and hem down. It was slightly too short. He wasn't wearing a duel disk.

Kaiba left the room and headed down the hallway. "It's just another data point," he said. It felt good to say it aloud, to remind himself that this was all an experiment, that he was in control. Despite his words, he felt more in sync with this world with each step. His grip on himself slipped, even as he struggled to study everything with the objectivity of a scientific observer. "At least we're finally getting somewhere," he thought as he headed for the kitchen.

He frowned and shook the sleep out of his head, clearing his mind of the remnants of whatever strange dream he'd had; it was already fading to nothingness. He'd been himself, but in the way of dreams, he'd been someone else, too.

Seto slid into his place at the kitchen table. Why had the phrase, "At least we're finally getting somewhere," popped into his head? Because of the baseball game tonight? Because it was almost time to hear about college acceptances? He was getting somewhere, no matter how impatient he was for the future to arrive. He was going to get into a good college. He was going to make his parents proud of him, even though they kept insisting they already were. He was going to work for a top computer company. Maybe he'd start his own corporation, like Hiroshi Yamauchi rebuilding Nintendo. He'd buy his mom a house with a garden. That settled, Seto smiled and turned to face his mother, the last traces of his dream gone.

.

Thanks to Bnomiko for betaing this chapter!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter and the next were two chapters I was really excited to write! Duelists Kingdom fascinates me because it could have gone wrong in so many different ways. The gang seems somewhat unconcerned with Kaiba here, but at Duelists Kingdom, the memory of Death-T was still very fresh. Although Yugi felt an impulse of friendship towards Kaiba at Duelists Kingdom, Kaiba himself had rejected it. So, I could see the gang having a variety of reactions, with Yugi feeling both grief and guilt, and the rest of the gang mainly reacting to Yugi: Anzu's mad at Kaiba for throwing away his life and burdening Yugi, Jounouchi refuses to mourn an enemy, and everyone just wants to put Duelists Kingdom behind them.

When I started writing this, at first, I was mainly concerned with figuring out the alternative worlds, and then with cartoon lightbulb going off suddenness, I realized that once Kaiba stopped letting anger cloud his judgment, the first thing he'd try to do is figure out the parameters of limbo, with an eye towards using that information to manipulate it to get them home. And given the choice of introspective musings or trying to navigate alternative dimensions by repurposing his duel disk, I had to figure Kaiba would go for the latter. Although check mark on the side of occasional introspection being a good thing, Atem has a point when he says that there has to be more to choice than living with the negative consequences of our choices.

And you have no idea how many times I did a search and replace to (hopefully) make sure I didn't use "Atem" in the alternative world where he didn't know his name!

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.