CHAPTER 21: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME CLICHÉ

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME CLICHÉ: We love the idea that nothing changes – until we don't. Every step Rachel and Ross took forward on the television show, "Friends," was immediately erased by another one in retreat, riding the will they/won't they wave until it crested. Was anyone invested in their relationship by the end – or did we all just want the drama to go away?

Ted spent seven years telling the story of "How I Met Your Mother," only to wind up with the girl from Season One; an ending that rivaled "Game of Thrones" for viewer disappointment. "Seinfeld" might be a show about nothing, but as the finale proved, even fans in love with a show about nothing are much less enamored of the idea that nothing changes.

MORAL: We love comfort food, but sometimes we crave a different reassurance: the affirmation that, difficult as it is, we can sometimes find happiness through change.

Kaiba threw himself into the final adjustments on his new Duel Disk the moment they returned to Domino. The only proof Atem had that Kaiba existed, that they were still lovers, was the vague, half-asleep sense of someone settling next to him in bed in the depths of the night and the faint warmth that lingered on the sheets when Atem awoke in the morning.

Even when he was home, Kaiba entombed himself in the computer lab and dueling arena in the basement, performing rituals as complicated and arcane as any high priest's. Given Mokuba's grumpy resignation throughout the week, this was clearly business as usual.

Luckily, Yugi was wrapped up in his perfect relationship with Anzu. He didn't notice Atem's evasive answers every time he asked after Kaiba. Atem was grateful. He didn't know what to say. There was something seductive about being alone, something satisfying about having only your own thoughts for company. He'd expected to be lonely, but he wasn't. He was alone. He was learning the difference. One of the things he'd upbraided Kaiba for was his insistence on being an untouchable island. Maybe it was simply the charm of novelty, but he didn't feel like a barren atoll, isolated mid-ocean. He felt like himself.

He couldn't confess his unexpected feelings to Yugi, whose first wish was to have friends, or to Mokuba, who would look on it as a slight to his brother. The only person with a shot at understanding was Kaiba, who wasn't there. Atem sighed, wondering if he was failing at life again. Despite the doubts which accompanied him on his solo rounds, his unanticipated enjoyment remained throughout the week.

On Sunday, Atem wandered downstairs in search of breakfast and company. He found Mokuba in the dining room.

"Look!" Atem said, holding out a small, mirrored rectangle.

Mokuba glanced up then went back to his pancakes. "Yeah? So?"

Atem's breakfast arrived. He ignored it. "We can take the photos from our trip and put it on this! And then the pictures repeat on a cycle…"

"I know what a digital frame is. Duh. If you gave my brother a week, he could probably make a holographic version that acted out the scenes for you. Two weeks, and you'd get wet when you look at the water ride pictures."

Atem set the digital frame aside, its value trickling downwards like life points in a duel. He started on his breakfast.

"It's a really good idea though," Mokuba volunteered, still chewing, his eyes on Atem's face.

"I'd never seen one before," Atem said quietly, suddenly understanding Kaiba's repeated question: are you daring to offer me pity?

"Yeah… well… I know what a digital frame is, but it never occurred to me to take a bunch of pictures and put them on one so my brother could see them too, so I guess it's new for both of us."

Atem smiled and finished his breakfast. A maid cleared the table. Atem and Mokuba looked at the sterile opulence surrounding them, the forbiddingly large mahogany table, the hard, stiff backed, gilded chairs, the impersonally curated artwork. They abandoned the dining room for the warmth of the game room with its overstuffed leather sofa. They traded their phones back and forth as they selected pictures: Kaiba laughing as he pinned Atem in bumper cars, the three of them seen through the splash of a dragon shaped log ride, captured by the KaibaLand photo station, a selfie that barely managed to have both Kaiba's and Mokuba's heads in the frame.

"It's a good thing my brother doesn't have your hair," Mokuba snickered, "or we would never all have made it into the same shot."

They laughed at each other's choices and then had matching smiles at the ones of Kaiba paddling around their suite in Blue Eyes White Dragon pajamas, coffee cup in hand.

"Perfect," Atem pronounced as they reviewed the final slide show.

"Where should we put it?" Mokuba asked. "Somewhere in here?"

"I guess," Atem answered. "The rest of the house feels so…" He shrugged.

"Yeah, and any time I ask about changing anything, Nisama just grunts."

"He doesn't mind tearing up the outside though," Atem mused, walking over to the window and staring out at the new construction project that Kaiba refused to talk about.

Mokuba joined him at the window, although he, too, had avoided mentioning the subject, giggling every time Atem had raised it. "He once said he wanted to burn down the house from the inside out." Mokuba shrugged. "I think he'd had a nightmare."

"Seto said that?" Atem grinned a shadow realm smile. Mokuba could have sworn that just for an instant, a stylized golden third eye had flashed across his forehead. Then Atem's smile softened to the merely feral. "Perfect," he repeated. He leaned over to whisper in Mokuba's ear although they were alone in the room.

"Great idea! I'm in!" Mokuba said, giving him a thumbs up and a conspiratorial grin.

Mokuba headed upstairs to finish his homework and text his friends. Atem wandered through the hallway, then ended up in the newly cleaned dining room. He'd just returned to the hallway again when Kaiba erupted up from the basement. Atem blinked. He'd assumed he was at Kaiba Corporation, downtown. Kaiba was in his Battle City gear. Atem wished that their outfits matched. He was wearing a chain-backed blue, silver and gold silk shirt with indigo leggings; he was a spirit of air and sea rather than a pharaoh returned to Earth.

Kaiba raced to Atem, grabbed his arm and started dragging him towards the basement. "C'mon! It's finally time to duel!" he yelled, his eyes fever bright.

Atem yanked his arm back. "I can walk on my own!"

"Hurry! It's done. It's ready. It's perfect! It's time to unlock our future!"

Atem followed Kaiba down the stairs, his heart pounding by the time they reached the dueling arena. Kaiba opened the door and ushered Atem in with a flourish. Atem walked to the center of the large, empty room and stared at the blank walls, puzzled. Kaiba threw back his head and laughed. Atem turned to face him. Kaiba thrust his right arm into the air. "It's time to duel!"

At the prearranged signal, his holograms started flowing down the gray metal walls, transforming them. Kaiba had intended to recreate the cathedral he remembered from the worlds where he'd created a dueling avatar of Atem in his madness and grief. He'd ended up designing a glass enclosed garden instead. The windows were still stained glass, but now they displayed art nouveau flowers, complementing the living blossoms around them. The air was scented with a dozen different perfumes that played with their senses before seducing them.

"Duel me, Seto," Atem whispered.

Kaiba was already wearing his Duel Disk and headset. He went to a recessed panel in the wall and retrieved a second one. The compartment shut and the flowers closed around it again. Kaiba had the impulse to kneel, a high priest presenting his offering to his pharaoh. He straightened to his full height instead and shoved the equipment towards Atem.

Atem restored a note of ceremony, bowing as he accepted it. He slid on the Duel Disk, worked the headset over his hair and activated it. He was immediately swamped by an alien, yet familiar mix of arrogance, anxiety and anticipation, a blend that was intimately Kaiba. He smiled, wondering if Kaiba could feel his acceptance– and his excitement.

Kaiba stopped pawing the ground like a nervous thoroughbred. "I thought about what you said at Battle City about unity. We're dialing down the sense of connection in the commercial version so it'll be much less intense, less personal… but for us… I wanted it all."

Atem grinned. "As do I. Bring it on."

Kaiba matched him, grin for grin. A jolt of shared adrenaline coursed through them both as Kaiba summoned his first five cards with a flick of his fingers. Atem stared at Kaiba's hands, suddenly feeling like they were caressing him instead of holographic cards. His mouth went dry; he was suddenly thirsty. There was an intimacy to this, like the intimacy of their bedroom at night, the same inability to tell where he ended and Kaiba began, as their monsters seemed to dance as well as duel, to build towards some unknown climax. And yet, the part of his brain that planned strategy was as clear as ever, as if his newly heightened state of awareness was a natural part of the mix.

The eerie, enticing feeling of togetherness extended to his monsters. He drew his Dark Magician and saw, not the familiar purple garbed mage, but his old friend and counselor, Mahaad. His Dark Magician Girl winked at him, and despite the lighter skin, blue eyes and blonde hair, it was Mana, his childhood playmate and partner in crime. He suddenly wished he had the fruit flavored array of Dark Magician Girls from Yugi's deck; he wanted to be one with all of Mana's incarnations.

As promised, Kaiba was giving him everything: his joy at the duel itself, his soaring pride every time he conquered one of Atem's monsters, the vulnerability he refused to hide every time he lost one of his own, his mingled hope and fear, the deep vein of passion – and love – for Atem that ran through it all.

Kaiba drew his next card. Atem shivered as a darker, more frenzied energy suddenly flooded their link. He stared at the Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl in front of him facing off against Kaiba's Neo Blue Eyes White Dragon, at the face down cards on each side of the field, suddenly recognizing the tableau. He cursed his memory for being so slow. He knew what Kaiba's face down card was as well as he knew his own. He'd seen this set up before, or rather, his other selves had in the worlds they'd visited. He'd lost every time. His lips turned down. Perhaps it hadn't been simple distraction. Perhaps, his other selves had shied away from their moment of defeat, even as they'd cherished the results: his loss had been the catalyst for his and Kaiba's relationship each time.

Kaiba was staring straight ahead, his eyes wide and unseeing. He threw back his head and laughed. "You recognize this moment, too! You know what follows! I was right! We can get to the future we saw!"

"Seto, please, no. You don't understand," Atem whispered, unheard.

"I can reverse engineer my way to the future! Watch it unfold!" Kaiba yelled.

"Seto, listen for once. You can't steer towards the future as if it was a place you could find on a map!"

Kaiba's eyes widened again. Atem knew he was remembering Horakhty issuing the same warning. Then Kaiba tossed his head back, rejecting the memory. "You're wrong! I started to doubt, to believe I was never going to be enough. Here's the proof I can will the future into being! Neo Blue Eyes White Dragon, light the way to our future!"

As Kaiba's dragon attacked, Atem activated his face down card, banishing the Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl to special summon Dimension Reflector. Kaiba laughed as the smoke billowed and turned over his trap card, Enhanced Counter, negating the damage and raising the attack power of his monster.

"I won. It's time for our future to start," Kaiba said with a quiet fervor as his dragon attacked.

Atem had never been so tempted to throw a duel before. He wondered if this was how Yugi had felt in the moment before he'd turned over Gold Sarcophagus, sentencing Atem, along with his Monster Reborn, to the grave. But he owed Seto his honesty, just as Yugi had owed him the same, regardless of cost.

"Seto, we can't build a house of our own on someone else's foundations."

But it was the wrong argument to make in the mansion, in Gozaburo's mausoleum. There was only one way to get through to Kaiba, now. Atem played Counter Counter, a card he'd never drawn in their duels before, as if it had been waiting for this moment, destroying Kaiba's trap card and dooming his dragon, along with the last of his life points.

Kaiba stared at the counter, ashen-faced, watching his hope of the future vanish as his life points clicked down to zero. He ripped off his headset and whirled from the room. The whoosh of the gray, metal door opening in the flower filled bower snapped Atem out of the shock that had frozen him in place. He raced down the hall and up the stairs after Kaiba.

Mokuba stopped him on the ground floor hallway. "What happened?" he demanded, his voice shrill and tight.

"We dueled. He was so proud of his system. It was amazing. He lost."

"That's nothing new. He looked like he saw a ghost!"

"Maybe he did."

"Did you guys have another fight?"

"No. A fight would be a relief."

Mokuba stepped out of the way as Atem ran past him and up the next flight of stairs.

Atem found Kaiba standing in the middle of their bedroom, arms crossed (or was he huddled into himself?), staring at his stained-glass dragons, as if they held the answer.

"Why, Seto?"

Kaiba didn't turn around, staring at his dragons as if they had asked Atem's question. "I changed the setting of the duel."

"I saw. It was lovely."

"I didn't recreate the cathedral – or your throne room. I wanted a fresh start. I listened to everything you said about not relying on our past selves. I really did. Then the cards started falling into place. You saw the monsters we drew. The same ones as in those worlds where I'd gone to the after-life to find you, where we'd been happy. I'd won and it led the way to the future each time."

"It led the way to someone else's future," Atem said gently.

Kaiba ran a hand through his hair, then paced the room, stopping for one last glance at his stained-glass dragons before turning to face Atem. "When I saw those cards, I was so sure I was finally going to win. I'd been there before. I'd won before. I didn't hesitate. I knew the duel was telling me I was on the right path, that it was going to work out." He dropped his face into his hands. "What have I become?"

"It'll be okay, Seto." Atem knew that Jounouchi or Anzu or even Yugi would say that it was only a game, but Atem couldn't utter so large a lie.

"Don't you get it?" Kaiba roared. "For a while, as much as I fought against it, part of me believed that I lost because I always lose to you. It's the closest I've ever come to believing in destiny. I rejected that. I had to. I tried harder, studied more. I refused to let losing be my fate. It was a puzzle I had to solve." He paced the room, arms swinging wildly. "Now, I know. You were right that day at Alcatraz. It was never about skill or strategy. We're equals there." He swiveled suddenly and faced Atem. "It's me. I lost because I'm not enough to win and losers don't get a future."

Atem walked up to him and put his hands on either side of Kaiba's lean cheeks. He guided Kaiba to look into his eyes. "Listen to me, Seto. You're enough. You're everything."

"Then why do I lose?" The question was as soft and simple as a child's.

"I've lost. And I've learned from it. So have you. If we've grown, how is that truly losing?"

"Are you daring to offer me pity?" Kaiba snarled softly, his anger muted. Only his words carried an edge.

"I've never offered you pity. Not once. I need you to be you. Resilient. Argumentative. So stupidly, stubbornly defiant, you'd stand in limbo and argue with a god. That's who I want to build a life with, walking it day by day, even when we can't see the road ahead. I love you," Atem's eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Kaiba blinked, momentarily blinded, not fully hearing Atem's words. The future had never seemed further out of reach, not since the morning he and Mokuba had been thrown into the orphanage. He'd sworn to control his own destiny from that day onwards, to forge his own path to the future he wanted, but that had turned out to be just another illusion, as empty and impotent as a hologram with the power turned off.

Limbo had given Kaiba a road map to letting go of his anger and bitterness, a vision of a future – and a future self – he wanted to own. Limbo had given him hope… but with it came hope's twin brother: fear. What if he couldn't measure up to all those other Setos? What if they played as if they had a cheat sheet while he kept watching his life points drop to zero, over and over?

Kaiba scanned Atem's face, finally seeing him. Kaiba was the one adrift but Atem was staring at him with drowned eyes, as if Kaiba was a lifeboat who could lead them to shore. "Why?" Kaiba mouthed, unsure of what he was asking.

"I love you," Atem repeated.

Kaiba cradled Atem's face, then yanked it upwards as he lowered his head to devour Atem's mouth. He groaned and jerked Atem into his arms, held him suffocatingly close. Kaiba raised his head, just enough to drop his face into Atem's hair, then moved to kiss him again. Atem's arms twined around Kaiba's neck. One hand reached up to push Kaiba's head even closer.

Kaiba angled them towards the bed, half pushing, half throwing Atem onto a wave of blue covers, ignoring the slivers of dragon bright colors washing over them from the windows. They shed their duel disks. Kaiba ripped at Atem's clothes and his own in his haste to get them off, to exchange this unwanted vulnerability for a different, more familiar nakedness. Kaiba wanted to feel. He wanted to drown himself in Atem's body until his brain shut off, until the message that he wasn't enough, that he was never going to win, stopped ricochetting through his brain.

Atem was welcoming him, caressing him, his voice going hoarser until his words of comfort devolved into grunts and moans. Kaiba didn't know why part of him craved rejection instead, believed it was the only acceptable outcome. Was he going to keep dragging this shit along with him into his future, knowing it was poisoning the road ahead with every step he forged?

Atem wrapped his legs around Kaiba's hips. He reached up to bite and suck at Kaiba's unguarded neck. Kaiba groaned, distracted once again by the beauty of Atem's body, by its availability, by his own need. Atem's words: "I love you," finally sank in. Was this the answer? To accept that he'd been given a shard of his future, freely, in exchange for nothing?

His eyes started leaking. He hadn't cried, not since his father had sat him down, stony-eyed and told him that his mother was dead, that he was a brother. He wanted to dash away his unexpected tears, but his hands were full of Atem, and entering his lover was suddenly more important, so he let them fall, hoping they were unnoticed.

Neither of them had ever cared about polish or control, not even Kaiba, not in this. They relished in the messiness, the roughness of each encounter. Kaiba thrust home, drawing a keening cry from Atem… or was that noise coming from his own throat? He continued, each stroke wilder than the last, fiercer as if he was fighting something within himself, even deep in his own and Atem's pleasure. Then Atem shifted, arched upwards, and Kaiba finally achieved the pure mindlessness he craved.

He gathered Atem into his arms, utterly spent, tear streaks drying on his face. A strange peace stole over him, just as it always did in these moments, a rare calmness in his life, one that couldn't be dismissed as a mere physiological reaction to orgasm. Somehow, despite its strangeness, it had become a familiar peace, an established comfort in a life that had never sought solace before. Was this how they came into their future? Not with a triumphant march, but through small, unnoticed steps? Did he have the faith, as Sugoroku had once asked, to let the future come to him – as it came to everyone – without guarantees? Kaiba grunted to himself. He was an old hand at beating back fear. He'd never had hope as a companion before.

.

Thanks to Bnomiko for betaing this chapter!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Given Kaiba's experiences, I can see him being distrustful of any process he can't control. At the same time, in limbo, he caught a glimpse of a future he wanted. I could see him concluding that if he played his cards right and set things up properly, he could reverse engineer his way into that future, and I don't think Atem or Mokuba telling him this made no sense really had an effect, because Kaiba is nothing if not stubborn.

So, when the cards started falling into place in a pattern that he recognized from those other lives he wanted, I could see him thinking he was home free – and I could see him being emotionally devastated when he lost, taking the meaning from his loss that he could never reach a future he wanted. I also think he'd be stunned that Atem still wanted him and even told him that he loved him, because part of him still believes he doesn't deserve that when he didn't win. I borrowed the ending of the duel Kaiba has with the dueling AI of Atem in the Dark Side of Dimensions, with the exception that this time, Atem has a card to counter it.

I'd love to know what you thought of the chapter.

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.