It is, perhaps, here that I truly begin to lay the groundwork for the mythology of this particular story. It's a throwback to the first installment, when the Ishtars received their Millennium Items, after the apparently failed quest of the Nameless King. After all, if two items have returned…it stands to reason that the others would come back, right?
Let's find out, shall we?
Verse One.
"…Doctor Ishtar says she's planning a trip for her classes pretty soon. To see the pyramids and stuff. I really think this might be fun. What do you think, Niisama?"
Seto's face was a gold mine of information when one knew how to search it. To the layman, he looked about as interested in his brother's conversation as he would have been in a lecture on the world's greatest lawn mowers. But Noa couldn't help but notice clear-cut signs that he was not only paying attention, but focusing almost entirely upon Mokuba as the boy continued to talk.
His mouth twitched continually, sometimes down, sometimes up, fighting both the urge to frown and to smile. His eyes, too, flickered from his brother, and the book in Mokuba's hands, to the road unrolling in front of him. Noa thought that Seto was probably torn between his disdain for Isis Ishtar and her field of study, and pride at the idea of his brother attending college-level courses. He wanted to be disapproving, in other words, but couldn't.
Mokuba looked up from his new textbook, awaiting his brother's answer. "…Niisama?"
Seto cleared his throat. "That's…fine," he said. "If you'd like to study Egyptology, you have my permission. I'll sign you up tomorrow, if you'd like. I would ask, however, that you not discuss…Doctor Ishtar's theories with me without a research paper and a complete bibliography to back it up."
Nice save, Noa thought, unable to keep the smirk from his face. He watched through the rear-view mirror as Mokuba's face shifted from anticipatory nervousness to a bright, effervescent grin. There was even a bit of a competitive gleam in his grey-violet eyes now, as he began to sort through the evidence he would no doubt soon be gathering in order to prove beyond doubt that his brother had once been a king.
"I can't use a works cited page?" Mokuba asked.
Seto snorted. "No. Bibliography. Five pages, at minimum. And single-spaced. Double-spacing is a waste of paper and my time. I'll see you work at this, do you understand? Furthermore, you are only permitted to use Ishtar as a source in order to establish the theory, not to prove it. I already know she believes in that garbage."
"And any reference to Yugi Mutou will result in an automatic 'F'," Noa declared, chuckling.
For the first time, Seto looked at his stepbrother with something resembling approval. "Yes," he said emphatically, "exactly. Mutou—and Wikipedia for that matter—is off-limits. Is this understood, Mokuba? Should I provide a hand-out for you?"
"How much of my grade is this essay worth?" Mokuba asked, grinning from ear to ear now.
"Essay?" Seto repeated scornfully. "Oh, no, you misunderstand me. If you want to convince me of anything, you'd better not hand me an essay. This needs to be worthy of a Master's thesis if you expect anything to come of it."
Mokuba laughed. "I think those are longer than five pages."
"I doubt it will be graded at all," Noa said. "It will either be accepted or not."
"So what happens if I pass?"
Seto frowned, thinking, for a moment. "If you manage to convince me that I'm a reincarnated priest, I'll put you at the helm of Kaiba-Corp's next project, and award you the salary due your position as vice-president for the duration of the game's development."
Noa actually saw Mokuba's eyes fall out of his head. "Oh, you're on."
Seto responded with a smirk. "Good luck, kid. You'll need it."
"Tch. I don't need luck," Mokuba replied, sounding so much like his brother that Noa blinked in surprise. "Luck is for the weak." The sandy-haired Kaiba turned to look at the boy, raising an eyebrow at him. Mokuba's eyes twinkled, and he winked.
Seto actually laughed. "That's my vice-president," he said. "Just what I wanted to hear. All right, then. You go to this class of Ishtar's, Mokuba, and make sure to take as many notes as humanly possible. You'll need all the ammunition you can scrounge together."
Mokuba was bursting with glee, to the point that Noa thought he might jump out of his brother's car and run down the street to work off the excess energy. "Aye-aye, Niisama!" the boy cried, and actually saluted. Seto nodded, clearly pleased, and turned his attention back to driving. Noa leaned back in his seat and felt the urge to laugh.
One joke…one joke that might not have even been a joke, Noa thought wonderingly, and you not only made him forget how uncomfortable you obviously were with the idea, but actually made him more motivated.
Noa realized—as Seto drove toward the mansion that had been his home for the first ten years of his life—that the scene that had unfolded in front of him was about as clear an example of his stepbrothers' relationship as he was ever going to witness.
Seto had lifted Mokuba's mood, and Mokuba had in turn lifted Seto's.
People often compared Seto's relationship with Mokuba to Gozaburo's relationship with Noa. But that, Noa realized, was not only ridiculous, but insulting. He had to wonder how people could be so fundamentally blind.
Kaiba Gozaburo had never looked as happy as Seto did right now.
For that matter, neither had Noa.
Verse Two.
Waking up with three pounds of solid gold on one's chest would be a disconcerting experience for anyone.
Unless one happened to be Yugi Mutou.
Nonetheless, Yugi opened his eyes, frowning at the (un)familiar weight, and when he spied the Millennium Puzzle resting upon him, he let out a yell of abject surprise and tumbled out of bed, the golden pyramid leading.
The artifact clunked onto his floor and dug into his midriff, driving what breath he retained straight out of him. Groaning, he flopped onto his back, tangled in his sheets, and stared up at the ceiling. As he waited for his body to regain control of itself, he wondered how long it had been. How long since he had felt this weight.
How long since he had felt this burden.
More than just his neck, more than just his back...Yugi's entire body was aching.
He sighed, and was only slightly surprised when he felt a smile tugging at his lips. It had always been like this...hadn't it? A combination of fun and exasperation; adrenaline and apprehension.
People talked about "frenemies." They had no idea just how confounding a person like that actually was. They had never met the Gambling King. The Ghost of the Golden Age.
Atemhotep...the Forgotten One.
Yugi heard footsteps approaching his door, and he turned his head to watch as it opened and his mother stepped inside. She frowned at him. "Yugi? What happened? You screamed." Yugi slowly, so slowly, rose to a sitting position. He blinked, shook his head, and dared to look across the room at his desk, where an achingly, hauntingly familiar apparition was watching him, as it made a glinting silver coin dance through the fingers of its right hand.
Looking at his own right hand, Yugi could almost feel that coin.
"Yugi?"
Natsumi Mutou was looking legitimately worried now. She crossed her arms, and Yugi gave a dopey little grin and said, "Uh...yeah, Mom. Fine. Just...had a really weird dream."
"...That's your puzzle, isn't it? The one your grandpa gave you? I thought you said you lost that last year."
Yugi looked down at it, cradled it, felt its familiar edges and grooves. "Yeah. I, uh...was just kinda...looking through some stuff last night and...and I found it. Craziest thing, huh?" He grinned again, and it felt fake.
Natsumi raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Well, that's good luck. Keep a better eye on that next time."
"Yeah. Sure, Mom. Definitely. Hey...what time is it?"
"Seven-thirty. The shop's about to open. You'd better hurry up and get ready. Dad wants you to man the counter today."
"Dad?" Yugi asked stupidly.
Natsumi flinched, looked guilty, and cleared her throat. "Uh...sorry. My dad. Grandpa. He...expects a big crowd today. That new shipment just came in. You should...go and get ready." She said this last sentence entirely too quickly, and left the room like her shoes were on fire.
Yugi watched the empty doorway for a moment before flopping back onto the floor and cursing.
"...She's looking well, Aibou."
Yugi snickered bitterly. "Yeah. Sure, she is."
"You don't sound surprised to hear my voice."
"All honesty? I'm not."
He felt it when the spirit raised an eyebrow, reached up and rubbed his own. "You aren't," Yami said slowly. His tone had lost some of its sarcastic bite. Yugi lifted himself, with great effort, and stumbled to his feet. He turned to face his (what he'd thought to be former) partner and saw...
Was it...fear?
"Well, Aibou..." the former king said, still in that slow, neutral tone, "...I am."
Yugi blinked.
"This...wasn't supposed to happen," Yami continued. "I was finished. It was over. All the damned...fucking games."
It had been strange for Yugi to hear his former incarnation use modern curses when he'd started doing it, a few months before the end. How much stranger to hear it now, so many months after the end. As Yugi sat there, thinking about his brief spell as the sole inhabitant of his own body, it became more and more surprising to find that he'd told the truth; it didn't surprise him to have the gambler back. It really...really didn't. How could something be so surprising...when it wasn't?
The innumerable conundrums for which this psychological Rubik's Cube was responsible.
And then he realized what Yami had said.
Yugi blinked. "...But...wait. You...love games. Are you telling me this whole thing...doesn't excite you? It would have, before."
Yami cleared his throat and sighed. He looked sullen now, and it looked wrong. It looked like he'd lost his touch. "Aibou...think about this. I'm here. The puzzle is around your neck, around my neck," he lifted it with one hand and let it drop back against his midriff, "like a cosmic ball and chain. It was over. Do you understand what it's like for me to go about life without an adversary? Without a challenge? Do you know how horrendously boring it is to overcome every obstacle that comes my way?"
It would have sounded arrogant from anyone else; it sounded arrogant from him.
But somehow, Yugi thought, it sounded fake, too. Like Yami was just...going through the motions. He sounded like he'd given up. For the first time since meeting him, Yugi thought this spirit of a king actually sounded dead.
This was not something that should have been thrown at him so early in the morning. Seriously unfair. He could barely think, but he couldn't help but consider the inevitable panic attack that would send him into hysterics as soon as he fully understood what this waking dream actually meant.
"Crawford...Ishtar...that idiot with green hair—" Yugi wasn't sure if he meant Noa Kaiba or the king of Atlantis, but he did smirk a bit at the idea of Yami making fun of someone's hair, "—and...that spirit of the Ring. All of them. Pointless. All of them, defeated. You and I, Aibou, we...stood against the best this world had to offer. And we defeated them all."
"You wanted to die," Yugi said slowly, "because there wasn't anything left to do. You were done. No more games, no more gambles...and you were tired."
Yami scowled, clearly nonplussed that he'd been read like a book for once, but he nodded. "You have it."
Yugi stood, thinking that there was no point in worrying about the fact that he was neither overjoyed nor mortified to have Yami back; it just...was what it was. A friend. An enemy. A mystery.
A puzzle.
"Well," said the vessel for the King of Games as he sifted through his dresser for something to wear before his grandfather came barreling in the room to accost him with the vacuum cleaner like last time he'd been late for work, "all's not lost, you know. No need to go emo on us now. We already look the part, we shouldn't act it."
He turned back and watched Yami's face contort with confusion. "...Emo?"
Yugi grinned. "We should see if Kaiba wants to come over and welcome you back. Think he'll bring a cake to celebrate the occasion?"
Right on target.
Yami's eyes went wide, his glum expression going slack. And almost like a flipbook being flipped entirely too slowly, a positively evil grin rose on his sharp, transparent face. Just like old times, Yami looked like a cross between a child at a carnival and a mass-murderer testing out his first chainsaw.
"If he does..." the gambler said in a low, excited whisper, "...I hope it's poisoned."
Yugi rolled his eyes and chuckled.
"Welcome home, Yami."
Verse Three.
He had liked the dark once. The night.
The softness that settled over everything, the gentle calm that met the sunset like a caretaker, ready to sing the world to sleep. He had courted the night, loved it and sat with it over a piping mug of hot chocolate and a book from the library; not checked out, but purchased second- (third-, fourth-)hand on those dime racks where even hardcovers were a pittance. He had thought of it like adopting them, as if these battered, torn, stained volumes were abandoned children, and he was now taking care of them, showing them that someone was still willing to listen to them.
So yes…he had liked the night. Once.
Until he came.
Ryou Bakura didn't even know if it was fair to call the thing male or not. Whatever it was that lived inside the swirl and spikes of gold in the Black Hag's Wedding Band; if Ryou courted the night, then this thing raped it.
Darkness filled him with shame, shadows with terror. His favorite orphaned books were blotched with red, because some nights he would take hold of one of his treasured stories without realizing his fingertips were dark and sticky with blood.
Silence drove him crazy. The cool, crisp air he'd once sucked in like a fine wine made him choke. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands shook. He felt like a palsied, crippled old man, and he wasn't yet out of his teens.
And it was the catalyst. The conduit to insanity.
It held him in thrall, in chains locked tight around his throat. And there was only one book that he could read anymore without it dripping its crimson venom onto the pages like a salivating viper. Ryou's lips would quiver as he read, whispered, huddled in the fetal position in the farthest corner of Our Lady of Harmony; he couldn't go home. Home was empty. Home was dank and desolate.
Home was his coffin.
The maddening part of it was that for a while, he had thought he was free from it all. That it was over. That it was over. He had tried to stand up, to walk on feet that didn't feel like his own, with legs that were the hollow limbs of a marionette. Ryou had gone back to school to finally finish his senior year; he had plans to go on to Westridge. He had a job with one of the city's newspapers.
He'd thought his life was finally returning to him, all thanks to Yugi Mutou.
He'd been on his bicycle, papers in the bag slung over his shoulder and looking forward to a long overdue meeting with the principal of Domino High School. He'd picked up a new book, he was fully stocked on chocolate, and he even had homemade marshmallows thanks to an internet tutorial he'd happened to find squirreled away in a spam email.
He'd been grinning, nodding his head in rhythm to the music in his headphones, daring at last to be happy—he thought he might stop by the Turtle Game Shop on the way home and visit with his friends—when his entire world went…black.
Mercifully, he didn't actually feel, hear, see anything. It all just went black, as if someone had bashed him over the head with a blunt instrument. It felt like a soft, silken blanket being wrapped around his body. His thoughts were blissfully, beautifully absent. His mind was quiet, his heart content, and he didn't remember anything. He didn't think of anything. All he felt was that lovely, seductive darkness.
He remembered how he'd loved the night.
It brought him back to…before. To Amane, to Mother. To Father, who never spent more than a handful of days at the home he "shared" with his son and who almost never remembered to write anymore. Father, who took to the unraveling of his family as an excuse to abandon what little of it was left behind. Or at least, that's what it said, when he wasn't swathed in beautiful darkness and resting so peacefully in nothing. He'd grown to believe it. There wasn't much of a point to arguing otherwise.
One, it didn't listen.
And two…well. Wasn't it true?
Wasn't it right?
It didn't matter. He was happy. He was contented. He was warm, he was safe. He was with the night. Father? Mother? Amane? They were here. They were with him in the night, and even if they weren't…what did it matter? He was warm. He was safe.
The night cradled him.
The night protected him.
When it was in control, the night…helped.
Yes. It helped.
And then he woke; the world returned, the blanket slipped off, and he was cold. He met with the realization that it wasn't over. No longer was he riding his bike in the damp newness of dawn. The real night met him, and it met him with anger, and betrayal, and shame.
He was staring out the window of his own bedroom.
Ryou Bakura wanted to cry, thought that there was no way that he wouldn't cry, but after a while…he realized that he just didn't remember how. He turned away from the window, didn't even stop to truly see the bag of bloodstained newspapers tossed unceremoniously into a corner of his room.
He stepped into the bathroom, turned on the light, and ran the faucet. He began washing red from his face, not even bothering to question whether it had come from himself or not. He was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt when he finally realized the familiar weight of the Millennium Ring pulling on his neck.
Except…it wasn't. The weight wasn't on his neck; only a ghost of feeling was on his neck. The weight…the real weight…was on his chest. Over his heart. He blinked, looked down at himself. Sudden dread welling up from within, Ryou all but ripped off his shirt.
The haunting, familiar gleam met his gaze.
He touched it, breath coming in gasps.
The Millennium Ring was grafted to his skin.
Then he heard the voice, thin and high, deep and dead, warped and warbling:
DId yOu mISs mE?
Ryou Bakura remembered how to cry.
Verse Four.
He looked out of the window of the car and found himself staring at memory. Not a memory, not one memory or two or a thousand, but all memories. The house was the nexus of everything he had ever known. His entire life was…here. This house. This estate. These grounds, these gates, these memories.
"We're home!" Mokuba cried like a one-man welcoming committee, and Noa watched for Seto's flinch, sure that the words would offend him. But he didn't flinch. He remained cold-stone still, and when he took his keys in hand and opened the driver's-side door, it was like the boy hadn't said a word.
Noa opened his own door and wondered if that was the trigger he'd been waiting for. He knew what Morris Jay knew: Seto did not want him here. Seto did not want an old enemy stepping onto his own property. Of course he didn't. He was a Kaiba, and a Kaiba did only one thing with enemies.
That one thing did not involve forgiveness.
But in this, as in so many things, Seto could not deny his brother. Mokuba was special. Not because he was smart, or manipulative, or dedicated to anything he did, although all these things were true. It wasn't because his smile brightened a room, although that was true. It wasn't even because he was one of a handful of people in the world who proudly proclaimed to love the man, although that, too, was true.
It was repentance.
Noa was sure that when Seto looked back on his life, he felt no bitterness. This would have sounded ludicrous to almost anyone else—Seto Kaiba was bitter about everything, they would have said—but Noa was nothing if not studious, and he knew better.
He had watched them. For untold years, he had watched them both. He knew. The death of his mother, the suicide of his father; being pawned off by his godparents after his rather pitiful inheritance had been sucked dry; the Children's Home, the tyranny of Kaiba Gozaburo, the death threats, the apocalypses…he felt no bitterness about any of it. If he felt anything at all, it was probably some twisted form of gratitude.
No. It was when Seto Kaiba looked at his brother's life that he grew bitter, and guilty, and felt shame. It was when he thought of Mokuba having never met his own mother, when he thought of Mokuba losing his father—barely more than a stranger, a shadow with a face—at three years old. It was when he thought of the abductions, and the death threats, and the terror, the heartache, the stress…all before leaving elementary school.
Mokuba Kaiba had gone through all of that without breaking. Without complaining, without blaming. Without hating the man who was supposed to protect him. He was angry at nothing, at no one. He went to school, he made his grades. He went to work, he kept the teams motivated. He cleaned his room and ate his vegetables and brushed his teeth. He went to bed on time, without complaint, and he took a shower every morning.
All this without hating his Niisama, who surely hated himself.
And so, when his baby brother actually asked for something, Seto could not—and would not—refuse him. Even if it was to forgive an enemy.
Not that Seto had actually forgiven him, but it was close enough for government work. It was close enough to allow the man under his roof, which was more than had ever happened at any other's request. More than would have happened to any other enemy.
Noa knew this, and he knew what it meant. He knew that he was on probation, and that if he did not treat his new life accordingly, then he would be removed from anything even remotely resembling his family, probably for the rest of eternity. Seto was the head of the Kaiba family now. Mokuba filled Noa's old position, and Noa figured that he should feel lucky to have been promoted to the status of "third wheel." And besides…Seto didn't consider him family, true, but Mokuba did. And that was all that really mattered to either of them. In that, they were of a mind.
He was dressed in blue jeans and a dark green t-shirt that Mokuba had picked out for him. The shirt was emblazoned with large, white block lettering which read: I'M KIND OF A BIG DEAL. Noa had already decided that he loved it.
Of course you do, came a voice in his mind that he thought he recognized, but didn't feel like admitting it to himself. The brat gave it to you; it could have been spun of steel wool and infested with fire ants and you would have thought it the most comfortable garment ever crafted. You would have knelt before him like a knight accepting his lady's favor. Pathetic.
He did feel somewhat underdressed, to be honest, as he stepped onto the meticulously sculpted lawn and made his way up the walk toward the palace that had once belonged to his father. But he found a grin anyway, because yes. That was true. Mokuba had picked it out for him, and that made it important.
More than enough reason for him.
As Seto approached the front door, it opened. They all three stepped inside; Seto with his $1,200 imported leather dress shoes; Mokuba with his worn but well-crafted sneakers; Noa with tan work boots—again, picked out by Mokuba, resident fashion expert, who held that they were awesome—and Noa was struck by how similar everything looked…and how different everything felt.
A rather stunning young woman stood in the entryway, dressed in a modest but sharp black suit—Mokuba had mentioned her; he called her Kiko—with dark brown hair tumbling down a few inches past her shoulders. She bowed deeply, and when she rose, her eyes sparkled and her smile reached her ears.
"Okairinasai," said she, in a voice like music.
Staring, half in a trance and barely able to remember what it meant to talk, Noa Kaiba murmured: "…Tadaima."
END.
"Okairinasai" and "Tadaima" are rather traditional greetings when entering a house. The former can be translated as, "Welcome home," and the latter as, "I'm back."
I've given a few extra names to the Millennium Items, because that's what tends to happen with ancient artifacts. Different cultures have different names for things; in the case of the Millennium Rod, we have God's Finger, the Needle, et cetera. And for the Millennium Ring, we have the Black Hag's Wedding Band.
Those of you who have read my oneshot story, "The Gambler's Debts," or the longer and more substantial "Cemetery Dance" will likely recognize the personality I've given to the spirit of the Puzzle. This Yami will, without specific reason, be present in just about everything from now on. I think he matches the personality originally crafted for the manga. Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion that his shift to Traditional Hero was not Takahashi's original intention. So, I've elected to make Yami a bit different.
On a final note, I have a second suspicion that many who profess to be Christian are simply paying lip service, but that plenty are honest in their faith and truly love God and His teachings. I also believe that Ryou Bakura is one of a last group, a broken group, who rely on that faith simply to remain alive. To exist. That kid's had a raw deal, and I've long been of the opinion that very few things could keep him together.
Faith is one of the only ones that hold any resonance for me.
