Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or Vampire Hunter D

I've been spending a lot of time reviewing what I've got (off by a week but I needed to take stock); I think it's going to start picking up speed again soon.

Although, chapters like these are important for their own reasons.

To whoever may still be reading this, enjoy!

(And feel free to send any criticism; I'm forever learning)

Chapter Forty-Three: Believing

There were no tears when the door of the basement creaked open and the evening greeted them with a broken spire of timber lodged in what remained of a demolished window. There was no room left to be. The awe inspired by the pervasive damage they could see from the half-destroyed wall left them stupefied. The sound of drywall crumbling to the hardwood pattered in the air, the only sound aside from their breathing that could immediately be heard.

D pushed past Mai and Zoe, brushing away their concerned grasps as he entered a zone that (at a glance) he knew remained stable. It looked bad; but the tornado had never fully gone over the structure itself. The storming winds, instead, had veered into the depths of the backyard. Most of the most frightening sounds that the twister had created had come from the destruction of the barn. He could tell by the tell-tale sounds—the remnants of clattering wood and nails dismantling upon the barren earth acting as the few signs he needed.

Even though he hurried to pick his way through the demolished innards of the home, he was not even sure of what he was so fervently looking for. They had waited a good ten minutes after the sound had passed before surfacing, time not even near enough for Bakura to safely return with Simon. Or for Bakura to return empty handed. Or at all.

Still, he had hoped. Searched—clutching that optimism close. As he found himself at the entrance, peering through the windows that stood and those that had been smashed in with debris, he hoped with all his heart that he would not regret having stayed down there with the others. Only time would tell.

"It's going to be too dark soon to check and see if upstairs is safe…" he heard Zoe say, as well as the grunt from Graham that followed. He heard Mai mumble something about how long they should wait up, and something about her tone angered him. It was not her fault—and she was right that there would only be so much time before it was clear no one would be returning for the night—but still. If he held faith, why couldn't others?

Why couldn't they at least pretend?

"You want them to lie to you?" his left hand, his ally and his blight, asked, and he shook his head in response. And then it said something he was alarmed to hear.

"I mean…there is a chance?"

The boy could not figure if he felt his hand's attempt to quell him was helpful, or worse than not hearing anything. When had it ever been positive to his advantage? Its pessimism was almost a welcomed constant now. Now, of all times, it was trying to be positive?

He was so lost in thought that he almost did not hear Claire's approach. She stood beside him, and stared at the closed door along with him, not saying a word at first. Five minutes passed and the shuffling of footsteps behind them announced that the others were trying to assess the damage that the chaos brought.

"He's okay," Claire said, breaking their quiet vigil. D glanced at her and found her hugging herself tight. He wanted to offer comfort, but he could not muster the optimism required. He could barely muster calm.

"He's not back," D murmured. The boy grasped the handle of the door and opened it to the dim light of a clouded evening sky. The front yard lay in tatters, the formerly parked vehicle upended a distance away, by the tree line, less full due to the storm. "He's not back," he repeated; his voice wavered even as he tried to hide his despair.

"I mean…the tornado, like, just finished like a few minutes ago, right?"

"He. Is. Not. Back."

"D, just because—" Claire smacked her legs in frustration, struggling to find a better, faster explanation before her friend did anything reckless. Her nerves were on fire; her intuition haywire. Not even enough time had passed to be certain of anything, anyway. Where were the adults when you really needed them? After so many things had been going right, this disaster felt worse than a punch in the gut.

Trying to offer any type of solace, she wrapped her arms around him in a vice-like hug. "Don't do anything stupid. We just need to wait a little. We've waited longer, before, right? He'll be back."

"Yeah," D agreed, monotonous.

"D…"

He pressed her hands against his chest, acknowledging her attempt at alleviating his worries before pulling out of her grasp like a loosely tied ribbon. Sidestepping her outreaching arms, he backed away, through the opened door. She followed him, quietly pleading—begging—him to go back into the house, to give Bakura more time before he took matters into his own hands.

D shook his head and hopped past the porch steps to a distance she could not easily reach. His feet left prints in the mud, but not a squelch of separating muck could be heard. Claire's face fell; D had failed to try and seem normal when company was around. That rang as a terrible sign to her, even more than his dodging her.

"Please, Claire. Don't follow me."

D darted into the destroyed front yard and into the shaded path, leaving Claire to look after him in pity. He did not see her choice, already halfway down the path as she turned around and did as he asked. She set herself to picking through the wreckage of their things. Above all, she was grateful she was alive, and that the boy was, too. She could not fathom thinking the worst, not now. Bakura would be back, and D would, too.

For Claire knew loss. She had lost the most important people she had cared for already; to think that anyone who had been replacing that emptiness could leave her was not something she wanted to face. She was stubborn enough to beat it down, and to tell herself to be patient. D, she thought, just needed time.

D skidded down the path where the incline permitted it, leaping over a few fallen trees, their roots like hands reaching for the sky, as if asking for help. D imagined Bakura, somewhere between the farm and airport, reaching up just the same, pinned by—

"You aren't helping yourself, you know," his hand pointed out, and when the boy refused to reply, it added, "What's gotten into you?"

"Stop." It was all the answer the being would receive.

When he reached the entrance of the driveway, he was greeted with a vast field, the very field where he could see for miles. He frantically twisted his body around, scanning the area for any sign of Bakura, but only saw the scarred, unused farmland. In the distance, the boy could see a carcass of some unfortunate animal, a sad note that not everything had made it to shelter in time. He clenched his fists until precious blood dropped from each palm.

There was no use in shouting Bakura's name. If he had been anywhere in the vicinity, D would have seen him. The boy parked himself in the middle of the road and crossed his arms over his knees, staring into the empty landscape.

There he waited. And waited. He waited until he heard the first frantic call of his name. First Mai. Then Claire. When it became a chorus with the others chiming in, he was already back at the shaken, but still standing farmstead. He watched them flail in the dark, searching for him with their thin beams of light. Their panicked faces peered through the deepening night in a vain attempt to find him. D sighed at their fruitless search. Although, even with his eyesight, the world looked dark past this sunset.

D bypassed those that tried to worry over him and descended the stairs to the basement. Past the checks for injuries. Past the questions. Past everything. Looking through the mess that now looked tidy compared to the main floor, he found a folded comforter that smelled of years of storage and threw it over himself, choosing a spot upon the red rug to rest. Listening to the voices clear to his ears, he closed his eyes.

He knew what was about to come. He was far too tired to deal with it.

Above his tomblike enclosure, Mai ushered the girl down the steps to join him. There was a discussion to be held that Claire did not need to be privy to, and one the woman was glad D chose to ignore. Only when she was certain that the girl had bedded down near her friend did Mai follow the others outside. The grim atmosphere stifled them, acting as its own sweltering humidity.

A moth fluttered to the light of Zoe's flashlight. She waved it away with a brisk flick of her dark hand. Her cool eyes spoke volumes of where the conversation could turn. Graham danced on the balls of his feet, agitated—yearning for a bad habit that was hard to come by in these parts. Mai looked to the both of them, chewing briefly upon her thumbnail as she considered what should be said. She did not come up with much.

"It's bad," Zoe stated, "but not so bad we can't stay for another day or so. I don't expect that we'll have another big one like that any time soon, if history is a good teacher."

"God, I could go for a smoke," Graham grumbled.

"You don't need it, G."

"Like hell I don't. I'm thinking about where it could have ended up."

"You still don't need it."

"There's still a chance that Bakura's fine," Mai noted, taking control of the conversation. She had hated when the Counsel had danced around important issues, and she hated it now. "Simon, too. If they were where the kids said they were, then what's the chances of the tornado going that way?"

"Slim," Graham replied, snapping an errant weed from the ground to place between his teeth. Mai could hear the slight grind of his jaw at work, and her face screwed up in a grimace at the sound. She could not imagine the taste.

"Debris would be the biggest concern," Zoe said. "That's only if the worst didn't happen."

"The worst? Wouldn't that be that they got caught in it?"

"They might have gotten caught in something."

Mai's mind traveled far from where the others would have gone, and somehow this brought her comfort. It reminded her that there were stranger things out there, and that her group all had survived far more than a natural disaster. She only hoped Bakura's luck had held as fast as hers.

"Maybe we should make the trek over there tomorrow, seeing as there's little reason to st—"

"No," Mai said, cutting Graham off. "The kids are on edge. They've got to be. If we do anything that they deem strange, they might go rouge on us."

"What?" Zoe snorted, her words skeptical. "They're kids."

"And?"

"They listen to you, don't they?"

"You've seen how smart they are. Sometimes, smarts in kids end up putting them in bad situations. I'd like to think that if the worst did happen, that they'd follow after me—but I can't pretend that they wouldn't give up their own personal search if they were dead set on it. It's complicated."

"I don't see how they'd be able to do that if we were watching them."

"D went missing today. Yes, for a short period—and he did come back—but we lost sight of him. That's just a taste of what I've seen him pull. When the two are together?" She shook her head. The tales she had heard were more than enough to know that the parental hold that they had on those two children was fragile at best.

"Let's stay here for now. Give Bakura…and or Simon, time to come back. If they don't, then you guys can go and look, and I'll mind them, since you know what you're looking for and I know their general moods. If you find the others, great! If you don't…"

"We'll take it from there," Zoe finished, nodding in understanding.

"Yes. But first, we've got to have faith in them."

Mai inwardly flinched at her choice of words. The doubtful expressions on their faces were familiar ground; a place she would rather be. It seemed that even as upbeat as they appeared, the world had worn them down, with the winds of the tornado playing with the shavings of what they once had been. Unused to playing the cheerleader, Mai found herself digging deep into her memories for a better example. It had to be believable.

Those kids needed to know that someone else believed.

The next morning, D refused to answer their inquiries. Thankfully, he did not have to shoo Claire away. She seemed to be more in-tune with his mood and busied herself with other things. He watched her fawn over the items she had collected from the wrecked rooms: her rifle, her only keepsake from her family—long since passed—and her guitar, which had luckily survived the devastation. She adored that thing.

She had also found their fishing rods; the long poles sat propped up beside her. The snapped-off twigs still lay twisted in the wire of one, and his hat was hanging from the other. On her other side, in a relatively clear spot, was his sword. Next to that, his journal—although oddly absent of evidence that she had flipped through its contents as she was wont to do.

Seeing the journal wrenched his heart and he bolted for the backyard, past Mai's offering of breakfast. Normal disinterest in food had become a revulsion. The only peace offering he would have accepted was presenting the man that he wished to see. And that was just something they did not possess.

He ran until he reached the vast expanse of backyard until he thought that he had put enough distance between him and the others. The boy tried to clear his mind, to inhale and exhale in measured breaths. Somehow, this panic stifled him more than the underground city ever had. His eyes flicked up as his breath hitched and he caught sight of a broken nest laying at the base of a cracked stump of a tree. Too late for newborns; but the burst of guts that stained the mass of shaped twigs and twine denoted an end to something.

Unable to contain himself any longer, he pressed his palms to his mouth and screamed wordlessly, first in anger, then in sorrow. The unfairness of the continual separation of his one constant left him closer to understanding the instability of grief. It seemed as if for every positive thing they all got to experience, something twenty times worse always had to happen. With that in mind, it was no wonder his mind turned to fatalistic outcomes. The boy hardly thought it was an even exchange. His formerly unending shout ceased only when he needed air. Words formed upon his lips after three passes of this ritual.

"You said you wouldn't leave me until I didn't need you," he whimpered into the immense acreage. His pitch rose as he continued, "I still need you…you should be back already. You should be back! Where are you?!"

Two weeks, three weeks, a month…how long would they all wish to stay and wait, when two of the adults had dreams of their own to follow? How long, when it was the children who first tried interchanging words of comfort? What if the adults were right? Those stares—they had held nothing promising good fortune.

So certain was D that Bakura would have made it back that very night if he could, that the answer to his absence seemed clear. He ignored his hand that tried to explain this inevitability and forced himself to breathe. He had to calm himself. It was unfair to pin all the emotional support on Claire, when she herself must have been pained just as terribly by the prospect. He could allow for this outburst, away from everyone; but he refused to further drag her mood down with his. There was also a good chance that maybe Bakura had been nowhere near the tornado and was completely fine. Yet, if that were the case, why was he not present now?

He cursed loudly into the air in a language he had not spoken in over a year. Then he flopped upon the grassy clods in silence, his eyes trained on the earth. He sat there until the sun stole away his shadow.

D eventually lifted his dejected gaze to the barn door. The front of the structure remained while the roof and devastated sides had been carried away, thrown in all directions. A small, broken branch had lodged itself into the remnants of its flaking red-painted wood. His mind wavered on the thought "what happens when bodies are flung?", but his eyes widened at another concept that came in its stead. An idea just as disconnected as Claire's line of questioning the day before.

He pried the natural wooden spike out of the softened wood with a swift yank, and marched ten meters away, his hand clutching the twig with almost enough force to break it. The barn door loomed before him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, twirling the branch between his fingers, looping it around, getting a feel for its weight. Taking a deep breath, he threw the thin piece of branch with all his might.

It clattered against the door. He had it flung at the desired speed, but the point just missed its mark. The boy blamed his distracted state. Regardless, evidence of what he had hypothesized was there, however small. A jagged scar ran across the chipped paint where the edge had barely just connected. Not the anticipated result, but a start.

His mind turned like the cogs of a clock. Prior experience and training linked with his want to aid Claire in distance fights without beating down her pride. D thought of Andy, and the rocks; he thought of Ewan, and the jungle gym of lessons meant solely for his kind. A skill and craft that would not take much time to master, but it became enough to let him focus on something constructive. He just wished he could tell Bakura.

The boy ran back to the house and seated himself beside Claire, who's inquiring look read that she was gauging his demeanor. He gave her a small, but affectionate smile that visibly relaxed her. Taking up her guitar, she sat back to back with him, humming a tune as he unraveled the bunch of sticks from the line. When he had them laid in a tidy line, he took one of his fingernails and began scratching away at the bark. They busied themselves in this way throughout the afternoon.

Mai came up with their dinner as the bright blue sky faded, pinpricks of early starlight visible at the right incline. She approached them with caution; much like a random zoo volunteer to a cassowary. Claire blinked in disbelief before letting out a sigh of exasperation.

"He's sorry that he was being rude and made you worry. He was just concerned about Bakura."

The glance Mai gave her made the girl look to her fretboard, sheepish swatches of red across her cheeks. As if she had not learned some of that wizened knowledge from a certain someone else, before.

"Yes, sorry," D said, confirming Claire's explanation without elaborating. He was busy checking the sharpened edge, jamming it into his thumb. To the others, it looked like he was fussing with a whittled stick, but as blood dripped from his finger, his lips curved in satisfaction.

"I figured after a little bit you just needed some space," Mai said, setting the plates before them. She sighed, stretched, and sighed again. Claire watched her with part amazement and part shock as Mai's back let out an audible crack. The two shifted a little to give her a comfortable seat and she sat beside them, lounging against some benign farm tool as they began to eat. Well, Claire ate; D shuffled his food around and took a few bites before he continued his work.

"They decide what they're gonna do?" Claire asked, her mouth bulging with food. D knocked his head against hers in reminder of her manners, and she elbowed him in the side in turn.

"All we know for sure is that they're going to go check out the airport tomorrow," Mai replied. She flipped her hair back, fluffing it a bit before sighing. "They say that this place isn't really safe to stay in anymore."

D snorted. "Just our luck, right?"

Mai gave him a crooked smile. "Yeah, just our luck. But we weren't planning on sticking around much longer anyway, either. Rebuilding the place doesn't make much sense. But…"

"But?"

"Duck?" Claire offered. The other two turned to her, perplexed. "What? I'd have said chicken-butt, but it didn't really fit. Y'know, like duck, duck, goose but…but-but, duck!"

D rolled his eyes at Claire's antics. Mai chuckled at the interaction.

"Just to clear some things up," the woman added, reaching her arms wide, pulling both children into a tight hug. "Regardless of what they choose to do, we're not leaving until we find him."

"Duh," Claire said. She cuddled into the embrace. "We don't leave our friends, or…kind of pretend uncles or kind of dad/moms or whatever, behind."

"That's a mouthful," D's left hand ventured, and D blew out a stream of air in amusement.

"You're right. We don't," Mai confirmed, ignoring whom she considered an unnecessary addition to the conversation. "So, wipe those sad looks off of your faces, and stop thinking the worst."

"Says you," D could not help but retort.

"Says me," Mai agreed. "They don't know him like we know him; and the more and more I think about it, there's no way we aren't going to see each other again!"

D wanted to believe her words were true. With Claire there, enthusiastically bobbing her head in affirmation, it felt almost possible. Beating back the terrible thoughts felt like playing tug of war with someone far stronger than he, but still he tried. If he could allow it, rational thinking could be more than just an easy way to think of the worst. Such thoughts also reminded him the man was far tougher than when they first met and had survived much more than a mass of speeding wind before. So, he set his mind to hoping, again.

"And if we don't find him?" his hand presented as the others turned their talk to something else.

"Oh, hush," D muttered, grinning.

Things were almost back to normal. Almost.

With a more positive outlook, it did not distress D as much when the next day dawned without even a hint of Bakura's return. He simply wished their new friends good luck in finding their missing third and their work intact as they set off to search for the day, a far cry from the way he ignored them the day before. The change in attitude seemed to brighten their spirits; Graham stopped chewing at the side of his mouth, whereas Zoe gave the boy a little pat on the head before turning down the driveway path. He waved goodbye unthinkingly with his left hand before swiftly switching to his right when he realized his "little assistant" was purposefully making itself visible. Unlike with other times, it seemed perfectly comfortable with their position now…to the boy's annoyance.

"What were you making yesterday?" Claire asked, emerging from behind the house where their relocated tent sat. She tapped him on the back of the head with a rolled-up magazine, demanding a response. When he failed to answer immediately, she knocked on his head with the paper tube in rapid succession. He barely blinked at the barrage.

"Projectiles," he answered after he was certain he had riled her up enough.

"Huh?" She lowered her battered "weapon". His words held more interest than her half-hearted torment.

"Things that are launched from a distance, Claire. Do we need to go over your vocabulary, again?"

She scowled. "I know what it means, jerk. Why?"

He shrugged. "You like your gun, and you are 'better' with it. Just wanted to make sure I could back you up if you needed me to."

He watched her face brighten and refrained from adding that he could have been better given a day's more practice. With her (human) skill, at her age, she had every right to be proud.

"They looked like just sticks though," Claire reflected and scratched the back of her head.

"They're like mini wooden stakes," he said, shrugging again.

An "o" of understanding popped on her mouth. "Like for bad vampires?"

D sighed, rubbing at his face with his hands. Sometimes her antics exhausted him. "Yeah, like for bad vampires."

"Shouldn't I have, like, silver bullets or something, then?"

"Sure, sure. Let me just learn how to smith bullets."

Claire snorted. "I know you were trying to be a dick, but I bet you could if you wanted."

The two children paused at her words, and then lost themselves in a fit of laugher. Mai hurried to their position, anxiety with a hint of ferocity coloring her stance. D felt the reaction was understandable. The shrill screech that Claire let out near had mimicked one of pain. When she saw the duo on the floor, the girl in mid-roll and no sign of tears apparent, Mai smiled and shook her head.

"You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days," she joked before returning to whatever task she had set for herself that day. Claire sat up, watching her departure. D followed suit, wondering why the girl looked after her so, as if seeing snow for the first time again.

"She's really pretty," she reflected. D tilted his head in consideration and nodded at her statement. The girl ran her fingers through her side ponytail, falling into deep thought.

"Do you think I'll ever be like that?"

"Hm?"

"Like, that pretty?" she flopped onto her back, leaving a dusty imprint of herself on the earth. "I mean, I'm pretty. I know. My momma was pretty, so I'm going to be. And I've seen myself, so like, duh—but like…remember when we were back in that city? And she was all dressed in purple?"

"Uh huh…"

"She looked so cool! I didn't want to say much before, because we didn't like her then, but…but…"

"She was cool?" D offered, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah! I guess she still is cool but whatever. So, do you think…?"

D shook his head. "How should I know?" There were times like these that the boy felt at a complete loss at what the girl wanted from him. The pair were not comparable. Mai was an adult and Claire was a child. They did not even look like each other.

His hand shifted of its own accord. "Seems more like you're trying to get out of answering the question," his left hand jabbed. D cleared his throat and shoved his offending appendage deep into his pocket. He faced the girl, his expression benign, hoping she had not been paying attention to his obnoxious counterpart. She had not.

"God, you are so boring sometimes," she sighed. "Anyway, she's smart, and pretty, and I hope I can be like that someday. Show me your stupid 'projectiles', since you can't think of anything smart to say right now."

Letting out a good-natured laugh, D motioned for her to follow. She skipped alongside him as he set up what he considered a haphazard presentation. He placed it as far from the house as he could, using the softened earth and trees to prop up the swiftly made bulls-eye. He then procured three of the weapons he had devised before guiding the girl to the porch. She stared at him skeptically from her perch atop the porch banister when he positioned himself even further back than she, just past the entrance of the shaken house.

"What, are you just going to use your hand?" she asked, crossing her arms. "I thought you were going to like, use a weird slingshot or something."

He grinned at her, unfazed. "Keep your eye on the target."

She frowned and motioned to it. "I can't see the smallest dot that far away, dummy."

"…they didn't have anything in them, right?"

"Duh."

He pulled himself into a confidant posture, holding one of the wooden needles between his index and middle fingers. "When I'm done, check."

She guffawed. Swiveling upon her seat, she switched her position to where she could watch him and then the target. Her friend did have many talents, but she doubted he could really aim that well and have the needle stick in the wooden target, partially rotted as the target was or not.

D breathed in, prickling with an unnatural fit of nervousness. Something about showing off an unpracticed skill was nerve-wracking, especially when Claire eyed him like that. Yet, as he released his breath and throwing needle at the same time, he felt confident that this time, it would work.

To his ears, the splintering wood could have been as close as music from a pair of headphones. To Claire, it was difficult to decipher. She cocked her head and her face scrunched with concentration as she tried to focus on whether or not the large wooden splinter (in her mind) had hit its mark.

"Done throwing?" she asked, checking for her safety. Her parents would have been proud.

"Go ahead," D said, motioning. The self-satisfaction on his face spoke volumes to her, and she raced to look at his work.

When she arrived, Claire covered her mouth with both hands, and let out a little shriek of excitement and a little irritation. Lodged deep into the target was the wooden needle, somehow perfectly planted into the surface, right where D swore to her that he would hit. She pivoted to his approaching form and rapidly pointed to his work.

"How!?" she queried, hopping up and down with the energetic glee that the boy felt internally. Try as he might, he could not hold that composure for long—not with that response and hoot of congratulations, and soon he was beaming from ear-to-ear.

"I got the idea from you," he said, tugging the needle from its resting place and assessing the damage it took. "These were the sticks you were snapping off."

"We make a great team, then!" she cried.

Claire offered her hand in a gesture for a high five, which he reservedly provided in return. She laughed at his attempt to look above the situation, noting his clear but quiet joy in how his idea worked.

"You're so serious," she pointed out, tapping his nose with her finger. "Live a little, D. Or you'll end up a grumpy old man way before you even get gray hair! Here, I'll help you."

The girl clambered up his back for an unceremonious piggyback ride as he tried to explain how her words made no sense and he would never get gray hair. She ignored them and called out a loud proclamation for anyone within a mile to hear. "Claire—the best shot this side of the…river and idea provider, and D—the boy with a bad attitude and creative spark!"

"Claire, get off…"

"We travel with our entourage to lands unknown—"

"Claire! I said—"

"Seeking out our fortunes!"

"That doesn't even correlate to what—I said get off!"

"What's going on?" Mai called from her position, deep within the house. It seemed that she still had something in there that was worth searching for.

Claire froze, clinging to D as she quit her ascent to his shoulders. Emerging from the depths of the home was their second parental unit, disappointment poised upon her brow ready to pull high, like a line reeling in a fish. The boy would have called for her assistance, but something else captured his attention. His companions' as well, as they faced the sounds of shuddering bushes, disrupted by something unused to the graveled path. All concerns about childish badgering were put aside as the trio prepared themselves where they stood.

D readied the two unused spines in his hand as he turned defensively to the opening of the driveway. The sounds continued, just past the line of vision in the trees. They waited there, still as the air around them, for the sounds to manifest into corporeal forms where the curve of the driveway and their line of sight met.

What the boy saw slackened his jaw and loosened his hand. The needles dropped unceremoniously to the weed-choked earth. Forgotten. In fact, if asked anything at that moment, D would have been unable to answer, for all his intelligence and cleverness lapsed at that instant. Claire nearly fell from her perch when the boy staggered forward. His legs felt like gelatin.

Graham and Zoe had made an unexpected return; and far too soon to have made it all the way to the airport, never mind the doubling back. D could not register the expressions on their faces. Happy, sad, elated, joyous, frustrated, unsatisfied…if it were any of those, he could not differentiate. Then again, he could hardly register anything that was before him. His mouth felt dry; the unexpected shock made it hard to breathe.

Just behind them, came someone who nervously toyed with the ends of their black hair as they followed. They were followed by more adults—the large congregation's sojourn ending where the driveway and homestead divided. Claire hugged herself close to D, unaware of why her friend was speechless, but in as much awe as he, aware that something big had occurred. Why else were all these people here? She was not blind to where the boy's eyes fell, but her own eyes had other targets, and her sightline swiveled to all the familiar and unfamiliar faces, unsure of what to say first. All she could do was grip at the collar of the boy's shirt as she fumbled for a phrase, a joke to break the mood—anything.

The silence frightened her more than anything. Silence meant not knowing. Friend or foe…it was hard to tell with all those eyes on them. She would have felt more comfortable with her weapon, instead of tufts of the boy's hair between her fingers.

D solved that problem as his words finally found him.

"Amami?" he asked in quiet disbelief. Distrustful eyes bounced to his, and then back down to the ground. Pained by the action, he still could not blame her.

"Amami?" Claire parroted, looking down at him, and back at the one his eyes latched onto. As she observed the girl, whose lips pursed as if she wished to say something but dared not, a bitter distaste for the stranger filled her. Not because of who Amami was or what she looked like, but Claire was not a fool, and remembered what she read, and generally what she was told. She would have said something particularly nasty, but D's attention shifted. Thus, so did hers.

Both gazed upon a very familiar individual who had emerged from within the group newcomers. Reaching the front of the pack, looking tired and worn, came someone who offered that kind and patient smile that the both had been longing for. The pair found themselves speechless once again.

"I'm sorry it took so long," Bakura said, rubbing the back of his head in shame. Something else clouded his expression as well, but the children could not have cared less at that moment.

Tears sprung unabated from Claire's and D's eyes; grateful that someone or something had heard their mental pleas of unwavering faith and answered. The children were so relieved that the most recent catastrophe had played out in their favor and could not wait to celebrate this luck with Mai. Had they looked, they would have found the woman clinging to the painted wooden column of the porch—her eyes wide like she had just seen a ghost. For there were many ghosts before her. Yet, at that moment, nothing mattered more than their singular elation.

"Bakura-sama!"

"Bakura!"

The whole of the world ceased to exist for the trio as they clung to each other. Bakura encircled them with an embrace that shielded them from their former fears, and as the two buried their faces into those welcoming arms, the man turned his sights skyward. Unbeknownst to them, he let his tears of relief and guilt fall silently as he recalled his absence. That distant look never wavered, even as he resumed his smile to greet them up close.

Whether spurred by fate or luck, he knew their good fortune would run out soon.

If it had not already.