CHAPTER 8: THE BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR CLICHÉ

THE BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR CLICHÉ: The Genie in Disney's "Aladdin" has a point when he warns Aladdin he can't wish the dead back to life. Movies, plays and books have a lousy track record when it comes to reviving the dead. Either you end up blaming yourself for not following the rules, like Orpheus, who looks back and loses his beloved Eurydice, or it's horrifically unsuccessful as the grieving parents in "The Monkey's Paw" learn, or – as Victor Frankenstein would attest – you end up in a dysfunctional and toxic relationship with your own re-animated monster.

MORAL: Maybe the sheer number of stories warning us against seeking the dead are a testament to our desperate desire to see our loved ones again.

Kaiba squinted at his computer, bringing his thoughts into focus. He shook his head and applied himself to the latest production schedule. Work, at least, was cut and dried. He was good at it. Work never slipped through his fingers. And however one would classify his takeover of Kaiba Corporation, since then it had never served up pyrrhic victories.

Kaiba Corporation was producing Yugi's first game. The game was absolutely worthy of bearing the Kaiba Corporation label, but Kaiba had had a second motive; he'd wanted to please Atem, he'd hoped Yugi's involvement would draw him in.

It hadn't worked. All Kaiba had been left with was another product to launch.

His intercom sounded. Yugi was outside. Without an appointment. Kaiba frowned. This wasn't business, then – or at least, not Kaiba Corporation business.

Kaiba looked up as Yugi entered the room. Yugi didn't sit down. He walked to the window and then back to Kaiba's desk and leaned over it.

"I'm worried about Atem," Yugi said.

Kaiba grunted.

"This is the third time in a row that Atem's blown off a get together. I haven't seen him in over a week. And even when I go to the mansion, it's like talking to a ghost! What's going on?"

"Nothing's wrong," Kaiba muttered, not meeting Yugi's eyes.

(Everything was wrong.)

Yugi glared at Kaiba. He drew in a breath and exhaled in a huff. "What happened? Is this some side effect of leaving the after-life? For the first few months after you came back, everything was great! Then he started getting more and more… I don't know… like he was sleepwalking. He zones out in the middle of conversations. He keeps saying everything's fine, but it isn't and you know it."

"There's nothing physically wrong with him. I've had doctors flown in, the same ones used to check out astronauts after long periods in outer space. It was the closest I could get. I've run every test I could think of. Blood work, synaptic responses, muscle function, brain waves, reaction to stimuli, sleep cycles. It's all normal."

"He's not a lab rat!" Yugi said.

Kaiba stood up, pushing his chair halfway across the room. He shoved the papers on his desk, sending them flying. "You think I don't know that! I risked everything to go to the damn after-life and bring him back! I risked destroying every relationship I have here. You think I did that for a science experiment?"

"No. I know. It's just…" Yugi shrugged. "I thought this was what he wanted."

"He said it was."

"I thought he was happy."

"He said he was."

"You're the one who always challenged him," Yugi pointed out. "I think you need to do it again."

Kaiba sighed. He'd thought he was done with challenges. He thought everything had finally turned out right.

He'd been wrong.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Yugi asked.

"No." Yugi might have been Atem's partner, but Kaiba was his lover.

Yugi nodded and left.

Kaiba started to walk towards his chair, then swiveled, picked up the photo of him and Atem; it had been taken after their return. He threw it at the wall. The glass shattered. Kaiba left the office and headed home.

Atem was still in bed. His eyes were open. Kaiba looked at him, seeing all the details he'd avoided noticing: how Atem's hair drooped, how pale he was, as if the blood was slowly leaving his veins, how dull his eyes looked even when awake.

Atem smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. It never did, anymore.

Kaiba sat down next to him on the bed. "Congratulations. You managed to get Yugi worried enough to badger me in my office."

The color flooded back into Atem's face in a mockery of life. "I'm sorry. I'll call him."

"We've never held back, and I'm not going to start now. What the hell is going on?" Kaiba drew in a breath. "If you've decided you want to be with someone else or you want to be alone…"

"I never want to be alone!" Atem insisted.

"Something's wrong. I feel like I'm calling you back from the after-life every time we talk. When we eat, you push your food around the plate…"

"Nothing tastes the way it should. Not the beer or the honey or the fruit. Nothing tastes like home."

"This is your home!" Kaiba yelled.

Atem drew in a breath. He reached up and put a thin hand on either side of Kaiba's cheeks. "No, it isn't. I was wrong. The after-life was my home. It's where I truly belong and I left it."

"But you chose this world."

"No. I didn't. Not really. It took me months to realize what had happened." Atem put a hand over Kaiba's mouth. "Please, Seto. This isn't your fault. It's mine. When you arrived, all I could see was your need, the desperation that drove you to find me. I remembered Yugi, holding back tears, trying to assure me everything was fine. Answering that call felt so familiar, so right." He sighed and looked into Kaiba's eyes. With his hair streaming around him, his eyes awash with tears, Atem had a drowned look. "I was too used to sacrifice."

"Why don't you ever say anything?" Kaiba asked quietly, as if he too had drowned and was somewhere where breath wasn't needed. "You didn't tell me you were leaving, and then when I came to find you, you didn't tell me you wanted to stay."

"I didn't know how to choose back then. There you were: tall, proud. You'd just won a duel. Just like when I'd lost to Yugi, it felt like destiny. And then slowly, everything here started to feel wrong. Every breath I take, every bite I eat, every word I hear reminds me that I left my true home. Every morning is another day living in exile, and nothing, not even your presence can change that. You brought me back to the world of the living, but nothing can bring my soul to life. I'm dead, Seto. I belong in the home of the dead. The gods were right. It was the final lesson I had to learn. Now that I know what choice is, I know I made the wrong one."

"I never meant… I thought…" Kaiba said.

Atem nodded. "I know."

"I'll make this right. I'll figure something out!"

Atem's smile finally reached his eyes. "I think you've defied the gods long enough. They made their impatience with you clear on your last visit."

"I don't care. I'll find a way!"

"Seto, for once, all you have to do is stand still. The gods require balance above all things. My coming here broke that. They let me come anyway, and waited for me to understand. My world is calling me home. The gods are merciful. They're easing my passage."

"You don't want to fight it," Kaiba whispered. It was a statement, not a question.

"Thanks to you I understand choice, now… and this is mine."

"What if you're wrong?" Kaiba said. "What if you die and there's no homecoming?"

"Life gives no guarantees, and death even fewer. I'm choosing to stake everything on my beliefs. If I dissolve into nothingness, if my heart sinks beneath Ma'at's feather and Amit swallows me whole, at least I'll be heading home. It'll be my choice, even if it's the first and last one I truly make." Atem brushed Kaiba's lips with his own. "It's selfish of me, but I'm glad we had these months together." Atem reached up and wiped away a tear Kaiba didn't remember shedding.

"Did you ever…" Kaiba pressed his lips together, He started to turn his head, but Atem's hands held him in place.

"Yes. I love you. Always."

"How long until you leave?" Kaiba asked.

"It won't be long. I'm ready." Atem kissed Kaiba again. "Seto, try to understand. If we had both belonged to the same world, I would have gladly given you all the things you wanted from me and never asked for, everything you deserve." Atem gave a choked off sob. "I'll carry the memory of this time – I'll love you – throughout eternity."

"I've always understood choice and consequence," Kaiba said harshly. "I tried to impress Gozaburo by designing a game and ended up creating a military horror. I challenged him to a chess match to earn a home and almost lost Mokuba. But of all the choices I've made and all the consequences I've faced – even if I'd known that this was the outcome – I would have made the same one. I would still have come for you." Kaiba swept Atem into his arms as if the force of his embrace, the intensity of his kiss, could hold Atem to his world.

Kaiba gently lowered Atem until he was lying on the bed again, propped up among the pillows.

"I'll go call Yugi so you can say goodbye to him as well," Kaiba said.

He left the room and stepped back into limbo. Kaiba stopped short, trembling with relief. Atem was standing in front of him, gloriously alive, dripping with gold, his cape billowing behind him as if it too was rejoicing in their escape. They were surrounded by a bright blue sky. Distant fountains bubbled behind Kaiba. A river ran through the scene behind Atem.

Atem's hesitant smile held a plea: Prove that I'm here, that I exist, that I'm more than a ghost. Kaiba rushed to him. As they embraced, they fell to their knees, sobbing with leftover emotion. They refused to let go.

They lay on the clouds, as if on their graves, cushioned by a bed of ivy sprinkled with small white flowers. They didn't speak. Atem clasped Kaiba's hand in his. Kaiba shuddered. His grip tightened.

"I'm sorry," Kaiba said.

Atem rolled over until he was laying on top of Kaiba, resting his head on Kaiba's chest, listening to the beat of his heart. Kaiba was probably wondering why their hearts were bothering to beat at all in limbo; Atem was grateful for the reassurance.

How had he made the same mistake twice? Was he really so weak he followed anyone or anything ready to lay a path at his feet, as if he had no mind or will of his own? When had destiny turned into subservience, when had it started to chafe?

"So am I," Atem whispered. "Thank you, Seto."

Kaiba shivered at the sound of his given name. "For what?"

"For trying to give me a choice."

"I didn't. I wish it was true, but that's not what was going on, at least not all of it, either here or back home. I want like hell for you to look at me and see that guy – the one who has only your welfare at heart – but he's not me and I can't accept unearned laurels. Not from you. Never from you." He looked Atem straight in the eyes, waiting for his condemnation. "It wasn't selflessness or even friendship. You were one loss too many. I couldn't let you walk away and have that be the end."

"How can you go through world after world and still insist that everything is black and white? I refuse to be the stick you use to beat yourself with," Atem hissed.

"Stop trying to make me feel better!" Kaiba snapped.

"Why not? All we have here is each other."

Horakhty appeared above them in a shower of light. The blue of the sky was the perfect frame for her golden brilliance. "Are you both as alone as you think? Are the people you love so absent, here?"

"You again," Kaiba snarled, forgetting his insistence that she was an illusion. He jumped to his feet to face her. "What's the matter? Tired of sitting back and munching popcorn while you watch us stumble through world after world? Decided to make the game more interactive?"

Atem's face was wreathed in smiles. "You were waiting for us to understand. For me to learn to question. And you gave us a place to do it."

"Either interpretation is acceptable," Horakhty said calmly.

"Stop talking to her! She's not real!" Kaiba insisted.

Atem smirked. "That's your opinion."

"Either interpretation is acceptable," Horakhty repeated, matching Atem in smugness.

"So, you don't care if we believe in you or not?" Kaiba snapped.

"Happily, your belief does not affect my existence. Gods are all things at once, we are an endless well that each person draws from according to need. Some take strength and encouragement from us, others demand a foe to beat, a goad to push them onwards. There must be balance in all things. Even the multitudes of worlds achieve harmony. What happens in each world is what was meant to happen there."

"I'm calling bullshit on that one. Are you telling me I was meant to be dumped in an orphanage? That I had no hand in becoming CEO of Kaiba Corporation? One my aunt and uncle's greed and the other the result of my own hard work, intelligence and drive."

"Either interpretation is acceptable." Horakhty flared as brightly as the sun she'd briefly replaced and vanished.

"Don't think you got the last word!" Kaiba shouted.

Kaiba pulled off his Duel Disk and sat down. He opened it and stared at its guts. He had to fix this mess. And arguing with imaginary goddesses or wallowing in his own sins, his own arrogantly false assumptions, wouldn't help. He'd shown up at the Ceremonial Duel to free Atem, even if that now meant freeing him from Kaiba's reach.

"I'm done wasting time. I'm trying again." He growled and suddenly shouted up at the sky, "Did you hear me? I'm not giving up!"

Atem watched as Kaiba stared at his Duel Disk. Tendrils of fog floated in, softening their world. Atem hadn't understood more than one word in ten of Kaiba's explanation for how he was planning to use their Duel Disks to get home. And he recognized, as usual, Kaiba was retreating from the emotions they'd just undergone for the much safer realm of technology. Atem allowed the retreat. He shared it, had doubts of his own he didn't want to face but knew he had to. "Trying to create a doorway?" he asked.

"Eventually. Right now, I'd settle for creating a pineapple." Kaiba tried to focus. His Duel Disk was designed to let him visualize his cards, then project their image outwards. He'd made the proper adjustments for this world. He was sure of it. He double-checked anyway and closed the Duel Disk. He drew in a breath and concentrated on pineapples… remembering his mother testing them at the fruit store, the slight pop as she pulled out a leaf, the sweet smell… picturing his father cutting off the rind, then quartering them and stripping out the hard core. His mother would place each pineapple in the center of the table when they got home from shopping, as though it was an honored guest. Kaiba closed his eyes and concentrated on recreating its many faceted surface, the merging of yellows, reds, browns and greens in its rind.

The clouds remained stubbornly flowers, white and almost shapeless. He couldn't convince himself they were changing.

"Damn!"

What was he doing wrong? Or was it simply that, as always, he wasn't enough. He hadn't been enough for Atem to stay, hadn't been enough to say goodbye to. He hadn't been enough for his aunt and uncle to keep, even with Mokuba as bait.

Kaiba sat down abruptly, folded his arms on his raised knees and rested his chin on them, looking out at nothing. "That world we were just in… there was a pineapple on the counter at the mansion when I came home. Like it was mocking me. I could have studied it, except I didn't know it was important because I'd lost myself. I was right there, except I wasn't, not in any way that mattered."

"Yes! Exactly! It wasn't you, Seto. Or me."

Kaiba stared at Atem as though he could draw absolution from the blood red eyes gazing into his. Slowly, he nodded. "That Atem wasn't you either. You've had a chance to learn and grow that he never got. When we return to Egypt, I'll back whatever decision you make."

"How can you be so sure it'll be the right one?" Atem whispered. His face had taken on a drowned look again, under a rainless sky.

"We hold truths in our hearts, deeper than any faith in gods. I believe in you."

Atem drew in a breath, taking comfort from the fierceness of Kaiba's words, from the soft grayness of the world surrounding them.

Kaiba's gaze sharpened as if he could drill through the wisps of fog. "I'll see you get home to prove it."

The flowers had shaped themselves into pure white cups, partnered by long, dark green leaves. The sky above seemed to weep, although no rain fell. Kaiba unfolded his legs and moved until he was kneeling in the flowers, head up, eyes closed, seeing nothing. He tried to clear his mind.

It didn't work.

He could sense Gozaburo standing behind him, could feel the leather riding crop caressing the underside of his chin, could hear Gozaburo's voice, threatening, promising, dismissing. He could feel his eyelids start to droop. Kaiba re-lived his own powerlessness, his failure at so simple a task as keeping them open. He gasped. His eyes snapped open. He took in great gulping breaths of air. He wished he'd been in an alternative world, one he could leave when his appointed time was done, but he knew better. Memories lasted longer and returned more frequently.

"I hate it here," he mumbled.

Atem dropped to his knees, by Kaiba's side. "Seto?" he asked. "Talk to me."

"I've always believed that my fate was in my hands, that nothing, not random chance, or an icy road and a speeding car, or some malicious god or Gozaburo himself could stop me. We're stuck in a hellscape, designed to throw us into and out of lives that aren't ours, mocking us with choices we never made and can't control, just like I could never stop any of the worst moments of my life." Kaiba laughed. "Maybe that's just as well. Look what happened when I tried." He choked back a sob, looked into Atem's eyes and vowed, "I'll win. I will."

Atem reached out and cupped his face.

"We'll win."

"I don't get it," Kaiba said.

"What?"

"If you don't believe in any of my theories, that anything I'm doing is real, how can you believe we'll win?"

Atem smiled impishly. "You're not the only one to have faith in something beyond the gods. I believe in you – and in myself. I know there's an order here even if we can't see it. Just like friendship. Who knows? Maybe the gods want us to meet them halfway, maybe they want us to use our intelligence and even your technology to complete the journey they've set us on."

Kaiba grunted affectionately.

Atem shifted slightly. Some tension stole into his frame. "Seto, I have to know… back when we first got here… when you sliced your arm… were you trying to hurt yourself?"

"I was testing a theory… two of them, actually." Kaiba ducked his head, then admitted, "I didn't care if I hurt myself in the process. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

Kaiba dismissed Atem's question with trademark swiftness. "There has to be."

"I wonder about that too." Atem sighed. "Everything here – being thrown into a strange world you don't understand, assuming an identity without knowing if it truly belongs to you, finding a home only to be yanked away – to you it's nightmare fuel. To me, it's Tuesday. I was nameless in a world I'd never seen, with no memory of ever having been anywhere else, not sure of who I was or if I was anything at all but the stray thoughts in Yugi's head. I could command penalty games, but was powerless in everything else. When you dueled Isis, you said the only future you recognized was the one you built, step by step. I cheered for you. I wanted that to be true for someone, even if it couldn't be me."

Kaiba ran his hand through Atem's hair, drawing their heads closer together. "It could be."

"I'm sorry," Atem said suddenly, echoing Kaiba earlier.

"For what?"

"The Ceremonial Duel. Not telling you I was leaving."

"Don't be."

"We're friends. I kept saying that and then I hid something that big." Atem waved a hand as if he could point to the world they'd just left. "He told you the most difficult, painful thing he could. I wish I'd matched his courage."

"Then don't lie to me, now," Kaiba said harshly. "You didn't tell me because you knew how I'd react."

"I thought I did." The blood rushed to Atem's face. "I told you I was afraid you'd stop me, but even more, I was scared you wouldn't care, that you'd call me a loser and walk away without a backwards glance." His laugh was halfway to a sob. "And then I did it to you first."

Kaiba clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was impossible to tell who the annoyed sound was aimed at.

"But I was wrong on all counts," Atem continued. "You deserved the chance to rise above what I thought, instead of my assuming you couldn't."

Kaiba grunted in place of the answer he couldn't begin to shape into thoughts, let alone words. It was novel, having someone, having Atem, think the best of him, even – or maybe because – both of them knew Atem's original estimate was the more probable one.

Atem smiled. "I agree with that other Atem in this: I'm glad we got this time together."

Kaiba nodded. "I hate everything about this world but you, and that makes up for the rest. And I agree with that other Kaiba as well, if there's a price to be paid for this time, I'll pay it gladly."

Atem leaned his forehead against Kaiba's. "There's something about this place. I start asking how absolute the absolutes of my life really were. It's taught me that I can make choices, that refusing to do so, that letting myself drift is a choice as well and it has its own consequences."

It was Kaiba's turn to reach an arm out, to wrap it around Atem's shoulders. Atem leaned against Kaiba as the sky darkened to a velvet blue. They watched the newly formed stars in silence.

.

Thanks to Bnomiko for betaing this chapter!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: As someone who loves the pairing of Kaiba and Atem, I always picture Atem wanting to come back (or at least commute) to the world of the living. But since I keep asking myself: "What if?" I couldn't ignore the idea that maybe there could be a version of Atem who hadn't had time to learn about choice. And maybe that version would see Kaiba's arrival as destiny, only to discover that his true home was in the after-life. I could also see it as a catalyst for Atem and Kaiba to re-examine their own actions in a new light. And I couldn't resist a nod to the ending song of The Dark Side of Dimensions, "Something to Believe In" by having Kaiba tell Atem, "I believe in you."

FLOWER NOTE: The flowers in each chapter are actual flowers. However, for this chapter, they are lying on Simbelmynë, which grows on the graves of the kings of Rohan, in Middle Earth in "The Lord of the Rings." What can I say, I couldn't resist!

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.