Disclaimer: I don’t own Yu-Gi-Oh! It belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.

Warnings: VERY ODD WRITING. Seriously, I need to stop having so much fun with the italics button...

Author’s Note: Well. Well. I honestly have NO IDEA where the freck this came from, I swear, it was totally random. I’m sorry, I really am. I haven’t actually had much to do with YGO since grade six when it was on public TV and the whole town was obsessed and THAT WAS QUITE A WHILE AGO but I’ve been reading a few fanfics on and off for months lately and then I downloaded some of the episodes a few days ago and it led to THIS MONSTRONSITY.
This is actually all Ame’s fault because she made me start reading some tendershipping fics which in turn made me want to write about Ryou who ended up becoming Yugi. :D
Now, I know that after the heart is weighed you’re supposed to take a very long walk fraught with peril and all before you get to Aaru but I didn’t have enough space for the walk, as I was aiming for a thousand words perfectly. :333
Beta’d by Ame because current beta wasn’t on and I need to post this while I still have the guts.

---

Hate is something Yugi knows he has no right to feel, hate is something he shouldn’t feel, and God knows it’s the one thing that should not be in his heart – not after everything. But he feels filled to the brim with it, all the time, always full and heavy, like a bucket full of stones and mud and muck, a lid slammed on top and then placed among several empty buckets, each clean and unburdened by these feelings. His rage and jealousy is poisoning his mind, making him sick with contempt and envy. He can feel the black sludge of it inside his heart and mind, weighing him down, drowning him in memories, and it’s driving him crazy.

He hates how he needs to hide it away, he hates how he has to play pretend, and he hates how no one really cares enough to stop and look at him. Well, no, that’s a lie – Ryou’s been looking for months, but he’s in the same state as Yugi, except he’s more whitewashed and tired, his body limp and unmoving. And perhaps Yugi hates him too, hates him for giving up and breaking down, like a toy that Yugi owned as a child, his favourite, that one day fell to pieces in his hands and could never be fixed again.

Ryou has ceased to exist fully and properly, and is immersed in his own world, one where his darkness holds him close and coos to him and beats him and presses to him and fills him upupup with satisfaction, while Yugi has to exist wholly and completely, has to force the smiles upon his face and push away his memories and close his eyes and grit his teeth and bear with it all. He has no world to retreat to, none at all, just a chasm of black, oozing sludge.

And the sludge is acid, he is sure of it, because he can feel his skin peeling away, feel his wealth of recollections fading into nothingness, blurring together into a mass of white noise, which is so loud in its message of ForgetforgetforgetHeneverexisted. He fears it so, fears losing his last hold of what is his, and his fear makes him hate, and his hate makes the black sludge-acid burn a hole even deeper into his heart. His fear and hate make his self, his existence, his very meaning fade away, until there is nothing of Yami’s or Atem’s or love, just a blackness that overwhelms.

Ryou says he should just give in and forget about the Others, about the world, and offers him the secret to remembering, on one of the days the white haired boy bothers to resurface. Yugi is sorely tempted, and his fingers twitch and his mind screams, but he shakes his head no, and walks home, leaving Ryou to his memories and his wretched happiness.

Because Yami, Atem, his love his life his meaning his light wouldn’t have wanted this for him. Or so he thinks, anyway. He rather imagines Yami-Atem would have been disappointed in Ryou, but then again he, he imagines the way it would feel to have arms wrap around his shoulders and a kiss to his temple and finds himself stopping in the middle of nowhere and everywhere, opting to stare at the sky.

Two cafes and a clothing boutique down, a little girl asks her mother why the boy has stopped in the middle of the road.

Yugi doesn’t hear the screams, the horn, so loud and crude, and he barely even feels the sudden crush of something against his body, not until he’s laying down for some reason, and the sludge, the acid, is bleeding out of him, not as thick as he thought it would be. Hmm.

It’s rather redder than he imagined, too.

And as it empties itself from his body he can feel the hole healing over, and his heaviness morphing into a light floating, and next thing he knows he can hear the sound of chatter and he’s standing in line, a large, overweight man dressed in a hospital gown with his belly spilling open in front of him while a little girl sniffles behind him, beaten blue and black.

He feels sedated, and he shuffles forward when asked, does as he’s told and watches, feeling rather detached as his heart is placed on a scale and weighed by a tall man with a dog’s head. He’s pushed forward when the scale tips upward, lighter than a feather, and then he goes and steps over to a group of boys his age. His surroundings twist and turn, and then he’s standing in a field of reeds, and he’s feeling again.

Yugi blinks once, and then twice, and frowns, wondering where he is. He turns around and around, taking in the beauty of this place, and the people who are here, all of them smiling and happy. What is this place?

He hears footsteps and he turns around, eyes widening and his mouth dropping open as strong, familiar arms gather him up and a kiss, sweet, soft, perfect, OhGodit’sYou is placed upon his lips and he can feel tears gathering on his lashes. It can’t be, but it is, it’s his wonderfulperfecthandsome Pharoah, holding him close and Yami-Atem-his-one-true-love is kissing him again. And then he draws back, hands resting lightly on Yugi’s shoulder as he smiles, and Yami-Atem opens his mouth to say something, but pauses, frowning. He touches Yugi’s forehead, and then his chest, and Yugi feels an odd sensation of fingers going through his chest, not on but in which can’t be right, it cannot.

“Aibou?”

And then he feels a jolt and he’s zapped away, laying in a bed with a wide eyed doctor looking down at him, while he can still remember the eyes and the angles of a face long forgotten, a smile and a whisper of touch and a breeze of a kiss of Yami-Atem still clear in his mind.