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It’s exhilarating. The sharp looks of unease or even panic as pale faced students quickly leap to the side and let him pass. He revels in the way their eyes quickly drop to the floor before they can catch his gaze. The hall clears before him in a silent fumble of limbs and feet as the normally confident students of Academia immediately wither before him like weeds. A few students clearly didn’t recognize him, looking at him and the way the others jumped aside for him with confusion, only for their comrades to hurriedly grab them by the arms and yank them out of the way. Even Academia’s fend-for-yourself attitude did not extend to leaving poor fools to his flytraps’ jaws.
Had Yuuri the ability, he might have purred. It’s just so easy . And the scent of fear is always delicious.
He rounds the hall, leaving behind the nervous whispers of students who know him explaining why they’d had to drag those that didn’t aside for him. He smiles, and around him, he can hear the faint, satisfied hiss of his plants.
He walks all the way to the end of the hall where the door waits for him. He taps his Duel Disk to the lock, and it opens for him.
Inside, the Doctor’s little pets squirm around in their tanks, their glowing fluid setting the room afire with a cold, unnatural light. In the artificial light, the two shadows of the Doctor and the Professor stand at the end of the room. Yuuri can hear their voices, soft but faintly echoey in the large, metallic room.
The Professor notices him first, eyes lifting at the sound of his feet. There is no smile or warmth in his eyes, only a nod. Yuuri does smile, wide and venomous, hoping to catch a reaction in the Professor’s eyes.
He does not. The Professor simply stares at him with his dark, expressionless eyes, and then looks back to the Doctor to finish his sentence. Yuuri keeps smiling. It’s no matter. Someday, the Professor will slip again. Someday, his cold, affected persona will droop just a bit; he’ll be caught just a little off guard, like he had once, a very long time ago, when Yuuri was little more than a child. Yuuri remembers very little of his childhood, most of it a blur of events that he doesn’t often take the time to examine in more detail. But he treasures that one small memory, of the day he’d seen the Professor’s mask slip for one imperceptible moment, and Yuuri had known the truth.
The truth that the Professor is afraid of him.
“Yuuri,” the Professor says finally, turning to him. “You were prompt.”
“But of course, Professor. What good would my training have been if I weren’t?”
The Professor raises an eyebrow at him, sensing Yuuri’s playfulness. But there isn’t any hint of the fear that Yuuri is positive lurks beneath his mask. He’ll see it soon. He’ll definitely see it. If he keeps being the monster that the Professor wants him to be, someday, the Professor will not be able to hide it. And when that happens...
I won’t card him. I’ll rip him apart with my vines. Scatter his entrails over the floor.
Oh, my. What a violent thought. Venom, was that one yours?
Oh. Wait. No, that was me. My apologies, Venom. I’m sure you liked the idea too, though.
Not violent enough? Oh, we’ll think of something then. Or was that me again? Are you even speaking today, Venom?
“Yuuri,” the Professor says, with a low, irritated tone that indicates he’d had to repeat whatever he’d said several times.
Yuuri carefully extracts himself from his thoughts, trying hard not to look quite as euphoric as the daydreams of ripping Akaba Leo apart have made him.
“Yes, Professor, my apologies,” he says, smiling sweetly. “What was it that you wanted again?”
“I dare you to eat it.”
Yuuri glares at her.
“That’s so stupid.”
She grins. There’s a big streak of mud across her face, and her hair’s fallen out of her ponytail. Her knees are all scuffed up, and so are his, from all the rocks they climbed to get up to the plateau where the last stand of trees on Academia island were.
She pokes at the worm they found while digging for beetles. It wriggles at her touch. He wrinkles his nose.
“Eating that would be bad for you.”
“Nuh-uh. They got uh....protween. It’s good for you.”
“It’s protein.”
“Whatever, nerd.”
He rolls his eyes. He picks up the worm, holding its thin, wriggling shape in his fingers and staring at it. It’s slightly slimy to the touch. How does it see? He’s never seen a worm before.
“Eat it, eat it, eat it,” she chants, pumping her fists up and down.
“You’re disgusting. I’m not going to eat it.”
“Wiiiiiimp!”
“If you’re so keen on it getting eaten, then you eat it!”
He thrusts the worm in her face, and she squeaks, falling back onto her butt. Her eyes cross trying to look at the worm. After a beat, she puts her hands out, and he drops the worm into her hands.
They both stare at it for a while, watching it wriggle, poking around blindly.
Then, gently, she puts it back on the ground.
“It would be kinda mean to eat it,” she said. “I’m not even hungry.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Nice excuse. You were just grossed out, weren’t you?”
“Was not!”
“Was too!”
“Was not!”
She punches him on the shoulder hard enough for him to fall back from his toes and onto his butt. She laughs suddenly at his bluster of indignation, and leaps to her feet.
“Last one back to the dorm is a rotten egg!”
“Hey, no fair!” he shouts, leaping up to try and catch up on her lead.
Her hair flaps as he chases her, but suddenly, it’s as though no matter how fast he runs, he can’t get any closer. He reaches out, his tiny hands trying to grasp for her back. Wait — why won’t she wait?
Who is she?
Why can’t he remember her face?
“What is your name?”
Yuuri looks up. He’s seen the big man a few times before. He comes and talks to some of the other teachers sometimes, but he’s not a teacher, at least, as far as Yuuri knows. He’s really big, with big broad shoulders and a balding head, and dark eyes that are set deep in his face. Yuuri stares at him for a really long time, waiting to see if he asks again. No one ever really talks to him — or any of the other kids in his group, except to yell at them. They’re the ones who got left here by parents who were gone, or ones that didn’t want them.
There’s a little girl standing next to him. Oh, Yuuri knows that girl. That girl is...
“What’s your name?” the man asks again.
That girl says something. “Pay attention, Yuuri!” Something like that. Right?
“I’m Yuuri,” Yuuri says. “Why?”
The man does not smile, and his dark eyes do not change.
“I saw your duel earlier,” he said. “You’re very talented.”
Yuuri can’t help but smile proudly at that. He knows that he’s talented. He’s better than anyone else in this school.
The girl sticks her tongue out at him, as though she can sense what he’s thinking. Whatever, their win-loss rate is pretty even! He’s got slightly more wins than her if he remembers right.
If he remembers right?
Who is this girl anyway?
Is she really even here?
This memory isn’t coming together.
Or maybe someone else is tugging it apart.
“I’m really good,” he says. “My monsters are really strong.”
“I can see that,” the man says. “How long have you been dueling?”
“Who are you?” Yuuri asks. “Why do you want to know about that?”
His lips press together briefly, and Yuuri wonders if he imagines the darkening in his eyes.
“You may call me Professor Akaba,” he says.
“You’re not my professor,” Yuuri says.
She snaps at him to be more polite. Akaba-sensei is a really special teacher. He’s going to be teaching here from now on.
Did she tell him that? Or did the professor say that?
Why can’t he remember?
“You have very special skills, Yuuri,” Professor Akaba says. “I’d like to put you in a special class, where you can grow more strongly. You have a very strong purpose in this school.”
He puffs up his chest, pleased. That’ll show all of those dumb kids who always made fun of him and tried to push him around. Wait til they see that he’s in a special class, for people who aren’t dumb like them.
The girl is mad when the Professor says he’d like to talk to Yuuri alone. “You said I was in the special class too!” “I had a chance to talk to you alone first. I’d like to speak with Yuuri-san.”
The girl is gone. He’s just with the professor now.
Was the girl even there to begin with?
Did he make her up?
It feels like they’re walking forever down the long winding hallways of Academia. Yuuri clutches his cards to his chest, wondering what kind of special class this could be. The professor leads them through the middle of the school and out into the courtyard. There’s a soft trickle of water from the fountain, where students throw coins as good luck charms for exams. No one is here today, though, and the professor takes them on a very long and winding path through the whole courtyard, past all the benches, and they’re all empty. Yuuri gets impatient.
“Professor? Where are we going?”
He’s brought them back to the middle, where the fountain is. The coins glitter dully in the pool, the sky thick and cloudy overhead.
The Professor stares down at him for a long moment. His eyes are so dark.
“Yuuri,” he says. “What are your feelings towards shshshshshshsh ?”
He doesn’t hear the name.
Or maybe he did then, but he doesn’t remember it now.
“What a stupid question. She’s a nag. She thinks we’re friends.”
“And are you?”
He can’t answer. Does he have friends?
Who is she? What did he answer? He doesn’t remember.
What is he trying to remember?
There’s a hand on the back of his head. His cards are exploded on the ground all around his feet, having flown from his hands when he flailed. His hands smack and slap at the water, clawing against the bottom of the pool and stirring up clouds of fallen coins, but the hand on his head does not let him back up. His face is deep under the water and he can’t breathe in he absolutely can’t breathe in or he’ll die but he needs to breathe —
Vines vines vines, the taste of blood in his mouth even though he’s pretty sure he wasn’t the one who bit, he’s soaking and sopping on the ground, gasping and struggling to see, his wet hair dribbling over his cards, his precious cards, but the monsters aren’t in them right now —
They’re out, and screaming.
Then there’s darkness. The rough feel of cobblestone digging into his cheeks, his fingers clinging to cards that have suddenly been very neatly gathered back into his hands and hugged to his chest. There’s someone swearing slightly, and he almost thinks he can smell the blood that drips onto the stone. A hand grabs him by the back of his shirt and hauls him up.
“Make absolute certain he doesn’t remember this happened,” the dark voice snaps, shaking with anger.
Yuuri blinks. He’s standing next to the professor in front of the fountain. His cards are in his hands. Has he been here the whole time? Why does it feel like a long time has passed?
The sky overhead is a clear blue.
Was it blue before?
The professor is staring at the pool, and Yuuri feels something like a memory clawing at the back of his brain. Something about...not breathing. Something that makes him want to scream and run. He feels panic clawing at his chest, all of a sudden.
The professor looks at him. His dark eyes bore into Yuuri’s. Yuuri's chest swells with unease, with a whispering reminder that he needs to run away.
But then something cracks.
And for a moment, Yuuri sees fear hidden in those dark eyes. Fear. Fear of him .
The professor is scared of him.
The fear in Yuuri's chest dissipates. He stares, lips parting, eyes wide with shock. Afraid of him. The professor is afraid of him.
How can he be afraid of someone who fears him?
“As I was saying,” the professor says. “I have a special series of courses for you, Yuuri. You’ll meet your first teacher tomorrow.”
“What are you looking at?”
Dennis greets him by flopping over him, dangling his arms over Yuuri’s shoulders. Yuuri moves so that he slides off, nearly hitting the floor.
“Mean,” Dennis says with a half laugh.
“In my space,” Yuuri responds.
“I thought you liked me in your space.”
Yuuri shoots him a look over the top of his screen, and Dennis sends him a goofy grin in response. Yuuri rolls his eyes, and scootches over to the side of the bench so that Dennis can sit next to him. He does so, pressing up as close to him as he can so that their thighs are touching.
“Plans,” Yuuri says, in response to Dennis’s original question, showing him the tablet screen. “The Professor has a package for me to collect in Synchro.”
“Wow, already?”
“Mm. It seems the Synchro plant found their package at around the same time you found yours.”
Dennis goes quiet then. It’s not that he was speaking before, but Yuuri is hyper attuned to the movements of the emotions of others, especially Dennis. His body seems to go slightly cold and stiff beside him.
“Don’t tell me you’re still moping,” he says dismissively. “You knew your duty when you went to Heartland.”
“I’m not moping,” Dennis says cheerily. “Why would I be moping?”
Yuuri’s eyes flash up. Dennis is smiling, but his eyes are closed. It’s a familiar expression. It’s the one he makes when he’s trying to pretend that he’s all right.
It makes Yuuri angry.
He drops the tablet and moves. Dennis’s eyes fly open as Yuuri straddles him across the bench, pinning him hard against its back with one hand on his chest and the other curled into his hair to force him to look back.
“Don’t make that face,” Yuuri says. “I don’t like that face.”
“I know,” Dennis says, smiling in the way he always does, even though Yuuri is probably hurting him.
“You’re mine,” Yuuri says. “That means you can’t do anything I don’t like.”
“That’s the promise I made. I’ll stop making that face, Yuuri.”
Yuuri feels a tremble claiming him all at once, and his throat closes up. He’s not sure where it’s coming from, but he knows when Dennis notices.
“You’re...you’re mine,” he mumbles.
Oh fuck, he can’t stop trembling. There’s a scream in his head.
Is that one you this time, Venom? Are you screaming?
Oh. I see. It’s both of us.
Yuuri falls off the bench, falls off of Dennis. His body can’t hold itself up anymore. He hears Dennis as though from a distance, and thinks with the rising tide of his panic that they are in public and anyone might come around the corner in the corridor and see him like this, a helpless trembling mess —
Dennis leans over him, and Yuuri grabs him by the collar, hauling him closer.
“Take me somewhere else,” he orders, his voice cracking.
Dennis has done this before. He’s the only one who’s allowed to see Yuuri like this.
Dennis carries a stumbling Yuuri through the back halls until they’re in his room. Yuuri immediately slides to the floor, and Dennis moves to close the door.
The panic spikes.
“Don’t close it!” he hisses. “Venom, don’t let him close it!”
Dennis doesn’t respond, and Yuuri’s not even sure if he’s still there. He cradles his head in his hands.
“Venom, where are we, where are we, which one is me? I can taste it, Venom, did you bite him or did I? Venom, Venom, Venom, my darling, Venom —”
The doors are closing in on him. His screams aren’t reaching anyone. He can’t even remember where this comes from. Can’t remember can’t remember can’t remember.
Big, rough hands, pinning him by the neck to the wall.
“You’re mine, you little shit, and you won’t forget that easily,” he growls. The face is half remembered — a rough, coarse face, grizzled by warfare. Thick gray mustache. A crop that he loves to swing at the barest provocation.
“I don’t want to go back in the box, I don’t want to go back in the box.”
“Yuuri. Yuuri.”
His name is Sanders. He is quick to strike. Yuuri learns not to avoid the smacks — if he takes one, Sanders is less likely to hit him more for daring to dodge him.
“I’m going to turn you into a soldier,” he screams into the only tears Yuuri remembers crying. “You’re my monster now.”
Darkness. Darkness and cold and he doesn’t even remember when he saw light last and oh fuck, Venom, Venom, say something, talk to me.
I am talking to me.
Venom, is that you? Which one am I? Am I you, Venom?
“Yuuri. Yuuri.”
Dennis puts his hands on Yuuri’s shoulders.
Yuuri screams and smacks him across the face.
“Get away from me, Macfield!” he screams. “Stay away from me!”
Dennis doesn’t yell. Yuuri doesn’t even see if he leaves. He just curls up into a ball, tucks his head between his knees, and tries to remember how to forget.
It’s so much easier when he doesn’t remember a thing.
He hears voices. Whispering and arguing in low voices. He can’t move his wrists or his head or his ankles or any part of him, actually. He struggles. His hands — his hands are strapped to the table. There’s straps around his head and his torso and his ankles and what is he doing here? He hisses with anger and frustration, and the voices stop.
“Up his dose. That should have kept him out longer,” comes a voice that Yuuri remembers. Jean-Michel Roger, he recalls. He’s supposed to be Yuuri’s newest teacher. His third in as many months since he’d left Sanders’s tutelage. Since Sanders had flung him out after Yuuri had nearly killed him, actually. And he’d been so close, too.
A needle sinks into his arm. He feels drowsy again. Starving Venom hisses with anger at being so confined, and Yuuri wants to hiss too, but he’s so tired. He goes back under.
We need to wake up.
I know, Venom.
This sleep is bad for us. We need to get up. They’re doing something to me.
Venom? What are they doing to me? How do we know?
Agh! What was that ?
Starving Venom screams, and there’s a thick haze of static that fills him from his head to his chest and spread outward through his blood. Something in his brain shorts out with electricity, and he thinks perhaps he screamed.
Move .
That isn’t his thought, or Starving Venom’s. That’s someone else’s thought.
Move.
His body moves. He screams against the inside of his brain. Why is his body moving without his permission?? Why does his head hurt so badly?
“It looks like it’s going to hold. Try a more complex command.”
“Yuuri, stand up. Lift your arms.”
Why was he doing this? Who was telling him what to do?
He screams. Something inside him gets thick and choking, smoke hazing over him like a fire that had suddenly burst to life in his chest. He and Starving Venom let out a shriek until they are only one creature.
Yuuri wakes up later with blood all over his hands. He hears the happy shriek of his plants, and tastes the blood that they lap up from the floor. His head hurts.
Ah, he thinks through a haze, looking down. He is on top of a doctor. The doctor’s neck is twisted the wrong way. Yuuri’s slick hands are on his throat. How curious.
He hears a cough, a terrified scrambling of limbs. He looks up.
Jean-Michel Roger untangles himself from a fallen, twisted medical cart, scalpels and tools sliding off of him as he stumbles back to hold himself up against the wall. There is blood splattered across his front, and as Yuuri considers his pale ashen face, he notes that there are two other bodies on the ground. One is stabbed through with a scalpel in the heart. Another looks as though its been stabbed multiple times with something thin. Ah. That must be where his plants were getting the blood.
“Sedate him,” Roger gasps, his voice warbling with panic.
Yuuri feels something akin to satisfaction while a dart strikes him in the neck, sending him back off to sleep.
“Is that you, Venom? Was that your thought?”
“I think so. Maybe I’m talking to myself.”
“No, but I can hear you. I can hear you. Don’t worry, pet, love, we’ll get to kill more soon. You want that, don’t you?”
“I want that? Well, you wanted it first.”
“Yes, we both want it. We both want it so much. I...which one is me, and which one is you, Venom? I don’t know who’s talking right now. Whose thoughts are these?”
“Both of ours? That’s...all right then. Yes, that’s all right.”
“It’s all right if our thoughts are the same. It doesn’t matter who thought it, or who said it, or who’s talking.”
“We both want the same thing anyway, isn’t that right?”
Yuuri stands over the cards that have fallen to his feet. The Professor will scold him for this, he thinks. He was supposed to stop carding Academia students.
The last remaining heckler turns and runs. Yuuri considers pursuing. It might be fun, to slowly track them down, work them up into a frenzy until they finally broke down and let him slit their throats. Metaphorically, of course. Carding is easier. And cleaner.
He feels dizzy. Why is he dizzy? His ribs ache. Ah, that’s right. He’d forgotten that Sanders had beaten him today for talking back to an order. That’s why he was out here, and why’d he’d gotten surrounded by some older students who thought they’d found an easy target. He’s leaving Sanders, since he’s such a terribly useless teacher.
“You think so too, don’t you, Venom?” he says. “He won’t let us have any fun.”
“Who are you talking to?”
Yuuri’s eyes widen. He feels himself tense and bristle, hears his plants and his dragon hissing.
The boy must be about his age, eleven or twelve. He sits on a nearby wall, kicking his feet back and forth. He has pale skin, bouncy orange hair, and a small beauty mark under one eye.
Yuuri smiles at him. People seem to run when he smiles at them.
“Do you want to be a card, too?” he asks.
The boy doesn’t run. In fact, he smiles back.
“Not really,” he says. “You’re really good.”
Yuuri stops smiling. He gapes. Who is this?
“Aren’t you scared of me?” he demands.
The boy blinks. He leans on his hands.
“Do you want me to be?”
Yuuri considers this. Since he’s become Sanders’s personal student under Leo’s orders, he’s been trained in the art of total annihilation. The students sent against him are destroyed in moments, no matter how many of them take him on at once. When he sneaks out of the complex he’s supposed to stay in, he hears people talk about him — call him the beast of the hunting grounds.
It reminds him of the vague memory of the fear in the professor eyes. It makes him excited.
“Everyone is scared of me,” he says. “I’m a monster.”
The boy tilts his head, looking Yuuri up and down.
“You don’t look like much of a monster,” he says.
Yuuri glares at him. Who is this boy, anyway?
“I can prove it,” he says, raising his duel disk.
The boy holds up his hands.
“I saw clearly enough how you duel,” he says.
“You are scared,” Yuuri says triumphantly. “You don’t want to duel me.”
The boy considers this, tilting his head. He rubs his chin.
“I’ll give it a go, then,” he says, jumping from the wall. He’s already wearing a duel disk, and his hair bounce around his face when he lands with a smile. “Don’t go too easy on me.”
His deck is decimated in three turns. One turn longer than Yuuri expected, but still a decisive victory. Yuuri raises his Duel Disk.
“Are you going to run?” he asks. “I’ll play tag if you’d like.”
But the boy doesn’t run. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t cry. He only closes his eyes. Yuuri stares. A long moment passes.
“Are you going to card me?” the boy asks, without opening his eyes.
“Why aren’t you scared ?” Yuuri demands, frustrated tears bubbling to his eyes.
The boy opens his eyes. He’s a little taller than Yuuri. Yuuri has to look up to meet his gaze.
“Why do you need me to be scared?”
Need. Yuuri’s ears catch on the ‘need.’ He hesitates. Why does he need this boy to be scared of him.
Yuuri’s fists tighten, he marches to the boy, until they’re inches apart. The boy doesn’t flinch, but he’s not defiant. Just curious, it seems.
“I won’t card you,” Yuuri says. “I’m going to keep you.”
“Keep me?”
“That’s right. I won. You’re mine now.”
The boy actually quirks a smile.
“You’re funny,” he says.
Yuuri scowls at him, lifting his arm to press the blade of his Duel Disk against the boy’s throat.
“I could card you instead.”
The boy just smiles bigger. He pushes the blade away lightly, and then bows to Yuuri.
“You have a funny way of making friends,” he says.
Something about that makes Yuuri hesitate. Why does the word ‘friend’ make him feel sick?
He thinks he remembers the hint of a ponytail, disappearing around a corner, a chortling laugh, a pair of skinned up knees and a grin with a smudge at the end of her cheek.
“What are your feelings about shshshshsh? ”
“She’s annoying. She thinks we’re friends.”
“And are you?”
“...I guess we are.”
And then water. Cold, choking water and — silence. The silence of an empty, buzzing brain.
“No!” Yuuri half screams. “We are not friends! I don’t have any friends!”
The boy’s smile slips. He doesn’t look scared, and Yuuri wants him to be — he just looks concerned. Yuuri screams, stomping his feet.
“I don’t have friends! I don’t have friends! I don’t have friends!”
‘Friend’ hurts. ‘Friend’ makes the fear rise up in his chest. ‘Friend’ means someone is going to hurt him.
“Okay,” the boy says then, quietly. “We’re not friends.”
“We’re not,” Yuuri hisses. “You’re mine. That’s all there is. You’re just mine. It’s not friends.”
The boy bows low again, actually taking a knee in front of Yuuri. Yuuri stares down at him, angry at the tears that bubble in his eyes.
“All right,” he says. “I’m yours then.”
That boy is still chasing him around. It’s a bit amusing to be the one chased for once — he’s so adorably pathetic at hunting. Avoiding him is so easy Yuuri can only laugh.
He lands neatly on a dock, dusting off his shirt. Amusements aside, he needs to get to his true objective — hunting his own quarry.
He steps forward.
“Hm? What was that Venom?”
“Oh? You didn’t say anything? It must have been me, then. How curious.”
“I almost thought I — ”
His chest clenches up. He feels heat explode through him, and he stops dead. All at once, it’s hard to breathe. He’s panting as though he’s run a marathon, his entire body trembling. For one, panicked moment, he thinks he’s having another blackout moment. Dennis is not here to hide him from prying eyes this time.
Then the heat pulses through him, and a glorious feeling of euphoric rage fills him. He feels Starving Venom crying out with joy — or maybe that’s him, or both of them. He can’t be sure.
DESTROY. DESTROY.
DESTROY.
A wild laugh tore out of him. Yes, yes, yes, he wants to! He wants to destroy it all, rip it down, tear apart the world! He feels so full and complete, whole for the first time he can ever remember. He feels real.
He awakes on his back, staring up at the sky. His fingers buzz the way they do when he’d just been in a duel. But who...who had he been dueling?
And that feeling ...that beautiful, euphoric feeling of wholeness. His chest aches. Starving Venom and he let out a thin, lonely keen. Where did that feeling go?
He wants again. He wants it oh so badly again.
“Come come, darling, don’t make this difficult,” he soothes. “You can only run for so long.”
He walks leisurely, knowing that the girl has nowhere to run. Up ahead, around the corner, he hears a frustrated cry. He smiles widely as he rounds the corner. There she is, digging her hands into the broken down wall, as though she means to climb it.
She flinches at the sound of his Duel Disk turning on.
“You can try to climb that, and I can drag you back down screaming,” he says. “Or you can come with me to see the professor.”
He wonders if she’ll cry. Most of his victims always have. He hopes she cries. He wants to see how scared she is, cornered by her predator.
She turns. Her body is stiff, and yes, there is fear in her eyes. But her jaw is set. Her fists are tight. And she raises her Duel Disk. She is afraid of him — but she will not fear him.
For some reason, this knowledge makes him tremble with a body-wracking euphoria. He trembles with anticipation. This is what he wanted! A worthy hunt, a worthy foe! This lovely package that the Professor has sent him to retrieve is giving him exactly what he’s wanted!
“We’ll play a game then,” he says, his voice dripping with excitement, Venom humming with him. “And if I win, you come with me.”
“Don’t think you can beat me so easily,” she says, her voice trembling but hard.
A cloud moves out from behind the moon, and illuminates her face.
He remembers a girl with scuffed up knees and a nagging voice, putting her hands on her hips and calling him stupid.
He hesitates — and curses himself for it. What on earth was that??
The excitement in his chest is gone. The clouds move back over the moon, and he can only hope that she didn’t see him falter.
Who is that? he he thinks.
Why does my chest hurt?
He is practically vibrating with the thrill of it. He can still taste the panic on his victims’ voices, still trembles with the utter euphoria of tracking them down as they slowly fall apart realizing that they can’t escape him.
He climbs free of the jungle field, barely even feeling the artificial heat and humidity. For all he cares, the sweat that plasters his hair and clothes to his body comes from his own excitement. What poor, poor fools Sanders’s brand new elite students had been, what unlucky bastards. The jungle was his, this field was his home — and the hunt was always his game.
His spoils, five fresh new cards, dangle from his fingers. He smiles as he shows them to Sanders when he reaches the control room, and is pleased to see the barely suppressed fear that flashes in the old man’s eyes. It is not the first time he’s seen Sanders fear him, but it is the most satisfying.
The Professor stands silently beside Sanders, watching him with that impassive gaze. He doesn’t see the fear there. Not yet. But soon. Soon he won’t be able to hold it back.
Yuuri tosses the cards to the floor at the Professor’s feet, maintaining eye contact.
“I think I’ve outgrown Sanders-sensei,” he says sweetly.
The Professor’s lips press together.
“Perhaps you have.”
Yuuri can still hear the echoes of his screaming victims, his classmates that he so mercilessly picked off one at a time. Tracking them, tailing them, dragging out the game for several hours longer than it should have been, while his helpless victims struggled to flee him in vain as soon as they realized they could not defeat him.
He suppresses a shiver of delight imagining the Professor is the one to flee this time.
The Professor does not smile, nor does he flicker with fear. But a darkness passes over his eyes, something akin to a stain of regret and hatred.
“What sort of a look is that, sir?" Yuuri asks with a smile. "You look at me as though you see a monster."
The Professor only stares at him.
"And am I wrong?" he asks in his soft, monotone voice.
Yuuri can't help but giggle.
"Of course not," he says. "But remember, dear Professor - I'm a monster that you made."
He laughs, and Venom laughs, or maybe it’s just him. He turns on his heels and scampers from the room like an excitable child, letting Sanders and the poor, poor Professor try to to deal with the imprint of his presence.
“Are you all right?”
Yuuri blinks. He’s not sure where he was a moment ago Dennis is leaning in front of him, looking at him sideways. Yuuri huffs.
“I’m fine,” he says. “You should worry about yourself.”
“Where do you go when you space out like that?” Dennis asks.
Yuuri’s lips press together. His eyes flick away from Dennis’s rather than meet that searching gaze.
“Don’t ask me stupid questions. That’s an order.”
Dennis doesn’t immediately lean back though. Yuuri can still feel him watching. It’s all he can do to bite back the sudden panicked sweat beneath his jacket. Dennis has seen too much of him already. He can’t show any more of himself.
If others know him, they won’t fear him. How can they fear a boy who disappears from his own brain and doesn’t know where he’s gone when he comes back? Who only remembers a cold sweat blanketing his skin and a half digested memory that doesn’t quite fit into the timeline he does remember of his life?
His flicker of eyes catches on something.
“Sucker,” he hears a voice cut across the courtyard. “Coming at me with such blatant moves like that? You’re so stupid. And you call yourself an Academia student?”
He looks across the wall beside him, into the courtyard. There’s a girl there, cracking her knuckles. She throws her ponytail back over her back. The ribbon in her hair is clean and starched, her uniform in pristine condition. He’s never seen her before.
She turns, and he catches a look at her profile. Something about it makes him stop.
He’s never seen her face before.
Right?
“Dennis,” Yuuri says. “Who is that?”
Dennis finally stops staring at Yuuri to look.
“Her? That’s Selena,” Dennis says. “You’ve never seen her before? She’s kind of a big deal. She’s the Professor’s personal student — rumor’s going around that she’s his illegitimate love child or something. Great duelist, but she’s not allowed to leave the school.”
Yuuri can’t stop staring at her. At the curve of her grin, the confidence of her stance.
He remembers a girl with mud streaked over her face, holding a worm in his face and daring him to eat it.
“Yuuri?” Dennis asks.
Yuuri has his hand on his forehead. Starving Venom whines. For just a moment, Yuuri can feel it, for the first time in what feels like a hundred years — the clear boundary between himself and his dragon. Starving Venom shakes with unease, but Yuuri feels...empty.
“You’ve really never met Selena before?” Dennis says. “That seems weird. You should be in the same circles.”
She turns, and looks across the courtyard. But her gaze does not meet his. It looks past him. Flickers across him and Dennis as though they’re part of the scenery. Then she turns away, and she is gone.
Yuuri stares at the place where she had been. He coils with distaste — or maybe that’s Starving Venom. It’s both of them. It always is. Just the two of them, and the static that fills his head.
“No,” he says. “I’ve never met her before.”
Oh.
He remembers things.
Oh.
It hurts.
All he can hear is his own screaming. It’s all tumbling through him, all crashing over him, all at once. He remembers everything . Oh god. He remembers everything.
He remembers. He remembers. He remembers. Every memory, taken from him by force or by trauma, it all floods him. Venom — where is Venom?? He can’t take all this remembering by himself!
“Hey, hey, hey! Hey....hey...it’s okay.”
It hurts. It hurts so much . He doesn’t want to remember. If he remembers, no one will be afraid of him! He’ll be too scared to move under the weight of all this remembering!
He remembers being nine years old. He remembers the hatred in Akaba Leo’s eyes when he said that he was friends with Selena. He remembers Akaba Leo holding his head under the water in the fountain. He remembers his tiny body, unable to handle the dragon that tried to burst out from inside him to protect him, contorting and biting into the Professor. He remembers the memory wipe afterward.
He remembers being eleven and locked in a cage.
He remembers being thirteen and strapped to a table with a drill stuffing a chip into his brain, and a scientist demanding that his body do as commanded.
He remembers Selena.
He remembers being ten years old, and seeing Selena run across the courtyard to him.
“Where have you been??” she demands. “I haven’t seen you in weeks!”
He stares at her.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But who are you?”
He remembers the horror in her eyes. The way she grabbed at his jacket and told him that that wasn’t funny. And then the Obelisk soldiers dragging her away, screaming.
He remembers that the next time he saw her, she didn’t remember him either.
“I don’t want to remember,” he begs. He is crying. Oh god. Everyone will see him crying. “I don’t want to remember!”
Arms. Arms fold around him, tucking his head against a shoulder.
“Hey,” says a voice, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. “Hey. It’s okay. Breathe. Let us take some of it.”
Yuuri doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know where he is.
He feels tears dribble down onto his cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” someone says. “You’ve been dealing with this all this time?”
“Let go of me,” Yuuri gasps. “Let go.”
He’s surprised when he’s obeyed.
He doesn’t know where he is. This isn’t a place, so much as it is...a concept, he realizes.
He also recognizes the boy in front of him. He’s remembering the more recent things, now.
Sakaki Yuya sits on the ground in front of him. He’s crying. Why is he crying? Yuuri puts a hand to his throat, feeling the bulge of tears there.
“Oh,” he whispers. “We did it. We became one.”
He remembers it all, now. Being Zarc. Destroying. The utter bliss of it all.
It doesn’t feel like bliss in hindsight. He hurts. So much.
He flinches back when Yuya reaches toward him.
“Stay away from me,” he hisses. Yuya’s seen too much — oh fuck. He’d never thought of that. Becoming one — Yuya’s seen all of him. The other two have, too. And they’re standing there in front of him too, he realizes.
Yuya is still holding out his hand.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, Yuuri,” he says. “You’re safe.”
“Me?” Yuuri says, voice breaking with indignation. “Afraid? I’m not the one who’s afraid! You are the ones who should be afraid of me!”
But there’s no fear in any of their eyes. Oh god, there’s no fear. They’re not afraid of him. They’re not afraid of him .
Yugo looks like he’s crying. Yuto can’t even look up, trembling slightly.
“Stop pitying me!” Yuuri screams. “We’re — I can take control of this body!! I’ll assimilate all of you! Destroy you!”
Yuya’s hand does not drop. He simply looks at Yuuri, head on, never dropping his gaze. Yuuri is crying. He’s crying in front of these fools. How could he let them see this?
“Yuuri,” Yuya says, soft. “You don’t have to scare everyone away anymore. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
“I’m...I’m not the one who’s afraid,” Yuuri gasps.
But he can see himself, inside this shared mind, through the others’ eyes. Through his own. Clear, and full, the whole of his life for once laid bare to him.
“I hate you,” he whispers. “I hate you. I hate all of you. I’m not here to be friends.”
“That’s okay,” Yuya says. “I just want you to know that you’re safe. You’re finally safe, Yuuri.”
“I’m a monster,” Yuuri says, voice cracking and hissing.
Yuya smiles. There is no fear. There is no pity.
There is only a smile.
“So were we for a minute there,” he says. “But who says monsters can’t smile?”
Yuuri is not supposed to cry.
But he takes Yuya’s hand anyway. And he lets Yuya hug him. Just Yuya, though. Fusion and XYZ can stay away.
“I hate remembering,” Yuuri says.
Yuya hugs him a little tighter.
“Then let’s find something new to remember instead.”
Yuya smiles, and Yuuri cries.
“Good morning, Yuuri. You’re finally awake.”