Work Text:
It was an issue of love, really.
Because Yubel loved Judai. They loved him truly, deeply, and with all of their soul. That much was obvious, what with everything that had gone wrong in recent months as a result. And that much Judai had accepted.
But now they’d fused. Judai was Yubel was Judai was—them. A singular being. But Judai would not, could not love himself.
A paradox: conflicting, agonizing, irreconcilable. Judai thought that such a contradiction couldn’t possibly exist in a singular person. It just wasn’t possible. So Judai told himself that they weren't one person. That they couldn't be, soulbound or not.
It was easier to think that the voice in the back of his head belonged to Yubel, not to him. To lock their memories, their personality, their feelings—their impossible love—somewhere apart from Judai. To pretend that Yubel wasn’t him, but just another one of the duel spirits he’d been seeing for as long as he could remember.
To pretend that nothing had really changed, in other words.
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t sustainable. But it was easier.
Most of the time, at least. Some nights keeping up the façade was harder, even when the only one he had to prove it to was himself.
Judai had nightmares, of course. They’d been a constant ever since he’d entered Yubel’s spirit world. When he was still there, he’d begun to long after his bed in the Osiris dorm, as if just crashing into those familiar sheets would be enough to get them to stop. If anything, though, the dreams seemed to have gotten worse since his return. If he didn’t wake up weighed down with sweat and a nebulous sense of dread at least once a night, Judai counted it as a good day.
But the nightmares weren’t all watching his friends fade to nothingness in his hands, or by his hand.
Tonight he dreamt of space: of the cold, the dark, the loneliness, and the slow acid burn of the Light chipping away at everything that he was.
But I am not alone, he thought, to keep it all at bay. I have him. To protect. To remember. To love. I love him. I love him. I love—
Me. I love—
That contradiction again. It gave Judai a headache, one sharp enough to drag him awake.
And into darkness.
Judai’s breath caught in his throat. He struggled to keep himself steady as he reached for something, anything, in the pitch black. His fumbling hands landed on cloth. The curtains, he thought. In his half-asleep desperation, he pulled.
And it all came tumbling down with a crash, the curtains and their supporting bar alike. The sound echoed. Judai might’ve felt bad if anyone but him still lived in the Osiris dorm. The sight of bright moonlight streaming in brought some relief, but it still wasn’t enough to pull him fully from the dream. Judai stumbled out of bed to splash some water on his face.
And in the dim light reflecting from the mirror above the sink, he saw Yubel staring back at him. Brown haired, brown eyed—
Wait. That wasn’t right. That was—
But before he could finish the thought, the eyes in the mirror glowed. Their mismatched light cast odd shadows on the wall. And that was—him, Judai? Yubel? Both?
Scales rose in complex patterns across the bare skin of his arms. Judai’s—no, Yubel’s, no—
Judai shook his head. Still asleep, he thought, watching the shifting figure in the mirror. It didn’t hurt as the features changed. So he had to be asleep, dreaming still. He curled his fingers over the counter and barely heard the screech his nails made across the tile. Still dreaming.
He knew better.
In the morning, the claw marks he’d left next to the sink remained. Judai ignored them.
There were nights when Judai didn’t even bother with sleep. It just didn’t seem worth the trouble. He didn’t seem to need it as much as he used to either, though he couldn’t tell if that was a result of the fusion or the trauma.
On these sleepless nights, he took part in his once-typical late night activity: he reorganized his deck, changing the ratio of spells and monsters and traps over and over again. He remembered having fun with it back in the day—not so long ago, really—but now it couldn’t help but feel like the distraction it was. All he could see were potential failures and their potential consequences. At a certain point he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Without a practice duel he couldn’t tell if he’d perfected it or just hit a wall, but that wasn’t exactly an option at this point.
And so he kept flicking through his deck, searching for weaknesses.
Judai leaned back from the cards scattered across the floor and stretched out across the bed. A breeze drifted in through the window that he now kept open. The wind was warm, and smelled like the sea that crashed just past the edge of the dorm. Judai let his eyes linger on the moonless dark of the sky.
You know, I can fly, he thought, idly.
And then he stopped himself.
No. No. That was Yubel—Yubel’s voice, saying, “You know, I can fly. I could take you.”
It was easy to see Yubel standing there and gazing out at the sky with just as much longing as Judai himself.
“I think that’d be fun,” Judai replied, carefully.
The lawn in front of the Osiris dorm was just as empty as the inside. It made sense; Judai hadn’t caught sight of the exact time when he’d grabbed his jacket, but he was pretty sure they’d gotten to the point where it was less late night and more early morning. The wind whipped the grass into waves of shifting movement.
He didn’t have to ask how to do this; a part of him already knew. Yubel took him, and they flew. It was as simple as that.
Simple, yes, but glorious.
All of his anxieties seemed to stay grounded as they pulled away into the open air. There was no room for them in the rush of wind that pulled at Yubel’s wings and whipped Judai’s overgrown hair across his face. Down below, the island had shrunk until the buildings seemed like nothing more than an intricately planned train set. He considered the lights that still burned in a few windows of the Ra and Obelisk dorms as they hovered there and took it all in.
“You’ll have to try much harder to get lost now,” Yubel commented.
“Hey.”
“You don’t really have a defense here.”
That was true. Yubel probably knew all about those days he’d spent hopelessly lost on the island in his second year, as much as Judai knew about the details of their life.
“Well,” Judai said, “There’s definitely some perks to being a dragon.”
Yubel chuckled. “You would look at it like that.” In another tone, those words could’ve easily sounded sarcastic; but Judai could feel the affection in them. The love. Judai faltered, but just for a moment.
“Come on,” he said. “I want to see the water.”
They dove and Judai couldn’t help but whoop as his stomach dropped like he was on a rollercoaster. It looked like they were going to crash into the ocean—continue the flight beneath the waves, maybe—but they pulled up at the last second, close enough that Judai’s dangling limbs threw up a splash of spray.
They took a few laps around the island, swerving around rocks and ducking beneath the bridge and through the occasional waterfall like it was all one giant obstacle course.
It was fun. Judai was laughing, and not even Yubel’s obvious relief at the sound of it could pull him away from his own burgeoning happiness.
On one of their passes, Judai caught sight of two figures on the beach. And if Judai’s extensive experience counted for anything, they were having a duel: a secret, late-night duel, at that. The sight of them came with an unexpected wave of nostalgia, and Judai gestured for Yubel to take them closer. There was a cliff overlooking the beach, and Judai figured that if he perched himself up there they could sit down and watch without worrying too much about being seen.
Judai didn’t recognize the duelists, neither the girl in the blue blazer nor the boy who was no doubt the owner of the yellow jacket tossed across a nearby rock. They looked young, though. First years? Or did everyone just look young to him now?
Water dripped from Judai’s hair and half-soaked clothes as he settled down next to Yubel. He swung his legs against the rocks and watched the volley below.
The girl was playing a good game, running a deck that focused on equip spells. Her opponent was, in a word, struggling. He was clearly waiting for some specific card to emerge from his deck, but even his stalling wasn’t fully successful. It was a miracle that he still had life points left by the time he drew the long-awaited card.
By then, though, it was too late. The girl’s field was fully stocked, and she made short work of the monster he’d finally summoned. The girl’s powered-up Cerberus card dealt the final blow. As the solid vision passed through him, the guy fell back on his ass in the sand. The monsters faded, and the girl walked over and offered him a hand up. The guy waved her off, and after a short conversation that Judai couldn’t hear, she waved goodbye and left him there.
He didn’t even stand up. Instead, he just hunched over, faced the sea, and stared at his cards. To say he looked dejected would have been a massive understatement.
Judai cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Hey!”
Predictably, the guy flinched and spun to find the source of the unexpected voice. Judai gestured for Yubel to grab him before leaping down onto the sand below. It probably looked pretty strange to someone who couldn’t see spirits: a human-looking figure dropping the thirty or so feet down to the ground with nothing at all to support him.
Which could have explained the guy’s shell-shocked expression, Judai told himself.
“You’ve got some pretty cool cards there,” Judai continued. The guy darted up from the sand as Judai stepped closer. “If you just got yourself some support cards, I bet you’d—“
And then, the guy screamed.
Judai froze. “Hey, whoa, wait. I’m just trying to help.“
Maybe he didn’t hear Judai over his own shouting, or maybe he just ignored him. Either way, though, when he finally went silent none of the fear left his face. He shook his head at the hand that Judai offered and stumbled back across the beach.
Finally, he ran.
“Hey, wait!”
But he didn’t. On his way up the path, he tripped and crashed onto the rocks. Even when he turned over a shoulder and saw that Judai wasn’t giving chase, though, he didn’t calm down. Not even enough to check the likely shredded skin of his knees. He just got up and bolted away.
“He…forgot his jacket.” It was all Judai could think to say. Hell, the way he’d been going the guy would’ve probably left his cards if they hadn’t already been clutched between his fingers. “Think he’ll come back for it?”
“You scared him off pretty good,” Yubel responded.
“Me? I was thinking you.”
Because Judai had decided: that had to be it. He wasn’t the only person here who could see duel spirits after all, and if there were three of them there could always be more who he hadn’t met yet. Judai supposed that seeing a giant dragon person descending on you in the middle of the night could be startling. Especially after all the ordeals the student body had already gone through this year alone.
The rumors swirling around campus the next day seemed to confirm Judai’s suspicions. They all spoke of a figure with massive wings and eyes that glowed orange and blue. The guy didn’t seem to have noticed Judai’s presence at all, if the stories were any indication. That wasn’t too surprising either; Yubel did tend to make more of a lasting impression, to say the least.
For Judai’s friends, the ones that had followed him into the spirit world, the rumors were troubling. No one brought up Yubel’s name, but he could see the worry in their eyes whenever the story came up, the way they met each other’s gazes with all-too-knowing looks.
Judai could have clarified, but he didn’t. He couldn’t—especially when some of the more puzzling details of the story eventually came out.
According to the guy, the mysterious winged figure had been wearing a red jacket. And, in an absurd twist that was mostly laughed off, it had actually tried to give the guy dueling advice.
No, Judai didn’t clarify the story. He thought he’d better not.
And he didn’t go flying again.
Even so, despite Judai’s best efforts everyone who mattered found out anyway.
Judai told them. He’d been forced to use Yubel’s powers, sure, but still. He’d told them everything. Or, most of it, anyway. He’d told them as much as he himself understood.
And they didn’t react nearly as badly as Judai had feared. They’d been shocked, sure, but that was to be expected. They still talked to him, though. They didn’t avoid him. They didn’t treat him with fear, or distrust, or disgust, and that was more than Judai had dared hope for. And that was enough.
Still, Judai figured that it he didn’t need to remind anyone of his situation, if he could help it. Remind them like—oh, say, summoning Yubel in the middle of a duel, for example. A practice duel in front of the whole class, with a practice deck. A deck that had been handed to him by the teacher and which had certainly not had Yubel’s card to begin with.
This was what he got for actually attending class for once.
Yubel’s card just looked so out of place among the trap-heavy deck he was supposed to be using for his exam; he kept staring at the card, even after the initial surprise of drawing it had worn off. Judai wasn’t exactly known for long deliberation in the middle of a duel, and as the silence stretched on the rest of the class began to fidget.
Manjoume was his opponent, and he seemed particularly annoyed. “You gonna play or just stand there?”
Judai didn’t reply right away. Finally, he replied, "Neither."
“Huh?”
Judai pressed a button on his duel disk, and the monsters faded.
“Y-Yuki!” the professor stammered. “Your test isn’t over!”
“I feel sick,” he said. Probably unconvincing, considering the ease with which he leapt from the central stage.
“If you leave right now, you’ll be forfeiting the match,” the man continued.
“Okay,” Judai replied. He’d wanted to drop out anyway. What did he care about his grades? He pocketed Yubel’s card and handed the rest back to the teacher.
This man wasn’t Chronos; he didn’t bother trying to stop Judai. He just nodded, his eyes already back on the rest of the students.
“Marufuji. You’re up next.”
Shou stepped forward from the pack, but his attention flickered between the duel ring and Judai. The concern in his expression was obvious, and he looked about ready to go chasing after Judai.
Judai waved him off, though. “I’m fine,” he called out. In the large space, his voice echoed louder than intended. “Don’t worry. Avenge me, all right?”
And then he turned and walked away without giving Shou the chance to voice the uncertainty Judai could see written across his face. Once he was out in the main hall, alone and sure that Shou wasn’t following him, Judai took out Yubel’s card and twirled it through his fingers. It wasn’t the first time Yubel’s card had appeared in his deck since he’d retuned. Judai wasn’t even sure where he’d gotten it, much less the supports that came with it, but it kept popping back up in his deck no matter how many times he tried to leave it behind.
But those had been his decks, at least. Now it was getting ridiculous.
“So,” he said. “Is this gonna keep being a regular thing, or—?”
Yubel scoffed and crossed their arms. “Do you understand what it means? To be a duel spirit?”
Judai paused and considered. “No?”
“It means our soul is bound to that card. You can’t just leave it behind. I’ve told you that.”
“Oh.” That would explain why Judai had felt mildly nauseous every time he’d tried to hide the card away in the back of his drawer. He’d thought he was just scared someone would find it. Judai glanced down at the card and ran his fingers over its printed surface. “Would carrying it with me help?”
“I suppose. If you really don’t want to play it.” There was a heavy dash of annoyance in Yubel’s voice that Judai chose to ignore.
“I really don’t. I think—“
“Judai!”
Judai reflexively curled his hand over the card at the sound of the voice and the heavy footsteps that accompanied it.
“Manjoume.” He looked pissed—not that that was any surprise. “That was quick. You didn’t give Shou much of a fight, did you?”
There was a time when an off-handed comment like that would have sent Manjoume into a tailspin. Judai had been counting on the diversion, actually. He was a little taken aback when Manjoume ignored it entirely.
“The hell do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?” Judai asked with as much innocence as he could muster.
“What I mean is since when do you, of all people, quit halfway through a duel?”
“Like I said, I feel a little—“
“Don’t even try it,” Majoume scoffed. “Both you and I know you’re too stupid to catch cold.”
Judai blinked. Then, slowly, he smiled. “I’m hurt.”
“Good."
Judai laughed.
“Hey, I’m not kidding. What’re you even doing, standing out here talking to yourself?”
“It’s spirit stuff.” The excuse—true, in this case—rolled off his tongue just as he realized: Manjoume should’ve known this already. Judai went rigid. He could sometimes forget that Manjoume saw spirits too, what with how often he tried to deny it, but he shouldn’t have. Especially not now, with Yubel hovering right behind him. Even if by some miracle Manjoume hadn’t seen Yubel before, he had to notice them now that Judai had stupidly drawn attention to them.
As Judai’s smile faded, Manjoume scanned the air around him. Judai tensed as he waited for Yubel to be seen.
“As usual: you are crazy.” Manjoume said, finally.
Huh?
Judai glanced over his shoulder, but no—Yubel was still there. They watched him now with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow.
And yet Manjoume hadn’t seen them.
“I…guess you caught me,” Judai replied, just so he’d be saying something. “Talking to myself.”
After that Judai kept the card in an interior jacket pocket. And admittedly, he felt better with it there, a constant presence over his heart.
But it wasn’t entirely better. No matter what he’d told Yubel, the truth was that Judai did want to play that card. When he cut all of the rest away, the bare truth was this: it was, and had always been, one of his favorite cards. Even after everything that happened, he couldn’t help but think of ways to integrate Yubel into his deck. He knew exactly which cards he’d add and take away from his main deck, and he kept all of them at the ready.
Despite never intending to play them. The pocket over his heart grew heavy.
Judai was too afraid of what would happen if he did play Yubel’s card. More than just calling up a lot of traumatic memories from the people around him—what would happen to him if he played it? If he ended up summoning himself onto his own goddamned field, or something similar, the jig would most definitely be up. All of that carefully constructed denial would go to waste.
And so he didn’t play the card.
Until he did.
Darkness had taken everything, everyone—except for Judai himself, who it didn’t even want. The thing he was dueling already thought of him as an abomination, so what even was there to lose?
Nothing to lose, no one to witness, and everyone to save.
So he summoned Yubel.
Judai did not literally teleport onto the field, thankfully, but a part of him seemed to go there nonetheless. He saw from both of their eyes at once; and somehow, rather than dizzying, the simultaneous vision was crystal clear.
It just felt right.
Judai-Yubel-Them on the field turned back to see the other them, the duelist with the glowing mismatched eyes, and they stared back. It was like looking into a mirror from both sides—and all Judai saw was himself.
And he realized: the Darkness was wrong. It was wrong about everything, all of it. He wasn’t an abomination.
And he certainly wasn’t alone.
Judai dueled all the harder, as if to prove it, to remember it, to reclaim it all—friends and self alike.
The first night after Judai left the Duel Academy, Judai found himself thinking of the Darkness again. It had taken his friends, but never him. It had never even tried. Other people had told him, slowly, reluctantly, of the various visions it had shown them to get to its side. No one wanted to tell him their whole story, but he got the gist.
And he understood. Of course he did.
But now he wondered—if the Darkness had come after him, would it have succeeded? It frightened him to even ask, because he thought he knew the answer.
There would have been plenty of ammunition for the Darkness’s visions, after all.
But the Darkness is wrong, Judai reminded himself. The visions it had showed everyone else were lies. The despair within them, at their heart—a lie.
Judai believed that. He had to believe that, even when he didn’t feel it. Especially then.
He rolled over beneath his blanket. He’d severely underestimated just how cold the desert could get at night, and his school-issued jacket was decidedly less than cozy.
Even with him shivering, Judai couldn’t help but appreciate the night, clear as it was. He thought he’d never seen stars like this—so bright, so numerous. And staring up at them, and remembering the duel he’d had earlier in the day, the pure joy of that, Judai felt content.
He knew that he wasn’t magically fixed, of course. Things wouldn’t just suddenly go back to the way they had been before, and he sure didn’t have it all figured out now. The same problems were all still there: he didn’t know what he’d do now. Hell, he still didn’t even really know what he was.
But still. He wanted to figure it out, now. He wanted to forgive himself, to find that joy he’d lost. He wanted to try.
It was something worth trying for, he’d realized.
And that alone made this night better than the one before. This was day one, and that was enough.
Judai rolled over again and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Still too chilly, even with Pharaoh huddled against his chest. After a moment’s consideration, Judai shifted so that he could pull out Yubel’s wings—his wings, their wings.
With them curled around him and layered beneath the blanket, he finally found himself warming up, and drifting off to sleep.
Maybe tomorrow he could go flying again.