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Clouds. That’s what I’m used to him feeling like when he touches my skin. Cold and clammy and ethereal. The pressure is minute before he passes right through me. When we touch, everything is light and airy, almost escapable, but frustratingly not. And bright. Oh so bright.
“Ryou!!!”
Clouds. That’s what touching him feels like. So, why does everything feel so heavy, so hard? The pressure as he grips me feels so foreign but so welcome. But it’s dark. Oh so dark.
“You idiot! Why did you get in the way?”
Idiot. Yeah, I guess that’s me.
At first I thought I was going crazy from grief. My father had died in a freak accident and my mother had just been diagnosed. I would get home from school and work around the house doing all sorts of chores to help her… and as the months wore on, and she grew weaker and weaker, I took on more and more responsibility. But even as I felt myself slipping from exhaustion, I would never fall.
Never.
“Hey! Get a hold of yourself!”
It was as if someone was always there to catch me.
I would blink to find myself tucked into bed in the morning, all of my chores and the work I thought I still had left to do somehow miraculously done. It only took one look at my mother as I brought her breakfast to know that she couldn’t have done any of it.
After she died, the breaks in my memory increased substantially. I would be crying, slumped over the kitchen table and planning to starve myself to death one minute and the next, I would wake up in the morning with breakfast already made on the table.
Without any recollection of doing so many things in my life, from cleaning to cooking, to just plain walking around town when it got too dark out, I was clearly going crazy. There was nothing else for me to think.
And then, to make matters worse, those I had called my “friends” started disappearing from my life. Granted, they weren’t always very nice, or we tended to get into arguments, but I thought they cared for me, or about me, at least a little.
It dawned on me then.
What if my memory lapses were hurting people?
What if I was dangerous?
I couldn’t live with myself knowing that people around me were getting ill, being hospitalized, disappearing… So, I stopped trying to live.
I stopped cleaning the house, stopped going to school, stopped showering, stopped eating, stopped sleeping… I stopped doing everything as best I could. I just…laid there. Waiting for the end.
It never came.
I fought the sleep as hard as I could, but it came for me all the same, and the next thing I knew, the apartment was clean, so was I, and my favorite food was warm on the kitchen table, waiting for me. I ate ruefully despite my best efforts to ignore the sweet smell of the food. Never before had I eaten so much or so messily.
I figured I might as well enjoy my last meal.
After cleaning everything up… I took a knife. I stood over the sink, and—
“Don’t leave me like this!”
That’s when I felt it. The clouds. By showing himself to me, he had stopped me from doing something stupid, as he so bluntly put it.
We talked a lot after that… about who he was, what he was doing… why he was doing it. The pain and hurt he had gone through had scarred him. He thought he sought revenge, but I knew that what he really wanted was closure. 3000 years trapped alone with only your pain and your thoughts can twist even the strongest of wills.
Yuugi was lucky that his other self retained no memories of his life as pharaoh. My other self was not as fortunate.
I did my best throughout all of my trials as his vessel to maintain balance between protecting my friends and helping him heal. Violence was never the answer, and I told him as much. Each time we fought I could see the pain flash through his eyes. Each time I lost my body to him I could feel the hurt and betrayal he felt from having to wrest control from me.
I blamed myself for not reaching him, for not trying harder to stop him, for not finding a way for him to see what I saw.
As time went on, our battles against each other subsided. I stopped fighting him, only holding him tightly against me in the hopes that he would feel how much I cared, how much I wanted him to let go and move on. The look in his eyes as he wrested control of my body from me softened. I was slowly but surely breaking him. I was sure that I would reach him, someday.
“Please… You’re the only one I can trust…”
But Yuugi’s other self always seemed to be in some sort of danger, and mine just couldn’t resist the temptation of using those circumstances to exact his revenge. Revenge for something neither Yuugi nor his shadow had done…
So when I learned of his ultimate plan, I knew there was only one thing I could do to save him. I had to go into the shadow game too.
It was there that I learned his true name: Akefia.
Now I could properly pray to the gods on behalf of him; for forgiveness for his actions, for salvation for his tortured soul.
I did my best to follow him through the desert to distract him. I asked him to take me to his childhood village. He scoffed but did so anyway, shielding me from the harsh sun with his broad shoulders.
When we arrived, I couldn’t help but cry. Everything he had told me was true. The village had been decimated, a pile of bones within the village temple the only trace that human life once existed there.
He called me foolish and weak, but I never-the-less took my time and paid my respects to the deceased. The bodies themselves were hard to parse, so I took every skull I saw and made each a grave.
After hours of watching me, Akefia joined in.
We spent the day digging tiny graves and paying our respects to all those who had died at Kul’Elna. The moon was already far above us when our work was finally done.
He threw his sleeveless vest at me and lit a fire for us to sit at when he saw me shivering from the desert chill. We sat together and ate, and for once in our relationship, I felt as though everything would be alright.
I felt as though I was finally getting through to him.
But he snuck off when I fell asleep, and it was already too late for me to keep him from exacting his brash revenge. I stole a horse from the thief in charge of watching over me and galloped towards the capital, praying to the gods above to spare him from his own foolish resolve.
And then, I saw him, riding upon his horse like a pompous general commands his army, filled with pride and blind to those who are willing to help.
Akefia’s Diabound had defeated the pharaoh’s Ra and was moving in for the kill. I had to stop him before he could regret his actions…
There was no time.
After all, actions speak louder than words.
“I can’t do this alone…”
Clouds.
That’s what I’m used to him feeling like when he touches my skin. Cold and clammy and ethereal. The pressure is minute before he passes right through me. When we touch, everything is light and airy, almost escapable, but frustratingly not. And bright. Oh so bright.
“Why?
Why!?
WHY!?!”
So, why does everything feel so heavy, so hard? The pressure as he grips me feels so foreign but so welcome. But it’s dark. Oh so dark.
It’s so dark now, and I can barely see his eyes. Are those…tears? If I could just reach out to him, grab his hand—
Everything is so heavy. It’s so hard to move. He needs to hear this.
Please... Listen.
“Heh… I thought you’d stop if I stepped in… I… don’t want you to make any more mistakes…”