Work Text:
Contrary to popular opinion, Judai did not escape the Dark World. He did not ride a shooting star across dimensions and the space between worlds. He did not arrive in a rain of fire and fury, stepping from the smoke with a mind focused on fried shrimp. Yubel also did not fall to Earth as snow, as flakes of ash disconnected from anything that had ever been alive, a nightmare ten years in the making realised with cathartic finality.
Someone else stepped from the smoke to face Sho, someone new.
Osiris Red was full of ghosts. Not just Daitokuji-sensei. The memories tasted more bitter than sweet, with Yubel’s jealousy and Judai’s hindsight. It was worse because Yubel didn't know how to suffer quietly. At some point in the descent, the heat and pressure had taken that from them.
Yubel thought like a car alarm. They were obsessed with Judai’s physicality, his skin. What it tasted like under the tendons of his wrist. They wanted to bite until the hand was severed. They wanted to leave thick scratches all over them until their exterior was just as damaged as their interior. To remake Judai into a monster as they had been remade.
We're a wound. Yubel hissed in Judai’s dreams. Why can’t we be honest about it?
We’re healing. He would lie, knowing that Yubel was listening, knowing that they knew it was a lie and still choosing lying as the best option available. We’ll scar.
He pictured a keloid, darker and more prominent than the original wound, still growing, his fingers tracing over its contours in the dark. The standard treatment for keloids is cutting them out. They usually regrew.
A recurring, discontinuous wound. Yubel was right. Judai knew it like he knew how the atmosphere burned. Sometimes, those memories of fire in the vacuum drowned out his present, his past, his future, and he understood what Yubel had meant when they had said I could not live with the pain unless I felt I was being loved. After those moments, guilt struck his mind like a waterfall until Yubel whispered: You are loved. It was so good not to be alone.
After everything Yubel and Judai had done, being tangled in one another was a form of justice.
People would not stop knocking on their door.
Judai did not want the attention. He had taken enough from his friends. He did feel a remote responsibility to advertise his own potent evil, which manifested in careful self-isolation. He wished that they would forget about him.
He saw Pharaoh outside the window and remembered the first time he had seen the cat, how Judai had been young and invincible. Yubel loudly did not offer their parallel experience in an act of restraint and kindness.
For a moment, he thought about opening the door. Immediately, the fire came again, guilt and memory and unthinkable pain. Yubel tugged him out of it, slowly, an inch at a time. Judai savoured reality descending as Yubel wrapped their wings around him, a comforting cage.
Shouldn’t we have died? Judai asked Yubel, because the knocking would not stop and their shared head pounded from dehydration. Shouldn’t we die?
Yubel sang to him, a lullaby so beautiful he could not understand how he could have forgotten it.
He focused on the music as Yubel took control of their body to get a drink.
Judai supposed that he should have felt lonely, in the dorm, in the dark. But Yubel understood loneliness – to be forgotten, unwanted and unloved – and therefore Judai understood it by proxy. In a way, he felt more connected than he ever had before. Yubel was so present, like his skin, like his shadow. They saw him, all of him, which was overwhelming because he didn’t like what they were looking at anymore.
They loved him, despite it all.
You won’t ever be alone again. Judai promised fiercely, quaking from how much he believed it, wanted it. He loved them. Of course he loved them. He loved them more than he had known himself capable of loving. He loved them as an act of survival.
They loved each other and that had to make it worth it.
In a moment of absentmindedness, he shuffled through his deck and froze when he saw it.
I did everything right and I still lost.
Now Judai had a handle on Yubel’s memories and could mostly stop their mind from bleeding into his own, he could take stock of his own damage.
I lost?
What had made that time different to those other almost-apocalypses during his school career? Winning had been enough before. Caring for people had been enough before. His best had been enough-
You can do everything right and still lose.
Where did that leave him? How could he know what to do next time? And what if… what if next time he did everything right and still lost? He wasn’t sure he could handle it. His eyelids would close and open on liquid gold. The world would weep. The Supreme King was in him because the Supreme King was Judai. It could happen again. It would happen again if Judai stayed alive.
You’re not evil. Yubel told him sternly. Go to sleep. I want to take our body to remember what the stars look like from this planet.
Judai put Super Polymerization back into his deck and felt Yubel’s face as they saw the stars. There was as much grief in their expression as joy. He caught one of his suppressed memories then, a wounded, limping thing, of watching the night sky together when he had been younger. They had taught him ancient constellations. That part of the memory was still blurry. He would need to learn again.
Stop feeling guilty, you idiot. Yubel growled. I’m trying to enjoy the stars. You should give it a go sometime instead of moping and being dehydrated. Those are awful hobbies.
An old recurring dream visited Judai one night. He turned up to one of Chronos's lessons without his trousers on. It was an exam.
The normal routine was mortification and running out of the lecture hall. Then he would wake up and his fear would quickly mature into amusement. Maybe he would mention it to Sho at breakfast and they would laugh about it. But this time he stared blankly at the crowd. Somehow, he didn't care. Why should this mean something to him after everything?
He woke up confused, feeling as though he had lost something.
Those friends of yours care about you. Yubel insisted. They miss you. You miss them. Can’t you see an obvious solution here?
Judai remembered Johan’s hurried departure, the look he had given Judai-Yubel before raising his hand to hesitantly wave farewell. Johan would be happier with an ocean between them.
He turned over in the bunk to face the wall and closed his eyes.
Judai reached for his deck again. Neos stared back. Winged Kuriboh chirped happy. They had been so quiet recently.
"I'm sorry." Judai said. It felt inadequate.
What he wanted to say was: I'm not sure I can duel anymore, or: you should have chosen someone else to save Neo Space.
"It's okay." Neos said. Judai wondered, bitterly, if this was what he had wanted. What kind of horrifying plan-
Nice to know how horrifying you find me. Yubel. Judai blinked. He hadn’t meant-
Aren’t you glad you saved me? After sending me away? Yubel’s eyes widened. For a moment, they looked spectacularly angry. Judai’s heart sank. Didn’t it all end well? We’re the Gentle Darkness. There was always going to be collateral.
I am. I am glad I saved you. He meant it.
You won’t ever get back what you had. Not the ignorance. Not the bliss. Not the innocence. Yubel spoke without sympathy. You don’t need it anymore. You’ll never be alone again: you have me. Now get over yourself and go outside. I want to duel.
Someone knocked.
Judai opened the door.