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A card is played, and then another. And another. They are yelling at each other as though they are standing inside a hurricane. So it always goes.
A dragon is split into three. Slain like a hydra. A flash, an explosion. A blink of holographic interference skitters through the coliseum.
His palms are sweating. He can barely draw a breath before, across the dueling platform, a wave gathers its fury in the form of the cry, “I will not be defeated at my own tournament!”
He can hear it ringing from the height of the tower like some kind of death knell. But the words don’t register.
In his mind, he is standing on the steps of a castle owned by a man with an eye forged in gold and nurtured in grief. Kaiba is standing high above him on the landing before the double doors. He expects some kind of scornful speech about strength and weakness, ambition and cowardice. And there is, in truth, some of that. But it is what is said after that arrests him. In a voice like Kaiba is losing his grip on the world he has been holding up.
And so it is with this scene between his ears that he stands before Kaiba in the coliseum, telling him that a duel has never before pushed him so far, while the latter snaps back at him to save it. He must have heard this, for now there is a tangle of vitriol spilling out of his own mouth about hatred, and rage, and jealousy. And then an accusation of denial. It is everything typical of them.
But in his head, all of this is overlaid by a steadfast plea issued above a castle stairway: For the first time, Yugi, I can duel with fire and passion in my heart. I’ve changed. I deserve a rematch. Give me a chance to play you now. Let me play you for the right reasons.
He has taken these words to bed with him for months. In the slow ambient recesses of night spilling into dawn, sheets balled under his fingertips, he removes Yugi’s name from this confession and replaces it with a space where his own should be. He takes these words to bed and understands for the first time the dense, seeping ache of namelessness.
“Look at me!”
Yami turns his gaze back to Kaiba, and still, even still, the snarl turns his bones to fire, courting down his spine, to pool, molten, below his hips. At first he believes the demand is for his lapsed attention, but then he quickly realizes that Kaiba is citing himself as a pinnacle example of being alone in the world and the grace and apparent virtues that bestows.
Already he is drifting back to Duelist Kingdom. Let me play you for the right reasons. Sometimes he replaces ‘play’ with a different word.
He is doing it now. Does it even have to be for the right reasons? He would take it on its own, if only because even that feels impossible. He does this to drown out the sound of his own voice when he asks, wearing the laurels of victory on the brink of rejection, “You don’t consider anyone your friend?”
Even before Kaiba opens his mouth to construct the coldest possible form of ‘no’, Yami feels the tower slipping beneath his feet, like a sand castle being slowly licked to ruins by the tide. He wonders if the dragon felt pain, being ripped apart like it was. Into thirds. One trauma becoming three.
Kaiba had said the coliseum was symbolic of the gladiators who fought for glory in its ring. He did not say it was symbolic of the ways in which they were humiliated, poisoned, torn to shreds, and discarded. He did not say it was symbolic of the graveyard it was, of lives and of names. Names. Yami wants to grab him, by the shoulders, or the coattails of his storm, whichever comes into his grip first, and demand that Kaiba give him a new name. So he can fill the space. So he can take that to bed with him too.
He stands alone on the duel platform holding Obelisk in his hand. In its bottom corner, he can make out the trace of Kaiba’s thumbprint in the sunlight.
Kaiba has agreed to a duel for third place with Joey. His fury has not ebbed in the slightest. It lashes out at his soon-to-be-opponent and bristles at Mokuba’s uncertainty.
Yami slips the card into his deck.
The group descends the tower stairs to the elevator landing in total silence, as if they are going to a funeral. Kaiba’s rage is palpable. The interlaced footfalls on metal stair steps connect like heavy drops of rain. Kaiba is a storm all his own, but Yami feels an impatience, a stubbornness, winding its way through him. He has never been afraid of storms.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kaiba’s bellow drowns the stairwell as Yami slips his hand through the loop of his rival’s arm, removing a card from the deck clamped within his duel disk.
Yami’s dark eyes pin Kaiba’s as he drops it unceremoniously to the floor and covers it with his foot.
“You picked the wrong time to test me, Yugi.” Kaiba’s whole body goes rigid, like a snake coiling to strike.
That name. Yugi’s consciousness rises beneath his own in recognition, but Yami nudges it back down. He needs this time. It belongs to him. It has to.
“Is there a right time?”
The eyes of Yugi’s friends are all on Yami as he stands, undeterred. Mokuba looks up at his brother anxiously. Kaiba says nothing.
“Kaiba and I need to have a quick word alone, Joey,” Yami continues, “if it’s alright with you.”
Joey, for his part, nearly flinches. The absurdity of it is overwhelming: as if anyone in the stairwell, between Yami’s immovable taunt and Kaiba’s seething rage, would dare to say it wasn’t. “Uh, sure, Yuge. Whatever you need, pal.”
Mokuba gets as far as shaping his mouth around the ‘S’ in Kaiba’s first name before his brother orders, “Go with them, Mokuba.”
“Okay.”
The two forces stand there on the first stairwell landing before the roof, facing each other. History reincarnated, repeating itself. They wait wordlessly until they hear the chime and subsequent downward rush of the elevator, before Kaiba bares his teeth.
“I swear, if I have to hear a single word about destiny—”
“You won’t.”
“Then what do you want?” He almost spits.
“In Duelist Kingdom,” Yami says, steeling his voice around this first-spoken thought, “you said you’d changed. But you haven’t. You said you deserved a rematch, but you didn’t. You said you wanted to play me for the right reasons. But you didn’t play me for the right reasons. And I don’t think you ever have.”
“I would’ve said anything back then if it meant I had a chance of saving my brother.” Cold, direct. Protective.
The memory Yami holds so close suddenly feels like a sheet of tissue paper, tearing at the edges simply by being looked at.
“So you didn’t mean any of it?”
“No.” Cold, direct. But the inflection at its end falters.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t need you to.” But Kaiba has moved closer to him, and in the silence that follows, he kneels before the spirit of the puzzle and his fingertips graze the floor. “Can I have my card back now?”
Yami can’t decide what to do. If he lets Kaiba take the card, the conversation is over. It will be the final hollow punctuation mark in a completely futile exchange. He had made a scene and wasted everyone’s time. He had asked a load-bearing question and collapsed what little, vague hope he had built. Of something. If he doesn’t.
He moves his foot.
Kaiba takes the card and glances at it. He snorts.
“What is it?”
“You’ll find out.” Kaiba’s voice is annoyed, but there’s a marked change. It’s softer, if only slightly. He slides the card back into his deck and stands up. “Are we done here?”
No. Yami’s tongue sharpens itself. He lets the moment go. He fans the flame. “Are you that eager for your bronze medal?”
Kaiba is impossibly tall. And without warning, all that impossible height and fury closes in on him and slams him against the metal wall of the stairwell.
“Put your arm up.”
Yami’s faceted eyes lift to Kaiba’s blue as he raises his left arm.
A force strikes Yami’s wrist as Kaiba pins it to the wall. His long pale fingers ungently twist the skin beneath them. The voice that follows is wildfire.
“You will not beat me and insult me at my own tournament. That’s the last line crossed that I’ll tolerate from you, Yugi.”
As he stands there, pinned to the wall, Kaiba’s shadow across his face, his defiance peaks. “My name’s not Yugi.”
A scoff. The grip on his wrist tightens. Yami feels his pulse in his fingers. Kaiba’s eyes are almost black. “Is that what this was really about? You pulled this little stunt just to tell me I got your name wrong? What was it that Marik and Ishizu called you? Yami?”
He doesn’t expect it. To hear it. It is not quite right, but that is how starved he is. That even adjacently, the word burns through him. The tiniest sound, huge in its betrayal, escapes him: he sighs.
He clamps his free hand to his mouth, as if that will undo the mistake, as if that will undo the entire situation, and forces his eyes closed.
He does not see the ‘oh’ on Kaiba’s lips. The self-satisfied smile that follows. The way those deep blue eyes study him as curses in Ancient Egyptian tumble out from beneath his hand.
“Or was it pharaoh?”
Yami doesn’t respond, but his eyes open toward the ceiling, dark above a column of white light that pours in from the rooftop entrance. He does not know—or does not remember—any prayers, but there is a plea in his gaze regardless, for something he cannot form into a thought. The aged word for king. What it does to him when spoken by a storm. The stairwell smells metallic and close. Like stale water. Like dust and ozone. Yami wonders how many birds nest on the roof, how many living things in how many dilapidated office buildings have grown over the legacy of Gozaburo Kaiba.
A flame is kindled in the center of his palm when Kaiba shifts. His long fingers are suddenly interlaced with Yami’s own, nails pressing lightly into the back of his hand. The question comes again, but without teeth.
“What do you want?”
Yami lets his free hand fall from his mouth.
“I.”
It feels to him like such a brave letter. Solitary, but tall. Alone or lonely or both. Suggesting a name, a life, an existence, without being one itself. It feels stronger than he is. A simple vertical line, making more of an impact on the world than his own soul—a remnant trapped in a prison masquerading as a sacred artifact.
“I wanted you to know that you’ve made me better,” Yami says finally. “A better duelist, a better person. I faulted you for your anger and your envy, but I have more than enough of my own. I try to rise above it where I can, but it still defines me in ways I don’t always anticipate.”
“I’m not your therapist,” is the response from above him. Kaiba smells like leather, ocean air, metal. But there is a sweetness there too. Rain laced with something like almond. “And I don’t need a consolation speech.”
“I’m saying that even if Mokuba wasn’t around, you wouldn’t be alone,” Yami whispers. The scent is water lilies, he realizes. “I wouldn’t let you be.”
The heat in his palm grows as Kaiba presses their hands closer together.
Yami continues. He is still looking at the ceiling, cataloguing the way Kaiba smells like sharpness and ocean and flowers that open and close like eternal doors. “Even if you hate me. Even if you hate me for it.”
He feels the warmth of a deep exhale on his forehead.
“Okay.”
It is a wholly mundane word. But the way Kaiba utters it tears Yami’s gaze from the ceiling. In his voice, it is a self-absolution. A delicate thing unwrapped and observed after years of being tucked away and buried. A guarded acceptance with the weight of an empire. He looks up at Kaiba as if in a trance.
“Kaiba.”
Kaiba’s eyes lower to Yami’s face, hesitantly, as if he’s not sure he’s allowed this.
“I promise.” Yami’s voice is slight. With his free hand, he makes a move to reach up to cover Kaiba’s heart, but he stops short. His fingertips parse the space between them. It is too much. There is too much that’s still unsaid. Too much that needs to happen that won’t happen here. Won’t happen until much later. He lets his hand fall back to his side.
Kaiba’s gaze has returned to the wall above Yami’s head. But he draws his fingers in closer against the back of his hand, their palms together.
They stand there in silence for what feels like days. Kaiba looms above Yami, eyes closed and eyebrows knitted together in some inner turmoil, as if he is deciding whether or not to regret everything that has occurred so far. Yami is looking at Kaiba’s chest, thinking about the sound of his heartbeat and water lilies. A dragon split into three. Finally, he breathes deep and closes his eyes as well, languishing in the strange sanctuary of the stairwell.
It is then that it happens. A jolt through his hand as Kaiba’s nails dig further into his skin. Palms together like a vice. And then, perhaps because he believes Yami isn’t watching him, Kaiba kisses the wall above his head. Strands of brunette hair fall reverently against the metal, eyes still closed. And Yami hears Kaiba speak. His voice is both growl and breath, obscured by a shaking centuries-deep sigh.
“If you go before I do, so help me.”
Yami is not sure he hears the words for what they are. They feel so impossible. That a thing so raw, so desperate, so unspeakably lovely should be buried beneath so much bitterness, and envy, and anger. He cannot fathom it. Can’t untangle it. And he won’t until much later. After all that needs to be said is said, and all that needs to happen has happened. But for now, he clutches the words, and the kiss, to his chest like early thaw in the winter, and takes them to bed. He will take them to the afterlife. One day he will turn them into water lilies and fill a canal with them, like gods turn lovers into stars.
It is not long after that Kaiba releases Yami’s hand. His heat withdraws and a door has been closed. Yami absently touches his collar.
“We should go.” Kaiba dares one blue-eyed glance at him, before turning away, a word on his lips that he visibly grapples with. Yami knows what he wants to say, but the timing is wrong. It would not mean now what it will much later. So Yami stops him.
“It’s okay.” He pauses. For now, it has to be. “Until I remember my true name, I’ll answer to anything you call me.”
“You know when I mean you, and not him, don’t you?” It is, somehow, the bravest thing Yami’s ever heard him ask. Free from the denial of his own awareness of their twin spirits. Acknowledgement that this budding yet terrifying devotion is for one, not the other.
“Always.”
After this, Kaiba takes third place in his tournament. The memory of the stairwell is diluted in his rage and condemnation of the past. Mokuba breaks his heart in a way he won’t process until much later. Ishizu forges a knife with her ever-prescient words that is sharp enough to cut through him utterly. She stands statuesque in her fate, a beacon of something he will not, like so many other things, come to accept until much later.
But of course, the card the pharaoh had pulled from his deck to taunt him with was none other than Fiend’s Sanctuary.
Deep down Kaiba wonders if Ishizu, even without her necklace, had somehow seen all that had occurred on the stairwell. Had seen the card Kaiba replaced into his deck. Had heard the oath he made into the cold metal of the tower wall. He thinks these things as he turns back to the wreckage surrounding the duel tower. As he ascends to its roof for a final time.
In that fated stairwell, mere steps from the rooftop doorway, Ishizu once again exposes his heart when she says, with her air of prophetic resolution, “I hope you’ve made the correct decision, Kaiba.”
His grunt in response leaves no room for doubt, but the statement shakes him to his core in a way he will not concede. He still feels the heat in his palm. He is glad he is not dueling in the final match. It is another thing he refuses to admit. His fingers are trembling.
As the duel platform rises, Yami’s heart surges in his chest. He stares across the field into Marik’s face, a kaleidoscope of loathing and cruelty and unloved suffering. He touches his collar and thinks of the white column of light in the stairwell. He thinks of the water lilies he will grow.
A call from behind him resonates with his pulse.
“Hold on, Yugi.”
He still gasps, in spite of himself. Yami knows Kaiba means him. Feels safe and grounded in the truth of it. Feels his future laurels, heavy with decades of the Ishtar family’s sorrow, graze his forehead.
When Kaiba throws him the card, he knows as soon as it’s within his hand that it’s the same one he pulled from Kaiba’s deck in the stairwell.
Kaiba’s blue gaze is brimming with fire as he looks up at Yami. Like he is the only being in existence. Like even without a name, Kaiba would bend the world to follow his path along the sky. That refusal to yield, the self-sacrificial devotion of it, will transcend space and time. It will transcend the closing of a door, a desperate vow made in a stairwell. From beneath its cornerstone, ocean air will mix with ozone in the dust of a ruined tower.
Yami holds the card up to the sunlight.
He finds the outline of Kaiba’s thumbprint, and covers it with his own.