Work Text:
Scattered on the shifting grey Pacific Ocean,
A thread of light, blurred sunset, part of the moon. An empty sky or a sky for flying things.
A traveler or a child inside the cockpit of a too-sharp plane.
Atem was gone now.
Seto Kaiba was home again now.
If he was weaker he might’ve cried at some point but he doesn’t cry. There isn’t a hell, but if there was he knew he would go to hell. Even if he went to hell, even if Gozaburo was there in hell too, Gozaburo wouldn’t look for him either. Seto might raw his tongue in anxiety so instead he worked in the manor’s basement, in wires and programs and holograph, trying to become a traveler. It was as if someone was playing an out-of-tune violin inside his brain.
The best part of this house wasn’t in all the space and the too-many rooms and it wasn’t in the autumn-toned opulence of furniture and artwork and walls and it wasn’t even in the ghosts. It was in the quiet and how Seto wanted to belong in the quiet, just for now.
He would eat dinner with Mokuba and he didn’t talk much. Mokuba’s hair was like the plumage of a raven. They would shuffle by each other to build their plates of food, to reach for something in the refrigerator, in the cabinets.
In the basement, in the laboratory, there were fingers reaching out from the keyboard. Just for a moment. Fingers touched Seto’s fingers.
“Are you okay?” Mokuba asked him one evening.
A burning sunset melted into the curtains of the windows as Seto was stepping back into the main chambers of their home from the kitchen area where they ate. The grey-dark inside edged with luster.
“What?” Seto asked quietly back, looking back to Mokuba.
“You just seem more… tired I think,” Mokuba said.
Seto wasn’t sure what to say at first and then he said, “I’m working on the new project. Duel Links will be extravagant.”
“I guess so,” Mokuba said. He kept a warm half-filled mug cupped in his hands.
“I can show you if you’d like,” Seto offered.
“Maybe later,” Mokuba said.
The letters of their words just brushing the tips of each other.
The basement’s computer would hum and beads of light sat in the dark. Clear blue light in his eyes. Seto was still alive and dreaming. He wouldn’t just be an onlooker.
The way the universe folded with light and time and energy. The unknown dark matter and dark energy that scientists couldn’t yet see and couldn’t understand. Seto would write this atlas of dimensions.
Lying in the dark of his bedroom, lying in his bed, his eyes gently opened as he sensed some presence watching him there. The being moved softly and Seto could recognize the Other Yugi’s eyes, his cheeks, his lips as he slowly bent down and pecked Seto’s own lips. Floating softness. Seto sat up and the Other Yugi was looking at him with kind eyes. Seto thrust out the back of his hand sharply at the Other Yugi and the Other Yugi spilled away into dust and stars. And then-- and then Seto flinched awake, his head resting on his curled arms in front of the monitor in the basement. He was alone.
It was raining, the early morning sky faded against the trees. Seto was looking out of a window after he’d gone upstairs for a drink of water. The greens of the world were luminously green in the rain.