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Absence makes the heart grow fonder, indeed.
William made her uneasy when he was still with them. It wasn’t always that way. Yumi liked him enough until he kept pushing and pushing and pushing for her attention. Then he cornered her, 1 AM at night, pressing her for a kiss until she placated him for a false promise. That memory tainted his charm so much that Yumi started avoiding him at school.
How far away it all feels.
She misses him. They all do, even Ulrich. As much as the clone makes them laugh with its oblivious humor, it only reminds them what they’ve done.
Yumi will always wonder, in the back of her mind, if all would have ended better had she voted “yes” that first night. They would have inducted William much, much earlier. He’d have gone on enough missions to stamp that dangerous pride out of him. XANA wouldn’t have overtaken him so easily, and Lyoko wouldn’t have bled alive at the hands of Zweihander.
People say she’s stoic. Is she? She certainly feels as much as anyone should. Her friends know that well. It’s just that she’s good at tidying her emotions, tucking them exactly where they need to go before they can make too much trouble for her. She’s not like Odd, loveable enough to make his moods tolerable, or Sissy, so stormy no one can afford to wait her out.
Unfortunately, whenever Yumi encounters something she can’t immediately sort out, it eats at her, growing more intense the longer she avoids it.
Maybe that’s why when William steps on her chest, onyx eyes blank with fury, guilt wells up like heartburn in her throat. It hurts so much, like corrosive fire eating away at her insides, and all she can do is turn it around on him.
“No, William,” Yumi says, sputtering and shortbreathed, wondering if she’ll die with his name on her lips. “You’re a Lyoko Warrior. You swore to it!”
Zweihander falls to the ground, hard enough to shatter the glaciers beneath their feet. At first, she assumes it must be some sort of feint. William sounds like XANA still, his cries deep and malevolent, and his arms thrash as if possessed. But when he remains on his knees, eyes strangely lucid, Yumi begins to hope.
In another timeline, Yumi moved too slowly. She reached out to him, but it was too late. Memories, no matter how precious, inevitably fade. Or perhaps without the fuel of her love, it was all too easy for XANA to stamp out the embers of William’s crazy, eternal passion.
In this one, she moves immediately.
“William,” and she caresses his face, lifting his chin up so that he could look at her, “it’s me. Yumi.”
And his eyes, dark as night, drink her in as if seeing her for the first time.
“I’ve—we’ve—missed you so much,” she whispers.
William’s eyes unfocus for a moment. She’s losing him, and her muscles freeze in preparation. Then he blinks, shaking away the fog.
Yumi knows she has to keep going. She’s never been smooth-talking or sweet, like Odd or Aelita or even William before the program took him. But she must keep trying, for all of their sakes, and she squeezes her brain for sentimentality.
“I think about you all the time,” and it’s not even a lie. “In class, where you should be sitting with me. Remember that time you covered for me in the photoroom? I’ll never thank you enough for that.”
She pauses when William gasps. Wishfully, she imagines that his panting has become more human, and she can’t help but lean in until their faces lie breaths apart.
“I can’t even escape you when I’m at home.” Yumi smiles wanly. “I think of that time you hit me on your skateboard. Remember? You went out to see Skybreaker Four, and you seemed so…so disappointed even after I reminded you the entire franchise sucked.”
It’s not a poignant memory. If only she had more.
Her fingers caress his left cheek. She’s seen people do it, in movies and shows and under the trees by the side of the main building after school. He feels like stone, cold and smooth. Yumi wonders if it’s the taint of a digital demon, or simply the Ice Sector seeping into their bones.
“You told me you were an optimist.” Her breath fogs. His is so frigid it blends into the cold air. “I laughed at you back then, I know, but honestly…I wish I learned that from you. Because even though I want you back so much, I can’t help but feel like I’m being stupid.”
His hand settles on her forearm. She tenses. But the deathly grip she anticipates never comes.
“We miss you so much. Come back to us, William. Please.”
His other hand caresses her cheek, and he gasps her name like a prayer. “Yumi.”
“William?”
His nails dig into her arm. Yumi wonders if she’s made a mistake, if they’d finally lost Lyoko for good this time.
Instead, William pulls her into a kiss. He’s so clumsy, nose bumping into hers and lips forceful enough to hurt, moving like a puppet flailing on its strings. But it’s all too sweet, too passionate, to be XANA.
She has no idea how to kiss anyone. For his sake, she tries, letting herself relax, and his skin comes to life. His mouth pulls away slightly, just enough for their lips to graze. His hands tremble as they run through her hair, feeling the strands brush against his fingers.
And Yumi knows she's saved him.
What a far cry from when he caressed her on the precipice weeks ago, moments before he pushed her into the Digital Sea. His knuckles rolled rough and hasty on her face, as if appraising a sculpture. After all, it wasn’t William who touched her, but his master, even if he borrowed William’s desire. XANA's always been rough with Yumi. Even now, she shudders at the sight of vines, unable to forget the feeling of a million tendrils running over her, visceral and suggestive all at once.
The real William is anything but cold. He’s warmth and passion and life itself: bright, vivid, and so, so hungry in the way that only humans can be.
“It really is you,” he murmurs. “I can’t believe it…”
“Stay with me, William,” she pleads even as she tries to pull away from him, afraid of encroaching monsters. “Please.”
“Just this one moment. Please.”
He feels the soft skin of her cheeks and leans in until their foreheads touch. His warmth spreads to her and settles in her stomach. Yumi stifles it, fans at the ready, counting every second until she dies for the second time. When William pulls away, his eyes are clear and his forehead unmarked, and she finally lets herself breathe.
“Aelita will be here soon. She’s just coming back from the eighth grade science-William!”
“I’m fine.” He gasps, but she can see the darkness struggling to settle over him again.
“William-”
“Devirtualize me. Now.”
He doesn’t have to ask again. She slices her fan across his neck, and then she’s all alone in the frozen Lyoko landscape.
Aelita shows up a few minutes later, to Yumi’s relief. It was unlikely, but what if the ghost of XANA possessed William once he rematerialized? For all of Aelita’s spirit, she has a snowball’s chance in hell of physically overpowering an older, much taller boy.
“William showed up on the other side,” she explains.
“I know.”
“What happened?”
Yumi shakes her head. “Later.”
William’s crumpled by the scanner when the girls rematerialize. His arms clutch his stomach. His mouth is wan, and his usually lively eyes are glossy and subdued. But they remain clear, and when Yumi and Aelita step out, they follow their every move.
“How are you feeling, William?” Aelita asks.
She rushes to hug him. Yumi feels awkward, their embrace on Lyoko hanging over her. Nonetheless, she joins them.
“Like I just ran a marathon.” His voice is hoarse, like he’s been screaming for days.
They help him out of the scanner room. Yumi hands him her water bottle, and he drains it eagerly. When he leans against her, she doesn’t protest like she would have months ago. Instead, she swings an arm around him and lets his head rest on her shoulder. Aelita stares at them briefly, her eyes wide and puzzled, but she turns away.
“That makes sense,” she says softly, eyes elusive. “XANA probably overexerted you. But it’s good to see you again. Yumi, let’s program the return to the past.”
“I don’t know about that. He’d end up on Lyoko again, won’t he?” It feels so weird talking about William as if he’s not here. But the whole situation is strange, and Yumi can’t even bear to look at him too intensely. “He was already struggling before I devirtualized him. What if XANA takes him again?”
“It’s possible. XANA probably injected something into him.” Aelita types something onto the supercomputer. “Yeah, we’ll need an antivirus sometime. But,” and she thinks for a moment before turning to William, “if you came back to us once, then you’ll come back to us again.”
William smiles weakly at her.
“We don’t have to return to the past this time, Aelita.” Yumi takes a deep breath. “I missed class. You ran out on the trip. We’ll get in trouble, but it’s not—”
“No, Yumi!” and Yumi recoils at the force of Aelita’s voice. “When I left, a freak thunderstorm was already starting. Ulrich was on a raft with XANA’s ghost. He was unconscious, and if he fell in the water, he wouldn’t be able to swim back out.”
Ulrich.
How the hell will she explain this to him? Aelita didn’t–couldn’t–see what had happened. But William was there for every second of it. He would present it as absolute proof that he was a better match for her. And then Ulrich would withdraw into himself, destroying the friendship they so precariously maintained.
You aren’t dating, she repeats to herself, like she does every time he humors Sissy. But they—everyone—always knew it was only a matter of time. He’d laid claim to her, in the same way she’d claimed him. If their positions had been reversed–if he’d been here with Sissy, and she’d been languishing in the lake–he would have dropped everything to save her.
“And I don’t think Odd and Jeremie were doing much better either…We really don’t have a choice. We have to go back before someone gets seriously injured. Or dies. You know we can’t bring back—”
“I know, I know.” Yumi sighs. “But Aelita, we can’t leave William either. XANA’s not going to let him go this time. He’ll dig his claws in even deeper until we don’t have a William anymore.”
Aelita rubs her eyes. William steps forward as if to speak, before stepping back. He’s too tired for words, suspecting correctly that his brand of advocacy wouldn’t be well-received.
“Aelita—”
Aelita closes her eyes and inhales sharply, as if seeing Odd and Ulrich and Jeremie floating, bloated and unmoving, in a pile of flotsam.
“Okay. I think we can do this. We can program a Return to the Past for today morning. Meet me here before school. Maybe 7, or even 6. We’ll bring William out before my class trip.”
She types the command before Yumi can even nod, and the world’s swept in a dome of light.
For once, their Lyoko mission runs smoothly.
Yumi runs out of bed as soon as her alarm sounds off. Her parents are still asleep, and when she bumps into a bleary-eyed Hiroki, she chirps off a half-hearted excuse about cross-referencing her notes before her exam. Even her sewer trek happens in record time, and Aelita shows up as soon as her watch beeps six.
Fetching William is fast. He stands exactly where he was in the Ice Sector yesterday, serene and unmarked. His eyes widen in terror when she unveils her fans, but he bears no resistance, not even when his body dissolves in the air.
And there he is when he emerges, lying at her feet, body crumpled and breath uneven, cast in the harsh dawn light. Yumi would never admit it to the other ninth grade girls, but she can’t stop looking at him. He’s the very picture of a sleeping prince, with his delicate jawline and sculpted cheekbones and wispy dark hair like strands of night.
Best of all, she rescued him. All of Jeremie’s ingenuity, and it was her moment of impulse that did it.
William’s eyes flicker open the moment he hears her emerge.
“Yumi,” he murmurs. Despite his current weakness, he beams with joy.
“You okay there?”
“Hold me.”
She obliges before she thinks. Why wouldn't she? He just survived an eon of trauma under XANA's spell. She just eliminated one of their worst enemies on Lyoko. In reality, no excuse can erase how he molds to the shape of her arms.
Yesterday, her happiness had been tempered with the understanding it could all be undone. Today, it surges through her veins like liquid mirth.
William sits up, cradling her face in his hands like the world’s most precious treasure. His thumb brushes her bottom lip, and she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
Yumi hesitates at first. She thinks of Ulrich, flitting in her mind like a ghost, and holds the thought of him as if it were a talisman. William and the passion he elicits is nothing compared to years of friendship, saving each other’s lives more times than she can count.
But when she stares into William’s dark pensive eyes, her heart melts. Those tremulous moments on Lyoko return to her unbidden, and she can’t help but replay it in her head.
Her decisions will haunt her for years to come, more than she ever expected. Though it takes an eternity for her to forgive herself, she’ll eventually accept that after everything, choosing William was inevitable. He picked her in the most crucial moment, and, well: Yumi is still a teenage girl, no matter how much of her adolescence she sacrifices for a world that will never know her.
Their kiss on Lyoko was awkward and chaste. Now it’s anything but. William presses his lips against hers, letting them linger long enough for her to miss them before pulling away. He laughs softly when she gives in and reaches for him. In a moment of weakness, she gasps, looking at him with bright covetous eyes, and he takes her again.
She’s never kissed anyone like this before. But William clearly has. He knows how to use his hands, his tongue, even the lilt of his voice to cast a haze of corporeal pleasure so intense it contaminates her mind. Maybe she shouldn’t be too surprised. Though Yumi’s never asked, she has no doubts he’s dated his fair share of girls at his old school. Even during his short time at Kadic, he was always followed by watchful, longing glances.
How does he do it? He makes it feel as easy as breathing, even when he steals her breath away.
His hands creep around her neck and the line of her waist. Yumi shudders at their contact.
“You need to rest,” she protests weakly.
William smiles. “I told you before, Yumi,” his mouth millimeters away from hers. “Love makes me crazy.”
Something hot and hungry bubbles over in her chest. She doesn’t protest when his hands slip under her shirt or when his lips migrate down her neck. She feels like putty in his hands. If they could stay here forever, just the two of them—
Her mind can’t stop churning even as her body wants to melt. They’ll never understand each other, she thinks, two opposing forces of nature, unable to resist each other’s power. Maybe that’s why William fell for her in the first place. He sensed in her that same overpowering intensity, the only person who could quell his fire.
Yumi, if anything, is sensible to a fault. She’s never been one for stories or fairy tales. They’re not for her, she knows—has known her entire life—not when her eyes ring too solemn and her blood runs icy cold. But her exclusion is partially self-imposed. It's her choice, to retreat behind ever-growing walls, to leave the flightiness and passion to her parents and friends.
And something about this situation makes her want to throw all of it away for the span of a heartbeat, even when she knows it can only derail her life.
Aelita’s footsteps approach.
“William,” Yumi moans as he caresses the lines of her shoulder blades. “We need to stop.”
They pull away before Aelita steps in the room, though her expression suggests she suspected everything that happened. Nonetheless, she stays cheery as she explains to William everything that happened in his absence: their calls to his parents, the time that elapsed, his clone.
“I can get rid of him now,” Aelita says. “You’ll just have to tell anyone who sees you around you went on an early run or something. Go on ahead. Yumi and I need to square some things away.”
William laughs. “I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”
“We do have a math test today,” Yumi points out, “so you can study for that.”
When he walks out of earshot, Aelita’s smile drops. Yumi braces herself for the inevitable inquisition. But it never comes.
Instead, Aelita only sighs sadly. “Yumi,” she whispers, and what she says is worse than any grilling. “Ulrich would die for you. You know that.”
It’s true. Yumi can list at least three times right off the top of her head. And then there was that time he’d configured a return to the past for that stupid lottery ticket just so that she could stay in France with them.
But it’s more than that. He’s the gateway to her current life. Without him, she’d still be meandering through Kadic society, bouncing from study buddy to study buddy, wondering when she’ll stop feeling so simultaneously empty and restless. For all that she dreads XANA, she can’t deny how much brighter her existence has become after meeting him.
Ulrich would die for you.
She knows that better than anyone else in the world, and suddenly she feels unbearably impatient.
“We would all die for each other,” Yumi replies harshly.
Too late, she hears her unintentional insinuation.
But Aelita seems more annoyed at Yumi's deliberate obtuseness than she is at the reminder that they all sacrifice their lives for her. She turns away slowly, always so gentle and level-headed. "You know what I mean," she says finally.
They walk back to Kadic in silence.