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The young pharaoh’s hands tremble around the cold surface of the Millennium Pendant. He’s watched the members of his court fall, one by one. He can see their faces and feel their souls departing this world, each one like a terrible wound that will never heal. They died for this cause; this victory. After days of fighting, the pharaoh’s nose now burns with the acrid smell of smoke and death. If things continue as they have, all of Kemet will be swallowed by the darkness, and their sacrifices will have been in vain.
No, not just his kingdom, not just these sacrifices — everything. Every land and every nation will fall, one by one, devoured by a dark power that no one dared to stop.
He will not allow it.
The shadows coil restlessly at his feet, as though they can sense what’s coming next. With only one path left to him, the young pharaoh summons every remaining ounce of strength in his soul and whispers his name for the last time.
Raw power flows its way into the Pendant, burning his fingertips and dragging a furious shriek from the darkness that lays thick around him. No matter; this is a seal that even the Dark One will be unable to break.
The last thing he sees as his soul falls apart is the sun breaking over his war-torn city. He prays for its safety to every God he can remember, until the memories slip from his mind like sand caught in the wind, and he knows not who he should pray to, or even what he should be praying for.
After that, there is nothing.
When the Spirit first realizes itself – an awareness that is either miraculous or a curse, or both – there is darkness. The darkness is all it knows and all it can find, filling every crevice and alcove in the rooms of its soul. Darkness is all there’s ever been, so how can it imagine anything else? There is no concept of time; the ages slip by like grains of sand into the void, endlessly. Perhaps an eternity has passed, but with no unit of measurement, no end and no beginning, who can say? Does it even matter?
It continues that way for a few more eternities-or-something-like-them, until something changes: the pinpricks of light begin, drawn from nowhere and pulled toward nothing. They burn through the darkness like a hot knife, the shadows hissing and trashing in protest, shrinking back. The light coalesces until something like a doorway appears, hanging heavy and inexplicable against a universe of emptiness.
There’s a voice beyond that light, murmuring excited words, but in that moment the Spirit knows nothing of language or the warm emotions behind it. All that matters is freedom.
An unsteady grin claws its way onto what must have been a face, once. Perhaps there are beginnings after all.
Yugi shows the Spirit many things, after pulling him from his prison within the Puzzle.
Anyone looking in from the outside probably wouldn’t believe it, based on appearances alone. After all, the Spirit’s confidence is violent and overpowering; in duels, Yugi melts into his shadow as he blazes his way to victory against any challenger (even Kaiba — especially Kaiba), boasting his victories and failing to be cowed no matter how dangerous the circumstances. It’s admirable to some, infuriating to others, but in either case there would be consensus: what does Yugi Mutou have to teach a figure so imposing?
They would all be wrong, of course, because only the two keepers of the Millennium Puzzle will ever know the extent of the lessons exchanged between them.
Yugi doesn’t even know the Spirit is there, not at first. He writes his blackouts off as temporary lapses in memory: exhaustion, stress, sickness, any excuse he can come up with to explain the gaps and the troubling things that follow them. By the time these denials begin to fail him, he can’t help but feel afraid.
People are being hurt. People are dying.
Even so... he doesn’t want to be afraid of this other soul inside him. He doesn’t.
When the Spirit orders his attack on Kaiba atop the ramparts of Pegasus’s castle, Yugi shows the Spirit terror, and then for a time, silence.
It’s the silence that affects him the most.
It’s too much like the darkness and silence of the Puzzle, no longer welcome now that he’s grown accustomed to a world of light and sound. After they’d established hesitant, uncertain contact with one another, they’d formed an unlikely faith that the Spirit finds himself loathe to give up now that he’s experienced it. Yugi trusts him — trusted him — and he in turn does everything in his power to protect his vessel and his friends. Through their combined efforts they’ve come closer and closer to their goal, and yet...
Yugi has shut him out.
It’s silent.
It’s maddening.
The Spirit confines himself to his soul room after Yugi wrenches back control (the first time he’s ever done so, the first time he’s ever even tried), wondering at Yugi’s fear. He’s spent long enough now exacting justice on anyone who wronged his vessel, with his kind heart always laid bare and easy to take advantage of, that he shudders at being the source of that wrongdoing.
Yugi doesn’t mean to, but this is the first time he shows the Spirit what guilt feels like.
Later, the Spirit will realize he becomes much better for it.
“It’s called chess.”
“Chess?”
“Right,” Yugi says, in that breathless way he gets when he’s talking about something he’s really excited about (usually a game, fittingly enough) and can’t get all the words out as quickly as he wants to. He deposits himself cross-legged on his bed, assembling an array of elaborately carved pieces on the board. “You have sixteen pieces — half of them are pawns, like this, see? — and then you have the rest of the pieces back here...”
The Spirit leans over his shoulder, eyeing the arrangement with keen interest. Yugi forces himself to bite back a smile.
“The goal is to capture your opponent’s King,” he continues, tapping one of the more ornate white pieces. “All the pieces move differently, like this...”
Five minutes of explaining later, Yugi seriously doubts he needs to do much more to sell the prospect. After all, the Spirit seems to take to all games, not just Duel Monsters. Still. He sits back, gesturing at the board. “Are you feeling up to it?”
The Spirit scoffs, like he’s been dealt an insult. “You think I’d turn down a challenge?”
Of course not. Yugi grins.
The arrangement is slightly tricky, what with having only one body between them, but they’ve always been good at shielding their minds from one another. Yugi moves for the both of them, following the Spirit’s instructions when he indicates which pieces he wants moved. A few plays have Yugi groaning and threatening not to shift the piece at all — he can already see all the ways he’ll be backed into a corner — but the bluff is so easy to call that the Spirit doesn’t bother. Yugi can feel him smirking in his head, somehow.
Figures.
An hour and a half later, by the time Yugi’s been thoroughly trounced (not that he didn’t put up a vicious fight, he’d like to point out!) and the Spirit’s mused that he could get used to this game, Yugi can’t even be mad. He just grins ear to ear, already moving to reset the board. “Two out of three?”
When Yugi offers to ease the chasm of the Spirit’s missing memories by giving him all of his own, he shows the Spirit kindness. The sort of pure, unrelenting kindness that gives and gives and gives without ever asking for anything in return. It had confused the Spirit at first, when he was fresh from the Puzzle and didn’t yet know the quirks of Yugi’s heart.
Now, though. Now he knows that kindness is one of Yugi’s most defining features, one of his greatest strengths, and the Spirit soaks it up shamelessly.
“I want to be with you forever. I don’t care if I don’t get my memories back,” the Spirit tells him, and though he blurts it out without much thought (anything to ease away Yugi’s distress, anything) he knows that it’s the truth. His partner, his friends — they’re all more than enough. Does he need to retrieve the memories of a life he knows nothing about? A life he can never return to?
Some niggling voice in the back of his mind, like a long-forgotten sense of duty, tells him he must. He resents it. He ignores it.
“Me too. Forever,” Yugi agrees, desperately trying to stem the flow of tears and not exactly succeeding. As the Spirit closes his hands over Yugi’s on the puzzle, he thinks they both know there’s no such thing as “forever.” But right now, neither of them can fathom anything else.
The Spirit has never seen snow before.
Yugi realizes this belatedly, after he’s felt a befuddled kind of alarm through their connection. At first his reaction is to prepare himself for the worst, because the Spirit normally only asserts himself when there’s a duel or something has gone sideways, but now...
The open puzzlement bleeds its way through their connection whether the Spirit intends for it to happen or not. Yugi turns his attention inward.
“Other Me? Are you alright?”
The Spirit’s projection appears alongside him, eyes wide as he takes in the flakes falling heavily onto the street beyond the Game Shop’s foyer. It occurs to Yugi that even if the Spirit had his memories, snow probably isn’t a sight he’d be familiar with.
“The rain,” the Spirit begins, staring at the falling flakes before swiveling around to fix his questioning gaze on Yugi. He hesitates, like he’s not sure what he’s asking. “No, it isn’t rain,” he reasons.
Yugi can’t help but smile. “Close. It’s snow.” He ducks out from under the foyer and collects some from the ground, noting that it’s not a very resilient snowfall. It’ll probably melt away in a few hours. “This is what happens when the rain freezes on its way to the ground.”
He holds the small wad of snow up for the Spirit’s inspection, ignoring how it burns in his palm as it melts.
“Does this normally happen?”
“Sometimes. If a winter is really cold, there’s usually a lot more than this.”
The Spirit considers the melting snow in Yugi’s hand for a moment more, before casting his eyes back out to the street. Cars drive much more slowly than usual, and pedestrians wander by with umbrellas to protect from the flurries. The entire spectacle is surreal, and yet... peaceful, somehow. It almost makes the Spirit want to urge Yugi back into the house to play video games all afternoon instead.
But a furrow works its way into the Spirit’s brow regardless, as he recalls at least one (or several, or many) earlier conversation. “Partner...” He tsks as Yugi shakes out his hand and tucks it into his pocket to warm it back up. “And you tell me this country isn’t inordinately cold? Your rain is frozen.”
Yugi’s laughter carries far enough for several passerby to look around curiously, but he doesn’t care.
When Yugi stays behind to reassemble the puzzle, he shows the Spirit a selfless love so blinding that it humbles him.
Yugi absolutely refuses to leave without the puzzle, fearing that it would burn up in the fire and leave the Spirit to an unknown fate. But when he realizes that his chances of leaving with it are next to nothing, he voices his final decision: he’ll stay behind and reassemble it, so that he’ll at least get to say goodbye to the Spirit properly.
He needs to take over.
He needs to call out to Yugi.
Run, run, run. Leave him.
But with the puzzle shattered, he has no way to help Yugi, or even communicate with him; the Spirit is powerless to do anything, and it’s the most frustrated he can remember being. Fire laps at the walls of the warehouse as Yugi dutifully inserts piece after piece, murmuring all the while that he’ll have apologies to make if they can only see each other again, just one last time...
By the time Jounouchi and Honda manage to pull Yugi from the fire, Yugi’s determination has already slotted the final piece of the puzzle back into place — what had once taken eight years now reduced to a scarce few minutes (a terrible eternity of minutes, given the circumstances), based solely on Yugi’s desperate desire to see the Spirit one more time.
When Yugi finally awakens, bandaged and heavily medicated in a hospital bed, the Spirit is already there, waiting. It’s been hours, excruciating eternities that Yugi has been unconscious; if the Spirit were bothering to track time properly, he’d know that it’s well into the night, practically morning. Yugi’s eyes slide over to his translucent form on the edge of the bed, clearly struggling to focus in the dim light of the room, but once he works out who and what he’s looking at, his face breaks into a watery grin that shakes something deep inside the Spirit.
“Other Me,” he breathes, laughing in relief. “You’re okay!”
It’s the first time the Spirit realizes he has something of his own, something he absolutely cannot bear to lose.
It’s terrifying.
“Have you ever eaten anything before?”
The question is met with somewhat perplexed silence, and all at once Yugi feels very foolish.
“Um- I mean, I guess you wouldn’t remember anyway, right?” He laughs a little sheepishly. Honestly, asking a disembodied, amnesiac spirit things like this! “Sorry.”
The Spirit shakes his translucent head, smile obvious only in the slightest quirk at the corners of his lips. “No, I don’t remember.” Another pause. “But I must have, once.” It’s hardly as if he could claim what it was, or what he liked, or what he disliked — but if he really was human before, then obviously he would have.
“Well,” Yugi begins, a touch uncertain. He bites his lip, eyes falling to the burger in front of him. There’s nothing at all remarkable about it, it’s the same burger he’s been getting ever since his and Jounouchi’s first venture to this restaurant, but it suddenly has him thinking. Normally the Spirit only controls their body for a duel, or something dangerous, but never anything as mundane as a meal. For a moment Yugi wonders if he’s been rude this whole time, not letting the Spirit experience these things, too.
“Partner?” the Spirit prompts, confused by the falter in conversation.
A small, sly smile crosses Yugi’s face, and his playful wink is the only warning the Spirit gets before their places are abruptly swapped.
“What- Yugi!” the Spirit protests, suddenly corporeal. Hands slap flat against the table while his mind fills with laughter.
Honestly!
“Sorry, Other Me.” He doesn’t sound remotely sorry. “I just thought — well, you should try it! Why should I hog all the fun stuff?”
“Eating is... fun?” He stares down at the burger on Yugi’s plate, feeling like he’s three steps behind in this conversation and not exactly enjoying the novelty of it.
“It can be,” Yugi confirms, still grinning. “If you like what you’re eating, anyway. If you don’t - um, well... I guess it depends on how much you don’t like it...”
“And you like this...” the Spirit gives the plate one of his elegant one-handed gestures, which is especially comical when he’s directing it at a fast food hamburger. “... whatever it is.” Though paying attention to the minutiae of what Yugi eats hasn’t been high on his priority list, he’s pretty sure it’s a ‘hamburger,’ notable only for Yugi’s obvious enjoyment of it. Still, he’d much rather feign ignorance than risk guessing incorrectly.
“It’s a hamburger! And yes, it’s delicious. Try it!”
The Spirit gives him a dubious look, but picks up the burger anyway. Yugi leans forward expectantly as he takes a cautious bite, holding his non-existent breath. “Well?”
“It’s-” the Spirit frowns thoughtfully, like he’s trying to decide. It isn’t like he has a frame of reference for tastes, which makes it surprisingly difficult to form an opinion. “Interesting.”
Interesting.
“I guess, even if you did have your memories, you probably wouldn’t have had anything like this in Ancient Egypt, huh...” Yugi rubs the back of his neck, feeling awkward. Something like a hamburger is probably totally weird to the other him! Why didn’t he think of that?
The Spirit sets the burger down and leans his chin on his palm, offering Yugi one of those smiles that Yugi is pretty sure he never aims at anyone else. Not that he’s, y’know... keeping track of that kind of thing, or whatever.
“Probably not,” the Spirit admits. “But by all accounts, I never would have gotten the opportunity to try one if not for you.” His eyes are warm as he taps the top of the Puzzle, a wordless invitation for Yugi to reclaim the rest of his meal. “Thank you, Partner.”
Yugi ducks his head — a pointless gesture, since they soon end up with their places swapped anyway — and desperately hopes his face isn’t red when he arrives back in his own body.
When Yugi sacrifices himself to the Seal of Orichalcos, he shows the Spirit selflessness.
The Spirit screams and curses and weeps, and it makes no difference because Yugi was stronger and braver than him and always has been. The days that follow Yugi’s sacrifice are the most torturous the Spirit can remember: every decision he makes feels hollow and questionable, like Yugi’s absence has robbed him of his better judgement.
(Because Yugi is his better judgement, he thinks, furious and disgusted with himself for his selfishness.)
The desperate quest to retrieve Yugi’s soul is the only thing that keeps his feet moving forward, even as the darkness seems to clutch harder at him with every passing moment. He’d known loneliness before, but the silence echoing in his heart now is entirely new and entirely worse. He vows to never, ever repeat the experience.
When Yugi’s soul is finally returned, and the Spirit relinquishes control of their shared body for the first time in far too long, he breathes a trembling sigh of relief at the feeling of warmth emanating from Yugi’s soul room. No longer are the halls of their soul cold and empty, filled with nothing but the ghosts of Yugi’s presence and the darkness of the Spirit’s maze. He gives his own soul door a long look - large and imposing, dark and cold - before he turns to Yugi’s door instead, perpetually ajar as if in unspoken invitation. Light pours out of it, cutting through the shadows of the hallway between their soul rooms. It’s so fitting that the Spirit doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He deposits himself on the threshold - not entering, but waiting for when his partner next turns his attention inward. They’ll talk then, and it will be his turn to apologize.
In the world of memories, Yugi shows the Spirit what it means to never be alone.
He wipes blood from his mouth, cursing. Osiris is defeated. He’s weakened and on the cusp of defeat - he knows it, and honestly can’t fathom how he’ll pull himself out of this situation. His spirit’s energy is depleted to almost nothing and his vision is swimming dangerously. He knows, too, that the ending of this story is a foregone conclusion; his memories will end in darkness, not light.
“So this is... it...?” Perhaps this is simply how it’s meant to be?
He doesn’t have time for regrets as his awareness shutters into nothingness.
The story should have ended there. He was so sure.
Instead, light cuts through the darkness, like that night so many lifetimes ago when Yugi had slotted the final piece into the puzzle. He aches all over, remnants from his battle with Bakura, and his eyes don’t want to focus, but he can feel an arm holding him up. Warmth seems to flow in his very veins, dragging his soul back from the brink.
Partner.
His gaze finally lock on Yugi’s face, disoriented and perplexed. Why is he here? How is this possible?
“Hang in there, Other Me!” Yugi’s hand finds his, squeezing like he’s afraid his partner will slip from his fingers at any moment. “I’m here with you!”
We’ll never truly be apart.
The sentiment has passed between them before, many times. It’s not that it was platitudinous back then, but the sudden appearance of his partner and friends here – in a world constructed entirely of his memories, where their presence shouldn’t even be possible – is the ultimate proof. He isn’t alone.
He carries Yugi’s light with him into battle, and wonders if a new ending isn’t possible after all.
They’re running out of time. Yugi and the others concentrate single-mindedly on the symbols they’d seen carved on the back wall of the Pharaoh’s tomb, willing them to etch themselves onto the Pharaoh’s cartouche and praying that Zorc doesn’t launch an attack in the time it takes the hieroglyphs to materialize.
If they’re too late, or they get it wrong...
I’m sorry, Other Me, Yugi thinks, feeling a sting of disappointment again. To get so far and finally uncover the Pharaoh’s lost name, only to be unable to read it...! This is the one thing we needed to do for you. If this doesn’t work—
“It’s working!” the Pharaoh’s voice rings out, and Yugi’s heart jumps. He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t let his mind wander from the symbols he knows he’ll have memorized for the rest of his life. The light finally fades from the cartouche, the hieroglyphs perfectly rendered from the wall of the tomb. Yugi and the others wait with bated breath as the Pharaoh steps forward, the little necklace clutched in his hands like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen. For all Yugi knows, maybe it is.
“My name...”
Yugi feels like he’s on the precipice of something, about to fall in, for better or for worse.
“... Is Atem!”
Blinding light surrounds the Pharaoh, but Yugi can’t tear his eyes away; the magic of his long-forgotten name is finally enough to beat back the darkness once and for all. But all Yugi can think is Atem. Your name is Atem.
Perhaps it’s fitting, so nearing the end of their journey, that Yugi and his friends are the ones to show him his name.
When Yugi beats him in the Ceremonial Duel, he has one last thing to show Atem.
It’s the final bit of proof, something that Atem is already sure of: Yugi is ready to stand on his own, a king in his own right, an unbeatable force to be reckoned with. Of all the emotions warring through him as his lifepoints crash down to zero, pride is foremost among them.
“You did it, partner,” he says warmly, but Yugi’s knees have already hit the stone floor, his tears coming in earnest now. That’s just like him. This was never a victory Yugi would relish in.
Some small part of him is envious of Yugi’s tears; he wouldn’t mind sinking down and weeping with him, but that isn’t his role to play. He urges Yugi to his feet instead, hands firm on his shoulders, and reminds him of everything he’s accomplished up until now. This is how it’s meant to be: facing each other one last time, as equals.
He just wishes it didn’t hurt so much.
He should show Atem how much he means to him.
He should run after him, reach out to him, take his hand, spill everything left unsaid between them.
Yugi doesn’t bother to bite back the tears, his nails digging painfully into his palm. Light is pouring out of the door, blinding and final, and he should do it now, now, now, before it’s too late. He should have done it a million times in their years together, but for some reason he didn’t, and if he doesn’t do it now then he’ll have to live with that weight upon his shoulders for the rest of his life.
Atem glances back at him, and their eyes meet — Yugi feels a jolt go through him, grief and pride and love all at once. Atem’s smile is as radiant as the light framing him, and Yugi realizes he’s being foolish. Atem already knows. Of course he does, Atem has always known. Everything that’s ever been shared between them is proof enough.
It’s then — when Yugi has nothing left to show his partner— that he knows it’s time to say goodbye. The sentiment passes wordless between them before the no-longer-nameless Pharaoh turns and faces the end of his story.
It’s okay like this, Yugi tells himself as the light swallows his partner, a royal cape billowing in his wake.
A Spirit walked out of the darkness, guided by Yugi’s outstretched hand, and it’s Atem who walks into the light.