Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Les Ombres de la Nuit ❯ Les Ombres de la Nuit ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Not mine

AN: TWT - Timeline, what timeline?

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Pendant la nuit, je vois les rois d'ombre
À l'aube, je me réveille à l'obscurité
Je vois le sang sur l'or et dans tes yeux.

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Yugi sleeps with the Puzzle on. He lies on his back, fingers tangled in the chain, and sleeps soundly. He never turns over, never gouges himself on the sharp edges, never wakes up bruised and sore from flopping onto it during the night.

It wasn't always like this. He remembers when he handed the golden box to his grandson, remembers his first joyous cry when two pieces clicked together, remembers when a drenched young man handed him a hunk of gleaming gold, and when Yugi tackled him with a greedy, gleeful cry, fingers already scrambling for the precious final piece to his treasure. He remembers the look on his face as he held the Eye in his hands, the strangeness of his smile, and he remembers how dark it seemed to be in the shadowy corners of Yugi's room.

He didn't know what to think when Yugi came down the stairs the next morning, a leather cord around his neck, the completed Puzzle dangling against his chest, the burnished gold gleaming between his palms like a second sun.

He brushed it off as a fancy. Legends were legends and he'd seen what he'd seen, but Yugi didn't seem any different, so he ruffled his hair and sent him on his way, certain that by lunchtime Yugi would grow annoyed with the heavy weight of his new toy, uncertain if the Puzzle would even remain intact for the duration of the day.

Yugi returned late in a blood-sun afternoon, laughing and gleeful that his treasure slid past the strictness of administrative scoldings, because really, jiichan, how is it any more attention-grabbing than my hair?

He didn't seem in the least bit fatigued by the weight around his neck, a heaviness that should have bent him further when instead he stayed exactly the same. (Slouching, always slouching, and why did he slouch when he so despised remarks about his height?) But there were no answers, just warmth and light and laughter, and maybe a hint of pride in his smile.

"My treasure," Yugi said, and he wondered at the harshness of his tone. Had he been teased because of it? It was beautiful, in its own way, but the Eye at its center... made him uneasy. Anyone else would have laughed off that it seemed like it was staring, but Sugoroku Mutou was anything but a fool.

Perhaps he would tire of it when the novelty wore off?

A week later, it hadn't.

Three weeks later, it still hadn't, and Yugi's friends were a laughing, chattering, three-headed presence as they trundled through his shop and into the apartment, sprawling across the small living room to watch movies and devour the snacks his daughter brought them.

And a short while later he wondered at Yugi's reluctance to put the Puzzle on display, wondered at the strangeness of the rumors spreading through a rough town like Domino City, wondered at the lighter he found tucked in one of Yugi's pockets one day as he was bringing down the laundry. He stared at the tension threaded through slim shoulders, and he wondered.

He peeked in on Yugi one night, curled up peacefully in his bed, and wondered why the Puzzle sat so near to him, just at the edge of the desk, almost to the point of toppling over.

He wondered why on Sunday mornings Yugi came down for breakfast clad in only his pajamas and the Puzzle. He wondered why he didn't grow sick of the thing. He wondered why Yugi was so lost in thought now, why he spent so much time sitting quietly in his room - but unlike years before, he didn't reach for his games. His hands were wrapped around his Puzzle.

He had to remind Yugi that leather could rot, so he shouldn't bring the Puzzle into the bathroom anymore when he showered. He didn't say anything when Yugi came back from school the next day and put a protective sealant on the cord.

He watched, and he wondered, and hoped Yugi didn't see the suspicion in his eyes.

Then there was a boy named Seto Kaiba, and Death-T, and he knew something had changed in Yugi, but he didn't know what it was. The coiled-up tension had slipped out of his body as swiftly as it had arrived, and he stopped lingering in front of mirrors for hours on end.

One day, Yugi told him about his new friend Bakura. The next day, he came home much later than he had been expected, and his mother threw a fit. But Yugi's brow was furrowed, and his lips were curled into a soft smile, and his fingers stroked weighty gold with a gentle touch. Sugoroku caught him staring wonderingly at his reflection in the window, and later into his bedroom mirror, homework as always forgotten somewhere beneath his desk.

His memories after that were blurred, but he was sure there was magic involved - magic that smelled of burning heat and smoke, and it sounded like a hundred voices screaming, and a demon snarled in the darkness, and the blood streaked down his tuxedo jacket and onto the fine shirt beneath. And he thought he was dying, and he thought he was living again, and there was a soft smile on lips unaccustomed to smiling - a smile that didn't match the brokenness in a ghost-child's eyes.

He remembered waking, dreams slipping away, and his daughter's delight as she embraced him. And then there was Yugi, flying into his arms, one slim hand reaching up in a graceful motion to flick the Puzzle behind him. When he let his grandson go at last, he frowned. Yugi looked the same - was the same - except he wasn't. Something had changed for him, on the madman's island, and he didn't know what it was, and Yugi guarded his secrets as one would an unknown lover, for all the truths he told them.

That night, Yugi slept with the Puzzle on the bed beside him.

A week later, Yugi came home with a length of industrial steel chain. His daughter sighed, he wondered what the boy was thinking, and the next morning his daughter stepped downstairs and asked him if he thought that her child was quite all right in the head.

Sugoroku said nothing. There was nothing to say.

And later there was the fire, and the hospital, and there was something fierce and strange in Yugi's eyes as he cradled the Puzzle in his arms and listened to his mother screaming about his foolishness.

Yugi's friends wouldn't meet his eyes, but Yugi did, and he couldn't hold his gaze for long. He didn't say a word to defend himself to his mother - and they all knew that there was nothing he could say that wouldn't sound awful, no explanation that could make her understand why he had stayed in a burning building to reassemble his shattered Puzzle.

He watched, and he wondered, and when he came to take Yugi home, he brushed off the nurses' inquiries about his grandson's mental health. Obsession and magic came hand in glove, and Yugi's eyes and stance were changing.

When he heard Yugi talking to himself alone in his room that night, he just walked away.

A few weeks later, Battle City swept Domino, and now he was sure he recognized the scent of magic in the air. He saw a flash of crimson in Yugi's eyes the night before the tournament began, and remembered the boy-ghost-child, hiding his brokenness behind a soft smile.

He prayed, that night, for the first time in decades, to gods he'd never truly believed in. And he wasn't at all surprised when all the viewscreens shattered during the finals, though he'd be picking glass out of the carpet for the next week.

His grandson returned from the tournament with the gods of Egypt in his pocket and steel behind his eyes. The fierceness was brighter now, incandescent, and even his daughter was taken aback by the change. The taste of magic was thick around his grandchild, ancient and dark, and Yugi was entirely too calm as he recounted his latest brushes with death. Parts of his story he knew were lies, parts were thin-stretched truth, and he wondered if the child would believe him if he told him what he knew.

That night when he peeked in, Yugi was wide awake, back propped against the headboard, Puzzle pushed to the side of his chest, limbs splayed in an awkward position. The shadows were thicker than the moonlight pouring through the window should have allowed, and his grandson's eyes were soft and fierce as he murmured against and into nothingness, head bowed as if to accept the touch of another.

Sugoroku blinked, and the air shimmered, and the ghost-boy with the broken soul clung to his grandchild, arms wrapped around his waist and squeezing. An imperfect mirror, and how had he forgotten that in the thick darkness, his eyes were new-spilled blood? And the not-child sighed in bliss when Yugi twined one leg around his and stroked his hair, and he knew the voice, Yugi's yet not, soft and low, as he parted his lips to breathe a name - no, an endearment, a prayer.

He blinked again, and there was only Yugi, alone in bed, looking ridiculous as he caressed the empty air.

And a month later when they went shopping, they had to pass through the bad part of town, and some nameless thug (one of thousands, millions, lost souls all) reached out and yanked Yugi back by the chain of the Puzzle. And Yugi fell backwards, graceful, too close to the man for it to be an accident, and the dip and sweep of his arm was a fluid motion perfected for duelling.

The thug fell back with a scream, and his grandson grabbed his hands and pulled him away, and he looked back as they were running to make sure he was right. Four-inch blade, buried deep enough in the thigh to chip the bone, the strike just to the left of a major artery.

When he turned back to his grandchild, Yugi's eyes were smoldering-bright, and he clutched his Puzzle close and stroked the sleek curves of its Eye with one bloodstained fingertip. Sugoroku wrinkled his nose - his grandson reeked of barely-checked magic, he privately marvelled that the man had gotten away alive. From what he knew of Darkness, all punishment was death or worse, yet Yugi had left him alive. Why?

Yugi stole a glance at him as they were walking home, Shadow-scent slipping slowly back inside the void (safe) against his chest, and Sugoroku looked back at him, expressionless.

After a moment, his grandson's lips quirked up in a crooked grin. "Don't tell mom?"

He chuckled and ruffled Yugi's hair. "She'll never know."

It was a conspiracy of silence they'd had since Death-T, and he felt no shame about it. His daughter would panic if she knew how many times Yugi and his friends had nearly died. He worried, of course, but Yugi was the one who solved the Puzzle, who woke the Darkness and cradled a shattered mirror in his arms. It wasn't as if he could stop the ones who came after him, or convince Yugi to destroy what had taken him eight years to complete, to shred again the spirit of the not-child who loved his boy so dearly.

He could only watch, and hope, and pray.

Two days later, he left a new knife sitting on Yugi's desk. When he came in to clean up the next morning, it was gone.

Now, the days aren't any longer, and now, the nights are darker. When he looks in at sometime past midnight, he sees Yugi, innocent, and his daughter peers over his shoulder with a worried frown.

"I wish he wouldn't wear those things to bed," she whispers, and he can hear her nervousness, and knows how uneasy she is with Yugi's obsession.

"He needs the collar to keep the chain from chafing," he replies equally softly. She's always hated his leathers, but Sugoroku understands. She does not see the same beauty in the darkness that her child does, and he himself refuses to confront it.

"But why?" she exclaims. "Why does he do it?" And there's so much more she's asking, as so much he can't tell her, because she'll never believe.

He looks to the slim fingers wound deep into the chain, the slight lump beneath the pillow where his new knife lies. He looks at the soft smile on Yugi's lips. He doesn't mind lying here, clutching his treasure, (greedy as all those who sought it for gold but his reward and punishment is so much sweeter) sleeping with a weapon at hand because one never knew.

He looks at leather and cotton and steel, everyday wear for this boy in sleep and in waking, and does not know what his grandchild has become.

"To keep safe," he answers, and his daughter gives a hiss of frustration.

"Why?!"

He looks at her pityingly, but doesn't reply.

And hours later, too early in the morning for it to be for school, Yugi comes downstairs, and he meets him. He pretends not to notice the line of the knife at his hip in the moment before Yugi sweeps his jacket over his shoulders. Yugi watches him, wary, but he makes no move to stop him, so he pulls on his boots and heads out the door without a word to save him.

"Take care of yourselves," he calls softly after him, a benediction that falls flat because the boy (both of them, one of them, they are the same and they are not yet whole because before them the world will fall) has no need for his blessing. Yet his grandson pauses, glancing back, brow furrowed, a hint of a question on his lips.

Sugoroku glances at the soft glow of the Puzzle, and back up at the whisp of Darkness peering over Yugi's shoulder. The not-child with the blood-ruby eyes stares back for a long moment, touches Yugi's shoulder, and then they spin as one and streak off into the night that pales before them.

He shuts off the light and goes upstairs to bed. He is not one to meddle in the lives (deaths, so many, bound by blood and gold and tears) of his grandchildren.

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En la nuit, je vois que tu es.
Je sais que tu es.
Je crains. Je sais. Je crains.
En la nuit, je vois ton visage.
Je vois le sang sur l'or et dans tes yeux.
Je vois le sang dans tes mains.

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Email: mjalta@yahoo.com

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