31_days | 8 Nov / Yu-Gi-Oh! / Never the End [Yugi-centric]

Title: Never the End
Day/Theme: 8 November 2006 - the hardcore and the gentle
Series: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
Character: Yuugi, OC
Rating: Teens (some language, death)
Summary: They've all had a lot of practise at preparing for the unexpected, because 'adventure' doesn't say goodbye easily. [Post-series]
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is copyright property of its owners and creator Kazuki Takahashi respectively. The following story was written for non-profit fun, and is in no way an intended infringement on the above-stated copyrights.

Notes: To be concluded - the 21^st looks promising. The title is stolen from the running gag at the end of CLAMP's Miyuki-chan stories (but, alas, there is no random girl-groping in this story.).

He was glad she'd died quickly. She knew it without asking, without even trying to know. It was just something in her head, completely obvious.

He hugged himself, running his hands up and down his bare arms. What kind of person walked around like that in the middle of the night, in tight, revealing black clothes, with holes and chains everywhere? Was he some kind of loser psycho goth kid, and that was why he was glad about this?

"Sorry," he whispered. Then he glanced around him, and they both noticed the people crowded on to the sidewalk at the same time. They were all bunched up in the space behind the police tape, straining to see into the road as they talked in hushed voices. He began to move away from the crowd, worming through from the very front of the police tape.

"Wait," she said. "Not yet-"

"It's been long enough," he whispered, and she shivered. It was weird, because his words felt warm - but she shouldn't be able to feel them at all! It was like he was speaking into her through the top of her head.

"I-I - we can't leave that - me - there! Go back!"

He began to shiver and hugged himself again. "It's not you anymore."

"Shut up!"

"It isn't," he said forcefully. The feel of it was still warm, and she could tell somehow that it was because he was all warm, through and through. But the stupid bastard kid wasn't at all sweet and nice, because he was walking away from her--!

She began to cry. He put his hand up to his face and wiped the tears off, briskly.

"We're going to my friend's apartment," he said. "He might know what to do."

His friend's house must be a good few blocks away. She'd been crying for a long time before she managed to say, "Stupid car. Stupid fucking blind driver."

"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice a little thicker, like he was going to start crying on his own. "And ... you do know what's happened to you? I mean, you ... realise what this mean--"

She scraped her fingertips against the wall she leaned on, as if clawing for a handhold, and he stopped talking. "You made me look," she said.

He didn't say anything. She felt something like a burn in him, then. It was the warmth that meant this guy was nice probably to the point where he was nicer than anyone she'd ever met, but that part of him was heated in friction as it scraped against something else in him: a part that did what had to be done. He was sorry for what had happened to her, but he wasn't sorry that he'd stayed at the accident site so that she could see through his eyes what the hit-and-run had left of her. Her body.

"I don't believe in ghosts," she said, knowing that it was inane, as she slumped down the wall. He smiled a little.

"My friend does. His name's Ryou Bakura. He knows about stuff like this." He made a sound of realisation. "Oh, I haven't introduced myself."

His name was one thing she didn't know. With her back to the red-brick wall she leaned against, she could feel all this stuff about him, but she didn't know his name.

"I'm Yuugi Mutou. And you are?"

"Dead," she said, because he was being so polite about it, she could scream. "My name is Kumiko Minamoto. I'm dead."

He said, "Are you okay?" and she knew that he could feel that she was gaping at him, even if it was from inside him. Then Kumiko gasped as she realised something.

"I'm fine!"

"Good," he said, a cherry-red rush of relief in his smile. Kumiko stumbled away from the wall, all of a sudden unable to stand it.

"How can it be fine? I'm not supposed to be okay with this!" she yelled at the wall. "I got hit by a car! I'm in your head, you freak! What the hell!"

"I-"

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

"Minamoto-san," he began, in a patient bull-terrier way that meant he wasn't going to let her go easily.

"I need to think about this! Okay? Gotta come to terms with it! So shut up!"

Chastened, he ... did something, so that it felt like he was some distance off, and looking the other way. Kumiko experimentally put her fingertips to the wall, then flattened her palm against it. The bricks were warm, but it was only with his presence. She couldn't actually feel him. And he couldn't feel her - she wouldn't be able to do something like cry out of his eyes, now. It felt kind of pathetic to have done that ... because really, she was dead, but why did that matter?

Kumiko backed off from the wall again. Was Yuugi making her feel that way? He'd been glad...

But he'd been glad, she realised, because he knew she hadn't felt more than a second's worth of pain. Maybe he was even glad that he'd - caught her, keeping her out of that broken body?

"Yuugi!" she said, and instantly he was back, attentive and close. She took a pace away from the wall. "Did you take me in here, into your head, I mean? Because I remember the car coming, and then - flying past everything. Over my own head, across the road..." She trailed off, unable to keep going.

"No, I didn't reach out, or anything," Yuugi said. "I just heard the car hit its brakes, and I was turning around to see what was going on, and then there you were." He didn't sound freaked out at all. He was smiling, reassuring and welcoming. "I think ... my head is kind of open, I guess. I, uh, I used to have a friend who lived with me. It seems like that kind of thing leaves its mark." He chuckled, as if embarrassed.

"Lived with you. You mean in your body," Kumiko said. "You're crazy!"

"It's true," Yuugi said. "He was a ghost too."

A ghost too. Kumiko hunched down, slowly seating herself on the grass. That was the part that seemed weird - being dead, sure, but being a ghost?

"Is there enough space in there, Minamoto-san? It used to be pretty big when my other friend was there, but things are different now."

He was crazy. Kumiko shook her head and answered. "It's fine. A little cramped, but okay." She took a long look around, and then stretched out her legs where she sat. "It's nice. I'm in my garden. My house is over there," she said, waving her hand.

Yuugi nodded. "Weird. I thought it would be a room," he said softly. "But I'm glad you're comfortable. Try and relax?"

Kumiko was suddenly very, very glad that it was this kid she was with. Not just because he was weird enough to be calm about it, or because he'd gone through it before, but because he was Yuugi. That, she knew, made every difference.

She nodded acknowledgement to his suggestion, and lapsed into silence. Now it was time to really try and figure this out.

Some time later, Yuugi said, "Here we are!"

Kumiko stood up, slightly apprehensive, and peeked through a window in the wall to look at what Yugi was seeing. She digested the sight. "I know this place."

"Oh? You know anyone who lives here?"

"Yeah!" she said. "And it's like two blocks away from where that car hit me!"

"I took the long route here. The really long route, I guess," Yuugi admitted. He was blushing a little. "I thought you might need some time."

Kumiko leant her forehead against the wall. She let that be her thank you, and then she said, "Let's go."