Crossing Over-Prideshipping
Title: Crossing Over
Rating: K
Summary: They need a last meeting. They need a last battle. They need each other. If only they weren't both too proud to admit it. Prideshipping, for contest.
A/N: Manga canon, takes place during the two months between the end of the Millennium World RPG and Yuugi's trip to Egypt for the Ceremonial Duel.
...lol sorry about forgetting the cut earlier guys. OTL
=======
"You need to call him, Seto."
Mokuba squints into the dim light of his brother's office, much darker than the hallway he's just come in from. It's after one a.m., but Mokuba knows his brother respects him enough not to chastise him for staying awake. Generally, Seto also respects him enough to consult with on personal matters, but tonight seems to be an exception.
"No, Mokuba," Seto says quietly, not looking away from the screen. When Mokuba pulls the door to the hallway closed with a quiet click, the light from Seto's laptop is the only illumination in the room.
Mokuba steps across the darkened floor to the wall-filling window behind Seto's desk and draws the blinds open. From the top floor of the Kaiba Corp building, he can take in the whole of Domino at night: orange streetlights reflecting off the metal buildings of the financial district, the distant horn of a late-night train, the headlights of the few cars still on the road, the last of the second shift heading home.
Sometimes it's easier to watch the street below than it is to watch his brother.
"Why not?" Mokuba asks evenly. He moves until his side brushes against his brother's computer chair, subtly nudging him - don't ignore me, you're only hurting yourself. He feels Seto shift in his chair slightly; so subtly as to be imperceptible to anyone who doesn't know him as well as Mokuba does.
But Mokuba knows what he's thinking. His brother wishes their backs weren't to each other.
His brother wishes more than that, though.
"I'm very busy you know," Seto begins, in the sharp tone he usually uses for talking to corporate opponents and Duel Monsters rivals. He breathes, in a manner that might almost be taken for a sigh if he weren't Seto Kaiba, and continues in a slightly gentler voice. "And if Yuugi had wanted to challenge me before he went off on his...trip..."-here his voice lowers in that way that Mokuba knows means he's tightened his throat painfully- "...well then, Yuugi would have made an appointment. Yuugi knows I'm very busy."
Mokuba sneaks a glance over his shoulder, past the back of his brother's head to the laptop screen in front of him. He smiles- Seto's finalizing the plans for the grand opening of Kaiba Land. Amusement park schematics fill the screen, and in a side-bar he sees listed all the cities in America where construction has been started.
But his gaze drifts down to the surface of Seto's desk, illuminated just slightly by the laptop-light. It's expensive and glass, and internally etched with the profile of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. A new addition has found its way to a far corner: an etching of a woman's profile with flowing white hair. He bites his lip.
"Atem," Mokuba corrects softly.
Seto moves a stack of papers over the corner of his desk and continues typing.
"At any rate," Seto replies, and his voice is still oddly tight. "I'm far too busy to take on challengers outside of regularly scheduled tournaments. You know how important establishing Kaiba Land in America is, Mokuba. And whatever personal interest I have in a rematch with Yuugi Moutou...can wait until he comes back from his...trip."
Mokuba closes his eyes and wishes he didn't hear the faint note of pain in his brother's voice. He hesitates and turns back to the window.
"I don't understand why we came back to Domino if not to see him," he says.
To this, Seto has no response.
=======
"You need to call him, oth-...er- Atem."
Yuugi is pacing the floor of their shared soul room, no longer a labyrinth since the retrieval of his other self's...no Atem's...memories, but a wide, alabaster floor marked with squares and giant game pieces. Atem had said it was a Senet board, a board for the game of the Egyptian afterlife. Yuugi had decided that he didn't want to play. Not yet, anyway.
Atem stops Yuugi's pacing with a hand to his shoulder. "Atem may be my name. But we are still two souls in one body. Call me whatever makes you more comfortable."
Yuugi nods, understanding. But his comfort isn't the point of this conversation.
Whatever he may call his other self, Yuugi knows Atem well enough to see when he's in pain.
Atem sits down cross-legged on an alabaster square, looking up at Yuugi. It's a conscious decision, of course, making himself smaller, less imposing, and Yuugi recognizes this. When he sits down next to Atem a moment later, their eyes are perfectly even.
"I'm willing to listen to what you have to say," Atem says. "But you have to say it."
Yuugi pauses for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order. It's more difficult, this talking, now that his other s-...Ate-..his partner has his memories back. There's a line, now, between what is his and what is theirs, the gulf of an unshared past and the knowledge of an unshared future. And though the gap itself is more distinct, what exactly it divides can be unclear. So Yuugi's been thinking, resolving. And he's come to this conclusion:
Kaiba is not his. Kaiba is Atem's.
Expressing that thought to Atem, though, getting him to act on it...that's another matter altogether. Stubbornness, too, lies firmly on the 'Atem' side of the divide.
"Rivalry..." Yuugi begins, and then pauses to look sidelong at Atem's expression. He's projecting an aura of...challenging interest. Interest that might cut you off at any second. But Yuugi continues anyway. "Rivalry is a...bond. In a way, it's sort of a kind of partnership... A-and so. I want to talk to you about Kaiba. You and Kaiba have something-"
"You are more important to me," says Atem firmly, cutting him off, "than Kaiba could ever be." He gives Yuugi a stern look, as if daring him to disagree.
"O-of course," Yuugi says, starting to bow his head, but then stopping himself.
Atem pauses a moment, thinking. He averts his eyes from Yuugi's and instead stares straight ahead, into the blackness surrounding the Senet board of their soul room.
"Kaiba came back from America a reason," Yuugi says firmly.
"Mmm..." Atem replies, still staring into the darkness. "I may have Pegasus's Eye, but I'm no mind reader. I'm afraid I can't tell you what that reason would be."
He can be so oblivious sometimes.
"You...he..." Yuugi begins, frustrated. His other self can't be this skilled at predicting his rival's next move, and this unskilled at understanding his rival's thoughts. "On the most practical level, he wants a rematch with you."
"Kaiba and I have played enough matches."
"No. You're just both too proud to admit that you need each other."
Atem's head snaps away from the blackness, and he looks Yuugi directly in the eyes. There's a sharp-edged silence that stretches on, but Yuugi breaks it softly.
"I want you to be..." Yuugi begins, searching for the right words, "...free. That's why we're doing this, isn't it? Why we fought for your memories? So you'd know who you were? Who you are?"
"I know who I am," Atem says, leaning back onto his elbows and letting his feet hang over the edge of the Senet board into the darkness below. "My memories. Your memories. I am complete. I am free. I can cross over."
"If you think freedom is nothing but the ability to cross over into the after life," Yuugi says softly, "then I think you sorely underestimate what made you free here on earth." He stares at Atem meaningfully, takes his hand and interlaces their fingers together.
Atem just looks at him.
"You need to call him," Yuugi repeats quietly.
=======
Yuugi prevails eventually, as Atem knew he would, and it's Yuugi who dials the Kaiba Corp phone number from the Game Shop phone, Yuugi who deals with the transfers through Kaiba's personal secretary, Yuugi who stays on the line until Kaiba picks up with a gruff, "Kaiba Corporation, Seto Kaiba speaking."
"This is Atem," says Atem, who takes over at the sound of Kaiba's voice. Yuugi retreats to their soul room, smiling. Atem can take it from there.
"I," says Atem, and his voice is as cool and confident and clear as it always has been, as it always will be as long as he can call himself a duelist. "I challenge you to a rematch."
"Kh," scoffs Kaiba, and now they're moving according to a familiar script. "What makes you think I have time for a rematch? What makes you think I'm even interested?"
"I know you're interested."
Kaiba laughs. It's tinny in the Game Shop's antique phone, but it's harsh and strong and arrogant and Kaiba, and in Atem it sets of a tingle of both anticipation and premature nostalgia.
"I'll bring the God Cards."
"I would expect no less."
"And the Devil's Sanctuary card you gave me."
"Your deck would hardly be worth much without it."
Now it's Atem's turn to laugh. With his index finger, he traces a circle in the dust on the surface of the front desk of the Game Shop. Mid-afternoon sunlight is filtering through the window a few feet away, and cicadas are starting to buzz in the trees. Summer is ending. For Atem, it's the last time.
"I am going...to a sort of sanctuary..." he begins, not quite as melancholy as he feels he ought to be. "I-" he hesitates for the next word, and Kaiba takes the opportunity to cut him off.
"And no matter how many times you, or Yuugi, or Mokuba talk to me about sanctuaries and crossing over and the next life, you'll always be wasting your breath. Honestly, I wonder how you've made it so far as a duelist with a mind so devoid of logical thinking." Atem can practically hear Kaiba's smirk through the phone.
"Life," says Atem, with the tone of someone making a profound proclamation, because that's exactly what he believes he's doing, "is far more convoluted than even the most strategic Duel Monsters game." His volume has increased, he's matching the arrogance in Kaiba's tone as he always does, and yet there's a note, deep down beneath it all, that's almost...caring. "Kaiba," he says, "it's important."
"Hmph," says Kaiba. " What's important is that this match will decide which of us is the true Duel Monsters champion."
Atem smiles fondly and reflects that he says that every time. And that this is the last time.
"Yes."
=======
Kaiba's platform has a dragon painted on the front, emerging from a whisp of a cloud that, from a distance, almost looks like white hair blowing in the wind. Across the arena, Atem's platform has been painted with a magician's staff crossed with the flail of Osiris.
Kaiba, who was only partially responsible for the arena decoration, wonders just how much Yuugi and Mokuba have been talking.
"This is our last match, Kaiba," Yuugi calls from across the field. He's using his low voice, so Kaiba supposes he should technically be calling him Atem now. Not that he will. It'd take far more than the outcome of a mystical Dungeons and Dragons game to reprogram the name that Seto Kaiba calls his rival in his own mind.
"In that case," Kaiba replies, "I'm glad our corporation got the latest model of the duel disk running in time. Your definitive defeat will be at the hands of only the most efficient and high-quality holograms." He smirks. Utterly unsentimental. That's the tone to go for.
...That's the only tone he has.
"So sure of yourself, Kaiba," Yuugi says, arrogant, smirking. "Have you forgotten the outcome of our last two matches?" Kaiba wants nothing more than to wipe that look off his face.
"Huh. You act as if I've learned nothing since then." He grins, and it's only slightly manic. "You forget, Yuugi, which one of us is the genius." And he has learned much in their last two matches, learned things that, perhaps, a non-genius would've known sooner. Learned he fought his best when he fought to protect those he cared about...learned he fought yet better when he left behind his hatred.
Not that he'd ever admit these things to Yuugi.
...This would be their first match since he'd buried his past. And the first since Yuugi had unearthed his. And the last.
"Show me then, Kaiba," Yuugi said, eyes narrow, challenging...oddly inspiring. "Show me what you've learned."
But Kaiba just snorts. "Hn. This all seems like so much stalling to me. Are we going to chat, or are we going to decide a Champion?"
Yuugi merely smiles knowingly.
They draw their duel disks level with their chests and take a step forward, coattails billowing behind them.
For the first and last time, they speak not against each other, not in argument, but together. One last word, said as one.
"Duel."
Rating: K
Summary: They need a last meeting. They need a last battle. They need each other. If only they weren't both too proud to admit it. Prideshipping, for contest.
A/N: Manga canon, takes place during the two months between the end of the Millennium World RPG and Yuugi's trip to Egypt for the Ceremonial Duel.
...lol sorry about forgetting the cut earlier guys. OTL
=======
"You need to call him, Seto."
Mokuba squints into the dim light of his brother's office, much darker than the hallway he's just come in from. It's after one a.m., but Mokuba knows his brother respects him enough not to chastise him for staying awake. Generally, Seto also respects him enough to consult with on personal matters, but tonight seems to be an exception.
"No, Mokuba," Seto says quietly, not looking away from the screen. When Mokuba pulls the door to the hallway closed with a quiet click, the light from Seto's laptop is the only illumination in the room.
Mokuba steps across the darkened floor to the wall-filling window behind Seto's desk and draws the blinds open. From the top floor of the Kaiba Corp building, he can take in the whole of Domino at night: orange streetlights reflecting off the metal buildings of the financial district, the distant horn of a late-night train, the headlights of the few cars still on the road, the last of the second shift heading home.
Sometimes it's easier to watch the street below than it is to watch his brother.
"Why not?" Mokuba asks evenly. He moves until his side brushes against his brother's computer chair, subtly nudging him - don't ignore me, you're only hurting yourself. He feels Seto shift in his chair slightly; so subtly as to be imperceptible to anyone who doesn't know him as well as Mokuba does.
But Mokuba knows what he's thinking. His brother wishes their backs weren't to each other.
His brother wishes more than that, though.
"I'm very busy you know," Seto begins, in the sharp tone he usually uses for talking to corporate opponents and Duel Monsters rivals. He breathes, in a manner that might almost be taken for a sigh if he weren't Seto Kaiba, and continues in a slightly gentler voice. "And if Yuugi had wanted to challenge me before he went off on his...trip..."-here his voice lowers in that way that Mokuba knows means he's tightened his throat painfully- "...well then, Yuugi would have made an appointment. Yuugi knows I'm very busy."
Mokuba sneaks a glance over his shoulder, past the back of his brother's head to the laptop screen in front of him. He smiles- Seto's finalizing the plans for the grand opening of Kaiba Land. Amusement park schematics fill the screen, and in a side-bar he sees listed all the cities in America where construction has been started.
But his gaze drifts down to the surface of Seto's desk, illuminated just slightly by the laptop-light. It's expensive and glass, and internally etched with the profile of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. A new addition has found its way to a far corner: an etching of a woman's profile with flowing white hair. He bites his lip.
"Atem," Mokuba corrects softly.
Seto moves a stack of papers over the corner of his desk and continues typing.
"At any rate," Seto replies, and his voice is still oddly tight. "I'm far too busy to take on challengers outside of regularly scheduled tournaments. You know how important establishing Kaiba Land in America is, Mokuba. And whatever personal interest I have in a rematch with Yuugi Moutou...can wait until he comes back from his...trip."
Mokuba closes his eyes and wishes he didn't hear the faint note of pain in his brother's voice. He hesitates and turns back to the window.
"I don't understand why we came back to Domino if not to see him," he says.
To this, Seto has no response.
=======
"You need to call him, oth-...er- Atem."
Yuugi is pacing the floor of their shared soul room, no longer a labyrinth since the retrieval of his other self's...no Atem's...memories, but a wide, alabaster floor marked with squares and giant game pieces. Atem had said it was a Senet board, a board for the game of the Egyptian afterlife. Yuugi had decided that he didn't want to play. Not yet, anyway.
Atem stops Yuugi's pacing with a hand to his shoulder. "Atem may be my name. But we are still two souls in one body. Call me whatever makes you more comfortable."
Yuugi nods, understanding. But his comfort isn't the point of this conversation.
Whatever he may call his other self, Yuugi knows Atem well enough to see when he's in pain.
Atem sits down cross-legged on an alabaster square, looking up at Yuugi. It's a conscious decision, of course, making himself smaller, less imposing, and Yuugi recognizes this. When he sits down next to Atem a moment later, their eyes are perfectly even.
"I'm willing to listen to what you have to say," Atem says. "But you have to say it."
Yuugi pauses for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order. It's more difficult, this talking, now that his other s-...Ate-..his partner has his memories back. There's a line, now, between what is his and what is theirs, the gulf of an unshared past and the knowledge of an unshared future. And though the gap itself is more distinct, what exactly it divides can be unclear. So Yuugi's been thinking, resolving. And he's come to this conclusion:
Kaiba is not his. Kaiba is Atem's.
Expressing that thought to Atem, though, getting him to act on it...that's another matter altogether. Stubbornness, too, lies firmly on the 'Atem' side of the divide.
"Rivalry..." Yuugi begins, and then pauses to look sidelong at Atem's expression. He's projecting an aura of...challenging interest. Interest that might cut you off at any second. But Yuugi continues anyway. "Rivalry is a...bond. In a way, it's sort of a kind of partnership... A-and so. I want to talk to you about Kaiba. You and Kaiba have something-"
"You are more important to me," says Atem firmly, cutting him off, "than Kaiba could ever be." He gives Yuugi a stern look, as if daring him to disagree.
"O-of course," Yuugi says, starting to bow his head, but then stopping himself.
Atem pauses a moment, thinking. He averts his eyes from Yuugi's and instead stares straight ahead, into the blackness surrounding the Senet board of their soul room.
"Kaiba came back from America a reason," Yuugi says firmly.
"Mmm..." Atem replies, still staring into the darkness. "I may have Pegasus's Eye, but I'm no mind reader. I'm afraid I can't tell you what that reason would be."
He can be so oblivious sometimes.
"You...he..." Yuugi begins, frustrated. His other self can't be this skilled at predicting his rival's next move, and this unskilled at understanding his rival's thoughts. "On the most practical level, he wants a rematch with you."
"Kaiba and I have played enough matches."
"No. You're just both too proud to admit that you need each other."
Atem's head snaps away from the blackness, and he looks Yuugi directly in the eyes. There's a sharp-edged silence that stretches on, but Yuugi breaks it softly.
"I want you to be..." Yuugi begins, searching for the right words, "...free. That's why we're doing this, isn't it? Why we fought for your memories? So you'd know who you were? Who you are?"
"I know who I am," Atem says, leaning back onto his elbows and letting his feet hang over the edge of the Senet board into the darkness below. "My memories. Your memories. I am complete. I am free. I can cross over."
"If you think freedom is nothing but the ability to cross over into the after life," Yuugi says softly, "then I think you sorely underestimate what made you free here on earth." He stares at Atem meaningfully, takes his hand and interlaces their fingers together.
Atem just looks at him.
"You need to call him," Yuugi repeats quietly.
=======
Yuugi prevails eventually, as Atem knew he would, and it's Yuugi who dials the Kaiba Corp phone number from the Game Shop phone, Yuugi who deals with the transfers through Kaiba's personal secretary, Yuugi who stays on the line until Kaiba picks up with a gruff, "Kaiba Corporation, Seto Kaiba speaking."
"This is Atem," says Atem, who takes over at the sound of Kaiba's voice. Yuugi retreats to their soul room, smiling. Atem can take it from there.
"I," says Atem, and his voice is as cool and confident and clear as it always has been, as it always will be as long as he can call himself a duelist. "I challenge you to a rematch."
"Kh," scoffs Kaiba, and now they're moving according to a familiar script. "What makes you think I have time for a rematch? What makes you think I'm even interested?"
"I know you're interested."
Kaiba laughs. It's tinny in the Game Shop's antique phone, but it's harsh and strong and arrogant and Kaiba, and in Atem it sets of a tingle of both anticipation and premature nostalgia.
"I'll bring the God Cards."
"I would expect no less."
"And the Devil's Sanctuary card you gave me."
"Your deck would hardly be worth much without it."
Now it's Atem's turn to laugh. With his index finger, he traces a circle in the dust on the surface of the front desk of the Game Shop. Mid-afternoon sunlight is filtering through the window a few feet away, and cicadas are starting to buzz in the trees. Summer is ending. For Atem, it's the last time.
"I am going...to a sort of sanctuary..." he begins, not quite as melancholy as he feels he ought to be. "I-" he hesitates for the next word, and Kaiba takes the opportunity to cut him off.
"And no matter how many times you, or Yuugi, or Mokuba talk to me about sanctuaries and crossing over and the next life, you'll always be wasting your breath. Honestly, I wonder how you've made it so far as a duelist with a mind so devoid of logical thinking." Atem can practically hear Kaiba's smirk through the phone.
"Life," says Atem, with the tone of someone making a profound proclamation, because that's exactly what he believes he's doing, "is far more convoluted than even the most strategic Duel Monsters game." His volume has increased, he's matching the arrogance in Kaiba's tone as he always does, and yet there's a note, deep down beneath it all, that's almost...caring. "Kaiba," he says, "it's important."
"Hmph," says Kaiba. " What's important is that this match will decide which of us is the true Duel Monsters champion."
Atem smiles fondly and reflects that he says that every time. And that this is the last time.
"Yes."
=======
Kaiba's platform has a dragon painted on the front, emerging from a whisp of a cloud that, from a distance, almost looks like white hair blowing in the wind. Across the arena, Atem's platform has been painted with a magician's staff crossed with the flail of Osiris.
Kaiba, who was only partially responsible for the arena decoration, wonders just how much Yuugi and Mokuba have been talking.
"This is our last match, Kaiba," Yuugi calls from across the field. He's using his low voice, so Kaiba supposes he should technically be calling him Atem now. Not that he will. It'd take far more than the outcome of a mystical Dungeons and Dragons game to reprogram the name that Seto Kaiba calls his rival in his own mind.
"In that case," Kaiba replies, "I'm glad our corporation got the latest model of the duel disk running in time. Your definitive defeat will be at the hands of only the most efficient and high-quality holograms." He smirks. Utterly unsentimental. That's the tone to go for.
...That's the only tone he has.
"So sure of yourself, Kaiba," Yuugi says, arrogant, smirking. "Have you forgotten the outcome of our last two matches?" Kaiba wants nothing more than to wipe that look off his face.
"Huh. You act as if I've learned nothing since then." He grins, and it's only slightly manic. "You forget, Yuugi, which one of us is the genius." And he has learned much in their last two matches, learned things that, perhaps, a non-genius would've known sooner. Learned he fought his best when he fought to protect those he cared about...learned he fought yet better when he left behind his hatred.
Not that he'd ever admit these things to Yuugi.
...This would be their first match since he'd buried his past. And the first since Yuugi had unearthed his. And the last.
"Show me then, Kaiba," Yuugi said, eyes narrow, challenging...oddly inspiring. "Show me what you've learned."
But Kaiba just snorts. "Hn. This all seems like so much stalling to me. Are we going to chat, or are we going to decide a Champion?"
Yuugi merely smiles knowingly.
They draw their duel disks level with their chests and take a step forward, coattails billowing behind them.
For the first and last time, they speak not against each other, not in argument, but together. One last word, said as one.
"Duel."