Work Text:
The absence of mou hitori no boku was a knee-shaking, quivering sort of gnawing hollowness. It made his stomach turn, throat stoppered with a leaden weight – every step was off-kilter and every step nauseatingly too bright and glaring. This temporary habitation of a desert should have soothed some of the agony, the familiarity to his long-banished home a balm to how it felt like his-their deck was threatening to drag him to the pits of hell.
So when an oily presence started glossing over the hazy pain (not filling, no, somehow not even starting to soak into the cracks that his partner's absence left in his heart like it maybe ought to), he was torn between grasping desperately to it and shying away like a startled foal. It wasn't like the horrors the Puzzle used to wreak on him, nor even the night terrors that were encroaching upon his dreams recently – sent like a vengeful retribution for his sins, he imagined. Such an alien sensation sent his mind whirling. Only the constant companion that was the Orichalcos stone clicking against the chains of his soul's permanent residence grounded him.
It mattered not where he was, nor who he was with; the touches to his mind – almost gentle, deceptively so – were always there, lingering. Oftentimes it felt like a caress to his cheek, or fingers running delicately through his sweat-crusted hair. And, sometimes, he pretended it was Yūgi's touch, soothing him absently whenever the magic was particularly difficult to rein in. Whenever he did so, however, his mind was sent swinging with an abrupt drenching of power that skittered along his (borrowed, stolen) nerves with enough force to make him sway and gasp.
Once he made the mistake of letting his thoughts wander when he was ostensibly leading the group of Yūgi's friends (not his own, not anymore – he forfeited that right when he forfeited his partner for the sake of an abstract goal and a veneer of pride weighted far too heavily). The pain was reminiscent of a whip cracking, bolting through his mind in a sharp arc that made him stagger. Honda-kun caught him, a steady band of iron around his bicep that kept his knees from scraping the drought-riddled earth.
“Hey, man, you alright?” His mouth worked soundlessly, a groan escaping instead at a residual tickle of agony scraping at his skull. It felt a little too much like nails, finely manicured to an insidious point on each finger, tapping and scratching at his mind. He settled for shaking his head, instead, releasing the white-knuckled grip on the stone to clasp a weak hand over the other's forearm in reassurance. Honda, pragmatic and too sharp to let him slip by, frowned, “Are you sure? That stone's been giving you a lot of trouble since... well. One of us can carry it, y'know, give you a break.”
The other two chimed in with their agreement. For a second he was tempted, gamer's fingers curled around the fragile chain that Anzu had leant Yūgi when they were still back in Japan before this derailment of events had even begun. Only a few hours at a time, not long enough for any of them to suffer the effects to a noticeable, unrecoverable amount. It would give him half a day, at least, and surely that was enough to start scabbing over the growing wounds it was leaving on him. But then that presence flexed, sliding across his thoughts with a silky whisper of No, no that made him hesitate half a second too long.
Absent disagreement noted by his company, they sighed, Honda-kun and Jounouchi-kun wearily propping him up between them in silent support.
When he finally attempted to rest that night, long hours of dragging their feet across parched, baked earth later, the masking presence grew stronger as the day grew cooler. He didn't want to think of the symbolism of that, what calculations he could scrape up from the paralleling of various actions to time of day. Instead, with a weary sigh, he let his eyes drift shut. The phantom feel of fingers running over his face and scalp with feathery touches seemed almost tentative, apologetic. It made a niggle of suspicion rise, but fatigue let it slip back under his radar, and almost immediately the sensations grew more confident.
That night he slept almost peacefully, dreams vague and suffused with a teal-tinted light. In the morning his energy was buoyed – which was convenient, as the last of Anzu's melting lip balm had nearly been scraped clean, their lips fracturing into bleeding rivulets as soon as it ran out. Jounouchi-kun cracked a joke about their free lipstick, inciting a flutter of chuckles amongst them. Still, the sun felt less searing that day, the growling of his stomach less evident. The thick soles of Yūgi's boots coaxed already-present blisters into biscuit-sized sores, though now his heels protested less vigorously at each chafing step of salt-damp socks.
And so the days passed – him walking more under his own power, thoughts of Yūgi slipping away further and further to the dusty corners of his mind. The nights grew thicker, doused with phantom hands and awash with glittering light, the colour slaking his thirst with needy gulps.
It occurred to him, one time when the sun was high in the sky and the only ornament in the vast expanse of blue, that the spectre of his friend was precisely that – lingering at the cloudy edges of his mind. The new presence, what was once intrusive, now settled itself delicately atop his own thoughts and acted as a gate-guard to the flow of stimulus from the outside world. From even his own mind, but considering the state of it between its appearance and Yūgi's disappearance, the ache was a wound hardly missed. The perpetual fog of green obscured everything, providing a filter that combined with sultry coaxing bled away the worst effects of the desert trek.
And then, all of a sudden, events spiraled out of control. It was chaos, the numb stillness of the past few days compensated by the absolute mayhem of train rides and desert canyons and pleas tumbling from wind-cracked lips. He clung to that tether that he knew was a golden cage, letting it ensconce his heart and its whispers muffle his ears. It was steady, a low thrum that forced order into his world with an adroit touch that left him craving for more.
Compass set, dangling from his neck, he marched to its tune with a relief borne of responsibilities handed over. His-Yūgi's friends (now, especially now, it was a small failure added to the monstrous one he'd made) staggered behind his confident steps as he strode right into the crux of things.
He stood, acutely aware that this was the end game – with its flickering walls of teal that matched one eye out of two in his opponent – and slid a relieved palm over his deck, twitch of lips growing in reaction to the pleased ones he had so often imagined.