Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Clear Vision ❯ Chapter Ninth ( Chapter 9 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: KatsuyaKaiba 
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Angst | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.08.2005 | Pages: 1 | Words: 4.4K | Visits: 268 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Angst | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.08.2005 | Pages: 1 | Words: 4.4K | Visits: 268 | Status: Work In Progress
Clear Vision
A Seto/Joey fanfic by subaruxkamui4ever
AN: Are you exited? I sure am. I am going to say this and no more, so as not to spoil anything about the storyline, but....(now I whisper in your ear, you like?)...Seto is a big meanie-head and will be one for this and possible further chapters. Please don’t let him get to you, he’s had a bad time and he needs to vent, so it’s not personal. He still loves you, and he always will....OK? Don’t cry you guys, come on. So, this chapter sort of took an idea I thought was kind of hot, and snatched it out of my hands and ran like mad, which leads us into this story, because all this was not foreseen, least of all by me The Author! So let’s get going before poor Joey has a coronary, you do realize that he’s been running like a madman ever since I posted the last chapter, and now I will finally release him. Stop Joey....stop! You see that door over there? Seto’s in there! (That’ll get him!)
There it was, that was the right door! As I leapt off the last step and rounded the corner I caught the door that led to Seto in my gaze and couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. I was coming up on it fast and if the door was opened at the wrong moment, I could be relieved of my consciousness quite swiftly with the oppressing force of a door to the face, angrily flung open by a confused and upset Seto. Warily circling around the perceived line of fire and reaching for the handle, my hand grasped it in the same moment I skidded to a sharp halt, and using the leverage of the doorhandle I stopped my motion in place and turned the tables, pulling where it had pushed, and used the momentum to open the door as fast as possible.
Pulling it outwards and nearly leaping inside, suddenly all the clumsy racket of my efforts to rush inside were dropped from the air they hung still within, silence cast upon everything as it entered the dormant area. I blinked rapidly, straining my eyes to adjust to the dramatically dark setting that the room held, a sullen and indignant refusal to acknowledge the sunshine and midday life that loomed over the moody shadows inside, merrily streaming beams of piercingly sunny light in a spiteful closeness, just inches from the only window. The drapes allowed no room for error, drawn out to the very edge of the rail that held them up, safeguarding the whole area inside from the joy and tenderness that threatened to spill into Seto’s lonely mind from without, threatening him with a fate he feared more than failure.
The room that he stayed in seemed to react to him, subject to a long and slow saturation of Seto’s many moods and cast off emotions for as many years as it had been his room, and was able to reflect the appropriate atmosphere that Seto would be able to rest in, a window to his heart. And as I strained to see him through the darkness that surrounded him almost impenetrably, hidden alongside him I could feel the thoughts and emotions that he bore inside this black place, his graveyard of unnecessary burdens. A sense of comfort, and an unfulfilled emptiness that would never be completely filled with anything but a Someone Else, were among the scraps and broken shards of fears he tread upon for years and years in vain, and then my eye caught the only solid and whole emotion left in the desolate place. The last and worst of them all, and in the case of he and I, the one Fear that may prove to be the very thing that would bring final and complete ruin to the lives of all four of us. Something he admitted even to himself that he feared above all else, perhaps even more terrifying than death in his mind, rising above all other nightmares in a victory over his every action, controlling his mind and thoughts as if not a part of him any longer. He knew, and I knew, it was the unavoidable and guaranteed result that he believed in fierce intensity would result from any attempt to share a part of himself with another person. The inevitable and obviously deserved utter rejection awaited, an impending and automatic repulsion for his pathetic and unwanted affections that he felt he had coming, forever proving without a doubt that he would never truly be ‘good enough’ for anyone at all. Feeling a settling sense of dampened restraint in the air, I tried to see where he was, and using what little light that dared cross through the murky doorway recklessly, I peered as far as I could, until I saw him.
I felt, not seeing much, that he looked right back at me as though his vision wasn’t clouded by the strangely timed night at all, but I was able to feel how his eyes had cast off the sleep and held nothing but a surging emotion that was in that exact moment being ‘dealt with’ accordingly. He had been quick to react, and before his next blink the uprising was forgotten and the remains frozen beyond recognition. I wasn’t sure if I had woken him personally from the dream with my thundering arrival, or if he had fled from it with his own will to remain unloved at all costs. Or maybe the dream had just finished on it’s own, thrusting Seto back into the reality of the retold happenings, waking and finding me standing before him upon his return. There were many believable maybes, and his face revealed nothing in the dark, but his slowly spreading realization of who I was rang out and stuck my thoughts with a force I couldn’t help but feel. This modified version of his mental image of Joey had been upgraded past the point of recognition, and in addition to the further expansion of every threat that I could theoretically pose to him, there were unavoidable and previously non-existent levels of understanding he had from now on, and could not delete from his mind. Even as he looked at me right then he could see under and through into me, and he felt his blood in his veins pulse at a new temperature as the new information fell into his mind, he held knowledge of me and how I felt, emotionally and, much more noticeable in contrast, physically. What I felt like to touch and the way I would respond, in every place on me that he had memorized in so many ways, somehow he knew that the spot his eyes had unwittingly rested upon was so familiar, so low on my neck that it was nearly my collarbone and not my neck at all. He closed his eyes and shuddered with the invasion on his self-control, remembering the exact taste and feel on his tongue of it suddenly, and panicking with a startling realization just afterwards. He wasn’t able to repress this, the way he did with every other deceptive and sinful thought that threatened to dethrone the Seto that would never be hurt by another. He remained silent, and despite the obvious futility he increased his efforts, began to feel extremely angry. There was no one else but me in all directions, and so his anger found a target and released itself at the object that spawned the insubordination of his mind and body, a final attempt to destroy all that would have him feel for someone. Whatever he thought of me now I had no way to tell as he stared at me in silent disbelief, it seemed he hadn’t really believed in me until just now, and now that he could never deny me again he resigned himself to silent acceptance.
He was sitting up as if he had just done so moments earlier, shocked awake by either the dream of me or the actual me and time lapse between the seconds that separated us pushed me further and further into the shadowy sadness of his room. His residual feelings were infectious and I felt them almost as clearly as my own, and then slightly confused one or two, resulting in a suggestion deep down in my thoughts that asked me why I was so sure of myself. What was it that I had come here to do? I wanted to help Seto... How could I make any sort of difference here, knowing how vehemently he would refuse the very notion of assistance from another. He was not in need of help, and if he ever was, no one would know, he made sure of that. My presence in this awkward moment would almost assuredly cause him to fly into an even less reasonable state, and I felt as though I were of no use to Seto, and could not offer him a thing. What could he need that he didn’t already have, and even if there was such a thing that was so very unattainable, what were the slim and pitiful chances that I could do a thing about it? Not likely, and with that thought, my head fell from the unseen gaze, and I cast my eyes downwards, unable to will them up so high as to equal his own. I waited for him to say it, whatever it would be. I knew it would come out eventually, the refusal of assistance and the temporary banishment of my company, preferring the silence of loneliness to my obnoxious and distracting presence.
“Well, what is it?” Seto cast the question at my feet casually but rushed it as well, he seemed interested in firstly ridding himself of my watching face for the inconvenient moment. I stared at the place his voice came from and my mouth hung open, I blanked at his simple question, what was it, why was I here? “Uh.....I.......I thought......” The intense and concentrated stare he released in my direction passed right through my body in a painful way, intending to hurt me and make me hate him back, or at least drive me away, along with the temptation I posed. But there was no way I was going to tell him what I had actually come for so as not to reveal that I knew his regretful dream, so I was empty-handed and laid bare, stuttering mindlessly at the reason that just couldn’t leave my lips and grasping for another that wasn’t there. His patience wore thin and then gave seconds after, and he sighed quickly and spitefully, in distaste for my blatant stupidity and inability to lie, even to save my own ass.
“Never mind, then. I don’t suppose you know why you do much of anything, and somehow I’m not surprised. So if you have no reason to be in here at the moment, then I suggest you come up with one in a hurry. Either way, one of us is leaving, and one of us is staying. I’m not in the mood for another one of your pathetic fairy-tale romances, so just save the sob story for someone who cares....”
I said nothing, knowing that he wasn’t planning on revealing the learned information, and my knowing it anyway didn’t really save me any trouble at the hands of his denial. Sensing my despair and seeing it written so plainly sad on my face gave him a momentary stillness, as if the pain that sprung forth from his words was now noticeable and affected him, and he stopped to look for a second, vaguely wondering why it mattered to him. He knew why and he knew that as well, but here at last was the moment that forced his face into the roughness of the effects he secretly regretted. Seto knew how much his unfiltered words hurt me, and he felt so sorry, now more than ever before. Able to sense to closeness between us clearly, he felt the pain as I did and it silenced him, lost in a battlefield that held the answer to the next feeling that he would have momentarily. He seemed to me, as I heard the unexpected end of his wrath in amazement, to have been insulted by himself and was now back to where he began, lost alone in the darkness. Curious as to finally see it all for myself and feeling left out as I stood near the exit still in preparation for anything, I abandoned my caution and took two steps closer, into the place I knew he was, and his sitting form was outlined in the darkness, somehow a shadow that stood out as a blacker sort of night than the Seto-born night itself. He was watching me and I felt him do it now as well as I saw, and I now felt a newer and slightly hesitant feeling from him, a slight panic and worry of what I might do to him. It seemed that any sense of his fondness or liking to a person was directly translated as an advantage they held over him, and was warily observing me in the absence of his usual escape route, expecting me to close in and take whatever I wanted from him. I briefly wondered what he might suspect me of wanting from him since I had never asked him for a single thing, except his simple presence.
I wanted to ask him if he knew about his other self inside him. Sethe had to be there, Zahra would instantly know if anything had happened to him and would follow him blindly, out of existence if need be. It seemed as if Sethe really just another version of Seto. If that were the case, it would explain how even after an impossible amount of time, he was still evasive and untrusting of the only person who would bother to chase him for so many lives and then so many after. I thought about how hard it had been for me to acknowledge, but after a time I had been able to accept all of these ideas and images of a past life and a endlessly sought after love, and I now lived without a doubt. My other self had promised himself for an infinite amount of time, and he had spent every moment fulfilling it, regardless of the rejection it held almost indefinitely. His patience and belief in the same soul I had placed my own belief in, our similar feelings and intentions were not like any of the other lives that had resolved nothing. For the first time, my other self felt a stronger bond to his new carnation and truly saw me as himself, and I felt the same for him, and we knew without speaking of it that this lifetime would be different. This lifetime would be his last, and the rest he sought to share with Sethe would either be realized here, or would never come to pass. I felt they deserved to rest together far more than anyone else deserved a single thing, and I wanted to give him all the support and help he needed, knowing that if they were finally put at ease, Seto and I would without a doubt be affected in turn. For the passionate and raging desire that had been a reflection of Zahra’s feelings for Sethe had been the only indication that showed me something was happening that involved the two of us, Seto and I. Now that I was finally able to draw some sort of distinction between the feelings I had then, and my real feelings as Joey, and I saw the truth that was not the same burning and raging love that had been gripping me until I spoke to Zahra for the first time, met myself and the way I had been. True, they were my old feelings for the old Seto and I was still capable of feeling the same way again, but...it wasn’t the right way just yet. I didn’t feel an insatiable and empty place inside me where I felt he was gone from. There would be plenty of time for that later, after the first two were gone from our lives, and we were able to encompass within us such a strong force as that had been. I knew from the way I felt in my dreams that I was not ready, and neither was he. It seemed to me, as I looked into his face cautiously and with reasoning, that he looked back at me in pure anger, at nothing I had said or done. In shame it seemed, and also in fury at that shame, the apparently scarring and horrifying turn of events that somehow forced him to see that he cared about me, and in the same way I did about him. Quietly, and patiently in wait of a stronger and more life changing feeling that was sure to develop, or at least had been sure. He had been unaware, it looked to me at that moment, or perhaps he was still unaware of the person inside himself that was the unknowingly and bitterly pursued beloved of my past self, retreating into endless lifetimes of subconscious self pity and resentment for the injustice done to them so many centuries ago. If only he would just let it go already, we could finally be at peace! Gazing deeply into his eyes as I approached the nearly visible countenance of Seto in a silently ascending wave of destruction, making sure I wasn’t appearing to walk at him, only up to be closer to see that awful burning, it hurt me in my mind and I stopped then, maybe two or three feet from his seated place before me, where we had slept so close the night before.
Seto was not yet aware that there existed within him a separate piece of Sethe that remained from before, and in all honesty had only slightly admitted to his actual existence simply because was inevitable, especially after he found himself able to read an alarmingly above average number of lost and forgotten languages, even for someone as intelligent and superior as he was. It was either lay the blame on this dead and rotting High Priest, or take it all upon himself in the present, and Seto was more than willing to acknowledge the presence of a scapegoat. The sorcerer would no doubt serve a greater purpose to his purposes now than he ever did when just a random person in a bedtime story, a tool that some of the more devout preachers of the tale tried to use to show Seto that he was endangering both his own life and the rest of the world as well, and he could no doubt rescue us all by simply making a lot of friends, and how strange that he didn’t see the reasoning behind it all. He had heard the generic and unimaginative tale on many occasions, each rendition just as uninvited as the last. Thinking back in anger at the origin of his coming to learn of this ancient fool in the first place, Seto finally broke his confused silence, siding with the angry part of him that was determined to defeat the dream in some way and he came back with full force and released the finish of his judgement upon me with a voice that was furious, and yet trembled slightly at the knowledge that couldn’t be fought away. The realization that he knew, I knew, somehow we both knew that he did not want to hurt my feelings and might never find it an option again.
“You don’t see me at all, do you, Joey? I’m not this Sethe that you think will just waltz his way right out from underneath me as soon as you ‘make me see’, and I would honestly rather die than let you force me to become another person just for the sake of your peace of mind.” His voice was filled with the contempt that he directed at me point blank, firing at my heart, which hit it’s target regardless of whether I knew he didn’t mean to or not. I took it willingly, but it was so much anger and something very close to absolute terror that it tore and slashed at my heart, seemingly trying to kill the feelings I had for him as well. A desperate and sad day in which he tried to take from the both of us what I wasn’t willing to give up. Underneath my momentary suffering, the small seeds of a hurtful resentment began to take invisible root. Before all of this came to an end, I was sure that they would somehow grow to bear the fruit of the pitfall that Seto wished to plant beneath his own feet. His newfound ability to feel the pain that he caused me hit home in that second, and his body trembled at maddening sensation of both cause and effect in the same moment, and yet he didn’t stop. He was not himself as he had been moments ago. Perhaps it was the shock of both types of pain, the pain of sending and of receiving at once, but he spoke like I had done something to him and brought all of this upon myself, pointing and cringing at my face which must have been paralyzed in shock by then.
“How nice it must be for you, to be able to imagine that I’m someone else inside, and this unsatisfactory me is just blocking your path to the person you really love. Seto’s just a vehicle to you, isn’t that right? All you care about is Sethe, and I’m obviously the only thing standing in the way of your beautiful and heart-warming reunion, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just step aside. Sethe can have you, you’ve been absolutely nothing but trouble since the day you first stepped in my path. What could I possibly gain from someone like you, someone as invisible as your class should always be to mine. You had nothing before I rescued you from that horrible existence, you would be there still if it wasn’t for me, chained and captive like all your suffering bloodline before you.” He sneered as he prepared to say a terrible thing aloud at my downcast face. “Even still, your filthy secret betrays you and shows your true nature to those above you, as I am. Always looking away in submission as you were born to do, and will no doubt do until the day you die, and in death as well your hands will be dirty with the truth. I know the price of your existence, as I’m sure you remember as well, it was the same price that I paid for you. And after all that happened between us I was always above you, I owned your life and I still do. You can’t cleanse yourself of the fact that ran through your veins, and the mark on your soul that I can still see as plain as day, the stain left from the blood of a slave that never comes clean, no matter how cheap they came, and I never saw another go for less than what I paid for you........Joey...?”
His hand slapped itself against his mouth, moments too late, and neither he nor I had seen it coming until it was upon us both, and his eyes were widened beyond comprehension, appearing larger still above the hand that covered all his other features in absolute horror. He hadn’t known that there was another actual existence within him, and the frustration of the other one within rose over Seto’s head and he drowned for those few moments. What an awful thing to say to someone, I thought, and I could immediately feel the pain inside at the harsh words to my other, who was crying deep inside me. Seto was frozen in place in a panic that paralyzed, and it was all far too much for the both of us. I sat down beside him and pulled his hand away from his face, and in the very moment of contact I immediately felt tears on my face that were Zahra’s and mine both, and I felt twice the pain at his hands than I should never have felt at all. His temper and his inability to allow himself to let me inside was still driving me to tears and pain, and I feared that he would never learn the way to let go and would take me down with him all over again. There had to be something inside of him that didn’t want this anymore, and I was absently hopeful that I would find it soon, before Seto and Sethe killed all four of us at once.
AN: Well, happiness is overrated anyway. This is a bad place to end a chapter, but I already started the next one, and I think it will be so very long......my fingers ache at the prospect. I already got off from work, and the only breaks I plan to take from writing are the Yu-Gi-Oh episodes on today. So, yeah, don’t think I’ll take that long to update now that this is my only story. I really don’t want to begin another one before I finish this first, but I somehow can’t bring myself to believe that I really won’t. All those ideas from the guessing game in Urgency of Life, ooohh......yeeeeees. Smile in fear.
A Seto/Joey fanfic by subaruxkamui4ever
AN: Are you exited? I sure am. I am going to say this and no more, so as not to spoil anything about the storyline, but....(now I whisper in your ear, you like?)...Seto is a big meanie-head and will be one for this and possible further chapters. Please don’t let him get to you, he’s had a bad time and he needs to vent, so it’s not personal. He still loves you, and he always will....OK? Don’t cry you guys, come on. So, this chapter sort of took an idea I thought was kind of hot, and snatched it out of my hands and ran like mad, which leads us into this story, because all this was not foreseen, least of all by me The Author! So let’s get going before poor Joey has a coronary, you do realize that he’s been running like a madman ever since I posted the last chapter, and now I will finally release him. Stop Joey....stop! You see that door over there? Seto’s in there! (That’ll get him!)
There it was, that was the right door! As I leapt off the last step and rounded the corner I caught the door that led to Seto in my gaze and couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. I was coming up on it fast and if the door was opened at the wrong moment, I could be relieved of my consciousness quite swiftly with the oppressing force of a door to the face, angrily flung open by a confused and upset Seto. Warily circling around the perceived line of fire and reaching for the handle, my hand grasped it in the same moment I skidded to a sharp halt, and using the leverage of the doorhandle I stopped my motion in place and turned the tables, pulling where it had pushed, and used the momentum to open the door as fast as possible.
Pulling it outwards and nearly leaping inside, suddenly all the clumsy racket of my efforts to rush inside were dropped from the air they hung still within, silence cast upon everything as it entered the dormant area. I blinked rapidly, straining my eyes to adjust to the dramatically dark setting that the room held, a sullen and indignant refusal to acknowledge the sunshine and midday life that loomed over the moody shadows inside, merrily streaming beams of piercingly sunny light in a spiteful closeness, just inches from the only window. The drapes allowed no room for error, drawn out to the very edge of the rail that held them up, safeguarding the whole area inside from the joy and tenderness that threatened to spill into Seto’s lonely mind from without, threatening him with a fate he feared more than failure.
The room that he stayed in seemed to react to him, subject to a long and slow saturation of Seto’s many moods and cast off emotions for as many years as it had been his room, and was able to reflect the appropriate atmosphere that Seto would be able to rest in, a window to his heart. And as I strained to see him through the darkness that surrounded him almost impenetrably, hidden alongside him I could feel the thoughts and emotions that he bore inside this black place, his graveyard of unnecessary burdens. A sense of comfort, and an unfulfilled emptiness that would never be completely filled with anything but a Someone Else, were among the scraps and broken shards of fears he tread upon for years and years in vain, and then my eye caught the only solid and whole emotion left in the desolate place. The last and worst of them all, and in the case of he and I, the one Fear that may prove to be the very thing that would bring final and complete ruin to the lives of all four of us. Something he admitted even to himself that he feared above all else, perhaps even more terrifying than death in his mind, rising above all other nightmares in a victory over his every action, controlling his mind and thoughts as if not a part of him any longer. He knew, and I knew, it was the unavoidable and guaranteed result that he believed in fierce intensity would result from any attempt to share a part of himself with another person. The inevitable and obviously deserved utter rejection awaited, an impending and automatic repulsion for his pathetic and unwanted affections that he felt he had coming, forever proving without a doubt that he would never truly be ‘good enough’ for anyone at all. Feeling a settling sense of dampened restraint in the air, I tried to see where he was, and using what little light that dared cross through the murky doorway recklessly, I peered as far as I could, until I saw him.
I felt, not seeing much, that he looked right back at me as though his vision wasn’t clouded by the strangely timed night at all, but I was able to feel how his eyes had cast off the sleep and held nothing but a surging emotion that was in that exact moment being ‘dealt with’ accordingly. He had been quick to react, and before his next blink the uprising was forgotten and the remains frozen beyond recognition. I wasn’t sure if I had woken him personally from the dream with my thundering arrival, or if he had fled from it with his own will to remain unloved at all costs. Or maybe the dream had just finished on it’s own, thrusting Seto back into the reality of the retold happenings, waking and finding me standing before him upon his return. There were many believable maybes, and his face revealed nothing in the dark, but his slowly spreading realization of who I was rang out and stuck my thoughts with a force I couldn’t help but feel. This modified version of his mental image of Joey had been upgraded past the point of recognition, and in addition to the further expansion of every threat that I could theoretically pose to him, there were unavoidable and previously non-existent levels of understanding he had from now on, and could not delete from his mind. Even as he looked at me right then he could see under and through into me, and he felt his blood in his veins pulse at a new temperature as the new information fell into his mind, he held knowledge of me and how I felt, emotionally and, much more noticeable in contrast, physically. What I felt like to touch and the way I would respond, in every place on me that he had memorized in so many ways, somehow he knew that the spot his eyes had unwittingly rested upon was so familiar, so low on my neck that it was nearly my collarbone and not my neck at all. He closed his eyes and shuddered with the invasion on his self-control, remembering the exact taste and feel on his tongue of it suddenly, and panicking with a startling realization just afterwards. He wasn’t able to repress this, the way he did with every other deceptive and sinful thought that threatened to dethrone the Seto that would never be hurt by another. He remained silent, and despite the obvious futility he increased his efforts, began to feel extremely angry. There was no one else but me in all directions, and so his anger found a target and released itself at the object that spawned the insubordination of his mind and body, a final attempt to destroy all that would have him feel for someone. Whatever he thought of me now I had no way to tell as he stared at me in silent disbelief, it seemed he hadn’t really believed in me until just now, and now that he could never deny me again he resigned himself to silent acceptance.
He was sitting up as if he had just done so moments earlier, shocked awake by either the dream of me or the actual me and time lapse between the seconds that separated us pushed me further and further into the shadowy sadness of his room. His residual feelings were infectious and I felt them almost as clearly as my own, and then slightly confused one or two, resulting in a suggestion deep down in my thoughts that asked me why I was so sure of myself. What was it that I had come here to do? I wanted to help Seto... How could I make any sort of difference here, knowing how vehemently he would refuse the very notion of assistance from another. He was not in need of help, and if he ever was, no one would know, he made sure of that. My presence in this awkward moment would almost assuredly cause him to fly into an even less reasonable state, and I felt as though I were of no use to Seto, and could not offer him a thing. What could he need that he didn’t already have, and even if there was such a thing that was so very unattainable, what were the slim and pitiful chances that I could do a thing about it? Not likely, and with that thought, my head fell from the unseen gaze, and I cast my eyes downwards, unable to will them up so high as to equal his own. I waited for him to say it, whatever it would be. I knew it would come out eventually, the refusal of assistance and the temporary banishment of my company, preferring the silence of loneliness to my obnoxious and distracting presence.
“Well, what is it?” Seto cast the question at my feet casually but rushed it as well, he seemed interested in firstly ridding himself of my watching face for the inconvenient moment. I stared at the place his voice came from and my mouth hung open, I blanked at his simple question, what was it, why was I here? “Uh.....I.......I thought......” The intense and concentrated stare he released in my direction passed right through my body in a painful way, intending to hurt me and make me hate him back, or at least drive me away, along with the temptation I posed. But there was no way I was going to tell him what I had actually come for so as not to reveal that I knew his regretful dream, so I was empty-handed and laid bare, stuttering mindlessly at the reason that just couldn’t leave my lips and grasping for another that wasn’t there. His patience wore thin and then gave seconds after, and he sighed quickly and spitefully, in distaste for my blatant stupidity and inability to lie, even to save my own ass.
“Never mind, then. I don’t suppose you know why you do much of anything, and somehow I’m not surprised. So if you have no reason to be in here at the moment, then I suggest you come up with one in a hurry. Either way, one of us is leaving, and one of us is staying. I’m not in the mood for another one of your pathetic fairy-tale romances, so just save the sob story for someone who cares....”
I said nothing, knowing that he wasn’t planning on revealing the learned information, and my knowing it anyway didn’t really save me any trouble at the hands of his denial. Sensing my despair and seeing it written so plainly sad on my face gave him a momentary stillness, as if the pain that sprung forth from his words was now noticeable and affected him, and he stopped to look for a second, vaguely wondering why it mattered to him. He knew why and he knew that as well, but here at last was the moment that forced his face into the roughness of the effects he secretly regretted. Seto knew how much his unfiltered words hurt me, and he felt so sorry, now more than ever before. Able to sense to closeness between us clearly, he felt the pain as I did and it silenced him, lost in a battlefield that held the answer to the next feeling that he would have momentarily. He seemed to me, as I heard the unexpected end of his wrath in amazement, to have been insulted by himself and was now back to where he began, lost alone in the darkness. Curious as to finally see it all for myself and feeling left out as I stood near the exit still in preparation for anything, I abandoned my caution and took two steps closer, into the place I knew he was, and his sitting form was outlined in the darkness, somehow a shadow that stood out as a blacker sort of night than the Seto-born night itself. He was watching me and I felt him do it now as well as I saw, and I now felt a newer and slightly hesitant feeling from him, a slight panic and worry of what I might do to him. It seemed that any sense of his fondness or liking to a person was directly translated as an advantage they held over him, and was warily observing me in the absence of his usual escape route, expecting me to close in and take whatever I wanted from him. I briefly wondered what he might suspect me of wanting from him since I had never asked him for a single thing, except his simple presence.
I wanted to ask him if he knew about his other self inside him. Sethe had to be there, Zahra would instantly know if anything had happened to him and would follow him blindly, out of existence if need be. It seemed as if Sethe really just another version of Seto. If that were the case, it would explain how even after an impossible amount of time, he was still evasive and untrusting of the only person who would bother to chase him for so many lives and then so many after. I thought about how hard it had been for me to acknowledge, but after a time I had been able to accept all of these ideas and images of a past life and a endlessly sought after love, and I now lived without a doubt. My other self had promised himself for an infinite amount of time, and he had spent every moment fulfilling it, regardless of the rejection it held almost indefinitely. His patience and belief in the same soul I had placed my own belief in, our similar feelings and intentions were not like any of the other lives that had resolved nothing. For the first time, my other self felt a stronger bond to his new carnation and truly saw me as himself, and I felt the same for him, and we knew without speaking of it that this lifetime would be different. This lifetime would be his last, and the rest he sought to share with Sethe would either be realized here, or would never come to pass. I felt they deserved to rest together far more than anyone else deserved a single thing, and I wanted to give him all the support and help he needed, knowing that if they were finally put at ease, Seto and I would without a doubt be affected in turn. For the passionate and raging desire that had been a reflection of Zahra’s feelings for Sethe had been the only indication that showed me something was happening that involved the two of us, Seto and I. Now that I was finally able to draw some sort of distinction between the feelings I had then, and my real feelings as Joey, and I saw the truth that was not the same burning and raging love that had been gripping me until I spoke to Zahra for the first time, met myself and the way I had been. True, they were my old feelings for the old Seto and I was still capable of feeling the same way again, but...it wasn’t the right way just yet. I didn’t feel an insatiable and empty place inside me where I felt he was gone from. There would be plenty of time for that later, after the first two were gone from our lives, and we were able to encompass within us such a strong force as that had been. I knew from the way I felt in my dreams that I was not ready, and neither was he. It seemed to me, as I looked into his face cautiously and with reasoning, that he looked back at me in pure anger, at nothing I had said or done. In shame it seemed, and also in fury at that shame, the apparently scarring and horrifying turn of events that somehow forced him to see that he cared about me, and in the same way I did about him. Quietly, and patiently in wait of a stronger and more life changing feeling that was sure to develop, or at least had been sure. He had been unaware, it looked to me at that moment, or perhaps he was still unaware of the person inside himself that was the unknowingly and bitterly pursued beloved of my past self, retreating into endless lifetimes of subconscious self pity and resentment for the injustice done to them so many centuries ago. If only he would just let it go already, we could finally be at peace! Gazing deeply into his eyes as I approached the nearly visible countenance of Seto in a silently ascending wave of destruction, making sure I wasn’t appearing to walk at him, only up to be closer to see that awful burning, it hurt me in my mind and I stopped then, maybe two or three feet from his seated place before me, where we had slept so close the night before.
Seto was not yet aware that there existed within him a separate piece of Sethe that remained from before, and in all honesty had only slightly admitted to his actual existence simply because was inevitable, especially after he found himself able to read an alarmingly above average number of lost and forgotten languages, even for someone as intelligent and superior as he was. It was either lay the blame on this dead and rotting High Priest, or take it all upon himself in the present, and Seto was more than willing to acknowledge the presence of a scapegoat. The sorcerer would no doubt serve a greater purpose to his purposes now than he ever did when just a random person in a bedtime story, a tool that some of the more devout preachers of the tale tried to use to show Seto that he was endangering both his own life and the rest of the world as well, and he could no doubt rescue us all by simply making a lot of friends, and how strange that he didn’t see the reasoning behind it all. He had heard the generic and unimaginative tale on many occasions, each rendition just as uninvited as the last. Thinking back in anger at the origin of his coming to learn of this ancient fool in the first place, Seto finally broke his confused silence, siding with the angry part of him that was determined to defeat the dream in some way and he came back with full force and released the finish of his judgement upon me with a voice that was furious, and yet trembled slightly at the knowledge that couldn’t be fought away. The realization that he knew, I knew, somehow we both knew that he did not want to hurt my feelings and might never find it an option again.
“You don’t see me at all, do you, Joey? I’m not this Sethe that you think will just waltz his way right out from underneath me as soon as you ‘make me see’, and I would honestly rather die than let you force me to become another person just for the sake of your peace of mind.” His voice was filled with the contempt that he directed at me point blank, firing at my heart, which hit it’s target regardless of whether I knew he didn’t mean to or not. I took it willingly, but it was so much anger and something very close to absolute terror that it tore and slashed at my heart, seemingly trying to kill the feelings I had for him as well. A desperate and sad day in which he tried to take from the both of us what I wasn’t willing to give up. Underneath my momentary suffering, the small seeds of a hurtful resentment began to take invisible root. Before all of this came to an end, I was sure that they would somehow grow to bear the fruit of the pitfall that Seto wished to plant beneath his own feet. His newfound ability to feel the pain that he caused me hit home in that second, and his body trembled at maddening sensation of both cause and effect in the same moment, and yet he didn’t stop. He was not himself as he had been moments ago. Perhaps it was the shock of both types of pain, the pain of sending and of receiving at once, but he spoke like I had done something to him and brought all of this upon myself, pointing and cringing at my face which must have been paralyzed in shock by then.
“How nice it must be for you, to be able to imagine that I’m someone else inside, and this unsatisfactory me is just blocking your path to the person you really love. Seto’s just a vehicle to you, isn’t that right? All you care about is Sethe, and I’m obviously the only thing standing in the way of your beautiful and heart-warming reunion, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just step aside. Sethe can have you, you’ve been absolutely nothing but trouble since the day you first stepped in my path. What could I possibly gain from someone like you, someone as invisible as your class should always be to mine. You had nothing before I rescued you from that horrible existence, you would be there still if it wasn’t for me, chained and captive like all your suffering bloodline before you.” He sneered as he prepared to say a terrible thing aloud at my downcast face. “Even still, your filthy secret betrays you and shows your true nature to those above you, as I am. Always looking away in submission as you were born to do, and will no doubt do until the day you die, and in death as well your hands will be dirty with the truth. I know the price of your existence, as I’m sure you remember as well, it was the same price that I paid for you. And after all that happened between us I was always above you, I owned your life and I still do. You can’t cleanse yourself of the fact that ran through your veins, and the mark on your soul that I can still see as plain as day, the stain left from the blood of a slave that never comes clean, no matter how cheap they came, and I never saw another go for less than what I paid for you........Joey...?”
His hand slapped itself against his mouth, moments too late, and neither he nor I had seen it coming until it was upon us both, and his eyes were widened beyond comprehension, appearing larger still above the hand that covered all his other features in absolute horror. He hadn’t known that there was another actual existence within him, and the frustration of the other one within rose over Seto’s head and he drowned for those few moments. What an awful thing to say to someone, I thought, and I could immediately feel the pain inside at the harsh words to my other, who was crying deep inside me. Seto was frozen in place in a panic that paralyzed, and it was all far too much for the both of us. I sat down beside him and pulled his hand away from his face, and in the very moment of contact I immediately felt tears on my face that were Zahra’s and mine both, and I felt twice the pain at his hands than I should never have felt at all. His temper and his inability to allow himself to let me inside was still driving me to tears and pain, and I feared that he would never learn the way to let go and would take me down with him all over again. There had to be something inside of him that didn’t want this anymore, and I was absently hopeful that I would find it soon, before Seto and Sethe killed all four of us at once.
AN: Well, happiness is overrated anyway. This is a bad place to end a chapter, but I already started the next one, and I think it will be so very long......my fingers ache at the prospect. I already got off from work, and the only breaks I plan to take from writing are the Yu-Gi-Oh episodes on today. So, yeah, don’t think I’ll take that long to update now that this is my only story. I really don’t want to begin another one before I finish this first, but I somehow can’t bring myself to believe that I really won’t. All those ideas from the guessing game in Urgency of Life, ooohh......yeeeeees. Smile in fear.