Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Clear Vision ❯ Chapter Tenth ( Chapter 10 )
[ 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: 5.9K | Visits: 265 | 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: 5.9K | Visits: 265 | Status: Work In Progress
Clear Vision
A Seto/Joey fanfic by subaruxkamui4ever
AN: I am a tired person. Are you tired as well?
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He was still in the same place as he had been since I entered the room minutes earlier, although it had passed years between the two of us. I still held the hand that I had pulled away from his face, freeing his speech and begging him in a way without words to somehow make this all right. I had sat down beside him on the bed, and his hand I decided should stay with me, and I pulled it close to my chest in a clinging sort of way, wrapping myself around his arm. He didn’t move or speak, but he watched me with open and focused eyes and was aware of everything. I had been scared that perhaps his past personality would become stressed with repression and fight it’s way to the top, and it had for a moment, but it had been quickly pushed right back under, saving the moment, but endangering the life that we had to either spend together or waste in pursuit, another lifetime to toss into the carelessly discarded pile of lost years. I knew much more than I realized, and when I listened to myself inside and spoke without thinking, knowledge of our situation slowly became clearer and more evident in the way that I could trust in the silent voice that I now knew to be Me, and my memories that still drove themselves endlessly forward into time. I looked up at Seto, he still watched me as if I were a creature he had never seen before. I suppose in a way that was true, since the old way he thought of me must be very long gone by this point. I didn’t know everything that he knew, but as I had been advised by Zahra it certainly rang out true in his newfound interest in my actions and awaited words. I realized that he was waiting for me to speak, and I sat up suddenly, releasing his hand reluctantly and meeting him in gaze and posture. He lost his curious look and took a much more prepared and accepting face. I think that he felt my underlying rage, even though I couldn’t yet, and also felt that even if he never did again, now he should listen to my anger and take responsibility for his outburst.
“Are you angry with me? You said....that hurt so much.....what you said. Is that how you see me? Seto?” I was still in a state of shock, real and unshakeable, it gripped my thoughts and motions until I began to speak. Everything that I heard leave my mouth was unplanned, and only came to as I heard the actual words. Seto and I both listened, neither one of us able to stop the splitting and cracking edges of the place where I held my feelings back in the heat of the moment. Instead of the final crash of a release and an overflowing of pure and unbridled rage, it first began to seep out slowly at the seams, trickling in tiny rivulets of distaste and questioning offense, and as the running emotions spilled around the breaking points they had to give way piece by piece and the bubbling creek grew steadily from stream, to river, and then letting it all go into a torrential wave of the final and pure underlying feelings that had been there for centuries. Anger with little things about him that remained throughout each and every carnation, his fears that drove him away from me eternally, his temper that flared without warning and without any effort on his part to keep in check, resulting in heated spats such as this and somehow, I was the only one that ever walked away in tears.
Well, not this time. I never hated him or judged him for any of his faults but in the face of the real and final end of Us, I held nothing else back, because Zahra had nothing else left inside, all that he was made of was his thoughts and feelings for Sethe that wouldn’t die. So in turn did I, and Sethe still had obvious issues himself, which kept his presence intact as well as Zahras. As I thought more about it, I saw that the only real set back in this strung out and prolonged ordeal, was Seto. The part of Sethe that was now Seto, the same as the part of Zahra that was called Joey today, the basic thoughtform that would never change no matter how many times it reincarnated, and would replicate nearly the same person infinitely. The only deciding factor that varied was the endless variety of opportunities to be given and fates to befall, each new life promised a new chance to figure it all out, and to alter ourselves as we saw fit. Learning through mistakes and repeating the process until the end result was achieved, whatever the end result might be I could not say and cannot still, because I haven’t learned much at all over the past five thousand years. But even less learned than I was, Seto silently listening beside me with an uncomfortable and unheard of amount of attention to my ranting, which had fallen short as I considered the truth of my unearthed and deep-seated source of troubling thoughts that I did not want to see. But why not? He had no problem with telling me exactly how he felt, even about needlessly petty and spiteful situations that were beyond anyone’s control. His disgust and loathing for me because I was an unfortunate victim of circumstance. As if I were the one responsible for choosing the fate of the people who came before me, telling them what to be so I would have an honorable heritage for his sake when I came to be among them. Here was when I began the eventual shattering of the bonds that kept my long repressed and overlooked feelings for his treatment of me, and of himself.
“Are you hearing me, Seto? I want your undivided attention, and that includes Sethe as well, because everything that I feel is also felt by Zahra. I trust you can handle that....” He was frozen in....something akin to fear, but deeper than fear because it wasn’t an emotion, fear was a reaction. This was a feeling of regret and sorrow at how my feelings poured out in a reaction to his thoughtless and lightly cast words that meant nothing and served as something for him to hide under. I had his attention here and in my eyes now, though, and it had better remain. He had been in hiding for far too long, and I was suddenly nauseous with the sickness I felt at this inane and pointless game he wanted to play. Tired to death and beyond it completely, so very many times now. He would not do this to me, to us, any longer.
“So, you must really want to be rid of me. I say this because of the evident distaste you have for me and my kind, we are indeed so very far below you and your eternally distracting and life draining lust for power and control, we are so lost in awe that we must not be able to see how pure in intent you really are. Such a noble and respectable existence you lead with your higher class on your higher plane, I wonder how I managed to catch your eye at all. How curious that I alone was able to dirty your hands with my sinful ways. And then, how very unlike you and your Perfection to not want to resist such an obviously laughable temptation, especially such a cheap thrill as I was, and still must be in your eyes of the gods. Because I was somehow able to achieve all of these offensive and regretful trespasses against your unwitting soul without ever being aware of your existence, and remaining unaware until I had been paid for in full. I would love to hear how you would explain that away, but I know the sound of your voice will do nothing but make me laugh. So don’t say anything at all.” These things that I heard myself express were absorbed by both Seto and I, and we both knew that it was all true, somewhere inside the memory was calling it out as loudly as my steadily rising voice. And although the facts were new, the accompanying emotions were hauntingly familiar, indeed they really wouldn’t go away at all. The pressure of carrying anything without rest for as long as we had was very tense already for one who remained alone, and our emotional turmoil was deafening as they collided against each other, and as the dust settled we could see more and more of how his will had crumbled and been destroyed beneath my own. And I wasn’t nearly finished with him. Either one of him.
“Would you really be so kind as to step aside as you so unselfishly offered to? I haven’t a doubt in my heart that you would prefer to kill me than to watch me leave so casually, as effortlessly as the way you say those things to my face, knowing full well how much they will eat away at my heart and simply not caring at all. You do not love me at all, and I have feared this for some time now. Do you think that I am as foolish as you say I am? You must be just as foolish as me if you believe that, because no one who really loved me would hurt me like you do, like you have since that awful lifetime in which we met. You know, you’ve been absolutely nothing but trouble since the day you first stepped in my path” I laughed in a quiet and frighteningly tender way at the memory of his own voice saying that, and I felt the last of my tears dry up and leave at once, taking along with them my sadness at hurting him with my own words. He really had asked for much worse and more truthful things, but I still loved him, and I felt disgusted by it at the same time. How weak I was, and he would agree, although he didn’t show a single emotion to my face. I had never once broken the angry stare that I held him in, he couldn’t so much as blink to my countenance. I never should have let him get this far. I didn’t need this pain, and I certainly didn’t want to continue this pursuit of a person who did not want me to pursue him, and for the moment I said that I wouldn’t, although I knew deep within my soul that I would always chase him. Always. But I still felt the same and I was still in terrible pain. His eyes were under my own and his face had not moved even an inch, he looked strangely happy, or at least content. How very incredible, I thought as I took a deep breath and went for the final point, the last truth that I had to say to him so he knew what was happening here. The last debt I would pay to him.
“The strangest part of this whole mess that you and I have become is the way that you really feel about me. You are a true idiot if you think that you have concealed any part of it from me, and I have seen every foolish and desperate attempt that you made to hide it, as well. I know you don’t mean any of the awful things you tell me, you’re just bluffing and you know it as I know it. You are obvious and you are shallow, and your petty and mistreated feelings deserve to be expressed, but you refused. You refuse today and you have for ages and ages, and it is becoming very ridiculous, and very wasteful. Seto, you and all you have ever been has wasted so much of my time that I almost wish that we had never met. I cannot finish that wish, only because I love you with everything that I have, everything that’s left of me after all this spent and used life is gone for good, and still ever after, I will think only of you. And no matter how childishly you hide it, you cannot deny that you feel exactly the same way. Go ahead and try if you like. But I think that you won’t, because you will look even uglier and sadder on the outside than you already are on the inside. So, rather than let you destroy what has become of us, I will keep the remaining pieces and take them with me. And I will leave you with nothing. For the last few thousand years, Seto, thousands of years were talking about here, I spent them on you and you alone, and none of it on myself. And you, you took them from my willing hands and then left, with my lives and your own, how good that must have made you feel. Well, I think I know what will make you feel even better. I know, inside me, that what I’m about to give to you will feel better than anything in all the world. You desire this so much, I can see it in you and you ask me for it constantly, but you don’t know that I hear you. You can’t even hear it. You don’t know what it is, but not only do I know, but I’m the only person who can give it to you. Do you still want it? What I keep from you, should I let you have it, what you want so badly to take away....” I smiled so slightly that I wasn’t sure if he could see it in the nearly midnight that coated the room still, and to bring reality to my words of promise I lifted one of my hands that rested next to us on the bed we sat on, no more than a foot that was our distance and it was closed in a moment by my hand, reaching his face as it had planned and now rested against the furthest end of the side, so far that it was almost on his neck, and for the first time since I had breathed a word he broke the motionless mask when he saw the impending demise brought by my hand and his eyebrows raised in panic and very real surprise, never in all his time with me had he expected this to be a viable reaction from me. I was just as soft with his handling as I had always been, but it wasn’t the nature of my touch, it was the very contact that he was stricken by all in itself, and when the first attack was raised and fired, and my hand found its tracing way across his pale and frozen skin, his eyes were the first to fall. After his immediate and unintentionally quick surrender, he wasn’t as aware of the next territory that I planned to overthrow as he would have been, if he hadn’t already been stripped of his sight by my swift and sweetly promising gestures of widely accepting forms of interpretation. Whatever he had wanted at first was not the same want that he displayed so clearly now, and I was almost amused at how quickly he changed his pathetic tune. That old song had been overplayed anyway, it was very tired, and I wouldn’t be hearing it for a moment, it seemed.
The simple touch had been held at that place on his face that was nearly his neck had been still for a moment, edging his closer on his own, while I just waited for him to fall under. And it worked, in under a minute, he had involuntarily shifted forward until the contact was full, his face had my entire hand, and he wasn’t going to stop me at all. I had every chance to exact full and complete revenge, and I could see the endless possibility spanning out, and all the satisfaction it promised. But I remained to myself and my intentions, for they were pure and their was no malice that I could hold to him. I did not have that kind of power. Instead, I continued to offer what he sought but wouldn’t take, almost dizzy with a blending of defeat and victory and not knowing which to claim as of yet, and letting me be the deciding factor. My hand moved, catching the last few fingers on his ear by accident, so it seemed, as I moved to run down, down the side of his face, and down towards his shoulder, the only way there was down the skin of his neck, and that was the path I followed in a slow and burning pace that seemed to halt all time, and somehow in the same moment that slowed the world around him, it stirred a desperate pace inside of Seto that raced to an alarming speed in contrast. A pulse so deep, and one that quickened with every second that crawled past him into eternity and longer, and mentally looking backwards at the second that passed him at last, he whipped his head back to look forward into the next approaching moment, and saw it so painfully far ahead of him that he moaned with a hopelessly unfulfilled anticipation, and I almost started at the voiced frustration, had he really been as deeply affected as all this? I moved in with him, what, forty-eight hours ago? Well, never mind, it mattered nothing to my purpose. I knew what it was that he desired more than all else underneath, it was evident now as it always had been to me, and I wished for his happiness. More than my own, and more than life.
The fingers that guided my touch continued as directed and fell as slowly as possible until the last of the exposed skin drew near, and the collar of his shirt was the very end of the road, for now. Only when I followed onto the fabric below did I realize how cold his skin had been, and now my hand was placed up to his collarbone and then fell farther still, pressing harder now to try to warm my fingertips on the clothes he wore, underneath them he was so awful and frostbitten to the touch that it was painful. Painful, but slightly interesting, how someone like him could even physically manifest the truth of what lay inside him, the dark and lonely grip of winter that stole his emotions and froze them until they were solid, and then were pushed and tossed until their frozen forms fell fast and were shattered into a million tiny pieces of ice that would never melt. He was a sad and solemn person and refused to be anything other, and I couldn’t force it on him. But I could offer it to him, in a way he couldn’t refuse. I broke the focus that the touch traveling down across his stomach commanded by tossing another invitation onto the fire of my unexplained offering, and I leaned into him with everything of me in a release of resistance, and where there had once been a touch now left only footprints of desire on his neck and shoulder, and I chose that path and I laid my head to the side and faced away. All the while I had him under the newly cast spell of my body, the relentless hand finally reached the very end of the shirt that had originally entered the path and was now at last bypassed, and I slipped underneath it with both of my hands and only initially touched him on his stomach with every fingertip in a nearly scratching upward drag, the barest and warmest of grazing sensation that was warm to me, and an unbearable and burning heat to his frigid and stiffly tensed form, and I felt his involuntary shudder, and an inhuman chill that traveled from the very top of his head, and following his spine it made its way in seconds to his feet and was lost through them, but his breath had raised itself in a slightly pausing pace that questioned the very nature of what it was that I was trying to give him, exactly. He would know in moments, and I enjoyed my time with him as I had always wanted to, trusting and caring as he hadn’t ever permitted me to. I nearly lost my nerve as the ice on his skin entered through my fingertips and I took my hands around his waist suddenly and with my arms around him I leaned in even closer until there wasn’t a place left on him that I didn’t feel, and I loved that place that I always knew was in there. This was a hope that had finally come true for me, and my face was still rested on his shoulder as he held me finally, not able to see my face as I smiled. I smiled and it was all that I could ever want, contained inside, and I captured it within the expression and held to it so tight, I loved this moment and this place, and I loved him, and this was the best moment I ever remember sharing with him, ever in any lifetime throughout all of history.
My arms tightened around him as I strained to place all my strength around him and claim him for a single moment, and after it left us behind, I knew it was the right time to let him take his need and have it fully for himself, he couldn’t share a thing and I knew it. This had to be completed, if not for the present and future, then at least for Sethe and Zahra, who had been caught in this terrible and never ending cycle of love fueled by hate, and now had no way to escape into rest, and unable to reason with one another any longer. Clinging desperately to painful memories because they had been destroyed before they could express their newfound love to one another, and both of them had seen it in the eyes of the other as they awaited the flames that would consume the two. Admitting to one another the truth had been their last moment in time, and it had been perfect and beautiful, forming a deeper connection that enabled Zahra to locate Sethe and they began to tread the path that I now stood at the very edge of, the end if it and the final destination was reached, and I waited just a few moments more. I wondered how their relationship had been before that moment, judging from the way they spoke about that particular life and its events, and I decided that it must have been a long and difficult road that led them to that tragic end so soon, but the results had manifested in their last words, and how strange for such a passionate love to be born from this tale I had heard of two opposing forces that were faced in a heated battle with every waking moment, the very presence of one would send the other mad, and then the other would instantly be mad as well, and all in a matter of seconds with no rhyme or reason, just a driving rage and unfulfilled emptiness that drained the two of them in a common weakness. But even all the touching and romantic feelings that grew and came to be could not make them get along, and they would never grow together because people who wouldn’t release their older and less able selves would never grow to be the complete and open souls that could sustain a love like theirs would be. They had to go, and I had to do this for all of us, for he and I, and both of them, we were against the wall and lost for sure. And that was why I would let him have his selfish and foolish way in the end, because if Sethe didn’t rest and move on, then Zahra wouldn’t either. And as long as they remained, the places that were filled inside Seto and I were keeping us from having even a fraction of what they had, and still could have if they would only let us. They were lost and so tired, and they didn’t see what would happen if they just let it all go. They were so afraid of losing one another, but they were driving each other apart with the fear, failing to notice that Seto and I were the only chance they had and we were so close, but still missing that place inside that was stolen and instead filled with a dead feeling. A feeling that could be alive again. And I would bring the end of them, and with it the beginning of us. So strong my conviction and the love for all involved that it stole away my fear and worries, and I smiled into his shoulder once more, and then lifted my head up high while keeping my hold on him tight, and looked at him with everything I felt, and with the smile that made me feel alive for all time. His eyes grew wide with a shock of disbelief, where had I found the place where a feeling such as this resided? He thought surely that it could never be from him alone, but he was wrong, because all there was to me was him, and it had always been that way. He would see it now for what it was.
“I know what you want more than any thing, what you desire most of all, and I have it and no other will ever be able to give it to you. And this is something you already know, so I am not worried or frightened of anything, except the destruction of our future through the mistakes of our past. I hope that by the time you see what I mean, it will not be too late. Don’t forget, this is never over, and I will never make you run away from me again....” I acted in haste, wanting to finish before my will was gone. Doing the right thing is always the most devastating part of life, no matter what, the right choice will show itself and it is so miserable, but I was happy to bear it in this case. I swiftly released his waist from my grasp and unwound my arms from him, and in an instant both hands were already holding to his face in a stilling move that he had no escape from. I fell forward into him and I kissed him for the very first time, in this life as Joey and Seto who had never kissed before, and yet he tasted just as I knew he always had. Strange, like how snow would taste if you put some in your mouth the very instant that it left it’s snowing cloud, falling on your tongue in the same space and time as it fell from the cloud, freezing and melting at once, forming and disbanding in a moment unreal and fantastic, and impossible to comprehend all the theoretical flavors and sensations of the event described that just could never happen, which was why I could never explain to him why I liked it so much. But still I did, and although I felt it slightly familiar it was still a physically new and unexplored level of proximity that we shared, that he shared without hesitation or expectancy, and the moment ended in a matter of moments. We had never been able to fall in live yet, so the intensity would never be sparked into existence if I didn’t let it all go. So I did. Pulling back again just for the width of an inch or so, I saw his face and he did not know what I was going to do, but he was suddenly scared at the question that had been so vaguely propositioned, and the way to the answer had been equally cryptic, and I had done that on purpose. If he knew, he wouldn’t have enjoyed himself as much as I was able to, even in the knowledge of the end. I leaned back to him but turned my head slightly so I went further, past his face and just before my lips touched to his ear I stopped, not able to help the breath that crept along his neck as I told him what I would do.
“Here, I have this to give you, because you will accept nothing else, and you know in your heart that this is what you wish to take from me. Well, now I wish for you to take it, and I won’t allow you to do anything else. I am sorry for what we have done to one another, and I hope that I am not too late in my realization of what we must do in order to rescue our chance. Don’t be sad....this is the happiest I’ve ever been, and its because of you, and because I realized that I found a way fix this. I’m only crying because Zahra is....and he knows the same things that I know. Sethe, you can go now. I’m sorry for chasing you, even when you showed me the signs that you no longer wished to be chased. Don’t run away anymore, I won’t be behind you if you turn around.” The tears that were his became my own as I told Seto the rest of my mind, and he was just still and quiet, as if he was screaming out to me in his mind, louder than anything had ever been before in desperation to the brink of insanity. But somehow holding it in with respect for the decision that he had never been strong enough to make, and somehow knew that I would. And this would be the last thing that I ever did for Seto Kaiba. The rest of the entire story, and the future I tried so desperately to save, was now fully and in all ways his and under his command. I would never set another foot in pursuit of him. He knew how I felt, and he needed to focus on how he felt. And I would wait until he knew what he wanted, and I would accept whatever it was he found within himself. He couldn’t hear my thoughts, and his patience wore extremely thin in the intense and nerve-racking stillness that surrounded the hurricane of motion that was stuck dead without warning it its place.
“I give you your freedom, from me, and from all my affection. It is the only thing I have never offered to you. It’s yours, so take it, it won’t hurt my feelings. This is how much I wish for your happiness. If you find it, I will find mine as well. So show me what it is that makes you the happiest in this world. I will wait for as long as it takes for you to find it, but I can’t help you, and I’m sorry. This is the only help I can offer.” I shut my eyes tightly so the tears that were forming would be cast away, and they fell from my eyes and fell on his shoulder, and I began to stand up from the bed where he sat, as a forlorn and broken picture of the very moment that someone took his hope away, and I felt so much worse than I ever had, but he would never learn to treat me with care if he didn’t know just how much he cared in the first place. He could do it, I knew he could, and I leaned back in quickly and kissed him once more on the cheek, and spoke again, but as I was standing before him he was accepting my retreat and he didn’t move as I told him the last things on my mind, and one very small and solitary tear was the very last thing that I noticed on his face as I pulled away in a hurry to escape and ran out of the room as I had ran inside, both ways it had been my only intention to help Seto, and never would I feel right again until I knew he was happy.
“ It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest what it is that you desire. What’s important is that you discover what it is. I will always hope that it’s me you want, and whatever it is I will stop at nothing to make sure you have it. It doesn’t make any difference if you love me, so don’t say that you do. I love you regardless, and I will give you anything you ask of me. All of our hope is your and I’m leaving here for good. I can’t come back until you ask, and when you come across the question, you will know. So....good-bye. And Good-bye to Sethe as well, and Zahra, for both of them will fall asleep if the memories are abandoned by either one. And then it will be the two of us alone, and the feelings of another world will be gone and lost, and you will see how it is that Seto feels, because Sethe is dead and wandering in pain. I can’t let them do this any longer......so...I have to leave now....bye, Seto.”
AN:I knew it had sap potential. I just had to milk it right. No, actually, this was really close to making me puke and it’ s still kinda lingering....uh. I hope you like it, because I secretly like it too, although I guess it’s not so secret so....yeah. Hi. Do you believe in a happy ending? It awaits...
A Seto/Joey fanfic by subaruxkamui4ever
AN: I am a tired person. Are you tired as well?
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He was still in the same place as he had been since I entered the room minutes earlier, although it had passed years between the two of us. I still held the hand that I had pulled away from his face, freeing his speech and begging him in a way without words to somehow make this all right. I had sat down beside him on the bed, and his hand I decided should stay with me, and I pulled it close to my chest in a clinging sort of way, wrapping myself around his arm. He didn’t move or speak, but he watched me with open and focused eyes and was aware of everything. I had been scared that perhaps his past personality would become stressed with repression and fight it’s way to the top, and it had for a moment, but it had been quickly pushed right back under, saving the moment, but endangering the life that we had to either spend together or waste in pursuit, another lifetime to toss into the carelessly discarded pile of lost years. I knew much more than I realized, and when I listened to myself inside and spoke without thinking, knowledge of our situation slowly became clearer and more evident in the way that I could trust in the silent voice that I now knew to be Me, and my memories that still drove themselves endlessly forward into time. I looked up at Seto, he still watched me as if I were a creature he had never seen before. I suppose in a way that was true, since the old way he thought of me must be very long gone by this point. I didn’t know everything that he knew, but as I had been advised by Zahra it certainly rang out true in his newfound interest in my actions and awaited words. I realized that he was waiting for me to speak, and I sat up suddenly, releasing his hand reluctantly and meeting him in gaze and posture. He lost his curious look and took a much more prepared and accepting face. I think that he felt my underlying rage, even though I couldn’t yet, and also felt that even if he never did again, now he should listen to my anger and take responsibility for his outburst.
“Are you angry with me? You said....that hurt so much.....what you said. Is that how you see me? Seto?” I was still in a state of shock, real and unshakeable, it gripped my thoughts and motions until I began to speak. Everything that I heard leave my mouth was unplanned, and only came to as I heard the actual words. Seto and I both listened, neither one of us able to stop the splitting and cracking edges of the place where I held my feelings back in the heat of the moment. Instead of the final crash of a release and an overflowing of pure and unbridled rage, it first began to seep out slowly at the seams, trickling in tiny rivulets of distaste and questioning offense, and as the running emotions spilled around the breaking points they had to give way piece by piece and the bubbling creek grew steadily from stream, to river, and then letting it all go into a torrential wave of the final and pure underlying feelings that had been there for centuries. Anger with little things about him that remained throughout each and every carnation, his fears that drove him away from me eternally, his temper that flared without warning and without any effort on his part to keep in check, resulting in heated spats such as this and somehow, I was the only one that ever walked away in tears.
Well, not this time. I never hated him or judged him for any of his faults but in the face of the real and final end of Us, I held nothing else back, because Zahra had nothing else left inside, all that he was made of was his thoughts and feelings for Sethe that wouldn’t die. So in turn did I, and Sethe still had obvious issues himself, which kept his presence intact as well as Zahras. As I thought more about it, I saw that the only real set back in this strung out and prolonged ordeal, was Seto. The part of Sethe that was now Seto, the same as the part of Zahra that was called Joey today, the basic thoughtform that would never change no matter how many times it reincarnated, and would replicate nearly the same person infinitely. The only deciding factor that varied was the endless variety of opportunities to be given and fates to befall, each new life promised a new chance to figure it all out, and to alter ourselves as we saw fit. Learning through mistakes and repeating the process until the end result was achieved, whatever the end result might be I could not say and cannot still, because I haven’t learned much at all over the past five thousand years. But even less learned than I was, Seto silently listening beside me with an uncomfortable and unheard of amount of attention to my ranting, which had fallen short as I considered the truth of my unearthed and deep-seated source of troubling thoughts that I did not want to see. But why not? He had no problem with telling me exactly how he felt, even about needlessly petty and spiteful situations that were beyond anyone’s control. His disgust and loathing for me because I was an unfortunate victim of circumstance. As if I were the one responsible for choosing the fate of the people who came before me, telling them what to be so I would have an honorable heritage for his sake when I came to be among them. Here was when I began the eventual shattering of the bonds that kept my long repressed and overlooked feelings for his treatment of me, and of himself.
“Are you hearing me, Seto? I want your undivided attention, and that includes Sethe as well, because everything that I feel is also felt by Zahra. I trust you can handle that....” He was frozen in....something akin to fear, but deeper than fear because it wasn’t an emotion, fear was a reaction. This was a feeling of regret and sorrow at how my feelings poured out in a reaction to his thoughtless and lightly cast words that meant nothing and served as something for him to hide under. I had his attention here and in my eyes now, though, and it had better remain. He had been in hiding for far too long, and I was suddenly nauseous with the sickness I felt at this inane and pointless game he wanted to play. Tired to death and beyond it completely, so very many times now. He would not do this to me, to us, any longer.
“So, you must really want to be rid of me. I say this because of the evident distaste you have for me and my kind, we are indeed so very far below you and your eternally distracting and life draining lust for power and control, we are so lost in awe that we must not be able to see how pure in intent you really are. Such a noble and respectable existence you lead with your higher class on your higher plane, I wonder how I managed to catch your eye at all. How curious that I alone was able to dirty your hands with my sinful ways. And then, how very unlike you and your Perfection to not want to resist such an obviously laughable temptation, especially such a cheap thrill as I was, and still must be in your eyes of the gods. Because I was somehow able to achieve all of these offensive and regretful trespasses against your unwitting soul without ever being aware of your existence, and remaining unaware until I had been paid for in full. I would love to hear how you would explain that away, but I know the sound of your voice will do nothing but make me laugh. So don’t say anything at all.” These things that I heard myself express were absorbed by both Seto and I, and we both knew that it was all true, somewhere inside the memory was calling it out as loudly as my steadily rising voice. And although the facts were new, the accompanying emotions were hauntingly familiar, indeed they really wouldn’t go away at all. The pressure of carrying anything without rest for as long as we had was very tense already for one who remained alone, and our emotional turmoil was deafening as they collided against each other, and as the dust settled we could see more and more of how his will had crumbled and been destroyed beneath my own. And I wasn’t nearly finished with him. Either one of him.
“Would you really be so kind as to step aside as you so unselfishly offered to? I haven’t a doubt in my heart that you would prefer to kill me than to watch me leave so casually, as effortlessly as the way you say those things to my face, knowing full well how much they will eat away at my heart and simply not caring at all. You do not love me at all, and I have feared this for some time now. Do you think that I am as foolish as you say I am? You must be just as foolish as me if you believe that, because no one who really loved me would hurt me like you do, like you have since that awful lifetime in which we met. You know, you’ve been absolutely nothing but trouble since the day you first stepped in my path” I laughed in a quiet and frighteningly tender way at the memory of his own voice saying that, and I felt the last of my tears dry up and leave at once, taking along with them my sadness at hurting him with my own words. He really had asked for much worse and more truthful things, but I still loved him, and I felt disgusted by it at the same time. How weak I was, and he would agree, although he didn’t show a single emotion to my face. I had never once broken the angry stare that I held him in, he couldn’t so much as blink to my countenance. I never should have let him get this far. I didn’t need this pain, and I certainly didn’t want to continue this pursuit of a person who did not want me to pursue him, and for the moment I said that I wouldn’t, although I knew deep within my soul that I would always chase him. Always. But I still felt the same and I was still in terrible pain. His eyes were under my own and his face had not moved even an inch, he looked strangely happy, or at least content. How very incredible, I thought as I took a deep breath and went for the final point, the last truth that I had to say to him so he knew what was happening here. The last debt I would pay to him.
“The strangest part of this whole mess that you and I have become is the way that you really feel about me. You are a true idiot if you think that you have concealed any part of it from me, and I have seen every foolish and desperate attempt that you made to hide it, as well. I know you don’t mean any of the awful things you tell me, you’re just bluffing and you know it as I know it. You are obvious and you are shallow, and your petty and mistreated feelings deserve to be expressed, but you refused. You refuse today and you have for ages and ages, and it is becoming very ridiculous, and very wasteful. Seto, you and all you have ever been has wasted so much of my time that I almost wish that we had never met. I cannot finish that wish, only because I love you with everything that I have, everything that’s left of me after all this spent and used life is gone for good, and still ever after, I will think only of you. And no matter how childishly you hide it, you cannot deny that you feel exactly the same way. Go ahead and try if you like. But I think that you won’t, because you will look even uglier and sadder on the outside than you already are on the inside. So, rather than let you destroy what has become of us, I will keep the remaining pieces and take them with me. And I will leave you with nothing. For the last few thousand years, Seto, thousands of years were talking about here, I spent them on you and you alone, and none of it on myself. And you, you took them from my willing hands and then left, with my lives and your own, how good that must have made you feel. Well, I think I know what will make you feel even better. I know, inside me, that what I’m about to give to you will feel better than anything in all the world. You desire this so much, I can see it in you and you ask me for it constantly, but you don’t know that I hear you. You can’t even hear it. You don’t know what it is, but not only do I know, but I’m the only person who can give it to you. Do you still want it? What I keep from you, should I let you have it, what you want so badly to take away....” I smiled so slightly that I wasn’t sure if he could see it in the nearly midnight that coated the room still, and to bring reality to my words of promise I lifted one of my hands that rested next to us on the bed we sat on, no more than a foot that was our distance and it was closed in a moment by my hand, reaching his face as it had planned and now rested against the furthest end of the side, so far that it was almost on his neck, and for the first time since I had breathed a word he broke the motionless mask when he saw the impending demise brought by my hand and his eyebrows raised in panic and very real surprise, never in all his time with me had he expected this to be a viable reaction from me. I was just as soft with his handling as I had always been, but it wasn’t the nature of my touch, it was the very contact that he was stricken by all in itself, and when the first attack was raised and fired, and my hand found its tracing way across his pale and frozen skin, his eyes were the first to fall. After his immediate and unintentionally quick surrender, he wasn’t as aware of the next territory that I planned to overthrow as he would have been, if he hadn’t already been stripped of his sight by my swift and sweetly promising gestures of widely accepting forms of interpretation. Whatever he had wanted at first was not the same want that he displayed so clearly now, and I was almost amused at how quickly he changed his pathetic tune. That old song had been overplayed anyway, it was very tired, and I wouldn’t be hearing it for a moment, it seemed.
The simple touch had been held at that place on his face that was nearly his neck had been still for a moment, edging his closer on his own, while I just waited for him to fall under. And it worked, in under a minute, he had involuntarily shifted forward until the contact was full, his face had my entire hand, and he wasn’t going to stop me at all. I had every chance to exact full and complete revenge, and I could see the endless possibility spanning out, and all the satisfaction it promised. But I remained to myself and my intentions, for they were pure and their was no malice that I could hold to him. I did not have that kind of power. Instead, I continued to offer what he sought but wouldn’t take, almost dizzy with a blending of defeat and victory and not knowing which to claim as of yet, and letting me be the deciding factor. My hand moved, catching the last few fingers on his ear by accident, so it seemed, as I moved to run down, down the side of his face, and down towards his shoulder, the only way there was down the skin of his neck, and that was the path I followed in a slow and burning pace that seemed to halt all time, and somehow in the same moment that slowed the world around him, it stirred a desperate pace inside of Seto that raced to an alarming speed in contrast. A pulse so deep, and one that quickened with every second that crawled past him into eternity and longer, and mentally looking backwards at the second that passed him at last, he whipped his head back to look forward into the next approaching moment, and saw it so painfully far ahead of him that he moaned with a hopelessly unfulfilled anticipation, and I almost started at the voiced frustration, had he really been as deeply affected as all this? I moved in with him, what, forty-eight hours ago? Well, never mind, it mattered nothing to my purpose. I knew what it was that he desired more than all else underneath, it was evident now as it always had been to me, and I wished for his happiness. More than my own, and more than life.
The fingers that guided my touch continued as directed and fell as slowly as possible until the last of the exposed skin drew near, and the collar of his shirt was the very end of the road, for now. Only when I followed onto the fabric below did I realize how cold his skin had been, and now my hand was placed up to his collarbone and then fell farther still, pressing harder now to try to warm my fingertips on the clothes he wore, underneath them he was so awful and frostbitten to the touch that it was painful. Painful, but slightly interesting, how someone like him could even physically manifest the truth of what lay inside him, the dark and lonely grip of winter that stole his emotions and froze them until they were solid, and then were pushed and tossed until their frozen forms fell fast and were shattered into a million tiny pieces of ice that would never melt. He was a sad and solemn person and refused to be anything other, and I couldn’t force it on him. But I could offer it to him, in a way he couldn’t refuse. I broke the focus that the touch traveling down across his stomach commanded by tossing another invitation onto the fire of my unexplained offering, and I leaned into him with everything of me in a release of resistance, and where there had once been a touch now left only footprints of desire on his neck and shoulder, and I chose that path and I laid my head to the side and faced away. All the while I had him under the newly cast spell of my body, the relentless hand finally reached the very end of the shirt that had originally entered the path and was now at last bypassed, and I slipped underneath it with both of my hands and only initially touched him on his stomach with every fingertip in a nearly scratching upward drag, the barest and warmest of grazing sensation that was warm to me, and an unbearable and burning heat to his frigid and stiffly tensed form, and I felt his involuntary shudder, and an inhuman chill that traveled from the very top of his head, and following his spine it made its way in seconds to his feet and was lost through them, but his breath had raised itself in a slightly pausing pace that questioned the very nature of what it was that I was trying to give him, exactly. He would know in moments, and I enjoyed my time with him as I had always wanted to, trusting and caring as he hadn’t ever permitted me to. I nearly lost my nerve as the ice on his skin entered through my fingertips and I took my hands around his waist suddenly and with my arms around him I leaned in even closer until there wasn’t a place left on him that I didn’t feel, and I loved that place that I always knew was in there. This was a hope that had finally come true for me, and my face was still rested on his shoulder as he held me finally, not able to see my face as I smiled. I smiled and it was all that I could ever want, contained inside, and I captured it within the expression and held to it so tight, I loved this moment and this place, and I loved him, and this was the best moment I ever remember sharing with him, ever in any lifetime throughout all of history.
My arms tightened around him as I strained to place all my strength around him and claim him for a single moment, and after it left us behind, I knew it was the right time to let him take his need and have it fully for himself, he couldn’t share a thing and I knew it. This had to be completed, if not for the present and future, then at least for Sethe and Zahra, who had been caught in this terrible and never ending cycle of love fueled by hate, and now had no way to escape into rest, and unable to reason with one another any longer. Clinging desperately to painful memories because they had been destroyed before they could express their newfound love to one another, and both of them had seen it in the eyes of the other as they awaited the flames that would consume the two. Admitting to one another the truth had been their last moment in time, and it had been perfect and beautiful, forming a deeper connection that enabled Zahra to locate Sethe and they began to tread the path that I now stood at the very edge of, the end if it and the final destination was reached, and I waited just a few moments more. I wondered how their relationship had been before that moment, judging from the way they spoke about that particular life and its events, and I decided that it must have been a long and difficult road that led them to that tragic end so soon, but the results had manifested in their last words, and how strange for such a passionate love to be born from this tale I had heard of two opposing forces that were faced in a heated battle with every waking moment, the very presence of one would send the other mad, and then the other would instantly be mad as well, and all in a matter of seconds with no rhyme or reason, just a driving rage and unfulfilled emptiness that drained the two of them in a common weakness. But even all the touching and romantic feelings that grew and came to be could not make them get along, and they would never grow together because people who wouldn’t release their older and less able selves would never grow to be the complete and open souls that could sustain a love like theirs would be. They had to go, and I had to do this for all of us, for he and I, and both of them, we were against the wall and lost for sure. And that was why I would let him have his selfish and foolish way in the end, because if Sethe didn’t rest and move on, then Zahra wouldn’t either. And as long as they remained, the places that were filled inside Seto and I were keeping us from having even a fraction of what they had, and still could have if they would only let us. They were lost and so tired, and they didn’t see what would happen if they just let it all go. They were so afraid of losing one another, but they were driving each other apart with the fear, failing to notice that Seto and I were the only chance they had and we were so close, but still missing that place inside that was stolen and instead filled with a dead feeling. A feeling that could be alive again. And I would bring the end of them, and with it the beginning of us. So strong my conviction and the love for all involved that it stole away my fear and worries, and I smiled into his shoulder once more, and then lifted my head up high while keeping my hold on him tight, and looked at him with everything I felt, and with the smile that made me feel alive for all time. His eyes grew wide with a shock of disbelief, where had I found the place where a feeling such as this resided? He thought surely that it could never be from him alone, but he was wrong, because all there was to me was him, and it had always been that way. He would see it now for what it was.
“I know what you want more than any thing, what you desire most of all, and I have it and no other will ever be able to give it to you. And this is something you already know, so I am not worried or frightened of anything, except the destruction of our future through the mistakes of our past. I hope that by the time you see what I mean, it will not be too late. Don’t forget, this is never over, and I will never make you run away from me again....” I acted in haste, wanting to finish before my will was gone. Doing the right thing is always the most devastating part of life, no matter what, the right choice will show itself and it is so miserable, but I was happy to bear it in this case. I swiftly released his waist from my grasp and unwound my arms from him, and in an instant both hands were already holding to his face in a stilling move that he had no escape from. I fell forward into him and I kissed him for the very first time, in this life as Joey and Seto who had never kissed before, and yet he tasted just as I knew he always had. Strange, like how snow would taste if you put some in your mouth the very instant that it left it’s snowing cloud, falling on your tongue in the same space and time as it fell from the cloud, freezing and melting at once, forming and disbanding in a moment unreal and fantastic, and impossible to comprehend all the theoretical flavors and sensations of the event described that just could never happen, which was why I could never explain to him why I liked it so much. But still I did, and although I felt it slightly familiar it was still a physically new and unexplored level of proximity that we shared, that he shared without hesitation or expectancy, and the moment ended in a matter of moments. We had never been able to fall in live yet, so the intensity would never be sparked into existence if I didn’t let it all go. So I did. Pulling back again just for the width of an inch or so, I saw his face and he did not know what I was going to do, but he was suddenly scared at the question that had been so vaguely propositioned, and the way to the answer had been equally cryptic, and I had done that on purpose. If he knew, he wouldn’t have enjoyed himself as much as I was able to, even in the knowledge of the end. I leaned back to him but turned my head slightly so I went further, past his face and just before my lips touched to his ear I stopped, not able to help the breath that crept along his neck as I told him what I would do.
“Here, I have this to give you, because you will accept nothing else, and you know in your heart that this is what you wish to take from me. Well, now I wish for you to take it, and I won’t allow you to do anything else. I am sorry for what we have done to one another, and I hope that I am not too late in my realization of what we must do in order to rescue our chance. Don’t be sad....this is the happiest I’ve ever been, and its because of you, and because I realized that I found a way fix this. I’m only crying because Zahra is....and he knows the same things that I know. Sethe, you can go now. I’m sorry for chasing you, even when you showed me the signs that you no longer wished to be chased. Don’t run away anymore, I won’t be behind you if you turn around.” The tears that were his became my own as I told Seto the rest of my mind, and he was just still and quiet, as if he was screaming out to me in his mind, louder than anything had ever been before in desperation to the brink of insanity. But somehow holding it in with respect for the decision that he had never been strong enough to make, and somehow knew that I would. And this would be the last thing that I ever did for Seto Kaiba. The rest of the entire story, and the future I tried so desperately to save, was now fully and in all ways his and under his command. I would never set another foot in pursuit of him. He knew how I felt, and he needed to focus on how he felt. And I would wait until he knew what he wanted, and I would accept whatever it was he found within himself. He couldn’t hear my thoughts, and his patience wore extremely thin in the intense and nerve-racking stillness that surrounded the hurricane of motion that was stuck dead without warning it its place.
“I give you your freedom, from me, and from all my affection. It is the only thing I have never offered to you. It’s yours, so take it, it won’t hurt my feelings. This is how much I wish for your happiness. If you find it, I will find mine as well. So show me what it is that makes you the happiest in this world. I will wait for as long as it takes for you to find it, but I can’t help you, and I’m sorry. This is the only help I can offer.” I shut my eyes tightly so the tears that were forming would be cast away, and they fell from my eyes and fell on his shoulder, and I began to stand up from the bed where he sat, as a forlorn and broken picture of the very moment that someone took his hope away, and I felt so much worse than I ever had, but he would never learn to treat me with care if he didn’t know just how much he cared in the first place. He could do it, I knew he could, and I leaned back in quickly and kissed him once more on the cheek, and spoke again, but as I was standing before him he was accepting my retreat and he didn’t move as I told him the last things on my mind, and one very small and solitary tear was the very last thing that I noticed on his face as I pulled away in a hurry to escape and ran out of the room as I had ran inside, both ways it had been my only intention to help Seto, and never would I feel right again until I knew he was happy.
“ It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest what it is that you desire. What’s important is that you discover what it is. I will always hope that it’s me you want, and whatever it is I will stop at nothing to make sure you have it. It doesn’t make any difference if you love me, so don’t say that you do. I love you regardless, and I will give you anything you ask of me. All of our hope is your and I’m leaving here for good. I can’t come back until you ask, and when you come across the question, you will know. So....good-bye. And Good-bye to Sethe as well, and Zahra, for both of them will fall asleep if the memories are abandoned by either one. And then it will be the two of us alone, and the feelings of another world will be gone and lost, and you will see how it is that Seto feels, because Sethe is dead and wandering in pain. I can’t let them do this any longer......so...I have to leave now....bye, Seto.”
AN:I knew it had sap potential. I just had to milk it right. No, actually, this was really close to making me puke and it’ s still kinda lingering....uh. I hope you like it, because I secretly like it too, although I guess it’s not so secret so....yeah. Hi. Do you believe in a happy ending? It awaits...