Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Clear Vision ❯ Chapter Eleventh ( Chapter 11 )

Clear Vision

A Seto/Joey fanfic by subaruxkamui4ever

AN: Yes. The ultimate angsting is back. And it is angstier than ever. I mean to finish this story with a few more chapters, since I have recently come to see how it will all "go down", as they say. But alas, a happier ending than even I had thought could be awaits you! Honestly! I am being serious! The smiles will take you all!

And finally, I apologize for not updating this story sooner, but here is my formula to explain why it did not happen.

Work at a toy store + Christmas shoppers/10 hour shifts = no puppyshipping. Blame the holidays.

My footsteps continued to carry me farther away from Seto and Sethe, with each passing second. I ran so fast, and each beat of my frantic heart seemed to match the terrible pace that my shoes pounded into the floor, taking me down the staircase and straight through the seemingly endless string of rooms and spaces that I still found so completely unfamiliar. Almost as unfamiliar as the pangs of defeat that repeatedly sounded inside my mind, echoing throughout my soul and threatening to finally break my heart in two. This just can't be the end, it can't…can it? My thoughts are screaming so loud, louder than anything I've ever heard, save the deafening sound of the way I said goodbye. The tears come faster as the sadness casts itself over my entire sense of being, and I see the front door at long last. Am I taking this way, after all? My mind dashed backwards momentarily to that moment early this morning, when Seto challenged my will.

"Where were you off to in such a hurry? Giving up after all?"

I wasn't giving up, Seto. And I'm hopeful still. I hope that you see. You are the only one for me, and you always have been, in this life and every other.

Reaching the door at last, I feel my body try to hesitate, and I overpower the urge completely. This eternal cycle cannot be allowed to continue. Zahra would have to release his memories if Set and I were to ever have a chance, and I knew that I would have to face my inner demon on my own. I knew that that was what Zahra truly was, he was a demon, possessing my dreams and living on after his time was spent. No matter how unjustly cut short his life may have been, he was still never supposed to linger within me, inhibiting my chance to right the wrongs that had befallen him and Sethe. No, no matter how much I cared for Zahra, I had to send him to sleep, where he belonged. I could only hold the hope in my heart that Seto could find it in himself to do the same with Sethe. Otherwise, our chance would be lost at once.

I crash outside through the door in my haste, and slam it shut behind me, never looking back. I wouldn't look back, for fear of falling short of my own expectations. I knew that I could get along somehow, even if he never came for me. If Seto truly found that he loved me, or at least felt anything for me that wasn't a residual feeling of Sethe's, then I would no doubt see him before this was all over. But if not…I decided to not give the thought any time, instead I needed to focus on the future that was coming to pass in a rush all around me. Dealing with specters from the past is a tricky thing, and not something I would normally be messing with. I know far better, if not before this ordeal, then now more than ever. Never again did I want to have to go through anything this heartbreaking or trying on my soul ever again. Events happening all around me seemed to come too quickly, and yet every time I looked up it seemed as if no time at all had passed to either Seto or I. I realized that Friday had been the start of all of this…between us. It was now Sunday afternoon, and it seems as though years have passed in the spaces that separate us from being close as one. Thinking back over all that had happened over the weekend and marveling over the endlessness of the time that hadn't really passed, my feet found the streets that were once so familiar to me, and I took off to my home. Well, my house, that is. I left my home behind, just minutes ago.

I know the way back from here, it's really not all that far from where I've been living. Even though I know where I'm going, deep inside me I have this feeling that each step I take is driving me farther and farther from where I belong, taking me instead to a place I desperately need to escape from. It doesn't matter. I have nowhere else to go. I tore blindly through the streets and sidewalks, ignoring any and all passersby. Nothing reaches me in my state, which was my first and foremost mistake. My second mistake, and the worst by far, was the exact second that I chose to dash into the street at such a frantic and haphazard pace. Sometimes you have to own up to the ridiculous decisions you make, even in an emotional panic. We are always in control of our own selves, regardless of how devastated or incapable we may feel.

What I heard next I will never forget.

It's the same noise that everyone else describes hearing in the second they are hit by an oncoming car. Just like me.

An awful mess of tearing skin and emotions was all that I could hear over the screaming halt of tires on pavement, and it was only a momentary feeling, because it somehow drove me over the edge of sanity in under a single second. I felt the ground as I fell fast into it but in some other place, perhaps in my heart, I fell farther still. With nothing to grasp or hold myself together with, I instantly came apart. A terrible weight pressed down from above, and I knew that I would have to descend farther still, no doubt until I reached the bottom of my soul, the place where Zahra resided, hidden underneath my feelings and the ways that I truly thought. Becoming transparent within them and swiftly moving throughout my consciousness, masking his love with the evidence of my own. That would have to stop, here and now. His intent was not evil or unjust, but nonetheless, this was my life. My feelings for Seto were my own, and they were not for Sethe, although I did feel sorrow and pain for the both of them. They just were not meant to be. But in denying this truth, they had nearly destroyed the chance they had in this life, as Seto and Joey, and my only intention was to help all four of us to move on for once and forever.

I was on my way to finishing everything between Zahra and I. He needed to be put to rest, and I was the only one who could show him the way. Whether he saw it or not, it was the only way out. And only one of us would be able to come out in control of Joey Wheeler. But I was sure that, with Seto's help, I would be the one. As long as I had him to come home to, I would be the one that came home.

If I still had a body to claim, that is. But I couldn't feel a thing anymore.