Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Dreams Come True ❯ Chapter Seventeen: Lost, Lonely, and a lake. Er, pond. ( Chapter 17 )

Chapter Seventeen: Lost, lonely, and a lake. Er, pond.

He twisted and turned, unable in his distressed dream to awaken from the horrific slumber that held his mind captive, brown hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, sheets bunched up in balls, his fingernails digging little ridges in his palm. Seto Kaiba did not often have dreams like these-but at the beginning, as all nightmares go, this one had begun easily enough. All of his did.

"No," She had said, "I don't understand." It was Mina, standing there, her outline vaguely blurry and her eyes deep and blue and impermeable. Ocean eyes, his dream self had thought. He had no idea what he had said to her, but the desolation written in her was something else. He'd never seen that kind of hurt in anyone. Some part of him relished it-and he recoiled from the frightful thought of hurting one of the two people he loved most in the world.

What did I say? He took a step towards her, and reached a hand out, to take her by the arm and pull her close, but to his absolute horror, his hand went right through.

He couldn't stand the accusing glare in her eyes. It was poison.

"Why are you doing this to me?" She was crying now, hot tears of anger and pain and sadness. He recoiled, staring at his hand as if he had just realized he had one.

My God. What did I do????

She looked behind herself suddenly, and gave a little scream, then began to run towards him, eyes wide and fearful and her hand was reaching for him suddenly and his was reaching for her….

Their fingers touched, and passed through each other. She screamed, a long, drawn out note of terror, and was engulfed by the blackness. Seto stood there, alone on one lonely spot of ground, staring after her, then he plunged into the darkness himself, oblivious of the danger.

Mina. My Mina.

"Mina??" He was standing on a heavily wooded path, the wind whipping his coat around him and then he heard the singing.

Eerie and beautiful all at once.

It was not Mina. Mina could not carry a note, he thought. Mina was imperfect and normal and safe. His drug.

He started running, running towards the sound of the song, each step dragging and becoming harder, until he had come out of the woods and fell on his knees. She was there.

On a cliff.

"Mina…No…" He breathed quietly, softly. She had her back turned to him. She was not the same. The clothes she wore were different, even, the usual tee and jeans replaced with a long, flowing dress, draping over her and flowing in the wind, making snapping sounds as the fabric caught and tore and whipped in the sway of the breeze.

Seto stood. A careful step taken, then two, then three. He began his slow, cautious movement towards her, and when he was five feet away he whispered her name, and she turned in response to his voice, but she wasn't Mina.

The eyes that held bottomless oceans of loss and broken dreams stared out at him--there were no pupils--their color a bright sea green. She was she, and she was not.

"Come on, Mina." He whispered, licking his lips and bringing himself back from the shock her eyes had given him. "Come to me, little girl, and it'll be allright." He realized the sudden tremor in his voice.

She smiled then, and turned, and reached a hand out to him, waiting for him. He took a step.

And she fell.

"Mina!!!!!" At the last moment he dove and his fingers caught air, and he was watching her plummet to whatever she was plummeting to, be it death, or hell, or thorns, and he wished he could plummet too, because he has failed to save her. His yell of despair pierced the night and shattered the calm with a broken ferocity that he had never felt….

"HEY, SETO! WAKE UP!!! You're scaring meee!!"

Seto sat up with a start, breathing quickly and shallowly. Mokuba was standing at the foot of his bed, frowning.

"A-Are you okay?" His voice was thin and tremulous. It brought Seto back down to Earth.

"…Yeah, Yeah. Bad dream. Need something?"

"It's storming outside. Can I have a glass of water?" Mokuba pulled back the covers and slid in next to his brother, feeling better. He hated storms. "Seto?"

"Mm?"

"Where's Mina been?"

Truth be told, the young CEO had no idea. She hadn't been by lately, and he hadn't seen her for three days. Tomorrow he was leaving for Duelist Kingdom.

"I…don't know…"

He worried. He fretted and paced and thought and was distressed, because this was not like her. Sometimes he came home from a hard day of work and checked the answering machine, but she never called. Was it his fault, he wondered?

*~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~

Far away, in Duelist Kingdom, Mina was staring at a map and wondering where she took a wrong turn.

"Oops," was her only comment, and she realized she had been looking at the map upside down. She turned it right side up, found her location, and began walking-

Right into a pond.

Well, almost. She stopped and balanced precariously on her tiptoes on the sharp bank, then forced herself to fall back.

"Lord God Almighty!!!!!!!" She exclaimed, panting. "When…when did we put that in???!???" She scooted away from the sharp drop off into water and against a tree trunk, pulling out her map again.

"This is so not fair. Watch me walk ten feet over that way and wind up back at the castle doors. Shit." She cursed under her breath, stood up and brushed off her jeans. "That's it! I'm sick of this! I'm finding someone who knows what they're doing!"

She tore her map in half, threw it over her shoulder, and trudged to what remotely resembled a path, walking up it, scuffing her not-quite-so-white-anymore sneakers in the dust.

"Huh? Mina? Is-is that you?"

She looked up at the sound of the vaguely familiar male voice. Her eyes widened, and she ran and tackled the speaker.

"Hah!!! JOEY!!! Oh God, I'm SO glad to see you!! I've been lost for HOURS."

The blonde grinned and ran a hand through his hair, prying her off.

"Well, actually, I'm sort of not much a help in that case, because I'm lost too."

"Oh…shit…"

He sighed and put his hands on his hips.

"You, er, don't happen to have a map, do you?"

Mina smacked her forehead.

"No… I tossed mine away. It wasn't helping. I nearly fell into a lake."

"Pond."

"Right."

They both put their hands in their respective pockets and began wandering up the path.

"How'd you get lost?" He asked.

"Um!" She racked her brain for an excuse. "I, um, dunno… You?"

"Turned around for a minute and the gang left. Hope they're not lost either."

"The gang? You mean Yugi and Tea?"

"Tristan and Bakura too."

"Ah."

"Where was the, uh, lake again?"

"Pond."

"Right."

"Back there somewhere," she waved vaguely back behind them.

"You know what?"

"Hm?"

Joey turned to look at her.

"I'm betting if we keep walking, we'll eventually reach the shore, then we can ask somebody for a map."

Mina grinned.

"Sure. Considering any way you walk, you'll eventually reach shore, because this is an island."

Joey laughed.

"Right. And no more lakes."

"Er, ponds."

"Right."

They grinned at each other and continued on their way, each thinking their thoughts.

And not that far away, Seto Kaiba was stepping off the wooden planks of a ferryboat, sighing to himself.

Here we go again.