Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Not This Time ❯ Memories ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two – Dreams Seto’s POV   I step aboard the captured vessel, wooden planking creaking under my boots, grin firmly affixed to my face. The British navy thinks they can stomp us out of existence… They’re delusional. As long as there are ships and coastal cities to raid and pillage, there will be someone to raid and pillage them, and it might as well be me.   My eyes scan the prisoners. There is one person missing, who should be here… certainly he survived…   I turn to my second in command. “Where is the captain? Was he killed?”   He looks back at them, searching them. I don’t know why; it’s obvious that he’s not here. “He must have been…” The uncertainty in his voice gives him away.   “Find him,” I order them. “He’s here somewhere, probably working on trying to free his ship. I won’t have that. This ship is mine, and I won’t have him taking it back! Go!” They scatter, save the ones guarding the captured crewmen. I stare at them for a moment… It won’t do him any good to free an empty ship, and he cares about his men…   “Kill them.”   The guards nod brusquely and turn to begin slaughtering my prisoners. The men beg for their lives like children; pathetic. I would probably have killed them anyway.   Before any of them have been executed, he appears, sword in hand, gun pointed at me. “If any of them die, your captain meets the same fate.” Cold crimson eyes flick back and forth between me and my men.   I laugh. “Fool. My men care nothing for me. They don’t care if you kill me – they’d just see it as an opportunity for one of them to take my place. That’s not a particularly effective threat.” Nevertheless, my men have stopped, still holding the prisoners, prepared to kill them but on pause for the moment.   His eyes settle on me. He seems so familiar… Have I seen him before? The sight of him tugs at something inside of me, and I don’t understand it… I feel drawn to him, but repulsed… I feel that he is dangerous, and I don’t know if that is attracting me to him, or pushing me away.   “You won’t call them off to save your own life?”   I step closer to him, almost against my will. “No.”   He stares at me, all his attention on me, and it feels good. Nothing else matters to him right now – I can see that, in the way his weapons are drooping slightly as he forgets them, the way he has turned away from my men and his own to face me. “Why not? Don’t you care about your life?”   The question… it strikes some sort of nerve. I can’t answer right away. I know the answer, what the answer should be: No. I don’t. I’ve lived for nearly twenty years, done things most would damn me to hell for, survived things most would never care to imagine. I have very little use for life except as something to do until I die. I know it. I just can’t manage to say it.   “Captain!”   We both swiftly look at the others, not certain which of our men spoke. It was one of mine, calling my attention to the prisoners… they’re revolting, fighting back. How did I not know…not hear?   My men swiftly gain the upper hand, and begin to execute the prisoners as per my prior order. As the first body falls to the deck in a spreading pool of his own blood, I feel the barrel of the other captain’s gun pressed into my back.   “Call them off!” he demands. “Call them off or I’ll kill you.”   “Again…” I whisper the word, not knowing why. I have to say it; for some reason, I can’t not say it. “Not again…”   “Call them off! You men, kill another man and he’s dead!”   I barely hear him. Again… He found me just to do it again… He claimed to love me and he just does it again and again and again…   My men look at me, at my silent, expressionless face, and only hesitate a moment before continuing on with their job. Another prisoner spills his blood on the deck.   I feel the faint pain before I hear the shot. Blood flies out in front of me to rain on the deck as well, painting it red. I slowly fall to my knees, looking into the faces of my men, some stunned, a few angry, some utterly indifferent… The pain barely hurts. He killed me again. Why…? Why does this always happen…? Why are we enemies, always enemies… Why can’t we find each other and live in peace…   “Again…” The word is louder as it escapes my lips, loud enough for him to hear it this time. I fall heavily to my knees and sit there for a moment, still in shock. He looks down at me, and the horrible flash of recognition crosses his face. It would be easier if he never remembered me, if he could just kill me without promising that it would be different next time… It’s never different…   “Oh my god…” He is beside me, holding me, as the shock begins to wear off. “I’m sorry…”   “Don’t… Don’t apologize… Just find me…” It’s the same promise I make him make every time. Just… find me. Some day, find me. I need to see him again, even if it is only as he kills me the next time… I least I can see him.   He strokes my hair, pulling my bleeding body to him. Yes, I am dying… It’s a familiar feeling, like falling away from my body. But I can’t yet… He has to promise…   “Yes, love, I’ll find you… and it will be different next time. I promise.” He continues stroking my hair, holding me tightly. I weakly lift one arm to touch him… I’m too weak, too far gone. I want to hold him; all I can do is lightly touch his waist through his clothes, smear my blood on him. How many times have I felt this… heard that exact same promise… seen my blood on him… How many more times will I do so before the cycle ends? How many more times will my love kill me, destroying himself in the process? When will it end?   My vision is slowly fading, but I look up when I feel a cool tear fall on my cheek from his eyes. How many more times will I have to see him cry for me?   One of my men is coming up behind him, anger in his eyes. I guess some of them did care… I try to warn him as my man raises his sword, but my voice no longer works. Thankfully, I lose all of my senses before he can kill him.   * * * * *   I sit up in bed, covered in sweat, pushing all of the sheets away from me. I’m shaking, almost crying… Seto Kaiba does not cry! But I nearly am… and from that? From a stupid dream, a stupid dream about being a pirate and being killed by Yami? What is wrong with me? As though I don’t have enough things to have nightmares about… Now I’m dreaming about being killed by him…   I’ve been dreaming about that for months, though… Since that duel atop Pegasus’s castle. Since it almost happened again – happened, I correct myself. No ‘again’. Just ‘happened’.   I look around the room in the light from the lamp I leave on when I sleep. I can’t sleep in the dark… Darkness frightens me, humiliating as it is to admit. I have to leave a light on – it makes the nightmares less severe, at least. Waking up in the light is absolutely necessary; if I woke in the darkness from some of my nightmares… I would scream. And Seto Kaiba does not scream.   Instead, he hides… He leaves a light on and hides behind that… He pretends nothing is wrong, even though he knows that his brother knows what he does. Because he’s to afraid to face the dreams, or face Mokuba’s knowing about the dreams, even though sometimes he has to change the code on his lock because someone has broken it, even though he’s never there when I wake up. And… I think I sleep better on the nights when I have to change the code.   But I still won’t admit it. Face it. Own up to it.   This is what I do, I realize. Every time I have a nightmare, instead of facing it, thinking about it, I push it away, bury it deep down inside because I can’t face it, even one as stupid as this. And all the other Yami ones. Being a knight. Being a soldier in World War I, I think, and he’s an American soldier… They’re all stupid, and I bury them as deep as the ones about my stepfather, the ones about killing or failing Mokuba. Instead of facing them at all, I push them deep down inside of me and think about something else… like how weak I am for doing precisely that.   I swing my legs from the bed and realize that I’m shaking slightly. God damn it! Of all my dreams, it’s the idiotic, pointless ones about him that affect me the most? Why? How the hell can he do this to me? I’ve come closer to dying, to being killed by people I knew better than I know him… so why does he affect me like this…?!   Looking at the clock, breathing deep and trying to forget my dream, I see that it is only one o’clock. I only went to bed a little more than an hour ago. I won’t be getting any more sleep tonight; I may as well try to do some work. I stand up to get dressed, noticing that the shaking has nearly completely subsided.