Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ The Love of a Priestess ❯ Awakening ( Chapter 32 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Originally posted on March 14, 2005; Reposted on April 26, 2005 with formatting edited.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Happy White Day!

Thank you Jenny Galaxie, Lady Nightshadows, and viviang for your reviews and encouragement!

Also, thank you AMK for reading this fic until now… I would like to have you continue reading, so I am trying to find a way to edit the last chapter, hide the original version for those who would like to read it, and lower the rating again. For now, I've hidden Chapter 31 and lowered the rating back to PG-13. If you feel that even this chapter requires an R rating, I will try to work on a PG-13 version appropriate for you.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, please leave me a comment!

I tried to make the chapters longer; I'm sorry I don't seem to have succeeded with this one.

Chapter 32: Awakening

My eyes snapped open and my body jerked violently. A cold sweat covered my body.

What the helljust happened? I thought, feeling slightly faint.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to sort out my thoughts. I could care less about the priestess sleeping with Yami and the High Priest, although it had been fairly pleasurable as far as memories went. Clearly, the priestess did care about both men, so any hypotheses about her being a little conniving vixen were wrong. But the last memory…

That man… that priest… I knew him. I'd seen him before, somewhere, someplace…

I shivered. And how had I ended up in memories that didn't even involve Yami? Wasn't that how this memory had started?

At that thought, I finally looked up to take in my surroundings. Damn, I thought. I was in a hospital. With a sigh, I sat fully upright slowly, careful not to disturb any of the equipment. I looked around the room. No one was inside with me. Carefully, I climbed off the bed and stood weakly beside it.

How long had I been out?

As I shuffled to the door to let myself out, it opened in towards me as a guest arrived.

“You're up!” Yugi cried brightly. Tea poked her head in behind him and heaved a sigh of relief.

“What's going on?” I asked, still somewhat groggy. I needed to get home… to ask her about the memories and how I was able to cross into the High Priest's or the priestess' memories when they weren't even present.

“You've been out for nearly three days,” Tea supplied. I groaned.

“We knew you were okay, because Yami said you were.” I smiled at Yugi's complete trust in the Pharaoh.

“Yami knew?”

“He said something…about your spirit entering another place and time.” Yugi gave a little shrug. “He said not to worry about you, that's all.”

“So I'm here because…?”

“Kaiba,” Tea and Yugi answered in unison.

I sighed. “Why am I not surprised? Where is he?”

“He's at work, I think,” Yugi said with a slight frown of concentration.

“Good,” I said brightly. “So he can't stop me from leaving.” I reached to go beyond them into the hallway.

“What?!” Tea cried. “You've been lying unconscious for nearly three days. You can't just leave now!”

“Tea,” I said slowly, gripping her shoulders. “I'm fine. Really. I am. And there is something vitally important I need to find out.”

Her eyes widened. “You're…different, aren't you?”

I sighed in resignation. Why here, and why now? I had more pressing matters on my hands… “Define different.”

“Well, I…Like… Yami…”

“Tea, maybe we should just…”

“Look, I'll explain later, I promise. I just… there's something I need to figure out. Oh shit!” I screamed, smacking my forehead as realization dawned on me. “I missed the wedding, didn't I?”

Yugi and Tea fidgeted nervously, not meeting my gaze. “Yes?” Tea ventured in a whisper.

“Well, not really… you really didn't miss anything, since there was no…”

Groaning, I sat back down on the hospital bed. “Oh, gods. I can't believe this is happening to me.”

After a few moments of silence, Tea spoke up. “Look, I think you should go… and take care of whatever it is that needs to be taken care of. Don't worry about the wedding or anything else… Kaiba didn't say anything about the wedding.”

“He was really worried about you, you know,” Yugi pointedly informed me.

I gave what sounded very much like a snort. How unladylike. Certainly not befitting of a Kaiba. “Oh really? Why? I'll bet it looked awful to all the corporate bigwigs to have me passed out in a hospital bed.”

“No… We knew when he called to tell us what had happened… He was scared. He was scared enough to call us; that must mean something. I've never heard such fear in his voice… It was like something had happened to Mokuba.”

I frowned. That wasn't the Kaiba that had tossed me away, then coolly waited for me to coming running back like a whipped puppy.

“And when you were in here, not responding to anything… he was out in the lobby, just sitting. Staring at his hands, the wall… He wasn't doing anything. He didn't sleep, and he barely ate. They wouldn't let any of us stay with you, since none of us are related to you, so he just… sat. And waited.”

“He went back to work just today,” Tea added. “He said there were people he had to talk to. He came in here right before that, talked to you, I guess.”

I examined a spot on the floor between my bare feet. I didn't know what to say. Why couldn't I see that side of Kaiba all the time? Why was it that I had to be out cold and beyond reach for him to care about me?

Then again, maybe he didn't even care about me, just his own ass.

“Thank you for telling me. I need to see someone, and then I'll have to talk to Kaiba myself. Go home.”

Yugi and Tea nodded, then headed for the door. “Just tell the nurses you want to leave. You're nearly a Kaiba; they won't give you much trouble,” Yugi advised.

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As I closed my eyes for a last few moments of rest, I found myself unconsciously tapping into Yugi's mind. Instead of breaking the Channel, like I normally would have, I stuck around to listen to his conversation with Tea.

“Something's different, Yugi. Could you tell?”

“Yeah, Tea, I could feel it too.”

“What do you think it was?”

“Well, she was acting differently… more like one of us than herself. Do you get what I'm saying?”

“I think so…”

“Plus… there was just something different about her when she woke up. She wasn't the same person.”

“What did Yami say?”

“That's another thing I don't get either. How can she talk to Yami without talking to me?”

“He said something about her spirit, right?”

“Yeah. So…?”

“So maybe… she's a spirit too?”

“But Yami's a spirit inside my body, just like Bakura had a separate spirit that made him evil and this Marik guy. I don't think she has an extra spirit. It just seems to be her.”

“But he did say that she was in a different time and place.”

“And he said that she would be all right… as if it were natural for her to be there.”

“I'm confused, Yugi. What does it mean?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

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I watched and listened to them go, then picked my clothes off a chair and changed out of the starchy hospital gown. I'd have to tell them—tell them all—eventually. Grimacing at the residual soreness in my body, I limped out into the hallway and down to the nurse's desk.

“Hi, I'd like to … um… well, leave now. If that's all right with you.” Why couldn't I have had some real-life, hands-on experience as part of my “training”?

“Hmm… Well, none of us would advise it, but since you seem well enough, and competent, I suppose we can let you go.” Feeling the slight warmth on my forehead, I wondered if the Crown wasn't smoothing things over for me. If it was, I thanked it profusely.

I smiled broadly at the young nurse, and thanked her. She pointed to the main door, and I hurried out. I rolled my shoulders as I walked down the block, wincing as each of them cracked. I'd never been in a memory that long. There was definitely something going on.

And I'd noticed it, too, like Yugi and Tea—I was acting much differently than I had been recently. Could it have been triggered by the memories? The 5000-year-old part of me thought it possible. The other part of me, the part that existed in this century alone, thought it was something else. The stress of all that had happened… wasn't it possible I was acting this way because I'd been hurt?

I laughed aloud, the sound hanging in the bright July air like bells. I had to stop psychoanalyzing myself. It was unhealthy. Besides, it wasn't going to help me answer the very pressing questions I had right now.

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Unfamiliar, yet vaguely familiar, streets flew by me as I hurried home. The more I walked, the more my body forgot about my spirit's three-day vacation, and I began to feel slightly better.

I hurried up the steps to the always unlocked door and pushed it open into the kitchen. She was there, as I had expected. Without hesitating, as if I still belonged in this house and we were still on speaking terms, I sat down on a stool at the counter and watched her.

She knew me well. She placed a half-full glass of mango juice in front of me and waited patiently as I gulped it down.

“Why have you returned?” she asked simply, taking the glass away to wash it.

I shrugged. I didn't want her to know how badly I needed her. But then, I was a little scared of everything that had happened… “Okay, fine. I came back because I need you. Happy?”

She made no response. At last, she said, “You know that none of us are truly happy while you continue to wander.”

I sighed heavily, choosing to ignore the reference to my ancient past. “Look, something happened that I don't understand, and it scares me.” She drew up a stool across from me and sat down, her way of telling me that she was listening.

“I was Channeling, like usual, and I was talking to Yami—“

“The Pharaoh?”

“Yes—how did you know?”

“Future and past are one and the same to me. Go on.”

“And all of a sudden, a memory opened to me…”

“Which you did not have to trigger?”

“No! That surprised me a little, too, since normally with Yami I need to open the doors in his mind. But then… the memory was long. Tea said I was out for nearly three days.”

“A long time for spirit to be separated from body.”

“Thank you; I think my body can tell that quite fine,” I snapped. “And so can my spirit, for that matter. Why am I acting so weird?”

She gave a little half-shrug, and closed her eyes. “A reaction to the memory, I should think.”

Grumbling beneath my breath, I continued. “The part I really wanted to ask you about, though, is that I was able to see memories Yami wasn't even in. How is that possible?”

“Is it not obvious?”

I glowered at her. “If you know so much about my powers, why don't you just tell me what they are so I understand them too?”

“Not all things are meant to be known now. Some things are for later. Some things are for never.”

“Answer my question,” I replied coldly.

It didn't phase her. “You've developed your power a great deal, with all your Channeling. If I had to guess—“

“And I'm assuming you're not.”

“—then I would guess that you are now able to tap into other important memories, provided you have a way into the mind.”

I could just envision the blank stare on my face. “What?”

“Whose memories were you in?” she asked more directly.

“Um… well, I guess it would be Yami's or the High Priest's. Or the priestess, I suppose.”

She was silent for a moment. “Then I would guess the High Priest. Would you have a way in?”

“I don't understand the way in… I thought he either had to have his Item or he had to trust me.”

“Well, you know he doesn't have his Item. Has he reason to trust you?” she asked, turning her great, dark eyes on me. I flushed. She didn't really need to clarify.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that…”

“And were you near him when you Channeled with the Pharaoh?”

“Yes, he was sleeping next to me.”

“Then you simply crossed over into the High Priest's memories.”

“It's that simple?”

“Essentially, yes.”

Suddenly, I remembered something. “What about…” I described the scene I had seen without the High Priest. A troubled look fell over her lovely features.

“You say neither was in this memory? Only the priestess?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “The memory is important; keep it safe. I imagine that you were shown it as the High Priest envisioned it happened.”

My head was throbbing, trying to retain all the new information about my powers. I didn't question anything she said. I was thousands of years older than her, yet so much younger in knowledge of myself…

“Things have become complicated. There is much left for you to do before you can be set free.”

I stood and walked to the window. “Who built this cage for me? Who caught me and clipped my wings, locked me away?” With some shock I realized I was speaking far more poetically than ever before. But the words were coming to me without thought, as if I knew them and had said them already.

“Only you know. You may need the Pharaoh and the High Priest and the priestess to find out, but only you can construct the story out of the pieces. Only you can break your cage, only you can test your wings.”