Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ With You ❯ Without You ( Chapter 2 )

Hey everybody! Sorry bout the long wait, I ran into a few troubles about the ending, but, thanks to my beta reader, we got it all fixed up. Enjoy! And remember, that I'm always open for ideas you wonderful readers might have.

Also, so you don't think I've forgotten, I've been working on the sequel for `Changing Makes a Difference' just like I promised. I'm waiting for my beta to finish with it and then I'll post it for you so be looking for it…maybe on Sunday I think, but no promises there.

Disclaimer: Don't own it and neither do you

~~ - Scene change between the same time (One point in Yugi's time to another)

## - Scene change between times (Yugi's time to Yami's time)

~~

"Hey everybody! What's up?" Yugi asked cheerfully as he bounced up to his friends with a big smile on his face. Confusion spread like wildfire over the faces of his friends.

"Uh…Yugi, are you feeling okay?" Joey asked him.

"Sure, Joey, I've never felt better. Why do you ask?" Yugi chirped, still bouncing around like a superball.

Yugi's friends looked around the classroom to make sure nobody else was listening so they wouldn't get asked about it later. Luckily, there was only a few people talking on the other side of the room so they turned back to Yugi.

"Oh nothing," -Joey replied as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, "except that yesterday it was like you had died and now you're happy."

"Why? What happened yesterday?" Yugi questioned, his smile fading into a confused pout.

"Yugi, don't you remember? Bakura, Marik, and Yami…"

"Oh! Here's comes sensei, I don't want to get in trouble, I'll talk to you guys later at lunch." Yugi waved before taking his seat in the front.

Joey looked over at Seto. "Why's he acting like this? It's like, to him, nothing happened yesterday that changed his life."

Seto shrugged as he sat down in his seat.

Malik and Ryou were also confused and thought about Yugi's strange behavior as they walked to their own seats near the back.

"Malik, I thought you said he needed some time to get over it? When you said that I thought you mean weeks or months; not less than 24 hours." Ryou asked Malik puzzled as he watched Yugi carefully.

~~

Yugi sighed as he sat down at the base of a tree trunk at lunch, waiting for his friends to meet up with. He fought with himself to hold back his tears, but a few escaped his amethyst eyes. Quickly wiping them away with his jacket, he looked around to see if his friends had noticed. Finding they weren't around yet he relaxed against the tree and let his mind wander. `This is for the best. Nobody will worry about me if I act happy just like I used to before…' Yugi shook his head to clear his head of sad thoughts. `If I think about it then I'll only end up crying.'

"Hey, Yugi!" Joey called as the blonde spotted his friend by their usual meeting place. Yugi waved to show he heard him, but didn't look up. "Sorry we took so long, Yug." Joey apologized as he plopped down on the grass, Seto settling himself behind him.

"Joey couldn't decide what he wanted to eat and the rest of us were behind him in line." Malik explained as he and Ryou sat down next to Yugi and leaned back against the tree.

"So how are you feeling today, Yugi?" Ryou asked, hoping Yugi would give a truthful answer this time.

"I'm fine, Ryou. Why?" Yugi smiled and answered in a cheerily, the falsetto convincing no one.

"Yugi, yesterday you looked like the world had come to an end. We just thought that you'd be, I don't know, a little upset or something today. At least not as cheerful as you've been."

"What happened yesterday?" Yugi lied. The night before, he'd thought of how to evade his friends' questions. He would just fake innocence and naivety, before they could remind him too much he'd interrupt them somehow and leave.

"What happened? Yugi, you've got to remember. All the yamis…"

"I forgot!" Yugi jumped up suddenly, startling everyone. "I needed help with my math homework. Sensei should be back in the classroom waiting for me by now. Later guys!" He called behind him.

"Why can't he remember what happened and the rest of us do?" Ryou asked innocently.

"He remembers, Ryou. He's just avoiding it…I think." Seto explained unsure himself of whether or not Yugi had suppressed the memory.

~~

Yugi decided it was best not to walk with his friends back to the game shop that day. He couldn't think of any excuses to use if they started to bring of yesterday's events again. He hated lying to them like this, but it was the only way they wouldn't worry about him.

He snuck out of the school as fast as he could after the dismissal bell rang and ran out of the gates. He stopped when he rounded the corner and heaved a sigh of relief that he made it without being seen by one of his friends. `I'll just tell them I promised grandpa I'd get home as fast as I could after school so I could help him with the shop.' He thought as he walked down the street.

##

Yami sat, completely bored, on his marble throne, tapping his fingers against the armrest. It was only logical that today would be boring since the day before something exciting had happened … or, rather than exciting, at least something that didn't happen very often.

The Pharaoh had woken up in the desert, just outside of one of the towns he ruled over. He had found it strange since he hadn't remembered how he got there in the first place. When he looked around him though he found something even more interesting. Two of his most wanted criminals were lying beside him. Before he could do anything though the tomb robbers had noticed him and ran off at full speed into the desert.

The uncomfortable man sighed and shifted in his seat. Nothing could possibly be duller than just sitting around listening to people talk about nothing that interested him.

"You're majesty!" Somebody yelled loudly as they ran into his throne room. Yami looked at him and recognized him as one his lesser attendants that he rarely saw around the place. He nodded his consent for the man to speak and listened raptly to what the young servant said. "You're majesty," he bowed and continued excitedly, "We've finally caught them! Bakura and Marik, the tomb robbers we've been trying to catch, are just outside!"

This news piqued Yami's interest. "Send them in."

The servant bowed once more and ran back out of the room through the doors. He returned a minute later with four guards behind him, two holding each thief. As he watched them a sense of familiarity washed over him and he had to hold the sudden urge to have them released.

Bakura struggled but stopped because the guards hold had increased to the point where if he continued thrashing, his arm would break. Instead he looked up at the young king and sneered. Showing all the respect that he had for royalty, he spit at Yami's feet before continuing to glare. Still, there was a nagging in the back of his mind somewhere as he stared at Yami but he couldn't quite place what it was.

Marik let himself be pulled carelessly to where Yami sat, not caring about what happened to him. He looked up when the guards had stopped dragging him and watched the ruler of Egypt with extreme dislike written on his face. Why couldn't the stupid king just leave him and his partner alone, everyone had to make a living right? When he glanced over at Bakura to see how well he was taking this change of events he nearly laughed when he saw that the older man had spat at Yami. Suddenly though, a strange feeling passed through him, almost as though they were supposed to be working in this palace, not stealing things from under the Pharaohs nose.

Yami looked the two criminals over, forgetting the sick feeling he had over having the two criminals punished, and smirked evilly. He waved his hand in the direction of the dungeons and waited until the guards disappeared through the doors with their captives before turning to the one advisor that annoyed him beyond belief. The man followed him endlessly throughout the day from when he left his room to when he went to bed; it irked him to no end.

"Have they found anything stolen goods yet?" He questioned, once more bored but still curious about his newfound prisoners.

"No, your highness, not yet I'm afraid. They haven't said anything since they were captured."

Yami nodded and wondered what he could do to get everything they'd stolen back. "Give them ten lashes a night until they decide to tell where they've hidden everything."

The advisor bowed and wrote down the order on his manuscript so he would remember to tell the guards later.

Yami turned his gaze to the doors that four of his guards and the two thieves had gone through and couldn't help feeling indignity for having the tomb robbers punished and thrown into prison. Almost like he had just broken a promise to somebody he'd known for a long time. The Pharaoh shook his head to clear it of such thoughts, brushing it off as paranoia and sleep deprivation.

~~

Bakura and Marik were roughly thrown into separate cells before the guards locked their doors and left to receive the rest of their orders.

"Well this sucks." Bakura growled as he sat down with his back resting against the cold stone wall in the back of his cell.

"You're telling me. This place smells worse than anywhere I've ever been in my life; even when you made us take that shortcut through the sewers…" Marik complained.

They sat in silence for a few minutes trying to think of something that would help them escape when the wooden door they had been dragged through earlier banged open and two of the guards came through smirking. One unlocked Bakura's cell and the other walked in a grabbed Bakura's arm, dragging him carelessly out and into another room. Marik watched curiously, wondering what was going to happen until he saw the whip dangling in the other guard's hand. He was about to warn his partner, but was too late; the guards disappeared into another room and the door closed loudly behind them.

~~

The guard chained Bakura's hand to the wall and forced the tomb raider against the wall so the thief's face was towards the wall and chained the other hand in the other cuff. Bakura struggled against the metal cuffs and only stopped when his shirt was ripped from his back, wondering and dreading what was going to happen. He didn't have to long to wait for his curiosity to be sated, because a sharp crack echoed throughout the room and a sharp line of pain pulsated painfully on his back. He couldn't help the scream that tore from his lips after the second lash of the whip.

~~

Marik flinched as the scream from the other room reached his ears and he unconsciously shivered. For every scream that reached his ears, each one sounding even worse than the last, he retreated another step further into his cell in hopes of escaping the pain-filled cries that were echoing in his ears.

Minutes later the door creaked open and the guards appeared dragging a torn Bakura behind them and tossed him into his cell and locked the door.

Bakura moaned in pain as he landed on his side and rolled so he was resting on his stomach. Struggling reached his ears and he looked up, wincing slightly as he did, a saw the guards both pulling Marik out of his cell as his partner fought to get away. Only after they disappeared once more behind the door did he rest his head against the dirt on the ground and closed his eyes, not caring about the dust he raised or the stale air he breathed in. He flinched with every cry coming from the door, knowing all too well what his partner was feeling.

The guards appeared once more after they finished with Marik and tossed him mercilessly in his cell much like they did with him. He opened his eyes when he didn't hear the door of the dungeons close and found one of the guards staring at him, the other at Marik.

"You'll receive ten lashes every night until you decide to tell us where you stashed everything you stole."

Somehow Bakura found the strength to spit at their feet before turning away to face the back wall of his cell room.

They growled at him but left without doing anything.

"Bakura?" a tired voice called.

The white-haired thief moaned to show he was listening but couldn't find enough strength to articulate his reply.

"Should we tell? It would save us trouble not worth taking."

"I'll never tell, Marik." Bakura groaned out as he shifted to get more comfortable on the hard ground. "We swore to each other we wouldn't, and I never break my word."

"Me neither, Bakura."

It was silence for a few minutes before Marik's tired voice reached his ears again.

"Hmm?"

"Have you been having a weird feeling lately?" A pause, "Like there's something important we forgot?"

Bakura tensed but regretted it as his back screamed forcing him to relax on the cold floor again. `How did he know?' Bakura closed his eyes to sleep. "No." He lied before going to giving himself over to the peaceful emptiness of sleep.