Five Seconds
emeralddarkness

Summery: It only takes five seconds for your life to change.
Rating: K/PG
Disclaimer: There are lucky people in this world who own the concepts and rights of Yugioh. I am not one of them.
Warnings: Spoilers for the end of the series.

oOoOo

It only took five seconds for your life to change, really.

Five.

The setting: It was a tomb, or something very like a tomb. It was a three-thousand year old virgin battlefield, buried to await the conquest coming. It was a hope, it was a dream, it was a nightmare, it was a passage to heaven and to hell. There was burning-hot sand not that far above, a sun that would seer your eyes and an endless sea of sparkling, prismatic fragments of quartz and other minerals that had been broken down over the years by the elements – mostly wind. There really wasn't anything that romantic about a desert; it was simply a collection of thousands upon thousands – millions and billions – of tiny fragments of rock. In the room, however, there wasn't much sand – some had blown in, of course, but overall the space was clear. The walls were made of stone and they breathed out a chill like an air conditioner. The air smelled musty and disused, which was only appropriate given that this place had been shut up for the better part of three thousand years. Sunlight leaked down the open stairway, spreading across the ground like an oil stain. The air smelled hot as well, despite the cool temperature of the underground. Everything smelled hot. Hot and old.

Spiders scuttled in the corners and were eaten by a small lizard who had crept in to avoid the heat of the midday African sun.

There was a round stone carved with strange symbols, some hieroglyphics and some maybe hieroglyphics, Anzu didn't know; she didn't really know all that much about Ancient Egypt, just what she remembered from early in her school years and a few odd books she'd checked out and skimmed in her free time when the origins of the other Yuugi had began to become more clear. They looked like hieroglyphs to her, probably spelling out some magic text, but if she was to be honest they might simply be decoration. Still, despite the very real possibility, that idea didn't seem right. In this chamber, of all places, symbols that looked so like hieroglyphic text shouldn't be simple decoration. A stone figure lay on top of the round stone in a fairly familiar shape, one made so recognizable by the media and history texts – it was a sarcophagus that would never have an occupant other then the glittering gold now displayed from the positions that they had fit snuggly into and the hundred souls they bore. Thieves and murderers all, which was somewhat ironic all by itself – they had a sarcophagus of their own now, so like and so unlike those they had robbed. A great door that dominated the landscape of the far wall had swung open of its own accord, cracking down the center where the all-too-familiar Eye of Horus had glittered down at them until just moments ago. Light now spilled from that doorway as well, though it didn't seem to illuminate anything – it was an odd paradox, like an ocean that was not wet or a fire that was not hot.

Four.

The time: It was close to midday now; the air outside would be hazy with heat. The air in the room, however, was still utterly cold and silent, unmoving except for the breaths of those in the room. There were figures scattered across the stone floor like bones that had been cast to tell a fortune – the fortune had been told. It was after a battle that had been left to decide the fate of two, a Yuugi and another Yuugi, a Yuugi and one whose true name (as they had learned, it seemed, only minutes before) was Atem. It was still bizarre to think of, new and foreign and odd. And now, it seemed, they'd never get the chance to dust off this new, old, odd name and begin the process of breaking it in again, not unless they were speaking of him after he had left. Yuugi had won, and so Atem – this newly renamed king – was leaving.

He was leaving. It was so odd to try and think of that.

Yuugi – the one she'd known so long, her childhood friend who'd always been one of those guys who, it used to seem, nobody knew other than the bullies – had won in this critical duel, a duel for the chance to liberate his best friend. It seemed so odd to so much as think of, even yet. A few years ago no one would have guessed anything like this might happen. Anzu could imagine asking about him then. Yuugi? Yea, I know him. Shy, nice, utterly invisible. Bullied every day but it doesn't seem like it bugs him, acts like he's in grade school, would rather play with a Rubik's Cube than talk to another human. Then he'd finally managed to assemble the puzzle and his life had changed at an almost blinding speed, and now, after so much, the golden pyramid which had hung around his neck for so long was shining in the stone sarcophagus. It seemed strange, almost sacrilegious, to see him without it dangling from his neck – except those times when it had been stolen or during gym when he'd been forced to take it off she didn't think she'd ever seen him without it, not since he'd completed it. He probably slept with the thing. And now, the fact that he didn't have it hanging on its familiar silver chain around his neck was almost making her choke – her throat felt tight and strange.

Her mouth twisted as she looked at him and bit her lip, blinking hard in an attempt to keep the tears that were already welling up in her eyes from spilling over – a vain effort, but an effort that she put forth. He was on hands and knees, the blond fringe of bangs that he so carefully bleached hanging down to hide his eyes (deliberate, he'd used the motion for years) but that couldn't hide the tears on the stone beneath him. The other Yuugi – Atem – had his hand on Yuugi's shoulder, expression soft and mixed with too many emotions to properly count, and was almost leaning in to comfort him and almost pulling away. His posture was unexpectedly and unfamiliarly indecisive – it was so odd, to see him looking like he wasn't sure what to do. The other Yuugi had always seemed so sure. Absolutely, terribly sure, as though the world could end and the stars fall from the sky and he would remain unmoved. Until now, until that absolute surety apparently ran out. The open doorway shimmered with white and rainbow light.

Three.

The wish: Anzu hadn't been sure what to hope, not really – she always cheered for Yuugi, she'd done it for years, cheered him silently before there was really anything much to cheer him about, but when she'd watched them battle, heart in her throat, she'd hardly known what to cheer for. She didn't know anymore. It was automatic to want to root for Yuugi, but for this pivotal duel she didn't quite dare – she didn't want to loose the other Yuugi any more than she wanted Yuugi himself to lose. It was a mess. She'd fancied herself in love with the other Yuugi a few times, and even if she wasn't entirely sure of her feelings on that front she still knew that she liked him very much, that she didn't want him to leave. It wouldn't be the same, it would be like he died. And while, intellectually, she knew that he was already dead, that didn't change the fact that she had talked with him and laughed with him, cheered him on and sympathized and cried and helped and fantasized about how maybe someday he would realize that he (somehow) loved her too, despite the fact that she knew it wouldn't happen – couldn't happen – she cared about Yuugi too much to hurt him that way, as did he.

It was a messed up little love triangle that existed between her and the two Yuugis.

Only… only now nothing would ever happen, because although Atem was already dead he going to die again, a true death this time. Anzu cried for the death of her friend, the tears reflecting the rainbow not-light like prisms.

She hadn't wanted him to lose, not in her heart – losing meant the death of him. Nor had she wanted him to win, as that would mean confinement for another three millennia. Maybe it would have been more than that, maybe it would also mean the loss of his memories, maybe they'd be stripped from him again. Anzu couldn't bear even the thought of that. Nor could she bear the thought of Atem being locked away in his golden prison for another three thousand years, and so she hadn't known what to wish for, or even what to hope for.

She'd believed, or more likely forced herself to believe, that if he'd just managed to win as he'd won so many other times – nearly every other time – that things would work out the way that they were supposed to, that he'd be able to stay but somehow not be denied passage to the afterlife. Anzu had asked Isis about that yesterday on the boat when the woman had mentioned the stakes for this duel. It had seemed harsh, unnecessarily so, to have this lonely battle be the only chance for literally thousands of years that Atem would get to gain passage to the Field of Reeds – that was what Isis called heaven, or the next life, or whatever it was in the end. Isis had explained quite calmly (of course, she was always calm), her azure blue eyes as expressionless as they always were. Anzu wished that this strange, Egyptian woman would show a little more emotion, but she never did. But emotionless or not, Isis had certainly managed to explain to satisfaction, laying out the facts for an uninformed outsider admirably. Anzu had understood, in a way, although she'd hated it. It was easier to blame something when you didn't understand.

The King had no physical body, the woman had told her patiently, her manner utterly calm. He didn't even have a statue made in his likeness, or none that survived; he had destroyed all traces of himself when he sealed the darkness – there was nothing remaining that might be an anchor for his ba. By rights his soul should have to wander for eternity, but the Gods were willing to make allowances, to bring the King to the paradise he had earned, because of the great sacrifice he had made and the reason he had lost his physical body – sacrificing every part of himself and even going so far as to fracture his spirit in order to contain the Evil One, Zorc Necrophades who was born of the Darkness, who had made it their quest to destroy Egypt and then the rest of the world. They were willing to make allowances – some, anyway – but even the Gods had their rules.

Anzu, almost choking on tears and mournful laugher that felt like it was at least half hysteria, had asked if a body was really all that important. She considered herself atheistic, or maybe agnosticistic – when she entertained beliefs of Something Greater she tended to think that they depended on what the individual to whom they applied believed – but even when she tried to see things from a religious point of view she couldn't understand why something that was nothing but a lump of meat should play so heavily into such considerations. Oh, the body was a marvelous thing – her health teacher had mentioned the usual comparisons between the heart and a pump, the brain and a computer, the eye and a camera, and Anzu had found them interesting and so remembered – but in the end a body was nothing but a wad of tissue that carried you around. The spirit and the body were supposed to be separate, weren't they? Weren't they? Her mother, who had tried to convert her to a religious view all her life, certainly seemed to think so, her father didn't care either way. No matter how she looked at things a mere body didn't seem important enough to be the hinge for salvation or damnation.

Isis had looked at her uncomprehendingly. A body was necessary for immortality.

Apparently they weren't separate, at least not in Egypt.

Two.

The story: Yuugi and the other Yuugi looked strange in the light of the netherworld, that light shimmering off the flat, glossy blade and reflective metal of Yuugi's duel disk and the holofoil faces of some of the cards that were still laid out as they had been when the battle had ended – Atem's duel disk had dissolved as he'd slid it off his arm. The cards were almost like miniature mirrors, throwing reflections of light up the walls like the sun glinting off sequins, as the other Yuugi gave Yuugi back the rest of his cards, the deck containing the gods which Atem had used for this final game.

It was so odd to see them standing separate, and the distinction between them was more pronounced than she had ever seen, even in the Egyptian role play. That seemed stranger, somehow, than all the rest of the circumstances combined. Shouldn't they have been more different when they were able to see Atem as the Pharaoh he was? They had been far more different physically – Yuugi in the school uniform that, some days, seemed as though it was almost his second skin and Atem in the golden jewelry and semiprecious stones and glass and linen and soft, delicate leathers of some other land, separated from the world they knew by thousands of years and thousands of miles. There had been the difference of skin as well, back in the world spun of memories – the other Yuugi's skin had been dusky; in comparison, Yuugi's had glowed like the moon.

Really, the greater difference should have been then, but it wasn't – it was now. It was now, when the twin figures were together on top of the slightly raised battleground, set up as though it was a stage.

The difference had never been stronger, and somehow that was punctuated by the conspicuous absence of the puzzle from both their necks.

Anzu had never known, not really, all of what had gone into completing the puzzle – Yuugi had never told her. It had been what now seemed forever before she even learned the time it had taken, and even that had almost been an accident. It had been after Otogi had stolen the puzzle and his father had smashed it – Anzu might never have gotten that story either, had Jounouchi not told her what had happened (in grim tones) when she came to the hospital to see Yuugi. She'd been pacing anxiously in the waiting room, glancing at the doors what felt like at least every other second as she watched them, hoping they would open soon and she could rush in to visit him. She hadn't really asked Jounouchi what had happened, but something that she'd said had prompted him to share the story, and Anzu hadn't been sure what to feel when he'd told her that Yuugi had insisted on staying in the fire as the building began to fall apart so that he'd be sure of completing the puzzle.

The boy had been cradling his puzzle in bandaged hands when they'd (finally) let her in – he'd burned his fingers reassembling the thing; some of the pieces had fallen near the fire and become hot enough to sear his hands. Not hot enough to melt, thankfully, (she noticed his fingers subconsciously and reflexively tighten when he said that, gripping the puzzle closer and harder to himself) but certainly hot enough to burn. It wasn't too bad, really, he'd assured her when she'd fussed over him. Nothing to be concerned about, he'd said, but of course he'd said that. Yuugi never considered much to do with himself anything to 'be concerned about.'

It had slipped out when they were talking of the puzzle and his burns, he'd said that he was thankful he'd been able to put it together so quickly – it had almost surprised him, it had taken him eight years the first time around…. The conversation had undergone a forced pause at this revelation as Anzu had stared. Eight years? It had taken him eight years and she'd somehow only noticed a few days before he managed to complete it? She'd repeated the period of time slowly and carefully, her tongue having somehow turned numb, rather hoping that she'd heard wrong. Yuugi had simply shrugged and said that he hadn't really had that much to do at first, and after a while working on the puzzle had become a habit. No, he'd corrected himself after a few seconds. At first, at least, the puzzle had been little but a distraction.

It wasn't your typical gift to a seven year old, he'd said with a grin (that had almost made Anzu lose her breath all over again – seven, he'd worked on that thing from when he was seven to when he was fifteen) but his Grandpa had given it to him because it seemed to distract him, and he'd needed distracting after his father had died. Sugoroku's only son had taken after him, as far as adventuring and archeology went and because of that there was almost always danger when he was away from home. It had seemed ironic, because of the omnipresent danger that his job produced, when what killed him wasn't his work but a car crash. Yuugi had laughed a little, without humor, when he'd said as much in the hospital, retelling the story. Here everyone was thinking that a tomb was going to fall on him before he retired and instead it was a drunk driver who ran him off the road. Anzu remembered when that had happened, it had been when she'd first started noticing Yuugi. He'd been a strange little kid, always sick – and then one day he'd just gone in for an operation and when he came back out his father was dead.

Yuugi had told her that he'd always liked the box – it always seemed friendly, somehow, and he'd played with it a few times even before he'd been given it. Even back then he'd thought that it granted wishes – it was the odd text in relief that ran all the way around the thing. That was probably the reason that Sugoroku, casting about for some way – any way – to distract his grandchild from the grief that was suffocating him, had given it. As Yuugi had said, it wasn't exactly a normal gift to give a seven year old child. He'd thrown himself into the puzzle, which had been difficult enough that he could throw himself into it, for a very long time. And, after the grief had faded, it had become a habit, something to play with, and something of an obsession besides. He'd still – always – believed that the hieroglyphics that traced their way across the surface of the box said something about magical powers and the granting of wishes. He'd worked on it for so long for his wish.

Anzu had shaken her head in amazement. Eight years. Almost half of her entire life, and he'd spent that long working on an ancient puzzle. And then he'd solved it and his life had changed. Was changing still, as only a few feet away the proud spirit of a Pharaoh comforted the unbeatable boy who had tried so hard and so long to solve the unsolvable (and somehow succeeded), and then turned and looked into the door of light. He straightened and took a step forward. His footsteps sounded as loud as artillery fire in her ears, though she knew it couldn't be. Still it was somehow, as he took another step towards eternity.

One.

The person: Anzu didn't really know what to call him – he was the Pharaoh Atem, ruler of an ancient land and by rights she really should call him by his real name (or at least his title) but whenever she thought of him 'the other Yuugi' was what rolled to her tongue; the habit of years is difficult to break. But he wasn't the other Yuugi, he was a person in his own right, a person with a name and a past and a future all his own. A future beyond this doorway that his true name had unlocked. She could almost hate his name for that, except for the fact that she couldn't – it would have been foolish and petty and many other forms of idiotic, and besides all that it was a part of him, just as much as his smile or his glare or his laugh or that easy, cocksure, flawless confidence in himself, and she couldn't hate him or any part of him. And he had to go.

It still seemed cruel.

He'd already straightened and left Yuugi – he'd had to, this was the entire point of the duel – after saying something softly to him, Anzu hadn't heard what, and now he was walking towards that door that was probably his only chance at the afterlife. Even with Isis's explanation of why this all had to be still ringing in her ears (ringing and ringing and blocking out the rest of the sound and the rest of the world) it didn't seem fair to just rip Atem away from everyone and shove him off into… into wherever it was that one went when they died.

Anzu was being irrational, and she knew and hated that. It would have been far less fair to demand that he stay in this world, the world of the living, for any longer now that he had a chance to leave. Still, the fact that he'd technically been dead for thousands of years and had true rest denied him all that time because of what he'd done to himself (quite willingly) seemed far less important to her then the fact that he was leaving, which sort of meant that he was dying again. Atem wouldn't see it that way, naturally – if he was thinking of this as anything more than an opportunity to finally be able to get out of the world and get a bit of peace and quiet then he probably just saw it as a duty, a chance to finish what he'd started, a chance to take the darkness out of the world permanently. That thought made Anzu grind her teeth in something akin to frustration as the tears rolled down her face. He always had been ridiculously self-sacrificing, in that he and Yuugi were very well matched. Both martyrs, both far more willing to see something happen to themselves then to one they cared about. Admittedly, Yuugi had a much broader scope of people he cared about, but the other Yuugi was just as tenacious in protecting those he loved. They were so amazingly similar, and so strikingly different – so separate and so enjoined at the same time. It was paradoxical, but Anzu had learned to live with paradoxes in recent years – so many things attached to Yuugi and his other self had seemed to be paradoxical; you had to learn to live with it or drive yourself insane.

It had been odd when the girl had first realized that it wasn't just Yuugi in Yuugi's body anymore, when she'd first known that there was something else. Someone else. Someone totally different, but still similar enough to fool – or almost fool – those not intimately acquainted with him. Most people had just thought that maybe Yuugi was finally growing a spine, that he'd decided to stand up for himself for the first time in his life, or maybe he'd just had enough of all the crap he'd dealt with for years and years and finally gone slightly cracked. Anzu, however… well, she knew that wasn't really it. At first she hadn't been sure quite what it was, only that it was something strange, and though it had been a while before she learned what was really going on when she finally had it had seemed so natural, so unsurprising. Even she hadn't really been sure what she'd thought before, but of course there was another Yuugi, how could it be otherwise? In a way it was both good and bad.

He'd rescued her too many times, that was one of the problems – she was just a normal girl, and just like any normal girl, when some mystery guy saved her life and her honor again and again from situations that wouldn't have showed up even in her nightmares she almost couldn't help falling into a sort of love with that person. Only she couldn't do anything, even when she finally found out in a real, assured sort of way who it really was since the guy who'd actually done the rescuing didn't seem the least bit interested in her that way, and besides which it had been obvious since they were both about nine that Yuugi had a crush on Anzu and was to shy to admit anything. She didn't say anything either, to save them both embarrassment – she was never quite sure how she felt about Yuugi. That way. So she liked the other Yuugi, Yuugi liked her, and the other Yuugi himself seemed only to be interested in protecting Yuugi and playing games, with barely a vague knowledge that something existed outside of that; or at least if he knew, he didn't really seem to care. None of them were left particularly pleased with the arrangement, she supposed, with the possible exception of Atem.

Yuugi and his other self were so similar – similar in ways that they themselves didn't seem to be aware of. It was so typical of boys, to be so oblivious to what was continually being thrust under their shared nose. Both of them protectors, able to be distinctive or invisible when the need pressed (admittedly, Yuugi was better at fading to invisible – his other self had strongly disliked it when he had not gotten his share of attention – but he was capable of doing so), both kind, both fiercely loyal, each considering himself somehow lesser to the other. It had always seemed idiotic to Anzu. Look at what they'd done, both of them! Look at what they were doing still!

As Atem was leaving. Oh. The girl's breath was caught in her throat.

He had risen and was walking forward, his few paces neither quick nor slow although they were utterly determined – but then everything he did was determined, decisive. When he made up his mind not all the forces in this world and the next could change it, and he had indeed made up his mind in this matter.

Exactly the same as Yuugi – they really were like two halves of a whole.

Yuugi was looking after him now, his violet eyes still shining with tears that it didn't seem like he even noticed anymore.

Time seemed to be playing tricks on Anzu – Atem'd only just been starting, somehow, and he was at the doorway, already starting to step through as he glanced back over his shoulder, mouth set in that omnipresent grin of his, the one overflowing with confidence so bright that it could rightfully be called arrogance, the expression in his eyes matching with utterly familiar confidence, and arrogance, and assurance, and kindness so laced with danger that it became something else. He grinned at them, raising his arm to give them a thumbs up as he stepped forward to infinity. Anzu felt laughter bubble in her chest. It was so like him – proud and arrogant and glorious and theatrical all at once, specifically designed to set those he cared for at ease – it will be all right, he was saying without words, now go on and conquer the world. Tell me about it later.

His smile was the smile of an immortal King, one who knew nothing could ever go against him, and then suddenly he was at the doorway of light and stepping through that instead. His jacket, which he had always worn as a cape, had suddenly billowed back as though in a gale – but no, Anzu saw, it wasn't a jacket at all, it was a cape of the same color, and suddenly instead of wearing the double of Yuugi's school uniform he was wearing what he had worn in the Egyptian RPG, gold shimmering from his ears and brow and throat and wrists and waist and ankles, rings on his fingers, his shoes replaced by more ancient counterparts.

Tears (stupid, really, she knew that she shouldn't be crying, she knew that she should be happy, but still she cried) were blurring the world all around her, softening and warping the edges of things, but even despite that, as the Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt stepped through the shimmering door of light, Anzu swore she saw ghosts. Dark faces framed by black hair, their eyes outlined in kohl, flared into existence to welcome back the king that they had awaited for three thousand years. And then, finally, as the ghosts of the past crowded nearer him in welcome, Anzu saw him turn back, or begin to turn back, one final time and for a splinter of a second she saw him smile, the cloak dyed the color of royalty beginning to settle down towards where his feet were, settling from the rush of otherworldly wind. And then a combination of the light from the door and the tears in her eyes erased the image, leaving nothing but a slightly skewed rectangle of brilliant white light.

Zero.

Slowly, ponderously, the stone making a soft grinding sound, the door of light slid shut; the sound when the two halves met as final as the end of the world. Darkness quietly settled back over the stone chamber, giving the appearance that nothing spectacular had happened at all.

It only took five seconds for your life to change.

oOoOo

This story evolved in an odd way: basically, I sat down and started writing something about the end of the series and… this came of it. I didn't even know who was narrating for quite some time, before Anzu introduced herself as the one. After that, it really took off.

I dunno. Tell me what you think, please? (aka, review and I'll love you for it)