Dib07: I can't believe it. I can't believe I am submitting this! Dear Ra. No one read this story. Please. But a bargain is a bargain YamiYugiPuzzleshipper. I can't believe you got the episode! And so as promised, here is the first chapter to Damaged Goods part 2. How do I get hooked into these things? XD

Guest: I had better reply to you here even though I don't want you reading this story either. But this place is the only place where I might be able to reply to you from Damaged Goods part 1. Yes the sequel is darker than oil. I doubt I'll be updating this story much anyways, so I shouldn't panic. But it is the darkest I have written out of ALL MY STORIES. Good guess with Yami's heart/chest trauma, but nope! It's not that episode! Sorry! You're gonna hafta try again! Don't read this story.

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Warning:

For blood, guts, angst, character torture and Dan Green.

Contains spoilers for the Yugioh TV show/manga.

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Notes:

Please do not persuade me to ship characters, and please tolerate any shipping of any characters.

I write the characters as I envision them. Nothing more and nothing less.

Some parts of this story have been co-written by a fellow writer. She is named FairyofThunder22 and can be found on Deviant art. Her parts won't come into play for a very long time, so for the moment you're stuck with me! I'll also be burrowing her OC character. Not to worry, it's all good news for you readers! I'll let you all into this OC when the time comes! ;)

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The Choices we Make

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'Hello darkness my old friend.

I've come to talk with you again.'

Simon and Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence

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Prologue

The first few nights out of the hospital passed in cold sweats and dark, lucid dreams of places intangible and cold.

Yami was inundated with debauched dreams and nightly sweats: most of it borne from anxiety. Yugi sat beside him with a book on his lap as the hours blurred by. Whenever the puzzle was near the King, the general malaise of his disquiet would altogether fade and he'd sleep easy. Yugi did not understand the logistics of the item, or its continued connection with the old spirit. Ishizu Ishtar wanted to come and meet Yami, but such an appointment had not yet been made.

And the new weight regime was a bit of a nightmare too. Yami struggled with the higher food intake. He had to eat a small meal every two hours, eight times a day. At times he outwardly refused all food even with Yugi or Grampa trying to tantalize him once they had resorted to feeding him themselves.

"Keep doing this ta him and you're gonna make him sick." Joey would say.

"This is what Dr. Hudson wants! And he's a cardiologist! He knows what he was doing when he told us to stick to this weight regime no matter what." Yugi had defended with little to back him up but faith. "Besides, once we get him out of this stress, he'll be better. And it's our fault besides. Before he got treated at the hospital, we weren't feeding him properly."

Then the anxiety began to settle and Yami's fluid nightmares eased off. The careful feedings continued, and Yugi sat by him, trying to get Yami to read a book on ancient spells like Ishizu had suggested, but his concentration was hazy.

~ 3 weeks later ~

Yugi sat down beside his darker half as the afternoon sun began to flee bruised skies that were heavy with snow. Around his neck shone the golden millennium puzzle. It caught the noon light radiantly and glinted.

Yugi's sick leave was finishing. He had taken a few weeks off college to look after his frailer counterpart, but the absence days were ending, and now Yami needed someone else to take care of him. Yugi didn't know how long this arrangement would last – it could be indefinite, or it could only be a year or so. But Yami wasn't getting better in a huge way – so Yugi needed someone reliable to take his place. He also knew that Anzu, Mai and even Kaiba were willing to play the part. Free of charge.

If not them, then an official babysitter was a must.

"So," Yugi began, trying to take charge of Yami's thin attention, "you didn't answer my question. Who do you want taking care of you? Mai, Anzu, or Seto Kaiba?"

Yami didn't meet his eyes. His silence was testing Yugi.

"Look, if you choose, then that person will come with you to medical exams as well. Would you rather prefer someone you know, than just any old babysitter? Come on, mou hitori no boku, these are your friends! Don't you... don't you prefer any of them?"

Yami leaned back in his chair. "I can't."

"Why can't you?" Yugi asked him tenderly.

"I cannot be a burden to any of them. My friends most of all. And Kaiba? Why would he even consider it? I don't think I could look him in the eye, let alone be looked after by him! It'd be an insult! To the both of us!"

"He wants to help you. Isn't that enough?"

Yami turned and set him with narrowed eyes. "Can't you see, Aibou? I don't want to showcase my weakness, least of all to Kaiba, or Anzu or to Mai! I was their leader once! Now look at me!"

"Yami, they love you! Don't you understand how worried they are...?"

Yami got up from the table, coughing deeply. "I'm done." He said, as if he could just terminate the entire conversation when he wished it.

Yugi remained at the table, and watched him slink away, back into the lounge where Joey and Anzu were waiting for him until all he could hear were his steady coughs.

xxx

Kaiba opened the car door for him. Yami scrambled out before he could be offered help. The billionaire watched the Game King for a moment as if he was viewing a rather tiresome child, then he signalled one of his cohorts to open the trunk of the limo. The boot lid was popped open and they were about to retrieve a black, chrome-fitted wheelchair.

Yami scrutinized it with sharp hate that exaggerated the shadows under his eyes and shook his head. Their wordless byplay continued.

Kaiba nodded and clicked his fingers. The wheelchair was folded back away into the darkness.

"Can you walk all the way there?" The CEO asked.

Yami turned on his heel and began heading to the building. His limp was so jagged that several times it looked like he was about to lisp into the cars closely parked on all sides.

"Jesus Mother of Mary." Kaiba growled, and was beside him in no time, one hand on Yami's back.

As they walked past a parked car, a woman raised her cell phone towards her closed window and snapped a shot of the two of them. In less than a second she had lowered her phone and was looking at the shot she had taken.

"That's him." She whispered, instantly recognising the wild hair and unusual eyes.

She watched the two of them walk slowly to the set of large clinic double doors until they were inside.

Her white, bony hand turned the key in the ignition and she reversed out of the parking lot.

She had a lot of preparation to do.

xxx

Yami sat with his arms obstinately crossed over his chest as he glowered beside the old rival he had been lumbered with. Kaiba seemed wholly engrossed in the newspaper he was reading. He had picked it up immediately upon arrival and hadn't put it down since. Yami knew he wasn't really reading it. Since when did Kaiba concern himself over such small print drivel? He knew Kaiba was trying to pass the time, without having to engage in the painful condition called 'conversation.'

Yami was here by orders. He couldn't believe it. He was Pharaoh – yet he had to follow orders? Preposterous! Yet no matter how he tried to sway his family, and get all grumpy, Kaiba turned up in a limo to pick him up and take him to his MRI and general check-up appointment. Yami sulked after that, hardly speaking a word, even during his frightful MRI experience that they had just come back from. Kaiba warned him that MRIs had such massive tunnels that the doctors tended to lose midgets in them.

Luckily Yami took what he said with a pinch of salt: not that he understood the phrase.

They had to inject him with dye prior to the MRI scanning and light sedation. And apparently this particular giant machine was safe for people with pacemakers. So Yami lay in a whirring, loud, dark tunnel for what must have been half an hour before coming out feeling deaf and disorientated. Luckily he wasn't that claustrophobic: the puzzle had taught him that. And restriction was also something he was used to.

"It's just to check to see if you still have a heart." Kaiba had told him after he had come out the scanning room. "Wouldn't want them to think you're completely cold-blooded."

With the MRI scan over after he had changed out of the thin hospital gown they had made him wear, they were driven to the clinic across town to receive further tests. Yami wasn't sure what this entailed, but sitting with Kaiba felt like torture. He eyed up all the magazines lying in messy piles on the table but he didn't know his Japanese well enough to consider them, so he sulked a little more.

Then, after what must have been close to fifteen minutes of concrete silence, Seto spoke most suddenly without looking up from the newspaper: "When the doctor calls, would you like me to participate?"

"How?" He growled.

"Hmph. No matter."

Yami looked away and stared angrily at his steel-toed boots.

Kaiba seemed to pick up on his distress. He nonchalantly turned a page in his newspaper. "I can help answer their questions. You're hopeless when it comes to medicines and their names. You're also hopeless with routine. And hopeless with modern day jargon. And hopeless remembering things. And hopeless doing the things the doctors ask you to do. Need I say more?"

Yami rolled his eyes. "What's in it for you, Kaiba?"

"It's my every intention to make you well so that we can duel again. Isn't that your goal also?"

"Yes. I suppose it is."

"Well then."

What's more, Kaiba carried the millennium puzzle in his left pocket. A corner of it stuck out, and its gold winked out at him every now and then whenever he jerked his gaze down to stare at it in something close to contempt. "Why are you carrying that?" He thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from the billionaire's own lips.

Seto rewarded his stubbornness with acknowledgement. His icy eyes met his as he struggled to comprehend Yami's random inquiry. He followed Yami's hard gaze down to the puzzle.

With a soft shrug, Kaiba turned back to his all-important newspaper. "Yugi asked me to."

"So, you're taking orders from him?"

"I did it to shut him up."

There was a shout coming from up the thin hallway. "Mr. Yami Motou?" A female nurse or doctor was looking at the patients sitting in the waiting room. Yami struggled ungainly to his feet. Kaiba was by his side, and slipped an arm through his before the gaunt pharaoh went spilling into the table holding the magazines.

They went into the medical room, the nurse closing the door behind them.

Kaiba helped Yami over to the examination table then lifted him so that he could sit on it.

"Good afternoon." The nurse said. "I am Dr. Winery."

Kaiba took a seat and resumed pretending to read his newspaper. Yami silently pleaded at him. Help me, Kaiba! Don't just sit there, reading! Do something!

"So," the doctor began, reaching for his file on the desk, "how have you been feeling?"

"Perfectly functional." Yami sneered, his eyes hot and blazing fury as if Dr. Winery had just kidnapped a member of his family and held a knife rather than a medical file in her hands.

"Uh huh." She said, surprised at his response and at his sudden defensiveness. "So, no chest pains? No shortness of breath?"

"He's lying." Kaiba spoke abruptly, again without lifting his eyes from the article he was reading. "He's just being difficult."

Yami opened his mouth to thrust up an argument when Dr. Winery turned to him. "Is this true? It's vitally important that you disclose all information to us all the time. I know this is a difficult time to get through, everyone goes through denial at some stage or other, but I'm sure your family wants the best for you, and you won't give them that if you aren't being honest."

Yami's hands had turned into fists, and they clenched on top of the sheets of the examination table.

"He has this cough too." Kaiba folded up the newspaper and rested it on the empty chair next to him. "It's getting more persistent. We want to know if his lungs are building up with fluid."

"All right. Well, I'll begin with a physical examination." She put the file down and came over to Yami's rigid frame. She picked up a tool that was long and slender. "Can you lean to your right please?" And she shoved a part of it inside his ear.

Kaiba watched, and when their eyes met, the billionaire shook his head at him.

She seemed to be looking into his ear. Yami tolerated it, as it wasn't that invasive. Next she checked out his other ear with the same device. After, she checked up his nose with a little light. Again he tolerated it.

"Open your mouth please and tilt your head back so I can have a look at your throat."

"Yes, yes."

Kaiba was still watching.

Yami felt a wave of embarrassment crush through him, and it blotted out all other thoughts. Heat rose into his white cheeks.

But he did as the doctor said to avoid looking difficult. However, he wasn't amused.

Once the doctor seemed satisfied, she drew away and pulled a drawer open in her desk. From it she retrieved a stethoscope. Yami paled again at the all too familiar sight of it.

"Has the cough been increasing recently?" She asked.

"Yes." Kaiba said without missing a beat.

"Is it worse at night?"

"Yes."

Dr. Winery advised her patient to remove his top, and this is where things started to get testy.

"I am fine." The pharaoh stated coldly, his arms petulantly folded.

Dr. Winery tried to show him her best I'm-not-going-to-hurt-you smile. "I'm only going to have a listen to your heart and lungs, and then I'll have a feel of your throat. It's just a preliminary examination to make sure all is well because the MRI results are going to take some time to arrive."

"Try weighing him first." Kaiba helpfully interjected from his chair. "Give him some time to cool off that ugly temper of his."

Yami looked away, disgusted.

"Well, he is very thin! We had better weigh you." Dr. Winery gently took his hand and guided him to the scales that were by the thin, white bed.

Yami huffed out a sigh. He was so tired of everyone commenting on his weight.

He stood on the weighing scales hoping this would be the last thing to do before going home.

The needles on the scale flew up to thirty kilograms which was less than five stone. Next she weight taped him by tightening a measuring tape around his slim middle. The results were twenty one inches all the way round, which was the same as 53.5 centimetres. She wasn't all that happy. "I can put one hand on either side of your waist," she said, "and touch my hand on the other side. That's not healthy. Are you following the weight programme Dr. Hudson gave you?"

"By the letter." Kaiba answered in soft rebuke, raising his eyes to meet hers. "And we're giving him eight meals a day, every two hours. He's put on nearly two kilograms since he left the hospital. He's doing well."

She seemed humbled by his quick reaction, so she nodded and allowed Yami to leave the scales.

"Any fever at all? Any lightheaded spells?" She asked him.

"No, none." Yami said, thinking that he was answering honestly. He hadn't felt hot, or dizzy lately.

"Is the cough worse when lying on one side?"

"I am unsure."

"And any chest pain? You must tell me, hun."

Yami shook his head. Kaiba was watching him closely to seek out the lie, but this time he couldn't tell. "None."

"Well," she picked up the old stethoscope again, "if you'd just remove your top, this'll be the last thing on my list, and then you can go home!"

"Over my dead body!" Yami growled at her.

"There's no need to act so angrily!" She reached for his wrist to guide him closer, perhaps even to steer him over to the bed to sit on. He wasn't having it.

"Get off me!" He cried. "I did not give you permission to touch me! Who do you think you are? I am Pharaoh!"

Kaiba dropped the newspaper and stood up, his line of thought being: This guy has a problem.

He whisked forward and gently grabbed Yami, who was plotting escape. Though he barely had the capabilities to walk he was slapping invisible hands away and crashing into things as he headed for the door. Instruments hit the floor and pages from his file leafed through the air like leaves finding a place to rest.

"Okay! Okay!" Dr. Winery was saying above Yami's shouting tirades, "Easy! No more examinations! I'm sorry!"

Kaiba easily quelled the disruptive King in his arms, but Yami seemed to have overblown it. He was shaking, sweating and panting as if he had just finished running a punishing marathon in the summer heat.

"I am sorry," Dr. Winery said again, meaning it. "I didn't realize you'd get quite so stressed."

"Yeah." Kaiba replied for him. "We're working on it, aren't we, runt?"

"Could you sit him on the chair, please? He's not leaving my office like this."

Kaiba sighed. Then he gently got Yami to walk backwards and then helped him sit up on the chair. Wide eyes of amethyst were watching them while sweat trickled down his black hairline. He flinched when she gave him an injection, and then reality seemed to grow fuzzy while his thoughts broke apart like melting butter. His fast breathing became steadier and the voices around him grew thick, and loud.

"Is he under?" Kaiba asked in an impartial voice.

"Yes. The sedative should last him an hour. Don't give him anything to eat or drink until he is well out of its effects. Is he always like this?"

Kaiba shrugged. "It's news to me."

"I am sorry I had to sedate him, but it says on his medical records that stress will only hurt him further."

"I understand. The sleep on the trip home will do the idiot some good."

Dr. Winery went on the computer to add a few things to Yami's medical report.

Yami listened to their conversations with impaired thinking. The world was a soft, placid numbness that he rather enjoyed. Already his heavy perspiration had begun to dry.

Though it was all dull comprehension, like vague dreams, he knew that Kaiba was looking at him with a tight, worried frown. Kaiba? Worried?

Had the duelling stock market lost out on a windfall?

"Well," Dr. Winery turned from the computer to confront the pair, "keep up on the medication and the weight regime. We won't get the MRI results for some time, so don't worry. If the cough keeps getting worse, I suggest you come back here or tell Dr. Sirius and we don't need a sample of his blood presently. In the meantime, please remind Mr. Atem that we doctors are here to help."

"I will do. Thanks again."

Kaiba gave her a brief bow and gathered Yami up from the chair. Yami sagged uselessly against him, boneless and ungainly. In the end Kaiba had to just pick him up and take him in his arms.

Yami could feel the puzzle brush beneath him. It kept giving him nauseating thoughts about doors – dark staircases that had no end, and dusty walls with no room to breathe.

Dib07: So yeah. Terrible huh? Yeah. Terrible. You shouldn't have read this. XD