Aria: Gomen---I'm very sorry for the uncharacteristic delay in continuing this story---to tell the truth, I'd pretty much forgotten about it over the fall, and it's nice to know I can start writing it again and people STILL like it!
Kaiba: Oh, shut up, you self-important twit.
Aria: Pot calling the kettle black, if you ask me, Kaiba. And you'd better be nice---otherwise I might have Joey choose a certain brunette OTHER than you.
Kaiba: Just try it.
Wakaba: *appears and wraps her arms around Joey's waist*
Joey: *brightens* Hey, cool...
Aria: See?
Kaiba: I hate you.
Aria: Oh, Kaiba, you only say that because that's how I write you.
Kaiba: *mutters under his breath and stalks away*
Aria: Excellent! Disclaimer time! *snaps fingers*
Sorata: *appears*
Aria: Fantastic! Okay, Miki, would you do the disclaimer, please?
Miki: What? But he's-
Aria: Here for me! Not for the disclaimer. *snuggles with Sorata*
Miki: *sigh* Fine. This crazy writer doesn't own Yu-Gi-Oh or Utena, or X. So do us all a favor and don't sue her, just put her away in an enclosed room somewhere...
Aria: Enough! Moving right along...
SECRETS OF A ROSE
Chance
* * * The night before *
Before her, the dueling arena stretched flat and smooth and cold, white and open. Whiter, even, than the petals that drifted lazily around her feet. Petals from the rose that was now just a nodding, beheaded green stem at her breast, caught in a curl of her hair. Petals Touga had cut from her chest. Petals that took away Anthy.
The sword disintegrated in her limp hand, fading slowly into golden dust that swirled in the rose-scented breeze, and she stood there in disbelief, her heart thudding heavily against her ribs, blood pulsing slowly, thickly, through her body and her thoughts processing just as slowly.
Anthy walked past her---she smelled roses---and went to Touga, who put his arm around her, possessively.
Not protectively.
The world spun.
"It's not true."
She smelled roses as they walked away; smelled roses as she fell to her knees and they bruised and blossomed into exquisite pain.
"It's not true!"
Silver tears fell slowly from her eyes onto the cool marble of the arena. And the petals that lay scattered about her.
* * *
Click.
Miki stared at the other boy wordlessly. Yami stood over him, cold violet eyes locked into warm blue. "Wha---what?"
"Duel," Yami repeated, and his eyes narrowed. "I challenge you, for Yugi."
The words sounded dull and empty even as he said them, and he hoped that the despair behind them wasn't so apparent to the boy before him as he thought it might be. It was a stupid, undeniably stupid move. And yet---
What choice did he have?
All night he'd wandered in the cold, locked stone of his memory, walking lonely down empty dark corridors rank with dust and the smell of old dead things, further and further from the sliver of light that was Yugi. And yet everywhere he went in that massive, winding maze, he could still hear Yugi's voice, echoing, rebounding like sparks, among the stone walls and rooms and corridors. Calling him. Pleading. Unhappy.
He clenched his fists, knowing that if Yugi ever found out about this challenge to Kaoru Miki, he would never trust him again. Ever.
But he couldn't stand to see---to feel---the innocent joy in Yugi's soul when he saw Miki; hated the spark of electricity that passed when they touched. Hated that Yugi had turned to Miki. Hated that he hated it. What right did he have to dictate Yugi's relationships, anyway? And yet---and yet---
"Fight me!" he shouted suddenly, his voice heavy over the light music still saturating the room. Miki jumped slightly, and stood up, drawing away a little.
"No," he said quietly.
No. It wasn't supposed to go this way! He would take the challenge, they would duel. One would win. That one would...would...
"I won't duel for Yugi," came the quiet voice again.
He couldn't take anymore. His legs, once so strong, felt weak and flimsy; his heart, once so cold and unreachable, had reached breaking point too many times.
"You think it will change everything," Miki went on in his soft voice. "But it won't. He could only hate you. Or hate me. Do you really want to bind him that way?"
"What do you mean?" His voice, once so strong and confident, now tried to give him away. It was weak, unsure, broken. Like him.
"If we duel, one of us will win. You suggest dueling for---what? His affections? His love? His companionship? He would never live that way. I'm surprised you would require it of him."
This was too much.
"You're surprised?" he cried. "YOU? You're the one who duels for that Rose Bride, Himemiya. She's nothing better than a slave to her betrothee's will, and yet you're telling me that you can't duel for Yugi?!?" Rage was consuming him. Vaguely he felt the familiar heat suffusing him...he felt stronger, heavier; it rushed through his veins, his blood churned. He wanted to pounce, to transform some of this reckless heat---fury---glittering red and violet emotions---to something tangible. He looked over at Miki, saw the shock in the innocent---so like Yugi's---blue eyes.
Click. That damned stopwatch.
He hated it. Wanted to break it, wanted to brand Miki with some sort of punishment for daring to touch his Yugi, his angel---his light---his love.
Love.
His eyes burned with tears unshed, salty and hot and splitting his vision into thousands upon thousands of sharp rainbow shards.
And then, the heat turned abruptly into something quite different. It left its mad rush through his body, across his vision, running wild just under his skin and settled instead deeply, warmly into his stomach, into his chest.
So this, he thought wildly, this is love.
And I never knew it.
So he was surprised when the hurt in Miki's eyes flared, heated to match his own passionate anger.
"Don't bring Himemiya into this!" he yelled, his blue eyes flashing and snapping in his newly-found anger. He stepped forward, closer---closer---
"Why not, Miki? It's the same thing, after all," Yami said, softly now, because he was no longer sure he wanted to hurt this boy for recognizing the truth before he had. "You know it. You see something in him...something you long for. But, Miki, he can't give that back to you."
Miki flushed, his clear blue eyes darkened momentarily by some invisible memory, but he pushed forward, his young voice cracking slightly with passion. "But you want the same thing!" he spat. "Can you tell me you don't? And you're the one who wants to duel. Would you have Yugi turned into a pawn the way Himemiya is now?"
Listening, a sick chill slid over his heart. Turn Yugi into a pawn? No. The second he'd put the last piece of the Millenium Puzzle---still wet from the pond where Joey had thrown it---into place, his life had no longer been his own. He'd been chosen---Possessed, his mind whispered.
No. Yugi chose that life---chose HIM. Didn't he?
Hadn't he?
* * *
"Hey. It's okay, Wakaba. It's fine. Really."
Big brown eyes looked up into his, warm and watery with tears and exhaustion. "Really, Joey?"
It twisted his heart. What the hell, he thought uneasily. She's just a kid. Younger, even than him. Maybe Serenity's age. "Really," he said, and smiled down into her face. "But we're not going to make things better by standing around here, so let's see what we can do about it, okay?" She nodded, smiled. Happy again, or at least content. He moved his hand down her arm and twisted his fingers through hers, swinging her hand back and forth as they walked.
"Joey?"
"Hmmm."
"Was there something you were going to say before---um. When I saw you? Just now?"
---A hand, backed by an arm of solid iron, forced him back into the wood of the doorframe. He gasped as the wood hit between his shoulder blades, at the pressure on his chest, at the cold blue eyes studying him not six inches away. Warm breath slid across his cheek.
"Mine."---
"Um," he said, at a loss. "I---"
She stiffened.
"What?" he asked, deeply relieved that he didn't have to answer her, guilty for not telling the truth. Well, what IS the truth? he asked himself, but blocked it, turned it away. He wouldn't----couldn't think about that, not now, not when they'd suddenly stumbled on Utena and Yugi in the middle of what looked like a deep conversation. Not when Utena gave Wakaba a look of pure fright and fled.
But when Wakaba walked after her, and her warm presence was gone, he was suddenly flooded with a million images from the night before, and the way his heart was thudding against his ribs, he didn't think he could keep ignoring it much longer.
"Dammit," he swore silently, and jogged after the two girls, determined to find something he could fix---
And halted, his quick, panicky jog slowing to a walk, before he turned and looked at Yugi, still seated against the wall. I'm needed more here.
"Yugi?" he said, walking over to his friend. "You okay?"
A pause, and then bright violet eyes lifted, smiling and glossy, to his. "Yeah, Joey." His fingers trembled involuntarily---he caught them into a closer grip.
Joey sat down beside him, groaning as his aching muscles bent and stretched.
"Okay," he said, once he was comfortably seated, "spill, Yugi. What's going on?"
* * *
He only listened, as Miki continued, his voice less sharp, his manner more calm, but his words reflected off Yami's new-found dismay as off silvered glass...the parallels couldn't be avoided. He couldn't duel for Yugi, because that was the same as dueling for the Rose Bride, yet Miki would, and had, and would again duel for the Rose Bride, though he had no idea why, except a fervent admission that he had loved her.
But maybe he hadn't loved her, he continued, just as calmly, because maybe he only loved the ideals of purity and grace that he saw in her...it certainly seemed unlikely that he and Saionji could love the same person, as they were so very different. And he knew that no one, not one of the Council members, not even Touga, knew what she was. There were whispers---rumours---flittings of ideas, but nothing substantial. All was as mysterious and compelling as the Rose Bride herself.
And maybe that purity that he had thought he'd found in Himemiya, maybe it was the purity that he'd seen in Yugi that drew them together. At any rate, he wouldn't duel, wouldn't be forced to.
And he looked at Yami with such pity in his large blue eyes that he could do nothing but stay silent, and listen to the echoing cries in his own mind.
"You won't duel me," he told Miki, looking up at last and standing straight, "but what else can I do? I can only duel. To win everything, or to lose everything. There is no middle ground for me---all must be risked to be gained, or lost forever. But---" he paused, only a slight pause---"We won't duel for Yugi. I won't have him be some prize to be won. But we must duel."
Miki shrugged, his eyes already dim with defeat. "If we must," he said. "But I'm afraid it won't be a fair duel. You would best me easily with your game, and, in swords, I should win easily. What is it to be, then?"
In answer, Yami slid his deck from its case, resting it for a moment on his hand, feeling its familiar weight, and then handing it to Miki and directing him to shuffle it. When he had finished, Yami took the top card, and held it without looking, as Miki also drew.
"The game," he said, "is Chance. Should I win, you have the right to challenge me to what you will---I must comply. If you win, I'll relinquish. These are the rules---the highest attack points wins. If one has drawn a Magic card, that person may draw again. If one draws a Trap, he automatically wins."
Miki nodded, but hesitated to look at his card. Clear blue eyes glimmered in the gathering dusk of the room, outside the evening was just beginning to fall; soft and dim light slipped through the clear windows to gleam now off polished woods and ivory keys, and the few notes that Miki played now dropped into the warm spring dusk as bright pebbles into dark reflecting water.
"You'd risk everything on a card?" he asked, softly, turning his eyes now to the keys before him and running his fingers lightly over them.
Yami nodded. "I trust them," he said. "They haven't ever failed me, and I have no reason to doubt them now. In any case, they're more Yugi's cards than my own. He put this deck together with his grandfather, and his heart and soul are in them as much as mine---so they should be the way to settle our difference."
Miki nodded, and flipped over his card, while Yami looked at, and then flipped his own.
He thought he heard music.
* * *
Aria: Once again, I'm sorry this is so belated, and so very short. There are only a few things left to tell...the outcome of the duel, Joey and Yugi's conversation, what happens between Joey and Seto, and, most important to this particular story, what becomes of Yami, Yugi, and Miki. I'll try to watch the episodes this was based on to finally finish this story! Please review...I need encouragement to finish this one!
Kaiba: Oh, shut up, you self-important twit.
Aria: Pot calling the kettle black, if you ask me, Kaiba. And you'd better be nice---otherwise I might have Joey choose a certain brunette OTHER than you.
Kaiba: Just try it.
Wakaba: *appears and wraps her arms around Joey's waist*
Joey: *brightens* Hey, cool...
Aria: See?
Kaiba: I hate you.
Aria: Oh, Kaiba, you only say that because that's how I write you.
Kaiba: *mutters under his breath and stalks away*
Aria: Excellent! Disclaimer time! *snaps fingers*
Sorata: *appears*
Aria: Fantastic! Okay, Miki, would you do the disclaimer, please?
Miki: What? But he's-
Aria: Here for me! Not for the disclaimer. *snuggles with Sorata*
Miki: *sigh* Fine. This crazy writer doesn't own Yu-Gi-Oh or Utena, or X. So do us all a favor and don't sue her, just put her away in an enclosed room somewhere...
Aria: Enough! Moving right along...
SECRETS OF A ROSE
Chance
* * * The night before *
Before her, the dueling arena stretched flat and smooth and cold, white and open. Whiter, even, than the petals that drifted lazily around her feet. Petals from the rose that was now just a nodding, beheaded green stem at her breast, caught in a curl of her hair. Petals Touga had cut from her chest. Petals that took away Anthy.
The sword disintegrated in her limp hand, fading slowly into golden dust that swirled in the rose-scented breeze, and she stood there in disbelief, her heart thudding heavily against her ribs, blood pulsing slowly, thickly, through her body and her thoughts processing just as slowly.
Anthy walked past her---she smelled roses---and went to Touga, who put his arm around her, possessively.
Not protectively.
The world spun.
"It's not true."
She smelled roses as they walked away; smelled roses as she fell to her knees and they bruised and blossomed into exquisite pain.
"It's not true!"
Silver tears fell slowly from her eyes onto the cool marble of the arena. And the petals that lay scattered about her.
* * *
Click.
Miki stared at the other boy wordlessly. Yami stood over him, cold violet eyes locked into warm blue. "Wha---what?"
"Duel," Yami repeated, and his eyes narrowed. "I challenge you, for Yugi."
The words sounded dull and empty even as he said them, and he hoped that the despair behind them wasn't so apparent to the boy before him as he thought it might be. It was a stupid, undeniably stupid move. And yet---
What choice did he have?
All night he'd wandered in the cold, locked stone of his memory, walking lonely down empty dark corridors rank with dust and the smell of old dead things, further and further from the sliver of light that was Yugi. And yet everywhere he went in that massive, winding maze, he could still hear Yugi's voice, echoing, rebounding like sparks, among the stone walls and rooms and corridors. Calling him. Pleading. Unhappy.
He clenched his fists, knowing that if Yugi ever found out about this challenge to Kaoru Miki, he would never trust him again. Ever.
But he couldn't stand to see---to feel---the innocent joy in Yugi's soul when he saw Miki; hated the spark of electricity that passed when they touched. Hated that Yugi had turned to Miki. Hated that he hated it. What right did he have to dictate Yugi's relationships, anyway? And yet---and yet---
"Fight me!" he shouted suddenly, his voice heavy over the light music still saturating the room. Miki jumped slightly, and stood up, drawing away a little.
"No," he said quietly.
No. It wasn't supposed to go this way! He would take the challenge, they would duel. One would win. That one would...would...
"I won't duel for Yugi," came the quiet voice again.
He couldn't take anymore. His legs, once so strong, felt weak and flimsy; his heart, once so cold and unreachable, had reached breaking point too many times.
"You think it will change everything," Miki went on in his soft voice. "But it won't. He could only hate you. Or hate me. Do you really want to bind him that way?"
"What do you mean?" His voice, once so strong and confident, now tried to give him away. It was weak, unsure, broken. Like him.
"If we duel, one of us will win. You suggest dueling for---what? His affections? His love? His companionship? He would never live that way. I'm surprised you would require it of him."
This was too much.
"You're surprised?" he cried. "YOU? You're the one who duels for that Rose Bride, Himemiya. She's nothing better than a slave to her betrothee's will, and yet you're telling me that you can't duel for Yugi?!?" Rage was consuming him. Vaguely he felt the familiar heat suffusing him...he felt stronger, heavier; it rushed through his veins, his blood churned. He wanted to pounce, to transform some of this reckless heat---fury---glittering red and violet emotions---to something tangible. He looked over at Miki, saw the shock in the innocent---so like Yugi's---blue eyes.
Click. That damned stopwatch.
He hated it. Wanted to break it, wanted to brand Miki with some sort of punishment for daring to touch his Yugi, his angel---his light---his love.
Love.
His eyes burned with tears unshed, salty and hot and splitting his vision into thousands upon thousands of sharp rainbow shards.
And then, the heat turned abruptly into something quite different. It left its mad rush through his body, across his vision, running wild just under his skin and settled instead deeply, warmly into his stomach, into his chest.
So this, he thought wildly, this is love.
And I never knew it.
So he was surprised when the hurt in Miki's eyes flared, heated to match his own passionate anger.
"Don't bring Himemiya into this!" he yelled, his blue eyes flashing and snapping in his newly-found anger. He stepped forward, closer---closer---
"Why not, Miki? It's the same thing, after all," Yami said, softly now, because he was no longer sure he wanted to hurt this boy for recognizing the truth before he had. "You know it. You see something in him...something you long for. But, Miki, he can't give that back to you."
Miki flushed, his clear blue eyes darkened momentarily by some invisible memory, but he pushed forward, his young voice cracking slightly with passion. "But you want the same thing!" he spat. "Can you tell me you don't? And you're the one who wants to duel. Would you have Yugi turned into a pawn the way Himemiya is now?"
Listening, a sick chill slid over his heart. Turn Yugi into a pawn? No. The second he'd put the last piece of the Millenium Puzzle---still wet from the pond where Joey had thrown it---into place, his life had no longer been his own. He'd been chosen---Possessed, his mind whispered.
No. Yugi chose that life---chose HIM. Didn't he?
Hadn't he?
* * *
"Hey. It's okay, Wakaba. It's fine. Really."
Big brown eyes looked up into his, warm and watery with tears and exhaustion. "Really, Joey?"
It twisted his heart. What the hell, he thought uneasily. She's just a kid. Younger, even than him. Maybe Serenity's age. "Really," he said, and smiled down into her face. "But we're not going to make things better by standing around here, so let's see what we can do about it, okay?" She nodded, smiled. Happy again, or at least content. He moved his hand down her arm and twisted his fingers through hers, swinging her hand back and forth as they walked.
"Joey?"
"Hmmm."
"Was there something you were going to say before---um. When I saw you? Just now?"
---A hand, backed by an arm of solid iron, forced him back into the wood of the doorframe. He gasped as the wood hit between his shoulder blades, at the pressure on his chest, at the cold blue eyes studying him not six inches away. Warm breath slid across his cheek.
"Mine."---
"Um," he said, at a loss. "I---"
She stiffened.
"What?" he asked, deeply relieved that he didn't have to answer her, guilty for not telling the truth. Well, what IS the truth? he asked himself, but blocked it, turned it away. He wouldn't----couldn't think about that, not now, not when they'd suddenly stumbled on Utena and Yugi in the middle of what looked like a deep conversation. Not when Utena gave Wakaba a look of pure fright and fled.
But when Wakaba walked after her, and her warm presence was gone, he was suddenly flooded with a million images from the night before, and the way his heart was thudding against his ribs, he didn't think he could keep ignoring it much longer.
"Dammit," he swore silently, and jogged after the two girls, determined to find something he could fix---
And halted, his quick, panicky jog slowing to a walk, before he turned and looked at Yugi, still seated against the wall. I'm needed more here.
"Yugi?" he said, walking over to his friend. "You okay?"
A pause, and then bright violet eyes lifted, smiling and glossy, to his. "Yeah, Joey." His fingers trembled involuntarily---he caught them into a closer grip.
Joey sat down beside him, groaning as his aching muscles bent and stretched.
"Okay," he said, once he was comfortably seated, "spill, Yugi. What's going on?"
* * *
He only listened, as Miki continued, his voice less sharp, his manner more calm, but his words reflected off Yami's new-found dismay as off silvered glass...the parallels couldn't be avoided. He couldn't duel for Yugi, because that was the same as dueling for the Rose Bride, yet Miki would, and had, and would again duel for the Rose Bride, though he had no idea why, except a fervent admission that he had loved her.
But maybe he hadn't loved her, he continued, just as calmly, because maybe he only loved the ideals of purity and grace that he saw in her...it certainly seemed unlikely that he and Saionji could love the same person, as they were so very different. And he knew that no one, not one of the Council members, not even Touga, knew what she was. There were whispers---rumours---flittings of ideas, but nothing substantial. All was as mysterious and compelling as the Rose Bride herself.
And maybe that purity that he had thought he'd found in Himemiya, maybe it was the purity that he'd seen in Yugi that drew them together. At any rate, he wouldn't duel, wouldn't be forced to.
And he looked at Yami with such pity in his large blue eyes that he could do nothing but stay silent, and listen to the echoing cries in his own mind.
"You won't duel me," he told Miki, looking up at last and standing straight, "but what else can I do? I can only duel. To win everything, or to lose everything. There is no middle ground for me---all must be risked to be gained, or lost forever. But---" he paused, only a slight pause---"We won't duel for Yugi. I won't have him be some prize to be won. But we must duel."
Miki shrugged, his eyes already dim with defeat. "If we must," he said. "But I'm afraid it won't be a fair duel. You would best me easily with your game, and, in swords, I should win easily. What is it to be, then?"
In answer, Yami slid his deck from its case, resting it for a moment on his hand, feeling its familiar weight, and then handing it to Miki and directing him to shuffle it. When he had finished, Yami took the top card, and held it without looking, as Miki also drew.
"The game," he said, "is Chance. Should I win, you have the right to challenge me to what you will---I must comply. If you win, I'll relinquish. These are the rules---the highest attack points wins. If one has drawn a Magic card, that person may draw again. If one draws a Trap, he automatically wins."
Miki nodded, but hesitated to look at his card. Clear blue eyes glimmered in the gathering dusk of the room, outside the evening was just beginning to fall; soft and dim light slipped through the clear windows to gleam now off polished woods and ivory keys, and the few notes that Miki played now dropped into the warm spring dusk as bright pebbles into dark reflecting water.
"You'd risk everything on a card?" he asked, softly, turning his eyes now to the keys before him and running his fingers lightly over them.
Yami nodded. "I trust them," he said. "They haven't ever failed me, and I have no reason to doubt them now. In any case, they're more Yugi's cards than my own. He put this deck together with his grandfather, and his heart and soul are in them as much as mine---so they should be the way to settle our difference."
Miki nodded, and flipped over his card, while Yami looked at, and then flipped his own.
He thought he heard music.
* * *
Aria: Once again, I'm sorry this is so belated, and so very short. There are only a few things left to tell...the outcome of the duel, Joey and Yugi's conversation, what happens between Joey and Seto, and, most important to this particular story, what becomes of Yami, Yugi, and Miki. I'll try to watch the episodes this was based on to finally finish this story! Please review...I need encouragement to finish this one!