-EPILOGUE-

-Jounouchi's POV-

You never realize how much you love the simple pleasures in life until they're gone. Eating three meals a day. Sleeping in a bed. Being able to take a shower. Or brush your teeth. God, it felt good to come back to the year 2004 and have all of those again after that whole wild goose chase.

I got to go home three days after I woke up in the hospital for the second time. They kept me on a ventilator for way longer than they needed to, because they were afraid that I would have another "relapse" if they took me off of it too soon. I could have told them there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of another "relapse", but the tube down my throat made talking damn near impossible. Besides that, they would have probably carted me off to the mental ward if I'd tried to explain that my soul was going to stay right where it was because my robotic future self wasn't going to be repaired again.

Ryou got to go home the day after we all woke up, the lucky bum. They ran a couple of tests, did some CAT scans and sent him right home. He says they didn't find anything wrong with him. I say he bribed them. Or maybe Bakura scared the pee out of them. Either way, he got to go home first.

Yug was in the hospital a lot longer than me. He ended up going through a couple of surgeries (which must have sucked), and was on a liquid diet for a long time (which must have really sucked). I never heard him complain, though. His grandpa threw him a big welcome home party the day he finally got out of the hospital. I'd never seen gramps look so happy.

Kaiba was in the hospital longest of all, which I'm sure he was pissed about. From what I heard, he needed lots of skin grafts. And physical therapy, which must have been a really unpleasant experience for the therapist.

They never did find the guy who bombed Hill House. Oh, the investigations went on for a while. We were all questioned at some point or another. I wasn't happy to hear that the guy had been stalking Mai. And I was completely pissed to hear that he kidnapped Shizuka. But they never even found his remains. Of course they wouldn't. He wasn't even supposed to exist for another thousand years or so.

It's funny how life has its own way of moving on. You'd think it would be hard to go back to everyday life again after everything that happened to us, but really, it didn't take long for life to go back to normal. Going to school. Getting detention. Hanging out at the game shop…all that might sound boring to you, but it was exciting enough for me.

Of course, some things are different now, too. Anzu has a limp. I still can't believe that she was shot in the leg by the same bastard who kidnapped my sister. The doctors tried to tell her she wouldn't be able to dance anymore, but she wouldn't listen to a word of that bullshit. She's already ripping it up at all the school dances again.

Yami wants to go after Bakura now that we all know he stole the Millennium Eye from Pegasus, but Bakura's been laying low ever since everything ended. That's perfectly fine with me. The less we have to deal with that psycho, the better in my opinion.

I also feel differently towards Kaiba now. Don't get me wrong. He still annoys the hell out of me. I'd still love to kick his ass in a duel. Or just plain kick his ass. But I respect him more now as a person. Call me crazy, call me weird, call me stupid, call me all of the above. But after what I saw in the cesspool, I can't help it. I'm not about to walk up to him and say something like, "Hey, Kaiba, ya know what? I've got a dad who smacks me around like yours did to you! Ain't that crazy?" I'm not even going to mention it to him if I can help it. I have a feeling he'd rather not know that I know.

Mokuba scares the bejeepers me now. I know it's stupid, but really. It's hard to look at the little squirt the same way knowing that someday his reincarnation is going to be a nutcase wizard by the name of Dante who kills Yug, Ryou, Kaiba and me.

Oh, and Honda and I finally fixed up my car after I got out of the hospital. It was a weeklong project, but it was it ever worth it. Do you know that I actually get air conditioning in the thing now? And I can play CD's. And we painted it bright red. It's now like one of the "afters" on one of those fix-up-the-car shows, rather than one of the "befores".

So this one day after school I'm cruising around town in my shiny, new (well, OK, not new) luxury ride. It's hot as hell outside, and I've got my radio cranked all the way up, so the subwoofer in the back makes the windows shake every time the bass guitar comes in. I'm just puttering around Domino alone, no real destination in mind when I get to the park.

I didn't really have any reason to stop there. I wasn't planning on meeting anybody. Yug was stuck working at the game shop, Anzu was busy at the burger joint, Honda was taking to Shizuka to a movie (but only after a long pep talk from me about how I would turn his face into hamburger if he tried anything), and Ryou had stayed home from school sick. But still, I go ahead and pull over to the curb and get out of the car.

I wander around the park aimlessly for a while, not really looking for anything in particular. I go past a playground with a bunch of little kids swinging on the swings or lined up to go down the slide. I walk past the public bathrooms and see a stoner sitting on the ground sucking on a joint. I see a couple of old people feeding the pigeons and playing checkers. Then I see somebody I know sitting alone on a bench.

I trot on over to the bench and plop down beside her. She's reading a book. Some romance novel by the look of the cover. She doesn't know I'm there.

"Hey," I say.

She jumps, surprised. "Jounouchi!" she shouts and smacks me on the head with her book. "Don't sneak up on people like that!"

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare ya." I give her a goofy grin. I know she hates it when people say things like that.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself. You didn't scare me."

There's a long awkward pause for a while after this. Finally, I clear my throat and say, "So…whatcha readin'?"

"None of your business," she coldly replies.

"Oh. OK. No need to get nasty about it. Sheesh. You mad at me or somethin'?"

No answer. Huh? I think. I don't remember doing anything to piss her off. Last I checked we were still friends.

"Who is she?" Spoken quiet, barely above a whisper.

"Huh?" Am I hearing things?

"Don't play dumb, Jounouchi. Who is she?"

I blink, confused. "Who?"

She sighs and snaps, "Jezebel!"

Wait a sec…does she think that I…no way! "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

I raise my eyebrows and study her face, trying to decide if she's serious. Then I heave a hefty sigh and begin. "Well, Mai, it all started at Hill House…."

THE END

Author's Notes: There. Jackknife 20 is now officially done! I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. My next project will be a story by the name of Star Struck. ß(Shameless plug!) Anyways, thank you to all of my readers and my reviewers!

Special thanks to ShamanQueens, Orenji Kaniku, Flame Swordsman, Liviania, mandapandabug, WildBlackWolf and Viva, shadowwaker, Yuki Tsukihana, number157493 and trefenwyd12 for reviewing the last chapter!

Now for the questions:

mandapandabug: I'm not exactly sure what Jou saw when he was living his fear…I thought it would be more effective to leave it open-ended. I did describe what he saw in the cesspool, though. Also, I think that the epilogue answered all of your other questions (or at least I hope it did!).

number157493: Ah yes. I didn't really go into detail about what happened to Elijah, Aiden, Gabe and Seto's reincarnation (no, I didn't give him a name). I guess you would have to say that the reincarnation's lives ended when Yuugi and the others came into the picture. The fact that their memories were in the cesspool was meant to reinforce the fact that Ryou, Yuugi, Jounouchi and Seto really were in the bodies of their future selves. They had their reincarnation's bodies, so they also had their reincarnation's minds and memories to deal with.