It's been so busy, I haven't had time to write in forever (and I got a little sidetracked on another series.  Sorry.)  I'm probably a bit rusty, but it sure feels good to be back.  ^_~

Disclaimer: If Yu-Gi-Oh were mine, I would be fluent in Japanese, Egyptian, Arabic, and L337.  (Which has nothing to do with owning Yu-Gi-Oh, but never mind.)  Seeing as I know squat about all of them (except a couple years' and a home stay's worth of Japanese), the prospects aren't too good.

Erm…maybe one spoiler for the Egypt arc in the manga.

            I sat on air, floating insubstantially, the scene laid out in cold precision before me.  There was the bed against the wall, surrounded as much as possible by humming, beeping machines, their screens glowing dimly in the darkness.  There were the curtains, drawn over the windows and their icy panes, hanging limply and motionless.  There was the small sink with the soap dispenser for the doctors and nurses, a mirror above it.  There was the room again, reflected in its accursed misery through the looking glass, anything but a wonderland.  There was the painting hanging on the wall, a sickeningly generic print of rainbows and clouds.  There, on the floor below it, was a child's backpack, undone homework inside, crammed in with pencils and a Kero Kero Keroppi eraser. 

            There on the bed, plugged full of needles and tubes, was a child, a little girl, her every breath slow and labored, sometimes seeming as if it had stopped altogether.  Bandages covered her, binding her tightly, holding her soul within its shell of flesh.  The blood had ceased to bleed as profusely as it had a matter of hours ago, but it still seeped gradually from the fissures in her pale expanse of skin beneath the gauze.  Her face was ashen, and her fingers were nearly white; in her mind, she was past pain. 

            Curled up on a chair next to the bed was a bundle.  It was another child, this one a boy, wrapped in a mussed-up hospital blanket, his shoes sitting neatly beneath the chair.  His body was limp in a fitful sleep, and one grubby hand clutched a fistful of coverlet near his face.  Twin trails of half-dried tears traced his cheeks, and his lavender hair hung, framing his innocent, troubled face.

            I had watched him that afternoon, saw him as he made his way to the room with his parents and sat by the bed the rest of the day.  He hadn't eaten anything, but sat faithfully by the girl, unchecked tears streaming from his liquid brown eyes.  I couldn't do anything but watch, grim as he learned the realities I had met so many, many years ago: pain, grief, and loss.  He hadn't wailed like other children, though; he had cried like a man, silent and in agony.  He had not kicked and screamed when his parents tried to pull him away, but had resolutely stood his ground, winning the right to spend the long night in the hospital room.  I puzzled over that, momentarily surprised.  I searched through his feelings, digging through the overwhelming despair and found a vibrant soul of purity and hope.  I returned to my own consciousness then, unable to look further within him, overwhelmed by the brightness. 

            Did I really start out like that, untainted and naïve?  I found it difficult to imagine, but maybe there was a time when I had such a heart.  It wouldn't last long for him, though; it never does.  He'd begun already to understand the world and its vices.  I watched him touch the gold around his neck in his sleep, his hand brushing at the burnished Ring hanging on its leather cord. 

            I floated closer to him, half ready to probe his troubled dreams and see what they would reveal, but something else called to me from the injured girl.  I sensed a breaking within her, like the snapping of cords pulled too tight, the straining of something stirring at last.  Drifting over the bed, I watched, looking back unblinkingly as she opened her eyes toward me.  Only, they weren't her eyes; she was now a translucent copy of herself in shining white, but unbroken and perfectly whole, hovering over her clumsy, corporeal likeness. 

            She studied me with a wise, innocent gaze before speaking softly.  "Niichan?"

            I shook my head.  "Not me.  You want him."  I gestured to the sleeping boy in the chair.

            She nodded a brief thanks and glided over to him, trailing silver, insubstantial ribbons that still connected her to her body of flesh and blood.  "Niichan," she whispered, reaching out to touch his face.

            He didn't stir.

            "Niichan," she repeated, a little louder, "wake up!  Where are we?"

            Still no response. 

            "Niichan…" I watched the hurt brim in her eyes.

            With a sigh, I put my hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her away from him.  "He can't hear you," I told her. 

            "Why not?" she demanded, turning to me.  "What happened?"

            "There was…" I paused, looking down at the soul before me "…a car accident."

            She looked back quickly at her brother, her eyes wide.  "Is he all right?  Was he badly hurt?"

            "He wasn't the victim," I said, memories of the scene flashing in my mind.  "The car just missed him and hit the person standing next to him."

            She smiled.  "I'm glad he's safe.  I'd be very sad if anything happened to Niichan.  That's why I always stay close…" She trailed off, confusion lighting in her eyes.  "I was…"

            "Next to him," I finished for her, sighing inwardly.  I hated scenes like these; they always ended in only one way.

            Her wide eyes caught sight of the silvery ribbons trailing from her wrists and ankles to her still body on the hospital bed.  "I'm…dead?"

            "Not yet," I said matter-of-factly.  "You're just barely hanging on.  You probably don't have very long, though."

            She looked back at her brother with pain.  "What about Niichan?" she asked desperately.  "What will he do if I die?  I don't want to leave him!"

            "He'll miss you," I answered truthfully, a memory of crouching in a dark, rocky cranny as my friends and family were slaughtered in the streets running through my mind.  An entire village massacred….

            "What will happen to me?" she asked more softly, fear in her voice.

            "I can't honestly say," I replied.  "I wouldn't know."

            She cocked her head.  "Aren't you dead?" she asked with youthful bluntness.

            "No.  I belong with that thing," I told her, nodding toward the Ring around her brother's neck.  "I'm between alive and dead, which is why I can see you."

            "Oh," she said, settling back comfortably on thin air, studying me.  "Who are you?"

            I shrugged.  "It doesn't matter.  I don't do anything anymore except wait."

            She made a face.  "I don't like waiting.  It's boring."

            I suppressed a smile.  She reminded me of some of the little kids I had known back in Egypt…back in that village.  It was disarming; I wasn't usually this open with anyone.  "So why are you staying around here?  Don't you want to see what lies beyond life?"

            "But I'm not really waiting," she told me.  "I'm talking to you."

            "I see.  What are we going to talk about?"

            She looked me directly in the eye.  "When I go, you will take care of Niichan," she ordered me, leaving no room for questioning.  "You will watch out for him, because he gets into trouble lots.  Okay?"

            I nodded, amused.  She would have done well in Egypt.  "You have to do me a favor too," I countered.

            "All right," she agreed.

            "I have a lot of friends over there, a lot of people I knew.  Tell them hi for me, will you?"

            "I don't know your name," she reasoned.  "How will I know what to tell them, or even who they are?"

            "You'll know," I said quietly, not once doubting.  "And they will too.  Say a special hello for me to a girl named Anjil, okay?"

            She grinned knowingly.  "Okay."  The silver ribbons vaporized from around her ankles.  "I've decided I'm not going to wait anymore.  Don't forget your promise, now.  You'll tell Ryou-Niichan goodbye for me, won't you?  From Amane."  The ribbons vanished from her wrists, and a portal of light opened within the dark room.  I watched as she turned to walk through it, but looked back at me one more time. 

            She smiled, radiant and peaceful, and then stepped into the otherworld beyond the gateway. 

            The monitors around her lifeless shell of flesh ceased to beep, their tones dropping to one single drone.  The boy in the chair sat up suddenly, his eyes blinking fearfully awake as he rushed to his sister's side. 

            I hovered next to him, unable to soften the blow as he recognized finality.  Not dead and not alive, I could not make him hear me.  A nothingness once again, I resigned myself to waiting.

Owari

AN: Anjil is my beta-reader's, 'SJ-chan.  I just draw her from time to time.