Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any characters and situations presented in the manga/anime. No profit is gained from the publishing of this story, no copyright infringement intended.
Should this story be deemed offensive by the creator, Mr. Takahashi, his solicitors or any of the (unsettling amount of) companies holding licenses to the series it shall be of course taken down without hesitation.
So don't sue the poor German gal… she's got enough problems already as it is.
Author's Note: I used to believe that I was not deep enough into Yu-Gi-Oh! to write fanfiction about it (as opposed to other series which I almost learned by heart) which is why the thought never crossed my mind, although I did follow the anime quite religiously. However, somehow I ended up reading the one or other one shot when looking for some entertaining IY-fanfics. Blame it all on Quickening, who's pieces "Mistletoe" and "Two are better than one" (not featured on thiswebsite)as well as "Kiss the girl" got me totally hooked. Needless to say, I've soon found other wonderful stories as well (my current favorite is "Photographs" by SightX – I advise you to read and review it if you haven't already) and they somehow rubbed off on me.
As far as I've gathered, YGO fanfiction is mostly shounen-ai or yaoi dominated which doesn't bother me, especially if it's well-written but nevertheless that isn't exactly my kind of poison. I can't help it – I prefer my favorite male characters to be straight so I can still fantasize about them if I feel like it (even if I'm a tad too old for this stuff).
Why am I telling you this? Because this One-Shot (means: no additional chapters or continuations as this piece is finished) is romance and if you don't like to see Yami Yugi pining for Anzu, you can stop reading right here.
To everyone else, please enjoy my first Yu-Gi-Oh!-fanfic ever(probably my last one, too), thank you for readingand if it so pleases you, let me have your opinion in form of a short review.
Acalanthis (The writer formerly known as Sapphire, the semi-demi talented Angel of Night)
If those hands had been mine…
That day, she told me she loved me but I've known for a long time.
She didn't have to say the words: her eyes and her smiles spoke volumes to me and although I haven't had a body to call my own in some time, I was well able to receive and decipher those carefully hidden messages that hers send me; whether it was that particular sparkle in her eyes (eyes that I've felt I've been missing all of my … well, for lack of better word: life as the spirit of the Sennen Puzzle), the tilt of her head, the way she bit her lower lip in my presence or the tender smile that none of their friends ever received safe me – I understood. Yes, I understood perfectly.
But those hands, they hadn't been mine… they would never be.
I had anticipated her confession, dreamt of it when I knew no one was there to invade on my thoughts. Often I imagined what it would be like at that moment when her determination to come clean would conquer her girlish shyness. Would she take a deep breath, raise her eyes to mine only to lower them again shamefully? Would her voice ring timid from hesitation and nervousness or would she manage to infuse it with false confidence and heartfelt infatuation? I did not know, but I was looking forward to discovering these things, just as much as I was looking forward to her impending declaration of love; the anticipation and knowledge of which I jealously sought to hide from my partner when it hadn't even occurred. Yes, I knew that she loved me, I was sure about it and I wanted to hear the words falling from her lips for no one but me to treasure. I was dependant on the exclusivity of her revelation, because it was all I'd ever get, all I'd ever allow myself to have.
For those hands – those hands hadn't been mine…
I must confess, I had expected it a lot sooner; perhaps when she first noticed (and rightfully suspected) that I was not her gentle friend, Yugi, but someone else entirely or perhaps on Kaiba's airship, shortly before I had to face whom I (all of us, actually) at that time had believed to be Marick Ishtar. It would have suited the occasion and I admit that I had wanted it to be over and done with – I was prepared to lose that duel although I knew that I mustn't. Too much had been at stake – not only my own welfare but that of others, too. Hers, for instance. Yet the unwelcome thought of losing would have been much more agreeable if I had heard her say those words to me beforehand – despite the fact that as much as I wanted to hear her tell me, there was a part of me that dreaded the moment she would.
Because I wondered – would I be able to dutifully deny her what she so willingly offered; would I be able to do what I deemed best when facing… her? Could I deny myself the pleasure of her love, where I longed for it just as much as I did for the knowledge of my identity?
What wouldn't I have given to hear those infamous three words from her, crowned by the gentle whispering of my name! And if I couldn't have mine, any name she'd see fit to bestow upon me would have been welcome and as dear to me as my own – any as long as it wouldn't be his; any as long as she decreed it mine and mine alone. But oh, how the gods tortured me. I knew that what I desired could never be just as I knew that denying both of us would cause a rift between us. I didn't want to tear that tender bond connecting us apart. I was scared.
But I knew I had no right to her because those hands, they hadn't been mine, no matter how much I wished for them to be.
And then she told me.
I was exhilarated and utterly devastated at the same time. How sweet was the feeling of triumph when all my wondering, all my doubt (yes, I had doubted – what would I have done had it not been I who had captured her heart but my partner?) evaporated into thin air, to proof what I had hoped. Never was she more beautiful to me than in that one moment when she opened her fragile heart to me and awaited my decision on what to do with all that she offered.
I had to reject her, as much as it pained me to do it and I still wonder, from where the words and the resolve to pull through came because the moment the words had left her lips, I only wanted to touch mine to hers. Yet I didn't. I refused her, denied us both what we yearned for.
Because those hands hadn't been mine and I wasn't sure whether I would be able of making her understand just how much that meant to me.
I feel safe admitting now, where I am standing before my gods in the Hall of Maat(1), that I had loved her. No, that doesn't ring right: I love her, even now, as my heart is put onto the scales; even now as the scales tilt ever so slightly to my disadvantage over the knowledge, that I cheated both, her and me, out of creating something that would have been truly divine, magnificent, pure and important.
Yet what had to be done is done and I couldn't have told her that I reciprocated her feelings, anyway, so why bother? Had it not been best for all of us to avoid unnecessary suffering that had been sure to follow if I had told her how I had truly felt?
Thus no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn't have told her that whenever she left my sight (when it was my sight) I had to fight the urge to tear after her and bask in the glory that was she. I couldn't have told her that the sway of her hips drove me mad with want; that her soft, melodious voice was an impossible opponent to battle during the long hours of night, when it would keep me awake while the body offering me habitation yearned for her touch as badly as the burning desert sands yearned for the rain to fall. I couldn't have told her how deeply I cared but…
But if I would have had a heart to give, a living, beating heart all of my own, I would have given it to her. If I would have had lips to kiss, I would have touched them to hers to taste the sweetness of her mouth. If I would have had arms and hands of my own, I would have embraced her as to never let her go again, would have reveled in letting my hands roam her curvaceous body without regretting a single moment of it.
Alas, those hands I had used, those hands which had itched with my desire to touch her, had not been mine and I could not, would not allow another to touch what I wanted for myself, even if that other was the boy who shared his body with me. I'd rather not touch her at all than having to touch her with his hands, even if it meant that I would never get to know the texture of her skin (whereas he might perhaps), rather not kiss her and never know the taste of her lips if it meant that he wouldn't know it, either.
My body is nothing but that: a well-conserved corpse with a mummified heart, hidden somewhere in one of the many forgotten tombs buried beneath the burning desert sands. What could I have given her with a body that is dead, a heart that no longer beats and a spirit that knew that upon completion of its task it would cease to exist in her world?
That world, it hadn't been my own – I was nothing but a stranger there; stranded in time.
Those hands, they hadn't been mine; they had been that of a child, not those of the man I once was.
But if her world would have been my own, if his hands would have been mine, I would have taken her into my arms the moment she told me how she felt. I would have showered her face with kisses, would have linked her heart to mine with sweet words of love that would have been both, exaggerated and true; I would have made her mine in every way possible, would have consumed her with my fire as hungrily as she would have consumed me with hers and reveled in the knowledge, that her soul would have been mine to cherish for the rest of my life, mayhap even beyond death.
I will never know, however, because no matter how much the thought torments me, those hands capable of touching her, although similar, are not mine, have never been and shall never be.
(1) - The Hall of Maat was, according to the ancient Egyptions, where the judging of the dead occured. Anubis, the god of death (the one with the shakal or dog head) would lead the dead into the hall where the deceased's conscience (his heart) would be weighed against a feather plucked from the wings of Maat, goddess of truth. Was the heart lighter or equal in weight to the feather, the deceased was allowed to meet Osiris, the ruler of the after-life, in the Egyptian equivalent of paradise. However, was the heart heavier than the feather, it would be devoured by Ammut, which meant that the deceased would cease to exist alltogether (as you might know, the Egyptians did believe that after death, life would go on - literally).