Beauty in the Breakdown
emeralddarkness

Summery: The Orichalcos Seal is poison, and yet somehow Mai never saw that before now.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Despite an extensive search of every one of my coat and pants pockets as well as dresser drawers, I have yet to find the rights to Yugioh. I am, therefore, forced to assume that no, I don't own it.

So... yea. I like taking snapshots of moments in the show when people are being all emo. It's cool for figuring out their characters.

As always, many thanks to my beta, Rennie; without her this story would be riddled with grammatical errors and other inconsistencies as well as just not being quite as good.

- - -

The world seemed like it was spinning too fast, like it was bleeding, like it was gasping for one last lungful of poisoned, dying breath before finally giving up and expiring. The entire planet was dying. Dying, it was dying, and heaven help her, Mai had encouraged it. The thought made her shudder, it made her gasp, it made her draw into herself the same poison that she had breathed out – out and out and out, filling the world with the poison, the bitterness, the everything wrong. There was, perhaps, a cruel irony in that she was finally breathing it herself – cruel because she was immune. Like Typhoid Mary, who had killed all she touched and yet never fallen to the disease herself, all that Mai seemed to do was spread death, spread the weakness and wrongness and helplessness that she was riddled with. She tried to hide behind a mask, but she was an idiot – it was cracked and it didn't matter and it was all stupid anyway-

The sidewalk, which should feel so rough, felt slick under her nerveless fingers, almost as though it had been coated with a thin layer of soap – almost slimy, a numb coating that was blocking proper sensations and, leaving nothing but a dead parody. The entire world seemed numb as she looked down.

She drew in another shuddering, gasping breath, tasting the poison permeating the air for the first time. How… how could she not have noticed? It was raining, and the rain felt like acid against her skin.

"Jou, I didn't attack, get up Jou – I didn't mean it, I'm sorry I played the seal – Jou, get up, I didn't attack you, you didn't lose! You didn't lose, you still have life points, get up, it shouldn't have taken you, you didn't lose so don't you dare try playing this with me-"

She was, she realized from a distant corner of her mind, babbling.

"Jounouchi, get up, you have to get out of this rain or you'll get sick, you idiot, and I can't carry you – you eat too much pizza, maybe if you didn't pig out quite so much I could but I really can't – stop being stupid, you can't be gone…."

The rain was getting him all wet. It was getting her all wet too, but that was ok. She was tougher than that idiot anyway – so sentimental, so soft, so idiotic. He was trusting, far too trusting, why had he trusted her so much-

"Idiot, idiot, I could have told you that you were an idiot – I did tell you that you were an idiot. You are an idiot. Jou, get up or… or…."

His eyes were blank, they were blank.

"It shouldn't have taken you." Her voice was so soft that it only just barely qualified as a whisper, but it sounded like a scream. "Jounouchi, stop it. Please."

She was shaking – how stupid, she shouldn't be shaking. She wasn't quite that weak, but she was shaking all the same. How stupid. Why was she shaking? She shouldn't be shaking, he hadn't lost.

"Jounouchi, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, I didn't want this-"

He looked all blurry; why was that? It took her a little while to realize why – she was crying. Mai's tears fell on Jounouchi's face, and at that she almost laughed. Now she was getting him all wet too – he'd probably blame her for it later, and then she could say that he was just being a baby and laugh and then he'd get all annoyed at her for saying that he was anything other than some tough guy-

"Jounouchi…."

And suddenly something breaks and she's not just crying, she's sobbing and hugging his limp form to her and he's gone and now there's no denying it. "I'm sorry!" The words are moaned, sorrowing and pitiful (except, of course, Mai wasn't pitiful, she was a Strong Woman Who Could Take Care of Herself – or at least until it actually mattered, apparently ). "I'm sorry; please don't leave me alone…."

Mai always denied that she needed anyone – she always pushed everyone away; why she pushed Jou away, why she'd kept on pushing Valon away despite the fact that it would have been so much easier to just give in and let him stick around. It was insane; she knew it was insane. It wasn't solitude that she craved and she was sometimes so very lonely – to continue to push away everyone around her under such circumstances certainly sounded like some kind of insanity. Solitude had, however, become so linked in her mind to the idea of independence that the two were practically inseparable, and that was what she really wanted. Independence.

The truth of the matter was that she was afraid to admit that she did need someone else. Admitting to that concept – that she too might need support every once in a while – was like swallowing glass. She couldn't bear the idea of it; that she might for any reason not be complete merely by herself without needing anything from the outside to shore her up. A good part of that reason was that everyone she had ever depended on had let her down in one way or another, but it was also simply because if she needed anyone but herself then she wasn't complete on her own and if she wasn't complete on her own then she was weak, and people exploited weakness. She refused to let herself be exploited; it was why, although she had agreed to work for Dartz, she had always been rebelling against him.

And then, of course, there was the fact that Mai was used to being disappointed. Anything that she had she'd had to take and hold onto if she wanted to keep it. She couldn't do that with a person – a person could die, a person could leave, a person could turn their back on her, a person could be taken away. Admitting that she needed someone like that was a bit more than merely a weakness – it was a gaping wound, hollow and bleeding. A person who might fill that might also leave and things would be that much worse by comparison. Or, even worse, they might just be after her for her looks (perfect face, perfect form, she hated them sometimes for all that she exploited them). People seemed to think that, simply because she looked good in a miniskirt, she obviously couldn't be anything but a living doll, whose only value was in standing at the sidelines and looking pretty.

If she needed anything or anyone then obviously she wasn't enough by herself, and if she wasn't enough by herself then whatever she was depending on could leave or go away or be taken and then she'd die, she was sure she would. So she crippled herself instead, so that in the end she would never have to worry about losing part of what made her whole. Stupid logic, some might say, but it worked for her. It always had.

If she'd never been whole then no one could take it from her. But, it appeared now, she did need something. How stupid. How pathetic. But, oddly, she found that she didn't really mind being pathetic as long as he woke up.

"Jou, I'm sorry, you have to get up – I need you, you dork. You said you knew it all along, so why aren't you getting up?"

She swore that she could hear Dartz laughing. He wasn't there, but she could hear him all the same. 'Well done, Mai,' he was saying, slick satisfaction in his amused voice. 'Just as you said you'd get him, so you have. Another soul for me – my, you've got quite the collection worked up now, haven't you…? Another soul for the Leviathan….'

Another soul for her collection, her offering, to sacrifice to a beast that she'd never quite believed in previously, despite all that she'd seen. Or perhaps it was simply that she'd talked herself out of believing in it – she simply wanted power, wanted to be able to win for once; was that so horrible? She'd wanted to be able to grab life by the neck and beat what she felt that she certainly deserved after all this time and all the crap that she'd been put through out of it. She didn't want anything to do with the crazy plans that Dartz was always running on at the mouth about simply because she didn't really much care about the rest of the world – he could think that they were as evil as he wanted. She had no opinion. Humans were humans and that was all – it wasn't them that she cared about. It was herself; it was this apparently hopeless quest to prove that she had some merit, some value by herself, that she wasn't just some kind of living Barbie doll.

The Orichalcos, for her, had been merely about the power, not some sort of mumbo-jumbo about bringing about the end of the world, nor the resurrection of something that she didn't believe in, because if she didn't believe in it then there was nothing to feel guilty about.

Except, suddenly, she found that she did believe that it was real.

And she had just fed Jounouchi's soul to it.

Oh.

She felt like she was going to throw up.

"Jou, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I swear I didn't mean it…."

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Mai wished it were closer. It was odd, how numb things felt and yet how vividly real. She almost wished that a bolt of lightning would hit her just so that she could feel something. Pain – Mai believed in pain, it showed that you were alive. She wasn't feeling pain right now, or at least not the right kind of pain. She was… she'd gone numb, somehow. Shock, she supposed. Honestly, a bolt of lighting might actually be good for her. Except no, she was right next to Jounouchi's body and no matter how much good it might do her it surely wouldn't be healthy for him….

"Come on, just yell at me…" she whispered, her eyes closing tight as she spoke. She couldn't even look at him anymore. And here she thought that she was so strong.

But he didn't yell of course. Mai let his form slide down out of her fingers until he was lying on the ground – he was suddenly too heavy, or maybe it was simply that she was too weak. She felt, suddenly, as though she were made of old, tattered silk, ready to tear into a million fragments at the lightest touch.

"Jou, I'm sorry." And Mai – the tough girl, the one who'd probably try killing you if you ever suggested that she'd act anything like this – collapsed in on herself and let herself cry.

She didn't know how long she remained that way. It felt a very long time and no time at all; how did it manage that? And finally she forced herself to laugh, though it was a miserable sound, as she tried to pull herself together again; she couldn't just let herself fall to pieces like this!

"Idiot. You shouldn't have been such a hero, when are you going to accept that I don't need looking after?"

Maybe, she heard him answer from somewhere in her mind, when you actually don't, cuz that sure ain't the way things stand right now.

She laughed a bit hysterically, pressing a manicured hand over her mouth in an attempt to hold the sound in as tears continued to roll down her cheeks.

"Stupid. Stupid man, you keep on getting yourself in trouble."

Eh, I usually seem to turn out all right.

And, strangely, that was true. He got himself into scrapes and then he got out of them with a little help from his friends.

Friends.

Jou, are we friends?

Sure we are! Jeez, always asking stupid questions.

She wasn't, even if she had been before. She didn't deserve it anymore. And she couldn't even say that she was sorry….

"Stupid. Always have to be the hero. If you'd just stayed out of it you'd still be ok." A bit more of her silken soul shredded. "I'm sorry, Jounouchi. I'm sorry." All her fault, she was so stupid. "All my fault and I can only sit around and cry about it!" Mai shook her head at herself – a sharp, fierce gesture, as though trying to shake the fog surrounding her senses away. Her hands curled into fists, those once perfect nails scraping jaggedly against the pavement. It was funny how little she cared in that moment – the normal Mai, had she seen the state that her poor manicure had fallen into, would have been horrified. "I'm sorry, Jou." Honestly, she was being pathetic.

Life, Mai had always thought, was like riding a tiger bareback – either you showed it who was boss or else it would throw you down and then maul you. And funny, she'd always thought that she knew how to do that: knew how to grab the reins and stamp some submission into that tiger.

When had the tiger gotten her in its teeth? That wasn't supposed to be how things happened.

" I'm being useless," she muttered, her mouth twisting as she looked to the side for a moment, as though gathering the strength to look back into Jounouchi's empty eyes. When she did her expression crumpled again; aluminum cans in a crusher. The sight of those empty eyes made her want to do something, only she didn't know what. Recklessly, she promised anyway. "I'll get you back, Jou – just wait a little while, I swear I'll get you back. I'm sorry, but I'll get you back and then you can yell at me." She'd staggered to her feet as she was speaking, promising people who couldn't hear that she'd do things that she didn't know how to do. And then the hopelessness of the situation hit her like a knife blade and she felt as though someone had stuck a fork in her stomach and were twining her guts around the prongs as though they were spaghetti. What was she doing? She covered her eyes with a shaking hand and said it out loud. Maybe that would help.

"I don't know what to do. I just don't."

Life had seemed so much less complicated just a few moments ago because a few moments ago she'd been able to pretend to herself that she was winning.

She wasn't.

"Always making things more complicated," she whispered half-heartedly, and she wasn't even really sure anymore if she was talking to Jounouchi or herself. "Stupid. Stupid, idiotic, thickheaded, stubborn, arrogant, incorrigible-"

Mai let her hand drop back to her side and looked back down at the limp body on the ground. How many people had she done this to now? Why hadn't she cared before? There really was something wrong with her.

She laughed a little then bit her lip quickly. Somehow, it seemed morbidly appropriate that her lipstick tonight was the color of blood. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked his body. Unsurprisingly, he made no answer. Still, him lying there, motionless and not answering, seemed for some reason like the proverbial last straw. "Well?" she asked, the volume of her voice climbing. "You're the one who started this stupid thing, what am I supposed to do? Don't you dare do this to me! Don't you dare just show up and oops, you lost and now Mai has to figure it out-"

She bit her lip, fiercely and suddenly, to keep herself from screaming and then shook her head until her wet, reckless curls shivered all around her body, the hopelessness of everything rising up around her like an incoming tide.

"Why do you even care?" she demanded harshly. "Why do you keep on coming after me, you just keep on getting hurt, you big doofus, why can't you just go somewhere nice and safe and live out a nice, happy life, huh?"

This time Jou did answer.

Aww, Mai, he groaned in her head.

He looked pathetic, just lying there in the rain. Her hands curled into fists again, clenching so tight that she almost thought that her nails might cut into her palms. "I guess I can do something about that," she muttered, then picked him up as best she could and dragged him over to the fence, propping him up against it. And couldn't decide if that was better or worse.

"I bet Yuugi's looking for you," she said to Jou – empty prattle, as though that could bring him back. He didn't respond. Her duel disk hung heavy and cumbersome on her wrist – it was harder to function with it on. It did, however, make her think of her fallen cards and so just to give herself something to do she went and collected them; forsaken cards, forgotten at the end of the battle. She ran her fingers lightly over the images, brushing the rain off as she caressed the slick, laminated paper before slipping them back into her deck. Almost involuntarily her eyes strayed back to the other blonde figure in the empty lot. And there she stood, undecided, as the wind made the wet strands of her hair curl around her face and stick to her skin. Impatiently she grabbed them off, flicked her hair back over her shoulder in a move so familiar that it was automatic, one that helped disguise the fact that her hands were shaking.

"I don't even know where I'd start looking," she whispered. "I don't. Where should I even start?" And then she realized, duh. Maybe, just possibly, there was something to this whole thinking out loud thing, even if she did feel fairly stupid now for not having thought of it earlier. She might not know where Jou's soul was being held, but Dartz would. And, all of a sudden, she knew what to do. She had to go and find him, she had to use his own lousy seal against him and if he didn't tell her what she needed to know then… then she'd suck his soul out with his own stupid card and move on to the next person. Raphael, she supposed that would be.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and a step towards the abandoned motorcycle, this new plan churning and still forming in her head, and then paused and looked over her shoulder again. Her eyes went down to the duel disk strapped to Jou's wrist and she hesitated. Still, she did know that the Legendary Dragon cards were just about the only thing that had any kind of power over the Orichalcos and she knew that Jounouchi had one…. She almost visibly wavered.

Stupid to be considering this – she didn't even know how to use the idiotic little thing.

Then again, a little voice in her head argued, Jou never really seemed to know how either and he seemed to do all right with it. Play the dragon, play something else and combine the two and something happens. What's to understand?

The voice, Mai had to admit, made an excellent point, and so after a few more moments of indecision she caved in and walked back over to Jou, her heels clicking sharply on the pavement. It was a very decisive sound; that was one of the reasons that she'd always loved boots such as this.

Her against the world, it seemed to be now. That was all right, she could take on the world.

"I need to borrow Haermos for a little while," she told Jou as she began shuffling through his deck with a practiced motion. "You can have it back after and then yell at me for that too, but I might need it right now and I'd rather be prepared." There was the card – quickly she slipped it from the deck and then slid the rest of his cards home again. She took her own deck out of her disk and laid the dragon, after a moment of hesitation, with care on top of her cards. "Just for a little while." And then she made the mistake of looking back up at his face, and suddenly she wanted to start crying again.

Not, of course, that she was going to.

Mai bit her lip to hold in the tears and then leaned in and brushed a kiss against Jounouchi's cheek. It was, perhaps, a poor way to thank him for snapping her out of whatever she'd been thrown into (then again, so was sucking his soul out) but it was the best that she could think of at the moment – Mai was never free with kisses, be they as innocent as a brush against the cheek or not. "Just hang on for a little while; I swear I'll get your soul back." And she was on her feet again, at the motorcycle, swinging her leg over the seat and kicking the engine into roaring, thundering, yowling life.

Mai looked back over at Jou again as the motorcycle snarled under her like a caged animal. "Just a little while longer and I'll get you back, I swear." Her eyes wandered over to the other body in the lot – and even though it had been his own dumb fault (Valon was an idiot too – why couldn't these people just accept that she could look after herself? And then she could hear him laughing in her head as well, and beginning to joke with Jou about wasn't it just funny that she thought herself so independent…) it had, in a way, been her fault as well – it had been a fight over her, both of them trying to protect her whether she wanted it or not….

"Why couldn't you just have left me alone?" she whispered between clenched teeth.

Aw, Mai, he chuckled. Mai's mouth twisted and then she changed her grip, twisted it and lifted her feet, and suddenly she was racing down the street – without a helmet, in the rain – and her words floated back to the two forms in the parking lot like feathers on the breeze.

Wait for me, just a little longer, I promise.

I promise.

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