Theme: 080 - In the moonlight; for 100_chances
Genre: Angst/introspective
Rating: G
Pairings: Atemu/Yugi implied
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Summary:Someday, Yugi will be glad he's gone, and that hurts him worst of all.

The ceremonial battle itself is the only thing they've talked about. In the middle of the night, sitting on the bed in the glow of the moonlight, they have discussed it countless times, as if the sting might fade if they talk about it enough. What will happen, when it will happen, what it will be like. But in all that time, as the weeks turned to days and the days turned to hours, neither of them spoke a single word about what will happen after it.

Yugi will live without him. That's what will happen.

Of course, Atemu thinks as he sits awake at night, he wants Yugi to survive the loss. To desire anything else would be dishonorable, immature, wrong. Yet it still hurts, knowing they have no time left; because Yugi will win the final battle when the sun arises. Atemu has known that from the beginning.

And when he is gone, Yugi will keep living.

He'll keep smiling.

He'll keep laughing.

He'll fall in love.

He'll grow up and graduate and have a career and a family.

He'll move on.

And Atemu wonders if someday Yugi will look back on their time as just another scene from his life. Nothing special, nothing important. Just a long-ago memory among hundreds of others.

He wonders if Yugi will forget him. If someday his partner will be able to go for days or weeks or even months without thinking about him. If the memories that feel so razor sharp now will someday blur in Yugi's mind, into things that resemble dreams more than reality, until he believes that maybe they never really happened at all.

Fifty years from now, will he even care about that strange puzzle? Will he still mourn a man who was already dead when he met him? Will he ever think I miss you or will he be happy, deep down, that those surreal days are nothing but memories now?

And it terrifies Atemu, to face the truth. To face that this world, this world that is not his, will go on without him. And that Yugi, who is also not his, will not be irreparably wounded by his loss.

Everything he knows, everything he loves, doesn't need him. Just as it did three thousand years before, his death will be quiet and unrecorded, his legacy lost again, this time forever. Someday even Yugi will think of him as nothing more than a memory.

Someday, when he realizes all the things in life he wouldn't have had if he were still playing host to a spirit, Yugi will be glad he's gone.

That hurts him worst of all.

X - X - X

Notes: Yay, leap-year post!

I wanted to write something very solemn and numb for this theme. I know the whole Yami's-thoughts-before-the-ceremonial-battle theme has been done to death (by me as well), I still wanted to attack it from another, quieter angle. I hope you liked it!