Disclaimer:Unrestrictedly not mine.

A/N: Written for DragonDancer, who asked me to write a ficlet based on the Savage Garden song 'You Can Still Be Free'. This was a long time in coming, for one reason and another, but I finally made good on my commitment. Now to do the same for all the other fics I owe various people. Narf.

You Can Still Be Free

© Scribbler, November 2011

"I would sacrifice my place in the afterlife to keep you safe," Atem whispered into Yuugi's ear.

Yuugi held him tighter. Atem heard their friends moving and talking below the platform, but for that moment there was only himself and Yuugi. It wasn't a moment of romance or profound insight. It wasn't even a moment full of sudden understanding, or realising just exactly what they were about to lose. Months of inhabiting each other had come to this one inevitability: that their time together had to end. Atem committed what every one of his senses was telling him: the smell of Yuugi's hair, the grip of his arms, and the sound of him swallowing compulsively as he tried not to cry. Each of them clung to the other in different ways.

And then let go.

Atem stepped through the doors, over the threshold, into the unknown. His sandals made no noise. His body was dust – ripped to shreds by magic thousands of years earlier. The one he had shared recently stood behind him, watching him go. Yuugi would go on to great things. He didn't believe it yet, but Atem knew it.

This form was smoke. Once, he was a king and living god, avatar of the greater gods. Now he was nobody.

No-body.

No body.

No. Body.

No …

Yami watched Yuugi sleep. Curled under the hospital bedclothes, he looked impossibly small. Every so often he would shiver as if he was cold, even though the room was stiflingly hot. Hesitantly, even though he knew what would happen, Yami stretched out a hand. He rested it against one lumpish shoulder – and passed right through.

His expression didn't change. He whipped his hand back, closed his eyes for a moment, and then went back to his guardianship. He didn't even realise when the hand cupped his elbow, and the other did too, as if he, too, was cold.

The spirit watched over the one who had freed him. He felt some strange kinship with the boy. Was this appearance related to that? Was he a reflection of the goodness burning in this boy's soul? If he was a reflection, then he was a perverted one. An opposite. Something other.

The spirit only had to think of darkness for it to appear. He only had to judge someone inadequate for dark magic to crack them open like a nut, consume their kernel and leave them a drooling empty shell.

The boy who had freed him was alien to darkness; it shrivelled and fled from him. The spirit hurt if he got too close, but like a moth to a flame, he kept coming back. The boy's chest burned so brightly. The spirit knew without knowing how that this was where the soul resided. Everything that made this boy who and what he was burned like a beacon, tempting dark things to come and snuff it out. The spirit lived in fear of more than the smaller shadows coming for the boy. He could defeat those, but even if victory was no assured, he would fight until the end to keep the beautifully lethal light alive.

Maybe someday the boy's bright shining goodness would be an end to him.

He could think of worse ways to end.

The Pharaoh stood looking down at his city. It had been a good day for hunting and his men were pleased. Nobles were a fickle bunch; they spoke honeyed words with viper tongues and writhed in complicated knots behind closed door. They praised him to his face, declaring him a god-king who would continue his father's glorious reign, then blasphemed behind his back with questions about his competence and youth. Even today, he had heard talk. Nobles always assumed slaves and servants were deaf and mute, and never dreamed they would repeat things back to unproven boy-kings who had shown them kindness.

The Pharaoh rode home straight-backed, as he always did. He could feel the nobles' eyes on him. He wondered whether someday he would feel a more physical blade there. His bodyguards were impressive and loyal, but he knew the stories of Pharaohs ignored by history for their ridiculously short, embarrassing reigns.

He closed his eyes to banish those thoughts. God-kings were not supposed to worry about such things. God-kings were beyond petty feelings like loneliness, remorse or fear. A wind blew up the side of the cliff, making him shiver.

The prince snuggled in his father's arms like any baby. Akhenemkhanen watched his sleeping son with an unreadable expression. Men were not given to this kind of behaviour. Nurturing babies was female work.

The wet nurse hovered nearby, ready to take back the infant and spirit him off to the women's part of the palace. The cloistered chambers where his Great Wife, lesser wives and concubines lived were a mystery to most men who weren't eunuchs. Akhenemkhanen had not seen his son for weeks. He probably would not see him for several more. He had been given children before, but only daughters and babies who died before their sex could even be established. This was his first living son. The most powerful man in the Two Lands did not want to let the baby go in the superstitious belief that if he did, his son would vanish and never come back.

Ignoring the nurse, he freed one hand from the swaddling cloth and laid it on the baby's head. The prince's skull was warm. It pulsed slightly beneath Akhenemkhanen's hand.

Akhenemkhanen closed his eyes, committing the feel and smell and sound of his son to memory. He had heard the screams of dying men and beautiful music, tasted mud and candied fruits, felt his own bone protruding from his arm in battle and the silken sheen of his Great Wife's hair, plus everything in between. Yet the warmth of his son eclipsed them all.

"I would sacrifice my place in paradise to keep you safe," he murmured into the baby's ear.

Finally he gave back the baby and watched the nurse leave. Akhenemkhanen walked away, over the threshold into his own chambers, and into an unknown future.

Fin.