This is a separate series of one-shots dedicated to exploring the ways that Atem might have remained in Yugi's life in tiny ways.

I'm not sure how many or few there will be so... I hope you can enjoy whatever I do post!

Everything will be rated T+ for instances of swearing and possibly adult situations :O (I doubt it even requires the rating but whatevs 8D). Always assume Puzzleshipping in whatever capacity pleases you!

Thanks for Reading!

Summary: Because sometimes you have to hear it from someone who's been there.

The Empath

Yugi stared at the type print on the script, scrutinizing the highlighted words. The paper was crimped at the bottom where he'd been clutching it for the past week. He had started hearing the line in his dreams.

"Touch up his make-up, he looks blotchy."

The voice seemed to come from a distance, like it was passing through water. He barely registered the command, and completely missed that the pronoun was referencing him until there was a sponge dusting his cheeks. He sneezed from the compact powder tickling his nose. There was bustling all around him, and he imagined himself to be a goldfish – a very bewildered, fatigued goldfish.

"All right, clear the set."

The scurrying suddenly ceased and the dull roar of commotion turned into a vigilant hum. All eyes trained on him again.

"Okay Mr. Mutou, you've got this. Remember, fire!" The director was standing squarely beside the large camera, a curled script nearly crumpled in his grip. Only the draining of blood from his knuckles belied the frustration of the man in the sunglasses and sheepdog haircut.

Yugi shuffled and after an awkward pause nodded jerkily. The director believed for all his worth that "fire" was a stage direction with all the clarity of crystal, and Yugi just couldn't shatter the illusion. A girl dashed past him and then the sheet was gone from his hand and he was alone in the spotlight again.

"You got this Yug'!"

"C'mon Yugi!"

He squinted, desperately wishing that he could see his friends lined up against the back wall, banished behind the demarcation line set by the director and a fortuitously errant extension cord half an hour before.

He sighed heavily and steeled his nerves. There was a click and then a rushed "Take 23, Rolling."

His shoulders squared and he repositioned his feet stiffly. He raised his chin the way they'd commanded and narrowed his gaze at the lens. To the room, he appeared cool and confident; personally, he felt a bit like a clown.

In the darkened rear of the sound stage, Jou's nostrils flared as he crossed his fingers. He had already botched two takes by talking after the director had called "action". He had finally convinced Anzu that she didn't need to cover his mouth to keep him silent. It also helped that Honda would suplex him if he didn't keep his trap shut.

The hush intensified and then exploded with a crisp, "Action!"

"Think you've got what it takes to challenge the King of Games?"

Really it was an incredibly simple line. This endorsement was just a thinly-veiled attempt for the tournament moderators to cash-in on the location of their final rounds. Between Kaiba Corp. and Yugi Mutou, the tournament was paying for itself. Yugi just thought it'd be nice for grandpa to afford that renovation he'd been lusting after.

"Cut!"

He tensed as he waited for the gavel. The last 10 repetitions had all been deemed unacceptable for one reason or another; his favorite explanation so far had referenced the sun reflecting off the splash caused by leaping dolphins.

The director stepped into the outer circle of light created by crossing spotlights. "Okay Mr. Mutou that was much better."

Yugi sighed in relief.

"…But you seem wishy washy! Where's that charisma from all those early interviews eh?" The man's tone was perfectly patient; it wasn't even an attack, to be fair. He almost sounded conversational.

The blood drained from Yugi's face and the world slowed.

Jou kicked off the wall and nearly tripped over the extension cord when Honda yanked him back by his hood. "OI! What was wrong with that!? It was perfect!"

Honda put the blonde in a headlock, speaking with clenched teeth. "Stop making a scene, it's hard enough without you butting in!"

"The guy's got no taste!"

"Yugi?"

Their routine was cut short by Anzu's inquisitive tone. They looked up in time to see Yugi striding off the set. There was a curious look on his face; it was a tie between concentration and hysteria.

"Mr. Mutou, please go—"

"I just need five minutes." His nerves jumped and sailed along the teetering cadence of his request.

"Can we try it once mo—"

"I need five minutes."

The studio went silent for the first time in two hours and Honda and Jou's jaws unhinged. Anzu was pulling away from the wall with one arm out, as if it would stop him. She was one foot over the cord when a tug on her wrist halted her.

"Keep them in line. I'll go." The kind voice made even the obvious suggestion that Honda and Jou were a circus act sound sweet. Anzu couldn't find grounds to argue with Ryou and he was 10 feet away before she thought to nod.

The door into the empty dressing room swung out behind Yugi, and Ryou caught it before it shut again. Then he was in the room and shutting it behind him and fumbling for the sliding lock. He was quiet as he watched Yugi cautiously. His friend stood frozen before the mirror, head down, like a trapped animal.

And then, bedlam.

Yugi's arms careened as he slammed a fist into the counter on the vanity. Cologne hit the floor and a bottle shattered; the stool leaned off-kilter and the make-up stand rocked dangerously. Then a hand cut across its surface like a swinging blade and flowers, soda bottles and brushes fell to the floor. For his part, Ryou did not interrupt as Yugi parted with better sense.

But it was hard, when his friend's shouts were full of woe and the familiar tones of a heart strained too much.

The ruckus diminished into harsh breathing.

"I don't…"

Ryou stepped in time with Yugi's first words, waiting at arm's length. He did not have to guess what had demolished the make-up vanity, but Yugi very much needed to say it out loud, for his own sanity.

"He always did this stuff."

Ryou's heart squeezed even as his face remained placid and patient. His fingers itched to offer a comforting gesture, but he knew better than to interrupt the catharsis.

"He was the one who handled the victory speeches and press junkets and the pictures." Yugi fell back heavily against the now-still vanity, barely registering as Ryou bent around him to right the stool and guide him to a seat. "I just watched. He had enough showmanship for both of us." One hand massaged his eyes, but he was just shielding his shame. Ryou would hear the tears in his voice anyway.

Ryou nodded, even though Yugi was not looking, and waited still.

Yugi dragged his pressed fingers down his face, smearing tears against his skin, and rubbed his mouth. He sniffed, feeling his eyes cloud with the dull sting of more tears, and spoke around the thick lump in his throat.

"There's just so much stuff he didn't tell me."

And then he shook his head and said no more, because there was nothing he could say that would eclipse that truth.

He lived a very happy life. They all did really, and he did not need to be reminded. But that would never change the fact that he was never going to see his best friend again, and that no time on Earth with him would have been enough. And he cried now because life moved so quickly that he had the luxury of forgetting this hard truth amongst the rigmarole of fond memories and everyday life. It was in the few still moments, in the difficult times and the hush of a Sunday afternoon that it occurred to him that he was never going to see him again.

He did not notice that Ryou had knelt in front of him until his soft voice broke the silence.

"The day after my mom and Amane died, I tried to do the laundry. I threw a liter of bleach and some detergent into the machine with my shirts and dad's ties. I ruined everything except my one white t-shirt."

Yugi looked up, a tear tracking down his cheeks as he looked at Ryou with muted surprise. He was kneeling, his hands resting in his lap with his fingers laced and his thumbs touching at their ends. His voice was very matter-of-fact, as if he were reciting the weather.

"Dad didn't know what to do with himself. He slept until noon and forgot to call in sick. I think a coworker visited the house and notified his job, because they didn't fire him. I tried to cook for us." Then a rueful chuckle bubbled in his throat and he shook his head. "I thought I should make something my mom had always cooked. I tried making her hayashi rice for dinner sometime that week…. I don't remember much of that first week, but I remember sitting at the table with my dad that night and focusing on not spitting out the rice. The demi-glace was horrible, but we stomached it. I think we thought it would be an insult to my mom's memory to not savor it."

Yugi's eyes turned glassy again as he saw his pain mirrored back at him in the calm reflecting pool of Ryou's memory.

It was usually enough to find sanctuary in his friends. They had all lost a friend in Atem, and they all tried to believe that that was comfort enough. Nobody, not even Yugi, could acknowledge that his loss and everyone else's that day were worlds apart.

He had never realized that Ryou had walked this road before him. He never spoke about his departed mother and younger sister; it was barely more than heresay that they had even passed away and had not simply spirited away to another place like Jou's mother and sister. But here he was, offering a hand to pull Yugi up from one of the many stumbles he was bound to take. He had thought once that he was tripping blindly through the dark – who of them had known a loss like this? To think, that Ryou had been there the whole time, patient and reticent, knowing.

He coughed, and his voice rasped out a question he had wondered at more times than he'd ever remember; he had not believed anyone would know the answer. "Does it get better?"

Ryou cocked his head thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Well it won't get worse than this commercial shoot."

Yugi laughed and dragged his hand across his eyes. "Well thank god for that."

"And to be honest, I make a pretty good plate of hayashi rice now."

Finally, Ryou laid a comforting hand on his forearm and Yugi felt in it the words Ryou had neglected to say.

It was never going to be easy to live without Atem. There were going to be moments for the rest of his life where he regretted everything he hadn't done or said; he would never stop having experiences he wanted to share with the dead man. He would struggle to learn how to live without him, because he had no alternative. But then, if it were easy, could he have truly called Atem his friend?

Ryou, most of all, understood that it was not about expecting things to get better, to hope that the pain would lift and that he'd be left with a blissful cloud of happy memories that would snuff out his regrets. It was all he could expect to just keep living and to live despite his death, instead of under it, and to know that it was his right to be happy even if his friend was gone. It was some consolation knowing that his friend was finally at rest.

Ryou pulled his hand back and planted it on the ground, pushing himself up. "So I can't lie, I'm pretty hungry. Think you can go out there and channel Atem so we can be finished and go eat?"

Yugi snorted and chuckled. Well, nobody would be able to "channel" the Pharaoh better than he, right?

Breathing deeply, he paused – and then he struck a pose and jabbed his finger into Ryou's shoulder. "Think you've got what it takes to challenge the King of Games!?"

Despite the hurt he felt in the moments that he realized the man was dead, he knew better than to think he was gone.

"See? You sound more like him already!"

And they laughed as they righted the mess.

Thanks for reading :) Until next time!