Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters
Title: Conflicted
Romance: Yuugi x Yami no Yuugi
Word Count: 2,227||Status: Complete
Genre: Romance, Angst||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Yu-Gi-Oh Pairings Challenge 9 & 3/4ths: Wildcard Round: Yuugi x Yami no Yuugi
Timeline: Post canon by several years.
Feedback: All forms eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Summary: Doing the right thing doesn't mean the right thing doesn't hurt, for years after the fact. Yuugi misses Atemu.

Scattered drops of rain made small circles of moisture on the dusty pavement; not nearly enough to call for an umbrella and just enough to wonder if one should've brought one any way, in case it got any worse.

Yuugi wasn't anywhere near any of his umbrellas at the moment, so he simply strolled along, enjoying the tang of the rain in the air. If it got worse, it got worse.

In all truth, he not only wasn't anywhere near his umbrellas, but he couldn't have said where he was in the first place, only that he wasn't in Domino City and he was reasonably certain he wasn't even in Japan. He spent a great deal of his time traveling, exploring the world to his heart's content. There was so much of it out there and the idea of staying in one place simply didn't appeal to him.

Somewhere, deep in the depths of his heart, where he never looked unless he had to, he wondered if he wasn't traveling just to see the world at all. I'm looking for him. It was a thought he'd entertained maybe once a year or so. Twice, if he were being fully honest. Once on the anniversary of the day he assembled the Millennium Puzzle all those years earlier and once again when the day of the Ceremonial Duel rolled around.

I don't need to. I know where he is. He'd seen Atemu cross the threshold himself, assuming his rightful garments as the Pharaoh, going to stand with those he loved, entering the afterlife denied to him for three thousand years. Yet that didn't stop the faint sense buried deep in his soul that if he just looked long enough, in the right way, in the right place, he'd find him again.

Everyone had a place to go. Atemu's place was in the afterlife. As much as it stabbed into his soul to send him on his way, Yuugi knew it was also the right thing to do. It didn't change how much he missed him. Or that he wished sometimes, in the darkest depths of night when no one was there to hear him think or dream, that Atemu could have a place in this world all his own.

Yuugi knew there were Gods. He'd wielded one himself. But whether those Gods could answer his wish, he didn't know. If there were other Gods, he didn't know if they could either. Or would if they could. Resurrection wasn't for everyone.

He refused to let himself dwell on it too much, though. He liked traveling and meeting new people and helping them out when he could too much to get sad over the past.

He still looked, though. It wasn't something he thought about, but just something he did, much as he breathed or his heart beat. He wandered and he talked to people and he looked here and there and never saw anyone that he knew like he knew his own reflection.

Sometimes, when he called his friends to see how they were doing, he thought they suspected what lurked in the back of his thoughts. Anzu never spoke of Atemu, but he thought she had her own reasons for that. He would have to make time to go see her soon. And Jounouchi would be entering one of Kaiba's latest tournaments, something to celebrate the opening of Duel Academia. He'd have to go there and cheer him on.

Jounouchi knew something of it, Yuugi didn't doubt that. There was much more behind those brown eyes than he let on to anyone. But he would say nothing, so long as Yuugi didn't.

He couldn't always be sure of the others. Almost no one spoke of those days anymore. It wasn't because they didn't like them; he would've known that, he thought. But more as if talking about them would hurt just a little more than anyone wanted to deal with.

He could relate. Thinking about Atemu did hurt, in a soft, sweet, wonderful way that he couldn't get enough of and wished would stop all at the same time.

A sharp bolt of lighting split the sky in half, and Yuugi's thoughts along with it. "Maybe I should find someplace dry," he murmured, looking around for anywhere that looked like a useful bolthole. Traveling without checking a weather report suddenly didn't seem all that appealing.

Not that far up the road he spied an opening in the hedges that lined both sides. It looked like the opening to a small park and that meant trees of some kind, or maybe a gazebo. A place where he could sit out of the rain until it passed, if nothing else.

Yuugi hurried along even as the rain started to fall in earnest, thick fat drops that made him glad he'd protected his deck and duel disk, if not himself, from the elements. He could get warm and dry much easier than they could.

He was right; the opening led to a park, though it was a little larger than he'd thought. A pebbled path wound around it, branching off here and there, and one of those paths led to a covered seat. A dozen hurried steps brought him there and once he drew close enough, he saw something he'd missed before: or someone.

Whoever it was didn't have an umbrella either, and sat with his or her back to Yuugi, staring off at something Yuugi couldn't identify. Yuugi carefully stepped over.

"Hello." He smiled as he spoke, hoping that whoever it was spoke Japanese. He knew some English, but it wasn't his best language by any means, but other than that, he knew he'd have to resort to hand signals.

"Hello." The other's voice rang oddly familiar, though Yuugi couldn't place it offhand. He even thought he'd heard the accent before. "I'm just here to stay out of the rain."

Yuugi laughed, moving closer so he could sit down. "So am I. I don't have an umbrella with me."

"Neither do I." The other glanced over his shoulder, but all Yuugi could catch a glimpse of before he looked away again was a pair of dark red eyes.

I don't think I've seen eyes like that before. Granted, his own were more than a little unusual, but still, red topped violet where rarity was concerned. "Mutou Yuugi."

The other shifted around and Yuugi glanced up, this time getting a good look at his face. The world dropped out from underneath him and he struggled not to fall off the seat. His mouth worked, but nothing coherent came from it.

"Is something wrong?" The other leaned forward, frowning a trifle. "Are you all right?"

Yuugi swallowed a little, then forced himself to try to stay calm. It wasn't easy. "You look like someone I know." He didn't think he'd said anything that sounded so stupid to his ears in his entire life.

After all the years he'd spent looking, whether he'd truly admitted to himself that was what he was doing, he'd found someone who could've been Atemu's own twin. Not a perfect match; the eyes came to mind right away, but the hair (so much like his own and how could two people have hair like that?) and the attitude, confidence given flesh...

"I do?" The other tilted his head back, a slightly amused lift to one lip. "I was about to say the same thing. Only you look like me."

Yuugi drew in a breath and shook his head. It was a coincidence. What else could it be? Even if Atemu were reincarnated, then he'd be a child, not the adult who sat across from him now.

"Something like that, I guess." He recognized the accent now: Japanese, with a faint hint of Arabic to it. It was how the Ishtars spoke, and how he'd always wondered if Atemu would speak, if he could do so without using Yuugi's body. "But he's been gone a long time."

The other's eyes softened. "I'm sorry." Words that anyone might've used to express sympathy for a stranger, but the way they sounded dug more into Yuugi's heart than anything else could have.

"No, it's all right. He wanted to go." At least that sounded better than anything else he might've said. "He'd done everything he could." He had to say something else. Something that didn't remind him so much of everything. Only thinking about Atemu was almost inevitable now.

He turned his attention to the rain outside, listening to it patter against the shelter overhead. "I hope this doesn't last too much longer."

"Important places to go?"

"Sort of." Yuugi shrugged, not sure at all of his reasons. He'd said it more to say something than because he wanted it to stop soon. "I should get in touch with some of my friends, anyway. It's been a while."

He didn't know what he'd tell them if he did right now. Tell them he'd somehow, unexpectedly, met Atemu's doppleganger? Who even sounded much like Atemu might have? Whose name he hadn't even heard if it had been given? And he wasn't sure if he wanted to, because if it was anything that wasn't Atemu, he didn't know what he'd think or do, and if it was, he knew even less.

"Is there something wrong?" Yuugi caught sight of those strange eyes looking at him and he did his best not to shift away. "You look a little weirded out."

"I wasn't ever expecting to see him again." Yuugi spoke without thinking. "I know you're not him, but I've never seen anyone else that looked like he did, outside of a mirror." He hesitated. "Except your eyes. His looked more like mine." Though had that been because they'd shared a body? He couldn't remember what Atemu's eyes looked like in his own form.

He wondered if he should worry about that more than he did. And how much of that memory was influenced by living in his body, anyway? Maybe he'd never know.

"You two were close, weren't you?"

A thousand thoughts shot through Yuugi's mind, of bullies humbled, of friends made, sometimes those bullies becoming those same friends, of games won and bonds forged, of duels fought and won and lost, of an endless maze and hot sands...

"You could almost say we were as close as if we were the same person." The other him. Yuugi set his jaw. He was the only Yuugi. Atemu'd said so himself.

"I've never lost anyone like that. But it was good to have him, wasn't it?" From the way the question sounded, he didn't expect an answer. Yuugi gave him one anyway.

"I wouldn't be who I am now without him. Doesn't mean I don't miss him, though. I'll always miss him." How could he not miss the other part of himself? The one person who understood him down to his core?

Silence from the other for a few moments that stretched out forever. "If he was with you once, then he is now. He always will be. Remembering people keeps them close, no matter what. And there's always the chance you'll see him again someday, for real."

Maybe in the afterlife. He didn't say it out loud. He didn't want to hurt this person, who was only trying to help. "It'll be a long time before I do, I think. A very long time."

He turned just enough to see the other smiling at him. "Imagine everything you'll have to tell him then."

It wasn't Atemu's smile. Yuugi thought he liked that. He found himself smiling back. "I already have a lot I could tell him. But I want more." So much hovered on the edge of happening. Anzu's performance. Jounouchi's dueling. Honda's adventures in the police force. Otogi and Kaiba's upcoming merger. Atemu would want to know it all one day and Yuugi knew he'd have to tell him.

He did miss Atemu. He always would. But as much as he missed him, he still remembered him, kept him close in his heart.

He was the Nameless Pharaoh for too long. Forgotten from everywhere. That won't happen with me. It was a promise he would do all within his power to keep.

"Look, the rain's stopping." The other gestured outward and Yuugi looked to see he was right. "Well, I have some things to take care of. It was nice meeting you."

"Same here." Yuugi started to ask the other's name and closed his mouth. He still didn't want to know. But one thing remained unchanged: he knew that he missed Atemu and that it wasn't wrong to do so.

And he's right. It's not like I'll never see him again. I just have to wait about sixty or seventy years.

"Hey...thanks." Yuugi called after the other. He wasn't sure of what he thanked the other for, but he wanted to say it anyway.

"Any time, Yuugi." The smile still wasn't Atemu's and neither were the eyes, but for one moment, Yuugi thought he caught a whiff of sun-drenched sands and a presence as familiar as his own heartbeat.

Then the stranger turned a corner and vanished out of Yuugi's sight. Yuugi started to take a step after him, then stopped. Another story I'll tell Atemu one day. And he went on his way.

The End