#ygo stuff

Hello, dear anon! I assume you sent this in after I revealed my participation in @projsakuraygo, which means you've been waiting an awfully long time. I don't know if you're even still watching for this fill, but I hope you are, and I hope you enjoy it. It's set after DSoD, so there's some very vague spoilers in here...but also please understand that I say fck canon, I do what I want to make my little stories work.

42. a kiss on where the sternum ends [dealer’s choice] + Prideshipping

Atem has been “born,” in a manner of speaking, three times. The first, he carries no memories of, having been a perfectly natural birth in which his infant brain was hardly equipped to encode anything more complex than survival instincts. The second, he recalls distantly and with dread, for there are few things worse than the feeling of being completely unmade and unmoored, barely strong enough to have a sense of what the word “I”means. There were days when Atem had been at his weakest that he had questioned if the experience was worth it.

The third, he knows he will remember, and it burns. Perhaps it’s only because the last time was so frigid—perhaps this isn’t actually scalding heat so much as warmth, since it doesn’t hurt. But it is intense, so much so that it’s just as difficult as the first two times to grasp onto a coherent thought.

The warmth is radiating from somewhere in his torso, and as Atem considers raising a hand to brush over the spot (yes, he does seem to have a body this time, not just a mental projection of something resembling limbs), it all floods back.

His story also really made me question - what is the nature of justice? Is it merely that one person believes they’re right so that means other stances are ‘evil’? How do we ensure that we keep our sense of what is right and wrong not tied to our position in society? How about making sure that any need for vengeance doesn’t make our soul unrecognisable, turning (our view of) justice into something where we don’t care about anything other than hurting someone else?

As well, because I like TK Bakura and Atem both, I think it might also have been my first foray into ‘what would it take for them to be able to get along? And how much communication would be involved, regarding apologies and acceptance of guilt and blame where it rightfully belonged?’.

Hello, hello!  Thank you for asking, and thank you for waiting!  I hope you like this; it was harder to write than I thought because I find Jack to be a pain in the butt even though I like him.  But I enjoyed it.

7. a kiss on the back of the hand + Aki and Jack

“So, were you always such a prince charming?” Aki teased, elbowing Jack in the side as Martha left them to settle in as she ducked into the kitchen to make some tea.

“What,” deadpanned Jack.

Aki’s eyes twinkled, even as the rest of her expression seemed far too innocent for how conniving everyone knew she could be when she wanted.  “With Martha,” she clarified.  “I think it’s really sweet.”

“It’s none of your business is what it is,” Jack said, sweeping his coat behind him as he moved into the room and took a seat on the couch, leaning back against the armrest and crossing his legs.  “No one will believe you if you tell them, either.”

Aki just hummed, going to sit in a nearby armchair. “Who would I tell, anyway? Everyone important to you already knows. Martha, Crow, the kids… Yuusei.”

Jack grit his teeth.  She was right, but that didn’t mean he would have to say so.

“I just think it’s a nice side of you.  That’s all,” she said lightly.  The tone was a shield, though.

…Or, maybe not.  When Jack looked at her, fully intending to deploy the sort of glare that used to have staff tripping over themselves to placate him, he saw that the little smile on her lips was reflected in her eyes.

He didn’t think much of it—that’s what he told himself and what he projected to others, especially since Martha took that moment to come back into the room with a tray full of teacups.  From there, the afternoon was a blur of embarrassing childhood stories from his adoptive mother and a flurry of activity playing and Dueling with the kids.  Most of them had the kind of spark behind their amateurish plays that could, with the right motivation, make them into the kinds of Duelists who could change the world someday, too.

When the day had passed, though, and he and Aki were aboard a helicopter back to the heart of Neo Domino, there was nothing to distract him from that conversation.  From the genuine praise from Aki, which was rare, even now, to the way that her eyes had sparkled with happiness when Jack had again given Martha’s hand a kiss before they left…  A part of him wondered if Aki did this on purpose, since Jack knew that she absolutely had it in her to be so cruel, but that wasn’t fair.  She, like Jack, like so many people since the Zero Reverse incident, had used that sort of cruelty-born-of-apathy as a shield against their ruined world.

And both of them, too, had learned how to live without it.  To choose something kinder.

So, once the helicopter landed and he had disembarked, he turned back to offer Aki a hand down.  Instead of letting go after she thanked him, Jack held her hand lightly between them, leaned over, and pressed the barest kiss over the back of her palm.