Revelation [A Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfic]

5. Deserve

All the news at the door

Such a revelry

Well, it's hocked inside of everything you said to me

It was found, what we orphaned

Didn't mention it would serve us picked

Said your love is known, I'm standing up on it

Aren't we married?

Beth/Rest — Bon Iver

When Atem looked upon his wife again, he wondered how he ever could have forgotten her.

Satiah was radiant. Even dulled by grey clouds and city lights, her spiritual form glowed as if she were holding the sun in her heart. She looked perfectly content sitting in her host's apartment, her hands layered neatly on the small table in front of her. She had even dressed her spiritual form in Satsuki's wardrobe; Atem thought it suited her as well as any gown she'd ever worn.

She was smiling, and had been since she stepped onto the plane of the living — as much royalty here as she had been in her first life. When he lowered himself into the seat across from her, she regarded him slowly. The look needled him with the most pleasantly painful feeling, like bleeding a poorly-healed wound.

"You look well," she said. Even her voice carried with it that familiar, curative salt — burning in his heart until all he could feel was the blunt ache of shame. It forced him to look away, over at the bed across the room where his partner lay in a tangled mess of sheets and limbs. His face was tucked against Satsuki's shoulder, his arm thrown loosely over her middle, just as Atem had left them.

"Was it you?" he asked, watching his wife's host draw in and let out deep, steady breaths.

When he looked back, Satiah's smile grew. "Alas. I am only a passenger."

The knife of guilt twisted deeper. "She doesn't know?"

Satiah shook her head.

Atem felt a thousand words rushing up from his heart, but none of them reached his lips. Instead, he simply breathed, "I'm sorry."

The rain blew harder against the window, thrashing in elegant, chaotic waves.

"For what, my love?"

What else could he say? How ashamed he was for letting her walk alone into the next life? For abandoning her to the ceaseless tides of time? For denying her to his closest friends, his dearest companions? No, even this was not enough. There was nothing for which he wasn't sorry, just as there was nothing he could say to make her understand this.

"Atem."

He looked up, first scorched, then warmed by the fire in her eyes.

"I forgive you." Somehow, he knew it was not a lie, but the way her voice thinned spoke infinitely of the pain behind her words. "You have paid your penance. I beg you — do not make yourself suffer needlessly." He jolted when she leaned forward and rested her hand over his. The metaphysical energy sparked like lightning between them. "You deserve happiness as much as anyone."

Suddenly, the dull knife of guilt withdrew itself from his heart. Lightened as he was without it, he still felt incomplete — like his spirit was seeping out through the wound left behind.

"Are you happy?"

His eyes were torn back to the bed again. He thought at first his partner might be looking back at him. Smiling. Waving. Cheerful. Kind. Everything Atem was not. But sleep still embraced him, and would continue to, until Atem saw fit to release him from his soul room.