Barrier

Greetings, readers. This is the release of the long anticipated Barrier! This will update bi-weekly, so every two Tuesdays. The chapters will be from 6,000-8,000 words in length. There will be ten. The final word count for only the things I have typed in the document is somewhere around 72,000, just to let you know what you're getting into.

I would like to dedicate this to the fine Kafae-Latte of DA, because she was my inspiration for this fic. I have a link to her original website up on my fanfiction profile, she draws comics. PLEASE if you're grateful for this story, go and take the time to check it out. Or, you could go follow her on DA. OR BOTH!

I have two people who have read/are reading this to be my basic betas. Their usernames on wattpad are ShatteredPrism and Jazzymin97. Shout out to them, too!

I do NOT own YuGiOh!, I do not own the characters except for technically Anna, who I just stuck in because she doesn't appear much and I couldn't think of anyone who would have fit. I own the plot, please don't steal it.

Prologue: The Start of A Life Abandoned

Screams pierced through the air as the woman, surrounded by doctors in the cold and unfamiliar room, pushed. She gave a shaky intake of breath, feeling like she would faint without the much-needed air, and pushed again, letting another scream tear out of her lungs as pain echoed through her. Her own strangled sound reached her ears and she felt a tear slowly trail down her face. This was not how she had imagined giving birth would be; clarity was not as sharp as people made it out. The haze of pain made everything seem unrealistic.

"Come on, you're almost there." One of the nurses said, sympathy shining in her eyes. She was an elderly woman, and you could tell by the gentle way she reached out and grasped the hand now popping veins on the railing that she had been in this same position many years ago. She comfortingly stroked a thumb down the side of the woman's hand, eyes darting up to hold the other's.

The woman let out one final groan of pain as she pushed harder than she had before, feeling the worst wave crest and then subside, blinding her sight with white. She slumped, not having realized that she arched in the first place, and her eyes shut tightly against the knowledge that it was done. She let out a shaky sigh of relief, panting harshly to catch her breath. The nurse beside her made little comforting sounds as her child began to wail, and the doctor announced in a flat voice that it was male. Not that she could find it in her to care for the gender of the baby.

The doctors already knew that the woman had chosen to leave her baby boy behind. In fact, the doctors knew the woman herself. She was famous among many, a movie star who had been out of commission for the past six months. When she found out she was pregnant, she immediately went into hiding. The only people who knew were the father, (who had suggested that she leave the baby) and her doctor. She would have kept it, if it hadn't been for... Well...

Being the son of an actress could be stressful. All the cameras in your face and all the people pulling you this way and that constantly, as if you were some wind up toy to be admired and then tossed aside and forgotten... It would in no way suit a young, developing boy. Besides that, the father was not ready to take on a child, much less one like him. Because, you see, these were not the real reasons she was leaving her child behind. She had convinced herself of her plan for the greater good of the child simply to sleep at night.

As soon as she had read positive on her test, her doctor had ordered several tests about the baby to be run. One of them, a test of the fluid surrounding the baby, came back just a little off. They knew that something was going to be wrong with her baby, they just didn't know what. So, she had told the father.

Almost immediately, the suggestion of putting him up for adoption came up. She had no way to care for a child and foster her career, she couldn't have a child with special needs. Not only that, but to put a child through not only having a pair of famous actors as parents but having a disability as well? Some people would do what they knew was right- Stay with the child and find a way to work it out for better or for worse, but... She had so many obligations in life, forgotten contraception once was not going to ruin everything.

So, she'd decided to give the baby to the hospital. She had been eager to get it over with and even induced her own labor a month early, knowing that the chances her baby would be harmed from it were there, if minimal. Now, it was finally over, and she was ready to just relax a couple of days and then get out of here. She had to hit the gym now if she had any hope of reviving her career in three months- nobody would suspect that she was pregnant in the first place. Everything would go just as she had planned.

The screaming of a child in the background was hurting her head- the room seemed too bright and the atmosphere seemed much too dark for bringing something beautiful into the world. She slowly sat up on her elbows to glimpse the doctors pressing the baby's ink-stained feet to a sheet of flimsy white paper, his birth certificate. One of the doctors leaned down when the main one had finished, writing down the date and time that the event took place. She watched as the writhing baby was held tight against the nurse's chest and carried over to the incubator, focusing on the clip clop of the nurse's heels. The sound reminded her of a clock ticking; maybe a clock counting down her time with this burden.

"Would you like to hold him before we take him away?" A doctor asked, knowing the answer but still feeling inclined to ask it.

The woman shook her head no, knowing that if she did the whole thing would seem much, much too real. The doctor shifted uncomfortably, unsure of what to do next. There were a couple more questions that were standard for an adoption to ask, but he didn't want to ask if he already knew the answer and she was looking so dead inside about it. He shifted again, giving a deep sigh. His job was his job, after all.

The sound of rain began on the roof, the soft pitter-patter giving the woman something else to focus on other than the pain in her head. The baby had just stopped crying, and she had already began to categorize this in her head as a fading memory- a moment of frustration not to be revisited. The clash of thunder would have caused her to jump had she cared enough at the moment to do so.

"Do you have any specifications about where the baby should be placed?" The doctor asked, his brows furrowing as he gave a small frown. She sighed.

"No." She said softly, not even bothering to open her eyes. There was the soft scrawl of pencil across paper as the doctor marked the form.

"Would you like to pick out a name for the child, understanding that the adopting family may change it?" He asked. At this, the woman paused.

"Let the nurse." She said, gesturing to the woman in her mid-50s who had held her hand through the pain. The woman's, Anna's, eyes widened slightly before a small smile appeared on her wrinkled face. It was clear that she had smiled many times through the years. "It won't matter in the long run, but she really helped me out."

The doctor turned to the nurse with slightly raised eyebrows, the silent question clear by his posture, the way he was holding himself as if anticipating the answer. He knew that Anna had been upset at her own misfortune of only having two children before her body was too weak, and he'd seen the longing looks she'd given the other babies in the nursery. Maybe, even if it brought Anna only a glimpse of happiness to name the young man, something good could come out of this.

Anna's lips pursed in the most curious way as she looked at the young boy. "Yami seems to suit him." She said, picking him up in her arms. A glance at the mother proved that she was already asleep, her body spent from the five hours of labor it had taken to finally push Yami out. She turned to the doctor with a small, mischievous smile on her face. "Are there any laws against us keeping him at the hospital, at least until we know what his handicap is?"

Chapter 1 will be out sometime today ^_^ I'm not gonna leave you with just the prologue~