Barrier

The Normal Life of Yami X

Hello there! Time for the first chapter! Warning: If you beg me to update soon or even mention the word update in your review, it will make me angry. I will update every other week. No more and no less.

Please review if you find you enjoy this.

I do NOT own YuGiOh!

Chapter 1:

The Normal Life of Yami X.

Yami bent down slowly, not wanting to get up and drag himself through yet another boring day in his life. He grabbed both of his shoe laces in his hands and tied them in a neat little knot, making sure to tie them tight this time so he wouldn't have to do them up again, which he often did. Somehow, no matter what he seemed to do, his shoe laces always seemed to come untied. As if he needed an addition to his admittedly clumsy nature.

He whipped himself back up, deciding that if he had to go out and face the day he might as well do it with energy. As Anna would used to say (well, sign), "Nothing's worth doing if you can't force yourself to smile while doing it."

Well, what she did say. (Okay, so Yami couldn't hear it, but still.) Anna had been like a mother to Yami- It had been her idea originally that the hospital would keep him instead of putting him in the foster care system and letting him move around from house to house, praying that he might one day find a family generous enough to take him under their loving wing- of course, reminding him constantly that he somehow owed them for taking so much of their precious lives to raise him. No sirree, he'd heard some horror stories of foster parents or adoptive parents treating their children as in-home nannies and workers, and respect without respect in turn was not his cup of tea. He was grateful to Anna for doing that.

He was also grateful to Anna for teaching him what he had to do to stay after she had been gone.

Anna had felt herself growing old- that's the reason she didn't adopt Yami herself in the first place, knowing that she couldn't take care of him the way that she should and balance a job at the same time. So, doing the logical thing, while her mind was still with her, she explained to Yami what was keeping him at the hospital.

"The administrator is only approving your boarding here because you don't know how to speak. Since you're a deaf kid, he doesn't want you to go to a foster home where they'd have to stick you into a private school, because it would be hard as hell finding somebody with that kind of money who wants to adopt," She signed to him, her hands moving furiously as she explained. It was interesting to see her sign, because her mind worked so much faster than her hands could and her body had to desperately try to keep up. "So as long as you don't learn how to completely talk before your eighteenth birthday, and pretend like you don't know how to read lips, you'll stay right here."

Yami had nodded his head, smiling at her. Even though she was sitting in a hospital bed, a patient no different than the ones she had tended for as long as she could remember, she was full of life and energy. She still had hope to fight against old age, but those who tended to her had seen a decline in health recently. She'd begun to grow weaker, and sickness was not as easy to overcome.

Yami had come to visit her every night after school, walking to the other wing of the hospital to spend time with her. She often made jokes about how the tables had turned, because it used to be her going to visit him. She told him stories about how she used to get off work and go straight to the room they had put him in, feed him a bottle and read him a story. That was, until he was two years old and they had realized that he wasn't responding to normal speech. She had been disappointed that her stories hadn't been heard, but that didn't deter her. No, she learned sign language instead and after four months of studying it, she began to pass along the stories that way.