A Christmas Carol with Kaiba

Yugi's Christmas Past

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. His limbs were being caught up in the darkness. The more he struggled, the tighter they pulled. Bakura was laughing again.

                                                                                        ***

His bedroom had turned into some freak surreal dream, with his bed curtains fluttering about on the cool breeze and Yugi before him in a shaft of light, his tiny, bare feet on his windowsill. The white light almost made him forget that it was one in the morning.

Almost.

"Ghost of Christmas Past." he said.

"Yep!" said Yugi.

Seto would have smiled, he would have laughed—this was all really, really funny. Who knew Yugi would be the type of person to pretend to be an angel on his rival's windowsill? But then again, it was one o'clock in the morning, and Kaiba was not the kind of person that got tipsy and giggling after staying up too late.

Instead, he slapped a hand to his face, both to block out the painful white light and to show his utter exasperation.

"Let me guess, and I'm suppose to be Ebeneezer Scrooge."

"No, you're Seto Kaiba. You're exactly who I came for! Now, come on, get up, we don't have much time."

Seto lifted his legs back onto his bed. "Good night, Yugi." He laid down on his side, facing away from the window. "Close the window on your way out."

"Kaiba!"

"And you better be paying for the electricity you must be burning, because if I find out you've plugged your stupid spotlight into my house--"

Yugi interrupted him with a loud noise of annoyance, which was the closest to a manly grunt that the tiny boy would ever get. Sometimes Seto couldn't believe that a seventeen year old kid who looked like he was as old as Mokuba had showed him up and taken his title. But he was never one to judge on appearance. I mean, look at him. He had taken over his step-father's company at thirteen. Plenty had misjudged him—to their regret.

A small hand clamped around Seto's wrist and, with surprising strength, pulled him back over. What shocked Seto more, though, wasn't the fact that Yugi had the audacity and ability to yank him over like that, but that the bright light seemed to follow Yugi and now filled up the canopy of his four poster bed. The light had left the window. If Seto didn't know better, he'd say the light came from Yugi himself.

The smaller boy's large purple eyes were narrowed in determination.

"Kaiba, you're coming with me, whether you want to or not. I will not let you damn your soul just because you don't believe I'm not a hologram."

"Who said I thought you were a hologram?" said Kaiba faintly, before shaking himself and trying to yank his wrist out of Yugi's grip. He couldn't. The kid had a hand of steel. "What the hell, Muto, this isn't Dickens freaking Christmas Carol, this is real life!"

But Yugi had pulled him out of bed. Seto scrambled to get his feet beneath him before his face mashed into the floor. The King of Games had his eyes to the window. Even when he dug his heels into the floor, Seto still found himself yanked and dragged towards the outside.

"You're not going to seriously pull me out the window." he said. "Come on, Muto! Even you aren't that crazy!"

"I've been endowed with the powers of the Ghost of Christmas Past tonight. You're going to have to trust me."

"This isn't a matter of trust, it's of sanity!" The window was coming closer. Yugi had a foot up on the windowsill. "Damn it, let go!"

"Trust me, Kaiba!"

Then Yugi was leaping over the edge, and Seto along with him. Seto would have liked to say that he didn't scream like a girl when his legs were yanked over the sill and he found himself in midair—and he didn't. It was a very dramatic, Hollywood-movie type scream, manly to the core. He kept his eyes wide open, watching the earth, waiting for it to rush up and beat the life out of him.

But it didn't. Instead, it sunk down and down at an alarming rate. The icy cool air rushing past him didn't get past his skin, and Yugi's small hand radiated warmth all the way down his arm. He looked back up at his rival, eyes focused to the heaven's, and realized that, yes, the light did radiate from him. Not to mention he hadn't seen any spotlight outside his window.

His mansion shrunk behind him at an alarming rate. When the lights of the city glimmered beneath him on sticks of skyscrapers and lines of streets, he finally trusted himself to speak (and no, he hadn't been about to throw up).

"We're flying."

"Yep." said Yugi, without a hint of sarcasm.

"Muto, we're flying."

"Yeah, I know."

"You're glowing."

"Mmhmm."

"Glowing like a freak of nature firefly, or some freak radioactive accident."

"Uh," and at last Yugi looked back at him over his shoulder, his white robe billowing about him and brushing against Seto's face and arm. "Are you okay?"

"After the whole sucked into ancient Egypt hallucination we all had together, I'm finding this rather tame."

"Really?"

Seto could feel his stomach churning again. He was going to be in therapy for this for months.

Yugi watched him, blinking. "You don't look okay."

"Just shut up and fly. We're going to visit all the charming Christmas's of the past, aren't we?"

Yugi beamed widely. "Wow, Seto, you really were paying attention!"

"Well, since we're doing our own little Dickens rerun..."

His rival gave a clear, chime like laugh and came to a stop. The light that radiated from around him seemed to grow, if possible, brighter, and Seto put an arm to his face. He wanted to cuss at him, and then cuss at Dickens for not mentioning that the freaking dick of freaking Christmas Past had originally blinded Scrooge.

Then he felt his insides swooping up to his ribcage. His eyes snapped open. They were falling.

Yugi was now below him, hand still tight around his wrists and his glow dimmed in the daylight. Their feet were both aimed for the earth below, which was lit with bright sunlight and frosted with snow. An orange bricked, 70's style building watched with dark windows as they plummeted down.

"Muto!" he shouted.