2. Atem

I hope you never look back, but you never forget,
All the ones who love you in the place you left.
I hope you always forgive, and you never regret,
And you help somebody every chance you get.
Oh, you find God's grace, in every mistake,
And always give more then you take,

But more than anything,

Yeah, and more than anything:

My wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to;
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this is my wish.

-- From My Wish by Rascal Flatts.

"So … all I have to do is wait for it to grow and I get to make a wish?" Mana looked up with a disgruntled expression. "Why have I never heard about this before?"

"You don't get to make just any wish," Amane replied. "It has to be something for someone in the mortal world."

"Who told you this?"

"It's common knowledge."

Mana harrumphed. "Not to me."

Atem declined to comment. He hadn't been here long, but already he was aware that Mana had something of a reputation, and that not listening was only a small part of it. Whether living or dead, his friend had a knack for making things … interesting for those around her.

'Interesting'. That was one word for it. 'Frustrating' was another. Also 'hair-raising'. Just like when they were children, then.

The jolt this time was less than it had been when he first put that thought into words: dead. He was dead. Him. Atem. He was dead. And not just the kind of dead he'd been before, no longer breathing unless Yuugi obliged him the use of his lungs, but not quite gone either. Now he was all-the-way, no-turning-back, goodbye-and-good-luck dead. It shouldn't have been such a big transition, but it was.

Having his old companions around him helped. He'd gone so long without his memories of them, but now he had at last recovered his old identity he valued them and their company even more. Mana, in particular, had taken it upon herself to acclimatise him to the ways things worked on this side of the veil – so she had been very peeved to find him being led around by a white-haired little girl with large green eyes and a disturbingly familiar smile. Amane didn't act like she was trying to oust Mana – in fact she was tranquillity personified, which only seemed to aggravate Mana more. Atem couldn't remember a time when she'd hung off his arm before, and he was sure that wasn't because the memories were missing.

Mana blew hair from her eyes and sat down. She immediately jumped up again. "I don't like snow. I'm glad we never had it back home."

"You don't have to feel the cold," Amane said softly. "If you want, you can turn off the sensation."

"I know that. But why would you want to?"

Amane hunched – not noticeably, but since Atem was watching her he saw it. "Sometimes it's better not to feel anything." Her voice dropped to a low murmur. "Sometimes you don't want to try to fool yourself that you're still alive."

Mana apparently didn't hear this. She was to busy kicking the snow and huffing. "This is boring. Come on, Atem; let me show you around some more. I can find much more interesting things than this to look at."

Atem sighed. He didn't want to leave. "Give it time, Mana. It's an exercise in patience."

She pouted. She waited for him to change his mind. Eventually she hunkered sulkily down again. "You never used to be this dull."

"I've mellowed during my time as a spirit in the mortal world." Yet another change Yuugi and his friend wrought in him. The pang from that thought would never go away, and he could only hope it would also lesson someday.

"That's another thing: I don't have anyone in the mortal world to wish something for. Everybody important to me is here." Mana sounded pleased at this, as though some great problem with the universe had finally been put right. "So there's really no point in me waiting around for some silly old flower to bloom."

"Aren't you a Guardian Spirit?" Amane asked quietly.

"Well … yes and no," Mana admitted. "It's complicated."

She could say that again. While Mana herself had been here, waiting millennia for Atem to make his final journey, part of her spirit had also been in the Dominion of the Beasts and the mortal world in the form of Black Magician Girl. She had blended so thoroughly with her own Guardian Spirit during the original battle against Zorc that she had never fully extricated herself. How she could be in two places at once, apparently two different consciousnesses, and yet still be the same person, the same single soul in the afterlife where it belonged … that part she still had problems explaining. According to all they'd learned as children, it was meant to be impossible. Your Ba and Ka reunited in the afterlife if you passed judgement and were granted passage into Paradise.

Reality, it seemed, was far different than what the Atem of three thousand years ago had been led to expect.

Amane went on in the same soft voice, "So shouldn't you make your wish for the person your spirit-beast guards?"

"She's hardly a spirit beast. I mean I'm hardly a … um … oh, never mind," Mana grumbled. "I suppose you're right."

Amane didn't nod or gloat. Atem wondered how long she'd been here to develop that skill, or whether she'd been this calm before she died. Bakura hadn't talked much about his little sister, other than to admit he'd once had one, but that she'd died in a car accident before he and his widowed father moved to Japan. Atem could see echoes of Bakura in his sister, but in other ways Amane was quite different.

The top of the snow mound shivered. The tip of the shoot began to show. Despite her grumbling, Mana watched, entranced, as it pushed its way free and blossomed into a delicate little white flower, which nodded at her as if in greeting.

"Make your wish," Atem chided. He made his own reflexively – Let nothing untoward happen to my friends now I'm no longer there to protect them – and watched as Mana scrunched up her eyes like a small child. Apparently wishing, for her, looked a lot like constipation.

Atem blinked. Where had that thought come from? Apparently Jounouchi and Honda's influence was more extensive than he'd thought. He half expected to hear Anzu whapping them upside their heads for such a remark, while Yuugi watched and shook his own head sympathetically.

And speaking of Anzu …

"There," Mana said. "I made my wish. Do I have to keep it secret?"

"I shouldn't think so," Amane said in her clipped English accent. "You're going now?"

"Yes." Mana leaped to her feet, dragging Atem to his. "I'll tell you as we go, Atem."

Atem glanced at Amane. She was staring at her hands in her lap. "Could Amane accompany us?"

Mana looked put out. Then she followed his gaze to the little girl kneeling in the snow, watching as the snowdrop curled up, turned brown and blew away. Bits of it caught in her white hair. She looked rather like a snowdrop herself.

Mana grumped. "Oh, all right."

Amane's smile was small, and still peaceful, but also a little relieved – much like Bakura's whenever Yuugi and his friends included him in some outing he'd fully expected to be left out of.

"Thank you."

"As long as you don't fall behind," Mana added.

"I won't."

"You'd better not. You have really short legs."

"I can manage."

"You sure?"

Amane blinked. "I mastered walking as a toddler."

"And I mastered casting fireballs when I was ten."

"But didn't you nearly burn down the palace with that trick?"

Mana's eyes grew wide. "What the … how did you … how could you … huh?"

"Stories of your exploits are legendary. They usually get retold whenever you blow up something new."

Atem looked between the two girls. Amane's expression was blank, but Mana's wavered between confusion, outrage and bizarre pride.

If nothing else, he thought wryly, things on this side of the veil would continue to be 'interesting'.