Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters
Title: Hallucination
Romance: Pharaoh Atemu x Mutuou Sugoroku
Word Count: 2,249||Status: Complete
Genre: Romance, Friendship||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Yu-Gi-Oh Pairings 9 & 3/4: Hard Round: Atem x Sugoroku
Notes: The romance is just a speck. You sort of have to twist your head and squint to see it.
Feedback: All forms eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Summary: Did Sugoroku hallucinate his meeting with the Nameless Pharaoh? Even all those years later, he can't always be sure.

Rain cascaded outside the Game Shop, reducing visibility to only a few feet, with puddles forming on the sidewalk that sent up rainbow reflections from the lights that hung from the roof. Sugoroku winced and shifted position on his stool, reaching up to rub his shoulder.

Still aches in damp weather. After all these years, he supposed he should've gotten used to it. But 'should have' didn't mean 'had'. The wound itself had long since been healed: the physical one, anyway. The memories hadn't faded, only slipped a little into the recesses of his mind, to return whenever he had a spare moment, in all of their most vivid glory.

He still didn't know how it had happened. Shot and alone, he should've died where he was, victim to the greed of two souls that paid the price for their sins with their own lives. But he hadn't.

No matter how much time passed, he couldn't forget the sensation of warm hands folding themselves over his own. His shoulder, throbbing only moments earlier with the pain of the bullet, ceased to ache. He'd looked up into eyes of a warm violet unlike any he could remember seeing in his entire life, and a smile crafted of regal confidence.

I've been waiting, Siamun. Words in a language he didn't know, but he understood regardless, just as he'd known the meaning of those hieroglyphics. Words spoken in a voice that shook him down to the core, the voice of a king and a leader.

He had to have imagined it. People did not exist like this. Not anymore.

He breathed in a long, low breath, trying to keep himself focused on the present. He knew he wasn't doing a good job of it; the rain stirred up the old ache and that stirred up thoughts of what caused it. There wouldn't be many customers to distract him either, if any at all, since most of the kids who were his usual clientele would be in classes for the next four or five hours.

For an encounter that had lasted only a few moments, the spirit certainly had made an impression on him, he knew. Perhaps that was why when he'd married, she'd been one of the few people who had the same violet eyes. Or at least close to the same; nothing could compare to those eyes.

I wonder if Megumi ever knew...He'd always loved her for herself, but her eyes had caught his attention first and foremost. She probably would've smacked him if she did know. She was that kind of a person. He missed her.

Again his thoughts drifted back to those few moments.

He lay on the bridge, trying hard to catch his breath. When he thought about it, he could still feel the pain from the wound, but as a distant vague voice, not the screaming cry he knew it should've been. He knew he needed to get to his feet, to finish his quest and find the treasure, but he couldn't. Not yet. He needed to rest.

Still those hands remained, one moving on his shoulder, a ghost of a touch that seemed more solid than it should. The pain still remained at a distance. He hazily wondered if the ghostly man's presence caused the pain fear and kept it from bothering him when it really wanted to. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.

Don't move. Again that voice. Sugoroku looked up, wondering all over again if the bullet in his shoulder somehow had inflicted him with hallucinations. He wanted to believe he'd seen this person, that he saw him now. He was in a Pharaoh's tomb. He'd seen events beyond his ability to imagine. He'd heard something when his second guide hurried past him, eyes on the treasure.

He'd heard a roar. He'd heard teeth snapping together. He hadn't looked. He hadn't wanted to. With all that he'd seen in his life, he still didn't dare look. Some things no man should see.

"Who..." He croaked the word out, throat dryer than he'd thought it would be, made so by shock and pain. "Who are you?" This was the tomb of the Nameless Pharaoh, but that in no way meant that was who this was.

Though the clothes certainly said it was.

A smile he only caught a glimpse of, as it was there and gone so fast. You know me, Siamun.

Yes, he did. He could never for the life of him said how he knew. He didn't need to know. Other images flickered in the back of his mind, too fast for him to grasp any of them for more than the barest of seconds. This young man, seated upon a throne of glittering gold, seen from his right hand. An older man, strong and wise, holding a tiny baby in his arms.

A golden ankh that called to him. A monster that was far more familiar than it should have been.

He closed his eyes, trying to fight off these images. He needed to think about other things, not about...about whatever all of this was.

Slowly he pushed himself to his feet. The other moved back, giving him room. With each step, the pain grew, its voice rising but cautiously, as if it feared to come too close, lest the pharaoh's stern gaze turn upon it once again.

He had only a few more steps to take. Then all the way back out. He looked over his shoulder, shuddering at the sight of the guardian statues. He knew how to get through them, but one misstep would be the death of him. Could he do it?

He would have to find out the hard way. There was no other way out of here.

Except, perhaps...

Another image brushed through his mind and he frowned, wanting to catch this one. He needed it, he felt. His life could depend on it. More than his life, the world itself. The Pharaoh had to return to the world, to fulfill his destiny.

Sugoroku shook his head, wishing he could keep a single thought clear. He'd been shot before and never had it been like this. He didn't think an infection could get started this fast, but he didn't know what else to think of seeing the Nameless Pharaoh standing before him, helping him, much less everything else that coursed through his mind.

He steadied himself the best that he could, breathing harder. He had to get out of here. But first...

One step. Then another. And another. There, glowing softly before him, in the light of a torch he didn't remember having picked up, sat a golden box on a high pedestal, where the Pharaoh's sarcophagus should've been. He stared at it, knowing what the markings on it said as clearly as if they were written in his own native language.

Without another thought, he picked up the box and held it close. He wanted to open it up and see what lay inside, even as his mind provided images from who knew were: an upside down pyramid with the Eye of Horus in the center, a pile of puzzle pieces made of gold, with that same Eye in the center of one of them...

The Millennium Puzzle.He knew it and could not have said how he knew. Nor did he care now. He had what he'd come here for; it was time to leave. He started to turn around, but stopped halfway, staring at one of the walls a short distance away. He took a few steps closer to it, reaching out to brush his right hand against one of the designs, a small squiggle that many might have overlooked.

The wall to his left rose upward with a great falling of dust and screeching of gears long unturned. It didn't rise very far, but enough so he could squeeze underneath, despite how much his shoulder screamed that he was an idiot to even try.

But try he did; better to lose the use of an arm than to stay down here and lose his life.

Sugoroku sighed, rubbing his arm at the very thought of that escape. He still hadn't figured out how he'd known that hidden passage was there. More mysteries of the pyramids and tombs of Egypt existed than would ever be solved, he knew.

Since then, he hadn't seen a single sign of the Nameless Pharaoh. He'd reported his expedition a partial failure, his guides dead in the traps, and had said nothing at all of the treasure he'd found. The Egyptian government wouldn't have wanted one of the priceless Millennium Items taken away without their knowledge or permission, especially by someone like him. He'd buried it in his luggage and hoped that it would pass muster.

It must have, since no one had given him a single word of complaint about it. Given how some people he knew tried to smuggle out artifacts and failed, he wondered anew if someone made certain he'd managed to get it to Japan safely.

Remembering the warmth of those hands and the strength of that smile, he wouldn't have been surprised at all.

Even with the evidence of the Puzzle, now gathering dust in a back room where no one would look for it, he wondered how much of that actually happened and how much was the result of having been shot and dangling only a few slippery fingers away from death. Had he been pulled up by a ghost or had he made his way there on his own? If the magic wasn't real, what happened to his second guide and why couldn't he remember those few moments when whatever happened did?

And if the magic was real, why hadn't he heard or seen anything in all of the intervening years.

(He didn't count the Devil's Board game and what happened because of that.)

Sugoroku glanced out the window; the rain still came down and no one looked as if they even noticed the shop, much less had any plans on coming in. He slipped off his stool and into the deepest depths of the back room, searching until he found it. The moment he brought the golden box into the light, it glittered warmly up at him. He tensed at once, eyes flicking this way and that, wondering if he'd see ...someone again.

But nothing happened and he sighed, setting the box on the counter. He picked up a rag and began to rub the dust off. He'd done that uncounted times, before his interest flagged over the years and he'd ended up putting it away. Once in a while, like now, he took it out and cleaned it up. He always put it back where it belonged in the end. Whoever could solve it, if anyone could, it wouldn't be him.

That didn't stop him from looking at the pieces, though. For all that they were crafted of gold, he didn't get a sense they were heavy. It wasn't fool's gold, though.

Another part of him, one that spoke softly in the depths of his soul, murmured that the pieces were indeed heavy, with souls, with age, with power. He tried not to listen too much to that. He didn't fear the voice or the knowledge it held. But it wasn't something he wanted to know more about, either.

He also couldn't shake the feeling that he already knew what the voice wanted to tell him: knew it in a part of himself he refused to look at, because it was the same part that told him what the hieroglyphics meant and how to get out of that tomb in one piece.

What disturbed him the most about that voice was that he knew it. Because how could he not know his ownvoice?

Siamun. Sugoroku's head came up at that and he looked around, trying to find where that voice came from. Not his own, not the one that spoke of knowledge and history, but his voice, the Nameless Pharaoh. Be at peace, Siamun.

Simple words and his heart swelled to hear them, to know the Pharaoh still watched over him somehow. He glanced down at the puzzle pieces in his hands, then stacked them back into the box with reverence. Perhaps taking care of this had something to do with it. Perhaps he should take it out more, give putting it together another try.

No. He shook his head, smiling at his own foolishness. The Millennium Puzzle wasn't his Item. The image of that ankh-shaped key formed in his mind for the space it took him to breathe once, then vanished. If ever he needed one, that would be his. But he thought perhaps it was someone else's task to serve the Pharaoh with it now.

He glanced up toward the door, wondering if he expected to see someone, and not at all surprised when he did not. The rain still poured down, after all. No one would come into the shop for hours.

He took the box back to the storage room, wondering when Shogi and his wife might stop by. They'd hinted at something incredible to tell him, but refused to say what it was over the phone. Newlyweds. But he and Megumi had been like that once upon a time.

From somewhere between the afterlife and the world of the living, Pharaoh Atemu smiled. I'll see you soon, Siamun.

The End

Note: Shogi is Sugoroku's son and Yuugi's father. The hidden news? They're going to be parents, of course! This is set loosely fifteen years and nine months (give or take some time) prior to the begining of canon.