Somnium Atrum (Latin for "Dark Dream")

Another one-shot, set just after Season Four (Orichalcos) ends. The gang has returned home, and all seems well. However, Yami has been strangely quiet in the Puzzle lately. And Yugi wakes up one night to find out why.

Mild Puzzleshipping near the end, and quite a bit of angst beforehand. It's actually my first story that has an official pairing, believe it or not. Italics indicate private thoughts.

Enjoy!

Yugi sighed in relief as he slid into bed. His bed. At last, after weeks of traveling, he was back home in Domino. Of course, he had been trapped in a stone tablet for most of that time, but it didn't make the return home any less welcome. Or the jetlag any better.

His eyes closed almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He couldn't wait to get his body back on Japanese time…

…Suddenly, he jerked awake. He blinked, disconcerted, as his eyes focused on a wall that he definitely didn't remember being part of his room before. For one wild moment, he wondered if he had gotten kidnapped – again, he thought wryly – and then he recognized his surroundings.

I'm in my soul room, he thought bemusedly. But, why? The Pharaoh hasn't called me…in fact, he's been completely silent for the past couple of days. Why would I wake up here? There was no telling what time it was, so he had no idea how long he had actually been sleeping. He did know, though, that something had woken him up. However, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, he felt it. A wave of pain tore through his entire being, as if all the fear and anguish he had ever felt had been coiled into a spring and shot right at him. He gasped, hunching into a ball, waiting it out. And then—

And then it was over, as suddenly as it had begun. As he sat up, shaking slightly from the shock, he realized that it had been that which had woken him. The only place it could have come from is the Pharaoh's soul room, he thought. Though…I never thought that he'd feel anything like that. He made his way out of his soul room, crossing the narrow corridor that divided their souls and kept their identities separate. The door to his other half's mind was always closed, a carved, heavy thing that always made Yugi feel slightly intimidated. Nevertheless, he opened the door slowly, peering into the gloom that penetrated his other's soul room.

"Pharaoh?" he inquired softly. No answer.

The door closed behind him and he paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim light. Any other being would have been astonished to see the complicated maze of doors and staircases, built to confuse the eye and the mind of any who entered. Not even the Pharaoh could have said what lay behind each door. However, Yugi had ventured into the labyrinths before, and while he didn't know where his other half was, he at least knew where not to go.

"Pharaoh?" he called again, starting down a particularly winding corridor. He wandered for a few minutes, trying door after door without success. Frustrated, he was about to call out again, when another wave of emotion and pain blew through him, sending him to his knees. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he stood, now certain that these waves were coming from his other half. As the wave died out, he closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind. There—that's it! He thought triumphantly, taking off at a run. Now he knew where to find him.

He reached it at last, a door that, at first glance, seemed no different than the others around it. On further inspection, however, Yugi saw an Eye of Horus etched in the stone near the top. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door, unsure of what he would find. He gasped.

The room looked like the interior of an Egyptian tomb. Spacious, but not monstrously large, the walls contained stories told in hieroglyphics. A torch was placed here and there to shed some light throughout the room. In the center, pushed against the back wall, was a large mahogany bed, draped in black and shades of maroon. In the middle of it all, seemingly fast asleep, was his darker half.

It would have seemed exceptionally normal if not for the visions.

Surrounding the bed – in the air, against the walls, all around the room – were images, short snippets of moving pictures playing over and over again; each with its own sounds and dialogue adding to a cacophony of noise that was overwhelming to Yugi's ears, having been accustomed to the eerie quiet of the Puzzle. As his mind adjusted to the new senses, he began to discern the individual sights and sounds.

The Pharaoh losing that terrible duel with Raphael. Yugi throwing himself at his other half, pushing him out of the way and letting the Orichalcos beam rip him away from his own body. Rebecca screaming at the Pharaoh, blaming him for what happened. The Pharaoh blaming himself – on his knees, screaming for his partner to return, horrified at what he had done. Looking across the Valley of the Spirits at Yugi; Yugi watched himself sneer at his dark half, hurling words that cut the Pharaoh to the core, playing the Orichalcos card to turn his other half's actions against him. The fear, the growing dread of what he was becoming, of what living without Yugi's light to counterbalance the dark was doing to him. Watching in horror as a blank-faced Yugi and Joey were forced to attack him in the duel with Dartz, warning Kaiba not to harm the four captive souls in front of them.

If that wasn't bad enough, the sounds were worse.

"Now the Orichalcos reveals – you're evil, Pharaoh." "YOU did this! Look around you!" "How could you DO this? Now Yugi is GONE!" "You didn't care what happened to ME, so long as YOU had power!" "Come on, Pharaoh." "You don't belong in this world."

Yugi watched and listened in shock as his other's inner demons screamed at him in full force. The figure on the bed was twitching, twisting, groaning, trying to escape the terrible words, the accusations, the hatred. Yugi frowned, concentrating on the bed before him, making his way slowly towards it, breaking through the nightmares surrounding him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he touched his other half's shoulder.

"Pharaoh," he called, trying to make himself heard above the raucous noise. "Pharaoh, wake up! It's just a dream!"

The visions seemed to close in, becoming louder. More images materialized – Joey yelling at him to pull himself together, grabbing him by the jacket, Dartz sneering at his and Kaiba's attempts to defeat him, Kaiba himself snarling at a battered Pharaoh to get up – and Yugi realized that he was inadvertently adding to the nightmare. Still, he had to try, had to break his other half out of this ring of guilt and self-loathing.

"Pharaoh," he cried, grabbing him by both shoulders now and shaking him gently. "Pharaoh, wake up!" The visions closed in further, the sounds louder, making it harder to concentrate. His cries mingled with the cries in the visions. "Pharaoh! Come on!" And finally, in sheer desperation, "YAMI!"

"NOOOOOOOO!" Yami screamed, jerking to a sitting position, his arms shooting out as if to push the nightmare away and latching onto Yugi's shoulders as the visions around them suddenly disappeared. He stared into the face of his lighter half, his grip on his shoulders like a vice, red-violet eyes seeming to look through Yugi, rather than at him. Yugi stared back, shocked at the raw fear blazing in his eyes, realizing that his other half wasn't quite out of the nightmare just yet. His ears rang in the silence around them; the only sound was his yami's heavy breathing. Slowly, hoping he wouldn't scare his dark half further, he brought his right hand up to gently touch his face.

It worked. The Pharaoh blinked, and the rest of the shadows dissipated. He blinked again, focusing on the face before him, confusion and surprise making their way across his regal features. His eyes took in his hands gripping Yugi's shoulders like a lifeline, at Yugi's hands on his own shoulders in silent comfort, at the concerned amethyst orbs gazing into his own. He took a breath.

"Yu…Yugi?"

Yugi nodded. "I'm here," he said softly. "It's okay. I…I'm here."

Without another word, his darker half slowly pulled him into a tight embrace. His head came down to rest on Yugi's shoulder, his breathing becoming ragged. Yugi hugged back just as tightly, his heart going out to the spirit in his arms. He'd had no idea how painful their separation was to his other half. He himself had barely known anything outside the blackness of his prison. His yami, on the other hand, had clearly suffered…not only from the absence of his lighter half and his own self-hatred for what he had done, but from the pain of having half of himself ripped away without warning. And here he was, in a state Yugi had never even dreamed he could fall into: hurt, fearful, full of guilt and unable to let go of what had happened.

A suppressed sob from his other half brought him back to the present. Not entirely sure how to comfort him – he who was always a pillar of strength – Yugi swallowed. "Pharaoh—"

"Please," the Pharaoh interrupted, his voice muffled. "Don't call me that. Not right now." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "It's…they…" he trailed off, but Yugi got the idea. After hearing those visions screech "Pharaoh" at him over and over, he could understand.

"What would you like me to call you, then?" he inquired quietly.

A pause. Then, "The name you gave me once. Back before we knew my origins, my destiny. Before…this." The word 'destiny' sounded slightly bitter.

"Okay. Yami," Yugi said. Yami…it was that name that pulled him out of the nightmare, he recalled. A name they had agreed upon back when they barely knew each other, when he had only recently begun to converse with the then-strange spirit inside his Puzzle. It seemed to suit him. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he WAS Yugi's darker half, but the name fit him and he'd answered to it readily. "Yami…it's all right now. It was just a nightmare. I'm here now; I'm back and I'm not going anywhere."

Another moment of silence. Then, "It was so painful, aibou. I thought I had known enough pain that I could stand almost anything, but this was…terrible. Beyond any imagining." He sighed, shifting slightly but retaining his grip on the smaller spirit. "Your soul wasn't just gone. It had been torn away. Where your soul room should have been was a black abyss with a ragged edge just outside my own; I nearly fell into it when I opened my door, thinking that I could try to look for you through the Puzzle. And in that abyss was…darkness. Evil. All the darkness you kept back just by being my Light, by being my closest friend, was right there, threatening to swallow me.

"I had to fight it every day, every minute. The evil tore at me, trying to consume me. I could barely sleep or eat; I fought with all my being to keep it back. But it was winning. Slowly and surely, it was winning…tearing at my very core, sometimes with actual claws that I could feel. And yet…" he paused and straightened, leaning his head on the spiky crown of his lighter half. "And yet, I am almost glad you weren't there." Yugi started in surprise, but Yami maintained his hold.

"Whether or not your light was there, the evil that the Orichalcos tapped into would have affected me anyway. Less strongly, perhaps, but…" he stopped for a minute. Then, very softly, "I would have hurt you, Yugi." Yugi began to protest. "No, I would have. Not…not right away, but…I…I would get so angry." His voice was barely above a whisper now. "So angry, I wanted to destroy things. I was angry at myself; I was angry at everyone. I nearly destroyed half my soul room once; I was losing control of myself. If you had been there…I can't imagine what I would have done to you."

He could, though. They both could, and behind two sets of closed eyes, shadowy images of an evil Yami snarling at his lighter half, throwing him across his soul room, his fingers crackling with dark energy, his eyes glowing a dark, chilling red. Yugi frightened, terrified, all bonds of trust broken between them as he cowered, unable to escape. Yugi shuddered at the thought that Yami, his yami, his protector and confidante, could…could be…

"…I would have been no better than the Tomb Robber," Yami finished his train of thought. Bakura had never cared for his lighter half; he would often terrorize poor Ryou into doing his will, and Ryou was terrified of him.

Yugi opened his eyes. "But it didn't happen," he tried to reassure him. "You were strong. You defeated my spirit in the valley and overcame the worst of it. Then we were reunited, and you faced the evil again and defeated it for good. I couldn't help you, then. You did it on your own."

Yami shook his head slightly. "Still," he said, his voice cracking with emotion, "I swore to protect you. Not only did I destroy that by betraying your trust and causing your soul to be captured, I could have destroyed it anyway just because of that card. Either way, I failed both of us."

"No," Yugi said firmly. "You didn't fail. You could have let the evil and the pain take you over; you could have despaired completely. But you kept fighting. You searched for me; you found yourself again. And you destroyed Dartz, freeing not only my soul but the souls of everyone else who was captured." He pulled away and smiled reassuringly up at his other half. "No matter how you look at it, that is most definitely not failure."

Yami looked touched, his expression softening. "Yugi…I…"

"That duel doesn't matter to me anymore, Yami," Yugi said earnestly. "It doesn't matter. What matters to me now is what you did to rectify it. That you made it right. And now we're whole again…and I wouldn't have it any other way."

He had broken through. The cloud of self-doubt was lifting from his darker half. For the first time in days, Yami smiled back. "I wouldn't either, aibou. I don't ever want to be parted from you again. Thank you."

Yugi hugged him, relieved and happy that his yami was finally healing. "Aibou," Yami said after a minute or two, "Would you stay with me? Please."

"Of course, Yami. Of course." And together, still in their strong embrace, they lay down to sleep.

Yeah, I'm kind of a sucker for happy endings. Anyway, hope you liked it. Thanks for reading, and please review!