Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect of the copyright holders of Yu-Gi-Oh! or its derivative works is intended by this fanfiction.

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Description: Shizuka's attempt to cope with the misery caused by Marik's dark side exposes her to something she never expected to experience. Can she find solid ground in an ocean of night?

Shadowshipping (Yami no Yugi/Shizuka) written for Round 10 of Season 8 of the FFnet Fanfiction Contest.

Note: Deviates from anime Season 3 canon in that I've made the last two matches of the Battle City finals (Kaiba and Yugi, Marik and Yugi) take place the next morning instead of right after Jounouchi is defeated by Yami no Marik.

WARNING: There is a brief scene of impending torture in this fic. The squeamish should consider themselves warned; skip to the next section in the story if you start to get squicked.

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Dedicated to K,
who has reminded me quite often recently
what young teenage girls are really like.

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Quietly Dark

by Animom

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· Dark ·

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He had told Kaiba that their match needed to be postponed until the next morning.

"So you forfeit?"

"I will not fight now, while Jounouchi's hold on life is so tenuous."

"So you forfeit." Kaiba had held out his hand. "Your Slifer card, then."

Yugi had watched as his other self had pulled out their deck and started sifting through the cards. "Of course, Kaiba. After all, a victory is a victory."

"What do you mean?" Kaiba's eyes had narrowed.

His other self had shrugged. "Your request implies that most people will see no difference between winning via a technicality or winning after a test of skill. All that will matter is that you can call yourself the Number One Duelist again."

Kaiba had pulled his hand back and said sourly, "Tomorrow morning will be a better time to broadcast your defeat."

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·Quiet·

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Honda and Otogi had both come by earlier in the evening, standing awkwardly by her brother's bed, saying that they would sit with him so that she could sleep.

"That's so sweet of you to offer," she had told them, "but I'm not really that tired." She couldn't resist adding, "You both can stay if you want."

Honda hadn't lasted long, his face gradually melting into silent tears as he stared at her brother's oxygen mask and the electrodes connecting Jounouchi to the sternly beeping machines. She finally took pity on him and sent him away, saying, "He's my brother. I don't mind watching over him." He had nodded and hurried out.

Honda was a pretty nice guy, she thought as she watched him leave. She was sure that he had come to the medical center as much for her brother as for her, and she was glad that he was such a good friend. Solid. Like a brick wall. Not very interesting as boyfriend material, but still, if she had to chose, he was better than the alternative, who had twisted sideways in one of the medical center's upholstered lounge chairs as soon as Honda left and was now patting the seat next to him and holding out an arm. "Here, Shizuka-chan, come sit here and get some sleep. You can use me as a pillow."

She really wanted to think of something mean to say right then, like I wouldn't use you as my brother's bedpan, but instead she put on her calm face and said, "This is the first time I've been with my brother in eight years. I'm not going to waste it sleeping." Then she'd pointedly turned her armless plastic chair – which barely had enough room for one, let alone two – so that its back was to Otogi, and pulled the chair right up to her brother's bedside.

She pretended not to hear as Dice-Boy – that's what her brother called him – slunk off a few minutes later, but as the door closed she let herself smile, just a little.

So silly. Did he really think he needed that gallon of cologne he was wearing? She wrinkled her nose: she could still smell it all the way over here, it was so strong. Like a cloud of poison gas or something. It was too bad he hadn't been wearing any that day in Domino when the Rare Hunters were chasing them: she could picture it now, the bad guys taking a whiff and then rolling around on the ground, screaming like they'd been maced. She tried not to giggle. Really, Honda was the brave one. Honda had been the one that told them to go on, who had stayed and got beaten up. If they had to run away from something Honda carried her, he didn't drag her along by the hand. And that day when Honda bought her sandwiches to eat on the train, he didn't make fun of her for eating two. Honda didn't wear cologne.

If only she could mush them together! Honda's niceness and Otogi's – whatever he had. Someone kind and brave and smart and sexy. That would be a boyfriend worth something!

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· Dark ·

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He was still amazed, from time to time, at how much sleep his partner seemed to need, but he understood that tonight Yugi wasn't just physically tired from the events of the past few days, he was also emotionally exhausted from watching Jounouchi's duel with Marik's dark side.

No, he wouldn't interfere with Yugi's sleeping dreamtime, even though he had a strong impulse to walk down to the medical center to – what was the phrase for what he felt? It wasn't Pay his respects, because that was for the dead, and those defeated in Marik's Shadow Game weren't dead. It wasn't Fix his resolve, either, because he already had a white-hot determination that vengeance would be delivered in the final duel.

When he thought about it, he supposed that the only reason to walk down to the medical center was to reassure the one who he was sure sat vigil there. He wanted to tell her that he knew that lives were literally at stake until Marik was defeated, lives important to all of them, and that he would not fail her.

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· Quiet ·

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The doctor came by shortly before midnight, thumbing back Mai's eyelid, then making a notation on his clipboard. After doing the same for her brother, he was on his way out when Shizuka asked, "Any change?"

The doctor shook his head. "Do you plan to be here all night?" he asked, nodding at the clock, then added, "The lights in here are on a timer. They'll go out in a few minutes if there's no medical emergency."

She wanted to stand and yell at him Of course there's a medical emergency! My brother and my friend Mai are never going to wake up, because you don't know what you're doing! But instead she said simply, "That's okay. Even if they aren't aware of it, they probably sleep better when it's dark in here." She glanced up at the harsh fluorescents. "When I was losing my eyesight, bright lights were like knives going in my eyes." She looked back at the doctor. "But my brother got the money to pay for my operation, and since then I can look at things almost as bright as the sun."

Clearly uncomfortable, the doctor nodded and hurried out.

Once she was sure he was gone, she went into the corridor outside the medical centered and closed her eyes, listening. The only sounds were the swishing of ventilation fans, the occasional ping of the hull, and little sparkles of static coming from the front of the ship. No one walking, no one talking. Satisfied that everyone else on the ship was asleep, she propped the door open with a crutch so that the light from the hallway could spill in.

If they opened their eyes, she didn't want them to be in complete darkness.

She sat back down by her brother's bed, taking his cold, unresponsive hand in both of hers, and took a deep breath. It was finally safe to work on letting the day's bad feelings go, in the way she had learned to do years ago: visualizing pictures or little scenes inside of bubbles, imagining the bubbles surfacing and then floating up and away from her, carrying away the negative emotions.

First off, a tiny bubble. She was mad at Otogi for hitting on her even while she was sitting next to her sick brother's bed, and so she imagined him as a diapered baby with a red headband sitting under a tree of lollipops that he couldn't reach, and then he got red-faced and threw a tantrum until his diaper fell off ... and then she giggled silently at his tiny baby penis until the bubble floated away.

Next, two bigger bubbles. One for Mokuba's brother, who let creepy bad people into his stupid tournament, and next to that a bubble with her brother, because she was a little bit mad at him for trying so hard to help Mai that he got himself hurt.

But those bubbles floated away without any effort, because pushing them aside was the Marik bubble, with his ugly face laughing as he hurt people. She had had a hard enough time dealing with how angry and creeped out she was after he defeated Mai, who she had only known for a few days, but now that he had hurt her brother she hated him so so much more, It felt as if she would explode. She wondered if bubbles could even do any good; it felt like the only way to bring the sun back was to go to Marik's room with a real knife or gun and kill him.

But as much as she wanted to do it, or ask someone to do it for her, it was wrong. She started to shake then, and let go of her brother's hand before she hurt his fingers.

It was going to take a lot to make this float away.

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· Dark ·

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He was thinking over his strategy for his duel with Kaiba – a duel he hoped to win on more than one level – when a sudden chill seized him.

Someone had initiated a Shadow Game.

Without taking the time to explain to Yugi, he rolled out of bed and dashed into the hall. He could feel the darkness drawing him, like a magnet to iron.

As he turned a corner he saw, halfway down the corridor, the door to the medical center, propped open with a metal brace.

The room was dark, but even from the doorway he could see that the medical bed nearest the door, the one that Jounouchi had been lying comatose on just a few hours earlier, was empty, as was Mai's. A light blazed in the center of the room: shielding his eyes, as the light dimmed he saw a a gurney between the two beds, tipped up so that it was almost vertical. Strapped to it was Marik's dark half, staring at the red-haired girl who stood in front of him: Jounouchi's sister Shizuka. The mist of a Game of Darkness swirled around the two, arching over them like a canopy, churning waist high on the floor. Shadowy tendrils reached up for Shizuka, whose shirt was made of glowing silver edged with gold.

Before he could move, a familiar voice said, "Do not interfere!" Across the room, Shadi held the Scales and the Key.

Marik chuckled as he eyed Shizuka. "Another woman, another woman for the darkness! I hear your screams already … begging for death as I impale you." He licked his lips. "Such sweet blood. Such tender flesh."

Shizuka reached into the shadows behind the gurney, took hold of something, and with a clatter pulled a metal tray around to the front, next to Marik's shoulder. On the tray were small knives, long-handled scissor-like objects, and several stoppered glass bottles. She said to Marik, "You enjoy hurting people, like Mai and my brother. So I'm going to do something about that." She lifted the bottle, holding it so that Marik could read the label. "So this will be for what you did to my brother." She set the bottle down and showed Marik a long, thin, oddly-shaped metal skewer. "This will be for what you did to Mai." She set the skewer down, and finally held up a curved needle threaded with black string. "And this will be for me."

Marik looked surprised.

"Do you know what it's like to be blind?" Shizuka asked Marik in an eerily calm voice. "To not know what's around you? Who's watching you? To wonder if people are lying to you because you can't see their expression?" She took a step closer. "No, I'm sure you don't. So I think you should learn." She held the needle above Marik's eyelid. "You don't know what it's like to receive the gift of sight from the person you love most in the world, and the first thing you see is him and his best friend dying."

He realized with horror that this Shadow Game had not been initiated by Marik, but by Shadi. It was a Judgment, a Weighing of the Heart – for Shizuka.

Shizuka touched the tip of the needle to Marik's eyelid.

He didn't know why she was being tested, but he knew that her true soul was as pure as Jounouchi's was. I have faith in you, Shizuka, he thought. You will make the right choice.

He was moving even before she gave a cry and dropped the needle; he was at her side before it hit the ground. "Let me handle his punishment," he told her.

Shadi nodded, fading away. The Judgment was over.

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· Quiet ·

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Let me handle his punishment.

It had been a good voice, deep and reassuring.

"Oh my God," she said, and put her hands over her mouth. Tears welled up, and she blinked furiously to bring the dark medical center into focus. In front of her was her brother, wired to the medical equipment; in the next bed Mai lay as unmoving as a mannequin. There was no sign of Marik, the purple smoke, or the … the things on the tray. "Oh my God, what did I do?" She was scared and ashamed and shaky, and started to sob.

"Are you – alright?" It was the same voice, and she gulped, startled, at the light touch of a hand on her shoulder.

Next to her, in one of the flimsy plastic chairs, sat Yugi – not Yugi Mutou, but the other Yugi, the one that dueled. She didn't know how she knew it was him, but she did. "I was … I was trying to do what they taught me. Float my bad feelings away."

"Float?" he asked. His eyes, which were so stern and scary when he was dueling, now were kind.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks. "When I'm mad, I imagine a bubble. I put a picture of what made me mad in the bubble, and then I let it float away. It takes the bad feelings with it."

"A picture? What do you mean?"

"Well," she sniffled, and he got up, brought her a box of tissues from a shelf, "like when that person is mean to my brother, I imagine him," she blew her nose and then laughed nervously, "I imagine him making funny faces and noises and … pooping … out a big pile of Duel Monsters cards."

The Other Yugi looked shocked. "That person? Are you talking about – Kaiba? You imagine – ?" He laughed then, and the way he laughed she knew he wasn't making fun of her. "That is a good image!"

Relieved, she laughed a little too, and took a deep breath. "So, just now, I …" She glanced at the glass-fronted cabinets of medical supplies and surgical instruments that had given her the idea for what she had imagined doing to Marik.

She hadn't expected it to turn real.

"So just now," she said, crumpling the tissues in her hand, "I was trying to make a bubble for – " Her breath hitched as tears welled up again. "And I don't know what – "

"It's over now," he said. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"No, I do want to talk about it. I want to find out what happened. Understand it." She was bewildered, and embarrassed, and determined, but under that she was a little bit angry at herself, too, because even though what she should have been thinking about one-hundred percent was the horrible, awful thing she had almost done to Marik, yet here she was also thinking that it was good that it was dark in the medical center, because she knew how blotchy her face got when she cried and she didn't want Other Yugi to think she was ugly.

"What did you see?" he asked, looking over at the far wall of the medical center as if someone was there.

"It was purple all around me," she said, looking down at her hands, "like the Shadow Games Mar – like what he did to Mai and my brother."

"Yes," the Other Yugi said, "the Shadow Game is one form of the test."

"A test?" She glanced up at him. "Do you know if I passed?"

He smiled faintly. "You passed."

"Are you sure?" She bit her lip. "Because I almost – "

"But you didn't. You unleashed the darkness in your heart, and then you held it back."

"But there was a part of me," she confessed, beginning to shred the tissues she held, "that enjoyed it. I was looking forward to hurting him." She forced herself to go on, because it felt good to push the words out. "I wanted that as much as I wanted to bring Mai and my brother back. I wanted to make him suffer." Even though she knew he might hate her for it, she was going to tell him everything. "I wanted to hear him scream," she whispered, aware that tears were running down her face again but not caring very much. "But then I realized that I was being just like him."

"Very few could be as brave and honest as you have been," Other Yugi said, putting his hand over hers. "But now, if you can, let me take the burden of vengeance. I will defeat Marik, and bring them back."

She looked up at him, and nodded, and then they looked at each other for a long time; and though she couldn't really explain it, it was as if their eyes were hugging each other. Comforting, but also something more, something that made her stomach do flip-flops. He was so different from the Yugi she knew – than any boy she'd ever met, really – stronger and sexier. She was sure he liked her too, and that any second he was going to lean forward and kiss her ...

… and then the overhead lights blasted on, the brightness as painful as daggers of glass.

"What the hell is going on here?" asked a loud, annoying voice. That person, that Kaiba person, was standing in the doorway, frowning at the crutch. "Yugi! Why aren't you sleeping? I'm not going to postpone our duel again!"

"Kaiba," the Other Yugi said, leaning back in his chair with a smile that made her tingle, "I'll duel you in the morning, as I promised. But right now, turn out the lights, because they're too bright for Shizuka's eyes."

"Yes," she said, "I like the dark much better."

Other Yugi squeezed her hand briefly before he stood up, and as he walked away, calmly countering Kaiba's rude remarks, she knew that she had found her hero at last.

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~ The End ~

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Author's Notes

During her Judgment, Shizuka is dressed as St. Joan, the fusion monster she used during episode 107 of the Noa filler arc.

I was going to have Yami no Yugi go into an explanation of Penalty Games, but I think it would have slowed the fic down too much.

I used http: / /yugioh. wikia. com /wiki /Weighing_of_the_Heart as my plausibility check here. Technically, the Judgment of the Dead is used for the souls of the dead, and either a Shadow Game or Weighing of the Heart is used for the living, but I sort of twisted the terms a little. (it seemed odd to refer to Shizuka's "Weighing," as it made her sound like a semi-trailer or livestock.)

Finally, I will not provide any details or address any questions or conjectures about the nature or use of the items on the tray.

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first post 3 Feb 2011
(07) 4 Feb 2011