Hallowed be Thy Name

An LLS Production

My name is...

I stop. The word Atemu trips off my tongue, unnatural and strange there as any other name used to refer to oneself.

About three thousand years ago, a Pharaoh named Atemu lived in Ancient Egypt, who died to save his people and sealed away a great evil with it.

He was selfless. He was dutiful.

He was everything one could ask for in a king.

Note that I say was, for nothing could induce me to say that Atemu lives still.

The Pharaoh Atemu died, no longer needed, and in his place lives on the one named Yami no Yuugi.

I have long realised that heroes live only as long as they are needed, and when no longer... there is an elephants' graveyard awaiting them and their nemeses.

It is a hellish place where legends go to die.

I am yami. Darkness. I am no one's hero. Heroes are forgotten in time.

If that is so, I will be only one person's hero.

I am a beloved of Yuugi Mutou, and only his opinion matters to me.

The feeling of discombobulation occurs in a game shop.

I blink. I am left to my own devices on the occasion Yuugi leaves on a pursuit of higher education, and I turn my hand to managing his shop, his only legacy left. My days are occupied partly by games, partly by my partner, and partly by other things that happen at night.

My surroundings have changed, though. Should I have not... no, I refuse to think of it like that.

I am not the first soul to have risen from the dead, and I shall not be the last.

My shadow itself moves, its whispers alluring to only one of darkness as I, the presence of light fills my mind. Yami?

Have you ever found the other half of yourself? It is a beautiful, complete feeling like no other, like you stand above the world at peace with oneself. For me, the silence no longer exist, the feeling that I am alone amidst the billions in our world, for my light, he exists.

Proof of the divine exists and I see it every morning, when he wakes up next to me.

I am in love. Call it what you will - but my soul rests at last within his.

Infringe upon my light and face your own madness.

A thousand memories lie scattered amidst the dust called eternity in the sands of time, and that is the remnant of my world, my world of before his time, when magic and forces beyond understanding still roamed the earth free in an age of mystery shrouded in darkness. There are still powers out there, but I do not seek them. What need have I of potions and magic, when my power burns in my soul, and my soul's match still brighter than I?

It would not do to ignore my other half, so I answer him. Hikari?

Erm... he is nervous, I can tell; he is out with his friends. The friends that began due to the Puzzle, and the friends he keeps.

I, the one gifted by the puzzle, remain by him, always within reach.

...could you come here?

I start. Today aibou was supposed to be 'hitting the party scene' as Jounochi puts it.

If there are people, bullies there, I will kill Jounochi. Friend or no, he is dispensable in my world view. Only Yuugi's opinion matters.

Yuugi often comments that I do not seem to care for his friends overly much, though there are his, and by extension mine. I do not tell him my opinion, but aibou is perceptive and he doubtlessly knows through the link our minds share. I certainly do not keep that a secret.

The fact that I do not care if they live or die is visible to those who would see it.

I walk in, and every eye swivels to me.

Yuugi remarks that I am an alluring person. His exact words were: "Yami, you could turn a straight man gay." The meaning I gain only through inference, but I will gladly put up with it if it means that Yuugi is mine.

If considered in that context, I suppose I did turn a straight man gay.

I walk through the half-darkness of what passes for a drinking hole in the modern world, the crowds parting before me. Some remnant of authority from millennia ago clings on and remains in me, and it is this that tells the crowd to obey my command.

It is the very self-same that ensures that I am not disturbed as I search for my partner. Perhaps they wonder if I search for a conquest for the night, for I see every available woman and even a few of my own sex press closer. My crimson eyes narrow, and they back off. Perhaps they are merely afraid of those who possess eyes of darkness like mine. Perhaps they can sense the darkness from such as I.

Or, most likely, they recognise that I am not someone to cross.

"Yami!" My beloved partner stands, his hair recognisable to me whom the darkness hides nothing, and I walk towards him.

My partner comments that I do not walk. At least, I walk in a way that is completely different from how others envision a walk. I must apparently stalk, prowl, and saunter every time I move from one place to another, if he is to be believed. Whether or not I move in a predatory fashion, the crowd parts under my whim and I reach him.

I cannot say that I am happy. Apparently Jounochi has seen fit to not only invite the thief, but also the two maniac Tomb-keepers. Ryou I can sympathise with, but his lip-lock with Bakura is increasingly reminding me of the actions I should be attending my partner with, which makes for a very depressed former Pharaoh. The man himself is piss-drunk, to put it mildly, and my beloved little one must be the only one with any measure of sobriety about.

"Aibou," I greet. Again, my partner says that I purr. I will not comment on this, because half the time we are in the bedroom I bring him release from my words alone and that is worth the comparison, in my view.

"Yeah," he laughs. "Could you help me –?" he gestures to the drunken sods.

Jounochi we dump in the spare room in the Game Shop, as his drunkard of a father is home this evening. Ryou and Bakura make their own way back, the thief having far greater capacity for alcohol than his hikari along with almost half a lifetime of paranoia enough to distrust me on general principle. The two Tomb-keepers we send to their apartment, and that is most of the party. Anzu is in Broadway, and we wish her well, and Honda is responsible enough, especially now that Shizuka is with him.

"Yuugi!" Jounochi slurs at me.

"Wrong person," I tell him, dumping him on the bed that once belonged to Sugoroku Jii San.

"Ah. Yami!" he cheerfully yells, still under the influence of the drink. "Yunno, I've wondered... You've a good name, why not use it?"

I occasionally feel friendship for the brave soul that is Jounochi Katsuya, but there are limits that he tests sometimes. "Jounochi," I tap into the shadows to pronounce.

He snaps, he wakes up, all traces of alcohol's influence gone under the voice of eldritch abomination I summon. And his face loses almost all colour. "Oh shit," he mutters.

He is afraid. As he probably should be. Long ago I decided to keep the name Yami, and already he questions my decisions. He knows that my name is a sensitive issue, and he brings it up. I have half a mind to introduce him to the realm of Yami for that.

I give him a smile that I am very sure contains only teeth, like Sebek or Ammit would. "Sleep. Good night."

I leave the room with him snoring, long out. My partner is in the kitchen, and he passes me a cup of something warm that I identify by scent as chocolate. It is good. Certainly a far cry from the cuisine of the ancient world.

"He has a point, you know," Yuugi comments to me.

My partner is perceptive on every account, and I love him for it, except that this one is more awkward than most. "He does."

"Will you tell me?" Yuugi asks. When he asks, I can deny him nothing. I can choose not to tell him, and the tension remains. I can tell him, and make it awkward for myself. Or I can change the subject, and we do this another time.

It was night. My time. I might as well do this right. If I play my cards well, as the saying goes, I never need speak of it again.

"My name... you know it is derived from that of gods," I start.

Yuugi nods. Of course he knows. Sugoroku Jii San ensured that he grew up on such stories.

"Specifically, Atum," I continue. "The complete one, the finisher of the world. The one who stands at the sunset."

Yuugi nods.

"Atum was said to be a self-created deity, who rose from the primordial waters," I talk onwards. "The first being to emerge from the darkness and endless watery abyss that girdled the world before creation. A product of the energy and matter contained in this chaos, he created divine and human beings through loneliness. He is a being associated with sunset, the end of Ra's reign and the beginning of the Serpent of Night's run."

The chocolate had gone cold, but I continue anyway. "I am named for a lonely god and the gods are capricious, they wander from conquest to conquest, and they never look back. I... I do not want to be that. I take on the name of Yami, of darkness, the mean something. Like your name means game, I want something that I can be true to."

When he could never come to me, I came to him. Light and darkness were always meant to be together. He no longer needs me, but I want him anyway, and our existence as it is... it is enough. It has to be.

It is why I turn my back on it. It is why the cartouche bearing the hieroglyphs of it remains around the neck of the little one instead of mine, his own name written behind. It is why I have another copy of my own, but the hieroglyphs are written on the back, where the pendant proudly displays a single stylised character.

Darkness.

"It is like marriage," I whisper, recalling the tale of two brothers named for the same god, the creator Khnum. Niankhnum and Khnumhotep, if I recall.

Nian-khnum-hotep.

Joined in life, and joined in death.

"I pledge myself to you, and return ask for nothing but you," I finish.

The silence between us is comfortable, quiet, as the little one forms his reply.

"You already told me that much earlier, didn't you?" he inquired.

"Yes," I whispered.

"How extraordinary," he murmured. "I thought I only heard what I wished you were saying. Forgive me."

He is a forgiving one, my partner, and I will always follow him. He may not need me now, but he clings onto me, and I cling back, for we are merely two halves of a soul who have found each other in a large world, and we walk together to face destiny.

"I am named 'game'," he whispers in the dark of night, as we curl up together, and the dawn approaches. "And you are the King of Games."

I chuckle. "If you say so, aibou."

…

Wait a moment.

He never said so. But... perhaps... though to believe for good and all he truly feels that way about me would be... life-altering. I cannot really suppose he has done the same thing that I just have? Can I?

Well, bless him and his games, then. He can try all he likes, and if it's my name he needs, he can have it. He can own it for the rest of his days. It was never of any use to me, after all.

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