It Was a Dark And Stormy Night

Body

This chapter's kind of short - if it's a little disjointed, bear with me. I banged it out in about an hour. I wanted to get it down and posted.
BTW, what's the last Millennium item? (A couple of my friends and I had this same problem once trying to remember who the seventh dwarf was in "Snow White.") There's the puzzle, the rod, the ring, the scales, the eye and the key.......
Anyway, have you guessed that I like Pegasus, maybe in spite of my better judgement? I can't help it, I think he's kind of cute for the bad guy - and he's so freaking funny. That scene when he starts waxing rhapsodic about Funny Bunny leaves me on the floor laughing every time....

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Jada looked from the unconscious man whose head was in her lap back to her cousin, then back again several times. "You're kidding---"

"What's going on?" Yami came in, putting his hands protectively on his aibou's shoulders. "Great Ra----" The eye on his forehead had started glowing dangerously.

"Guys, wait! Back off, okay? I think he's hurt," Jada said. "I think something terrible has happened to him."

"If it hasn't, then it will when I---" Yami started forward.

"Yami, wait!" Yugi blocked him. "Jada's right. If he's hurt or something, we have to help him. Otherwise we'll be --- just as bad as he was." He looked apprehensively over his shoulder as Pegasus moaned, slowly regaining consciousness.

"Yugi's right," Ryou said. He and Bakura had come to see what the commotion was.

"And if he's not, then I get first crack at him," Bakura declared.

"You?" Yami snorted. "Do you have any idea what that - bastard - did to my koibito?!"

"Yami, shut the fuck up! I can't hear myself think!" Jada snapped. Surprisingly, Yami did, although his sennen eye was still shimmering with rage. Jada held the pharaoh's glare for a moment more, then turned back to the stricken Pegasus. "Are you all right? What happened?"

"I----" Pegasus shook his head, trying to clear it, then focused on her as best he could. Jada caught her breath with a little squeak. His left eye, no longer shrouded by his hair, was a dull pale brown, with a white scar slashing across the iris and pupil, which obviously didn't react to light. It didn't look like a recent injury.

"Damn, he did have an eye under there after all!" Joey murmured.

"Do you remember how you got here?" Jada said.

Pegasus shook his head. "I---I remember I was trapped, I don't know where. He thought I still had the Eye. He --- he wanted the Eye. He wouldn't believe that I didn't know where it was anymore----" He shuddered, burying his face in his hands and huddling into a ball. "He had Cynthia -- her soul -- but I couldn't reach her. Couldn't touch her----" His voice broke and he started to sob.

Yami snorted in disgust and Yugi gave him a scolding look. "That isn't nice, Yami. If someone did that to us I'd go out of my mind, too."

"But aibou---" Yami started.

"Yami, it's over. It all worked out all right," Yugi said. "I forgave him a long time ago. I had to. I can't go around holding a grudge like that. It doesn't do anyone any good."

Jada looked at Yugi. "Who's Cynthia?"

"She was his wife," Yugi replied, his huge violet eyes shimmering with tears over the man who'd once caused him so much grief. "She died, but I don't know how." He knelt by them.

Behind them, Yami was torn between his deep hatred of Pegasus and deep shame over it all at once. Once again his beloved had proven himself more of a true king than the pharaoh.

"All I wanted was to see her---" Pegasus sniffled. "She was all I ever had. But I--I couldn't --- and then it took me over, this power. If I could hurt others as much as I was hurting, then maybe it wouldn't hurt anymore----but it was never enough, I --- I --- it took hold of me, and then----" He shuddered, choking on a sob. "I believed that if I could raise enough power, then I could bring her back somehow. Like --- like you----" He looked up a bit, his good eye focusing on Yami. "That was why I wanted the Puzzle. I didn't realize it didn't work that way, that you--you weren't who I thought you were." There was more, much more, he knew, but his mind was fogged, confused by real falsfalse memories, dreams and nightmares and fragments he couldn't sort out. He had no idea how long it had been since --- whatever had happened to entrap him in that other place, that nightmare he couldn't awaken from. He didn't even know how he'd gotten here. He'd simply awakened to find himself dumped in a culvert at the foot of the hill; ten minutes more and he would most likely have drowned with ever regaining consciousness.

Yami, meanwhile, had forced his emotions down to try to read his former adversary's mind, determine if this was just another trick. What he saw shocked him.

"He's been held prisoner in the Shadow Realm. Tortured--" The former pharaoh breathed, looking at the others. "Great Ra. I would not wish that fate upon even my worst enemy."

"Except Tea," Jada added grimly.

Yami didn't acknowledge the remark.

"So? We were stuck there for five thousand years, pharaoh," Bakura said. "What makes him any different?"

"We were not tortured, merely unable to escape," Yami retorted. "And even he merely held the souls of the others the way we were held, unharmed." He had to give the man that; Pegasus could have tortured Mokuba and Seto and Yugi's grandfather in the Shadow Realm, but he hadn't. And, like Yugi had pointed out, he had let them go as promised.

"But how did ---- who was it?" Seto had one arm around Joey and one around Mokuba, suddenly fearful despite himself.

"I don't knoe cae called himself Presidio," Pegasus said shakily. "He had the Key. That's why he wanted the Eye."

"The Key?!" Yugi was stunned. "But I -- I thought Shadi had ---"

"The Key? The Key to what?" Jada interrupted.

"The Millennium Key. It's one of the seven items," Yugi explained. "I thought someone else had it." That part of the story he was going to have to explain later. It was just too complicated now.

"The Eye allows you to read another's thoughts. The Key enables you to enter another's mind," Yami explained. "With the two together, you can take over the soul of another."

"That's not all----" Pegasus said softly, miserably. "He knows who has the Eye. That must have been why he released me."

They all looked at Bakura, who shrugged. "Hey, don't look at me. I dropped it into the water off that stupid island. By mistake, might I add?" The tomb raider looked quite annoyed with himself.

"But then who---?" Yami looked at Pegasus.

Pus sus shook his head. "He didn't say."

Jada turned back to him. "It's all right. We'll help you."

"You'll----?" He looked at her for a long moment, dumbfounded, then slumped slowly into her arms and buried his face against her shoulder, sobbing again. "Thank you -- oh thank you, thank you-----"