Nightmares

Okay, here we are - last chapter. Again, big thanks to everyone who reviewed!

If it seems like there are some loose ends -- maybe there are. I suspect the only times things of this nature ever get wrapped up with a neat little bow on top is on a "Lifetime Special Movie Presentation," and I'm hoping to do something a little more realistic than that.

BTW, Yugi kept calling Yami "master" in that last chapter - and he's still more damaged by his early childhood than anyone realizes and/or wants to admit.

Warnings for language, remembered violence......

Disclaimer - nope, they're not mine.......

******************************************************************************


Yami looked at him, wide-eyed. "Koi, are you -- what makes you think so?"

"I -- I saw him, Yami---" Yugi sniffled.

"Shhh, koi, it was just a bad dream---" Yami soothed, hugging him tighter.

~*~

After Yami fell back to sleep, Yugi slipped carefully out of his arms. After sneaking into the bathroom to clean up a bit, he went to look out the window, wrapped in his robe and shivering. He needed to be alone somewhere to think. Despite what Yami had said, he knew it wasn't just a dream. He carefully slipped out of the bedroom, softly shutting the door. After making sure his grandfather was asleep, he tiptoed through the living room, eased the apartment door open and slipped through, carefully shutting it behind him and picking his way down the dark stairs. The shop was full of dark slithering shadows and eerie yellow light reflected from outside and he shivered, darting through it to the back room. It was almost pitch black inside, but he didn't try to put any of the lights on. Instead, he sank down on a dimly seen box, shivering, looking around at the barely seen shapes of boxes and crates. He whimpered, hugging his knees to his chest and burying his head against them. He didn't know what to do. He was positive now; his nightmares had really happened. Which meant that his father had killed his mother. His mother.....

"Yugi, if you would just be a good boy, your father wouldn't have to discipline you. But you're not a good boy. You never learn. You keep going back and doing the same things over and over again. Why do you behave so badly? Why do you force your father to punish you? He was a happy man before you came along. You've made him very unhappy."

"No, Yugi. Those sort of things are for good boys. You're not a good boy. You're very bad. You don't deserve anything special."

"Yugi, stop your whimpering. You deserved to be punished. You deserve whatever your father does to you. It's all your fault----"

Which --- if that was true, then --- it was his fault that his father had killed her. Not to mention his fault that his father had been shot dead afterwards. It had to be true. Why else would she have kept telling him it was if it wasn't? The whole thing had been his fault --- he'd been the one who killed his parents -----

"Kami---?" he whimpered, starting to sob helplessly. "I didn't mean to, really----I try to be good, but it never works. O-kaasan was right, I'm always bad -- I can't do anything right----it was all my fault----" He huddled into a ball, sobbing so hard his small body shook, but not making a sound.

~*~

Meanwhile, Yami had awakened to find his koi not in his arms. Concerned, he got out of bed, started to open the bedroom door - then remembered something and quickly dematerialized, reappearing a moment later pulling on a dark blue robe. He wasn't anywhere near as self-conscious as his beloved, but it wouldn't do to walk around the apartment naked. He peeked around the bedroom door, expecting to see light spilling from under the bathroom door, but all was dark. Thinking his aibou must have snuck to the kitchen for a late-night snack, he headed in that direction - only to trip over Solomon's footstool and fall flat.

"Oof---" He added a few unkind observations in ancient Egyptian.

"Yami?" Solomon called, his voice drowsy but amused. "Was that you?" He had never understood how the former pharaoh could be so clumsy and so graceful all at once.

"A thousand pardons, Mutou-san," Yami called back, sitting up and looking around. Where is my aibou? he wondered worriedly. No one was in the kitchen. Yugi had blocked off their mental link, but, if he concentrated, Yami could usually track him down anyway. He closed his eyes, concentrating----

~*~

"Yugi, why can't you just be good? Why do you keep doing things like this? You're such a horrible little boy; it's no wonder nobody loves you. No, don't give me that look. Your father doesn't love you because you're so bad. And how can I love you when you do nothing but cause me trouble? It's your fault he gets mad and takes it out on me. If you weren't such a horrible little boy he wouldn't have to get so mad in the first place. Now just stay here until you can try to be good." The door slammed, leaving the sobbing, violet-eyed chibi in almost total darkness. Surprisingly, it wasn't the dark he was afraid of. Had there actually been monsters under his bed, they would probably have been kinder than the monsters that had given birth to him.

"It's your fault, bitch! You're the one who wanted to have the little shit! I told you we should have just fucking killed the little bastard and tossed him in the garbage!" The sound of a brutal, heavy blow, a crash, a scream, more bellowing and cursing----

"Koi?! Whn Ran Ra's name are you doing down here?!"

Yugi gasped, startled, as strong arms emfolded him, pulling him into a comforting embrace. He burrowed close, desperately in need of reassurance.

"Shhh, beloved, it's all right now. It's all right," Yami soothed, stroking his hair. Yugi was sobbing, completely hysterical. His mental defenses had crumbled; Yami was easily able to read his little one's mind, to see all the painful images suddenly freed from wherever they'd been locked away.

"By the Gods, aibou---" he whispered, horrified and very near tears. How dare they treat his beloved with such cruelty? Yami himself hadn't had much of a childhood by this world's standards, taking the Sun Throne at thirteen after his father had died of river fever (his mother had died giving birth to him and his twin sister; he had never known her,) but he had had hatheather's unnwavering, unconditional love. He remembered his father referring to him and his sister as "the most precious jewels of the Great House." How could any parent feel otherwise about their child, he wondered. Especially one as beautiful and pure as his hikari?

"It--it was all my fault---" Yugi finally whimpered, his face hidden in the curve of Yami's neck. "If -- if I wasn't so bad all the time he wouldn't have killed her----"

"No, koi. No. It was not your fault," Yami soothed, standing up with the little hikari in his arms. "Come on, let's get you upstairs." He carried his little one up the stairs and set him down to open the door, but before he could it was opened by the very worried Solomon.

"Yami, what's going on? Is Yugi all right?" he said.

"Mutou-san, how could you leave him to remember all that on his own?!" Yami demanded, his Sennen eye abruptly flaring. "How could you lie to him all these years instead of trying to help him?" It wasn't logical, but he needed to demand some answers from someone, some accountability.

"Yami, what are you talking about?" Solomon demanded, more bewildered than angry.

"I'mkingking about what those Ra-damned bastards did to him!" Yami snapped. "How could you have let it go on for so long? Why didn't you do something?"

"What? Who --- Yami, what do you mean?" Solomon was completely confused.

"I'm talking about what his Ra-damned parents---" Yami started, but was interrupted by a cry from poor Yugi.

"Stop it!" Yugi had retreated about three stairs down. "See, they were right, it's me --- now you're fighting too and it's all my fault---" He crumpled to the stair, sobbing and shaking.

"By the Gods---" Yami suddenly realized what he was doing. He put his hands over his face, slumping back against the doorframe. "Forgive me, Mutou-san----koi, it is not your doing; it's mine---" He took a long, deep, shuddering breath, then went to his beloved and scooped him up again, holding him close. "Beloved, forgive me, please---"

"It's okay, both of you," Solomon said as Yami carried Yugi into the apartment. "I was just worried is all. I'm not angry, really."

Yami sat down on the sofa with his little hikari cuddled in his lap. Yugi wasn't crying quite so hard now, but his muffled sniffles and whimpers still tore at their hearts. "I'm sorry---" he sniffled, not looking up.

"Don't be. It's all right." Solomon sat down with them. "Yugi, what happened? What do you remember?"

"All I remember is my father hitting me all the time and yelling at me and my mother--" Yugi sniffled. "Then she'd tell me it was all my fault he was mad, because I was so bad. She kept saying she didn't love me because I didn't do anything except cause trouble and --- and that nobody would ever love me because I was so horrible --- but she wouldn't tell me what I did." The latter was something he had just realized with twelve years' hindsight.

"Oh, Yugi---" Solomon said softly. "I don't think your mother loved anyone except herself. Kami forgive me for saying that about my own child, but it's true. And your father was just a complete asshole." He shook his head. "Yami's right. I should have butted in. But I was afraid they'd just take you and go somewhere where'd I'd never see you again. I didn't want to lose you altogether. I loved you so much, even then. But I had no idea how bad things had gotten until that horrible phone call. Even then, all they were worried about was the emergency room bill. It took me close to a month to find you. I promised myself then that nobody would ever take you away from me again like that. Ever. I even made then change your name back to Mutou." He sighed. "You were so traumatized that you couldn't really remember anything. And I didn't want you to have to. I wanted to spare you that."

Yugi sniffled again, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and looking up at them. "I remember you coming to get me that time---" he said shakily. "At the -- wherever I was." Before Solomon could reply, Yugi had launched himself out of Yami's lap and hugged him. "I love you, Ji-chan."

Solomon hugged him hard. "I love you, too----"

~*~

"J--Ji--ch-chan?"

Solomon started awake out of a dream that was quickly turning ugly to find himself staring into frightened violet eyes. "Yugi? What is it, baby? Are you sick?"

"N-no, I --ad aad a weally bad dweam----" the trembling chibi sniffled. He had on a pair of blue footed pajamas with sleepy teddy bears printed on them and was dragging his "bwanket" behind him. "C-can I 'tay here? Pwease?"

Solomon sat up, lifting his frightened grandson into his arms. "What kind of bad dream was it, baby?"

Yugi clung to him, sniffling. "O-taasan said I couldn't 'tay with you anymowe and I had to go with him, but I didn't want to. I wanna stay with you---" He looked up. "I -- I don't hafta go back there, d-do I?"

How do you explain to a four-year-old that there isn't any "there" to go back to? "No, Yugi, you don't have to go back there. All of that was only a nightmare. It wasn't real. You can stay here as long as you want."

"Weally?" Yugi brightened almost immediately, then looked shy. "Ji-chan?"

"Yes, baby?"

"Can I have some ice cweam?"

~*~