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Chapter Text

A’aru was beautiful- a sea of golden sand under an endless, cloudless sky; cut only by the sapphire sheen of the Nile as it had been in the days of the Pharaohs. It was a kingdom that he could rule forever in peace, without the threats of war and death and famine, without fear of the demons that had ended his rule five thousand years before. He was surrounded by all those he had loved in his first life; his priests, his mother and father, his subjects- though whether they were the actual souls of his loved ones or constructed from his memories was unclear. He had not been buried with any earthly possessions to take with him to the other side. He had not been buried at all. As far as he could tell, A’aru was a consolation prize from the gods- he had separated himself from all he had known by sacrificing his soul to seal the demon Zorc, and the gods would not break their own laws for him, regardless of his supposed divinity.

He would not have left the living world so quickly, given the chance. In just a year or so he had met and lost the people who had meant the most to him in his entire existence. He loved his friends from his days as Pharaoh, of course, but their god-worship could be exhausting. The Mana in his Memory World had not even known his real name (though he wasn’t sure if that was accurate to his real life or an effect of the realm’s magic). His friends from the future saw him as a person, just like the rest of them. Yugi, Jounouchi, Honda, Anzu- even Kaiba; they had all seen him for who he really was, beyond the cool and composed persona of the king. He missed them desperately. But alas, his soul had to return to the afterlife, and unfortunately it had to be right away.

He had promised to stay forever. He didn’t mean to make empty promises- but Yugi had been distraught, terrified; as if losing Atem was losing a part of himself. His other self . It was beautiful, almost, to the Pharaoh; that his partner had gone on calling him that long after he discovered that he wasn’t merely the boy’s alter ego. He had other titles before his friends had found his name- Yami Yugi, the Nameless Pharaoh- but he had always seen him as a part of his own soul. Had it been only destiny that had chosen Yugi? Some unknowable force ripping apart the souls of any man who dared to solve the puzzle until it had landed in the hands of that darling, awkward, overeager boy? The other men had all wished for riches, power, the might of the Pharaoh- he had only wished for friends. He liked to think that even in his five-thousand-year stupor, he had somehow chosen him himself. He wouldn’t have chosen anyone else.

Had Yugi understood what the Ceremonial Duel meant to him? The emotions it was meant to convey? It was the closest thing he had gotten to a burial, a funeral; did Yugi understand that he had given his eulogy, his last rites? Did he understand the complicated feelings in every card, the trust in the summoning of the God Cards? He had wept for him, in the end. He had never liked to see Yugi cry. He would have stayed forever, if he could. Maybe Kaiba was right- destiny was stupid. Perhaps he should have stayed; lived out Yugi’s life with him, rotted away in the Puzzle afterwards, stuck in the mortal realm for all eternity. He would never take another host, and it would still be more beautiful than A’aru.

In the darkest, coldest night of his rule in A’aru, he had begged the gods to send him back, to give him his own mortal body and let him die when Yugi did. He didn’t understand how they could be so cruel- but Seto did not get to spend his afterlife with Kisara, and he could not grow old with Yugi. He had gotten to see him one more time since the Ceremonial Duel, when that fool Diva had abused the power of the Millennium Cube and thinned the boundary between dimensions, allying himself with whatever was left of Zorc, ripping apart Kaiba and nearly killing Yugi. The beast was nothing before his divine power. It was almost disappointing. Time had passed in the mortal realm, clearly- his jaw had been sharper, his shoulders straighter, filled with a confidence that rivaled his own. He had been beautiful. He had never not been beautiful. Neither dared speak, but Yugi nodded, as if to tell him, ‘It’s okay. You can go’, and maybe, wishfully, ‘I love you’.

And back to A’aru he went. He took the Puzzle with him, so that neither that fool Kaiba nor Yugi ever found unnecessary hope in the obsolete thing. It was the Cube that had weakened the barrier enough for him to save Yugi anyway, as much as he’d love to believe there was some little spark of magic left in the puzzle binding him to Yugi. Yugi would get over him eventually. He had wonderful friends, a bright future- he’d probably have a successful career and a beautiful wife- and eventually his time with the Pharaoh would fade to wistful reminiscing about his time as a teenager. Atem could rot in his heaven-turned-hell forever, if it meant Yugi would one day be happy without him.

The Pharaoh was shaken from his musings by the familiar voice of one of his priests, Seto coming about as close to shaking his shoulders as mortals were allowed to get to their Pharaoh (He was his cousin, so he must have some divine blood as well? Much to think about). “My Pharaoh, there is someone here to see you. Take care, my Lord- I do not trust him. He speaks strangely, and dresses oddly. He cannot be of this world”

The throne room doors slammed open in a flourish of white and blue.

“We meet again, Pharaoh!”

Chapter Text

The Pharaoh could not believe his eyes- Kaiba was dead? And in A’aru? He had assumed that A’aru was his own personal afterlife, the resting place of a king, surrounded only by the souls of those who would have served him in life. He had not imagined anyone else could join him there, much less one who had been such a staunch disbeliever in the divinity that made such things possible- but before him, white coat covered in sand and sporting a manic look in bright blue eyes, was the young CEO of KaibaCorp, looking barely any older than Atem remembered him looking during the Diva incident. Seto Kaiba was dead, and he couldn’t have been older than twenty.

“I challenge you Pharaoh! If your title as the King of Games means anything to you, then duel me, here and now!”

The Pharaoh frowned. “That title means nothing to me anymore, Kaiba- in fact, it belongs to Yugi now, in my absence.” Kaiba stiffened, the certainty in his face flickering. Clearly, he had not expected Atem to sound so world-weary in his ‘perfect’ desert paradise, “What I am more concerned with is the fact that you are dead, and so young. What could have possibly happened to bring you to my kingdom so soon?”

Kaiba’s eyes widened, almost seeming shocked at the news, which in turn surprised the Pharaoh. Had he somehow not realized his own state in his hurry to challenge him for some meaningless title he had left in the living world? Yugi had beaten him in the end anyway. Even if he had lived, it wouldn’t have been his to keep. Had Kaiba, in his hubris, somehow not processed his own departure from the mortal plane? It was then that the man before him began to laugh, but there was no warmth in it- it was a cold, cruel cackle that he had heard so many times before- but at some point in his absence the ice had stopped reaching Kaiba’s eyes. All there was now was a sort of manic fire, the eyes of a man driven mad by too long without the object of his desires. It was a haunting sort of look, and it made the laugh seem even madder.

“I am not dead, Pharaoh. Nothing could kill the great Seto Kaiba so easily! The Millenium Cube is no foolish occult item- it is a quantum engine of unimaginable power, capable of bending time and space to its user’s will! With the Cube in my hands, your ‘afterlife’ is nothing more than yet another alternate dimension for it to access- and your glory will be mine. No longer will I suffer these scars of defeat, Pharaoh, because my Dual Dimension System allows me to challenge -and defeat- you even after your own death!”

He… wasn’t dead? He had built a machine that allowed him to access A’aru as if it was one of Diva’s punishment dimensions, rather than a paradise built by the gods of ancient Egypt themselves? He had thrown away his own chance at life with who knows how low of a chance of return, just to challenge him again- all for a rivalry that should have ended with his passing?

He found himself shouting before he knew it. “You are a fool to come here, Kaiba!” What he hadn’t expected was the genuine devastation in the man’s eyes at his words. He looked as if Atem had ripped up his treasured Blue-Eyes cards right in front of him, burnt the scraps, and stomped on the ashes. He looked shockingly heartbroken for such an unshakeable, unstoppable force- but the Pharaoh’s rage could not be quelled by such a thing. “You have thrown away your chance to live in pursuit of some stupid, selfish rivalry that only you believe in. Have you even thought about how your foolishness could affect the real, living people who still care about you? How your brother, and Isono, hell, even Yugi would feel about you effectively killing yourself, just for a chance to pick a fight with me in the land of my eternal rest? Did you even consider that what you were throwing away for your infernal pride was the one thing that I desired and could not ever have again?”

In his fury, he had stood and stepped down from his throne. He still stood a full foot shorter than Kaiba, but his presence was so powerful in his full Pharaonic glory that it seemed he was looking him level in the eye. He could understand, now, why the man had been seen as a god in his day. He was shockingly terrifying. Despite his small stature, Kaiba felt towered over. Even as he glared back, he knew that this too, the Pharaoh had won. “I can go back.” Atem’s glower softened, his furious features taken over by a glimmer of hope. “If my calculations are correct- and they always are- the DDS should have enough power for one round trip before either the engines or the Cube lose power. I didn’t have to die to get here- this isn’t really the afterlife anyway, and dimensional travel and space travel aren’t functionally that different. This is my physical body, not some abstract ‘soul’. And I think-” 

Here he paused for a moment, either choosing his next words carefully or for dramatic effect, to stroke his own genius. Any of the vulnerability the Pharaoh’s previous words had struck had disappeared, replaced once again by the raging fires of mad genius in his eyes. “-that perhaps, if my physical form could move from my reality to yours without sustaining damage, that you could be transported from this place back to the real world without any substantial harm to yourself. There are-” And here he cleared his throat, as close to openly nervous or awkward as he would ever have let himself be in front of another person, “-certainly people who would enjoy your return.”

Was what Kaiba was saying true? He could go back? The Pharaoh didn’t know much of anything about quantum physics or dimensional travel, but what he was saying seemed to make sense. He could go back, have his own body, see all of the people he loved again? See Yugi again? It seemed too good to be true, but nothing in the mannerisms of the man opposite him seemed to indicate that it was some kind of awful trick to get him to duel again. As loathe as he would be to admit it, Kaiba was probably one of the people who wanted him back in the land of the living. He had certainly gone to extreme lengths to duel him here. It was probably the closest the man could get to admitting he had missed him.

“Give me half an hour to say my goodbyes to my people and my family, then show me the way to your ship. If the things you say are true, Kaiba, then I’m going home.”