Work Text:
It’s easy to see himself as something that needs to be put down.
He doesn’t have to look very far to see the reasons as to why he thinks this. He can see it when he snaps at his little brother, eyes melting into something that looks like fear. He can see when Yugi flinches when he slams his hand on the desk too hard, anger flowing through his veins to coat the world in red. He can see it in the news stories and internet comments and forum posts about people like him, about how dangerous they are to society and how they shouldn’t exist.
The worst part is that he can’t find it in himself to disagree with them.
He can’t find it in himself to tell them that they’re wrong, that he’s more than that. He can’t find it in himself to prove their words wrong, to prove that he’s better than all of that. All he can see is Gozaburo jumping out of the window, glass flying around him as he plummets down the building like a wad of paper being tossed into the garbage can.
He can still see the blood that pooled across the sidewalk, the shape of a human that didn’t look human anymore and he’s ingrained with the thought that losing means death. But he’s also engrained with another thought. He’s engrained with the idea of using death as an escape, a method to the solution of a mind that falls apart. If losing is death and death is the erase of the human form, then where does he fall on that line?
Did he stop being human the moment Gozaburo jumped out the window or did he lose it long before that? Did he lose it when his parents died, when he had to watch their bodies be lowered into the casket with Mokuba crying into his arm? Did he lose it when they both got sent to the orphanage, shown and told that the world never wanted them? Did he lose it when he watched Gozaburo isolate him from his brother, collar around his neck as he was paraded and treated like a dog?
Did he lose it when the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder rested in his lap, the voice of his step-father ringing in his ear that he was just another dog to be put down like the rest of them?
Or did he lose it when he went to the afterlife on a suicide attempt, desperate to escape from the crushing emptiness that made up his existence? Did he lose it when he came back and was forced to look at the people that he had hurt? Did it lose it when he stared into the mirror and realized that he stopped being human a long time ago?
Or maybe he was never human to begin with and he had just been fooling himself the whole time, deluding himself into believing that he was like everyone else. If losing was death and death was losing, then he had already lost the fight with his mind, lost the fight to be normal and sane like every other person.
He looks at other people with a jealous envy, a want to have a brain like theirs. He wishes that he could take out his brain and cut out all of the bad parts and replace them with something new, something better, something far less awful than what it is now. He wishes that he could replace himself with something better, something more human, something more normal, something less toxic.
He feels like bleach on a good day and like poison on a bad day, the ticking of a clock ready to explode in every direction. If losing is death and death is the loss of the human form, then he has already lost anything that made him human. He wonders if this is genetic, if this is the curse of the Kaiba blood that he was forced to take in. He wonders if his birth parents will still love him like this, if they would both still see him as their child or as something long gone, as something that can no longer be saved.
The bottle of pills in his hand feels like an escape from all of that, a promise to make him normal in the next life. Maybe if he dies now, he can be reborn as something different, something sane, something that isn’t this. The pills are bitter like the taste on his tongue when he looks at himself in the mirror, the bile of self-hatred burning the back of his throat.
The pills taste like freedom from a brain that hates him, from a brain that wants to destroy him from the inside out. The pills taste like the afterlife, of desert heat licking across his skin as a pharaoh stands in the distance screaming his name. The pills feel like hands trying to save what is left, of trying to piece together the broken pieces of a puzzle.
The pills feel like the soaring of wings in the sky, the sun blasting in his eyes as he smiles once again towards the tune of death.
━━━━━━
He wakes up in a hospital bed, wrist tied to the sides of the railings as the world beeps around him. He looks around the room, disconnected and tired as he gazes towards the window. Yugi sits in the corner of the room, fingers flipping through a book in his lap. A closer inspection shows that it’s a pamphlet for a mental health facility in New York, the same state that Anzu and Jou live in.
He rasps out the other’s name, catching his partner’s attention as the pamphlet is dropped to the floor and pale fingers press the call button beside his bed. It isn’t long before nurses flood the room, taking his vitals and removing tubes from down his throat. The room is soon empty, Yugi standing next to his bed like a ghost from his past.
“You were in a coma for a month.” Yugi’s voice is tight, deep enough with grief to remind him of Atem. “You almost died.”
He reaches for the other’s hand before it’s slapped away. Purple eyes look at him filled with water, narrowed in anger as his body shakes.
“Do you know how dangerous that was?!” Yugi’s voice booms across the white wall, overtaking the sounds from the hallway. “You flatlined twice, the doctors almost couldn’t save you, and Mokuba is…”
The duelist goes silent, lips quivering as he leans over the railing to push his face into his chest. Yugi’s nose digs into his shoulder, grip tight around the hospital gown.
“We almost lost you…” Yugi whispers, tears dripping into the cloth. “You almost died…”
Part of him almost wonders how many times he’s going to have to come back here, to the bottom of the barrel where everything mocks and laughs at him for being too weak enough to finish the job. Somewhere, Gozaburo laughs at his misery.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“I know.”
“Is Mokuba okay?”
“Yeah.”
Yugi pulls his head out from his shoulder, wiping his face off. He sits back down in the chair, moving it closer to the bed as he picks the pamphlet off the floor. He flips it open, placing it on his stomach. He grasps it with shaking hands, looking at the information presented to him.
“Your therapist recommended that to me. She wanted to wait until your next session, but she thought now would be a better time…” The duelist says, picking at his nails. “She thinks that it would be good for you. You’ll be there for three days to monitor you and give you the help that you need. I’ll be going with you while Mokuba stays behind to look after the company. I already talked to-”
“Fine.”
Yugi blinks, surprise coloring his face. “Fine?”
“I’ll go.”
The other leans back in his chair, sighing lightly. “Good, I’m glad. I’ll go ahead and tell your therapist what you said. She’ll probably figure out the rest from there.”
“Yugi?” He calls, swallowing a thick layer of saliva. “Thank you… for being here.”
The duelist smiles at him, soft and small and layered with heartache. “Of course, Kaiba.”