Part 7

-----"Game over, man! Game over!" -Private Hudson, Aliens, 1986-----

Joey twirled the screwdriver through his fingers and grinned. Then he retreated behind Wesley and his shotgun. Cordelia did likewise, only she staked a vamp with her screwdriver as she moved. Seto readied his weapon as the first vampires rose from the ruined stands. There was only so much use for the guns - some vamps had left the bleachers already, and the rest of the AI crew plus guests engaged them in quarters too tight to fire. In the back of the room, though, they could shoot vampires without shooting one another.

Behind the altar, Yami found Lilah as she moved for the door. He spared a quick glance behind him and saw an unfamiliar dark-skinned man plunge a stake into a monster's heart. The thing exploded into dust. //Ah. // Then movement, and he grabbed the lawyer and pulled her to face him.

"Ow! Not the wrists!"

"Would you like me to let you go?"

"Well, yeah. Unless I'm more important than your Light."

//WHAT!?// And something tingled in the strange haze surrounding his dormant bond. But nothing, nothing distracted him in the midst of a game.

"Time is a bit different here." And Lilah looked around, to find a strangely washed-out world. Events outside, seen through swirling shadows, seemed to have frozen in place. "We'll play a game. Win and I'll let you go. Lose and you're mine."

Don't commit to anything, her lawyer's training advised her. "What game?"

"I'll make it simple for you." He smirked, and her eyes narrowed. "I think, high card." He drew Ralph's Hoyle deck and shuffled it. "You'll draw blind, twice. I'll do likewise, once. You can keep your first card, or discard, without seeing mine."

Wait, her training said. But a new, reckless voice replied, "What the hell. Sounds fair enough."

He cut and drew, as did she.

Lilah smirked back. "Queen of Diamonds." And she *felt* that if she turned, she'd see a mountain of gems at her back. Interesting. "Your move."

He drew, looked at his card, and his mouth quirked up at the corner. Then he closed his eyes and leaned back against nothing, hands behind his head. "Take your time," he said.

She did, appreciating the svelte, leather-clad view. Then she very slowly and quietly reached a hand towards the deck, turning up a card at its corner. An ace! No way she could loo-

"You're cheating," and she looked up to find his red eyes still closed, but his third eye glowing. "Hardly a blind draw. I do believe that constitutes a violation of the rules." All eyes open now, and suddenly it was very hard to move.

"Not terribly illuminating," he continued, "but then I hardly needed this game to know that you were selfish, grasping, and completely amoral."

"Pot to kettle? You're black," she ground out, feeling his magic surround her. The potential diamonds behind her might have been teetering, about to topple, to crush or suffocate.

"But now," he continued, "I get to punish you." He reached a hand to her and she felt something constrict, start to shatter. "Wait! Does this have any affect on my soul?"

"Soul, mind, spirit, oh, yes, it should. But you'll see in just a second - "

Her breath came in panting gasps, but she reached into her briefcase and withdrew a document in blood-red ink. "You should have specified. My soul isn't mine to wager." And the power began to ebb.

"What?!"

"It's 98% mortgaged. 50% to my employer and 48% to assorted dark powers." She shrugged, and time began to resume its normal flow.

"That still leaves two percent."

"Your point?"

"I'll take it." His hand clenched into a fist and Lilah collapsed. Her words, though, hung in the air. //My Light. Yugi - he can't be here!?// Then he turned and looked directly into the eyes of Seto Kaiba.

* * *

The brown-haired billionaire smirked at the taller, harder version of Yugi Mutoh. "Well, looks like you're in my debt." He flicked his eyes to the chaos around them. "I'm funding this little rescue."

Yami Yugi was silent, his red eyes narrowing as they found Yugi, protected by three of the newcomers, gamely holding a stake. Then he closed his hand around Kaiba's neck and slammed the blue-eyed man into the wall.

"You brought him HERE!? Into this?" It was a feral growl more suited to Yami Bakura. Yami squeezed.

"You selfish bastard! He was dying by inches!" Kaiba gasped, and Yami's grip loosened. Kaiba pushed him back and Yami scrambled for purchase.

Blue eyes on red, and Kaiba was not backing down. "He needs you. He was blocked from you, but he would have wandered Los Angeles at night, looking for you, until someone or something killed him. I found him backup. You didn't even think. You. Just. Ran," Seto spat. "The mighty game king. Get your hands off of me." He shook out of Yami's loosened grasp. Vampires circled them, and the quarters were too close for his shotgun, so Kaiba pulled a stake. "It might interest you to know that you've been manipulated. These things used magic to keep you apart for their little ceremony." He staked one vampire, and then handed his stake to Yami. The dark boy looked at it, then withdrew a card from his new deck. His vampiric opponent smirked, and kept smirking as he crumbled to dust, a thrown card lacerating his heart.

"Nice. Now, let's go keep my employees alive. You and Mutoh have things to discuss."

As he joined the fight, Yami saw Joey as well, fighting alongside a woman and what looked like a Duel Monster. And Seto's employees didn't seem to need much saving. The vampires were being beaten back, converting to dust as the tall black man and a white man with glasses decapitated the creatures. Then, suddenly, the beasts were gone, and he was face to face with Yugi.

* * *

The violet-eyed boy was dusty and flushed from the battle. He nearly glowed with the inner radiance for which Yami named him Hikari, his Light. It was wrong, Yugi juxtaposed with these ruins, all this destruction. Yami began to back away, but two things stopped him. There was the human barrier at his back formed by Kaiba and Joey, the most unlikely of allies. And then there was the deep, deep pain in Yugi's eyes.

"Please," the boy whispered. "Don't leave me again."

Angel, Lorne, Cordelia, Gunn, and Wesley formed a loose ring around them, but the two had eyes only for one another. Imperfect mirrors, one radiating a light that the other seemed to absorb, they stood locked together.

"No! This is wrong. Again, you're surrounded by pain and destruction." //And it is all because of me.//

"Yami, what you're feeling isn't real! Don't you see?" the boy implored. "They used a spell to break us apart, and it's still working! You're the master of games and strategy and you can't see that?"

"Maybe it is still working, and maybe it's for the best!" The taller boy's voice was rough. "You know...you found out what I do for you. How I hurt, how I kill! Even the smallest bit of acceptance - I'm corrupting you! What the dark Bakura can't even manage to do to his companion, I'm doing right now, out of my best damned intentions! Isn't that the phrase? About the road to Hell? How many times have I proclaimed those gates open...and how many times were you watching and learning...." His voice trailed off in a choke. A hand lodged in red and black hair and tugged hard, and red eyes turned completely inward.

"Yami. Yami, look at me. Please." The boy's voice was soft, almost musical, compelling. Almost against his will the dark reflection turned back. "Please, you've got to stop this. Stop thinking that I'm perfect! I'm not, and I never was. I am your light, and I always want to be your light, but I'm human too." Liquid violet eyes entreated, red eyes tightened with stress. "I don't know all of what you do when you shut me out, but I know you only do...final things...when they're necessary or deserved. I trust you. I'm sorry if that shakes what you think of me but it's part of who I am." He broke eye contact briefly, looking down, but moving closer. "You and I - we're yin and yang. A little darkness in the center of the light, and so much light inside your darkness. It's how everything is." Yugi placed a hand on his Yami's arm, and the Darkness trembled.

"I'm human, Yami. So are you. I trust you to protect me, because I love you. Please, Yami, come back to me."

Yami raised a second trembling hand and grasped Yugi's forearm in turn. "Aibou," he whispered. "Are you sure?" The shorter boy nodded, eyes full. Then the pyramid puzzles around their necks flashed with blinding light, and when everyone could see again, only Yugi stood there.

"Whole," the boy whispered, eyes closed. Then his eyes opened, and as he took in the room they reddened and he grew taller.

The entire Angel Investigations group wore grins, save for Gunn, whose eyes were fixed on a point behind the altar. "Um, guys?"

"Well, that screws things up a little bit. Good thing we kept a backup." Lilah's voice was shaky, but it carried from the back of the room. Next to her, before the door, stood two surviving vampires, one grasping the sacrificial knife and the other holding a struggling white-haired boy.