From the Ashes [PG-13]

[LordoftehNubz]

Tagged this 13+ primarily for themes, as there is minimal profanity and/or explicit violence.

 

I'd like to mention that

• All characters are original.
  
• All settings are original.
  
• There are duels.
  
• Cards are custom or existent only in the anime.
  

 

[spoiler=I - Ashes]

For Mikhail, it had been a journey of years.

 

He remembered lights.

 

There had been contracts to sign, appearances to make, autographs to write, the boring tedium of celebrity to negotiate. He had had friends, fame, fortune at his fingertips, and though he never indulged them the exclusivity of them was exhilarating. Luck ran with him and skill never failed him. Little boys tottered up to him in streets and simply stared in dumbstruck awe. The magazines called him “Midas”, because every card he touched turned to gold. He scorned the name. He knew better. He was better.

 

A year passed, and Mikhail had graduated from an unknown middle-class punk to a marketable star. Then things went bad, as things did for Mikhail, and the feud between William and that other kid had engulfed his very existence. The stories changed from ‘The Golden Duelist’ to ‘Mikhail: MIA’. The fans’ cheers became murmurs of indifference. His supporters quietly withdrew, one after another. The fires of the two villain’s hatred for one another had consumed Mikhail’s career, and then three years ago it had very nearly consumed his life.

 

His burns itched above his prosthetic arm as he wheeled himself into the deserted arena. Being broken was something nobody could understand, and though his good arm groaned at the effort it took him he would never ask for assistance getting up the steep ramps. He wanted to be alone. Sitting alone amongst the dazzling floodlights awakened something deep within him.

 

Mikhail understood.

 

 

Malachi shuffled his cards absently as the carriage clattered unsteadily along the rails. Occasionally he would glance across the passage at the cityscape sprawling below, occasionally Jakob would cough or whistle snatches of depressing tunes; and he would glance up; silence would reassert itself; and his head would fall back down. The train had been silent since Deltais, and there was still another hour to go judging by the majestic golden sunset that sprawled along the western horizon.

 

Twilight was crawling into the city from the east, but Malachi barely noticed. Jakob barely noticed. Leah barely noticed. Each of them sat with their heads bowed in the dimly-lit compartment, Malachi shuffling his cards mechanically; Jakob’s eyes flitting around the cramped booth; Leah’s eyes shut, as she sat silent, motionless, the fourth seat adjacent to Malachi conspicuously empty.

 

Silence reigned.

 

After a quarter of an hour and eternity later, Leah cleared her throat, her tiny voice struggling in the suffocating calm.

 

“He’ll be back, won’t he?”

 

The words were the silver lining to the hanging clouds, a shaft of light breaking through the choking darkness. The words broke the clattering silence, and for half a moment Malachi dared to hope. He studied the girl opposite him, saw Jakob’s surly scowl, saw Leah’s eyes, shut tight like a terrified child’s, and while he tried to smile cheerfully at the words he knew she was lying. Leah was lying to herself. Jakob, his hand patting her shoulder like a big brother, muttering empty condolences and promises, was lying to her. He was lying to both. Malachi’s tired blue eyes met Jakob’s own, flickering desperately towards the young girl next to him, eyelids still clamped shut. He understood? Malachi inclined his head slightly, and gave the smallest of genuine smiles.

 

He understood.

 

 

The next day dawned and nothing had changed.

 

Jakob struggled into his clothes in front of his mirror. His normally flat, well-behaved brown hair was unkempt and unwashed, his t-shirt creased, his jeans dirty, his brown eyes reddened after last night. He was tall and he was big, but too much was lard and he was, at the very least, stout. He trudged out of the house at quarter-to, brushing off his mothers’ random impatience, and stumbled onto the nine o’clock train, footsteps and eyelids heavy. Malachi was waiting for him in their booth, staring blankly out at the graffiti and trash that littered the tracks, his face as impassive as a statue’s.

 

The windows were shut, Jakob noticed. The train’s floor was unpleasantly sticky and buried in dust and the very air parched his lips. Malachi didn’t move. Jakob heard an amputated grunt as he shuffled into the booth and sat down heavily, nodding vaguely to the familiarly unfamiliar dark-haired, dark-eyed young man that occupied Leah’s normal seat, voice cracking in a muttered greeting. Eventually the train jolted, starting, accelerating all too slowly out of the dumps that they called home. Monotonous gray buildings, choking under the weight of spray-painted tags like crawling ivy, sidled past in a demented blur.

 

Seconds passed. Malachi was silent.

 

Minutes passed. The masses of discarded steel and detritus and mountains of trash gave way to idyllic suburban townhouses replete with pools, happy middle-aged couples and two-and-a-half children gambolling around on close-cropped grass. Jakob sneered hopefully at the scene, but to no avail. Malachi was silent.

 

An hour passed. The train had passed six stations, coiling through the city centre like a snake. The sun was high in the sky already, and every little ant that was a person below them went about their normal Thursday as if nothing had happened, as if the world hadn’t shattered into a trillion crystalline pieces. Jakob thumbed through his cards, shuffled his cards, called coin tosses, in a desperate fight against lopsided reality. Somehow a reassuring hand found his friend’s shoulder. To no avail. Malachi was silent.

 

“Why not open the windows?” he proffered tentatively.

 

He regretted the words once they left his mouth. He saw Malachi stiffen, saw him turn his head, slowly, inexorably, around to face him, and he saw the wild, terrified, agonised look in his bloodshot eyes. He heard the pained gasp that escaped his lungs like the cry of a dying animal, and he heard when he spoke, his friend’s voice husky, trembling, determined.

 

“I’ll kill him. Whoever did it. I’ll kill him.”

 

The dark-haired man nodded in silent assent.

 

And Jakob understood.

 

 

 

 

 

I know the prologue idea is terribly cliche, but this chapter was both shorter and bereft of duels and so I found it neater to place it first.

 

Fanfiction laws apply, of course. Critique at will.