Not All Who Go Come Back
It was hard enough with the drama of nearly losing both Heba and Atum.
But to be truthful...Yami had felt that security blanket Seventh and the Cathedral family had given him that all of his loved ones who passed would come back safe and sound.
That wasn't always the case.
Atem had been fighting the pain, the decaying process that had been making him suffer so much for so long. All things Yami could think of that might help him were in vain, even to make him a puzzle as Yami's own partner had for him was impossible. So powerless he felt and yet...there had been nothing he could do for the man he loved but stay by him in the last days he had. Those days had been filled with little but body-racking sobs and tight squeezing of hands. There had to be something...Yami would have given anything. But in the end...he could not save the man he loved. He could not bring him back like the other had been. That hope was there...that something would just fall in their favor and he would wake and be the silly, brightening man Yami fell in love with so long ago...as if nothing happened.
But it was not to be.
Memories flashed, days of past coming back. From the good to the bad, their first few encounters, their adventures, their darkest days. He remembered the first time Atem seduced him, the first time they enjoyed a glass of wine together and simply laughed about nonsense, the night in the street outside that club, the day Atem got his hand shredded by a paper shredder, the day Yami's insanity went out of control and Atem comforted him without backing away once. The man who gave so much to him...Yami wished he had given more. Wished he could have been more for him. The memories brought back were so...happy and yet painful. Such good times and even bad times with him were all part of what they shared, what they had together. The man who would always have a piece of his heart...
It was days...nearly a week before he would even speak to anyone. The toll taken on Yami's heart was incredibly grand, his eyes swollen and puffy from crying, his cheeks sore from smiling at every happy memory that surfaced. Never would those be forgotten. Never would Yami turn away the memories and every part of their relationship they had. The few fights, the few sad days, the times when Yami feared he might lose him all came crashing down. It took those days to actually accept that Atem...wasn't coming back, and more so to fully grieve...to mourn...to settle.
It was one of the hardest things he ever had to acknowledge, and there would never be a single day that Atem was not in his mind nor his heart. Photo albums kept brought smiles to his face on days of such pain, little notes they shared that Yami saved. Atem would always be a part of Yami's soul, his love never wavering. The man could only hope that Atem was there somewhere...watching over them all.
And he still would say goodnight to him as he always did before letting himself drift to sleep...regardless if he could hear him or not.
