Work Text:
This is Yugi Muto. He is powerless and weak and nerdy, bruised and bullied and friendless, and he has a bottomless well of love in his heart. The world is vicious and cruel to kind people, full of bad and bitter things happening to people who never did anything wrong, and it’s not fair, makes his face heat up and his hands curl into fists and bile rise in his throat. He is so small, though. He can’t protect anyone, stop anything, no matter how hard he tries, and all it ever gets him is a black eye and a kick in the teeth. So he wears leather and spikes and covers them with white-collar shirts, bites his tongue and swallows all his sharpest words, makes himself smaller and softer. If he is small enough, maybe they won’t see him. If he is soft enough, maybe it won’t hurt when they break his ribs after school.
This is ???. He is not Yugi, but he looks like Yugi, and lives in his head. He does not know who he is or why he is or where he is or how he got there. He looks under a rock in Yugi’s brain, and sees nothing but rage, years and years worth, twisted tight and curled up into knots, buried for miles all the way down. “Ah!” he says, “This must be who I am. This must be where I came from.” So he fills himself with every passing thought and awful fantasy, every buried grievance and righteous fury, fire and brimstone and crocodile teeth.
Never mind that no one was ever meant to act on them, no one ever meant to hear a word, no one ever meant to take it so far. Never mind that it doesn’t make sense, that he must have a greater purpose than this. How should he know that? He is so empty and it gnaws at his insides. Something to become, to convince himself to believe, fill up all the parts where he is hollow. Isn’t it true, then? Isn’t the world too cruel? Doesn’t it drive him insane, how unfair it all is, every cell of his body and inch of his soul demanding he fix it? Isn’t this what all of them deserve?
It must be true, and he is sure of this. Sure as his name is Yugi Muto.