Title: Yearning for Love 1/?
Author: Yami no Kaiba
Series: Yugioh
Rating: R
Pairing: Yami/Seto (Seto’s name in Egypt is Set) and Set/Osirus (one-sided)
Summary: The pharaoh’s Shadow Realm deck held all the Blue Eyes White Dragon cards, and there’s a myth that a god’s soul had been sealed into one of those cards. Yami decides to see if this is true.
Disclaimer: If I got money off of these stories, I wouldn’t be posting them on the net. I don’t own the characters, because if I did, Seto and Yami would be making out almost every episode.

*---*---*---*---*

Yami smirked in triumph as the summoning card second in on the right glowed fuzzily as it reacted to his magic. /Amazing,/ he thought, /so my father’s story had been true! A god’s soul had been imprisoned in one of the cards!/

Collecting the three other Blue Eyes White Dragon cards and returning them to his deck, Yami picked up the fourth card and studied it. Of course, the one that had an Egyptian God’s soul would have been written in Egyptian script. Yami briefly considered smacking his head with the palm of his hand at his own lack of ability to reason this out, but shrugged it off. It was always better not to have assumed.

Standing up off his bed he laid the card on his bedside table. He would need to gather the candles needed for the ritual.

*---*---*---*---*

With one last surge of magic, Yami slumped to the ground, panting lightly. Glancing at the spell book that he had ‘borrowed’ from the priests, he grimaced slightly. This was the part he didn’t like. The ink was very worn here, and it was hard to read but the general gist was that the completion of the spell needed some spilled blood in order to give the soul a body.

Picking up the silver blade he had chosen from his collection of daggers, he rested the blade in the palm of his left hand. Yami winced as he drew the blade across his flesh, leaving a trail of red, slightly viscous, liquid flowering from his skin. Discarding the knife he let the blood drip on the card.

When nothing happened, Yami cursed. All he had ended up doing was ruining one of his most prized cards. Sighing, he cleaned up the candles and the dagger, putting them away and picking up the book and card. Stopping and putting the Blue Eyes White Dragon card on his bed, he went to the door to his room, opened it and exited.

As the door closed with a soft thump, it left the room in a silent ambient darkness. Only a few minutes after Yami left, a silver glow filled the room, concentrated on the bed.

The blood of the pharaoh seemed to sink into the Blue Eyes White Dragon card as the light and energy coalesced next to it on the bed in a vaguely human shape with wings and a tail. The light shrank to the form as if it was a second skin for mere moments, then with the sound of a mirror shattering the light broke apart, revealing a slim naked young male curled up on the bed on his side, hiding beneath dragon like wings with a forked tail wrapped tightly around one of his thighs. The only item of clothing that he was wearing were thick white leather wristbands that were buckled closed.

As the reality of the situation hit the god, tears of relief flooded his eyes. Finally, after so long, he was finally free. No more isolation, no more being alone.

However, the darker part of his mind that was always laid things in black and white, not covered in the colors of emotions, hissed at him and asked, ‘who was he trying to kid’.

*---*---Past---*---*

Even though Osirus was his twin, he had never paid attention to Set. When Set had tried to attract attention by messing with the mortal world, instead of being ignored he was shunned and ridiculed. Then there had been that incident with Osirus, were Set had gotten to the point he would do anything for attention from his twin...

That had been the last straw for all his family and they had gone about the process to imprison him. First, they had sealed his soul into a human form to prevent him from escaping their punishment as they prepared, locking him away in an isolated room with only a bed.

By the fifth day he had snapped, breaking the head board, taking and infusing one of the splinters with his magic (for although his powers as a god had been rerouted to lock him in this form, he still had a humans magic) and digging it sharply into his wrist and jerking up towards his elbow, repeating the process with his other arm.

The physical pain was new to him, but it only accented the torture in his mind and soul, as the blood in the immortal body seeped and flowed out of him, drenching his clothes and the carpet a pretty red. Set had giggled insanely as he kneeled in the slowly widening pool, the strength in his body ebbing away with his blood. He had thought it would finally be all over, since an immortal’s wounds never healed.

As blackness had edged his vision and he had fallen sideways, no longer able to stay on his knees, he heard the door creak open minutely. In his light headed state he wondered at that. Gods that had so much power didn’t even stop a door from making noise. He giggled at the thought as he turned his head to see the horrified look of Maat and the stoic but slightly shocked look of Annubis. He wondered briefly if this meant he would be judged and sent to Annubis’s realm like a mortal, but shrugged it off. It didn’t really matter, really.

*---*---Set’s POV---*---*

I watched, smiling brightly at them as they got over their emotions quickly. That’s the main problem with gods for mortals, I suddenly realized. We’ve seen death so much that we take it in stride. The only reason Maat and Annubis stopped for even a second was the concept that, as a god, I had chosen to die.

Annubis revived first, walking over and kneeling beside me. I smiled at him, and I wondered what he’d think about that. Actually, I wondered how all of my family would react. I’ve never smiled before. There had never been a reason to, since they all ignored me.

Annubis’s gold colored eyes continued to study me, even as Maat got over her own hesitance. As she approached, the God of the Dead opened his mouth and spoke the first word to me he ever had.

"Why?"

My smile vanished. Even after all I’ve done, all I’ve been through, they still don’t understand. As my loneliness and despair swept through me, I felt water come to my eyes. I briefly wonder if they know my name, and if they do, if they will remember it even a year from now.

The adrenaline rush from my emotions caused my blood to flow faster. Interesting… now that it was my own, I realized just how much blood humans held within. Weirdly enough, though, the adrenaline fought the blackness away from my vision.

I looked Annubis in the eyes, held them steady with my own. The humans say that out of all the gods, Annubis was the most compassionate and understanding. Then why didn’t he understand me? Why didn’t he understand why I hand done all these things? If I was going to die, they damn well will know why!

"I’m tired," I started in a whisper, letting my normally ice blue eyes express myself. "I’m tired of being ignored by our family. My tries at getting attention have only resulted in the opposite of what I wanted..."

Annubis’s eyes blinked. "What did you want?" He asks in a soft whisper. I start to reply when the cool feel of another’s skin grabbing hold of my wrists startles me. I turn my head to see Maat with her hands wrapped around my forearms, mouthing the words to a spell under her breath. I gasp, closing my eyes. No, she hadn’t...

A choked whimper escaped my throat as I felt the comforting presence of the remnants of my powers as a god forcefully taken hold by Maat’s magic and rewoven into a new, alien pattern that forced itself into the material world.

As my powers were stripped, the few features of my real form that were locked away using the power materialized. A scream of agony tore itself from my lips as my full weight bore down on the bones in my wings, threatening to snap them and thrust the fragments into my back. The forked tail that sprouted from the small of my back flicked out from under me and curled tightly around Maat’s wrists, yanking uselessly at her.

Annubis, recognizing the danger inherent to the wings, lifted and propped my upper body against him as Maat’s spell finished. A sudden ice-cold sensation coupled with firmer pressure wrapped around my wrists. My wings rustled and spread out in agitation and surprise. My tail slipped off of Maat’s wrists and thrashed in the air as I hissed.

Maat removed her hands, surveying her work, nodding in approval. On each of my wrists was a white leather wristband an inch wide, closed by three successive buckles on the back of my wrists, the straps flaring away from my body. The leather was not staining that pretty red color of my blood.

The magical aura I could see and feel around the latches were proof enough that the bands could not be taken off by anyone other than a god in their true form.

I wondered why she had done this, stopped me from dying, and hope flared in my heart as I caught her eyes and searched her for the answer I sought. That’s when I felt it and my hope shattered, my eyes filling with tears. Pity... Maat just pitied me.

"Why...?" I whispered and tilted my head back, looking into Annubis’s golden eyes. "Why can’t anyone feel...? I thought... I thought out of everyone, Siri would feel it towards me, but... But he didn’t! He felt it towards HER! WHY?! WHY COULDN’T HE LOVE ME?! ...Why can’t anyone love me?"

With that I curled up into Annubis’s arms and cried myself to sleep. When next I woke, I was on the floor of an empty locked room.

*---*---*---*---*

Maat closed the door to Set’s room slowly and looked over at the God of the Dead. "You saw it, didn’t you? When he broke down like that..."

"..." Annubis shifted slightly and looked away.

Maat sighed and leaned against the door. "Then he is. Empathic, I mean."

"This isolation may kill him," Annubis deadpanned, looking into Maat’s silver eyes. "Scratch that, it will kill him. It took only five days for the absence of others emotions to drive him temporarily insane. Years of it? True, he won’t be able to kill himself in the card, but what will happen when he comes out and is exposed once more to all those emotions again?"

Maat’s eyes widened and she noticeably paled. "He’ll go mad..."

--To be Continued.