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Yugi couldn’t do it.
The deck she had used to send Oneesan, no, Sakhmet away was
tainted. She could not bring herself to disassemble it, but at the same time
she could not bring herself to use it either. The cards held too painful a
memory to touch. However building a new deck, or rather, rebuilding her deck
from the cards that her older twin had not taken through the gates to the Afterlife
was proving too painful to do as well.
Her deck, the deck she had built with her other soul, had
sung in her senses. The cards’ hearts reaching out to theirs and responding to
them. These cards felt blank. Lifeless. Like the pieces of cardboard people who
just did not understand the connection had always told her they were.
Even the Dark Magician card that her Grandfather had gotten
her to replace the purple one, Mahad, who had gone on with Oneesan was little
more than ink on card. That hurt the most. Her Dark Magician, the purple Dark
Magician, had always felt alive and special to her. Even before she had
borrowed her grandfather’s deck and used him for the first time, whenever she
had been allowed to touch him, she had been able to feel his heart.
But he had not been hers. He had been Sakhmet’s and he had
joined her in the afterlife. Yugi did not begrudge him that. He deserved his
rest just as much as the former Pharaoh did but…
She just couldn’t do it. She could not build herself a deck
out of any card that she couldn’t sense and trust.
And right now, that meant she could not build any deck at
all.
She was beginning to wonder if it was her. That now she had
completed her duties as the Vessel of the Pharaoh, that she would never be able
to sense the cards like she had before. Or if, with Sakhmet’s departure,
everything special about her was gone. Including her ability to feel the hearts
of her cards.
Just pulling out the box of spares hurt. Where once she had
rejoiced every time they had built their deck together, now seeing the rows of
cards, worth thousands of Yen in money and so much more in time spent with her
older twin, made her want to weep.
And she just could not do it. She could not handle the
rejection of the cards on top of the loss of her duelling partner.
The box was put away for another attempt another day.
