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It was never quite the same and obviously, it never would be. Cardboard, wood, nothing ever came close to the weight of the Puzzle. Even specialty metal puzzles never came close, too heavy or too light or the edges too sharp in his hands no matter how well polished the metal was. Because it would never again be ancient gold that had been handled by hundreds of hands before him, the sharpest points blunted by forced attempts to make edges that were not meant to be fit together, all to make the Puzzle whole again, the surface smoothed and pitted at the same time as each piece was held and turned and polished by errant hands.
And really, that was for the best. It wasn’t like Yugi wanted to find another spirit trapped in an ancient puzzle that harbored old magic and demons and possibly the trapped souls of hundreds sacrificed to make that magic work. No one deserved that fate and that first puzzle had left such a hole in his soul that, should he find another one by some incredible twist of fate, Yugi wasn’t sure he could put himself through that again.
He didn’t regret putting the Millennium Puzzle together. He couldn’t, it had given him so much. But it wasn’t a gift. He and so many others had paid a terrible price for it and Yugi, at least, didn’t have enough left in him to afford that cost again.
But Yugi hadn’t started putting together that ancient puzzle for its power or its promises. He began piecing it together because he loved puzzles. And all the world around him might have changed, he may have loved and lost and grown up. But Yugi Mutou never stopped loving puzzles.
Even though piecing them together still made his heart ache as he fell back into old habits.
“Okay, I know the image on this one is cheesy,” he murmured to himself. “But I promise it’s a good one. Much harder than it looks, see all the blue pieces? Some are sky, some are water, and but the shades are almost the same, so who knows if a piece is going up or down.”
Yugi didn’t wait for a response as he worked. He wouldn’t get one, the shop was completely empty. And he knew it would stay that way, this late on a Tuesday night, with the raining pouring down outside. If he wanted, Yugi could shut down the shop for the night and no one would even notice.
Which was maybe why he refused to do just that. The little game shop still mattered to him and it made his heart ache to think it might not matter to anyone else. And even if he closed the shop, he’d be just as alone in the house, with Grampa away on vacation. May as well keep the shop open, on the off chance such a thing would matter to someone else after all.
But that didn’t mean he had to stay behind the counter, waiting for no one to show. Instead, Yugi selected a puzzle off the shelf, made a note of removing it from inventory, and sat down at one of the tables they used for game demonstrations. A short wrestle with the packaging and a moment later, Yugi had the pieces dumped out across the whole surface.
There was something soothing about the sound of a puzzle leaving its box. Never as nice as the chime of metal being emptied from the Puzzle’s old box, but satisfying in a different way. Yugi began pawing through the pieces, flipping them face up and searching for the edges. A few piles of certain colors began to form, the blue one growing quickly as he knew it would.
“Gotta do it by the shape more than the image, you know that’s the trick Jou never got,” he said. “But I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”
And he didn’t need to say who that non-present ‘you’ was. Even before he knew of his other half, before he even knew the Puzzle had actual magic, before he’d even seen that wondrous golden box, Yugi had a habit of talking to himself as he worked on puzzles. Only that always felt a little too lonely, so Yugi had begun to pretend he was talking to someone. If the jigsaw puzzle was of a character, Yugi would pretend to talk to that character while he pieced their image together. ‘Oh, here are your eyes,’ he’d say, ‘now you can see me just like I can see you!’
Even if there was no character, it was easier to pretend he was talking to somebody. Which was why it became such an easy habit with the Millennium Puzzle, that ancient artifact was as easy to personify as any cartoon character on a cardboard box.
And now, whatever puzzle he selected, there was only one person Yugi talked to as he worked. Always the same person, the same ghost, the same absent space as the hole in his heart.
“Though I wonder,” Yugi said out loud. “Was it easy to talk to you back then because you really were there and listening? Or did I wake you up with all my incessant chatter? I suppose I’ll never know now and I guess it doesn’t really matter...”
He hummed softly to himself and fell silent as he began to piece the edges together.
“You know,” he said. “You weren’t at all like who I imagined when I started talking to you, to the Puzzle I mean. Not that I pictured a person when I talked to the puzzle...”
It had an eye after all, it had been so easy to talk with it, that one middle piece propped up against the box as he worked slotting whatever two pieces he had at the moment.
“And I’m not disappointed or anything. How could you ever disappoint me? But I just...” His eyes crinkled up with a smile. “The Puzzle was always impatient when I imagined it. Even when I wasn’t working on it, but a different puzzle? It was still the Puzzle I talked to. And that thing was always so grumpy and wanted to be solved and...”
Yugi laughed out loud, the sound filling the game shop. “It was kind of a jerk, actually. Probably a sign of how messed up my self confidence was as a kid, you know? Imagining dialogues in my head and it was always a voice I had to placate and assure. ‘Here, here, just got another piece together, see? You don’t have to be upset!’“
So having said, about three pieces of the jigsaw puzzle slotted together under his fingers.
“But he always was, that grump. The Puzzle in my head, I mean. I don’t think you ever were, if you could see me. Now I can see, if anyone was impatient, it was me. Me being mean to me.”
The pile rattled as Yugi shifted pieces around, looking for the last corner piece.
“So how could I ever regret you? You were always so much nicer to me than the voices in my own head. Even when you were literally lighting people on fire, you were always such a gentle voice to me.”
He paused, darker memories flickering to the surface. He didn’t actually remember lighting anyone on fire or really any of the darker things his other self had done before they became aware of each other. But Anzu had made an old binder with news paper clippings and writeups of all the incidents she thought were related to him and just a few months ago, she handed it over to Yugi.
Because Anzu was ready to move on. Or at least move out and a binder of related crimes was maybe not the best thing to carry with her to the States.
“It’s weird, you know,” he said. “I wonder, if I hadn’t already given the Puzzle a voice in my head, if I would have noticed sooner that you and I weren’t the same. Then again, given how different you were from the Puzzle I voiced, maybe not...”
Yugi paused and sat back to stretch. He shook his hands out, which were becoming chilled. He wondered if he should grab his fingerless gloves. But then again, that wouldn’t protect the part him that was actually touching the cold bits of cardboard.
That was the one thing Yugi hated most about puzzles that weren’t the Millennium Puzzle. The pieces of all other puzzles were so cold. They sucked the warmth right out of his hands. And yet, the Puzzle never had. It was always gently warm, not quite body temperature, but close. It didn’t matter that they were metal, it didn’t matter how cold out it was. Always warm to his touch.
“Heh.” He picked up a piece and held it overhead, studying the shape in the light. “That should have been my clue, huh? That you really were magic and Grampa wasn’t just blowing smoke up my shirt. Skirt? Shendyt?”
Yugi shared a laugh with himself and put his head down to work. But it wasn’t long before he was talking to himself again. “I miss you. I probably don’t need to say it, but I do. I hope you’re happy wherever you are. And I hope you don’t mind that I’m picturing you here. With me. Even on a gray awful rainy day.”
He hummed, selected another piece and put it in the obvious gap that had been staring at him for a while. “On the other hand! No one stealing my little serotonin boosts! No taking the pieces from me, no filling in a spot before I get to it, no elbows bumping together...”
A sigh, a frown as he shuffled futilely through the stack. “Then again, I guess we never did have that issue. Seeing as it was always my body. We never did get to put together a puzzle when we each had our own hands...
“I wonder what that would have been like. Putting a puzzle together when we both have bodies, I mean.” They had worked together on plenty of puzzles, jigsaw and otherwise. But it had always been with one or the other making suggestions from the side as they watched, sometimes swapping out to be the one running the hands. Not a perfect way to do a puzzle, but they’d made a game of it.
They’d made a game of everything together.
“You were always so patient with me,” Yugi said fondly. “Would you be as patient if you had your own body? You wouldn’t have to wait for me to pick up the right piece to direct me...” He bit his lip, glancing over the image that was forming already before him. “I bet you would be. Obviously you’d put down any piece you spotted, but what if I had a piece and I wasn’t seeing the gap? What would you do? You’d never take a piece out of my hand, I know, you’d just...”
His hand traveled across the table, pausing and changing direction to where something felt a little... warmer. And under that spot, the piece in his grip slid perfectly into place.
Yugi didn’t move his hand, staring without really seeing. The piece under his touch felt warm. And maybe that was because he’d been holding it, but...
The whole shop felt warm. The air hung around himself, soft and smelling, strangely enough, like sunlight.
“You’d just point me in the right direction,” he whispered. “Just like you always do.”
He finally moved his hand back, to wipe at his eyes, which had teared up. And at the same time, Yugi laughed. “Let’s do a puzzle together, ne, Atem? Just like old times.”
His attention returned to the table and the spread of pieces. But the smile didn’t leave Yugi’s face.
And the warmth didn’t leave the shop until after the last piece was slotted into place.