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[knifemonopoly]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, PLAYER1. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 10.11.0.0.01 *** PLAYER1 has joined 10.11.0.0.01 <PLAYER1> If you're looking for someone you knew as Yugi before June, you've found him! It's Atem, leave a message.

Main handle: < Player1 > Anon: < turtleluck >, < actuallydied >, < burner >

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[knifemonopoly]

[That's right. All he had was himself, and who he was wasn't enough. Not to stop those things from happening to him, and other things from happening to his loved ones. He looks up, meets green eyes with widening gold-rimmed red ones, and it's clear that whatever he was expecting, it wasn't for her to extend that particular type of understanding. It's the least closed-off he's looked since they started to talk.

It's hard, isn't it? To not be enough, and to have no more than yourself.

Then, she asks what he expected from her.]

You mean, here and now...?

[He confirms, before going on. There's a moment of thought, then the slightest hint of a canine shrug, as his head lowers a few inches.]

Either who I was would be enough for you, or it wouldn't. I didn't know which it would be...but I was prepared to accept either one.

[Atem doesn't know Trish intimately enough to be able to predict how she would ract. He wasn't trying to win her over or push her away -- he cared enough about having a fair shot at it to let her know he knew she was coming at him unfairly, to ask for her to approach him with the intent to understand, but besides that, he simply told her the truth, as he sees it.

He expected one of two outcomes, after that. Trish, in his life, able to understand him, even if she couldn't forgive him -- or a rejection, another person who sees his actions as nothing but willful evil, or the result of brainwashing by the Fog God.]

If you had rejected me even after hearing my reasons, or...if you were to go on, after this, as though nothing wrong had happened at all...then yes, you'd have reminded me of them. I would have been sad...but not surprised.

You didn't see what was happening, but...part of that's my fault. I told you I would handle it, and didn't let you deeper into my heart, so that you wouldn't have to see the horrors there. I thought I was protecting you, but...that means the loneliness I felt is my fault, isn't it?

I'm still doing it. This, and Daniel...they're just two of the things that have happened to me, Trish. But, if you don't truly want to share the burden of them, knowing ahead of time that they're bad...then, it doesn't feel right to make you.

Some people here just have good luck, and the worst of what happens passes them by. Yugi was one of them. I'm glad you have that luck, too...you deserve to have an easier time, now that you're here, than what you went through before. I don't want to hurt you for no good reason...

[Even if it's lonely. Even if it means there's parts of him she'll never see. She doesn't have to, if she doesn't want to...that's not a condition of their friendship. And he'll take responsibility, for his willingness to protect her preventing her from helping him more.]