A/N: Scroll down, and you'll find this fic to be written in first person. I know. No, don't hit the back button yet. I can explain. Believe me – I love third person/present tense/limited as much as the next person: it allows the writer to be close to the character's thoughts, but also gives a certain amount of distance. Which is precisely the reason why I didn't want to use it for this fic. It would be making Ryou into the host again: a vessel through which the author speaks. I wanted to give him an authoritative voice, for once.

Whilst I'm getting into this apologia, I may as well explain something else. This is based around one of those what if notions. To wit: what if Ryou had been more than simply partially complicit in Bakura's schemes? A simple premise, but one which raises a number of issues.

The title, by the way, is taken from Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. You can probably see where this is going: i.e. Tendershipping.

With that established, it's probably about time we got started.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear

- William Blake, London

Doors of Perception

Dear Amane,

Guess where I am right now? A madman's castle. No – I'm kidding, don't worry about me; Pegasus isn't mad, just strange. But I keep feeling that the description holds true nonetheless. There's a lot to tell, but at the moment I'm finding it difficult to sort it all out in my head. Particularly when my head isn't really the safe place I once thought it... you know what? There are too many ideas in my mind right now, all knotted into a big, tangled mass – and writing about them is like trying to single out one particular thread at a time when they're all clumped together.

Can I get back to you once things are calmer up there?

When I was a little kid, I used to believe so fervently that Amane was alive in heaven, voraciously reading my daily letters for news of the prosaic bustling of earth that I knew she would miss so very much. Writing had a definite air of magic to it: communication which transcended space, time, death. Later, that earnest belief all but dissipated alongside the beginnings of adolescence and, concurrently, scepticism. The letters became less of a two-way thing and more of a diary – and yet, I still felt a connection pulsing between existence and its opposite, even if it was weaker, formed on a more ambiguously spiritual sort of basis. I could no longer picture her receiving envelopes via celestial mail slot, settling down on a nearby cloud to read the contents whilst brushing stray vapours out of her hair. Instead, she rustled through the air around me: ubiquitous, atomised and somehow still capable of comprehending on a more intuitive level what I wished to say to her.

Dad knew all about it, even if her pretended not to in the earlier years, for fear of bruising my eleven-year-old feelings any further. Later, he would tease me about my apparent lack of ego: I couldn't even write a diary without addressing it to someone else.

Maybe there is a scattering of truth in that, even if I still maintain that they were letters, not glorified autobiographical material. I do feel uncomfortable saying 'I' even now - really I'd prefer to write 'Ryou' instead. 'Ryou did this', 'Ryou said that'; would that be a better way of telling you this story? Just say the word and I'll swap. It's no trouble, really – it'd be a relief. No? Well, all right – I'll do my best.

This isn't a story about me, though. It's about him. Well, OK – it's more about his effect on me, though that's much the same thing. I'm sorry I can't be a better narrator; there are many incidents to which I was not privy: blurred at the edges, or obscured altogether. You already know the story, so that helps. What you want to hear is his side. I'm not the best person to supply that, really – but I'm the only one willing and able. So here we go; I'll do my best, and please excuse any vagueness on my part. What memories I do retain are all very vivid and clear in my head, but thought can be deceptive, surreptitiously filling in crucial gaps with blankness, so that you don't pay any attention to the missing material until you have to talk about it and you realise there's much that's missing.

That said, you want to hear what I do have to say, right? Well, I'll give you the scenes you never saw – what I experienced of them, anyway – and perhaps you'll be able to make a judgement in the end.

Shall we, uh...?

Ryou lay on his stomach, on the bed, pen bleeding into the thin paper whilst he tapped it repeatedly against the unyielding blankness.

... What?

Oh. Oh, all right. I lay on my stomach, on the bed, attempting to write, whilst the shadows collected furtively around me. No use. I wasn't making excuses with regards to the state of my head. So I rolled over and reached for the book I had placed on the bedside table instead; if my qualms could not be silenced, they could at least be temporarily suppressed. A shape caught the corner of my eye, and I paused to glance at the chair at the edge of the room.

The occupied chair at the edge of the room.

It scarcely occurred to me that I ought to be surprised, and he seemed a little perturbed by the fact that I wasn't.

He made up for it with a slender, spreading smile that I now know was calculated. At the time, it simply seemed further evidence of his unassailable composure.

"Host." A flippant, hollow greeting – a twisted parody of the casual.

"Spirit." Because, beyond the obvious choice of noun, there was little else that could be said.

"You're wary," he noted, curled catlike in the armchair. His hair was splayed against the jutting bones of his shoulders – a stray kitten with a viper's eyes.

"You ought to be expecting that." I sat, spooked, transfixed, like seeing a spider skitter across the room and pause, and being unable to move and disrupt the mess of fascination and repulsion. (I like insects. I like bats. I like catfish, and Komodo dragons, and scorpions, but there is nothing in the world like a spider and I have never been able to wrap my head around that.)

"Still bitter about before?" He flexed his bare toes, as though teasing out numbness, and I wondered how long he had been there, curled up, animal and inconspicuous. "I thought I had atoned."

"You tried to -! You know what you tried to do." The evidence was stacked against him, so I felt little need to reassert it. This was a mistake. He took my reticence for lack of argumentative ammunition, and confidently proceeded to take the initiative.

"Let me do penance then." Now lolling sideways across the arms of the chair – the way my parents always told me not to, as they are more fragile than they seem – it was difficult to imagine a more unlikely penitent.

I tore my gaze away and screened it with the book, arbitrarily turning pages with a pointed rustle.

I heard motion; he seemed to straighten and sit up. Secure in the knowledge that I would not resist by recounting various known misdeeds. I had no choice but to maintain a frustrating silence, for any attempt to recapture lost ground would seem like insincere protestation. A little nuance to our dealings that probably altered the chain of events; I did not bite back with the obvious. You tried to kill my friends. (And it would have been simple to say, but too late.) I was, for the moment, ensnared as a result.

"Good book?" he inquired, voice as light as the brush of soft fingertips.

"I can't tell," I hissed, face still shielded, conscious of the possibility of being overheard from next door. (He never had to worry about that sort of thing – I always had to handle the technicalities; even when he was in control, he didn't care.) "You're distracting me. My eyes just slide off the page."

I heard him sniff, delicately: irritation duly noted.

"Would you just – go?" The last word was swallowed by the sudden swirl of air as he stood. I peered over the edge of the book. He had not moved much closer – he seemed anxious to keep his distance. I think he might have even believed it was courtesy.

"Let me read it."

I blinked at him, deliberately unresponsive. It might have been a challenge.

He certainly took it that way. "Let me read to you," he said, enunciating each word with low precision.

"... Why?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Doing penance. Anything to regain your trust."

"You never had it. Don't try and steal retrospectively."

That made him smile, although I did not know why at the time. "We had a false start," he said. "Why don't we begin again? Think of me as an imaginary friend." I snorted at that. He shook his head, impatiently. "No – I mean it - when have I ever intended to harm you?"

I stretched my arm out, pointedly.

"Self-infliction doesn't count," he smirked.

"I'm pretty sure I could make a good case for duress," I muttered. But I allowed him to continue.

"Besides, how do you know I'm not you? That my actions were not just your subconscious wishes, given hideous living form?" He was laughing outright now. A harsh, deep scrape of a sound.

"No," I answered, firmly. "No, I'm almost certain you're not." He fell silent, and his eyes gained a glimmer of interest.

"Explain."

"I spent an awful lot of time thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that I have never once, even secretly, wished that I could keep my friends sealed forever in little doll figurines. Don't start laughing again; I know it sounds silly, but listen anyway. In reality, friendship has always seemed like it's built out of feathers, but that's what makes it so wonderful: they could blow away any second, and you find joy in every minute they don't. So it actually rather spoiled it." I sat up, drawing an arm around my knees. "You're not me, or my shameful desires. I probably have as many as the next person, but you don't resemble them. You're from outside, not inside."

"Like a parasite," he answered, chillingly. "Very good."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"Up to a point. Now will you let me read to you?" He still hadn't budged from where he stood. The metres between us did not seem protective exactly, but I was grateful for the distance. "Toss me the book. Otherwise you'll never be able to sleep."

"Can you even – touch it?"

That caught him off balance. "No, you're right," he mused, a little perturbed. "You'll have to prop it against the chair arm instead."

"And what about turning the pages?" I knew when to relent. "Look, just come sit over here, next to me – there's room – and I'll hold the book. You read. Don't try to make it so difficult."

Again – surprise registered on sharpened features. "Are you certain?" Residual annoyance from the unwanted reminder of his incorporeality lingered in his tone.

"You said you wouldn't harm me," I shrugged.

Reluctantly, he settled next to me.

Strangely, I felt heat, and solidity. "Why can I -?"

He tapped me on the arm with a hand like anyone else's. "All in the mind, isn't it?"

"Huh. Suppose so."

"Shall I begin?"

"All right."

""You fill me with in-fin-ite revulsion," he shouted. "Pure un-a-dul-ter-a-ted loathing. I'm getting out of here before I murder you!" He wheeled away from..." Host, what is this?"

"Sophie's Choice. It's about a woman who survives a Nazi concentration camp and slowly breaks down into depression."

"Hn. I think I like it. Nice... prose style."

"Come on – read. If you must."

He complied. It was funny how what had started as a gesture from him had turned into a favour from me. It was a peace offering nonetheless. As he read, I sank back into the pillows, holding the book at a haphazard angle by which he could read. Closed my eyes. He would give my arm an impatient tap when he wanted me to turn the page, which I would do blind. It was relaxing, funnily enough, to hear him read aloud in his high, abrasive, resonant voice – stumbling over the occasional word, or misplacing a syllable here and there.

You mustn't think it was all that comfortable. Not at first. Being read to was nice, something of a nostalgic luxury, reminding me of lazy evenings spent listening to my parents alternate reading chapters aloud, and of arguing amiably with Amane over the choice of book. Which is not to say that it brought me back to that time – in fact, it made me acutely aware of the weight of the loss and the hollowness of the substitute. As the words washed over me, like the stumbling ebb and flow of an erratic tide, I considered ghosts. When I lifted my lids enough to see white through a mesh of dark eyelashes, Bakura looked like a spectre.

"I wouldn't have expected you to be reading something so dismal, host," said Bakura, disdainfully, breaking off a few sentences away from the end of a chapter. Inconsiderate, really. It would not have mattered either way if he had taken the time to reach a more logical concluding point - but I would have preferred it. Not that I was lucid enough to consider the issue thoroughly.

"'S'not like that. It's... beautiful," I murmured, through a thick haze of sleep.

"Shall I go on?"

I took my time to process the thought. For a moment, the sheer oddity of my position assaulted me. The spirit, a close and solid presence beside me. Myself – listening to every borrowed word with avidity. An author's thoughts as our unreliable conduit. The proximity of it all threatened to crush me with the weight of its implications.

I sat, abruptly, causing the spirit to flinch.

"A-actually I'm going on a walk. To – uh – clear my head."

He shrugged. "Back to solitary confinement, then," he said, indicating the Ring which hung about my neck like a leaden shackle. He must have detected some hint of apology in my features, for he added: "Not to worry. For the moment, I'm yours to command."

"I doubt that," I said, standing, uneasily. (Tiredness attacked the corner of my vision, but I brushed it away with movement.)

"Host, have I ever lied to you directly?" He said it seriously – gravely, even – but the directly qualification was not entirely lost on me.

"I'm going," I said, firmly.

"Don't fall over," he smiled, noticing how I gripped at the wall for balance in the dark.

I aimed a withering look at him as he melted back into the Ring.