Inside a dark alleyway, two figures lay huddled over each other. Soft cries were coming from one of the figures while the other grunted and tried to get him to stop. Bakura always hated it when Ryou cried. Ryou's hands were covered in blood as he tried to stop the hemorrhaging coming from his Yami's side using anything he could, but the blood was oozing out too fast. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ryou knew this time, Bakura wouldn't be coming back.

"Bakura… Please hang on, the ambulence is on its way…Just hang on…" He whispered, as the darker one's eyes had been filled with a haze and he looked away. "I'm so sorry this happened to you…I… I never really wanted to say it, but I never really was able to be mad at you… I know now going through what you did in your past would've turned anyone bitter and sad inside… and…" Ryou choked on his words.

All his Yami had been through, watching his entire world be murdered, starving through hunger and being put through rejection trying to find someone to take him in over and over as he was forced to survive… It would've been enough to turn anyone's heart to the darkness. Ryou was sure Bakura had wished to die after the night the Pharaoh's soldiers had slaughtered everyone he had loved, while he had survive by "hiding like a coward," as Bakura had once said in contempt… But this wasn't how his life was supposed to end, murdered as well in an alley by a stranger who only wanted money Bakura hadn't had on him. He had been stabbed from behind for nothing.

"Not even someone as cold as you deserved this…" He touched Bakura's cheek with one bloodied hand while pressing his shirt to the stab wound.

"Stop… it…you fool…" Bakura mustered out hoarsely Ryou was only slightly surprised to hear him dish insults out at a time like this. "I'm not…going to die…" His eyebrows knitted in a hint of frustration The boy decided not to argue with him, but instead pressed his face to the older man's chest. He could hear Bakura's heartbeat slowing considerably as he continued to bleed out.

"Kura.. You're so cold…"

"Then… warm me…" he grunted with a slight shiver that spurted out a bit more blood. Ryou tried his best to shield his Yami's body with his own while keeping his now sodden shirt in place.

"This won't do…" He thought, and as quickly as he could, he shimmied out of his jeans to use something fairly dry to press against Bakura's side before awkwardly getting back on top of him.

"Even now… You still…take your clothes off… for me, Hikar…i…" Bakura's eyes mustered a faint smile before coughing with what force his dying body could muster.

"Save your strength…" Ryou whispered softly in his ear, the smell of his other half's blood making his stomach convulse and his body shudder.

"I'll be one… with shadows again, Light…"

"You can't go… I know I always said I hated you, but I don't… Bakura… I…" Bakura tried to raise a hand. As the sound of the ambulence roared up in the distance, the older man struggled to speak.

"…I won't… be gone… Look to.. your shadow… you will see me…there…" His eyes began to close as the blood flowing slowed, and hot tears welled up in Ryou's eyes, spilling over them and down his cheeks to drip on his Yami's face.

"Please hold on… Please…" He begged to a god he didn't believe in. "Kura…My darkness…"

Bakura's eyes closed completely and he mustered out the last words he could. "I live on… in shadows and… your… memory…" The last of the man's life slipped out of him right as the ambulence entered the alleyway. Paramedics rushed over to where Ryou was sobbing hysterically, who didn't realize men were trying to pry him off his lifeless other half so they could attempt CPR on a heart that had no blood left in its chambers to pump.

"Bakura!" He cried out. Ryou sobbed some incoherent sentences as he was taken into the ambulence next to Bakura's body on a stretcher who was announced dead on arrival. The boy's eyes fixedly stared on nothing inpaticular, glassy and very far away. As the police officer tried to get a report out of him as to what happened, all he could get out of Ryou was, "He was there one moment and gone the next… Just like a shadow…"