The Friendship of a Million Years
Summary: SPOILERS!! Spotlights on the developing friendship between a prince, a magician and a spellcaster in training. First story: based on episode 213, just before Mana and the Pharaoh catch up to the other priests.
Disclaimer: If I did own these characters, I'd probably be getting paid a lot more than I am now.
It was just as Bakura's turtle-like scaled monster exploded under her Ka's magic that she heard his cry and saw him running towards her, his two accompanying spirits rising above him, and in what seemed like just a heartbeat had raced to meet him and flung her arms around him.
It was not her normal hug, but then the emotions behind it were different: rather than a relieved hug because she hadn't seen him for an entire day, now it was because just moments before she's thought she would never see him ever again, and she clung to him, feeling his muscles heave and the sweat run down his back from the strain of worry and running, the softness of his schenti and cloak, the sound of his harsh breathing in her ear, even the smell of him.
It was almost hard to believe that just moments before they had all been in an underground shrine and he, thinking all hope was lost, had offered himself as a sacrifice to Bakura's evil spirits: how she and the others had watched, horrified, uncomprehending, as he had walked towards the thief, while they were still recovering, unable to do as they all wanted and get to their feet and grab him, to save him. She barely registered the other's cries, remembering the scream that been torn from her throat as the ghosts had entered him, as he hunched over, eyes wide, shaking, as she tried to force her exhausted, aching to muscles to move, dammit, to stop him from dying and leaving her for good, her closest friend, just as she had lost her beloved teacher. She had trained so hard, developing her own Ka-beast she that she could fight, so that she could start protecting him for once as she had promised, and she had, down in that dark, underground cavern, but then there was simply a greater threat to endanger him, where once again she could not pull him back to safety.
Now, as she embraced him, she didn't care that Master Mahaad and Hassan were watching, or that they were in a dangerous situation and needed to find the others: for now she was just relieved to have him in her arms for a few moments, as they had so often before as they grew up together, as if this was just another day before their world had turned upside down, before all this danger and fighting and sheer worry had begun, when all she had to think about was her dream of becoming an elite spellcaster, walking happily under the burning sun with her two best friends by her side.