Here's a neat little drabble that I wrote in Music History the other day. I thought I'd share it with you guys because it's very dark, and dark things tend to happen around this time of year… (i.e. Halloween...duh. XD) It's a side of Bakura that I haven't explored in my writing yet. Usually when I portray him, you see a dark, tortured soul looking for a shred of light still trapped within him. However, this time there is no light. I wanted to see what I could do with a truly canon Bakura (or Zorc, or whatever he is now) who has finally accepted his dark nature. Hope you like it~

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What I Have Become

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"What have I become?"

Nothing but a whisper in my mind.

Is it really my mind though? I was clever once, quite so – but I sought to become cleverer. I wanted to become more than myself, more than my upbringing and more than the life I led. I wanted to be powerful.

There is darkness in power – an all-consuming, corruptive darkness that is now as much a part of me as I am of it. Because I wanted power, I sought out darkness like a blind man seeking solidity. I craved the raw heat of lust, of warm flesh to bury myself in, and hot blood flowing freely in my final release. I needed that raw, carnal passion to play with as an old pastime. I longed to hear the music of a true friend's dying screams as I tore out his or her throat with my bare hands. And I still seek anguish. I still relish sorrow.

But I was human before. Yes, before I rose to power I was a poor, misguided human who grew up too fast in a world full of hatred. Maybe if I had known any differently… But I didn't. All I knew as I was swiftly thrown into adulthood was a blind, craving hatred of those who had wronged me. Those fools unwittingly created a monster capable of loathing far greater and more powerful than anything they'd ever dreamed of committing. I used that infinite hatred to feed my lust for power and revenge. When it came, it was sweet. So fucking sweet…

And so, once my black human soul had attained what it thought it wanted, I let true darkness seep into me, affecting my heart and my mind, affecting all that made up me. The whole of my being succumbed to depths lower and fouler than the worst of depravities.

That was when I discovered the ring.

The millennium ring allowed me to embrace darkness in a way I had never conceived. There was a power so vile locked within those items that even I, in all of my blackest glory, had trouble comprehending it. But I fixed the problem logically: I destroyed who I was, that I might be able to comprehend it. The new me merged with the old me; I seeped under his skin and crawled through his veins until he begged nonexistence of me, of this newfound, powerful force residing in his soul. Now Touzoku Bakura is no more.

Who – or what – I am now… Well, I am greater than what I was – greater than the sum of a petty criminal shaped merely by the injustices of the world and his awful lust for vengeance. I've become what I was always destined to be.

The Devil himself would be jealous.

Now, I am death. I'm the kind of death like unto eternal blackness – a darkness so frightening that it makes you wonder if life has any true meaning to it at all. When you're alone and your mind starts to wonder about dying, about taking your last breath and no longer existing in the world, about long after you're gone when no one remembers you, when not even you will remember you – I am the fear that sinks deep into the pit of your stomach. I am that darkness, and I welcome it – and you – into my open arms.

Now, I am the stuff nightmares are made of, true terrors that leave you gasping for breath in the middle of the night, wondering where you are as you clutch your covers tightly to your frame. I am that which makes the sweat trickle down your back, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, the shadows – ah, the shadows! – I am those which move about, warped and supernatural, in the pitch darkness of your room. I am a force older than time, darker than night, and larger than the gods.

And you have every right to fear me.

"Evil," I answer softly. No one is around to hear, so I start laughing to myself, madly, wildly. "I am… truly evil."

~;~Shaku