Disclaimer – Not mine. Sigh.

A/N – I've had this in my head for over a year and finally found enough inspiration to write it when the latest YGO Abridged episode started with the line, "Hey, remember when Bakura used to be in this show? Neither do I!" That said, this fic turned out nothing like I expected. The seeds of the original idea are still there, but this kind of wrote itself into something I wasn't expecting. I can't say I dislike the new version compared to the old.

The Voice of the Past That Will Always Be

© Scribbler, February/March 2008.

I am the voice in the fields when the summer's gone,
The dance of the leaves when the autumn winds blow,
Ne'er do I sleep throughout all the cold winter long,
I am the force that in springtime will grow.

-- From The Voice by Celtic Woman.

Amane held it off as long as she could. In the end, though, it wasn't enough. She wasn't enough, and that hurt even more than making her dad and brother sad by dying.

She was a sparky little thing, far braver than her brother in her own way. While he avoided trouble she trounced it, or tried to, then told him all about it while he dabbed iodine on her cuts. He'd reprimand her, but reserved a special smile for those times; a sort of resigned pride in his baby sister and her promise to police the schoolyard of bullies and illegal marble rings. She'd learned a lot of tricks in the years of following him around. She knew how to blow bad dreams away with a special breath and keep away other ghosts. Ryou was so upset when she died that she stuck around to comfort him, the same way Mom did for dad, but Amane didn't move on when Mom did. She couldn't.

She was too young when she died, her spirit not yet fully formed into the person she was to become – would have become someday, had Mrs. Bakura taken the long way home from the supermarket instead of the freeway. Amane's spirit burned like a small, hot flame, but it was a candle compared to the forest fire she faced.

At first she could repel it – him (she had trouble telling whether it was a boy or a man or a thing that knew what humans were for but not what they were). She could only face the thing while it was still scattered from being so long imprisoned. Back then it was just like any other ghost muscling in on her patch, but when it was more self-aware it brushed her aside like she was nothing. She wasn't strong enough to stop it and wept bitterly every time she saw the horrible necklace glow with something that wasn't darkness, wasn't light, but which seemed to absorb all the brightness and goodness that got too close.

The thing ignored her, mostly. It didn't think she was worth acknowledging, since she provided no challenge and couldn't directly affect the world around her. When it realised she couldn't hold it back any longer it was as though she ceased to exist, and sometimes Amane had to check to make sure she was still there.

This was more difficult than it sounded – she couldn't see herself in mirrors, couldn't take deep breaths, lift a book and feel its cover, or beg for a hug to remind herself she was still needed. Only Ryou's letters told her she was still loved and remembered by someone, since Daddy seemed intent on forgetting his family ever existed. He even removed Ryou from his life, which stung, since Ryou was always his favourite. Amane had to shove her presence up against another spirit until she felt it push back – often involuntarily, but it was enough. She'd go out into the streets to find other ghosts who'd died too soon and couldn't let go of the living world either. Sometimes she couldn't find anyone and felt herself starting to unravel at the edges, and would rush at the nearest alive person just to bounce off the door to their soul room. Then she'd stagger back through the wall of Ryou's apartment, or wherever he was at the time. She could always find him, like she was tied to him with a piece of silver thread that twisted and knotted but always glittered just enough for her to follow it back to him.

It was hard being a soul without its own room anymore. Most souls moved on straight away, frightened by the nothingness of life without living. It didn't bother Amane, since she was too taken up with watching over Ryou, but more and more she realised she was vulnerable, since she had nowhere to shelter – something the thing seemed to know and threaten her with before she stopped existing to it.

She was reduced to lurking in shadows, pushed out by its evil and smothered whenever she ventured too close. Where before she used to sit next to Ryou on the desk as he wrote his letters, peering at the upside down writing and spelling out the big words in her head, now she couldn't even get near to her brother. He pulsed with evil, surrounded by a nimbus that occasionally blinked and slid its gaze towards her with something like triumph. She only got an impression of this, though. When the spirit formed into a proper shape it paid her as much attention as she had to the dust bunnies under her bed before she died and didn't need to sleep anymore.

Nights were easier. The thing didn't release Ryou, not ever, but at night he was allowed to sleep to replenish his energy and Amane could crouch by his ear. She tried to blow his bad dreams away, but increasingly they were too disturbing for her to do more than blow the steam off the top while they burned away pieces of his mind. She whispered to him that it would all be okay – somehow. He used to do the same for her when she was frightened of the dark.

It was so embarrassing for the girl who policed the playground and stood up to sixth-graders to be afraid of the dark. Daddy thought she was too old for a nightlight and Mom didn't argue the point, so Amane would huddle under the bedclothes to shiver and imagine terrible boogiemen prowling her room. Then she'd feel the mattress depress and hear Ryou's soft voice, which swept the monsters away like a damp cloth across a chalkboard. He told her stories until she fell asleep; heroic tales of magicians and knights who fought monsters and evil demons to save the beautiful princess in her tall tower. When she finally slept he'd creep back into his own room. He never talked about it during the day, but whenever he heard her whimper in the dark he would be there to rescue her from her own imagination.

Sometimes she wasn't really asleep, but felt guilty for keeping him awake when he was really tired too. She'd hear him close the door, but not all the way so that a sliver of light from the hall cut into the shadows, and she'd smile, glad she had a brother who didn't mind having a sister who was scared f the dark.

Now it was Ryou who was scared of the dark, only it wasn't the same dark that conjured boogiemen for Amane. His dark was a conscious malevolence, and when he stirred to wakefulness it pounced, driving Amane back to where she couldn't reach him. She wasn't a magician or a shining knight. She couldn't banish the monster with a wave of her sword, so she hung around on the fringes, watching and waiting for either the day the thing got careless, or the day she could guide Ryou's soul safely into the afterlife with her.

The worst part was when Ryou stopped writing to her. She hadn't felt pain like it since the day she died – it felt like she was still strapped upside down in the wreck with her life leaking from the severed artery in her thigh. It wasn't even gradual; he just picked up a pen one day, stared at it as though he couldn't remember what it was for, then put it down and never tried to communicate with her again. It was like he forgot her – her big brother, who used to understand her oddities, who'd remembered her when nobody else did, had no more room in his head for her. It was worse than the creature ignoring her when she pummelled its defences and yelled words both Mom andDaddy would gasp to hear she knew.

"Why don't you just move on?" asked Hikari, the girl who was mown down by a bus near the high school. She wore an old uniform and a hairstyle that went out of fashion in the 50s, and followed a bag-lady she claimed was her baby sister. "It's got to be easier than fading away."

"Why don't you move on if it's such a good idea?" Amane snapped back, annoyed but grateful to be acknowledged by someone.

"Because Toki still thinks I've been reincarnated in her cat. She still remembers me, so it's easy for me to stay."

"Ryou hasn't forgotten me," Amane said, even though part of her worried the thing really had filled up the space in Ryou's mind where she used to be. It was taking over so much now, constantly repressing Ryou inside his own body. Though she felt like she was vanishing bit by bit, concern for him gave her resolve to run into as many soul room doors as she could.

"I saw a ghost fade away, once," Hikari said thoughtfully. "It was awful. She was standing right over there by the bust stop. She just sort of slumped over and melted. Her eyes were all blank and horrid, like a dead body." Then she giggled. Hikari found the oddest things funny – like mini skirts and hip hop. "I wonder where ghosts go when they fade away. I don't think they go to the afterlife."

"I'm not leaving my brother alone," Amane replied doggedly. "He wouldn't leave me if it was the other way around."

Hikari shrugged. "It's your funeral." Then she giggled again.

The world became a much darker place as time went on. Amane had thought nothing could be crueller than dying before you hit puberty, but Ryou started to go places and meet people that disproved this. Amane trailed after him, or at least after his body. She hoped he couldn't see what was going on while the cursed necklace was in control. Ryou had always been so gentle. She thought about how he stroked their neighbour's cat and carved his RPG figures, fingers deft and nimble, when the creature used them to tear a metal eyeball out of its socket and hurt people.

She took solace from Ryou's friends. They looked out for him and could do things to help him that she couldn't. One of them even tried to throw that awful necklace away. He tossed it off a tower so high it made Amane dizzy to look down. She actually tried to hug that guy, though she passed straight through him and into the empty kid on his back whose soul door hung open like a fresh wound. The kid was the same age she'd been when she died and something about him resonated with Amane – some echo of sadness and an urge to care for a precious person who didn't realise they needed caring for. She started shoving the door shut until she realised he wouldn't be able to get back in if she did, and instead stood guarding it against intruders until the kid's own soul returned. It felt good to do something active for once.

Later she cursed her own short-sightedness for thinking Ryou was safe enough without the necklace for her to look out for someone else, even for a little while.

Once, when she looked at her hands and saw her fingers turning to smoke, she ran blindly into one of his friends and the clang of his soul room door sent her reeling far more than usual. Flashes of things she'd never seen before rushed through her mind: sand the weight of a crown and raw power that beat back the darkness and left it whimpering in the corner. She sat on the floor, tingling all over and staring up at him in wonder. He didn't see her, of course. None of the living could, though sometimes they did a double take as though they sensed her presence but couldn't understand the feeling. This boy stood tall and proud against the fake Ryou's merciless gaze, and for the first time since Daddy gave Ryou that necklace Amane felt that maybe there was hope for the Bakura children.

The thing continued toignore her – for the most part.

"Why do you insist on loitering where you're not wanted?" Its voice was smooth and terrible, even worse because the figure that looked like a twisted mockery of her brother didn't bother turning around to address her.

Amane pushed her shoulders back. She barely came up to his chest but she didn't care. Her brother was unconscious in a hospital bed, his wounded arm bandaged and his face pale and drawn. She remembered him crying out when the cut was made, and his shallow breathing as the old man brought him here, but the thing hadn't left him alone the whole time. Instead it seemed intent on sticking around to watch his chest rise and fall, as though perversely concerned about him.

Amane knew different. She remembered the cold stab of metal in that alley. "Leave him alone."

"Foolish child." The figure seemed happy to leave it at that. It hadn't spoken to her since the day his strength eclipsed hers; when she buckled under its attack and it rushed headlong into Ryou's soul, filling every aspect of him and twisting him up in dark tendrils before Amane had time to think.

"Why are you dong this?"

"Why are you?"

"Leave my brother alone."

The figure snorted. "You really do have no idea how the world works, do you? Death is supposed to bring clarity of vision, but you're like the rest of this modern age – blind as a newborn kitten." A warped version of Ryou's eyes with none of their warmth or compassion raked over her. "And just as easy to destroy."

She thrust her shoulders so far back the blades tried to touch. She wasn't scared – honestly she wasn't. It was easy to be brave when you were being brave for someone else. "I'll save him from you. You see if I don't. You can't win forever."

"I will," he promised.

Amane remembered the exchange right up until the day the thing was expelled from Ryou's body. She was in the shadows there, too, and actually felt the moment that stifling presence vanished and she could step out into the light.

Patterns of memory wound their way around her, though Ryou just had gaps in his memory and days he knew nothing about. She remembered every loathsome minute it had spent torturing her brother, puppeteering his body into doing unspeakable things. She shoved herself along the path it had burned, soothing the torn edges and flattening Ryou's ruffled consciousness where she was able. When she found the jumbled recollections that were all that was left of the creature's time at the helm she picked them up and took them with her like a solid object, keeping them inside herself so Ryou would never stumble across them by accident. He didn't need to see what his hands had done without him.

She sat by his bedside that night, trying to stroke his hair as his subconscious found the rifts and he twitched against troubled dreams. Maybe it was wrong of her to leave him with pieces missing, but she murmured reassurances to both him and herself that it was for the best.

"I'm sorry," she choked out. "It wasn't me who saved you, but I wanted it to be. I did try, but I wasn't strong enough. I love you, big brother. I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you the way you used to protect me…"

Ryou turned over, away from her.

Amane felt desolate. She should have been overjoyed that the evil spirit was gone, but its departure made way for fresh worries. "Please remember me, big brother. Please let it be that thing that made you forget. Please don't say you forgot me all on your own."

Ryou shivered and wrapped the covers tighter around himself, drawing his shoulders up as though trying to block her out.

Amane felt herself fading. She actually felt it, and it made her draw up her courage and do something she'd never done before – she ran into her brother and smacked against his soul room door.

He sat bolt upright in bed, wide-eyed and staring. His mouth hung slightly open and his throat convulsed, just scraping the surface of a scream. His head whipped around, scanning the room, but of course it was empty.

"Not again," he whispered. His hands were trembling as he raised them to clutch either side of his head. "The Millennium Ring is gone. It's gone!"

Then he scrambled out of bed to raid the mini-bar. By sunrise he'd eaten all the overpriced ice-cream and the sugar rush had kept him too awake for Amane to blow away his bad dreams.

She felt extremely guilty for not realising her actions would cause such a result when Ryou was still coming to terms with playing host to an evil spirit for the better part of a year. She'd just wanted to get close to him, to stop herself fading away. Instead she found herself perched on the foot of his hotel bed, more distant than ever, watching him shovel food and mumble to himself.

"Perhaps it'd be better if I really did fade away," she muttered, small hands bunched into fists.

Ryou paused in his eating. It was only for a second, and couldn't be because of brain-freeze, but he blinked at the bed and narrowed his eyes before downing another spoonful of Rocky Road.

The next day he surprised everyone by coming down for breakfast but not eating a thing, instead asking for a sheet of paper and a pen and locking himself away in his hotel room until lunch. When he came out again he clutched a bulging envelope he'd sealed with tape. He confused his friends further when he procured a book of matches from the concierge and deliberately set the envelope on fire. It burned his fingers and set off the hotel sprinklers when he dropped it on the rug, and they all got into heaps of trouble, but Ryou didn't regret his odd behaviour. In fact, he wore the biggest smile anyone had ever seen.

Amane stood by his shoulder, smiling and crying at the same time – crying because of what had been written in that letter and smiling because, for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, she'd sat next to him on the table to watch him tell her his news. He hadn't forgotten her. He did still love her, would always love her and keep her in his thoughts.

"I love you too, big brother."

Fin.

I am the voice of the past that will always be,
Filled with my sorrow and blood in my fields,
I am the voice of the future, bring me your peace,
Bring me your peace, and my wounds, they will heal.

I am the voice in the wind and the pouring rain,
I am the voice of your hunger and pain,
I am the voice that always is calling you,
I am the voice and I will remain.

-- From The Voice by Celtic Woman.