Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh, writing fanfic is as close as I get to it.
I'm Ryou deprived…
NO pairings.
There's more swearing in this than my usual stories, but it's really not that bad. I just depict Yami Bakura as someone who swears a lot.
Chapter One: While Ryou seems to be the source of attention at the moment, I'd like to point out that I'm still the main character.
"WHAT?" I snarled into the phone. Who the hell could be so persistent as to call three times? There was a reason why I refused to answer the annoy device, but do they care? No; instead they take that as an invitation to repeatedly do the same action over and over again.
The stupid Pharaoh's brat's voice leaked through, "Bakura… I – I – Ry-" His voice crackled. Was he finally reaching puberty or what?
"Look, Brat, I have no time to babysit you, and whether you like it or not, I'm not your friend, and I refuse to hold your hand through every tough –"
"NO! Listen, Bakura-"
I growled into the mouthpiece. He dared to cut off the almighty King of Thieves in the middle of his sentence? "No, you listen to me, you fucking brat. If you so well as open your damn mouth again, yo-"
The midget of a dueller cut me off again. Yes, again. "It's Ryou; he's-"
"I warned you, you – Wait, what?" Ryou? What did Ryou have to do with this conversation? Where was he, anyways?
"Ryou's in the hospital!" The kid broke out in sobbing tears, "He – hic – the– there was an accident, and – car –" Insert more annoying sobbing sounds, "Crashed, and –"
I let out a spiel of curses, feeling my stomach drop. "Where?" I hissed out, simultaneously trying to contact my hikari at the same time.
There was silence in both ends.
"WHERE, DAMN IT?" This was why I hated that damn midget and his drooling brain-dead friends. Why couldn't they do something as simple as giving Ryou's location?
The Pharaoh himself took the phone on the other end. With a quick apology of Yugi's mental breakdown and the location he should've given at the start of the damn conversation, I slammed the phone down and bolted out the house.
o-o
Ryou, despite his timid demeanour, was a worthy host – or rather, ex-host, now that all us spirits received our own bodies.
Regardless of being bald and having a bull-shittingly vague speech pattern, Shadii actually managed to do something intelligence for once. His millennium Anhk not only allowed him to plunge into people's hearts, but also to manipulate the contents, in such, letting him split their millennium user's souls and bodies.
Of course, I have to wonder why he didn't do that the first time we met, sparing some of our less willing hosts the pain and suffering we inspire just by existing – which, mind you, was all fun and games to inflict onto Ryou.
But we're past that now. I suppose living with someone like him does that to you. Something about that boy just makes you mellow down, and actually willing to seek that pestering light overhead from deep in the comforting well of the past with its neck-high water full of resentment.
We are family, brotherly – in that abusive brotherly way. Verbally abusive, mind you, I wouldn't hurt the poor boy. … if you forget the whole Marik bonding cut on the arm way back, and the late night 'adventures' I drag him into every now and then. Hey, where else do you think he's going to learn some questionable talents from?
Sure he hates them, but he'll adapt.
Sure it's dangerous, but I'm there. But this … why couldn't I be there for this?
Of all things holy and flaming in the light of Rah, why did he have to get into such accidents when I'm not around? Every one of the hundreds of raids I've taken him to, he's managed to suck it up and suffer through it, and now, now a single car manages to bring him down? After all the training I've giving him, a car, a rah-god-damn car brings him down?
o-o
I barged into the room after a great hassle with the receptionist for Ryou's room-number. Yes, I'm sure I'm related to him – does looking like him not clue you in?
The first thing I saw were the two people I hated most, then Ryou's battered, but not too bad, form lying on the hospital bed.
The shorter of the two I despised lunged at me, "This is all your fault, Bakura! Why do you always have to send him running around playing courier for you?" Well, well, the brat grew a back-bone. Finally too, I have to say.
I was so impressed I decided to hold back my snarky remark. He failed to look as pleased as I thought he would.
"You have anything to say to me?" I asked, turning to the other one. The Pharaoh was barricading my way to the bed with Yugi.
"Yugi insisted you be notified about Ryou," he started in his oh-so annoying 'correcting-your-wrong-doings' voice, "But I don't see why you have to be here. Don't think we don't know how you've been treating Ryou. You've been ordering him around like your servant, doing everything for you! Cooking, cleaning, delivering messages!"
Yeah, so what? It's not like I don't let him complain about it – oh, wait, no I don't.
"It's not like he cares." I tried again.
Oh, wait, yes he does; he's just too timid to go against me.
"That's besides the point," I continued myself quickly, not letting the Pharaoh add anything in, "Now move away from my hikari." I said, with a quick topic-change.
With a seething (greatly ignored) glare at me, he reluctantly moved with a tug from his light. Ah, we see who dominates who, now don't we? I smirked at the thought.
Ryou, on the bed, looked better than I thought he would. Unconscious (hopefully not a concussion), a few bruises, scraped skin, bleeding cuts, no broken bones … I daresay I trained him well, getting off like that after being hit by a car.
"How long has he been like this?"
Yami stared at me, probably trying to figure out my motives for asking, because apparently it's requirement for all Tomb Robbers to lack compassion. Or whatever thought that flashed through his mind – if, though I highly doubt it, there actually was anything in there. "An hour – maybe two. Yugi and I saw an ambulance on the way home, and saw Ryou being lifted into it. We followed it back to the hospital, and when Yugi finally calmed down, he went out to call you."
"Eh." I flopped down on the chair positioned beside the bed, "Great, now I have to sit here for awhile before he wakes up. How boring."
The Pharaoh, with his thousand-year old hearing loss, snapped his head over at me with a "What did you say?"
Which part? "How boring?" I ventured lazily.
"You! How dare you!" How dare I what? "Ryou's badly injured, and here you are acting like it's no big deal? Pretending it doesn't concern you! Do you know how lucky he is he's still alive? You heartless bastard, you really don't care about anyone but yourself, do you?"
I dismissed his accusations, "Stop being so melodramatic. I guess pretending to a Pharaoh ordering around those so-called loyal servants really gave you a feel for acting."
"Are you saying I really don't care about Ryou?"
"Living in a fantasy for so long has really meddled with -" wait, the Pharaoh didn't have a brain, "- the gapping hole between your eyes occupied by a vortex of egotistical self-admiration - because no one is stupid enough to feed your ego especially when you don't deserve it."
I watched almost giddily as the Pharaoh visibly bristled under the insult.
He forced himself to calm down, "Are you only here to offend me, Tomb Robber, or did you come here to check on your light?" he asked arrogantly.
Bringing up Ryou again! Could he not spout a sentence without the word Ryou in it, or was that too much to ask? Don't tell me my hikari's name's the only reason he could talk in full, coherent sentences.
"I do admit it was getting quite boring at home. Ryou gives me an excellent excuse to be out."
Yami's eyes were ablaze with anger, engulfed with flames I thought only Rah himself could produce. Idly I wondered if the Pharaoh only managed it because of the lack of internal organs. A cavern skull full of nothing but oxygen really does burn the best.
"I'm kidding." I drawled. Seriously, his lack of humour was sad to the point of embarrassing. "Why else do you think I came here?"
A sniffle from the shorter one caught my attention. How he stealthy moved from the doorway to the opposite side of the bed, without me knowing, I don't know. Considering the quaking mass he was, I wouldn't have been surprised if a nurse carried him over to the bed beside, thinking he was another patient.
He looked at me, "Is he going to wake up?"
"He's fine." I replied as monotonous as I could. Can you not see I don't want to talk to you? Or are you ignoring that blatant signal my body's giving you like you blatantly ignored the fact that normal people aren't home, or want to be left alone if they don't pick up the phone after you've called them three times in a row.
After a quick mental debate, I decided to go with the idea that he shared a single brain-celled with the other moron behind me.
"Is there nothing you can do?"
If it'll make you shut up, I can try. I grabbed my millennium ring around my neck and focused on it, trying to call Ryou out.
Like the last time I tried, I got no response.
Hikari, you'd better not be pretending you can't hear me! Get your lazy ass out here and get this endless well of tears away from me!
Still, I got no reaction.
This was beginning to annoy me. After all, there was nothing the King of Thieves could not do, and a little hikari would not be the one to prove me wrong.
The Ring flashed gold as I poured my energy into it hoping the sheer power would fix any stray, broken ends of the bond I couldn't find. An identical ring on Ryou's chest lit up in response.
"What are you trying to do, Tomb Robber?"
I rolled my eyes at the stupidity of the man, "Are you going to question every single move I make?"
"Obviously, since you'll never change for Ryou, or even take care of him." He snapped back, inching towards his own hikari fearing I would hurt the brat, or something equally as childish in response. There was no way I was going to coddle my boy like he did to his.
"There's no merit for me to change the way I act."
"It's all about you, isn't it?"
"Of course," I was about to go on, but something in the Ring twitched.
Someone groaned behind me. Finally Ryou was waking up. I turned around watching his eyes slowly crack open.
"… Bakura?"
I pointed towards the Pharaoh in triumph, "See, told you my Hikari's fine," I turned to my light, "Now tell this idiot you're just bruised up, and let's go home and cook me some dinner."
"H- home?" he slurred out.
"Yeah; I could do with some steak. Sitting here for so long waiting for you to wake up has giving me an appetite."
"You just got here. We've been here for a couple hours." Yami called in the background.
"Now home? Dinner?"
Ryou stared eerily at me for a moment, slowly focusing, before his eyes suddenly narrowed into a glare, "Cook you dinner? Hell, no; what am I, your bitch?" he spat out.
The group dropped silent.
That was not Ryou.