A/N: OK, so after writing Doors of Perception, I decided to experiment with a rather different interpretation of Bakura. It all began when Aluminium requested Bakushipping from me, and I delivered... well, two thirds of the deal. Specifically, Geminishipping. Fluff was also part of the request, but that went straight out the window from the outset.
Fun fact: this ought to have been posted a week ago, but I was having technical errors left, right and centre with my account. Luckily they now seem to have resolved themselves. So, here it is - finally!
Parasitic Dialectic
Bakura leans back, letting the heavy folds of sleep ripple over his eyes, allowing his consciousness to sink into the depths itself – coiling in endless circularity: reason chases emotion chases irrational chaos and begins again. This level of slumber is a luxury in which he will occasionally dabble – only to be attempted when his host is safely unconscious, and the need for alertness evaporates with the night. Necessary, in a sense. He subsists upon himself.
The sharp corners and jutting furniture of his host's bedroom dissolves into haze, before reasserting itself as a construct purely of his own devising: the devil's playground of me, myself and I. Or two of the three, as it turns out. A subtle blur of blue, sinking into a darkening sky; Bakura stands barefoot on a bar of sand, cast turquoise in the pale, receding light. Before him is a glassy sweep of lagoon, carrying listless, rippling waves from horizon to shore with a curious murmur. It carries through the water, and resonates with the sleek-tongued willow trees: a soft, evanescent rustle of something neither wind, nor life, nor rain.
Here in the stirring calm, where colours mingle in a shifting gradient of indigo to palest moonlight, he allows the usual rush of to catch hold of his nerve endings, teasing with a shiver of expectation - perfectly attuned to the waves, the trees, the sky, the sound. Not a trace of outer life disturbs his calm monopoly over the surroundings.
Here, the ghosts of a past long dead can congregate, shadow-saturated.
Oh yes, he is here – and isn't he always?
"You need to stop bothering me," says Bakura, lightly. "There's a point where existential angst becomes self-delusion, and I'd wager we've just about reached it." He realises that the finer points of this derisive line will be utterly lost on his impromptu companion. Logically, this ought to lend him some sense of superiority, but truthfully, it does not make the encounter any less unsettling.
A soft snicker from the Thief King, who leans lightly against the willow, half-hidden by its long-tongued branches. "Just try getting rid of me."
In grudging acquiescence, Bakura ducks under the branches to join him. Its leaves now enclose them both in a loose circle, pierced by scant glimmers from the inquisitive moon.
"You're looking paler than ever," offers the Thief King, unmoving. He is the very picture of languor – but with eyes that speak tersely of hot desert sand, and vehement shocks of ferocity. "This life is draining you."
Bakura sneers. "Of strength? Doubtful." He steps closer, balanced and predatory – silky movements that betray no loss of power, but do reveal an alarming tentativeness.
"Of character," says his counterpart. Wordplay; they toss phrases to and fro in some combative game of association. Who knows? There may even be meaning in the show.
"... Plausible. But not entirely unwelcome. I'd hate to remain static." Bakura unfurls another curling smirk, intended to infuriate, but eliciting only an identical expression from the Thief King. Like an unsolicited mirror – and cooler besides. "What would that make me? You."
"It's not progress – it's loss," says the Thief King, determinedly. "There's a difference," he adds, helpfully. Then, if anything, he relaxes further, seeming almost to melt into the tree. A deliberate reminder that he, like Bakura, is an integral part of this landscape: the lynchpin of his mind's architecture.
Bakura can scarcely stand to watch him without some irrepressible, illogical urge to destroy. This man; this living – dead – embodiment of his arrogance, blazes like an everlasting flare against the sliding layers of the night. He – down to his ostentatious scarlet robe, and ostentatiously casual manner to match – is an anomaly, a reprobate, and damned if the fool isn't maddeningly aware of it.
Bakura longs to snap that he has gained considerably in intelligence; but the Thief King will inevitably answer that what he gained in book-learning, he lost in instinct. No need to frame a just, destructive impulse in philosophy. Stick to brusque, pithy comments, and propaganda of the deed.
He knows this because he has tried before. That line of argument was soon exhausted when both realised they could never confront each other o their own terms. (Whose terms? Bakura cannot separate the two in his mind, at times, which is truly unnerving.)
Eventually, he realises that it is his turn to deliver another pointless, meaningless retort. But, really, no need, for his argument and the subsequent rejoinders have flitted across his face in tedious succession; and the Thief King is so skilled at deciphering the code of his expressions. Suffice to say that nothing is hidden here – the very leaves would betray him.
"You're a memory," Bakura insists, changing tack. "You're just a moment in time – frozen! Give up already – admit your age has passed." His voice clangs hollow against the night. "You're moribund. It's all very Sartre-esque."
He reaches up to brush an errant strand of hair that has flopped into his eyes, and is discomfited to find that the Thief King has made an identical gesture; not echo, nor mimesis, but synchronicity. Bastard.
"Oh, I'm not moribund yet. If I was, you'd stop letting me in," he drawls in response, safe in the knowledge that this is a dispute he will always win. In effect, he cannot lose. For when he ceases to matter and disappears from this duplicitous corner of Bakura's subconscious, there will be no argument to win; to summon him once more for the last word will serve to prove his point a thousandfold.
"So you're not entirely irrelevant," concedes Bakura. He moves still closer, until perhaps a foot of undergrowth and cool, liquid air, and a few thousand years separate them. "So what? What do you want from me?"
"Boot's on the other leg," barks the Thief King, with a raucous laugh. "What do you want from me?"
"A little peace!" yells Bakura, promptly. Practically nose to nose with his mirror-self now, and to add insult to injury, he is definitely taller.
The whispered susurrus of the surroundings has heightened, stretching into an all-pervasive, tension-filled hum. Somehow, this tete-a-tete has gone worse than usual.
The Thief King finally stands properly, eyes switching from half-lidded and wry to alert and determined. Bakura takes a tentative step backwards, which seems to amuse him. Undeterred, he says: "Think of Kul-Elna. What do you see?"
Momentarily startled, Bakura flinches. "What do you think? I see my family, my friends, my comrades – all dying in the slew of their own liquefied flesh."
The way he keeps staring– intense and uncompromising – is far too piercing to ignore; far too perceptive for comfort. A look which smoulders like an accusation – yet calm, deadly calm, and focussed.
"Liar," he says. "Nah - I don't think so. You only feel a cool, vicious desire for vengeance. You don't feel the fire – the bloody agony – or the singed, choking smell, the explosion of fear and pain. You don't even feel that bubbling surge of injustice that would well up in your throat every time you thought of thrones, or kings." Proud, and indignant, and blazing – an explosive firebrand of a semi-conscience. "It used to be relentless – the horrible, unbearable wrongness of it all – but now you're a slinking shade! Nothing else! You don't really feel any of that; you've forgotten. It's all simmered down into a dark, motiveless malevolence. You were a rebel once. Now you're just a common demon. You follow my path of revenge because something odd and directionless within you whispers that you should – not for any grand idea, or life-changing justifications. Just the feeling that you probably ought to."
Bakura matches his fire with bitter ice – and melts. "That's not true!" he bites out, the words having kindled a flare of temper.
"You've lost your sight – you're blind!" he crows, with a crackle of mirth. Implicit in the raillery: you've let the darkness erase you.
Bakura lunges forwards in instinctive rage – and, to his mind, the slits of sky discernable through the leaves flash with a sudden burst of silver fire. The hum in the air seems tempered by the threat of lightening.
The Thief King moves to arrest whatever inchoate attack Bakura had intended, with a swift, confident palm to his throat.
(Still time for a moment. The touch is electric, sending a coursing jolt through Bakura's chest, like the thrill of flames sealed into one, overwhelming motion. Bakura's first thought is warmth, chased shortly by a second: power.)
In a fluid, disorientating scuffle, their positions are reversed within seconds: Bakura now pressed to the cool bark of the willow tree; arms pinned above his head by one powerful hand; throat held like a fluttering bird – pulse pounding – in the cage of another. And the Thief King's shadowed face above his – breath surging, warming each others' cheeks, eyes swapping defiance for devilry; a flush of heat and a flash of daring. Limb against limb, and like with like; a tangled yin-yang of passion and reason and wasn't this inevitable.
"Don't you remember that anger?" Bakura's shadow self rasps close to his ear.
Bakura twists in a struggling attempt to lash out, but his movements are stifled before they begin. Frankly, the attempt was lacklustre, half-hearted, and the Thief King did well to trample such delusion. Laughable that he would ever shrink from this. Inconceivable that he should welcome it. Self-evident that he should find it necessary.
"Remind me," hisses Bakura, without a trace of irony, and perhaps a hint of desperation.
Laughter - again with the laughter - but soon it is stifled as lips find identical lips in a searing kiss that begins as a bite, and grows into a challenge; a combative clash of the consciousness. Crushing and fearful, it triggers memories of the blistering heat of Egyptian summers; the sharp glint of sunlight on a curving blade; the wreckage of eradicated Kul-Elna, burned from the records with a bright, sizzling heatand sealed with the inexorable vengeance of history. Ravished by the remnants of a passion long dead, Bakura sighs into the embrace and thinks I could lose myself so very easily.
Oh, it is not wholly spiritual – there is, of course, the fierce physicality with which to contend - but his mind keeps veering into the abstract.
Gradually, the Thief King has loosens his hold on Bakura's throat, allowing his hand to steal behind his neck instead, clutching loosely at his hair; a show of force modulating with strange deftness into an odd kind of care. He lets go of Bakura's hands to snake an arm around his waist, pressing insistently closer.
Something volatile snaps in Bakura, like a match held to magnesium. In a burst of sudden fury, he shoves the Thief King away with as much force as he can muster; this, and a considerable element of surprise serves to free him. Blindly, he stumbles away, brushing past the clinging willow branches to race towards the water. He continues to run as he hits the point where sea meets shore. His plunging feet elicit forceful waves, with the sound of each step shattering the calm afresh.
Waist deep in water, he slows. Stops. Sinks to his knees, half-submerged. It is cool, not cold, and clear, but not tranquil. The past is dissolved here, like some colourless powder – rendering it useless for cleansing. It clings, refuses to evaporate. Bakura clenches a handful of water, throwing it back against the waves with a harsh splatter of futile intent.
He is not quite a single individual any longer. He is something a little more; something a little less. Shades of both puppet and puppeteer.
The Thief King was not made for this isolation. He is solitary, yes – but what is solitude when deprived of a crowd from which to shrink? What is egotism when one's ego becomes the only reality? Only self-assertion in an empty void.
He will be crouched underneath the willow tree, waiting like a crimson threat; a shock of pigment in a shaded mind.
An obstinate reminder of himself. Half of him. A third, even; it is all so fragmented, Bakura has lost count. Lost himself. Lost his reason, or his passion, or something.
No. No, he will give this living memory a chance to have his revenge; he certainly deserves it. Full circle. Why not? Let the Thief King be the key player in Bakura's elaborate, final power play. If Bakura cannot dredge up the motivation any longer – if he really is drowning in pure desire for destruction... if he cannot salvage himself, why not summon who he once was, instead?
A good plan. A fitting plan. (What is he becoming?) A pleasing nuance to the scheme.
Bakura spares the willow tree and its prisoner one last glance before willing himself awake.