Disclaimer: Dishearteningly not mine.

A/N: This grew out of As Deep As the Sky, a fic project I've been working on since August, in which I write ficlets inspired by songs but only have the duration of each song in which to write. I noticed I was collecting a couple of ficlets with the same theme and decided, after the third one, to put them together into a separate fic. As such, I've gone back and edited them, so they're quite a bit longer than anything in As Deep As the Sky. Amane is a character whom we know nothing about other than she was Bakura's younger sister and died in a car accident along with his mother. But what if, by some strange miracle, things had been different – or at least there was more to them than canon told us?

Five Ways Amane Bakura Didn't Leave Her Brother

© Scribbler, October 2008.

1. Because You Live

Because you live and breathe,
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help;
Because you live, girl,
My world has twice as many stars in the sky.

-- From Because You Live by Jesse McCartney

Ryou looked up at Domino High School with a rising sense of dread. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be starting at a new school, in a new town, in a new country. He wanted his old school with its familiar corridors and teachers and subjects, not –

"For goodness' sake, Ryou, you have a face like a wet Sunday. Cheer up."

A 'whoof' of air escaped him as a hand landed squarely between his shoulder-blades. It was in exactly the right spot that no amount of bending could allow his arm to reach enough to massage the feeling back into it.

"That's easy for you to say," he grumbled.

"It'd be easy for you to say, too, if you weren't so negative."

"I'm not negative."

"Oh, puh-lease. 'But Dad, I don't like the idea of a new school. Can't I just stay in England with Auntie Beryl?' You're fifteen, Ryou. You've had fifteen years plus time in the womb to grow sufficient backbone by now. Be a man. Be macho. Like this – grrr."

Despite his apprehension, Ryou couldn't help smiling at his twin's attempt to pose like a bodybuilder when she was built like a sparrow with a growth hormone deficiency. Her fine hair fountained from her head, framing her heart-shaped face as she slipped from gurning to grinning. She'd always had much less coarse hair than him, though they shared matching shades of near-white. People used to talk about some old film called 'Village of the Damned' when they were little and would sit, watching and listening to adult conversations without saying a word of their own.

"Don't giggle behind your hand like that," Amane ordered. "You look girlier than I do."

"Amane!"

"What? It's true."

"Well if you took more time to look feminine, maybe it wouldn't be so easy for people to mistake us for each other."

Amane glanced down at her new uniform – pink blazer and blue skirt with knee-high socks – and then across as his navy blue trousers and blazer. "I think," she said seriously, "that if people mistake us for each other in these get-ups they should seek the help of an optician. And possibly a psychiatrist. This is going to play havoc whenever I want you to swap with me so I can sneak into town to go shopping. You'll have to start shaving your legs."

Ryou smiled again. Amane never failed to make him laugh when he was gloomy – which had been happening more and more since the death of their mother in a car accident. Only fate had stepped in and stopped Amane joining her in the wreck.

They weren't aliens with golden eyes like John Wyndham's creations, but they did share a kind of empathy that meant whenever one of them was sick, the other one experienced phantom pains. Apparently it was common in twins, and their family had always been more sensitive anyway. While their mother skidded on a wet road and wrapped her car around a tree, Amane was in the bed next to Ryou's with 'fake flu' to match his real one.

Their father had been so devastated by the loss of his wife that he withdrew completely into himself, leaving his children to deal with their grief alone. Having each other made it easier, though the rest of the world sometimes tried to invade their private little bubble and separate them. Apparently spending so much time together was unhealthy. However, if anything,the interference of others had driven the twinsfurther into each other's arms, so that they almost warded off the rest of humanity with crossed fingers. Their grief was shared, like two hands with interlocking fingers, and disentangling one was painful for the other. They healed each other until they were ready to face the world again.

Their father wasn't so lucky. Eventually he caved to his own emotions and took what remained of his family back to his hometown in Japan. He didn't so much as ask whether they wanted to leave their home and everything that was familiar and precious to them - including their mother's grave.

Ryou didn't know what he would've done if it hadn't been for Amane. When trying to win arguments he always made a big deal about being older than her by five minutes, but in truth he most often felt like he was years younger than her. Amane knew how to smile in a crisis and keep those around her buoyant even at their lowest ebb. It was she who'd encouraged their father's tentative emergence from his shell by accepting the gift he offered from his last trip abroad. Ryou thought the necklace was an ugly thing, but they took turns wearing it and it seemed to make their father happy.

"C'mon," Amane said, grabbing his hand and dragging him through the school gates. "It wouldn't do to be late on our first day."

"But what if we forget and speak English in the middle of lessons? Or if we're in separate classes? Or what if nobody likes us -?"

"Ryou," Amane chuckled, thumping him on the back again and running ahead as he gave chase, "you worry entirely too much. What does it matter if nobody likes us? We have each other, don't we?"

A/N: Well nobody said how much younger she was, did they?

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