'Ello there. This songfic consists of Tornshipping (Ryou x Marik x Yami Bakura) and it's based off the song Let It Die by Foo Fighters.
Disclaimer: I have no rights to Yu-Gi-Oh! or it's characters, and I make no claim to. All rights belong to them. I'm just a fan.
It's rather dark, I must say. If you're looking for cute fluff, you might want to leave now.
This fic contains: Violence, a psychotic and broken Ryou, identity crises and implications of sex.
This fic is yaoi (ie - boyxboy), though it has no smut/lemon/lime. The sex is completely implied, so don't let that deter you.
Comments, reviews and messages are greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
- zlae.
Our love is a dead thing.
It festers and bleeds like an open wound, until all we can do is amputate the limb, to prevent us from feeling nothing at all.
Let me have iron lungs, to tolerate the air you exhale through your bruised lips. My mind is barely my own, my white hair and eyes the colour of a bruised pear are no longer a means to identify myself.
I am nothing, not even the bacteria swarming my pale, sweaty skin.
I am no one, but all I wanted was to be somebody to him.
He was a pure thing that became tainted, like a hard-working man succumbing to the forgetting powers of alcohol.
His eyes were bloodshot and focused; limbs long and sun-kissed. My eyes would widen upon glancing at the tattoo that adorned his straight-spined back.
But the most startling trait of the man I believe to be my hopeless addiction was not his hair, nor his skin or his mind. Not even his beating heart.
No, none of those trivial things that base mere mortal infatuations.
It was the way those eyes looked at my darker self hidden within me, fear and passion intertwined like their hurried limbs.
Once, I was told my eyes were almost dazzling.
Almost.
I had never believed a compliment since then.
I would never let those selfish sycophants take pleasure in such an unnecessary, vain thing.
My mind had corrupted since then; the nightmare that occupied it never had a grace for social pleasantries.
If he wanted it; it would be his.
That's how it's always been.
Until now.
"Hey, Bakura," Marik would say with a boyish grin, confidence in his startling eyes.
I'd look down, avoiding his startling gaze. This was routine; you'd think I'd be used to it by now, but every time, it stung a little more, and the wound reopened.
"I-it's Ryou," I'd whisper, my breath hitching and hands trembling.
The contrast was immediate. Marik's eyes suddenly narrowed, his eyes screaming bloody murder, as if saying, 'Where is my Bakura? What have you done to him? Why have you replaced him, you monster?'
It was that irony that always earned a humorless chuckle from my cracked lips.
"Oh."
An unwelcome silence.
It suffocates me, clouding my eyes like a thick fog. And it tears at me, breaking me down until I can't breathe, and my only thoughts are of my (supposed) other half clenching his unsated, greedy fingers around my thin neck.
I choke, and my hands reach out to him without my command.
He turns away.
"Why can't you be like Bakura?" Marik sighs, his hands making desperate attempts at the air in front of me, as if trying to drag my nightmare out of my mind, but only for his benefit.
'He doesn't care about you.
He thinks – no, hopes – you're someone else.'
It's what I tell myself every time.
But is it really any different?
I scream, clutching at my pale throat. But no sound escapes.
"Ryou," Bakura whispers within the confines of my mind, his throat hoarse and wanting. "I made you a present," he continues.
In his skeletal fingers he clutches a necklace with gems that look like pearls. They're white, pale and strung on a clear, colourless fishing line.
"What... What are they?" I whisper, fear suddenly spreading through my veins.
Bakura just smiles.
It was an empty smile.
His teeth were gracelessly clinking together on his make-shift necklace, rising gradually into a haunting symphony.
Spaces of black stare into me; his mouth was open, and his bony fingers place the necklace around my blood-streaked throat.
Bakura was still smiling.
His face was humorless.
I scream, and I don't stop; not even once the vision disappears and I'm left in my cell, naked and shivering.
I didn't sleep that night, or the next.
They had always said repetition was a good thing; but to me, to be consistent with routine was to accept that in life, you live to die.
That is why I never had a job, or kids, or even a family.
My life was my own.
I would let no one – not even this hellish nightmare – command it.
I won't budge.
Marik will be mine.
If you've ever been with a lover, you'd know how I felt at this moment. It's the tension, pulled so taut and hard that you would believe it was palpable. Whenever you looked into the eyes of the person your hands had caressed countless times, you feel a choke in your throat. It's as if - every time - that you can't help but see how they used to look back then, splayed out beneath you, skin coated with a thin sheen of sweat and chest heaving up and down.
But then, inevitably, the love wilts. It rots and decays, and all that's left is the unmistakable passion of hate.
That look was what I received from Marik, every day.
No matter how much I tried to avoid a brushing of our fingertips, or a fleeting look from the corners of my bloodshot eyes, he'd still look at me with distaste.
Our love had never lived; how could I had believed it to have flourished?
That was what I chanted in my mind, every time he gave me that searing look of scorn.
I believed I could endure it; that the string wouldn't snap, and it would just bend slightly, only hesitating for a short time before giving a little away.
Who knew I could be so foolish?
"Bakura, are you there?" A hesitant voice whispers in the night, slowly inching to my side. My whole body stiffens, and all I could do was stop myself from screaming and running away. So I put my white-knuckled fist in my mouth, clenching my jaw hard onto the bones, grimacing in satisfaction as the copper taste of blood runs onto my dry tongue.
"...Bakura?" Marik whispers again, his unease growing by each wasted second.
A decision.
One wrong move could ruin everything, and I never had been lucky.
"Yes, love," I whisper, my throat hoarse from lack of sustenance, rather than nervousness or anticipation.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
It helped to ease the guilt.
A hand caressed my side, and my stomach contracts, but I do not flee.
Was it right for me to take advantage of this situation?
Would he demean me, call me a thief and demand to see his true love?
"I'm here," I whisper, a hand travelling towards what I had denied myself for so long.
I took him then, under the guise of another name.
He screamed that name as he reached his climax, and I had felt no passion rise within me. He didn't even realise as his body was held within my stony embrace, his chest falling up and down as he slept in a lovely dream.
We were so similar that he couldn't even tell, and at that moment, I couldn't even distinguish myself from the monster residing within my mind.
I just watched him at peace, his normally troubled eyes fluttering in his sleep.
"Bakura," he whispers, and hatred rises up through my bloodstream.
He truly had stolen my heart.
There was no humanity left within me.
"It was you," Marik whispers, his normally-tanned hands clutching onto the coffee cup as if clinging for life, the grimace on his effeminate face was prominent.
That was a change, for once.
He had finally focused on what was, rather than what wasn't.
"You..." He whispers, something akin to horror and distaste curling on his tongue. It was as if he had directed all of those negative feelings of disgust and hatred towards me, using a name that could relate to anyone.
I remained silent, not even letting the turmoil I felt inside reflect onto my face, or in the scattered look of my dilated pupils.
He recoiled.
His whole body shook with the revelation, but his grip on the cup did not falter.
But then, finally, he let it go.
And it smashed onto my face, the cup breaking instantly from the impact. My mind was scattered, and my body fell to the ground.
Marik didn't look at the anguish I now displayed; he just stared at his hands.
I screamed.
I shrieked until I couldn't anymore, and I clutched at the burning wreckage that was my face. Blood pooled onto the floor and ran down my stained shirt. It was burning, oh dear god it was burning. I couldn't smell anymore, but if I could, I would have smelt the putrid odor of searing flesh and singeing hair.
I screamed more, my voice cracked and bubbled, and the last thing I saw was Marik staring at his hands, his eyes conveying disbelief, as if unsure that he had really destroyed me.
He moves, then.
He runs towards my broken body and straddles me, his hips on top of mine.
I feel nothing.
Even as his fists make a bloody mess of my face, no pain is felt.
"Your faces shouldn't be so similar," Marik whispered, tears trickling down his cheeks.
"It's your fault," he cries, his hands still punching into the bloody pile that was myself.
"It's all your fault!" He screams, and he spent the night punching into the body that used to contain me (the forgotten) and Marik's now-lost lover.
The hands still moved, and Marik didn't dare to think or even breathe.
He just kept on trying to erase my existence.
My face would be unrecognisable as I would be laid in my grave.
I would be nobody.
Ryou and Bakura wouldn't exist.
I'd be just another corpse, rotting, tossing and turning in its grave.
And for some reason, that comforted me more than any words ever could.
Marik was whispering to himself, "You're not him, you're not him, you're not him," as Bakura and I ended as one.
He wrapped his hands around his body then, and his torso was quivering.
The gold that formed his bangles had rusted; the love he had shared with my darker self had died.
Their love was a dead thing.
It festered and bled like an open wound, until all they could do was amputate me, to help them feel nothing at all.
My corpse has bony lungs, to taint the air that surrounds its' unchanging grave. My mind is no longer my own, my shattered skull and empty eye sockets were no longer a means to identify myself; I no longer had a distinguishing factor.
I am nothing, not even the bacteria swarming my shattered, decaying bones.
I am no one, but all I wanted was to be somebody to him.
end.