A/N: Major Warning: Don't read this if you are in any way squeamish, because it gets really, really bad at points. Saying more would be spoiling the plot. Also, a lot of swearing and the prolific use of the word "fuck", but compared to the other stuff that is next to nothing. Enjoy, if you can.
Blue. The sky overhead is blue. A shapeless, endless blue, like the forget-me-nots that he pulls from his host's memories, memories that he shuffles through like tarot cards. Bitter and sweet and bittersweet.
Weapons turned into pieces of paper and no less deadly anyways, but the Pharaoh isn't taking chances, not any more.
He is chanting, chanting something to himself, a mantra to keep from slipping, to keep from acknowledging that ground rules have been broken from desperation and in this situation, acceptable isn't an applicable word. Acceptable is what works.
„What is the matter, Pharaoh?" the title sounds like an insult, but, then again, to him it is,"you want to end it, that's fine. Are you having second thoughts?"
Righteous, so righteous. Don't kill. Don't kill. It's a bad thing to do, a horrible thing, a despicable thing. But there's something, something that even children learn – killing is okay, if you're killing a monster!
Monster. Sick, twisted, vile, inhuman thing.
So noble. So righteous. So unable to even accept that they share the same species.
He wants to throw himself against the bonds, dislocate his own shoulders and scream scream scream to be let free, to be let free again of this binding. Hates himself. Let down his guard.
But it's no use, no use at all, worrying over that now. He will be free again. Soon, he will be free.
If only the gods-damned Pharaoh would fucking get on with it!
„You leave me no choice." he says. Dawdles. Knows he will have to sacrifice the host to get rid of the parasite. No other choice.
Look in my eyes, Pharaoh. Call me a monster. That'll make it okay to kill me.
Uncomfortable. It's starting to get uncomfortable now, the way that his arms and legs are tied, spread apart, feet not touching the ground. Pentagram. He can see the shape his body makes.
In a moment, in a moment (If only the gods-damned Pharaoh would fucking get on with it!) there won't be discomfort, there'll be pain.
Hmm, that's almost better. Less boring. Freedom.
Oh. Oh, gods. He considers pain better than boredom by now. Isn't that funny? Isn't that truly the most amazing, fantastic, hilarious thing that was ever said, thought or dreamt, in all the ages of mankind? It is.
Yami no Bakura throws his head back and laughs until the tears start to stream down his face.
„Monster! You dare laugh in the face of your own demise?"
Stating the obvious, is he? Poor sad noble little Pharaoh. He will never understand.
My name is Bakura bin Elna and I laugh in the face of death. My name is Bakura bin Elna and I laugh in the face of death. My name is Bakura bin Elna and I laugh...
My name. My name is...
„Not monster. Bakura bin Elna," he says, enunciating each syllable very carefully, „that is my name. And I laugh in the face of death."
A twist, a grimace, something in the Pharaoh's expression, very off, and the gods only know where he's got the sword from. Brings it down.
Ah, there it is. Pain.
His last words are laughter. He laughs laughs laughs instead of screaming when suddenly he starts feeling very much lighter, the reason being one missing leg.
„To water." the Pharaoh says. Bakura thinks, fuck ceremony!
And there goes his other leg. The strain on his arms is greatly reduced, now. Funny. Funny, funny, funny. „To fire." he knows where this will lead, four ancient elements. But he still has a head, doesn't he. Stupid Pharaoh. Can't even count right. Looks pained and righteous and sorrowful and full of noble sadistic pleasure at killing a monster. Fucking bastard. Can't even kill him right.
That's the laws of physics to you, he thinks as he goes smacking against the wooden structure he's been lashed to when his right arm gets it. („To air.")
His arm is able to take the stress of carrying what's left of his body, but, thank the gods, it doesn't need to. Gods how he had hated that sound when he first heard it gods how he'd grown to love it.
Hitting the dirt really, really hurts. („To earth.") There's blood dripping in his eye. He didn't even know his bones where this white. Light, so light. But he's lying on the floor, like a worm, like a piece of trash.
No more pomp. The Pharaoh stands, stick straight, and lets the sword fall.
Yami no Bakura bin Elna is still laughing as he gets beheaded.
„To darkness."
Throwing up the entire contents of his stomach is the one and only way to celebrate his adversary's end, Yami no Yugi thinks, hysterically. Those are the only thoughts on his mind besides the renditions of „To water, to fire, to air, to earth, to darkness."
To water, to fire, to air, to earth, to darkness.
Nursery rhyme. Golden rule.
His head and mind might be unlike a human's, but Bakura's body does burn. Up in flames, one leg goes. The sea is close by. Into the water, the other one goes. There are mountains, low ones, where the winds rush through. Into the air, the right arm that inflicted so much death, so much suffering.
The left arm, scarred and marred and bloody, is buried. To turn to earth.
The rest, torn-scattered-left. Left to rot, left for dogs and rats and maggots to take. Nursery rhyme.
Freedom feels differently than he thought. Freedom from pain is welcome, in a way, but freedom from all other sensations? It's horrible. It's horrible and he doesn't want it to stay, this feeling. There has been too much and too much and too much of it, of darkness and brightness and nothingness, not even grey, more featureless than even that. Hell.
He wants a body. A body means binding, but it means sensation and mobility. A body means life.
Life is addictive even when death is a rush.
The ring is full of powers he claims as his own and they are so useful, but it's a pretty prison.
A pretty, pretty prison to make him tear at hair he doesn't have and scratch non-existent skin bloody.
There is something else, inside the ring. Curled up in a corner like an abandoned heap of rags and shivering with something else but cold.
Ryou Bakura has never died before, and he isn't taking to it very well.
Wakes him up. Shakes him out of the fear-drunken stupor. The dull eyes grow less dull, gradually, and one question, „Where are we?".
Nothing more. Yami no Bakura answers. Yami no Bakura also has some questions.
Do you want to stay here forever, host?
Do you want to help me get our body back, host? (It's my body!)
Either we both get it, or neither.
How?
You went to school, host. Tell me what an atom is. A molecule. Carbon.
What?
Tell me what an atom is, landlord.
An atom is something there is a near-infinite number of in any given body.
Start with the easiest, work your way up. It hasn't been too long, he thinks, when he spreads his mind out of the ring (and the ring is somewhere safe, where the gods-damned Pharaoh can look after it), but it has been long. When he sends his mind out over the sea (and his landlord helps him, how kind of him to help him), there are only bones left. Those are easiest, those come first. Bones pulling themselves together and then, over hundreds of kilometers, the flesh that has rotted or has been eaten or has been transformed, until it isn't flesh any longer. Catch its atoms and break up the molecules and piece them back together just right and you get – flesh!
And pull the leg out of the sea, and have it wait.
Flesh burns, and the flesh is destroyed, and the molecules are destroyed, but the atoms aren't.
They are scattered all throughout the earth, all throughout.
There are even some in his homeland. The nobleman in Kairo who is eating lobster doesn't mind and doesn't know that a few molecules used to belong to a corpse, and that they are gone now.
All parts together. From the earth, where worms fed on them and carried them and were eaten by birds which migrated and were eaten by cats which got run over by a car and chance has it that Yami no Bakura scrapes, metaphorically speaking, part of his eye from a car's tire.
Is there anything missing? Atoms draw together like clouds, like clouds of locusts. Too small to notice, at first, even when the molecules have re-arranged.
But then the clouds grow denser. Yami no Bakura has to stop quite often, to extract his substance from lungs where it was breathed in. At last, the clouds all gather together where one leg is lying, solitary, not decaying by the sheer force of energy that is coursing through it.
The cloud is one now, singular, thick and greasy and sticky.
Ryou Bakura was the star student in biochemistry. It shows.
It pieces back together, and though the ring is no-where close, part of their souls stay to keep and anchor and the rest goes back to the body, where they have left enough residue to enter.
He sits up. He can feel his heartbeat. He's breathing.
Oh, that went better than he had expected. There seems to be nothing missing. His landlord explains, quite calmly, that there are a few thousand atoms missing, minor mistakes, nothing serious. They're not even enough to notice, anywhere.
But the thought is exciting. Those atoms, in people's lungs, hearts, brains? Parts of his body (Ryou Bakura's body! Okay, their shared body.) in trees and books and seas and churches and graveyards.
Move, move! A body means mobility. The body is whole, is complete, is living. Nothing missing.
But still, this new age, so troublesome, people scream when they see a naked man. Especially women.
No big deal. Steal some clothes. Fuck body modesty! The parts that are still Tomb Robber think.
Uncharacteristically, but no less effectively, his landlord thinks back, fuck being able to move undetected?
Even the house is asleep. The medium is asleep, deeply, chain wound around his neck and the puzzle beside him, lying on the pillow like a companion.
When Yugi wakes up, it is to see a face that he thought he would never see again. The evil spirit, destroyed, and the kind-hearted classmate destroyed alongside.
Yugi Mouto and Yami no Yugi have shared their guilt.
Ryou Bakura and Yami no Bakura have doubled their rage.
His heart freezes. The other side takes over, stronger? Older, yes, but nobler?
And the face, and the voice, is not Ryou's kind face or Yami no Bakura's twisted smile.
It is both.
And the voice, and the words.
„You killed me. You did really kill me. How could you? How could you?" The words are screamed, shrieked, shouted full of pain and betrayal. „Why didn't you fucking ask me?"
And, calmly, happily, as happy as on the day that he died,
„Pharaoh. Give me my ring back."
Bakura bin Elna laughs in the face of death and at his retreating back. He laughs in the face of life. He laughs in the face of Yami no Yugi, the Pharaoh.
„Pharaoh. Do you know the same tricks as I do?"
Bakura bin Elna draws his knife.