Written for the livejournal community fic on demand.
Bakura Ryou x Shadi (invalidshipping ). Set after Battle City. I'm shamelessly mixing manga and anime canon, but I hope it's not overly confusing. I'm postulating that Shadi: 1) is a ghost; 2) was killed, in this life as well, by Yami Bakura/the ring.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any of its characters, I make no money with this, etc.

Wrong Door

The door opens to the outside. He knows, even before he sees the room, what this means, because he knows these things: its main role is to be easy to hold close from this side. This room, he knows immediately, is not a carefully guarded secret, not a labyrinth of the soul, not a safe haven within: it is, furthermore and before all this, a prison.

The light is dim. The walls are of a greyish white, dirty, monotonous, simple. The flour is a brownish carpet, and the few objects that fill it are all leant against the walls. As he steps in, he can only faintly see their outline, and so it takes him a few moments to see, among them, the one whose soul the room represents.

He readies himself to fight or to flee – the latter, probably, for he has not come to fight, and if he kills him a second time, he will be gone for good and his pharaoh still needs him – but one look at his face tells him that this is not him. The thief is a masterful actor, but he is just as skilled at seeing though masks, and here, and in the presence of key and balance, the walls of the soul room would scream if he tried to lie.

He does not look like the one who has killed his past self thousands of years ago, even though there is a likeness. He looks like the thief has chosen to appear after the ring has escaped from him and killed him. But the eyes are different, his stance is different, the dissemblance visible even now, as he's just sitting leant to a wall, motionless, but, for all the thief's confidence, looks more natural, more real. The thief has only stolen this appearance. This one is the one the body belongs to.

The boy is looking at him, with wide eyes: they are attentive, not dead, like he would have expected, at first glance, from the appearance of the room.

"Who... are you?"

Suspicion shows in his eyes, but also keen interest and innocent curiosity. Shadi has not been greeted with either of those in a long time. He is about to answer when suddenly wind blows from the corridor outside: the door is still open, and a strange, dark shadow falls inside the room.

"Oh!" the boy says; he jumps to his feet, stands unsteadily – and then he vanishes.

Shadi forces himself to move, despite his surprise: runs to close to door, leans against it, motionless. If the vessel has been called outside, back into control of the body, the thief must be inside his soulroom, and it is too late, this time, to enter it. And maybe too dangerous to try to leave.

His eyes, subjected to laws of the physical world here where he is as real as everything else, grow used to the light. He can make out some of the shadowy objects by the wall. Most prominent among them is a picture of a young white-haired girl: she is smiling brightly and happily.

Shadi begins to move. Scattered on the floor are cards, both duel monster and tarot cards, the images some of the most complete and beautiful ones he has ever seen. Hand-drawn, he realises after a short inspection. Death and Judgement, he decides, are the most skilfully drawn ones: they lie on top of a pile, clearly visible. Maybe it's just the way the light shines onto them.

Aside from the cards, the room is neat and personal: shelves lining the wall, filled with books – role playing rule books, mostly – and toys, small figurines, many of them hand-made, some fiction, fantasy and horror. There's a comfy chair, right next to the spot where the boy had been sitting, with a photo album laid on it.

Shadi begins to relax, despite of the remaining danger. It feels like even the greyish walls look a bit friendlier, welcoming, with time, and the gloom dims.

He extends his hand to the album, when suddenly the boy reappears.

"What are you doing?" he asks, seeing him. "This is..." He interrupts himself. "Who are you?" he repeats. And, sounding hopeful, he adds, carefully: "He doesn't know you're here."

Shadi straightens up.

"I am Shadi. I must leave now, ring-bearer."

He turns, and walks to the door. The ring-bearer comes after him, looking even more confused.

"Wait! You can't – " He stops dead when the door swings open. "You can open – " Then his eyes fall on the millennium key in his hand, and he backs away. "Oh, I..." He falls silent. "Who are you?" he then repeats.

"I'm Shadi. I serve the pharaoh."

"Yuugi?" He sounds hopeful. Shadi bows his head.

"Yes. The puzzle-bearer as well."

"Will you come back?"

"I can't."

But he does come back.

Because the door is bolted shot, but once he has used the key on it, swings open so easily, as if inviting him to enter. Because the room is warm and welcoming and cosy, once you get used to it (while, he has discovered, the thief's soul room is dark and empty and cold, and smells of blood and smoke and decay), the carpet is soft, the images on the walls friendly... Because Death and Judgement are drawn in a way that looks true, but not horrifying.

Because, he discovers a little later, Bakura looks adorable with his turban keeping the long white hair that's horrible to wash once it gets sticky out of the way (he hadn't taken it off in a very long time: it is one thing that separates him from the young priest he was three thousand years ago), and cream from creampuffs all around his mouth.

"S... sorry," Bakura murmurs sheepishly, when he finds him staring. "I just – I don't need to eat, but I miss the taste of food..." He blushes. "Thank you for bringing them."

"You're welcome," he says slowly. He feels younger too, maybe because of the turban, or because he's not used to emotion anymore. "I wish I could get you outside. But..." But he could liberate only his spirit from his body, and that would be infinitely dangerous...

"I know. It's fine." The smile is genuine; his tongue comes out, eagerly licks off the rests of the cream from his lips. "I'm only worried for Yuugi and the others." He's tempted to lean in, to whip away the cream from Bakura's chin. He doesn't. He hasn't opened the photo album until Bakura did it for him. He's knocked before prying the door open. "And scared of him, I guess..."

He sits up. 'Him' is the ring spirit. Bakura knows, somehow, of the power of names, and has refused to name the spirit, as if to keep it at bay.

"He can't harm you," he says, fear in his voice. "You're his vessel."

Bakura bits his lips, then raises his right hand for him to inspect: there's a huge scar there, both on the palm and the back, as if the hand had been stabbed through completely.

"It was in his first game against Yuugi. I managed to get control of the hand, and he... stopped me." He smiles faintly, vaguely proud. "This one..." Another scar, less deep, but long, all over his upper arm. Shadi leans in, traces a hand over it. Fresher. "I don't know why he did this..."

The light dims, and Bakura seems to shrink, draws the arms around his body. Shadi recognises the signs: fear. He can feel it too, not just the influence of the room.

"I didn't know that," he murmurs.

The pharaoh will win. The thief can't harm his vessel.

Not fatally. He didn't know that.

"I'll be fine." Bakura smiles again. "He's usually protecting me." There's a fondness in his voice, a calm trust, that makes him furious. "Do you know if Yuugi is alright?"

He's not good at reassurance. He can't say he will help, not against the current enemy, and because the victory will have to be the pharaoh's, and too much help will inevitably spoil it. But he doesn't want Bakura to be worried.

"Right now he is. They won't let him win," is what he finds to say.

"Hm..." Bakura smiles; the fear is still there, but he can feel the room's returning calm, and breathes easier himself. "Thank you for that!" He takes off the turban: long hair cascades down, tousled, frames his face. He motions the cards on the floor with his head. "Do you want to play?"

Like ghosts of monsters roam through the room when Bakura plays one of the ones close to his heart: Shadi loves their touch, even when they attack. He nods, while clenching the scarf close without thinking. He hasn't played in a long time. Never with cards, and never for fun. Right now, he can use the distraction

"You can't do this."

Ryou looks irritated and fearful. The wooden figurines on the shelf behind him tremble faintly with his agitation.

"I can. He has stolen the millennium eye. He can't refuse to let me judge and fight him."

"What if he wins?" Ryou snaps.

He feels helpless.

"I won't let him."

Ryou glares at him.

"What if you win?" he asks after a moment. "Will it... kill him?"

"Not... completely. He's split his soul. But it will chase him from you."

"But you haven't split your soul..." Ryou guesses.

"No, but..." In the over thirty years of his second existence, he's never done anything that's personal, certainly not since he's become a ghost: and this is dangerous, for he must stay alive (as alive as he is now). It's not just the wounds. It's the way the door resists his attempts to open it gently, against both their wishes. It's the fear, sometimes forgotten but always returning, that they will be noticed. The secretiveness, the knowledge that he can be banned, Ryou's happiness, that has pleased him at first and now pains him as he realises what it means, when he brings him anything from the real world outside... "Please."

Ryou stares into his pleading eyes and bits his lips.

"If you get killed because of me... I..."

There's a pause, and then Shadi is grabbed and dragged forward: Ryou's body is soft and warm, and the kiss is long, clumsy and passionate, and the last thing Shadi had expected.

He is a ghost, but there are a few things he can touch without any effort, everything connected to his mission: millennium items, duel monster cards, the ring bearer, and, by extension, the cream at the corner of his mouth.

He draws back: Ryou tastes nice when he's eaten them, sugary and wet, but this is the first time he's eaten any, and –

"You don't like it!" Ryou says, accusingly, laying back down completely on the couch.

The sun falls into the room through half closed blinds, drawing a pattern on the floor, on the furniture, and Ryou's body beneath him. It will take some time, he thinks, to get used to a universe that isn't shaped to his lover's moods, but the realness of Ryou's body beneath him, and the lack of fear when they raise their voices more than makes up for it.

"It tastes..." He thinks about it for a moment, and gets distracted by the way Ryou smiles up at him, and moves his hand slightly over his belly: they've been like this for most of the afternoon, never getting farther than removing his shirt and pushing Ryou's up to the navel, and he feels like he could stay like this for days and weeks. "Of chemicals."

"It does not."

Ryou pulls his head down, fingers gently trailing over his bald head and the back of his neck, and kisses him, slowly, his tongue exploring his mouth almost lazily, lips sucking at him gently.

Then he draws back a little, breathless, and sticks his tongue out at him.

"See?"

Shadi doesn't feel like arguing.

Comments are always appreciated. :)