***"We're all a little weird. And life is weird. And when we find someone
whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into
mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love."
― Robert Fulghum***
***AN: This will be a three chapter story. This story is a result of my ridiculous brain thinking, "ha ha, it'd be funny if Yami Marik came back from the Shadow Realm and carried a flashlight all the time because he was traumatized" and then my next thought was "wait, don't write it, wait don't write it, I was just joking so don't - crap, I've written another fic." ***
Walking home from work, Ryo wasn't surprised when he saw a man with unkempt, gold hair and garam marsala colored skin leaning against the wall in an alley near Ryo's apartment. In his gut, he already knew why he stared at Marik's alternate self; he already knew that Marik wanted the Spirit from the Ring back. Yet an equation needed to be balanced on both sides, if Marik found a spell that summoned the Spirit back from the Shadows, then there would have to be a balancing result (in this case, Marik's own darkness returning from the Shadows as well). Ryo stared at Marik's other half, arms wrapped around his own body, eyes squeezed shut, and head bowed. Would Marik even care if he knew the consequences to his magic? Probably not, it wasn't Marik's way to think things through when he wanted something. Marik's alter ego groaned as if suffering from a nightmare, still hunched and doubled-over with his back propped against the brickwork.
Because of the angle of the sun, shadows covered half his body and light covered the other half, creating two symmetrical sides. Ryo suspected that was the nature of whatever heka Marik used, a spell that drew light and dark together - Ryo's darker half to Marik and vice versa. With nothing else to do, Ryo found himself swinging the dazed man's arm over his shoulders and helping Marik's other half up the stairs to Ryo's apartment.
Ryo remembered most of the Battle City events. He knew this aspect of Marik was dangerous, but at the moment Ryo could barely manage to drag his weakened companion to the apartment building. "Are you okay?" Ryo asked as they stopped in front of the door so Ryo could find his key.
Marik's doppelganger leaned against the wall. His eyelids pressed down and a pained expression consumed his face. "C-cold. I'm so cold."
"Okay, just a moment." Ryo opened the door and tried to pull his companion inside.
Marik's other half pulled away, pressing his back against the hallway wall. He opened his eyes wide, a stark, haunted lavender color. "No."
"It's my apartment. It's safe." Ryo reached out his hand.
The other Marik shook his head in a panic. "No, no more dark."
Ryo looked back into the doorway; it was dark inside. He stepped across the threshold and turned on a few lamps. He also drew the blinds up so the clear, autumn sunlight brightened the room. He went back and held out his hand. "See? It's okay now?"
He blinked purple eyes at Ryo's hand, as if he didn't know what to do. Ryo reached out, took the other Marik's arm, and led him inside. Once in the living room, not-Marik stood still, trembling. Ryo remembered he'd mentioned being cold so he took a thick quilt from his linen closet and wrapped it around not-Marik's shoulders. He walked him to the couch and sat him down. The other Marik only stared at everything, blinked at everything, as if waiting in horror for an attack.
"You're safe here." Ryo found himself repeating. "I'll make some hot tea. Would you like that?"
He looked up at Ryo. "You're the other one?"
"I'm me," Ryo said with a tone of finality.
"Why are you helping me? I-I sent your body . . ." his shaking intensified; he stared at the floor. "I sent you there, but no more. I swear. No more sacrifices to the darkness." Marik's alter ego pulled his knees into his chest and hugged them. Gooseflesh puckered across his forearms. "It's cold, and it's hungry, and I couldn't scream, and I shouldn't have sent you there."
Ryo knelt down, holding not-Marik's hands. "I'm here now. Everyone's back from the Shadows now, even you, so don't worry about it." He stood up, went into the kitchen, and brewed two cups of green tea.
When he returned, he noticed that not-Marik had unscrewed the lampshade off of Ryo's lamp and held it in his lap with the light shining in his eyes. Ryo took the lamp out of the other Marik's hold and he placed one cup in his hands instead, but Ryo had to help him push the mug up to his lips because he still shook.
"Are you that cold?" Ryo asked.
The other Marik looked away and Ryo realized he was that frightened. A bolt of terror ran down Ryo's spine from the revelation. To see someone as proud and as strong and as crazy as Marik's other personality reduced to a broken, shaking person, was more unsettling that anything Ryo ever experienced while he owned the Ring.
He acted on instinct, setting the cup aside and throwing his arms around the other man. He held him in a hard embrace. His hand reached up and stroked the other Marik's spikes of hair. "It's okay. It's okay," Ryo whispered. "It's okay."
"I don't want to go back there." The other Marik's voice cracked as he made the confession in Ryo's arms.
"You won't. You're right here. You can stay with me for a little while."
"Why?"
Ryo smiled. "We're part of a matching set, aren't we? Just like they are. So let's be friends, okay?"
He still trembled despite Ryo's efforts to comfort him. "Friends? I . . . don't know how."
Ryo couldn't help the soft laugh that came at the other Marik's words. "You don't have to know how. It'll just happen."
He rested his head of wild hair against Ryo's shoulder, still wrapped in Ryo's arms and the quilt. His eyelids fluttered shut and after a few moments his trembling stopped as he fell asleep. Ryo sighed and shifted the quilt so it covered both their shoulders and shut his own eyes. He felt exhausted, too tired to turn off all the lights or go to his bedroom. It was still bright outside. Ryo imagined that somewhere in Egypt their other selves were also falling asleep – drained from strange magic and whatever incantations Marik used to pull both darker halves back from the Shadows.
Marik's doppelganger felt warm curled against Ryo's chest. Ryo sighed again and succumbed to the weariness clouding his thoughts. They fell asleep with all of the lights on.
Ryo didn't wake up until the next morning when the alarm clock beside his bed screeched and whined. He sat up with a start, confused and wondering why he was on the couch and why he felt such odd contentment. The answer to both thoughts still lay in Ryo's arms. Marik's alter stared around the room as if he still didn't trust it. Ryo realized that he felt content because it was the first time in a while that he'd been with another person without feeling nervous. Whenever he saw his old friends, awake from their comas, he felt guilty; whenever he saw his new friends, Yugi and the others, he felt chaperoned, as if he were their feeble, baby brother instead of their equal. He didn't have to worry about his past with Marik's alter ego, (and Ryo knew he needed to think of him as something better than that, but Ryo didn't know how else to think of him).
"What's that horrible noise?" Marik's other self asked.
"The alarm clock." Ryo forced himself to standing and stumbled to his bedroom to silence the shrill alarm. "Sorry," he called into the living room. "I need to take a shower. I'll be out in fifteen minutes and then I'll make breakfast."
Once Ryo was cleaned and dressed, he toasted bread and covered the slices with jam. He found his new roommate still sitting on the couch and once again holding the naked lamp up to his face. Ryo took the lamp away again and returned it to its end table. "Stop that. You'll hurt your eyes. Here, it's not much, but you can eat whatever you want while I'm at work."
Not-Marik stared at Ryo with a desperate expression. "I need to keep the light close."
Ryo frowned; he couldn't remember his time in the Shadow Realm very well. All he remembered was a stranger in a scarlet cloak and a white, glowing creature – like a guardian angel – protecting them. He realized that, alone, Marik's twin had a different experience. Whatever happened to the abandoned portion of Marik's soul was horrible enough to leave scars much deeper than the ones poxing his back – horrible enough to reduce a murderous personification of hatred and anger into someone content to sit on a sofa and stare at a lamp. Ryo couldn't bare it.
Ryo went into the kitchen and pulled open a drawer in which he stored random items. He pulled a flashlight from the drawer and brought it to his new roommate. "Here." Ryo put the object into Not-Marik's hands. "Slide this up and there's light, but don't shine it in your face."
Marik's other half looked up at Ryo as if he'd just been rescued. "I can use this all I want?"
Ryo nodded. "You can have it. So you never have to be in the dark. I'll pick up more batteries on my way home from work."
He stared at the flash light, caressed the plastic case as if it were living.
Ryo found himself slipping his fingers through the other's hair. "I have to go to work. I'll be home after three."
Not-Marik jumped to his feet and clung to Ryo. "Don't leave."
Ryo stumbled back with the impact of Marik's other self crashing into him. "I have to. It's Friday, so I'll be home for the weekend after today. You have to let go." Ryo tried to pry the tanned fingers away from his shoulders.
"You can't," he begged. "What if I go back to the Dark?"
"I promise, you won't." Ryo succeeded in freeing himself. "I'll see you when I get home." Ryo almost bent forward and kissed the other Marik's forehead as a comforting reflex, but he caught himself before he did it, realizing it would be silly, and ran out the door with a pink blush on his pale cheeks.
He worked at the Museum. It made his father happy and Ryo never thought of anything better to do. Throughout the two years he'd worked there, Ryo kept in contact with Ishizu – it often came in handy for each of them when they wanted to do various exhibits. Two seemingly innocent emails later, Ryo had a phone number in which to contact Marik. He didn't plan to, but wanted the option available in case it became necessary.
Time passed slow and tedious. Ryo felt anxious to get back home and check on his companion. Did he know how to cook? If he got too frightened would he get violent? What if something did go wrong with the spell Marik used and both their darker halves went back to the Shadows? Could they get them back? Ryo blinked at his thoughts, realizing how much he didn't want to be separated from Marik's other aspect. It'd only been a day, but Ryo felt at ease beside him. His new companion was the only person that looked at Ryo as if he wasn't weak and that feeling reminded Ryo of a drug, something he wanted more and more of.
When the end of his shift arrived, Ryo ran out the door and jogged home instead of walked. He only stopped to get the batteries he'd promised Not-Marik. When inside the apartment, Ryo froze beside the door at the sight of his new roommate. The window cast a long rectangle of light onto the carpet and his companion sat in the center of it, holding the flashlight into his chest as if he could press the light inside himself. Ryo also noticed that ever single light and lamp in the apartment was on – he even left the microwave and fridge doors open so that the lights inside them stayed lit. Ryo shut his front door and then shut the fridge door, sure that everything inside would need disposed of.
"Um . . ." Ryo wanted to call out a name, but only Marik came to mind and he didn't want to use that title. "Hey, I'm home."
"When the sun goes down, it'll be dark outside."
"But not in here."
"I can keep the lights on? Always?"
"Some of them. You don't really need all of them."
"Yes I do."
Ryo looked around the apartment, wondering what he could do to cheer up his roommate. A thought crossed his mind and Ryo went to his extra room where he kept his games. He took his Duel Monster cards and brought them to the living room. "You play, right? Want a game before I make dinner? Or maybe I'll order dinner. Keep the fridge closed from now on, okay?"
His roommate looked up and noticed the cards in Ryo's hand. Tears started rolling across his dark cheeks and his lips sagged into a frown. "Please. No."
The cards fell from Ryo's hands when he noticed the other man's tears. They landed in a lop-sided fan shape on the carpet. Ryo scooped the slips of paper back into his hands and hid them, running back to his companion and crashing down to the floor so he could hold him again. "I'm sorry. I didn't think . . . I'm very sorry."
"You're made of light."
"What?" Ryo asked, confused by the statement.
The other Marik combed Ryo's hair, the milk-white strands glowing from sunlight. "It's all around you," he answered.
"You're glowing, too."
"I . . . can't be. I'm made of dark."
"Well you are." Ryo gave a single spike of hair a playful tug. "Each section looks like a sun ray shooting out from your head."
More tears washed down his cheeks, but he didn't vocally sob. "Really?"
"Yes."
"How did I get here? With you instead of the Shadows?"
Ryo sighed, opting to tell the truth, though he didn't know for a fact that it was the truth. "Your other side used magic to save my other side from the Shadows and it also brought you here to me."
"Because we're part of a matching set? Just like they are?"
"Yes."
"And I can stay here? With you, in the light?"
"Yes."
"And we're friends, even though I don't know how?"
Ryo looked at his companion with dark, espresso eyes, touching his companion's cheek. "Yes."
They ordered take-out noodles for dinner and afterward his new roommate took a shower. By the time he reappeared in the living room, it was dark outside. Ryo went up to the other Marik and held his hand. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"Outside, to the roof, I want to show you something."
The other Marik held his flashlight and used the beam to guide them down the halls. "I don't like hallways."
"We're almost there."
His roommate's eyes zipped from left to right and his breathing quickened. He growled, jerking his hand out of Ryo and turning around. "Forget this, I'm going back."
"Marik!" Ryo yelled. The other man flinched at the name and Ryo hung his head down, his expression guilty and sad. "I'm sorry, I was trying not to call you that since you're separate now."
The knuckles holding his flashlight on Not-Marik's hand were so white that it looked like the bone peaked through the skin. He clenched his jaw. "It doesn't matter what you call me."
Ryo pursed his lips in thought. "It's because of when you were one Marik and lived in a tomb. That's why you hate the hallways, isn't it? I'm sorry." He looked up at his companion and gestured to the door a few feet down the hall. "We can go back if the hallway is too frightening for you."
The other Marik's purple eyes grew jewel-bright with rage, he clenched his teeth even as he growled at Ryo. "I am not frightened. I'm the one that had to deal with the tomb when he was too frightened, when he was too weak to handle it. Me. Me!" He marched past Ryo and threw the door open, marching up the stairs, flashlight still in hand. "Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I'm scared!"
Ryo jogged behind him to catch up. "I – I didn't mean . . ."
They ended up on the roof. Not Marik held out his hands and turned in a circle. "We're here. Why?"
"Um, well." Ryo sighed. "I just thought, that maybe." He sighed again without finishing a complete thought. Ryo hugged himself and looked away. "I'm really sorry."
"Why am I here?" Not-Marik still had his jaw clenched as his hands gripped the flashlight.
Ryo's eyes flicked out at the city below them. "I just thought you'd like to see all the lights."
"What?" the other Marik asked, but some of the fury drained from his face as his eyes went out to the city below them.
Ryo gestured below. "Look, between the streetlights, traffic lights, cars, and other buildings, it's never dark in Domino City. Even at night there's always something glowing, shining, lit up."
Marik's other half walked beside Ryo, looking at him instead of the streetlights below. Ryo felt the gaze at turned his head to look back at his roommate. He shrugged offering a sad smile. "It was the best I could think of – I wanted to make you feel better." Ryo looked up. "And there's also the stars. The city lights fade them, but you can still see some of them twinkling"
Ryo's smile changed from a wistful, upturn of lips to a full, bright expression when he felt his friend's hand slip into his own. As he held Ryo's hand, Not-Marik stared at the stars that stretched endless in the sky and at the electric lights that bunched past the horizon. After they star gazed for a moment, Ryo lead them back to their apartment so they could lay down and rest. They nested beside each other on Ryo's bed. The light in the center of the ceiling shined on them as did two small lamps on Ryo's night stands; Not-Marik also removed the shades from these lamps so their light covered more area.
Ryo stared at the ceiling, feeling his companion's body shift while he breathed. "My sister hated the dark, too. I'd always wake up in the middle of the night with her curled up beside me, holding a flashlight just like you are now."
"Ishizu doesn't fear anything . . . except me. Do you get along with your sister?"
"You would have thought we were sown together. We often played outside, in the sunlight. I'd pick flowers for her and we'd sing silly rhymes that'd make her laugh." Ryo stopped speaking; he swallowed, eyes glassy and shining.
The room sat quiet until Marik's alter ego whispered, "you're speaking in past tense."
"Yes. I am."
Silence again. Marik shifted a little closer to Ryo. "We couldn't go outside, but the women would dye cloth with henna or turmeric and once I collected the scraps and made a hair wreath for Ishizu with cloth flowers."
"How old were you?" Ryo asked, blinking his eyes.
"Seven."
Ryo realized that at seven it was technically Marik's memory, but since both Mariks were one child before their initiation, it made sense that they'd have the same memories before they broke into two minds. Ryo exhaled a breath of relief. He'd been trying to force himself to think of his friend as a nine-year-old (Marik being nineteen). However, it was hard to do so when his companion's body looked carved out of hard, desert-weathered, Egyptian stone and his lips were shaped like a plump, dusty-pink heart. If the other Marik remembered everything before the initiation, then he was Ryo's age mentally as well as physically; therefore, Ryo didn't have to worry about casting an occasional, admiring glance at his new roommate.
Ryo turned his head to do just that, enjoying the view of his companion's broad face and wilderness of hair. "I'm really glad you're here," Ryo confessed. "It's nice to have someone around to talk to."
His companion nestled the flashlight in the crook of his arm, lighting up the head board behind them, and took Ryo's egg-shell white hand. He rubbed his fingertips over the thick matting of scar tissue marring Ryo's palm. "You have scars, too."
"Yes. I have lots of them, but they're not pretty."
"It doesn't matter what they look like. If you have scars, it means you survived; it means you're stronger than whoever tried to hurt you."
Ryo blinked, never expecting to hear something that philosophical from Marik's other half. His companion looked up and met Ryo's eyes. Ryo realized he was staring and averted his gaze. "Do you want to see the rest?" he asked.
"Of your scars?"
Ryo nodded. He wasn't sure why he offered to show them to his new roommate. Perhaps because everyone objectified Marik through his scars. Ryo figured that it might be comforting for this Marik to be the one to look at scars for a change.
He frowned. "You don't have to."
"It's okay." Ryo pulled off his shirt and lay back down.
He noticed his companion staring at his chest, the entirety of it, and Ryo looked away, feeling too pale and self-conscious. When the other Marik reached out his hand – the one not holding the flashlight – and touched Ryo's chest, the air hitched in Ryo's throat. Ryo held his breath. He hadn't meant to react to his roommate's touch. The other Marik's coarse fingertips examined each of the five twisted knots below Ryo's sternum.
Ryo glanced back over to look at his roommate's face, noticing again the thickness of his companion's bottom lip, the slight clef in his chin, and the length of his eyelashes. Marik's other half moved away from Ryo's chest and studied the worse of his scars, the one on his arm. "Do they ever itch? Mine do."
"Sometimes. Usually in the winter when the weather is really dry." Ryo ran his own fingers across the scar on his arm. The tips of his fingers brushed against the other Marik's fingers as they touched the raised tissue at the same time.
"I think the Spirit caught more nerves with this one. Most days it's fine, but sometimes it still feels like the knife's inside the skin and all I can do is grin and bare it."
Ryo's companion nodded his head. "The skin on my back doesn't stretch right when I move, especially around my shoulders." He grinned, a hint of the old, deranged Dark Marik lingered in the expression, but Ryo found the grin endearing to look at. "Marik doesn't let anyone know, but that's one of the reasons he always preferred controlling others with the Rod. That way he could stand back and look powerful, when really something as simple as lifting an object from the ground can be uncomfortable for us to do."
Ryo held up his left hand. "I drop things a lot now thanks to this one. I'm just glad it was this hand. I can forgive a lot of things, but if that bastard would have hurt my right hand to where I couldn't craft Monster World figurines, then I would have hated him."
"You don't now? I mean hate him."
Ryo shrugged. "I'm glad he lost, in the end, but I'm also glad Marik brought him back. No one belongs in the Shadows." Ryo smiled and looked at his roommate. "And because Marik brought him back, you're here. Now we each have someone to rub lotion on our scars when they itch."
His friend's eyes widened. "Really? You'd do that for me?"
Ryo chuckled. "Sure, what are friends for?"
Marik's other half smirked. "Whenever I want?"
Ryo was mostly teasing; he didn't expect Marik's better half to ever take Ryo up on his offer, so he nodded his head to agree. Ryo's mouth dropped when he noticed Not-Marik removing his black tank top and turn his back to Ryo. Ryo licked his lips at the sight of his roommate half naked, earthy skin gleaming from the lights. Ryo reached over and took lotion from his nightstand drawer (trying not the think about why he had lotion in that particular drawer). He warmed the cream in his hands before spreading it across spiced-colored skin. His companion leaned into Ryo's touched and exhaled. Ryo bit his lip to prevent himself from bending forward and kissing the nape of his roommate's neck. He'd meant for the sentiment of a back-rub to be friendly, but he was nineteen and this was the first time his hands ever glided across another person's bare flesh. A jolt of excitement coursed through Ryo's body as he explored his roommate's shoulders with timid, circular stroke of his thumbs.
His roommate's soft, content sighs and the way he shifted and relaxed under Ryo's fingers didn't help. Ryo couldn't stop the daydreams assaulting his imagination. He wanted to wrap his arms around his companion, pinch his nipples, guide his touch below the other Marik's belt line. Instead, he focused on the area around the shoulders and shoulder blades, where Not-Marik had mentioned the skin felt the tightest.
After a few minutes, the better Marik leaned closer and pressed his back against Ryo's chest. "You're the first one to ever touch my scars. The initiation marked my back as a possession of the Pharaoh's, so no one was allowed to touch it. Even the servants who dressed my wounds had to be careful not to actually touch the skin or abouya would punish them."
Ryo wrapped his arms around his companion's stomach to embrace him. His earlier fantasies set-aside as Ryo rested his chin on the crook of his roommate's neck and shoulder to comfort him. "That's horrible."
"He had a knife," Marik's other aspect whispered, rocking oh-so-slightly as he spoke. "He had a knife and he was going to hurt me again. My first memories of being someone separate were of that knife and of that pain and I couldn't – I couldn't – I couldn't – bastard wasn't allowed to hurt me anymore. I stopped it and I was happy, and if that makes me a monster then I like being a monster."
Ryo realized he wasn't breathing and forced a shaky breath into his lungs. "I . . ." Ryo wanted to say something, but what do you say to someone who killed his father at eleven because he didn't want to be tortured again? Ryo held his roommate harder as if his empathy could be transferred and understood through their skin.
"And then the Power of the Shadows seeped into me from the Rod. Into us, Marik and me, but he only tasted it. I drank it like fresh kefir and grew stronger and stronger until I was able to take control." He shook his head. "I used to love the dark, but when I was banished I wasn't useful, so the Power left and those Shadows eat you from the inside out and you can't scream, and it's dark – pure dark – no sounds, no sight, no scents, only the the feeling of infinite needle-teeth eating."
The noise sounded dry at first, almost rusty, but then something broke in the other Marik's throat and proper sobs escaped his mouth. He cried in Ryo's arms and Ryo felt panicked to stop his companion from suffering. He shifted on the mattress so that he faced the other Marik, half sitting in his lap. Ryo held his companion's face, watching the tears slid down his cheeks and drip down his chin.
"I'm here. I'm right here," Ryo whispered. He bent forward and kissed his companion's eyelids and cheeks, trying to kiss the tears away. "Right here."
Marik's alter ego held Ryo's wrists as Ryo held his face. His tears ebbed and his breathing changed to sighs as Ryo kissed his tears from his cheeks. When the other Marik's tears stopped, Ryo laid down and allowed the other Marik to used Ryo's chest as a pillow. Ryo held him tight, tight enough to let the darker aspect of Marik know nothing could pull him away from Ryo's hold. A final, shuddering sigh shook from the other Marik's lips before he settle exhausted against Ryo's scared chest. They fell asleep with all the lights on.
***AN: *Edited 4-24-14 to fix a word choice issue* Thanks to angel-heart-of-love for suggesting abouya as a better word over al walib for "father" (darn online translators are rubbish, lol).***