After being on a several year hiatus and deleting all of my old work, I am back. -Throws confetti into the air joyously- Although I am not sure at all of whether or not this fandom is still thriving or not as it was back in 2003-2005, I hope that at least one person might read this. And perhaps not believe it to be utter crap. Oh, good olè Ryou-centric angst. Nothing gets the blood pumping like so!
Ryou: Why must you be so cruel? Aren't I your favorite muse?
L: But of course, love. Over these past few years, however, I have become mad due to stress--A little sadist at that. My daughter, however, is much worse I am afraid.
Ryou: Yes, I know. Thankfully she adores Jounouchi far more than I.
-both of them state blankly as L's daughter puts pink ribbons in Jou's hair-
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. Please do not sue the poor college student.
- - - -
Ryou:
I can cease heartbreak by just regulating the rhythm of my pulse.
Possibly.
Have you ever felt so ridiculously hopeless, even though you should not? Misery engulfs your vision, suffocates your lungs, and yet you feel foolish as to why? When you are fortunate enough to be mostly financially stable, with family and friends who adore you? Sure, there have been rough patches, times where you have fallen and cried. But nothing to severely impact your life as this did. Or was this a sign of foreboding, that something deep down acknowledged that something was to happen soon? This pain twinge at my heart, and twisted it until it burned. What in my life could possibly be so heart wrenchingly sad?
What could hurt, youth?
What could hurt, Hello-My-Name-Is..
My brain could not seem to process an identity to myself, because I was not myself. There was something missing. Wasn't there? Something so important to me, that even though I did not know who, what, when, I knew it was missing from me. And I had to find him. Him. My head was pounding, straining to remember who it was that I felt so desperately to find, to protect, even if there was more than a twinge of fear in the pit of my stomach knowing that I should not feel this way, that I should not be so desperate to hear his voice, to feel his presence, to know he is still. Here. Was I the product of some sort of brain-washing experiment? What in my right mind could cause me to miss such a person, whose name I cannot come to remember. I, me, Hello-My-Name-Is..
I was alone inside of my head, when I knew I should not be, inside of a room, where as well I knew was not mine, with a bed next to another youth, sleeping. I thought of going outside, only to notice a male as if standing guard outside of mine and this other boy's open door. To lock us in? My mind strained to reason why I was here in this building that was not my home, sharing a room with a boy I did not know, with a man guarding the door. The security guard look irate when noticing I was up, narrowing his eyes slightly. 'Go back to bed,' they read to me. Sighing, I turned to face the opposite direction of this man, and in doing so, finally noticing the sharp pains coming from different sections of my body, making it stiff and each slight even thought of movement angers my body. I squinted in the dim light, trying to find the closest view of why my body could possibly be in such physical agony. And what I saw, almost made me want to scream. Almost.
- - - -
I wouldn't say that my life was a "lie"--No need for those sorts of melodramatics. Happiness was not a facade, just difficult to come by. To a blind eye, who could see nothing than a mere high school boy? Perhaps slightly queer with natural silver locks and an almost unsettling polite, quiet demeanor. Smiled with his peers, answering when questioned, politely apologizing when declining some sort of invite. Who could see his reasoning? Who else could feel the cold, ancient metal digging into his skin, piercing through to his heart? I, him, Bakura Ryou do.
Have you ever been to curious as to what jumping from a roof top would feel like? To just fall, have the wind tickle your sides until your eyes watered, and Death waited for you patiently to greet you with open arms? To wonder what it would feel like to take that toaster that never works for a bubble bath and if the shock would tickle? Or perhaps to just let the blood flow from your wrist into warm water, gently falling asleep? The last one seemed more plausible than the other two, however the choice just may be indirectly bias due to my Other Half and his faithful practice of masochism. When you are close to someone, their traits tend to rub off on you even without realizing it. How much closer could you be than him and I, with interlinked minds?
At this point, it made no sense as to exactly why I still put on the Sennen Ring, when nothing pleasant was ever the outcome. If I was truly that lonely to reduce my range to just that of a mad-man, it would be more than just pathetic, but irrational and just plain.. Un-wise. However, I was far from unloved, despite my father's constant trips with lengthy time spans to which I would not see him, but company was what Yuugi and his gang were for. I could feel that they were always at least somewhat frightened of me, never completely at ease due to my Other Half's more than convincing acting skills. So then why was I so desperate to put on the Ring each time I swore I was to wear it for the last time? Was it just my pitiful escape to allow someone else to take over and allow myself to disappear? Was I truly that selfish as to let the rest of the world be in constant peril just because I was too wish-washy to handle reality?
Yes.
- - - -
I could tell my arms were profoundly swollen, despite the inability to see things clearly. The skin's texture was off: Torn flesh was everywhere, scabs beginning to form with some sort of awkward gel texture covering them (Neosporin, perhaps?). The stiffness ran through my entire body, so I only assumed that these areas were also covered in (for whatever reason) healing wounds. Memory rendered to be useless at this point to the exact reasoning for the some-what mutilation of my body and being in a room that I was not familiar with, sheets stained with my own blood? Mind. Find. Reason. Why am I here? Search. Why are you here? Search. Hello-My-Name-Is.. Discombobulated minds are extremely irking. Why aren't you here?
I have been awake for hours--Days. I could feel my head throbbing, with this awkward conflict between my body aching to sleep, but somehow being physically unable to. Each time my eyelids closed for more than a few seconds, this unnatural restlessness stirred within me, the strain in my skull almost forcing my eyes open despite obvious exhausted from sleep-depravation. I have been awake for days, but could not even begin to remember why. How long had I actually been here? Static. Nothing. I sighed, irate from my prior trance-like-state that left me with a lack of memory to anything really prior to this instance. There was an awkward taste in my mouth, left overs from something thick but almost liquid like. It was awkwardly sweet and left mouth to throat dry, parched and aching with thirst. Breathing proved to be more of an issue than needed to be, stomach wrenched in knots from a mixture of hunger and yet knowing I could not keep anything down. My heart thudded awkwardly fast--Even if I was panicking, it shouldn't be this so. The more conscience I grew, the more I longer for the null state I had been prior. However, this desire was not out of physical pain; Physical pain was bearable with most damage done will heal in a matter of time. No. This ache in my chest, the glass heart turning to fragments, its shards cutting through me as they plunged deeper.
Is there someone missing?
Should someone be missing me?
Sunlight began to fill the room. Slowly but surely, my roommate began to stir, shifting his face opposite to the rising sun through heavily almost bar-like windows. I waited longer, trying to find which ways to shift my body with causing the least physical amount of discomfort. The area around my eyes throbbed with sleep-depravation making things some-what difficult to see. What I could make-out was the guard from earlier approaching. It's time to wake up, I read on his lips. Make your bed. Mechanically, the other boy and myself folder sheets and I flinched almost seeing all of the awkward rust-colored stains from my own. However, this practice was simple enough, although the other youth next to me looked rather irate. 'They change the sheets and shit anyway when we eat,' he grumbled in a low voice, not seeing why we had to do this. Eventually, I got the hang of moving around in an effective, less painful manner, even if it meant moving slower than I would like to. The guard gave us time at least for brief human moments and I sighed thankfully for the (very) brief time I was allowed to myself. The restroom located inside of our room was small and painted a generic off-white color, small cracks were its decoration, as well as a small spider making itself home in the left hand corner of the shower. It looked me over with its many eyes, trying to see if I was a threat or not, I suppose, to which I would have normally have shuddered in my "right" state of mine (that much about myself I knew at least). I smiled wryly at the spider. It went back to spinning its web.
I gazed for what it felt forever into the mirror and almost rushed out from a mixture of being summoned by the guard to hurry, and because I had to look away. There was a strange youth with wild silver locks, whose complexion was reduced to a chilling bone white (perhaps from blood loss?). The windows to his soul dramatically stood out from the rest of his body, with whether it be intensity of his emotion or the black and red that encircled the areas, deep lines drawn under. His lips were chapped, slightly dark with some sort of black substance caked onto them. The boy had try and touched his face, but was startled at the way I was gazing at his arms. Red, swollen and shiny, pretty scabs decorated him like sleeves. He looked the type that could wear tears like jewels, passing for some type of Prince of Sighs. But what most stood from this youth was the arrangement of letters carved over where his heart was supposed to be.
- - - -
He was at it again, the transparent, helpless (in this form at least) apparition paced back and forth, contemplating grumpily. I chewed my cereal slowly, watching him pace and eventually chewing at the pace of the would-be-sound of his foot steps. How I ever became used to his astroprojectial form, I do not know. It had once been all too eerie seeing him in the depths of my kokoro, an almost exact image of myself speaking back to me. He had the potential to look angelic, with his girlish hips and wide auburn-brown eyes, silver locks dangling in front of his immaculate face. When he became animated with speech however, this innocence seemed to fade with his twisted smile and Devil tongue. He was very beautiful in a way that I would never be: His confidence illuminating the world around him, charming others with his cat-like grace and fierce, reckless laugh that sent chills down your spine. Yes. My yami was beautiful in a way I would never be. His child-like scowl was cast in my direction, more irate than actual fury was plaid upon his face. He wasn't fond of my random bouts of masochism when I took off the Ring that bound us. Why was he angry, after being my muse for such actions? No, not the blame. I am not arrogant to blame him for my own actions. However, he had made it look all too intriguing with the way he had unflinchingly wounded our body from time to time. I wondered faintly if I wouldn't flinch as well. I didn't.
"Don't be a copy-cat, find some sort of originality in the outlet of your petty angst!" he hissed, eyes narrowing. "You do not have the slightest idea of what you are doing. If you die, then I am stuck inside of that damned Ring once more!"
"You need me, how could I forget? Poor ickle Tzokou-ou." I knew I would pay for my petty indifference later. He threw up his arms angrily, cursing in a language long forgotten in this modern time. He grew frustrated at the fact that I had grown cold towards him instead of cowering in fear like I had done all too many times before. When this change had occurred, we both were not sure of. The days where I was his helpless, sniveling pawn seemed years ago.
A life time ago.
My heart had long since hemorrhaged since. I was bled dry.
He was restless and bored, aggravated as always. The intense eyes I had once feared smoldered as they locked upon an identical pair locked in its gaze, unmoved, unaffected. I wondered briefly what it was like to be so powerful and yet to helpless, rendered into a mere spirit form without a physical body to inhabit. Although this, I had known all too well due to his previous trappings of me, locked away into the depths of our soul room, banging on the doors and yet not feeling them.. Not knowing how to get out. My kokoro had been decorated with toys then, the innocence that I was. What it was now, I did not know: I hadn't been there, since. He tried to analyze my mind, probe for any sort of weakness to throw back at me with reverse psychology that he often liked to use when toying with his victims. I had long since learned to switch my mind set to AM rather than FM, where his mind had access to mine. Now and then I slipped up and I was reminded of the terrible being he was. I'm getting better.
I thought about him being trapped in the Ring once more, wondering for how many more millennia he would suffer alone. Years of sharing minds had softened him, as much as he did not like to admit. And although his utter most abhorrent for Yami no Yuugi was evident, it seems as though his revenant was never to be fulfilled. He would eventually succumb to madness with nothing but his hate to drive him, and then eventually in time become bored with madness and became some-what sane once more. Do not mistake him being sane as a sign of goodness or humanity: He is an indiscriminate killer, cynical, brilliant and cold. He didn't have to be stoking mad to be such--It was just his nature. The sanity did make him more tolerable to be around, however. Still equally as dangerous, yet less threatening. Perhaps I had inherited his madness which made him appear almost normal to me. It was plausible, at this point.
Dwelling on the subject, I stirred the ruminates of my cereal and absent-mindedly asked, "How long would you be trapped in There once I die?" The inevitability of it still shook me at times. Death, that is. I had long since abandoned the fear of The Final Judgment and being cast into the pits of Hell, or snuffed out eternally like a candle that lost its light. My yami was proof enough of there being some sort of after life, and he himself had no knowledge of whether there was a God or Devil, if Christ died for our sins on the cross that so many wear absent-mindedly, not taking heed to the sacred meaning to which it once stood for. He said he was too old to think of such trivial things, as he put. And that he was the closest thing to the Devil there was. At times I pitied the Devil for being mocked so by my other half's arrogance. After being created by the Lord Himself, being once an angel and witness of all of God's wonders and horrors of creation, existing since existence.. I did not believe the Devil was a stupid, maniacal soul. Perhaps he went through bouts like my yami did: Time frames of insanity and clarity. Surely, he must grow tired of madness, too. I pitied him for being compared to by my other half (it would be like if I had claimed I was a savior like Christ).
He shrugged irritated by my usual unpredictable questions. My mind focused back on him. "Well, if the past is to repeat itself (which most of the time it does), I would say that my body will be reincarnated once more as well as the damned Pharaoh's, we will battle and bring the world to near obliteration once more assuming you damned mortals haven't made the planet uninhabitable by then with your damned Swiss-cheese barrier you can an o-zone. Every time I become flesh once more with our body, I swear I can taste the pollution in the air and the damned sun cancering my skin!" He stuck out his tongue childishly, but his eyes were dangerous. Sarcasm was perhaps the most fluent of tongues for him. "If this is to occur and the human race has not died of cancer or caused a nuclear war, then I hope to inhabit a far more useful host than you."
His face was so twistly animated, slight lines on the sides of his mouth to show the wear of his constant laughter. He appeared to be the more human of us at times, even if he was the supposed evil. I sat there in silence, not bothering to focus on what I had been staring at. When I die.. a soft sigh escaped my lips, shutting my eyes gently to be clouded by darkness with faint shimmers of dark red and gold peering through. If I kept them closed long enough, I would see inside my lids spots. It was one of those rare moments where I pondered death, not frightened by it as most, but just to think of it as it were. The process was simple, really: Heart ceases beating, organs shut down, life equals terminated. The utter simplicity of it left me unnerved, but the awkward thought of no longer feeling my chest pound within seemed odd to me. Growing up as I did accustomed to the constant move and change (such came the life of a son of an archeologist who traveled, without a mother to take care of the child. I went with him wherever his expeditions took us, and it wasn't until I became older that I decided to plant my roots somewhere, perhaps bother to make friends long enough to remember their names. I was well old enough to know how to man the fort while my father was away for months and months, while he sent in money for the bills. My father does not speak of my mother, so do not ask me of her absence. I do not know. I simply do not know). The heartbeat I had carried since birth had been the only true consistency in my lifetime and the thought of losing my companion was the only sad part of Death. My heart quickened at the hooded one's name. Hush, calm yourself, dear friend.
I scanned the room in a null fashion of the Iconic pieces my father had collected for our humble abode. When he was home, we often spoke of history and art, and how often those two seemed to coincide. The art of Hellenistic period in Rome, as well as their many copies of Greek art that had long since been destroyed was among my father's favorite subjects, the immaculate, idealized face of Apollo that would soon become an early depiction of Christ, with cherub-like features and gorgeous curls, much different from the bearded man Christ we see depicted today. This lead to his greatest obsessions, being the work of the Gothic architecture in Europe (especially of Notre Dame and Reims Cathedrals with their beautifully solemn relief art of the Saints and Christ, rose windows and flamboyant arches..). The Renaissance also interested him greatly, watching the crude archaic and generic depictions of the Christ child looking like an elder dwarf to a cherub of some sorts that you would see in Ancient Greece and Rome flying faithfully beside their Pagan Gods and Goddesses. The Madonna becomes less stern and more motherly as she gazes tenderly upon her beloved, doomed son. A wonderful comparison between these two time periods are the paintings of The Triptych of the Madonna and Child with Saints by Neri Di Bicci and the later work of Cima da Conegliano's Madonna and Child in a Landscape. My father used these two works as a comparison time and time again, so it was inevitable that the names and images were imprinted into my mind. I had often tried making due of being stuck together with my insufferable worse half, attempting to make conversation over art like I would do with my father. He, however, was not interested. Perhaps it was the thief within him that could not appreciate anything unless he actually had possession.
My father's Roman Catholic upbringings and appreciation for the Saints meant nothing to my other half. Why-when I wasn't religious-these Saints and God and Blessed Virgin meant something to me, I did not know. Perhaps it was the fabricated tale in which was so beautifully and yet arrogantly imprinted into text that I valued. Its wild stories of heroism, sexism and all sorts of other isms kept me enthralled when I had nothing else to read. Just because you do not believe in something, does not mean you cannot find its words moving, or beautifully sad. In any event, it was not these Holy items that kept my historical interest like did my father. It may seem all but obvious what my passions of the ancient world is and was, as its existence intertwined in mine.. A history that would rob me of my senses, alienate me from any chance of the life I had once sought when first beginning my independence and rooting in the once uneventful town of Domino, Japan. The history that will claim my being forever, seclude my lonely soul..
It was supposed to be a gift, the Sennen Ring. How I had marveled such a gift from my father, almost girlishly squealing in delight of its rough, reddish Egyptian gold with the Eye of Horas in the middle of a splendid triangle, encircled by a gold bar with five pointed cylinders at the sides, clanking together as it was moved. How I had marveled upon this beautiful object, blinded by my childish euphoria, not even sensing the ancient evils that would be faced upon my young self at the time. How the blasted beautiful, golden object would stick its daggers into my soul and shatter my innocence, over and over until years later there was not the polite, wide eyed youth with a shy smile (although polite and quiet my exterior stayed, inside, timid, I was and now am not). An evil so ancient that it was an ancestor before the supposed first true ruler of Egypt, Narmar, with a tongue different from the Afro-Asiatic and Arabic languages, long since lost in the sands of time.
How it ensnared and robbed me of my senses..
How it unraveled my mind.
- - - -
Hello-My-Name-Is..
The boy in the mirror with his defeated expression, written in English upon his pale chest: "Tzokou-ou". I went into the hall, trotting slowing along with several other boys my age who seemed to know where they were going, for certainly I did not. My body ached with the constant shifting of my body, the scabs stretching as the skin moved with each step. I must find out where I was. Who I was. Who The King of Thieves must be.
-L and Baby I happily hum as they tie up the bishounen-
Jou: You won't get away with this, authoress..
L: Perhaps I won't, but do you really wish to go up against a toddler's rage? -Jerks thumb over to Baby I-
Ryou: We should invest in white flags..