Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.
This story is partially inspired by trivia-game's fanfic "Lucid," on aff.net, and by Battle Royale 7.
Warnings: deaths, blood, tense changes, and punctuation run amok. And please note that brass is a very bad thing to get into a blood wound. A Very Bad Thing.
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Ryou Bakura dreams of power, and pain. And revenge.
His parasite follows his dreams secretly, carefully, noticing the patterns and variations within them. He has no interest in why Ryou dreams these things, and he is seeking no answers to the riddle that is his host; he has merely found in Ryou's dreams something that he wants.
Occasionally, Ryou dreams of torturing Malik. These dreams are generally repetitive -- Ryou knows that Malik's tattoos are his weakest point, so his dreams are usually of recutting the lines into the teenager's back with a brass knife -- and often fleeting, as Ryou easily loses interest in Malik and moves on to new dreams. The parasite is mildly disappointed in the lack of creativity that his host shows, but Ryou is young; and he is untrained; and he has only recently learned what cruelty truly is, having met Yugi less than a year ago.
And besides, Ryou hates Malik too little to kill him, and too much to be capable of casual disinterested malice. His parasite had no hatred towards Mahaad, and what he did to the priest was far crueler than what he did to Akunadin or the pharaoh.
Often, Ryou dreams of fucking his other self. Those are the most common dreams, his parasite has noticed; the ones where Ryou has stripped him naked and tied apart his arms and legs, the ones where the teenager smiles because he has death and fury bound and helpless beneath him and he is powerful.
The parasite does not like these dreams much -- if having sex with someone who looks like himself is odd, watching it happen from the sidelines is unnerving. And he dislikes the thought of his host having power over him, even if it's an imaginary kind. But he tolerates it, watching the images with detachment and pushing away any residual anger at the sound of the sharp grunts and hisses that Ryou manages to force out of his dream-self's throat (for Ryou has built upon these dreams for a long time, and they are surprisingly realistic). He tolerates it, because there is something in Ryou's dreams that he wants.
Sometimes, Ryou dreams of killing Yugi.
Both the host and his parasite are fond of knives, so Yugi's deaths are often repetitive as well. For the longest time, they always came in the form of a stab in the heart and a twist -- simple and fairly easy. But one day, Ryou learned how to slit a throat, and soon afterward the dreams where Yugi dies changed.
Unlike the pharaoh's other self, Ryou has very little trouble keeping a hold on his Ring. Part of this is because he is not inclined to willingly take it off or hand it to someone else, ever, and part of this is because he wears it beneath his clothes rather than over them, so fewer people are aware of its presence, and part of this is because the Ring refuses to be taken from him. The few times someone has tried, his parasite had promptly eliminated of the problem. That's how Ryou learned how to slit a throat -- one time, the man stealing the Ring had been holding a gun, and his parasite decided there was no time to cut off Ryou's awareness before attacking.
Ryou had screamed at him for that (one of the rare times when host and parasite spoke to each other), screamed and raged and then picked up the Ring and run from the scene.
Two days later, Yugi's deaths became much more realistic. The parasite noticed this change with interest.
Because the Ring was so rarely threatened, it was a long time before Ryou was troubled again. But it happened, and his parasite -- who was for once curious about something in his host -- left Ryou aware before cutting open the lesser thief's stomach.
This time, Ryou didn't yell. The only feeling he received from his host was that of numb horror. It made him wonder if Ryou even remembered his dreams upon waking.
It took nine nights to happen, but finally the parasite watched as Yugi died from evisceration.
It was exactly the way the lesser thief had been killed. Right down to the brief pause he had made in the middle, when the parasite realized that he was cutting too far past the layers of skin and muscle and baby fat and digging into the intestines. (It makes sense, the parasite thought, it was my host's hands that physically committed the act; and even if Ryou's conscious mind doesn't remember his dreams, his subconscious knows everything he thinks and feels and does.)
In these dreams, Ryou cuts Yugi open, watches as the guts surge forward and spill out despite the other teenager's efforts to hold them in, watches as Yugi sinks to his knees and pain twists his face into something ugly, something a great pharaoh would not want to be associated with. And Ryou steps forward and smiles as he squashes the intestines under the sole of his tennis shoe. His parasite holds his nose as the stench of blood and shit -- the smell of death -- begins to ruin the air, but Ryou only smiles. Ryou always smiles.
And then he moves on to a new dream.
In those brief seconds before this dream disintegrates and Ryou shifts completely into the next, his parasite steps forward and tugs the chain off of Yugi's neck, lifts the blood splattered Puzzle and cradles it in his hands. The gold gleams brighter in contrast to the splotches of red.
It is not good enough -- Yugi's flesh is still on his bones, he has not been melted down and alchemized yet, but in this moment . . . in this moment, it will do.
Then the Puzzle drifts through his fingers, and Ryou has moved on to another dream and forgotten this one, and the parasite follows his host detachedly through his mind for the remainder of the night.