Because I felt a need to write something straight for once, this happened.
Warnings: References to cutting, Hostshipping (Anzu X Ryou), onesided Revolutionshipping (Anzu X Yami), slightly post–canon.
Length: 4,900 words.
Names: Are not used often here, but they are the manga names - so Tea becomes Anzu, Ryo becomes Ryou, Joey becomes Jounouchi, and so on.
And for the (broken?) record, Spooner likes reviews.
Speak
Someone is giving a speech.
It is not echoing around the walls of some huge concert hall, nor rebounding into the ears of a hundred hungry ministers, each champing at the bit, impatient to tear the arguments apart. Neither is it blaring over a massive lawn, ruffling grassy blades with the shrieking of the word 'goal'; or even sailing over the heads of twenty–three bored students – no, make it a crowd of twenty three, because it's always a crowd. It does not cut the stony silence (so typical of a theatre audience) clean in half, nor does it howl out across revelling masses, obliterating snarling guitar in a blaze of pure microphone. In fact, it disturbs no–one at all.
Someone is giving a speech.
It is not a speech made for anyone's ears; for it is not yet fully formed. It stumbles around the little cabin on wobbly legs, wavering in its resolve. Sometimes its motions come robotically, sometimes they are too much for its unsteady balance; its grand sweeps almost making it fall over, a laughing stock. It tries and fails and tries again to regain some semblance of pride, but soon its resolve fades, it shrinks and crawls into a corner in embarrassment – no, in shame, because the speaker is ashamed, and so it is too. Then, just like that, it is gone; vaporized into a deadening silence.
Someone was giving a speech.
It is – or rather, was – meant to be a plea. It had been written down and practiced, practiced until it was burned into memory. It had been reiterated time and time again, revised and recited, until it was pure, perfect on paper; a moving speech that would convince the love of her life to stay. And it was a speech that was really a spell, a charm that would surely bend him to her will, her charisma suddenly alluring. Once upon a time, she had given a hundred of these – disguised as simple pep talks, they hypnotized the whole gang into working together, time and time again. Her voice, her eyes – she could make them do whatever she wished, and had been doing so from around the same time as the Duelist Kingdom Tournament started. She has only ever used those as a way to keep them all together, keep them from fighting, keep them from getting into too much trouble over homework or school, never for her own desires, but now…
Someone is about to give a speech.
It is almost time, alarm clock going off as an untimely curtain call, shotgun in the silence. She goes to the door in a daze; knowing that it is now or never, she tries to steel her resolve with mixed results. It is hard for her to take that first step, from the warm timber floor to the ice–cold tiles; but somehow she manages it. The next few steps are somewhat less hesitant but no sooner have they been taken than her outstretched fingers grasp a handle, the sensation causing her to freeze for several seconds. In that instant, she feels utterly unprepared – but then shakes it off, tells herself otherwise, and boldly knocks, asks to come in. She stands before the love of her life, eyes almost aglow as she takes a deep breath and steadies herself; ready to deliver the words that will change everything, bring Him back to her.
Someone opens their mouth to make a speech.
It is not Him she's talking to, and only now does she realize it, as he turns to greet her – it's the other him, the one she sort of likes, as a friend. But the other him is not the one she was hoping to see; is not perfect, is not the one she wants to keep, is not the one she was hoping to hypnotize into staying. She could always ask the other him to show Him to her, she quickly reasons – and if refused, she could maybe force him to do it, with lulling voice and hypnotic gaze. And yet she hesitates a moment, accidentally blurting out the first thing aside from the speech that comes into her head as she tries to cover her fear.
"Did… the other Yugi… say anything?"
And there is a pause, dreadful and most dramatic; impossible to tell whether it is the result of mistrust, thoughts occupied elsewhere, or just a bad memory.
"No. He hasn't come out…"
"I see. Yugi…"
"Hmm?"
"Um…"
Someone is trying to give a speech.
It is too hard; she can't do it, can't look the other him in the eye, can't pronounce the first word or the last. With a muttered apology, she leaves, feeling the other him's eyes on her as she goes; confused look or accusing stare, she does not know. Either way, she is somewhat relieved when the door clicks shut behind her, and she's clattering back up the hall, tumbling into her cabin when the boat crests a large wave. She falls onto her hands and knees, and for a long moment finds herself gazing down the hall at what could have been, if only He had been there instead of the other him, if only… but soon enough, she has closed the door, and now sits on her bed, head in hands. She reads over the script in her lap, then reads it out loud, desperately trying to find a fault. She knows that it is really all her fault, her conviction is what is lacking from the thing, why the speech will never quite work no matter how hard she tries – but she refuses to admit it to herself. Instead, she senselessly repeats the words on the script nestled in her lap, as some tropical bird might murmur the words of humans, trapped inside a tiny prison of iron bars and plastic swings, teased by the occasional glimmer of blue sky, peeping through a open door. She feels imprisoned, too; stuck in a world where she is unable to speak with the love of her life due to nerves, and soon will be unable to catch a glimpse of Him at all…
Someone is giving a speech.
Someone is listening.
Someone is sitting.
He has been sitting half the night in front of that one door, but cares little; the act of sitting enables the act of listening, which is incredibly important at this particular point in time. Monitoring the room's occupant is tantamount – her plan has clearly failed somewhere along the line, and he knows that she won't take that well. He considers it important to protect her from herself – no harm must come to her by her own hand, for that is the first choice he has ever made in perhaps nine years. Choosing to care about her when he sauntered past the bedroom door and heard the crying, that was his choice; the result of his newfound freedom. Freedom is precious in his eyes; having been stripped of it, he values what he now has, commits to every choice. Even if this is the wrong answer to the question of 'What will I do?', it is an answer; and one that he will stick to – for a wavering choice is hardly a choice at all.
Someone is sitting up.
He has so far been slouched over, but now he raises himself, eyes wide and alert. This is in no small part due to a churning feeling in his stomach when that speech rattles out yet again; it sets him on edge, shivers down his spine. She sounds absolutely heartbroken, and she is so very close too – minutes tick by, and he begins to wonder whether or not to reach that short distance up to the handle, to open the door and enter. This is the culmination of an old fear; a fear stemming from the time they both found out what was to happen to Him, born of the desperate look in her eyes as she asked if she could follow Him, ever see Him again. The speech is only the cincher; proof that she has tried to force Him to stay, or at least thought about it. It is no real surprise, of course; she's been suspected of having that particular crush for a very long time, and he knows more than enough about her hypnotic powers, knows that she will be utterly unable to restrain a will such as His, even if she does pluck up enough courage to try. No, what he fears most about the whole scenario is what comes after. What will happen to her when He goes, despite her best efforts; when He leaves, striding into the light?
Someone is shifting uneasily, though still sitting.
He has sat so far, he decides eventually, and he will continue to sit. She does not need to know of his presence just yet, he reasons; only if she becomes hysterical or tries to hurt herself should there be any interference on his part. She should be monitored, but allowed to do as she wishes for now – were he to stop her, he would be denying her freedom; just as bad as the thing which took his own choice away. And so, even when she begins to tire of saying the same things over and over, even when her voice is absolutely broken, a painfully weak whisper in the darkness, he only sits and listens and waits, quietly making sure that she plans nothing, that nothing bad will happen to her in the night. He keeps this silent vigil until the speech becomes nothing but a choked series of syllables, at last dissolving into a single vowel. Soft breathing follows soon afterwards; she has cried herself to sleep, thank Ra…
Someone is sitting.
Someone is crying.
It is not a wail, as Romeo gives when falling upon the sword, nor is it the moans of a teenage television star, unwittingly begging his female audience to go out and bash the hell out of whoever dumped him. It is neither the howl of the dying anime bad guy, nor the sniffles of the small and lost toddler. It is not even vocal, just liquid crystal brimming in azure eyes, shimmering on white cheeks, dripping onto soggy paper, paper that may or may not have once held a script for a speech; it is impossible to tell. The ink has run, colours separating with the water into a gaudy rainbow, a cruel joke – just as He might have dealt out, once upon a time, when he gave horrific punishments and the world was a little warmer.
Someone is crying.
It is an entire day since He left, a night of no sleep since she arrived in her new room at his flat (too embarrassed to go home, too weak to face the questions over where her boyfriend is, the other him's house too full of terrible memories), and she knows that she shouldn't still be in tears; He wouldn't want her to be. But the fact of the matter is that now He's gone – and she could have stopped him that night, that night with the script in her head but her jaw not moving. Now He's been whisked away to another world; she's useless, she could have said the magic words, should have, but she didn't. She'll never get him back, either; not even taking her life would enable her to travel there. Her blood is all wrong; were she to slice her throat open, the gods themselves would likely turn up their noses – or beaks or snouts, come to think of it – and she'd just die on the floor. This brings a sick grimace to her lips – the idea of a guardian angel, gazing down at the crimson mess that is her trying to reach Him is almost ironi–
Someone was crying.
It is dead silence, but for the slight cough coming from the other side of the door. She immediately shrinks back from the noise, arching her spine against the wall – though her arms automatically reach out, fingers searching for perhaps a little warmness in the room, something to indicate that he is with her. Her mind races with both fear and excitement; perhaps He is listening, perhaps He will listen to her speech, perhaps He will even come back if he hears it. All she has to do now is… well, she's not really sure. She scrutinizes the paper before her; what was the first word? And a tear trickles down her cheek; because she can't read it, can't remember any of it, not even any of the good bits. She's useless, useless, useless.
Someone is crying – and this time it is audible; a cacophony of utter misery.
It is now, in the very depths of her sorrow, that she reaches for the little pencil case by the bed with one hand, the other clenching her stomach as it flip flops. The mental pain building inside her, it is just too much to take. If she can just find the pencil sharpener, that ice–cold wedge of metal, and jam a finger in one of the holes, skin it on the blades – but her searching fingers instead grasp a larger object, one with sharp edges. Whimpering in fright and ecstasy, she gently teases the scissors free of the web of pencils and rubbers,
and begins to repeat an accusation,
"You left me."
round and round,
"You left me."
each time with the blades a little closer to either side of her wrist,
"You left me."
until she has convinced herself that it is all His fault,
"You left me."
and brings the sharp edges
"You left me."
down
"You left me."
and screams.
Someone is wailing.
Someone is listening.
Someone is thinking.
He has a ponderous sort of thought path; one strongly influenced by the amplitude of the wails coming from the other side of the door, and perhaps mildly impacted by the position of the breakfast cereal on the tray currently carried (one small component of the enormous meal, but nevertheless one that could adversely affect the other items). After a long moment, he puts the thing down and settles just in front of the door, remaining perfectly still that the mind might meander properly; and wander it does, flicking through everything from the correct eating temperature of toast (and thus the correct time to bring the tray into the room) to the possible causes of the guest's sadness. It lingers on the latter topic a long moment, since he wishes that there is something that could be done – and maybe there is something, if only it can be found.
Someone is thinking.
He has an unusual memory; one that is possibly due to the regular blackouts, and the amount of human remembering time which has been missed out on as a result. This memory is one that is absolutely perfect in those areas he wishes it to be – every detail rendered exactly, every sound recorded as though the place has been bugged, and now the footage is being played back. The night on the boat with her is one of those areas he wished to save – if only for the police, were she to do anything ridiculous with her life. Now he rewinds through it all, making the occasional inference; that night, the speech was ever so important. He wonders if it still is important to her – perhaps she cannot find the script for the speech, and cannot remember it? If so, she must be feeling miserable–
"You left me."
The words carry a threat with them; one that makes him stiffen. And then there is a howl, a protest against everything wrong in the world (or rather, everything wrong in her world, which is something a bit different) – and most importantly, it is underscored with pain, which can only mean that–
Someone was thinking.
He has a way of not thinking very much, once a decision has been arrived at. He certainly thinks before he acts, but once he has finished thinking that is that; and so he gets up, picks up the tray, opens the door, takes a step into the room, and eyes firmly closed (for fear that she might already have done something to herself), begins to speak, soft tones clashing with her snarls, but soon stunning her into silence when she realizes what he is saying, scissors falling limply onto the mattress. And the words simply flow effortlessly through his lips, sweet and sticky like honey, addictive enough that they continue on without the speaker really understanding why; they just sound wonderful sliding off the tongue, sentence after sentence resonating in the room.
Someone is no longer thinking.
Someone is speaking.
It is all she could ever have hoped for; every word carefully enunciated and yet somehow sounding so natural, every syllable charged with what she could swear is her own emotion. He stands before her, eyes shadowed by white bangs as the speech goes on, and she can feel the spell of her own words, the power in them now humming around her. And it is perfect, its head held high though its masters is bowed, parading around the room with a sense of real life; utterly enchanting, puzzlingly intricate, everything it was meant to be and more. She can feel the hypnotic syllables affecting her thoughts, but cares little; she has already thought and felt those things before. Now she feels them even stronger, yearns for Him to come back; agrees with him that He should stay – and that she should stay in this world too, because he has twisted the meaning ever so slightly. She grins a little when she hears those parts…
Someone was speaking.
It is funny, she thinks; he must have a very good memory to have recited all that. He surely cannot be a hypnotist himself; but the words seem to still have their power, even when spoken by someone who knows little of their purpose. She really should hide her speeches away better, she decides, lest this sort of thing happen again – were Jounouchi to try saying something like this, even as a joke, the results could be disastro–
"Anzu."
She hears her name at that point, looks up at the caller – and she's immediately hit with a powerful stare framed with white bangs, she's falling into darkness and can't climb out. The whole world is blurring, dimming, until every thought and feeling and observation is utterly drained from her. She floats in the void, and one that she knows all too well, from those many times in the early days when she accidentally hypnotized herself – when she thought too much about what she said, became enamored with her own words. There is silence for perhaps a minute; then a sound begins to echo all around her – a human voice, one she dimly recognizes.
Someone is speaking.
"You won't try to hurt or kill yourself. Okay?"
It is only then that she realizes, when he's let her go, when he's setting the tray down beside her bed while watching her cautiously, that he had the ability all along. She could have slapped herself for not figuring it out sooner – certainly, he wasn't the one that hypnotized friends into a teamwork mood, and rarely receives the attention she's sure he inwardly craves, but it was almost painfully obvious all the same. After all, he never reacted to her own speeches, never looked her in the eye when she gave them. Always hovering on the fringe of the group, with the constant threat of the Ring Spirit hovering behind, he had flown under her radar for the most part. Now her own carelessness has come back to bite her, it seems; for try as she might, she cannot force herself to pick up the scissors and attempt to slice her own skin again. She looks at the unblemished whiteness in disgust, creased where the blades almost cut her – she failed, she failed, she failed.
"Are you all right, Anzu?"
Someone is speaking.
It is a quavering voice, a question forced from of a chest that aches from sobbing so much, from lips trembling in exhaustion. The eyes, however, maintain a ferocious glare, one only a female can give; she may like him as a friend, but she feels that way about many people – it certainly does not give anyone an excuse to hypnotize her! She has her own will, and she'd scream it out at the top of her lungs to prove it, if she had to – she does not exist to be manipulated, and absolutely hates it whenever someone does. He has taken away her right to die; now she will never be able to die for someone she loves, even to save them. Already, she is planning what to say next; regardless of how he answers her question – how dare he do that, he needs to undo those instructions right now…
No–one is speaking.
It is likely because he is struggling for words; brow furrowing as he tries to think of something that won't sound overly corny – or perhaps he's just trying to come up with a decent – sounding excuse. After some time, he seems to give up on answering; shoulders sagging, eyes watering a little as he stares at her wordlessly. She has a strong nerve, however – and so she asks again, her voice a little stronger, rising in anger at the end:
"Ryou! Why did you do that?!"
A long pause, while she glares and stares, winces a little when he looks away in shame for what has been done. She briefly wonders why he did not wipe her memory of being hypnotized; though she would surely have figured out that someone in the other him's group was a fellow hypnotist on finding that she could not hurt herself, she never would have guessed it to be him. No sooner has the thought come into her mind then it is dismissed; perhaps he does not know it is possible, and she does not wish to tell him.
Someone is speaking, answering.
"Because I care."
It is a single sentence – but a reply most unexpected, a reply unconventional; it absolutely stuns her, blows her prepared barrage of insults to shreds. And yet, it creates a whole string of new ones in its wake; now she knows (or thinks she knows) what he wants, and she does not want to give it. He aims to lure her with honeyed words, but she will never step from His side, even though He is not there anymore. She will stand tall, and proud, and she will definitely not come away from Him. Perhaps this is a test – yes, it must be.
Someone is speaking.
"You don't care."
It is the choking out of the last of her nasty thoughts; her last attack against him. A sick grin splits her face in two, weak and sarcastic.
"No–one cares. I have to make them care. What do you think I've been doing all this time? Because only… only He cares… and now…" A sucking breath, and then a horrible snarl; a hand, clawing at him, her shrieks driving him away from her side.
"You don't care, let me die. Just let me die!"
Someone is sobbing.
Someone is trying not to listen.
Someone is walking away.
He has turned on his heel and is leaving, since there is nothing to be done for her now. Much as she wants it, he cannot take back his instructions. Not because this isn't possible, but rather because he doesn't want to take them back. They are for her own good, he repeats in his mind, trying to make enough mental noise to block out her crying. Yes, he has taken her freedom from her, but only so she cannot take her life from herself, the hopeless romantic, so infatuated with Him – and here the mind wanders again. He is perfect, an idol to them all – head high (how he wishes to hold his that way), eyes full of strength (oh, why does he have to be so weak?), friends flocking to His side (if only he wasn't so afraid of people!), moving onwards into the unknown (so much braver than him).
Someone is walking away.
He has decided that he can't take it; the look in her eyes, the shrieking. He's just too tired to; the late night vigils and the hypnotizing took so much of his energy, he needs to rest. Besides this, he knows that he's not perfect like Him, he cannot comfort her or bring light to her world. All he can do is prevent her from hurting herself, and he has done that permanently now. He is not utterly useless, he understands that, but all the same feels a little like a broken toy. If only there was something he could do, if only he was brave enough to turn and face her, but there is nothing – she does not love him, not with those venomous words she's spitting in his direction. Certainly, he cares deeply for her, but that is nothing if not returned. Now she probably hates him, will never accept him now because of what he's done; however at least she's safe from herself now, which is all that matters to him. Hopefully she'll move on from Him, now that she has the chance to; hopefully she will be happy...
A happy prision?
Someone is walking away.
Someone is giving a hug.
It is a grabbing at first, a snatch of denim jacket and a rough pull back to the mattress. The last time anyone walked away, it was Him – slipping away from her, water through her fingers, an ignorant thumbs up – and she can't bear to lose another person. And so she snatches him back from the doorway, hauls him onto the bed, and wraps her arms around him, holding that warm body close so that he won't get away. He barely resists the pull, following her direction with nothing more than a sigh, and she capitalizes on it, careful to get him as near to her as possible without hurting him. He mustn't leave her, he mustn't leave her…
Someone is giving a hug.
It is something which starts as a restraint, and develops into something far more tender; because as she calms from her burst of anger, she begins to realize something. Something she would never admit to him, of course; but the fact of the matter is that she was wrong about him being uncaring. He was trying to help, coming in when he did; and it wasn't her telling him to do did care, after all; and the realization of that has her tightening the hug, stroking his hair, feeling his hands against his chest. He cared about her, all along; and she ignored him all that time…
Anzu Mazaki doesn't want to lose him, not now she knows.
Someone is giving a hug.
Someone is being hugged.
He has to admit that it is a little scary at first, when she grabs his jacket and drags him back, and so he lets himself go limp and prays that she will not hurt him. When she curls her arms around him, he automatically stiffens –awkward as always in the presence of any sort of contact – and somehow, impossibly, she continues on, running her fingers through his hair and cuddling closer to him. Gradually, he realizes that she is enjoying the hug, and relaxes a little at that; it is good to see her with a smile on her pretty features, even if her eyes are still reddened from the tears…
Someone is being hugged.
It is a glorious feeling, to be loved and appreciated; one that he's never really had the chance to experience before. He basks in the warmth of it all, even shifting a little to get closer to the source, to return the favour, have a major fear put to rest. Nothing will happen to her while he is close, and for as long as he is close to her, her friends will be friendly towards him – the relationship is symbiotic, he supposes.
Ryou Bakura doesn't want to lose her, not now, not before, not ever.
Someone is being hugged.
UAB
This should be pretty obvious, but just to clear up any confusion:
'Him/the love of her life' = Yami Yugi
'the other him' = Yugi
'he' = Ryou
'she' = Anzu
And for the record, everything said between Anzu and Yugi follows the exact dialogue of the manga scene; I'm not sure if the anime had that scene, but whatevs.