The Silent Landscape
Bog water so murky it must have been the very definition of vile sucked him down, but he could see the bank up ahead, so he didn't think much about it. It was up to his waist, and climbing, and as he sloshed through it his shirt and hair got sprayed with the substance. Mud and bacteria and fungi and whatever else dampened him, slimy and oh-so-very distracting. But he couldn't stop to comb his fingers through his hair to dislodge any clumps of the stuff. He couldn't even pause to look behind him; the thing was moving far too quickly and if he stopped for even a second he knew that it would swallow him whole, and make his current state look positively clean.
Although it had form, and appendages, Bakura didn't read enough comics to guess that the creature behind him was a cartoon-classic bog beast, all green and lumbering forward on tree roots. It had hands like twisting thorns, and eyes like little coals, and its torso was just simply a mound of mud and greenery. It was something a child might find frightening, but as for Bakura, who had seen far worse horrors than plant life, he was not in the least bit concerned about it. Mostly he was more concerned about his landlord's apparent lack of imagination, and just a little bit fed up with the monotonous scenery.
He managed to reach the bank, and fumbled up the slope, his shoes finding no traction in the slick grasses. As expected for a creature built on little imagination, it seemed to have boundaries on its territory, and so the bog-beast didn't try to come after him but instead shook its thorns at him in frustration. Bakura flicked stray leaves off of his trench coat, fairly annoyed.
Up ahead, a teen with white hair and a blue and white striped shirt was sitting on the soupy ground with his head buried in his knees. He was nearly Bakura's identical in appearance, though one might not have been able to tell since he was covered in grime. Bakura approached him.
Somehow, the teen sensed him coming and looked up, though didn't quite meet his gaze. He instead looked beyond Bakura, to the bog-beast wasting away in the murk. "Your dream is ridiculous," Bakura said with no hint of humour.
"I'm safe so long as I don't go into the water," his landlord reaffirmed to himself, eyes completely on the waste behind Bakura.
Scowling now, Bakura crouched next to him. "You call this a nightmare? This is pathetic. You can't even conjure up a decent monster. I would know, dear host. I am a monster myself."
The teen began shivering, as if he had just noticed that he was cold. Bakura started to feel exasperated. "I have to do something about my clothing," the teen thought aloud, rubbing his hands together, "I'm soaked. This is no good for survival. I could get hypothermia, maybe."
"You're not bloody cold," Bakura snapped to him, though the teen was not even listening. He was concentrating on creating friction to keep his hands and arms warm. "This is a dream. If you're going to panic about it, realize how illogical the situation is and wake up, landlord. Don't be stupid."
Bakura didn't think it was possible, but beneath all the mud and blades of grass, he thought he saw the beginnings of blue colouring in his host's pale skin, hinting that he was getting frostbite. "Oh, for the love of..." Bakura abruptly reached forward and clasped the teen's hands, startling him. Then he began rubbing them between his own, hard. He was irritated.
Wide brown eyes stared at him. "Oh," said his host, confusedly, and fearfully. Bakura did not bother to comment on his stupidity anymore; it seemed futile. "You followed me even here, didn't you. Somehow I thought that you wouldn't be able to reach me here, all the way out in the depths of the forest. How many hosts did you take, to find your way back to me?" His appearance was changing, Bakura noticed with some curiosity. Grime lifted and vacated the area, and suddenly he was wearing the Ring, though Bakura was sure that he hadn't had it on before.
The landscape altered, wet mud making way for hard asphalt. Trees made room for skyscrapers. Bakura gave his host a bored look. "Good, we're back in the city. Now, unless you have any more nightmares, I will be leaving. Go dream about card games or something —I don't know."
"I won't let you hurt anyone else!" The teen shouted at him, and jumped to his feet, before spinning on the spot and bolting in the opposite direction down the street. He even ignored a red light at the crosswalk, which was something unusual for his host to do. Crowds meandered down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, slowing him down, but still he pushed onward, panting and eyes determinedly forward. Bakura stared until he rounded a corner and vanished from his view.
As he left the area, the landscape began to disappear into darkness, and Bakura looked up into the ever-widening black sphere around him and decided to leave. So he vanished from the nightmare, returning to reality.
Likely his host would give up on the nightmare, seeing as how Bakura himself had been the latest source of his worries, and Bakura had left. Unless he conjured up a new Bakura to take the real one's place, his dream would be effectively fear-free for the rest of the night.
Bakura didn't know when exactly he'd begun slipping into his host's dreams, though he knew why. The mounting stress of the constant moving, the disappearing friends, the pressure of schoolwork, and an absent father was causing many a sleepless night for Bakura's vessel. This was problematic to him for a number of reasons. Firstly, because Bakura rarely fulfilled bodily needs when he was in control and if his host was also unable to fulfill these needs, then his body would become unusable. And secondly, the more sleep that the body received, then the better condition the mind of his host would be in, which was key for Bakura to stay possessing his body. If his host's mind broke down and he began to go crazy rather than maintain some semblance of sanity while being possessed, then he and Bakura would face the prospect of having to dodge doctors and psychiatrists. This would possibly push him to go shopping for a new host. And lastly, it would not be good to have the Pharaoh's vessel or his friends asking into Bakura's health. They all assumed that he had been defeated for good, and he would like to keep it that way.
Taking his astral form and materializing beside the bed, Bakura looked down thoughtfully at his host's sleeping form. Crinkles in his forehead were just beginning to straighten out, and his breathing was gradually becoming even, which assured the Ring spirit that his mind was settling down. Good. He had more important things to concern himself with. He had plans...details to iron out...
A stretching of his astral form snapped Bakura's thoughts to the Ring, where an intense tugging through his very soul was causing him to be pulled back into the Item. Eyes narrowing, Bakura glanced down at it on the bedside table, and searched around mentally for the cause, though he knew what it was.
A darkness so deep that it would be an understatement to call it an evil lanced through his thoughts, calling out in a low growl. Bakura knew the words before they were spoken. He answered the calling without question, slipping back into the Item.
The demon bound to his soul was demanding his presence, and it would not due to defy it.
On the bed, the Ring spirit's host shifted uneasily, having felt the glimpse of darkness, like a brief catch of breath before a yawning pit with no bottom. And he shivered in his sleep, wondering about the aching in his mind, and the emptiness. An intruder had come into his dreams and had gone though he did not know it, but regardless he still felt some sense of misdirection, like he should have been thinking about something but had been forced to change his thoughts.
He slept lightly and uncomfortably through the rest of the night.
xXx
The figure at the front of the classroom was unidentifiable due to a black smoke pervading throughout the space, but what mattered was untouched by the smoke and that was all that Bakura cared about. If he squinted a little he would be able to see the outline of countless desks extending on all sides, but he didn't bother to look around him and instead just kept his gaze down at the desk where his host was writing a test. He wasn't sure what kind of test it was, only that it was causing the teen a great amount of frustration and stress, and that he was constantly glancing up at the clock on the wall —the only other clearly visible thing in the room. His host's selective vision had Bakura rather exasperated, and he watched the teen shift anxiously in his seat with a heavy sigh.
Another night, another nightmare. Bakura was getting impatient with his host, not understanding the difficulties in getting a full night's sleep.
"You have all the time in the world," Bakura tried to convince him, sitting down on the blurry desk beside his host's, which for all intensive purposes was empty. Even if there had been a dream student sitting in the chair, Bakura was reasonably sure that the mind that the dream belonged to was not too interested in remembering details like scenery. The only thing that was important in this dream was the test, the desk and chair, and the clock on the wall. Bakura knew this, even though his host didn't.
"I can't remember if I studied this or not." Bakura heard his host whisper to himself, miserably uncertain.
Tapping his fingers against the rim of the desk, Bakura spoke a little more loudly than before, "There isn't anything that you should concern yourself over. The test. The marks. Forget it all."
An eraser was scrubbed against a page that Bakura was not even sure contained a question at all. "I still have some time left," his host reassured himself.
Standing now, Bakura walked over to him, slamming his hand down against the desk beside the paper. "You haven't been sleeping very well recently, Landlord. I can't allow this, you must understand." But the teen only sharpened his pencil and started writing, flicking eraser bits out of the way as he scribbled down the page. Bakura was certain that he wasn't even writing a legitimate language. He crouched down to be eye-level with him, and stared into his face, which was completely focussed on the page and his non-language.
"For four marks...that should be enough of an answer." Came a hesitant mumble, just low enough that Bakura almost missed it.
Speaking very firmly in an effort to get through to him, Bakura stated, "You are going to stop worrying now. This isn't doing our body any good. I need this brain of ours to be fully functional in order to carry out my plans."
His host did not even look at him. In fact he turned the page over, moving to the next nonexistent question. "Um...let's see now..."
Bakura smacked his hand down over where he assumed the next question to be printed out. The teen paused, and then blinked several times before slowly looking up. His eyes travelled up Bakura's arm to his shoulder, and then his face, and Bakura watched all colour drain from his host's skin. The tension in the dream had just amplified, and Bakura felt the effects through an aching pain in his mind. At that point, he gave up. "I have something important to do, and I need you to leave class early," murmured Bakura delicately.
His host became very still and was absolutely silent.
"I'm going to do you a favour, dear landlord of mine. I will help you with this test, and then you will turn it in early and walk out of that door and go home. Are we agreed?"
A shuddering, slow breath left the teen's mouth, and then he gave a jerky nod. Bakura stood, satisfied. The teen watched him with wide eyes as he made a slow show of sliding back into the Ring that suddenly appeared around the teen's neck. Within seconds, his host collapsed on the desk, positive that he had been taken over.
Bakura listened to his mind fall quiet as he fell into a deeper sleep. Then he returned to reality, leaving the mind and the body for his astral form in the bedroom of the small apartment.
An alarm clock ticked loudly beside the bed, and Bakura swiped out angrily with his astral hand, and his mind was bent with all the force of the Shadow magic he possessed in order to interact with the physical plane from his astral one. The clock toppled over the side of the nightstand, and hit the wall, batteries getting knocked out of the back in the process. Bakura let out a sigh in relief. Surely there were no more influences in the room to bother his host's dreams now. He glanced at the sleeping teen, who turned over to bury his head further into his pillow, apparently relaxed. Good.
Leaning over the bed to brush his fingers over the teen's cheek, Bakura found himself becoming relaxed too and dipped his head down to whisper in his ear. "Have good dreams from now on, dear host..."
He vanished into the Ring, settling down himself to rest his mind before the next day.
xXx
They were on a hilltop. It was a rather cookie cutter hill, actually, perfectly round with lush grass like the teen dreaming it had picked the hill out of a catalogue of landscapes. Bakura wasn't sure what surrounded the hill, perhaps it was a forest, perhaps more grasslands. What he could see annoyed him, however. A beautiful sunrise was blooming over the hill, staining the grass in pinks and yellows and stretching across the sky in slow waves. His landlord was reaching up his fingers towards the sky, like a child, thoroughly enjoying the picturesque view though he could not actually touch it.
This was the third night in a row that he'd been forced to interrupt his dreaming.
Bakura strode up to him, stopping just behind him. He muttered with a scowl, "All right. You've got me this time. There are no monsters. No obvious threats to your fragile contentedness. So you're going to have to start giving me hints, my dear."
The teen opened his mouth, almost in awe, staring up at his fingers like they were slipping through the egg yolks and orange rinds of colours above. Bakura did not drop his scowl. "It's too bad...I don't have a camera with me," said his host thoughtfully to himself.
Grinding his teeth, and nearly snapping out at him, Bakura suggested coolly, "Then imagine yourself one, you idiot."
There was a sad smile starting to form on his face now, something which Bakura could not understand. His hand dropped down to his side, and then he sat down, looking uncomfortably at the dew on the grass that had not been there a second ago. "I wish he could have come. We used to do things like this together..."
"Ah," Bakura realized, "missing that father of yours." Gods, he didn't know how to deal with that. Enemies he could definitely face. (There was nothing that his host could conjure up to hurt him.) Lesser concerns like that test the teen feared that somehow judged his education, well, he could deal with that too. But nostalgia and longing were not things that Bakura felt that he could handle. He was a victim to such things too, after all. And he felt that he dealt with it no better than his host did.
Fiddling with the grass under his knees, the teen broke off some blades and made thin breaks in the middle, holding them between his thumbs to try and whistle through the grass. An odd noise came out. Bakura clamped his hand down on his shoulder, and growled, "Quit it."
But because he was not affecting the dreamscape in any way, such as by blocking the teen's view of the sunrise, he was not noticed in the least. Another odd noise came through the grass, and then a short laugh left the teen's throat. Bakura watched him silently for a moment before dropping down into the grass behind him and wrapping his arms around his shoulders. "Forget your father," Bakura told him quietly. His host only moved his hands back to the grass, picking it raw. "I'm more important than him anyway. He's nothing."
His host was humming now, brokenly, as he tried to remember some tune that Bakura was sure did not exist. "Something something...hmm hm hmmmm..."
Bakura drew one finger along his jaw line, to his ear, and tucked stray strands of hair behind it. "I suppose I could capture him in a doll, if you truly desired it. Then he would be with you whenever you wanted," he suggested absently.
The teen stiffened in his arms like he had heard him, and Bakura tilted his head curiously to see his expression. There was something like uneasiness crossing his features now, and his brows crinkled and his mouth twisted as he thought. Bakura smirked, just a little. He had been noticed by the dreaming teen, though only by his words, and even then Bakura was sure that the dreamer in his arms had not been sure where the words had come from. Perhaps he'd thought that he'd heard them inside his own head, and had mistaken his voice for his thoughts across the mind link instead?
His guess had been correct. For there, forming in front of him, was a replica of himself, and Bakura looked over the image with a small chuckle. The duplicate was taller than he was, and looked about ready to strike out. Apparently his host thought he was aggressive, judging by the cracking of knuckles and cold sneer on the dream Bakura's face. "You miss him, don't you?" Mocked the dream Bakura, sneering down at the teen in the real Bakura's arms.
"You can't take him from me," said his host with a crack in his voice.
"Oh, but I can. So easily. I'm sure he'd make a good explorer in our Monster World game, don't you agree, Landlord?" Threatened the dream Bakura seriously.
Bakura tightened his grip on the teen, who was shaking somewhat now. "I wouldn't do that, you know," he told him exasperatedly. He raised his voice as he saw the look on his face —how fully concentrated he was on the fake Bakura. His host was doing a poor job at listening. "Your father is your source of income. He is important for your survival. I wouldn't have the time to steal for us in-between planning Pharaoh's demise. Don't be stupid."
"We need him," mumbled his host haltingly, squeezing the grass in his fists, and pulling his legs up purposefully. Bakura thought he might try to get to his feet and run. That would not due at all, he did not need the stress of dreaming about a mock chase. "So you can't...it wouldn't make sense..."
Perhaps he was getting through to him, more so than his fake self. "The Ring is all we truly need," said the dream Bakura with a sense of finality. The look on his face dared the teen to suggest otherwise.
Bakura pressed his nose against the back of his host's neck, and breathed directly against his skin. He felt him stop shaking, and then shiver, once. He stared out at the fake image his host had created and watched it vanish into nothingness. Goosebumps were making their way across the skin under his nose, and he couldn't help but feel like he'd won, even though his opponent had been a poorer version of himself.
His host, fully alert and aware of the arms wrapped around him, and the breathing man behind him, shivered again and swallowed heavily. And Bakura, knowing that he would be heard, said, "This dream is just as bad as the other ones. Is there anything that you dream about that isn't illogical and nonsensical?"
Sharply, the teen drew a breath, and turned his head around.
But by then, Bakura had already gone.
xXx
It would be another few hours, maybe, before his host awoke this time. Sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at the fully functioning, ticking alarm clock, Bakura contemplated smashing it to pieces before deciding that it probably would frighten his timid host if he awoke to see his property broken like that. He could do something else about it, though...
With the alarm clock taken care of, he turned his head and looked over his shoulder at the shivering teen in the bed, and then turned his gaze to the window. It was open a crack, and a breeze was blowing through the blinds occasionally. Bakura sighed.
There was a dark stretching of his soul that was distracting him, and a weight settled onto his astral form, tugging him incessantly back into the Ring. A demon was calling, and it would not be good to keep it waiting. But Bakura took one last glance at the dreamer on the bed, and moved closer, sparing a few seconds for parting words.
His lips brushed against his forehead, and then Bakura said, "No more bad dreams. I forbid it."
Then he vanished, answering the call of the darkness bound to him.
The teen woke some hours later, disoriented and wondering about dreams that he could not quite remember. A slight breeze was making him cold, though, so he sat up rather quickly to shut the bedroom window.
And that is when he noticed his alarm clock on the nightstand, upright (unlike a few nights ago), but showing a time that could definitely not be right. He reached out a hand and lifted it onto his lap, surprised at its lightness. Then he pressed a few buttons, trying to see if his alarm had gone off. But nothing seemed to work.
But then the back casing slid off when he brushed his fingers against it, and he frowned to realize that the batteries had been removed.
He was horrified at this discovery, and hurried to figure out what the time was. After digging for a wristwatch in his drawer, he learned that he'd slept in and had only minutes to get ready for school.
So as he rushed about the house, never fully taking into account that it was one of the first times that he'd slept in for weeks, the Ring spirit and his demon observed silently from the depths of the Item, pleased that their host was seemingly refreshed.
They needed him, after all. There were plans to fulfill...
The End.