Ryou was being impeccably irrational.
The Spirit had never been the most gracious of guests, and his destruction had left a staggering sense of relief in its wake. There were still sore spots on his body to tend to, and habits he couldn't break, but because of Yugi and the Pharaoh, Ryou was finally free. Even so, the emptiness in his mind was difficult to get accustomed to. Wary of the total loneliness that closure had brought, he resorted to something for which he had developed fondness over many years: the Occult.
Most specifically, necromancy.
Of course in practice, he didn't have a very successful history; the most he had ever accomplished was in terms of his sister and the composition of letters (by the hundreds of dozens, over time) followed by some considerably unhinging dreams that, he was sure, were somehow concocted by the Spirit. That was one of many abuses Ryou suffered at his hand, but despite countless wrongdoings over time, it felt almost necessary for him to attempt contact. He was driven by practical madness.
His home was a single room, a living space growing ever smaller as he kept needing to downsize. Alone and in silence, he began in the simplest way known to him. By lowering what remained of the protective barrier set up between his mind and the Spirit's, he realized it had never been all that powerful; it receded easily, with an almost unnoticeable change. Ryou sighed, knowing that back then, if ever he had felt the semblance of privacy, he was mistaken.
As expected, probing behind the walls in his mind revealed nothing; following the Spirit's departure, his own soul room had disintegrated, unneeded without the presence of the multiple consciousness.
So, the simplest solution was proven useless. However, through years of morbid interest in the Occult, Ryou had amassed knowledge of numerous other ways to contact the departed. Nothing had worked with Amane, but the Spirit was just that - a spirit - and proven to have lingered in the mortal world for centuries, unnoticed. Everything seemed more likely when it concerned him.
Having grown farther from friends since their return from Egypt, both the decision and execution of the attempt came to fruition uneventfully. There were no opposing parties to convince of his safety, and once it began, none to come looking for him as he slowly disappeared from the waking world.
Ryou supposed he should have felt fear, or a sense of danger, as he continued attempting contact. Perhaps his loneliness had truly driven him to apathy, but he felt a kind of security in the endeavor. He was the one seeking out the Spirit this time, not the other way around. If they crossed paths again, things would be different. Most importantly, neither would be alone.
September was warm, for the first time in recent memory. Even still, Anzu shivered as the unseasonably balmy temperatures began to drop. The inevitable change in climate wasn't something she was particularly fond of.
Huddling into an over-sized sweater, she walked up to the entrance of a rustic apartment complex. Jounouchi and Yugi stood still on the sidewalk, waiting for her signal before coming any closer. Anzu pushed the front door open with her hip but was intercepted by someone leaving the building. She hesitated for a moment as the inside door began to shut, but decided to remove her hands from her pockets and hold it open.
She turned her head to gesture at her friends outside. Jounouchi looked at Yugi and shrugged, walking up to meet Anzu as the shorter man trailed behind him.
"Are you sure we should just go in without checking, first?" Yugi asked. He was still sheepish, and had somewhat of a stigma about entering people's homes uninvited. Jounouchi slapped a hand on his back and pushed him through the door Anzu held out for them.
"Don't worry about it, Yugi," he began. "The guy could use some company, right?"
Yugi nodded silently, and Anzu smiled. The two of them were the only people she could find that were free on a Wednesday afternoon, let alone willing to accompany her to visit Ryou at home. Though the group of them had hardly spoken to him for a year, they were duly updated when he had moved out of his one bedroom apartment into this downtown bachelor suite, and she, at least, had pledged to visit him every once in a while.
So it was on Ryou's birthday that the three of them ascended two flights of stairs, stopping at an old-looking wooden door embossed with a dull plaque reading '302'. Yugi rapped softly on the door, and after a moment of silence, Jounouchi echoed with a louder, more emphatic knock. To their collective surprise, it caused the door to swing halfway open.
"Ryou?" Yugi called into the apartment, as Jounouchi pressed the door open fully. The white-haired man lay quietly on his bed in the corner of the suite, surrounded by books and stones, still as though asleep, in the midst of a calamity. His body faced away from the door, crumpled into a position that looked uncomfortable. He had always been quick to stir, so his motionless form prompted Anzu to push past her two friends and into the apartment. She took the few strides between the door and bed to stop herself from shaking, and reached out to Ryou's body.
Jounouchi raised an eyebrow, a smile half formed on his face. "Maybe we should come back later, don't wanna scare - "
"He's not asleep," Yugi interrupted with a whisper, following Anzu's path around the assorted objects strewn onto the floor, coming to rest beside her as she turned Ryou to face her.
His skin, though always having been pale, was lightened a shade further. His lips had lost nearly all of their pigment, but most noticeably, there was a thick, rusty smear along his right cheek, below the eye. That same colour stained the sheets where his head had been, and it lingered beneath his fingernails and on his fingertips, which otherwise maintained their translucent pallor.
Anzu immediately lowered her ear to Ryou's mouth. Slight movements confirmed the hint of air escaping onto her cheek.
"Is he breathing?" Jounouchi asked stiffly, his form still caught in the doorway.
"Yes," Anzu said quietly, stepping back from her friend's body. "Barely."
She turned to face Yugi, who was frozen, his face expressing a mix of fear and shock. Anzu spoke softly. "Call the hospital, his phone is over there."
Yugi nodded silently, moving to pick up the receiver and sighing in relief as the dial tone met his ear. The phone was still connected. Ryou couldn't have been out for too long.
Yugi spoke quietly, his voice breaking ever so slightly as he explained the situation. Jounouchi moved into the apartment to help Anzu turn Ryou fully onto his back. His skin was cool to the touch; the two of them did their best to clear the bedspread of its books and littered objects, wrapping his limp body within the stained sheets in an attempt to preserve its warmth.
"They said there's an ambulance coming right away," Yugi announced. The three of them stood in silence, unoccupied for a few precious moments, finally absorbing the gravity of the situation in full.
Anzu held out her hands to her two friends. Yugi took one of them, but Jounouchi instead pulled them both into a hug. Anzu began to shudder, and Yugi started to go limp, leaning into the taller two bodies for support.
"He's gonna be okay," Jounouchi reassured. The embrace tightened, as did Yugi's grip on Anzu's hand, while she nodded through teary eyes. Yugi closed his eyes, gritting his teeth to fight back his own sob.
Ryou's eyes stared into darkness for so long, he wasn't sure they were even open. There was a tight feeling on the right side of his face, pulling his skin taut. It resembled the sensation of dried blood, something the Spirit had caused him to recognize over time.
Lethargy kept him rooted in place, laying on what felt like his bed, but his thoughts wandered to the rest of his surroundings – most specifically that he was unaware of them, in exact terms.
If this was home, there would have been a crack of hallway light coming from the bottom of the door. And it would never have been this silent, not with the clunky water heating system pumping through the building. Even still, this dark and muted place felt familiar.
He propped himself onto his elbows, groaning with the surprising difficulty it presented. Things were no more visible from this vantage point; Ryou sighed and swung his legs over the edge of the bed and set his feet on the floor.
There was no floor.
Ryou let out a cry of shock, feeling the sensation of falling for a split moment before lapsing into unconciousness.
Comatose – that's all that the paramedics could, or would, disclose. It had been difficult enough convincing them to say even that much, but in light of the fact that Ryou had no immediate family to speak of, a close friend would have to do.
In arriving at the hospital, Anzu seemed the only one able to articulate the situation properly, and so opted to speak with the ER staff while Yugi and Jounouchi stayed near Ryou's bedside. She told the nurse what she could about his medical history, opting not to mention the rather more mystical reasons behind some of his afflictions.
"And he lives alone?" The nurse asked, head down as he scratched notes onto a clipboard.
"Yes," Anzu confirmed, swallowing the waver in her voice. "We were just coming to visit – "
"How did you say you found him?"
"He was on his bed – on his side, there were books and things all around him, he's normally a very tidy person, I don't know – "
"Thank you," the man said sharply, clicking his pen and walking swiftly past Anzu to tend to another patient. She sighed, knowing her responses likely held nothing for the doctors. She walked back down the corridor, turning into Ryou's room just as Jounouchi was leaving. He carried Yugi on his back, whose expression was worried even as he slept.
"They don't want us here very long," Jounouchi explained, grimacing. "Maybe they think we did something to him, I don't know."
Anzu shook her head. "I don't see why they would. But it is probably a good idea for you to go home." She reached out a hand to brush wayward bangs out of Yugi's face.
"He must be exhausted."
"Yeah," Jounouchi nodded. "Guy can't get a break, huh?"
Anzu gave a slight smile. "I'll see you two soon. I'm going to try staying here a little longer."
She sat down in the folding chair directly beside Ryou's bed, listening to thrumming machines and the tone of his heart monitor. Chatter could be heard from the hallway as people passed by the room, but Anzu herself stayed silent. Reaching out a hand, she touched Ryou's injured cheek. The blood has been cleaned up and the wound was exposed for her to see.
A line ran long down his face, intersected by two that were shorter and parallel to each other. It was familiar, and though it disfigured Ryou's face as it began to scar, it didn't seem out of place. Some of his white hair was still stained carmine, and it splayed unkempt beneath him. Anzu shifted her attention from his face to a hand that peaked out from the hospital blanket. She gave it a short squeeze.
"You're going to be okay, Ryou," she breathed. "You've survived until now. I believe you can do this."
She sat in the mechanical silence for a few moments, stroking his palm with her thumb.
"Excuse me, I have to ask you to leave."
Anzu turned her head and saw the nurse she had spoken to earlier. He stood in the doorway, looking impatiently at her. She let her hand drop from Ryou's.
"Yes, of course," she replied quietly. She stood quickly, tears welling in her eyes, and strode past him.
Ryou found himself laying on his stomach. This room was much brighter than the last, blindingly so. As he moved his hands around him, to be sure he wasn't about to fall through into nothingness, he found the floor was flawlessly smooth. Once his eyes adjusted to the light, he discovered that he was laying on top of an expansive mirror. Staring back at him was a vision of the Spirit as he had been in Egypt; his own face was now marred with the same scar, and his hair was a bedraggled mess.
Inhaling deeply, Ryou sat himself up to discover that the entire structure around him was reflective. Thousands of bewildered clones stared at each other. He looked up to find the ceiling was nothing more than the blackness he had descended from. That seemed the only explanation for it, though he was sure there was very little logic behind whatever was happening.
He sighed and managed to stand, finding his body so sore it was nearly unresponsive. His memory was hazy, with a timeline nonexistant, but he knew there was no point in staying still.
Ryou reached out in front of him to touch the closest mirrored wall, and as he walked closer, the room seemed to shrink around him. When he finally made contact, the wall became fluid and dropped like a fabric sheet, disappearing as it met the floor.
Ahead of him was something he would have thought impossible. In the same impeccable condition as it had been a year before was Ryou's soul room. He stood where the door should have been, realizing the full extent of his confinement while the reflections of his soul began to laugh from behind him.
Ryou had been moved to a more permanent room once it was obvious that his condition was unchanging. The news spread quickly through their circle of friends, with most everyone Ryou knew coming to see him once, and talking amongst themselves about how unfortunate he was. Yugi and Jounouchi managed to visit him twice since his admittance, but were understandably harrowed and preferred to keep their distance from their unresponsive friend.
Anzu, however, made a point of going back to the hospital every day to check on Ryou's report. The staff were still reluctant to reveal much, but her persistence brought her some luck when, two weeks after he had been admitted, she overheard a discussion between his doctor and the nurse on duty. They were walking in front of her towards Ryou's room.
"The toxicology results came in," the nurse reported. She handed the doctor a series of papers.
"There's nothing here," he said. "No sign of narcotics or alcohol. Levels are typical for a comatose patient, but there seems to be no cause."
A young orderly rushed out of the room, nearly running into the doctor. "There's something you need to see, sir."
He led the two staff into the room. Anzu remained behind, but close enough to listen in.
"How did this happen?"
"I don't know. It must have been after hours, I just noticed the blood when I started my rounds."
At that mention, Anzu decided to make her presence known.
"Good morning," she greeted, trying to act normally though there was an audible shudder in her voice. The doctor turned on his heel to face her.
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, miss, there's something very important we need to - "
There was just enough time for her to notice the marking carved into Ryou's chest, something very familiar, but grotesquely depicted.
"You don't know what that is," she pointed, her voice hardly above a whisper. The carving of the Ring, combined with the scar on his face, made her realize who could possibly be doing this to Ryou.
"Do you know something about this?" The nurse had a concerned tone, but there was accusation laced in her voice.
Anzu had to think quickly about her response. "He has an enemy, someone very thorough," she began furtively. "And this person is capable of terrible things."
"Why weren't we informed of this when Mr Bakura was admitted?" The doctor asked, his voice sharp and clinical.
"We thought they were dead," she responded weakly.
The doctor nodded, but his gaze was still skeptical. "How could this person have had the access necessary to do something such as this?"
"He's a thief. A professional criminal," Anzu interrupted. "There is literally nothing he's incapable of."
"I assure you," the nurse began, "we have staff making rounds all throughout the night. If there had been some kind of disturbance, the monitors would have picked it up."
"This pain is something he's used to," Anzu responded. "He might not even have registered it. It's not unusual."
The doctor sighed and began to rub his temple. "I don't know what to do, here. This can't be allowed to happen again. We may have to bar all visitation until we find the cause."
"You think I'm the one doing this?" Anzu's face fell. "I'm the only person who comes in here to see him, you know that. I'm as surprised as all of you."
"Mr Bakura's physical safety is in danger - "
"Then let me look out for him," she interjected, her tone suddenly defiant. "I'll stay here and make sure no one comes near him. I know who's responsible."
"Use your information to contact the authorities, we will handle his medical needs."
"I can't," she said, exasperated. Because it was impossible. Because the Spirit was gone, and couldn't physically break through a coma unnoticed, even if he were still alive.
"Because no one really knows where he is. But I can identify him. Please."
"Visiting hours only," the orderly squeaked. Everyone turned to look at him.
"Let her stay. He's comatose, it won't hurt him. She's upset, it'll put her at ease."
The doctor and nurse exchanged looks, and Anzu nodded towards them.
"If I can stay, I'll be out of your hair."
The doctor gave a curt nod and left, the nurse following behind him.
"I'll be back here in a few minutes to clean him up," the orderly announced.
Anzu sent him a grateful look. "Thank you."
AN: I sure hope no one minds that ending. I realize there are a lot of unanswered things, as well. I might do a second chapter for this (possibly even a third) to clear that up. But for now, I think this addresses Anzu most of all, which is what I was going for.