Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of its character. Not copyright infringement intended, no money made with this.
Divine Providence
Minutes and hours, and days and months, and years and decades and whatnot, passed under his hands in darkness.
Grey stonewalls, swirling darkness, distant whispers and feather-light silence; childhood toys, pictures and regular furniture, all made of illusion.
Precarious self-awareness, threatening to slip away any moment (words with lost meaning, disappearance of time), and the not sharp enough fear not to be the one to hold it in place.
Sentences and words and letters, and nothing else.
What is life?
Ancient meaningful unanswered question asked by theologians and philosophers and biologists of all time, whose answers he might have studied in more than an esoteric-obsessed way, profoundly, back when life seemed to be more than small slices between sleep and stolen awakening.
He can tell, at least, what life most certainly isn't: physicality, soft breezes and ice-cold water and burning heat and pain from paper cuts and wood between your fingers and blinding light, and breath.
Words and illusions and nothing else.
But it's a lure, of course, how could he tell with certitude when he's sitting there and there's a bed with soft cushions even though he never sleeps, and there will be any object he can wish for with enough strength, and he can feel, and see, and hear, in this so life-like prison for his spirit.
Sentences with no verbs, sentences with no verbs and no subjects, and so on, pronouns emphatically thought with majuscules, and it's a dangerous path.
There have to be studies, somewhere, about how long one can remain without going insane in total isolation, and how to slow down the process, and how to accelerate it. Serious studies with tests and graphics and numbers and hours spend researching, and so on.
Phrases finished tiredly, in lying hope for continuation. Meta-thoughts, swirling circles.
Objects appearing to his bidding, colours, forms, voices and faces, but the later two bear danger; trying to keep those from becoming too real, or He will erase them. Memory can't be trusted more than anything else.
Flashes from the past, foreshadowing of the future, glimpses of ever fleeing present.
Magic he had longed for. To awake a death hero, to read thoughts, to judge the soul, to find to control to see to intrude.
Rests of sanity, wonder if there would be any difference if he was dead.
Does our life have a purpose?
xxx
He was wearing a duel disc. That was new. The duel disc was a new one, not just that he was wearing it: not the same model as in Duellist Kingdom. How long could Kaiba Corp take to make a new duel disc model? Not long, probably. Was it even Kaiba Corp? Yep, same logo, no concurrence on that sector yet. He wondered if he had new cards.
"Bakura?" Jonouchi, who was choosing the worst moments not to be oblivious to things, nudged him lightly. "Are you all right?"
He looked up from the duel disc on his arm, and the white bangs that had been shadowing his face flew back. He smiled, nodded, didn't quite trust his voice yet.
Honda was there, as well as Anzu, and Yugi. They were standing in the centre of a street. Domino? Yes, Domino, though there was something weird about it, more people in the street than usually, hopefully not fleeing en masse from something. Many of them with those new duel discs.
For all he knew, the place where they were standing was completely random. They could have been a few more feet to the left as well, or at the other end of the street, or in New York. He couldn't see what that particular spot had that made it be – particular.
However, he had the privilege of the knowledge that things didn't happen by chance and hazard. Never. He could, flawlessly, count on the certitude that there was a reason he was suddenly here, now.
If he could stand there, and follow the others and listen to Jonouchi and Honda arguing, it was, somehow, part of a greater plan.
Yugi looked nervous; Anzu managed to stop the argument like only she could. He did his best to listen to what they were saying, but the first moments were always a bit difficult: breathing, moving, standing, seeing and feeling were all new sensations, and it was difficult to concentrate on anything else. And he mustn't attract attention, and that alone was strenuous: Honda especially was good at noticing the difference.
He managed to catch a few things, however: a tournament, Kaiba, rare hunters, card thieves, ...
"A danger?" he murmured, breathlessly, almost inaudible.
Obviously, they would never, ever, stand somewhere with duel discs just for fun.
He could feel the constant presence in his mind stretch out, come closer to him, embracing his mind noticeably.
Not for you.
They were soundless words, but right then, he could without hesitation separate them from his own thoughts.
"Not for you," the voice said, and he shivered. Never for him, not until the very end, and then – a final judgement, and it would be better to be ready then, not to have amassed sin.
Thoughts intruding his own, disappearance of himself, of any privacy and any distance, obscenely strong intimacy, and he knows were this is going, but what he believes to be knowledge can't be trusted more than anything else.