Author's Notes: This is a sequel to my other fic, Powerless, so it won't make much sense without reading that first!

Warnings: Contain some R-rated limey moments, and I don't mean when they're drinking tea.

Ch 1 - Girl Anachronism

I've got some issues to work through

There I go again, pretending to be you

Make-believing that I have a soul beneath the surface

Trying to convince you that it was

Accidentally on purpose

I don't necessarily believe there is a cure for this

So I might join your century, but only as a doubtful guest

Behold the world's worst accident

I am the girl anachronism…

~The Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"

"Draw quickly, vessel… I'm afraid you haven't got a prayer."

Ryou grimaced, looking over his hand. The dark voice of his opponent was right. But when he slid a new card into his hand, his eyes brightened.

"I sacrifice Lady of Faith to summon Millennium Shield, in defense mode," he announced, picking up Lady of Faith and replacing it with the new card. He grinned to himself, "Your Necrofear might have a bit of trouble getting around that."

Bakura's victorious smirk became a scowl, and she muttered as she drew again. "You do realize that a purely defensive strategy is useless in this game, right?"

"It works when half of your opponent's strategies involve sacrificing their own life points," Ryou hid his smile behind his hand of cards, preparing to duck if Bakura threw something at him.

Bakura started to raise her lip, but smirked instead. "I can't help it if I've got more balls than you, even now."

Ryou tried to look hurt, but his frown was such an exaggerated pout that neither of them could take it seriously, and they laughed.

"Anyway… say goodbye to your Shield," Bakura's smirk widened as she set a magic card down, "I equip Dark Necrofear with Axe of Despair. I believe that brings her attack points to, oh… 3200."

Ryou grimaced and shook his head. "That card ought to be illegal," he sighed.

"That's not the worst of it, landlord. I summon Whiptail Crow in attack mode, and…" Bakura snickered and put down another magic card, "equip it with Malevolent Nuzzler, giving it 2350 points."

"What? You're ruthless!"

"Would you like me to add the Black Pendant I have in my hand as well? I think that'd bring it to almost 3000," she grinned darkly.

"If you feel so inclined, but I've still got Dark Door in play, so you can only attack once," he reminded her, tapping the magic card on his side of the field. He tried to keep a poker face, knowing that his lack of real worry would make her suspicious. Still, bluffing was something he wasn't any good at, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Very well, then… I destroy your Shield with Necrofear." But Bakura's words were guarded, and she scrutinized him as she announced her move.

"Ut!" Ryou couldn't help but grin again, and flipped over his face-down trap, "I activate Dark Spirit of the Silent. Attack your Crow instead."

"That's my combo!" Bakura bristled.

"They're my cards," Ryou raised his eyebrows, and chuckled as she muttered her new attack. Being forced to attack her own, weaker monster cost her nearly 900 points, and she didn't have that many left.

Ryou knew his strategy of defending and raising his own life points was infuriating her, especially when he found sneaky ways of costing her points without attacking. But he knew they were both enjoying it – obviously, since they'd been dueling for the past hour.

They were on the carpeted floor of his bedroom, and cards were scattered around them. Ryou had taken out his entire collection, and they both rebuilt and modified their deck after each duel. Bakura trounced him in the beginning, but as he picked up her strategies, he was able to find ways to counteract them. As a result, their decks were complete opposites. Bakura's was almost purely offensive attack power, while Ryou's deck relied on healing his life points and a strong defense.

Ryou watched her as she ended her turn and glared at the cards on his side of the field. His introverted nature had given him keen observational skills, and he had found the tactics used in Duel Monsters could reveal interesting things about the psychology of the players.

Bakura's methods definitely said something about her own nature. One of her biggest tactics had little to do with her cards. She loved to instill fear in her opponent with the sheer power and recklessness of her moves. Her current deck was filled with equip magic cards that raised the attack strength of monsters, as her previous turn had shown. The weakness of her Fiend monsters could lull her opponent into a false sense of security, until she piled two or three equip cards onto them and raised their attack well past even that of a Blue-Eyes White Dragon – without having to make a single sacrifice.

And when she did get out her powerful monsters… Ryou had experienced first-hand how well her scare tactics worked when he was faced with a Summon Skull with an attack of over 5000. She went for a combination of trickery and raw attack power, and the way she casually spent her own life points to use certain magic and trap cards spoke of certainty and confidence in her victory.

Ryou smiled a little at that. It seemed that all the trauma of several months ago had left no great dent in her self-esteem. Bakura was nothing if not resilient. The bruises to her ego, just like the bruises on her face, had healed and disappeared. On the surface, at least.

But there was something different about her. Bakura was still arrogant, still insulted and teased him freely, but now it was obvious she intended no harm. In fact, her new pride seemed to indicate real confidence – not some sort of shaky, forced pride that had to be fiercely defended by lashing out at everyone around her. Ryou wondered if it was because she now knew that anything she accomplished would be the result of her own strength, and not the strength of the Ring or the dark powers of the Shadow Realm.

She was still abrasive, of course, but they had managed to cultivate a something resembling friendship over the weeks. Bakura knew him better than anyone else in the world, by virtue of having lived in his head for years and by being the only person to never leave him for greater or more interesting things. Likewise, Ryou suspected he was the only one who knew Bakura was anything other than a once-male thief with a dark past and a barbed tongue.

Bakura was brave, daring, and unpredictable – opposite to him in so many ways that just living with her proved to be an adventure. But she could also be funny, and represented a cruder, darker, more thrilling side of life that his prim and proper upbringing found to be a tantalizing forbidden fruit. It made him wonder why she accepted his friendship. She was a strong, captivating thrill-seeker, so what made her keep returning to him and his small, dull apartment…?

But she let her reasons for staying slip in silent ways. It was the things that she let him do that made him forget his fears of abandonment. As impressive as she was, she felt he was worthy enough to let him sit close to her, laugh at his jokes, and talk about things that he couldn't fathom her mentioning to anyone else. This way, she told him things her lips would never speak.

I accept you. I trust you.

I might even like you.

She even smiled at him every so often. The thief smirked a lot, or grinned with self-assurance, or gloated and sneered, or bared her fangs and laughed darkly – but she when she smiled, it was something to remember.

Ryou shook his head and drew from his deck. The longer she stayed, and the nicer she was, the more he let himself like her. He missed her while he was away at school, and thought about her often. The simplest things, like a game or meal with her, made him happy. Even shared periods of calm silence were pleasant. It had gotten to the point where just seeing her mesmerizing crimson eyes made his heart lift in a way that was strange, but not at all unpleasant…

"Are you going to play something or not?"

Ryou blinked a few times. He hadn't realized he had been staring at the eyes in question. His heart dropped from where it had risen, falling into a pit of self-conscious nervousness.

"I, uh," he coughed, averting his eyes to his cards and hunching his shoulders. He had forgotten whatever strategy he had in mind for them. Trying to regain his wits, he set down another monster card. "I summon Prevent Rat in defense mode and end my turn."

Bakura rolled her eyes and drew. Her eyebrows arched as she eyed the card she had pulled, and a fiendish smirk curled across her lips. She slammed two magic cards onto the field.

"I play Heavy Storm, then Raigeki!"

"Oh, crud," Ryou frowned and shuffled all the cards on his side of the field into his graveyard. Bakura laughed, even as she discarded her own magic cards.

"Then, I summon the Bistro Butcher," she continued, setting the powerful monster in attack mode, "and equip it with Black Pendant. And seeing as you have nothing in play with which to defend yourself…"

Her smile became both wicked and playful, and she leaned forward onto his side of the field. "You're mine, landlord."

Ryou froze. On one level, he knew she was talking about her imminent victory. But there was something about those words, and the way they were whispered in a mischievous, husky tone, while her face was less than a foot away from his own…

He swallowed and focused on his cards, trying to make himself smaller as she announced her attacks and eliminated his remaining life points. Ryou could only hope she interpreted his action as defeat and not embarrassment. Luckily, she was too smug to notice.

"Well," Bakura swept all her cards back into her deck and shuffled them, "Would you like to be defeated again?"

"I think that's enough dueling for me," he mumbled, making a point to look at the cards and not the girl, "We've made a mess of my collection."

"A sore loser, are you?" she snickered, but set her deck aside. "But you're right, I'm getting hungry. Since I won, I get to pick what we have for dinner."

"All right, but after you help me clean this up," Ryou chided, once he was certain the blood in his face had drained back a reasonable level. He started gathering up the cards scattered across the carpet, organizing them by type.

Bakura sighed in irritation, but helped him, pulling some of the card folders they had emptied back over to their side. "Is that really necessary?"

"Yes," he answered curtly, "Now, could you hand me the folder for trap cards?"

"Even the Pharaoh's pet just keeps his favorite cards in a box," Bakura snorted and picked up the purple folder in question, but sifted through the plastic, mostly empty card holders instead of giving it to him. There were a few particularly rare and valuable cards that he had insisted they not play with, and she eyed them longingly. But Ryou was a collector first, and a player second.

"Cards are worthless if not played," she muttered, but handed the folder over.

"I've already given you my Destiny Board set, a foiled Necrofear, and a bunch of other rare cards. And I'm sure you've taken more than a few when I wasn't looking," Ryou shook his head, exasperated. But he knew, if she really desired a card, he would've let her have – heck, freely given her anything out of his collection, despite the fact she was rather rough with her cards.

"Who, me? How could you say such a thing?" Bakura spread her hands to convey innocence, but her wry grin gave her away.

Besides, he had the sneaking suspicion that she was the one secretly supplying him with new rare cards, though they were undoubtedly obtained at a five finger discount.

Ryou finally sorted the cards, disassembling his deck to put the cards back in their place. It had been a decent deck, but not his favorite. He had a strange affinity for dark monsters, but they were usually poor defensive creatures. Bakura's particular tactics would plow through them, not to mention the fact that she had taken the best Fiends and Zombies.

Bakura swapped a few cards back into their folders, but, he noted, she kept the cards he had specifically given to her as gifts. Those cards managed to find their way into any deck she made, even though a set of Destiny Board cards could often hurt more than it helped, and Necrofear was a pain to summon. He felt himself smiling.

With the cards securely in their folders, and the folders stacked neatly beside his computer, they left for the kitchen.

xxxxxxx

"What did you want me to make?" Ryou opened up some of the cabinets, taking inventory. Anticipating her response, he gathered up the soy sauce and meat seasoning for steaks --

"Pancakes."

Ryou stopped and glanced over his shoulder at her. "Pancakes?"

"I saw them on television. Are you familiar with them?"

"Well, yes, but," Ryou shook his head. He should've known better than to try and predict her. "They're really a breakfast food, and I'm afraid we don't have any batter or anything…"

"Then I suppose we'll just have to the grocery store," Bakura cut him off without missing a beat, folding her arms. She acted like she had had this planned. Ryou wondered about that, and realization dawned on him. Bakura may or may not have really wanted pancakes, but Ryou knew what she did want.

Though it felt like ages since that terrible night, it was impossible for Bakura to completely mask how deeply Marik's attack cut into her psyche. She had become adept at finding ways to rope Ryou into going on walks with her, usually under the pretense of going to the store for something.

He hardly minded. Domino wasn't always the safest of cities, even with the Shadow Games over. Though he knew Bakura had been a fierce fighter, she had spent several lifetimes relying on either magic or sheer bulk, and Marik had made a point of not merely making her female but stripping her of all her strength, mystical or physical.

Ryou doubted she had any faith in his fighting abilities; he didn't have much himself. It was simply safer to travel in pairs. Still, when he first realized that she was subtly, even inadvertently asking for his protection, it had sparked something in him, and he started secretly doing katas and other exercises in his room, just in case. He kept quiet about it, since didn't want her to know how much he wanted to protect her. She'd kill him.

Ryou smiled and nodded. "I guess we will. We needed some other things, anyway."

xxxxxxx

Bakura exhaled into the night breeze. The air was just barely chilled enough to make her breath visible, and she watched it curl upwards and disappear. Domino's winter temperatures were still something of a novelty to her. The way it sank past her sweater and settled into her bones was strangely invigorating, forcing her to shiver and create her own warmth. True, the desert nights could be cold, but the winds of Domino had the salty bite of the ocean.

She liked the cold, despite her homeland. The way it dug into bone certainly made it more formidable. Heat battered the skin but got no further.

It took more than the sun to light internal flames…

A strange look crossed Bakura's face as she realized the debauched memories her mind conjured. Namely, memories of the buxom, dark-skinned women the King of Thieves had occasionally kept as company – ones that she, apart from her white hair and wicked scars, now dangerously resembled. She sighed and dismissed the thoughts. It was obvious that she'd never be able to partake in those particular pleasures of the flesh again.

It wasn't the first time she had missed certain features of her old life that had nothing to do with the occult.

"Something wrong?" Ryou's voice distracted her from mourning over her lost manhood, and she looked up at her former vessel. Bakura scowled. She had lost her gender for the sake of a boy masculinity was absolutely wasted on. When she first realized what she had given up, she sometimes wondered if she'd made a mistake by throwing away her chance to get all her power – and her old body – back. But one look at his concerned face always made her begrudgingly admit she'd made the right choice.

True, she missed her dick, but she would've missed Ryou a lot more.

Not to mention that she never would've gotten the chance to see his eyes light up whenever she accepted his friendship, or positively beam when she returned it. She never would've heard his soft, modest laugh or seen him shy back when she said something that could be interpreted as kind. She never would've been able to learn that not only could Ryou smile, but he actually had many different smiles and grins and for once in his life, they were not forced. She never would have felt a caring hand on her shoulder, a hesitant, but sincere pat on the back, or even, rarely, the embrace of a pair of arms that expected nothing in return for what they freely and happily gave.

Such experiences engendered a kind of inner warmth that neither the Egyptian sun nor passionate midnight trysts had been able to kindle.

And that disturbed her deeply.

Bakura grumbled and looked away from the boy. She knew she was going soft if she even fleetingly wondered if there was something to what the Pharaoh spouted about friendship. In all her three thousand years of life and death, she'd never really had it. As a child in Kul Elna, her strange white hair left her ostracized; as an adult, the pursuit of gold and revenge left little time for a social life; and as a corrupt spirit, her soul had darkened to the point where she could no longer even understand such concepts.

Nevertheless, she could not deny that she had come to see Ryou as a… friend. The word still seemed strange, even dangerous. And the warm feeling… it all made her recall some of the taunts both her inner demons and the spirit of the Ring had thrown at her in her moments of weakness. The warmth was nice, but it made her anxious, angry, and confused all at once. Ryou made things all the more frustrating by apparently not being afflicted in the slightest by any of these feelings. He seemed to know full well that he wanted her companionship and neither fought nor feared the idea.

Their evening walk had taken them through the park. The sound of the chilled breeze rustling through the trees stopped Bakura's thoughts. All the lights of the city were starting to flicker on, and the moon hung low overhead. Her footsteps slowed, and she stared up at the stars as the wind tossed her bangs.

Moments like that always silenced her tumultuous thoughts and simply made her revel in having a living body once again. She was no longer a piece of jewelry, no longer a spirit able to only analyze the sensations its host body was feeding it with detached arbitration. She had her own skin, her own nerves, her own hair and fingers – and even if she was missing certain parts she was once familiar with, those absent parts, times like this reminded her, were not the most important things.

The moment passed, and another wisp of breath snaked out from between her lips and climbed upwards. As her eyes came back to the earth, she caught Ryou staring at her with a wide-eyed expression. He had stopped alongside her and observed her in silence, and was obviously impressed with whatever he had seen.

Bakura met his eyes and quirked an eyebrow. "What?"

"You were smiling," Ryou murmured unconsciously, before he realized he'd been caught. He suddenly shrank back, tearing his gaze away and forcing it to the ground.

"I was not," Bakura defended herself, but just in case, she made sure she set her face into a fierce scowl. It didn't matter, anyhow. The boy suddenly seemed terrified and refused to look in her direction.

She tilted her head. Maybe he wasn't as fearless in the face of his own desires as she thought.

That was somewhat comforting.