Sweet adolescent Bakura on a casserole! I didn't think I'd written this much. Beware of the obnoxiously long first chapter, sorry.
First -this is my pairing. No one can take it away from me! *grabs Kisara and thief Bakura plushies and looks around menacingly* This is, until someone proves me wrong, the very first thief Bakura/Kisara fic ever on ff.net, or probably anywhere. It's the pairing guaranteed to offend all people of all non-canon shippings! It pisses off any Kaiba/any prissy YGO! girl as well as all gay pairing fans.
Now, what I try to make unique about this is that I'm concentrating on gradually shaping Kisara's personality to fit Bakura's standards, not the other way around. You know how these pairings usually go, the mushy-gush love scenes where fill-in-the-blank hardened criminalish character falls madly in love with the girl's cute little eyes. I spit on you, ha!
Chapter 1: The Unorthodox Kidnapping
The Pharaoh was dead, Set was merrily on his way to forming an unstoppable rebel army, Akunadin's state of mind had been successfully altered for the worse-
And surprisingly, the giant blue beam of death that shot up into the sky was not the fault of the thief Bakura. The snide comment that followed, however, was.
"That was subtle," the revolutionary remarked, then quickly returned to sulking silently in his prison cell.
The priest Set sneered, looking down at the lowly cell from his high seat, but did his best to hold his tongue. This had been a considerable breakthrough -the first time he had persuaded Kisara's psyche to summon her powerful Ka without having to jump in and save her from falling into oblivion first. True, there were now two rather large holes in the ceiling, and passing guards continually dropped through them to their doom, but it was an improvement nonetheless.
This still left a rather large problem involving Bakura. "This isn't the time for you to be making snide remarks," snapped the priest, his arms crossed. "You're bloody lucky I found it in my heart not to destroy you immediately, after what you did to Pharaoh."
At this the thief burst out laughing. "Sorry," he mock apologized in recovery, "but between the two of us, I appear to be the much better actor, though I must give you credit for being able to keep a straight face while saying that." He frowned. "I'm not deaf. And even if I were, it'd be pretty obvious by now. You need me alive until you can strengthen Diabound enough to defeat any of the actually loyal priest's forces so that you can become Pharaoh. Your father must be very proud."
And now it was the priest's turn to sulk, for that had been exactly what he had been planning. Why couldn't he be nice and quiet and passive, like Kisara? Then again, Bakura seemed to have more control over his Ka than the girl did. Shame. But he wasn't going to bother much with the thief. The other captured villagers would probably be able to dull his sharp tongue.
"You act real tough now," one remarked, his words slurred from his swollen cheek, "but come out of your little cell and say it to my face, why don't you?"
Bakura smirked, shook his head. "Toughness I might be feigning, but intelligence I'm not. You see, while you're out there killing yourselves, thinking it's to your benefit, the bastard priest up there is counting your victories like a farmer counts the eggs a chicken lays. Besides, any time he wants to, he could just knock out that girl he has locked up there and have you blown to pieces, and that, frankly, isn't really worth my while."
Set glared impatiently. He was clearly aware of his time budget- the occasional swing of his eye towards the hidden entrance to the underground training halls was evidence of that -so he sent down his ratty servant to negotiate while he continued to toy with his other, more cooperative prisoners.
The servant was a short, ugly man, with masses of fat replacing his neck, permanently raised eyebrows, and a demented smile that looked a lot more like fang-bearing than anything else. Waddling down the steps to Bakura's cell, he took hold of the bars and leered into the smutty area. Bakura considered doing harm to him, but his knife had been confiscated, and he felt any attempt to break the obnoxious man would seem petty if the damage was not permanent.
"The master is not pleased with your behavior, it seems," he breathed.
"You noticed," the thief retorted, pulling his hood over his eyes and lying back against the wall. "Aren't you the observant one, eh?" He didn't need to look up to see that the servant was fuming. "Listen, if you really do insist upon bothering me so much, do try to inform your master that he'd better realize that this isn't getting anywhere and kill me already, because all this sitting around is really starting to get on my nerves."
But sitting around is exactly what he did. Of course, he did much prefer this to death, but it was a monotony he was quickly coming to hate. Every night after hours he would spend most of the night attempting to break free of the lock- he had quickly learned that any attempt to summon his Ka outside of the dueling arena over the bottomless pit of death had been prohibited. The news that Diabound could pass through walls thanks to the Millennium Ring had spread quickly, it seemed. Of course, that had been confiscated, too. In all possible ways removed from any sharp objects he could use, he rummaged for any loose, wiry objects to use as a lock pick. He had been thus far unsuccessful. But not tonight, he resolved.
He had observed in a rather put-off manner the amount of freedom that Kisara was allowed. She had free reign to roam around the chamber doing whatever she pleased while Set went off to his royal chambers. Of course, the girl would never dare displease the priest. She was insanely loyal to him after he had rescued her from a mob of attackers in the streets, referring to him most respectfully as "Master Set," when spoken to. Then there was her Ka -the great Blue Eyes White Dragon that appeared only when she fell into an unconscious state, or, at least, it had so far. Bakura despised her for her shameless strut of innocense, but in this instance, he didn't want to offend his one possible way out.
"'ay," he whispered as the girl wandered close to the staircase. She looked around for the source of the sound, and the thief spoke again, "'Ay, you there. Over here."
Kisara swayed at the top of the stairs, pointing to herself and mouthing, "Me?" Bakura let out something of an affirmative snort, and she crept down the stairs. But upon seeing who had called her, she let out a little gasp and jumped back. "It's you!" she murmured.
"Who were you expecting?" the thief asked.
"I didn't know-" she paused, her words caught in her throat, "I didn't know you were here."
"Indeed," he answered, "I'm easy to miss. I mean, Set's only been shouting at me every bleeding second he gets for the past week. Then again," he amended, "you've been unconscious for half the time you've been down here, so you're excused."
"What do you want from me?" the girl demanded, carrying right on with her inquiry.
Bakura sighed, a tad disappointed that his select choice of words had gone unnoticed. "Let's consider, shall we? I have shown little to no interest in the women of this society, so it's unlikely that I've taken lust to you and am going to rape you. If I were now to kill you, I would be no closer to escaping, only now with a raging priest breathing fire down my back. To knock you out and use your Ka by force is useless, as your Blue Eyes is, truthfully, more powerful than my Diabound, and from what I've seen, your Ka's first and foremost instinct is to protect its owner. So what does that leave, eh?"
Kisara gulped. She wasn't much for this sort of talk when face to face with someone she had feared only to the highest degree. She had been told that the proper thing to do in the presence of an intimidating being like Bakura was to stand tall and at least pretend to be calm and collected, but that wasn't something that she was very good at.
"Let me help you out here," sighed the thief king, after a considerable silence. "You are on the outside of the cell and I am on the inside. Hence, I could use a bit of your help. Naturally I wouldn't expect pure kindness from the bottom of anybody's heart, so I'd be willing to exchange a favor. Enough for you?"
"I would never--!" sputtered Kisara indignantly, drawing back.
"Never betray Set?" Bakura suggested. "You're an odd one. What is it with you, anyway? What the hell did he ever do for you to win over your eternal gratitude?"
Kisara drew a long breath. She didn't particularly like talking openly about her captor. She was still so frazzled about the whole matter to really state her own opinion, yet somehow the thief had managed to violate some great belief of hers, one she couldn't leave injured. "He's certainly more of a gentleman than you could ever hope to be," she retorted, the sharpness of her words dulled by the faltering of her voice. "And above that, he saved my life. What sort of graditude is it to run off right after he did something so good for me?" The other merely grinned, as he did often.
"Excuse my persistence," Bakura mused, "I just don't like to go out of an argument when my opponent has even the slightest idea that they might have won out. But really--you think that Seto's giving you all of this free range out of the kindness of his heart? He probably has guards waiting right outside the door, just in case you do get enough backbone to run off. It's all a matter of gaining your trust--doesn't take a diviner to figure that one. Though, from what you've just said, his methods do appear to be working. Pity."
Kisara flushed bright red, causing Bakura to blink several times to adjust to the extreme change in pigment. In the lack of most all other pigment, she resembled a large, chalky bloodstain. It was a very specific hue. "That . . ." she murmured, "That's not true." That was her response, and it was her final response before she dashed up the stairs to a resting place near Set's chair. It was really all she said the entire night, or for indeed quite a while. Then again, she was always silent when the priest Set was in the room. Bakura hadn't quite figured that out yet--what was she trying to accomplish by this silence? Then again, it was just like a girl like her to be able to win over someone by pure innocence. He hated women like that.
Bakura's own day was passed in a similar fashion to Kisara's, sitting silent in his cell while the other prisoners blew themselves up. Kisara's ka was dormant throughout the battles--Set wasn't going to risk the commotion the beast's blast tended to cause and was biding a good deal of his sleeping time trying to find a way to muffle the noise. Judging by the dark rings under his eyes that had been developing recently, he apparently hadn't made any progress. This left Kisara the meander through the dungeon, dodging glances from the other prisoners, and avoiding Bakura's cell like the plague.
Bakura didn't much mind this. If the girl had hung out around him for too long, the priest might be suspicious. Not that he was really being particularly successful in convincing Kisara to help him. Lazily he watched with one eye open as a caterpiller-like monster engulfed a large pteradactyl. He quickly tired of the slaughter and scanned the other cells, towering up to the ceiling of the chamber, each small crevice stuffed with as many prisoners as they could manage. He himself had been rather lucky to get his own cell, though he imagined that this was only because they feared that he might slit the others' throats in their sleep, just for the hell of it. It was a stupid fear of theirs--Bakura tended not to kill unless it actually helped him.
His gaze caught the rogue arm of a fellow prisoner reach out of the bars of his cell. He was ignored, of course. A flailing arm pales in comparison to a gladiator fight of mutants. But Bakura watched it with interest--it disappeared again momentarily, then returned with a long pole of metal. That pole groped outwards then to the right, fiddling with a nail tacked to the wall. On this nail were a spare set of keys, which he caught on his pole and coaxed back to his cell. The man eyed the priest warily and, much to his apparent relief, saw that Set had not seemed to notice. He pulled the keys in close to him and hid them in his robe. Of course, he wouldn't try to escape while still watched. He would wait until dark to slip out and no one would notice he was gone. Bakura cocked an eyebrow. This man would probably be easier to reckon with than Kisara would. Then again, anyone would be easier to reckon with than Kisara.
But he was quickly disappointed. Problem was, when the time came it was not only his eyes watching, but Kisara's. She strode over to the cell, demanded (well, not quite demanded--demanded in a passive, Kisara-ish way) the keys. The prisoner eyed her nastily, but had not forgotten the power behind her ka, and handed over his escape ticket. Bakura furrowed his brow in frustration but kept quiet--Kisara would have to pass by his cell to get back to Set's chair.
"Hey," he called to her when she was in range. Kisara froze on the spot, a frightened rabbit sensing a wolf.
"What do you want?" she breathed, staring straight ahead into nothingness.
"Remember last night, when I said that the only real use I had for you would be if you yourself agreed to help me?"
The young girl gulped. "Yes."
The thief grinned slightly. "All right, then. Just checking. Then you ought to know that I've made something of an amendment to what I said."
Of all the things Kisara could have done then, screaming was not one of them. Bakura was good at keeping his victims from screaming.
It was a warm night, as it often was in Egypt. That was a good thing, as Kisara wasn't exactly prepared for a chill. A cool wind brushed against her face, whipping her hair into her mouth, causing it to mat and collect around her like a drenched sloth. No, she thought to herself, she really had no idea how she had gotten outside, but a throbbing pain in the back of her skull probably had something to do with it. slowly she opened her eyes--she was on a vast cliff, overlooking an empty wasteland of dunes. Off in the distance she could spy the twinkle of a flame, and it came from a small mass of adobe houses off to the east. She looked up--a ceiling of rock overshadowed her, closing in around the ddges like huge, stone jaws toying with its prey. She must have been inside some sort of cave, carved crudely into the side of a mountain. It must have been a perfect hideout for the thief--he could see out for miles yet be protected from the eyes of passers by.
A thick brown line overtook the horizon--it was by now the most she could see of the car off city from which she--
She stood up in shock, but the throbbing pain caused her to retreat back into a fetal position at the edge of the cliff. Had she really traveled that far in so short a time? Bakura must have taken her--it was the only possibility. He wasn't there at the moment; he'd probably gone out for some sort of nightly slaughter, but she knew he would return. Her breath came in short, sharp bouts as she considered her situation. She had to get back--had to get back to Set. She still owed him, didn't she? And even if she didn't, she-- Well, she wasn't exactly sure what it was that made her want to return. But if not that, she reckoned, she at least needed to get back to the city. Had to find safety. Had to get away from that maniac, Bakura.
"In case you're planning to escape," drawled a nonchalant voice behind her, "be my guest. You've got no place to come but right back here, and I'd say that'd be most embarrassing on your part." Kisara whirled around, ignoring the terrible pain that came forth because of it. Standing not far behind her was Bakura, who managed to look a lot more intimidating without a safe barrier separating him from others. He carried over his shoulder a thing of rope and in his opposite hand a good amount of some sort of cloth. He dropped both near the innermost part of the cave, near the wall, and began preparing a place for a fire.
"See, that village off in the distance is the closest place of actual civilization," he continued, seeming not to take much interest in his hostage. "Though I could name at least twelve clans of outlaws that favor this bout of the desert, and I know they'd just love to get ahold of your pretty little neck."
"But are you not an outlaw yourself?" the girl countered, her voice once again wavering terribly.
The thief smirked. "Are you actually trying to sound brave, or are you just trying to seduce me like you tried to do with Set?"
"I was not trying to seduce him!" she said, appalled at the very thought. "I would never--"
"You continue to back up your arguments with the same information." Bakura observed as the first flame of the fire crackled. It burned through the wood and spread, finally ceasing at the ring of rocks that surpressed it. "Ay, now that's much better," he said approvingly. He watched the flames for a while more to be sure that they wouldn't overtake the rocks, then advanced on Kisara. "Now, to deal with you. . . ."
Kisara drew back immediately, yelping as she felt herself nearly lose balance. Bakura caught her by the arm before she could fall, but reflex caused her to yank her beyond his grasp, and she toppled to the floor. "What do you want from me?" she asked, "You have your freedom, what more good can I be for you? And if nothing, why do you not kill me?"
"Because I have ears, you see," he explained, standing over her with an amused look about him. "You have to be pretty oblivious to not know about that ka of yours. Of course, I wasn't originally planning to kidnap you. It's just not my style, you see. Can't stand the little prissy girls that you always have to kidnap. They keep going on about loyalty and about how what I'm doing is wrong and how true love will prosper . . . really not worth it, if you ask me. So just for you to know, I'm not kidnapping you for a ransom or anything. Cliched, that's the problem with it. Mainly because I don't like the idea of set winning out in anything. He has the advantage of people's trust, you see. I hate it when people have advantages."
"Funny," the pale girl muttered, "but I would have never guessed that from how you attacked the village before you killed the Pharaoh."
Here was the first time that Bakura took pause. "You should have seen how much back-up that bastard had," he snorted dejectedly, "Those god monsters, I swear--if he had been able to summon Ra, I wouldn't have made it." He laughed lightly at his near death. "But it's too late to be considering the 'if' variable now. Still--that bloody Set's monster and his sword--my wrist still hurts from where he got Diabound." He rubbed his wrist with a slight grimace, then seemed to remember something. "Speaking of which--'ay, Diabound!"
Kisara quivered in fear at the great beast's name, and a screech escaped her mouth as the giant head of a snake emerged from just outside the cave. It was slightly transparent in the fading sunlight, then solidifying as if passed into the safety of the cave. It was quickly followed by its upper half, a pale skinned, winged beast of humanoid build. It came to settle at the farthest end of the cave, looking far too large to be allowed. The snake half glanced at Kisara momentarily then whispered something incomprehensive to Bakura, who glared indignantly at him and told him off. The snake shrugged--or at least, it shrugged as much as a creature with no shoulders could--and went back to rest near it's other half.
Kisara tried not to imagine all the poison that snake could secret. She really, really tried. Didn't really do her any good, but she did try.
"He's really not that bad," Bakura insisted, giving the snake a slight pat on the head. "Though I usually just let people keep to their petty little fears about him. Eh, but there's no real use in giving you a fright. Don't want that dragon of yours coming out before the right time, eh?"
Kisara now considered her ka--even the thief himself dared not deny that the dragon's power surpassed his own. If only she could harness its power for herself. . . . Of course, the problem with that was that she had never actually seen her ka. She had no idea how to use it in battle, nor how to summon it at all. It had only appeared twice when she had fainted, and that had been when she was in great and immediate danger. She wasn't entirely sure she could convince her ka of the more inpending danger to come. She frowned as she considered this, lost in hopeless thought, but her thoughts were interrupted as she felt the touch of a warm, moist towel on her cheek.
"You're too fidgety," Bakura snorted, wiping her face off. "It doesn't do your ka any good unless we keep you in good health, hmm? Besides, with all that dirt on that white skin of yours, you were starting to look like a mouse."
She winced as the material sent a burning sensation through her. Some sort of herb had to be in there, she reckoned. Not unlike the ones she used to find in the village.
"Right now," said the thief, seemingly satisfied, "Now, why don't you go lay down by that fire to keep yourself warm. There's a good chance of a long day tomorrow."
Kisara bowed her head but didn't move. She was torn between the welcoming warmth of the fire and the knowledge that better off she kept herself, the stronger her ka would become, and then Bakura would be one step closer to obtaining the dragon for his own purposes.
Bakura wasn't much for begging anyone to do anything, especially if it was something the person was privledged to do in the first place. And so, he left her to her own devices and worked withh the rope and cloth he had brought, making himself a rhudementary hammock, and settled himself in.
This action seemed to upset his hostage. "Where do I sleep?" she asked, eyeing him warily.
"Anywhere," he answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I don't really care. But I'm sure as hell not going to make anything for you. I'm already doing more than to be expected of the average kidnapper. Make your own hammock." And that was the last he said to her for the remainder of the night.
She waited for a long time after, watching him to see if he was asleep. She doubted he really was--he was probably still listening, even with his eyes closed--before moving in closer to the fire. It felt wonderfully inviting against her skin, and she hugged her knees up close to her to preserve body heat. It wasn't the cold of the night that chilled her, but the fear in her heart brought shivers to her skin.
She watched the desert as it lulled her to sleep. The vast plains of sand shifted and writhed, the wind combing long, streak-like patterns into it. Perhaps the royal troops were already looking for her--she would be rescued by morning, surely. But as she watched, and as nothing came, her assuredness became but a hope, and from that, a dream. . . .