Season Five Chapter 1: Operate, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

title: Operate
pairing/characters: Yami Malik x Yami Bakura
summary: "To be evil or good was never a decision, because they were never told the difference and instead picked life over death…"
rating: M
notes: Written for Computerfreak101's Yu-Gi-Oh! Crack Pairing Contest. First Round. Inspiration drawn from Interview With A Vampire.
standard disclaimer applies.

'No squealing, remember that its all in your head.' Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz.

He is perfect for me
To practice surgery
One look coagulates
Its time to operate

Operate - Peaches.

He slammed his hands down on the table. Teeth sneering.

"Alright sir, I am going to have to ask you calm down."

The cold laughter echoed. "Get me a chess board."

"Malik Ishtar -"

"My name is not Malik."

"That is what you are - "

"Its Marik. Get me a damn chessboard and I can tell you what you want."

The interviewer sighed. "Alright." He stood up, went out of the room and then returned.

"They are getting one as we speak."

"Good. Tell me officer, have you ever gone insane?"

The man blinked. Marik rocked back on his chair, then slammed back down again. Grinning so his white teeth gleamed behind the gold hair that fell about face.

"In my line of work… there have been times where I… have not been in my right mind."

The chair slammed back down, it was developing a pattern, and Malik stood up leaning forward. The interviewer gulped as Malik swiped his tongue across his lips.

"That's not insanity, insanity is much more… temperamental."

Black takes White.

Marik sat across the chessboard, staring at his opponent.

"Marik."

"Bakura."

"Fancy meeting you here?" Marik sneered.

"It's a… strange occurrence, but then again, maybe not." Bakura replied back, cold smile forming. "But after all, this is the shadow realm is it not Marik? Where else is fitting?"

Marik laughed, rasping and burning.

"I propose a game, Bakura."

Removing a arm from where it was crossed over his chest he gestured widely. "What game?"

"Chess."

"Chess? How… plain. We have nothing to lose."

"Just ourselves, if this place doesn't get us first."

"This place or ourselves, Marik,"

White takes Black.

"What's the shadow realm?" The interviewer inquired.

"Some where you should hope you never end up." That same flat smirk was on Marik's face. Marik leant forward and stared down at the chess board. "As human's we have so many choices. Some are made for us by our body. To breath, to have our heart pump, our stomach digest." Marik moved a pawn forward.

The interview inclined his head trying to understand what Marik was getting at. "Free will is a powerful thing."

Marik laughed again. "From that, most of us chose what we wish to become. Some chose to be good, to help, to be compassionate, others chose to be evil, to sell those drugs, to hit their wife, to rape that girl, to steal and kill. You are a police officer, you must know this."

"I do." The interviewer moved his rook to spaces to the left.

"But some of us do not chose, some of us are made. Some of us have no thought of our own, at least not that we can control. For some of us the choices of others take away our free will. To be evil or good was never a decision, because they were never told the difference and instead picked life over death…"

"…That is the difference between sanity and insanity, officer."

"I am afraid you aren't making sense…"

"Soon, officer, I will."

Black takes White.

Bakura ran his tongue over her teeth, fingers resting over his queen.

"Are you willing to lose yet Marik?"

"Only if you are." Marik blinked slowly.

"Joint loss, aren't they called stalemates?"

"A weak term, just a cover up of saying neither of us are any good."

Bakura laughed, the shadows twisted with him. Sharp reminders as to who exactly this spirit was.

"Did you not think my light and myself didn't know what you were up to when you asked for the millennium items?" Marik pondered his move.

"I figured there was a possibility."

Marik curled his fingers around a bishop and smashed Bakura's knight off the board.

"I am a tomb keeper, of course I knew what you were up to."

"You aren't a tomb keeper. Your light was, you are his deluded emotions seeking form. For this reason in our battle of spirits, I am superior."

Marik hissed. "I am not a recycled piece of soul. I am my own being as much as you are."

White takes Black.

"Hold up, what do you mean by recycled piece of soul?"

"The nature of Bakura is that he is implanted within a piece of the most sacred of the objects and every time he is 'destroyed' he re-incarnates. Recycled over and over."

"I see."

"You don't believe me, do you?" Marik glared.

"Why should I? You are here on convictions of murder Marik. You aren't in your right mind obviously."

Marik laughed so loudly then, that it ran under the thin crack of the door and into the corridor.

"Not my right mind? No, you are right, but this is my best mind, the other one is a wreck since he recreated me."

"Recreated you?"

"Oh yes, this is not the first time."

"First time to kill?"

"First time to show my real power."

"Your real power?"

Black takes White.

"Marik, my dear boy, neither of us are, because the shadows are chaos and the chaos is never real or true."

"Shut up!" Marik clutched the side the piece he had just taken.

Bakura scoffed. "You are acting like a child. But what can I expect from one made from childish ambition?"

"You are a marvellous pretender Bakura."

Bakura lowered his head. Marik continued.

"What about you? Family destroyed, so out of your pain as a child you set about festering and swearing revenge. We are both children in this game."

Bakura's head was turned away, arms crossed, but Marik could see here his fingers hand bunched together in agitation in the cloth.

White takes Black.

"He was a child swearing revenge?" The interviewer reiterated.

"Because on the first time around of existence, he lived in Egypt. His whole village was massacred at the Pharaoh's orders. He sought revenge."

"A understandable reason for revenge."

Marik picked up the piece he had just removed. A pawn. "Ever lay face first in blood?"

The interviewers hand jerked, knocking one of his pieces.

"No, I haven't."

"Then you wouldn't know. Its not just revenge, it's a need to clean one self of all that has been done against you."

"Bakura was, is, if nothing else, haunted."

Marik stood up.

"Haunted."

He walked around the table to chair where the interviewer was sitting, he leant over his shoulder.

"There is no other way to say it, Bakura is haunted, scared, and above alone, afraid. And does not want to be any other way."

He breathed into the mans neck.

"Most humans do eventually reach a point where they go past maturity and into childhood again. When they have reached this point, nothing really matters anymore and you can laugh at philosophers, because they know nothing in the end. No one knows anything."

Black takes White.

"Marik, you think you know so much."

Marik laughed. Bakura grit his teeth.

"Bakura, you think you know so much."

They glared at each other across the table.

"We are not so different, you and I, we will never be." Bakura spat.

Marik smirked. "Glad you finally realise."

Bakura slammed his hand across the pieces.

"Child." Marik taunted.

Bakura knocked the table across next, standing up in black rage, the shadows twisting harder.

And it was that moment that they knew they were separate in all ways, but their differences made them the same.

Marik reached his hand up and dragged Bakura to him, smashing their lips.

It was as violent and as brittle as they were, every bit of tension in those slow steady moves on the board. Bakura's fingers were in Marik's hair, tugging and pulling undoubtedly painful, one of Marik's hands remained bunched in Bakura's shirt, the other braced on his neck, holding him to him as Bakura steadily pushed and Marik pulled. As one but not.

About them the shadows turned.

White takes Black.

"What does this have to do with answer to murder question, Marik."

"Nothing," Marik muttered. "Nothing I have said does. I was just…" he gnashed his teeth in the man's ears, eyes glinting at the shiver that ran down the man's spine. "… fucking with you."

The interviewer hit the button on the recording machine, effectively stopping it.

"You see these pieces," Marik gestured to the board. "They are all different, just like Bakura and I. All of them. Things are decided for them, but in the end they are the same, they move, forward and back, taken and replaced. Each a step and careful move of some higher power."

"What are you trying to get at, Marik? You've told me a story, nothing that will help prove your innocence. In fact you said you'd answer some things for me, you haven't done any of that. You've told me a bunch of things that aren't related in any way."

"This is true. But you aren't listening."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you, Bakura and I are exactly alike, despite differences."

"What do you mean?"

"I killed her, because I chose to, not because I wanted to, but because I was defined from a young age. I'm your killer, sir. Too bad you turned the recorder off." Marik licked the side of the mans throat.

"So what does this have to do with anything?"

"Do you know what I am?"

"No."

"I am the darkness born from a boy who was destroyed by his own father, his hate and malice gather within him combined with a dark magic from a time much older, a dangerous collaboration, don't you think? You could call me a… forceful multiple personality disorder."

"Bent on anarchy? Please, I've seen Fight Club."

Marik laughed. "Yes and No. I care little for world destruction, just domination. Destruction is made for men like Bakura. All I sought to tell you is of choice. Bakura could of done all manner of things to stop me. He did not."

"W-what did you do?"

"I found out his secret to continual rebirth."

Black takes White.

"You bastard! How! How did you do this?!" Bakura snarled at Marik's fast disappearing appearance.

"I embedded part of myself within the puzzle. Simple enough. After all, you are the one that thought of it, Ba-ku-ra." The cold laughter ran out, but the darkness it had no difference.

"You will not survive it this time, I will make sure you will not Ma-rik."

"You best not, otherwise this would be far to boring. Inform me when you get out of this realm." Bakura reached forward to grab his shirt, but Marik was gone.

White takes Black.

"I thought you were friends! Lovers!"

"No, you are putting your restrictions on us, on our relationship. We are, by your definition, psychos, those sorts of restraints mean nothing to us. Eat or be eaten? Isn't that the phrase?"

"So he's still there?"

"Oh no, he's free. It didn't take him long to work out what I had done."

"What did you do?"

"As if I could tell you, Bakura."

"You have go to be joking, I'm - " the roomed turned dark. Appearances changed, and the roomed distorted.

"You caught me Marik."

"So you found out how to get out, huh?"

"As you said, it didn't take me long."

Marik began to walk back to his seat, he leant on the table. "Shall we finish our game, Bakura?"

Its still a stalemate.

Fin.

Afterahardday