So this is the infamous blurbs I've been talking about. As you will be able to tell by the continuous -- I have written this over the course of about two weeks. And the days that I wasn't faintly going over it and deciding it wasn't complete crap, I was actually writing and I devide the two with -- but it is really all one story. (EDIT: This no longer applies)

This is very... different from any other story that I have written. I've done a few with Bakura being the bad guy, but I want to be more true to the story. I made him cruel, but I made it more in character, though eventually this will be a yaoi. I don't know how yet, my only outline is a song that will be the titles of my chapters. I don't know how long this will be, and I don't know where this is going, and I don't know if anyone will even like it. Comments are a good thing. If I don't get comments I think ppl think it sucks and I just don't update. I lose motivation, so please comment if you liked it. Or if you didn't, I'd like to know if I'm delusional or not.

But as I said before, this isn't polished, it's not perfect, and it may drag so... sorry.

EDIT: To my WONDERFUL watchers/reviewers THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm glad you like this story. However, I got extreme feedback from a friend of mine that says that the chapter is too long and that I should shorten it. This will help me a little because then I have more time to write my little 3-2 page blurbs. I'm having a hard time finishing up the next full chapter, every lyric means something and I need to complete it, so now I'll be able to update faster. So I'll have everything up soon, but I'm running out of time in class right now so I'll finish posting what I already had written by next week when I get back into my senior project hour again. And hopefully star posting new stuff, please stay with me on this, I'm really liking this story so far!

Disclaimer: Freai doesn't own Ryou Bakura, Arthur Bakura, or the spirit of the Ring.

--

"When your only friends are hotel rooms"

(Part 1)

--

His head hurt. Ached and throbbed though he did not know the source of the pain. Trying to open his eyes, he was stopped by a blinding white light, making the pain double as he shrunk away from the brightness. He was lying on a bed, and couldn't escape the light; rolling over to cover his eyes from the intruding light his head spun more and throbbed intensely. What had he done, did he fall and hit his head? No, then he wouldn't be on a bed. Had he died? Was this the end? A blinding white light? Oblivion. He had never thought of it, what it would mean to no longer exist. It was a nice thought, considering where he was the last time he was conscious.

Wait… where was he? He was… at his boarding school… in his dorm with all of the other boys. The other boys… his heart sunk deep into his stomach and he suddenly wished he WAS dead. He didn't want to wake up only to see he was in his bunk. He tried to swallow but his throat was dry, and his breathing seemed a little ragged. His chest hurt too, not from breathing though… did they beat him again? No, he knew what that felt like, the pain he felt now wasn't as dull, and it didn't hurt when he moved a muscle, but when he moved his skin. Still having his head buried into the blanket, he let his hand trail down his chest, there was something there. Where was his jacket? Why was his shirt undone? Cool metal met his fingers… what was it? Was he in a hospital and not the dorm like he had previously thought? No, the object was circular… it was that thing, that necklace that his father had sent him.

It came in a little cardboard box just a few weeks ago, on the inside he had found a note that said "Ryou – I'm sorry this isn't going to get to you for your birthday, and I'm sorry I'm not going to make it back to see you. Hope you're doing well in school. Love, Dad" His birthday had been five months ago. 'Ryou', that was his name. No one here in England could ever say it right, and they couldn't say 'Bakura' either but he blamed that on Star Wars. It was strange that he didn't think of England as his home, he was born there, and had never even gone to the place of his name's origin. But Japan seemed so much more welcoming than here. He had been born in London, and lived with his parents until he was eight. After that it had been boarding school after boarding school. Number five, he was laying in his fifth bunk at his fifth boarding school at the age of twelve. It wasn't always his fault though; first it was money, and then location, and the last few had been because of him… and the kids that he roomed with.

Ryou wasn't a very normal boy. His father, Arthur Bakura, who had a completely normal name also had a very abnormal job. He was an archaeologist for the Natural History Museum in London, and was gone… all the time. Ryou had gone with him a few times, but his father believed that he needed to be with children of his own age. So he sent his eight year old son to a boarding school, who then proceeded to skip two grades as soon as he got there. Raised on a dig site, Ryou knew enough to be considered a prodigy of his time, but… unfortunately, his peers did not share the same enthusiasm as his teachers.

Ryou was smaller than everyone else, had a pale complexion (even though he had been outside for the last three years of his life), and long pure white hair. The length was quickly solved, but the school did not allow him to dye his hair. Even to fit in. Being very shy and very meek he was easily pushed around, and any self-confidence was destroyed very quickly. Still small, still child-like, and still unbelievably brilliant, Ryou felt he could never escape the hell that was the boarding school he now resided in.

Trying to open his eyes once more, he slowly adjusted to the brightness and tried to look around, constantly reminded of the pain in his head as it throbbed in time with his heart beat. This was not his dorm room. The walls were white, blaringly white. There were no lights in the room, but there were no shadows. The bed he lay on had very soft colors, but was plain as could be. As he looked closer at the walls, ignoring the pain that shot through his head as he concentrated, he could see that there use to be things on the walls. Pictures that were now void of color or outline, and the moldings were white as well. The

carpet use to have a design but had been bleached beyond repair, as had a few pieces of furniture he had not noticed before. They were as white as everything else, and casted no shadows, so they blended into the walls and floor. It was strange and it hurt to look at it for very long. He closed his eyes once more, welcoming the darkness, but as he opened them again he noticed the room had changed. Shadows were starting to form around the furniture, right before his eyes, and the walls dimmed to an off-white grey. What was this room? And then he saw the door.

It wasn't there before he was sure of it. It was old wood, so old that it had to be bleached because of age. But it was grey, and as he stared at it pondering how its existence came to be, the color changed. It became more burgundy by the moment, and all Ryou could do was watch it in awe as it de-aged two hundred years in a matter of minutes. Dumbly, he tried to slide off the bed, nothing really ached though he knew it should. The carpet was soft, and he was barefoot. Looking down he realized his clothes had changed. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, like he use to in Cairo. And the necklace his father had given him was gone. What was going on?

Standing up, he wavered on his feet, but eventually caught his balance. Was he so weak that he didn't notice someone coming in to help him? Why didn't he notice his clothes were changed? Was he just imagining everything and was really in the infirmary? He couldn't understand anything. But as he tried to take a step towards the door his knee gave out and he crashed to the ground. The carpet was suddenly hard, and it felt as if he had hit a concrete floor. Tasting copper, he saw the first colors since he woke up in the strange room. Blood, bright crimson dripping onto the pure white carpet. It would stain he was sure, trying to stop the nose bleed, he cupped his hand just under his nose and mouth, tasting the blood in his teeth. But as soon as he started looking around for something to help stop it the bleeding ceased. He blinked in confusion, large chocolate brown eyes staring at the floor waiting for more drops to fall. But none did. Before he could start cleaning himself up though, the door shook.

His head snapped up, it had shook as if someone had accidently bumped into it. Was there someone there? He wanted to ask but was afraid to speak… he wasn't sure if he could. The silence he had been in for however long he had been awake had now consumed him entirely. He was scared to shatter it. Trying to find his feet, he dragged himself over to he door slowly. He reached out to touch the door, not sure if it was real, but the rough wood that he felt confirmed it just as much as the bloody fingerprints he left behind. Grasping the old brass door-knob, he half-expected to find the door locked. For some reason he felt that he was forbidden to leave the room, wherever the room might be. And as he turned it the lock clicked and denied him passage. Sighing, he let his hand drop and just stared at it. Wondering what to do, going back to bed sounded very inviting at the moment. But then the lock clicked again. He waited for the door to open but it never did, was the lock just stuck? It had to be. There was no other explanation.

Turning the door knob again, it turned all the way this time, and the door opened with a gusty breath of air. It was dark on the other side. Should he really leave the room? Looking over his shoulder at the blinding walls and colorless patterns, he needed no motivation. He stepped into the darkness.

His bare feet meet the cold wet street, and the rain soaked him to the bone not a moment after he stepped outside. Wait, outside? Looking around, a dim light on the wall of the building he just walked out of gave enough light to see the pouring rain and the building right across from him. He was standing in an alleyway, much like back in London. How did he get to London? Actually he knew this alley! The building across from him was the museum! He looked back at the closed door, had that always been there? He had explored every crevasse of the museum when he was little, how had he not seen it before? Had it been blocked off, he was probably forbidden to go there in the first place. Looking back at the museum, he searched for the solid cement doors, and found them. The light above them was burned out, and the doors were locked and chained. Did he really have no other option but to go back to the white room? Walking over to them, avoiding large bits of gravel and glass, he finally reached the doors, and took hold of the chains. They were ice cold.

He blinked through his water-logged bangs at the door again, didn't there use to be windows on them? And they were painted a brownish-red last he remembered. There were black, so black that in this darkness he was surprised he had seen them. Only because he had remembered them had he found them, any one else would just stand in the alley way forever.

Starting to walk further down the alley, he thought he could go around and see if a janitor would let him in through the front doors. But a hand colder than the chains on the door grabbed him by the arm. Crying out in surprise at the cold and the other's sudden presence, looking back to see who it was… he screamed.

He was looking at himself… or so he had thought at first. The eyes were darker, and crueler, as was the smirk that was set firmly on the thin pale lips. Even through the rain, the other's hair was all over the place, and it was taller than him. It was wearing the button up shirt and uniform pants of his boarding school, what he had been wearing only moments before. He looked so much OLDER than him, but it was himself. He really was dead.

The other chuckled mockingly, shaking his head a little. "You're not dead," it told him through the rain. The water was barely touching him, only lightly wetting his clothes so they clung to his body, and his hair drooped slightly from the weight of the water. "And you're not dreaming either." Ryou hadn't even thought that he was dreaming, but it was very obviously the next explanation he would have come up with. "Of course," the other drawled in a faint British brogue, "that might make this easier to except if you think it's a dream and then later realize in horror that it is all real." The smile on his face was so wide it could have split his face, with a dangerous gleam in his eyes. Ryou know that it was toying with him, like he was the most amusing thing that it had seen in a long time. That realization hit him full force, nothing he thought here were assumptions, everything was truth. And anything that was assumption the other knew before he did, like it was in his mind. "Now you're catching on."

The figure took a step towards Ryou, and almost in time with it he took a step back. A silver eye-brow disappeared underneath the wild bangs. He clicked his tongue and took another step forward, "now, now, don't be like that yadoneshi." Ryou hesitated at the title, in which it got another step closer without him keeping the distance even.

"Yadoneshi?" He had never hated the sound of his own voice so much before. It was soft and high-pitched with a distinct British accent, even when speaking Japanese. And his mind couldn't translate fast enough, "w-what.." taking another step back his legs gave out again and he crashed to the wet cement. The other laughed at his misfortune, a laugh that was almost swallowed up in the sound of the rolling thunder and pouring rain. Suddenly, faster than Ryou could blink, the other was no longer hovering over him and was kneeling on the ground too close for comfort. Ryou scrambled to get away, but that ice cold grip caught him again.

"You know what it means," the other drawled. He leaned in, causing Ryou to freak out more, but he couldn't move. When did the wall appear behind him? The figure nuzzled his wet hair in a mock-loving gesture, while the grip he had on the boy tightened to the point of pain. The other didn't say anything, he didn't need to, and Ryou didn't need to completely understand the situation to understand what the other was smiling about. It was too happy, too utterly beside itself that it was finally free. Free from what he didn't know. But he somehow knew, somehow felt, that he was stuck with this strange… thing that looked exactly like him. That he could never escape it, no matter how hard he tried. And like any good landlord, yadoneshi, he had to keep his border happy. The thing was stroking his hair as he realized all this, but didn't understand what any of it meant. Where were they? "In your mind," it whispered to him, trying to contain its maniacal laughter. What? Inside his head? But how… how do you leave? How did you escape it? "You wake up… when I let you." He was asleep? It had more control over him than it was letting on, didn't it? The other just smirked wider, showing vampire-like fangs, as a response. His shoulders starting to shake in silent laughter. What was going on?

Ice touched his forehead, cold dry ice that made him flinch at the contact. It let the kiss linger, as the smirk never left its lips. "All in good time. Now go back to sleep, your head still hurts. Remember?"

Searing pain shot through his head as it said that. He screamed, collapsing against the wall and holding his head tightly. The laughter echoed through his head, and he couldn't stop screaming. He was still screaming when the nurse found him on the floor outside the infirmary. How he got there… nobody knew.

--

TBC

--

Okay, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review, I'm more motivated to write if I know ppl like this somewhat...