(See bottom of page for disclaimers, and if the parentheses bug you, don't read them.)

Nightmare

I still feel him, sometimes.

Him. The Dark One. The being of ever-thirsting evil I allowed to possess me so many years ago. The reason that I did many of the things I have done—that I was damned, exiled to oblivion. The reason I, too, became a stealer of souls.

He came again tonight.

I don't remember where I was when it happened; it's always somewhere different. That's how he hunts: unpredictable and deadly. He lurks in the gloom, just barely allowing me to sense him, although I never know exactly where…and like a fool I begin to run. I run fast, but it doesn't matter—I'm not fast enough.

Never, never fast enough.

He swoops down like a predator, pinning me helpless beneath a fiendish black shadow. Helpless. I can't move, I can't see; my limbs fall prey to numbness. My lungs are frozen, pinpricked with needles of flame, and my mind screams something incoherent…whether it is for defiance or oxygen, I cannot tell. Helpless. The world before me is black, and against that a shadow darker than void—darker than anything, than nothingness. Necrophades.

( Wake me up inside )

Damn it, He is a shadow. He slithers just like the rest of them, never keeping a definite shape. Only…only the eyes—immortal Ra, they will haunt my soul forever—glowing like the coals of a Hell I have never seen, they alone remain constant. The devilish fires within them—fantastic parodies of light—only serve to make the shadow darker. And they laugh, silently, gleeful, as the shadow grows, twisting upon itself, glutting upon that paralyzing emotion I've so often pretended not to have.

As He leeches my strength away, another laugh constricts my heart. It does not reach my ears, but stifles my soul, suffocating me. My spirit recoils, and He only laughs deeper.

Little fool. Did you think you could escape Me?

And He moves close to smother me, tearing my soul from my body.

I don't know how I kept Him back. I must have, somehow, because in the end, I was still myself. He roars at me, furious, piercing my being with talons of sin.

How dare you defy Me! Insolent weakling! I own you! You are Mine

A whirlwind of angry voices erupting from nothingness, shrieking and howling and whispering like furies, slicing my being to shreds.

Mine! Mine! You belong to Me!

"No…"

I try to yell back, but my voice is lost in the tempest.

The screaming catapults to a deafening pitch, conjuring visions to flash through my mind. I know it all too well. His favorite weapons are coming into play, and I am powerless against them. You are weak, they tell me. Worthless. Nothing.

The Shadow has outdone Himself this time, tapping memories lost even to me.

( Wake me up inside )

They have razed my village to the ground. Faces I have known since birth, friends I spoke to just that morning…Merit emerges from the brush behind me, jubilant calls for mama dying on her lips. Quickly, I turn to cover her eyes, but she has already seen; her heartbreak pierces the air. Our parents lie slaughtered on the ground. Two towering monsters appear—have they done this?—to drag us from our ravaged home. Our anguished wails join those of the massacred dead, lending momentum to the uproar, puncturing more holes in my spirit.

"Please…"

My sister screams for me again, from years later, gashes marring her flesh as she crumples before my eyes. Merit! The sickening crack of the foreman's flail. Why can't I move?! She screams and screams and though I scream back with all my might, I cannot reach her side.

"…stop… "

The still, broken body of a lover, punished for remaining loyal to me—the betrayer. The thief. The darkness.

"STOP!"

It stops.

The numbness slithers from my limbs a little too quickly, and I am left reeling. Wha…what? This has never happened before. Dazed, I look around at the world of nothing. The tiniest fragment of hope flits across my disbelieving consciousness. Did I…have I…finally won? Is it even possible, after so long? It seems too unreal to be true.

/ Bakura. /

Ryou?

( Call my name and save me from the Dark )

I turn, and he is shining before the darkness, smiling as if nothing has happened. Only he could smile that way, as if the world was somehow inherently good, as if he never had trembled before a monster with his own face. Waves of untold relief break over me, and I smile back. If he's here, then it must be real. The shadows are already receding behind him; the presence of my light is chasing away my darkness.

He smiles brighter, brimming with innocence, and extends his hand to me…but as I reach to take it, something goes wrong. He jerks it back, stumbling away, his face melting into a strange expression. I move towards him, and he stumbles back further. I stop. Sheer horror has enveloped his features.

Am I too corrupted for even my own hikari?

No, something else is wrong. He is struggling—besieged—with something I can't even see, and not until the darkness slithers down his arm do I realize what is happening.

"No…not him."

The darkness is taking my loved ones again.

/ Bakura…help me… /

"Ryou!"

I begin to run again. This time, however, Time has turned against me; I can only move a few excruciating centimeters at a time. The darkness keeps him just out of reach, snaking its possessive tentacles around his waist, his neck. Ryou coughs, choking. You bastard! Don't touch him!

I summon what little strength I have left, prepared to reach him or die trying, but the shadows know me too well. With their filthy laughter whipping against us, they release Ryou. Utter surprise smoothes his features as he falls, and I hardly notice the onslaught of white-hot slashes—cutting me far more deeply than any physical blade—as a million fountains of crimson erupt from my hikari's body.

( Bid my blood to run )

I somehow manage to catch him before he collapses, cradling him close, as if by sheer will I can stop the precious lifeblood from running down his skin. He slumps against me like a broken marionette, staining my clothes. In my arms, he is cold and far too light. The ecstatic howls of Necrophades boom in the total darkness.

/ Bakura… /

His breathing is labored. His eyes, gazing unfocused, are already growing dim. And yet he tries to smile.

Please Ra, not him. Not.Him.

( Before I come undone )

It isn't supposed to happen this way; damn it, I can't exist without him. I'm only the parasite—I'm supposed to die. I deserve it! Never Ryou!

The doe-brown eyes slip into emptiness and I panic, reaching out with every scrap of my consciousness, desperate to halt his flight to Osiris. But I'm too late.

He's gone.

Necrophades shakes existence with his glee, whipping nothingness into a hurricane—devil's eyes leering down at me, victorious. Numb again, I struggle to shield Ryou's body, but He won't even grant me that. With a raging shriek, He swoops down once more and snatches it from my useless embrace.

( Save me from the Nothing I've become )

It's too much; I don't even have his body to hold onto. I scream. I do more than scream. I summon every drop of every torrent of emotion of every bit of my being and unleash them all into one long howl that out-roars even the wind, and I hope my lungs collapse from it. The shadows mock me mercilessly with Ryou's voice.

/ Bakura…Bakura… /

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

( Bring me to life )

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"BAKURA!"

With a snap, I rejoin the waking world. Drenched in sweat, my pajamas cling oppressively to my body and I gasp for breath, frightened by the violent pounding in my own chest. Ryou is leaning over me, concerned as only he can be.

( Call my name and save me from the Dark )

He sees me awake and sits at the edge of the bed, and waits until my breathing steadies. "You were screaming in your sleep again," he says at last. When he sighs, he looks both tired and relieved. "Bakura-san, please tell me what's wrong. And no lies about bad pork chops this time."

I try to sit up, and find the blankets tangled around my limbs, the sheet twisted snakelike around my neck. I wrestle them off, cursing everything and the Pharaoh, and Ryou smiles despite his obvious worry. He seems different here, in the blue half-light; softer somehow—or is it stronger? His eyes sparkle even in the dimness, and suddenly I feel an overwhelming thankfulness just to see him alive. My expression must have changed, because he looked at me strangely then, tilting his head to the side.

"Bakura-san?"

( Bid my blood to run / Before I come undone )

The next thing I know, I'm weeping into his shoulder, soaking the thin sleeve and the mane of hair nearly as unruly as my own. I don't even care that for the first time in centuries, my sobs are sticking in my throat, choking me, making me shudder and gasp; nor does it matter that I'm terrified, frustrated, overjoyed, and exhausted all at once. This time, he is warm within my arms. The numbness of my soul has been banished.

As the tears subside, I notice how quiet Ryou is. He is holding very still, almost rigid, and it strikes me that I have never allowed him to see me this way. Indeed, I've always hidden my softer emotions for fear that they should make me seem weak. Weakness and helplessness: two things I have always tried to avoid….

The belittling shrieks of the Shadow came crashing back, and I probably would have started crying again had Ryou not wrapped his arms around me.

( Save me from the Nothing I've become )

"Bakura, what's the matter?" comes the soft voice next to my ear.

"Nothing," I sniffle, bathing in his embrace. I don't care what the baka Pharaoh would say if he saw this—it feels too incredibly good to be held. "Bad dream."

He says nothing to that, but starts stroking my hair, the way a mother might to calm a child. The way my mother might have, once, although I cannot remember. He rocks slowly side-to-side as he strokes—a steady, lulling rhythm. It's strange to be so relaxed, so wonderfully comforting. I close my eyes.

"Don't worry," he murmurs at last, "You're safe now."

Safe…yes, safe. Safe in the arms of my light.

Safe, at least, for the moment, while he keeps my demons at bay.

( Bring me to life )

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Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is obviously not mine—that honor goes to Kazuki Takahashi-sama. I just respectfully borrow things, including Zorc Necrophades. (If you haven't seen the end of the series and have no idea what I'm talking about, see the Wikipedia entry for "Ryo Bakura.") The italicized words in parentheses are song lyrics from "Bring Me to Life" by the marvelous Evanescence, and obviously, not mine either.

However, this story—and my interpretation of Bakura's past, including Merit—is mine. Steal, and Zorc shall eat your soul.

Author's Note: Originally, I wasn't planning to include any sort of lyrics, but after I had already gotten the plot down in my head (and halfway on paper), I chanced to download a Yu-Gi-Oh! Music video—featuring Bakura, no less—set to Evanescence's Bring Me To Life, and I said something like "Hey, that's what I just did!" I know its cliché, but I really couldn't resist. (And since it turned into an inspirational accident, it wasn'ttechnically slacking.) I wrote this entire thing in less than a night, finishing at about 5 o' clock this morning. And thus—is Hell frozen over yet?—I officially close my first finished fanfic.

Please, for the love of muffins, review and tell me what you think! (Linzy, September 11, 2004)

Minor revisions on November 22/23, 2006 and November 18, 2007. (What do you know? It's 5 a.m. again.)