A City With A Name I Have Forgotten
Summary: After the pharaoh separates him and Ryou, Bakura finds himself wandering a city he doesn't know about and doesn't care about, looking for something inside himself that is quickly fading. This is actually the second chapter of Blessed Be Those Who Live but I'm dumb and only wrote it now, after uploading like, thirteen chapters.
Genre- Morally ambiguous introspection? I'm not sure this has an actual genre.
Rating- T for a bit of violence
Bakura stalked the alleys of the city. Walking among any shadows he could, and clinging to something that seemed to be leaving him too fast. Traces of a dark smoke that he relished on. Something that echoed his own thoughts back at him.
But it was leaving. Fast.
Some nights he just laid on the ground at the back of some alley, staring into the darkness until all his thoughts turned inwards and he stared at the one presence that had been with him since the start. Since he'd seen them all fall into that cauldron, mutilated and broken, torn apart like the useless beasts they were.
Beasts he had loved, of course, but still human beasts.
Or had he really loved them? He could only hear a childish voice telling him that yes, they did. He did.
Loud barking took his mind away from the darkness, and the shadows were again only shadows, and nothing talked to him from beyond them.
At the entrance of the alley some scruffy gray dog had gotten his leash tangled in a trash container and was tugging and barking like mad.
Bakura got up and walked towards the dirty thing, decided to stop it from making any more noise ever again.
But as he got close to the dog, it turned to him and barked one. Then barked at his leash, and stared at Bakura frantically. He took another step and the dog repeated its actions. One bark at him, one at the leash, and a frantic staring.
Bakura took out his knife.
"I'll give you this one for being smarter than the average human," he said, and cut the leash.
The dog ran away barking.
Bakura saw it leave, and then started walking in the opposite direction with the only intent of never meeting with the scruff again.
After a couple blocks he found the body of some lanky boy lying on the sideway with a stab wound on his side and a ball next to him.
Bakura looked at the boy's empty eyes for a while, before going towards where the dog had gone.
It didn't take him long to find another body, this one with bite marks all over. Few times had he seen such violence in a murder, but only this time did he feel like he understood.
The dog sat in the shadows whining pathetically. Like it didn't know whether to run back to the body of its master, or…
Bakura approached it and took off the leash, getting his sleeve bloody, but he didn't care.
"You got him, uh?" he said, and looked at the name tag. "Spotty. You got him good."
The dog looked at him with eyes that for the first time in millennia made Bakura wonder if animals could cry.
He broke open a vending machine to get a bottle of water and wash off the blood from the dog's snout. It was smarter than the average human, but that wouldn't save it if anyone found it with a bloody snout.
Spotty whined while Bakura cleaned him.
"No point in being a wuss now, you did what you had to," he said, and Spotty took a couple drinks from the bottle. "Your boy is dead, and you did what you had to and now the bastard is dead, and… No, don't look at me like that. I don't know what happens now".
The dawn found them sitting next to the entrance of a shelter, far away from the darker streets where boys shouldn't play with their dogs. There they waited until some girl came in and unloaded a big bag of dog food from her truck.
"Hey there," she greeted them with a tense smile, and opened the shelter's doors. "You need anything?"
"Yes. I want to leave this dog here. I found him on the street," Bakura had to carry him inside. Damned dog had already realized what was happening. "I heard you find houses for dogs here".
"Well, he's a bit old, and not very cute. I don't think anyone will want him," she had barely looked at him. "After a certain age people just don't bother with them".
"There must be someone who will want him. In fact, I want to make sure he does find a home, so I will do this the good and bad way," The girl turned around and Bakura put a bunch of bills on the counter and shoved the dog into her hands. "Here, this is for your efforts. But if I find out he isn't in a good home," he took out his knife and all the color drained from the girl's face. "I will be back, you can be sure of that".
And he left, wandering again, because for once he had been honest. He did not know what happened next.
Notes: Ok, I'll be honest now. I just wanted Bakura to have a dog in the later chapters of BBTWL, and this was the best I could come up with.