Thank you to my dear reviewers! I'm glad you likee.
Anyway, this bleeding story is taking forever to get finished satisfactarily, so I have decided and I'm probably going to regret this, but oh well... to post up the next 'bit' as a chapter in its own right. So, basically, this just went from a oneshot to a short fic thing. Heh.
On the bright side, I've got my last exam on Thursday, so after that I'll have more time to sit & tweak the fic, and then - hurrah! - I'll actually finish something that isn't a oneshot. xD
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own YGO or the characters thereof. I only own... er... that ball of fluff over there. And Ryou's tree. I'm quite attached to that, too.
"'Bye Mom!" Tea called cheerily as she stepped out of the door, pausing for a moment to breathe in the fresh air. She had been studying for some time now, and it was nice to be outside again. Bending to smell the pretty pink roses along the pathway, the brunette began her walk down to Ryou's house. Her mother had offered to drive her, but she had declined; she loved to walk, and when she did it alone it gave her space to think, to set her mind in order to the rhythm of her footsteps.
She hummed as she went, her long legs taking leisurely paces as she strolled along. Having checked the big kitchen clock before she left, she knew that she didn't need to worry about being late – early, maybe, but not late. The girl hated being late; to her, not being punctual was quite disrespectful, and showed a bad attitude. And if anyone had a good attitude about life, it was Miss. Tea Gardener.
Soon, sooner than she'd thought possible, she reached the white palisade fence that separated Ryou's house from the rest of the street. Pushing the gate open, she made her way up the garden path, lifting a tulip to her nose and touching the big, old tree that dominated most of the garden gently as she passed it. She loved flowers – she always jokingly blamed her surname when anyone asked about her passion for all things green and growing.
Lifting her hand, she rapped politely on the door. An irritably sullen voice from within yelled, "Go away, we're not buying!" Tea giggled quietly, wondering why Bakura seemed to mistake her for a door-to-door salesman every time she popped in to visit. It must have something to do with the way she knocked. She knocked again, more insistently this time, and called, "I'm not trying to sell you something, Bakura!"
She groaned when his only response was to swear at her, and then tell her to go away. "Just let me in, Bakura!" she called again, tapping a foot impatiently. "Come on! I'm here to see Ryou, anyway."
The door opened a crack, and Tea was greeted with a slice of extremely annoyed face. "He's out," the face said flatly, and the door began to close again.
With a speed and agility developed from having to go through this rigmarole more than once before, Tea jammed her foot into the door, stopping it from closing. "I'll wait," she said firmly, pushing at the door in an attempt to open it.
"Whatever." The door was released so quickly that she accidently forced it wide open with the strength of her pushing, making it bang on the wall and causing her to unbalance enough to fall over.
As she clambered, now becoming irritated, to her feet, she caught a glimpse of spiky white hair disappearing up the stairs. After closing the door gently and dusting herself off, she put her bag on the couch and went upstairs, her mouth forming a determined line. "Bakura!" she called upon reaching the landing, hands on hips. "Where are you?"
"I'm on a yacht in the Bahamas, what do you think?"
Tea rolled her eyes, sighing in annoyance. And her mood had been so nice when she'd left home, too. "I'm not in the mood for sarcasm, Bakura!"
"Aw. I'm sympathetic. Now go away and wait for Ryou somewhere where I don't have to so much as smell you."
Tea huffed, but she knew that she wasn't going to get anywhere with him anytime soon. She clomped downstairs and seated herself on the couch, checking her watch. Hmm, that was unlike Ryou – he was late. Five minutes, but still. After a while, she picked up the remote and flicked on the television, beginning to flick through the awful afternoon television. Outside, the wind began to pick up, dark clouds gathering overhead – but Tea was oblivious in her seemingly futile search for something decent to watch.
"– please do not leave your homes at this time."
Tea blinked, her attention caught by the serious tone of the anchorman. She listened to him in silence for a few moments, her face slowly creasing first with worry, and then with fear. A hurricane – Hurricane Michelle, to be exact – was heading their way. She'd heard about it before, but it was supposed to have gone right around Domino City. Think again.
Leaving the television on, in case the anchorman said anything else important, Tea got to her feet and returned to the staircase. "Um, Bakura…?" she said uncertainly as she climbed, not really sure why she wanted to subject herself to the youth's acidic temper, but aware that at this point she just wanted to see another human face. Even if it wasn't a face she particularly liked.
"What. Do. You. Want?" Bakura's door slammed open, and his head poked out into the corridor, his mane of white hair wild and a scowl on his tanned face. "Can't a guy get some peace around here?" he asked the world at large, ignoring the fact that Tea was staring blankly at him, taking in his unruly appearance. Usually, when she saw him at school for example, he seemed to be quite well-dressed, and whatever messiness was about his person was the intentional, bad-boy-charm stuff. This was… fairly unexpected.
She cleared her throat. "Er… I just thought you might want to know… there's a hurricane coming. It's going to be a big one, at least according to the weatherman."
"That's niiiiiice." Bakura's head retreated, and his door slammed closed again. He seemed unable to move a door without making a noise.
Tea glared at the space where he'd been, and turned to go back downstairs, muttering, "Well, fine. That's what you get for being nice around –"
It was very sudden, but to Tea it appeared to happen in slow motion. There was a great creaking sound, and the sudden awareness of how much the wind had picked up outside, how hard the rain seemed to be drumming on the roof. The creaking got louder, now accompanied by the sound of a thousand ropes under extreme pressure. Tea's breath caught in her throat, and she began to back away slowly, her eyes wide, as with a tired sound of defeat, something fell on the front of the house, and the world went dark.
She screamed once, shock getting the better of her.
"What in the name of – oh geez." Bakura was suddenly beside her, staring into the darkness with an oddly apprehensive look on his face. He sighed, and then said in a dull monotone, "Oh, perfect."
"What – what happened?" Tea asked, finally getting a grip on herself and batting away the flutterings of hysteria. She was somehow surprised to find that she was shaking. Bakura did not appear to have heard her – he was staring down into the darkness with an unreadable expression on his face, as much of it as she could see in the darkness. Her eyes seemed to have adjusted a bit, but she was still practically blind for all intents and purposes.
Bakura rolled his shoulders and, completely ignoring her, began to walk cautiously down the stairs. His movements were surprisingly catlike, his body seeming now more lithe than skinny. Tea watched him in silence for a moment and then, impulsively deciding that it was better to be at least with someone, even if they didn't even acknowledge her presence, than to be on that dark landing alone.
She very nearly walked right into his back, and was only saved by the fact that she was carefully testing the air in front of her with both the hand that was not holding the banister and feet to stop herself falling headlong down the stairs in the dark. Not a fun prospect. As it was, her hand touched his shoulder before she took the step that would have made the two collide.
Bakura whipped around, but he only sighed and rolled his eyes when he saw who it was. "Are you still here?" he asked in a tone of complaint, staring at her in sudden irritation. "Oh, great. Just great."
"What? What's great?"
Bakura gave her a look, and said flatly, "A tree has fallen on my house, for which my annoying light will probably blame me, and because of it I'm stuck here for gods know how long with you!"
Tea's eyes widened in shock, and – choosing not to hear the second part – she gasped, staring into the darkness and shivering in the sudden wind running rampant through the house. "A tree fell on your house?!"
"It's there if you don't believe me. Great stupid hulking thing." Bakura snorted, shaking his head. "Ryou should have let me chop it up for firewood a long time ago."
"Trees are beautiful, and should not be 'chopped up'!" Tea said, suddenly offended, although not quite sure why exactly. "Anyway, it was the wind that blew it down. It wasn't the tree's fault."
Bakura stared at her in disbelief for a long moment. "You actually – oh, never mind." He turned and started back up the stairs, muttering to himself in what Tea recognised from Yami as being Ancient Egyptian. Yugi's 'dark' half – a laughable way to describe him if Bakura also fitted into that category – also had a tendency to use it for swearing when necessary. Tea didn't approve of swearing, but she was at least grateful that he did so in a foreign language.
She thought about following him, but decided that it was probably not the best idea at this point – it would only irritate him further, and she'd seen him irritated. It wasn't exactly a pretty sight, to put it euphemistically. So, she walked cautiously through the darkness, arms outstretched before her; she had absolutely zero faith in Bakura coming down to help her if she fell and hurt herself, so she wasn't taking any chances. It seemed to be getting windier and windier as she moved through the front hall, and she figured that the tree must have created holed through which more wind could blow.
There it was. A massive branch, bigger than two of her waists, was lying in the middle of the lounge area. Her eyes trailed upwards, and an involuntary shiver passed through her as she made out the rest of the tree in the dim light from a faraway glimmer of lightning. She walked towards to, a stricken expression on her face as she took in the damage that had been done to the old tree, and almost managed to stand right beside it before a gust of wind hurled a hefty log into her stomach, sending her flying backwards to land in a heap on the floor. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming, and warily prodded her stomach, wincing as her fingers found the newly-formed bruise. A bruise… but nothing seemed to be broken, thank goodness.
Slowly, she got to her feet, wincing every time her bruise twanged painfully. She could not stay down here, she knew, for the wind was picking up and at any minute a larger branch could hit her, coming out of nowhere like the first. As much as she disliked being in Bakura's presence, it was clear that upstairs was a hell of a lot safer than downstairs at this point.
At least Bakura didn't throw bits of tree at her.
There it is, folks. Don't forget to drop a review in the basket as you go out... -wink-
