***I told a few ppl this had 8 chapters. My bad, it has 9. I can't count. Here's chapter 2***

Something happened in the Shadow Realm after Battle City, something that changed him, but he couldn't remember what. For whatever reason, he'd been kicked out - vomited out of the darkness and back into existence. He woke up in the streets, wearing the clothes he'd been banished in. Since Marik had had on those clothes, it should have been impossible. Although, the fact that he had his own body was also impossible, so he supposed the clothing wasn't all that odd considering.

He followed Ryou into the small, one bedroom apartment. Wall scrolls and posters covered the living room walls. Bookshelves stood overflowing with games, DVDs, comics, and figurines. The room was busy, but not messy. It looked... comfortable. He grit his teeth and scowled at boardgames in their bright colored boxes, and the two oversized beanbag chairs in front of the television that looked large enough to curl up and nap on if given the opportunity. Everything in the room was too nice, too lived in, reminding him that he had no true past of his own, just memories from Marik.

In the kitchen, he sat down in a chair, propping his elbows on the table and using his hands to cradle his chin. Ryou busied himself filling a kettle with water for tea.

"Your hands are shaking."

Ryou looked down at them. "A little, I guess. I'll be fine."

"Your feet are still red from walking on the cold sidewalk," he said with almost a bored tone. He remembered, from the time when he and Marik shared a body, how argumentative and stubborn a Bakura could be. He realized it wasn't fair to compare them like that. He wouldn't like it if Ryou compared him to Marik, but Ryou did seem equally stubborn.

Ryou smiled at him. "Still angry that I wouldn't let you carry me like those girls?"

"You let me eventually." He snorted, looking away. "But it's not like I care about something stupid like that."

Maybe he cared a little. He'd never felt casual human contact before. He'd known battle contact - victims lashing out against their death - but not simple touching. When the first girl had wrapped her arms around his neck and hid into his chest as he carried her home, he'd been amazed with the sensation. He was never able to decide what enticed him more - the simple, physical contact, or the fact that she acknowledged his efforts to protect her. Neither of the two girls had stared at him as if he were a monster for killing their attackers. Neither screamed at him, or ran from him. They only stared at him with wide, grateful eyes, knowing that they were safe because of what he'd done.

He growled a little, angry with himself. Marik hadnever thanked him. It shouldn't matter. He shouldn't care, but he did, and that was a new feeling.

He broke out of his thoughts when Ryou tried to pour him a cup of tea. Most of the pale liquid reached the cup, but the rest splashed onto the tabletop because of Ryou's trembling hands. He looked up and glared at the other male wearing his cloak. "Will you change into dry clothes already? Shit, you really will make yourself sick if you stay here like an idiot playing host instead of taking care of yourself."

Ryou sighed, setting down the tea cozy and slipping the purple cape from his shoulders. "I guess I could use a hot shower and my pajamas."

He waved Ryou away. "Get out of here. I won't break anything, or steal anything, or kill anyone while you're gone." He gave Ryou a predatory, toothy grin. "I can control myself when it suits me."

"Hmmm, I wonder about that." Ryou handed him the purple cape.

He reached out for it; their hands brushed together. He almost dropped the material at the unexpected sensation of skin, but managed to pull it towards him instead, growling a little as if the coincidence had been Ryou's fault.

"Sorry." Ryou frowned, turning and disappearing.

A moment later he heard water running from a room over. He wrapped the cape back over his shoulders, noticing that it carried Ryou's smell - subtle, but pleasant. He ripped the fabric away and tossed it over the back of the chair, resting his forehead against the table and trying to stop all the thoughts in his head. The sound of the running shower soothed his mind, and he enjoyed the relative peace from his usual vortex of over analytical self-musings.

When he finally sat up, he tried the tea and realized it'd grown cold. Glancing at the time on the microwave, he frowned. He stood up, wandering out of the kitchen and down the hallway. The hall was a strip of shadow and pitch, but he never had his host-ego's problem with the dark.

The sound of water came from a door to his left. He paused and knocked. "Ryou?" He didn't hear anything, so he shouted louder. "Hey, Ryou!"

A muffled reply was all he heard. It sounded like just a minute, but he wasn't sure, so he sat there, for exactly one minute, before knocking louder and harder on the door. "Quit fucking around."

Another muffled, distressed reply. He scowled at the door as if it had insulted him and pushed it open, popping his head inside the bathroom. He expected steam and shower heat. Fog clung to the mirror, but it was fading. He didn't understand until he saw Ryou, standing beneath a cold stream of water, shivering and crying.

"Go away. I'll be out in a moment," he whispered, sniffling and trying to play off his tears as shower water.

"What the fuck? Are you trying to get sick?" He marched to the shower and turned off the water.

"What are you doing?"

"Being your mother." He grabbed a towel and started drying Ryou.

The pale, slighter male punched at his chest, hands cold from running the shower too long. "Don't touch me. I can dry myself. I've gone quite some time without a mother thank you very much."

Marik's former shadow started laughing, almost dropping the towel because of how his chest shook with chuckles even as Ryou continued to punch him.

"What's so funny?"

"You're punching me is fucking cute! It feels like butterfly wings."

An angry scream exploded from Ryou's mouth. He used his right fist to uppercut and reached one of the former Marik's eyes. He fell back, still laughing, but also holding his eye because it felt bruised.

"Oh god, I'm sorry." Ryou checked the other's eye. "I'm sorry... I'm..." He curled his hands against his chest as more sobs shook his slender, white frame.

He reached for the towel that he'd dropped on the floor and went back to drying Ryou, still laughing at the slighter man's assault. He nudged Ryou towards the counter where a pair of blue-stripped pajamas rested in a perfect square of folded cloth.

Ryou dressed himself, then allowed his companion to lead him back into the kitchen and sit him down. He dried the tears on his pajama sleeve and stared at the former Marik as he refilled the kettle with fresh water. "What are you doing?"

"Making tea. It got cold because you took too long."

"I can do it."

"Yes, you can, but I'm already doing it."

Ryou sniffed, dabbing at his eyes again. "You know, I thought you would be... much worse."

"Because of Battle City?"

"Because of the stories I've heard about Battle City."

"I wasn't me then. I was Marik."

"Then who are you now?"

"I'm... Marik. I guess." He shrugged. "Alters don't always choose names."

Ryou blinked. "You don't want your own name?"

He closed his eyes. "It still feels like I'm Marik... but then he's Marik. I've always thought of myself as Marik, and him as Marik."

"That never gets confusing?"

He shook his head, re-opening his eyes. "No."

"Hmmm..." Ryou gazed off into nothing for a moment. He only half returned when he spoke again. "After a while, I thought of him as Bakura and that never confused me either, so I think I understand."

He poured the tea into Ryou's mug, noticing the frown pointed in his direction. "What? Did I do it wrong?"

"Your eye is turning purple."

"My eyes are always purple."

"No- well, I mean, yes, they're a very nice shade, but I meant the skin around your eye is bruising." Ryou stood up and marched to his freezer, taking out an ice pack and wrapping it in a dish cloth. "Here." He pressed it to the other Marik's eye.

He stood and allowed Ryou's doctoring, a wide, boyish grin on his face. "You think they're a nice shade?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"My eyes."

"Oh." A slight dust of pink rushed across his cheeks. "I suppose I did say that." He pulled down the ice for a moment to look into both of the other Marik's eyes. "What about Mariku?"

"What about it?"

"Well, Marik is a hard name to say."

"I'm sorry if my Egyptian name is too inconvenient for your cute, little Japanese mouth to say," he retorted, both echoing Ryou's earlier comment (about damsel in distress stereotypes) back at him, while returning the compliment for his eyes.

Ryou's cheeks grew a touch more pink as he pressed the ice back to his companion's eye. "I simply meant that if you feel like you're still Marik, but wanted some distinction, that could be a compromise."

"And it had nothing to do with the fact that it'd be easier for you to say?"

Ryou shrugged. "Nice bonus for me?"

He leaned a little closer. His one good eye trained on Ryou. "Sure. You can call me Mariku instead."

For a moment, Ryou smiled, but it dropped to a frown as he looked at Mariku's eye. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so, sorry."

Marik pressed a huge, brown hand against Ryou's mouth. "If you apologize one more time, I will punch you back so we can be even."

Ryou moved Mariku's hand. "Aren't you mad at me?"

He shrugged. "Anyone else, and I would have snapped their neck on reflex, but... and no offense, but... you're not very threatening." He stared at Ryou for another moment. "Is it because he controlled you for so long? When you had the Ring? Is that why you're so out of sorts?"

Ryou made a noise in his throat, neither agreeing or disagreeing. "I never wanted to be that weak again, to have all my control just stripped away, but it happened. When they pinned me down I had no control over myself... and I hate it... and then there were the memories of Pegasus... It's not one thing. It's all of them. All the memories, and feelings, and it's all spinning around my head. I can't stand it."

Mariku stared at Ryou. "I know... how that feels."

"I'm still sorry - please don't hit me."

Mariku laughed again. When his laughter died down the kitchen fell into a comfortable silence. Mariku shook his head a bit once he realized he'd been staring at Ryou.

Ryou smiled, sat down, and sipped his tea. "It's good."

"I like coffee," he said, not sure why he was speaking so freely. Perhaps it was because he knew that Ryou understood what it was like to share a body with another consciousness. "But I figured out the caffeine makes it worse."

"Makes what worse?"

"Wanting to fight or break things - break people. I've been trying to switch to tea, but I miss it, the strong, bitter taste."

"So you're fighting it? I mean, wanting to hurt people."

"I'm trying to figure it all out. I've been at the library every day since I've returned."

"The library?" Ryou asked, as if he didn't believe Mariku. "What do you do at the library?"

He grinned, sipping his tea and relishing the burn on his tongue. "Read books. Why? Is there something else to do there?"

"No, not really. You just don't strike me as a reader."

"You don't strike me as the kind of person that would slice someone's face open with a knife."

Ryou's eyes dropped to the table. His expression crumbled with guilt.

Mariku shook his head. "Don't look upset. I meant that as a compliment."

Ryou stared at the bundle of cloth between them on the kitchen table, the knife still wrapped within. "You would, but I feel horrible."

"Dissociation."

Ryou lifted his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"That's what I read about. Dissociation and DID. The books are old, though. The internet was a little more helpful. I found a forum. I even spent one day chatting with another alter named Sasha." He chuckled. "Apparently he named himself that because it sounded feminine and he knew that would piss off his other self."

Ryou tilted his head, looking at Mariku with interest. "If it's not rude to ask, what exactly do two alter egos talk about over the internet?"

Mariku shrugged. "We mostly talked about the right to body time."

Ryou started laughing. Mariku scowled at him, and he lifted up his hands as if to defend himself. "It's not like that. I'm not teasing you - I just know how that is." He sighed. "Makes me kinda feel like an alter ego, too."

Mariku's scowl lifted back into it's former grin. "Welcome to the club."

"At least I have my body back now, and you have one of your own."

"Yeah, I'm lucky in a way, but at the same time..."

Ryou slid his hand across the table, as if he wanted to take up Mariku's hand although he didn't grasp it. "You can tell me."

"I was a coping mechanism for the things Marik couldn't handle. I was his hatred, but I was also his desire, too. He wanted to be stronger, so I'm strong. He wanted to be safe, so I destroyed the one that hurt him. He wanted to lash out at the Pharaoh, so I challenged the Pharaoh and his friends to Shadow Games. I know I was an over-dominant alter, but-" he slammed his tea on the table, knuckles white from gripping the cup. "He didn't care if we lived or died and I wanted to live, dammit. Why shouldn't I have taken over? And now..." Mariku looked around the kitchen as if it held a secret beneath the layer of wallpaper. "What do I do? I always acted out Marik's desires before, but now I'm on my own... that's-" Mariku shut his eyes and turned away.

"Overwhelming?" Ryou offered.

"Frightening." Mariku grit his teeth after his confession. He didn't like the word. He didn't get scared; Marik got scared, and he dealt with the fears. "It's frightening to be an alter without a main ego to feed off of."

Ryou made an understanding sort of coo. "Maybe this is stupid, but I kinda felt the same way after the Spirit left. He spent so much time in control, that when I got my body back to myself I was lost. I couldn't cope with something as simple as being in control of myself for an entire day. I slept all the time just so I could be unconscious for a while, and even now I'll have these weird moments where I feel... wrong. I feel wrong because I'm in control of my own body, and then I feel stupid because I know it's not normal to feel that way."

Mariku let go of his tea cup, allowing one of his hands to overshadow Ryou's. They looked at each other across the table in silence, and Mariku wondered why his heart felt so skittish as it beat in his chest.

Ryou shrugged. "Why am I complaining? I promised to make you dinner."

"Dammit, quit being polite and go to bed. You need the rest." Mariku stood up, the chair scraping against the cream colored linoleum. "I'll go."

Ryou stood up quick so he was level with Mariku. "Don't go."

Mariku glanced over his shoulder to look at Ryou, eyebrow raised to question him.

Ryou shrugged. "I need to eat anyway. We could get takeout?"

Mariku grabbed his cloak and wrapped it around his shoulders. "I know a good place. I could pick it up and bring it back here."

"Let me give you some money."

He shook his head. "I got it."

Ryou blinked. "Do you have a job?"

Mariku shook his head no.

Ryou winced. "You... you didn't steal it, did you? Because I'd rather not use money that-"

"It's mine," Mariku interrupted him, teeth flashing in a manic grin. "I sort of stole it from Marik. I know all his account information, but I figured that bastard owed me. Besides, he has more money than you may think. He won't miss what I took."

Ryou sighed, shuffling out of the kitchen and going towards his couch. "Nevertheless... it's not really me saying thank you if you buy the dinner."

Mariku stepped behind Ryou, whispering in his ear. "Well, you could always kiss me like the other two did."

Ryou jumped at the sound of Mariku's voice so close to his ear. It made Mariku laugh. He strolled out the door before Ryou could respond.