Where we last left our beloved bishounen, they were all tied up and facing L and her daughter's fan girlish wrath..
Yami no Bakura: Hell hath no fury, bitch.
L: Don't use such language. A rather impressionable toddler is present amongst us, thank you.
Ryou: I don't think she's rather attentive to us right now, though..
-All of them stare blankly as they watch L's daughter have tea with Jou-
Yami no Bakura: See? Now, where was I? Oh, yes: Bitch.
L: Oh, now it's on..
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or its sexy girlish men.
- - - -
In my youth, I had grown up with an ignorant love for The Lord. For the psalms, hymns and quiet rituals of the Catholic church, for the stories my father read to me from night to night. The angels I found beautiful and I wept for Michael as he had to slay the first bourns of the still Pagan Egypt for their defiance of the Lord. I fasted and made The Sign of the Cross every time I felt blessed (which as a child being less cynical, I did so often..) and would say the most insignificant things I felt were my "sins" to a priest when in a Confession; Father, I have sinned. Of what, my child? I lied to daddy. I was afraid he would be angry with me. Entering the church always sent a wave of serenity to me as I would dip my middle and index finger in Holy Water, whispering quietly to myself, 'In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit..'
I had happily made my First Holy Communion by the time I was eight years of age, eagerly attending Catechism classes on Wednesday nights, jubilantly accepting the gifts of Eucharist, greedily consuming Christ's Body and Blood. Each time Lint came, I picked difficult things to give up, refusing to wipe away the ashes on my forehead. So foolish those days seem, so ignorant. I had been gifted with a soft, beautiful voice others told me. My teachers believed me to be an angel sent from the Lord, blessing their humble church with my immaculate, solemn voice that matched my wide eyes and pouting lips. My unnatural silver locks falling shaggily everywhere did not add to the appearance of heavenly decadence, my snowy skin soft looking, rounded cheeks. The face of an angel.. How often did my family and church mates ask me to sing to them? My father being the intelligent man he is had a deep appreciation for different cultures and languages. Him himself was fluent in several and often taught me how to sing variations of Biblical hymns in other languages, Latin being his favorite (as well as one of my own); 'Dies irate, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla. Teste David cum Sibylla, quantus tremor est futures. Recordare, Jesu pie, quod sum causa tuae viae..'
But with age lessened my ignorance and with a new found maturity I read through my once sacred passages and perceived them in new ways. I remember being outraged of finding that Eve was not the first female the Lord had created. The depictions of Lilith angered me, as did the story of Samson and Delilah. Before I had viewed Delilah as some sort of heathen woman, whom of which should rightfully be condemned. After all, didn't she weaken her supposed beloved by the trickery of cutting her lover's magnificent hair, seducing him with her obvious devilish sexual charm? However, the inevitability of change was possibly the few consistencies with myself (I seem to be a breathing oxymoron), so in time the point of view that the church had bestowed upon me had shifted. It was obvious that Samson loved Delilah to a certain extent (or was at least infatuated with her), but who was to say that Delilah didn't love Samson back? Perhaps it was in her love that she could not take being taunted and misperceiving this as ridicule as the source of Samson's strength was constantly being fibbed? Perhaps her betrayed could be possibly justified by her love in that she realized that Samson's infatuation was merely just that? Being younger and more melodramatic, I thought to myself, If I were a woman and knew the man I loved would never love me back.. I would finally snap as well. Delilah got her money, Samson died by the hands of his foes.. All's fair in love in war, after all. As far as my anger towards having to find on my own that Lilith was Adam's first wife, the first woman to walk the Earth (that is, if you believe in Creationism). The fact that Lilith was a strong woman who demanded equality and separated himself from her arrogant husband seemed gallant to me and that in her strength that I had always admired in a woman, she was punished that a hundred of her children were to die each day. While in reading further into the subject, becoming obsessive (as I often do in research, even then) as Avetik Isahakyan stated in his works, "Though Adam's lips said Eve, his soul always echoed Lilith" struck me as horribly perverse. The endless scriptures of women being portrayed as heathens or disposable angered me, as if I was seeing for the first time. I was about thirteen, I believe, when I held this discussion with my father, stating my new found point of view of Delilah and Lillith being misperceived and seemed to me as being rather strong, righteous women that reminded me of famous woman revolutionary figures. I found them to be charming in a way, while my father remained old fashioned and wrinkled his nose in distaste.
"Son, do not question what the Testament proclaims. Our opinions are irrelevant at this point, and it is the vision of the Lord we must contain. Whether we think these women were good or evil does not matter--Just God's word." I was dumbstruck. Never had I pegged my father as being a religious fanatic, lacking a will or opinion of his own. For the first time in my life, I acknowledged that him and I were rather different creatures in that he was remaining the same and that I was not. Suddenly just my own Faith did not satisfy my. I felt parched and arrogant. Paganism fascinated me greatly, studying from my father's text books of ancient cultures and their multiple gods, their hold (and at time bloody) Sabbaths, anthropophagic feasts (which did not always have to do with early paganism), being in tuned with the Earth and spirits.. Perhaps it was the natural urge for even the most humble of teenagers to rebel, perhaps I had no true reason for refusing to go to church, refusing to keep my hair in the traditional short style men seemed to wear. I infuriated my father endlessly with my Godless-ness, my new du.. A father with all of the wrath from his former good son's rebellion, yet attempting to still show his unconditional love. Which-when thinking back to it-was more than I deserved from my cocky behavior, distasteful comments that I knew would hurt my father and yet I chose to utter them, anyway.. It seemed as though the day he told me not to question the Lord, my own faith in my biological father was shaken in some ways. Why I behaved this way, I could not justify. Perhaps it was a simple matter such as anger was such a rush, caused such adrenalin to flow through me that I let its fiery scorn caress every fiber of my soul. I danced with Anger, swiftly and arrogantly.. Because when you dance with Anger you can justify despicable actions, you can be the world's most insufferable bigot, a time bomb just waiting to detonate and just take whoever happens to be there with you on a one-way-ticket to Hell.. Because when dancing with Anger, romanticizing its passions you can pretend to forget that in a demand of blind obedience.. Your father broke your heart.
I sighed, feeling my eyes fog with the inevitable tears that came whenever thinking back to the ignorance of my childhood and the painful and too quick pace of the questioning that comes with maturity. Rage filled my heart, spiking it with an oh-too-familiar ache that throbbed through out me, weighing my breast with a malice that subsided to sorrow. Before pride would force me to choke back my sobs in front of my yami, the sound of his impatient voice would strike such fear into me that I would not speak. I kept the Ring far away from me, his mouth in an angry scowl for being the crybaby I always was. Once I had hoped that perhaps he was a gift sent to remedy my loneliness, instead of alienating me further after time in fear of him hurting anyone. Even my own father I barely spoke to, my silence wounding him deeper than the at times cruel words I had spoken in the days I danced with Anger. I was a lonely, damned child, the exact contradiction of the angel I had vainly been depicted as a child. His cold stare did not bother me at this point. I clenched my teeth and promptly dug my nails into the sleeves of my shirt, at first fighting at the very tears he mocked. My eyes opened suddenly, shaking and blurred as the panic attack ensnared me, and I gasped feeling as though my heart were to explode from my chest. I was disconnected from the world around me. Inevitably I cried. For that was all I could do.
'Our Father, who art in Heaven; hallowed by Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil..'
- - - -
The walk didn't last long--At the end of the hall was an open door room with tiled floor, desks, and two different kinds of chairs. The boys took seat of the more comfortable looking chairs and rubbed their eyes to drive away any remnants of sleep. Ah.. Sleep. My body ached for it so, yet rejecting the thought as well just as violently. The nausea I felt was almost over-whelming, mixed with my fears of this silent place and the discomfort of my countless cuts. I thanked lightly that I had been wearing my usual long sleeves and that there was no one who could see me in this helpless form. This paranoid persona dropped automatically, when realizing that such prideful-ness was irrelevant here; Some of the boys had cuts to decorate their flesh, too. A man came in and smiled with a generic cheerful-ness, as if it were a necessary façade. He held a clipboard in his large right hand. The dark hairs on his knuckles and arms bothered me--I don't know why.. Reading off a few names from a list on his clipboard (mentioning them to follow him to the cafeteria, I believe?) I and the others felt an immediate and childish distaste for him. Something in my body told me to abhor this man and anyone here who dressed in the same uniform as him. The rest of the boys that still sat with me all glanced at one another and proceeded in calling this man every vulgar adjective under the sun. All of them seemed to be broken out of their drowsy-ness (save myself; I am not a morning person) and began quietly chatting amongst one another, as if suppressing the usual animated way men speak with one another. I understood at once: Do not let the staff of this place hear your true thoughts.
A minute or so passed before us the remaining boys were instructed to line up quietly in the hall and we would get our breakfast. I stood timidly in the back of the line, picking the dirt from the inside of my nail observing the other boys in what to do; If there was any sort of idiosyncrasy of mine was that I could not stand not knowing what to do and others knowing this. Any signs of incompetence or just sheer stupidity on my behalf were inexcusable, however.. Me being the natural klutz and lacking any sort of social charm often prevented me from maintaining the posture I so yearned. This much about myself I knew well, despite any sort of amnesia. The throbbing near my eyes would not cease. Sleep. Sleep is what I would need. Eventually I had my own tray of food (I supposed it was food, anyway. The rest of the lot seemed rather displeased and when sitting down, I saw why). Lifting the lid to my container, there was hot white goop (watered down oatmeal?), packaged cereal of the Fruit Loop Variety, cartoned milk and juice. I was hungry, yes, but I could not contain very much substance. It did not matter though, since substance is that my body craved and that was what it would obtain. I found myself chewing slowly, almost counting every bite until the hammering sound of my chewing became an insufferable booming in my own ears. I was often rather self-conscience about such things as whether or not my chewing was loud or not, finding myself foolishly attempting to be proper in the manner in which I ate, etiquette at its finest even in a place I did not know, surrounded with strangers in their pajamas. At times I can be a tad bit.. Strange. It felt as though everyone was staring at me, irate for making such damned noises with my chewing. I dared not look up. There was a distinct fear in me of the other boys here hating me for disrupting their morning. I could tell what I feared, what made my heart ache. I knew this part of the alchemy to my being, part of the fibers which constructed my personality. But who I was, am.. How could I not know?
- - - -
Any sort of belief that I had become this boy with a metal heart shatters every time I think of my father and my once beloved Christ. My arrogance proceeds me and I felt even more foolish when I caught myself making the Sign of the Cross. He laughed, of course, as he always does when I finally crack. I tried my best to throw a hateful glance at him, for my eyes to pierce his soul and to send a chill down his spine. A chill that would make him stop laughing and apologize and fear my wrath. To treat me as I were a sacrosanct, inviolable. He eyed my mind as if it were candy and I felt immediately violated, as if I had been mentally castrated. He eyed me coyly, tilting his head alone with his sadist smirk. "Frankly dear, I don't give a damn." he quoted admirably. I was Scarlett and he was Rhett, and we were no gentlemen. Where was my darling Mammy to scold me for my selfishness? I was on my knees with cotton picking hands, my pride diminished to nothing more but this: I must survive. I am starving. I must survive. With the setting day in play with its majestic auburn's and black, I strike my fist into the air and the thick Southern air filling my lungs I preach, "I'll never go hungry again!"
I sulked childishly and wiped the tears from my eyes. "Et tu, Brute?"
'Then fall, Caesar," he replied dryly, no longer amused by my a gust behavior. We could spend days comparing one another to fictional characters, reciting line for line of who were our roles, mocking one another in an almost sophisticated manner; When you are alone, you have nothing better to do.
I am Caesar, he is Brutus. I am Scarlett, he is Rhett. I am Othello, he is Iago. I am Benjamin, he is Turpin. I am Duncan, he is Mac Beth. I am Faust and he is The Devil, but this time God will not save my soul. He is not there.
- - - -
"Mood evaluation sheet". It was almost insufferable to suppress my laughter.
How are you feeling? Fine.Do you have an appetite? No.
Do you have self-destructive urges? No.Do you feel at risk to yourself? Yes.
Perhaps it is my own failure as a person in being unable to understand the human condition and how to let peace to my soul. Perhaps I am merely the breathing anachronism for ignorance. Secretly, I want everyone to know that there is something wrong with me, wrong enough for there to be nothing wrong with me and that I just am a fussy prat. That I want attention, that I want to be left alone.. But despite any sort of contradictions, in my selfishness I do not wish to bother to fix these things. With painful cuts engraved all through out my body, with the faint taste of sweet charcoal on my lips.. I cannot help but feel as though that in my misery, I might as well be glamorous as a male can be. I will throw a tantrum for attention and deny help, I will be that irking person that no one wants to be near because they are just than damned eccentric in their motions. I will be a humble fool and smile and not mean it and say that my "depression" is lessening to understanding, only to most likely end up here again. I will be the wise-man, I will be the fool. And I will most likely not do any of what I stated above.
I am but merely a slave to my mind's incoherent, spontaneous musings.
- - - -
A/N: Something that I would wish to clear up here and now: The point of this fan fiction is not to smear any sort of religious beliefs down the reader's throat. The main background to the original story was that I remembered in my middle school and early high school years I spent on this silly site typing up Bakura Ryou angst, just doing more or less the same story-lines over and over with no real explanation for his distraught and suicidal behavior and I really wasn't thinking too much into fan fiction of anything of the sort for several years since the birth of my daughter, being wrapped up in schooling and mothering. Myself being young, I have introduced things I had loved just a few years ago as a child (PokeMon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Hamtaro, ect). And when watching Yu-Gi-Oh once more it brought me back to the days of when I was thoroughly in love with my bishounen muse and had posters of animated characters all over my bedroom walls, which is now my daughter's room and decorated with tastes.
But. Back on the subject: In reminisce of my past fangirlism and my daughter becoming rather obsessive herself (she really adores Yuugi and Jounouchi), I became swept back up in my past fan girl hype as well and decided to begin writing fan fiction once more when my daughter is asleep and I am finished with any sort of projects before it is too late (I am rather notorious for staying up until four AM and my wake-up time is five AM). And in choosing to write once more, I had thought about past authors who I had admired in my youth, White Angel Chan still being my absolute favorite. I had always admired these authors (and WA in particular) with their rather distinctive story lines and writing styles. I had thought to myself for a long time of what could possibly cause poor Ryou to be this character that seems so popular to be featured in fan fiction. And then I decided: I am going to make up my own reasoning's, attempt to shape his character to someone who is rather introverted but a passionate and yet monotone figure, whose apathy can be mistaken for being polite. In this story Ryou is rather plagued by his Faith in growing up as a child and that being destroyed (depending on the person) can have a rather devastating effect, not to mention that he will be portrayed in this piece with more of a bi-polar edge to him which seems to haunt most genius individuals (which also will explain his constant tone changes through out the piece, as well as reasoning's for his rather impulsive behavior). It is his need for constant learning that is his downfall, must like in the Odyssey where because of Odysseus'curiosity lead him to kill the Cyclops and in doing so sparkedthe wrath of Poseidon and is constantly blown off course on his way back home from Troy, taking him on wild adventures but there is a rather inner turmoil over not obtaining just what he wants (to return home). That is more or less Ryou in this piece: His intelligence and need to know persona is the basis of his misery, his thirst for knowing being so great that it brings him much pain when contradicting to things he had already believed in, which drives him into bouts of isolation and this arrogant, "No one would understand me" wishy-washy self-pitied tone.
So. Between taking 18 units per Quarter and chasing around a three year old, wish me good luck in writing these chapters and I do hope that the A/N helped add a better understanding to Ryou's psyche and the more-or-less point of the story, along with conversations of books, history and music, art, ect. If I have made a mistake in any of my statements, please do tell me. Any sort of constructive criticism is rather appreciated!