Title: A Persistent Shadow (Chapter 3)
Pairing: Ryou Bakura x Yami Bakura, possible others
Rating: M (Overall)
Summary: The Pharaoh uses a spell to force Yami Bakura out of Ryou's body, but unfortunately for Ryou it doesn't work quite as well as intended.
Getting a good night's sleep was easier said than done. First Ryou had to deal with the spirit bothering him, talking and trying to goad him into talking (or thinking) back. The spirit started by walking around the room making insulting comments about his things. Then he moved on to insulting comments about his friends. Ryou was used to ignoring those, and it was even easier now that he knew the spirit couldn't actually hurt his friends, but the constant stream of noise was still distracting enough to prevent him from sleeping.
Eventually, the spirit tired of trying and failing to get a rise out of him and simply left the room. In its own way, this was even worse than the spirit actively pestering him. Now the spirit was just out there somewhere, doing things Ryou knew nothing about.
Ryou heard the spirit laughing at him in his head. You should have talked to me when you had the chance.
Ryou sighed. He reassured himself that the spirit was probably just seizing the opportunity to torment him further. From what he could tell, the spirit couldn't interact with anything other than him. If he wanted to wander around in his spirit form, then at least he wouldn't be here harassing Ryou. Unfortunately, it still took Ryou another hour to relax enough for sleep to overcome him.
Ryou awoke several hours later to the sound of his alarm. He groaned. He wasn't ready to get up, but he didn't want to be late for school either. He sat up and looked around. The spirit was nowhere to be found. "Spirit?" he called softly.
The spirit appeared immediately. "Yes?"
"Um." Ryou hadn't thought very far beyond calling him. "Nothing. I just wanted to know where you were."
They stared at each other until the spirit broke the silence, turning away from him in disgust. "You're just as dull awake as you are asleep."
Ryou got out of bed and went to grab his uniform. "I'm sorry I can't be more interesting while I'm unconscious."
"You could at least manage more interesting dreams."
Ryou nearly dropped his uniform. "You... you can see my dreams?" He struggled to remember what he'd dreamed that night but failed. He hoped it wasn't anything... A blush covered his face.
"Believe me, it was nothing so exciting," the spirit replied, apparently not feeling it necessary to elaborate on what Ryou actually had dreamed about.
Ryou was relieved. He was about to take his morning shower, which would be bad enough without any additional embarrassment. He carried his uniform to the bathroom with him, wanting to spend as little time unclothed as possible.
"Oh, really now. It's nothing I haven't seen before." The spirit leered at him from the hallway. "And I've done things in that body far worse than just looking at it."
Ryou's blush returned full force, though he tried to tell himself the spirit was just messing with his head. There'd never been any indication of anything... like that. "Well, fortunately you won't ever have that opportunity again." He closed the door in the spirit's face.
Ryou turned on the shower to let the water heat up and took off his pajamas. He sensed the spirit appear behind him and quickly stepped under the water, drawing the shower curtain between them. The spirit walked right through it and stood behind him. Ryou tensed, but continued his shower. He got a glimpse of the spirit out of the corner of his eye, and saw that he was completely naked as well. This unnerved him even more just being naked himself, even though arguably this made them equally vulnerable.
The spirit just laughed at him. "Naked or not, I will never be as weak as you."
Says the man I threw through a wall yesterday.
"What was that, Landlord?" the spirit asked dangerously.
Ryou thought it best not to answer that. "What did you end up doing while I was asleep?" he replied, hoping to move away from a possible confrontation. He never thought he'd feel safer asking the spirit that question, but there was a first time for everything. "Did you spend the whole time watching my dreams?"
"Hardly." Apparently, the spirit didn't want another confrontation either. "I spent the night exploring my limits."
"Your limits?" Ryou turned toward the spirit, momentarily forgetting the situation they were in. He spun back around immediately on seeing the naked form directly in front of him. He started scrubbing himself at a speed he never knew he had in him.
The spirit chuckled, but didn't comment on his reaction. "Yes, my limits. I can only go so far away from you in any direction."
That made sense. "How far?" Ryou hoped he hadn't been spying on Yugi.
"Not that far. Only to the end of the block."
"But you can go that far in any direction?"
"Yes."
Ryou was torn between not wanting the spirit to be going around causing trouble and being glad the spirit didn't have to be near him at all times.
"It's so nice to know you care."
"But this is good for you, too. If I start to bore you, you can go watch other people." Ryou felt a twinge of guilt at effectively encouraging the spirit to spy on people in possibly private moments, but it wasn't like the people would know the spirit was watching them... Okay, so that's still creepy. But at least he wouldn't be doing anything to them.
"You have such a strong sense of morality, Landlord."
"Hey, I'm not the one wandering around spying on people."
"Actually, you were the one who brought up the idea."
He had a point there. "Yes. Well... I was only imagining the sort of thing you would do."
"Really?" The spirit leaned forward, draping one arm over Ryou's shoulder and speaking directly in his ear. "And if it were your decision, would I be here in your shower with you or spying on one of your poor, unsuspecting neighbors in theirs?"
Ryou froze, more at the fact that the spirit was touching him than at the question he'd asked. The few other times the spirit had touched him so far had been too brief to register much about the feeling. He found it disconcerting – it was entirely unlike the normal touch of another human being. The spirit's arm felt neither cold nor hot against him, it was simply... there. It had almost no weight to it – Ryou felt only a mild pressure where the arm rested on his shoulder.
"Well?"
Ryou returned to his senses. He shoved the spirit off of him and turned off the water. "You'd be here in the shower with yourself," he replied, stepping out of the shower and drying himself off.
"Heh. You won't always be able to get away with that answer. At some point you'll have to choose between other people's interests and your own."
Ryou ignored him, getting dressed and leaving for school without saying anything else.
Ryou made it all the way to school without getting into another argument. It helped that the spirit did seem content to go exploring the houses between Ryou's apartment and the school. Ryou tried not to think too hard about what he might be seeing inside those houses, but he had no way of preventing the spirit from doing it, so there wasn't much point in worrying about it.
His friends were waiting for him outside the school when he got there. He looked around nervously, but the spirit was nowhere to be found. Ryou wondered if it was because the Pharaoh was nearby.
Yugi broke off from the group to greet him. "Hi, Bakura!"
"Hi, Yugi!" Ryou waved to the others. Tristan and Joey were eagerly discussing something that from the look on her face Téa didn't approve of.
"Feeling better?"
"Yeah. A little tired, but I got here okay." The tiredness was more from the spirit keeping him until all hours of the night, but a leftover effect of the ritual was as good a cover as any.
You lie to your friends so easily.
Ryou started at the spirit's voice. He looked around, but the spirit was still out of sight.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah. It's just so new, being able to walk around on my own. I was always so afraid that he'd take over."
Yugi nodded. "He was in your head for... how long?"
"Ten years. Since I was eight." Ryou was glad Yugi didn't seem to be questioning his excuse, but he didn't like where the conversation was headed. "We should get inside."
"Not yet, I told Marik we'd wait for him."
As if on cue, Marik zoomed up to the curb on his motorbike. He jumped off the bike, landing right in front of them. "Hey."
Yugi smiled at him. "Hi!"
Ryou looked him over. He was dressed in his normal clothes and didn't appear to have brought anything with him. "Why aren't you wearing a uniform?"
"Don't have one. I haven't registered as a student, yet." He walked toward the school. "I have to do that now."
Yugi and Ryou trailed after him. "And you're doing it on your own?" Yugi asked.
The three reached the doors and walked inside. "Yeah, Ishizu is too busy at the museum today."
Ryou cringed. "The principal doesn't like students coming in on their own." Ryou himself had shown up alone on his first day, his father having left about a microsecond after he'd handed Ryou the keys to the apartment. He'd thought the process would be fairly simple, given the number of times he'd been through it before, but the principal at Domino High had been unusually difficult to deal with. In fact, at a few points it had been so bad that he'd feared he'd black out and wake up to find the man in a coma, ending his time at Domino High before it had even begun.
Yugi looked puzzled. "Why not?"
"Something about teenagers without proper supervision all turning out to be delinquents." That had been the most intelligible part of the rant, anyway. "Do you at least have all the papers they need?"
Marik pulled a folded and crumpled bunch of papers from his back pocket. "Right here."
"That's something at least." Ryou tried to look on the bright side, not commenting on the state of the papers or the principal's obsession with neatness.
"Maybe we should go with you," Yugi said. "For moral support."
Ryou shook his head. "That would only make things worse. He already hates me because the school can never get in touch with my father." He coughed. "Um. And because of my hair. He says I look like a girl." He eyed Marik's midriff-baring shirt and jewelry. This isn't going to go very well, is it?
Yugi nodded reluctantly. "He did once say that my hair looked like an explosion at a paint factory. Right after he accused me of being 'one of those nuts who shut down the entire school district for a card game tournament'."
Marik snickered at that. "I can handle it. Just point me to where the office is."
"Over there." Ryou gestured in the general direction of the office. "Good luck."
Marik headed in that direction. "I'll see you guys later."
Ryou watched him go. "Do you think he'll be alright?"
"I think so." Yugi laughed. "In fact, we should probably be more worried about the principal than Marik." The warning bell rang. "We should get to class."
Ryou remained spirit-free for a whole hour after classes began. He was mid-way through math when the spirit appeared next to his desk. He kept his eyes trained on the front of the room. Yugi was sitting directly to his right, so he had to be careful not to show any reaction to the spirit. He'd been lucky enough to get away with it earlier that morning.
He tried to squash his curiosity about what the spirit had gotten up to in the time he'd been gone. He wasn't interested.
"Ah, but don't you want to know how your friend the Tomb Keeper is doing?"
Ryou blinked. Is that where you were?
"Yes. The ruler of this place seems like he would enjoy a trip to the Shadow Realm. It's a shame I didn't seize the opportunity while I had it."
Ryou shivered. Even if the spirit couldn't steal people's souls from their bodies anymore, it still disturbed him to think about it. You think that about anyone who happens to be in charge.
"That's because it's true about all of them."
Ryou refrained from rolling his eyes. How did Marik do?
"Poorly."
Ryou dropped his pencil. What? Is he okay?
"He's fine. And so is the other foolish mortal. The Tomb Keeper only mildly annoyed him. Even the Pharaoh could do better than that." He sat atop the empty desk to Ryou's left and crossed his arms in disgust. "To think I used to work with that idiot. I even let him damage our body for that plan of his."
Ryou retrieved his pencil from the floor. It's my body, not our body. And what do you mean you let him--
Understanding hit him. He rubbed his left arm. He couldn't feel the scar through his uniform, but he knew exactly where it was. He had no idea how he'd gotten it; all he knew was that it had happened during Battle City, or as Ryou thought of it, the Month He Had No Memory Of. He'd never asked the spirit how he'd been injured, fearing what the answer would be.
Yugi and the others hadn't said anything about it either, and he hadn't wanted to bother them with questions they might not even know the answers to. In general, Ryou avoided talking about that month altogether.
You mean, it was Marik who...?
"Yes."
Ryou didn't know how to feel about this. He'd known that Marik had done some bad things before he'd turned around, but Ryou was a bit vague on what those things actually were. He knew the spirit had been involved somehow, and that Marik had been suffering from a sort of possession by his own dark side.
The spirit laughed. "They really didn't bother to tell you anything, did they?"
They don't always remember that I wasn't actually there, Ryou thought at him. He was almost as annoyed with his friends as he was with the spirit at the moment. He pushed those feelings aside. For all he knew they were waiting until he was ready to ask. It wasn't like he'd wanted to know any of this before now. Was it Marik or... the other Marik?
"The ordinary one."
Ryou frowned, gripping his pencil hard. He didn't know Marik very well, but he couldn't envision the boy slashing his arm like that. Then again, he couldn't envision him working with the spirit or doing any of the things Yugi and the others had told him about, and he knew he could trust them far more than the spirit.
"You could ask him about it yourself."
I don't think that's a good idea. He doubted Marik wanted to talk about those events any more than he himself wanted to talk about the things the spirit had done. Anyway, I don't care what he did in the past. The others gave me another chance. I can give him another chance.
"How magnanimous of you."
Ryou was about to make his mental retort when he felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped sky-high. He turned to find Yugi standing next to him. "Huh?"
"You were a million miles away. It's time for gym."
Ryou glanced around the room. Everyone else had left already. "Er, right. I didn't notice." He got out of his seat. "Math isn't really my favorite subject."
"At least you didn't fall asleep like Joey." The two laughed.
"Why don't you run ahead? I have to put my stuff away."
"Okay. I'll see you there." Yugi waved and ran out the door.
Ryou packed up his things and turned to the spirit. I can't be talking to you all through every class. You'll have to find something else to do.
"Oh, don't worry about me," the spirit said innocently.
Ryou only shook his head as he left the classroom.
