It's been a little while, hasn't it?
Chapter Seven
Whispers
Egypt was quiet that night.
How strange, one man thought, that such an ancient place could seem so at peace with itself. So many dark things had occurred here, many things that the world was largely unaware of. It was not a place where one would expect to find peace; not in the abandoned thief village of a name that escaped him. According to their records, a terrible massacre had occurred here.
How interestingly destructive these muggles had been. They had destroyed a village of accused sorcerers, monsters, and thieves in an effort to create the most destructive magical articles in Egyptian history.
It seemed, he had to think, that the Death Eaters' presence in this ancient village defiled its peace. Then, in the seconds' wake of the thought, he had to wonder when he began to see his own fellow Death Eaters as a bane.
Interesting.
Lucius Malfoy followed all of the work in the village with a sharp eye, watching each man and woman scramble about to fulfil the Dark Lord's wishes. His followers were loyal. They would obey the Dark Lord until their dying day.
But Lucius Malfoy was no such follower. The Wizarding World may have seen him as a cruel man, but Lucius Malfoy's loyalties lay only with his family. He had affiliated himself with the Dark Lord seeking power. Only too late did he realize that his wife and son had been irrevocably intertwined with that world.
It had been his choice. He was not sure if he would ever take that choice, that step towards power, back. He had become the Dark Lord's lapdog, though, and Lucius Malfoy was no one's pet.
With the betrayal of his son and the imprisonment of his wife, Lucius was quite near the end of his fuse. He was quite close to ending this silly game.
But Narcissa will suffer if I so much as twitch in the wrong direction, he thought coldly, eyes moving to the Dark Lord himself as he surveyed his men. He has made that quite clear.
The same could not, unfortunately, be said for his son. Draco was a marked man - and no matter how brave a young man he was for making his decision, he had damned himself by doing so. Any Death Eater that saw him would attempt to kill on sight. Lucius only prayed that those fools he was traveling with could protect him.
There were no lives more important than that of his family's. Lucius Malfoy was cruel enough that he would ensure their safety in any way that he could, even to the detriment of his own Dark Master.
"Marvellous, isn't it, Lucius?"
He jerked at the velvet voice of the Dark Lord. He sent shivers up spines with that voice - the voice of the coldest killer in wizard history. The Dark Lord was legendary for a reason.
And, standing in the face of a legend, Lucius Malfoy felt nothing but fear.
"Wonderful, my Lord," Lucius echoed, disgusted by the nature of his own grovelling. He had been stripped of his pride in the wake of his wife and son's betrayals. He had nothing left but to pant obediently in the lap of his master.
And you, Narcissa, are reaping what you have sewn by helping our manic son.
The rustling of a long skirt coupled with the clicking of sharp heels. Lucius turned.
Speaking of manic…
"We have it, my Lord," Bellatrix Lestrange cooed, wand in hand, as she waved her arms in her typically dramatic fashion.
Lord Voldemort's lips spread in a vile, shark-like grin. "Excellent. I am most pleased."
The woman shuddered with pleasure at his words, bowing low - almost with her forehead to her boots. She grinned also, where the Dark Lord's was a shark, she was a feral cat. When she straightened and faced Lucius, though, she had gone cold.
"Lucius," she greeted in even tones.
She was not worth his time. Bellatrix was one woman he'd have liked to remove from the Black family history years ago. "Bellatrix," he replied in an equal monotone.
"How are you?" she queried in a sing-song voice, dancing around him in a full-circle. She flashed her teeth at him in a vicious smile, eyes going wide.
Lucius did not take the bait. "Perfectly fine," he sneered, lips twitching up into a predatory smile of his own. "And you, my dear?"
Clearly put out by him not upsetting the way she wanted, Bellatrix sniffed and turned away. "I am not your anything, Lucius. Keep that in mind."
Lucius turned to the Dark Lord. "My Lord," he said, stepping past Bellatrix, "how are we to complete the stone? It is meant to house all seven of those Millennium Items, two of which those traitors have, and-"
"Do not fret, Lucius," Voldemort said, cutting him off with a wave of his hand. "It is of no matter."
Lucius cocked an eyebrow. How so? Oh, he was just so eager to find out.
Voldemort turned to the man who had approached them, gesturing forward with a disturbingly elegant sweep of the hand. "Take us to the stone, McRyne."
Lucius's eyebrows shot up. McRyne…? He didn't recognize the name. The man must have been a new recruit…a very, very new recruit. Since when were new recruits allowed so much information?
Bellatrix clearly caught the look on his face, because her fingers ghosted across his shoulder and a sly smile spread across her face. As the man, McRyne, turned and began leading the way, with the Dark Lord following, Bellatrix leaned in to whisper in his ear - "McRyne has been with us for some time, Lucius. He led the search for the stone." Her lips formed into a mocking pout. "Did the Dark Lord not tell you this?"
Lucius shrugged her hand away, casting a threatening glare at the woman. "Touch me again, Bellatrix, and I will ensure that your time in this world is cut very short," he hissed.
Her lips popped open in a small "o" of surprise before shifting into a grin. She didn't respond, only danced forwards to walk just behind the Dark Lord. She threw a smug grin over her shoulder, eyes glittering with malicious delight.
Oh, how he loathed that woman.
McRyne folded his hands in front of him in a strange gesture of appeasement. "You will be pleased to know, My Lord, that we have uncovered the key to the alternate method of awakening the dark power."
Key? Lucius knew nothing of a key. He exhaled through his teeth, a gesture that his wife had said was his indication of frustration. He was frustrated; he'd been irritatingly uninformed regarding these works.
"We have deciphered enough to have clues about the identity of the key," McRyne continued, "it is pertinent that we-"
"-Identity?" Lucius interrupted. "This 'key' is a person?"
McRyne paused and glanced at the Dark Lord. Voldemort smiled at the Death Eater and gestured for him to speak. "Answer his question, McRyne."
The man seemed hesitant, but it was clear that he would never disobey his Lord's orders. "Yes. It is a person who lived during the time, the assumed sole survivor of the Kul Elna cleansing," the man's lips twitched at the irony of the description, "or, rather, the massacre."
"Massacre," Voldemort said airily, "does not constitute the history, McRyne. They were, after all, killing for a purpose."
Lucius repressed the desire to roll his eyes. 'Massacre', in their Dark Lord's eyes, would never involve killing for a purpose, for their Dark Lord did not want to see his own actions as the actions of 'massacre'. He thought of their deeds as 'progress.' The word 'massacre' inspired thoughts of senseless mass killings, such as the term genocide, or other similar phrases that the Dark Lord did not feel adequately described their work.
After all, Lucius thought wryly, what German Nazi of the Second World War felt that the killing of Jews was a massacre and not the 'cleansing' of Germany from an inferior race? His wife had once, in private, compared the Dark Lord to the muggle leader of Germany in the 1940s. At the time, Lucius had dismissed the comparison. That was a time when he still believed in the Death Eaters and their goals.
Then his son was born. Lucius had never deemed himself a compassionate man, but neither was he a fool. His son had changed him, even if that son had become a radical. When he next saw Draco, he was going to box the boy around the ears for being so hot-blooded. Only a fool escaped the Dark Lord.
Lucius would follow the Dark Lord until his service was no longer needed or Harry Potter completed the prophecy. Either way, he was not going to participate in his wife and son's insanity.
Lucius, he chided himself, these mutinous thoughts will get you killed.
And only fools let themselves get killed. It was a lesson his father had taught him. Lucius obeyed that lesson, for Lucius was not a foolish man. Nor would he ever be.
Who are you trying to convince? A dark part of his mind whispered.
"Tell me, McRyne," the Dark Lord said, his voice jerking Lucius away from his thoughts, "what else have you uncovered about this survivor? There are many tied to Ancient Egypt and the Millennium Items. I will not allow a wild chase for something we are unsure of."
McRyne looked nervous. Of course he was. He clearly didn't think he had enough information to satisfy the Dark Lord.
"We know that they are trapped in one of the seven Items," McRyne said, "and that it is a vengeful spirit, one who seeks to destroy the Pharaoh in the name of his Dark Master."
"Do you know which Item, McRyne?" Voldemort purred.
McRyne shook his head, hunching his shoulders as if he expected to be beaten for it. "W-We think that we need to decipher more. There are clues there, but we have few local resources."
Voldemort did not look displeased, but his expressions were always misleading. "See to it that you find out. And do it fast," said the Dark Lord.
Lucius had never before seen a man run so quickly.
The moment that Bakura stepped onto the deserted streets of Kul Elna, he knew that this dream was not going to be a good one.
His feet moved him down the road in a sickeningly familiar journey. No measure of time could have made him forget the route he took every day as a child - the one that led to the place he had called home.
There was no one to speak of in this Kul Elna. It was as he recalled it in that last day - a ghost town, deprived of all life for the sake of a Pharaoh's power. There was ultimate power, power that was crafted from the bones and blood of his people.
Inside of him, that old vengeance coiled and shifted. All decisions to ignore his revenge against the Pharaoh aside - he hated him no less. He had not forgotten. He would never forget.
And, in no less than a second, he found himself standing outside of the only true home he'd ever known. It still looked like his home. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine a woman stepping out of that place, that small, shack-like place.
"Mother-"
He cut himself off. No, none of that. She was long gone. She would never come back. Wallowing in depression over it would not get anything done.
He had long accepted the death of his family and friends. He had long come to terms with the fact that she had been damned to a fate of eternal servitude. He could not change that.
But saying her name had quite nearly broken him.
The door opened. Bakura leapt backwards, clenching his fists. Who could have penetrated his dreams and come to this place? In any dream of Kul Elna he'd ever had, it was either of that day or he spent the dream alone. Never did it change.
A child stepped out, dropping to the ground and curling his knees up to his chest, folding his arms around them. Tears were streaming down that child's face. Violet eyes were screwed up in pain that Bakura could recall with disturbing clarity. The child's skin was tanned but his hair was near-white...
"Mama...Mama..." the boy whimpered, "Mama...where are you?"
He knew this child. He knew this child far, far too well.
"Sad, isn't it?"
Bakura's head snapped up towards the intruding voice and beside the child now stood a man. His hair was white and he wore the robes of the Thief King, but the face was nothing like the one Bakura recalled seeing in the reflection of the water. This face was too sharp and too pale, eyes that were the colour of fresh blood. They were colder than Bakura's own eyes, lighter and harsher and filled with nothing but evil. The man smiled a smile of shark-teeth, staring at Bakura with a hungry kind of expression.
"Who are you?" Bakura demanded, squaring his shoulders. He did not like his dreams to go interrupted by such intruders.
The teeth flashed again, the man's eyes brimming with vicious amusement. "Who am I? I am part of you, child, what did you expect to find in the recesses of your own mind?"
He gritted his teeth. "Fool - you dare lie to me?"
"I tell no lies," the intruder said. He paused, mulling over his own words for a moment, before grinning again. "Not right at this moment, in any case."
Bakura stared, scrutinizing this stranger (why was he so familiar?) wearing the clothes of his past. "What're you playing at?" he demanded, lip curling with distaste at this unwanted person.
"Me?" the stranger crowed, laughing aloud. It wasn't a pleasant laugh - more of a bark of malicious pleasure. Had Bakura been a cat, his hackles would have been raised.
The man met Bakura's eyes straight on, red on red. "Child...ah - wait, you go by Bakura now, don't you, Spirit of the Millennium Ring?"
"What do you want?" Bakura demanded, taking a threatening step forward. The man threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender, the shark-grin returning.
"Ah, ah," he said, waggling a finger as if Bakura was a child, "You had better be careful, Bakura. Attacking me will only hurt you, in the end."
That took him aback.
"What?" Bakura asked, rage and confusion mingling. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"For such a dedicated follower," the stranger sneered, pointed teeth flashing in the sunlight, "you aren't very smart, are you?" Before Bakura could retort, the man threw his arms outwards and the scene, very suddenly, shifted.
Both of them stood, still opposite one another, in a small room of stone. Between them was a table, one with a mapped scene of the land Bakura was born into. Just in the centre, shrouded in a cloud of dark miasma, was an upside-down pyramid.
Behind the table was a sarcophagus, open to reveal a shrivelled, mummified corpse.
"Had you not taken your exciting little jaunt around Europe," the other man sneered, fingers brushing the edge of the table, "you would be here - fighting a most marvellous Shadow Game with the Pharaoh."
Bakura knew. Before Ryou and he had...accepted their connection, Bakura had planned this particular story quite well.
"How do you know of this?" Bakura demanded, clenching his fists at his sides. He didn't like being in the dark. He didn't like the way this man tried to patronize him, either.
"I know of this because I know of everything about you," the man said, a lilting sneer edging into his tone, "I am part of you, Bakura."
And, very suddenly, the pieces fell into place.
"Zorc Necrophades," Bakura hissed through his teeth, taking an instinctive step back. "I wasn't aware that the part of you that was inside of me was still alive. I had assumed that you'd died along with my previous priorities," Bakura's lips pulled back into a sneer of his own. "Clearly, I was wrong."
"Clearly," Zorc echoed with a devious smile, seating himself across from Bakura with a decidedly dramatic flourish. He interlaced his fingers, elbows resting on the sides of the chair. He stared over those fingers, long and bony and pale, with his blood red eyes.
"What do you want?" Bakura asked. It was time to get to the point. Zorc had clearly summoned himself to Bakura's mind for a purpose. He never did anything without one. "I doubt that you're here just for a chat."
"There is a reason," Zorc said, "that I appear as a distorted reflection of you, dear slave."
"Don't call me your slave," Bakura snapped, "I do not serve you. Not anymore."
Zorc barked out a laugh. "But you have been neglecting to purge your soul of the part of me that lives inside. What an exciting double-standard."
Bakura did not like to be laughed at. He did not like to be played. This man, this monster, was toying with the shredded remains of Bakura's self-control.
But that was the point, wasn't it? Zorc Necrophades wanted Bakura weak. He wanted him to lose control so that the monster could take control.
"You want Ryou's body," Bakura said, realization dawning in a cold wave of horror. Zorc had seen the prophecy in Ryou's mind. He had seen what could and (in all likelihood) would happen. He wanted to ensure his revival.
What better way that to claim a physical body? It would act as a portal to release his full form. A human host would give him complete control in the physical realm.
Multiple ways for evil to return, but only one way to stop it...
Well, he'd clearly put his foot in his mouth on this one. His words had come back to bite him in the ass. This had been a sloppy miscalculation on his part. Zorc was sealed away, yes, but that did not erase him from existence. Of course he would make a move - any move that he could - to guarantee his rebirth.
How had Bakura not seen that?
"I have no hold over the child's soul," Zorc, this small part of the monster, said in even tones. "It is you, Bakura, with whom I hold a key into this world. You gave yourself to me many lifetimes ago - why would you not do it again? I can offer you great power. We can take the Pharaoh so easily, now that his memories are gone."
Revenge.
"It is what you have always wanted for your people. You cannot deprive them of their vengeance, Bakura - they are your everything. You have forgotten them."
Murder.
Death.
"I'm not going to fall for your pathetic trickery!" Bakura roared, dark energy crackling across his body like an electric storm.
"You already have," Zorc answered with a razor-tooth smile. "After all, would I be here if you were so resistant to my power? You are mine, slave."
Then the ground shook, and up from the floor came chains the colour of gold. They wrapped around his wrists, and no matter how hard he tried to fight them, they sealed themselves tightly and brought him to his knees. Bakura cursed as his knees skinned against the floor and his palms hit the ground with enough force to bring up a cloud of dust.
"You are bound by the death in your past," Zorc whispered, his voice carrying on the air as if it were a melody. "You are chained by the mortals you so treasured."
"I was once mortal," Bakura seethed, pushing himself up onto his knees. "What made you choose me, Zorc, if you so loathe mortals?"
Zorc settled his gaze on Bakura, an unsettling red gaze that made Bakura half-wonder if his own eyes unnerved people in a similar way. The plague of Ancient Egypt smiled then, a lip-lifting smile of pleasure that seemed almost...fatherly, in a disturbed, twisted sort of way.
"You were such an intriguing human," Zorc explained, never shifting his gaze. He held Bakura's eyes steadily, and Bakura couldn't summon the courage to look away. His own weakness sickened him. "In my existence, I have never seen such hatred. Your loathing was impressive, to say the least, and so deliciously blind," the monster licked his lips, revealing a long, lizard-like tongue. "You were a worthy experiment, such a good servant."
"I do not...serve you," Bakura said through clenched teeth as he strained to pull away from his bonds. It was a useless endeavour, surely, but he refused to give up. He refused to relinquish any sense of weakness to this monster.
"A temporary setback," Zorc drawled, "and a brief outburst of rebellion. I will accept you with no consequence, Bakura, if you surrender to me now."
Surrender.
Bakura scowled. No. He could not, would not surrender.
Zorc smiled. "I like the spunk, child. You always had energy, it seemed. Boundless, endless energy that drove you through the Hells and back." His smile vanished, though, and he strode up just inches away from Bakura and grabbed his face with one clawed hand, forcing Bakura's head up.
"Look at me," Zorc purred, a soft demand that, once, would have swayed Bakura in an instant. Not now, though. Not after he'd laid his vengeances to rest. The Pharaoh deserved whatever bad things came his way, but Bakura would no longer have any part in his destruction. The Pharaoh could bring that on himself.
When Bakura did not do as he was instructed, Zorc tightened his grip on Bakura's chin. "Look at me," he hissed, so quietly that his voice nearly disappeared into the wind. Bakura, however, did not budge in response.
His silent refusal only seemed to incite Zorc's temper. It was a volatile, quick-burning temper. Bakura knew that from the first time around.
"Look at me, you foolish child!" He thrust Bakura's face from his hand and, using the momentum of his push, backhanded Bakura so hard that the restraints on his arms cut into his wrists.
Bakura chuckled, a sound that was sinister even to his own ears. He raised his eyes, glaring over his bangs with a smile of his own. "Frustrated, Zorc? Mad that you can achieve nothing without my help?"
"You are nothing," Zorc snarled in response, his teeth curling back viciously. He took a few steps back and paced away. He was clearly upset over his loss of opportunity. After all, he was nothing if he could not intimidate Bakura into giving control. He had no sway. He had no hand in the mortal realm.
And suddenly, Bakura felt much stronger. It gave him the power to dissolve the shackles binding him. They vanished, dispersing into the air into foggy nothing. Bakura rubbed his wrists as he stood. The scene changed, back to Kul Elna, back to the place where all of this had begun.
Zorc spun, his expression rolling into manic hatred. "You are nothing," he repeated, "and you will submit to me, slave!"
"I will not," Bakura snarled. Something tickled his legs, and Bakura looked down to see that his own body was beginning to disappear into the sand.
Zorc's eyes widened, however the gesture was so minimal that anyone else would have missed it. He realized that Bakura was, right before him, slipping away from his grasp. He was losing his foothold again, just as he had when he'd been sent to the Shadow Realm in Battle City.
Bakura expected Zorc to attack. He expected Zorc to do something rash, something in sync with the vicious temper the creature had displayed time and time again during his days in Egypt. Zorc did not do this, though. Instead, he paused, and a slow smile began to spread across the face he'd stolen from Bakura.
"I will return, Bakura," Zorc said in even tones, his voice deceptively calm. "Keep in mind that you and you alone will unlock the prison that binds me. It has always been you."
"If so," Bakura sneered at the spirit, relishing in the sensation of his form vanishing into the wind, "then you are doomed, Zorc."
His form disappeared completely, and he let himself succumb to the strange emptiness that surrounded his consciousness as he left that part of his mind, a part that he hadn't realized still lived so strongly.
So he locked it away. He locked it behind many doors with many chains. Then, for a split second before he was sprung back into reality, he relinquished his cynicism to pray that those locks and chains would hold forever.
- Yami…? -
And suddenly he was awake, awake into the real world. Ryou was in control of the body. He was standing in the bedroom reading the back of a box of…hair dye?
- Are you okay? – Ryou asked through the link. Bakura could feel concern radiating from Ryou's end. – I couldn't reach you. –
"I'm fine. Tired." And an even more tired excuse. Ryou wasn't buying it; that much was clear. Still, Ryou respected privacy, even if he knew something was wrong. He knew Bakura's tone and wouldn't, he hoped, pester for answers.
"So here's the deal," Malik said from his bed where he was laying out his own disguise tools of choice. "It's a super-sneaky storm-the-castle thing we've got going on here. Sounds right?"
Ryou sighed and shook his head good-naturedly. "If you must put it that way," he agreed reluctantly.
"We're basically throwing ourselves on their whim, hoping that they don't recognize our paltry excuse for disguises, and then we're going to find…what, exactly?" Draco popped out of the bathroom after voicing his thoughts, looking irritated and a bit worse for wear.
"This was your idea," Malik pointed out. "Cold feet…?"
"Cold nothing," Draco snapped, crossing his arms. "I suggested it because you both need some way to find Potter and his friends. Well I sure don't know how to, and you two seem to be in no better a position."
"And this Department of Mysteries is our shot at finding something," Ryou supplemented. "We're desperate and losing this battle. We have to do something."
"I hate that I suggested it," Draco said. "I hate this."
"So, no cold feet, right?" Malik drawled sarcastically, pulling his hair back into long tail at the nape of his neck.
"Not cold feet!" Draco shouted. "I've realized, far quicker than either of you, how utterly stupid this is! We're just handing ourselves-ugh! Damn it!" He punched the wall in an abrupt and very unusual show of temper. Draco's temper was hot, but more familiar with biting words than physical retaliation.
It was making Ryou anxious, too. "You're afraid that this is going to end badly," Ryou said. It was a pretty safe guess – he'd already worried about the plan a thousand times. "I get it. I really do. We have to do something, though. We can't wait for them to make a move and we can't wait for Harry Potter to just bump into us on the street.
"From what we gather," Ryou continued, "the three are on the run for a reason. That means that they have to be crafty about things. We're not going to find them without help and effort. If the Death Eaters can't, then we certainly won't."
"So you're suggesting that they're better than us," Draco snapped.
Ryou shook his head. "No. Only that they have a thousand times our resources and considerably more manpower."
Draco frowned, glaring away and turning tail back into the bathroom. Ryou stood immediately, following him as far as the doorway. Draco stood in front of the mirror, his wand in his hand. He noticed Ryou's presence through the reflection, casting him a nasty look.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
Ryou blew out a long sigh, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. "Draco, look," he said softly, "we've pulled crazier stunts than this. You have to trust that we can make this beneficial to us simply because we have exhausted all other options."
"The Snake-Bastard isn't going to stop looking for ways to destroy your world just so that we can have a merry romp around Europe looking for Potter and his friends," Malik said, approaching the doorway also.
Draco scowled. "What is this, a party?"
When neither responded, Draco's scowl deepened and he raised his wand level with his head. "Now let me work, will you?" he sneered.
Ryou and Malik exchanged glances as Draco waved the wand and uttered a spell that neither of them caught. As the words left his mouth, a strange almost-clear fluid seemed to shoot from the wand and towards Draco's face. It vanished a second later, leaving the blue-eyed blonde a hazel-eyed brunette.
Draco seemed to be in a scowling mood, for he glared at his new reflection with clear disgust. "Lord, I look-"
"Like you," Malik supplied. Draco looked as if he were to protest, clearly thinking that this was an entirely unwelcome change. From behind his back, Malik drew a pair of scissors. "So we're going to fix that."
"Don't you dare touch my hair," Draco warned.
"It has to be done."
"I said don't touch it!"
"Quit being a ninny, you spoiled rich little-"
"-Bugger off, I tell you! I'll hex you, I swear it!"
"I'll show you hex-!"
In the end, a rather pleased looking Malik stood behind Draco and worked scissor-magic while Draco glowered at Ryou as if the entire situation was his fault.
"You should have stopped him," the young wizard muttered.
Ryou raised both hands, palm-up, in surrender. "I'm sorry," he offered weakly.
"Means bugger-all when he's cutting my damn hair," Draco hissed, narrowing his eyes at Malik's reflection in the mirror. He then redirected his defeated frustration onto Malik. "If you botch this…"
Malik stopped cutting to take a firm hand and grab the top of Draco's head, snapping his neck straight forwards. Draco protested loudly, but Malik's grasp was stronger, keeping his head facing straight forward. "Keep moving, and I am going to screw up."
That effectively shut the blonde-turned-brunette up, leaving him to resume a glowering contest with his own reflection. It didn't last long, because Malik finished his work in relatively short order, brushing stray strands away from Draco's neck. A quick affair with a container of gel from Malik's own personal collection left Draco staring into the mirror with awed shock.
"I'm impressed," Ryou said to Malik, grinning at him.
Draco's irritated expression turned to one of devious glee as he turned on Ryou, wand at the ready. "And guess what?" he sneered. "You're next."
Ryou raised his hands up, as if it were to block the oncoming spell. "What are you going to do?" he demanded. There was no way that he was letting Draco do strange things to his physical body with their other magic. He didn't want to face the probable negative consequences.
"I'm just going to change your hair colour," Draco said, looking a little insulted that Ryou didn't trust his judgment. "I can't do too much transfiguration with your face – it wasn't really my best subject. I'd rather avoid causing your bones to melt away." He looked retrospective for a second, a slight smile on his face as if he were recalling something related from his past.
Ryou didn't like that look.
Malik snipped his scissors. "And I'm going to cut it. Your hair is way, way too recognizable, Ryou."
He bowed his head, glancing forlornly up at his dusting of white bangs. His hair may have marked him as a standout and an easy victim for bullies during his youth, but he was proud of it. It was something that he'd shared with his father, something that he was loathe to get rid of in the wake of his father's murder.
He didn't want to give up that part of himself. Not really. It would be like admitting what had happened. Ryou was still hoping – praying – that it had been all a dream. Maybe he'd wake up in his bed, not having lost his father, only lonely and waiting for another phone call, another put-off of their rare meetings.
From the look that Malik was giving him, he understood the devastated expression completely.
"Ryou, we can dye your hair back after this is over," he said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It'll grow back, too."
Ryou straightened and steeled himself. "Do it," was all he said.
It was time to stop risking the future by wallowing in the past. He'd been doing that for far, far too long. At this point, with the way things were, he wasn't helping anything. He was only putting himself and others in danger.
He couldn't be selfish, anymore. He'd spent this entire journey, this whole terrible, awful experience, mourning the mistakes he'd made and the losses he'd suffered. He'd fretted over what had happened to him, what he had lost, what he still stood to lose.
Yet he'd forgotten that Malik's family was still at risk, Draco had possibly lost his mother and was alienated from his family forever, and that so many of these wizards had suffered in this war far longer than he.
"Stop that," Bakura hissed, pulling Ryou from his thoughts. "You are only selfish in this pathetic show of self-loathing."
Bakura's words pulled a wry smile to his face. – I'm sorry, - Ryou replied.
"You had better be."
Draco raised his wand to Ryou's head again; taking the silence following the Japanese teen's declaration as an affirmative. He murmured a spell, waving his wand once, twice…then lowered his arm.
Ryou wanted to ask why he hadn't done anything yet – after all, he'd felt nothing to indicate a spell had actually been cast – but then he caught his reflection in the mirror.
The contrast was incredible. Ryou's hair was jet black, emphasizing his Japanese-born features. He had always felt like a stranger in Japan; he was a person of Japanese descent, yes, but he was an outsider by his looks. His semi-European heredity showed in his hair colour and light skin. He'd inherited the dark eyes of a Japanese lineage, however, and with black hair, he looked almost purely so.
Malik looked a little shocked by the difference, too. He got right to work, though, almost as if he wanted to do the damage before Ryou could back out of it.
So Ryou waited.
As the "snip-snip" of the scissors took over all other sound in the bathroom, Ryou closed his eyes and redirected his thoughts to his other half.
- Yami, - Ryou whispered through the link, - what happened earlier? –
Bakura's soul gave a strange sort of aura, one that Ryou did not miss. "Nothing, landlord," the spirit replied curtly. It was too quick, though. Ryou knew that much.
- Keeping secrets will only make things harder, - Ryou chastised, feeling frustration at the hypocrisy of his other half's conduct. – Please, - he begged.
"Leave it," Bakura warned, dropping all pretense of 'nothing-is-wrong' and getting straight to the defensive. "I am serious, Ryou. Drop this."
There was something in his other half's tone that tugged at Ryou's mind, made him worry and wonder. Ryou went quiet for a moment, debating that odd thought, before finally recognizing what it actually was.
- What has you so scared? – Ryou asked softly.
Bakura's aura went still, as if Ryou's question had shocked him into a near-comatose state. Then something dangerous followed, something that made Ryou's own soul rear backwards in fear.
This danger was familiar. The feeling of hesitation, of expecting something awful to come, was something that had been familiar to Ryou for a long, long time.
Bakura, too, recognized it, and the sensation disappeared a moment later.
"I did not mean to instill that in you." His voice floated across the link in the closest thing to an apology that Ryou was ever going to get.
It was enough. A long time ago, a time that felt farther away than it actually was, Ryou would have never trusted that as meaningful. Now, however, after all they had shared, Ryou knew the difference.
"I'm done."
The scissors stopped cutting and were set gently down onto the bathroom counter. Hands moved through Ryou's hair, ruffling it to get rid of the loose strands. Ryou took a deep breath.
He looked up into the mirror, but didn't see himself. It wasn't until he met his reflection's eyes that he was certain who he was staring at. He saw his own eyes, eyes that looked as confused as he felt. This person, however, had a shaggy cut of black around his face, alien to what he was used to seeing.
This person dropped away into the crowd, looking normal and average and everything that Ryou had wanted to be his entire childhood. Losing that marker, his white hair that boys didn't understand and girls envied, was like giving himself up. He felt so different.
"Well," Malik said, stretching his arms outwards, fingers interlaced and palms out, "I'm not exactly a hairdresser, so it's not perfect, but…"
"It's perfect," Draco said, nodding. "I barely recognize him." Something flashed across Draco's face as he spoke those words, and Ryou briefly wondered to whom the young wizard was referring.
Ryou took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them, he stared into his new reflection with conviction. This was him. No physical aspect defined him. This was only a necessary step in this game of cat-and-mouse they were playing.
"Now it's my turn," Malik said, ushering Ryou and Draco out of the bathroom, "so go get changed."
Ryou barely managed to get out before Malik had slammed the door practically in his face. He blinked for a moment, surprised by Malik's clear embarrassment over…something? He wasn't sure what it was or even if he wanted to question it.
Ryou made his way to the bed and picked up a tweed jacket, throwing it on over the dark button-up he'd been wearing. It was a very "professor-style" look, something that Ryou didn't often see in Japan but saw in many an English film. His father had loved them, back before the accident.
"When in Rome," Ryou murmured softly to himself, slipping on the jacket and doing up the centre button. He left the other two undone in an effort to not seem too…perfect. He wanted to be seen but not thought of. If he looked as normal and rushed as most seemed to, then it would be a disguise well done.
"The hair makes you look older, you know," Draco commented, slipping on a long coat that sat in dark contrast over his light-gray vest and white dress-shirt. He made a face after his own statement, glancing at Ryou with tentative apology. "I don't mean to offend, that is…ah…"
"No offense taken," Ryou assured him, smiling slightly. Draco was definitely trying to sidestep Ryou's previous concern over the makeover.
They fell into an awkward silence, neither of them sure how to progress the conversation. Draco went about fiddling with his buttons and with the briefcase he was apparently to carry with him. They were hoping to pose as young Ministry workers, praying that anonymity would help them keep out of trouble until they'd found whatever information they needed to find.
Draco had told them about a woman who had previously taught at Hogwarts who worked within the Ministry. She, apparently, had recruited Draco for some kind of job that Malik had referred to as "volunteer tattletales", to which Draco had loudly and somewhat abashedly protested.
She had been "attacked" by Harry Potter and his friends. It'd been all over their wizard paper, titled something along the lines of the "Prophet", if memory served.
Also in the Ministry, however, were supporters; some of them secret, most of them under extreme surveillance. Draco wasn't sure who backed Potter's cause, and Ryou and Malik had been concerned as to how they would locate these supporters without giving themselves away.
Malik's head popped out from the bathroom, his hair tied back into a tight ponytail and some kind of brush in his hand. "Er, Ryou…?" the Egyptian male queried, looking a bit embarrassed.
Ryou blinked. "Yes?"
"I need you to change my bandages…"
Draco watched as Ryou smiled without humour and followed his friend into the bathroom. The door closed after him. They could have been discussing him, perhaps. He wasn't sure.
He just hoped that they were going to pull this off and find something that would help them, because the risk was just too big.
Draco couldn't shake the bad feeling. This was a bad idea.
But there wasn't any turning back, was there?
End Chapter
I had no clue how to end that chapter. Ugh. I am not happy with that. I had to get this out, though. It's just been way, way too long.
Shit's going down next chapter, guys.
