Phantom: Thank you to everybody who has reviewed so far! Special thanks to Ataahua and Presea! Getting feedback from you guys is half the reason I like to write these stories. My growing obsession with ballet (or maybe I was always obsessed) is part of the reason why I love this story so much – so expect to see some more of that in later chapters. For now, this chapter is a little short, but I needed to figure out a place to end it, as the next one will be quite a bit longer. Hope you enjoy!
Chapter 9
xXx
"Jesus! There's two of them!" I cried.
Malik sucked in a breath. "Fuck. Me."
"Maybe later!" Ryou called from the kitchen, with a wink.
"How in the hell-?" I fish-mouthed.
Malik looked like he was ready to split, fixated on Bakura as if he were some kind of wild beast about to pounce. "You've been dabbling in Shadow Magic again, haven't you…?"
"Have I what."
"I didn't think it was possible…" Malik murmured.
"Well, one of us had to try it. As it turned out – it worked."
Malik turned to Ryou, looking as if his blood pressure was rising with every passing second. "Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking, letting him have free run of the world? Have you gone completely insane?!"
Ryou limp-wristed him. "Oh, look who's talking!"
"He's a sociopath! A psychopath! He'd kill someone if they got his drink order wrong!"
Bakura crossed his legs. "I can hear you, you know."
I glanced at Malik gesticulating wildly, cheeks flushed; I didn't think I'd ever seen him so distressed before. He was usually a pretty composed kind of a guy, but this new turn of events seemed to be rubbing him really up the wrong way, like dropping a cat into a bathtub.
Ryou took his apron off and came over with some drinks. "Malik, Bakura is not Marik." He stated, calmly.
"He's not much better." Malik glared at the fiend across the table.
"Bakura has been with me long enough now to understand how the modern world works. He's become more human over the years…"
Malik rolled his eyes and folded his arms, not buying any of it. "This has got to be the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome I've ever heard of."
"Bakura, how are you going to prove your identity? You don't have a birth certificate!" I queried.
"I do." He replied. "In a dusty tomb…in Egypt…somewhere."
"You'll need a passport if you want to go to Egypt."
"A what?"
Ryou blanched and went back to the kitchen to finish off dinner. "Don't worry about any of those things, Sable. Bakura has connections…let's just leave it at that."
Curiosity suddenly got the better of me. "Do you mind if I…?"
I walked over to where Bakura was sitting and boldly touched his face with both my hands. His skin was warm, real…human. I could even feel a slight stubble under my palms. He was solid, real flesh and blood. He blinked up at me in surprise, as if the feeling of skin-to-skin contact was foreign to him. His eyes were such a dark brown, his pupils were barely visible. Every cell that made up his body had been formed from some kind of black magic, and my mind was drawing a blank as to how that could possibly be. What was his DNA made from?
"No shit...But how?" I looked to Malik, then across to Ryou, begging for an explanation.
"Sometimes, it's better not to know these things." Malik deadpanned, finally calm enough to take a seat at the other end of the table.
"It didn't require a blood sacrifice, or anything like that, you know." Ryou joked, handing me a glass of wine.
Bakura leered at Malik. "Your other half says 'hello'."
"Very funny."
I was still befuddled. "But what did you do to make this happen? Sell your soul, or something?"
"He doesn't have a soul!" Malik griped. "What you're seeing here is the product of evil forces coming together to create an abomination."
"Oh come, now, Ishtar. Let's not get the words 'soul' and 'heart' mixed up, now." Bakura turned to me. "I danced with the Devil on the thirteenth floor, okay?"
I felt a chill run down my spine; he obviously wasn't willing to tell me exactly how he had acquired his own body, or else thought I wasn't able to understand the logistics of it.
"So, what are you going to do now that you're…" I struggled to think of the appropriate word. "alive?"
"I wasn't dead before, you know." He seemed slightly offended by that.
"'Undead', then?"
"Ryou thinks I should start by going to school." The spirit replied, sneering in disgust. "Apparently it's a lot harder to make a living as a tomb robber, these days." Apparently, he had a sense of humour.
I tried to imagine Bakura in a school uniform, and snorted out loud. The idea of it just didn't jive. Then again, how many times had I witnessed Ryou in school, when it wasn't actually Ryou at all? The thought of it made me feel queer.
"What age are you going to try to pass off as?" I asked.
"Well, I was 18 when I died, which makes me younger than all of you, now, doesn't it? Ironic, no?"
Ryou came and set the food down on the table. "I'm going to enrol him in university. But first, he's going to need a few lessons on how to work a computer."
"That could be challenging." I sweat-dropped. Ryou had once told me that Bakura had thrown the microwave down the stairs because he couldn't understand how to make his food warm again.
I noticed Malik was being unusually quiet. "What do you think, Malik?"
"You want to know what I think? He's going to make everyone's lives a living hell, especially Ryou's. Ra knows how Yuugi's going to take this, when he catches wind of it. Ryou, honestly? How are you not terrified of this monster?"
Ryou looked wounded, knowing that his relationship with Bakura went beyond the realm of most people's understanding. Given Malik's experience with his own darker half, he figured that Malik was biased on the subject. "Things are different now, Malik."
Bakura pouted. "Come on, now, Ishtar. Everybody deserves a second chance."
"Not you! You were bad enough when you were using Ryou's body; I can't count the times that you hurt him. You belong in a nut house!"
"Oh, and like you had nothing to do with that." Bakura rolled his eyes.
"It's alright, Malik." Ryou cooed. "That was a long time ago, now – water under the bridge. Bakura's come a long way since then; it's time for him to find his feet."
"I want to go back to Egypt, so you fools won't have anything to worry about after I'm gone, anyway."
Malik looked visibly relieved. "What for, may I ask?"
"To bone your sister," Bakura grinned wickedly.
I nearly choked on my dinner. "Bakura!"
"Hey! Take it back!" Malik shot up from the table. I grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him down again.
"I'm kidding…sort of."
"Stay away from Isis, you fucking psycho."
We spent the remainder of the evening having a somewhat stilted conversation with Ryou and Bakura, and I was slowly getting more used to the idea of them both being together in the same room, however incomprehensible it may be. I wondered if Bakura really was known as 'Bakura' in his past life, or if that was just the name he had unofficially adopted, and was happy to remain known as such.
It was uncanny how much of a resemblance he bore to Ryou; it was like they were twins, but not identical – there were definitely some obvious differences, namely in height and build – Bakura was over six feet, and muscular in a sinewy kind of a way. Ryou was about 5'9, and made little effort to stay in shape physically, yet he was naturally slender. I had always envied anyone that never seemed to have to work to maintain their figure. Dancing had always helped me in that department, but there had been times when I was unable to dance, and I gained weight simply by looking at food, or so it seemed.
Malik was obviously feeling rather alarmed about the whole state of affairs, and I wondered if it was really due to the fact that Bakura was now a fleshly being, or that the chances of Malik's dark side returning, too, could become a real prospect. However, from what Ryou had told me, during Bakura's reincarnation ritual, the only way the spirit could acquire a body of its own was if the host gave their true and genuine consent. Ryou obviously cared enough about Bakura to allow his embodiment to be carried out, which would not be the case with Malik and Marik – if indeed Marik still existed at all.
"If he's going back to Egypt, then you won't have to worry about him." I said to Malik, on our way home in the car.
"He didn't say for how long, though."
"Maybe it will just be a trip to try and find the remains of Kuru Eruna."
Malik glanced sideways at me. "How do you know about that?"
"Ryou's told me everything about him, Malik. Everything he knows, anyway."
"I'd prefer it if you stayed away from him."
I frowned. "That's going to be kind of hard when Ryou's my best friend…and I work with him."
Malik exhaled unhappily, but said nothing.
"Why are you so upset by it?"
"I don't even know where to start, Sable."
I reached over and clasped his hand. "From the beginning," I smiled. "Let's go somewhere, and you can tell me."
Malik glanced in the rear-view mirror, shifted the Aston down a gear and floored it. We hurtled onto the motorway, heading toward the hills, where the drifters liked to hang out. I felt a rush of exhilaration, betting that Malik could give them a run for their money if we happened upon any. He was a skilled driver, and the roads were slick with rain, so the chances were high that they'd be out tonight.
We climbed further into the hills, and, as predicted, some drifters were out burning rubber. We played a little game of cat and mouse with a few of them, Malik putting the Aston through its paces, until we found a place with a nice view to park up. We sat for a few moments, just admiring the view across the glittering lights of Domino. Even on a rainy night, it was still pretty.
"When I came to Japan eight years ago…I was filled with anger and hatred, toward my father, for keeping me and my siblings in the dark for so long, guarding the so-called Pharaoh's tomb. I began to resent the idea that we were nothing but slaves to a long-dead Pharaoh who was never going to return, and that my life had been built on a lie. I wanted to live in the real world, but I had been robbed of that for the first twelve years of my life. We were literally living like ancient Egyptians, underground, away from everything that the world is today. I felt like I had been deceived by my father, my whole life."
I was quiet, listening, as the rain drummed on the roof. I hoped that by telling me his story, Malik would find some kind of release.
"Over time, as I endured the abuse from my father, an evil entity began to grow inside me. My hatred toward my father fuelled it. It started to control me, and eventually it even took over my body. It controlled me – with the power of the Sennen Rod – for almost four years. It convinced me to do terrible things, to get revenge on Yuugi…which sounds so ridiculous, now that I think about it.
"I had to fight, Sable, to get my body and my life back. By the end of the Battle City Tournament, I realised it had gotten way out of hand. This…side of me, this evil persona, had taken on a life of its own – my life, to be more specific. It was a maniac, and Bakura was working together with it to try and reclaim the power of all of the Sennen Items.
"Yami no Yuugi was the only one who was able to stop them…I owe him my life. It's all so much more complicated than that, but you've got to believe me. Seeing Bakura again, now – in the Ra-damned flesh – has just brought it all back again. I wanted to leave that life behind me. When I started singing, and dancing, I thought I was finally free of it, and everything that was connected to my past life. I was starting over. But now…" he trailed off.
It hurt for me to hear how distressed he was, by this, and the fact that he had been raised by an abusive father – for at least part of his life. He still had not disclosed how his father had died, and I assumed his mother was also dead, but I got a sinking feeling that I knew the answer.
"I'm sorry you had to go through all that," I whispered. My childhood back in Australia seemed pretty mundane, by comparison.
"None of it matters, now." Malik replied, gazing out the windscreen, his eyes glassy. "It's over. But it will always be there. You can't change the past."
"It's shaped you into who you are today, though." I reminded him. "If none of that had happened, then you wouldn't have gone on your quest to find Yuugi, and ended up here. We might have never met."
He looked over at me, then, as if broken from the miasma of his thoughts, and his expression softened. "If one good thing came of it, it's that I got to meet you."
I smiled, trying not to laugh, because I sensed he really meant what he had said. I never thought of myself as something special, but perhaps I was special to him. I leant over and kissed him, feeling that familiar ache stirring within me once again as he kissed me back slowly, sensually. I tried to push away the terrible, sinful things I wanted to do to him right then and there in the car, and I could tell Malik was having a hard time with it too (pun intended). Eventually we broke apart, catching our breaths, and I knew if we didn't stop, we'd very soon end up in the back seat.
"It's getting kind of steamy in here," Malik said, wiping the inside of the window with his shirt sleeve.
I laughed. "State the obvious, why don't you."
He smiled goofily at me and started the engine. "I'm going to take you home before I do something I regret."
xXx
Phantom: So as you can tell, this chapter gives you (and Sable) more of an inside look into Malik's mind. I'm trying to write the characters as authentically as possible, including Sable, but do feel free to comment your criticisms and likes or dislikes about how well I write the characters! Thanks so much ^_^
