Title: Two Sides Of A Coin (Chapter 10) – Chasing Phantoms
Pairing: Ryou x Marik, Ryou x Yami Marik (of a sort)
Rating: M
Summary: Banishing part of Marik's soul to the Shadow Realm had more consequences than anyone realized. Two years post-series, Marik's dark side resurfaces with unclear goals and an unnerving focus on Ryou.
Ryou stared at the open window for a long moment, the shock preventing his mind from providing him with a course of action. He eventually shook himself out of it and ran over to the window, hoping to see Marik – normal Marik – safe and unharmed in the bushes below.
"Is he there?" Yugi asked hopefully, joining Ryou at the window sill.
"No," Ryou answered quietly, trying not to panic. Where did he go? Why did he go? Ryou thought frantically. He's never up and left before.
Ryou stuck his head out the window and looked around, praying he would see either Marik or his alter-ego somewhere farther down the street, but he had no luck there, either. Though the crushed branches indicated that someone had fallen on the bushes very recently, there wasn't anything else out of the ordinary about the scene below. "I don't see any sign of him," Ryou said, his feelings all over the place. On the one hand, the lack of an obvious trail meant they had nothing to go by in trying to find Marik. On the other hand, a complete lack of clues seemed infinitely better than a trail of blood or a noticeable path of destruction.
"He didn't even break the window," Ryou added, inspecting the area around the window. That's good, surely? Ryou thought. If he has some control, he might not hurt anyone he sees. The idea was comforting, but Ryou couldn't fully convince himself that it was actually true. Even it were, the thought that Marik's dark side had more control over his actions made Ryou uneasy in its own right, though he couldn't clearly articulate why.
Yugi went quiet for a moment before responding. "What if he isn't the one who ran away?"
It took Ryou a moment to figure out what he meant. "You think Marik jumped out the window himself?" he asked, unable to believe it, but also aware that his disbelief might well be unjustified. I know a lot less about Marik than I used to assume.
"It's possible," Yugi said unhappily. He shook his head. "We should be out looking for him," he declared, closing the window. "The longer we wait, the farther he can go."
Ryou nodded. "Where should we start?" he asked, stepping over bunches of ripped paper on his way out of the bedroom. "He could have gone in any direction."
Yugi followed behind him. "I'll call Joey," he said, heading for the phone. "Maybe we should call Ishizu and Odion," he added.
Ryou grabbed his hand before it could reach the phone. "We promised not to tell them," he said, distressed at the thought of betraying Marik's confidence.
"What do we tell them if he stays missing, because we didn't ask for help?" Yugi asked.
Ryou let go, conceding the point. "You call them," he said, grabbing his coat and putting it on. "I'll start looking for him."
Ryou ran out of the game shop, rushing past Yugi's grandpa without even saying goodbye. He heard the old man call after him, but he didn't want to stop. He noted with a small amount of relief that Marik's motorcycle was still parked in front of the shop. If Marik ever ran off by himself, he would never leave that behind.
Once outside, he immediately went to the spot under Yugi's window, hoping a closer inspection would give more hints about where Marik's dark side might have gone. There were a couple of indentations next to the bushes that looked like they might have come from feet, so Ryou headed in the direction they led. I hope he didn't change direction after these two steps, Ryou thought.
The path took him directly to a nearby intersection. Ryou looked down every possible direction, but the trees along the streets prevented him from seeing too far away, and there didn't seem to be any clues about which way to go. His mind really wanted to panic, but Ryou forced himself to remain calm. I'll never find him if I can't think about this rationally.
Ryou looked around some more, trying to figure out if any direction might appeal more to Marik's dark side more than the others. But is he just trying to get as far away from here as possible, or is he going somewhere specific? Ryou wondered. If he's going somewhere specific, it wouldn't matter how appealing any of the streets are.
Ryou was about to give up and choose a direction at random, when he saw the proprietor of the corner store he was standing in front of staring at him through the window. I wonder if...
Ryou ran inside and raced over to the counter. "Um. Excuse me. I'm really very sorry to bother you, but-"
"Is something wrong, young man?" the old man cut him off.
"Er," Ryou replied, not wanting to say yes, however true it might be. "I'm looking for my friend, and I was just wondering if you saw which direction he went in."
"What does your friend look like?" the old man asked.
"Well," Ryou began, summoning up an image of Marik's dark side in his mind. "He's blond. And a little scary looking..."
"That punk was your friend?" the old man asked, looking Ryou up and down like he couldn't believe it.
At least I know we're talking about the same person, Ryou thought. "Um. Sort of. So you've seen him, then?" At the man's nod, he continued: "Which way did he go?"
"That way," the man said, gesturing to indicate that he'd disappeared to the left side of the window.
"Thanks," Ryou said, racing back to the door. He hesitated a moment before going through it. "Did he see you?" he asked the shopkeeper, wondering if they'd had any actual interaction.
The shopkeeper shook his head. "No. And I'm glad he didn't. Your friend looked ready to kill someone."
Ryou hoped the words wouldn't turn out to be prophetic. He nodded grimly at the old man. "Thanks again," he said as he headed back out the door.
Ryou turned the corner in the direction the shopkeeper had indicated and looked ahead down the street. Why this way? Ryou wondered, trying to remember if there was a place in that direction that Marik's dark side might want to get to. Or is it just that this direction has the least traffic?
Ryou ran down the street, looking down every alley and street he came across. He continued down the same street, only turning when there was a bend in the road, since without actually seeing Marik's dark side, he didn't have a logical way of choosing any one of the intersecting streets over any other. He hadn't met any other people while walking down the lonely residential street, so he couldn't even ask if anyone had seen anything, like he had with the shopkeeper. After going several blocks without any clues whatsoever, Ryou started to wonder if it was simply hopeless.
He was considering turning around and going back to the game shop when he heard a dog barking somewhere off to the left. He jogged around the corner and found an elderly woman and a small, yapping dog standing next to an unconscious figure on the sidewalk. "Marik!" Ryou ran over to his friend and knelt down on the ground next to him.
The dog started yapping at him. "Shush, Pip," the old woman ordered the dog. The dog ignored the command, but was forced to move away from Ryou when the old woman pulled on the leash. "Do you know this man?" she asked Ryou.
"Yes," Ryou replied, rolling Marik over so he was on his back. His head wasn't as bad as Ryou had been expecting; it appeared to have been cushioned by Marik's arms as he fell, instead of hitting the the hard concrete directly. Marik's arms were badly scraped up, and he'd taken a likely unpleasant hit to the nose, but it could have been much worse.
"Your friend looks nothing like this when he's awake," the old woman said, rubbing at her glasses as though she thought it would fix the apparent contradiction in Marik's appearance.
"What happened?" Ryou asked, pillowing Marik's head in his lap and looking for further injuries. He was relieved to see that Marik was breathing normally. Marik shivered a little; Ryou immediately removed his coat and put it on top of him.
"Your friend was storming down the street like he was looking for trouble," the woman said. "But the moment he saw me and Pip come out of the house, he fainted dead away. I guess he's not as tough as he looks."
Ryou frowned in thought. He's never come out in front of other people before. Even at the game shop, he waited until Yugi was out of the room. What is it about other people that keeps him away? And why doesn't it work with me?
"Should I call an ambulance?" the woman asked Ryou, walking up to the steps of what must have been her house.
Ryou thought about it for a moment. He's always woken up on his own eventually. I'm not sure paramedics could even do anything. He gently rubbed the side of Marik's face. "Um. No," he decided. "He doesn't need an ambulance, but if you could call-"
A car suddenly came speeding down the street, the noise drowning out what Ryou had intended to say. The car came to a screeching halt several feet away from them, as though the driver had caught sight of them while passing by and decided to hit the brakes, hard.
"Marik!" cried two voices, one male, one female. Ishizu and Odion ran over to them, crouching down next to Marik's unconscious body.
"He's okay," Ryou tried to assure them. "A little scratched up from the fall, but he's still breathing."
Odion promptly picked Marik up and carried him over to the car without saying a word.
"Thank you for finding him," Ishizu told Ryou before rushing to the car herself. She opened the rear door of the car so that Odion could lay Marik down in the back seat.
"Where are you taking him?" Ryou asked, joining them at the car. He waved at the elderly woman still on the sidewalk so that she would know it was alright to continue with her walk.
Ishizu and Odion looked at each other in an apparently non-verbal consultation. "Yugi's home is closest, and Marik's other friends are still worried about him," she said finally, getting in the driver's seat of the car and gesturing for Ryou to sit in the passenger's seat. Ryou complied immediately. He wondered for a moment where Odion was going to sit, but the large man simply lifted Marik's head and slid onto the seat beneath him.
The moment all seatbelts were buckled, they took off down the block, screeching around the corner and speeding down the street toward the game shop.
The ride back to the game shop took either 5 seconds or 100 years. Ryou wasn't entirely sure which it was.
On the one hand, the ride to their destination had taken place at such a terrifyingly high speed that it seemed to take forever for them to stop. On the other hand, they'd been going far too fast for the ride to actually have taken all that long. Ryou supposed that speeding must be an Ishtar family trait, though he had to admit that Ishizu might only have been reacting to the situation.
They got out of the car when they reached the game shop. Ryou ran ahead to hold the door open, and Odion carried Marik inside. Ishizu followed behind them.
"Is he alright?" Yugi's grandpa asked, running out from behind the counter to meet them.
"We think so," Ryou replied, looking at the others a little nervously. Odion still hadn't said a word since they'd found Marik, and Ryou was starting to wonder what was going on in his mind.
"Hurry up and bring him inside," Solomon replied, gesturing to the door at the back of the shop.
They wasted no time in getting Marik into the home behind the shop. When they reached the living room, Odion set Marik down on the couch.
"Yugi and Joey are still out looking for him," Solomon informed them. "I'll try to call them back," he added, walking toward the door to the shop. "Bakura knows where everything is."
"I'll get some bandages," Ryou said, running to the bathroom. He seized the first aid kit and ran back out to the living room, setting the box down on the coffee table. He took out a few packets of sanitizing wipes to clean the dried blood off of Marik's arm. Odion took a packet of his own and worked on Marik's other arm. Ishizu watched from a few feet away.
They soon had Marik's arms cleaned and bandaged. Odion took care of his nose, first making sure that it wasn't broken, then cleaning it up and putting a small bandage over the top. While Odion was doing that, Ryou went to find a blanket to put on top of Marik, concerned about the amount of time he'd been out in the winter cold without a jacket. He doesn't seem to be doing doing that badly, but then, his dark side was out in the cold far longer than he himself was. I suppose his dark side doesn't have to care about things like cold weather.
Ryou took the blanket from Yugi's closet and brought it back to the living room. Seeing that Odion was finished, Ryou laid the blanket on top of Marik and stepped back. Odion made a few minute adjustments, then turned and walked directly over to Ryou.
"Now," he said, his face completely unreadable as he towered over Ryou. "You will tell me what has been going on with my brother."
It wasn't a request, nor was it a question. It was a calm, simple statement of fact, because, as the look in Odion's eyes indicated, Ryou wasn't going anywhere until he explained precisely what had been happening in Marik's life that had built up to this particular event.
"Er." Ryou was, of course, completely and utterly unprepared to provide such an explanation off the top of his head. He didn't even know where to begin. His knees gave out a little, and he collapsed in the nearest chair. "J-just give me a minute," he said.
Odion nodded, not moving from where he stood. "I will wait."
Ryou looked from Odion to Ishizu and back again, then buried his face in his hands. Of course you will.
He sighed mentally, then set about coming up with a coherent explanation of the events of the past few months. It wasn't going to be easy.