The next morning, I wake to angry shouting and clattering around downstairs, making me jump, startled, out of Bakura's bed. I'm alone, and it's his voice I can hear doing most of the yelling. Rubbing my eyes, I tie my hair back, change into clean clothes, and leave the room to peer tentatively over the bannister.

Bakura is sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor, looking irritated, while Yuji paces restlessly and Ryou eyes them both worriedly from his curled-up position in an armchair. "There's no way I can just let you two run off like this," Yuji is saying. "Ryou isn't even fully healed, and your head is still all over the place, Kura. If you think I'm going to sit back and watch you run off to get yourself killed, you've got another thing coming."

"It has nothing to do with you!" Bakura growls. "This is something both Ryou and I have to do for ourselves. You wouldn't understand."

"It's too dangerous!"

"It's important!"

"You're being stupid!"

"And you're being a stubborn jackass!"

Yuji stops pacing, and sighs, running a hand through his hair. "If you must go…at least let me come with you. I'd do nothing but worry for you otherwise."

"Like hell!" Bakura laughs sardonically. "I'm not having some annoying kid tag along with me."

"Tou," Ryou chides gently, "Yuji has taken good care of us these last few weeks. You should be showing him more respect."

"No, it's okay, Ryou," Yuji tells him. "Believe me, I'm used to it now." He looks back at Bakura with a small frown. "I suppose you'll take Marik with you though."

He shrugs in reply. "That's up to him. He can do whatever the hell he wants."

"But I can't?"

"You haven't been trained under me, that's the difference here."

Yuji's face flushes angrily. I know he's jealous of the interaction between Bakura and I recently. I've tried so hard to keep him from clinging to me when Yuji is around, but he just doesn't care who sees when he's in need of comfort.

But why are they leaving?

I make my presence known at that point, descending the stairs with a wary expression. All eyes turn on me. "Where are you going?" I ask. "You've never said anything about leaving before."

Bakura sighs and rubs a hand over his face, looking towards Ryou, who pipes up in his stead. "We can't stay here forever," he says. "It's time for us to go back home."

"Home?"

"Kul Elna," Bakura says quietly. "Our hometown…where our parents died."

"It's too painful to stay here," Ryou chips in, looking saddened, "and really…we've just both decided that it's time…time to join the fight we'd been preparing ourselves for all these years."

Okay, now I'm confused.

Yuji looks between me and Bakura, then Bakura to Ryou, and throws his hands up into the air in frustration. "I can't deal with this," he mutters. "I'm going out."

"Thank fuck for that," Bakura snaps as the front door slams. Ryou throws a cushion at him, shooting him a deathly glare. "Get lost, Ryou! What was that for?"

"You're being so awful to Yuji right now!" Ryou snaps back. "After everything he's done for us, you're going to treat him like that? This is difficult for him. You know how he feels about you. You might not feel the same way, but you've been close to him, so you must understand how much this is hurting him. We have to do this, I know, but can't you be a little more tactful?"

Bakura says nothing, just stands up and moves to throw himself onto the threadbare sofa, crossing his arms over his head. He seems determined not to discuss whatever the hell his relationship with Yuji is at this point.

Another emotion hits me: awkwardness. And I don't like it. I can feel my face heating up, and I pointedly make myself scarce into the kitchen. Yuji always makes hot drinks when there's been conflict or someone is upset, so I do just that, making one for myself, and then for Ryou and Bakura too before I even realise I've done it.

I bring the mugs in, passing them out. Ryou looks a little surprised, but Bakura accepts his with a tiny smile. "Can you please tell me what's going on?" I ask them, sitting down in Bakura's vacant spot on the floor.

Bakura lays his arms back over his face, sighing. "Remember when I said I'd tell you why I don't like fire?"

"Mm. I remember."

"Right, well…it stems back to Kul Elna. You know that we're not from here, that we're from Ezo originally, but Kemet is all I remember, and I'm sure Ryou's the same." Ryou nods in agreement at this. "Amane was born in Kul Elna, so she didn't know anything at all about the nation the rest of us are from. But that's neither here nor there…Kul Elna was home, for all of us."

"Our parents tried their hardest to raise us in safety," Ryou chips in. "They were good people, and they just wanted us to be happy and away from danger. But what could they do? The Dark One's influence was everywhere, and Kul Elna quickly became isolated from the rest of Kemet. It was a potent target for demon attacks. But they didn't want to leave. They'd moved us around too much already, and our mother was pregnant, and the added stress would have been too much for her. So they stayed…and they fought, and somehow managed to survive another few years."

Bakura sits up and swings his legs to the floor, raising his mug to his lips while gesturing for me to sit beside him. "Amane was about two years old when the final attack came," he says, more into his drink than to us. "The whole town became covered in darkness, and the townspeople succumbed to it, one by one. I remember the light just…going…out of their eyes, and their minds shut down. Then they turned on each other."

"It was a distraction," Ryou says. "They wanted us all out of the way so they could make obliterating the town easier."

"But why?" I ask.

"They were good fighters," he shrugs. "They'd taken down a fair few of the Dark One's higher-ranking soldiers; not just the mindless drones that roam the land, but the ones that retain a consciousness of their own, that have their orders and fight directly for their master."

"I'm still confused," I admit.

"Zorc," Bakura mutters. "The one who brought the darkness to our world. Most call him the Dark One. If it weren't for him, we'd still have our parents, we'd still be happy in that town…our sister would still be alive."

He closes his eyes, and I can almost see his heart breaking for the thousandth time. "Most of the townspeople had been afflicted by the darkness by the time the demon horde swarmed in to finish them off. I grabbed Amane and hid her away, but I couldn't find Ryou, and I couldn't see our parents anywhere. I could hear screaming, and the clash of metal, and I could smell blood. Amane was crying, she wouldn't stop, she kept asking for our mother, but I didn't know where she was. And then the flames sprang up…they were everywhere. The demons had set fire to everything, to drive us out and kill us all."

Bakura begins to tremble. "I cried then. I screamed out for anyone that might still be human, and after a while, I saw my mother, but…she wasn't the same. She had fallen to the darkness, and she didn't even seem to feel as the fire burned her alive. She'd truly been lost to the fucked-up shadows that Zorc had the good grace to bestow on us."

Ryou watches him with deep sympathy etched on his face. "I was still myself at this point," he says quietly, "but I was desperately trying to bring my father round. He'd fallen to the darkness too, and didn't recognise me anymore. As I clung to him and begged him to stop, a demon drove its blade through his heart, and I watched him die. His darkness flowed out along with his blood and…it entered me, and I think…I think I blacked out at that point. I don't remember anything after that, just that everything was black, and cold, and so, so isolated. It felt like nobody would ever find me and bring me back to life."

Bakura nods slowly. "He came stumbling through the flames like some sort of fucking zombie. I was still hiding with Amane, and she was screaming and screaming. We were the last ones left, and the demons had long since gone. I guess they didn't think a little kid like Ryou was worth their time; he was only five, after all. Seeing him like that terrified me. Part of me wanted to turn tail and run, get Amane to safety, but I couldn't leave my little brother behind. So I ran to him, and shook him, and tried to slap some sense into him. But he just…looked at me with those huge eyes of his, and they went through me. He couldn't see me at all. I just…froze, I guess. I let go of him and completely broke down. I didn't know Amane had left her hiding place until she was right in front of Ryou, tugging on his sleeve and asking him to cuddle her, but I was so far gone by that point that I couldn't even bring myself to drag her away."

My mouth is open in horror. I can't believe that they experienced such tragedy when they were young. Suddenly, Bakura's fear of fire makes sense. Who wouldn't be scared after experiencing something like this?

"This was when you were corrupted," I say to Ryou, a statement, not a question. He nods grimly. "What brought you out?"

Now he smiles. "Amane," he whispers. "I heard her voice, and her touch. She couldn't say my name properly back then, but she kept repeating it over and over… "Ree, Ree, cuddle, Ree." And something inside me just snapped, and suddenly I realised where I was, what was happening, and I scooped her up into my arms and held her tight. The fire was closing in on us, and I panicked, and that's when I felt the tingling in my hands, and the flood of power into my body. It was so intense that I dropped Amane, but at that moment, the flames froze…every single one of them."

He looks back over to Bakura, who sits hunched, his hands shivering around his mug despite the warmth of the drink inside it. "Amane laughed at that," Ryou continues. "She ran up to the ice and touched it, and laughed, shouting that it was cold. Tou came out of his trance then, but he'd snapped into battle mode, and he grabbed us both and ran, as far away as we could get. We didn't look back, we couldn't. There was nothing left for us there."

I can barely even process this. They've been through so much. How have they managed to survive through such horror? It's almost impossible to comprehend.

Ryou sighs and leans back in his chair, drinking deeply from his mug as if telling his story has exhausted him. Bakura sets his mug down and puts his face in his hands, shaking his head back and forth. "It's no life, just existing like this," he says in a muffled voice. "That's why we've got to go, we've got to go back home. Our work still isn't done. We've got to pick up where our parents left off, but we weren't ready…not till now. It's taken Amane dying for us to realise that we're more than strong enough for this now."

He lifts his head and looks at me with steely determination in his eyes. "We're going to kill Zorc. We're going to vanquish this godforsaken darkness for good. For Amane, for our parents, for everyone that we've lost to the shadows. If you want to come with us, I won't stop you. But this is fucking dangerous, Marik. You have to be prepared for anything."

My mind was made up the second I put two and two together.

"I'm your apprentice, Kura. Of course I'm coming with you."

His face splits into a smile, the first true smile I've seen. "Wouldn't have it any other way."