Woodsmoke

by albino-yaoi

The hushed, cold land bears a small cabin in its bosom, and Ryou awakes to find himself alone with a being he has never met - yet has heard so much about. Long drabble, deathshipping, eventual gemshipping and rustshipping

11. Chapter 11

So things don't get confusing:

Ryou is...Ryou

Mr. Bakura is Ryou's father

Bakura is TKB/Yami Bakura whatever the fuck -

0000

The police had separated them for questioning.

Ryou was in the hallway, acutely annoyed, and the agitation was fueled by his lack of sleep and anxiety. Some of the neighbors would poke out of their doors for a quick glimpse, and he felt like cussing at them and beating their faces in.

He was tired.

He was scrutinized, questioned, repeatedly asked who was who, and he quietly muttered an "Ishtar" behind a broken name. He recalled what had happened, why it had happened - with discrepancy, a "past conflict of interest". Who the apartment's rental agreement was signed to - an absent father with a disconnected son. He felt overwhelmed, robbed of his sleep and the tense silence that had lasted for days before left him encrusted with a thick frustration. He wondered how Mariku was faring.

Jonouchi was escorted out into the hallway. His nose was crooked, and his brow was split. One side of his cheek held a blossom of burst blood vessels, and he looked at Ryou with an exceptional amount of fury. Ryou could hardly swallow in response.

He didn't press any charges.

But he would hold a small grudge of humiliation and sick annoyance.

0000

Ryou didn't go to school the next day. He was beyond irritated in his stately form of sleep deprivation and the outspread wings of insomnia had begun to take their hold. He had nightmares when he attempted to sleep, and only an hour of slumber was gifted to him. He became boldly disheveled and lashed out at Mariku as he drank scalding tea, the heat curling in his chest like serpents. He would spit verbal abuse at Mariku, his words embroidered in black malice and agitation and Mariku would watch him with silken eyes, curiously excited by the insults.

When the caller ID revealed a "Mutou Yugi" or "Kame Game Shop", Ryou would never answer. He would stare at the phone, as if offended that it was making such a heinously high pitched tone until it went quiet. He didn't have the heart to try to answer, he lacked the stability, the rationale to speak coherently. He felt like a cloth rose. Quite dead, quite useless.

Mariku had bruises that had erupted across his skin. Barely visible, like faded ink from a purple pen. His lip was split and swollen, and he prowled around the apartment in a flurry of disappointment and ruptured anger. He had reveled in the fight, had felt the agony of bone and skin and the desolation of an old acquaintance inflamed with violent rage. It made his shoulders ache, his fingers tingle and the hair on the back of his neck rise. His eyes would water, and he would tug at his lip and feel the decay of his mind pulsating with renewed bloodlust. Jounouchi still had the same scowl, the same accent, the cocky gait, the exquisite detachment as he hurled punches and kicks with divine ferocity. Mariku had a moving expression, a totem through Jounouchi.

He had recognized himself.

Ryou had noticed.

He fumed at Mariku, vile words leaving his throat, though he was mildly disappointed that he didn't fight back as much as he had expected him to. They leered at each other like distorted mirrors, equal amounts of fury and cold inferiority fluttering against their hearts. Ryou dove into his homework. Finals were soon, and he was still so far behind. He felt like a chicken about to get culled, hanging upside down by his feet. It was inevitable that he would fail this year - his supposed last year - and he was grossly upset. He would cry into his pillow sometimes, or in the shower at this realization, and he was disgustingly frightful for his future. He would have to take summer school and try his exams again next year, and he needed to tell his father.

Ryou still hadn't called his father to tell him he was still alive. Ryou wanted him to suffer, to let him think both of his children were dead, to suffer the anguish of living longer than the lives you had made. He might as well have been dead, he had been surrendered to the depths of unknowing wilds without a fuss.

This comprehension of his impending failure and sudden bout of crippling depression did not keep him from studying with such intensity that it left him seeing stars behind the frustrated tears that crept atop his lashes. He didn't even hear the phone ring.

Mariku's muffled voice trickled into his ears, and it took him a moment to realize that he was talking. The prattle of numbers and words on paper ceased, and Ryou listened. It was lucid, reminding him of the strange impression Mariku had made the first day he had met him in the cabin. Simple, clear, and Ryou was suddenly encumbered by a host of petty worries when he realized Mariku was on the phone.

He bolted out of his room.

Mariku was in the game room, still and silent before the shelves of unpainted Warhammer figures, drab and gray in their innocuous poses, with pieces and kits organized by model types. An unset RPG table was at his back, brushes with dried paint sitting beside a cup that had once been filled with water. The phone was against his ear, and Mariku regarded him with cold eyes, "He's right here, Yugi."

Ryou sniffled as tears left his eyes, and his stomach boiled. He wanted to wretch.

He watched as Mariku flicked the light on his illuminated magnifier, brightening a section of the table, before turning it back off. He repeated the process several times, mumbling "mmhms" and a "He's fine, Yugi." into the phone.

Ryou walked towards him, fully intending on taking the phone away, to explain to his friend why he had lied, why he had kept such a horrendous thing a secret. He couldn't even begin to fathom how to start, where to start, what words he cold possibly choose. There weren't any words. He couldn't explain that the entire time he had been gone - that the person in the cabin that had helped him - had been Mariku. That Jounouchi had barged into his home, unwelcome, and fought with a guest.

It wasn't that simple.

Mariku walked away from him, turning on his heel, and Ryou stared at the carved back of a humorless scar that had both embellished and marred Mariku's skin. He quickened his pace, lurching to grasp the phone from Mariku's hold, and he watched, horrified, as Mariku hung up the phone, the beep delving into his nerves like a bitter acid.

Mariku looked at him, shuffling his bare feet and averting his gaze to the wall, "He's coming to visit."

Ryou wasn't sure if he should set tea or lock himself in his room.

0000

Atem had skin that was a polished bronze, only a shade darker than Mariku's. He stood, dignified and imperial, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall in the living room. He held a natural assertion of his power, a pulsating chant of his royal lineage, of who he once was, of who he will always be. The pieces of Ryou's coffee table lay in a pile on the floor next to him, a shock of splintered wood and large pieces of glass. Ryou hadn't felt like leaving the apartment to take them to the dumpster, and he felt like a disquieted fool in the presence of an individual who had once been revered as a god.

Mariku was across the room, leaning against the opposite wall. He had his arms crossed in mocking, pose and stance mirrored. Amethyst met ruby, and they studied each other, forlorn in a muted irritation of forced recognition. Mariku allowed a curled smile, a smirk to vex a Pharaoh's sacred divinity, to poke fun at the irony, at this mindless severity of disquiet. It worked, and Ryou watched Atem's face fall into a scowl.

Ryou looked to Yugi, standing next to him. He offered a shy smile, one which Yugi returned. Yugi studied his friend's demeanor, his pallid skin, the restless bags beneath his eyes, the disheveled hair and wrinkled clothing. He had lost weight, fingers jittery and reactions listless. He never said anything at school about the hickeys or how greatly lethargic Ryou had been, but now he knew, and he genuinely worried for his friend, fearing that Ryou had somehow skidded back into an abusive situation and didn't know how to get out. It made him sick.

Yugi gently lay his hand upon Ryou's wrist, all reassuring smiles and positive attitude, gentle Yugi with and extraordinarily big heart and tremendous naivety. The hollow sound of a narrow shade of breath flowed across his face, almost a whisper, and Ryou strained to hear it, "Let's go into your room to talk alone?"

Ryou closed his eyes, terrified, his emotions stale in their overwhelming knotted melodies. He meekly followed Yugi, sneaking a glance at Mariku and Atem, almost anticipating them to start fighting. Mariku clucked his tongue, eyes averting towards Yugi to wink at him and Atem scoffed.

Ryou shambled to his bed, a nest of malaise and disheveled weeping, and his voice cracked more than he thought it would "This isn't want you think."

Yugi sat in the chair by his desk, a small form that held a rush of heated possibilities and violent wounds that had never quite healed, "Then tell me what I should think. Because I'm thinking quite a lot."

It was like the smell of old incense, plucking and flicking truths and whispers in a recollection of cold blood and warm fires. Everything was unwrinkled, curt and he felt humiliated, a dark reckoning of sweat, skin and beaded spunk. He never boasted, but he always emphasized through a thicket of shame and uncertainty. He hadn't meant to lie, hadn't meant to bend the truth in the beginning. And he most certainly hadn't meant for what had happened - twice - to happen. He denied the glamour of the incidents, though he also denied his unwillingness. He hadn't been as a corpse being kissed, but a narrow qualm that had plunged him into a foul broth of unease and stricken confusion.

Yugi was startled. Startled, aggrieved, and ashamed for his friend. He wasn't disgusted, but apprehensive and he felt that Ryou had become a part of a muted drama. The hickeys had been explained, awkwardly and quickly, and Yugi didn't ask for further details outside of the quiet stories.

Then Yugi tore into him - telling him he looked like he did when the Spirit had possessed his body, leaving it wasted. Yugi had noticed, he had always noticed. He never wanted to embarrass his friend, nor pester him into annoyance. He felt aggravated and sick that he hadn't asked at all.

Ryou wouldn't deny that he was tired, that he was stressed. He began to feebly cry. He felt like that was his entire existence, of being exhausted and always on the verge of tears, and Yugi was an inexpensive outlet for his misery. His father had abandoned him, he was failing school, and a dark shadow had endured the harshest of punishments to come back to plague him and torment him with bared teeth. His own Spirit was unaccounted for, and he felt ill over the thought of him ruining someone else's life.

He had always been the odd man out, the straggler, the third wheel. None of these things were ever entirely his fault, he tried so hard to have friends, and to keep them. He knew he didn't exactly have the best personality, and his interests in the occult either attracted the wrong types, or pushed them away. He could be stubborn and withdrawn, and he realized this. But games were fun and games brought people together and making friends became easier because of them. The Spirit had ruined that.

Yugi reassured him that he always had friends. He just never fully realized it.

0000

Mariku sneered at Ryou, his head cocked, "He interrogated me."

Ryou was lethargic, as empty as a greasy tin can, "Who?"

"The Pharaoh."

Ryou grunted, his eyes swollen and body numb. Yugi had left with the Pharaoh - Atem - after Ryou's unveiling of his personal depravity. Ryou didn't have the courage or energy to leave his room, to even look at Atem's feet, let alone his face. Mariku had found him curled upon his bed, all blankets and empty remarks. They only had the pleasure of guessing each other's qualms, of what was exchanged on the other side of a closed door.

Ryou strained his body as an oiled woman upon the bed, molded out of his own prison, lost amidst his own thoughts and problems, "What did he say?"

Mariku sat next to him on the bed, stretching his arms and Ryou watched the contours of his back and twisting scars, taut and sobering, "He told me to leave you alone."

The corners of Ryou's lips turned, and a small burst of laughter erupted from his chest, "Is that it?"

"He phrased it differently."

Ryou felt insulted and hollowed as he lay next to a desolate shadow, and he reached his hand out to stroke Mariku's back. He didn't flinch away this time, and the grooves of the hieroglyphs dug at the joints of his fingers, "And what did you tell him?"

Mariku grinned at him, "To fuck off."

They smiled at each other, feelings swollen with a writhing beauty that left them strangely unthreatened by the weight of the world.

0000

They looked at him differently. Concerned glances and fake smiles that didn't quite reach the eyes. He had emerged from the dawn, a piece of himself killed off and thrown to the wolves. A looming emptiness cracked through him and a veil of death rested upon his shoulders. Jounouchi with his bruised face, who would only shake his head at him from behind a desk chair. He waited for the words, for the accusations and frightful moments that sprung from a delirium of lucid memories. None came, but they all knew. Yugi would reassure him with soft spoken words, telling him to come to him if he ever needed help, if Mariku changed, inviting him over for dinner or for a play at a new board game, but the Pharaoh still intimidated and shamed him. Anzu offered a challenge on a dance platform at the arcade, or even just to go to an after school dance club. He had always been a terrible dancer, clumsy and disoriented with physical work and movement. But he appreciated the offers.

Even if they were a sacrificial avalanche of disgusted disapproval, sudden in their interest and solemn in their pity.

Honda was the only one who had drummed up to him after school, asking him to get something to eat. Not a date - he had phrased, embarrassed with his crooked tenderness. Ryou accepted. He had been too miserable to cook and had been eating snacks and cereal, and eating out was a shift out of this rut of repetitive anguish of studying and festering around the apartment with a frustrated Egyptian. He had fallen into a routine that had become stagnant and Mariku was a damp tatter of his own desecration.

He needed a break.

Honda would call him by his last name, the name he received from his father, and the name that held a marbled vein of distinguished grief. It wasn't out of coldness, but of a respect in a tentative friendship. Honda had always seemed to have been behind him, worrying for him, a stealthy distance with feigned indifference besides that of an association with Yugi and the Spirit of the Ring and the basics of human empathy.

It took Honda a long time to admit to himself that he held a peculiar fondness that went a bit further than how he had felt for either Miho or Shizuka.

Ryou had been mysterious, exotic, a miraculous haul of rarity in both personality and form. A sensitive crystal figure, though not delicate by any means. He was quick to smile, not entirely shy, and he enjoyed games almost as much as Yugi. He was enthusiastic in his interests, a solid gains in a definitive life. He was confident in his hushed calm, and broody in his intelligence. Girls would fawn over him, pressing their boundries and irritating him, and Honda had been jealous, though of either Ryou or the girls, he was no longer sure.

Honda remembered the sick laughter of a demon bursting forth from sneering lips, the haughty stance of a frightening fiend. It hadn't been Ryou, not during the tabletop RPG, in Duelist Kingdom, not in Battle City, and not in the Pharaoh's memories. There were glimpses, small words and smiles, and at first he wasn't sure who was in control at what time, but he learned. This still scared him, it made him angry and he felt helpless watching someone battle with their own body and mind, an actor pretending to be the boy he had taken over. A cloaked cancer, pulsating and sinning in the body of a hapless teenager.

He had wanted to help him, to guide him, to preserve and defend the person he had grown affectionate for. He wasn't a duelist, and his grades were subpar, and he would admit that he wasn't exactly the most attractive guy. He didn't live an exciting life with curses, possessing spirits and ancient blights, and the only thing he was good at was fighting. He felt devastatingly useless and drab, and offered the only help he could through kind actions and encouraging words.

He wanted Ryou to like him.

So he wouldn't back down, he had never backed down. He would use the only qualities he could to protect him. A few fistfuls of fury and the shattering crack of his fist meeting bone, and the shock of a collapsing body, of a split lip. He had no mercy with the Spirit. He didn't dare to, lest it swallow everything he cared about in one gulp. He wanted to let the Spirit know he would not back down without a fight, and he would drag the fiendish terror down with him.

Now, after so much suffering, so much strife and anger, he ring was gone, and the wraith with it. It had been abolished, destroyed, annihilated. He was gone, and Ryou was free of his darkness, of its disastrous horror. Honda had been relieved, a phantasm in a white dawn that eclipsed his feelings of constant dread and daunting fear. He knew that he was always talking with Ryou now, and thought that he could finally be happy without worrying about what would happen next.

Until he heard that the Spirit had come back.

Not through Ryou's words, but through Yugi's. Ryou never talked about the reappearance unless someone kindled the questions, though they made him uncomfortable and agitated. The Spirit had his own body, the powerful, broad shadow of death and violent rage that he had dealt with in the Pharaoh's memories. Lilac eyes with an abstract decree of his harsh life split upon the skin of his right cheek. The hair had been the same, as had the stance, the cocky bearing. He had worried, and at times he would wake in the middle of the night thinking about Ryou, though he heard the Spirit had left and never returned.

But they had always said that.

A narrow cell of frightful moments left him bleak. The Spirit could be anywhere, lurking in the alleyways, harming those he wanted. He could return to Ryou at any time, to use him as a crutch in this world, to violate him, leave him a husk. Honda waited, and he watched.

When Ryou had suddenly disappeared on a trip to visit his father he had blamed the Spirit. He knew something had happened, that the phantom could have returned to claim a tie he had to a doomed boy, striking when he knew no one could stop him.

But Ryou had reappeared. Small smiles and reassuring words, and an adventurous story, though Honda wasn't confident in his safety. After awhile he had become lifeless, haggard and the shimmer behind his eyes had grown stiff and slow to burn. Honda became nervous and distraught. He asked Yugi to check in on him - to see how he was doing - though he wasn't sure if he had ever followed through. He felt that he didn't have a close enough friendship to do it himself.

Jounouchi had told him, with a swollen face, that Ryou had it far worse than he had originally thought.

Malik's murderous plague - a half-bred soul in a fleshkin body - had been living with Ryou in his apartment. He had wanted to go with Yugi to confront the monster, to kill him and make him suffer, to take Ryou away to safety. Yugi refused, and he had gone alone with the Pharaoh. Honda waited at the base of the apartment complex, shuffling in the snow. He didn't want to worry anyone for loitering around in the lobby. He was shaking and cold, waiting for a phone call, to ask him to come help, for Ryou to come walking out the door with Atem and Yugi at his sides.

None of these things happened, and Yugi could barely tell him anything without stuttering, without blushing and awkwardly stalling. Simple things, no details. But it was still the type of devastation that had sent him into shock, deeper into the perforated wretch he he had become with a boring life and useless aspirations.

And at the table in a diner restaurant, Honda found himself staring at the purple and red blotches across Ryou's neck, and he was apprehensively crestfallen.

0000

A small vocational break in his school had come up - and where Ryou should have been studying and doing extra assignments - he called his father instead.

Part of him wished his father wouldn't even answer, that he could put his fingers to his lips and remain mute to the shuttering tone of the phone. He had a taste, and a desire, to strangle his father and he felt startled that he had even thought such a thing. It was outlandish and ridiculous, and he had become more attentive to his own thoughts than to the voice on the other end of the phone.

Ryou resigned himself, as if condemned to death, and offered a small hello. His father didn't seem overly excited to hear Ryou's voice. More shocked than anything, and Ryou felt bile rise in the back of his throat. Abandoned, left behind, forgotten, white skin swallowed into the darkness of the world and his only close relative didn't even seem to care.

He was resentful.

His father offered a visit, a ticket out of Japan and Ryou had felt that he had already heard this before, months ago. He had trouble obeying the sympathies his father was attempting to drape him with. He had to explain the basics of his situation, how he had a peculiar guest. He wouldn't leave Mariku here, alone, in the apartment, as a soul in anguish trapped in a phial with the world closing in on him.

A private jet was arranged and Ryou was hungry for the sacred madness that he knew would bless his existence. He was craven, he was bitter, and he wanted retribution.

His schoolwork could burn for all he cared.

0000

Ryou had been to Egypt several times. A few, to visit his father.

His other visits had a more supernatural calling, and he wasn't entirely fond of those memories. Or lack thereof.

He and Mariku had arrived in Luxor at around 10pm the next evening, planning to leave the airport in a designated cab to a hotel his father had arranged. The streets were dark, the lights of tall buildings and apartments shimmering against the stars and moon. The air had been cool against his face, though muggy with a modest humidity. Their driver had sunglasses upon his forehead, a moon and star necklace resting upon a clean white shirt, with large hands and sandaled feet. He had a plain face, with a small beard and short black hair, and Ryou had watched as their bags were nestled into the trunk. Mariku and he had exchanged words in Arabic, though of what, Ryou didn't know, nor did he care to.

Ryou hadn't slept in nearly two days. He was deathly tired and anxious, and his stomach roiled in a draped humility. He stood on the sidewalk as a white cat, perceptively waiting, feeling incompetent, though he wouldn't let anyone know. He wanted to see his father. But he also wanted to slap him, to scream at him, to tell him he could "go fuck himself", as Mariku had phrased it.

But he was still his father.

Mariku didn't understand.

The hotel was quiet, their room on the third floor. It was modest, with two beds and a single bathroom. His father and a coworker - an obvious buffer against Ryou's inevitable anger - would meet them tomorrow for breakfast, and a note was left on a bedstand for him to get some rest. He felt like taking on the entire world with bags under his eyes.

Mariku had guided him to a bed, gentle and hushed. Ryou whined at him, pushing him away, seething for him to sleep by himself for once. He slapped at him, snarling in absolute despair. He wanted to weep, to throw the lamps onto the floor and overturn the furniture, and rip his clothes into shreds. He laid down instead, and Mariku watched him scream into his pillow. Ryou threatened him with death if he didn't sleep in his own bed, but Mariku didn't listen to him, and they curled up together on top of the blankets, still wearing their jeans and jackets.

0000

They had missed breakfast.

Ryou had slept heavily, clinging to Mariku until he had to get up to use the restroom. He swept himself into another bout of bitterness, throwing his clothes onto the floor and strangling the shades when he couldn't figure out how to close them. Mariku stretched on the bed and watched him with detached apathy, quite awake and mildly amused.

The phone rang and Mariku answered. Ryou was burning crimson, splashing water upon his face, attempting to unwrinkle his morale. He spoke with Ryou's father for a moment, reiterating that they had, indeed, missed the designated breakfast. He knew, he didn't care, and watching Ryou pant across the room nearly naked brought on swollen desires. He liked him when he was angry.

The phone was placed back into its base. They would meet for brunch instead.

Ryou began to cry and Mariku had become startlingly accustomed to the taste of angry tears upon his lips.

0000

Ryou's father was a dour man, stubble and glasses and awkward gait. He had smiled grimly, introducing his coworker, his friend, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, a hefty title and Mariku realized that Ryou's father had looked the part of a peasant aside a Goddess.

He had always been fond of Isis. A sweet softness to her body, voluptuous and unyielding, an exaltation of an ample passion that he would covet. He had watched her behind the mind of her child brother, and he would devise complicated debauchery that he never had the providence to fulfill, with bouncing breasts and blushing cheeks. She stood before him, across the room, a candied expression of shock refined across her features. She was sacred in her stance, in her womanhood, sharp eyes and bewilderment. He wouldn't call her sister, not now, not ever, it wasn't appropriate. It never had been.

He felt Ryou's fury, knew his anger, this frightful asylum that was blood-born. He understood the hatred for his father. He couldn't even speak. Recognition grew upon Ryou's face when he laid eyes upon Isis. He looked over to Mariku, the only shadow in the room, looking wounded and tender.

Mariku glowered at Isis, cold and dark, "We've met before," his voice was stiff in its confidentiality.

Isis narrowed her eyes at him, and Ryou's father was the fool.

0000

Brunch was awkward, and silent, as if an imminent funeral mass awaited the first bell. No hugs, no hellos. They were in a small restaurant at the base of the hotel, humble but inviting. It had been decided it would be easier for the boys to stay in the hotel than to navigate Egypt to a different restaurant, though in truth, neither one of them cared.

Ryou wouldn't look at his father, though his eyes would tangle themselves with Isis's until the point of despair. Mariku would stare wrongly at Ryou's father, a perverse violence squealing at his fingertips. His knee would brush against Ryou's under the table, often dragging his foot across a calve. Tortured lines to prove he was here in modest support, though his eyes weren't twinkling. Occasionally he would openly gape at Isis, an electrified grin tugging at his mouth. Mariku didn't eat anything, and Ryou barely took a few bites from his meal. His nerves were possessed, quite intimately, by raw dread.

"So, Ryou..." his father's voice was soft, and draped off at the end, a mere whisper of name, "It is good to see you."

Ryou's reply was curt, "Sure is."

"And your friend here - I'm sorry, what was your name?" he looked to Isis, squinting, "You know, he looks a lot like -"

"I don't have a name." Mariku smiled at the question, though his gaze went to Isis as he cut off Ryou's father.

Bewildered, the man attempted a response, "That doesn't make sense, don't just -"

Isis cut him off abruptly, and he appeared rather irked that it had happened twice, "There are incidents and matters that are beyond our comprehension, Mr. Bakura," she spoke as if reassuring a child, "Things that we cannot understand, nor control. This world ebbs and flows to an intricate system that intertwines with every single person, every single occurrence, every single artifact," she looked to Ryou, "Some have gifts that are more powerful than others."

Ryou felt a pull, a flowered piece of porcelain, cold and brittle. She knew. She had always known.

His father laughed, incredulous, "Are you talking about all that magic and curse nonsense again? Miss Ishtar, please, now really isn't the time."

An eye of gold, resting in a looped pyramid. Points that bled crimson across engorged skin, whispers and nightmares and the burning against his skin that would stop his breathing. Ryou remembered explaining to his father about strange whispers and terrors after he received the Millennium Ring. They came slow, leaking into him and imposing an intoxicating poison that left his mind void.

Then came the blackouts.

He sought help in the only constant in his life - his father, though he was thousands of miles away. His father had never seemed concerned, had never taken Ryou seriously, blaming the sobbing calls in the late hours of the night on nothing but plain night terrors and a child's imagination, "You should call your friends instead."

His friends were all in comas.

"Ryou here - he's always been fond of magic and the supernatural, isn't that right? Ghosts and goblins and the like."

Ghosts and goblins. As if he was still ten years old.

Feeling riled and handsomely infuriated, Ryou replied with a full set of teeth, "You're a prick," then promptly stood up and left the table, briskly leaving the hotel. Mariku offered a grinning snort of a laugh, watching Ryou leave. He wouldn't go after him, he had gotten slapped enough from Ryou's small bouts of dismal rage, though he had begun to enjoy watching him seethe. His father balked, looking to Isis, as if searching for a reasoning for such a response. Isis offered a minuscule smile, and he followed his angered son, leaving Mariku and his not-sister at the table.

Isis knew it best to let them work this out themselves. She had heard of Ryou's unfortunate accident months ago, his disappearance, and she was shocked to find Mr. Bakura back in Egypt so soon. She had found Ryou's father to be someone who had become so disconnected to people and his family because of his work. Isis liked to believe she was the opposite. It was her work, and her love for it, that kept her family together. Ryou Bakura was an unfortunate tragedy arranged in mysterious circumstances and a condemned fate. She pitied him, but she knew he was a crucial piece of the entire world's puzzle. Nothing happened without a reason.

Her dark childhood in the tombs taught her that.

Isis sighed, feeling protective, concerned, with a slick emergence of wit. She looked to the deranged fragment sitting across from her. A striking horror that had sloughed off a child's fear and anger, unbrushed hair and glowing skin, donned in a hoodie and loose sweat pants. His eyes held a darkness that appeared to have mildewed, calm yet brooding. He was an ornament of the constellations, a small burst of a corrupted seed from the Gods, a song of darkness and death. When Malik had screeched of his darkness's reappearance, she almost thought him to be hallucinating, that he was scared that the devil would skin him and wear his flesh as a cloak. Yet he remained adamant, confronting her with a stirring fidelity that he was back, he was here, physically, somewhere. She had begun to believe him. And she became brilliantly apprehensive when she realized it to be true. The potential of him, the brutality, this wicked abomination that devoured suffering and infestations of corrupted depravity scared her immensel. It was a realistic fear.

And here that fear was, sitting across from her.

She asked, quietly, "How did you come to meet Ryou?"

Mariku smiled ruefully at her, white teeth and twinkling eyes, "Fate."

Isis grimaced back, a bitter resignation in her stance, "I see."

They stared at each other in silence, eyes burning.

"It's not so bad," Mariku started, "not as bad as everyone thinks."

Isis narrowed her eyes, "And who is everyone?"

Mariku snorted, eyeing her breasts and collar bone, "Little Yugi. The Pharaoh. Jounouchi - all of them. It was Ryou who brought me to Japan in the first place, of his own volition." Mariku felt powerful with this information, as if boasting with his wretchedness, his wanted company, "I have not harmed him. I didn't force him into anything."

Isis felt her chest constrict, and a breath she didn't know she had been holding shuddered out of her chest.

Mariku's eyes gleamed as a varnished violin as he looked into her eyes, "Not like how his Spirit did."

0000

Bakura didn't dwell on trifling things, it distracted him from the more important things, and it wasn't in his nature. They would stun his impulses and convictions, and would rend his narcissism humble. He had an easy routine, with a few flashing smiles, charming words, and the poignant stance of arrogant confidence, he could rightly tempt and seduce those he wanted to. He usually got what he wanted.

And when he didn't, he used force.

He had the power to beguile, made fraud with venom and deadly cunning. He had the strength to become physical if his smiles met unwelcome eyes. He was brilliant in his madness, in his anger, his cynicism. He felt that he had the entire world within his palms, rolling against his nails, hot and full of burning potential. Yet he found himself utterly powerless, minuscule, a faded shadow of what he once was. He was here, but he was devastatingly lost.

So he would wait, as he had waited before.

Something had sparked inside of him, and pulled at him like a gentle string connected to his heart, gently tugging him along to the sandy knolls half a world away. Much had changed - too much, he would whisper to himself - and yet he found himself in a place he had thought long destroyed. Home had become a relative term.

He could almost smell the acrid stench of burnt flesh.

People were here. Close, but not too close. A small town had arisen among the ashes of an ancient village, bursting down the cliffside in small mudbrick huts, quiltwork patches of green farmland blushing in awakened vigor along the Nile. The people here were simple, humble, quiet, though they remained bitterly subdued.

He stayed where he felt most comfortable, away from the populace in an abandoned section of dunes and rock, where the hills were quiet and devoid of life. He found solace in a weather worn hut that had been built thousands of years ago, overlooking the expanse of the desert and the shimmer of the Nile. There wasn't a single person living within two miles of him, but the silence held a familiar hum. He wasn't alone.

He was living in a necropolis, and he could still hear their whispers.

They tore at him, seething, bitter and aggrieved, like starving children, hands outstretched, wanting, begging with wide, sorrowful eyes. But they were faded, numerously submissive to the darkest reaches of the buried tombs, forgotten, lost, and lonely.

Some came to him, pressing to his door late at night, finding cold solace in a corporeal existence of kindred. Others followed him through the inhabited parts of the village. They trailed with him, dark phantoms swirling along his feet and wrists, wisps that explored a dying village with a long dead soul.

Where once they screamed and moaned with tremendous loathing, their voices were now muted, incoherent, as if they knew their fate was already sealed. He could no longer communicate with them, and their cold touches left him feeling empty and traumatized. These were his family members, his friends, his neighbors. They pulled at him, taunting, lucid threads of anger clinging to them. He offered them nothing, for he could not give them what they craved. He had failed them.

They were never avenged.

He hadn't felt particularly guilty over this fact, merely aggrieved and mournful. It wasn't his fault, not entirely. He had repeated the same gestures, sunk his teeth into bone and flesh, wore his very kin around his neck, but everything had turned to dust. There was so much darkness. Cold, spiteful, sickening darkness that ripped into him like poisoned knives. He hadn't been himself. He would argue that he had been the solemn host of a Death God, but he wasn't even sure of that anymore. Who was he, really? A host of a host of a host. And that confused and infuriated him.

And so he would fight.

He found a group of boys in town that he could brawl with in the dark alleyways, hidden in a dugout platform that was once a temple. They were thieves, pickpockets, lowlife scum that would come to call him Raaqis.

Not that he needed to fight, particularly. It wasn't for the money, the foodstuffs, or the livestock he would gain for winning. It helped, as any gains of wealth could help, but to feel the burst of vibrant rage pulse across his arm as his fist met another individual's body - well, that was worth it. Measuring your opponent, watching the fear in their eyes and the sweat gleam down their cheeks when they realized they were inferior to your skill.

Here, he was divine. Here, in a small circle of shouting men, when the sun was kissing the ground, he was someone. He gained purpose, he gained respect, and he was revered. And it was here, half naked with sweat glistening down his body, eyes wild and fists bloody, that he had met an old acquaintance, standing rigid and unmoving in the pulsating crowd. He couldn't even hear his name over the ringing in his ears, but he could read the lips forming a soft 'Bakura'.

Sun-bleached amethyst eyes and sandy blonde hair, clothes that showed more skin than needed. The kid hadn't really changed.

0000

Malik would meet with Bakura on the outskirts of New Qurna twice a week.

He never told his brother or sister, and he felt the knowledge biting at him like fleas. They didn't need to know, not really, this phantom was powerless in his underground virtues. Bakura wasn't as he remembered him, in the host body of a young boy, frail and sallow. He was solid now, a daring excuse for him to stare in the throng of strength and virility. A sinful body, built with a boldness that left Malik in the position of a nervous kid. He had a wicked beauty to him, dark and sinister, though he was quick to smile, narrowed eyes and filed teeth.

His laugh was the same, as was his disposition.

They spoke of Qurna, of preserving the tombs, and Bakura would laugh cruelly at him, and throw stones of malice. It was his home, it always had been. It wasn't his fault that idiots had begun using it as a burial ground centuries ago. He would offer gestures of theft, gold and turquoise bangles and beaded necklaces fit for a queen. Malik would realize they most likely had belonged to a queen, and he would throw them in the dirt, disgustingly insulted, only to watch Bakura place them upon his own wrists and neck. This infuriated him. Topics would switch, and Malik would ask about the fighting, for an explanation, and Bakura could offer none.

They argued more often than not, over trivial things, and Malik would leave on his bike back to Luxor in a fit of muted rage. Bakura would flip him off, but within a few days, they would be eating fresh fruit and dried goat meat on the crumbled stones of a forgotten ruin. It was a frail friendship, constructed from a past affinity that didn't exactly have humble beginnings. But it was familiar company, and the fastenings that had bound Malik's previous connections with people were long gone. He was no longer a ruler, and many of his previous servants were set loose in a flurry of humiliation and cruel sorrows. Some stayed loyal to him - why, he did not know - and he directed their efforts towards Isis's research. But he didn't know anyone, not really, not anymore. He had lived his usefulness as the Pharaoh's living art.

Now, he was nobody.

Sometimes Bakura would look at him as prey, and he felt his throat swathed in gauze. He remembered hot breath and kisses, imbued with an agonizing lust that left him stricken. It was the only time he had found himself submissive, cloying with a stranger that danced in the shadows, a sexual potency that left him quivering. Bakura was as a wolf, elegantly deadly and violently cruel. He wouldn't even touch him now.

Malik had an open fondness for the reborn spirit, though he wouldn't push it any further. Bakura had felt the same way.

When he had returned to Luxor after a visit with Bakura - bloody fists and rippling muscle - Isis had told him she had met with Ryou. Startled yet excited, he had wanted to see him as well. Another familiar face, another spark of sovereign memories that were entangled with people he had both hurt and barely loved. A tortured line of indoctrination that flowed forth from his fingertips. Ryou Bakura was one of them, one he knew intimately - in both body and mind. Malik remembered that his body had been soft, like a girl's, but the mind had not been his own, and the actions were a decoration of an ancient disturbance that was entirely too rough and feral. It had bruised both of them. He was a lonely person, from what the Spirit would allow him to see of his mind. Sleeping alone, breathing alone, eating alone, being alone. He was a kindhearted tragedy, not entirely gullible but an unfortunate victim to a fragmented displacement of history and magic.

He had used him, had formed a wounded bond through his body, a whispering immorality that tugged at his very soul. He didn't want to hurt anyone anymore, to use them, to break them and drag them bare through their own fears. That wasn't him, not anymore, and putting closure to someone he had used and defiled - to the utmost capacity that he possibly could - would offer some solace to his personal condemnation.

He wanted to see him, even if he had once been over familiar in his own devices. Not to hurt him, not to ever hurt him.

But then Isis revealed that his own shadow had been with him, somber eyes and tired smile. He had changed, though she didn't know how deep the vagrant shred of her brother had altered himself. He still bore the features of superiority and spiteful hatred, and she wasn't sure how damaging he had been to Ryou.

Malik began to weep.

0000

Notes:

-has a jar of boy tears-

Thiefshipping?

Yes.

Mentions of potential Fearshipping?

YEs.

One sided Protectshipping?

YESSS

All of the yesSSSS

Hell yes fuck yes aw yisssssss

i ship all the ships sorry not sorry

Please feel free to leave any sort of feedback, critiques, questions etc. Thanks for reading!