Darkness...

It was everywhere he looked....

Or did he have his eyes closed....

He didn't know...

Was he dead?

Where was he?

Were those sounds?

There wasn't supposed to be sounds in the nothing...

And he hadn't gone trough the hall of Anubis yet either.

He hadn't even seen the soul eating monster yet.

Was this really all there was now?

He'd take the shadow realm any day compared to this....

...nothing.

More sounds.

This time it didn't sound like talking.

It was like something scaly was slithering across the floor towards him.

He looked around..

..there was no floor.

And yet the sound was getting closer.

Bakura turned around in the darkness that surrounded him and his eyes widened as he saw what was floating behind him. The Diabound.

Suddenly he was falling, he knew it only because his soul monster was rising so quickly away from him. Now he couldn't see it anymore, but he felt the wind from falling. Or was it wind at all. And then it stopped, so suddenly.

Now he knew he had his eyes closed. There were footsteps all around him now, and hushed talking. It was hard to make out what they were saying, like they were speaking in another language. But that couldn't be.

And why was he here? Isn't he supposed to be in his soul room and let Ryou worry about the waking up part and complaining about pain? Why did he have such a killer headache anyway?

He felt someone move something around him, was it the sheets or the bed it didn't matter right now. What did matter was that it didn't help his headache at all. And he couldn't help the pained groan that escaped him.

There was suddenly more scurrying around him and whispers almost so loud that his head felt like exploding and splattering his brain all over the walls that were... he carefully opened his eyes slightly but closed them quickly as the brightness of the room made the already existing headache worse. And the wall's were white for crying out loud!

They could use a few splatters of color. Now someone was calling his name somewhere close by. And why were they talking to him like he was a frigging baby! He was a three thousand years old spirit not a toddler.

He couldn't take it anymore, he had to do something about it but he felt too tired to move to kill the person. "Shut up bitch..." okay, maybe that wasn't the best thing to say but it shut her up pretty quickly. And now he would hear Ryou telling him to apologize for his language.

But he heard nothing. Only the annoying yapping of the lady that was now at least calling him a "sir" and not "Ryou dear" or "sweetie". But he couldn't hear Ryou.

Finally the woman stopped bugging him and started to leave the room, she probably thought that he had fallen asleep again. Let her think that, he had more important things to worry about.

He silently and stealthily slipped from the body he was occupying and landed in to his soul room. It was different. Why was it different?

He looked around the room, it looked like something had torn trough the place and the holes had been fixed with Ryou's soul room. There were things he had never seen before and the things that had dragged along with him from the moment he had first found out about this place.

It was so alien that he couldn't take any more of it. He launched himself back in to the body just as someone was reaching for him from the side of the bed. To put a wet cloth on his head, to tug the sheets up a bit or to stab him in the throat. He took no chances as he suddenly moved his hands and grabbed the wrists that were too close for comfort.

He opened his eyes, pain be damned. He had to see who was there. A nurse had reached over him to place a wet cloth on his forehead, and was now trembling in fear as he looked at her. "Where am I?"

his voice sounded odd to his ears, but he still knew that it was his.

The trembling nurse said something about saint mungo's but Bakura didn't really listen. Nor did he really care that the place sounded like a holy animal. He had to find out what had happened to Ryou.

The best thing to do first would probably ask why he had been brought here. "Why, am I here?" Now the nurse really did look frightened, and he barely could make out what she had stuttered to him. "you must be joking". Was the only sane thing that he could really think of now but the nurse shook her head.

Bakura let go of her hands and she quickly pulled them to herself and Bakura started to think. "Hit by the killing curse, that's not possible. That can't be possible". But it would explain why he couldn't feel Ryou anywhere.

He decided to try again, he wouldn't stop until he found Ryou. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he carefully slid back in to his soul room again, this time looking around better.

He looked along all of the four walls of the spacey room, some parts were made of old Egyptian stone and other were modern plaster walls with paint. There were pictures hung around the walls, some of Ryou's childhood and some of his own. But no door.

There was no door!! He started to feel a slight panic settle in him, looking trough the walls carefully again. There had to be something, a hatch, a hole, a secret passage. Anything. But there wasn't.

He started looking trough all the items thrown around, one of them had to have the answers he was looking for. Just had to. He couldn't have survived that spell without Ryou, it just wasn't possible. It wasn't!

A box filled with plushies and other toys, a rack of daggers and swords. His bed an odd looking mix of Egyptian and modern. A bedside table with a picture of Ryou's sister and himself. And a note... A note!

Bakura franticly reached for the note. What would it say? Was it from Ryou?

"What? No. It hurts.

Spirit? Is the spirit safe?

It hurts, it hurts.

I'm sorry, please be safe spirit".

He couldn't believe it.. this looked like a bad joke at first, but it couldn't be. Those sounded like last words, but they couldn't be. The killing curse. It made sense, but it couldn't be. No.

Bakura let the note slip from between his fingers to the floor and felt his heart clenching painfully. Ryou couldn't just be... gone. It wasn't right.

He's the one that wasn't supposed to be here. Ryou was supposed to explore the wizarding world. Was supposed to bring something to the mutt to scare him so everyone could laugh. He was supposed to go home and play games with the Pharaoh's holder.

He wasn't supposed to be... gone.

A dead silence surrounded the soul room as Bakura listened. There was no sound at all. It wasn't like when Ryou was sleeping in the next room when he could hear his breathing. Ryou wasn't trying to get his opinions on anything regarding what was happening outside. There was nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

Bakura felt his chest tighten and he took in a quick gasp of breath, and it was followed by another. He should calm down now. He had no idea what would happen to the body if something were to happen to him in his soul room.

But he couldn't, he just couldn't brush this aside like so many other... lost spirits.

His legs felt weak all of a sudden and he fell to the stony, partly carpeted floor below him. He tried to keep himself upright by grabbing on to the bedside table that he had seen so many times in Ryou's soul room.

But something was between his hand and the surface, causing his grip to slide off the table and he fell to the floor.

He cursed loudly, there was no one to complain anyway. He felt his chest tighten again at the thought. He looked at what caused his grip on the table to slide off. It was a duel monsters spell card.

He felt stinging behind his eyes and he pressed them forcefully shut. He wouldn't cry because of this, he hadn't cried in millennias. Not even when his family had been melted in to the millenium items. He wouldn't.

There was a small sound and Bakura opened his eyes, what was that. He looked around but didn't see anything. Something warm slid down his cheek and he angrily wiped it away. He wasn't supposed to cry.

He looked down at the card in his hand to look at it better. There was a wet spot on it, like a water drop had hit it. He dried the card and turned it around, Change of Heart. How cruel.

Bakura pulled his lips in to a twisted smile, oh how fate played with him like a dead rat. It was Ryou's favorite card, the picture and the name had reminded him of the two of them.

The angel was split in half, "It's like us, two halves of one and the same". The name, "I'm glad you're not the same as back then, when you tried to destroy the world".

Bakura squeezed the card in his fingers, pulling his arms around himself as he shook slightly because of unshed tears.

And he screamed.