Sleep
For some reason shortly after our search for Kisara Teana became unenthused by the idea, Bakura reasoned it was the city bringing her down and the memory of Amunet so he made the final decision for us to leave the city. He said maybe one day we'll return but for now we all needed to leave and be out of the hustle and bustle of city life and away from the memory of Amunet. I personally didn't see how leaving a mere city could help me forget about my precious little sister but I agreed none the less and we started heading north, away from the city, the Pharaoh and the rest of the Millennium items.
We camped in the open on the first night, under the stars on the comfort of sand, much like we used to. Teana slept much easier tonight and I too found quick solace in sleep but that was until a fitful Bakura woke me.
There was a time when Bakura would stay up all night if it meant keeping watch over us but I noticed recently he had been falling asleep much easier, even when he tried restlessly to stay awake. However for some reason lately sleep claimed him all too easily, I briefly thought this as I awoke and saw the curled up figure of Bakura besides me until I realised it was his mumbling that had woken me. I rubbed my eyes to clear them of sleep and then reached out to wake my friend.
"Bakura, wake up you're having a bad dream." My hand had barely grazed his arm when Bakura suddenly sat up right and his mumbling ceased. He sat with his back dead straight and his eyes now open staring straight ahead but seemingly unseeing. The sudden movement startled me and I fell back, using my hands to catch myself to avoid landing flat on my back, "…Bakura?"
"You dropped it you stupid boy!" Bakura's gazed snapped round to me yet his eyes were still flat and unfocused and his voice was odd, deep and throaty as if he badly needed to cough.
"W-what? Bakura… are you still asleep?"
"GO BACK GO BACK WE MUST GET THEM"
The sudden shouting startled me again and this time Teana awoke with a start.
"What's going on?" she peered into the darkness, alarm in her voice but I didn't have time to answer because Bakura was on his feet now and storming away, his movements stiff and awkward and kicking up sand as he went into the blinding darkness of the desert.
"Bakura wait!" I yelled and jumped to my feet chasing after him.
"We must get them all we must take the power we must we must we must we will we will kill them all we will take the power we WILL WE WILL WE WILL! WE CAN SO WE MUST. "
As I finally reached Bakura I felt my patience run out and I just tackled him down into the sand throwing all of my weight onto his larger form using his awkward walking to over balance him and send us both plummeting into the sand. As we hit the ground Bakura let out a grunt and immediately started fighting me off but soon enough Teana was there also holding his legs down as I straddled his chest and tried to grab his arms and when I finally had a hold of his flailing form he suddenly went limp.
"I-is he ok?" Teana asked in panic at the sudden stillness.
I leaned in close to my friend's face and released one of his wrists to gently touch his face and tilt it side-to-side, "I… I think he's sleeping."
"Sleeping?!"
"He must have been sleep walking or something," I concluded but the doubt was clear in my own voice, what on earth had just happened was beyond weird. "Hey Bakura, wake up."
"Are you sure we want him awake again?"
"Ugh… what… Ryou why… why are you on top of me? Teana what's… going on?"
I sighed in relief as Bakura's eyes opened bright and focused and his voice clear, albeit a little sleepy.
"You tell me!" Teana let go of Bakura's legs to come and sit besides me.
"Are you feeling alright?" I asked and I was answered with a raised eyebrow.
"Apart from you sitting on me… I feel fine."
I rolled my eyes then shifted to the side, off of his chest, allowing him to sit up, "you defiantly seem back to normal."
"Back to normal? What are you on about? What happened?"
"You were having a nightmare and when I tried to wake you, you started yelling and running off."
Bakura looked between Teana and me as if to find any hint of a lie or practical joke but when he found none he threw his head back and laughed.
"It's not funny! You scared the life out of me!"
"There must have been something weird with that fish," Bakura chuckled.
"Glad someone can laugh about it." I huffed and made my way back over to my makeshift bed. Normally I would have taken the time to laugh off the incident and to calm Teana's nerves but once again I found my capability for caring null and void. Instead I just curled in on myself and forced myself to sleep.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo
The next day we spent travelling and eventually we made it to the shaded bank of the Nile once more. Teana quickly disappeared to go bathe whereas Bakura and me sat idly on the side, Bakura chewing one of the bread buns we had taken from the city.
For some time I watched the rippling changing current of the Nile and admired how it caught and danced with the sun's rays and I found myself thinking how I'd quite like to be buried in the water, when I died. Pharaohs and rulers were berried with all their riches and prized possessions but I had neither of these things other than the jade dagger Bakura had given me and the clothes off my back I really had nothing at all but this river held pleasant memories and I think I'd like to stay with them: my memories. But these thoughts soon reminded me of Amunet and her tiny body face down in the water ways of the palace… was she still there? Would she stay there? Was that to be her eternal resting place? Tainting the very water the Pharaoh drank? Or had they found and moved her? Burned her with the rest of the waste? Suddenly my stomach lurched and I jumped forward dangling my head over the water and gripping my sides.
Bakura jumped, "woah! Are you ok?"
I nodded and moaned through gritted teeth trying to keep the contents of my stomach down but the thing was there wasn't anything in my stomach to come up, all I would wretch up would be my own bile.
Bakura sympathetically patted my shoulder until the sudden nausea died down and I was able to sit back. "What happened? Are you not feeling well?"
I shook my head, "It's nothing really…" I made the mistake of waving my hand to dismiss the topic but Bakura's keen eyes grabbed at my wrist.
"Shit! Ryou when was the last time you cleaned this thing?"
He had caught my injured hand, all covered in tattered and yellowed cloth with dried flecks or blood and grime stuck on my immobile fingers.
"It hasn't exactly been the top of my priorities." I tried to snatch my hand back but Bakura's grip was tight and much stronger than my own so I only succeeded in straining my wrist. Bakura glared at me, wrinkling his own scar, which had healed tremendously in the last week or so now only leaving a clean and clear shape across his face, unlike my own tattered flesh.
Bakura begun to undo the haphazard dressing and soon my infected hand was out in the air, I was surprised to see there was still flesh blood gleaming on the surface.
"Can you move it?"
"Not the fingers," I confessed knowing there was no point to lying. "It's not going to heal… is it?"
Bakura inspected the hand as if his diagnosis was as valued as that of a top healer, "I don't think so… how have you been getting on?"
"Fairly easy… it helps that I can't feel it most of the time."
Bakura heaved a sigh and opened his mouth to complain some more but I however was already on my feet heading off to clean my wounds, in privet.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
That night Bakura woke me again. He was worse tonight, what had woken me wasn't mere mumblings but he was actually thrashing about.
"Again?" Teana groaned rubbing her eyes, weary from sleep, "wasn't he keeping watch?"
I however was more concerned with waking him and calming him without repeating last night's events. I knelt over him and tried to pin him with my forearms and Teana was crawling awkwardly in the dark to come to my aid when suddenly I was thrown back with so much sudden force I couldn't catch myself and ended flat on my back, my legs bent awkwardly underneath me. I struggled to sit back up when big hands grabbed my shoulders and kept me pinned.
"Doesn't need you, so weak so weak…" the voice was the same as before, thick and raspy but this time it was quiet and whispered close to my neck and in the dark I panicked, I thought for a second it was someone other than Bakura holding me down.
"He knows he doesn't need you why would he need you? So weak so weak he can do it alone…"
I should have been fighting against him but my brain was too busy running through the words that were being hissed into my face. Who doesn't need me? Need me to do what? I was so confused and caught off guard I didn't realise as one hand left my shoulder and trailed down my bare arm, tickling the flesh until it grazed the numb dead skin and then suddenly it pressed and gripped as nails dug hard into the already broken skin and suddenly my hand didn't feel numb at all.
I screamed at the sudden pain, as fingers pried at the infected flesh and I started flailing and wriggled my other hand free to push at his face. Teana at some point had latched herself onto Bakura's back and was trying to pry him off of me and then suddenly much like before everything just stopped.
Bakura suddenly dropped on top of me, his strength apparently sapped from his body and his grip on my hand loosened also. Teana yelped as she was dragged down with his body and I let out a strangled gasp as the air was squeezed from my body.
"Ugh, sorry, sorry!" Teana squeaked rolling off and trying to drag Bakura with her who was now seemingly unconscious. With a few of my own shoves we succeeded in rolling Bakura onto his back. I sat up and cradled my injured hand close to my chest, the blood that had been resting neatly on the surface before was now seeping through the rag and running down my wrist.
"Are you ok?" Teana reached out for me but I shuffled back, away from her grasp.
"I'm fine."
"Ugh …my head is killing me." Bakura's voice groaned somewhere in the dark, "why are you guys awake?"
Teana's eyes held mine for a moment longer before I turned away, using the veil of white bangs to hide my face. She sighed and ran her hand through her own hair, "It's nothing Bakura, go back to sleep."
We let it rest until morning, all of us tried to go back to sleep but it was clear none of us were going to so instead we lay in silence until the sun rose and then we got a particularly early start on our travels.
We travelled in awkward silence for quite some time, Bakura would often attempt to start conversation but it usually died out quite quickly and I soon noticed his confused and somewhat hurt expression.
"What is up with you two?" Bakura stopped in his tracks cross his arms over his chest.
"Nothing, let's keep going it's almost noon," I didn't stop walking as I spoke however Teana halted after a few more strides acting as a bridge between me and Bakura.
"Bakura, are you having nightmares?" she suddenly asked out of the blue and with groan I turned around to face the other two.
"Nightmares? No… I haven't really been dreaming at all lately…" but even as he said the words his face changed and he grabbed his forehead, "ah… no. That's not right…"
"So you have been having nightmares?" she pressed on.
"I… yeah. Something about home… about Kul Elna."
I was a little startled if I'm honest. Bakura rarely spoke openly about Kul Elna nowadays unless in a vicious or revengeful way I hadn't heard him call it 'home' since we were children.
"You hurt Ryou last night,"
"Teana!"
"I… I what?"
"You hurt his hand, after shoving him on the floor. You said something to him but I didn't hear and Ryou wont tell me."
I instinctively pulled my injured hand close to my chest again and found a spike of anxiety run through me when Bakura's eyes caught mine, this time however I found myself unable to turn away.
"Why the hell wouldn't you tell me something like that? What is wrong with you both?! We never keep secrets!" Bakura's normal temper was back I was momentarily surprised to realise during the day Bakura has been very even tempered as of late.
Teana and I remained silent, we hadn't really discussed not talking about it but it wasn't something one could drop into casual conversation. After a minuet or so of silence Bakura stormed forward, across the bridge Teana had created and grabbed my shoulders and for the first time ever I flinched when Bakura touched me. The motion didn't go unnoticed and the distraught look that covered Bakura's face pained me worse than my hand ever could.
"Gods Ryou what did I say to you…"
I looked down, finally able to break contact, "You said you didn't need me," I begun and found my voice very quiet so I licked my lips and tried again, "that I was weak, that you could do it on your own…"
Bakura stared down at me and unleashed my shoulders, "Damnit Ryou surely you know that's not true? I couldn't do anything without you…" he chuckled and scratched the back of his head, "even if I wanted to."
There was something odd about his words; it felt similar to when I had left Amunet in the gap in the wall down in the waterways, something like foreshadowing…
Bakura huffed and ran his hand down his neck and down the cord of the ring until it landed on the cool metal, in that same habit he had picked up recently and then suddenly I heard Teana gasp.
"That's it! The ring!"
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooo
No new faces this time, and I don't really have any more planned but we'll see how that goes. (as I'm writing this now the fic is incomplete as you are reading it, it has been posted on ff. net and therefore it is finished!)
So yeah don't wanna say too much and give anything away before next chapter so thanks again for reading!
Not so much going on in the review section of this fic anymore, have I taken it down a route people aren't interested in? I haven't heard much since Amunet's death and would really love to know why…
Thank you if you are still reading xx
