Chapter 12: In which a spirit finally finds his way home
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Bakura watched helplessly as Marik laid the spell. He looked desperately at the field. At his hand. At anything. He felt panic well up in his gut. He had to stop this. He'd been wrong. It wasn't time yet. There had to be a way. Somehow, there had to be.
But there wasn't. The bright light of Marik's last attack all but blinded him. The tinkling sound of the last of his life points draining away sounded distant, but the pained whimper from across the room rang clear as a bell. Bakura lowered his arm to see Marik standing on trembling legs, one hand clamped over his mouth as tears trickled from the corners of his eyes. Marik took a hitching breath and managed a shaky smile as he dropped his hand.
"Congratulations, Bakura. I guess you get to go home after all. That's what you wanted. Your family will be there, I'm sure of it."
Bakura just gaped wordlessly while the shock of his sudden loss sunk in. Before he'd even had time to fully realize what was happening, the eye on the tablet glowed bright white and a portal grew in front of his startled eyes. Distantly, he could see the hazy forms of other people there. They weren't clear, but they were there. The portal felt warm. Some deep, instinctual part of him knew this was where he was supposed to go. If the shadow realm was cold and fear, this place was just the opposite. And yet, he hesitated. He pried his eyes away from the open arms awaiting him in the portal and looked back towards Marik.
Marik gave him another watery grin. "Go home, Bakura. It's OK. Go."
Bakura looked back toward the portal, which was growing brighter and closer as he hesitated in front of it.
"But… I want to have a life first."
He wanted to look back at Marik one last time, but the portal flashed, and he found himself pulled through before he could manage to tear his eyes away from the light.
Behind him, Marik collapsed to the ground with a sob.
~ o ~ o ~ o ~
Marik couldn't catch his breath. His arms were bound tightly around his middle as though that would somehow hold him together. He'd had a job to do, and he'd done it.
And now he could break down all he wanted.
He felt his forehead hit the ground as he curled forward. He gasped for air and retched on his own sobs as he tried desperately to calm down. It was done. It was over. He could mourn as long as he wanted, but for now he needed to breathe.
But he couldn't slow his sobbing. Bakura had changed his mind. He'd seen it happen. He'd heard it confirmed. Bakura had wanted to stay with him. And now he was gone. And he had helped to send him away. But he hadn't had a choice, had he? He couldn't have risked ripping Bakura's spirit apart. Even if he wanted to keep him.
Even if Bakura had wanted to stay.
Marik finally managed to suck in a proper breath of air. Breathing should have been easier than this, with the wide hollow left in his chest. He found another breath and greedily sucked it in. He was still sobbing into Ryou's carpet, but at least he felt less frantic with it. He idly wondered how long it would be before he felt normal again, if ever. He dismissed the thought, and shoved it crookedly into the broken box.
Marik didn't know how long he lay on the carpet hiccupping through his sobs, but eventually he found the energy to lift himself up. He gazed dazedly around the room. It looked remarkably the same as when Bakura had been in it with him, and that felt perversely wrong. How strange, that the world kept its form even when a hole had been ripped right through the middle of it. Marik blinked slowly, waiting for the room around him to fundamentally change somehow, to reflect his pain back at him in some tangible way he could focus on.
It didn't. How cruel.
He forced his eyes around the room, looking for something to latch on to. They fell on the ring of candles they'd lit for the ritual. It would have been better if they'd been for a romantic bubble bath or some other sappy shit like that. What would Bakura have looked like covered in bubbles? Guess he'd never know. Damn his deck.
Some part of his mind was functioning enough to notice that all but one of the candles had been blown out in the drama of the ritual's ending. He stared at it for several long moments, and it slowly occurred to him that he should stop it from dripping too much wax on Ryou's floor. He shuffled forward on his knees, and blew it out.
He fell back into staring as thin ribbons of smoke curled upwards from the candle's wick. He watched the winding shapes drift upward, and his thoughts drifted with them back to Bakura's family. Would their spirits look like that? He'd heard that the spirits of Kul Elna hadn't been much more in the final RPG. What if that's all Bakura would find? What if this whole damn endeavour was for nothing? What if there wasn't anything waiting beyond that portal to push away whatever regret Bakura had felt in those last precious moments? What if…. Marik's thoughts rapidly descended into a patternless, panicky swirl as the smoke in front of his eyes curled up. And up. And up.
Marik blinked, and realized he was staring at empty space. The smoke had gone. He shook himself. He glanced at the clock on the wall, and then realized he didn't know when he'd blown out the candle, anyways. He shifted his weight and cringed at the pain in his knees and numbness of his shins. Fuck. He shifted to sit on the ground with his bent legs in front of him to get the circulation back, and ran a hand down his face to ground himself further. He was startled to discover that his face was covered with fresh tears, the last of which were still tricking down his cheeks and chin. Double fuck. He was going to dehydrate and die on Ryou's carpet at this rate. That would be a hell of a thank you. One death was enough for today.
Marik closed his eyes and took several deep breaths into the hole in his chest. What the ever-loving fuck was he going to do now? His thoughts turned to his siblings, and he felt the blood drain from his face. Oh gods, how the hell was he going to face Isis after this? There was no way he'd be able to hide this from her. She was going to be so pissed he'd done this to himself. Or fuss over him until he wanted to scream. Or both. Probably both. Maybe Rishid could keep her under control if he asked, he had offered to help out with that… well, sort of. But then again, he didn't much want to face him, either. Fuck.
Ryou would be back eventually. He knew what they'd been and done together. Or, he knew enough. And there was no way Marik was going to be bothered to try to put himself back together in time to save face, anyways. Maybe, then, Ryou would help him figure out how he could make it through this. Marik aggressively squashed the thought of asking him if they could check on Bakura, just to be sure. That's what had started this whole mess in the first place. He couldn't possibly say goodbye to him a third time. He'd break.
Marik took one more deep breath and forced his eyes open. He finally noticed that he was sitting on some of his scattered cards. He mechanically gathered his cards from under him, tucking them away into his deck. He doubted he'd use them again after this. Not after this last thing he'd done with them.
He finally turned his gaze to the other side of the room. Ryou's cards lay scattered across a wide area, where Bakura's sudden disappearance had left them. He forced himself to crawl over. His hands shook so badly that he had trouble keeping hold of the cards as he gathered them up into a neat pile. Ryou would want them back, after all.
Right where Bakura had last stood, he found Diabound Kernel. He set aside the rest of the deck and lifted it with trembling fingers. This was Bakura's, not Ryou's. He ran a finger gently down the face of the card over and over again as a fresh wave of quiet tears trailed down his cheeks. This card he'd keep. He needed something, and this seemed like about the best he would get. Bakura had held it in his fingers. Marik brought the card up to his lips and gently brushed a kiss across the name. He held it to his forehead and let himself curl into a miserable ball again. Just a few more minutes. Then he'd face the world again.
He wasn't expecting the bright flash of light. He definitely wasn't expecting to be shoved sideways as something warm and heavy knocked into him. He looked up, startled, as Diabound fluttered to the ground from his lax grip. He blinked.
It was Bakura. Solid. There. He was patting at his own chest with an astonished look on his face. He looked up, and his eyes were just as Marik remembered, if perhaps wider than usual.
Clearly, he'd gone completely insane in his grief.
His hallucination stared back and forth between Marik's nonplussed look and his own body. "I saw my family. I saw them, Marik. But…" A huff of breathless laughter escaped. "…but they wouldn't let me join them. They said I wasn't a complete enough soul anymore to bother weighing." The apparition chuckled self-deprecatingly.
Marik blinked, uncomprehending. It had been a lot less confusing, the last time he'd gone insane.
The Bakura-shaped hallucination looked right at him again. Those eyes looked so real it tore at his heart. "They sent me back." The image chucked. "They decided to 'punish me for my misdeeds' by forcing me to live another life before going to the Reeds." The chuckle escalated into a full-blown cackle. "Suckers!"
Marik startled violently when the Bakura-shaped hallucination reached forward and grabbed his arms with warm, solid fingers. "Marik. They sent me back." Bakura was smiling properly now as he gave Marik a little shake. "Marik, I'm here. It's really me. Snap out of it, for fuck's sake."
Marik reached out a trembling hand and brushed the hair from Bakura's eyes. He brushed his fingers along the scar, feeling the rough texture under his fingers. "I'm not insane. This is real."
Bakura nodded hard, and grinned so widely it looked like his face might split in two. "It's real."
"You're here."
"I'm here!" Marik gasped as Bakura let out a loud whoop and lunged forward, pinning him to the ground with an enthusiastic kiss. He met Bakura's laughter with his own, and finally, finally wound his arms around the thief. He clung desperately, soaking in the feeling of a warm, solid body in his arms.
The kisses were far too full of laughter. They couldn't manage to keep proper contact, and kept knocking their teeth and noses together. Marik was pretty sure he'd end up with bruised lips with how hard they were clinging to each other. It was sloppy, and uncoordinated, and sometimes painful. It was perfect. This was perfect.
It felt like home.
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A/N: There we have it! Only the epilogue to go now, because the boys deserve Good Things after all this. Thanks to anyone who's still reading this - I hope you've enjoyed coming along for the ride! Please leave a comment or tumblr ask or something to let me know what you thought. I know reviews are rare to get on FFnet, but I promise I don't bite. ;)