~Chapter Fourteen~
By the time that Marik and I finally managed to convince ourselves that it was a good idea to get out of bed, it was almost three o' clock.
"So… Ryou's still here?"
"As far as I know, he was when I last checked." Marik draped his arm around my shoulder, and we shuffled into the other room- where Ryou and Bakura were laying on the sofa, watching the news.
"What's goin' on?" Marik asked, yawning and stretching. Both of our white-haired friends shushed him, Ryou gesturing towards the television.
"The perpetrator in these non-fatal attacks has not yet been apprehended, but each of the victims describes a well-built, blond male, possibly with a scar across one side of his face." Gee, I wonder who that could be?
"Victims? Victims my ass!" Bakura shouted angrily, throwing the remote at the wall. It hit the floor, the back panel detaching and clattering along the floor, and the batteries rolling off in different directions.
"Dammit, Bakura! What have I told you about breaking my shit?" Marik shouted back. "Now I'm harboring a fugitive," he muttered, semi-angrily.
"You heard what that bitch said about those fucking-" Ryou silenced Bakura by putting a petite hand over his mouth.
"We know, Bakura. We're all just as pissed off as you are." He was right there… although I was feeling more of a heavy sense of dread than anything. Bakura had already gotten hurt because of me, and now he had the police looking for him, too?
"Malik?…Malik, you okay?" I shook my head, both in response and to clear out my thoughts.
"This is my fault." Marik sighed heavily, rolling his eyes.
"No, actually, it isn't. It's their fault, for being such disgusting human beings, and it's Bakura's fault, for letting them see him." Bakura nodded agreement, to mu surprise.
"Yeah, I know better than that. I was just pissed. That's why this happened, too-" he gestured to his wounds. "So you'd better shut up about how all the world's problems are 'your fault,' you got it?" I smiled, feeling a bit better, but not entirely convinced.
"Still, I shouldn't have said anything. I knew how angry you two would be, if you knew that they were the ones who'd hurt me, and I knew I shouldn't say anything, but I did." Bakura gently moved Ryou off of his lap and climbed off of the couch, walking (a bit unsteadily) towards me.
"I said no more of that!" He told me, catching me in a headlock.
"Ow! Okay! I'm sorry!" I protested weakly, feeling a little panicked at being grabbed- and restrained- so forcefully, but I was surprised to find just how much I trusted Bakura. I mean, I knew him even less than I knew Marik, and I'd seen how dangerous of a person he really was. He had a quick temper and wasn't afraid to resort to violence (I'd say that he kind of liked it, actually), but I still felt safe with him. He'd shown me that he cared about me enough to fight for me (and almost get killed).
"That's better." Bakura released me, and I staggered out of his reach, rubbing my neck.
"Normally," Marik said, glaring at Bakura, "I would beat you up for touching my boyfriend. But for once, I agree with you." I sighed, putting up my hands in defeat.
"Alright, whatever. What are we going to do about this whole situation, though?" I brought up a pretty good point, you have to admit…
"Well… like I said, we know where they live," Marik pointed out. "You didn't object to the death threats I'd mentioned earlier…" He was right…
"Yeah!" Bakura shouted, pumping his fist in the air victoriously. "I've always wanted to cut letters out of magazines and glue them together!"
"We'll have to wear gloves, though, so that they don't find our finger prints. We should also use magazines that don't belong to us, too," Ryou chimed in. "They might be able to tell which magazines we're subscribed to, based on the letters cut out of them, and/or the words on the other sides." It always helped to have a genius in the group.
"I'll go grab some of the neighbors' recycling," Marik told us, slipping on his shoes and walking out the door.
"Alright then, I guess we'll be threatening them… what should we say?" I asked Ryou and Bakura, who were back in their original position on the couch.
"Well, we'll tell them to drop all charges, or I'll finish the job," Bakura began cheerfully, "and then we'll include something about them hurting innocent people, so that even if they do show the cops, they will be less likely to really search for me." Oh yeah, Bakura was good at what he did. "I mean, it's not like I actually killed anyone, and if they think the guys deserved it, they'll just drop the case. If they keep searching for me, then we'll just have to send a note to the police with a few details about why they deserved it... Don't worry, Malik. We won't say anything specific, just vaguely what they're guilty of, and how they deserved much worse than what they got." Okay, so we had two geniuses in the group, just on different topics. "And if that doesn't work, I'll just hit up my contacts at the department." Why wasn't I surprised?
"So why don't you just hit them up first?" Ryou asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Because, hun, you don't want to run to your contacts all the time; they'll be less likely to help you out if you're always depending on them. Besides, I already said that I've always wanted to send these kinds of letters. And if we scare the living daylights out of these guys, they're less likely to hurt people, knowing that I'm not afraid to hurt them. We can't let them push us around by turning the police against us, when they're the ones who deserve to be rotting in a cell." It was clear that Bakura took this whole 'reporting and describing him to the police' issue very personally. Not that I disagreed with him, of course.
"Look what I found!" Marik called, throwing open the front door. Ryou rolled his eyes.
"Don't touch them, I'll be right back." He ran out to his car, coming back with his case of supplies- gods bless forensic science students. He handed us all rubber gloves, and Marik dumped the magazines on the floor, and then went to find scissors and glue or tape. He'd hit the jackpot, in the magazine department- there were all kinds of hunting ones, as well some detective/crime ones- full of words such as 'hurt,' 'kill,' and all manner of other violent words- words perfect for threatening people. Ryou began flipping through the crime one.
"This is perfect for the one to send to the police station," he commented, tearing out a page and setting it aside for later use.
"What is it?" I asked, peering over, but he covered it up.
"I'll show you when I'm done." Fine, then, if that was how he was going to be...
"Marik, did you find anything?" I called.
"I got scissors and paper, but no glue... I'll run to the store and grab some glue sticks." He tossed the pile of supplies on the floor, and once again headed out the front door. It was handy being so close to everywhere useful.
"Bakura, what should I say in mine? I'm not too experienced at threatening people..." He looked at the magazines I had.
"Well, just... whatever you want them to know. You're the real victim here, not these bastards. Tell them how you feel and what you want to do to them." Well... this could be interesting. I began searching through the magazines, searching for the right letters and words. 'Stolen' popped out at me, as did 'regret.' They both worked pretty well... it was like I got the perfect magazines to express my... what was I feeling? I had been so busy trying to not think about the events of that night, trying to avoid anything that might remind me of it, that I hadn't been able to come to terms with anything. About ten minutes after he'd left, Marik returned with glue sticks, more scissors, and some construction paper.
"What is this, arts and crafts time?" Bakura joked. Marik stuck his tongue out.
"It was your idea, you retard. Now let's get to work; these letters aren't going to glue themselves." He passed out the glue, and set the paper and scissors in a pile. I grabbed a piece of paper and began gluing, slow and meticulous. I was getting pretty in to it; everyone else had finished twenty minutes before I had.
"You want to hear what we've got?" Ryou offered, holding up his happily. I could tell that he really liked the idea of hurting the people who'd hurt me.
"Sure."
"'Stop the police hunt, or I'll do worse than just hurt you- you deserve everything you get for hurting innocent people.' See? That way, they can't show this to the police, and even if they do, they won't be able to explain the part about hurting people." I smiled at Ryou.
"Thanks, that sounds really good..." Marik and Bakura read theirs- they'd each done two.
"And this one," Bakura held up his second one, "is the one we're going to send to the police station. 'The 5 men who reported the attacks are liars and rapists. You should thank me for kicking their asses.'" He pointed to the word 'rapist.' "See? This is the one that I found. It was in that crime mag over there." He was clearly quite proud of himself. It was quite clever and well-done.
"I like the little batman cutout..." I pointed to the figure glued on the bottom of the page.
"Yeah, that's to give them the idea that I'm a super hero. You know, beating up bad guys and stuff." I nodded.
"It's fitting." Hey, as far as I was concerned, he really was a super hero.
I held up my finished work, and was a little embarrassed to show the others. It was pretty personal and revealing.
"You okay, Malik?" Marik was giving me a concerned look, and I realized that my hands (and the paper I was holding) were shaking. "You don't have to do this; we're more than happy to threaten all of these guys for you. And you don't have to read it out loud; we all understand." I shook my head.
"No. I have to do this... I need to get it out."
I took a deep breath.
"'You and I both know what you did- you've stolen something from me that I can never get back, and I'm damaged in ways that I don't even understand. You got off easily compared to the physical and emotional pain that I've endured thanks to you. If you have any conscience, or any sense of self- preservation, you'll drop charges. Otherwise, the whole world will know exactly what you are, and what you've done.'" There were a few seconds of silence, before Ryou shook his head.
"Well, now I feel inadequate."
"Oh, whatever," I protested, my hands still shaking. I couldn't look anyone in the face. It was way too personal! I should have just settled for vague death threats, like the others...
"See?" Bakura asked. "Doesn't that feel better?" I shrugged, but once I realized that no one was staring at me, just nodding in approval of my letter, I did feel a little better. Not that I was okay, by any means, but the thought of what had happened didn't give me a total panic attack. I even allowed myself a smile, as Marik hugged me tightly.
"Let's get these delivered. Bakura, write down the addresses for us."
"Which..." I paused, then shook my head. "Never mind."
"No, what were you going to day?" Ryou demanded.
"Well, I was wondering... which house was the largest man's?" I stared at the floor, fidgeting. "He gets this one..." I held up my letter. He had been the ringleader of the group; he had been the one egging the rest of them on, and he'd hurt me the worst. Without a word, Bakura circled one of the addresses, pushing so hard with the pen that it tore through the paper. At least I wasn't the only one with that much anger and hatred.
"You and I can deliver them when it gets dark," Marik promised. "I don't want anyone to get a glimpse of the car during the daytime, just in case." I nodded, smiling a little more freely. Things were looking up now. Bakura was okay, these guys had sort of gotten what they deserved, and now, hopefully, the police would just drop everything. And Bakura and Ryou were getting along well, judging by the fact that Bakura was going to hang out with Ryou at his house... which should be interesting, introducing Yugi to Bakura.
"I can go home now, too," Bakura informed us. "I hope no one's broken in to my house..." I wondered what bad part of town he lived in.
"Probably not; they all remember what happened last time someone broke in," Marik pointed out. "Don't forget your meds here." He threw the bottles into a plastic bag, handing them to Ryou for safekeeping.
"Call me, Malik, and let me know how it goes," Ryou ordered.
"Yes, sir!" I saluted him jokingly. "Don't worry, I'll call you." They left, and I let myself relax. I hadn't even realized how tense I was, but now that it was just Marik and me, I let out a huge sigh of relief.
"See?" He murmured in my ear, nuzzling against me. "I told you everything would be okay." I smiled back at him.
"I know," I told him. "Thanks to you." He shook his head.
"No, Malik. It's thanks to you. You're healing and making things work for you. We're just helping, and you know we'll be here for you every step of the way."
A/N: Haha! See? I got this up fairly quickly! I had to reread the whole story, because I wasn't even sure what was going on. I'm going to be better about posting regularly now that I'm at school for hours and hours and hours a day, with nothing to do but write fanfiction.
finally, some plot! I realized that the last three chapters consecutively were pretty much all fluff... :/
let me know what you think! I love you all!
*many thanks to soundofmadness223*