Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! Nor do I own Batman. I just noticed that Kaiba is a lot like Bruce Wayne, and decided to run with this story. So sue me (on second thought please don't)!
Author's Note: Sorry my motivation for the story is slowly dwindling L. I'm trying hard to keep myself interested in it, but its hard to do sometimes. I really don't want to leave all of my lovely viewers with an unfinished story (that bothers me when I'm reading a story) so I'm gonna keep updating… but slowly. Sorry again!
Oh and MukashiNoHikari thanks for the review! I really appreciate it!
It was late. Dr. Ashita Crest's last patient had departed half an hour ago, and she was finishing up some paperwork before leaving the office. Her mind wandered as she sat at her desk, and she gave a small annoyance when she discovered herself rereading the same paragraph for the fourth time. Time to call it a night. She pushed back from the desk and froze.
Someone was standing in front of the window, a tall man, his face hidden by shadows.
"Who-" Then the figure moved and she saw the long black cape and the hood that obscured most of the head. She swallowed. "Good evening. You startled me."
"Good evening, Dr. Crest." His voice had a hushed, eerie quality to it. He moved into the room, a forbidding figure in black and gray as he came to stand on the other side of the antique desk. "I apologize for the intrusion, but I need your professional opinion."
The small woman nodded and motioned her visitor to a chair. He remained standing. "I half expected you to call sooner or later," she said after a moment. "How can I help you?"
"Ryou Bakura's fiancé told me that he was a patient of yours last fall. Without breaking confidentiality, I need to know what his chances are of ever regaining his sanity."
Dr. Crest tented her fingers on the desktop. "It's difficult to diagnose a patient without the proper opportunity to examine his current condition." She gestured to a pile of newspaper clippings on her bookshelf. "As you can see, I've been following the case quite closely. What we have here is a man who was severely traumatized as a child - so severely that the only way he could deal with the trauma was by developing a separate personality - literally extracting the part of himself that he felt was responsible for the trouble and locking it away where it could do no more harm." She shrugged unhappily. "Apparently the secondary personality began resurfacing from time to time, causing inexplicable outburst of temper that Ryou could never recall afterward. The outbursts had increased over the past few years, no doubt due to the stress of Ryou's job. Then there was the incident at the refinery…"
"And that's when Big Bad Kura came out for good." Batman had begun to pace slowly. "What I need to know is if Ryou's primary personality can be made to reassert itself. If someone from his past confronted him, for example - is there any chance he might be able to come back to his old self?"
"Possibly." Dr. Crest rested her chin on her fingertips. "The difficulty lies in not knowing exactly who is in charge now. Is it really the personality we knew as Big Bad Kura who's seized control? Or did a new identity emerge after the explosion and the scarring - an fusion of the two previous ones?" She played with a letter opener on her desk. "The Big Bad Kura that I encountered was a terrifying, brutal man, but in some ways he was very simplistic - like a child who'd been locked away from the world for years." She lifted one of the newspapers. "This bizarre creature who's named himself Two-Face exhibits a cleverness and a depth of intelligence that I would never have attributed to the bully called Big Bad Kura."
The Dark Knight paused and regarded her thoughtfully. "You're saying this new personality might contain parts of both of the others?"
She shrugged. "The obsession with dichotomy, the careful attention to detail - everything either split in half or multiplied by two - none of this was a part of either Ryou or Big Bad Kura before the accident."
"Does that mean that therapy designed to change Two-Face back into Ryou might backfire and bring out Big Bad Kura again?"
"We understand so little about multiple personality disorder, Mister-er, Batman. Each case is unique. I hesitate to give false hopes, but based on my previous observation of Ryou and of his will to work through his problems, I would say that there was a least fifty-fifty chance that the original personality might reassert itself - given the proper treatment. This would not mean the destruction of Big Bad Kura, merely his integration into Ryou's personality as the normal manifestation of the anger Ryou Bakura has so long suppressed."
"And the Two-Face identity?"
"It's a recent development. With luck - and especially if the physical damage is left by the accident could be dealt with - that identity might be done away with entirely. But I would guess that time is an important factor here. The longer Ryou is left untreated, the stronger hold Two-Face will assert."
Batman stroked his chin. "Thank you, Doctor. You've been very helpful." He turned to slip back into the shadows, then hesitated.
"Yes?" she prompted. "Was there something else?"
"I was wondering. You said Ryou's personality split apart as a result of childhood trauma…" He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Does this always happen? I mean, if a child experiences something terrible in his life…"
"Will he develop a second personality? The answer is no, not necessarily. We have many ways of coping with unpleasant experiences - multiple personality disorder is just one of them."
"But what if - later in life - this child still seems influenced by what happened to him so many years ago - influenced to the point of spending a large part of his life trying to prevent such things from happening to other people…"
Dr. Crest smiled. "Why, then I would consider that a very good outcome has occurred from what must have been a very unpleasant incident."
"But suppose he had to disguise his own identity in order to carry out this mission," the man in shadows persisted. "If a person chose to… divide his life, to create a new life in order to accomplish something he thought was important. Would that-"
"I can't answer that question without examining the subject closely," she said gently. "As a general response, I would say that as long as the person realizes that the secondary identity is just that - a mask or a cloak, rather than an independent entity - he should have no problems remaining seated in reality. If he should ever develop problems in that area, he would be welcome to discuss them in the privacy of this office."
He was silent for a few seconds. "Thank you, Doctor," he said.
"Do be careful when you go out," Dr. Crest called as he retreated into the darkness. "That window's never been right since I had it replaced several months ago." A breeze blew briefly into the office. As Dr. Crest turned back to her desk, she murmured, half to herself: "You know, the really intriguing question in that last case would be: after all these years - which one is the true identity and which one is the mask?"
~*(KC)*~
Shadows moved stealthily inside a spacious office on the thirty-fourth floor of the newly opened Kochman Tower Complex. Pebbled glass hung in jagged shards from the metal frame of the office door. One large piece lay on the thick beige carpet just inside the doorway. It had words printed on it in an elegant gilt script: E. DOUBLEDAY
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.
Inside, the office was illuminated by a broad shaft of moonlight coming through one of the wide windows and by the narrow flashlight beams that swept the plush furnishings. File folders and papers were strewn everywhere. A tall man sat in the leather seat behind the polished teak desk and flipped through the files. Two other men used crowbars to force open the remaining locked cabinets in the adjoining file room. Moonlight fell across one side of the tall man's face in a slash of white radiance. His features seemed calm, his dark brown eye brooding on the contents of the files.
There was a grinding sound of metal being pried away from metal, then a sudden snap as a drawer gave way.
"Hey," one of the men in the other room said, "this looks like something…" Max carried a thick file folder to his brother. Min was swaying slowly as he leafed through a sheaf of papers. Raucous music leaked from the earphones clasped tightly to his head. Max tapped his twin on the shoulder and pointed to the other man's flashlight. Still moving to the beat, Min shone his light on the folder's label.
"'Rupert Dartz/Confidential,'" Max read. He left the room and approached the man in the leather chair. "Hey, Two-Face-"
"Gimme that!" The tall man snatched the folder from his hireling's grasp. He leaned forward, the strip of moonlight shifting to the other side of his face as he read. Max flinched away from the madness in the staring red eye, the hideous curl of the leering mouth.
"For years I tried to subpoena this." Two-Face flipped through the file with shaking fingers, devouring the contents with his mismatched eyes. "Money laundering, payoffs, blackmail - it's all here!" He spun around and rose from the chair to stand framed by the wide window. The Domino skyline clawed at the night behind him. "I'll destroy Dartz with his file," he rasped exultantly, "just like he destroyed me with mine!"
"Uh, boss, can we get outta here?" Max edged toward the shattered office door. "We been hangin' around a pretty long time. It might be a good idea to hit the road before somebody noti-"
Part of the blackness beyond the doorway detached itself and stepped forward over the jagged glass. Max lurched back in shock, reaching for his revolver. Before the gun was halfway out of its holster, a black-gloved hand had snatched it from his fingers and tossed it contemptuously into the hallway. Max hauled back his arm, deciding to put everything he had into one tremendous roundhouse punch. Unfortunately for him, by the time the blow landed, its intended recipient had stepped smoothly to one side. Max howled in pain as his hand slammed into the plasterboard six inches to the right of the gaping door. The intruder delivered a quick right cross, and the thug fell heavily forward onto the carpet.
Batman turned and extended his hand to Two-Face, who stood frozen at the window, silhouetted by the moonlight. "You're coming with me, Ryou." The costumed crime fighter took a step toward the other man.
Two-Face bolted, trying to dodge past Batman out the door. The Dark Knight stepped into his path and Two-Face fell back with a cry. "I want to help you," Batman told him.
"Help me?" Two-Face sneered in disbelief. "You don't know anything about me - what makes you think I need your help?"
"I know you have friends, Ryou. Friends who love you and care about you and want to see you well again."
Two-Face groped behind him on the broad desk. The fingers of his left hand closed on a small metal lamp with a curving shade of green glass. "Good Little Ryou's friends are no friends of mine," he grated. He raised the lamp over his head.
Batman stood his ground. "What about Serenity?" he asked softly.
Two-Face jumped as if jolted by electricity. "Serenity…?" The unscarred right side of his face moved forward into the moonlight. He looked stunned as he lowered the lamp to the desktop. "What do you know about Serenity?" he whispered, his voice shedding its guttural rasp.
"She still loves you, Ryou." Batman moved closer, looking the confused criminal squarely in the eye. "She keeps your picture. Every day she waits - and hopes."
The man in the moonlight swallowed. He had the mournful look of a little lost boy. Batman slowly extended his hand again. "She wants you back, Ry. We all do."
As Ryou slowly lifted his own right hand, Min burst through the door, gun drawn, just in case there was trouble. "Hey, what's taking you guys…" The Dark Knight was momentarily distracted by the intrusion, and suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of Min's gun.
In that instant, Two-Face ducked back into the shadows again. An evil sneer grew on the left side of his face as he lifted the lamp high and brought it down hard on Batman's hooded skull. The Dark Knight fell forward onto the carpet and lay there groaning.
"Boss, let's get outta here! C'mon, Max-" Min helped his groggy brother to stand and the trio slipped through the broken doorway and into the hall. Gasping in pain, Batman crawled to his feet and stumbled after them. He gained energy as he pounded down the hallway, his head beginning to clear. Rounding a corner, he leaped for the fleeing Two-Face, tackling the smaller man about the waist and bringing him down to the floor with a heavy crash.
"Ryou," he gasped urgently, "I'm your friend!"
Two-Face squirmed desperately in the other's grasp. "Let go of me!" he roared. He planted his foot in the center of the Dark Knight's chest and shoved with all his might. Batman tumbled backward, crashing heavily into a janitor's cart lade with mops and buckets.
~*(KC)*~
Batman lay there for a long time, swimming in and out of consciousness. After what seemed like days he heard a soft inhalation and felt someone's hands pulling him free of the tangle of cleaning supplies. "Hey there, Mr. Batman. You okay?"
He opened his eyes to a broad, wrinkled face. The elderly woman watched him with concern as she righted a bucket and picked up one of the mops. "Looks like you took one very nasty fall there."
He looked around, trying to get his bearings in the darkened hallway. "Ryou… where's Ryou?"
Dark eyes blinked in the wrinkled face. The woman turned to glance up and down the corridor. "Nobody here but you and me."
Batman pulled himself to his knees, the rose slowly to his feet. Suddenly he clutched at his ribs and doubled over with a sharp gasp.
The janitor supported him with firm, gentle hands until he was able to stand by himself. "You all right now?"
"Yes…" He grimaced, pressing his hand against his injured side. "I'm fine."
"Here." The woman bent and retrieved something from the carpeted floor. "Looks like you dropped this." She handed him a matchbook with a shiny foil cover. Batman raised it to his eyes and examined the logo on the front. It was a picture of a playing card. He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. The Two of Hearts…
Author's Note: Poor Seto, he got all beated up. L On the other hand: How rude, Seto! You could've at least thanked the woman. She's like super old and helping you stand up and all you do is say "I'm fine." Roland taught you better.
Sorry for the late update, but I really haven't had much motivation. The only thing really keeping me going right now is the promise of Yugi (I absolutely adore him J). Other than that… nothing.