Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this fanfic unless I created it myself. Anything that I did create was inspired by something owned by someone else. This is done for fun and entertainment, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: Scenes From a Reversal: Bloodpaths: 21-50: To Risk Death
Character: Marufuji Ryou
Word Count: 552
Genre: Drama, Supernatural||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: 50scenes: Marufuji Ryou: change
Summary: Fifty scenes from a story unwritten, with one fact reversed: what happens when the Gentle Darkness is not gentle? Ryou has his own dark tale to live in this world.
Nothing.
No matter how hard he stared, he couldn't see himself. There was nothing there. He touched the tips of his fingers to the mirror, then breathed against it. Nothing happened.
Ryou closed his eyes and balled up a fist, slamming it into where his reflection should have been.
If he weren't dead.
Undead.
If Camula hadn't put her filthy mouth on his neck.
Drunk his blood.
Fed him hers.
Made him a vampire.
Glass shattered, but there was no pain. He wondered in an abstract sort of way if that too was because he wasn't alive. He brushed the shards from his knuckles and tried not to notice the open flap between his first and second fingers that would have bled if …
If his heart still beat.
If his own blood flowed through his veins.
If he were still human.
How long had it been now? Time meant nothing to him anymore. Time had ceased the moment Camula's voice called him back from the dead.
He wondered if his soul were still there and he was nothing more than the memory of a warrior duelist, an empty shell who kept itself going on the lifeblood of others. Perhaps the true Marufuji Ryou was in some afterlife the likes of which he couldn't conceive and would never experience.
Ryou couldn't help but envy that part of him, should it exist somewhere. That part of him, that part of his life, held so much he knew he would never taste again.
To be free: something he hadn't appreciated until he wasn't anymore.
To live in the sun: something he hadn't thought he wanted, until it scorched his skin.
To walk beside those he cared about: something he took for granted, until he saw them as food.
No. There was no other part of him. If there were souls, then his was in his body and he could not escape what he was by pretending he was anything but what he was.
He couldn't lie and tell himself this was all Camula's fault, or Haou's, when he was the one who chose to spy upon Haou in search of Johan. If he hadn't been such an arrogant fool, then this wouldn't be his existence now.
He should have known better. He hadn't. Now he would pay for this for all time to come.
Or until Haou's rule over the twelve dimensions was complete and there was no more time or existence for him to suffer in ever again. Or until someone kills me.
No, not just 'someone'. It would have to be Edo. He was the only one who had a chance. Which is why Haou won't let me near him. Not with a duel disk, at the least.
A sudden thought twitched through his mind. Ryou examined it for a few moments, then smiled. This could work. All that it would require would be waiting for the right moment and then approaching Haou in just the right manner.
He pulled his deck from the case and began to set each card on the table, the shattered mirror, and all of his depressive thoughts about the hell his life vanished into to the far corners of his mind. There was a single chance to end this all, and he was going to take it.
The End