A/N: This came about because my boyfriend got me back into Yu-Gi-Oh! and made me watch the Dark Side of Dimensions. I mentioned working on this fic in the past, and being disappointed that I was still not a good enough writer to do with it what I wanted. He convinced me to give it another shot, so here you go. The original fic is called The Ties that Bind Us and can be found on , but I have changed everything except for the most basic premise.

The world tipped and spun on its axis, and she was falling backwards into the storm. The air around her burst into a cornucopia of colors. There was nothing to slow her fall, nothing to stop it. It was an inexorable pull, drawing her back into it. Down, and down, and down.

Oh...she thought, as her head tipped back and the feeling of it consumed her limbs. Her hand was light where the knife had left it-had it struck its mark? It had. She'd heard the sound, the anguished cry, but then things had happened too fast for her to process. He'd cast a spell, she'd thrown the knife. She'd heard a cry, seen gold beads scatter in the air like confetti she'd seen once, a long time ago.

And then she'd been falling. And she hadn't been able to stop herself.

And although a part of her was still numbed by surprise, still unable to process that she had been so caught off-guard, the colors that surrounded her brought on another thought. An older one, a thought from a different girl. A different time.

It's happening again...

#

"My name is Amane Bakura..."

The last time she had fallen, she'd been a child. She remembered the incident in fragments. The bright light and jarring impact of the accident. Her mother screaming, silver hair streaming in the light as she twisted in her seat, throwing herself over her. The sound of breaking glass and the crunch of bone. And then a jerking motion, as she was ripped out of her seat.

At first she thought she'd been flung out the window. But that didn't make any sense. Because her mother's hands had been tight on her shoulders and the car had been rolling, but she was still falling, still falling, still falling...

She had vague memories of light. Of stone and gold and the air of something that felt too much like a tomb. The air was warm and tasting of sand, and she'd been standing barefoot, in a shapeless white dress that she definitely hadn't been wearing before.

She'd been standing before a set of scales. An enormous golden set that dwarfed her, nearly reaching the ceilings. On one side of the scales, there was a feather. And behind the scales, a presence. Something tall and foreboding. It stared at her, and she felt her mouth go dry, her hands curling into fists at her side, as she asked it one question.

"Am I dead...?"

"No," the voice replied. "Not yet."

"But I..." She swallowed hard, trying to get some moisture in her throat. "I..."

"There is still much you must do."

She remembered those words, and she remembered it all disappearing. She remembered falling again. And as she slipped away, she thought she remembered...something in the shadows. A voice, deep and terrible, lurking on the other side of the scales. A voice barely recognizable as female, that chuckled with dark amusement as it said, "Mark my words. That one will serve me."

And then she'd been in the sand, and delirious with heat, and so thirsty it felt as if her lips were cracked stone. And the boy had been standing over her.

He was a child, like her, but leaner, wilder. Feral. His skin was dark, but his hair was white. The same white as her own. He was shouting something furiously at her, but she didn't understand. His mouth formed words, sounds, demanding questions, but she didn't understand. She stared at him, uncomprehending, and he stepped back and threw his hands up into the air in disgust.

He started to walk away, and she looked around her and realized that they were alone in the sand, just the two of them. That there was no one else she could see.

She felt a flash of panic. She licked her lips and tried to will moisture into her throat. Tried to will something.

Those words were the only thing she could think to say. Her voice came out cracked, broken. A shadow of its former self.

"My name is Amane Bakura."

She hadn't been expecting him to stop. He had been moving away with such purpose, but he did. He stopped, and looked over his shoulder at her. There was still fury in his expression, but it was fading, replaced by confusion and something else. Interest? Intrigue? He barked something at her that had the tone of a question. She didn't understand, but the statement of her own name had given her some clarity. She remembered travelling, with her father and mother. With her brother. She remembered the concept of a foreign language. She shook her head slowly to show she didn't understand.

His brow twitched in impatience, and he reached up with one hand, placing it on his chest.

"Bakura," he snapped.

She understood then, or at least, she thought she did. She slowly raised her own hand, mimicking his gesture.

"Amane."

"Amani?" he asked, quirking a brow. It wasn't entirely right, but it wasn't entirely wrong. She nodded quickly.

He said something else to her and then started walking away again. Amane stared at him, confused, feeling again that touch of panic. That fading hope. He was walking away, and she almost shouted when he stopped walking, when he looked over his shoulder and barked something at her. Louder, with the tone of command. He rolled his eyes and waved his arm in her direction, a universal gesture.

Follow me.

She scrambled to her feet, kicking up sand and nearly slipping in it in her haste to follow him.

#

Falling.

The world was streamers of light around her, and she felt as if she were moving through a dream. She held on to those memories. They were slipping through her fingers like grains of sand, but she fought to hold on. The falling went on forever until it ended.

The sky yawned open beneath her. Air, real air, whipped at her skin, and the sky overhead was a yawning blackness devoid of stars, lights shining from buildings that surrounded her. She heard noise-conversation, the honk of car horns, and then screaming. Screeching brakes. It was a cacophony of noise and she felt herself panic.

Then she crashed to the earth, and all she knew was black.

#

"Landlord, phone!"

Ryou Bakura was cooking. It was something he had occasionally enjoyed in the past, but it was something he found himself doing a lot more now, particularly since the number of bodies that needed sustenance had tripled in his house over the past year. He was engrossed in the task, and he was so used to tuning out noises from the living room that he didn't realize he was being spoken to until the voice called out for him again.

"Ryou! Answer the damn phone!"

Ryou blinked, straightening up from the sink. He cocked his head in the direction of the rest of the house and realized that just under the sound of the shooting game they were playing in the living room, he could hear the faint, tinny sound of his ringtone. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and hurried into the hallway.

"Sorry!," he said, running to the room where he had last left his phone-a small, cramped space that was nominally his father's office but that had been turned into his project room. "I didn't hear it!"

"Are you going deaf?" Bakura demanded, leaning back from his game to yell at Ryou as he passed the open door. "Damn it, Marik, that's cheating!"

"And that's rich coming from you."

The sound of simulated gunfire followed Ryou as he ducked into the darkened room, following the sound of his ringtone. He could see the light of his screen from underneath a cloth he had thrown over his latest work in project. Ryou snatched it up, careful not to disturb the unfinished diorama, but before he could answer it, the ringing stopped. He blinked, looking down at the screen.

3 missed calls, the screen read, and then underneath it, Yugi Mutou.

Ryou was just about to call back when the phone started ringing again. This time, he answered it, raising it to his ear.

"Yugi?" he began, confused.

"Are you watching the news?" Yugi asked, before he could say anything else. He sounded almost breathless. Ryou looked back over his shoulder at the light and sound still spilling out from the living room. He leaned closer to the phone.

"Should I be?" he asked.

"Turn on the news," Yugi said. "Please, Bakura. It might be important."

Ryou frowned, tiptoeing carefully over half-finished miniatures. He thought about reminding Yugi that-because of the possible confusion-he wasn't going by his surname anymore, but Yugi seemed almost frantic. The past few years had left Ryou with an instinct for trouble, and he had a familiar sinking feeling in his gut, the same coiling dread he had once felt before any of the many times where the world had slid out from under him.

He moved as if in a dream, and walked into the living room, where his darker half and Marik Ishtar were seated on the couch, playing a video game.

"Well?" Bakura snapped, not looking up from the screen as he mashed buttons furiously. "Who the fuck is trying to call you at this time of night?"

"Yugi," Ryou said, still feeling a little dazed. There was silence on the other end of the phone, even though he knew that Yugi was still there.

"And? What does he want?"

"Can you pause your game?" Ryou asked, instead of answering.

"What?" Bakura asked. "Tell him to go to hell. Why should I-?"

He broke off suddenly, because at that moment, Marik's phone started ringing. The sinking feeling in Ryou's gut intensified. Marik hit the pause button before Bakura could, drawing a glare from the former Spirit of the Ring. Before Bakura could say anything, he picked up the phone, tossing the controller onto the couch and pressing it to his ear. He started speaking rapidly, in a blend of Egyptian and Egyptian Arabic that Ryou knew he only spoke with his siblings.

Bakura looked from Ryou to Marik and said, "What the hell is going on?"

Ryou didn't say anything. He looked at Marik, who had walked away from them for a bit, hunching over his phone, and picked up the remote from the coffee table. He changed the channel to the Domino City News.

It took him a while to understand what Yugi wanted him to see. There was a breaking news story in downtown Domino, and there were cameras and police tape pulled up around an intersection. He saw the red and blue lights of ambulances, and at first thought it was a traffic accident. But the headline was: "BREAKING: Mysterious Girl Falls from Sky" and the cameras were showing medical staff scrambling around a young girl, lying in the middle of the crossing.

A young girl, with hair as white as his.

A teenager, dressed in clothes that resembled Ancient Egyptian wear, gold bangles decorating her arms. A girl with features he recognized, because even though it had been years, even though she had clearly grown, he still remembered that face.

A girl whose chest rose and fell with her breathing, even though her eyes were closed, showing that she was somehow, impossibly, alive.

"Bakura?" Yugi asked. "Bakura, are you there?"

Ryou didn't say anything. He couldn't respond, even if he wanted to. Because as soon as he saw the girl, the phone had fallen from nerveless fingers, tumbling to the floor.