He felt lost, his mind clouded by a thick mist.
Wake up…
His stomach grumbled, but he ignored it completely. He had long lost his appetite, even if his body disagreed.
He hadn't eaten that night at all, or spoken to her for that matter. He was still trying to find that memory of those flashes he had seen during his duel with the High Priest's doppelganger.
This was the second time he had confused someone for one of the Pharaoh's servants and it was weighing in hard on his mind.
He prodded at a grain of rice with his chopsticks as he thought about it.
Why did they look so similar? Even if they were their descendants, such coincidences rarely happen, especially after hundreds or maybe thousands of years.
And if they were, did that mean that he failed? The Pharaoh and everyone at the palace lived on and had children, who in turn had children of their own to spread across the world?
What about him?
Did he survive?
How did his own children come to be?
Was he right? Did that woman make it back home and gave birth to his offspring?
He didn't really believe it himself, let alone manage to convince the girl on the other side of the table from him.
Did he even have children to begin with? If that was just his hasty conclusion, did that mean that she wasn't even related to him at all?
He felt like he had been living a lie.
Wake up…
He wanted to do just that. Unfortunately, he had been awake the whole time. There was nothing to 'wake up' from. He ran his free hand through his hair, as though it helped him think.
"You should eat before it gets cold" Amane told him, though there was no real concern behind her tone. It was irrelevant to her if he collapsed from hunger or not, but she said the sensible thing regardless.
His stomach grumbled again.
"I'm not hungry" he lied, leaving the room. "I'm going to sleep for the night"
She watched him head for Ryou's room, shrugged off his moody attitude and cleaned up the plates.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
Hunger prodded at him, now sleep.
He hadn't slept a wink for a few days now and was sure he'd collapse soon. But he didn't want those dreams again. The ones of his family. Even though he had lost the duel and Diabound, their spirits were still with him.
They weren't a part of his Ka, but their own souls. As such, they weren't bound by the rules of the Millennium Ring.
And they were very upset with him. They flowed wailing in a low tone around his body, their incorporeal forms going through him as if they were trying to smack him in their anger.
He shouldn't have lost that duel. He had everything he needed to win. He should feel very ashamed of himself.
And yet, he didn't.
The revelation he had at the end, the one that made him lose, had been a big one.
He had managed to get a hold of a memory that wasn't his own.
He wanted to know more.
He got to his feet and left the apartment, walking the night road alone as the girl slept in the other bedroom.
He had made it back to that street where he first met Shada. Or at least the man that he thought was Shada.
It was close to midnight and the streets were empty. Unlike his own time, the roads were well lit and there was no sense of danger as he sat on the sidewalk alone, waiting and hoping that the man would return.
The only stress that came to him was the fact that he wasn't there.
He had passed this street nearly every day for the past week and the man hadn't come back.
He was wondering if there was even a point to him coming here.
He called out for the man, but there was no response.
Anger welled in him. He pulled out the ring from underneath his shirt and lifted it as high as the string around his neck would allow him.
"If you don't show up, I will kill everyone in this city!" he let out an empty threat into the air, as if the man could hear him and was just ignoring him.
He flashed a bright display of power from the Ring to prove that he was being serious and waited.
"You shouldn't be using the Millennium Items so frivolously." he heard a calm voice behind him.
He turned around to look the man in the eye. This was the first conversation he had with him ever since he saw him.
"You have no idea how long I've been trying to get a hold of you" he reprimanded him, as if he was owed some answers.
"I see you're trying to understand. That is good." the man responded as if he was continuing his statement from last time.
"Tell me, how do I wake up?' the thief asked, his voice lowering.
"I can help you with that, though you will have to do it yourself. My question to you is: do you want to?"
That was an idea he didn't want to hear.
"It depends on what you show me"
The man lifted the Millennium Key to his forehead and stated as the item glowed in the night sky.
"Take a look" was the last thing he heard.
He was in a dark void.
It felt familiar.
He had been here before, even though he didn't remember. His body shuddered as a familiar numbness overtook him.
He fell slowly through it, as if descending to the bottom of an infinite lake.
Again, his body told him.
„Your mind is clouded. But it is not by outside forces, it is by yourself. You need to sort it out. Time is irrelevant here, so take as long as you need. When you're done you'll be able to leave this place" the owner of the Millenium Key and Scales' voice whispered in his ear, the owner of said voice never materializing around him.
This is what he had to wake up from.
He trusted his body to recognise the things he didn't.
Images appeared around him, like photos, dissapearing just as quickly.
Then sounds.
This isn't my son!
A woman yelled.
I wasn't born right.
A soft boy's voice told him in all earnest.
You have to stop crying, Ryou...for my sake.
That was the girl...her name was Amane. Amane...
Bakura...
That was his name. That's where it all started from.
He remembered voices asking him for his name. Over and over. No, actually, it wasn't that quickly. His isolated mind just registered it as having been minutes when in truth several centuries passed between each visit.
He didn't want to forget it. It had been the name his parents gave to him, the last thing that he kept from them.
The Gods didn't like that.
He was supposed to discard everything.
Starting anew meant erasing all past memories.
Keeping a name, however insignificant a request, meant having to narrow down choices for reincarnation.
It couldn't just be anyone at random anymore.
And thus, it was delayed.
Centuries, millennia…till the Gods couldn't wait anymore.
All that hard work to make him perfect, tainted by one little aspect.
All that cleansing, just to leave one tiny, dirty scratch on the perfect pearl of his soul.
Why can't you just be normal?
His mother was right, why couldn't he?
He had such limited scope in both mind and heart. He tried many times to surpass these barriers, but he couldn't.
That scratch left in him let him know he was capable of more. When he confronted those bullies, he had been so close to feeling an emotion he wasn't supposed to.
It took him months to understand what that specific emotion was, sealed deep within himself.
Hate.
Yugi was the one who helped him feel it. Yugi triggered it when they touched that night.
Yugi didn't like it, but he did. It was the first time in this existence that he felt so good, so natural. As if he had been unbound from a tight chain. It was then that he realized, hate used to be a common emotion for him, but it was snatched away completely.
And so were many others. Rage, aggression, wrath, avarice, pride, lust…so many, that he was left with next to nothing.
Sadness was the only negative emotion he was allowed to keep, because it was the only emotion that wouldn't cause harm to others.
Therefore, he cried. He cried all the time, cried with all his heart. Cried to compensate.
Why did he have to be 'pure'?
There was nothing to admire in purity. It was weak. It forced him to always be 'good', to only experience things the Gods wanted him to. He could only smile and say nice things to others, over and over. Like a toy with a prerecorded set of dialogue.
But this was the person he had become.
There was nothing he could do about it until he died again.
Again.
He closed his eyes as he kept falling within the void.
He had died. That's how he ended up here.
He didn't remember how.
For some reason, he had more holes in his past life than he did in the present one.
He had no memory past the pyramid collapsing on top of him when he got the Ring from the Pharaoh's right hand man, Mahaad.
He might have died right then, but that didn't explain something.
Why did the Pharaoh die with him?
He was not there. He had most surely not died that day.
Yet he reincarnated along with him.
As Yugi.
Yes, he understood now why he felt hatred for him that time. It was because his heart remembered him, even if his mind didn't. And vice versa, it seemed.
A hate that surpassed time and limitations.
It was their own shared mutual emotion, only triggered by each other's presence.
Amusing, in a way.
His best friend had been his greatest enemy, and this exact hatred is what unknowingly brought them together.
No wonder they had so much in common.
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. A bitterer, knowing smile.
Maybe he should've just left these memories alone. Now he felt sad again.
What a miserable existence he led. Both this and the last.
The images stopped as his mind finished processing them. He stopped falling, complete silence enveloping him.
What was he to do now?
He had to make a choice to leave this place, didn't he?
In that case, his choice was…
The place went bright with the Millennium Key's golden light and he woke back up on the street by himself.