I originally posted this in 2020 but I got the urge to come back to it recently so here we are! I'm changing a few things in the original 10 chapters and am planning to write some new ones as well because I'm no longer satisfied with the ending. I hope you enjoy~

Chapter 1

Yami and Bakura stood across each other as they had so many times before. Yami was like a gallant knight as he faced his opponent. The crowd, if you could call it that, was mostly there for him. Bakura on the other hand looked decidedly less noble. If Yami was a knight, Bakura was the dragon and he looked every inch the part of a beast. The situation was, once again, dire.

"Why should it always be like this."

Yami mumbled this to himself out of frustration. He wondered this quite a bit. Why couldn't Bakura just let them be? At times it seemed the man's hatred was limitless but on some days, days that seemed to be all too common recently, he would catch a look in Bakura's eye that betrayed his exhaustion.

The hatred he held in his heart was clearly a burden on him and it was at such a point that his already oppressive occupation of Ryo was leaving physical changes even after he handed back control to the timid teenager. The eye bags were the most noticeable. Least noticeable was the way all his movements had seemed to slow down. He moved as though through thick honey. Cheerful and kind but weighed down by a burden that was not his own.

Yami couldn't have been the only one to notice but nobody seemed to think much of it if they did. He was sure though, Bakura's hate was killing him. Killing him and Ryo both.

But what do you do when you notice a thing like this in your enemy? Maybe that's why nobody was saying anything. But even still Ryo was innocent! How could they let him suffer alongside the thief? Was Ryo's light stronger than the heaviness Bakura carried around himself like smog? How much longer could they really expect him to last if nothing was done?

He couldn't think of a reason to feel bad for Bakura other than the fact that he took no pleasure from watching people suffer, even his enemies. Punishment and aggression had always been a grim reality to him. An action taken in defense of the people he loved. He didn't want to fight Bakura but the man just kept showing up. How many times had they defeated him now? A sobering thought occurred to him here. Evil need only win once. But despite himself, Yami couldn't go so far as to call another person evil. He stayed silent when Jou would make his declarations of hate and Tristan would chime in and they would speak on Bakura's soul like it was bare before them. Like they held the key to the gates of heaven. He didn't think poorly of them for this. It was stranger, he felt, to behave as he was.

His feelings toward the thief were complicated. Obviously, he didn't like him. It's a bit difficult to like someone who's constantly making attempts on your life and the lives of your friends. No, he didn't like the man, he had just been alive too long and had seen too much even if his memory of the past was a little wonky. He never found people evil really and just didn't have it in him to hate and thank god for that. He would loathe putting bags under Yugi's eyes.

Ultimately however, whether the thief king was evil or not didn't matter. Yami still had to respond to the man's latest act of terror.

So here they were again. Bakura had enacted some elaborate trap and now the lives of his friends were in danger (again). They were in the middle of a heated game and Yami was not liking his position at the moment. His life points were dangerously low. He needed to end this game five minutes ago.

It was his turn now and he glanced from Bakura to his deck. Those tired eyes had stopped surprising him by now so they gave him no pause as he reached for his next card. His already knitted brow pulled impossibly tighter at the sight of the card he drew. He was not fond of this move but unfortunately it would most likely mean the end of this game and secure the safety of his friends.

"I activate the golden eye."

Bakura's own eyes widened a fraction.

"The eye will now search through your mind and pull your greatest weakness to the field. The damage to your life points will be proportional to the weakness."

Silence filled the room and that in itself gave away the bizarre and intense nature of this card. Malik Ishtar and his sister Ishizu were there as was Anzu. Tristan and Jou were missing from the crowd because they had been the ones captured. However Bakura had managed it, they were abducted after school. They sat together bound by shadow magic just behind Bakura's platform.

Everyone, including the usually rambunctious duo, was watching in rapt attention but it was Bakura's silence that weighed the most heavily on the room. Yami wished he would say something, anything, Maybe a quip about not having any weaknesses. His silent plea went unanswered and the pharaoh began to feel with sinking clarity that he would not enjoy what was about to happen.

A golden eye hovered on the playing field. It was shut at first and perfectly spherical except for the slight protrusion where the top and bottom lid met. It stayed closed for the length of a heartbeat before snapping open with violent speed. The pupil of the eye contracted and from it shot a gold light that connected squarely with Bakura's forehead.

It must have only been seconds, realistically speaking, before the eye shut just as violently as it opened. Immediately it began to vibrate and both Yami and Bakura watched it with barely concealed trepidation. The eye vanished slowly and in its place rose an image of a village. Yami didn't recognize it but Bakura most certainly did and began gripping the stand in front of him as though he were already in pain and that was not a good start. They were speaking in Egyptian and Yami felt a peculiar wave of nostalgia mix with the dread in his stomach.

What began as a normal scene quickly turned into confusion. Armed men rode in on horses. Armed men Yami recognized. People were being mowed down left and right. Houses were lit on fire. People were being smoked out onto the street to be eradicated. It was terrible.

The room filled with the sounds of metal slicing through the innocent. People were screaming, children were crying, soldiers were yelling. Through the chaos emerged a woman. She was middle aged and clutching her chest as she limped. Blood soaked the rags she wore. Yami felt his whole body tense when she and Bakura locked eyes. The mirage filled the whole playing field for the moment and she drew herself to the very edge of the board to stand directly before the thief. Bakura's whole body was visibly shaking.

"Akefia!" She cried. It hurt to listen to. It was desperate and more a wail than anything else.

"Akefia!" She only seemed capable of saying this and as the bloody scene raged on behind her she was left untouched. Here she was, the concentration of this gruesome mirage. This woman was the vehicle that would lead Yami to victory.

She reached as far forward as she could, still screaming Bakura's Egyptian name. Most people couldn't bear to watch the scene unfolding on the board and once they had satisfied their curiosity, turned their eyes to the thief.

What would he do?

Honestly, he didn't look to be in good shape. He removed his hands from their white knuckle grip on the stand and he took a shaky step to the side of his podium. He was under the spell of this card and Yami dare not wake him, for his friend's sake. Instead, he watched with bated breath like the others. Bakura neared the edge of the field and stood face to face with the wailing woman. She was still reaching for him so he placed his hand in hers and at their contact, a golden light consumed the room.

Most had tried to shield their eyes and everyone was disoriented. When Yami gathered his senses he scanned the room for Bakura. Briefly, he registered that Bakura's LP had been depleted and heard rather than saw that Tristan and Jou had been released. He gathered his cards and went to Bakura's side of the small dueling stage followed closely by Anzu. There they found Bakura on the floor. Well to be more precise, they found Ryo who Yami hoped had passed through the ordeal mostly unharmed.

Anzu ran to get water and everyone else slowly made their way over. The intensity of the scene they had just watched put a blanket over them. It was Yami that first broke the silence.

"Those were definitely palace soldiers," he said with his eyes trained on the boy lying on the floor.

Ishizu looked as though she wanted to speak. Something about the look on her face told him he didn't want to hear it though so he didn't prompt her with any questions. Ishizu had an uncanny connection to the divine and she shared her knowledge sparingly so it was foolish to avoid it when it was in front of you but, even still, he couldn't pretend to be enthusiastic at the moment.

Yami didn't get to sit in his self-indulgent silence for long anyway. After her moment of initial hesitation, she gathered herself and came down to kneel beside the pharaoh.

"What do you know of how your father and his priest constructed the millenium items?"

Yami looked up at her in encouragement but didn't speak.

"The details of the magic are complicated but essentially many lives had to be sacrificed." Yami averted his eyes to stare once again at the pale boy. Ryo was breathing softly but looked gaunt and Yami began to worry that somehow he would break if they moved him too roughly. Ishizu's voice tore him back out of his thoughts.

"Your father ordered the slaughter of remote and poor villages to fuel his crusade and . . . It seems like Bakura was from one of those villages."

A lot made sense at that. Yami was upset to hear it but by no means surprised.

Anzu returned with the water and after a few minutes Ryo had regained consciousness. It was lucky because nobody wanted to look after him and risk letting Bakura loose in their home.

Ryo offered his usual tearful apology and Yami accepted it although with slightly less enthusiasm than usual. Everyone else chimed in as well and reassured him that they knew he had no control over his actions but Yami couldn't concentrate. He had a bad feeling and had to settle it before he allowed Yugi to take the reins again.

Once everyone (except the thief king) had kissed and made up, they began shuffling towards the exit of the warehouse. That was when Yami noticed Ryo hanging back.

"Is something wrong?"

Ryo jumped and met Yami's eyes with caution.

"I can't feel him."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't feel him. I can't feel Bakura. " By now everyone else had stopped as well. "Normally, even when he's not talking to me or controlling me, I can feel his presence. I can tell he's there. Right now . . . I can't feel anything."

Ishizu glided through the collection of confused teenagers and put her hands on the ring. She stood there in concentration for a few moments before she raised her head, understanding plain on her face. What they would have done without her was a scenario Yami didn't want to picture.

"This may not be typical of your card Yami, but it seems Bakura was sucked into the vision of his weakness."

She said it so matter of fact that first Yami was just confused and then a shot of guilt immediately electrified his chest. He cleared his throat to distract himself from the sensation before he replied.

"I try to avoid using this card but I've never seen anything like that happen. Are you sure?"

She nodded, looking severe. "Bakura had an extremely powerful weakness. Well it would be more accurate to say he surrendered power to that weakness. Knowing what it is we can see how it's motivated his actions for almost his whole life. It has such a strong hold over him . . . and he doesn't have a body holding him to this earth. He must have been pulled into the illusion."

Jou stepped up. "You mean that that bastard is finally gone?!"

His enthusiasm caught her off guard. Ishizu looked as if she was a teacher that had been hit with a paper ball mid-lecture. Her response was dry.

"He is trapped within the card"

Jou looked incredulous. "So we're free. We're done." He clapped Ryo on the shoulder "You're free!"

They ought to be happy but everyone was mostly shocked. They exited in a daze and went their separate ways.