Fate: I like the way this ends now. Wasn't too happy with it before. But now I like it.
Disclaimer: is busily headbanging
[12] In Which There Is Gold Glitter
"You know, I always figured Ryou for the 'neat freak' kind of person," Jounouchi said, stopping dead in the doorway.
Bakura simply elbowed him aside defiantly and passed through the chaos without noticing that it was there. "Why?" he snarled.
Jounouchi blinked. "I dunno. It's just that he doesn't seem like a very messy person. Unless it's you?" he added after a pause, squinting at Bakura.
Bakura glared at him as Eisei edged himself and the still-catatonic Ryou around Jounouchi. "I, as an accomplished thief, do not leave possessions lying around where anyone can take them from me once I managed to get my hands on them, idiot."
Jounouchi tilted his head to one side. "Very true. It must be advantageous for other people to be absentminded and messy, though, right?"
"What do you think?" Bakura snapped.
"I think you're stalling," Kaisei said mildly. "I can't understand why, but I believe that you are. It seems a little foolish, you know, since you gain nothing from your present state."
"You're going to use that – " Bakura pointed at the Scales furiously, " – on me. Why the hell wouldn't I be stalling?"
"You could have your power back," Kaisei reasoned.
"What good is power going to do me if Am'mit eats me?!"
"She won't," Kaisei said. "Yet."
Bakura glowered at him. "I don't trust you."
"Do you have a choice in the matter?" Kaisei inquired.
"I could leave," Bakura pointed out.
"And abandon your hikari as a lifeless doll, subject to my brother's whims? You're even less intelligent than I thought," Kaisei muttered.
Bakura shot him a sulky look and turned his back pointedly. The he whipped around again. "Does he have to be here?" he demanded, glaring at Yami.
Yami merely looked at Bakura. The two yamis then commenced in a staring contest, the occasional red spark flying through the air.
"He blinked," Jounouchi announced, pointing at Yami.
Shadi gently pushed Yami into the room and closed the door after him. "Kaisei, if you please..."
"It would help if you disenchanted the hikari," Kaisei remarked to Eisei.
"Aww," Eisei pouted. He tapped Ryou briskly on the head with the Ankh, then prudently backed off a step, as did everyone else. Jounouchi even went so far as to dive into the kitchen and peer suspiciously over the counter as Ryou blinked, stretched, and slowly looked around, meeting everyone's eyes deliberately.
Bakura was staring intently at the floor in order to avoid his hikari's eyes when he suddenly realized that a white-haired being had attached itself to him and was gazing up at him, lips parted just enough to show bloody, pointed teeth.
"Are you going to shove me away and scream?" Ryou breathed. Jounouchi ducked even farther down behind the counter. Yami also decided that it was time for a prudent retreat, and vanished behind the couch.
"That is what you expect me to do?" Bakura replied just as quietly. Ryou's cold hands snaked around his neck as he nodded. "I see."
"Do you?" Ryou inquired. They were now close enough to be eye to eye, if only Ryou would stand up straight rather than hang onto Bakura in a show of helplessness.
Silence.
"Yeah," Bakura finally snarled, jerking Ryou to balance on his own feet, then tilting his head slightly and biting his hikari hard enough to draw blood. He looked back up at his would-be mirror image as a drop of blood spilled from the end of his mouth.
"Was that supposed to happen?" Jounouchi hissed audibly as Ryou stared openmouthed at his yami.
"Go with it," Kaisei replied, letting go of the Scales with a flourish. They floated in the air, glowing faintly and rotating around the center pole.
"They're going to try and balance us," Ryou murmured, steadfastly ignoring the blood seeping from his neck wound. As he spoke, a tiny cloud of grayish smoke sparkling with gold flecks appeared on one of the golden pans of the slowly rotating Scales.
"And if they don't succeed?" Bakura wondered aloud the thing that had haunted his mind for rather a while. He was almost too preoccupied to notice the smoke growing on the other pan of the Scales.
"Don't worry about it, because if they fail, life will still be beautiful," Ryou whispered, touching the blood at the edge of Bakura's lips. "My blood on your teeth." A smile crept up on his face as his teeth flashed. Searing pain briefly shot through Bakura as Ryou neatly reopened one of the cuts he'd made so long – but it hadn't been so long, had it? – ago. "And your blood on mine...if you can call it blood," Ryou said thoughtfully. "It's sweet, you know, sweeter than anything I've ever tasted, but it's not cloying, if you know what I mean. The aftertaste is...mmm, well, only consider the bearer of the blood," Ryou insinuated with a lazy smile.
Bakura fought the very tomb-raiderly urge to run screaming into the wilderness and not come back for a good long time. He instead raised one hand to trace the wound he'd inflicted on Ryou, eliciting a suppressed hiss of pain and a wince from the other boy as his finger traveled in lazy circles around the injury. Finally he withdrew the offending digit and licked his hand clean of the blood that had spilled down it.
"You really shouldn't be shedding blood like that," Jounouchi advised from his hiding place.
"Shut up," Yami suggested as both yami and hikari's eyes flicked to the kitchen, then back to each other. "Hurry up," he added to Kaisei.
"Do you want to be caught in the spell and be torn in two because it doesn't know which of them you belong to?" Kaisei replied out of the side of his mouth as he spun the Scales more quickly with mere waves of his fingers. "It doesn't matter if you're an innocent bystander or not. Now calm down and let me work."
"Mweep!" Jounouchi agreed feebly.
Shadi and Eisei looked equally disturbed. Eisei tossed Kaisei the Ankh, disappearing when his brother touched the Item. As Kaisei donned the gold pendant, Shadi also vanished.
"I don't suppose I could leave now, could I?" Yami inquired.
Kaisei looked rather strained. "No. Now stuff it, my pharaoh."
Yami was more than happy to comply and watch Ryou and Bakura's tête-à-tête, as it was at that moment getting rather interesting.
Ryou had by then hooked one arm around Bakura's neck and had tucked the other in his yami's back pocket. Bakura's teeth were inches away from the hole he'd just bitten in Ryou's neck, and he had one hand clutching the cord of the Ring where it met Ryou's collarbone and the other pressing his hikari against him at the waist. Had Yami been in the fangirl black market, he would have been filthy rich in a matter of days.
"Why all this attention all of a sudden?" Ryou asked, his whisper almost sultry. He turned his head as much towards Bakura as he could manage and licked his lips. "Did you just lose the will to resist me?"
"No," Bakura replied, his eyes almost closed. "I just found the courage to take you back."
Ryou laughed. The high, eerie sound echoed unnaturally in the small room. "You are my yami."
"Precisely," Bakura answered with a flash of teeth. "I am yours, or so you think. And I think that you...are mine," he added so quietly that he wasn't even sure that Ryou could hear. He licked teasingly at the blood pooling on Ryou's shoulder. "I'm consummating you, aren't I?"
"You make me perfect," Ryou whispered. "Alone, we are blemished and unfit for company. Together..."
"We could rule the world?" Bakura suggested mockingly. "How many times did I offer to lay the world at your feet, only to have you refuse in tears?"
"I've changed," Ryou said simply.
"And so have I," Bakura retorted. "But it doesn't matter."
"There we go," Kaisei said as the Scales suddenly blazed golden, shooting out pillars of white and black indiscriminately. "O Ma'at, having heard these two who are one converse, have you gleaned the necessary information for their Balancing?"
As far as a good portion of the rest of the world was concerned, time had frozen. They couldn't hear Kaisei speaking, nor could they speak themselves. They weren't at all aware that time had stopped, and never would be.
However, in places that probably didn't quite count as 'the rest of the world' but were lumped in there anyway, there were still some who could answer. The white and black lights parted neatly off to either side, with the gold flecks hovering around them.
"This priest of your Order thanks you, O Blessed Ma'at," Kaisei said respectfully, touching the eye on the Scales, which had mercifully stopped rotating. "By the power that is invested in me, the enlightenment that I was given by Ma'at my Patroness, and my determination, I will restore the Balance to the cosmos." He put a finger on each pan, watching as the white swirled into one and the black into the other. When he took his fingers away, the pans still balanced perfectly. He sighed internally with relief, then raised his hands over the Scales. "The Balance has been restored, and may all who have been affected live on in peace, health, prosperity, and above all, fairness." He closed his eyes and brought his hands together swiftly. "It is noted," he announced.
Blackness crashed down on Kaisei, followed by a soft rain of golden dust.
The Scales fell, released from the power that had kept them hovering before their yami master. Once they touched the ground, time snapped back into normalcy.
Kaisei's eyes dropped shut. "It worked," he whispered, grinning, as he used the last of his strength to remove the Ankh. "It worked." Luckily enough for Kaisei, Shadi managed to jump out of his soul room and catch his unconscious yami. Eisei also popped back into reality to aid his hikari.
Jounouchi peered over the countertop warily, then hopped over it with an odd grace, showering gold dust everywhere. His hair and eyelashes glittered with it.
Yami also emerged from his hiding place in a shower of gold. He then began furiously brushing at his clothes in a vain effort to get them relatively back to normal.
Bakura and Ryou were on opposite ends of the room, having broken apart almost instantaneously upon their reanimation. Ryou was huddled in the empty fireplace and Bakura was under the table.
"Um," Jounouchi said, crouching to peer under the table.
"Yeah?" Bakura snarled, reaching for his knives.
"Oh, stop that," Jounouchi said authoritatively. Bakura froze. "I think that we're going to leave, unless you want those bite marks seen to," he added.
Bakura put one hand to the gaping wound protectively. "We'll be fine!"
"I hope so," Jounouchi replied, standing. "I wish you luck." He looked over at the fireplace.
Ryou was curled up in the most shadowy corner possible, tears coursing soundlessly down his face.
Yami started towards Ryou, but was halted by the thud of a knife embedding itself in a nearby bookshelf. "Leave. Him. Alone," Bakura said, voice barely above a whisper.
Yami turned his head to look back at Bakura. "Why?"
Bakura closed his eyes. "Just get out."
"Yami," Jounouchi said softly. "Let's go. Let's just leave them alone for a while."
"I don't trust – " Yami began.
Jounouchi cut in deftly without any obvious effort. "It doesn't matter because you don't understand. Now go home. Yuugi's probably waiting for you."
"Yuugi!" Yami's eyes widened and he turned for the door, swiftly collecting Eisei, Shadi, and their unconscious yami and marching them all out the door.
Bakura stared at Jounouchi. "How the hell – ?"
"Have I managed to pull things off like that during this entire chaotic...thing?" Jounouchi smiled mischievously. "Allow me to put all your suspicions to rest, but you must promise not to tell anyone but Ryou."
Bakura nodded. "Secrets keep you alive."
"In the proverbial sense, yes. I've been Seto Kaiba's boyfriend for eighteen months running. I pick up on little talents like that," Jounouchi said smugly. With that, he turned and walked out of the apartment.
Bakura wasted very little time in gaping, and instead scrambled across the floor without bothering to get up. "Ryou. Ryou!"
"Don't touch me!" Ryou whimpered, pressing back against the fireplace wall. "I don't want to hurt you more! Get away from me, quick, before you get hurt!"
Bakura decided to be somewhat proactive, and reached out and took hold of Ryou's good shoulder. "Hikari..."
"You're different to me," Ryou said, stiffening. "You're..."
Bakura sighed impatiently. "Oh, shut up," he growled, bodily dragging Ryou out of the fireplace.
Ryou yelped as he fell to the floor in front of Bakura, then tried to scramble back up and away. This plan was thwarted by the very respectable hold that Bakura had gained on Ryou's upper arms. "Let me go!"
Bakura glowered at him. "No. You're acting different too. You'd never plead with me. Change happens, get used to it or get screwed over," he said ungracefully. "I'd prefer you get used to it, unless it's me doing the – never mind," he cut himself off as he thought aloud.
Ryou stared at him, having caught this addendum. "You...?"
Bakura blinked. "Me?"
"You don't hate me?" Ryou blurted out in a rush.
"I never said I did," Bakura retorted. "Never, ever. I've done everything you ever asked of me."
"You tried to kill me! You tried to kill my friends!"
"I only did what you asked!" Bakura yelled. "I never deliberately put you in harm's way! Just out of my way!"
"You never wanted me!" Ryou shrieked. "You wanted me to die!"
"I'd been dying without you!" Bakura howled back. "Dying, you skinny little mortal idiot!" Deep breath. "How many times have I died for you?"
"You've taken my body...taken me against my will...used me..." Ryou hiccuped, swiping away tears angrily.
"And why was it against your will?" Bakura snarled, leaning forwards. "I've never done a thing but to protect you, and to avenge myself!"
"The Monster World thing – "
"I had to send you somewhere – "
"On Duelist Kingdom – "
"Do you really think the pharaoh had the ability to swap us? The Eye could have, but – "
"In Battle City – "
"I carked it there, too, in case you hadn't noticed!" Bakura snapped. "And who attacked you while you were defenseless and I was half-dead? Hell, not even Marik went after you to get rid of me. No, it was the pharaoh who figured, well, what the hell, better get both of them while I can!"
"But you deserted me to – "
"I can be beaten too!" Bakura screamed. "I'm not perfect! I'm broken!"
"And then at the church – "
"Oh, gods!" Bakura sat back from Ryou. "I'm not the fucking pharaoh!" he snarled through the hands covering his face. "I'm not the high-and-mighty all-powerful smartass that he is. Get it through your head that I've been doing my damndest to protect you and get revenge on him simultaneously, and it isn't easy. I'm not the perfect protector. I'm worthless at it. Worthless. But you kept me." Shuddering breath. "You kept me."
Ryou very slowly reached out. Bakura made a strangled snarling noise, forcing Ryou to withdraw his hand slightly. Then the slimmer boy finally touched the half-shattered spirit on the forehead. "I kept you," Ryou said, quite clearly, "because I wanted to."
The tension flew from Bakura, who leaned into his hand with an exhausted sigh. "I'm so tired..." he whispered.
Ryou took his hand away slowly. "You should go."
Bakura looked up at him, nodded once, and vanished.
The remaining white-haired figure tore the Ring from his neck, flung it across the room, and collapsed to the floor in a welter of heartbroken sobs.
Fluffy: busily dancing Oi, we hitting any heartstrings yet?
Lyn/Lin: Thank you!
Nadako-Miaka: twitch Gah. Sorry about that.
happy yaoi lover: This calls for an 'OMG ::wub::'
Queen-Of-Demon-Dragons: No one else thinks Ryou's a complete and utter loony.
Dark Crystal Maiden: Thaaaaaaaank-ooooooo!
Melissa: pounces on trophy Shiny!
KeMu: runs out to drag Malik back kicking and screaming He's fun!
Saturn Imp: Cursing is bliss.
Froz Flame: Nope--but next chapter is the epilogue. Le sigh.
yukoma: Believe me, he regrets it.
BakaNeko-Chan: Sorry about the late updates. The plotbunnies went on strike.
Kitten: Glad to have been of entertainment.
Gyakutenno Megami: Bah. Silly people.
summer psycho:Oo...faves? Me? faints
Yami no Ryuzaki:Spiffles. I like that word!
Isis Hotep: Your friend will just have to live as a deprived soul.
Liviana: He's ba-ack!
Duel: Moo. What? Not like I have a point or anything.