Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.

Warning: personification of a mental state below.

Nothing perfect lasts.

I know this, better than anyone. Any thing. I am the very meaning of imperfection, and I have existed without ceasing since the first murder.

You know firsthand about murder, don't you Malik?

But you were mine even before then.

You first opened yourself to me when you watched the teenager you assumed would never fail you stand and do nothing as you were carried away; and you became mine completely when the heated knife first touched your back. Your unanswered screams were the path that led you straight to me. And you have been mine ever since, no matter haw sane you may seem at times.

Toying with magical forces didn't help matters.

After all, I am possessive. The path to me may be straight, but the one that leads away is long and twisting, full of dead ends and corners where you would suffer is you were backed into them.

You do not want to take that journey away from me, Malik. You do not even want to try.

You've been in discomfort here so long--do you really wish to learn what other options there may be?

And as I've said, I'm possessive. Even if you piece yourself together into some mockery of sanity and take the path and walk away from me, you will still be marked. You will still be one of mine. In the darkest, most ignored recesses of your mind, where your nightmares come from, I will linger.

And that is if you are alone. But I know you, Malik; you do not like to be alone.

But if you stay with that 'family' you have been through so much to consolidate, your sister and your servant-brother will always look at you with a tinge of fear in their eyes, because you are no longer perfect to them. They have seen my mark on you. And eventually those looks will drive you back to me.

I will be waiting.

I will welcome you back, with no hard feelings.

For you truly are insane, Malik. You are a boy who has murdered his father; who has spent five years controlling and torturing and idly destroying other humans, all in a quest to kill the vessel of a soul of a man long since dead; who has suffered imprisonment and helplessness at the hands of a creature of his own mind; who had to be saved by the very same person he seeked only to kill. A boy who has no purpose now to live for, and nowhere to go that will not drive him back into me.

You must be insane, Malik, because no sane man could have survived what you have lived through--and you are not even yet a man. You are, only, imperfect.

And you are mine.

There are so few who are truly insane, beneath the surface as well as above it, that I could never reject you. Not even if you try to take the path away from me. You will attempt a 'normal' life and you will struggle, and you will slide backwards, and you will realize that there is no one who will both understand and sympathize with you, and eventually you will give up, because you are not as strong as you believe and have convinced others you are. You will grasp for sanity and you will fail.

And then you will come back to me. You will not crawl, you will not actively seek me; you will simply slide too far and fall too fast for anyone to realize and attempt to catch you before you sink back into my possession.

There will be no struggle--no one I have claimed in all my long existence has ever left again when they come back to me the second time. Even though I prickle like hot needles beneath your skin and in your mind, I leave you with a sense of control that pleases you. I know you crave control, Malik; so I dangle it like a bright toy that one holds before a small child when wishing to pacify it. In my grasp, you will have your control. You will be mine unquestionably and you will stay mine.

And you will live. Nothing will ever break you, nothing will ever kill you, nothing will ever turn you into that which you do not want to be.

For I have made you imperfect. You owe me a great debt for that--greater than you could ever pay. Imperfection is the highest gift I could give you, Malik. When you finally understand that, you will realize how deeply I crave you and how eternally you have been made mine.

The scars on your back...the scars on your mind...the ugliness that you have seen and the ugliness that you have done and, ultimately, the ugliness that you have become....

I love you for it. I have taken you from the beautiful child that you were and turned you into a bitter, mad boy. You have slept in the depths of my embrace and you have been tarnished for it.

Nothing perfect lasts.

You are no longer perfect. You will last.