Ok, ok. So Take Five is out considerably sooner than I'd thought. Ain't my fault – I got the second issue of Bast, which has Apophis, and then started listening to strange music, and then this decided it wanted to be written. It's another one of the short little parts.
I worry about this whole thing getting redundant, which is why I'm sometimes hesitant to continue it. … And then I look at Possession by Edmondia Dantes, which is up to 20 parts. Great fic, by the way. ^_^ But anyway. It seems like you can do more when you use different characters… maybe I'll write a victorious Seto sometime. Bwahahaha.
This kinda goes with Take Four – which, in case I wasn't clear enough on, is what happens when Yami Malik wins and kills everybody. ^_^
Soundtrack: Stay – Aesma Daeva
(If you're at all interested – because the song does complement the fic quite a bit – and you can't find the song on Kazaa or anything, e-mail me and I'll see if I can send it to you.)
~~~
To the victor go the spoils.
Spoil, verb; To corrupt, to cause to go bad. He spoils her with his influence.
~~~
Take Five
A flash of a memory hit him at the same time as the pain – skewed white hair not covering the bloody face, the tan skin peeking out beneath its crimson coating, like red watercolour paint but thicker, so much blood on the skin and the red cloak, too much red and white, the pale ivory of hair and eyes, eyes glassy blank totally white save the tiny rim of red iris barely visible under the upper lid – and then he was shoved back into reality with a heavy precious burden in his arms.
The stars were no longer visible, and the sky was light near the horizon line, but it was much too early for even a false dawn. Yami Malik, who desired the darkness, didn't seem to mind that his destruction was the cause of the light. The flames were tall, twisting and flaring up even higher than the blond who stood in the center of it all, cackling in his victory.
Ryou Bakura held his darker half up, but it was difficult. He wasn't physically weak – not as strong as somebody like Jounouchi, for sure, but not feeble either – but couldn't recall ever having to use his muscles so much as he'd had to that night. It had been a long night, too, and it wasn't even over yet. Though Yami Malik promised the end of the night was coming soon, and not the dawn.
He shifted his grip, and the other Bakura coughed, another line of blood dribbling out of his mouth. Ryou froze, both for fear of causing more injuries than the forced ejection from his body had inflicted, and from the fact that Yami Malik had heard the cough over the fire crackling and the screaming.
For one of the first times since the dark Bakura had been defeated at Monster World, Ryou was afraid. Yami Malik sauntered over, not seeming to notice that his pants leg had caught fire and was burning into black cinders.
Bakura's body twitched in his arms, and he tried not to be scared on the outside at least.
"You know that you'll die too?" He called to the advancing horror. His thin, tiny voice was almost lost over the other noises, but like the cough that had first caught the fiend's attention, it was heard.
"Of course," Yami Malik answered. "There would be no point otherwise."
His tongue slipped out and licked his lips in anticipation, the flickering firelight casting distorting shadows on his dark face. Ryou flinched and stepped back at seeing that, momentarily forgetting the injured one in his arms. (Wondering why he had to see something so frightening and wrong and dark when it was shortly after the middle of the night and it all should have been dark, with no fires, and he shouldn't have had to see the expression that was darker than midnight on Malik's face.)
Midnight is dark, but at least it has the stars to lighten it.
Seeing the shorter boy's struggle to both stay away from him and support his dark half in strained arms, the blond laughed. "I wonder," He said absently, still approaching, "why you're not dead now. I already killed you." Still advancing, ever closer. "Not that it matters, because you two will stay dead this time."
Yami Bakura coughed, and Ryou jerked his head down to see what had happened. The side of his tenant's mouth that wasn't caked in slightly sticky blood was pulling upward, grinning. "Ryou," He moved his mouth soundlessly, and it was only the slight remnants of his presence in Ryou's mind that allowed the boy to understand what was said. "Remind that bastard that I don't stay dead." He tried to laugh and ended up coughing again – the hollow words didn't comfort either ivory-haired boy.
The memory of the attack that had forced him out of his landlord's body was still painfully apparent in both their bodies, though his landlord had suffered considerably less damage.
"I will destroy the world," The dark Malik proclaimed, as though he had not made it obvious enough by then. Perhaps it was said just to remind Ryou that he should be afraid for himself and not just the spirit in his arms. "I am like Apophis, the great serpent who will destroy the sun Ra and cast the world into darkness!" He sneered at the near-unconscious Bakura, "Your little Set will not kill me this time."
Yami Bakura once more attempted a chuckle, and again ended up coughing, whispering something. "Turn around," His mouth moved, "let Set stab you in the back. Hah, ha –" and he hacked and was quiet. [1]
"You won't be creating eternal darkness," Ryou argued, dragging himself and his tenant back, away, away from that dark creature. "The sun will still rise even after we're all dead!"
Yami Malik cackled once more, loudly. "But if there's nobody alive to see it, who can say that the sun does rise!?" He demanded. "It won't ever rise for you again, and that's what matters for you!"
Ryou whimpered and pulled the other Bakura to his chest. His feet still shifted back, but there was no conscious thought to the movement now; pushing each heel back automatically, the terror still advancing closer and closer.
"At least that damn pharaoh died before us," Bakura mouthed, pushing deeper into Ryou's embrace.
"Any last words?" Yami Malik taunted. The fire had advanced up to his hip, and Ryou suddenly became aware of his surroundings once more; he'd been backing against a wall, the orange flames creeping toward him, surrounding Malik and consuming all.
It made sense in a twisted way, Ryou's mind thought, in the panicked gallows' laughter hysteria of when you knew death was waiting for you. If you were Christian the world had been destroyed by water the last time around, so it was only logical that fire should follow. He wondered if the Christians had the wrong idea all along, especially considering the religion of the one who would be killing them all, and he wondered if his hair would burn, and he wondered what Ra and Set and Apophis would think of the destruction if they truly did exist. Maybe Apophis'd be jealous that he wasn't the one winning. Maybe they wouldn't care.
He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to watch his own demise, and the memory returned to show him those blank gazing eyes on the corpse that had darker skin and shorter hair but was still so obviously recognizable.
"Any last words?" The dying man whispered against his chest. "I said mine long ago. Not that anybody listened then." Even without the voice, the bitter tone was still heard.
A fly landed on one of the glossy white spheres.
Closer still, and Yami Malik was there, hand around Ryou's pale neck. Ryou forced himself to open his eyes, maybe the last time, dark dark violet examined wavering pale emerald, and it was the last time and all three knew it.
"Yes," Ryou managed to whisper, his usually small voice barely audible. But Malik heard, and he waited for the last words, the fire creeping up his back and then catching on his hair. "Make sure our eyes are closed."
La fin
[1] These are references to Egyptian Mythology (bwaha, I did my research). Yami Bakura reminds me of Set – empty threats and generally an ass. And Set killed Apophis by tricking him into turning around, and then cut Apophis's head off. Nasty little backstabber. ^_^ So that's what he and Yami Malik are talking about.