Chapter Five: The Second Sign of Madness is Answering Yourself.
Disclaimer (of sorts): Actually, I do own the key to Ryou Bakura's heart. Would anyone like to buy it? Five dollars going once… five dollars going twice…SOLD!
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Bakura had been sleeping deeply somewhere in the back of Ryou's head, blissfully unaware of his hikari's plans. Deep in the land of dreams, he was getting ready to drive a knife deep into the Pharaoh's heart. Bakura smiled in anticipation. Suddenly, the positions were reversed, and his own knife, his favourite silver stiletto knife, was about to enter his chest…
Waking up, he was flung into a real, living nightmare. He saw, as if in slow motion, his hikari holding HIS knife, poised to make the final blow…
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Bakura slammed into action. Although he personally didn't give a damn about what happened to Ryou, there was that small matter of what would happen to him if Ryou died. Bakura didn't know what would happen, and he certainly didn't want to find out.
Ryou could feel his yami's anger flooding through their link, and this made him feel vaguely happy. You know you're doing the right thing when the bad guys get angry.
By using his considerable mental strength, Bakura managed to halt the knife's path, but he couldn't push it back. Once again the two souls battled. (This phrase is sooooo overused, but it really was a battle of life and death). As the two came into conflict, the hand holding the knife began to shudder from all the contradicting messages it was receiving from Ryou's head. Go into the chest! No, throw it away! Stop! Destroy me. Do it now!
In the end, the poor hand did the only thing it could, and dropped the knife. It clattered to the ground. There was an undignified scramble as both reached for it. Bakura succeeded in kicking it away with their foot, but this had unexpected consequences. Furious at being denied even the freedom to die, Ryou let loose an animal snarl that took both his yami and himself by surprise, and leapt forward, seizing the knife in one bruised and bloody hand. His yami, shocked, was knocked from control. Ryou had brought the knife forward to within a millimetre of his chest when he found he could no longer move his right arm. It looked like a stalemate. Ryou drew on reserves of mental energy he never knew he had in order to keep the knife there, and Bakura was angrily trying to drop the knife, but found he couldn't. It was the first time in three thousand years that he wasn't in control of his own weapon, and he was almost worried. Almost.
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Bakura wouldn't have survived for three thousand years if he had been the type of person who panicked easily. Being an experienced Tomb Robber, he always left himself an alternative. In this case, it was his host's left arm, which had hung limp and forgotten during most of the battle, apart from Ryou had brought it up to try and throttle himself.
Bakura used their left hand to wrench the knife from Ryou's grip, and flung it across the room. They both watched, mouth open, as it flew silently through the air. It landed point first in the wooden doorframe, where it hung, quivering slightly. The door swung ominously open, to reveal…