A/N: *ducks random projectiles* I'll make it better, I promise! *gets hit with a tomato* Yeah… First off, this chapter is short. I wanted to make it longer, but as always, I have trouble making stuff anywhere near long. No tomatoes for the shortness of it, please. *gets hit with broccoli* By the way, just to clear up any confusion, the bounty hunter Malik was the hikari, not the yami. On to the long-awaited (not really) Chapter 7!

The Love of an Angel

Chapter 7

When Bakura woke up, all he could see around himself was darkness. He squinted slightly, trying to see in the black abyss that he seemed to be surrounded with. The other things he was suddenly aware of were the sharp pains in his skull and his right shoulder, which made themselves known very effectively. He ground his teeth together in irritation. If he ever found out who had hit him from behind, the scum would regret ever being born.

The demon slowly became aware of his surroundings as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Being the illustrious thief and stealthy escape artist that he was, Bakura rarely saw the inside of a dungeon cell. Even in the very few times that he had been caught, no prison had been able to hold him for long.

This one seemed quite conventional; thick stone wall, heavy wooden door, and a high barred window that let the smallest bit of light in from a few torches outside. It was currently night, and clouds hid the moon behind their gray curtain. Bakura frowned as he looked at the sky. It had been early morning when he and Ryou had been captured. Just how long had he been unconscious?

Wait a minute… Ryou! Where was Ryou?

Bakura tried to leap to his feet, only to suddenly find that he couldn't. Being chained to the wall by one's wrists was a bit of a hindrance to said leaping. The demon growled in annoyance, trying to find something in the cell to glare at. This was going to complicate things slightly.

He wracked his brain, trying to remember everything that had happened. They had been going to another cave, and then there were the movements and noises all around them… Stupid, bumbling maggots, they must've had help to catch him… Then everything had just stopped. His shoulder began throbbing suddenly as a reminder of what had occurred after that. Then what had happened?

Bakura remembered hearing Ryou call his name, and then the angel had screamed. The last image that Bakura remembered seeing was some stranger in black with Ryou, and the rest was a blank. What had they done with Ryou?

Then, the demon suddenly remembered back to the first night that he had Ryou. A gift to the Demon Lord's son… Red filled Bakura's vision for a bare second at the thought, and another growl filled the stone prison. The angel belonged to him, not to some rich, spoiled, snot-nosed, sniveling, pig-faced, son of a…

Right then, he heard voices from somewhere outside his cell. Loud footsteps came down the hallway, and a few of the guards passed by, shouting and laughing rather drunkenly. Bakura very suddenly wished that his hands were free so that he could cover his ears when one of them started singing off-key. They stumbled down the hall, pounding on cell doors and shouting insults to the occupants.

One of them called through the door to Bakura's cell, "Enjoy your last night alive, bastard scum!" and they continued noisily down the corridor with their bottles in hand.

The sentence took a moment to sink in, and, if he had been able to, Bakura would have smacked himself for being so stupid. He was the thief that had humiliated and stolen from the Demon Lord some five-hundred-odd times; of course they were going to execute him at the first chance they got. It would restore his royal highness's worm-eaten pride, which was all he had left considering that his reputation had been deep in a sludge-filled gutter for several years.

Once he thought about it, the demon realized that this was the first time that he had ever been truly frightened of dying. It wasn't the actual concept of it that scared him; it never had, and it probably never would. It was the fact that he wouldn't be able to protect Ryou once he was dead that made him dread the executioner's axe. During the previous night, it had seemed a wonderful prospect to live the rest of his life with Ryou, and if he died tomorrow then he would never get that chance.

Everything that Ryou had said and done the night before, from holding the demon as he cried to showing him how to feel, all rushed back to him. It overwhelmed him, and there was a sudden craving for that sweet intoxication that was his angel. Bakura suddenly understood what Ryou had meant when he said that love could also be painful as well as pleasurable. If he lost Ryou… what else was there?

In a blaze of anger and frustration, Bakura jerked at his chains roughly. And he jerked them again, and again, and again. They were old and rusted, even though he was too caught up in his anger to notice this, and the more he jerked and pulled at them, the farther they pulled out of the wall.

A tear managed to escape Bakura's tightly shut eyes, rolling down his cheek to fall down to the cold stone floor beneath him. The thought of never seeing Ryou again invaded his mind, and gradually he sank into despair. The anger slowly ran dry, and he slumped against the wall defeatedly. It had always been this way; the gods had never been kind to the demon, and they never would be. Just give him a little taste of something beautiful, he was sure they had once said, and then steal it away from him just as soon as he gets his hopes up.

The demon clenched his fists as these thoughts invaded his mind, the frustration rising again for a bare second. A strangled cry tore from his throat, and in one last fury-fueled pull, the chains popped right out of the wall. Bakura promptly fell forward in surprise, his anger suddenly forgotten.

He blinked at nothing for a moment, then pushed himself up into a sitting position and stared at his hands. The cuffs were still around his wrists, the chains attached to them, but the chains were no longer attached to the wall. Making sure that he gave the cloudy sky where those infernal gods resided a healthy glare, he carefully stood, trying to make as little use of his shoulder as he could.

The first priority was to find Ryou, of course, and the second, if he had time, was to chop the Demon Lord and his infernal son up into several pieces, skewer them, and roast them on a spit. Both of these thoughts immediately put the demon in a better mood.

Now, to work on an escape plan…

Ryou woke up slowly, a painful throbbing in the back of his skull greeting him. He opened his eyes to darkness all around him, except for the dim light of a few candles. He found that he was lying on an enormous bed covered with bright silk sheets, and the candles around him cast eerie shadows across the large room he was in. The angel lay where he was for a moment, staring at the high ceiling dazedly and trying to remember what had happened.

The last thing he remembered seeing was Bakura being hit over the head, and everything after that was simply blackness. Ryou couldn't see any sign of Bakura around him, and began to sit up to look around. That was rather difficult, as his wrists were tied to the lavishly carved headboard. Still groggy, it took him a moment to process why he couldn't sit up, and it took him another moment to find that a gag stuffed in his mouth thwarted any attempt to call out to Bakura. The only sound he could make was a soft, muffled moan.

Ryou struggled vainly against his bonds, wondering where Bakura was and if he was all right or not. He remembered suddenly that Bakura had been hurt when they had been captured, which only made him worry even more. The angel continued to pull at the ropes, then winced as his wing began to throb. His feathered wings were tied together behind his back, which effectively kept them immobile, and was also in a rather uncomfortable position.

A sound from outside the room made Ryou's head snap up, and he stared at the curtained entrance with wide eyes. The noise became clearer second by second, and Ryou could distinguish that the noises were uncoordinated footsteps. It sounded as if the person was stumbling ungracefully along down the hallway.

The curtains were pulled open abruptly, and a dark, heavy-set figure stood in the entrance breathing heavily. The figure stumbled drunkenly forward, letting the curtains fall closed behind him, and came into the circle of light that the candles created. Ryou couldn't see his face clearly, but did see the empty glass bottle in his hand and the large black wings extending from his back.

"Hello, pretty one…" he said, his words slurred, and crawled onto the bed rather clumsily. Ryou tried his best to shrink away from the demon, but was held securely in place by the ropes. The angel's shirt had been removed earlier before he had awoken, and the strange demon crawled forward and began to caress Ryou's ivory skin with his rough hands. Ryou closed his eyes tightly, tears of despair and fear squeezing out of them.

/No…/ he thought, still fighting against his bonds and the demon, but the ropes were too strong and the demon held him down almost painfully. He tried to cry out, but he couldn't. /Oh, please, no…/

Only Bakura was supposed to touch him like this… Only Bakura had permission to do this… Ryou wished as hard as he could to be in the garnet-eyed demon's embrace again as he struggled weakly once more.

The strange demon's hands began to travel lower, and Ryou's body began to shake with silent sobs. Only Bakura could touch him like this… This couldn't be happening…

/Please, no…/

A/N: Aah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Okay, I know I'm being really mean to our poor little angel, but every moment of angst balances out with a moment of sappiness in my fics. So, no more flying vegetables, please. Please review!