by Shadou-sama
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The only sound that could be heard was the soft scratching of a pen's tip against paper. A boy, thin and pale, hurried the pen as quick as he could. If he wasn't finished by the time He returned…
Dear Sister, the letter started. Just like the hundreds of other letters he had written while His back was turned. All the same…
The boy had once read his letter. He couldn't believe how whiney he sounded. It had never felt like it was too much to ask, that it was as bad as he made it out to be. He had prided himself on how he never exaggerated, how he always told everything exactly the way it was.
It was too bad his friends, the only friends he had had in years, hadn't had the time to learn that. For He had decided that they were worthless.
"Sleep my child and peace attend thee," he sang to his departed friends. It seemed very fitting now. His mother had once sang him this very song, when he was very young. Now she sang it every night to his sister. "All through the night."
His pen paused as he wondered why he kept writing these letters. His sister, well, she'd never be able to write back. Oh no, she wasn't dead. Nothing as dramatic as that. She was in a coma, a horrible one, one the doctors believed she could never rise from. She was merely a human doll now, an adjustable figurine that his parents kept alive on machines and medicine hoping for a real child.
A real child… His pen trembled above the paper. Not the dangerous one that they had to send away, anywhere, as long as it was nowhere near them. It was his fault, her coma. Just another one of His dues.
He cleaned her lead figurine everyday. He cleaned them all everyday. He had nothing else to do trapped in this room. Sometimes, he even fancied that it was talking to him, her lead figurine. Sometimes they did that. But then he would pull out of his daydreams and it would be just an inanimate object.
When was the last time his father had called? Months ago, maybe. He might be in Egypt or the Russian Steppes right now, far away from a telephone. Or he might be mourning for his daughter.
His mother? She never called. Well, that would figure since she had been the one to send him away, the one to figure out how. What man doesn't have a mother's love? Him, and only him.
"G-guardian angels a-and God will s-send thee…"
Damp circles appeared on the paper as he sniffled. The ink blurred together. He turned his head away from it, covering his eyes. If He were here to see him like this…
The boy pulled himself together and glanced around his room. Yes, his room. The only place in the whole apartment that he still had. It wasn't much, but he didn't need a lot of material things. He still had his futon for sleeping, though He had been threatening to take it away if he misbehaved. He had his desk and his paper and pens. He had even been allowed to keep a few clothes.
"All through the night," he murmurred.
Sometimes, if he had been good, he'd get to have a shower. Then he'd make His meal. He never cooked for Himself. He was too great for that menial work. That was the only time he was ever let out of his room. Oh, and out to clean. But it was never during the day, always at night. Never in the light.
The boy knew that He had taken residence in the other room, the one that was supposed to be his parents'. He now had his own body. The boy often wondered why He kept him around, if he was as useless as He said he was. For security, for a back up plan. Incase His new body didn't work out.
"Softly now the shadows creeping," a rough voice sang softly.
He turned back to his letter, hurrying to scribble down an appropriate ending. He didn't want to leave it too bleak, even if he hadn't seen real light, or even artificial light, since the last time his father had called. He commented that his night sight had rather improved greatly. He didn't want his sister to worry.
"Hill and vale in slumber steeping," the voice continued, louder as He was closer.
He winced at the lyrics. That's why he sang it. He knew, he knew.
"I, my loving vigil keeping," the voice was right outside the door.
He fumbled with the paper before sliding out a drawer and stashing it there. The boy quickly closed it, making sure it stopped soundlessly.
"All through the night." The door opened. He would have liked to say he was blinded like a deer caught in the headlights, but it was only half-true. There were no light outside the door. He made sure of that.
"Ryou," the voice cooed. The two Millennium Items hanging on his chest glowed softly in the darkness. That was the only light, that twisted light, that he ever saw.
Ryou stepped back, no chair to impede him. He shook in apprehension. He almost never said anything. Just sang His little song, dirtying his lullaby, and checked to see that he was still caged and hopeless.
"I've had such an awful day," the voice said, closing the door and taking a step forward. "Do you want to hear about it?"
Ryou didn't reply, just stepped back again, and felt the corner of the walls at his back. His room wasn't that big.
He glided closer until nearly a step away. Ryou sank to the ground. That's what He wanted, right? He'd go away then, right? But to his dismay, He just crouched down too.
"That tomb robber tried to come back again," He said, his arms resting on Ryou's knees. "He's really a pain. Thinks he can save the world. But he's wrong, right little Ryou?"
Ryou, his eyes shut tight, nodded.
"The Dark Days, the ones he tried to stop thousands of years ago," He said, though Ryou already knew this. He knew it as if it were his own heartbeat. "They're back. And this time they'll succeed. Right little Ryou?"
Again, Ryou nodded.
"No one will see it coming, no one will know. Not until it's too late. Right little Ryou?"
Against his better judgment, he shook his head no.
Smack!
"When you're wrong, you get hurt," He warned. Ryou tried to withdraw even more, from Him and the stinging pain, but it wasn't possible.
It hurt. It shouldn't hurt. When you're hurt so often that you're never without injury, it starts to hurt less and less. You get used to it. Right? He wished he had a little Ryou to nod and make him feel all knowing.
"They won't see it. They didn't then. Well, a few had. But this lifetime, they've made themselves out to be fiends." He laughed, sharp and cruel.
"But how did he manage to come back this time?" He asked, more to himself than to Ryou. "I have his Ring, I have his host, the only two things he has a tie to in this modern day."
"H-he's tied to you," Ryou whispered. He shut his eyes tight, waiting for the inevitable slap. But it never came.
"Hmm, you may be right…" He didn't sound surprised at all, the opposite of what Ryou felt.
Moments passed in which Ryou only heard the beating of his heart. Loud and clear in the silent moment. Ryou had taught himself to listen to his heart. Most of the time, it was the only way to count the time.
Ryou gasped in surprise as He suddenly pulled his legs out, making Ryou's torso slide down the wall. This never happened, He never did this! Only his head rested on the wall now.
He climbed onto Ryou, resting His head on his chest. Right above the pulse of his heartbeat. Ryou couldn't feel His pulse or the gentle intake of breath. He had neither. He was dead.
"Deep in dreams my baby's lying." He had started singing again, but softly and barely audible. It was almost… comforting. Ryou exhaled deeply. "Breezes to my songs replying."
It could be worse, Ryou realized. At least he was sane. Unlike Anzu, who was stuck in some nightmare of failure, and Jonouchi, sentenced to the mental institution, his own 'Yami' whispering mental abuse into his ear.
"Lullabies are softly sighing…"
And at least he wasn't dead, like Honda, who had been brutally mutilated before being tossed off a bridge. The police still hadn't found his — the body. But Ryou knew. He had made him watch.
"All through the night."
Yugi was the worst of all. He had sentenced the kind short boy to an eternity of torture and pain. He sometimes told Ryou about how they had had to strap Yugi to a hospital bed; he was wrenching around so much. Yugi was still there.
"Hark the whippoorwill is calling…"
Nobody had ever stopped to think that maybe He wasn't such a savior. That maybe He had saved them only because He wasn't the one causing pain.
"Clear though the night."
They believed so readily that the tomb robber, the former spirit possessing him, was the evil one.
"Pure and sweet his notes are falling."
Dear sister, his letter would begin. My friends were sadly mistaken and misguided. Naïve, innocent, no matter what their pasts might suggest, they were but children. They were stupid. It wasn't the tomb robber.
"All through the night."
It was the Pharaoh.
The End