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Ryou curled up in a corner of the room hugging his knees. When Malik had given him the basics of how to live in the vampire's world as a human slave he had not expected to ever actually want to see Bakura. Now he wasn't happy unless the tall vampire was there.
The house seemed empty with just him in it, and he'd already been through the things Bakura had bought him twice, trying to make the memories fill the room. But there was no substitute for his actual presence. Ryou fingered his new collar. The leather felt soft under his fingers and he could feel the indentations on the tag and think on the words engraved there.
He had chosen the message himself. 'Ryou Property of Bakura'. It was a simple enough message but it meant everything to him. It meant the end of his freedom, the surrendering of his will, and his struggle to decide whether or not he liked it. The mental struggle was the worst part of being a slave. Having to act as though he was less than Bakura or Marik and obeying everything they said without question was hard.
And he knew that he had it easy. Malik seemed to exist only to get hurt by Marik, and most slaves would have been punished for the stunts that Bakura found amusing. His lot may be hard but comparatively it wasn't... and it was. His life had been empty before he had been kidnapped and left on the floor of Bakura's living room.
He hadn't had any friends; no one wanted to be associated with the weak boy with white hair that was a target for any and every bully in the neighborhood. He had at one time managed to befriend a group of people, but they didn't really like him. They just thought of him as their personal charity case.
And now, now no one would dare to hurt him because they were afraid of what Bakura would do to him. Malik was his friend and both thought of and treated him as an equal. He was slowly learning more about the politics of the vampiric world and no one really seemed to think that he was particularly different. His white hair made him fit in more if anything.
In a place where everyone was unusual his looks merely made him seem like just another of these. He would have stood out more if he had been normal. This was true even among the slaves as most people wouldn't bring slaves out of the home unless they were exceptionally good-looking or unusual enough to invite comment and admiration.
It was strange, Ryou reflected, that it had taken him this long to find a place where he was accepted, and even stranger that in the place he felt he could call home, the first such he had found since his mother and younger sister had died, he was thought of as a slave. He was content in this place. It was his true home; the place where he wanted to stay for the rest of life.
A world of vampires and other strange creatures, most of them evil, with himself as a slave to one of them. This was his soul's resting place. And his master... his master was the one he loved. Wouldn't his father be horrified at him now? He'd always had pressure on him to be normal, to accept the standards of society and conform to other's expectations. Even the fact that his love was male would have gotten him disinherited.
The addition of vampires, werewolves, giants and dragons would have had him sent to an asylum. Amane would have understood. She always did. And his mother would have accepted whatever he did because she loved him. No matter what he did. He had been loved and accepted and happy until they died.
When they had died though... the world had gone grey. Ryou had lost his interest in everything. He hadn't cared about the things that he had been passionate about. His grades had slipped. He'd gone to school every day with his eyes red from weeping. His few friends had deserted him for others who would at least pretend to be happy.
He hadn't, and still didn't, understand his father's attitude. The man of the house, father and husband to the dead women, had been cold and calculating. He had thought about their deaths as a hindrance to his work and of his grief-stricken son as an embarrassment. That was when he had begun the continuing cycle of being sent from one school to another.
His grades had continued to slip. The only subject that he still did well on was writing and even then his teachers complained that he never wrote anything cheerful and that all his works were too depressing. He hadn't told them that that was how he felt. He didn't want to be sent to a psychiatrist. He just wanted to be left alone.
His thoughts were interrupted by the lights going on. He looked up warily and smiled, his whole face transforming at seeing Bakura standing in the doorway. "Master! You're back!"