Chapter 8

"I'm sorry," whimpered Malik that night in his soul room. This time Yami and Yugi had joined them on the tower roof for dinner. Yami hadn't been paying much attention to what was going on, just staring out into space and had accidentally kicked him. That wasn't what was wrong however. The problem was that to avoid being kicked again he'd shifted and nearly knocked Ryou and Bakura off the edge. Needless to say Marik hadn't been happy.

Now, of course, Malik was bearing the full force of his yami's wrath. He was already covered in blood and bruises and unable to move and Marik hadn't shown any signs of stopping. "Shut your mouth you filthy little bastard," Marik growled at him. "This is your own fault you know." He kicked Malik in the gut, making him start hacking up blood to join the growing pool on the floor.

A yawn was heard from behind them and Marik spun around to see Bakura standing there eyes closed and hair rumpled looking as though he just got out of bed. "Come on Marik," He said irritably without opening his eyes. "It's almost morning already."

"What woke you up then?" Marik asked pleasantly, delivering yet another kick to his long-suffering hikari. Malik's pained cry startled Bakura into opening his eyes. He raised an ironic eyebrow choosing to answer the question with one of his own.

"Been busy haven't you?"

"Yes; and you're avoiding the question. How did you get in here anyway?"

"Fine then, Ryou had a nightmare and woke me up. I tried to go into my soul room to get away from the fuss he was making and found myself in here instead. You know you might seriously want to consider what I said. If you keep up with this you're going to kill him."

"Yeah, whatever," Marik waved his hand dismissively. Bakura gave him a look and he sighed. "Okay, okay I'll think about it about it. That good enough for you?"

Bakura sighed and nodded. "What happened?" He asked.

"What do you mean what happened, you saw what happened."

"No, I mean to you," Bakura replied kneeling beside Malik. "You never used to go this far. Actually you've changed a lot since the end of Battle City. Why?"

"Can we take this somewhere else? Away from my hikari? And you still haven't told me why you're here."

"I think one of the items pulled me in here to make sure you didn't kill Malik. You really did seem to be awfully close to it."

"Really?" Marik stared at him horrified. Sure he liked to hit Malik but he wouldn't actually want the brat dead. Besides if Malik died how would he work out his anger?

"I wouldn't joke about something like that." Bakura tipped his head to one side, "My hikari's still awake so how about you send Malik out so Ryou can patch him up while we talk."

"Yeah, I guess," Marik sounded subdued as he sent Malik out of the room with the usual flashing of light from the rod. Soft singing began in the background. "And I know I've been different since after Battle City. It's no big deal; I'm just trying to adjust to being friends with Yami and to not be cooped up in my soul room all the time. It's a relief you know."

"Marik if you're trying to say you're doing this out of relief..." Bakura gestured at the bloodstained room. "Why don't you clean it up by the way?"

"Never thought about it. Are you trying to stop me from doing this?"

"You can do whatever you want. No matter how stupid I think it is I'm not going to stop you. It's just... worrying, seeing you change like this."

"Oh. Well, I guess it's not really the relief it's more that, well, now I'm in control. I'm not trapped inside my mind most of the time. I'm spending more time outside of my soul room than ever before and it's... difficult. Suddenly I have time to do things. Now instead of just thinking someone's an asshole I can actually tell them that they are."

"That's going to come in useful," Bakura commented dryly.

"Oh shut up, you know that's not really what I meant." But Marik was laughing, his tense mood broken by the simple joke. "It's just, it, sorta put more stress on me than I thought it would. You wouldn't understand really, 'cause you had a life of your own before you were trapped in the ring, and then you could always make Ryou take over and diffuse the situation. Me on the other hand, I was made by Malik who didn't have any knowledge of the outside world in the first place. Then, well, you know Malik; he's more likely to irritate a situation until it gets out of hand. So it's not really feasible to let him have control when I get in trouble and I don't want to anyway. After spending so much time in my soul room it gets, smaller sort of."

"Uncomfortable," Bakura interrupted, "Like the walls are pressing in on you and you're trapped inside and everything's wrong because your fear just makes it worse and it goes on forever in an endless cycle."

"Yeah, yeah, that's it. And I've just been taking my stress out on Malik because I don't care what he thinks of me."

Bakura stepped forward to embrace Marik lightly before stepping back a slight tinge of red crossing his cheeks. "I'm glad you care about what I, well, what Yami and I think of you. And I do see what you're talking about. Just, just try to loosen up a little huh? Shove your frustrations into some object. It works for me."

"What do you mean shove my frustrations into an object?"

A knife appeared in Bakura's hands, "Well you see you just try to imagine all the bad feelings or the thoughts that you wants to get rid of flowing into whatever it is. It also has the interesting effect of making the object more powerful and sometimes unpredictable. I've used this knife for it enough that it does weird things sometimes. It seems to be my thoughts that trigger it now. I mean if I'm holding this and thinking of how I wish that some person will disappear it might send them to the shadow realm. I got in so much trouble with Yami when it did that to Anzu once. She was babbling on and on about friendship and I just couldn't stand it anymore."

"Now that I can understand. Come on, you said it's late so we better be getting to bed."

"No, Amane!" Ryou screamed staring at the lifeless body of his sister, "Amane!"

A harsh slap caused his eyes to snap open. The realization that it had just been a dream dawned slowly on his mind. He trained his eyes on his feet, careful not to catch the gaze of his yami who was looming over him. A scowl crossed the harsh features and Bakura vanished, though not without the customary flashes of light.

Now that his yami was no longer in the room Ryou relaxed. He looked around, noting that Marik was sitting in the corner his eyes blank while Yami was snoring in his bed. For the past few days Bakura had shared his bed with Ryou for reasons unknown. Not that he was going to complain. He had two good reasons for this. First of all Bakura would punish him if he did and second he didn't actually want to. It was much more comfortable sleeping with Bakura than it was sleeping on the floor in his soul room. Or at least it had become so once Ryou had realized that Bakura wasn't going to do anything to him.

He smiled sleepily. It was strange sometimes living with his yami. He just wished that Bakura was more like Yami. If he was even a little nicer sometimes Ryou could actually be quite happy. He knew that most people would be horrified at the thought of being happy living with an abusive spirit, if they didn't already want to confine him to the insane asylum for thinking spirits existed in the first place, but that was because they didn't understand.

No one could really understand what it felt like to meet your darker half if they hadn't experienced it. The sense of rightness, of completeness, was overwhelming. It was as though he had been only half of a person up till then and only now was he truly complete. Of course, he hadn't exactly been happy when he realized that Bakura had come to make his life even more miserable but hey, that's life. At least he wasn't alone any longer.

His thoughts were interrupted by a burst of light from Marik's direction and a sharp order from his yami. Sing something. And go get the first aid kit; I want to you to patch Malik up.

Ryou shivered, singing the first song that came into his head as he scrambled to obey the rest of his yami's command. Hai yami-sama He replied meekly.

Good. Now stop talking.

Ryou simply nodded and dropped down next to Malik who had appeared on the floor. He looked terrible. He was so covered in blood that Ryou couldn't see the extent of his injuries but from the way he looked he knew it was bad. Malik shoved himself up on one elbow. "Are they gone?" he asked in a raspy voice.

"Yes, now shush. Don't talk. You'll just hurt yourself more." Ryou pulled out the gauze and, still singing, began his near impossible task. He did the best he could to fix Malik's injuries and relieve the pain and then helped the other boy to sit up.

"Thank you," Malik rasped.

"Don't thank, me thank my yami. It was his idea. I wouldn't even have noticed you were there if it weren't for him."

"Yeah, but it's not him who's helping me is it? Are you okay? I mean, Marik's been rather angry at you lately and I thought he might have done something. And why are you singing?"

"Bakura told me to. And Marik's probably mad at me 'cause Bakura's been being nice lately." Ryou shrugged and continued his song.

"Do you know why he's being nice or is this just one of his whims?"

"As far as I know he just felt like it. It's been wonderful though." Ryou switched to a different song.

"You never know
Some folks think the world just moves too slow
But was it you?
Who told me I'm your everything

You hit me like I never felt before
Hit me like a sucker punch, you're rotten to the core

You know you hit me like I never felt before,
Silly for the last time

You never take,
A promise from a man who sheds his skin.
You had to wait
For my aching heart to break

You hit me like I never felt before
Hit me like a sucker punch, you're rotten to the core

You know you hit me like I never felt before,
Silly for the last time

Oh, everyone gets angry
I feel it when you're holdin' me
But in the right place, at the right time, to the right degree,
It's a breeding ground

For the pain I've found
From dealing with your scene
And you know that ain't easy"

"That's nice," A voice commented from behind them. The boys whirled to see Bakura sitting on the edge of his bed. "It's 'You Never Know' right?" Ryou nodded, eyes dropping to the floor as he sang.

Malik glared at Bakura, "Why won't you just leave him alone?" he demanded.

"Shut up," Marik kicked him from behind and Malik collapsed to the floor, moaning.

"The answer to your question is I don't feel like it. How bad is he Ryou?"

"Bad," Ryou answered, subdued.

"That's not an answer," Marik growled.

"It works," Bakura shrugged, "You might want to leave him alone for a while now. Ryou's work won't do much good if you keep opening his wounds again. Now, I thought we were here to sleep?" Bakura slid under the covers. "Come here Ryou."

Malik watched disbelievingly as Ryou slipped in next to him, silent tears beginning to run down his face.

"Don't cry," Bakura gently wiped the tears away. "You don't have to sing any more if you don't want to." He yawned and wrapped his arms around Ryou. "It's not as though I was going to make you sing all night you know. You do need sleep sometime."

As Bakura lapsed into the even breathing of sleep Malik found himself being thrown back inside his soul room. Marik seemed to have taken Bakura's advice as there was a blanket on the floor and, for the first time since Marik had started beating him, the room was clean with no blood anywhere. He curled up with the blanket wrapped around himself, and went to sleep.