Fate: Huzzah. Here it be.
Disclaimer: Whee!
[yume]
"Did you dream last night?"
Ryou blinked, then looked up from his homework. "Hmm?"
"I said, did you dream last night?" Bakura repeated in a tone of voice that was probably as close as he'd ever come to being patient.
Ryou smiled vaguely. "Yeah...yeah, I did." He scribbled another line of calculations, then glanced back at the darker sprawled half on the couch and half on the floor. "Aren't you uncomfortable?"
"I've had a lot worse," Bakura said meditatively.
"Mmm." Scribble.
"Are you even paying attention to me?"
Quick glance. "Yes, I am." Add another line of calculations.
"Hn." Bakura fumbled for the remote with one hand, then flipped the TV on. "What's that?" he inquired, squinting at the screen from his upside-down position.
Ryou didn't even look up this time. "'S a TV."
Sigh. "You know, I forgot to tell you. In one of my lives, I was the darker half of a vampire. We had lots of wild kinky sex for a couple years, sucked some blood, and then I had to stake him through the heart instead of stabbing him."
"Mmhm. Sounds like something you'd enjoy."
Bakura flung the remote at the TV irritably. "You're not listening to me."
"I am too."
"Yadonushi, I am going to eat your homework if you don't put it down and pay attention to me!"
Ryou rolled his eyes. "What do I say in class then? My yami ate my homework?"
"It's a tempting thought." Slow, mocking grin.
With a martyred sigh, Ryou pushed his homework aside and looked over at Bakura. "What?"
"What did you dream last night?"
"Yami, what – ?"
"What did you dream?"
Closing his eyes and leaning back to rest on the floor, Ryou began, "I dreamed...that I was older. And I was somewhere...somewhere warm. And there was blood on the floor, and all over me, but I wasn't afraid. There was...I think it was a deer? A deer. Its skin, at least. And I was washing it. And the blood from it was all over the place. I didn't know...I didn't know what I was doing. And...I wasn't scared or anything. I was...I wasn't happy. I don't remember if I...if I even knew what being happy was. But...it was nice. I...it was nice."
There was a soft noise from the motionless boy on the other side of the room. "Odd."
"Aren't all dreams?" Ryou asked.
"That wasn't a dream," Bakura said, his voice sounding slightly strained.
"Well, what was it?" Ryou demanded, impatience seeping into his words.
"It happened to me. What you described." Bakura's head rolled towards the other. "I didn't, you know."
"Didn't what?" Ryou inquired.
"Know what happiness was. I knew, once, but I didn't remember. I remembered all sorts of things...everything but just being at peace with my surroundings. I suppose by your modern terms, I was happy a lot of the time, but...I'm not modern."
"I'm no more modern than you are," Ryou said quietly. "I'm...half here, half there, I suppose."
"You're with me." Bakura smiled at the ceiling, trying for normalcy and missing by a bit. "You're somewhere in between."
"Do you think we can ever get out?" Ryou asked.
"That would really depend on whether we wanted to."
[-]
"Yami." Poke. "Wake up."
"MrrrghIdunwannaa."
Poke. "Yami. Wake up."
"Whathefuh?"
"It's getting dark, you tit. And I have something for you."
"Mrr."
"Ya-mi..." Cue the puppy dog eyes, the slight whine, and general aura of cuteness.
Bakura thrashed about for a bit, then finally rolled over and sat up, pushing his hair out of his eyes and glowering at Ryou. "What the hell was so goddamn important that you just had to wake me up?"
Ryou raised his eyebrows, then very solemnly put a kitten down on the bed. "I was considering just putting her on your head and letting you find out for yourself, but I didn't want you to stab her or something."
"What the – where the hell did you get a cat?" Bakura demanded, his glower melting into an astonished stare.
"Animal shelter," Ryou said with a shrug. He dropped his backpack on the floor and quietly moved the kitten over so he could sit next to the bewildered shade. "They're places where people give away animals they don't want, so you can go and adopt them and stuff. Oof!" he added when Bakura grabbed him hard around the chest and yanked him back in a halfway decent simulation of a hug. "Ow."
"What's her name?" Bakura asked, his breath hot on the back of Ryou's neck.
"Bit of a strange story, actually. They said her name was Bastet," Ryou relegated. "Meep!" he added when Bakura hugged him harder.
"You've been pestering me about my dreams lately," Bakura said quietly. "About why I sleep so much, and so badly."
"I wouldn't say pestering," Ryou retorted, offering one hand to the silvery-white kitten with big gold eyes.
"Mmmph. You don't say. But I'll tell you," Bakura said after a pause. "I'll tell you what I dream, and what your dreams are all about."
Ryou twisted to get a better look at Bakura. "You mean it?"
"Why would I offer if I didn't?" Bakura asked practically.
"When will you tell me?" Ryou asked hesitantly.
"Right now."
[-]
Zane walked back in the door, a dead animal slung over his shoulder. /I'm back!/
What is that thing?I demanded, stabbing one finger at the deer.
/It's an antelope. I'm going to skin it,/ Zane explained. /Snog you later, I have to gut this thing before it starts to smell./
I jumped to my feet and followed him out the door, jewelry rattling with every step. He always dressed me up, you see. Not because I was his toy, but just because he could. Having a rich wife would have made him powerful, but having a lover with the power to summon demons, murder men with a touch, and steal without a trace made him wealthy as well.
He never asked me to do any of these things, and wouldn't let anyone else order me around.
I liked it, I think.
So what exactly are you doing?I inquired as he flicked one knife out of his vest and began cutting a long slice up the animal's stomach.
/Skinning it,/ Zane replied patiently. /I take off the skin, clean it, and tan it. I cut out the intestines and meat, save what I can, and bury the rest. I keep the bones. You've seen the other bones in there,/ he added with a jerk of his head towards the house. /Don't tell me you've never actually wondered where all this meat came from./
I learned not to ask too many questions like that,I replied grimly.
Zane raised his eyebrows. /I see./
I wasn't too sure that he did.
/This is going to take a while. You sure you want to stick around? It gets messy,/ Zane added.
I looked at the animal. Thought about it. I'll stay.
/All right then,/ Zane said doubtfully.
What, you think I'm squeamish?I demanded indignantly.
/Erm. Yes./
I sulked momentarily, then reached around him and knifed out some of the meat. I'm hungry,I said plaintively when he stared at me.
/And you're just going to eat it like that?/
I blinked and bit some off. That was the general idea, yes.
/People catch death-sickness if they don't cook meat first,/ Zane said, sounding worried.
I laughed. I've been dead for longer than your whole family has been alive. I'll be fine.
Zane seemed to be mulling this over as he peeled the skin back and began heaping pieces of gut onto a wooden board. /Want to keep an eye on this, then? If any animals come over and try and eat it, chase them off./
What am I, a guard dog? Mnn-meef!
Zane smiled down at me, fingers still held loosely around my face. /Now look what you made me do. You're all over blood./
I touched my shoulders, then felt up my neck to my face. I've had worse,I replied, looking at my fingers.
/Weren't you watching the entrails?/ Zane inquired mildly.
Hey, hey, what about – ?
/Later, you little devil./
[-]
"He had me wash the skin, you see," Bakura said drowsily. "That's your dream."
"What about your dreams, yami?" Ryou asked. It made for an odd picture, the pair of them partially entwined with Bastet draped across Bakura's shoulder.
"Always about him, lately. Not her," Bakura replied tiredly. "Always something different to start with, but the ending is the same. I kill him."
"Yami..."
"I'm never going to forget the way he looked, you see." Sigh. "I explained about Micky, but he didn't believe me. I tried...and he didn't believe. He never believed half of what I said."
"Couldn't he tell when you lied?" Ryou asked, astonished.
"You can?" Bakura retorted.
"For seven years running, and that was another one."
Bakura laughed again, soft and dark and mocking and delicious. "Aren't you going to elbow me aside and go do your homework?"
"No school tomorrow."
"Yes, you have," Bakura replied, perplexity etching itself across his face.
"...Yami, you've been asleep for three days until now. I almost gave up trying to wake you up, but since I'd just gotten Bastet I figured it was worth a shot."
Blink. Blink. Bakura grabbed Ryou's elbow and wrenched the other around so that they were face to face. "Really?"
"Yes."
"It only felt like a few hours," Bakura replied, looking dazed.
"Well, it wasn't."
"So you're not going to move?" Bakura asked.
"I wasn't planning on it, no."
"Good."
Ryou glanced at his yami. "Eh?"
"I'm damn comfortable and you owe me for waking me up."
Ryou laughed, and kept laughing at the crazily normal scene the three of them made, two identical opposites and a silver-white kitten, tangled-up and half-asleep on a twin bed. "Everything seems so...not so otherworldly," he finally said between bouts of laughter.
"That's because everything is just that," Bakura replied enigmatically.
"What do you mean?"
Soft laughter. "I don't know. Oh, shut up, stop moving around, and go to sleep, yadonushi."
Laughter like sin and night air and velvet.
No wonder everyone coveted him.
[-]
Is it another nightmare?
No! I'm not dreaming! Dammit, listen to me!
Go back to sleep...
I'm not dreaming! You're going to die!
Sssh. I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere.
No! Gods, no! You don't understand! You –
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood on the bed, blood on his hands, blood on his face. Blood on glassy unseeing eyes, blood across a betrayed countenance. Blood everywhere.
If you taste anything dead without cooking it first, you catch death-sickness and die...
Don't eat anything raw.
I'm dead.
Dead.
I'm dead and you killed me.
Is it another nightmare?
Bakura screamed.
[-]
"Did you dream again?"
"I dream every night."
"I know." Perdita smiled, the fire painting her face red-gold. "But you'll never tell me what they are, will you?"
"Mmm." Egypt again, hotcold and sandy, the Nile bitter in the back of my mouth and jackal-cries in my ears. Kemet. Home.
So close, so far.
So empty.
"Did you dream after you killed everyone?"
I blinked and looked over. Perdita was lying by the fire, staring up at the sky. "What? Which time?"
She laughed. "Only you would ever ask which time when I used 'you killed everyone' as a reference. The time you burned everything to rubble and then vanished."
"Oh. That time." I stared into the fire, holding one hand out to the flames tentatively. "I dreamed...I dreamed of fire and night, of eternity and green eyes. Of Kemet. Of you, of that girl, of everyone. I dreamed of music and dancing girls, and fighters and blood. I dreamed of dying over and over again, seven times."
"I'm only the sixth," Perdita said softly. "You know that, and I know that."
"Yes."
"How did the others die?"
Stare into the fire. "I never told you?"
"No, you didn't." Perdita rolled over and propped her head on her hands, her hair cascading down her back and across her tattered shirt. "But I think I know."
"Do you?" Numb and fire-blind by now.
"I think you killed them," Perdita said meditatively. "I think you killed them all, because they weren't real. I think...their blood is on your hands."
"Do you think I'll kill you, too?" I asked.
Perdita tilted her head back and smiled. "I wouldn't mind."
...but she is Home, in the magic sand, where death is only the Beginning and never the End...
"...tell me, Bakura." Pause. Breath. "What do you plan to find here?"
"Kuru Eruna." Soft, shaky words. "Kuru...Eruna."
"Do you know anything about my family?" Perdita asked, switching topics abruptly.
"No," I replied, puzzled.
"I was born somewhere hot, where it floods but doesn't rain," Perdita said softly. "I don't remember the name. We had to leave, you see. And run and run and run. And there were two children only, my brother and me. He was older, much older. And one day my family came across a caravan of slave traders. I was young and beautiful. I would make a good slave, one that cost money. I could put food in my brother's mouth and pay for my mother's medicines. She was sick, and no one would buy her. But they would buy me, and buy my father if it came to the worst. It mattered that my brother survived, and only him."
"I've heard about crazy people like that." Tracing patterns in the ice-cold sand, the fire flickering heat onto one side of my body.
"I killed him."
"What?"
"I killed him, so my father wouldn't sell himself and my mother would stop whoring. I killed him so I wouldn't have to be sold. I killed my brother." She smiled through the fire. "He held a knife to his chest and told me to push, and push hard. And he told me I wouldn't be alone. Someone would find me. And if I pushed hard enough and bit down on my own pain, I would survive. We would all survive." She closed her eyes. "My mother died, and my father sold me. A murdering brat, I was. No one would take me but my master, and he sent me out to die."
"He sent you for my Ring," I said, astonished.
"Of course." Perdita smiled again, painfully, but the smile was there. "I believed him, you know."
"Your master?"
"My brother. He said someone would find me." She looked directly at Bakura. "I think he meant you."
"Wh-what are you – ?"
"I would have to die to atone for him," Perdita said thoughtfully. "And in doing so I would further someone else's life. Yours."
"But I'm already dead."
"Only as long as you think you are," Perdita said gravely.
Jackals screamed in the distance, screaming triumphantly over their find.
[-]
He killed everyone and you welcome him?
He killed me and you adore him like your own body?
I died because of you?
You took my prize from me...
I hate you!
I died to save him...to save you...
But I didn't...I didn't want this...I didn't mean...
You didn't?
How could you not want him?
How do you not love him then? Tell me how.
How didn't you want this?
How didn't you mean to take him from me?
Tell me how you didn't.
Not me...not him...not me...not me!
You lived and I died.
He loved me and killed me, and you're still alive. Don't you wonder? Don't you watch the clock at night and feel a little afraid?
Do you ever wonder why it was you and not me?
Don't you think he'll turn on you if you don't control him? I failed. You never tried.
How can you not love him? How do you say you don't adore him? How can you be him? How can you?
Have you ever thought about us being as alive as you are?
I thought about you. I had nightmares! Nightmares like this one!
I'm not a dream...
It was brief, but it was no dream.
I'm not a dream! I'm not dead!
I won't let myself be forgotten. Especially not by you!
I'm not a nightmare. I promise...
You have nightmares too, then?
I think about you...I am you. Don't you see? I am you, all of you...
You're not me.
He doesn't love you like me.
Can you rule like me?
You don't have the power to be me.
I am myself and no one else but him.
You're me? Are you sure?
Stop it! Stop it! Just get out of my head! Get out of my head!
Slow, aching tears slid along Ryou's face.
Get out of my head...
I can't get out of your head. I am you am me am him.
I am you.
[-]
Bakura blinked at the notebook left where Ryou would have slept, if he still did such a thing. The lighter one was given to roaming about the house endlessly through the night, staving off sleep by sheer force of will.
They speak to me, yami. Tell them to go away.
One line, one simple little scrawl beneath his latest entry. Bakura left the notebook with the cat and padded from the room, looking for the other without even bothering to glance at his surroundings.
"You're useless if you don't sleep," he observed quietly.
Ryou's hands were shaking as he turned the TV off. "I'll die if I do."
"They haunt your dreams?"
Shudder. "Always."
"They can't have you. Stop shaking." Bakura flopped down next to the other and touched his shoulder, fingers wandering over to his collarbone and neck. "They can't have you. I suffered and schemed and died to find you, and died and died and died to keep you. They can't have you."
"I'm so tired..." Whisper.
One hand slowly brushing through white hair, one hand closing green-black eyes. "They'll not have you." Strange, reminiscent smile. "They can't have you. You're mine."
"Forever?" Almost noiseless, a breath in the shape of a word.
"I don't know how to say beyond that."
Soft, sleepy laughter. "To infinity and beyond, yami."
Shades and light and shadows. Raise one hand and turn out the light.
Sleep without dreams.
Fluffy: As you may have noticed, Kiokuryoku is a slightly lighter tale than Yadonushi. Lack of impending doom will do that.
Bakuras-Hell: It goes for seven chapters. So, uh, keep asking if you've got questions.
Liviania: snicker Nice image. ;;
Panda X. Bear: Dun wanna overdo the book. D'you like Bastet?
YamiKatie: blush
Kyoko-san: I blame it on Bakura's influence.
Dreamingchild: Okies then!
Saturn Imp: Hee. Too much angst makes me really snap and start putting in random bits of humour.
QueenOfGames: Hmm. Me likes your idea. Oh, and sorry – Kiokuryoku means 'telling a story' or thereabouts, and 'Yadonushi' is what Bakura calls Ryou. I've heard a variety of translations, from king's home to parasitic host. All of them seem to apply. The translation I have is along the lines of innkeeper or landlord. Sorry again!
Higashikaze: I wanted to have this conversation with Perdita happen in her chapter, but I set myself up with a nasty trend and didn't leave myself any room to do it. I am severely tempted to go back and really work over Yadonushi. Reeeeeally tempted.
SweetMisery: I liketh your idea too.
tamashiipurizuma: Don't worry about it. Sorry for the wait!
Kerei Kitsune: Going? XD
viva rose:Indeed there is!
Sailor Comet: You too? Nifty.
TaleneIsMyYami: She was the one I had the least planning on, and she turned out hellishly creepy. Damn my imagination. Of course, she wound up being the way I'd sort of planned Aya to be, but changed. Arr.
Duel: ....wow. Erm. Wow. Please pull this off again?
