Penumbra Darkening
Cautions: Angst. Lots.
Inescapable disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 1
The thing about the night was that it didn't care who slept through it and who did not. One way or another, it would eventually end. And so it had this morning, sun taking no heed of any unfortunate insomniacs as it struggled half-heartedly to pierce the damp gray dawn. Unfailingly, the clock flickered and beeped, declaring that it was time to regain consciousness; it too neither knew nor cared that the pale battered boy lying silently in bed had not enjoyed one moment of rest that night. The assault had ended eventually, and the spirit retreated in grim satisfaction, leaving Ryou to tremble where he lay amidst the rumpled blankets. On this night, he had not even bothered to tend to his wounds afterwards, nor to rewrap himself in the bedding for warmth and comfort. He had merely remained as he was, shivering from time to time and staring blankly up at the ceiling.
All of this would not put off the approach of morning and routine, and the insistent mechanical chirps continued until a delicate hand found the alarm button and put a stop to it. The motion was trancelike, as were all those that would follow that morning. Teeth were brushed, hair was combed, a school uniform buttoned into place – all of it as mechanically and unfeelingly as would be expected of one in a trance. If he was supposed to be awake now, he certainly looked the part, but to truly be conscious was a luxury Ryou could not afford in these moments. Rarely now could he summon up the strength to knowingly protect himself, and so his subconscious stepped in to help, guiding him through this strange shadowy version of reality in which he neither felt nor thought. Surely, to feel – to think – as he was dabbing a washcloth carefully at a bruise that stained his cheekbone – would undo him.
The spirit, of course, was awake as well. This was his routine too, one which began where Ryou's ended – with the looping of the Ring-laden cord about the boy's neck. That had always been a voluntary action, even in those times when a true struggle had existed between them, when Ryou had believed he wanted the spirit to disappear. None of that had mattered. Even as he proclaimed his hatred for the servitude and the torment, he dutifully kept the ring in its place, never letting it stray from his sight. Now, once again, it laid against his chest as he turned to lock the door behind him, hidden away under shirt and jacket and chill-deflecting overcoat. Its tenant lounged silently at the edges of his host's mind, watching the snow-globe town from behind listless, fatigue-rimmed brown eyes.
The first signs of actual life did not appear until they were needed, as the slush-laden walk towards school brought his path to intersect with that of Yugi and his small band of friends, all of them just as wrapped and bundled against the cold as Ryou. There came the expected smiles, the waved greetings – Yugi's, as usual, most enthusiastic of all – and in response the equally expected politeness with which he always presented himself, aching or not. Absentmindedly, he found a silver lining to the previous night; his legs, by sheer luck, had not fallen under the abuse, and so this time there was no telltale limp to invent an excuse for. It was just as well. By now they were learning not to bother asking. Some weeks ago, when Ryou's explanation for a nasty scrape near his eye had failed to convince Yugi, the puzzled boy had turned to his own yami for confirmation of his theory on it, and the discussion that followed had ended up costing him a little sleep as well.
"That cut Bakura-kun had…it was…from –him-, wasn't it?"
A sigh. "Most likely, Yugi."
"…Then…a few days ago, when he said he'd hurt his hand making dinner…that…?"
"It's possible."
"Why does he take that?" Frustration. Concern. An innocence that had made the pharaoh's heart ache.
"Those things can be very complicated, aibou."
By now even Jounouchi had learned to hold his tongue, maintaining the distant knowing silence the others had come to embrace on the days Ryou came to school in ill condition, and once the first awkward silence had passed the walk continued in uneventfully pleasant fashion. Conversations drifted by Ryou's ears, and his surroundings passed without impact. He could almost see himself there, and all of it an old soundless movie playing out before his eyes – Jounouchi groaning about homework he hadn't bothered with, Yugi playfully scolding him for it and receiving a headlock and friendly bit of tousling from the taller boy in return, Anzu expressing her thoughts on the matter with a sigh and a roll of her eyes…
And then he spoke. The voice, icy and thoughtful, that hummed in Ryou's thoughts as the group waited for the light to let them cross a busy road.
If I were to push one of them now…If I were to knock the pharaoh's light into the street, do you suppose he would die right away? Or would he suffer first? Ryou's legs buckled at that, gloved hands clenching in his pockets as if to ensure they wouldn't move to perform such an act. Relishing the reaction he'd earned, the spirit spoke again, and Ryou could all but see the sadist's grin through which the words were murmured. Of course, it would be –you- who pushed him. They already think you're insane…ha! Wild amusement, in light of the expressionless face from which all color had rapidly drained. They'd lock you up forever.
That was a weak point. It had been painful enough to endure childhood as the strange one, the friendless one, the quiet foreigner with the weird habits; now, the influence and actions of his dark possessor had worsened that reputation. Even those who would call themselves his friends were not immune to what they saw, and Ryou was all too aware of the wary looks Jounouchi snuck towards him when things seemed out of place. He had never fully understood the nature of the spirit, or of the duality between said spirit and Ryou, a fact they were all guilty of to some degree. It seemed impossible, then, for the soft-spoken boy to ever acquire the sort of innocent and simple friendship he ached for, and the spirit knew this well. It made a fine weapon with which to jab at his psyche, when he felt particularly spiteful. Even now the suggestion made Ryou wince, trying silently to block out the sibilant voice. No success.
It would only take a little shove, the spirit noted with audible approval, and finally Ryou's retreat into himself became visible to those without. Yugi, who had noticed his pained silence contrasting the easy-going laughter of the others, was the one to voice his concern.
"Bakura-kun? Is something wrong?" His own puzzle-bound spirit sighed, knowing the pallid boy's expression all too well, but left the response to Ryou nonetheless. It was to his surprise that the usual polite dismissal and artificial smile did not appear then; instead Ryou seemed to be struggling just to speak, and when he finally did it was softly and with stammering haste.
"I---I've forgotten something at home---I'll see you all at school later." And before he could be questioned, he had turned and was running from the little crowd, head down and eyes squeezed shut.
Once he'd turned from their line of sight, darting into a snowbanked alley, he let himself collapse to his knees and silently trembled. For a terrifying moment, he had believed – just as the now-chuckling spirit had intended – that his control would flee and Yugi would indeed fall victim to the homicidal intentions housed within him. That spirit – Bakura-sama, as he had commanded Ryou to call him if he had to address him by anything – had found a new weakness as of late, in the threatening of his host's dearest and most sincere friend. And it was an effective one, which could only mean it would continue to be exploited. This realization was made bitterly, before that bitterness melted into the same restrained swirl of pain that Ryou had learned to make himself numb to and the boy pushed himself to stand, calmly brushing the snow from his legs and hurrying to make it to school in time.
He made it through the first three classes of the day before his continuing inability to keep his eyes open could no longer be excused with an apology and the teacher, quietly noting the arrival of a new visible injury or two, shooed him off to the nurse's office. The pale boy was becoming a common sight around there; at one point, there had been talk of the school taking action to determine whether he was abused at home, but the idea had been resigned to unofficial gossip when it was revealed that he lived alone and was never in any kind of relationship. Now the school nurse, a pleasant maternal sort, welcomed him in with a knowingly sympathetic smile and escorted him to the room's little cot. They didn't really go through the motions any more; she would ask what was wrong, he would have a polite and plausible explanation for everything, and all she could do was offer him a chance to lay down and rest a while – he would decline – before sending him back to class.
"Such a nice boy, too," she murmured wistfully to an onlooking assistant as Ryou made his way back towards his classroom. "I can't see why anyone would put those kind of marks on him."
After that it was business as usual. To help himself stay awake, Ryou dutifully noted every word his teachers inscribed on the chalkboards, copying it all in his neat script into a well-kept composition book. During these hours, for the most part, Bakura would grow bored with his host's world and retreat into his inner sanctuary, a darkly private place that housed much of his grandiose and violent scheming. School had become Ryou's haven, the closest to a relief from the torment that he could ever find, but as of late even that was losing its potency. The comfort and happiness of being there had dimmed to the same dull acceptance that seemed to be consuming every moment of his life; to be protected from pain was also to be protected from joy, or anger, or any other feeling stronger than this numb iciness to which he'd given himself over.
Bakura did make an unexpected appearance midday, when lunchtime rolled around. Everyone ate inside in this weather; Yugi and company tended to clump their desks together, while Ryou stayed alone at his. At some point in the haze of the morning routine, he'd fashioned a simple lunch for himself; the sandwich which was its main component stuck out amidst the bento-boxed entrees of his classmates, but it reminded him of younger days and posed more appeal to his tastes. He'd just begun to unfold the neat cling-wrap in which he'd bound the meal when suddenly his hands no longer worked, and the dark spirit's presence had stalked out of its hiding place. The surprise he couldn't help but show only seemed to amuse Bakura, who now replaced the food in the paper sack Ryou'd brought it in and – and now Ryou's legs too went numb – walked calmly to the garbage, disposing of the uneaten meal without a word. The same easy steps carried him back to his seat, and then control belonged once more to the body's original owner, who could only stare dumbstruck at the empty desk where his lunch had just been. It had been a random act of cruelty, and when the conspicuous growling of Ryou's stomach during the next class made the boy flush and shrink into his seat with embarrassment, Bakura's grin haunted his mind.
But he was more or less silent then, and remained so till the day's end. And this pain, while fading with all the others, still managed to hit Ryou – he did not want to go home. At home, the spirit was unrestrained. Sometimes he would knock out his host's consciousness for a while and go do who-knew-what, leaving Ryou bewildered and unremembering when he came to again. Sometimes he'd take the temporary body he'd taught himself to form and cause trouble with that. Most often, though, he simply broke from the confines of the ring and existed around the house, as casually as if he himself owned it, entertaining himself with the wonders of modern technology (he had an inexplicable fondness for the tv that, when Ryou had been alone there, had done little but gather dust) or with the torment of his hapless vessel. He did not need to eat, but he would demand that dinner be made for him anyways, and when it inevitably fell short of his desires, Ryou paid dearly for his errors.
The spirit was not introspective by nature. He gave little thought to why he did all this, why he found the need to constantly lash out at what he considered a weak burden he'd been temporarily cursed with. It was just the way things were. There was a time when he had known, in fleeting moments, exactly why he did it. When Ryou had first come into his possession, as it were, and had still cried out when he was hit. There had been something narcotically beautiful in the boy's screams. Now, they were no more. He was nearly silent, no matter what was done to him, a fact that only frustrated Bakura and induced the assaults to intensify. But he had never really needed to know why things were this way. They simply were.
After what had happened that morning, Ryou knew better than to accompany his friends home, as much as he ached for their company. They were not close, and for all the kindness that had been extended, Ryou had remained the eternal outsider. But they were real. They were human, something he wasn't sure he could say about himself any more, and he longed for that. He forced himself, however, to fight that longing, slipping off to take an alternate route home. Yugi had been in genuine danger that morning and hadn't even known it; he would not take that risk with his friend again. And so it was just him and Bakura, who seemed a little irked at having been deprived of that particular pleasure. The spirit was in an ill mood…that did not bode well at all for the rest of Ryou's day, a fact he grimly accepted as he trudged his way through the snow.
By the time he let himself into the empty house, warmer than the ice outside but no more welcoming, he could feel the spirit straining to escape. And as soon as the door was closed, before Ryou could even hang his scarf on the coat rack, he had done so and stood, abruptly, behind the boy. Without warning, he grabbed one of the thin shoulders before him, whirling Ryou about so they faced and grinning in a show of near-deranged bad intentions.
He was met with nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The lovely brown eyes that had once shimmered and dilated with fear at such a look were utterly dimmed, as blank as those of the porcelain dolls Ryou sometimes resembled, and the grin faded to a glare of angry frustration. He had savored that fear, that raw terror; now his light had gone numb on him, and even when he shoved the boy irritably back into the wall, he received only a moment's flinch in response. No cry, no surprise or pain. Nothing. It had been this way, and growing in severity, for some weeks now, and Bakura did not know what to make of it. There was no doubt that this was his doing, that it was his treatment that had driven every spark of light or emotion from his host – but the smug satisfaction this should have induced failed to appear. In its place was a furious confusion, and again he pushed the boy, trying to coax forth some pained sound or expression. None came forth.
It did not seem so long ago that this was not the case. Just beside where Ryou's head met the entryway wall, the plaster buckled and cracked and gave way to an apple-sized hole that bared insulation and piping. Evidence of a recent bout of madness on the dark spirit's part; he had taken a swing at Ryou just where they were now, but the boy – for he still reacted then – had instinctively ducked aside, and the wall had taken his wrath instead. All reasonable enough. The memory that had stuck, and the one to which Bakura's mind was now recalled as he stared at the spot, was that of what had immediately followed the impact.
Seething, he drew his fist back for another strike, resolving that this one would not be evaded, but before he could fully retract his hand it had been taken, wrapped up in the somehow more delicate one of his light. The fearful countenance he had been inducing had faded with startling speed, leaving behind a look of gentle worry for which Bakura had been wholly unprepared. Too stunned to withdraw, he stared on as the boy he'd claimed examined that fist, frowning in his harmless way.
"Oh, but you're bleeding now…Wait here, please." It was too surreal to react to, and the spirit could only stand in bewildered wait, casting a glance towards the slow drip of blood that seeped from his knuckles. By the time he understood what had just happened, Ryou had skittered back, wielding a damp washcloth in one hand and a roll of gauze bandaging in the other. And then he had taken Bakura's hand again, and the spirit went to recoil only to find the gentle brown eyes frowning up at him and the washcloth being dabbed lightly against the plaster-induced scratches.
"Please. Hold still." It was as though Ryou had no idea that the punch had ever been intended for him, an impossible notion Bakura discarded immediately. Without that being the case, though, there was no explanation for his tender behaviour now, for his deft workings to clean the injuries and wrap them neatly up. When it was at last finished, the spirit still frozen by his disbelief, Ryou smiled and drew back, retreating away to whatever it was he'd been at work on before the fight began.
Bakura, dumbfounded, had not come after him again for the rest of the day.
Now there was not even that. Not even the surreal, inexplicable compassion that had once shone through his light's numb exterior, and for however unexpected it had been Bakura still found himself somehow missing it. He had died millennia ago, and yet at this moment he seemed more real than the silent, blank-eyed form slouching against the wall before him. That revelation sent a piercing heat through him, a fierce animalistic mix of anger and despair, and he gripped the boy's shoulders too tightly and shoved him back once more, nearly denting the plaster again in his ferocity.
"You aren't even alive any more!"
The words had been shouted, and it first it seemed to be the volume that Ryou reacted to. But that alone could not explain the slow disintegration of the dull apathy, or the look of sheer pain by which it was replaced. For a long frozen moment it seemed as though the old tears Bakura had once provoked with ease were going to spill over once more, streaming down those pallid cheeks the way they had when the boy still seemed to feel…
But they didn't.
He merely stood there, empty and broken and silent. At last the spirit could no longer bear the sight, nor the electrifying ache it shot through him, and with a slam of the door he was gone, fleeing through the snow that had just begun to fall once more. The boy inside, who now crumbled shakily to his knees, was something he could not bear to face now; his only destination was as far from Ryou as he could run, and his only plans beyond that were the vague ideas that he'd go back before night fell and the cold became too harsh on this temporary body.
"You aren't even alive any more!"
Bakura was absent from his mind now, but his words lingered, echoing and looping incessantly. Well, murmured his own thoughts in response, that's it, then. Quietly, mechanically, he eased off his boots and gloves, placing everything where it belonged; his coat found residence on its designated hook.
He paused then, and stepped closer to one of the small frost-painted windows that flanked the front door. Beyond it the world was beautiful and white and unfeeling, and for a long moment he silently gazed upon it.
And then, just as silently, he turned and made his way up the stairs, slipping into the bathroom there and locking the door.
(A/N: Yes, it's longer than the prologue. So, what do you think so far? Working?)
