Oh, How The Mighty Have Fallen …

XO'MagickMoon'OX

A/N:

T-T … so little reviews for "Hikari" & "Yami" … maybe this one will help. Anyway, sorry for switching the P.O.V and tense … from first-person to third-person, and then from present tense to past tense, but I'm very comfortable with this setting. Anyway …

Sooooo … enjoy! And please, please, please R&R! I accept compliments, critiques, and flames! Anything, just so long as it will either encourage me or help me improve!

Piercing, brown eyes glared at their reflection in the mirror. Bakura snarled, palms pressed flat on the sturdy mahogany as he watched himself in the framed sheet of half-length glass that hung above the dresser. Elbows locked, his body was trembling. Well, not his body, exactly …

He glanced over to the corner of the room where Ryou's spirit sat, curled into a frightened ball, whimpering pathetically. He hated the boy …

He used to hate him for his pitiful frailty, his disturbingly feminine appearance, his pathetic wallowing … but now he hated him for another reason entirely.

Ryou was confusing him. Ryou was making him feel, and to feel was to be weak. To have an emotional attachment to another living being was weakness. Weakness was not allowed.

The strong lived, and the weak died.

So, if he knew this, if he understood this truth with frightening clarity, why was he … feeling something for his yadonushi? He didn't know what it was exactly, but he knew it was something, something that was making him soft, making him weak.

"RRRRGH!" Bakura launched a clenched fist into the mirror, a thousand stinging pin-pricks shooting through his knuckles. The glass shattered, the grating whisper reverberating through the room. The glittering shards, some stained with scarlet, flew askew across the dresser top, some falling to the carpeted floor.

Ryou cried out in surprise. Bakura looked over to the boy's hazy form, locking eyes with the frightened spirit. There were tears in Ryou's warm, chocolate eyes.

"Please," he whimpered, "don't let my hand bleed like that."

Bakura glanced down at his fist, unclenching it and turning it over to examine the knuckles. Bloody gashes ran across the porcelain surface, marring the smooth skin with painful lacerations. Luckily for Ryou, there were no shards or silvery splinters in the cuts. Though Ryou couldn't feel it now, he was sure to feel the stinging when he returned to his body.

Bakura grinned evilly. "Don't let it bleed?" he repeated the plea in his harsh, maliciously sweet tone. He brought the back of his hand up to his lips and ran his tongue below the wounds, licking off the blood running down to his wrist. The delicious metallic taste filled his mouth, his lower lip coated in scarlet.

Ryou shuddered at the sight, hiding his face in his hands.

"Heh … baby," Bakura sneered, his lip curling into a smirk.

Ryou whimpered, "Why … …" The rest of his words were muffled by his palms.

Bakura frowned angrily. "What was that?"

Ryou looked up, tears falling down his phantom face. "Why do you … love to torture me?"

Love. Bakura blanched. Why did that word bother him so much? He stomped towards his yadonushi, who cowered in his shadow. Bakura stooped and grabbed Ryou by the collar of his shirt, dragging him to his feet and pinning him to the wall.

The closer the spirit and the Ring are together, the more tightly compact the spirit's molecules become. When the wearer of the Ring and the spirit are touching, the spirit becomes solid, almost as if it were an actual body.

At the moment, Ryou's spirit was solid, giving Bakura the ability to do as he wished to the helpless boy. Ryou couldn't faze through the veil to the Shadow Realm, either, while his molecules were so compact.

"B-Bakura …" he whimpered.

The tomb robber looked Ryou up and down, from his head to his toes, taking in every inch of the boy. His hair … why did Bakura have the sudden urge to run his fingers through it? And his clothes … why was it bothering him that Ryou was wearing them? With one hand holding the boy to the wall, the other reached up and ran a slender finger over his cheek. Ryou bristled under the cold touch.

Ryou's skin … even his spirit's porcelain skin was soft and smooth. Was his spirit's hair just as fine as his actual hair? Bakura's fingers trailed up to Ryou's crown, falling through his silken locks with ease. Yup, his hair was just as beautiful and magnificent as his actual hair. Bakura then took the same hand and ran it through his own hair – which was actually Ryou's hair – and found it to be slightly courser and limper. It always was when he had control of Ryou's body. His skin was always colder, too, his hands more callused – the hands of an ancient Egyptian thief. He looked down at the palm of his free hand contemplatively, his eyes distant, as if he weren't really seeing it, but rather, looking through it. He absentmindedly flexed his fingers, and then turned the hand over to see the scarlet gashes. Why did he do that? Why did he mar such a smooth surface, ruin such perfect, milky skin?

As he looked back at Ryou, he remembered why.

Just looking into those warm, chocolate eyes made something move in his chest, something heat in his gut. Emotion… feeling… weakness. He felt his eyes sting with … tears? How long had it been since he'd last cried? He suppressed the tears, and, with a … trembling? … hand, he slapped his yadonushi across the face … the face he'd just caressed.

Ryou gasped in pain, squirming free from his yami's grip. Without thinking, Bakura released the shirt collar he was holding captive, and immediately Ryou's form became slightly more hazy as he fell to the ground, holding his searing cheek. What was wrong with his yami? Why was he acting so strange? Breaking his mirror and wounding his hand … pinning him to the wall and then petting him … and then slapping him? And now he was turning away again.

Ryou knew that Bakura was angry at him. Angry at him for the stupidest thing … for loving Malik. For being loved in return. For being cared about by another person. For receiving attention from another other than Bakura.

He distinctly remembered Bakura shouting in his head as Ryou had walked home, "You are mine, and I'm not sharing you … especially not an Egyptian pretty-boy like Malik! Don't forget who has the power, don't forget who's holding that leather leash around your neck … me."

Though there wasn't really a leather leash around Ryou's neck, he sometimes felt like there was. And Bakura knew that, and he took advantage of his yadonushi's weakness and vulnerability and insecurity whenever he could, like poking at an open wound.

Before Ryou could delve further into his musings, he felt an icy hand reach through his mind, wrap around his spirit and pull him into the Ring before forcing him into his body. Instantly, his cheek began to sting, and pain seared through his hand. His breathing was ragged from that swift and unexpected switch. The Ring felt heavy around his neck, and he knew Bakura was in there once again.

Bakura was thinking. Slowly, as he sat in his mind-chamber in the Ring, he began to realize what was going on with his – he shuddered – emotions. He was … in love with Ryou. He had been in love with Ryou for a long time, but hadn't realized it until now. He had taken Ryou for granted, never once thinking that he'd lose him, never once thinking that his pathetic yadonushi could win the heart of another. So he took advantage of him, of his weakness and insecurity, bullying him and using him to gain power. The love was there all along, just concealed by confidence and malice. But now he recognized it for what it was, the emotion he couldn't describe.

In short, his situation could be summed up by an age-old saying:

You never know what you have until it's gone.

If no one flames me for this terrible fic, then it is TBC ... Please REVIEW!