Book Dragon: "Another."

Secret Pains

I've been here.

He suddenly realizes it in a strange eerie way. These objects were familiar to his eyes. The sounds his ears were use to. The smell as plain and normal as anything. And yet, he didn't know what any of this. Not really. He may have been here, yes that could be, anything is possible, but why?

I-I-I' v-v-v-e-e-e b-b-b-e-e-e-e-e-n-n-n h-e-e-e-r-r-r-e-e-e…

Muffled, like a creaking door way. It's cold. In this gray misty fog it's cold and he doesn't like it. The feeling of danger grows like a twisting lurch in his stomach. The hair rises on the back of his neck. Yet he keeps walking. Walk, walk, walk, walk. Step, step, step. There is something horrible and twisted in those footsteps. His footsteps. He can see his shadow lurking behind him, doesn't under stand the fright crawling up the insides of his chests at the sight of the black of it.

He just kept walking in the shuffling fog.

There's whispering. His feet walk on through the numbing fog, his arms hugging himself to keep warm. His breath steams in plumes of fog. This place is gray like November. Keep walking on forbidden ground. He feels something chasing him, something he's fought back for so long he doesn't even recognize it. Is it a memory? Or maybe it's just a nightmare?

His ebony shadow twists below his feet. He can see it without looking. It's like he's outside of himself. Watched the white haired boy walk on gray soil earth, something smelling like graveyard soil reeks into his nose as an exotic perfume. He strangely understands how a vampire hunter feels on his first run, even though he's doing nothing of the sort of hunting. Perhaps being the rabbit in the eye of a hungry fox was a better metaphor.

It makes him as scared as hell walking between the gravestones, walking across the earth that housed many dead rotting corpses that had once been living breathing creatures. It smells like rotting earth and stone. He's afraid not to end up like them and live for ever by drinking the life in the blood of victims.

His vampire didn't need to drink to get at that.

The shadow continues to twist.

He watches it change into the shape it always mimics. He is his shadow, after all. It is only logically for him to come from that darkness that has housed him. Housed in him, the need inside his soul that feeds him life as well as consciousness. He watches with wide eyes as the black changes into white, into pale skin, into dark silent brown staring eyes. Eyes like his own. Hauntingly like his own eyes.

It takes his shape and stares down at him.

"I told you to stay out of here…" A cool dark voice echoes into the still air. The shivering kid stares at him, his mirror, and feels the extreme difference between them. Feels the power. Smells the reeking scent of death on him. He shakes from cold no longer, but from something entirely else.

"I-I know." He whispers, averting his eyes away. There is silence, and yet he doesn't know where the out door was. He hadn't when he had been littler. Then he had ran away from this great darkness, a mere four year old, crying as fast as his wobbly legs had aloud him to go until It caught him, picked him up, and-

"Bakura." He is shaken from the memory like vision and looks at the thing that appears like him. He can easily imagine fangs behind that frowning mouth and suppresses a scream. Those brown eyes stare inhumanly. Never blinking.

"Yes?" he asks weakly.

"Take my hand." He stares at him. Stares at him with fright and some twisted feeling of curiosity. Scared wonder. He knows what will happen if he doesn't put out his hand, what will happen if he doesn't obey. This new unknown horror settling around him, however, had him baffled. He takes the outstretched hand, once clothed in black, once a weapon of pain, takes it with numb timid fingers.

Those ghostly fingers clasp around hard, making him yelp into this misty place and his eyes boggle. He expects to be yanked forward, forward to the ground, for ward to receive punishment for his wandering. Expects earth to swallow him around his shuddering still breathing figure. His soon to be screaming form.

There is no pulling lurch.

It is replaced by a gentle tug.

They walk together. Stumbling feet behind sure feet. The mist parting for its master and master's puppet. He feels like a small child again, being led by a sure adult. A dangerous adult. Neither of them are adults. He was shaking uncontrollably, trying to figure out what kind of pain would be inflicted upon him. How much it would hurt. And why or when he thought of this sort of torture.

The mist cleared in the circle. The circle that contained two slabs of parallel stones in the very center. He wonders what they are for. Dreads what they are for. The thing that had been living inside of him for so many years stopped walking at the center of the circle, stopped and turned on him with sure strong eyes.

"Sit." It said, said and pointed to the stone to his left. He sat down without question. Sat and watched It with wary eyes. It sat down a little while after him, turned, and looked at him with glowing brown eyes. There was silence for what felt like eternity. Those brown eyes were maddening and scarily twisted so they didn't look like his own eyes anymore.

"Tell me." It demanded. Bakura told it all.

Tears streamed from his eyes.

The next thing he knows he's being carried. His whole form hurts, aches, at every quiver of movement. His vision is fuzzy. Everything is still a gray November Beast. His breath goes in shuddering plumes of steaming fog. He leans on the warm body carrying him only because he is so weak. In the frailness there was still fear in those sure gripped hands.

And he can see those brown eyes looking down at him in the strangeness of it.

"Why?" He whispers, the movement of his mouth making him wince and the sound of his chocked ragged voice. He feels so vulnerable. Wonders why It doesn't just tare him to pieces and just take everything he had. Take everything away. Destroy him and steal everything.

"…There are things one's mind doesn't allow." It's a whisper. It holds him tight, the consciousness he never understood with weary brown eyes. Its thumbs are wet. Wet with tears. Brushing away tears. The steps aren't so sure, and he is tired.

It knew the question still lingered.

Why?

"Just heal, vessel. Heal and wait for me."

In the vanishing gray matter, dissipating like smoke around them, changing as he carries him out of his territory. Leads him out of the Lion's den he had scrambled into for refuge from the severe pain outside. The place where one pain would've been replaced by an other.

Instead there was no pain.

Bakura slept.

And the Spirit of the Ring watched.

Watched with a heavy heart full of secrets.

Secret pains…