Notes: Aren't I just the evil one? Hehe, sorry for being mean but it's fun to be the one who's not being pressed inwards and feeling on the verge of pulling out your own hair because you don't know what's happening next (hint hint, nudge nudge Nefertari...) So I guess I'm just enjoying this and trying to get the most satisfaction out of it while I can...XD

So, hopefully, y'all will be satisfied by the progress made in this chapter. I'm finally on my way to revealing the secret behind Mokuba...Heh, well...you'll see... There won't be THAT much space between this and the next chapter. I want to avoid the wrath of the reader (Believe I know about those...Hell, I like to START them!)

It's funny...I had this all planned out but my hands STILL refuse to write the way I want them too, they keep changing the story! I don't even KNOW what I'm going to write before I actually DO!

Notes2: Oh, and I DO NOT enjoy writing sad and angsty bits about my favorite characters! Don't worry, love with conquer all in the end!..As it should!

CH 8 Falling

"That's it?" Ryou managed in a strangled voice before ducking under the arm of Bakura who, being the dark spirit that he was, was actually smiling in the face of danger.

The group, made up of the 5 pairs, was standing in front of the ominous and dark temple. Located in the center of the forest, it had an ancient and oppressing air to it, and unconsciously, the group had become almost silent as they walked towards it.

Around them, the trees swayed slowly as if warning them not to enter. But the wind could not grasp there attention on this night. They all just stood there, staring ahead, in wait for what was to come.

For what they waited for, none could say. It was if they were looking for a sign that would give them courage. The only ones not totally submitting to the temple's power were Seto, being the one who had his head planted firmly in reality, and Bakura, whose dark nature was grinning in anticipation.

Suddenly, a gust of fierce wind blew down from the shore, and snapped the reverence that the group had been maintaining. The only sounds that could be heard were their breaths as they edged cautiously toward the dark expanse looming in front of them.

It did not need to be spoken that the tension between them was so high that they creeped along on silent feet and wary eyes.

So when Yugi brushed his hand up against Yami's arm, the darker's instant reaction was immediate and sharp. Yuugi hitched his breath and grabbed Yami, pulling him a little ways away from the slow procession.

"Yami, I don't feel good about this," Yuugi confessed. Yami knew that his aibou was more sensitive in such feelings and so took him seriously. But they could not turn back, not over something that might turn out to be nothing at all. Yami could only offer words of comfort and encouragement to his light. Though still a worried expression lingered on Yuugi's face, he followed behind Yami into the dark pit that was the shrine.

Instantly, a cold wrapped itself around Yuugi's form and started to squeeze the breath out of his body. The last thing present in his mind was the silent call to his love. 'Yami..'

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Yuugi awoke sometime later in a dimly-lit, silent alley. Squinting around, he could not see passed the small light created, he realized, by himself. He looked down to find himself sitting up against the cold brick wall. Yuugi shivered.

It took another minute for Yuugi to suddenly realize that everything about this alley was familiar. The way the wind blew through the cracks the way the wall seemed to silently protest under his slight weight, the way it was hard to see past a few feet in front of him. With growing horror, Yuugi's eyed darted across the dark alley as he whimpered.

As if on cue, a door from the shadows burst open and rebounded against the wall as a tall figure blocked the light from reaching him. He could see more standing behind him, eager to begin. Yuugi smothered a moan of dispair and tried to crawl away before looking down at his body in shock. He was covered in welts and bruises, one of his arms wouldn't respond to his commands, and drawing a breath, Yuugi started to cough and spit out blood.

Memories crashed down upon him wave after wave, scenes from his seemingly so long ago life flashed passed his eyes like lightening, and Yuugi could only hold his head in his hands.

Yuugi was standing in front of a mirror in the school bathrooms, staring back angerly at the reflection. He scowled at the bruises covering his cheeks and the small but numerous scratches along his arms and legs. Without thinking, he reached out with his fist and swung it down on the mirror. As the glass shattered with a deafening noise, Yuugi was brought back his surroundings with a crash. He desperately searched for a place to hide as the familiar footsteps drew closer.

Yuugi's moan grew steadily louder as his mind brought back later times.

The youth walked slowly down the street stopped with a soft grunt, before crossing the street. He was always careful: to hide the limp caused by the long gash across his leg, to hide his labored breathing because of the bruising and cuts along his ribs and chest, to hide his face in semi-shadow from the swelling. Rounding another corner, he stopped to ease his headache and so missed the figures closing in on him front all directions.

Before he could stop them, Yuugi found vision blurred as tears leaked out of his eyes. Squeezing them tight, he still couldn't escape the last and most horrible memory. The night They had all come at him, the most painful night of all.

Yuugi yelled out in his mind as he saw the foot raise back for the first kick, 'Where are you, Yami!'

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Finding himself standing on a desolate and dimly lit rooftop, Yami had no idea where he was. A gust of wind started up and blew sand across the empty space as he coughed. Sand? Yami thought before concluding he had to be in desert; the combination of heat, sand, and silent whispers convinced his memories.

Yet something seemed familiar, and as Yami stepped out to see over the edge of the tan-colored brick, he suddenly knew where he was.

"Egypt?" He voiced out loud and turned in a full circle, noting the landscape. There was no doubt, he was back in his original time, the time of the pharaohs. Getting over the shock of returning such an ancient setting, Yami's hand reached behind him for his Light's...and found it to be missing. His eyes widened as he spun around. His gaze raked over the rooftop, scouring for Yuugi.

"Why am I here?" Yami murmured to himself as he searched for a way down, finding no conventional means, he jumped straight down the two stories and landed, bent-kneed, on the ground below.

It was empty; there were no people nor even any traces of them. It seemed as if human presence hadn't been around here in a long time. Upon closer expection, things not evident from the height of the roof above, Yami could see that everything was in ruins. The walls remained only half-standing and darkness shrouded every corner and severly limited Yami's vision.

"No..." Yami choked out. This was the capital; he could see the palace ruins rising defeatedly over the next building remains. He had grown up here and now what remained was twisting his heart inside out.

As a child, he had always feared the attacks of the renegade tribes and in his dreams, imagined a horror falling over the town. Never a night had gone by without Yami jerking awake with a gasp, the image of the town lying in ruins in his mind; the people he had loved, known, and cared for dead, scattered and taken by the winds.

And now it had become a reality before his very eyes.

But Yami's mind refused to believe that his beloved city could be so destroyed. With a trembling hand, he reached out to touch the nearest broken wall and let out a wordless cry as the stone crumbled underneath his fingers.

His darkened vision swam as tears filled his eyes, a reflection of his heart, broken in despair. He didn't want to spend any more time in this place. He wanted desperately to return to the arms of his lover. As if caught on a loop, he called out the same things over and over in his mind.

'Yuugi, where are you?'

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Ryou stepped through into the dark expanse of the temple and shivered. Like Yuugi, he had felt uneasy about this entire venture and only by force of Bakura's wrath had he followed him in.

The sensation of falling hit him like a ton of bricks, but before he could cry out, Ryou found himself standing in the kitchen of the apartment he and Bakura shared. Blinking repeatedly to make sure he wasn't imagining anything, Ryou stepped forward tentitively and spun around when he heard a grunt of disgust.

Standing in all his wrathfull power was Bakura, and the dangerous and angry glint in his eyes was setting Ryou on edge. He gasped and lifted his arm, stretching it towards his boyfriend, who was hidden in the shadows. This seemed to further anger the dark being, and Bakura stepped forward swiftly with a low growl, like a predator hunting its prey, into the light of the kitchen lamps.

Ryou couldn't remember a time that Bakura was ever this angry with him; those eyes had always held such love in them. The farthest anger that had ever been directed in Ryou's direction had been frustration, and even then it had only been the sexual kind, the kind both he and Bakura secretly enjoyed.

Carefully backing away from the onslaught of rage present in his lover's towering form, Ryou's progress was halted by the sharp edge of the kitchen counter. He bit back a yelp as his attention breifly left Bakura to glance at the counter, and in the second Bakura had closed the distance between them and stood, poised to pounce.

Ryou shuddered uncontrollably in fear, for the first time experiencing the reason why Bakura's foes didn't stay sane, or alive, for long. Closing his eyes, a whimper escaped Ryou's lips as a slight breeze brushed passed his face, foretelling of the pain that was to come.

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Joey stood in the rain in front of Seto's mansion with no recollection as to how he got there. The tears falling steadily down his cheeks were lost in the greater force of the rain and an overwhelming sadness enveloped his heart. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Somehow, a hopeless he hadn't felt in a long time was descending on his shoulders and with a cry, Joey fell to the ground as his knees gave out.

But he didn't care, not that he was soaked to the bone, nor that he had was the only person in sight as far as he could see. With stunning clarity, the events of the past hour had come back to him and Joey's shoulders began to shake as he lost control of his emotions.

'Seto's left me...for good,' Joey shouted in his head. He wanted to scream out loud, to pound on the ground, to shake the iron bars of the gates to the mansion; but he did none of those things. He couldn't seem to get passed the barrier in his mind that stopped him front doing anything physical. So he sat with his head bowed and stared at the water dripping off his hair. 'But why?'

Ripples of pain echoed in Joey's mind as he tried to grasp such a sudden event, such a change. 'The bastard hadn't even felt any sadness when he had told me it was over, only told me to leave.' Gasping for breath, he put out one hand on the ground to steady himself. There was confusion and anger and mixed with the regret and pain, how did this all come about?

'After all those times, all those memories...How can you just throw all that away without a second thought, Seto? Are you really as heartless as you pretend to be?' Joey silently pleaded in his mind. 'But you're not! You let me in under that cold, aloof exterior. And now you're pushing me back out? How could you?'

Joey's gaze snapped up until he faced the falling rain and closed his eyes.

I've seen the real you, the one that hides behind the mask you wear, and I thought he was beautiful. I know all your secrets, you told them to me yourself, every night, even though it seemed that it hurt you to do so. And you weren't the only one, I told you mine too!'

Silence pressed in on all sides as all hope seem to flee to far away places.

And finally, a long-awaited sob tore through Joey's throat and seemed to float up into the sky. He was on the verge of completely losing himself, yet the struggle for understanding inside himself continued.

'So much, so much did I share with you. And for what? To be thrown out like your garbage, is that what I look like to you now?' Joey's eyes narrowed in bitterness. 'You knew I didn't tell you those things easily and how much it meant to tell you. How could you betray be so?"

Sitting back, Joey began to rock back in forth under the downpour that coated everything in a grey curtain and let out a moan. He cried under the clouds for all of the happiness that he and Seto would never share again, he cried for all the bad things they had ever gone through and survived, he cried for the hurt that was tearing him apart inside.

Joey cried until he could cry no more and his vision darkened. The last he heard was the rumbling of a car as it drew near when he slumped forward against the brick wall of the mansion and lost all consciousness.

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Bakura couldn't believe what he was doing, or more specifically, what his body was doing for he seemed to have no control over it, whatsoever. He stared in incredity as the form which had served him so faithfully was gaining a mind of its own and directing his feet.

It only vaguely registered in Bakura's scattered mind that he was astoundingly back in the apartment that he and Ryou lived in since getting together, as he was taken passed the various rooms and closets, down the long hallway that connected them all, and stopped in front of the kitchen doorway. It was with anger that he realized that his voice was not responding either.

Bakura wanted to shout out at such a ridiculous situation, at the very least regain use in his limbs, but all he could manage was a grunt of disgust at his now dimished control, if he couldn't even accomplish that.

Upon hearing his half-voiced complaint, Ryou spun around and his eyes widened in fear. Seeing this, Bakura wanted to point this out, being the weird way he was being stared at but most of his concentration was on moving his foot, which wasn't budging at the moment. Getting more and more frustrated at his inability to communicate with his body or Ryou, Bakura unconsciously released a growl of triumph when his feet started to move again and glided across the kitchen floor.

Having completely ignored Ryou during that time, Bakura looked up to see him cowering in fear against the back counter. More in puzzlement as to being angry, he barely managed to direct his legs in the general direction of Ryou before he allowed his full attention to turn to trying to figure out what was wrong. He felt that protective streak kick in, the same one Yami had with his hikari.

'If anything or anyone was hurting his Ryou, they would pay', Bakura promised. And now it was applied to this situation, but Bakura could not figure out what was making his lover act like that. Coming to an abrupt halt two inches from Ryou's heaving chest, Bakura's eyes grazed over the younger boy's form, trying to determine the cause. The boy's eyes were shut tight in anticipationg, but of what Bakura knew not.

So it was with great shock that the words from Bakura's mouth were met, from both of the stricken people in the kitchen.

"You filth, you disgust me. I've never seen such a pathetic sight!" Those words rang out cold and hard, straight for Ryou's heart. It became worse for Ryou as Bakura continued.

"When did you ever think you were strong enough or most deserving enough to have me or my love? The blindness with which you follow me around is sickening!"

'It doesn't even sound like me!' Bakura thought with disgust. 'That hikari of mine better not think that's me talking! How can it be?' Yet it was with pain and hurt filling the eyes of the delicate creature before him, that Ryou looked up, those eyes filling with tears. 'What?' Bakura shouted, on the edge of hysteria, in his mind.'You really think I'm that low and cruel? Bad I may be, but never to you, Ryou! Never!'

Bakura continued to pour forth hurtful things from his controlled mouth.

"Worthless is what you are! Always have and always will be! Don't you know that already?

"And don't think about going to your friends. You have no real friends, they're all pretending! You'll never have any friends, not now or ever. I'll make sure of that.

Bakura's evil voice began to shout, "We are so finished. I never want to see your worthless and hideous face ever again!"

'I understand,' Bakura thought in sudden revelation. 'This is what he fears. This is what he thinks might become of us.'

At that moment, Ryou had sunk down to the floor as his legs gave out and cover his faced with his arms, as if to shield himself from the things being hurled at him like physical objects. Each seemed to find its mark and Ryou's tears dropped down into view on his blazer. But it was all futile, the loud penetrating and obnoxious voice broke through any thoughts Bakura might have been forming again.

"And I've never even liked your cooking. It's like you tried to fry the garbage you made me throw out! Dis-gusting."

' What in Ra's name? That's not even something I think about!' he exclaimed in his mind at that particular ridiculous insult, directed at the crumpled form below. Ryou seemed to stir slightly from his stupor. 'If this keeps up, Ryou will be laughing instead!'

Bakura's eyes flashed with sudden realization before returning to the hateful gleam that clouded them.

'That's it, I have to show him what's real!' With renewed vigor, Bakura preceded to do just that.

As an afterthought he muttered,"I like your cooking."

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Notes4: Ok, be nice please! This took a while to do because of all of the character's personal histories and personalities! Long reviews appreciated. P