Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh characters.

Warnings: This will get very angsty in later chapters, sometimes gory so this is not for the faint of heart. Also, this is AU. (My first AU story, wee!)

Her Sweetness: Guess what? I managed to get all my music back! How, you ask? Well I am a master of technology after all. Don't doubt the Sweetness. -wink-

— Everybody, Everybody —

Chapter Seven

Nighttime filled all the rooms, filtered in through the cracks uncovered by the drawn curtains and the windows that were left open for whatever reason. Marik Ishtar had closed all the windows but, for some reason, he left the kitchen window open, the one right beside the door to the small laundry room. It stayed open, the stained curtains tied to the side and the moon staring in at the broken apartment on the fifth floor of the building.

Marik Ishtar now lay on the floor, panting heavily but slowly, silently so as not to break the concentration of the room, the world. In the darkness—the moonlight the only thing shining bravely on his tanned face—he looked to the left, towards the kitchen and the moon and saw what he had done to Ryou Bakura. There, on the tile-covered floor of the small eating space was a fragile form, curled up like a beautiful ball was Ryou Bakura who had put up such a fight in his frustration of being kept here.

When Ryou had leant into Marik's body, sobbing and yelling incoherent things, Marik, he admits, lost control of himself. He saw tearing running down that pale-peach face and heard the quiet sniffles and felt Ryou's shaking. It made him so happy, to see all of Ryou Bakura's emotions, to see what Ryou Bakura must've been holding back.

He was so happy and he lost all control, he forgot himself, forgot the situation and leant in and kissed Ryou Bakura. Bravely, passionately and stupidly, he'd thrown caution to the wind and tilted the boy's head upwards and filled Ryou's mouth with his own tongue, wanting and needing to be inside him. He remembered there was only a second of bliss before hard contact was made by Ryou's hand with his cheek. He'd been slapped, hard, and held his cheek that did not ache physically, because of Ryou's smaller size and strength, but psychically, because he did something he should not have.

Ryou had gotten up then and ran to the back of the apartment, unknowingly into Marik's own bedroom. He stopped in his tracks upon coming inside the room, immediately seeing everything that Marik Ishtar held sacred and secret from the rest of the universe. Here, on Marik's walls were thousands of papers, taped, nailed and stapled up, all baring the words:

RYOU BAKURA.

Again and again the name was printed by Marik's own hand. Less frequent on the walls were small sketches, some on notebook paper, others on canvas and all of Ryou Bakura. Smiling, laughing, crying, laying motionless on a bed of flowers. Ryou took this all in at once and it proved almost too much and his tears were renewed. The drawings of himself starred down at him and he looked towards the ground, realizing that this was not the way out.

Marik came into the room after a moment, timidly entering and seeing Ryou in a corner of the room by the closet, huddled up in a corner and upon hearing Marik's entrance, he huddled up even closer to the wall. Marik shrunk at this reaction and swallowed a lump in his throat. He looked up at all the sketches and the close to one hundred pages where he'd written Ryou's name over and over again. The silence was pounding down on him, all except Ryou's weak sobs.

"I-I want to go home," He'd said between sniffles and hugged himself in the dark. He lifted his head from his arms and looked at Marik, silver light from the window over Marik's bed hitting him and taking Marik's breath away. "I want to go home to my brother, Marik, I don't want to stay here with you."

A second passed and Marik took another step into the room causing Ryou to flinch. "I'm sorry I kissed you… But… you make me feel good, Ryou Bakura. You make me feel like holding and kissing you."

"You can't do this," He whispered.

Marik smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "… But I want to…" He took another step. "Why can't I be happy with who I love?"

"I don't love you back!" Ryou shouted, voice dry and desperate. He felt like he'd fight this battle forever.

Another small period of silence and Marik took another step before sitting on his bed, the covers and sheets ruffled and unmade. He looked over his shoulder to Ryou without moving his body and rubbed the white comforter with his hand, a ruffling sound now accompanying Ryou's small sobs.

"You… You might not know this but before I met you, Ryou, I was real lonely. After a while, I told convince myself I could be that way forever but… but then I met you." He turned around fully, eyes concentrated on Ryou. "And you said my name and you invited me to sit with you. And then you said you loved me and now I love you. It's a weird way to work but I'm glad it does work like this.

"Now the only think I don't like about it is that you don't even remember saying you love me. … Ryou? You truly don't remember, not even a little bit?"

Ryou's voice cracked under the pressure but he cleared his throat and looked Marik in the eyes. "I can't remember what I never said."

"Stop saying that!" It was a split second before Marik got on his feet and was starring down at Ryou who quivered now but tried not to let his fear become too apparent. Marik's narrowed eyes softened immediately and he shook his head. "Don't say that Ryou, I want you to remember and I'm going to help you but please… don't say you never loved me, it… it hurts."

"Don't tell me about being hurt! I'm being held hostage by a psychotic person who swears that I love them!"

"Ryou…"

"And I never did! I never gave one hint that I valued you for anything more than a friend! And now I regret every second I spent with you, I wish I could forget your name!"

"Stop it, Ryou! Stop it!"

He lost control again. Before either of them knew it, Marik was on the floor, on top of Ryou, his hands clutching both of the smaller teen's shoulders and his nails digging into the cream-colored sweater he wore. Ryou screamed again, a shrill and helpless sound in the quiet of the building. He fought, vainly, against the grip and Marik's weight pushing him into the floor. Sandy blonde hair met Ryou's silver locks as Marik leaned down, his hands slipping from Ryou's slim shoulders and his breath, ragged and hard, in Ryou's ear. He whispered: "Why can't you accept me?"

Ryou stopped fighting so hard when he realized Marik was no longer hurting him. Their breathing came as one, both tired of screaming at one another and tired of the rawness that came to their throats when they cried. Marik let his hands slide to rest on the floor beside Ryou's hips and inhaled the strawberry scent of his hair. A faint smile appeared on his lips when Ryou didn't fight his body going limp on top of the boy's. Ryou looked away, inadvertently shaking Marik's hair out of his eyes.

"I don't accept what I don't acknowledge… Marik," He looked back at him and shifted his weight. "Why can't I go home? I'll forget about what happened here, I won't tell anyone if you let me go now…"

Marik sat up, straddling Ryou's hips but Ryou didn't seem to care too much. He reached his tanned hands up to cup the boy's pale face. His smile didn't return, it was merely a look of question that he gave to Ryou. "Why don't you at least offer to be friends like…?"

There was a short laugh that Ryou did not mean to let out. "Like in the movies? Or television? Because we're not on a screen, Marik. You're hurting me. You're keeping me from someone I…"

"I'm sorry," Marik murmured, his hands moving down to that elegant neck. "But I won't let you go until you love me."

Now as he looked over to Ryou's small from, huddled by the corner in the kitchen, on the other side of the refrigerator, he wished he hadn't been so rough with him even if that was the only way to keep him quiet. Actually, Marik thought, he would've wanted Ryou to be loud. For some reason he liked hearing Ryou's scream, his protest; flip side to that coin, he hated knowing Ryou was screaming in protest of their love. Marik wanted, for a brief moment, to kiss Ryou again but didn't.

Instead, he was forced to knock him unconscious again. He knew that Ryou would only try to escape again the second he woke up so Marik Ishtar was very clever and went downstairs to the Superintendent's Office on the first floor of the building. He passed all the other floors and their were a few people going into their own apartments, mostly young people coming back from a date or some such. Marik noted that it was late, nearly midnight.

When he arrived in the office, the desk was occupied by a young woman, and Marik was taken aback for a moment. She resembled Ms. Sinclair almost too much, those thin-framed glasses poised on the tip of her nose and a slim figure adorned in a professional attire. This woman's black hair was wrapped tightly in a bun on the back of her head and it didn't move as she tilted her head up to greet Marik.

"Can I help you?" She asked, not automatically but kind, almost friendly, as if Marik was her next-door neighbor.

Marik was a bit confused; this woman was not the Superintendent he was familiar with. "D-Do you know where Mr. Ives is?"

"Oh," She folded her hands across one another. "I'm sorry, he's on vacation this weekend. I'm Madison, his niece; I'm just a substitute for a few days. But maybe I can help you anyway,"

His eyes flickered to the door behind Madison's desk. "Yes… I was wondering if you had any… any chains. From the Utility Closet back there…"

She looked surprised, just as Marik predicted she would. "Chains?"

"The door to the small fuse box on my floor… Everyone's been complaining about how they can never keep it closed so they sent me down here to get something to keep it closed with… A-A chain."

Madison smiled and nodded, seeming to understand his predicament. Marik was so happy that his lie worked. She stood from her seat and walked to the door behind the desk and opened it with a key on her belt. It opened and she went in, not bothering to close it behind her. A moment later, she exited with something in her hands. Madison looked up at Marik, eyebrows raised. "Well, sorry, no chains. There's rope, though, if you can make do with this…"

"I can, thank you," He said, forcing a smile as he took the rope from her hands. He began to walk out and before he reached the threshold, she called out to him.

"Wait a minute; what's your name?"

His body turned rigid at hearing this question. He didn't turn around. "M-Marik,"

"… Alright," She smiled, waving him off. "See you around, Marik,"

He gave a barely visible nod and shuffled out of the office, eager to get back to Ryou. When he did arrive back in his apartment he feared, for a brief second, that Ryou had already woken up and gone off. But no, there he was, breathing angelically on Marik's bed right where he had left him. Before tying him up, Marik saw to the boy's wound on the back of his head. Most of the bleeding had stopped but Marik bandaged it anyway, wrapping a bandage around the upper part of his head and tying it on his forehead.

Whether he merely wanted to touch Ryou Bakura or whether he wanted to help him was not clear and there may not be a single answer. The bandaging took all of five minutes and directly after that, Marik got the rope he had obtained and went into the kitchen with Ryou. There was an rather old space heater on the other side of the refrigerator and Marik found it a good place to keep his love. He tied the rope around both Ryou's hands and around a bar of the small furnace.

And that's where he was. Marik smiled in the shadows, trying to breath in time with Ryou.

-

In the darkness there were scattered pictures, all torn from a pretty picture book. The picture book was Ryou Bakura's favorite. It was night-blue with gold star stickers decorating the front and back, cursive written on the front in simple black. The words read, sweetly:

MEMORIES.

Ryou opened his book with a placid expression to find pictures of him and his twin brother. From Ryou's first remembrance, there was a picture. For every event, every blink that he found special, there was the picture, right here in his picture book. He flipped through the pages, with every turn seeing how he and his brother grew and looked at different ages and times. Halloweens, Christmases, birthdays and first days of school, both boys looked at each of and smiled in the photos, so happy.

Ryou Bakura flipped another page and his placid expression failed to change though he was surprised. A whole page was missing. He looked at the previous page, the last picture recorded and saw him and his twin looking at each other in front of a brightly lit Christmas tree. Now, to the page past the blank one. The next picture was him and his twin looking at each other in front of a brightly lit Christmas tree. Ryou stopped.

That whole page missing was a year. A year of memories gone missing. Flipping the pages back and forth. Their 13th Christmas. Flip. Their 14th Christmas. In their thirteenth year, they looked at each other like brothers did, happy and innocent, glad to be receiving gifts and wanting to see what the other had obtained. Their fourteenth year, Ryou looked at the picture closely and noticed the way they were standing together was different.

The way his brother looked at him was different. Of course, no one but him would notice this. The change was too small but it was a change. Ryou let the picture book slip from his hands and fall to the floor.

"Stop it!"

Ryou's eyes widened and he jumped up from the couch, immediately beginning to run down the hallway. One hallway, two, three, never ending corridors he ran through, not knowing where to.

"Please, Bakura, don't!"

He ran faster, the screams pounding in his ears, shrill cries of pain and anguish. His own screams. Was he screaming? The hallways continued, going on forever and ever. He looked down, now panting and still hearing the cries of distress. The ground was covered in negative pictures, all blank. The screams got louder.

Ryou knelt down, rummaging through all the negatives and as he did, the sounds got louder and more desperate. Photos were thrown out of the way and his hand found one that wasn't blank. Inside the picture two boys moved in the darkness, the light coming in from the window in the background creating a fiery blue halo around their forms.

Ryou watched himself underneath his brother, saw himself crying as Bakura's already naked form was undressing him.

"Dammit, Ry, stop shouting," He whispered harshly, pushing his hand down over his younger brother's mouth. Ryou continued to cry, thrashing around under his brother's weight. Bakura leant down into the boy's ear and said: "Ry, come on… Mom and dad are in the other room, they'll hear you."

"Please," Ryou begged. "Please, Bakura, don't you listen to me? I don't want to do this, I don't,"

Bakura smirked, nuzzling into his brother's hair. "You say that now but after a while, you'll love it. I already know that you love me, Ry, so why don't you want to show it? I'm willing to show you," As he spoke, he never let go of Ryou's shoulders and he never stopped unzipping his jeans.

"I-I do love you… But I just can't; I'm not ready—"

"But you are ready to suck on the teacher, isn't that right?"

Ryou shrunk then at his brother's disgusted tone. A moment of silence and he whispered so low that he almost mouthed the words. " You… you love me?"

His elder brother's grip softened and his eyes shifted from Ryou's exposed lower half to Ryou's eyes that were wet and red. Bakura shook his head. "I'm not going to tell you, I'm going to show you."

In the middle of the night, Ryou's face twisted.

A scream.

Dire need of release.

"No more, no more,"

Ryou dropped the photo and his vision was blinded with a blood-stained sheet.

His breath hitched and suddenly, two chocolate eyes were open to greet the world but he did not think of it as a greeting but as a nightmare. Though for some reason it did not seem as dark and gloomy as it was when Ryou had first gone to sleep.

Wait, he told himself.

He hadn't gone to sleep.

Immediately an alarm went off inside him and he started to get up but fell right back down to where he had been laying. Ryou turned his head around and realized his hands were bound to the space heater he was sitting next to. He pulled and tugged with both hands but nothing would budge. An upset cry came from his throat but he didn't recognize it as his own, momentarily thinking it sounded as if the sound had come from a wounded animal.

But that's what he was. A wounded animal; small and helpless.

He gazed up again and saw, through the open kitchen window, that the sun was climbing up over the horizon to meet the day just as his eyes had only a moment ago. Birds were chirping at the window and in trees down below. Ryou felt like crying. Why was the world so happy when he was so miserable, chained like some dog in the home of a psychopath?

A sound came from the threshold connecting the kitchen to the living room and Ryou detested the thought of looking over but did it anyway.

"I-I'm glad you're up," Marik's timid voice reached his ears and Ryou hated it. "I knew you'd be upset if you woke up in my bed so I decided you should sleep in here…"

Ryou huddled against the space heater, trying to show the man before him that he wanted nothing to do with him. When Marik looked at him with his same questioning and innocent stare, Ryou's face turned beet red and he screamed. For lack of having anything to say and not wanting to give in to crying, he screamed at the top of his lungs, again and again. He screamed until his voice was raw and he couldn't speak.

To be continued…