A/N: I could've had this chapter out early this week, but I was quasi affected by Hurricane Sandy. Luckily we didn't get much damage, nowhere near what was forecasted, but I was conserving my netbook's battery just in case (which is more complicated than one would think since the power cord is dying).

Chapter 11: Shaded Truths

Bakura tore from the school gates, running away from the conversation with Kaiba and Ryou. Blood boiled in his ears, and resounded in his skull. He couldn't breathe as Kaiba's voice, Kaiba's insistence, washed over him, pressing into his lungs. He ran away as fast as his feet could carry him. The pounding of his sneakers against concrete pavement matched the pounding in his head. He had to get out of here, had to get the fuck away before this pressure burst from him.

But where to go? The apartment wasn't an option. Ryou would be home shortly after to question his behavior or to puke up an afterschool snack. Either option was too unpleasant to deal with. Finally, he followed his feet's lead, and ran aimlessly, letting the rushing wind swirl into his mind, calm the pounding in his skull.

After a while, he slowed. Recognition brought his pace to a walk, and he realized his chest was heaving, and he gasped for breath. Sucking in lungfuls of air, Bakura surveyed his location. He remembered the area from a few weeks ago, after the altercation with Kaiba, after mocking the rich bastard in the Mouto residence.

He surmised he was about a block from the park he had found a semblance of solace at. He walked the block, and settled himself into the shaded area under a clump of trees. The park wasn't empty—in fact the little boy from last time cheered at his mother, whom pushed him on the swings across the park were here—, but, with his back turned against the small children and the protection the trees provided, Bakura relaxed in the privacy.

A quick glance at the streets to ensure no one paid him any mind, and he dumped a blade in his hand and pushed up his sleeve. He cut into his arm, and everything squeezed out of him in the form of droplets and dribbled away with the blood snaking paths around his arm.

"Bakura?" Another familiar voice broke the serenity of the moment. Yami. Bakura shoved his sleeve down over his hand and crossed his arms. He glowered up at Yami and the rest of their trio, Marik and Yugi, in response.

"What are you doing out all the way over here?" Yugi crinkled his forehead and stared at Bakura's arms openly. Bakura suppressed the tremor that shivered down his spine.

"Nothing. I have to go." He pulled himself to his feet and prepared to skulk away, when a hand grabbed his shoulder roughly. The force nearly caused him to topple to the ground. His arms uncrossed as he struggled to remain upright. "Fuck!" he cried out.

He looked into Yami's narrowed eyes. "Whatever you're up to thief," Yami insinuated.

Bakura quickly re-crossed his arms at the sight of blood staining his uniform jacket. He sucked in a breath as the pain from cutting settled in. The cut must've been deep. He could feel it now, between the deep ache that shouted something was wrong to the blood seeping through two layers and possibly staining his jacket length also. After a long moment of silence between the four, as the cut ached horribly and the sticky feel of blood against cotton urged him away, Bakura spat, "Fuck off, Pharaoh," and turned and walked away.

Bakura fidgeted with the ends of his uniform sleeves as he sat in homeroom class. Kobayashi made his announcements, and Bakura seethed. The bastard excuse of a teacher demanded his presence in extra afterschool cleaning hours. Not long after meeting with the teacher to address his 'refusal to comply with authority'—or as Bakura saw it: continuing to don long sleeves—Kobayashi threatened him with extra cleaning responsibilities as an incentive for wearing his short sleeved uniform.

All students were required to stay late, after school every other week or so, to organize the classroom after the day's lessons. Bakura noticed his name appeared more frequently on the task sheet.

As Kobayashi passed his desk, Bakura crossed his arms lower than his chest, near his abdomen, under the security of the desk top. If the teacher couldn't see his long sleeves, surely the extra fabric must not be an issue. Bakura contemplated telling his homeroom teacher, even going as far as to approach the man after the last period of the day.

He hoped to explain the necessity of wearing long sleeves throughout the summer months, to appease the teacher—not so much to escape the indignity of more time spent at school, but the inevitable unknown (what if Kobayashi did something worse?) That hadn't gone as planned; Bakura stuttered out a clipped "Good afternoon, sir," and let Kobayashi walk off.

As homeroom ended, and psychology started, Bakura let the thoughts trickle away. It was no use worrying now. Between the failed explanation with Kobayashi and his carefully phrased questions to Ryou (that had been a practice in revealing nothing whilst gleaning important information: the age of majority was twenty; minors were not held responsible, instead their guardians were informed), Bakura's resolve reaffirmed.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Ryou a few rows behind him. Talking with Ryou about Japanese social customs had been neither pleasant nor easy. He ended up talking the direct route, placing all of Ryou's fears on a proverbial plate. Every question Bakura uttered was molded to the guise of Ryou's eating disorder.

After a half hour, Ryou stalked out of the room. The two spoke even more infrequently than the first couple days after Bakura had caught his former landlord regurgitating his food. The most important chunk of knowledge Bakura absorbed, the piece that broke off Ryou's shattered mask, informed him to remain silent, to be grateful he never explained his situation with Kobayashi.

Harmful acts committed to one's self, by law, must be reported to the minor's guardian. This is where Ryou plucked a handful of courage and questioned Bakura's curiosity, and Bakura wrenched any clarity from his host, snarling about his disgusting food habits. Conversation over.

The class and Bakura stood to greet the psychology teacher with a demure bow, and the day's first lesson began.

The two weeks between Kaiba's invitation and the brat's party were miserable ones for Bakura. Even his current pastime of staring up into the faint swirls and designs of the paint on his bedroom ceiling couldn't halt the gut clenching sensation that nearly made him crumple over when the mere thought of this party flittered into existence.

Cutting it out was only effective as long as blood steadily dripped down his arm. Between the dread of this party, the social event of the year for all the middle schoolers, and Ryou withering away in front of him, Bakura was taxed out. His emotions frayed at the end, and anything and everything set him off.

The puking had increased. Bakura could hazard a guess as to why, and he disliked the answer. His scapegoating onto Ryou—he deserves it; his mind hollered a defense—only made Ryou eat less and vomit more. Bakura rubbed his arm one last time before leaving his room for this dreaded party, and entered the kitchen, shuffling his feet like a death row inmate on call for his last meal.

"Morning," he said to Ryou, not bothering with their usual breakfast tradition of fighting over what Ryou didn't eat, or what Ryou ate and puked. His stomach twisted in over its self as he attempted to keep down the breakfast Ryou placed at his spot.

Finally, right before noon, Bakura and Ryou stepped out of the apartment in unison. Ryou stared at the ground, eyes downcast, as he hid himself from Bakura's irritable countenance—irritable because where he was headed or because Ryou had purged his breakfast? Bakura trailed slightly behind, staring at, if he had been face-to-face with him, Ryou's eye level, but not comprehending anything, the knot in his stomach growing as he approached his own personal death knoll.

It boiled in his stomach, gurgling somewhere mixed in with acid. Bakura clenched his fist against the sound, the achingly familiar sounds of retching—sounds he now associated with the near constant stinging of fresh cuts and the sight of droplets of blood dotting his forearms. The anger coiled up, reaching out of his stomach to nestle in his throat at the images that dance across his mind. He imagined Ryou behind the closed door of a random toilet along one of Kaiba's many hallways.

The irony of this situation didn't fail to lift an iota of the rage blurring the, most likely, real gold door handle, even as the familiar gasps creep from under the western style, thick wooden door. Intimately familiar with Ryou's purging, Bakura recognized it quicker than he cottoned on when Ryou decided to have a proper conversation.

Bakura stood, outside the door, in a hallway, in Seto Kaiba's mansion at a party designed for middle school kids—specifically the brat Mokuba's party he adamantly refused to attend. And here he stood, arms aching from a long night spent cutting away his pride. The anger shoved away these thoughts as Ryou, from somewhere behind the door, flushed.

Now, Bakura told himself, he would run a paper towel against the edge of the toilet seat, then wash his hands and arms all the way to the elbow, along with his face. Mustn't stink like he had shoved a hand down his throat. After that, he would check the mirror at his reflection. Nothing like eating and puking to make Ryou vain.

Bakura's face pinched into a scowl when Ryou exited, silently maneuvering the door into its lock without that irritating click. Not that Ryou didn't have expertise regarding all the tips of the trade.The thought made him glare more overtly into Ryou's face.

Ryou paled, and he ducked under Bakura's penetrating gaze, assured Bakura wouldn't ever say anything. Bakura's hatred of Ryou's friends overruled any hatred Bakura felt for Ryou himself. A faint half smirk etched into his face when Bakura grabbed his shoulder, and forcibly swung him around to face him.

The rage, the all consuming, licking up into his head making it hard to think rage, swept everything away, except the lone urge to throttle Ryou. To make him feel every nick, cut, gash Bakura carved into his arms. He grit his teeth at the anger that quickly dissolved into fear on Ryou's pale face, at the red dots around his eyes that went unnoticed by his friends, at the small beads of sweat mingling with hastily splashed water dripping near his hairline.

Then Bakura slapped him across that face. Just like he felt after cutting, that one moment of aggression melted from him like a stick of butter left out in the summer heat. A calmness flickered through his nerve endings, but at the frown fast taking over the stunned look on Ryou's face, Bakura could not feel any relief.

Instead, the sadder Ryou's pathetic, scrawny ass face looked, complete with two at tears threatening to leak over his water line, and creep picturesquely down his sunken cheeks, the more his mind screamed to fuck off out of there. Red slowly blossomed on the corner of Ryou's face where it had come into contact with a sharp hand.

And Bakura hightailed it out of the party, past the mob-like crowd of preteens gathering around the newest video game console, through another room filled with presents and the majority of Yugi's friends stacking the multitude of gifts like indentured servants, and around a kitchen he remembered seeing on his way in, where the remains of the elaborate meal sat. He ran away from Ryou and anybody who would feel entitled to ask questions. He showed up; what more could they fucking ask for?

Later that night, as Ryou returned home from Kaiba's party, Bakura sat on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table and idly flicked trough channels. He never cared too much about television, so when the apartment door opened and Ryou stepped up into the kitchen, Bakura did not react. He kept his eyes locked to the mindless television show, even as Ryou sat down on the opposite end of the sofa.

Ryou brought his knees to his chest and looked into Bakura's eyes for the first time in a long while with a focused glint in his eyes, like a fog had lifted. His eyebrows threatened to bleed into his eyes. "We were looking for you."

Bakura shrugged at the television screen, at the images of a game show contestant creating a record breaking piece of sushi. "Why'd you leave?" Ryou asked, again.

And Bakura turned to face Ryo. Without the haze his eating disorder kept him in, Ryou's appearance shifted, morphing into something entirely different than what Bakura was accustomed to. The landlord he had known was weak, complacent. He wondered momentarily if Ryou had been vomiting on purpose back then too.

He resisted the urge to scratch at his arms; he thought, with such an undivided attention, Ryou would call him out on it. Instead he let his emotions vaporize in the cool emptiness that burrowed in his thoughts. Ryou laid his hand upon Bakura's arm, peering up into his face as if trying to pry the information telepathically from his mind.

Bakura jerked his arm away: an automatic reflex as the cuts ignited flaming trails. He found a spark of anger, the one lone source of rage that consumed him in the past months, and latched onto it. "Tell me why you're so screwy with food," he barked out.

Ryou's eyes lit with a strange emotion for him; then his expression fell. The calmness that normally stared at Bakura returned to Ryou's face. Without a word spoken, Ryou stood stiffly, and left the room. Bakura sat, alone in the living room.

After a moment, after he figured Ryou wouldn't deign to return, he dug out a single razor blade. He flipped it between his thumb and forefinger, marveling at the cool feel of the thin metal against skin. He cut into his wrist, and the thin skin parted easily under the blade. By the time the sting washed away his stress and blood dotted the surface of his skin with little beads, the blade felt warm to the touch, a comforting temperature.

The weeks passed slowly, the weather turning humid as the rains finally halted. Bakura shrugged on his winter uniform, yet again. Because Domino High School had switched from winter to summer uniforms, which was supposedly a mandatory switchover, but Bakura never much regarded institutionalized rules (he found himself in extra cleaning duties because of it), nor could he bare his cut up arms, not with the increased frequency and severity of his cutting, so he suffered through the indignity of extra housekeeping. Though as time passed, even Kobayashi relaxed his strictness in regards to uniforms, or he merely gave up reprimanding Bakura, who chose to remain indifferent.

Bakura strode out of the apartment long before Ryou exited the toilet. He just could not deal with Ryou's blatant half truths and lies when he mocked his eating habits. His chest swelled and his sped walk in an aimless direction. When he finally stopped, somewhat under control of his faculties, Bakura blinked at the familiar park near the Kame Game Shop. The little boy from last few times time wasn't there. Bakura dragged himself to the shaded part of the park, away from mothers with young children on the playground.

Lately, he found his feet leading him here whenever he couldn't cope with blades or the stress got too much to handle. Which, more and more, tended to be on a regular basis. Many afternoons after cleaning duty or when he knew he wouldn't be interrupted by the Pharaoh or his minions, he wandered the fifteen minutes up here. Underneath the trees, in the cool shade from the July sun, Bakura felt control return to him. Even the constant humidity faded away. And, was it ever muggy and hot.

After walking the extra quarter mile out of his way, Bakura was sweltering in the late July heat, especially in his winter uniform. He was half tempted to roll up his sleeves. At the very least, he removed his outer coat (which served as extra coverage between the white uniform shirt, which could very easily be stained by a reopened cut, and his arm.

Arms crossed, eyes closed, head resting against the tree trunk, Bakura could finally breather easy without the sharp sting brought by dragging a razor across his skin. Even that lately, with his increased cutting, was not so much effective. In fact, sometimes, it just plain hurt. Even the pain could not shatter the icy numbness that encroached him or quell the boiling, licking anger that made him want to bash his head against the wall and warped his vision.

"Bakura?" A calm, familiar but odd, voice broke the first true silence in his thoughts in a long while. He cracked an eye, before glaring as he recognized the Pharaoh looming over him.

"Fuck?!" He exclaimed, wrapping his coat, shoving his arms through the sleeves before he could get a good look at the white fabric or the few cuts that might be visible. 'What do you want?" he asked whilst exhaling, all of his anger stretched thin with Ryou's fiasco.

Yami peered into Bakura's eyes, his own eyes narrowed with concern? Bakura must be mistaken. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"I'm fine!" Bakura snapped. He crossed his arms tighter, letting the fresh marks rub painfully against two layers of fabric, and pretended the stinging made him feel calmness, rather than just more pain.

"Are you su…" Yami started to say something, but cut himself off at the red that flushed Bakura's face and the arm that unfurled to scrub at his eyes. Instead, Yami sat next to Bakura underneath the tree in the almost deserted park as most of the inhabitants walked from one end to the other to their destinations.

A long moment passed. Bakura uncurled and curled his fist, fighting with himself. He frowned at the grass on the ground, basking in the welcome silent company of the Pharaoh. Any company that wasn't actively destroying their health and bodies was pleasant at this point.

"He's making himself sick."

"Excuse me?" Yami rose to his feet at once and resumed staring into Bakura's face from where he stood, looking down.

"You heard me." Bakura glared to the ground, refusing to meet Yami's eyes, refused to give him the information he wanted. If the Pharaoh wanted to know about Ryou, he could fucking ask Ryou.

Yami grabbed Bakura's arm to wrench him from the ground. Bakura let out a low scream. "What the fuck, Pharaoh!" He winced as various cuts flared pain up and down his arm. He summoned the very dredges of his will power not to reveal how much pain he was in or the origin of the pain.

"Bakura," Yami said, not aware of Bakura's violent reaction, "Remember that psychology lesson? This is very important. You need to talk to someone about this."

Bakura's hatred for the pharaoh returned full force, reopening the deep chasm between the two. Like volcanic settlements spewing in every which way, Bakura filled the chasm with a long stream of insults and epithets denouncing Yami. "Just fuck off, okay!? You and Yugi and you're other little fucking monkeys can dick with it, okay? I don't fucking care!"

Wiping spittle from his lips, Bakura stalked off in the opposite direction, choosing to return to the apartment in favor of following everyone to school and continuing the never ending marionette play of contentment.

Yami's face burned with his rage at Bakura's words, but as the thief wiped at his mouth in the same way he had wiped the tears from his eyes when he had first sat on the ground next to him, Yami's eyes widened as an epiphany of sorts settled over him. Bakura was long out of earshot, when Yami whispered, "But you do care."

A/N: Aw look, the first true instance of Bakura and Yami. And the last thing I wrote before I got injured. Which is just a fun fact. It's fun reading through/expanding each chapter and remembering what I was doing for each chapter. The rest of the chapters were written while I was completely drugged out on pain pills over a span of two weeks max.

The information Bakura learned from Ryou is all true, except the last bit that threats of self harm must be reported. I don't know if that's true, but I can't imagine it wouldn't be… In 1998, Japan's suicide rate increased by 35 percent, so I bet there was a bit of a panic there. In '98 in the United States, self injury was still confused with suicide attempts (it still is), so I think if any teacher discovered Bakura's cutting, Solomon would be informed.

Age of majority in Japan is 20, while in the US it is 18 (and the UK is 16? Unless they changed that?), and you have to be18 to get a driver's license, so imagine Bakura as a 15 year old. Haha.

Mokuba's birthday is July 7th, which worked perfectly with my plot. Fantastic. Why didn't I mention this last chapter? Kaiba hosted the party especially late (on the 19th), because of his work obligations, and because the 1998 calendar disliked my plot.