"Tickets, please."
At the entrance to the tomb of Ramses IX, a frazzled tourist reached for her purse, and it was not there. Her hand curled against the place where it should be, and then went around the other side, looked down, looked around, twirled, panic rising. "Sweetheart, do you have my purse?" she asked the teen behind her, still patting her own pockets.
"No, mom. Did you put it down somewhere?"
The people behind her in line looked on impatiently. There were a lot of them. Luxor was choked with tourists, an army of figures flooding in from every other place in the world, carrying overstuffed backpacks, clutching bulky cameras, wearing walking shoes, and sweating in the heat. Here to gawk at ancient wonders and buy t-shirts with cartoon sphinx, tour the places where dead kings were made to rot, see the ruins that had already outlived hundreds and would surely outlive them too.
The woman continued to frantically look for her purse. A man a few yards in line behind her was personally grieving the disappearance of his favorite watch. The west bank was experiencing an epidemic of thoughtlessness. A girl put her backpack down for just a second, to take a photo of an engraving for her travel blog, but when she looked back to retrieve the bag there was nothing there. Another man was pacing back and forth on the path in front of the tomb of Set II, searching feverishly for his wallet, which he definitely must have dropped around here somewhere. An older woman bumped into someone, sorry, she'd always been ever so clumsy, and an hour later realized to her horror that her wedding ring was gone. There would be a lot of grumbling, a number of complaints, and a great deal of sympathetic, condescending looks that asked well, where did you see it last?
"Your entry pass, ma'am." the man at the door repeated, bored. "Otherwise, I'll have to ask you to leave." The eyes of the attendant, and every annoyed person in line, drilled into her. She smiled nervously, thinking about her passport.
Bakura returned to the crumbling shrine and dropped his bounty on the floor in a heap. Tourists were such easy pickings. They were always carrying too much, always looked a little lost, and never wanted to make much eye contact. He tore voraciously into a granola bar, his first meal of the century, and started picking through his treasures. Water bottles, because by mid-day the desert sun was merciless. A pile of cash, mostly Egyptian pounds but also a few types of international currency. Several pieces of jewelry, which he knew in some cases was probably not real gold, just cheap painted shit, but he eagerly put on anyway because all of his was gone and a king requires finery. Plenty of useless trinkets, too, IDs, hotel room keys, headphones, pens, little nothings that happened to be in the wrong pocket. He could snag a few things with the credit cards, maybe, if he was fast enough before they got canceled. Probably more trouble than they were worth.
It would serve him, he thought, clasping necklaces together and slipping rings on his fingers, at least until he had a better grasp on the situation. It was not clear why or how he was here, but now at least he had the means to obtain necessities.
Bakura lay on the floor, new jewelry jangling, and closed his eyes and smiled. Home sweet home. He remembered where he was now, of course. How shocking that he ever could have forgotten it. How interesting to be back. The slab might be gone and the walls aged and weathered half to ruin, but he knew the outline of this temple by heart, every brick and every seam. He must have done this a thousand times, counted out his spoils in the same spot, hid from the afternoon heat by dozing off on the stone floor.
Easy. Quiet. Familiar. A safe place to rest, silent and eerie, full of dust.
It really was quiet.
He bolted upright. That wasn't right. It was never quiet here. They were a lot of things, but they weren't quiet. He looked around a little frantically, not sure exactly what he was looking for. It had been so long since he thought about them, he realized with a hint of shame, years even, but it's not like they could go very far.
No, they'd always been stuck here, noisy, restless, lonely. Kul Elna was not a person or a group of people but a teeming mass, who acted in the singular but whose competing voices ran over each other in an ever-present thrum of confused whispers, speaking all at once in clangorous discord. Rarely they spoke with a remarkable, united, seething intelligence. More often they referred to concepts they could not explain, or lost track of who they were speaking to, or began to argue with each other vociferously, or simply stopped making any sense at all. They all called him the things you call your children, imty, dear one, sweetheart, son, always had something to tell him, instructions to give or wishes to burden. You acclimated to the sound quickly, until its absence became strange. They never stopped.
Bakura sat next to his pile of treasures, stock-still, rigid and uncertain, straining to hear. It had been so long since anyone was in here.
He stopped breathing. The silence overwhelmed.
Four 20-somethings walked down dirt pathways, or maybe stumbled a little. Loud, rowdy, slightly intoxicated, but what were gap years for, if not to go to foreign countries and get buzzed around their ancient wonders? Brightly colored windbreakers were tied around their waists, and they were laughing about something that didn't matter. Ahead of them, one of them noticed, was someone with long hair and a flowing outfit, standing alone and staring up at a massive statue.
"HEY, LADY!" he called out, "Could you take our picture?"
The figure did not respond. They got closer, as they continued walking. "Did you hear me? Could you take our picture with that?"
Still, no response. As if they were not there. Just staring up, standing alone, silhouetted against the sky. They were close enough now to notice that despite the hair this was not in fact a lady.
"I don't think he speaks English, dude."
"Yeah, just make Kyle take the photo."
"Shut up, Sierra, I want to be in the photo."
"What, with your face?"
The first one was not giving up. Being ignored was making him recalcitrant. "Hey, I asked a question." he said, coming closer. "C'mon, I'll pay you." Finally the figure turned to look at them, revealing an annoyed, disdainful expression and a long, prominent scar down one eye. The young man stepped back. "Holy shit, man, what happened to your face?"
It was then that the young man did something very stupid. Out of bewildered curiosity, or a complete disregard for personal space, or the alcohol he downed before getting on the ferry over here, he reached out to touch it. This was stupid because the movement was perceived as a threat, by someone who did not respond well to being threatened and was already having a very bad day. The one with the scar turned his face into something awful and savage and snatched the wrist lightning fast, and as it bent and twisted there was a nasty snapping sound. The traveler fell on the ground with a whimper and one of the girls behind him screamed.
Bakura spent the days doing what might be called exploring. Maps were easy to obtain, and he already knew the valley well, so it was not long until he had memorized the new additions, which paths were most popular, which hours. A crowded playground of oblivious internationals carrying too much cash, where you could find enough wallets to feed yourself after ten minutes standing next to the visitor center. Really he preferred tombs. A challenge would be nice, real gold, real traps. They were guarded, though, and he had neither weapons nor Diabound, and he did not fancy the thought of facing modern firearms. Pity.
He quickly found his way to the city, just a cheap trip across the river. A wonder that it was still here. A different name, a different look, deprived of its status as capital and long built over by concrete and steel, but cities in a lot of ways are really all the same. Certainly in the old days there hadn't been an auto parts store, or a catholic school, or a pizza joint, but Nowe was Nowe, was Waset was Thebes was Luxor. If you were looking closely, you could still find the pharaoh's streets, and he wandered them carelessly, garnering only occasional stares.
A few things were becoming clear.
One, everyone here spoke Arabic, which was a problem, because he did not know a lick of it. A mental indexing revealed that he knew Egyptian, well-worn and nearly useless in the year 1998 A.D. He also still knew Japanese, Ryou Bakura's Japanese, settled into his head as if native. Besides that all he had was a few words of half-remembered Punt and a handful of English phrases he'd picked up sitting through classes at Domino High. Still, he managed, clumsily. He quickly learned the most important words, like yes and no and food, and there was a universal language to be found in putting a stack of money on the counter and pointing firmly at something.
Two, no one was aware of his existence, or if they were they didn't care. For some reason he kept expecting, any day now, an indication of something. A visit from his former frenemies, someone with a millennium item, someone to abruptly drag him back into the thick of it, or at least tell him what was going on. No one approached. The shrine was clearly abandoned. He had been left, without explanation, to his own devices.
Three, the shadow RPG was over a month ago. He learned this after palming a cell phone, which was unlocked with a visible calendar. There among some poor soul's vacation plans was the word September. He had, for reasons unknown, lost a significant amount of time. What, precisely, had happened in the meantime, and why was he here now?
He held the phone, sitting on the ground in the sand behind some massive pillar, gripping smooth, cold plastic, and realized that he had a phone. He could call someone, if he wanted to, ask questions. The question was then who to call, and the only answer that came to mind was Ryou Bakura. With that came a prick of...something. Guilt, maybe? Trepidation. Words formed on the back of his tongue in the wrong language and he could not quite put together what he would say. Knowing no other phone numbers, he powered it off so it could not be tracked, and put it away. He needed no help, anyway.
That was the fourth thing he noticed. That everything he remembered about the years with the other Bakura was blurry, strange. Something about the ring. He remembered all the things he'd said and done with perfect clarity, that he'd acted with deliberation and intent, and that it all made perfect sense at the time, but it was the way you confidently knew nonsense in a dream. The reasoning behind it all was lost in the daylight, actions standing alone as non-sequiturs, cruel and bizarre.
Was all that really him? The name Zork Necrophades crawled its way into the back of his throat, gnawed at the edges of his thoughts. It was him and it was not him, both of them or neither, or they were the same, because there was no line between them, or there were a thousand tiny lines too small to see and strings that pulled on every inch. A time when he kept reaching for a name and insisting that he had no name, or that he had only one name, but no, that was never his name. But does your own left hand have a name or does it merely have yours? It is no thing of its own, how laughable to think it is anything but a mere extension of someone else's will, a will which is correct and glorious and natural. And the strings would have hurt like a bitch, maybe, but was suffering not perfect, the point of everything, was the river of blood from your shoulder not as pretty as the Nile, because you were built to suffer for him and feel nothing. The obedient, cheerful foot soldier of their immaculate ruination, who feels only what lies between rage and a bored vacant distraction while the hooks in your mouth forced a smile, longing for horns that were not there, after something scraped itself across the inside of your skull and tore out everything that ever mattered, when the world was hollow and full of ants and built in two dimensions and wasn't it wonderful, or it felt like nothing, or wonderful because it was nothing.
He blinked. He'd been staring into space. The sun was going down. His mouth tasted like sand and his skin crawled, lightheaded. His thoughts carefully danced around an empty space where something should be, unable to touch it, like trying to force the wrong side of a magnet. He shook it off, and stood up unsteadily, and went home.
Whatever he was before, he was himself now, as he walked toward dusk with clenched teeth and fists. Only himself. He knew that. He could tell. And no one else, he thought, with a nervous, shaking sort of fury, was ever getting in again.
Every night he slept in the shrine. It might be empty now, but it was still his. Even without creature comforts, there was nostalgia in the dark. He stared at the ceiling endlessly and tried to remember Kul Elna's words, trace their raspy voices with his own mouth.
Sweet child, our only hope. Do not weep for us. You may be the last of us but we will not let you leave this place alone.
All that remains of us we give to keep you safe. All of our fury, all of our hatred. All our protection and all of our love.
That we may hide you from their eyes. That you may go where we cannot.
The Duat will not take us, for what they have done. The gods have abandoned us. All we ask is that you live.
He should figure out why he was alive, and he would, he was sure. At some point. He'd always had a problem with procrastination, really. And so he whiled away the days, roughing it, like old times.
