Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine. Not mine.
Warnings: Shounen-ai. (Yaoi in nature) Hints of child abuse (to what point
is only in your imagination, therefore only implied) Blanching balance
between angst and humor.?
Summary: AU Everyone watches as heat rises and melts the mirage of a house
that secured an unsociable Ryou for all his life. Marik/Ryou. Yami/Bakura,
Seto/Otogi, implied Malik/Joey.
Randomness: Never trust normality when the number of boys that an insane
author presents to you is an even number, because it usually leads to
allowing the crazy author to pair everyone off as yaoi.
For people reading this for the first time: Ryou is Bakura's brother. No, this is not an incest fic. No, this is not a Bakura-abuse-Ryou fic. No, this is not a Ryou's-many-failed-suicide-attempts fic.
CAST
(Because we all know that there are only a few hundred versions of each name on this site)
Ryou Bakura: Ryou
Yami Bakura: Bakura
Yami Yugi: Yami
Malik: Malik
Yami Malik: Marik
Duke Devlin: Otogi Ryuuji
Joey Wheeler
Seto Kaiba
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B u t t e r . C a s t l e
by Crimson Nightmare
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Prologue: Fly on the Wall; Dog behind Bars
"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night and a smooth road all the way to your door." - Irish Blessings
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Ryou POV
My brother is a man who dreams about the world outside. I watch him close his grip around a baseball as he toss and turn in his sleep. He is smiling. I wonder what he's dreaming about.
I wonder if he is dreaming about baseball. How do you play baseball anyways? I have only seen him playing what he calls 'Catch' with Vitto (our old, but brilliant pale labrador). He throws the ball at the dog and Vitto would yelp and jump at it, catching it in his mouth like it's a chewy piece of candy. Is Catch the same thing as baseball? Does it have to be played with a dog? I wish I can ask my brother, but he's sleeping right now.
I better not wake him from his dream, or else he'll wake up again to a nightmare that he does not need.
Vitto nudges my elbow, and I turn around, surprised that he's up at this hour. He places a piece of leftover chicken breast down on the ground beside my knees, and I quickly grab it and stuff it down my throat. The black soot on the meat feels a bit sandy, but that's what you get for eating what you pick up in a ventilation pipe. I pat Vitto's head thankfully. He licks my hand. For the ten thousandth time, I thank the heavens that Vitto is so loyal and smart. He finds me in these crooks and crannies of our house, and brings me dinner. I'll probably starve otherwise.
Real dogs, and a person who is said to be a dog, are two different things. Real dogs, like Vitto, are viewed as adorable, fun pets. They are to be groomed, hugged, and well-fed. They keep you from remembering that you are old and alone and no one cares about you anymore. A person who is seen as a dog is a bastard, an unwanted son. An ignored piece of garbage that people kick around, wishing that it wasn't there.
For years I exsited as a dog to my family. And then for many more years I became a pest that live in my family's grave, a vermin that hides in the many narrow, hidden openings of this house. This old, stony castle, this place of sodomy and murder that were commited years ago, still haunt us beneath our eyelids when we sleep at night, and when we live like we are alive during the day.
I wish my brother good dreams of baseball and green grassfields, though.
Bakura deserves at least some good dreams some times.
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To be continued...
"What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness." - M.C. Escher
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A/N: I decided to rewrite this fic, simply because the idea's been in my head since forever, and it's never going to stop coming back and gnaw at my foot until I finish it. I've messed around with the original plot line and changed some things around, in order for it to make sense again.