Yugi groaned, turning stiffly in thick but ebbing half-sleep. His head was throbbing, his skin felt hot and prickly and raw all over. He slid his arm underneath his chest to brace himself up, and his fingers met the resistance of rough, wiry fur. He blinked the sleep from his dry, burning eyes and tried to apprehend his surroundings.
"Shh, shh, lay back, my dear," came a distantly familiar voice.
There was the warmth of a hand on his shoulder and at the back of his head, and he felt himself being lowered back down onto the animal pelt that covered his bed.
"Where am I?" he croaked, voice sore and cracking in the dry air.
A pair of clear blue eyes set in a warmly smiling olive-brown face appeared in his fogged vision. Long black braids swept down from behind the gold-laden ears and brushed Yugi's pain-sensitized arms.
"Sleep now, my child. Questions later."
The figure covered Yugi with a woven blanket and mopped the grit and sweat from his brow with a soft, damp cloth. He fell back into a dreamless sleep.
Fatima stoked the fire in her hearth with a little paper fan and a long iron prod. She teased a little troupe of dancing flames from the embers and stood up to appreciate the warmth and the glow.
It was deep night, the peak of darkness, and it brought a chill through the open windows of her home. She gazed at the too-still form of the sleepless boy before her and, deciding it wasn't too soon for coffee after all, and she set about making a pot.
"You should take your rest, my son," she said as she ground down the beans on her grinding stone.
"I don't sleep when there's work to be done," the boy said.
"You can't do your seeking in the dark," she said. "Daylight is another two or three hours away yet."
The boy didn't answer. He just stared out through the doorway to the room beyond.
"When he's well again, I'll send you right to the king," Fatima said, dropping palmfulls of sugar into her copper ibrik. "Nadir and Ahlem will take you there, they know the way as well as anyone."
The gloomy boy hummed his reply, but made no move to look at her. She smiled. So willful, so full of dark fire. He reminded her so much of her only son that it almost pained her to speak with him. She wanted to embrace this boy, gather up all his long limbs and cradle him until his stubbornness gave way to the ache she could read in his eyes.
She was high-born here and her service to the king had earned her a little looking-glass, a mirror into which she could look and see her beloved son. She had watched him enough nights as he lay sleepless, gazing up at the ceiling, to memorize the color that the sting of loneliness brought to the eyes.
She knew exactly how the ache to be held shaped the countenance of motherless boys into something tight and intense, something desperately private that screamed all the same to be known, something that drew others in with the same force that it pushed them away.
This boy sitting at her table exuded just such recursive gravity, so strong that it was a marvel he hadn't imploded yet. His eyes bore the arctic loneliness that belied the molten core beneath. It was her son through-and-through, or so she imagined from the things she'd seen through her looking-glass.
The dark transit of death had taken her seconds before they could press him to her breast. She never even got to hold him.
She knew a time would come when she would meet him at last, at the end of his natural life; she also knew it was the fever-struck little vessel that slept on her leopard pelt in the room beyond she had to thank for that. They were even her son's age to the year. She was thoroughly determined to sure them up, to rest and care for them before she sent them on their way.
She took her copper ibrik from the grate above the flames and poured the thick dark liquid into two cups. She took up a seat opposite the tall and lonely boy and slid the cup into his limp hands.
"Drink," she said, patting his fingers closed around the cup.
She watched and waited until he took a sip from the cup, smiling at the sudden light in his eyes. He quickly drained the cup and set it down. She poured him another from the still-steaming ibrik and took a sip of her own.
"I'll prepare you some supplies. It's two day's ride from here, straight east between the mountains. He should be well enough to ride in a day or two."
The boy looked her up and down. Finally, he met her eyes.
"Why are you helping us?"
In her wisdom, she recognized the source of his suspicion as a lifetime of betrayal, and she took no offense to his harsh tone.
"I know you," she said, brushing back her many braids. "I know you both. You're a friend to my children, and so is he."
He scanned her face for a few intense seconds, tracing the shape of the lips, the angle of the blue almond-shaped eyes, the tall, elegant posture. He imagined a golden eye at her throat, imagined the rows of braids as flowing black strands and his lips parted around an inaudible 'oh.'
"God, she looks just like you," he said.
Fatima smiled.
"So I've been told. My son is the spitting image of my late husband in his youth," she said.
"And where is your husband now?" the boy said with a cool detachment.
"What the shadows take, the shadows keep," was all she said.
Fatima thought of the darkness that had colored her life from the time she swore her fidelity to the captain of the tomb guardians. Indeed, even here there were shadows in the deepest corners, and these boys, these frail and foreign boys who didn't belong here yet, were sure to draw them out.
She went to the hearth and gathered up a basket that sat to the side on a low wooden stool. She took two long leather sheaths from the basket and wrapped them gently in a light woolen blanket.
"My children. These are for them, when they return to me," she said, laying the bundle down next to the boy.
"But right now, you need them. I pray they protect you on your way."
Yugi woke with a start, subsumed with panic, hands out in front of him to brace them from impact. His own strangled yell parted the terror creeping through him, and he blinked the room around him into focus.
Last thing he remembered, he was sitting back in the tiny cockpit of the launch capsule, sitting between Seto's bent knees, seeing the controls and the monitors through Seto's bleary eyes, watching Seto's hands operate the dials and the holofields and the switches as they sped down the tract that connected Kaiba's personal low earth orbit laboratory with the projected landing site. They were due to "land" at a space fifty miles outside Giza said to have a lower threshold for dimensional perforation—Yugi didn't bother to ask why.
It had been almost two days of grueling preparation and jet travel to Egypt, then a harrowing five hour ascent to dock with the orbiting laboratory, where the prototype waited.
He remembered the rush of the sync, the excitement and the fear and the deep remorse coming from a clouded place Yugi couldn't touch. He remembered the feeling of leaning back in the cramped cockpit, his aching head against Kaiba's fear-tight stomach, feeling reciprocal heat and a spark through his limbs that was part their tight press and part a shared and fraught excitement at the prospect of seeing, of touching Atem.
Soon they would be with Atem, and whatever task awaited them would shrink before them because he would be there, he would be with them.
He remembered Mokuba's worry-cracked voice saying something that Yugi couldn't understand but that chilled Seto to the bone, Mokuba's face a twisted grimace that filled the display before them as red warning messages flashed on every screen. He remembered shutting his eyes against the pressure and the sound and the painful rattle of the launch pod as they approached and exceeded ascension velocity, only to skid and sputter off the tract with a hydraulic whine and the ear-splitting snap of carbon steel.
He knew because he could see through Seto's eyes through the sync that they were headed straight down toward a rocky mountain range at the equivalent of orbital escape velocity. He remembered gripping at the pendant around his neck with one hand, the other shooting out in front to brace them for impact. There was a bright light and the whiplash jolt of collision.
Then he remembered nothing. And here he was now, sitting on a leopard pelt in a sparse but comfortable room, bare but for a thin kilt, caked in the salt of sweat from a broken fever.
"You're awake! It's about time, my child."
In the doorway to his little room stood a strikingly beautiful woman in a vibrant cotton djellaba with a tall coil of braids fixed above her head with a red sash. The djellaba was patterned with brightly colored chevrons and stripes and was cinched around her narrow waist with a gold chain. She wore gold bangles on her wrists and ankles, and her small slippered footsteps set the bangles clinking as she stepped toward Yugi's makeshift sickbed.
"Where is Seto?"
She gave him a warm but curious smile as she extended her hand.
"Recovering what's left of your things."
He took her hand and she helped him to his feet.
"Come have something to eat. There's a bath ready too, when you're ready."
She braced him as he staggered through the doorway to the kitchen. She deposited him into one of the chairs near the hearth and gave him a bowl of porridge and a plate of fresh fruit. Yugi eyed the porridge with suspicion, but one spoonful was all it took to remind him how ravenously hungry he was, and he was slurping the last of it directly out of the bowl before he even realized he'd dropped the spoon.
She poured him a cup of frothy liquid from a pitcher and watched as he began on the fruit.
"This will help you get your strength back," she said.
He swallowed what was in his mouth and took the cup to his lips. It had a pungent herbal smell and it was intensely bitter, but something in him knew she was telling the truth and he drained the cup of bitter liquid in a few large gulps.
He was nearly panting when he was done.
"Th-thank you," he said feebly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
"Mmhmm," she said from the other side of the room, where she was placing jars into a small woven basket.
Yugi leaned over, elbows on his knees, wincing at the limp fall of his hair. He took a deep breath and sighed it out. He reeked.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Two days, child."
He ran his hands over his face. Everything felt dirty.
"How did we get here?"
She came over with the basket and a folded cloth.
"You came in the night in your little ship. Your friend scared my mule half to death, carrying you over his shoulder right up to my door. I thought it was jackals or a wolf, the way she was carrying on," she said, helping Yugi up again.
"I didn't know what to make of him. He scared me too at first! But then I saw your face. You're the king's vessel."
"You know him!" Yugi said, eyes wide. He stumbled after her as she led him through the house to a modest courtyard with a wide basin that stood about two feet high.
"Who are you?" he said, bracing himself against the open doorframe.
"My name is Fatima," she said, setting the basket down next to the basin. "Fatima Ishtar."
She tested the water with the tips of her fingers.
"Go on, now," she said. "I'll be inside if you need me."
She patted him on the shoulder as she passed.
Yugi stepped out into the courtyard, feeling for the first time the golden sun of the next world trace over his bare shoulders and chest. The touch of it on his face was exquisite, and for a few moments he just stood there, face upturned, eyes closed, feeling the warmth of it run along his body.
He slipped out of his kilt and stepped into the sun-warmed water in the basin. He kneeled down till the water covered his waist, and he cupped his hands and scooped measure after measure of water over his back and shoulders, up over his neck, his hair. He tested some of the bottles Fatima had left in the woven basket and found that two of them lathered, and he used one to wash the grit from his hair. He found clumps of dried blood here and there, but a cursory scan of his scalp revealed only a few small scratches.
He was wringing the water from his bangs when he felt a new warmth on his exposed back. He glanced over toward the house, and the doorway was darkened by Kaiba's broad shoulders, the blue eyes almost glowing in the shade of the thatched eaves. Kaiba was bare-chested, wearing the same kind of simple kilt Yugi had found himself in. From the looks of it, he'd been outside the past two days, as his skin was bronzed all over and red around the shoulders and on the high peaks of his cheekbones.
Yugi stood up in the basin, turning to face Kaiba as the sun and the rivulets of water streaked his limbs. The light caught his damp hair, haloing him in gold. Kaiba's breath hitched, and he barely swallowed the throaty moan that rumbled in the back of his throat.
"Oh thank god. I'm so glad you're back," Yugi said.
Kaiba shook his head and crossed the space between them. He took Yugi's hands in his own and kissed the fingers of the right, then the left hand.
"I'm glad you're alive. I thought I'd killed us."
Yugi smiled.
"Maybe you did and we're in heaven now."
Kaiba watched a sunlit drop of water run from Yugi's nipple over the repeating curves of his ribs until it reached the little divet at his hip bone.
"That's a distinct possibility."
Kaiba reached for the cloth in the basket and wrapped it around Yugi's shoulders.
"You look better. I won't even tell you what you looked like the past two days. How are you feeling?"
Yugi laughed and the force of it made his head hurt.
"Hungover. Like I got the snot knocked out of me by a large mountain."
Kaiba smirked.
"We should be ready to go by the afternoon," he said. "I recovered as much as I could from the crash site."
"Hmm," was all Yugi said.
He pressed his forehead against Kaiba's chest, and Kaiba wrapped his long arms around Yugi's head.
"We'll see him soon," Yugi said, winding his hands around Kaiba's waist.
"We'll see him soon," Kaiba said in return.
Yugi followed Fatima's nimble fingers as best he could, copying the criss-cross wrap and elaborate knots that she wove to secure their belongings in tight cylindrical bundles. He was still a little weak from the crash and his head was foggy, but he got the hang of it slowly.
Fatima wrapped cloaks and some basic cooking tools and flints and a straw mat and ample rope in a thick woolen blanket. Yugi rolled what was left of their bodysuits, patched with fabric from Fatima's loom, around their Dimension Disks and headsets. He packed the delicate bundle with the portable holofield rods and bits of spare hardware and tools Kaiba recovered from the crash site, and laid them gently next to the heavy burlap bag of grain for the animals.
There were loaves of bread and dried fruits and a few root vegetables and desiccated venison and great bloated water skins filled with well water and a leather satchel of sweetly spiced balms and oils and a roll of soft white cloth all packaged with care in a woven reed basket. Fatima went inside and came out with two tall clay jars sealed with cork and wax.
"You shouldn't be more than two nights. One for each night, to bring sleep on," she said, winking.
They carefully fixed the bundles and the baskets and the jars to the wooden rack of the pack saddle that was cinched around the little gray mule named Ahlem.
"You're a nice girl," Yugi said as he rubbed Ahlem's velvety nose. "Are you a sweet, nice girl?"
Ahlem brayed and flicked her ears and lipped at Yugi's necklace, which now bore the pendant with the king's name as well as a little Marshmallon charm that Jounouchi had given him the night before they left. The shiny pink plastic charm was jarring in the timeless atmosphere of Aaru, and Yugi clung to it like a talisman.
"She likes you," Fatima said. "It's good. She can be very uncooperative with people she doesn't like."
"Well she doesn't like me at all, so she's you're responsibility from here out," Kaiba said over his shoulder.
He tightened the girth around the well-muscled Barb stallion named Nadir. Nadir pawed at the ground and snorted but otherwise held still while Kaiba worked, careful not to pinch the girth too tight. Kaiba made a final check of Nadir's tack and firmly patted his flank.
"I think the animals are ready," Kaiba said.
"Yes, but are you two?" Fatima said. "Come inside, I have something more to give you."
They followed her inside and she bade them stand near the hearth. She went into her room for a moment and came out with a big bundle of linen.
"These were for my children," she said, unpacking three neatly folded piles of cloth. "Rishid's would fit you best, Seto, but I fear his isn't finished yet."
She held a dark blue cloak up against Kaiba's chest.
"This will have to do for you. It's short but I think it's wide enough. As for you," she said to Yugi as she handed him a deep violet cloak. "Malik's will be a bit long. Try it on, make sure it doesn't drag."
They donned the cloaks and Fatima tugged the fabric into place. Wearing Isis' robe, Kaiba was covered just a bit past the knee. Yugi was covered down to his ankles. Fatima tied the golden cords at the neck and the waist on each boy's cloak, then stepped back to appraise them.
"Something's missing. My son, where did you put the package I gave you the first night?"
"It's tied to Nadir's saddle," Kaiba said.
"Wait here," she said.
Yugi shifted under the thick cloak. He lifted his arms and stepped side to side, feeling the cloak swish behind him.
"Now I see why you like that jacket so much. This is fun."
"Actually, Mokuba designed my jacket," Kaiba said. "It was his idea to fan the tails out."
"Yeah, but I know you like wearing it. I bet you feel like this all the time," Yugi said, crossing his arms and lifting his chin. "I feel like the king of the mountain."
"Good. Hold on to that. You'll need it when they receive you in the palace."
Yugi stuck his tongue out.
"I'm serious. You do well in front of cameras and fans, but this is another level. You're royalty here. You probably can't even imagine what that entails."
Yugi's eyes went wide.
"Me, royalty? You think so?"
Fatima returned with the bundle and slowly unwrapped the leather sheaths. She held the long one out to Kaiba.
"My son's. Bear it well."
He unsheathed the finely wrought sabre with a slick swoosh and tested a swipe in the air. It was well balanced, well honed. It was a gold yatagan, a long, gently recurved sabre with a rams horn hilt. It was about the length of his forearm, hand included—a good size, though the hilt felt a bit thin in his large palm.
"Thank you. Truly. I expect the pharaoh can help us return them to you when our journey is over."
Fatima held out the remaining odd shaped sheath to Yugi.
"I'm not troubled, child. Things in Aaru have a habit of finding their own way to where they belong."
Yugi carefully withdrew the sharply curved blade and held it high above his head. It was an engraved khopesh, with a convex sickle-like blade that came to a squared tip, and a long hexagonal handle that was split half-way by a narrow pommel that led to a leather-wrapped hilt.
"It's beautiful," Yugi said.
"It's for my daughter. Make no mistake, it's a killing blade. But the inside curve is blunt, should you want to protect rather than destroy."
Yugi reverently sheathed the blade and tied the leather sheath around his waist. Kaiba slung the long sabre across his body, looping the wide belt from his shoulder to the opposite waist.
"Yes. Now you look ready," Fatima said, smiling wide.
Yugi freed his arms from the cloak and hugged her tight. She was a bit taller than him, and they happened to fall in such a way as his head laid on her chest, and she cradled his head and shoulders.
"I pray for you as though you were my own," she said.
They parted and Kaiba laid his large hand on her shoulder. She covered his hand with her own and they nodded.
"Thank you for your help."
"And for all the good food," Yugi said.
"Ahlem and Nadir know the road, you have only to lead them off to make camp at night. Be vigilant. Be safe."
She led them out to the end of her homestead and a kilometer beyond, until they were soundly on the dirt path that led down to the trade road. Kaiba braced Yugi as he tentatively put a foot into one of the stirrups of Nadir's saddle.
"Keep your head up and your posture straight," Kaiba said. "Let your hips flow with the movement of his shoulders. You'll start to feel a rhythm soon."
Kaiba lifted Yugi up onto Nadir's back and walked beside them with Ahlem's lead in his hand.
Fatima watched them go until they were almost out of sight. They turned and waved at her at a bend in the road, and then they were gone.
They walked for two hours along the road, until the still-stiff hemp slippers Fatima wove rubbed Kaiba's feet raw, and Yugi threw off his cloak and forced them to switch places.
Kaiba fell easily into sync with Nadir's gait. There was something deeply peaceful about riding through the rocky, shrub-dotted landscape, limned as they were in the gold of the setting sun. He watched the gold light dance over Yugi's naked shoulders and it filled him with a fresh warmth. He wondered how long it would take for the newness to give way to cherished familiarity, like it had with Mokuba when he came out of his coma. Their relationship was new then, as this one was now.
Kaiba was not a man who trusted easily. He knew this about himself. But something about the thing that had grown between him and Yugi didn't prick at his fear so much anymore. More and more, it felt like an inevitability, and he didn't question its half-life—he just knew on a deep level that this is how things are now.
Mountains to the east swallowed the last rays an hour before the sky darkened completely, and they set about making camp. They'd been journeying nearly seven hours, it was time for rest.
Yugi gathered firewood and chopped it into manageable piles with his khopesh while Kaiba unsaddled the animals. He set Ahlem's pack saddle over a small boulder and laid Nadir's saddle and blanket upside down on the sand to dry. He brushed them down with a rough cloth and gave them each a portion of grain.
"We need to give them water, right?" Yugi said.
"I think I saw a stream when we left the path."
Kaiba drank from one of the water skins and rubbed at his bleeding heels.
"I'll take them to the stream," Yugi said. "You start a fire."
Yugi put the khopesh in its sheath at his waist and stepped up to Nadir's side. He laid a hand on the horse's neck.
"Are you gonna be a good boy?"
"You know that he's not going to answer you, right?" Kaiba said as he pushed small stones into a wide ring. Yugi gathered the leads from where they were tied to Ahlem's pack saddle.
"We're in heaven, how do you know horses don't talk here?"
Ahlem brayed right into Yugi's ear, startling him, which startled Nadir, and the horse snorted and pawed anxiously at the ground.
"You lack horse sense," Kaiba said, standing. "I'll take them to the stream. You start the fire."
Yugi gave Kaiba a look that was equal parts sheepish and relieved. Kaiba took the leads from Yugi in one hand, and cupped his cheek with the other.
"Be careful while I'm gone."
It was a typical Kaibaesque imperative, curt and cold and with a finality that bore threat. But Yugi knew things about Kaiba that no one else did, and he could easily read the fear and concern that lurked far beneath. The admixture of care and dominion made Yugi feel hot all over, and watching the animals calmly obey as Kaiba led them back down the path gave Yugi a terrible idea of what they could do with all the spare rope.
He busied himself with the fire. It wouldn't do to think of those things now.
He tore off a bit of the cloth packed in with the oils and balms and dipped it in the unscented oil. He stuffed the cloth underneath some twigs in the center of the ring of stones and flicked the flint until it sparked over the little pile. Before long, the cloth and the twigs caught, and he blew on them as he added bigger and bigger sticks.
He worked his way up to whole logs and managed to build a decent fire. The desiccated wood of the desert burned easily and with only a modest amount of smoke.
Yugi took out a small copper pot and chopped bits of dried venison and figs into it. He cut up two potatoes and what looked like it could be a parsnip and put those in as well. He filled the pot with water from the water skin and set it as close to the fire as he dared.
He turned the pot at even intervals and sat hugging his knees, watching the flames dance, until he heard a whinny in the distance.
Kaiba tied up the animals again and took the liberty of sitting down directly behind Yugi, his long legs splayed out on either side. He leaned heavily against Yugi's back, arms snaking around his stomach.
"You're sunburnt. You shouldn't have taken your cloak off."
"It was hot!" Yugi said, leaning back into the weight of Kaiba's chest.
"There must be a balm in that basket."
Yugi looked back at Kaiba with the firelight glinting in his narrowed eyes.
"Are you offering to give me a massage?"
Kaiba made use of his long reach to grab the basket from where it sat with the rest of their supplies. He reached a little farther and tugged over the large bundle that held the woolen blankets.
"Spread the mat or the blanket. I'll figure out which jar to use."
"Oh, jar!" Yugi said, hopping up. He went to Ahlem's pack saddle, where the clay jars were still tied. He brought one back and uncorked it with some difficulty, then held it out to Kaiba.
"A final gift from Mrs. Ishtar."
Kaiba sniffed the jar, eyebrows raised. He took a tentative sip, licking his lips.
"It's meade."
He took a long gulp and passed the jar back to Yugi.
Yugi took a sip and almost coughed. It was intensely sweet, but had an aggressive alcoholic bite that made the back of his throat feel raw. But then he felt the warmth spreading through him, and he took another generous sip.
"Not bad," he said.
They unrolled the straw mat and covered it with a wool blanket and sat down as they were before. Kaiba poured some oil into the palm of his hand and gently started working it over Yugi's shoulders. They paused at intervals to pass the jar back and forth and to turn the copper pot of food, and Yugi collapsed back onto the mat feeling a little more boneless each time.
"That feels," Yugi said, moaning as Kaiba worked at a knot near his neck, "so good."
Kaiba let his hands move low, working down to the juncture of hip and thigh. He poured another palmful of oil and slid his hands forward, around toward Yugi's stomach. Yugi gasped and leaned back against Kaiba's chest.
"We need to eat," Kaiba said, though he made no move to get up.
"Soup should be done. I'll get the bread…in a minute," Yugi said, running his fingers through Kaiba's damp hair.
Kaiba made a little humming sound, a rare concession to gentle pleasure, and Yugi knew it to be a vulnerable sound.
"Is this all right?" Kaiba said.
When he made no attempt to clarify, Yugi smiled softly and smoothed down his hair.
"It's perfect."
Kaiba lifted his head, looked up at Yugi's relaxed expression for a moment, then dropped his head back down again.
"You can trust it. You can trust me," Yugi said.
"I wouldn't be here if I couldn't."
Yugi laughed and sat up.
"Yes you would! To see him!"
Yugi extracted himself from Kaiba's limbs and retrieved the bread and copper spoon from the pack.
They drained the last of the meade and dipped bread in the light broth and ate until there was nothing left. They drank some more from the water skin and cleaned the cooking tools and bundled the remaining food up tight and Kaiba hung the bundle from an acacia bough.
They poked the embers of the fire into a pile and set the remaining wood far enough away. They checked the animals' leads. Then they rolled up their cloaks into makeshift pillows and slid their weapons underneath, and, spooned together, soon were fast asleep.
Yugi woke to the feeling of eyes upon him. Kaiba was still and solid beside him, but he could hear the sure sound of footsteps against the rock-littered ground in the distance. He quietly slid his hand under his pillow and edged the khopesh out of its sheath.
Hs could almost see the figure edging closer in the embers' dying light, a cloaked figure moving smooth like a stalking leopard. His heart hammered in his throat and he willed his breathing to still, like he'd practiced when he synched with Kaiba.
The figure came perilously close and crouched down low. Yugi saw an arm extend toward him and he reacted on instinct, whipping the khopesh with the blunted concave side out.
The blunted edge screamed against the hard metal of a gauntlet, and the crouched man quickly pried the weapon from Yugi's stunned fingers.
Then the man dragged him up by the wrists and was hugging him tightly, and there was a rich, dark voice in his ear saying aibou aibou it's okay it's okay and it was okay, it was so very okay, and Yugi collapsed into the warmth of those arms and the richness of the voice filled his consciousness, soothing his beating heart as the darkness swallowed him again.
Kaiba was jolted awake by a sudden motion and the scream of metal on metal. He braced himself on the rapidly cooling empty space beside him on the mat and sprung up, drawing the Ishtars' golden sabre as he stood. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he could pick out a distantly familiar murmuring through the jackhammer strikes of his heart against the alcohol-thinned membrane of his eardrums. In the height of an adrenaline spike, a familiar and comfortable state for him, he savored the marked slowing of time and tried to tamp down the fiery panic that seized him when he saw the stranger's form tanging with Yugi's body. In the moments between moments, he sifted through what little he could see in the dark and formulated his attack.
The attacker was small and appeared unarmed. Kaiba made full use of his height as he stepped close to press himself against Yugi's back, reaching around to strike the attacker in the side of the head with the hilt of the sabre. The attacker staggered back and sunk to one knee in the sand, and Yugi's limp body sagged against Kaiba's chest. Kaiba caught him around the waist and held him close, the sabre held protectively in front of them.
"Who are you!" he shouted at the crouched figure.
"Stay your hand, Seto," said a voice to his right.
Kaiba pivoted as best he could while still shielding the body in his arms. A hand closed around his wrist and sent a prickling electric sensation up his arm. He felt a cold blooming at the back of his skull and the world started to spin. He dropped the sabre into the magician's waiting hand.
"You…did you just drug me?" Kaiba slurred as he struggled to stay upright.
"Kaiba," said Atem. He reached out to brace Yugi's shoulder as Kaiba's grip slipped. "It's me. It's us. You need to calm down."
"You!" Kaiba spat, wrenching his hand from Mahad's grip. "Don't ambush us in the night and then tell me to calm down."
"I'm sorry, I should have waited for dawn, I know. I couldn't wait."
Atem tried to ease Yugi's body out of Kaiba's arms, but Kaiba curled defensively around him, clinging desperately.
"You're disoriented," Atem said. "I'll take him."
"What did you do to him?" Kaiba snarled through clenched teeth.
Mahad laid a hand on Kaiba's shoulder and gave a directive but magic-empty squeeze. Kaiba flinched at the contact but didn't pull away.
"He fainted. Let me examine him."
A moment passed in tense stillness and pregnant quiet, and then Kaiba exhaled audibly and eased Yugi down onto the sand with Atem's help.
"He's still breathing," Kaiba said.
"His lifeforce is quite strong," Mahad said, kneeling next to the body. "He's very probably just exhausted. He doesn't belong here, it's probably putting additional strain on his body."
Mahad held his open palms over Yugi's eyes. He slowly moved his hands to hover over Yugi's throat, then his heart, then his stomach.
"Help me move him to that bed there," he said.
Atem took up Yugi's ankles and Kaiba grabbed him by the shoulders. Mahad slid his hand under Kaiba's arms to brace Yugi's lolling head.
"On three. One, two—"
They lifted Yugi easily and laid him down again on the wool-covered straw mat. Kaiba covered Yugi's legs with the Ishtars' deep blue cloak.
"We could use a fire. If you have any water, bring it here," the magician said.
Kaiba brought him both the full and the near-empty water skins. Atem stumbled in the starlit dark until he found the wood pile.
"Let me work. Try not to worry, he'll sense it in the state he's in."
They grunted their assents.
"Most of all, don't fight."
There was a shining, blue and red, that cut the dark. The world was spinning around him, or he was spinning around the world. A figure, like a god, bent over his eyes, that is if he even had eyes anymore—there was no feeling, no hand or foot or ground beneath to support, only dark, dark, dark. No mouth, no lungs with which to breathe.
Breathe.
A command from the god to breathe.
There was a creaking, like the world was being bent over an ancient knee and was beginning to snap open. The whine before the sharp crack, the point at which bend gives to break.
He could not let it break.
In the space of the keening sounds around him he went to the depth of the darkness and drew, like it was a well he drew, though he didn't know how.
Breathe, good.
And as the air went in, it brought with it a golden light.
Atem took a stack of wood from the pile and carefully balanced three pieces in a pyramid over the dying embers. His anxious, restless hands refused to cooperate with tearing bits of dry cloth and bark for kindling, so in a fit of resigned frustration he tossed his open hand toward the pyramid of logs and set the thing ablaze. It was dark magic, a poor choice at night and far from the temples as they were, and poorer still with Mahad engrossed in chant, bent over the still and unresponsive form on the straw mat.
What he wished would be a joyful reunion had the feeling of a final rite, and he felt stripped his patience and most of his self control, shadows be damned. And—though he would never admit it—Kaiba's presence emboldened him, made him feel a little more restless, a little too eager to throw caution to the wind.
Kaiba was pacing the length of the camp like a caged lion, back and forth, the labor of his breathing making his shoulders heave. Suddenly illuminated by the blaze, Atem could read fear and fatigue on his face.
They lock eyes across the light and heat of the roaring fire, ruby to sapphire, and it stilled them both. They held one another's gaze for a moment. Atem cocked his head toward Mahad, who sat on his knees with his hands held over Yugi's head and stomach, chanting softly. Kaiba walked over and kneeled next to the pair, waiting patiently for word.
It was eerily quiet. The crackle of the flames was too loud in Atem's ears. The horses and Mahad's mount swayed anxiously on their leads. It was all a far cry from the picture Atem had in his mind when they set out from the palace that morning.
He shouldn't have expected anything. It had been hard to tamp down the excitement, the childlike joy he felt when he sensed his partner's presence in Aaru. Now the excitement had been overcome with worry and a self-conscious feeling of uselessness and the budding growth of a fantastic headache.
He slumped down to the ground, sitting on his cape in the sand. He kicked his legs out toward the fire and sighed, willing the tension in his jaw release.
Suddenly, Kaiba was next to him, holding out a tall clay jar.
"Mahad said he'll come around. Maybe in a few hours. Maybe by daylight."
"Mahad is a very good healer," Atem said, gazing unfocused at the dancing flames.
Kaiba reached for the cork and Atem held the jar for him as he pulled it free. Atem took one greedy sniff of the pungent liquid inside and his eyes grew wide and hungry. He took a long few gulps, then pushed the jar into the sand between them.
He folded his arms on his knees and rested his chin on top, face canted toward Kaiba. Kaiba looked so severe in the stark light of the fire, like a brutalist sculpture, all cuts and angles and outrageous proportions. The light cast him in bronze with the gray patina of sand and grit from traveling. Only the glow of the deep blue eyes gave him the impression of life.
"This isn't what I hoped for," Atem said.
Kaiba took a sip from the jar and set it back.
"Hope is a trap we set for ourselves," he said. He rubbed absently at the dried blood on the raw skin of his heels. "Hope is a self-indulgent redressing of the raw desire we won't admit drives our futile actions. It's an illusion clung to by the weak. Hope is a useless emotion."
"Your foot. I can help," Atem said, reaching out tentatively for Kaiba's bent leg.
Kaiba flinched when Atem touched his ankle. Atem gave a gentle tug, and he extended his leg into the space between them. Atem carefully lifted Kaiba's foot and laid it over his own extended knee.
"Hope is an illusion, you're right," he said, carefully cupping Kaiba's heel. "But it's an illusion that people in darkness need."
"I suppose you're a shining example of the success of necessary evil," Kaiba said, wincing at the burning sensation of Atem's healing magic. "How many lives were thrown into darkness before you achieved your great hope?"
"Do you always pick fights when you're worried?" Atem said as he tested the newly healed skin with his thumb.
Kaiba scoffed and withdrew his leg.
"Worried is such an ordinary word," he said, scowling at the fire.
"This is an extraordinary worry, isn't it," Atem said, gripping fistfulls of sand.
Kaiba took a long gulp of the meade and pushed the half empty jar toward Atem, who gratefully nursed the jar as he stared into the flames. He was so lost in thought that the sensation of fingers running along the back of his neck at the hairline came through his distant, dreamy state in stages. He frowned when he finally placed the feeling, and Kaiba withdrew his fingers.
"You're bleeding," Kaiba said.
"You hit me pretty hard," he said, massaging his temples.
"You're lucky his gentleness has rubbed off on me. I could have killed you."
Atem snorted a dark and derisive laugh.
"Kill me? Where do you think you are?"
Kaiba sighed.
"I assume you still have a brain here. You're probably concussed. You shouldn't go to sleep until Mahad can do whatever he does to heal you."
Atem drained the jar and placed it down in the sand.
"Then I'll take the first watch. You should get some rest."
Atem was prepared for a fight in response, at the least protest packaged as some biting sarcasm. But Kaiba was weary and dangerously drained of his trademark will, and so he only huffed a little before setting about the great challenge of arranging his long limbs in a passably comfortable configuration. Atem watched him curl up and thought of baby deer folding their spindly legs. It wasn't long before Kaiba's breaths came elongated and even, face softening in necessary repose.
It made Atem uncomfortable to see his formidable rival so vulnerable. A thicket of emotions pricked his belly. Surprise. Envy. Curiosity. Frustration. Fondness—the sharpest prick.
There was the sensation of an unknown void being filled as he watched the firelight dance over the high cheekbones and the lidded eyes. He reached his hand out to touch the sleeping head. He withdrew his hand before it made contact and stood in an attempt to shake the feeling off.
He took off his cloak and laid it over the sleeping form. He walked away from the camp, away from the warmth of the firelight and into the dark desert, hoping the cold would clear his head.
Three months.
For three months he fielded inquiries about the whereabouts of his brother and took board meetings alone and launched the projects laid out in the schedule Seto left. Three months of plans and blueprints executed without fault, another successful quarter for the empire.
Three months of dead quiet in the manor that chilled him, so that by the end of those three months he'd practically moved into the suite at HQ normally saved for late night crashes.
Three months of Isono quietly observing his dwindling appetite, so that by the end of those three months Isono was preparing and delivering each meal and saying "Mr. Mokuba, please."
Three months of throwing himself into the preparations for next quarter, just in case. Three months of furious work and no small amount of craftiness on his part, so that by the end of those three months he had turned the feelings of the board and upper management from skepticism to surprise to delight to shock at how much a Kaiba he was becoming. He had no head for technology, so he had to throw himself fully at the business aspect of the empire. When he heard whispers here and there that betrayed the general feeling—that he would surpass his brother as a CEO—it filled him with a deep sadness.
Three months of aggressive moderation at the ramp up to internationals, preparing showdowns and ranking bashes between the five major Duel Monsters leagues across the globe. Three months of a growing reliance on the good humor of a certain shaggy-haired front-runner, which by the end of those three months seemed to be the only thing that could cheer him up anymore.
Three months of disappointment for the long-suffering girl-almost-woman who didn't in the least resent him for it, so that by the end of those three months Mokuba feelt he didn't deserve the dinner invite she sent him.
He stared at his phone a long while, feeling the weight of those three months.
"Mr. Mokuba," Isono said, breaking him from his trance. "You should go. Not for her, for yourself."
He forced a smile to his lips and found the rest of his body following after it. A small step toward something a little lighter.
"Yeah. Okay."
"I'll prepare the car."
A hand on his shoulder roused him, and he blinked the sleep from his eyes.
"Come on. Wake up. It's your turn to sit watch."
Kaiba's voice. Atem squinted in the dark. He could make out the outline of Kaiba's broad shoulders against the dying glow of the fire.
"Impossible. It should be dawn already."
Atem sat up and stretched his aching neck. He stood and shook the pins and needles out of his legs. He unfurled his cloak-turned-blanket and pulled it around his shoulders against the chill.
"You must be exhausted if you're asking me to switch so soon," he grumbled, rubbing the sand from his hair.
Kaiba loomed near him, his whole posture radiating aggravation. The frantic energy that rolled off of him made Atem's heart jump.
"After what felt like two hours, I began counting my breaths. I chose an advanced pranayama meditation used by swamis in the himalayas."
Kaiba huffed, and Atem heard a tremulous note of anxiety amid the frustration.
"The exercise takes three hours."
Atem's body went rigid. He swept his eyes around the dark camp, suddenly anxious for his friend and protector.
"Mahad."
The young king saw the shape of the magician looming over the prone body of his partner. It was dark, but the tongues of shadow that danced like flames around Yugi's lifeless body were darker. He felt a sting in his fingers and in the soles of his feet. The pain rocketed up his body until it pooled between his eyes, throbbing with his quickening inhales.
"Mahad, the dawn."
The magician turned, and his eyes shone with an internal light, casting a blue glow over the desolate little camp.
"It's begun. We won't see another dawn until it's over."
Kaiba stepped into the glow cast by the magician's foreseeing eyes. He had to get to Yugi. He felt a warmth behind him, and when he glanced over his shoulder he was nearly blinded by the sudden light from Atem's glowing forehead.
"Until what's over?" Kaiba said, voice booming over the growing hum around them.
Atem and Mahad stood on either side of him, bathing him in eldritch light. He felt a sudden pinch in his chest. The pinch grew so painful that he nearly doubled over as they said in unison:
"The trial."
Ryou was a light sleeper when he slept at all. It went in cycles of depressive immobility and days-long restless wakefulness, of which he would take full advantage before the inevitable crash came.
He came alive at night, preferring the quiet and the stillness for his work. He could breathe easier knowing that most of the souls around him lay distant in sleep. It gave him more room to think.
He was recently made glad of his longtime habit when he realized how much easier it was to talk to Malik late at night, when the other side of the world was lucid.
Tonight Ryou's phone sat silent—Malik was on a three-day field mission in Algiers. So Ryou sat up painting tiny storefront signs on tiny facades for his miniature alpine village, part of a large diorama he'd been commissioned to do for an ambassador from Switzerland.
He'd closed his windows so that only a sliver of chilly air could cut through. He heard through the partition the call of a bird, a familiar sound that told him dawn was looming near.
"Time to make the donuts already," he said to the drying figurines on a shelf above his workspace.
He pinched the bridge of his nose when he felt the familiar headache descend. He carefully screwed closed the lids on his set of lacquer paints, leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he found himself standing at the mouth of a long, dark hall. He groped out to his right and made contact with the a wall of gritty, hand-hewn stone.
"Hello?"
The echo of his own voice answered him back.
"Is anybody here?"
He stepped slowly down the hall, fumbling slightly on the rough earthen floor. He could make out the dim outlines of rows of doors in the distance.
"Hello?" he called again, louder this time.
"Hello, Yadonushi," blew a dark voice in his ear.
The humid heat of the breath against his neck sent a numbing through his limbs, and he barely registered his own violent trembling before a fist closed tight around a clump of his thick white hair and an arm hooked clear around his waist. He felt himself violently jerked back against a hard, warm body, and he willed his senseless hands to push vainly at the thick-muscled arm that held him. Sudden silent tears spilled fast down his cheeks.
"God, you're pathetic," the voice hummed in his ear. "At least put up a decent fight."
The fear shook him so deep that he wretched, and the presence dropped him in alarm. He fell down on his hands and knees with a hard smack and vomited onto the packed dirt floor.
"You're a mess," the voice said, colored with an acidic amusement. "Was I really that bad?"
There were hands in Ryou's hair, gentle, threateningly tender, gathering it away from his face as he spit out the last of the bile that coated his tongue.
"Yes," he breathed, closing his eyes against the spinning. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "You were that bad."
The answering laugh was dark and vicious and chillingly close, painting the pale shell of his ear cherry red.
"Then why did you save me?"
Ryou shook his head, fists balling against the ragged ground.
"I didn't—You're not real. This is a nightmare."
The presence grabbed him softly by the arms and pulled him up to standing.
"Look at me."
Ryou squeezed his eyes closed.
"You're gone, you—you died. This is a nightmare, you aren't really here."
"You keep me in a box of shadows and take me out when you're lonely. If I'm here, it's because you brought me out. And I'm here all right."
A large hand closed on his chin, stilling his shaking head. He grit his teeth and ground them together so hard it made a rasping sound.
"Look at me, Yadonushi."
Ryou balled his fists and sucked in a harsh lungful of dry air and opened his brown eyes wide. When the sparse light hit the back of his brain, the image it painted struck him mute.
There was a queer familiarity to the violet-colored, almond-shaped eyes, though he was sure he had never seen them before. The ragged cheshire grin was eerily bright in the golden brown skin. The hair too was different from how he remembered: a dusky gray rather than his own stark white, and cut above the shoulders.
Bakura was huge, towering half a head over Ryou's 5'9". He seemed to be Kaiba's height, but with a thick build that boasted formidable strength. In layered gold and floor length open red robe, he was more imposing than the Bakura with the black duster and tennis shoes that Ryou remembered. But instead of a quaking fear, Ryou felt something soft and creeping that troubled him to define.
His fingers grazed the pale scar that ran through the eye and over the cheek. He took in the aging bruises and welts that littered Bakura's exposed legs and torso with a gutless awe. Awe had momentarily replaced the fear he felt, and he forgot himself entirely in that moment of incomprehension. He faintly registered the sound of his own ragged breathing.
"You." he whispered.
Bakura thumped his chest with his right fist and splayed his other hand out beside him.
"Ardutu Serquis Malaku Aqefyah Baqaru."
Ryou stared, slack-jawed and uncomprehending. Bakura laughed his cruel and unhinged and magnetic bark of laughter and bowed low on bended knee.
"Prince of the Village of Thieves, Akefia the Conqueror. Born in the flames of ruin, with blood and suffering as my nursemaid. Reluctant final acolyte of the temple of Ishtar-she-who-brings-war at Kul Elna. First captain of the tomb runners, last of the banished viceroys of Assur. By the death of all my forebears, heir to the crown of the Tigris in exile. It's a pleasure to formally meet you, Yadonushi-sama."
Bakura extended his open hand, and Ryou gripped him at the wrist. They solemnly exchanged the tombkeepers' greeting.
"So you're one of them now? The tomb runners used to pillage and raid for sport. How pathetically soft the were without me. I bet that bastard Set extorted them into guarding the very tombs they once proudly robbed," Bakura said, sneering.
"They aren't like you," Ryou said softly.
"Don't play dumb. You sought the tombkeeper captain because he's like me. You missed me so bad you took my only living heir as refuge."
Ryou wretched again, dry and painful, and it shook his whole body. He clapped his hand over his mouth.
"How is my great-grandson?" Bakura said, folding his arms over his bare and scar-streaked chest. "Is he as good a lover as I was?"
Ryou broke at that. He stood straight and tall, a deep stillness settling over him. His features frosted over, eyes glinting glass-like in the candlelit hall.
"Don't use that word, please. Malik is nothing like you, he—and you never loved me. Never. A-and…"
"And?"
"You—you aren't him," Ryou said, staring blankly into Bakura's red-rimmed violet eyes.
Bakura threw his head back and laughed, long, belly-shaking laughs.
"God. You're a freak to the end. If you miss the part of me that was Zorc, you're even crazier than I thought."
Ryou bit his lip.
"I guess I am crazy if what I see when I finally dream again is you bullying me."
Bakura snorted.
"I wish this was a dream. This is my living nightmare," he said, pulling his robe aside. There was a killing wound over his liver and it gurgled clotted black blood as he breathed.
"Besides, you couldn't dream if you wanted to."
Bakura pulled his robe over the oozing hole and gave Ryou a pitying look.
"You're a dream eater, my devoted landlord. You have an endless capacity for darkness. You crave darkness like it's food, because to you, it is. You sucked me in before I could properly die because I'm your darkest mark. All my pain and rage must be delicious to a monster like you."
Ryou's eyes slitted and he turned away, giving Bakura his shoulder.
"You shut up. I'm done with you. I'm going to wake up now."
Bakura gripped Ryou's shoulder and squeezed hard.
"Wait. Hear me out. You kept me for a reason. A good one."
Ryou edged out of Bakura's grasp and took a step back. He took a deep breath. He had spent the better part of a decade with the spirit of the ring. He could taste the shifting flavors of its lies. What he tasted now was a tart, guileless desperation. He flinched when he realized how much pleasure he took in the fact that Bakura was in some way at his mercy now.
"You want to save your friends. Don't you, Yadonushi?"
Resolved, he met the piercing violet eyes with his own and nodded.
Shizuka rolled and chopped leaves of basil into neat little ribbons. She could hear her brother's voice in the dining room, and then a consonant ripple of laughter, his and Mokuba's. The sound was like a balm. She had been growing more and more worried about her brother and about her—she wondered if she could still call Mokuba her boyfriend.
It had been a hard spring, and it was turning out to be a hard summer. Even she felt Yugi's abcense. Whenever she visited Kame Games during one of Jounouchi's shifts, a blue gloom sucked the color out of all the bright displays.
Mokuba had it much worse. She could see him unraveling slowly the longer his brother was away.
She refused to believe they were gone. They would come back. They would. If she had to hold everyone together until they did, well. There isn't anything she wouldn't do.
She spilled a palmful of black peppercorns onto the cutting board and gently crushed them with the flat of her knife. She pushed half the basil and all of the crushed pepper onto the flat of her knife and gently brushed it into the pan of simmering crushed tomatoes.
She heard the sound of keys in the door. She perked up considerably at that: they were expecting.
"Oh! Mai," came Mokuba's voice.
"Well hello there, young Kaiba," said Mai, amused. "I subscribed to Time Magazine when I heard you could be man of the year. Don't you disappoint me now."
Mai was the one other person Shizuka could rely on when she herself needed a little pick-me-up. She rinsed and dried her hands, not wanting to miss out on hugs hello.
"Hello Mai!" she called from the kitchen.
"Hello, honey!"
There was the sound of a long zipper and then another—Mai's boots. Shizuka stepped up to the entrance just as Mai was putting on her house slippers.
"Jounouchi!" she said sharply. "You look like hell."
Jounouchi rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.
"Nice to see you too, ya old harpie."
"Manners!" Shizuka said. "Come on in, would you like some tea?"
"Yes please," Mai said, following Jounouchi into the living room.
Mokuba grabbed Shizuka's wrist, stopping them between the front door and the kitchen. Shizuka's eyes widened
"Shizuka," he said, cradling her face in his palms. "I'm really sorry. All this time, it's been nuts over there. I—"
"Shhh," she said, gently placing her small hands on his chest. "It's okay."
She watched his face go from tense and neutral—too like his brother—to open and scared and relieved and it almost brought tears to her eyes. She leaned in and kissed him, and she could feel him unwind beneath her fingers.
"I can make tea," he said, dreamy, when she pulled away. "If you want. You can go hang out."
She smiled. He ran his hand along her waist as he passed into the kitchen.
She peeked into the living room, where Mai and her brother were already sorting through some new cards they each had saved for the other.
"Seriously," Mai said. "You look unwell. What gives?"
Jounouchi cracked his neck and leaned back. The angle highlighted the bags under his eyes.
"I ain't been sleeping so great these days."
"Something on your mind?" Mai said, kicking off her slippers. She crossed her legs, wiggled her red-lacquered toes.
"Nah," he said, gazing appreciatively at the exposed length of her calf, tracing the anklebone and the arch of her foot with his eye.
"I just been having, I dunno. The strangest dreams."
Ryou lifted his face to the moonlight.
Something about moonlight soothed him. Solitary and wan, pale and alone but content to shine alone, and hide by turns, to turn away, to duck behind clouds. So quiet—a listening body, not a speaking body like the radiative sun. Dependable. Distant, but reliable.
Ryou liked the moon quite a bit.
There was an unseasonal chill in the air, and a lingering humidity from the day's light rain. His jeans clung to his calves, cold and damp, as he walked his bike along the riverside path.
'Tonight, Yadonushi. I mean it.'
He glanced at the translucent figure beside him.
"He'll never trust me ever again."
'I can see into your head. He already doesn't trust you. He never really did.'
Ryou bit his lip and mounted the bike.
"All right," he said. "Well. I'm trusting you. If you, I mean, if this is all a ruse—"
'A ruse? Who says that? You need to stop reading those fantasy novels.'
One side of Ryou's lip twitched up a fraction.
'And eat some meat, you're even skinnier than you were before.'
"Yes, mother."
'I'm serious. I hope you can climb the fence. If you can't, we're fucked.'
"I still don't know why we can't just go in through the gate."
Bakura sighed and gestured with his hands as he talked.
'I've already explained to you how this works. You know where the cameras are. The high fence in the back is the only way in.'
The moon followed Ryou as he rode down the path, and under the moon was the pale shadow of Bakura's hair.
This Bakura ran hotter than the spirit of the ring that Ryou remembered. He was louder, moodier, higher maintenance. He was viciously blunt, but less cruel. Less cruel. Bordering on his own brand of kind—
Ryou pedaled hard, choosing uphill trails, desperate to fight off the stinging guilt he felt. Guilt for what they were about to do, guilt for what they'd already done, and guilt for how comforting he found the constant presence at his side.
For weeks now Bakura had been following him everywhere, teaching him how to case targets, how to pick locks and spot cameras and how to steal.
He stole a set of lock picks from a big chain hardware store. He stole clothes, reams of black clothes and gloves and even a few pairs of shoes each with different treads to wear and discard after each mission.
He saw a man beating his dog and got so upset that Bakura convinced him to steal the man's wallet, and they did, and they bought a burner phone and minutes with the money they found inside.
What started as tremulous anxiety gave way to a bone-deep thrill every time they pulled off a job. Even the tiniest heist, a single pair of driving gloves from an outlet store, gave Ryou a satisfaction so deep that he stumbled back to his bike with his hands clasped over his mouth to keep himself from smiling.
Ryou smiled now as he tucked his hair into the black beanie he stole right in front of the bulky figure a loss prevention agent at a high end shop. The guard was too busy suspiciously eyeing a prim looking dark skinned couple. Ryou heard them speaking Arabic, though it didn't sound like the Egyptian dialect he was used to. He was so incensed by the profiling, he stole the hat right in front of the guard. They had ten hats at home, but he had wanted to do something, anything to feel less of a useless, impotent loser.
He didn't have Kaiba's resources or Malik's cunning. He didn't have Yugi's depthless empathy and patience. He didn't have the pharaoh's noble disposition. He didn't have Bakura's brute strength.
He was Ryou, just Ryou, quick smart fingers and mousy personality, easy to overlook, white hair or no. Invisibility as a superpower. The fact that people found him creepy for reasons neither they nor he could identify and so avoided him was his primary strength. Nobody liked to look him in the eyes. All he had to do was to look into any suspicious eyes that turned his way and smile sweetly, wait for them to shudder and retreat.
Maybe he would become a king of thieves too. Steal from the rich, give to whoever. He chuckled to himself.
'What's so funny?'
"I thought you could see inside my head," Ryou whispered. They were approaching the fence behind the housing complex.
Bakura crossed his thick arms and smiled.
'It excites you. It should, it's in your blood.'
Ryou double knotted his shoe laces and tucked the loops behind the tongue of his sneakers.
"I thought you said we weren't related."
Bakura laughed.
'We're not, my dear son of a tomb raider. I'm sorry—archeologist.'
Ryou stuffed his bike between two bushes and stepped back to make sure it was hidden. He approached the high chain link fence.
'One big motion, don't hesitate until your feet hit the ground on the other side. And quietly. Come on, I know you can.'
Ryou took a few quick steps and hopped up onto the fence. Bakura was climbing needlessly beside him, coaching him, and because of it he stayed collected enough to throw one long leg over the top bar, then close the remaining distance with a long but exhilarating jump.
'Good. Good, Yadonushi.'
"Now?"
'Once you're in the unit, you'll need to get into his dreams.'
Ryou inched along the outside wall of the complex, creeping in the shadow of the building.
"But how?"
'Give me your hands when we find him and I'll do the rest.'
"Okay. But just my hands," Ryou conceded, silently ascending the concrete stairwell.
"You won't hurt him, right?"
He slipped the lock picks from his back pocket and dripped some WD-40 onto the ends.
"Bakura?"