"Betrayed me
Played me
Slayed me
Hurt me like I've never been hurt before
Disowned me
Only
For the
Other people you decided that you wanted in your life more."
~I Hate U by Simon Curtis
Six days ago…
"I'm glad you could make it," Bakura said with a grin as he opened the door and let Marik enter the apartment.
"You paid for the tickets, so I figured I didn't have anything to lose but a little time," Marik retorted as he stepped inside and entered the main living area, trying to maintain the appearance of proud reluctance as he sat on the couch with his arms crossed, his backpack on the cushion beside him to keep Bakura from occupying that space. "And for your information, I am in touch with some of my Rare Hunters. There are still some in Domino who'd be willing to do me a favor." There were others across the nations that would do his bidding as well, but Bakura didn't need to know about those ones.
"Good, because as I said, we'll need a scapegoat for this to be successful." Bakura locked the front door and sat in the armchair, crossing his legs as he turned his body to face his old friend. "So be sure to pick one that you won't miss. He can't be a complete idiot, though. He needs to be smart enough to know his way around computers but gullible enough that he thinks he won't get caught."
"It'd help if you told me what your plan is exactly." Marik glared at the Spirit of the Millennium Ring with a sour expression. He didn't like being kept in the dark.
"Yadonushi's tried every conventional means of communicating with his father, all to no avail. That leaves the unconventional methods for me to try."
"Get to the point," Marik snapped impatiently. He couldn't hide the discomfort he felt from being alone with Bakura.
"We're going to build a bomb and—"
"No!" Marik stood up immediately with the intention of leaving. "You promised nobody would get hurt!"
"Wait, you don't even know the rest of the plan!" Bakura protested, rushing after the Egyptian teen who marched over to the exit. Marik tried to open the front door, but Bakura slammed the door shut with one fist on the edge of the door above the other's head. Marik turned on him, angry that his departure was being impeded, but found himself pinned against the door as Bakura also pressed his other hand to the surface behind Marik and inched closer to him.
"Hear me out, Marik. I promised not to hurt anybody, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did, but you're not exactly the most trustworthy person I know," Marik conceded, trying to keep himself from blushing as Bakura leaned forward with half-lidded eyes and a playful smirk.
"You came all this way, though, so deep down somewhere, you must believe in me." Bakura dropped one hand from the door and slowly traced one finger up the length of Marik's arm, starting at his wrist and slowly ascending to his shoulder. "You've been working out," he noted appreciatively when his finger traced over Marik's bicep, finally eliciting a coral blush from his friend.
"Knock it off, Bakura," Marik muttered, his eyes averted as his hands formed fists at his sides. He didn't need this right now. He should just shove Bakura away and leave. Except—
Marik really did want Ryou's father to come home, for the boy's own sake. Out of the three hikaris, Ryou had the worst deal. He was miserable, and that fact wouldn't change until Bakura left him for good. If Ryou's father were to return, however, surely his misery would be at least partially assuaged?
Just as Marik was about to push the white-haired thief away, Bakura leaned back of his own accord, crossing his arms as he smirked with satisfaction.
"Perhaps you'll let me finish telling you my plan before you jump to anymore conclusions?"
"Fine," Marik muttered, pushing past him to enter the kitchen. As he started checking the cabinets, he muttered, "Do you have any coffee? You're so boring I can barely keep my eyes open." The jet-lag from Egypt to Japan was something awful.
"My host only drinks tea," Bakura answered as he sat at the kitchen counter and watched every move his Egyptian friend made. "The plan, in its simplest form, is that we build a bomb, strap it to my host's chest, have him take a classroom hostage, and make him demand for his father to be brought to him or else he'll blow them all sky high. So, what do you think?"
Marik glared fiercely at the spirit as he lit the burner beneath the full tea kettle. "That's a terrible plan, if that's all you plan on doing. Have you even considered the consequences?"
"I have, which is why I said that's not the whole plan." Bakura glared back at him with equal annoyance. "For one thing, Ryou's detonator will be fake. The real detonator will be with your Rare Hunter in a sketchy building not too far from the school, but it'll be disconnected so that not even he can set it off. Does that satisfy your need for safety?" he asked harshly, and Marik only nodded in response, more curious about Bakura's plan than he'd like to admit. "The Rare Hunter will need be watching a live feed of what's going on inside the classroom, so he'll have to have a laptop with him so he can hack one of the webcams."
"Why are there webcams inside a classroom?" Marik interrupted, looking confused.
"They put computers in some of the classrooms for educational use or something," Bakura muttered with an indifferent wave of his hand, obviously apathetic about the administrative practices of the public school system. "The Rare Hunter will be playing the part of a terrorist, and he'll relay a few instructions to my host every now and then. We'll give him a script or something so that he knows what to say."
"How will Ryou hear him?" Marik interrupted again, and Bakura rolled his eyes.
"He'll have an earwig, which I was about to say if you hadn't cut me off." Marik glared at Bakura as the thief cleared his throat to continue. "We'll have to find a way to make it look like Ryou was contacted and manipulated by terrorists."
"Why would terrorists want Ryou to get his father back?"
Bakura sighed dramatically as Marik smirked at how aggravated the spirit was. "That's something we'll have to find out. The man spent plenty of time in the Middle and Near East doing his archaeological work, so he's bound to have offended some kind of violent, fundamentalist sect with his desecration."
"Didn't you used to desecrate tombs, though?" the Egyptian asked with false innocence in his lavender eyes.
Bakura brought down both fists on the kitchen counter as his face turned red with anger. "I wasn't saying that his actions were considered desecration by me, simply that someone would be violent enough and insulted enough by his actions to wish him dead and attempt killing him by having his son blow them both up together."
Marik considered his words, looking thoughtful as Bakura made an effort to restore himself to a state of calm self-assurance. "Huh, that actually sounds fairly plausible," he muttered, a bit impressed with Bakura's plan. "How long did it take you to come up with all that?"
"Just a couple hours." The thief smoothed down his stubbornly spiky hair, looking proud of himself. As the tea kettle started to whistle, Marik turned the stove off and went to the cupboard to find himself a mug.
"Better put that in a thermos. We need to get going so that we can start hacking."
"Where are we going?" he asked as he removed a thermos from the cupboard and added a teabag to it before pouring the hot water.
"We can't have any of this traced back to us," Bakura said from the far side of the room where he was burdening himself with a pair of laptop bags. "You haven't checked into a hotel yet, have you?"
"No, I didn't think I'd actually be sticking around long enough to need one," Marik replied disdainfully as he sealed his thermos of black tea and took his backpack off the couch.
Bakura grunted in disbelief at that. "Good, because we're staking out in a motel."
"Why would we do that?" Marik demanded, crossing his arms in indignation.
"Like I said," Bakura answered impatiently, "We can't have any of this tied back to us or my host, so we're going to use untraceable laptops in an untraceable motel room. That way, even if the police do figure out that we hacked the terrorists' email account and the location from which it was hacked, they'll have no idea who did it."
"You've been watching crime shows, haven't you?" Marik asked suspiciously as Bakura led them out the front door.
"Correction: Yadonushi has been watching crime shows."
"I'll bet you cheer for the criminals."
"The serial killers tend to be my favorite characters."
Marik snorted derisively. "They would be."
Five days ago…
"When do you plan on contacting that Rare Hunter?" Bakura demanded as he typed furiously on his laptop, slouching in his chair as he hacked into an Email server in Egypt.
"In a couple days," Marik answered lazily, rolling onto his back and staring at an upside-down Bakura as he lay sideway across the bed, his head hanging off one side as his feet dangled off the other. "I already drafted the email and did everything else you told me to do."
"Are you sure you did enough snooping around on Ryou's laptop?" the thief demanded, looking irritated by his partner's inactivity. Marik wasn't nearly as adept with computers as Bakura was, which made more of the process rest on Bakura's shoulders than the thief would have liked.
"Yeah, he does enough research on depression and suicide on his own that I really didn't need to add much," his partner replied quietly. The Egyptian watched the Brit with sad eyes.
"What are you making that face for?" Bakura growled when he finally noticed it.
"You really should take better care of him, Bakura."
The thief grunted noncommittally, much to Marik's irritation.
"I'm serious. You're not always going to be around to keep him from killing himself. If he commits suicide after you're gone, it'll be all your fault."
"You assume that I'll be leaving him one day, that I won't be victorious over the Pharaoh, and that I won't banish Yadonushi's soul to the Shadow Realm before that battle comes. Who knows, one of these days I might just get so sick of him that I'll send him to hell like he keeps trying to do to himself."
"You're not going to do that."
Bakura glared at his fair-haired companion. "What makes you so sure that I won't?"
"Because your souls are tied together somehow," Marik answered, a little unsure of how to articulate the connection between Ryou and Bakura that he'd felt when he still wielded the Millennium Rod.
"Yes: I'm the parasite and he's my host. I told you that back in Battle City."
"It's more than that," Marik insisted, shaking his head in disagreement. "You feel something for him, you know you do. Why else would you be working so hard to bring his father home for him?"
"Maybe I just like to get him all worked up only to dash his hopes," Bakura remarked callously as Marik rolled onto his stomach and slunk off of the bed.
"You don't have to work this hard to do that, though," Marik pointed out. His voice was closer, and Bakura looked up from the computer screen to see Marik leaning over him, one bronze hand braced on the back of his chair. Bakura smirked. "What's the real reason you're doing this, Bakura?"
"I'm sick of his infernal weeping," Bakura answered scornfully, the smirk slipping from his face. "Honestly, he cries more than a hormonal woman."
"I'll bet he's not the only one," Marik answered softly, dropping his free hand to cup Bakura's cheek. The thief froze, his piercing gaze directed at Marik as he tried to figure out his endgame.
"I don't cry."
"Not in this lifetime, perhaps," Marik murmured thoughtfully, brushing the pad of his thumb across the other's cheekbone. "But Ryou's not the only one to lose his family."
Bakura scowled fiercely as he muttered, "At least I didn't kill my parents." Marik gasped sharply, deeply wounded by the comment. He lifted his hand and smacked Bakura as hard as he could, leaving the other teen's cheek bright red as he turned and stomped away with a look of utter fury.
"My mother died of natural causes," he growled at last.
"Yes, she died while giving birth to you."
"This is why we broke up, Bakura!" Marik burst out, rounding on him as red-hot anger flooded his mind. "This is why it would be a mistake for us to get back together!"
"I don't want to get back together!" Bakura shouted back defensively.
"Then why is there lube in your laptop bag?" Marik demanded at equal volume.
"Because, Marik, I just want to fuck you!"
"Do you really think I'm that easy?"
"You were last time!"
"You're such a slut!"
"It takes one to know one!"
"Shut up!" Marik screamed, clutching his head as he suddenly dropped to his knees. "Shut the fuck up, Bakura!"
The pure agony that distorted Marik's features made the spirit fall silent. He knew that expression, knew what it meant. He set his laptop down on the ottoman and crept out of his chair. His footsteps were as silent as death as he approached Marik and knelt beside him. He put an arm around his shoulders, which was enough encouragement for Marik to cling tightly to him with no intention of letting go.
For all of his posturing and his terrible behavior, Bakura did truly care for Marik. That was why he tried so desperately hard not to be too kind to him. That was what had driven the two of them apart last time.
"Don't push me like that." Marik's words were harsh and spoken with much difficulty as he worked past the throbbing pain in his head as his other self threatened to return. It was a plea as well, though. Marik feared his other self as much as Bakura did.
"I won't," Bakura whispered in return, his eyes closed as they continued to embrace in the quietude of their room. No apologies, no promises, just the faint gasp of Marik's ragged breathing.
The previous day…
"So let me just make sure that I have this straight," Marik said, draining the last of his tea before continuing. "We're framing the Rare Hunter to look like a terrorist from an extremist cult that was insulted by Mr. Bakura's archaeological expedition. The terrorists manipulated Ryou after finding him on a forum filled with other suicidal teens. They get him to tell them about his dad, and they convince him that this is the best way to get his father to come home."
"And that's the conversation you and I posted on the forum yesterday," Bakura interjected, pushing back Marik's bangs so that they no longer flopped in front of his eyes.
"And you'll be dropping just enough hints that they'll be able to tell that Ryou's not completely in control of the situation, and when they figure it out, they'll trace the computer hacking and the earwig signal back to where the Rare Hunter is hiding out. He'll get arrested and—Wait, why won't he rat us out again?"
"Because I can erase and alter his memories with the Millennium Ring," Bakura reminded him, tracing the outline of Marik's lips as he leaned back against the counter so that he could face the Egyptian.
The eyelids belonging to those lilac eyes drooped as he blushed and his expression softened.
He let Bakura press a teasing kiss to the corner of his mouth as the thief murmured, "And because we covered all of our tracks, neither of us nor Ryou will get into any trouble. Sure, they'll see that he's a bit disturbed, but I figured you'd like that part, since you care so much about his wellbeing, because it means that he'll get help."
"Bakura?" The slightly taller teen had difficulty breathing as the other's lips ghosted across his own.
"Hm?"
"You're sure this will actually bring Ryou's father home?"
"I'm certain."
"Even if they stop him?"
"Especially if they stop him," Bakura assured. "Because they'll see how much he needs his father to come home. Besides, once his father's returned to the country, there's always the option of prosecuting him for neglect."'
"They won't do that, though, right?" Marik looked genuinely concerned, but Bakura just shrugged.
"It's not up to me at that point." He carded his fingers through the other's platinum blond hair in a way that seemed to reassure him, and Bakura smirked. "I know I could get you to come back to Domino."
Marik frowned and kicked his partner in the shin.
"I mean, thank you for coming back," Bakura muttered, and it was Marik's turn to smirk.
"Much better."
Author Notes: My first ever substantial attempt at Thiefshipping! It's about time, too, considering how hard I ship them. ^_^ I think that cleared everything up… If you have any questions left unanswered, please post them in a review so that I can be sure to address them in the next and final chapter!
And in yet another fic, I write Yami Bakura as a sexist. Don't be offended by him.
Also, I picked that quote from "I Hate U" for this chapter because that's how Bakura sees Marik's conversion to the good side: as a betrayal, ditching him for Yugi's dweeb patrol (in the words of Seto Kaiba). And that betrayal would have been especially poignant for Bakura because he hated himself for loving Marik, indulged the feeling by entering into a relationship with him, and was then hurt by it just like he feared.
