Our Lady Peace- Thief


-I-

It was either floating or falling—or perhaps he wasn't moving at all. He felt like he had been submerged in deep, cool water that dulled his senses and blurred his mind. Everything felt flat, as if all the trials and tribulations of life had gradually been sanded down, leaving the landscape of his life scattered with a thick layer of sawdust.

And there was a strange emptiness, as if he was picking up some deceptively light object that he had thought he would be unable to lift. He searched wildly, looking for the missing weight, but was unable to change anything.

Was he dreaming? But no—this was too light to be a dream, too calm, too quiet. Years of dreaming of fires and monsters and magic had taught him to believe that dreams of anything else were impossible. This had to be something else, something that he had never experienced before.

And then there was a rushing feeling and everything was pulled away. He opened his eyes—he had eyes now—and saw a tiled ceiling, bright, burning lines, smeared faces whose only discernable feature was eternal concern. He heard their voices. They were high-pitched, panicked. Without having to really hear them, to understand the individual words, he knew what they meant. They had no hope for him; they were merely waiting, standing on the sidelines with crossed fingers as they watched the battle rage inside him.

That sensation would only last a moment, and then he was back. Back in the world where he had no skin—because the air, the eternity—was his only shell. Where there was no weight, no thought, only sweeping plains and soft, silky blankets of time. There was nothing but him. He felt like he had been cut open, like he had splattered on the floor and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. And now all that he had tried to contain, to keep neatly stacked and meticulously organized in the manila folders and large, gray filing cabinets of his mind had exploded across the floor, started to climb the walls, clung to the ceiling like bats.

In a wild flurry, half-forgotten memories came streaming back, liquefying and blending themselves into a sloppy mélange of past and present. There were things he had tried to forget, things that he had, and, in a small, dusty pile in the far corner of his mind, he found memories that he was certain were not his own. He recoiled from them on instinct; delving too deep into them gave him the same intrusive feeling of reading a stranger's diary. However, the more he turned his back on these strange discoveries, the more they fought their way forward, begging for his attention.

And there was one that he simply could not ignore. It was lighter than the others, sweet and painfully smooth. It glowed like an inside-out sun, soft, warm, and unimaginably dangerous. He didn't want to touch it, didn't want to come near to its shinning surface, but just as the walls between his mind and body seemed to have dissolved, so too did those between his responsible reactions and reckless desires.

He delicately pulled on the end of it, and slowly and suddenly the delicate layers of suppression and the corrosion of time vanished. What remained were pure light, joy, dusty happiness, and harsh, sandy exultation. What remained was Egypt, the way he had always wanted it to stay.

He was sand, he was rich blue sky and thick transparent water. He was damp rocks and sticky layers of sand that clung like a second layer of skin. He was heavy, humid breezes, he was the sky breaking open at dawn. And so was she.

He have didn't see her—at least not in the conventional sense—to know what she looked like. Her image had long ago been imprinted on his soul like a sunburn that would never heal. She was pure beauty, a white-washed purity that he had never been able to find again. She was flowing white hair, long thin limbs, and eyes that overflowed with emotion. She was graceful concern as her cool, soft fingers caressed his dirty cheeks, as her eyes bent up like crumpled tin foil when she was worried. She was tightly pursed lips and doubt and worry as she asked him, "Bakura, what went wrong?"

To that he had no answer. Had it been when she had splattered across the windshield of that man's car like a pitiful insect? Or the first time he had strung that heavy gold pendant around his neck, gently cradling it against his skin as if it was something to be revered, something holy? Maybe it was the first time he had woken up cold and alone on the kitchen floor in clothes he couldn't remember buying. But those answers never satisfied her, she always insisted that he wasn't looking far back enough, that there was something he wasn't seeing.

He had no idea what it could be.

"Why do you call me that?" She would always ask him. "Don't you remember me?"

"Of course I remember! How could I ever forget you?"

"Then why don't you call me by my name?" He could feel her scowl like a cold wind—temperamental and unforgiving.

"Because that is your name…"

Whenever he said that it made her cry.

-II-

"Bakura! Bakura! Are you there?" Their voices were so heavy, so hard. It felt like they were hurling bricks at him when they spoke.

He could feel his blood pounding through his veins, running through him as if it were trying to tear him apart. He could feel the air struggling into his crumpled, leathery lungs. There was a certain strain in having to think in words. Just by being awake for these brief and hazy moments, his emotions were boxed into neat and proper characters when he wanted nothing more than for them to run wild and free. And he felt his skin, sucking off him like a leech and trapping him inside a prison that he hadn't even known had existed until he lived one moment without it.

He grew to hate being awake.

-III-

"Why couldn't we have always stayed like this, Bakura?" She would ask him, her tone wistful and sweet as flower nectar. "Why did everything have to fall apart? We used to be so happy together, but…it never stayed that way."

He never had an explanation for her. He would only listen, watch her as the dappled sunlight danced across her hair. There were times when he thought that his silence infuriated her, but he never knew what to say.

With a shrug of the shoulders and hopeless sigh he would sit next to her and watch the sun rise for the fifth time that day. Each one was slightly different, but they always remained exactly the same.

-IV-

The worst was when she brought up things that he was certain had never happened. Running barefoot through the desert, stealing fruit from the neighbor's baskets, playing tricks on the guards who came almost daily to inspect their homes—he couldn't recall any of them with any conviction or emotion. Listening to her stories, told with the fervor and brilliance of rich oil paints and syrupy stained glass, he felt like they must have been living separate lives. The only things he remembered were the fire and the sirens, the trip to the hospital, clenching her hand the entire way. She never wanted to talk about the fire.

"Why did you even come?" She asked. "Why bother if you don't even care about anything? But of course, you never cared about anything except your wild fantasies and foolish schemes for vengeance. You ran so far away from reality…I could never find you! Half the time—it was like you weren't even human! You weren't yourself…you weren't anyone."

"I never wanted to get revenge on anyone…"

She laughed, sharp and pure like chiming glass. "Is that what you say? Then why the magic? Why the gold and the spirits and the armies? And you think I'm the one imagining things?"

"I really don't know what you mean. Amané, those things never happened…"

"I told you not to call me that! Bakura, I don't know what to think of you. I thought that I had lost you before, but now it's like you're an entirely different person…"

And she would leave him alone, lost in the wind and the tides of his changing thoughts.

-V-

His condition was improving. He could feel it in the strengthening of his pulse. He could feel it as his skin put itself back together. He could see it as the world swam back into focus and the faces that greeted him were calm and cool, even cautiously optimistic.

He could sense it as his memories returned to their proper places. They folded in their corners, wiped themselves clean, and retreated back to where he kept them for safekeeping, though he was never able to directly touch or experience them.

The day before he was officially declared 'recovered,' Amané wrapped herself back into her silky egg shell, modestly hid herself under dusty layers of age and forgetfulness.

The day he was finally released from the confines of his hospital bed, the voice that narrated his thoughts returned dark and deep as night air, it seamlessly slunk back into his head as if it had never been gone.

Years later, he could still remember the arrogant, pained chuckle and the way it had shot icy sparks down his spine. And he could remember, with the same intensity of shock and confusion each time, as the spirit of the ring had chided him upon his return.

"You nosy fool." A long angry pause, and then a gradual and unintentional lessening of tension, like a balloon grudgingly releasing the last of its air. "Her name was Kisara."


Apparently I like tricking Ryou into thinking that every white-haired person he encounters is Amané. Now I just need to write a story where he meets Pegasus XD