The Fray- How to Save a Life


The silence wasn't becoming any easier to tolerate. It hung thick and sharp in the air like a heavy stone that was impossible to lift and heave away. Marik always tried to avert his eyes when he caught him starring up at him, waiting for a reply. Even in the still semi-darkness he could see them stinging with expectancy, with a kind of vulnerable, bruised, and battered anticipation that made him incredibly uncomfortable.

"I don't know." His voice was gray and thin; it sounded like falling down.

He turned away in a putrid mix of guilt and disgust as he saw Ryou shiver silently on the floor, as if the chill of his response had physically robbed him of something that he had been trying impossibly hard to protect. Heavily-lidded eyes sliding across the silky shadows that darted like children across the walls and ceiling, he shook his head softly.

"No, you must know. You—you must be able to help me!"

Why did he have to make it so difficult?

Marik gently released a feathery sigh as he meticulously retraced his steps, wondering with dreary dissolution how he could have so carelessly fallen into this position, how he could have gone from free agent, an entirely independent man, to delicately trying to keep Ryou's frail and fragile life from shattering in his shaking, clumsy fingers. That is, if he could even save his own.

He couldn't figure it out. It had been a subtle but rapid transformation, catching him out in the cold of frantic ambiguity like a sudden rainfall that he had convinced himself would never come.

It had began just as he was about to fade into sleep. The saturated, sloppily seeping sun was just closing its eyes to the scorching Egyptian sand, its honey-soaked hues slowly streaming from the sky like subtle spiraling clouds of invisible fog. A faint shadow of coppery brilliance still hung uneasily in the air, but with every passing moment it diminished more and more into the inky violet arms of nightfall.

He had heard stumbling outside his doorway, and his lopsided, stumbling silhouette materialized in the doorway. He was an unlikely pilgrim, unstable on his own feet, thrashing about wildly, as if he wasn't used to relying on his own two legs to carry him. Fierce, silver panic clawed at the edges of his eyes, but Ryou remained silent and stumbling, leaning heavily on the doorframe until Marik, thoroughly surprised and slightly unnerved by his sudden appearance, had allowed him to enter.

For a moment condensed, magnetic silence resounded between them, hungrily lashing at Ryou's thoughts with acidic potency before they managed to creep out as timid, flickering little words. But his eyes drew Marik into their sparkling, celestial orbit and refused to relinquish him. Even in the descending darkness they shimmered with silky islands of helpless naivety that floated tremulously in an uncharted sea of bitterness, confusion, and engulfing despair.

Just looking at him, feeling the energy from those glassy orbs piercing his skin like the sun, Marik felt that, perhaps for that single caged, iron-clad moment, they read each other thoughts and feelings like glowing neon signs.

And then he spoke.

"I need to know that it gets better."

For a moment Marik merely let the echo of his words drift through the thick, fleshy air. He focused more on the gaps between his words, the thoughts that he chose not to say. He couldn't pretend that he didn't know. He remembered the screaming, fragmented night himself—the first night in any tangible memory that he had spent entirely alone. Looking at Ryou now, so near to the point of crumbling that his skin was practically peeling, he was dragged back to that same night spend scratching at the walls and jumping at the distant ruffle of the wind.

He was about to speak, to say what he had no idea, when Ryou's voice cut through his memories like a sudden obstacle on a dark road.

"I didn't mean to intrude on you like this, but it's something that Yuugi wouldn't really understand. I don't think he had the same problem that I, that we did." He laughed a soft series of silver chimes. "Maybe I just never understood him, but I felt that…maybe you would know better how to help me."

"How can I help you?"

Ryou refused to meet his eyes, but his eyes were transfixed by his silhouette etched across the wall in a deep, humid bronze across the cool stone. "The same way you helped yourself." His words were placid, almost transparent, and seemed to amass in a wiry shell that threatened to encompass him. "Because you did, didn't you? You're not the same person that you were when he was still there, are you? And everyone knows it?"

"I'd like to think so."

"How can I make them see it in me? When they talk to me or call my name, how will they know it's not really him, just come back again? He fooled them so many times, how will they even be able to tell the difference anymore? Will I?"

"Ryou," Marik savored the sacred sound of the name as it spilled over his lips like a bubbling waterfall. "You're not like him, anyone could see that. You're a better person than he could ever dream of being."

Ryou shook his head as if trying to rid himself of a bad dream, and for the first time he let lose the full power of his searing, stabbing eyes on Marik's unsuspecting conscience. They burned with raw vulnerability, took him back to the time he was nearly blinded by his first sight of the sun.

"That's exactly the problem." He voice sank into low, feathery whispers. "I used to think that, too. The thing that kept me sane was knowing that I would never be like him, that there was always some tiny part of me that he could never reach. But he had a way of breaking down all the barriers I put up. He took my friends, my memories; he stole my name. He had no sense of privacy. But—but what made me think that I was so much better than him, after all? Just because I had never stolen or anything really bad like that—it didn't mean that I had never thought about it, that I hadn't for a single moment thought myself capable.

"There was no point in trying to put up the walls between me and him, I don't think. There were times when I thought that we weren't so different, when you got to the heart of it…" He shut is head and turned forcibly away, so that Marik was forced to study the deliberate curves of his profile it the last snatches of the evening light.

Recovering quickly from the dazzling thrill of hearing so many words rush liberally from Ryou's usually neatly buttoned lips, Marik sprung into action. He faced Ryou directly, as unswervingly as he dared, drinking in every facet of his face and wondering in the most fleeting, distant corners of his mind if he could ever garner the courage to touch him. "Listen, Ryou, you are nothing like him. I can—I can see it right now. Do you honestly believe that the spirit of the Ring would ever come to anyone looking for advice?"

"No, I suppose not…"

"So doesn't that mean something?"

"It does…but it's not enough. I need to know, I need to see that I'm different. There were times—there were times when, I don't know, maybe something bad happened to me some day or something, and I would think such horrible things and I would be so angry. I hated being so mad at everyone all the time…"

"And you think that was his influence on you?"

"I don't know!" Splintering flashes of lightning seemed to emanate from his skin as he spoke, each gesture and expression becoming increasingly fragmented. He looked close to shattering. "I blamed it on him, I know I did. Everything that went wrong was always his fault. But then…then I start to think that it was me all along. That's how everyone is going to see it. They'll say that they understand, but I don't think that's true. How can they see me any other way, after all the things I did? How could they ever believe in me? But they believe in you, now anyway…"

He studied Marik's face like a map, laboriously reading its curves for any sign of salvation.

"Ryou, I've felt the same way, believe me. It would destroy me to always dwell on the events of the past. But you can't let those experiences define you. Above all, you have to remember that it wasn't you. We've faced something extraordinary, and it was hard, but we'll be stronger for it. You'll be stronger. I mean," a tiny tremor crashed across his shoulders "there are horrible scars on my past that I can never erase completely. Sometimes I wish that I could, sometimes I wish that I could just start my life over so that I could do everything right. But I can't do that, Ryou. I know you've had dark hours, and I have, too. But with my sister and my friends, I've realized—"

"Realized? What could you have realized? That there's some tidy solution to everything? It wasn't me—of course it was me! It was me the whole time! Maybe not my whole mind, but it was always me. I let it happen."

"You didn't let it happen."

"I let it happen. And so did you. You can't just run away from that."

With Ryou's words the clouds overtook the moon, which had penetrated the wide expanse of sky at some point during their conversation. Their sharp glinting silhouettes were eaten by the gloom, leaving only faint, murky shadows where they had once stood.

And so the night trudged on, their words echoing against the sky like terrible, discordant music that made Marik's ears fell charred and bitter. Their voices swirled across the walls and festered in the cracks in the ceiling, refusing to leave either in peace even in their brief moments of consoling, hallowed silence.

Gradually, the vivid passion in their voices evaporated into the night, replaced by gray murmurs and empty ripples of noise. The sweet, strawberry blue sunshine began to lick the walls and pool in airy puddles on the floor. It lapped at Ryou's cheeks as he lay on the floor, resisting sleep steadfastly with the astringent determination of a vigilante. Over and over his smooth, melodious words spilled from his throat in questions that Marik could scarcely understand, let alone answer.

"What I am a supposed to be now?" he wondered listlessly. Marik hated the reverence that blossomed in his eyes whenever they met from across the floor. It reeked of an ignorant adoration that he felt himself very far from deserving.

"I don't know." He sighed, watching his fingers tangle and snarl among the chaos of his bed sheets.

"No, you must know. You—you must be able to help me!"

"And what made you thing that I had all the answers?"

Ryou slowly gathered himself onto his knees, kneeled at Marik's feet. "Because you made it. People trust you now, they're not afraid of you like they are of me. You're so strong—so right."

Marik looked impossibly tall from Ryou's perspective, perched on his bed like a king surveying his empire, the sun igniting behind his wild wreath of golden hair. Everything he touched seemed to burst into life.

"Ah, Ryou, you have no idea," he chuckled softly. "Come here." He gently patted the spot next to him on his bed. "You need to sleep, you look exhausted."

Ryou shook his end but complied, his head nearly collapsing on Marik's shoulder the instant he sat down. Through words heavily smudged by fatigue, he mumbled, "I can't sleep…if I don't know…"

"Don't worry, Ryou," Marik whispered silkily as his hand caressed Ryou's pale forehead, brushing the hair from his eyes. "We'll figure it all out—eventually."

As heavy and as limp as they felt, Ryou struggled to keep his eyes open. For a moment the air burned like melting iron and it felt like all the air in the atmosphere had already been exhausted and neither of them could force themselves to turn away and somewhere, billions of miles away, the sun shone brighter between them, enshrining them in its magnanimous embrace.