Disclaimer: I have no rights to Yu-Gi-Oh! or its characters. I'm merely a fan. I make no profit from this story whatsoever.

Well, here's chapter one!

-Zlae

CHAPTER 1 – ALARM:

There was a pause. It was small, and it was unintentional, but it was a pause nonetheless. The man opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. He was an intimidatingly attractive man, with shoulder-length brown hair and icy-blue eyes.

"So, this man; Ryou Bakura, has no living relatives, no place of residence, no close friends, and has been wrestling with self-inflictions for three years." He sighed, not finished with the depressing list that had befallen the near-twenty-three year old. "He has also recently battled a drug addiction, and was discharged from a mental institution only two months ago."

The skittish runner just nodded anxiously, eager to get out of this seemingly frightening man's presence as quickly as possible. "…Lovely," he said with a weary sigh, slumping down as he cradled his head in his hands, in deep thought. He waved his hands in dismissal, and the runner stayed true to her name, fleeing as quickly as possible.

His eyes roamed, fixating on the photo frame that broadcasted the happiness he had once shared with his wife; a beautiful young woman with stunning white hair and a fragility he couldn't help but try to protect. "I'd try and kill myself if all of that shit happened to me, too," he whispered to the unoccupied air.

Ryou was falling. He was falling inside the black, with nothing for his flailing hands to grip. He could see nothing, and yet he could feel penetrative glares fix him into the falling air. His skin began to chill, and he could barely supress the shivers that coursed through his frail body. Opening his scarred mouth, he inhaled a lungful of air that was seemingly endless. He tried to scream, and no sound escaped his lips. The sound was stolen by the wind, floating up through the atmosphere.

Instead, he looked down, and saw the stained pavement. He tried to move, to escape this nightmare. But his muscles were still; his cheeks were frozen in a panicked smile, caused by the force of the air flying into his opened mouth from the attempted scream. All that could move was his panicked eyes, continuously moving back in forth within their prison, as if searching for an escape from the inevitable future that awaited him.

As the time sped up and the bloodstained ground rushed up to meet him, he couldn't close his eyes. Pain ricocheted throughout his entire body; it was as if there were a million men, ripping apart the frays that seamed him shut. Blackness clouded his vision and he opened his mouth, waiting to hear no sound. But his lungs screamed at him, and such a deafening scream made blood trickle out of his ears. It stained the white, supposedly pure colour of his hair with red.

As he shattered into a million pieces like glass, an unwelcome memory intruded his vision; the beginning of the downwards spiral that was his current state.

Almond-coloured eyes opened, and Ryou feared he would see the broken pieces that formed him. His fears did not fabricate, and instead, he was a younger him of twenty, foolish and easily influenced. He wasn't a bad kid; not yet, anyway. He looked around, and his eyes bore witness to the night that changed his happily-led life. Panic pumped through him, he tried to run. But his body was not his own, he was an anachronism; he didn't belong at this time. All he could do was watch through his misled eyes as his hesitant, unblemished hands reached for the pill.

"C'mon man, just take it! Know what it's like to live a free life, away from these fuckers and their expectations!" The boy – and his older self – looked up at the man that had outstretched his hands that looked so clean. But Ryou, older and more experienced, knew the blood, sweat and tears that had encased those hands. He'd fired guns, touched bodies, exchanged money, taken drugs, and indulged in all other sorts of debauchery with those calloused hands. He wasn't the person he used to be.

"Marik," Ryou hissed to himself, wishing to tear apart the man he had thought was his lover. What a foolish, unforgivable mistake. Ryou froze as his younger self reached towards the pill, seemingly comforted by the easy smile Marik had provided. Ryou knew it was sinister, coated with horrible intentions. But his younger self had refused to believe that his then-boyfriend had anything but best wishes for him. Oh, how foolish he was.

"Don't!" Ryou yelled to himself, trying to get through to the clouded mind he inhabited. "Don't do it!" He yelled again, hoping he could prevent the pathetic excuse of a man he had become. How ironic, to know that he was screaming at his younger self the same way his conscience had at him that day.

Time did not freeze, nor did it slow. His hands did not falter, and they encased the hands that had roamed over his body countless times. He took the pill into his own smooth hands as a pleased smile appeared on Marik's undeniably handsome face.

Marik moved forward, and Ryou remembered this part no matter how many times he scrubbed his skin and willed it to go away. They were in a rented room with broken shutters and flickering lights. The wallpaper had mould creeping up and dirty clothes adorned the floor gracelessly. Marik's hands caressed his chest, and Ryou's stomach fluttered; whether in dread or anticipation, he couldn't tell. Marik pushed him down onto the bed, and the pill was momentarily forgotten. Clothes were quickly torn from each other's bodies. Outside of the room it was silent. It was an eerie silence, blanketing all sound except their hurried breaths mingling together. Ryou closed his ethereal eyes, not willing to relive this part of his life again.

When he reopened them, they were both sprawled naked on the bed, and he was still watching through the ignorant eyes of his younger self. Marik's lean body had countless scratches of Ryou's doing, and Ryou's pale, shaking body curled up into a ball. One of Marik's arms lay possessively on Ryou's shoulders, as if claiming him as his own. Ryou had unsteadily slipped out of Marik's strange embrace and quietly walked towards the balcony. His footsteps were almost as light as his breathing, and he opened the ungreased door at an agonisingly slow speed, making sure it didn't squeak. Walking out of the warm but unpleasant room, he shut the door behind him, still making no sound.

As the cool air assaulted his body, he looked out into the night. He did not shiver, did not cower in on himself in the blank openness of the dark sky. He unwound his bony arms from his aching body and held them in balled fists, directed towards the ground he didn't dare himself to walk upon. Only then, in the solitude of the night's emptiness, did he allow himself to cry.

"Check on the patient," the man commanded without question, absent-mindedly twisting a pen around with his thumb and forefinger. A blonde haired woman looked up and realised she was being addressed by him.

"Right away, sir!" She squeaked, just before hurriedly walking away in her uncomfortable-looking heels.

"You'd think people would stop acting so terrified around me after going to all these lengths to conceal my identity," Seto mused. He was no longer the hotshot billionaire, Seto Kaiba. Instead, he was the intelligent doctor, Kaito Base. It wasn't that hard to figure out, but most people wouldn't believe he was the man anyway, which was a bonus. While he still maintained a cold, arrogant attitude, he had been slipping as of late. Instead of letting the assistants leave with a biting insult, he'd been rather silent and subdued.

"Damn it, Mokuba," Seto mumbled to himself, still dwelling on thoughts of the brother that would always remain little to him.

"Kaito, sir?" He heard the obnoxious yelling of that same woman, and began berating himself for thinking of firing her almost immediately. 'Old habits die hard,' he thought with an internal smile. She seemed rather shaken, and Seto didn't bother to let that affect him. If she wanted his attention, she was going to walk up to him and stop being so brash.

Unfortunately, that method wasn't working.

Sighing inaudibly, he stood up from his comfortable office chair and snapped in an equally loud voice, "What is it?" He could almost hear the surprise from where she stood, and he just chose to ignore it. "Well?" He prompted, losing his patience until his eyes saw something.. strange.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, immediately brought back to reality. Distantly, he was aware of hearing the slight shuffle of documents, but his mind hadn't really registered it. "It's about that other patient, Ryou… Bakura?" Her voice gained a higher pitch at the end of the sentence, making it sound like a question. But Seto didn't feel the need to reassure her, and even if he wasn't preoccupied, he probably wouldn't have anyway.

At that moment, his attention was completely captured by what he had just seen on Ryou Bakura's heart monitor.

Ooh, cliffhanger!

I hope I'm not completely predictable.

That would suck ass.

Anyway, I hope you guys don't mind, but when Seto's not spoken to, I'll address him as Seto and not Kaito.

So, the usual – reviews and comments are appreciated!

Thanks!