Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! does not belong to me.
A.N. This is the follow up story to the one-shot, Le soleil, la lune. I hope it is as well liked as that was!
Le soleil
Ryou opened his eyes to his living room, bathed in light. Groggily the teenager sat up, long legs swinging off the couch as he sat upright, rubbing his eyes. His hands were dry and stiff, something like dried mud flaking off his fingertips. When brown eyes focused he noticed it was blood, not dirt, and made a sound halfway between a gasp of surprise and a groan of exasperation.
Would it be too much to wash his hands?
A moment later a dark voice laced with malicious amusement lanced through his mind. It's a present for you, host. Would it please you to know how he screamed?
Ryou shuddered and stood, bare feet padding silently as he made his way to the kitchen not replying to his darker half. He was dressed in loose jeans and no shirt, doubtless something Bakura had decided to pull on before his ritualistic observance of the sunrise. He turned on the faucet, bothering only with the hot water. Sighing as he poured a generous amount of dish soup into his cupped palm, Ryou scrubbed his hands together beneath the running stream, soupy suds bubbling up as he scraped at the dried flakes of reddened brown, making sure it all washed down the sink.
He didn't remove his hands until they were a vicious red.
After that he went directly to the shower, stayed there for a hour, and cried.
He was careful to ignore the papers that day, having no desire to see whether or not his yami's victim had been found or not. Instead he decided a nice walk through the park would do well to calm his nerves, some fresh air sounding tempting. And after all, it was the weekend and a beautiful day. What business did he have spending it moping indoors?
That was how the white haired teenager found himself walking slowly through Domino City's central park, a nice area that was surrounded by neighborhoods and a place where the sound of playing children and couples out for a walk were common.
Ryou strode along the paved pathways alone, taking a simple pleasure in simply watching people and, quite literally, smelling the roses. He was almost disappointed when he heard his name called, pulling him out of a reverie that , rarely, had nothing to do with a life that for all intent purposes was lacking something very important.
Brown eyes met the eager lavender of a shorter boy, smiling as Yuugi Motou ran up to him, excitement evident in the boy's large smile and the way it looked like he wanted to jump up and down.
"Hello Yuugi, how are you today," Ryou said politely. He liked Yuugi but sometimes he felt inexplicably sad whenever he was around him and his friends. Perhaps it was because they were so tightly knit it was practically impossible to feel apart of the group of friends. Perhaps it was because the boy had a yami who loved him and treated him like a person whom he actually cared about in a genuine way and not the twisted, frightening fashion which his own yami had confessed to him when he had thought his weak little light was sleeping.
Ryou was very careful to hide that knowledge from Bakura, mental walls rectified and impenetrable.
"Ryou! I saw you on the other side of the park and thought 'I know him!' and just had to say hello!" the smaller boy said exuberantly, out of breath as he rested his hands on his knees.
Ryou smiled at him. "All that effort just to say hello?" the young British native murmured, tilting his head to the side and looking down at Yuugi.
Think of how easy it would be to reach forward and snap his neck, a poisonous voice suddenly whispered and Ryou jumped, but kept his smile in place.
"What brings you to the park today, Yuugi? Are you meeting Jounouchi? Or Honda and Anzu?" Anyone save him.
"No, I just wanted to take a walk and spend some time with Yami, you know?" he said, standing up straight and looking to the bright bed of blooming daffodils to their right, flowering a beautiful sun-gold yellow. Ryou hummed his agreement, eyes following Yuugi's, one pale hand reaching up to brush away a strand of colorless hair. "Well," he said. "I should get going. I was going to pick up a few things at the market and-"
"Ryou."
He stopped mid sentence at the new voice, brown eyes returning to Yuugi who was now taller than the boy he knew, who's eyes were sharper than the boy he knew.
Yami.
Pharaoh!
...Ironically enough he hated it when they switched like that. It always threw him off and truth be told...he didn't often like what the long dead Pharaoh had to say.
"...Oh, hello Yami," he said, giving an embarrassed laugh and rubbing his neck. "How are you today? Enjoying the park?"
Yami looked at him, as if he was attempting to see through his skin, as if he was trying to make sure it was Ryou and not the tomb thief he had hated so many thousands of years ago and still did. Finally he smiled, expression friendly, like a big brother, or a bully.
"I wanted to speak with you," he said, deeper voice never failing to make Ryou listen with rapt attention. Bakura's voice had the same effect. When either of them spoke he listened and could never tune them out if he tried. Both of them were too domineering, both of them demanded attention. Both of them were, in their ways, so frighteningly alike that it made Ryou want to cry at the unfairness of it all. Yuugi got Yami, and he got Bakura.
Bakura...who hated himself for loving him. Such a terrible unfairness there...
"Did you?" he replied, playing the part of the shy and polite boy all of them had met that day in class. "Did I do something?"
Yami laughed lightly and waved a hand in a negative gesture. "No, no," he said. "I just wanted to speak to you...about the Thief."
It was as if the park suddenly became darker. Black clouds covered the sun, the trees lost their leaves before his eyes and grew knarled and blackened, the flowers around his feet wasted away and died, sucked back into the Earth, returned to dust and dirt.
When he snapped out of it a bird was singing brightly in a tree slightly to his left, two children raced by carrying Popsicles and laughing, a dog was chasing a lizard through the grass. "About my yami?' he said quietly, erecting a wall around himself, blocking Bakura's thoughts which had suddenly become more apparent, lurking in the background of his subconscious.
"Yes...well, Ryou. I don't know how to say this but..." Yami looked away, expression uncomfortable before looking back into Ryou's serious eyes. "Has he hurt you any more? Since...well, I wanted to know if he was causing you as much trouble as he used to."
Ryou stared at Yami, shocked. He had always assumed Yami and the other's had written him off as nothing important, a fair-weather friend, that he was simply the shell to the pesky thief who occasionally caused trouble and nothing more. To have Yami suddenly bringing it up now, in a public park among people, was surprising, disconcerting.
At first the only sounds he could make were choked beginnings of half-formed words. It took a moment to gather his thoughts. He could feel Bakura scratching against the wall, eager to tear it down with the curiosity that even he could feel, but Ryou simply made sure there were no cracks for his yami to eavesdrop through.
"He...well, he has been the same as he's always been, I suppose," he said awkwardly, not entirely comfortable with the topic. Talking about Bakura with Yami always made him nervous.
Yami looked at him with sympathy coloring reddened violet eyes and Ryou hated him for it.
"Well, I just wanted to know, you know, in case he was hurting you and..." The once Pharaoh trailed off, looking embarrassed. Ryou merely smiled, tilting his head. "Everything is fine," he lied.
"I believe I have discovered a way to separate our bodies, spirit and mortal, make them two different forms. I wanted to inform you, give you the choice. Because...you know, if we do..." he trailed off and looked at Ryou meaningfully. "We could destroy him. Without hurting you."
If he hadn't been shocked by the implications he would have been touched by the concern that was being shown him. It seemed as if they did care after all, these people who so often left him out of their group activities, their fun and games. Or perhaps it was only because this meant they had found a way to destroy Bakura without the guilt over having to kill poor little innocent Ryou.
In his mind he scowled and his walls shuddered under the assault of the tomb keeper who was becoming aggressively impatient. He quickly rectified them again,worrying momentarily if Bakura had figured anything out.
If he had the thief gave no indication and Ryou hesitantly opened his mouth again to speak. "Destroy him..." he echoed and the thought offered itself, suggested a life without the spirit. He didn't know why it perturbed him but the idea of a quiet mind, of that sinister voice no longer there haunting his dreams...he didn't know why that should make him feel lonely.
One grows comfortable in routine, he supposed.
He looked up into the crimson eyes of an ancient pharaoh, who has once been a veritable boyking to a people long dead. "Can I think about it?" he asked.
Yami looked momentarily surprised, as he hadn't expected Ryou's answer. He probably hadn't, Ryou reasoned. The other yami probably thought he would be eager to get rid of a parasite like Bakura.
But he obliged. The pharaoh was too polite to refuse him. He has asked, this was the answer he had received. "But Ryou...we would like to do this by the end of the month. If you could have an answer by then...?"
Ryou nodded, pushing a strand of ashen hair from his face behind his ear, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. "Yes...yes, I will have an answer for you by then," he replied, ready to get away from the other.
Yami smiled at him and Ryou couldn't help but think how royal the other looked smiling like that. Self-assured, confident, benign.
It irritated him a little bit.
Goodbyes didn't take long after that and Ryou watched the other walk away with a sudden cool lack of emotion, an indifference that he had learned from his little parasite. Around him children were playing, laughter rising gaily as wild excitement overtook their senses and brightened their cheeks a rosy color.
Hide and seek, he had always liked that game.
He lingered, watching them moments longer before shoving his pal hands into his pockets and heading for home. He also lowered the previously secure walls around his conscious, allowing Bakura to speak with him if he so wished but not root through his mind like the thief once had with careless freedom.
He tried neither.
Ryou sighed and left the park, so deep in his thoughts that he didn't hear the two woman discussing the grisly news of a murder that had taken place the night before, not far from this neighborhood, or how this world was becoming such an awful place to raise ones children.
But when had it ever been?
A/N: I...fail. Well, there's the second chapter! Finally...Though that's not entirely my fault. didn't support any of my writing programs so...fie on them!
I hope you liked it, I personally feel it's a little weak but hopefully I will gain a little momentum as updates become more frequent. Any suggestions or opinions, please review :) Thank you!