Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! does not belong to me, I forgot to put this last chapter but I'm beginning to think it rather redundant anyway as it is stated in the first chapter and yeah, why repeat myself:P

A.N. It looks like this will shape out to be a Yami no Marik/Malik fic as well as a Yami no Bakura/Ryou fic. I couldn't leave them out, I actually tried.

Enjoy

Le soleil

Chapter 5

The reactions that followed all should have been rather expected.

Jou, because he was a hothead and no one could ever honestly say otherwise, leapt up, his body tense, his easygoing attitude morphing into his former tough guy persona. If Honda had been here he would have done the same Yami knew and he looked to Anzu, to see if she were alright. She had paled a bit and he noticed her hands were gripping the edge of the counter too tightly for comfort. He caught her eye and smiled, to reassure her. He would be doubly damned before he let anyone hurt his friends and he said as much with his expression.

Her posture loosened but she still held on to her nervousness, something he didn't blame her for.

"Jou!" he said, pushing himself away from the counter and moving to catch the blond before he collided rather explosively with the other blond.

Malik had not moved and he stood with a rather peaceful expression as Yami caught Jou not a foot from his own form.

"What are you doing here you little piece of shit! No one wants to see you after the stunt you pulled!"

No one had to ask what stunt that was. Jou had had his mind and body used against his friends just as Anzu had. Their was still some rather tangible resentment.

"I invited him here, Jou," Yami said, before Malik could defend himself or maybe to prevent the situation from growing more volatile. The Egyptian didn't look particularly apologetic.

Jou turned on him, spinning to face the shorter, although really not by much when he was the former pharaoh, and looked at him that felt as if he'd betrayed him. "How could you do that! After what he did to us?!" Yami only put a hand on his shoulder, looking seriously at his friend. "I can't do this ritual without taking care of all loose ends. Malik is apart of this too."

Taking the temperamental boy's distraction as time to move Malik walked carefully around them, ending at a shelf of various card packs. He didn't bother to look at the girl who ha been silent since his arrival and rolled his eyes at Yami's words. Loose ends, yeah right.

"I-I thought you were in Egypt."

Malik looked at Anzu, purple eyes hooded. "My sister is in Domino for the Museum. Pharaoh called a month back about all this so I decided to come with her." He waved a hand to gesture what this was and turned away from her.

Another hurt look was cast at the former Pharaoh from Jou at those words, who was beginning to calm himself. "Oh, we didn't need to know that, huh?" he snapped and Yami sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I knew you'd be upset," he said quietly, looking at Malik, who looked away.

"I wonder why!" he retorted acerbically and Malik rolled his eyes again, a habit when he was in this company. "Can we just get on with this?" he muttered. "There are places I would rather be. Re knows none of you really want me here." He looked pointedly at the them all, a moment of confusion passing over his face when he didn't see someone who should be here. ""Where's Ryou?"

Yami cleared his throat as he laid a hand on Jou's shoulder, preventing the other from retorting to the other's blunt words. "That's actually what this is all about," he said. "Ryou phoned awhile ago telling me he was ready to go through with it and I just wanted to let everyone in on it and-" He paused for a moment and looked at the Egyptian carefully. "-discuss some things with you," he finished.

Malik silently congratulated the Pharaoh for being such a conniving bastard. On the phone he had hinted that the British native would be here. He probably thought it had been an adequate lure, the two boys finding a sort of connection in each having darker sides that swam in the deep end of the pool of sanity.

He didn't want to admit out loud it had been a good plan. He doubted he would have come if he'd known the boy who held the Millennium Ring would not be present. Clever.

Bastard...

Malik sighed loudly and threw a key chain of Kuriboh back into it's basket of assorted duel monsters. "Great, fine." He looked to Yami and smiled cheerfully. "So, what can I do to serve you?"

Anzu sighed at his sarcasm, Jou bristled, and Yami just lifted an eyebrow. "I told you Malik, I'm not the Pharaoh any longer, you don't have to address me like that..."

Malik waved his hand as if to wave the words away. "Yeah, whatever," he said. "Just tell me what you wanted me here for." He was impressed then when Yami did not launch into a long tirade of whatever it was he said when he was avoiding getting ot the point and simply...got to the point.

"I want to make sure you are still up for this, that you won't back out and try something."

Of course, it didn't mean he couldn't also be a little insulted. "Try something? Like what?"

"Like stab us in the back and let Marik take control of you."

Ah, blunt. And it looked like Jou and Anzu were lost. They would be, wouldn't they. They still thought-

"I thought Marik had been banished to the Shadow Realm!" Anzu exclaimed.

There, that. He sighed and ran a hand through flaxen hair. "He is," he said, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. "But he still exists and existing..." He cleared his throat and looked at a wall. "Existing means he can always find a way to come back." He smiled with faint admiration. "Bakura did.

"Yami here thinks that if he pulls him from me, give him a body of his own, make him mortal essentially, he won't be a threat with his powers gone and yeah, all that rot."

Malik himself wasn't entirely sure how he felt about it. Oh, he knew he never wanted to give his darker side the ability to control him like he had, steal his body from him and threaten him with banishment to the shadow realm...it was just...he thought it would be very strange to see half of himself, in full, flesh and blood, form.

He would have to try not to anything embarrassing, like scream.

"I'm not going to betray you, Pharaoh," he said. "I want him out, I never reveled in housing a murderous psychopath in my head, thanks."

Yami just looked at him as if he'd like to swear upon that but Malik ignored him. He had become quite good at it, too. Ignoring people he thought were wasting his time. The Pharaoh, or rather the very memory of him, had wasted the first portion of his life not to mention lace it with enough blood to last him several lifetimes.

"Now, I think I'll be leaving," he said, abruptly because the shop had fallen into an annoying stillness and Malik knew all of them were watching him. He cast a deprecating look at the three of them as he left. "Call me when Ryou is actually here, next time. I don't want to waste my time just so you can have my word, Pharaoh."

The bell jingled merrily as he left, leaving the friends behind. On the counter Anzu shifted uncomfortably. Jou simply glared obstinately at the closed door. Yami sighed, looking to the floor as he crossed his arms, thinking that that all could have gone better.

Don't worry Yami, the soothing voice of Yuugi piped up, making the Pharaoh smile despite himself. I sure everything will be okay!

But he couldn't shake the feeling that when it came down to it he wondered what Malik would really do when he had his own darkness standing before him, flesh and blood, as human as he could ever get. For that matter he wondered if Ryou really was ready to cast aside the thief, denounced him as he should have done the moment he learned of him. He had hidden it so many times, the Tomb Robber's return, had acted as if all were normal, as if he wasn't a threat to them all. He was left wondering if either Malik and Ryou were strong enough to turn truly against their others. Or if it would be as it always had, him and those he cared about against an evil that used cheap tricks, the lives of the innocent, as their shields.

x

In a land of shadows there was a sound, a wheeze, that grew raspier and choked as it rose in volume. The sound buckled for a moment, falling into silence, momentarily crushed by the weight of the darkness around it before it burst forth with a sudden violence, a hysterical and beatific laugh that drowned out the oppressive silence around it, tearing it to shreds until it was nothing more than the tattered edges of a black cloak, and the laughter continued, feverish and manic, and the voice that spit forth such a sound petered off into delirious giggles, layered with the heavy breathing of something in this darkness that was still impossibly alive. Eventually the laughter ended and was replaced by mad little whispers, promises from the dry lips of something that inhabited this place of decay and loneliness.

"Malik," it whispered and the name laced the shadows like silver linings, like icing and sweet, sweet nothings that cloyed on the tongue and begged, begged, begged to be touched.

"Malik," the voice hissed. "Malik, Malik, Malik."

x

Bakura stretched, turning away from the dying sun to walk back into the apartment. It was cool inside and he shut the door, an autumn wind giving the air a bit of a chill. He had never really cared for cold, at least not this kind, so different from the desert weather he had grown up with. Ryou had tried to explain to him one time it was the humidity in the air that made it feel different, even if temperature readings were the same in different climates. He had waved it aside vowing never to understand it (or caring really) and had changed the subject to automobiles and all the reasons why they shouldn't exist.

Re damned too noisy to start off.

He hadn't missed the suppressed smile his hikari had let flit over his conscious to let Bakura know he found amusement in the (ridiculous) things he said but Bakura had made no comment about it.

He wouldn't admit to himself, at least not consciously, that he enjoyed being able to make the other smile.

Sprawling haphazardly on the couch he stretched out, head resting on the armrest as one leg dangled off the sofa, the other propped comfortably against the cushions. He didn't really mean to do it but it was done before he even realized. He was asleep in minutes, the mortal body apparently worn out from Bakura and Ryou's shared use of it as of late. He blinked and then sighed, running a hand through his hair as he looked around his soul room somewhat forlornly. He didn't want to be here, not really, and resisting the urge to invade the exhausted body he left his soul room instead to explore the already well treaded paths of the Ring. He was five steps past Ryou's door when he stopped, staring forth into darkness and rune etched walls. He turned, slowly, to see his other standing in the doorway of his soul room, a place he knew looked far different from his own. Where Bakura could barely stand to be in his Ryou, he suspected, found a comfort in a room that echoed his childhood, when life had been so much easier, cleaner, happier. When his soul had been pure of his influence.

Ryou was staring at him, an odd look on his face. Bakura didn't say anything, just turned fully and walked back to Ryou steadily, his footsteps echoing deliberately down the stone halls.

To his credit Ryou didn't flinch. In the face of this fact Bakura grinned, torchlight glinting off slightly elongated canines.

He stopped inches from the boy, looking down at him from his higher stature. It was only a few inches, but it worked to his benefit at times like this, when he could try and scare the other with his darker eyes, sharper features and greater height.

"What are you doing Ryou?" he asked, words spoken softly but with a certain edge about them that caused Ryou to shudder despite himself. He smiled at that, he had seen the other try and suppress it, push back the shiver that made his skin tingle and his breath catch in his throat.

It was moments like these when Bakura wanted very much to kiss Ryou. But he pushed back the urge, knowing it would bide well for neither of them. It would reveal far too many secrets to his lighter half and make him lose sight of what he truly wanted, what he had spent so many thousand years obsessing over. Besides...he wouldn't have been able to do what he really wanted to anyway. They were incorporeal beings in this place, little more than ghosts. If he were to touch Ryou now all he would feel would be the crackle of invisible electrons, the coldness of presence without being. An absence.

But he leaned forward anyway and though Ryou wouldn't be able to feel him he would be able to feel the unnecessary breath he took, blowing cold and steady against his neck, with their cheeks aligned as his mouth so close to the others ear that it would be so easy to run his tongue along the fine cartilage. "What are you doing Ryou?" he asked again but his voice was hardly above a whisper now and even though he was not looking into Ryou's eyes he fancied they widened, that his breath caught in his throat.

It was moments like these that Bakura would give anything to be able to touch Ryou.

"N-nothing," his light managed to breath, "nothing, nothing, wondering where you are going!"

Bakura pulled away with a smile, taunting and full of an affection few would recognize. "I am off for a stroll, care to join me?" he mocked, opening his arms with a flourish to gesture to the encroaching darkness. The Ring always grew darker when Bakura was in these moods, when he thought the world his oyster and the haunted halls his palace.

Ryou shook his head and only caught the flash of disappointment in his yami's eyes because he was looking for it. "No, no I think I will stay in here. Maybe sleep."

Bakura sighed and waved a hand carelessly, brushing his words away like bothersome cobwebs. "Your loss," he said and turned, walking away from Ryou. "Dream about me," he called behind his back, as Ryou watched him walk away. "Toss and turn, scream in your sleep, cry to your pillow, dream about me." He laughed and filled the corridors with the mad music of the sound and only stopped when he heard the door of Ryou's room close.

"Dream that I hate you," he said to himself, when he was too far to be heard. "Dream sweet little lies that will set me free of you." He sighed and felt like screaming, falling against the stone wall and sinking to the floor. "Ryou...dream...and help me stop loving you," he whispered but the words were lost almost as soon as they left his mouth, swallowed by a silence that would never shut up.

x

A.N. I feel as if I need to take a moment to thank everyone who has reviewed;

Dragonlady222: You have reviewed every single one of my stories. I am so glad you like what I write and I sincerely thank you for taking the time to review and give me feedback of what you thought. :) I hope to always keep hearing from you!

Yamiace1321: In my story Ryou doesn't know about Kuru Eruna, ergo not understanding a lot of what Bakura does and for what reason. At most he would suspect something in Bakura's past made him the way he is but Bakura hasn't shared that much with him as of yet. And as for your stories! You should upload them absolutely. We can always use more of Bakura, Ryou, Marik, Malik centric stuff. They are love!

Mei1105: I totally agree! And yeah...Pegasus and Dartz...they fail to make the cut!

And for everyone else, crimsonrosepetals, Anei Anouka, Mystic Genie, casaragi, Love'sBakura, Charmkeeper, PageTurn, Andyouthinkimcrazy, thank you so much!

This chapter actually came easier then any of the others have and consequentially is also the longest, though, granted, not by much. Hopefully the rest of the story will come just as smoothly and I will have another chapter soon:)

As always, reviews are encouraged, I get a fuzzy feeling every time I get a new one.