It's so hard to find you
I'm standing right behind you
The streets are much colder
This mean I'm getting older
Why would you? How could I?
These questions lead to goodbye
But now I got my freedom
Don't I?
I parked my car outside your house
Hope that someday you'll come home
Seems the woman that I love
Is someone that I hardly know
And after all this time
I finally found a way to be alone
I'm terrified to think that I may be losing my mind
Maroon 5 – Losing My Mind
A/N – we're going back and time for a bit here. I thought that this was a nice place to insert some back story – angst-ridden back story about Yuichi and Ryou's mother and father! There are no cannon names for his mother or father so I have chosen names that suit their personalities as far as my story is concerned. I have named their mother 'Haruka' and that means 'distance' and their father shall be named 'Iwao' which means 'stone man.' And since it's been a while, Yuichi is Bakura's first name! Oh, and the part of the story that happens in the present is the day after the day in the last chapter!
*Flashback 10 years*
Haruka Bakura tucked her son into bed and turned off the light before shutting the door. Ryou was eight years old now and still liked for his mother to put him to bed with a song. Yuichi was already going through a phase and he was only ten. He had insisted on going to bed on his own. Haruka poked her head into his room she smiled gently to hear him snoring away in the darkness. She continued further down the hall to check on her daughter.
Amane was hardly three years old but she was clearly the apple of her mother's eye. She was a miniature version of her, down to the small spattering of freckles along the bridge of her tiny nose. Amane had her mother's gorgeous lavender hair and soft brown eyes, unlike her older brothers who looked like younger versions of their father. Haruka visibly favored her youngest, although Ryou was still very attached to her and very much a "mama's boy."
That was more than likely a result of their father's frequent absences. Iwao Bakura was an archeologist turned curator turned archeologist again. When the boys were young they had lived in England where their father worked on restoring artifacts that he had found in his early years as an archeologist. When a museum in Japan signed the deal to have the exhibit transferred long-term Iwao decided it was time to return to the island he had spent the majority of his life trying to avoid.
Haruka was more than happy to return to her homeland, she was tired of her children speaking more English than Japanese and the way that they were so much like their father in the fact that they considered that foreign land their home. She had never said it aloud, but she considered her boys less Japanese for having been born in England. Iwao loved his boys and made sure that they had proper English upbringings, purposely speaking less Japanese to them when he could get away with it.
Around the time that Haruka had become pregnant with Amane, Iwao started travelling. Perhaps it was because he was tired of staying in one place. Perhaps it was because he missed the musky heat of the Egyptian desert. Or perhaps it was because he had gotten a vasectomy before he left England and had not slept with his wife for months when she announced that she was pregnant. Amane loved Iwao, but she was not his daughter.
Yuichi, being a child of only seven years when Amane was born, pointed out how odd it was that she did not have the light hair that he and his brother shared. Yuichi was always one to be skeptical, and when he saw his father distance himself from his mother, he began to detach himself as well. He buried himself in his studies and made excuses to be alone. Five year-old Ryou, on the other hand, wanted nothing but to be around his mother and the little girl that she had brought into the world.
Ryou adored Amane.
She was small, pink, and quiet. He loved that she would grip his tiny finger in her tinier fist. He had none of the scorn that was typical of a middle child. As Yuichi found ways to get out of being in his mother's presence, Ryou weaseled his way in further and turned a blind eye to the way that his mother favored the little girl over him.
Iwao could not have handled it with the silence of Yuichi or the grace of Ryou. He began drinking heavily when he was in Japan. He would come home drunk and yell at Haruka, slam doors, break glasses and cause a ruckus. He uprooted the family from Osaka and transported them to a small city called Domino. As Yuichi and Ryou later found out, their father had been planning it ever since he found out that his wife was having an affair with the private tutor that she had insisted he hire to teach the boys Japanese.
Yuichi had a problem obeying authority ever since. Ryou learned to be wary of it.
At ten years old, Yuichi decided to start going by his last name, insisting that everyone who addressed him called him Bakura. Ryou was still very attached to the English way of things and enjoyed the familiarity that came with allowing people to call him by his first name. Mika Koyama had been raised with similar values. Ryou had met her on his first day of school when he accidently spoke English when he introduced himself to the class.
Mika had been a precocious, eloquent child and had spent all of recess and lunch by Ryou's side. She did not have very many friends from what Ryou could see, but he saw that the other kids left her alone and he liked the protection that a friendship with her offered. He also liked that she was pretty with huge blue eyes that stood out in the sea of narrow brown ones. She explained to him that she had to deal with bullying when she was younger because her parents were half American.
While her great-grandfathers had gone off to fight in the World War, her great-grandmothers had stayed behind to mind the children that they already had. Each woman had been forced into prostitution when their villages had been overtaken and had ended up pregnant from some officer or another. Her grandparents (all four of them) had been the result of just such incidences.
Her mother and father had been neighbors in a neighborhood full of children just like them. They had made the decision to move to Domino after they had married and it was all Mika had ever known. There were kids who made fun of her for having blue eyes, and as she got older, there were those who made fun of how wide her hips were getting.
When Ryou was not at home with his mother, he was at Mika's house or she was at his. They were absolutely attached at the hip. Yuichi was at once jealous and grateful for her presence. She kept Ryou away from their awful parents, but he himself had no such escape.
It had been a particularly rainy week when the Bakura family reached a breaking point.
Haruka, tired of living in a strange town with people she did not know, had announced that she was leaving. Iwao went into a fit of rage and began packing her bags for her. Haruka screamed and yelled and made several phone calls. It was very late when a car arrived at their house. Their father had been gone for hours by the time that their mother's lover – their sister's father – had arrived to take them away.
That evening, before they had been put to bed, was the last time that they ever saw their little sister. Their mother's lover had wrecked his car on the highway, just a few miles out of Osaka and he and Amane had died instantly. Haruka lived. Her body was severely injured, but she had survived the accident. Her arms and legs were scarred up as permanent reminders of the life that she would never have and the life that she had left behind.
That same evening Iwao Bakura had renounced his fulltime position as curator at the Domino Museum and purchased a one-way flight to Egypt.
Yuichi and Ryou had awoken to a home bereft of family. Any semblance of normalcy that their parents had tried to present since they could remember was gone. Ryou mourned openly. He sobbed and insisted that their father buy him dark clothes. His therapist told him to write in a journal and Ryou had been writing to his sister ever since.
Yuichi scorned his mother and father equally. Haruka and Iwao officially divorced and she took her half of the money and ran away to the farthest corner of Japan. Iwao came and went as he pleased, and when he was in Japan he did not stay long. Yuichi had asked his father to take them away from Japan, but Ryou protested. He wanted to stay near his mother, even though he did not know where she had gone or what she was doing. He wanted to stay near the memory of his sister. He wanted to stay where he had made a friend.
Iwao allowed it, mostly because he was too selfish to take his sons with him. He hired a live-in nanny who stayed with the boys until Yuichi turned sixteen and was able to manage the household. It was this, combined with the stress of everyday life as a student and athlete that led Yuichi to become a womanizer who sampled drugs and the party scene in his spare time. His father had caught him a few times when he had been home, but because his grades never suffered he was at a loss as to how to lecture his son about his destructive behavior.
At some point Yuichi found a balance and Ryou had a rock in Mika so they were happy pretending that their mother had died that night along with their little sister and their father was hardly around but he sent money and bought them each a car and so they pretended to be happy with him.
So when Bakura showed up at Mika's doorstep looking completely distraught she had a pretty good idea what was going on. She ran up to his car as soon as he pulled up, grateful that Ryou had called and given her a heads up. He turned off the car and just sat there, staring into space. Mika threw the door open and undid his seatbelt before climbing into his lap.
"My mother …"
"I'm so sorry Bakura, I wish that things hadn't turned out this way," Mika whispered into his neck, her palm pressed to his heart.
"I can't believe that she's been dying this whole time. I can't believe that she's dead now."
His hands were still at his sides and Mika was trying to comfort him but did not know what words to say. She could tell that he had cried at some point, but now there was anger and exhaustion on his face. His mother had been dying and his father had kept her from communicating with her boys – he did not give her a chance to say goodbye. Their mother had left them for a second time, this time much more permanently.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Her voice came out in a whisper; she was worried that her parents would notice that she had climbed out of her window. Iwao had called from Cairo after Haruka's funeral had occurred and told his boys. It had been eleven at night when they got the news that their mother had been dead and buried for over three days.
"No," his voice was raspier than usual and it sent a chill up her spine. "I'm done talking. That's not what I need."
Mika sat back, resting against the steering wheel, one of her legs still awkwardly outside of the car. "What do you need Bakura?"
"I need you, Mika," he looked her dead in the eye, his hands slowly making their way up her arms. "I need you to be my rock this time around."
She nodded, breathless at what he had just said but even more breathless at what he had just suggested.
"Can I take you somewhere? I promise that I'll have you back –"
She pressed a finger to his lips, "Anywhere. Don't worry about my parents."
He nodded and she climbed over the center console and into the passenger's seat.
Sorry for the long wait - you are all so wonderful and I am so cruel for keeping this from you!
Shout outs to those who reviewed: Yuki, Astrid, TheAverIn, julen, Akatsuki's Bitch and last but never least the wonderful CraftyLion!
Where is Bakura taking her ...? I know, and you will all find out very soon ^_^ *cough*sex*cough*
Reviews are LOVE.