See chapter one for the disclaimer, as usual.

Chapter Eight

(In which the villains get themselves a nice cottage.)

"Well?" was the first thing Bakura said when Malik returned to the hotel room; he was sitting cross-legged on the bed and laying cards from his deck out in front of him, in a way that looked random to Malik. "How far is he?"

Malik closed and locked the door behind himself, chunked the keys onto the table by the door, and walked over to the thief.

"Looks close to finished to me, but he says it's not." He shrugged; they'd counted on it taking a while, even with Pegasus working non-stop; it was still time before they'd have to worry about the artist trying to stall. Malik sat down on one side of the bed and slipped off his shoes. "What are you doing?"

"Reading them," Bakura answered cryptically, and, when Malik leant over the bed to get a clearer view at the cards laid out in front of the thief, reassembled them with a few swift movements.

Malik shrugged, and lay down next to the spirit, upper body pushed up by the elbows, and watched him as he recollected the cards with odd care, shuffled the completed deck a few times, and put it safely away.

"Did you know he could impersonate you?" he asked only when the thief had finished, trying for casual.

Bakura glanced up and grinned at him, nastily. "I know everything about my host," he said, and his grin broadened when Malik glared at him in answer. "He's good at acting – just usually too unsure to use his skill. But it's useful."

"Useful?"

"It's easier to pretend when the body you use has some practice in it."

Malik narrowed and glanced away, pretending to be very interested in the blank TV screen; from the corner of his eyes, he could see Bakura still grinning at him

"Can't we rent a third room?" he asked plaintively.

"You sister didn't have that much money," Bakura chided.

"Pegasus does."

"Here, with him? In cash?" Bakura asked sarcastically, and then smirked. "You didn't think this whole thing through at all, did you?"

"Maybe I didn't," Malik said, crossing his arm and falling back on the bed. "But I can probably still just let you rot here and go back."

Bakura raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't comment.

"If you say so," he said, eventually, in a noncommittal tone. "If you want to be rid of me so badly..."

And he vanished.

Malik was beginning to get used to the disoriented look their face got when the body's original owner returned to control. It was, possibly, just a little bit cute.

"Hi again," he said to the ceiling.

"What happened?" Ryou asked, looking around the room curiously.

"Nothing." Malik threw him a covert glance. "Quit being so jumpy."

"Sorry," Ryou mumbled distractedly.

Malik rolled his eyes, sat up, and reached for the TV remote, all the while carefully not looking at Ryou.

"...it's easier to pretend when the body you use has some practice in it..."

Bakura's words wouldn't leave him alone when he was back in his room at night, clunched together lying on one side, Pegasus' mind put to forced sleep. Damn him. Now he couldn't sleep. He hated not being able to sleep at night. He had already turned on the small desk-lamp next to the bed because he couldn't bear the dark, but its white, piercing light, painfully bright, was going to keep him awake as well.

And – he missed Rishid. Both Rishid, and Isis, and home, but Rishid more than all. His own darkness was gone, he had defeated it, he repeated this himself in a quiet, unintelligible mumble like a mantra, the pharaoh had forgiven him, and he had finally completed their duty... And during the day, after it had all been over, he'd been calm, and later reckless, and in both cases determined to take control of his own life – but during the nights, his fear came back, dark and insidious and worse than all familiar, and he felt sudden sympathy for the Aztecs who, he had been told, used to sacrifice humans every night out of fear that the sun would not rise again.

Only Rishid could calm his fear; would sit by him, sometimes for the whole night, and hold him.

If he could at least call him now. But he'd have to call the apartment, Rishid didn't have a cell phone (he'd get him one, at the next occasion), and Isis or, worse, Yuugi might be there, and what would he tell him?

He rolled onto his back with an annoyed sigh. And he couldn't just leave now, he wouldn't be able to pay Rishid and Isis the money he had blackmailed them into giving him back – but, of course, that was a lousy excuse, they'd still rather want him to come home. He hoped they still did, anyway.

He winced at the thought. Stupid thought. Rishid wouldn't abandon him, ever. He closed his eyes very tight. He knew this, but the fear wouldn't leave him alone... He did not deserve...

Still, at this point it could be late and Bakura might just proceed without him anyway and –

Fuck Bakura, and his way of speaking about Ryou like some pompous car owner. And fuck Ryou, and his sudden protectiveness of the spirit.

He winced in the darkness.

He rolled back onto his stomach, completely wrapping the blanket around his body in the process.

Not true. Bakura still needed him, or at least he needed the millennium rod, and Malik was going to hold on to that. That was why they had renewed their partnership in the first place. The right thing to do would be to just leave the ring spirit to himself and tell Yuugi what was going on, offer his help, so they could free Pegasus.

But he wasn't going to leave, go back and beg forgiveness now... just because the darkness frightened him. It would be over by morning, he silently told himself.

My host has talents he's not aware of himself.

"Go to hell, Bakura..." Malik murmured into his cushion. He didn't sleep all night.

The next day, they moved base.

Staying in one place for too long was a hazard, now that Kaiba was on their trail, and the pharaoh with him: Malik had no desire whatsoever to face him, and he suspected the same was true for the thief; he wasn't sure, of course. Bakura had a certain tendency for self-destruction, Malik had noticed that when they'd duelled his personified darkness.

Maybe, he thought gloomily, as he watched the trees fly by from the window on the train – he'd had to give up the car –, this was why he had decided that partnering up with the spirit was such a good idea: he'd been the one solid, almost friendly, at least oddly human person by his side when he'd faced his own darkness; by comparison, he'd been a friend.

Hotels were expensive and too easy to search for someone like Kaiba, Bakura had declared, so they found themselves a small cottage in a remote area. It was surprisingly easy: Malik wielded the millennium rod as soon as the door opened to them – Bakura looking like Ryou at his most innocent, correct and sweet and maybe a little confused – and it was a matter of instants to take control of the minds of the two people inside, a couple, a man and a woman in their early sixties as it turned out.

"Not bad," Bakura acknowledged with a grin – Malik watched his face change from Ryou's mask to this expression with quiet fascination – and walked past him and the man and the woman who were staring into space with vacant expressions on their face.

"Told you I'm better at this than you'd be," Malik said, grinning back, and spinning the rod in one hand, feeling suddenly elated.

Bakura snorted at him but didn't stop grinning.

"I only hope that doesn't mean you've lost Pegasus."

"Do you know that I used to control a whole army of these?" Malik snapped back, even as he mentally ordered the currently controlled Pegasus to join them.

"Be careful," Bakura said, serious now. "He's pretty broken now, but he did manage to control the millennium eye once."

Malik closed the door behind the American millionaire.

"So?"

"He has some experience with dealing with – magical intrusion of the mind. And he's strong-willed, and sneaky." He turned to Pegasus. "Release him."

Malik considered arguing – Bakura's tendency to order him around annoyed him just as much as, he was sure, the opposite annoyed the thief, but relented: he didn't like to admit it, but subduing three minds was strenuous. He did use to have many people at once ready to be taken over – he didn't control them all at the same time, however.

Pegasus blinked with his one eye, then straightened up – he was wearing the same now rumpled red suit as the day they'd kidnapped him, so Malik had no idea how he managed to still make it look elegant – drew a hand through his hair, brushing it further over his face on one side to hide the lost eye completely (Bakura's doing, this, Malik suspected; the thief had so far refused to flat-out admit it, but he hadn't tried very hard to convince him of the contrary either, and one day the pharaoh would need this millennium item as well, so really, the thief had done him a favour by securing it for him) and looked around.

"Ah. Not a hotel this time, I see." He smiled briefly. "Very quaint," he commented on the house.

Malik couldn't see anything quaint about it; but it looked lived in, shoes lying, in disorder, on the anteroom, old jackets hanging by the door, things scattered all over the place wherever you looked; all along one wall there were cabinets that might once have had a practical use, but where now covered with a bizarre, stuffy collection of keychains, used and broken pencils, half a deck of regular playing cards, plastic flowers, and a few toys that looked like they were coming right out of a cheap automaton.

He looked away; he couldn't tell why, but his escape from his families' underground prison had brought a furious want for clean, new-feeling places. People, minds were different, easier. They were malleable.

"Set up your things," Bakura motioned the half-finished painting they had carefully transported with them, which had not been fun on the train. "And go on." Pegasus stiffened, cast the spirit a dark look, but didn't protest. "Oh, and first, write me a list of estates you own. Empty, inhabitable ones."

"What for?" Malik asked curiously once Pegasus had disappeared; the man's mind felt subdued to him now, like it often did after direct Pegasus directly interacting with the spirit. Malik mentally followed him to a living room where he cleared away space, then shut off the contact.

The spirit glanced after Pegasus through the anteroom's open door, then made his way to the kitchen.

"What do you think how long we can keep these two –" Bakura gestured dismissively at the controlled couple. "– like that without anyone wondering? I'll need space and time for the ritual."

Malik followed him to the kitchen, where, without looking up, Bakura rummaged through the fridge and made a dissatisfied face at the contents. The kitchen was small, with no space to sit; safe for one counter, where most of the cooking was probably done, it was dusty; the many pots of what looked like home-made marmalade looked like they hadn't been opened in ages, and there were dead flies lying beneath the bright stickers on the windows. There was a very small garden outside, and then a field. It wasn't anything Malik would have chosen, but he let himself relax; irrationally, he found it easier with the spirit than with the latter's host.

"Won't Kaiba notice?" he asked.

"We'll just have to be careful," Bakura said distractedly, and straightened back up; he looked at Malik, who was leaning against the doorframe and watching him. "What?"

"Nothing. Is it empty?"

"There's fish," Bakura answered, and Malik mirrored his disgusted look: it was rare that they agreed about food, but Bakura's taste, Malik had found, ran towards mostly raw meal, and he was a vegetarian. "I suppose my host might like it."

"I think he'll eat about anything after you've been in control."

Bakura didn't answer; he walked through the rest of the small kitchen, picked up a small, smudged notebook from the counter and scanned through it, then pocketed it.

"What are you doing?" asked Malik, when the thief pushed past him back into the corridor, and started to inspect its contents with professional ease.

"Looking if there's clues to anything we'll need to know about these." He motioned the two still figures with his chin. "And I'll need some good wood," he murmured, more to himself than to Malik, and eyed the stairs' railing speculatively. Malik ignored the last bit, which didn't make sense to him anyway.

"Can we nick their stuff and sell it?"

Bakura wiped round and focused his attention back on him.

"What is it with the sudden kleptomania?" he asked, and sounded genuinely interested, and almost amused, and not meanly so. "You weren't like that last time. And no, don't be stupid."

"I don't know," Malik muttered back, slumped against the doorframe and watched the thief as he went back to his inspection. "It's just..." A way of keeping score, perhaps; proving he still could, proving that giving up his revenge didn't mean he was just neatly fitting into a pattern of expectations and correctness; and, well, having money was nice... "I stole a boat last time. And a motorbike. And a crane."

Bakura gave him a look, then shook his head, and went up the stairs without comment. Malik stared after him for a moment, then walked to the living room to look after their prisoner. Pegasus didn't acknowledge his presence: he seemed completely immersed in his painting: the colours were laid out on the table next to him, together with a piece of paper where he must have written the list Bakura had demanded. Ignoring him in return, Malik picked it up, vaguely wondered why he had written the list in Kanji, and let himself fall down on the nearest chair.

AN: ... I think this chapter and the next one are a bit bizarre, but so is the situation. Uhm. I don't know. Thoughts?

In the next chapter, Malik and Ryou talk some more about evil spirits.