Many thanks for the reviews! :)
See chapter 1 for disclaimer, as usual.
Chapter Nine
(In which Malik has nothing to do and dolls are creepy.)
It was still relatively early in the evening, but dark clouds had formed in the sky, and Pegasus had claimed that he couldn't work in the fading light; Malik had locked him up in what looked like the couple's bedroom. Bakura had come down briefly once, to look at the painting and take the list, without listening to any of Malik's suggestions about it, and to tell him to have the two controlled mortals – his words – call in sick for work, providing him with the numbers (not that Malik couldn't have drawn them from their minds, he thought a bit petulantly); since then, Malik had not heard a word from him, and he had passed the time watching TV. But he was getting bored now, and came upstairs to look for his partner.
"Bakura?" he called; the other one must be somewhere on the second floor, but everything seemed quiet.
"I'm here," a soft voice – not the ring spirit's tone – came from behind a closed door; Malik opened it to find Ryou sitting by the desk of what looked like a private bureau, carving something out of wood.
"What are you doing?" Malik asked curiously; he closed the door behind himself, turned the light on, and walked over to the desk to look over Ryou's shoulder.
"Dolls," Ryou murmured in a weak voice.
Malik picked up one piece of wood Ryou had apparently already worked on and turned it between his fingers curiously. It was as tall as a finger, and he supposed that you could see it as a head and a body; there were even, he realised after a closer inspection, two small bumps that could be the hands or the arms.
"What for?"
He walked around the desk and sat down on a second chair on the other side of it, which creaked under his weight.
"The two of them," Ryou said, and put the second wooden doll and the knife down; Malik had been wondering why Bakura, who didn't tend to get into physical fights, even carried a knife. He wouldn't have guessed that it was for doing handcrafts. "He wants to ban them into them. It won't work if it's to something that's not related to them at all." He held the second doll up to the light, and gave Malik a weak smile. "If I pain their faces and clothes on, it'll probably be enough."
Malik was annoyed that the thief had apparently called his bluff when he'd claimed he could keep the two of them, and, if need be, Pegasus, under control the whole time; and Ryou's demeanour was disconcerting. He looked out of the window: it had started to rain now, and the raindrops were running down the glass in increasing speed.
"I'll be right back," Ryou said, still in that soft, subdued voice, and left him alone; he was back shortly thereafter, with Pegasus' colours.
Malik watched him in silence as he carefully laid them down, and then started to work on the wooden dolls, but in the end, he had to ask:
"Would he harm you if you didn't do this?"
"Harm me?" Ryou paused in his work, and looked at him like the notion was completely foreign to him. "No, no. But he might kill them, if he doesn't feel like making them himself."
With that, he went back to his painting; Malik stared at his fingers as he worked; he looked no less concentrated than Pegasus did when he painted. It had to be something about artists.
"Oh," he eventually said, and was silent; Ryou didn't seem to hear him.
"Finished," he said, after a while, carefully putting the second doll down. There were small spots of pain on the desk, but that was probably a small price to pay by its owners for not getting murdered. Malik looked at the dolls curiously: if you knew who they were supposed to represent, you could see the resemblance, he supposed. "Can y –"
Ryou was cut off as the ring flashed, bright golden, and Malik felt something hit against his inner barriers, tear at his mind; he closed his hand on the rod in panic, convinced, for an instant, that the spirit was attacking him...
Then it was over.
"There," the spirit said, glancing at him with a slight smirk. "You don't have to control them anymore."
Malik grabbed the sides of his chair and looked at the dolls: was it just his perception, or did they have oddly blank looks on their painted faces, instead of the faint smiles Ryou had given them earlier?
"Could have warned me," he snapped at the spirit. "I was still in their mind. That hurt." The spirit just continued to smirk at him, clearly pleased with himself. Malik looked down at the dolls. "This is creepy."
"He likes them," Bakura said with a shrug. "I know my host," he added, when he noticed the incredulous look Malik gave him for that. "He feels guilty for it, but he does."
"I'll go have dinner," Malik snapped and stood up.
He was only half-way to the stairs when he heard the door being opened behind him again; he turned round.
"Look, I don't w – oh, it's you."
Ryou smiled at him uncertainly.
"I could cook something?" he offered.
Malik gave a jerky nod, and turned right to the living and dining room when he reached the base of the stairs.
Ryou, it turned out, was a pretty good cook, even when he had to improvise with what he had, which in this case turned out to be different sorts of rice – enough, overall, but very little of each sort – various vegetables, and the fish, which Malik refused to touch. Malik watched him as he began eating with the post-possession haste he was beginning to get accustomed to.
"Why do you keep the ring if you don't like what he does?" he asked suddenly.
Ryou froze mid-chew, a comical look on his face; then he swallowed his food and took a long drink of water, only to do nothing but shrug in response.
"He leaves you in control often enough," Malik added.
Ryou put down his chopsticks with a sigh.
"It doesn't work like that..."
"Why not?" Malik asked, almost angry, even though he was aware that this was entirely unfair of him. "You could get ride of the ring – you could take it off, now. Anytime. He wouldn't be able to do anything."
Ryou shook his head.
"I thought so too... I kept it with me because I thought that as long as I didn't wear it, it would be alright, but – it's not just the ring. He's connected to me."
Malik made a sceptic face.
"Look – during Duellist Kingdom, Honda threw it away. Into the sea." He marked a pause, caressed over the gold. "It came back. I don't know how – it just did.
"Wait," he added, when Malik seemed about to object. "After Battle City, they were about to leave it behind; they didn't tell me what happened to it, and it would have exploded with the island..."
"But...?"
"I knew it wouldn't work. I knew it would come back anyway... So I took it back."
"You – "
"And when we were back in Domino, I gave it to Yuugi, because I thought that if anyone could keep it safe, it would be him." He smiled sadly. "See how that worked..."
"I..." Malik trailed off, silently looked at the boy across of him, before unsurely raising a hand to lay on his arm, before remembering that by their first meeting, this simple, timid gesture of comfort had been twisted for the two of them. Ryou looked at him, the ghost of a smile on his lips, and Malik could see no sign of resentment in his eyes. "Did he posses you? Without the item?"
Ryou nodded slowly.
"It's become stronger since I got the ring," he said softly. "Maybe it was already there before – he says I was meant to have it, that it had to find me." He pressed his lips together. "At first he just took over my body, and I wasn't aware of anything during that time, or I forgot... After I met Yugi, I heard his voice for the first time. And later... I could hear him even when I wasn't wearing the ring, when I was only looking at it... He wasn't able to take over my mind when I didn't wear it, at the time. He talked me into it doing it for him... But this time..."
He fell silent, and crunched lower in his chair; Malik hesitantly drew his hand back at the movement. He knew what was left out: this time, the spirit had been strong enough to control him without the millennium object – at least long enough for him to steal it.
"I didn't know," Malik murmured softly, looking down at his plate. "I didn't know it was so similar..."
"To what?"
Malik glanced up at him; he hadn't meant to explain this, but Ryou now looked interested and eager, and he felt he owed it to him.
"My... my other self," he said, in a strained voice. "It was like that. Him becoming stronger, until he chased me from the body completely..." He flinched under Ryou's curious look, and automatically closed a hand around the millennium rod at his belt. "I wonder if being controlled by the millennium rod feels like that." It was an uncomfortable thought.
"You mean you don't know?" Ryou sounded surprised, but had calmed down enough already to start eating again. How does he do this? Malik wondered absently.
"Of course I don't – I've never experienced it from that side."
"Don't you want to? Just to find out?"
At that, Malik started and narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously; he was clumsily pushing food into his mouth, his hair was flat and wavy, he looked very much like himself...
"Why?" he asked sharply. "Are you offering to show me?"
Ryou blinked up at him; then he let his chopsticks sink.
"Oh," he said, and was blushing now, which Malik found weirdly distracting. "No, of course not – you can't give me – sorry."
Malik didn't answer. They finished eating in silence.
Afterwards, Malik offered to do the wash up, and urged down the automatic annoyance at their hosts not being in a state to do it for them; after, he helped Ryou drape the latters' bodies into blankets and lay them down as comfortably as possible on the carpet in the living room, which, he had to admit, was all a little disturbing: they looked dead, more so than his favourite puppet had when his mind didn't control it from afar.
"Do you think you could ask him to send them back into their bodies when you leave?" Ryou asked him after they'd finished and returned to the bureau, where Ryou picked up the two dolls with care.
"I guess," said Malik. "I can't promise he'll listen to me though."
"I think he might," said Ryou, put the figurines down and smiled at him friendlily. "He missed you, you know," he confided.
Malik stared.
"What?"
"The spirit." Ryou sighed and added: "Bakura."
"... missed me?" Malik asked, and as Ryou nodded: "You're not serious, are you?"
"Yes I am. It's... He's never been allied to anyone ever since I got the ring."
"What about you?" Malik asked, with an involuntary hint of sharpness in his tone.
"I..." Ryou pressed his lips together, and then, angry: "I'm not his ally."
"So you said..." Malik, drawled, a little suspicious despite of himself.
"Look... He doesn't think I am. I've been fighting him, and... He's never been together with someone who'd talk and argue with him, and..." He stopped. "I think he enjoyed it."
"If you say so," Malik said sceptically.
Ryou nodded, apparently satisfied with that.
"Do you think," he asked timidly after a moment. "Will you stay here for long?"
"Probably not," Malik said with a shrug, on safer grounds again; the thought of the spirit actually – not hating him was a bit thrilling and frightening at once, and even guilt-inducing, if he believed it, because Malik had used him as an outlet, someone who was beyond human anyway and safe from harm; and yet, he had been almost friendly, of late, that much was true. "Why?"
"I'm not sure they can survive like this for very long without intensive care," Ryou explained matter-of-factly.
"Ah," Malik said, and completely unfairly, he was suddenly missing the spirit's presence a bit; it was safer, in a strange way. "But they'll be fine for a few days?"
Ryou nodded.
"I think so." He tenderly caressed over one of the dolls. "I don't understand why. It's just how the magic works." He stretched out his arms tiredly. "Do you want to play a game?"
"No!" Malik said reflexively; Ryou winced at his tone. "Sorry, I mean – not right now. Tomorrow, maybe. Hey, Ryou?"
He stood up and approached the other boy cautiously, raised a hand, then let it fall again. Ryou nodded.
"Okay then. I'll – draw a bit."
"I'll be downstairs." He thought of something. "We'll have to share the couch, I guess..." Pegasus got the only bed after all, the bastard. "Don't use up the entire colour, we need that."
Ryou smiled again, his eyes soft from tiredness.
"Don't worry."
(end of chapter nine)
Notes: The ring coming back shortly after Honda threw it away into nature happens during DK in the anime; the spirit possessing Ryou before he even gets the ring happens at the beginning of the AE in the anime. Ryou hearing the spirit for the first time after meeting Yuugi is manga-canon, as is the spirit talking him into putting the ring back on, and Ryou running back towards Kaiba's tower to voluntarily get his ring back (though it's my invention that he gave it to Yuugi right after). Overall, manga!Ryou is a lot more friendly towards the ring than anime!Ryou...
God, I hope that's not completely confusing.