Many, many thanks for the comments!
See chapter one for disclaimer.
Chapter Fourteen
(In which at least some people are surprisingly happy.)
Malik glared down at the fallen form, as if angry about its mystery.
"How do you know?" he asked; he'd made his peace with the fact that there were things about the two of them that were just strange and you had to leave it at that, but at the moment he had little sympathy for mysteries.
"Sometimes – I see his dreams," Ryou said, softly, then leant over the form on the floor. "Spirit?"
"Do you know her as well then?" Malik asked, pointing at the girl.
"I've never seen h –"
The person on the floor, who Malik supposed had to be Bakura, groaned loudly, rubbed their head, and began to unbend with the slow air of someone who has recently gotten a painful and disorienting blow on the head. The millennium ring, still hanging from Ryou's neck, glowed strongly as if in answer.
"No," Ryou said next to him, to something Malik hadn't heard. "It's mine, you know."
The man slowly stood up, and Malik couldn't help staring at him in all his naked glory; Bakura, more muscled, a little taller, short white hair, a scar under one eye – he had been hot in his previous life. Not that he wasn't in this one.
"What did you do?" Malik asked.
"It is mine," Bakura answered, looking at Ryou; his voice way weak and rough, like it hadn't been used in a long time. "More so than you could ever comprehend."
Ryou crossed his arms over his chest and the ring protectively; Malik, still very much confused, hoped that they weren't going to fight for it: he had no idea with whom he was supposed to side.
But Bakura didn't dive for the ring; the glow died down, and the thief pushed both of them aside to walk over towards the centre of the pentagram, where, collapsed over the Blue Eyes White Dragon card, laid the woman.
"Damn it," Bakura muttered, at he stomped towards her with obvious frustration.
Ryou ran after him quickly, and Malik followed.
"This isn't what you were trying to do?" he asked; Ryou kneeled down next to her and checked her pulse.
"She's alive," he murmured.
"Of course it isn't!" Bakura snapped.
"Is it someone from your past?" Malik tried.
"Will you stop asking stupid questions?" Bakura snarled at him.
Malik recoiled; he had never seen the thief this uncontrolled and agitated; even when his own dark side had slowly erased him from existence, he hadn't been. Something must have gone seriously wrong with his plans. That, or it was the new body; that had to have an overwhelming effect, though Malik himself had taken to wearing Anzu's pretty well when he'd had to.
"No," Bakura said coldly. "She's..." He kneeled down next to her as well, and shook her without gentleness.
"Don't –" Ryou tried. Bakura ignored him; the woman's head bumped against the floor. "Stop," Ryou repeated; Malik stepped forward unsurely, but he didn't need to intervene; Ryou laid his hands on Bakura's; they both stared down at their joined hands for a moment, very still, before Bakura swiftly moved back, then stood up. Ryou cradled the girl's head on his lap.
"Was this part of the plan?" Malik asked and motioned Bakura in a grand gesture; and with a half-smile, he added: "Because I think I like it."
Bakura's whirled round and looked at him as if he were surprised by his very presence; then, slowly, when Malik was beginning to feel out of place again, he grinned; the face was new, and the different, grey eyes would take some getting used to – assuming this was permanent – but the grin was the same as before.
"Thank you."
"Oh sure." Malik crossed his arms. "Accept the compliment and don't answer the question."
Bakura's grin vanished, and he pressed his lips together.
"This wasn't planned," he said at last, much to Malik's surprise: he hadn't really been expecting an answer.
"Uh, sorry to hear that?" Malik offered; he looked, searching for help, at Ryou; the latter was delicately holding the girl's head, but looking at them, and smiling faintly, and his smile widened when Malik met his eyes.
"Can we..." Ryou said, then trailed off. Carefully, he extracted himself from under the girl and came towards them; in front of Bakura he stopped, and raised both hands the his face, touched it delicately, as if he were blind and had to learn his features by touch.
Bakura stood still; but, after a few moments of slowness, Ryou instead drew both arms around him and kissed him; and Bakura too enlaced him and held him close, with force, and maybe, Malik thought, watching, they were trying to remerge into one.
"Do you... want me to leave you alone?" he asked.
He had meant for it to sound sarcastic, but instead it came out weak and a little sad, rejected.
They broke the kiss but not their embrace, and stared at him.
"Don't be stupid," Bakura said, surprisingly softly; his voice had already gained in strength.
"No, we don't," Ryou said, and looked at him worriedly, and Malik hadn't known how much it would pain him to lose this until then. "It's just – this is strange." He pressed the thief even closer, as if not entirely sure that he was there.
"It will be even stranger when you betray me to them and they defeat me, host," Bakura drawled.
"Stop that," Malik stepped in, without being completely certain what the spirit meant; he came towards them, and as soon as he was in reach Ryou held out a hand and, when he took it, drew him close.
He found himself suddenly between them, Bakura – as tall as he was now – breathing onto his neck, Ryou's mouth right under his, both their bodies pressing against him, and whatever he had expected of Bakura's accursed ritual, this wasn't it. He kissed Ryou, softly, and shivered when Bakura kissed his neck. As real as it had felt, their time together inside Ryou's soul-room had had something eerie, which this no longer had; absurdly, as Bakura moved his head downward and even though both of them had traced every line of his scars, he felt suddenly self-conscious about his back. (The few times he'd had sex before them, he never had he been naked.)
"We –" Ryou interrupted himself by kissing him. "We need to do something about her."
"Right," Malik murmured against his lips; who (or what?) ever she was, he didn't want to be directly responsible for anyone's death. "Bakura."
Reluctantly, the thief stepped back.
"She mustn't die," he agreed coldly.
"Who is she, then?" Malik asked, wandering back to her, Ryou by his side.
"We'll see when she wakes up," was all Bakura answered.
He went, not to the girl, but to where the millennium eye had rolled to, and picked it up. Malik followed, and waited if maybe Ryou would put up a fight for it as well, but Ryou ignored them, his attention back to the girl.
"Are you planning to...?" Malik gestured at his own eye and mimicked pushing; Bakura grimaced, and pocketed the eye.
"Maybe," he answered, looking grim. "Not now," he added, annoyed, when Malik looked disgusted in answer. "Come on, we need to get her upstairs."
The "come on" was unnecessary, as he was the one who picked her up, bridal style, and surprisingly careful, and led the way; Ryou and Malik stayed behind, and looked at each other; then Ryou took his hand.
"I'm glad you're here," he confided, and squeezed.
"I love you," Malik answered, because he did, and maybe it bore saying, then added, quickly switching subjects when Ryou stared up at him: "Do you think this really wasn't planned?"
"I'm not sure," Ryou admitted, and pulled his hand, urging him to follow Bakura upstairs; Malik let himself be led. "I don't see why he would – I haven't been able to hold him back since that first time. And you said he wants the dragon."
"That's what he told me. That would have made sense."
Ryou nodded thoughtfully; they had reached the top of the stairs, and the faint light from the already low sun was a welcome change. Despite the confusion and the incertitude, they smiled at each other as they walked on.
Bakura was sleeping peacefully by his side.
The room, one of the smaller ones, was faintly lit by a small lamp by the bedside; the bed itself was softer and more luxurious than anything he had ever known, and more than large enough for three people. He was naked, but the temperature was agreeable in the whole mansion and he wasn't cold.
Bakura was sleeping peacefully by his side.
He turned the phrase over in his mind; but it was still wondrous. The connection between their minds was still there, but feeble and thinning, and that was frightening, despite the freedom it offered. But for Bakura to be there, to be real, in flesh, not only within the embodiment of his mind!... He had, even after all this time, sometimes wondered if the spirit was a hallucination, nothing but a manifestation of his own insanity; and while the presence had always been too overbearing for him to truly believe that, it was still wonderful for him to have gained this reality, physical, independent of him!
Bakura. He was willing to give him his name, which Malik had so easily cut apart for them. He was family, in a sense, and stolen as the name might be, the spirit had worn it; and Ryou suspected that he had no memory of the own name he'd once had. So that was alright.
Maybe he was hopeless, for not hating the spirit that had stolen away his life and was still bound on destruction, who had threatened every stranger that had crossed his path; but he'd seen the memories of blood and fire in his other's mind, and – but that was an excuse, the real reason lay in the inescapable closeness which Malik had breached enough to let them meet, instead of losing themselves in each other. If he could be certain that the spirit hadn't pretended this whole time...
Malik was lying by his other side, body drawn together slightly, moving now and then in his sleep – he had nightmares, he'd confided once when they'd been in his soulroom. Less now, he had added. Ryou smiled, and reached out to both sides to be able to touch them both.
Malik awoke to annoying bird-twitter and Bakura playing with the pointers of the millennium ring.
He sat up with a start; judging by the light it was early in the morning, but he felt no longer tired. And seeing Bakura sitting cross-legged on the bed, on the other side of Ryou's sleeping form and holding the ring in his hands, he suddenly wasn't so sure if it was a good idea to sleep in the spirit's – former spirit's – presence, now that his assistance was no longer needed. Distrust no longer came as naturally as it used to.
Quickly, he rolled to the side and over the side of the bed, where his clothes lay, and, among them, the millennium rod; it was where he'd left it. He heaved a long sigh.
"They have to be won or given, you know," Bakura's voice came from behind him, and Malik rolled back round and towards him. "Cutting your throat while you sleep and taking it doesn't qualify."
"Could you not mention cutting my throat as long as we're sleeping together?" Malik snapped, even as he stared at the thief; he wouldn't stop doing that for quite a while, he suspected, though he'd became very familiar with this new body last night. He reached down beside the bed to retrieve his pants. They'd need to find clothes for Bakura, he supposed. "Why do you have this then?" He motioned the ring the thief was holding with his chin.
"It is mine," Bakura said coldly; but, to Malik's surprise, he then laid the ring gently onto Ryou's chest.
"Why?" asked Malik, after he was at least partly dressed. "His father gave it too him, you know." Ryou had told him that, in his soulroom.
"They killed my whole village and moulded their ashes into gold. I, and this –" He motioned the ring, then the rod (Malik closed his fist tighter around it, instinctively). "– is all that's left of them."
He stood up.
Malik was too dumbfounded by Bakura actually telling him anything about his past to comprehend the content of it for a moment. When he did, he stood up as well. Ryou shifted in his sleep but didn't wake up.
"Really?" Malik went toward Bakura. "You know, I spend my whole childhood learning about the nameless pharaoh and the items, and they never told me about that part. It figures."
Bakura turned to him, surprised, and then smiled.
"So," Malik added, grinning back, "what's the next part? It's not me giving you the millennium rod, in case you wondered."
Bakura actually rolled his eyes, which was a bit rich, coming from someone who ripped out people's eyes and tried to kill them.
"We wait until the girl wakes up. Until then..." He shrugged, and then glanced from him to Ryou; Malik didn't stop grinning.
(end of chapter fourteen)
Having sex is a perfectly reasonable reaction to someone suddenly gaining a new body! :p
The next chapter is already written, but after that there's a void, so I'm not sure how fast I'll update. It's slowly nearing the end, actually.
Please tell me what you think!