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When the Snow Falls, chapter 10
A Life to Live
I hadn't seen Ryou once since that night. It's not that he wasn't in the apartment or anything; Bakura was just hanging around too often for comfort. He wouldn't talk to anyone either. He would wake up early in the morning, leave, and come back at extremely late hours of the night. Many times I tried asking him where he was going. His response to everything was ignoring me now.
You know, not that it bothered me or anything. He was just walking around with Ryou's body doing god-knows-what. No problem.
Several days passed before anything changed. Bakura walked up to me with a face of complete indifference and asked,
"Where's Amanet?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, fluffy." I scoffed.
I didn't have an answer for him. I mean, how could I? After we met her that one time, I hardly knew what was going on with these ancient spirits anymore.
Bakura's eyebrow twitched in annoyance.
"Don't. Ever. Call me that." he snarled viciously. He stormed off with his teeth and fists clenched.
Sighing, I shuffled back to the room Ryou had prepared for me when I came here, and say down on the bed heavily.
"Ryou... Where are you?" I whispered to myself.
I clearly couldn't deny it.
I was in love with him. Every little quirk held me tighter to him, and I never wanted to let go. Judging on what happened that snowy night, I was pretty sure that he felt the same. Of course, I had no way of talking to him; Bakura never let him. And I would never, in a million years, talk to him about this. That would come back to bite me in the ass sooner or later.
"There is a way."
The voice jolted me from my thoughts. I looked around the room frantically, but I didn't see anyone or anything that could make a sound.
"Che, and now I'm hearing voices. Schizoid much?"
"I can assure you, you do not have schizophrenia."
Now this was just too funny.
"Then who the hell am I talking to?"
It was silent for a moment, but then the voice cleared it's "throat" and responded
"It's Amanet."
My brain stopped working for a moment. 'Really?' I thought 'She's lurking around in my head still?'
"Well, aren't you just a basket of sarcastic roses?" Amanet scoffed, equally sarcastically.
At this point, I found out just how annoying my constant sarcasm could be. Outwardly sighing, I mumbled
"What is it? What do you want from me?"
"It's about all four of us. Bakura, his host, you, and I. I'm quite aware from watching the last week or so of your life that you have feelings for that Ryou boy, right?"
My face flushed slightly at her blatant observations. 'It wasn't THAT obvious, was it?'
"Very much so." She chuckled.
I growled inaudibly.
"You're really starting to get annoying, do you know that?"
Amanet laughed loudly, then continued
"That brings me to my more relevant point. Do you remember what happened in the Shadow Realm? How you materialized that weapon?" I nodded. "You, like myself, have the power of Shadow manipulation. Thus, what you can do is separate the Yamis from the Hikaris by creating new vessels for the spirits within the realm."
I was dumbfounded.
"So, basically what you're saying is that you and Bakura would separate from Ryou and I?" Amanet hummed in confirmation. Then I thought of something. "Then why couldn't you do that yourself? You said that you had that power too, right?"
Amanet exhaled deeply before responding.
"There is a crucial necessity in the ability: you have to be living. The energy that feeds the power is found only in living beings. Therefore, I couldn't do anything about it myself. If I could, don't you think that I would have done that long ago?"
I nodded gently in my solitude. If there was something; anything I could do to let Ryou not have to worry about Bakura taking over both his body and his life, I wanted to do all that I could.
"Teach me."
The hours we spent in the darkness.
The endless repetitions of magic and incantations.
The frustration if failure time after time.
It was all worth it though.
"Now, speak the incantation over me. I can take my astral form now that we have finished." A small, fuzzy form started collecting before me. This was the first time I had ever seen Amanet so close; she was beautiful! She looked a lot like me, but he skin was darker and her general outlook had a lot more vitality to it.
As I was gawking at her, she started getting impatient. She cleared her throat, and indicated to me to begin.
"Bannē alaga ātmā'ō vibhājita rahēśē. Vidēśī mātē navī śarīra. Bē bē, ēka ēka, śyāma anē pāchā pharī prakāśā. Prakāśana!"
A clear light gathered around Amanet. She gasped lightly for a second, then grabbed my arm with her metaphysical hand. That startled me and I had an instinctive reaction to pull myself back, but the Egyptian's eyes, glazed and widened, indicated that I had to be with her.
Suddenly, I felt a massive, painful pull from my chest. I curdled over in agony, crying out. She kept her firm grasp on my wrist as I fell over, but was clearly unable to keep a complete hold on me.
"You fool! The ritual won't finish unless we remain in contact with each other!" Amanet hissed. I swallowed my suffering and tired to re-establish the connection we had. In a few short moments, I could no longer feel any pain. It was as if it was lifted from my heart. Opening my eyes slowly, I saw something expected, yet beautifully surprising: Amanet was standing before me, fully visible. I scrambled to my feet and faced her.
She extended her hand to me, and smiled.
"It worked, Akane. Thank you."
I smiled back.
"Now for Ryou... and Bakura too."
Amanet smirked for a moment, and giggled softly. As we turned away to dissolve the shadows, I small voice perked up from behind us.
"A-Akane-chan?"
That voice! It's-
I whipped around to see something that I never thought I would see. Ryou and Bakura, standing side-by-side.
"Ryou!" I called out emotionally. "It's really you!" We ran towards each other and embraced. How long have I wanted to be held by these arms again? I buried my face in the crook of his neck, and muttered
"I'm so glad you're back."
Ryou pulled me away before bringing me back in a tongue-twisting, heartstring-pulling kiss.
"It's good to be back."
Amanet and Bakura glanced at each other before completing the disintegration of the Shadow Realm and walking towards each other. After a moment's hesitation, their hands and fingers entwined and they left Ryou and I alone.
"Ryou?" I whispered hesitantly. He looked me dead in the eye in acknowledgement. "There's something I have to tell you."
"What is it?" he asked.
"I-I think I love you."
Ryou didn't give me a chance to brace myself for an answer before wrapping his arms around my waist again.
"That's something we share, Akane-chan. I love you as well."
My heart soared with every word he said to me that night.
I'll never forget those heartfelt nights.
Our love started when the snow fell.
Finis.
A/N:
Do you hate me? I really hope you don't.
Akane: It's over? *cries*
Ryou: It's ok! *hugs*
Bakura: My screentime was hardly sufficient.
Me: Suck it up, hon. You didn't pay me enough! And just a BTW, the little foreign blurb is in a language called Gujarati. I took a random verse off the top of my head and stuck it into Google translate, then romanized it. The grammar is likely horrid. Blame me not. Translated, it roughly means "The separate souls of the two shall split. A new body for the foreign. Two to two, one to one, light to dark and back again. Release!"
Yeah.
And I'm going to do something I've never done before: The person that is the 66th reviewer gets to request something of ore-sama! Be it a one-shot of some sort of pairing or whatever, or an epilogue to this story, if you request it, I SHALL WRITE DESU! Just one thing: I won't do incest. Please don't ask me to do that. But I like yaoi ^^ BRING IT ON!
To all of my readers, I love you sooooo much for reading and reviewing this story. It means a lot to me that you took the time to read this. I just want you all to know that (insert heart-emicon here) :3
~Riv