LATE UPDATE IS LATE GOMENASAI!
Everyone: Gomen.
Riv: I've been stupidly busy with school, midterms, friend drama, band, and the list goes on.
Ryou: Now you're just making excuses.
Riv: I know :'( But hey, I'm FINALLY updating~! And a shout out + cookies to my wonderfultasticsuper-special-awesome reviewers~!
Stormygio~!
Punk Rock Kitsune~!
Fire Ice and snowcones~!
YamiGirl314~! (as I literally just realized, is pi... you can tell I'm not too observant.)
Adorehim88~!
Rhamana~!
And even though you didn't sign in, I knew it was you Miss Kuraki-chan~! TROLOLOL.
Now, on to the long awaited chapter (I'M SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG O.O)
Chapter 6
There was nothing I could do. Nothing. I couldn't stop any of the deaths. All I could do was watch as Bakura tore through endless people's lives.
My father.
The detective.
All of the innocent officers he was murdering ruthlessly.
I could do nothing but stand there, held by Ryou, as we watched the psychotic Yami kill and kill again.
Soon the tortured screams stopped.
The silence was uneasy.
Suddenly, the tall grasses that surrounded us began rustling.
"Someone's coming!" I hissed.
We dropped to the ground; listening, waiting, hoping that it was a friendly face that emerged from the tall golden stems.
I could feel my heartbeat throughout my body, and could hear the blood rushing by my ears. I squeezed Ryou's hand in fear. He thus held me tighter and closer to him.
The rustling and shuffling stopped. Within the wild grasses was one blood-drenched Bakura. His eyes glowed with a sinister, yet sorrowful shine, and his frown was replaced with an emotionless expression.
The pain of losing the woman he loved was still obvious though.
"Bakura..." I muttered under my breath. He looked down at me and grunted.
"We can't stay here long. I'm only *so* good at hiding dead bodies."
"You..." Ryou started, "You killed all of them?"
The Yami's eyes redirected towards the Hikari.
"Only the ones that came at me. The rest will live out the rest of their pathetic existences as rocks and blades of grass."
I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or serious.
The pained look on Ryou's face suggested the latter.
As we emerged from the field and headed back towards the van, the expression on Ryou's face did not fade. When we approached Amanet's body for a pseudo-burial, he still appeared tortured by his mentality.
"Ryou...? Are you going to be alright?" I murmured in his ear. He looked at me with a face that could have made even me cry.
"It's all my fault." he whispered, gazing at the girl's lifeless body. "If it wasn't for me, she would still be alright. I knew I should have turned myself in; I just knew it! Why didn't I listen to my gut?"
I grabbed his shoulders and gazed intensely into his clouded chocolate eyes.
"There was nothing that you could have done to change this! Some things happen because they haveto happen. If they didn't, the world would probably blow up! Then EVERYONE would be goners!"
"Akane, your attempt at optimistic humour has failed." Bakura groaned sarcastically.
I turned to him swiftly and growled,
"Shut the fuck up, Kura, you're not helping!"
He was taken aback severely by my verbal attack, but didn't start a rebuttal. On the contrary; he backed away. When I turned back to Ryou, he still seemed incredibly down. I did my best to calm myself before I started speaking again.
"Look, I don't know if there could have been anything we could have done to help her, but what's done is done; there's no changing the past. Everything happens for a reason, and what that reason is is the light at the end of the tunnel, right? What we need to do now is keep on moving so we can find whatever that is, alright?"
He lifted his listless eyes to mine. There was still so much negativity behind them, and they were buried under a covering of false happiness.
"Yeah. We should probably... finish up here then move on. We don't know when more people might come."
I didn't want to comment on his apparent emotions, and even much so talk to Bakura about any of these matters. They were both extremely unstable right now, and who knows what might set them off next?
As per Ryou's suggestion, we buried Amanet relatively quickly before getting back in the van and driving off. The melancholic normality of the plains spread the feeling across what was left of our group. Ryou did nothing but sit, staring out the window and sighing. Bakura was uncomfortably static in his place driving, not speaking or changing position once. As for me, I sat awkwardly in the middle of it, mentally begging one of them to start up a conversation to break the disturbing silence we were suspended in. But I don't think that anything anyone could say would settle the tense air hanging about us.
Both of them were so tense, I felt like the simplest think would make them snap.
It was almost sunset when we came across the next town. We stopped at a small gas bar before booking ourselves in at a small motel. Everything about it screamed "sketchy", but it was cheap. Seeing as we were practically nomadic at this point, money was rather tight.
Later that night, I noticed that Ryou was acting strange; strange being more depressed than the rest of us. His eyes were hollow and blank, and he didn't respond to anything!
"Ryou?" I whispered. "Are you alright?"
He was still silent. From across the room, I heard a loud slamming sound. Before I knew what was going on, Bakura had Ryou by the neck of his shirt and dangling slightly above the ground. Just as I was about to slap the Yami across the face, he snarled and said,
"Man up, Yadonushi. We're all depressed over what happened to Amanet, but you don't need to overdo it like a PMSing girl! Get. The fuck. Over it."
Ryou winced at the sheer poison in Bakura's voice but when he stayed silent, Bakura grunted and practically threw him against the wall.
I ran towards Ryou and knelt down to the ground. His eyes were no longer blank, but they were shrouded in fear. I grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet, and then bolted rigidly to Bakura. I clenched my fist angrily and slapped him across the face, leaving a large red handprint on his cheek.
"How dare you! We are all on edge, and the last thing I want us doing is engaging in internal strife, but by all means, we both have a right to be angry at you. After all, it was you that killed all of those people, including the main cause of all of this chaos. Ryou is trying so hard to keep it together, and you're just adding kindling to the fire! Do you honestly expect everything to be alright after what has happened these last few months?" All I wanted to do was punch the Yami for every hating word that had been spoken to Ryou, but my intrusive conscience held her against it. "You're not the only one suffering, Bakura. We all are heartbroken over Amanet's death. Would you just...try to relax for a motherfucking second?"
Bakura was silent and unmoving. His crimson-brown eyes were lowered to the ground and misted. He broke the still by raising his head before whipping around back to the desk where he was sitting before. After I (rather childishly) stuck my tongue out behind his back, I turned back to Ryou, who was standing timidly in the corner. As I approached him, I could see him visibly shrink into the wall, but that didn't stop me. I grabbed his quivering hands and held them tight.
"I'm sorry Ryou. I didn't want you to see me like that... I just...got so upset at Bakura and I couldn't help myself... Ever since Amanet died, I've felt this stabbing pain in my heart. It might be because of that spell we cast to separate us, but I can't know for sure." He kept his face to the ground as I spoke, and I felt like he was still wallowing in grief.
"You're not alone. Just know that, ok?" A pressed a brief kiss on his lips before slowly turning around.
'I don't know what to do anymore...'
I took one step before something held onto my arm. I peered around and saw Ryou's pale hand wrapped around my forearm, shaking but still strong.
"I'm sorry." he whispered. His voice cracked as slow tears descended his face. "I'm so sorry..."
I hated seeing him like this. He was so heartbroken that he was falling apart in front of me. The part of him that was always smiling, looking on the 'bright side', and the loving boyfriend I knew still lived in him had disintegrated into a weak-minded human, hopeless and lost in despair.
"Stop apologizing." I muttered. "If you want to fix this, then you know what you need to do. Keep going and hold your head high. When you're depressed, nobody can be happy. I know that what has happened these last few days have been trying, but we have to keep going, so be a man and do what you think is right!"
I felt like a cheap motivational poster for a moment, but I did my best to brush it off. My miniature corny speech seemed to hit its mark though, because Ryou seemed to lighten up marginally.
"Th-thanks, Akane. I'll try." he whispered.
The rest of the night was normal enough. We got some (admittedly terrible) Chinese food before getting ready for bed. Bakura arranged himself relatively quickly on the oddly upholstered sofa while Ryou and I settled on the bed.
And before I knew it, I was fast asleep.
I found myself in a lush meadow, surrounded by flowers and bright green grass. I didn't think about the obvious grandeur of the dream, but rather started running through the grasses without a care in my mind. Suddenly, the ground disappeared from beneath me. I felt myself falling to an uncertain place, and I hit water. Immediately, I started panicking.
'No! Anything but this! Ryou-'
My mentality started to regress. I went back to that afternoon 10 years ago when my father held my head under the water until he passed out of drunkenness. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think at all. A lot of people think I'm a tough person, but in reality, I'm terribly fragile. Despite adversity that I faced head-on, things that some would find insignificant scare me half to death. Water is one of those things. I started flailing my arms and legs sporadically, hoping that someone-anyone would help me.
'But this is a dream. Nobody would help me...' I thought to myself. 'After all, who would?'
A golden ray of light woke me from my delirium. I whipped my head around (although it took at least double the energy from the water resistance) trying to find the source, but it came from all around, so it was a futile effort. Whispers started filling the space around me as well, and the feeling of drowning began fading. I could breathe under the surface of the water somehow. 'A great divine prank this dream is.' The hushed voices grew slowly louder and clearer. Behind the words were what sounded like a child's crying. The words were distinct now, and their voices seemed familiar as well.
"Come on, don't leave me like this..."
"Don't cry..."
"Can you forgive me for trying to care?"
"I love you more than words can describe."
"
I'm sorry"
The statements weren't even in a conversation; they were more like chaos. The apology came across very loud though, as if it bore more importance.
"Wake up." someone commanded through the fluid-like atmosphere.
"What...?" I muttered through half-lidded eyes.
"Wake up and find him. Keep him close, before it's too late." the voice repeated. The tone seemed familiar... I recognized it as Amanet's!
"What do you mean, Amanet?"
She didn't respond to my question, but instead roared,
"Go, now!"
With the final yell, I bolted upright in bed. I was panting heavily and a thin layer of sweat covered my body. It took a couple of seconds for me to calm down from...whatever nightmare that was. I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed.
'It's only a dream. But...what was that? What did it mean?'
I let my eyes wander in the dark room. The only source of illumination came from the moon, which was shining brightly outside the open window. Wait, why was it open? I was sure I had closed it...
And that's when I noticed: Ryou wasn't there. At first, I disregarded it and thought he might just be in the bathroom or something, but the light was off and the door was locked.
"He's an idiot, you know?" a low voice called out. I whipped my head around to where Bakura was sitting, his head in his hands and shrouded in darkness.
"Wh-what do you mean? Where is Ryou?" I asked, growing slightly more panicked by the second. Instead of responding to me verbally, he threw a small envelope towards me. Curious, I opened it. The contents reduced me to tears.
"Dear Akane,
If you are reading this, it means that I'm not here anymore. There's something I want to tell you. Even though it was, in fact, Yami that killed your father, he wasn't the only one inflicting the blows. Therefore, I am as guilty as he is for the crime committed. When I saw what was going on, I guess that tiny bit of courage inside of me started reacting to you. Ever since then, I knew that I was in love with you. No matter what happened, I felt my heart beat faster when you spoke to me, or touched my hand. Even when you hit Yami in the head with that frying pan (yes, I know about that. Good job, haha) I couldn't help but smile; a genuine smile, not for show like I used to, which is revolutionary for me. When we made love... my heart set on fire. Every layer of ice that had built up in my soul was instantly melted by that one act. I love you more than I could describe, do know that. But because of my love for you, I have to go. I'm turning myself in to the police. After what happened to Amanet, I kept thinking to myself, "What if that was Akane? What would I do then?" Eventually I just couldn't bear it any more.
I hope that my actions make sense to you. I want to keep you out of harm's way. Isn't that the reason we're all here anyway? That's what I think, if it matters.
With all my love,
Ryou"
"I tried to stop him..." Bakura muttered. "But he just wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. And then he told me to give you this. I didn't read it; I'm not going to invade your privacy this time."
As tears pressed against my eyes, I felt my hands shaking around the small letter.
"He...he really is an idiot, isn't he?... Leaving us behind without really saying goodbye? That's just too cruel." My voice never left a whisper, but I knew that Bakura could hear me. After a short moment of silence, a sudden wave of nausea rolled across my stomach. I rushed to the bathroom and subsequently vomited.
Bakura followed me in silence and held my hair out of my face. When I stopped throwing up and caught my breath, the Yami let my hair down and said something I wouldn't have ever thought of.
"You two...did you sleep together?"
My face flashed red as soon of the words left his lips.
"I-I, I mean, we-"
It was too obvious.
I was pregnant with Ryou's child.
-(-o-)-
A/N:
Akane: You're such a bitch, you know that?
Riv: If I didn't, I wouldn't flaunt it and make it dreadfully obvious.
Everyone: O.O;
Riv: Hehe... SOMEBODY DISCLAIM DESU~!
Shizuka: Ooh, I've always wanted to try this! RiverTear980 does not own Yu-Gi-Oh, even though in her "World Domination Plot #87, it is listed under "very important" along with the raising of Atlantis from the bottom of the ocean~!"
Riv: I like you. Enthusiasm.
Tyler: What is this "enthusiasm"? You crazy girl. *tousles Riv's hair*
Riv: UAAAAH! THE FOURTH WALL BE BROKEN!
Monika: Oh god, please don't tell me this is a fanfi-
Everyone: EVERYBODY, RUN TO THE PORTAL! ESCAPE TO THE REAL WORLD!
Riv: ...I feel lonely. Anyone want to join me in this realm? Leave me a review~! I really like reviews~! They make me feel happy in this depressing world...