AN: Thank you all so much for the amazing feedback I got! It really means a lot. Now, I have this story written up already to a pretty far point, so I decided to post this chapter early for you guys (since I have a lot of this story written up, it also means that I should be pretty consistent with updates, which is always good.)

Also a note to Salience Is - Thanks for pointing out the previous chapter mistakes (Which I fixed by the way.) Bound to be a couple when you write fanfiction at all hours of the morning haha. I'll try to avoid those in the future =)

More puppets in this chapter! Read on, everyone.

Borderline

"I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed."

-James Thurber

08 ; Gimmie A Call

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, and this storyline is absolutely, positively fictional. I mean no offense to anyone.

Ryou is walking with Duke to Dr. Melvin Potts's office at three-minutes-to-five and blurts out,

"What was her name?"

Duke continues to stare ahead wordlessly, but Ryou notices his face hardens imperceptibly. Finally, the older man swallows. He replies with a forced nonchalant tone,

"Who?"

"The girl who slept with some other guy to get up the college social ladder and dumped you," Ryou elaborates.

Duke, for the first time at Rockford, shoots his head to the side and gives Ryou a death-cold look.

"Don't you ever talk about her like that again, you hear me?" he sneers, and Ryou blinks.

There's silence. Ryou isn't intimidated easily, although Duke being that harsh with him is a surprise and does make Ryou crack his knuckles once in uneasiness.

Finally, Duke speaks.

"Her name was Miranda. I loved her. A lot," Duke tells, "But apparently she didn't return the feelings," he finishes, and gulps.

Ryou simply continues watching Duke, silently urging him to say more. Duke notices this, because he turns to Ryou, narrows his eyes a little, and says,

"That's it."

Ryou knows Duke is lying, but he doesn't have time to pester him about the topic any longer, because the duo has arrived at Melvin Potts's door. So reluctantly, Ryou goes in.

But not before he catches Duke muttering under his breath,

"I should have never said a word."

"I'm not crazy."

"I never implied that you were."

"I'm living in a mental institution. It's been more than just implied."

"Well, we're here to help you so no one will imply that you're crazy ever again."

"I told you, I'm not crazy."

"That has nothing to do with what I just said."

"Yes it does. If I was crazy, I would need to be in here. I would need to get help. But I'm not and I don't so I'll just be leaving—"

"Ryou, sit back down."

Pause. A shuffle of feet.

"Good. Now, I think that—"

"Do you like hot dogs?"

"…Excuse me, Ryou?"

"Hot dogs."

"Don't try and change the subject."

"I for one think they are completely unhealthy and simply—"

"Ryou! Focus! Tell me how you feel right now."

"…How I feel?"

"Yes."

"Well, right now I feel pretty PO'd."

"Why?"

"Why do you think, idiot?"

"Ryou, don't be sarcastic, and I don't appreciate being called `an idiot'. I'm a doctor and far from an idiot."

"Whatever."

"Do you have any strong interests in anything, Ryou? Any hobbies, things…"

"Music."

"Oh that's nice. What do you play?"

"Everything, pretty much."

"Everything?"

"Yes."

"So you play the harpsichord? The vibraphone? The ukulele?"

"No."

"Well than you don't play `everything'."

"Fine, Mr. Let's-Get-Technical. So are we done yet?"

"No, Ryou, we have thirty-five more minutes."

"Great."

"Ryou, it won't be so ba—"

"What's wrong with Bakura?"

"Pardon?"

"Bakura. What is his friggin' problem? He's psycho!"

"I can't—"

"Seto, then. How long has he been in here?"

"I—"

"Yugi? Joey?"

"Ryou, I can't talk to you about other patients' confidential information."

"Well than you're really boring."

A sigh.

"Ryou…"

"You're welcome."

This was how Ryou and Dr. Potts's first therapy session went.

They didn't really get anything done, as Ryou likes to think on his way back from the shrink's room. He has a smug little smirk on and is proudly holding his head up high with his hands stuffed into his jean pockets.

As far as he was concerned, these detestable people weren't going to ever get a thing from him. Not one lick of his inner thoughts or feelings.

Never.

Ever, ever.

He's walking down the hall to the TV room to relax before `bedtime medication' AKA `sleeping pills' when Jared calls out from behind the nurses' station,

"Ryou, phone's for you."

Ryou blinks and restrains a sigh.

Last night his father called at about this time to check up on him after his first day, and Ryou expects him to have called again tonight. He's not looking forward to that, because their conversations go something like this:

"Ryou, how are you?"

"In a mental institution. And yourself?"

Ryou just can't resist using that sarcasm of his.

"I'm good, Son," his dad says.

"...Made any new friends?" he adds.

Ryou stifles a laugh because of course he's made loads of new friends at this mental hospital on his first day.

"Yup," he says, acting chipper.

"That's good. All right, be good. We'll see you this weekend when we go in and talk with Dr. Potts!" his father croons, and Ryou rolls his eyes.

"Of course, Dad, see you there," he says, his actual feelings not showing up at all in his voice.

"Bye!"

So of course Ryou walks as slowly as he can to the ringing phone booth to his left. Finally, he clambers in and sits as comfortably as he can on top of the little wooden bench they built off of the wall. He picks up the phone with a bored,

"Hello?"

"So what's your diag-nonsense?"

The unfamiliar voice surprises Ryou, and he knits his eyebrows. Shifting a bit uneasily, he replies,

"Who's this?"

Suddenly, hearing a low knock on the back of his wooden phone booth, he peers his head outside behind him and catches sight of Bakura's head stuck out of the phone booth up against his. The other boy's face breaks into a mischievous grin and Ryou can't help but return the act as Bakura whispers into the phone he's holding,

"Hello there."

Ryou takes a breath in and returns,

"Hey. I don't know my `problem' yet. Dr Potts didn't tell me."

Bakura nods, but of course Ryou can't see that so he says instead,

"Yeah. No surprise. Guy usually falls asleep during sessions. At least he did always with me."

There's a pause, and then Bakura chuckles.

"But that's because I purposely made myself boring and closed so he couldn't ask or have anything to talk to me about," he explains, and Ryou smiles a little.

Then, Bakura's tone gets completely serious as he says to Ryou,

"Listen, don't fucking give in. They'll pester you and instigate you and try and get stuff out of you but don't."

He hesitates. Ryou bites his lower lip, honestly surprised at Bakura's outburst of kind-of-helpful information.

"Don't tell them. Don't tell. Because once they have your thoughts, your secrets, your mind, they'll kill you. They'll kill who you really are because they can't stand that you're non-conforming and exactly what they don't want," he says. Then a small smile is in his voice when he whispers, "You're different. I can tell."

Ryou gulps a little.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Bakura's smile grows and becomes more evident in his voice when he says,

"Because I don't want to lose the only person most like me."

Needless to say, Bakura's phone call and little comment made Ryou a little uneasy the next day.

Bakura was cooked up in seclusion, though, as far as he knew, so thankfully he didn't have to associate with the boy. So instead, he occupied himself with Yugi.

He and the small boy sit at the TV room table with checkers and Yugi steals two of Ryou's red before saying,

"He's only nineteen."

Ryou doesn't look up from the board as he makes his next checkers move and asks,

"Who?"

"Bakura," Yugi simply answers.

Ryou nods.

"He looks young. He looks a little bit like me, too."

Yugi laughs, and then smiles a little.

"Yeah, he does."

Ryou looks up as Yugi's reaching to make his next game move.

"Why do you tell me so much about Bakura?"

Yugi narrows his eyes a little.

"Well, `cause you asked."

Ryou doesn't break his gaze from Yugi's and eventually the intense silence causes Yugi to give in and he reveals,

"Because I don't want you to hurt him."

Yugi's face is completely straight but his light purple eyes glimmer with sadness as he says it.

Ryou takes an unnoticeable breath in.

"How would I—?" he starts, but is cut off.

"People don't understand him like I do. They just don't. Even though we've all been here with him for years now, no one really gets him like me. He's misunderstood. He scares people. And because of that, he gets in trouble and hurt. And I don't want another person to come in here and cause him to get hurt just `cause of some misunderstandings, so I'm going to try and enlighten those who might not get him that well as best I can to prevent that," Yugi explains, narrowing his eyes a little bit at the end, obviously referring to Ryou. Then, he pauses before adding quietly,

"And, of course, you're a heck of a lot like him."

Ryou blinks at Yugi's words, and then narrows his eyes.

"What?"

Yugi looks up, surprised at Ryou's surprise. He hesitates but then finally says, "Well, you and him do both have weird white hair." Ryou inwardly smirks at this, because this was Yugi telling someone they have 'weird hair'. "You have a lot of similar personality traits. That's never happened before. I just thought you'd wanna know more about the one guy who's most like you here."

Ryou suddenly feels anger bubbling in his stomach, and he knows why.

"Well, continue, then. You never finished your story from the other night about what happened to Bakura. And you never told me how you ended up here, either," Ryou replies, suddenly nasty.

There's a silence, and Ryou continues staring wordlessly, unblinkingly, and harshly at the tri-colour-haired before him before Yugi reaches forward, moves two checkers, and announces,

"I win."

His Stephen King novel is finished.

The book is closed, and Ryou sighs as he leans his head back against the plastic chair he's sitting in. He closes his eyes for a bit, feeling that wave of tiredness that always seems to wash over him after he's finished a good book.

Bakura was right.

It was a morbid story.

And Ryou enjoyed it, too.

As soon as the thought goes through his brain, Ryou swallows. He lifts his head back off of the chair, and twists his lips in distaste when he remembers Yugi's comment about him being "a heck of a lot like Bakura".

He didn't want to be like Bakura.

The Good Lord up in Heaven knew that was exactly the one friggin' thing he didn't want to be.

And yet, even he himself didn't doubt the similarities that he and Bakura most definitely shared.

He didn't know what was wrong with Bakura. He didn't know what was wrong with himself, even. But there was a similar problem shared between the two of them.

And that both scared and thrilled Ryou out of his mind.

There's a shuffling of sock feet on the tiled floor of the TV room suddenly, and Ryou snaps out of his trance to watch Bakura, all mischievous smiles, bound in. The boy doesn't pay any attention to him, Seto, or Yugi as he hastily slides over to the corner of the room.

The corner of the room with the puppet box.

Bakura bends down, and his smile softens. He reaches in and picks out a gray, ugly sock puppet with googly eyes and a dark yellow threadbare smile. He pulls it over his left hand, and begins to move the puppet's mouth with his fingers while squeaking in a playful voice,

"Hello there, Bakura! Haven't seen you in a while!"

Ryou's jaw drops a little.

And out of the corner of his eye, he sees Seto smirk.

Reviews are always nice. So, the other chapters should definitely be up at a rate of one (maybe more) per week. I let you have this one early because I had it on my laptop and it required minimal editing, so you're welcome =)