AN: Hey! This chapter has some...wait for it...Ryou/Bakura bonding =D
Also a tad more Puppyshipping hints in this chapter.
Read on...
Borderline
"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be safely and quietly insane every night of our lives."
-William Dement
13 ; Sweet Dreams & Secret Secrets
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, and this storyline is absolutely, positively fictional. I mean no offense to anyone.
"Duke."
Ryou walks up, fearless, to the guard who is sitting at the nurses' station. The man turns to him, and when he does, his eyes widen with shock.
"Yes, Ryou?" he asks, sort of wary but trying not to show it.
Ryou crosses his arms.
"Don't be `concerned' about me."
Duke raises an eyebrow.
"What?" he replies.
Ryou narrows his gaze.
"I know you're all thinking I'm going downhill. That's why you gave me free use of the Art Room—to stop me from going psycho. But just don't," he says.
Duke, now very confused and put-off, responds,
"Ryou, what are you talking about?"
"Just leave me alone. Stay out of my business, let the psychiatrists deal with talking to me, and don't care, okay? That way we'll all be happy," Ryou says, and then marches off, leaving behind a very utterly confused guard.
"Is Tristan really leaving?" Ryou asks, lying on his back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, arms and legs sprawled out.
Bakura plops down on his back on the mattress next to Ryou, supporting himself up with his arms. He stares at the wall across the room.
"Yeah," the older boy whispers back, his tone strangely depressing and soft. "Yeah."
Ryou doesn't say or do anything, even though his friend's tone is, for once, showing actual emotion. He just stares blankly up. Then, finally, after minutes of still, thoughtful silence, he shakes his head, disgusted.
"But the guy's psycho. He gets his friend to deliver him pot in rehab!"
Bakura laughs bitterly, and then lies down on his back fully.
"Well, he did okay in therapy, and that was enough for them, I guess," he explains.
Ryou then turns to Bakura on his side, staring curiously at the boy.
"What? Therapy?" he repeats.
Bakura doesn't look at Ryou and just nods.
"Yup. That's all you really have to do to get outta this snake pit," he starts, a bitter disgust dripping off of his words, and then he changes his tone to that sarcastic German accent he uses to mock Freud. "`Lie down, confess your sins, and you're saved!'" he mocks. "That's why Freud's fucking picture is pasted up every-friggin'-where around here in all the fucking psychiatrists' rooms. It's the age-old tactics. Even if the don't work, they still use `em. Cough up your secrets, and you're `healed'."
Bakura's tone is quietly hostile in a pathetic sort of way.
Ryou blinks. He's wordless at first, but then,
"But Bakura…what if you don't have a secret?"
Bakura, for the first time in their conversation, turns to Ryou. His face is emotionless, but there's a hint of true sadness in his dark brown eyes as he whispers,
"Then you're stuck here forever, like me."
Ryou wakes up at exactly 1:00 AM because he hears screeching.
He flies up, still in that half-asleep, half-conscious hazy state of mind, and looks anxiously around his room, his heart thumping madly in his chest.
In a mental hospital, there are many things that can go through a person's head when one hears screaming. Most of those things are terrifying and sick, so of course Ryou's a bit worried.
Then again, though, he's not even completely sure if he's actually awake or just dreaming.
But soon, his fears melt away to a sort of amusement and he realizes that the wailing is not in his head. Yugi groans tiredly, and turns in his sheets. Ryou watches as the dark blonde covers his ears, buries his face in the pillow, and mutters,
"Seto…"
Ryou blinks, his interest perked and his previously sleepy state of mind completely gone. Not once at his experience at Rockford has Ryou gotten the chance to witness one of Seto's "nightmares". He had heard they were intense and disturbing, which just made him want to see them even more, because Ryou is weird like that.
Now, he is fairly surprised Seto is even having an attack, because he knew that they had him on sleeping medicine, but apparently they've taken him off because the howling outside in the hallway is getting louder and more horrific.
So Ryou gets up.
He shuffles to the door, ignoring the freezing tile under his toes, and peers outside into the hallway.
The room across from his and Yugi's (Seto's own private room—but unlike Tristan, his parents didn't pay for him to get a single. The psychiatrists just demanded it, because with all of Seto's night escapades he couldn't keep a roommate if he tried.) is wide open with a light on. There's yelling coming from inside, and Ryou now notices that there is more than just Seto's voice screaming. The guard's voices are rising into the atmosphere as well, and from what Ryou can make out of their words, they're arguing with Seto to calm down.
Then—
CRASH.
Glass breaks from inside the bedroom.
Seto howls the longest, most disturbing scream yet after the noise, and Ryou actually finds himself covering his ears.
Then, the patient's shadowed form falls out of the bedroom, toppling onto the ground, sobbing with his head in his hands. Ryou can see that Seto is shaking violently, rocking back and forth slightly, and whispering barely audible, but nonetheless seemingly disturbing things into his palms.
The guards follow Seto out of the room, and their faces are etched with exhaustion and pity. Duke bends down to touch Seto's shoulder, but Seto just howls and pulls away, still crying and not letting anyone see his eyes. Duke shakes his head and says,
"Seto, we can't put you back on the sleeping medicine. As it is, you've been on it for longer than the doctors even want."
Seto's cries get louder and more desperate with the man's words.
Duke sighs.
Then, Ryou tilts his head curiously as he watches Duke turn to Jared, another guard, who's standing behind the hysterical patient and the head guard silently with his eyes wide, and instruct,
"Get someone to clean up the broken glass in his room. But before you do that…get Joey."
Ryou watches as Jared nods obediently and runs off.
Ryou scoffs inwardly. He never, ever plans on being that obedient ever again. Though, truth be told, it's not like he was even that obedient in the first place.
As Ryou is waiting for Jared and possibly Joey to arrive, he takes the liberty of looking around the hall and behind him to check up on his roommate. Now, he notices that he's not the only one who's awake watching the escapade unfold.
Joe is leaning in his doorway, a disgusted, completely drained look on his face. Yugi is watching from his bed behind Ryou, through the open door. Joey is nowhere to be seen.
Ryou peers down the hall towards seclusion, but as far as he can see, Bakura isn't outside of the room, and he frowns.
Bakura would have loved to see this.
All of a sudden, footsteps break Ryou out of his trance. He looks up to see Jared trailing behind a running Joey Wheeler down the hall. Joey sees Seto on the ground and says something along the lines of,
"Okay, I'm here now, Seto."
Then, the blonde bends down on the ground and scoops up his friend in a giant hug without a word of instruction.
As soon as Joey's arms wrap around him, Seto immediately lets down whatever walls he previously had up, and falls into his friend's arms, sobbing hard.
Jared is awkwardly shuffling back and forth on his feet as this all goes on—obviously, he's not on "Kaiba duty" a lot. Duke is smiling slightly, still standing behind Seto and Joey on the ground. Yugi chuckles a little, saying something like,
"It never fails."
And Tristan? Well, Tristan groans, and storms back into his room muttering,
"And that is why I'm beyond overjoyed to go home."
Ryou chuckles a little at that, and then he turns his attention back to the two boys on the ground.
The two have retreated into their own little world as Seto mumbles into Joey and Joey answers soothingly while rocking his best friend back and forth with a saddened look on his face.
Ryou catches a small part of their conversation.
"Th—they won't stop, Joey…" Seto cries quietly, his voice choked up, desperate (which Ryou sort of finds fascinating—never before has he heard Seto Kiaba desperate), and breaking with sniffles and shivers. "I—I've tried so hard, but they just won't go away…"
Joey frowns, and Ryou notices that his eyes are also watery with tears. Then, he whispers back,
"I'll help them stop, Seto. I promise." A pause, and Joey's frown turns into a small, small smile. "Now, just rest. I'll be right here…I'll be right here."
And as Seto quiets down oh-so-slowly, with nothing but a few cries or whimpers here or there (And when he does cry or whimper, Ryou notes, Joey just holds him tighter), and as Jared and Duke finish up cleaning Seto's bedroom and walk out, whispering a quiet "thank you" to Joey, and as Joey ignores them all and just continues holding Seto, Ryou realizes that Joey is The One.
Joey is the only one that can save Seto.
Save him from his nightmares. His mind. His traumas.
Himself.
Seto would be, no doubt in Ryou's mind, long dead without Joey.
Ryou also watches how Seto desperately clings to the blonde, face still buried in Joey's baggy pajama top, and how Joey simply pulls his friend closer, smiling slightly. That's when Ryou also realizes that it goes vice-versa.
Seto is the only one that can make Joey okay.
He's the only one that gives Joey that feeling of actualworth, of, "I'm-more-than-less-than-nothing-to-everyone", of being needed horribly, of being appreciated deeply, of being loved.
Ryou suddenly frowns.
He wishes he had a friendship that was amazing like theirs.
He's jealous, and he doesn't like it one bit.
He starts to retreat back into his bedroom, feeling tiredness suddenly overtake him.
But, before he goes in, he pauses.
Because, in the dark hallway now, he hears a soft melody.
It's rising above the stillness, breaking through beautifully.
Joey is singing.
Singing to Kaiba.
And despite his previous feelings of jealousy…
…Ryou goes to bed with a smile that night.
Bakura grabs a strawberry off of Ryou's Belgian waffle.
Ryou puts down his fork.
"Bakura," he starts.
Bakura looks up, chewing the fruit. He swallows. "Yeah?"
Ryou blinks. "Have you ever seen one of Kaiba's nightmares?" he asks.
Bakura leans back in his chair, looking directly and thoughtfully at Ryou, as if he's surprised at the question. He takes a breath in and pauses. "Yeah. The first night I got here," he answers finally.
Ryou raises his eyebrows in surprise. "Wow."
Bakura nods, and then leans forward and folds his arms on the table in front of him. "It was so messed up, `cause at that time, they hadn't totally figured out what to do with Seto when he started going crazy like that. And it was happening a lot, `cause they hadn't put him on the drugs yet, either," Bakura explains.
Ryou nods.
Bakura takes a deep breath in and lets it out loudly.
"So, basically, the night I first came, I was sleeping alone in room four or something. I heard all this screaming and crying, so I went to the door, and peeked outside. Seto was freakin' punching Jared, who was trying to get a hold of him, `cause when Seto freaks out, he's really dangerous and smashes or throws things, a lot of the time at people," Bakura tells.
Ryou hastily nods. "Yeah, last night, he had an attack, and smashed some glass in his room," he says.
Bakura laughs. "You gotta be kidding me? I missed a Kaiba Freak Out?" He groans. "That would have been awesome to see."
Ryou laughs, too. "I was thinking of breaking you out of seclusion so you could see it," he says.
Bakura scoffs. "You couldn't break into or out of that prison no matter what," he replies. "Trust me, I've tried."
Ryou shrugs.
"Anyway, basically, right as Seto's about to, like, be shot with a fucking tranquilizer, Joey runs up," Bakura continues.
Ryou swallows.
"Joey somehow gets past Jared to get to Seto, and he whispers something to him. And then, just like that, Seto shuts up."
Bakura shakes his head.
"Joey's the only one who can `tame the beast', so to speak. And we have no idea what he does, but it works every fucking time."
Ryou nods.
"Joey and Seto are close," he whispers.
Bakura looks up, and smirks.
"Kind of like us, huh?" he says, and Ryou's eyes widen in surprise, until he re-gains his composure and smiles with a reply of,
"Yeah. Like us."
"Why did they say you were dead?" Ryou asks Bakura later that afternoon while they're fiddling with the puppets together in an empty TV room.
Bakura frowns.
"Because I cause so much trouble. It's easiest to just say I'm dead, I guess, even if I'm not. Plus, they probably assumed I was dead anyway `cause I was gone for so long," he answers. He looks up, smirking. "A month is my record."
Ryou licks his lips.
"So you've run away before?"
Bakura laughs. "Duh."
Ryou blinks. "How do you manage to get out of here? This place is like a friggin' high-security prison."
Bakura only smirks at his best friend. He continues to stare at the younger boy for a bit with that devilish smile, and Ryou shifts uncomfortably. Then, Bakura stands up.
He puts his puppet away in the box, and he starts to leave the room, not saying a word.
Ryou raises an eyebrow and feels disappointment well up inside of him at his departing friend.
"Where are you—?"
Bakura stops in his tracks.
"Meet me tonight at 11:00, and I'll show you my secret."
Ooooh =)