Ryou's Story
By: ACE329
Summary: This story is mine to tell. No, not the one whom most refer to as Bakura, the spirit of the millennium ring, just me. He already stole my name but I cannot—will not—let him take away the one thing that I have left…my words.
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-gi-oh!
A/N: Hello, at last! You have no idea how badly I've been wanting to update. Yes, it's been awhile, but hopefully it will well be worth the wait. I'm finally on my spring break, and will take full advantage of the "free time" (no time is ever free…). I hope you will all forgive me!
Chapter Twelve- Masquerade
Bright, ocean blue eyes blink up at the frail boy with the alabaster hair. A girl, the owner of these eyes, pairs her gaze with a coaxing smile.
"Ryou, it's your turn."
A crease etches onto the boy's smooth forehead. "But it was my turn last time."
Again, another smile. "I know."
The boy uneasily glances left and right, left and right. He sighs. "Fine." Crouching low, he begins to slip down the staircase, wholly silent and calculating. A nanny casually walks by, holding a laundry basket. The boy freezes. He waits until her back retreats into another room. Glancing back at his sister for reassurance, he sucks in a deep breath and makes his way over to the door.
His hand grips the knob, twisting it softly open. He winces as he hears approaching footsteps.
"Go!" he can hear the girl frantically whisper.
Without looking back, he lurches through the door.
Outside, he can hear the rhythmic pulse of suburbia. The birds, blissfully chirping, and cars, leisurely rolling down vacant roads. A group of kids, kicking a softball, and laughter.
But there is one particular sound he is listening for.
He hears it. The stop-and-start roar of the mail truck. It slowly chugs its way past each mailbox, finally stopping at the boy's. The boy is standing there, expectant and silent.
The mailman peers out the window. "Are you waiting to pick up the mail for your parents, little guy?"
Wordlessly, the boy nods his head. There is no need to say he does not have a mother.
The mailman smiles. "Well then here you go. Don't drop anything, now." He hands the boy a pile of letters. "Have a nice day." He disappears back into the truck and moves on to the next mailbox.
The boy starts furiously sifting through the letters. Bills, advertisements, junk…and a real letter. The address is handwritten, and the return label is from an all-too-familiar place.
He stares at the letter.
He holds the letter apart from the others, allowing his mind to run through all the ways to destroy it. Would it be safe to throw it in the trash? Probably not.
He opts to tear it into pieces. Hundreds of unreadable scraps of paper, all food for the wind. As he is about to rip the letter, a hand clamps down on his shoulder.
The boy jumps, his heart racing.
"Ryou." The voice sounds soft, but angry. "What do you think you're doing?"
It is only one of the nannies, but as the boy knew, they were all threats. They could easily—
"What's this?" The nanny snatches the envelope from the boy's grasp, before he can hide it. "A letter from your grandparents?"
The boy doesn't answer. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the letter, wishing he could will it to dissolve into thin air. The nanny just doesn't understand, he has to take that letter, if his father sees it, he might-!
"I've noticed you have been getting the mail a lot recently. How long has this been going on?"
Still, no words escape the boy. He has nothing to say. No, she doesn't deserve an explanation. It's none of her business.
The nanny sighs. She grabs a hold of the boy's arm. "Come with me."
The boy doesn't bother struggling. What would be the point? She already has the letter. In his mind, he failed the mission he was sent out to do. He failed his sister.
The nanny drags the boy inside, kicking the door shut with her foot. The noise coaxes the girl to peek out from the staircase, watching the boy with scared eyes. She tightly clutches onto the spindles.
Like a prison guard, the nanny marches the boy down the hall to the room that resides at the very end. As they get closer to their destination, the lights seem dimmer and dimmer, until all light seems to be squeezed out by the darkness.
The boy can hear his heart pounding fearfully in his chest.
The nanny knocks once, twice, before opening the door.
"Sir, I think your son has been hiding something from you. A letter that came in the mail today."
The boy cringes at the harshness of the nanny's words. When it was said like that, out in the open, it made him seem like he had committed a criminal act.
"I believe this has been going on for a while, too. I've been watching him—"
"Enough." The nanny immediately silences.
The boy notices how his father's chair is turned away, his back facing him instead. He can barely see the top of his father's head, and a hand, holding up a glass containing a dark amber liquid.
"Give me the letter." The father is now holding up his free hand, waiting. The nanny promptly places the letter into his palm, as his fingers curl around it. He places his drink down with a sloppy clatter before ripping the envelope open with agonizing lethargy.
A tense silence fills the room as the boy waits for his father's reaction. He stares down at the burgundy carpet, wondering how many times he has been in his father's office since his mother had died. Maybe once, twice. He holds his breath.
"This letter is from your grandmother, Ryou."
The boy bites his lip, nodding his head. He then remembers his father isn't looking at him and lets out a quiet, "Yes."
"She wants you and Amane to live with her and your grandfather."
The boy says nothing to this. Words fail to come to his mouth, swirling around in his mind instead.
"And she says this is the ninth time she has written with no response."
What could he possibly say in defense to this? It was by accident Amane came across the first letter from their grandparents. They were curious so read the letter before their father got to it.
The grandparents were so concerned about the children's mental health after the brutal death of their mother that they requested the children's immediate placement with them.
But it wasn't really with "them." No, what they really wanted, was to send them to—
"She believes a few weeks in intensive therapy would help you and Amane tremendously."
The boy knew that "intensive therapy" actually meant a mental health facility. He already read the details in the first letter. The grandmother wanted to send them off until she felt both the boy and his sister were stable enough to "handle the real world." But who knew how long that would actually take.
"Frankly, I agree."
The boy's head shoots up. "N-no!" he stammers. This was exactly what he and his sister feared. Was their father really that willing to get rid of them? Life at home wasn't perfect, but away in some foreign place with psychologists and clipboards and white walls would be far worse.
"Why have you been hiding these letters from me, Ryou?" Casually, the father flicks the letter to the floor and picks up his glass instead. His chair tilts back as he takes a long sip.
The boy thought the answer to his father's question was obvious. What child would want to be torn from home? A dysfunctional, broken home, yes, but still home.
The boy feels his shoulders begin to shake. "Amane and I don't want to leave."
"Ryou, let me tell you something, and I want you to remember it for the rest of your life. Are you listening?"
The boy's fists clench. "Yes."
"We'd all like to think that we have control of our own lives. That life is one big game that you can conquer if you learn all the rules. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
The father pauses once more to polish off his drink. Like the letter, he throws it to the ground carelessly. The glass rolls around the floor, dribbling the final remains of the liquid into the carpet. "But this is something you must learn early. You are not in control. You may be told you are responsible for the outcome of your life, but this is a goddamn lie. You are but a leaf in the wind, being blown in any direction the wind chooses. If it wants you to go to hell, you go to hell. Are you following?"
"Y-yes."
"Ryou, I'm tired of being that leaf being pushed around. Do you think I wanted your mother to die? No. Do you think I had any control over it, whatsoever? No. So then tell me, son, why did it happen?"
The boy is wholly shaking now. "I don't know."
"Damn right you don't. Neither do I. But it doesn't matter. The point is, just because you don't want to leave this place you call home, it doesn't mean you will get your way."
The boy chokes back a sob. "Dad, I—"
"Shut your mouth. Now." The harshness of the father's words is like daggers to the boy's heart. He quiets down, biting his lip once more.
"If you are going to ask me whether or not I'll send you and Amane off to your grandparents,' don't bother," the father softly says, his voice lower now but colder. "Because I'm only going to tell you one thing."
Finally, the father wheels his chair around. The boy holds back a gasp as he sees his father. It looked as if demons had clawed their nails down the man's sunken face, as every feature appeared to be drooping. A sickly yellow complexion shadows across his face, thickly accentuated with the desk lamp's unforgiving light. The father's eyes meet the boy's, bleak, tired, and glassy.
"I don't care."
"Wake up."
I certainly heard this harsh voice, cutting through my sleep like a jagged knife, yet I couldn't quite pull myself out of the blanket of sleep that smothered me. No, in my mind, I was still a child, seeing the nightmarish cast of my father's office towering over my head, threatening to cave in on me from the heavily-laden shadows. I could see my father's eyes, how their passive acceptance suffocated me. I couldn't take it anymore, I was running down the hall, stumbling past objects that weren't there, refusing to look at Amane's disheartened face—
"Damn it, Vessel, wake up!"
And just like that, consciousness gratefully returned to me. I groaned into the darkness, my hands magnetically rising to my face to cover it.
It was silent now, but I could still hear my heart, drumming powerfully in my ears.
"What time is it?" I murmured drowsily. I knew Nameless was sitting at the edge of the bed, even though I couldn't see him apart from the darkness. Rather, I felt his presence.
"It's going on five. You need to get up now to catch the bus."
My hands were still covering my face, rubbing my eyes to coax them to open. "Is Yuugi getting up this early?" I just couldn't believe that Yuugi—or any of his friends, for that matter—would be willing to get up before the sun had even risen just to catch a miserable bus for a dueling tournament.
"That doesn't matter," Nameless replied instead. "I want to get on the bus before Yuugi or anyone that will recognize you sees that you're going to this tournament. I don't want them suspecting anything, or worse, having the brains to think that I have something to do with this."
I sighed into my hands. "And even if they did find out, what could they possibly do about it? Point fingers and call names?"
Surprisingly, Nameless chuckled. "This is true, but I don't want to take chances. I have no idea how that spirit inside Yuugi's puzzle would react."
I considered this before prying my hands away from my eyes and forcing them to open. Darkness welcomed me, which I suppose was a perk for being up so early. Bracing myself, I pulled my body in an upright position and squinted at the clock. 4:58. I groaned once more, wishing for a "snooze" option, although knew that with Nameless, that wouldn't be possible. I might as well rise before he would make me. Although, now that I thought about it, would that really be a bad thing…?
"Vessel."
I barely turned my head to acknowledge him, wondering if I had the willpower to slip out of bed. "Hm?"
"Your dreams…they're interesting."
That woke me up.
"What." I couldn't even formulate my tone to sound like a question—it projected itself as a statement, demanding for clarification. Immediately I was beginning to feel the familiar rush of blood flooding up my neck and across my cheeks.
"You always have nightmares, although most of them were reality at some point. A tortured soul, you are."
How could he possibly have known what I dreamt about? Was nothing kept private to myself? If not my thoughts, then why couldn't my dreams have escaped Nameless' critical eyes?
My embarrassment ate away at my insides, feelings jumbling together with unspoken questions. Most of all, I wondered if he was aware of the dreams I had of him.
I couldn't find it in me to ask.
"What…what makes you bring this up?" I began to worry my lip, trying to shove my biggest questions to the back of my mind. I struggled to make out Nameless' facial expression amidst the darkness. He was translucent, causing his appearance to waver at the smallest disturbance.
"I just found it odd." Nameless didn't offer any elaboration, so I let it go. I had to get up anyway, so snatched the opportunity to rise from my bed and disappear into the bathroom before he could bring up anything else. However, it was right when I was closing the bathroom door behind me that I thought I heard Nameless speak. It was so quiet though, I'm pretty sure I was just imagining things.
"…I used to have them too."
The process of getting ready wasn't supposed to be difficult, yet with the straightjacket that is sleep deprivation, I found even the most simple of tasks a complete obstacle course. By the time I had made my way over to the kitchen for breakfast, I was relieved to finally have the chance to sit down.
I was surprised, to say the least, when I saw my father sitting at the table.
I blinked, wondering if I was seeing correctly. "Father?" I slowly asked.
He started from the unexpected noise, folding down his newspaper to glance at me instead. "Ryou, what on earth are you doing up this early?" he asked incredulously.
It had occurred to me then, that I hadn't thought of a reasonable explanation to give to my father about going to a dueling tournament for a week.
Would he even care? a part of me dryly prompted. I didn't know what reaction I wanted from him.
So, instead of trying to taper my words to convince my father, I simply told him as much of the truth as I could. More or less.
"I'm leaving for a week to go to a dueling tournament. It's supposed to be a really big deal that Pegasus J. Crawford—you've heard of him—is hosting on his exclusive island. I was invited. And I know a lot of people who will be going too." There. That wasn't so bad.
My father stared—or rather, gaped—at me for a few moments, completely silent. Even the familiar tick of the wall clock seemed to shut itself off.
"Have you gone mad?" he finally inquired.
"Huh?" Maybe I shouldn't have started with the "I'm leaving for a week" part.
"You don't like those types of card games," my father reasoned, scrutinizing me now. "Why on earth would you run off to something like this? And for an entire week?"
"I don't see how you would know what my likes are," I calmly retorted. Really, I was hoping to avoid another argument from a couple days ago.
Suddenly, I felt his presence seep out of my body, looming close behind me. "Be more persuasive than that," Nameless whispered in my ear softly, even though I was the only one who could hear him. I cringed. His mere presence alone was enough to suffocate me.
And yet I complied. "But I've really come to like Duel Monsters because of my group of friends," I told my father, adjusting my tone to sound more conversational. "Like I said, they're all going too."
"Friends?" my father repeated, as if just realizing what I'd said.
I felt a twinge of annoyance, but let it go. "Yes, father. Friends. Real ones."
"Come now, Vessel, you know that sarcasm won't win your father over," Nameless once again piped up. I swear the air around him was overwhelmingly cold, freezing me to the core.
"Why are you interfering?" I thought to him.
"I'm simply making it easier for you, Vessel, since you clearly have no idea how to be convincing. We could just leave, but then you'd have this man to contend with after. And he might be so annoying that I would have to silence him forever."
"Don't you dare joke like that!" I hissed in reply.
I heard a faint chuckle. "I'm not joking," he said.
I was about to express my disgust with him, until he interrupted me. "Not to take the skeletons out of the closet or anything, but your father used to be an alcoholic? He just didn't care about you or your sister at the time…he couldn't. Too bad he still doesn't feel the same way, it would be much easier—"
"Cut it out!" I snapped.
My father looked at me, completely lost. "Cut what out…?" he hesitantly asked.
I winced, cursing myself for forgetting to keep my last thoughts silent. It really was impossible to carry on two conversations at once. "You…keep looking at me like you want to say something. Just say it," I prompted, desperately snatching words as they came to me.
My father blinked. "Do I really? Well, I guess this is true. I guess I keep thinking how much I really don't know about you."
This completely threw me off-guard. I would have never thought he would admit such a thing, much less out loud.
My father finally lowered his gaze back to his newspaper. He looked permanently exhausted, haunted, even. "And thinking about what I was suggesting about you the other night—you know, with that phone call and everything—well, Ryou, I'm really sorry."
I stood, suddenly feeling very awkward, before my father. He had just apologized to me. But do you really mean that? I wanted to ask him. It was much easier to coast through life without taking much consideration into anything. Right now, I had a hard time trying to accept what my father was telling me.
As always, my thoughts never ran in conjunction with my actions. I nodded my head, even smiled. "Thank you, Father."
"That's a good Vessel," Nameless practically purred in my ear. I turned my head away.
"So what are you going to do about your schoolwork?" my father probed, switching topics. Apparently he was feeling awkward too. "I thought you didn't like to miss school."
"Well, I don't," I agreed, hoping Nameless would hear that part, "But I have someone at school who agreed to take notes for me." Lie. That was a lie. Maybe Miho would have, if things hadn't gone so sour. "…And I figured I owed it to myself to allow a little fun once in a while." How horribly ironic! I was pretty sure I even heard Nameless scoff at this.
"Are you sure you should be doing this, though? You'll probably fall behind in your schoolwork…" my father trailed off.
"Everything will work out fine," I replied, trying to sound as convincing as possible. I wish I could promise that.
There was a speculative stillness that filled the room. Perhaps a minute went by while I waited patiently for my father's next question.
"So when are you leaving?"
"About half an hour," I automatically answered, knowing a bus came by at the stop every thirty minutes or so. It was already five-thirty, so I had to hurry to make sure I caught the one at six.
"It would have been nice if you gave me a warning before the day you're leaving," my father commented, finally straightening out his newspaper to indicate he was finished with our conversation. My shoulders slumped at this, wishing I could just say, "I would have, but the spirit taking over my body only told me of this yesterday."
I speculated this potential scenario in my mind as I shuffled over to the fridge for some juice. I noticed a bowl of half-eaten fruit salad nudged behind the eggs, so grabbed that too.
I sat down at the table, watching my father read the paper with such intensity it was unsettling. I wondered again why he was up so early. I had an excuse, but why would he be up when the sun wasn't? He normally went to work hours later.
I stabbed at the fruit in my bowl with a fork, not really hungry. There was so much going on I was too stressed to work up an appetite.
"Eat, Vessel," Nameless suddenly demanded. "You don't know when your next meal will be."
That was reassuring. I didn't respond to the spirit though, obeying him instead. I wasn't sure if my drowsiness was making me unwilling to speak or if it was my irritation with him. He was making me go through all of this, and really, for what?
"Ryou," my father said. I looked up from my bowl. "I was wondering something."
"All right…" I said slowly. Whenever my father felt the need to announce his thoughts, it was usually because he was bracing me for something traumatic.
"Where on earth did the piano go?"
I stared at him silently. The piano was absent for at least a week. Or was it more than that? I was having increasing difficulty in keeping track of the days…they all seemed to mesh together into one long nightmare.
I began to laugh. It was a quiet laugh—mine always are, nothing is ever too funny—but it surprised even me.
"Oh, Father, that piano has been out the apartment for days and just now you realize that?" I asked him. I stood up, swiping my bowl and cup off the table and dumped them into the sink. I turned on the faucet, washing the dishes briskly before throwing them into the dishwasher.
Drying my hands, I shook my head in disbelief. The more I thought about my father's question, the more it annoyed me.
"Ryou?" my father asked again. I could tell he was confused by my reaction. "Seriously, what happened to it?"
I turned to face him. I looked him hard in the face.
"Does it really matter?"
The trip over to the pier was easy enough. There were minor inconveniences, such as packing enough in one book bag to last a week and getting to the bus stop on time, but for the most part, it wasn't too bad.
Sneaking onto the boat was an entirely different matter.
"Oh, dear," I huffed as I gazed at the small crowd circulating around the pier. It would be nearly impossible to slink onto the boat without encountering security. Especially with my hair, I didn't blend into the crowd as well as I would have liked. My eyes flitted from the dock to the boat to security, completely lost on what my next move would be.
"Spirit," I said, noticing the whiny edge that crept into my voice, "What on earth am I supposed to do?"
"You step aside," Nameless' answer swiftly came. "I don't need you messing this up."
"I have no problem with that," I asserted, "But why didn't you say so earlier?"
"I just wanted to see how you'd react," Nameless casually said. "And you acted exactly as I'd expected—completely helpless."
I didn't appreciate that answer, but what could I say? How was I supposed to know how to act like a criminal? Not that I wanted to know.
Consciousness temporarily left me as Nameless took over my body. It was one of the times I was glad to release control over my actions, because this was one activity I wanted no part of. By the time I reopened my eyes, I was inside my soul room, and Nameless was already on the move.
I stared at the piles of fallen leaves that pooled around my ankles. It felt like, recently, I had been inside my soul room far more than I would have liked. It worried me, to think that I was likely to be stashed away in this enigma of a place more and more frequently as Nameless runs around to accomplish his mission.
Would there come a time where I would simply disappear from the real world? Would my own personal existence no longer matter?
I shuddered—I didn't want to think about it.
To distract myself, I resolved to make my way over to the looking glass that allowed me to see through Nameless' eyes. I wasn't sure what else to do with my time anyway. Pressing my hands against the large, ancient door to steady myself, I gazed into the mirror which embedded itself into the thick wood.
I could see Nameless heading straight for the guards—as if he feared nothing!—and encountered the man who appeared to be in charge. I gawked at the mirror, wondering what the devious spirit could possibly be planning. He wasn't going to fight them, was he?
I quickly realized that I was mistaken. Nameless was more clever than that. But what he did surprised me so much I would have never guessed it.
Nameless transferred his soul out my body into the man's. I felt his absence immediately, the very second he left. It was the oddest thing to see the guard's eyes completely change expressions, from curious to purposeful. Nameless was speaking through the man, giving orders to the other security guards to check out a suspicious person they let through. Consequently, they all left, leaving the possessed man and my semi-empty shell of a body standing at the edge of the dock.
I was immediately distracted, though, when the door I was pressing against fell open, causing me to stumble through.
"What?" I gasped aloud as my body tripped through the gaping door. What was happening? Why did that door open? I was never able to open it before. But now, when I wasn't trying, it just swung open for me.
My head whipped back and forth frantically, taking note of my surroundings. There was a long hallway, with both sides extending indefinitely into darkness. What immediately caught my attention was the closed door that resided just a few paces away, across from my door. It was enormous, and made entirely of crumbling stone. Etched into it were numerous markings and pictures. They were definitely hieroglyphics.
What was this place? My mind was screaming with countless of thoughts and questions, but I had an overwhelming feeling that the door I stared at would lead to Nameless' soul room. I wasn't entirely certain, but the aura that practically oozed from the door gave me enough of an indication. It felt like dry ice lapped at my ankles and crawled up my skin—my body ached from both freezing and burning.
I could feel my heart pounding forcefully inside me, propelled by both fear and excitement.
Despite my natural instincts screaming at me to run, one question swirled around me temptingly. Would the door open? For whatever reason, I had to find out. I had a hard time believing Nameless had a soul to begin with, and yearned to know what his room looked like.
Besides, Nameless knew what my soul room was like. And consequently, that meant he knew everything about me. Or at least in essence. He even knew about my dreams. Didn't that entitle me to find out something—anything—about him?
Gathering up my nerve, I approached the door as quietly as I could, afraid of making even the tiniest sound. I feared that even the smallest movement or indication that I was outside of my soul room would send Nameless running.
But wait, how could that have been possible? Nameless was in that guard's body. Maybe that was why the door locking me into my soul room broke open in the first place. However, if that were true, then that would also mean that my time to "freely" roam around this strange new place would be limited.
I had to hurry.
I reached out to the stone door, and, sucking in a sharp breath, pushed against it while twisting its rusted knob. The door gave in fairly easily, moaning with an extended creeeaaaaak. I could feel the hairs on my neck stand on end as I braced myself to enter.
Immediately that aura I was sensing outside the door wrapped around me a thousand fold the moment I approached. I cannot truly explain the feeling, for it was a combination of things: fear, anger, hostility, despair, coldness. It eagerly clung onto my skin, pouring down my throat and seeping into my insides. It was suffocating, overwhelming.
It was when I advanced a few steps into the mysterious room that the door I had opened unexpectedly slammed shut behind me. I jumped, whirling around in horror to see that the stone door had just sealed me in.
And that was when I truly realized, with complete and utter terror, the reality of the situation—I was in Nameless' soul room.