Title: A Persistent Shadow (Chapter 16)
Pairing
: Ryou Bakura x Yami Bakura, possible others
Rating
: M
Summary
: The Pharaoh uses a spell to force Yami Bakura out of Ryou's body, but unfortunately for Ryou it doesn't work quite as well as intended.


Ryou walked out of the last art supply store in Domino City lugging a large, heavy bag full of modeling clay. He'd been to three others before this, each time asking about clay from 'the Half-Sun Valley', but no one seemed to have any idea what he was talking about. In the end the spirit had just told him to buy several packs of the basic clay to practice on.

But if we can't get the real clay, isn't this all pointless anyway? Ryou thought, dragging the bag behind him as he walked down the street.

You'll get the real clay, the spirit said. I don't care if you have to go all the way to Egypt and dig it out of the ground yourself.

We don't even know where this place is, Ryou protested. They'd looked at a map of Egypt as soon as Ryou had gotten home the day before, but the spirit hadn't been able to point to the location, despite claiming to know what valley the instructions were referring to.

Of course I wasn't able to find it on a map, the spirit said, as though it meant nothing. I couldn't tell you where anything is on that map. The borders are all wrong, there are all these new places I've never heard of, and they don't give any useful points of reference. If we were actually in Egypt, I could point you there in a heartbeat.

How do you know the route you'd want to take even exists anymore? Ryou asked, not expecting an answer. Anyway, I still have to find golden sculpting tools and get the money to buy them...

The spirit made a noise. Really, we'll be done with this much faster if you don't insist on buying everything we need.

Yes, because the police will come and arrest me, Ryou replied, turning down an alleyway in the hopes of a shortcut. After we have the tools, we still need several plants that might be extinct, along with a type of paint that hasn't been made in thousands of years. Ryou made another turn and sighed when he found himself in a dead end. He turned around and nearly shouted when he found himself face-to-face with a strange man. "Ah! S-sorry. I almost ran into you," he said, wishing the spirit had said something about someone walking so close to him.

The spirit appeared next to him, eying the man suspiciously. If I'd noticed him, I would have, he said. Stay away from him.

Do you know him? Ryou asked, backing away from the man obediently. He was certainly strangely dressed, wearing long white robes and a turban, with an ankh hanging around his neck.

That's not just an ankh, you fool, it's the Millennium Key.

The Millennium Key? Ryou asked, backing away even more quickly until he hit the wall behind him. He didn't know anything about the person who had the Millennium Key, but based on the other items alone there was at least a 50-50 chance of the person being possessed by some kind of spirit. For all Ryou knew, he was the one who'd tried to break into his apartment.

"Ryou Bakura," the man said.

How does he know my name? Ryou wondered. "Hi? I'm sorry, I don't know your name." Or who you are, or... anything about you, really.

"You can call me Shadi," the man said. "I look after the Millennium Items."

"Look after?" Ryou asked. It wasn't that he doubted the man, exactly, but if he really was looking after the Millennium Items, it didn't seem like he was doing a very good job. "I don't have the Millennium Ring anymore."

"I know that," Shadi said. "I sensed when you gave it up."

"Oh," Ryou said intelligently. He'd really been hoping the man would just leave him alone after he said that.

The spirit circled the man, then reached one hand carelessly toward the ankh-- no, key. Shadi caught it before it ever touched the surface, looking the spirit right in the eyes. "Don't think I can't see you, thief."

The spirit disappeared immediately, reappearing at Ryou's side, arms crossed.

Ryou felt a jolt of surprise. "Y-you can see him?" he asked, not really sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. The man didn't seem to care one way or the other.

"Yes," Shadi said, apparently not feeling he required any more explanation than that.

This was starting to feel like trying to get information out of the spirit. "So. Um. Why are you here?" he asked.

"I recently sensed an attempted theft of a Millennium Item," Shadi replied. "So I came here to check on it. Yesterday, I sensed several Millennium Items being stolen, including the Millennium Ring."

"Several? Stolen?" Ryou repeated. The words finally clicked in his head. He dropped the heavy bag he was holding and tried to run past Shadi. "Yugi's the one with all the items. If they've been stolen--" Images of the burglar who had tried to break into his apartment rampaging through the game shop filled his head.

Shadi caught Ryou before he could get by. "There's nothing you can do to help him right now," he said.

Ryou tried to pull away and couldn't. "But--"

"If it happened yesterday, the damage has already been done," the spirit said from behind him. "Let him say whatever it is he intends to say."

Ryou relaxed. "Fine."

Shadi let him go, then pulled a scale out of his robes. He walked over to the spirit and held it right in front of him. The spirit looked on impassively as the scale tilted. Shadi pulled the scale back. "You have a darkness in your heart."

The spirit rolled his eyes. "Do I? I would never have guessed."

"It's far less than what it once was," Shadi said. He held the scale in front of the spirit again, a little further away this time. "Have you given up on your alliance with the Dark One?"

The spirit glared at him, looking as though he didn't feel like answering. "Yes," he said eventually.

Ryou wished he knew what they were talking about, though it didn't exactly surprise him to hear that the spirit had at some point been allied with someone called 'the Dark One'.

The scale remained level. Shadi nodded, as though he'd been expecting that, then turned to Ryou, holding the scale right up to his chest. It tilted ever so slightly. "You have a small amount of darkness in your heart."

Ryou's heart sank a little as he thought of all the things that he'd done that might reflect that – mostly lies he'd told.

Oh, please. The idea of using one of these items to judge the purity of one's heart is laughable.

Shadi looked at the spirit with interest. "It's very kind of you to reassure him, even if it isn't true."

The spirit scowled, whether at the suggestion that he was being kind or at the statement being made about the items Ryou wasn't sure. Wait a minute... He didn't say that to me out loud, Ryou thought, starting to feel a little paranoid. Did the man know what he was thinking, too?

If he did, he didn't feel any need to mention it. He looked back and forth between Ryou and the spirit, as though not entirely satisfied with what he saw, but thinking he would have to make do. "You still have a ways to go. We'll see each other again," he said, making as though to leave.

"Wait," Ryou said. "Are you going to tell anyone about the spirit?"

Shadi looked him in the eyes. "No. Continue as you were." And with that, he walked past Ryou toward the wall.

Ryou turned around, but the man was already gone. Huh?

Don't worry about it, Landlord, the spirit said. Take the bag so we can get going already. This is time you could be using to practice sculpting my likeness.

Okay, okay, Ryou thought, picking up the bag. But once we get home, I'm calling Yugi before anything else.

Or maybe that wouldn't be necessary, Ryou thought as he ran into Yugi on the way out of the alleyway. "Oh. Hi. I was just going to call you," Ryou said, looking him over.

Yugi certainly didn't look like he'd had any kind of run in with a shadow-magic-wielding maniac. If anything, he looked perkier than he had in a long time. He was holding a map up in front of him, which he crumpled up into an odd shape and shoved in his bag when he saw Ryou. "Hey! What were you going to call me about?"

Ryou hadn't given any thought about what he should say. He didn't want to reveal the conversation he'd just had with the man named Shadi, mostly because it had involved the spirit, but also because it just didn't feel like the man had wanted him to talk about it, even if he hadn't said so explicitly. "I was just a little worried about the Millennium Ring," he said, making something up as he went along. "I had a bad dream about it. Are the Millennium Items still safe?"

"Of course," Yugi said, eyes wide. He held up the puzzle hanging around his neck. "See?"

Ryou started to wonder if the strange man had just been making everything up.

He was not making up his ability to sense what happens to the items, the spirit said. But that doesn't mean he wasn't lying about them being stolen.

"That's a relief," Ryou said. "But are you sure about the other items? When's the last time you checked them?"

"Um..." Yugi looked thoughtful. "A few days ago, I guess."

"Can you check again?" Ryou asked. "I-if it's not too much of a bother, I mean."

Yugi started to move toward the alleyway. "Maybe a little later..." he said.

"There's nothing down there but a dead end," Ryou said. "I was just there."

"Really?" Yugi asked, rooting around in his bag for the map and partially unfolding it before taking it out. He smoothed it out and glanced over it as though confused. "Huh. You're right. I guess I got a little lost," he said, though Ryou could have sworn he was looking at the wrong area of the map for that part of town.

"Are you trying to get somewhere?" Ryou asked, wondering if he could help.

"Nowhere important," Yugi said, shoving the map back in his bag.

"S-so. Can we go check on the items?" Ryou asked. "I don't mean to impose, but I'm kind of worried about them," he added, hoping he didn't sound suspicious.

You really aren't the suspicious one right now, Landlord.

"Sure," Yugi said. "Let's go."

The two walked in the direction of the game shop. "What does the Pharaoh have to say about the items?" Ryou asked, thinking that the Pharaoh would be the first person to be concerned about them, no matter how trivial the threat. If nothing else, Ryou thought the Pharaoh would be suspecting him of asking about the items as part of some kind of plot.

Yugi looked blank for a second. "Oh. Um. He says you're overreacting to your dream."

"I hope he's right," Ryou said.

The two walked the rest of the way to the game shop quietly. When they got inside, Yugi brought Ryou through the door at the back. "Wait here," he said, leaving Ryou in the living room as he went to his bedroom.

Do you think the items are safe? Ryou asked the spirit, who was sitting on the couch not looking particularly concerned. The spirit's change in attitude toward the items still seemed odd to Ryou.

No, the spirit replied. But I do believe that they're still here.

So you do think he was lying? Ryou asked.

The spirit pointed at Yugi, who had just walked out of his bedroom door carrying the ring, the necklace, and the rod in his arms, puzzle hanging around his neck as always. It would appear so.

"See? All the items are fine," Yugi said, putting them down on the coffee table. "There's nothing to worry about."

Ryou looked at the items without touching them. "You're sure they're the real items?" he asked, wondering if someone could have come in and replaced the real items with fakes to avoid being detected. It did seem kind of far-fetched, though.

"Um. Pretty sure?" Yugi picked up the Millennium Ring and held it out to him. "You had the ring for years. Does it seem like the real thing?"

Ryou didn't take the ring; he and Marik may not have been able to verify their theory about how the items were made, but the idea was more than enough to put him off touching any of them. It also didn't help that a giant, monstrous entity had come out of the Millennium Ring the last time he'd held it. He looked it over as best as he could without touching it. "It looks like it. I guess I'm just getting worried over nothing," he said. "I'm sorry I wasted your time."

"That's okay," Yugi said. "Better safe than sorry, right?"

"Yeah," Ryou replied, nervously fiddling with the bag still in his hand.

"So, what's in the bag?" Yugi asked curiously.

"Huh? Oh. This," Ryou said, panicking inside for a moment before remembering that there wasn't actually anything inherently suspicious about a bag full of modeling clay. "It's just some art supplies."

"Taking up a new hobby?" Yugi asked.

"I guess," Ryou said, thinking that it wouldn't hurt to have his friends believe it was a new hobby. Trying to hide it completely would only make him look strange. "I should really get going," he added, wanting to get the heavy bag home, even if it meant spending the rest of the afternoon trying to make a perfect replica of the spirit's face.

"See you later," Yugi said. He led Ryou out to the shop, then waved goodbye.


"My face looks nothing like this, Landlord," the spirit said, eying Ryou's clay creation disdainfully.

"I know that," Ryou said. He didn't need to look at the misshapen figure to know how wrong it was. The model head had two eyes, a nose, two ears, and a mouth, but that was where the resemblance ended. He'd tried to make it look realistic, but the small model people he'd used to enjoy making had been cartoonish, and it showed here. "I've never done this before."

Ryou looked at the spirit's face again, then started trying to fix the jaw. He got it as close as he could manage with his level of skill, but it still seemed wrong when he looked at it.

The spirit looked at the clay model again and made a frustrated noise. "That's still wrong," he said, getting off the couch and sitting right next to Ryou on the floor. He grabbed Ryou's wrist and tugged on it. Ryou relaxed his arm, allowing the spirit to pull it where he wanted to. The spirit brought Ryou's hand up to his face, pressing it against his jaw, then let go.

Ryou, now understanding what the spirit intended, brought his other hand up and felt the shape of the spirit's jaw. His hands were spattered with bits of modeling clay, but none of rubbed off on the spirit's skin. He inspected the spirit's face closely, accidentally meeting the spirit's eyes for a moment before quickly looking away.

It felt... odd, touching the spirit like that. Ryou was having trouble concentrating on what he was supposed to be doing, finding himself wanting to explore other areas with his hands. He turned pink and pulled his hands away from the spirit's face when he remembered that the spirit would know what he was thinking. Then he realized that he would have to explore other areas if he wanted to make a full model of the spirit's body and turned bright red, since that would include...

The spirit laughed at his discomfort. "Yes, it would include there. But then, it's not as though you've never thought about touching me before. And really, a few days ago you were begging me to touch you."

Ryou covered his face with his hands, wondering why the spirit had to bring that up now. "That was only because you were driving me insane. And neither of those things are the same as..." Ryou trailed off, unable to articulate the difference. The scenario started to play itself out in his head. The spirit would have to be naked, due to where Ryou would need to see and touch him, and that meant Ryou also had to be naked... Ryou envisioned himself actually touching the spirit, and the scene started to go a little off track as his fantasy spirit responded to the caress...

"I'm afraid it's not possible for me to react that way in this form," the spirit said, sounding neutral about the fact.

Ryou tried to pretend he wasn't disappointed to hear that. He'd kind of known it already, and anyway, he had no reason to want the spirit to react that way. Really.

"If you change your mind, you're free to see how I react once I get my new body," the spirit said.

"What?" Ryou dropped his hands from his face and found the spirit leering at him. He promptly looked away. "I don't want to do that," he said, starting to work on the clay again as a distraction. The spirit's gaze combined with the vague promise he'd just gotten were having an uncomfortable effect on him. He didn't want to think about the spirit being near him with a real body. A real, naked body. A real, naked, responsive body that he could touch. Or maybe kiss...

The idea wasn't the least bit appealing. Whatever Ryou's own body seemed to think about it.

Ryou mashed the clay with his hands, not even really noticing what he was doing anymore.

"If you really want to make one of those, you should choose a sturdier material," the spirit said, amusement clear in his tone. "You also might want to go for something a bit smaller."

Ryou looked down at the form he'd molded the clay into and immediately dropped it on the table, face burning. He coughed a little before picking it up again and quickly smashing it into a simple ball. "I wasn't trying to make anything," he said, putting the clay back in its bag before he could start fashioning it into another suggestive form.

"Heh. You know, the tomb keeper might actually have a point about this whole 'repression' thing..."

"I am not repressed," Ryou said adamantly, trying unsuccessfully to force away his unwanted thoughts. Okay, so maybe I am a little. How can I not be when he knows everything I think or feel or want? Ryou wished his body would calm down.

"I could help you with that," the spirit said, caressing Ryou's neck.

Ryou tried not to lean into the touch. "I don't..." He paused. He couldn't really say he didn't want it. Not honestly, anyway. It was more that he wanted it, but had so many reasons not to go along with it. This was the spirit, the one who had hurt him, hurt his friends, even if he'd been unable to do that lately. Even if he'd been almost... nice to Ryou at times in the past few months. Ryou's feelings were so confused; in the past week alone, the spirit had spent the days attempting to torture his cooperation out of him and the nights cuddling him in his sleep.

Ryou didn't know how he was supposed to feel about this, but he was sure it wasn't the way he was actually feeling.

I don't even know his name, Ryou thought, somewhat bothered by the realization. How could he do things like that with someone whose name he didn't even know? If nothing else, he wouldn't know what to call out when the spirit reduced him to a gibbering mess.

The spirit smirked at him. "You could always just call me 'God', like you have before now," he said.

"I wasn't calling you--" Ryou started to protest, then thought the better of it. "Seriously, what's your real name?" he asked. It felt strange that he'd never asked before that moment, but he'd never wanted to know before then. He'd only wished that people would stop calling the spirit by his name.

"I don't have a name," the spirit said, frowning.

Ryou stared at him. "You can't just not have a name."

The spirit shrugged. "Names aren't important."

Ryou thought of the way the spirit refused to use other people's names and wondered if he'd always thought that way. Surely his parents had called him something.

The spirit scowled at him. "My family is none of your business, so stop thinking about it right now."

Ryou squashed his curiosity about the spirit's family; it really wasn't his business if the spirit didn't want to talk about it. "But I have to call you something. 'Spirit' just isn't a good name."

"Then call me 'Thief King'," the spirit said, sounding proud of his title.

Ryou imagined himself calling out 'Oh, Thief King!' in the middle of certain activities and snickered. It was like something out of a bad romance novel.

"Plenty of people have been satisfied calling out that name," the spirit said indignantly. He took a step toward Ryou, resting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure you wouldn't be any different."

Ryou bit his lip. The idea was tempting, but... he really wanted something less intense right about now. The past week had been overwhelming, to say the least.

The spirit looked his face over, seeming to think about something. "Fine," he said, after a few moments had passed. "Sit down on the couch."

"Why?" Ryou asked, always suspicious of anything the spirit asked him to do without giving an explanation.

"Just do it," the spirit said impatiently.

Ryou cautiously did as he was told, curious about what the spirit intended to do. He felt the spirit appear behind him and begin gently massaging his shoulders. He almost laughed, but he was afraid the spirit might stop if he did. He leaned back into the touch. It felt pleasurable, but it was a slow, gentle sort of pleasurable, not the overpowering, sharp-edged feeling he'd had the rest of the week.

"Lie down," the spirit told him, moving away for a moment so Ryou could lie down on his stomach. He sat on top of him and continued the massage. Ryou laid his head sideways on top of his arms, catching a glimpse of the spirit's intent, focused expression out of the corner of one eye. It put a small smile on his face, though he didn't really know why.

Ryou continued to relax as the spirit kneaded his muscles, eventually falling into a sort of sensual haze. He worked up the strength to roll himself over and pull the spirit down into a kiss. He was content to let the spirit lead from there.

Ryou had one final, fuzzy thought before completely surrendering to the experience – if it was going to be like this all the time, he might take the spirit up on his offer more often.