Title: A Persistent Shadow (Chapter 23)
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, Marik, and the boy followed the spirit through the village. The spirit walked steadily ahead of them, seeming to want to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. The boy wasn't as eager to go forward, and his grip on Ryou's hand got tighter and tighter as they got closer to their destination. He stopped altogether at one point, looking down at the sandy ground.
Ryou stopped too, turning back to look at him. "Is something wrong?" he asked, wishing there were a less stupid-sounding way to phrase the question. Of course something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
"We're going to find him," the boy said quietly. "The one who..."
Ryou knelt down so he could see the boy's face, not surprised by the terrified expression he found there. "It'll be okay," Ryou said. "We'll stop him from hurting anyone else."
"How?" the boy asked, hugging Ryou's arm.
"Um." Ryou hadn't really thought about that. He'd mostly assumed the spirit had some sort of plan. He frowned, hoping it wasn't something overly violent. He didn't want the boy to have to witness yet another murder that day, even if it was of the man responsible for killing everyone he held dear.
The thought became a little surreal when Ryou realized that he was trying protect the boy from seeing possible violence committed by an older version of himself, but it didn't change how he felt about it.
"He's already weak," Ryou told the boy, wondering exactly how true his own statement really was. He knew that the High Priest was currently crawling away, which suggested he'd been pretty badly injured, but then the High Priest was actually crawling away with all seven Millennium Items in his possession, which was another matter entirely. "We're just going to take away his only way of hurting other people."
"But how are you going to take it from him?" the boy asked.
"Well, he's a really good thief," Ryou said, pointing at the spirit, who was stopped some distance away from them. "He should be able to do it." The spirit looked back at them with his arms crossed. Marik said something to him that Ryou didn't hear, but whatever it was seemed to annoy the spirit even more. "We should go. We need to get to him as fast as possible."
"Right," the boy said, sounding scared, but determined.
Ryou walked him over to the others.
"Are you done having your little moment?" the spirit asked impatiently.
The boy squeezed Ryou's hand. Ryou looked down and saw the boy peeking out from behind his arm, giving the spirit a challenging look. For the first time, Ryou saw a distinct link between the two, one that was only strengthened when he looked back at the spirit and saw the exact same look on his face. The spirit and the boy continued to glare at each other, showing no signs of stopping any time soon.
Marik snickered.
Ryou sighed. "We can't just stand here," he said. He patted the boy's shoulder, ready to start walking again. He was immediately distracted by the spirit.
"Stop coddling him," the spirit ordered. Ryou could hear the strain beneath the anger, and when he looked in the spirit's eyes he could see intense discomfort hiding there. "He's perfectly capable of walking without you holding his hand."
The boy looked down at the ground.
"I like holding his hand," Ryou replied, rubbing the boy's hand to reassure him.
The spirit glowered at him. "This is ridiculous," he said, moving to stand right in front of Ryou. "Let go of his hand right now."
The boy hid fully behind Ryou, still gripping his hand tightly.
"No," Ryou said. He refused to let the spirit intimidate him. "What does it even matter to you if I hold his hand?" he asked, feeling genuinely curious, but not really expecting a helpful answer. He wondered if seeing him holding the boy's hand reminded the spirit of how helpless he used to be, but it seemed like the boy himself should do that far more than the hand-holding.
"It doesn't matter to me," the spirit said, glaring at the boy from over Ryou's shoulder. "It's just annoying."
"You'll just have to live with being annoyed," Ryou said. He almost thought that it was about time for the spirit to put up with someone annoying him, but it was obvious to him that there was something more than normal annoyance behind the spirit's words.
"I have no intention of 'just living' with anything," the spirit said, grabbing Ryou's hand by the wrist. He reached for the boy's hand, clearly intending to separate them. "I'm putting a stop to this right-" he choked on his words, hand moving right through the boy's without resistance. The area where their forms intersected glowed brightly. The spirit pulled away immediately, stumbling backward and falling to the ground.
Ryou stared in shock, only snapping out of it when he heard the boy whimper in pain. He turned to face the boy, inspecting his hand for damage. "Does it hurt?" he asked, not seeing anything visibly wrong.
"It felt really bad..." the boy said.
"Your hand?" Ryou asked, rubbing it gently.
The boy shook his head. "Everything," the boy said, shivering. "I don't want to feel like that."
Ryou held the boy close and took a look at the spirit. "Are you okay?" he asked, holding out a hand toward him.
"I'm fine," the spirit said, sounding distinctly rattled. He ignored Ryou's hand as he stood. He turned to continue down the path. "Keep him away from me."
Ryou and the others trailed after him. "What was that?" Ryou asked Marik. He assumed the boy didn't know, and he doubted the spirit would tell him even if he did know.
"I don't know," Marik said. "They're technically the same-"
"We are not the same," the spirit said, words mingling with the boy's simultaneous cry of "We're not the same!"
"Um... Well, however you want to put it then," Marik said. "This is your memory," he told the spirit. "Like it or not, he's a part of you."
The spirit didn't reply.
The four walked for another few minutes, before the spirit stopped them near a bend in the road. "Wait here," he said softly. "And be quiet." He approached the turn from the side of the building next to them and carefully looked around the corner, then returned to the others. "We've found him."
"What do we do now?" Ryou asked, keeping his voice low.
"I'll take care of it," the spirit said, turning toward the entrance to the nearest building. "Stay here."
"Wait, where are you going?" Ryou asked, grabbing the spirit's arm. He didn't like the thought of anyone being separated from the group. He still hadn't seen Yugi since he'd run after the Pharaoh, and he had no idea if he was even okay. The spirit possibly going off on his own made him worry about so many different things: the spirit's safety on his own, their safety without him, what sort of thing he might do to the High Priest without anyone to stop him...
The spirit yanked his arm away. "I'm taking a route that will prevent him from seeing my approach," he said, as though it were obvious.
"But we won't be able to see you either," Ryou said. "What if something happens?"
"Then something happens," the spirit replied irritably. "This is the best course of action we have available."
"How are you going to carry all the items back here?" Ryou persisted. In the past he would have been too suspicious to willingly allow the spirit to carry all seven items around on his own; his concerns were more about the practical aspects now.
"I'll call the rest of you over once I've subdued him," the spirit said, disappearing into the building.
Ryou sighed.
"He'll be okay," Marik said.
"I hope so..." Ryou said. He hugged the boy again, more to comfort himself than the boy this time.
The boy seemed aware of this. "Is he really your friend?" he asked, glancing toward the building the spirit had gone into.
Ryou wasn't sure how to answer. He knew the spirit would have denied it, but the spirit would also have claimed not to have any friends at all. "I'm his friend," he told the boy. "I think he's my friend, too."
"But he's mean to you," the boy protested. "He's mean to everyone."
"Sometimes he forgets how mean he's supposed to be," Marik said. "He can be almost nice to be around when that happens."
The boy looked doubtful about this.
"He just doesn't want to be weak," Ryou said. He'd been thinking that before they'd been drawn into the memory, but it made far more sense after everything they'd seen. Taken from a very skewed perspective, it would make sense to think that caring about other people was what had left him crying and helpless when they'd all been killed. Caring about other people might actually have been a weakness if all they ever did was reject him over and over again – or even tried to hurt him. Thinking that way may well have helped the spirit to survive after he left the ruins of his village.
It was strange to think that the spirit's paranoia might have been justified at one point.
Whatever the boy intended to say about the matter was drowned out by a call from the spirit in the distance. "Landlord! Get over here!"
Ryou and the others quickly rounded the corner to see the spirit standing over an unconscious man some ways away, the golden items spilling out of the pockets of the man's cloak. They rushed over to him.
"Is he dead?" the boy asked quietly, looking at the spirit with fear in his eyes.
The spirit scowled at him. "He's merely unconscious. Committing a murder this close to all the items together would be extremely unwise."
Ryou couldn't quite tell if he wanted to warn them about that particular danger, or if he just wanted to make it clear that he hadn't left the man alive because he was unwilling to kill someone. Either way, he was as relieved as the boy and Marik were to find that the man was still alive.
"What are we going to do with the items?" Ryou asked, stomach turning at the thought of touching any of them, especially so soon after the material had hardened. It didn't help that the ring, the puzzle, and the key didn't have the strings and chains their future owners had added to make them easier to carry.
"We could each take a few of them," Marik suggested. "I'll carry any two or three other than the rod..." he added, looking as uncomfortable as Ryou felt.
The spirit leaned down and picked up the ring and the key, shoving them at Marik. "Here." He picked up the puzzle next and handed it to Ryou.
Ryou looked at the puzzle, noticing that it appeared slightly different than he remembered it. "It's not a puzzle," he said, confused by its completely solid nature. He held it away from the boy, noticing the sickened expression on his face when he looked at the items. Ryou couldn't really blame him, though it made him wonder how the spirit handled it so easily. That was his family in the items, too.
"It didn't become a 'puzzle' until it was broken," the spirit told him. He picked up the scale, causing it to tilt slightly, then held it out to Ryou.
Ryou's only free hand was currently holding the boy's hand. He looked from the scale to the boy, reluctant to let go. The boy saw where he was looking and made the decision for him, letting go of his hand. Ryou stroked his hair before taking the scale, which returned to its normal position once the spirit was away from it. The boy took hold of his arm in place of his hand.
The spirit picked up the necklace and the rod, looping the necklace around one wrist to keep one hand free. He unsheathed the dagger hidden within the rod, as though to check that it was good to use, then sheathed it again.
Ryou wondered for a moment how exactly the rod could have been created with a hidden dagger like that, given that what they'd seen of the creation process had only consisted of pouring the material into molds to create the items whole, but he supposed that the magic probably made the difference. He looked from Marik to the spirit to the items in his own hands, noting that they each had two items. "Where's the Millennium Eye?" he asked, immediately envisioning an answer he really, really hoped wasn't true.
All four pairs of eyes turned to the man face down on the ground.
The spirit flipped him over onto his back, revealing what Ryou had feared: the Millennium Eye was lodged squarely in the man's eye socket. There wasn't much blood, but the whole left side of his face was an angry red, looking like it had recently been burned. The man's normal eye was closed. Ryou's gaze wandered down to the man's chest, resting on something unexpected, yet familiar clutched in the man's arm. "What's the book doing here?" he asked.
The spirit picked it up with his free hand. "The High Priest needed it to create the items," he said. He looked from the book to Marik's hands to Ryou's, then looked at the boy.
"He can't carry that, it's too heavy," Marik said.
"He can if he uses both arms," the spirit said, shoving the book against the boy's chest. The boy let go of Ryou's arm, struggling to keep hold of the book. "Let him be useful for once."
Ryou looked at the boy in concern, but the boy managed to get a solid grip on the large book. "I can do it," the boy told him.
Ryou gave him a small smile, then turned to the spirit. "How are you going to get the eye?" he asked, feeling a little queasy.
"How do you think?" the spirit replied, leaning down over the body and reaching for the eye.
The man's normal eye flew open, making everyone other than the spirit jump back. The spirit himself was undeterred. He held the rod up, and it started to glow. The man sat up with an ease that Ryou doubted would be possible if he weren't possessed by the rod. Ryou looked on in horror as the man removed the Millennium Eye himself, making a sickening popping noise in the process. The boy cried out and turned away. The man held the slightly bloody object out for the spirit to take from him. Ryou avoided looking at the man's face, not really wanting to know what an empty eye socket looked like.
The spirit wiped the eyeball on the man's cloak, then put it in his pocket.
"What are you going to do with him?" Ryou asked.
The man took off his cloak and handed it to the spirit. The spirit ripped a few strips of fabric off. "I'm going to tie him up."
A dark wind blew across the path, stopping the spirit from reaching the man to tie his hands. The scale in Ryou's hand tilted. When the wind died down, the man was on his feet. The spirit stepped back, hitting the rod against his palm a few times like he thought it was broken.
A terrible smile filled the man's face. The spot where the Millennium Eye had been was nothing more than a black hole, black smoke pouring out of it to hover around his body. He laughed. "You didn't really believe that would work for long, did you?" he asked, voice low-pitched and distorted.
The boy whimpered, hiding behind Ryou. Ryou looked around for a way to escape, but there was no where to run that the man couldn't follow, and he didn't think the boy's legs were long enough to have any chance of outrunning a fully grown man fueled by magical energy. They also couldn't run very fast without dropping the book and at least some of the items, which was another serious problem. He was prepared to do it if it came to that, but he hoped it wouldn't. He stepped backward, trying to shield the boy from the man, for what it was worth.
"Zorc?" Marik asked.
Confusion passed over the man's face, quickly replaced by anger. "I am High Priest Aknadin," he said, tone filled with arrogance.
"Um..." Marik said, looking at the spirit for some kind of confirmation.
"He's allowed the darkness into his soul, but he is still the High Priest," the spirit told him.
"Allowed the darkness into my soul," the man scoffed. "I am a High Priest of Egypt. I am the only thing standing between this land and the evil that would destroy it."
"Evil?" Ryou asked, wondering what the man could possibly be talking about, since he clearly didn't mean Zorc. Or human sacrifice. Or even genocide, for that matter.
"Yes, evil. Thieves who would rob us. Armies that would invade us," the man said. The smoke around him thickened. "Evil people whose continued existence contaminates the very soul of our country."
"Like the people in this village?" Marik asked softly.
The boy looked betrayed. "We aren't evil!" he said, sounding like he was about to start crying again.
Ryou turned to try and calm him down. "It's okay," he said quietly, wishing his hands weren't occupied. "He knows."
The man turned his attention to the boy. "Oh, So you aren't evil, are you?" he asked, laughing horribly. "Then why was your first reaction to this horrible tragedy to come and steal from me?"
"Steal... you murdered an entire village!" Ryou said in disbelief. "You stole their lives to create those items. You used their bodies..." he found he couldn't continue.
"Those people were evil!" the man shouted. "You were all supposed to die, but it looks like we missed a few of you. I'll just have to remedy that now," he declared, taking a step forward. His body wavered, still clearly weak. He seemed to be held up more by the smoke than his own strength – though the smoke itself was clearly a force to be reckoned with.
Ryou, Marik, and the boy took a step back, but the spirit held his ground. "And how exactly do you intend to accomplish that?" the spirit asked, sounding almost like he wanted the man to try something. He unsheathed the dagger hidden in the rod.
Ryou watched the dagger nervously, fearing that the spirit really would kill the man this time. He wondered how serious the spirit had been when he said it would be unwise to commit a murder near the items.
"You think I'm afraid of something I created?" the man asked, lunging at the spirit without any apparent concern for his own safety.
The spirit dodged the attack easily, sending the man to the ground. "You'll have to do far better than that if you want to kill me," he said.
The smoke lifted the man back onto his feet, and he repeated his attempt several more times, failing every time. It looked like the man had forgotten about Ryou and the others entirely. After the man fell to the ground for at least the dozenth time, Ryou locked eyes with the spirit, who tilted his head to the side, gesturing for him to get out of there.
Ryou didn't like the idea of separating then anymore than he had earlier, but he knew they had to get away. While the spirit had no trouble avoiding his attacks, the man actually was very fast, and if he decided to attack anyone else, Ryou knew they would be in trouble. He nodded to the others, and they quietly started to make their way away from the scene.
Ryou sighed in relief when they rounded the nearest corner. "Where should we go?" he asked Marik.
"I don't know," Marik said. "But we should probably stay away from the middle of the village. I don't think the items are safe anywhere near that stone."
"That's really too bad," a deep voice said from further down the path.
All three heads turned toward the source. Ryou felt a chill run down his spine when he saw the Pharaoh, or possibly Zorc, standing behind Yugi and pressing a sword against his throat. Yugi looked simultaneously terrified and heartbroken.
For a moment Ryou's panicked mind thought the sword was another magical item, but then he realized that it looked just like the swords clutched in the hands of the bodies scattered around the village.
"What do you want?" Marik asked.
"The items," the Pharaoh said. "Give them to me."
"Don't do it!" Yugi squeaked.
Ryou had no idea what to do. He couldn't just stand there and let the Pharaoh kill Yugi, but handing over the items would be like standing there and letting the Pharaoh kill everyone. "What are you going to do with them?" he asked, trying to stall.
"I'm going to..." The Pharaoh abruptly cringed for a moment, face contorting in a series of strange expressions before returning to what it had been. "If you don't stop that," he shouted angrily, "this sword might just move itself by accident."
"Stop what?" Ryou asked desperately, feeling like he was arguing with a madman. The Pharaoh certainly looked crazier than normal, face filled with a wild anger Ryou had never seen anywhere – not even in the spirit.
"Never mind," the Pharaoh said. "Now give me..." The Pharaoh seemed to rethink whatever he'd been about to say. "No, I have a better idea. Come with me," he ordered, starting to back away from them down the path toward the center of the village.
"Where-" Marik started to ask.
The Pharaoh cut him off. "Come with me or he dies."
Ryou hesitated, looking at Marik in the hopes that he'd know what to do, but Marik seemed just as clueless as he was.
The boy tugged on Ryou's shirt. "We have to go," he said fearfully. "Or he'll kill him!"
"It does look like we have no choice," Marik said, starting to follow the Pharaoh down the path.
"I guess not," Ryou agreed unhappily, joining him and the boy. He could only hope that they'd think of something before they reached their destination.
