***Not sure if I'm satisfied with the final climax of this story :/ I mean, it parallels the beginning, and I like that part . . . still seems like it's missing some undefinable sort of je ne sais quoi.

But every time I try to fix it, nothing changes, so here's the end.***

Ryo stepped into his apartment and shivered. Frost covered the furniture. The air around them looked too dark, as if something prevented the street lights outside from slipping through the windows. Ryo glanced down at the new carpet in the living room. There'd been too much blood on the old carpet to simply shampoo it.

"I see he's made himself at home." Kek looked around, a baseball bat slung over his shoulder.

"Then let's start the welcome party." Marik turned on a flashlight so they could see better. The beam shook with Marik's hand, but he didn't complain and kept walking forward.

Ryo turned the living room t.v. on and changed the inputs until static filtered over their faces. Even the snow on the screen looked dark and light-less, black and gray instead of gray and white. They crowded into the bathroom, cold despite their bodies standing close together.

Ryo set the rice and hair stuffed Necrophades on the counter as he filled the tub. Bakura mixed four cups of salt water for them to use. They didn't speak until finished.

Ryo faced each of them. "Ready?"

Bakura frowned. "Do we have to say it all at once? We're going to sound like idiots."

Ryo clenched his hands into fists. "You and Marik are idiots. You better do everything correctly or I swear Bakura, I'll—"

"Yeah, yeah, shit, Ryo. It was just a question."

Ryo gave him a silent glare, but then turned back to the doll and picked it up. "Let's get this over with. My stomach hurts."

The spoke together. "Your name is Zorc Necrophades."

Ryo carried the doll to the tub.

"We are the first to be it. We are the first to be it. We are the first to be it."

As Ryo drowned the doll, Kek couldn't help but smile. He and Bakura drowned for so long in darkness, that it was pleasant to see Zorc's avatar get a taste of drowning.

They scattered to their hiding places. Kek closed his eyes as he counted.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

"Four."

"Five."

"Six."

"Seven."

"Eight."

"Nine."

"Ten."

He opened his eyes and ran back to the bathroom with the others. The air felt heavy as if the dark and cold conducted malevolent energy around them. Ryo winced as he pulled the doll from the water. Kek noticed his hand and arm were bright red from cold. Kek wondered if Zorc suspected their plan.

In union they said. "We found you Zorc Necrophades."

In union they stabbed the doll; Ryo with his scissors, Bakura with his switchblade, Marik with a bronzed knife, and Kek with an ice pick.

"You're it, Zorc Necrophades. You're it, Zorc Necrophades. You're it, Zorc Necrophades."

They each took a cup and ran. Kek placed just outside the bathroom entrance and sipped from his cup of salt water. He set the cup on the floor to his left and waited. It only took ten seconds before a human-sized representation of Zorc stumbled out of the bathroom.

But something was wrong. Kek could see that despite the dark hallway. Zorc stumbled down the hall and towards the living room as if drunk or dying, swaying from one side to the other, pawing at his own face. Kek wondered at it for a moment, but then he remembered how Zorc tried to kiss him while wearing Ryo's body like a suit.

Kek chased Zorc into the living room, and he spat the water against Zorc's back. "I win! I win! I win, you fucker!"

Zorc turned to Kek and Kek jumped back. Kek's eyes widened at what he saw. Red thread laced through the demon's lips, preventing him from opening his mouth. Similar stitches kept his onyx bead eyes open and unblinking.

"Holy Ra." Kek stepped away until his back hit the wall separating the living room and kitchen.

Zorc lumbered towards Kek, arms reaching out. Kek's instincts took over and he swung the baseball bat. One, two, three, four, fives times he knocked the bat into Zorc's skull. He'd anointed the wood with Four Thieves Vinegar and blessed oil that afternoon, and he knew each strike felt like a lightning bolt. Zorc moaned; the stitches in his mouth muted the noise.

At that moment, Kek remembered he left his cup on the floor down the hall. He dashed to his cup,grabbing it and trying not to spill any as he ran back to Zorc and dumped the water over the demon's head.

Before Kek could blink, Bakura stood behind Zorc, a thief appearing from the shadows. He didn't react to Zorc's awkward movements or grotesque face. He spat the water in Zorc's eyes, a sadistic grin on his face as he whispered. "I win. I win. I win, and you'll never touch my soul with your filthy claws again, you goddamn bastard." He tossed the last of his water into Zorc's eyes.

The creature dropped to his knees, clawing at the threads preventing him from closing his eyes. Something like whimpers muffled from thread-sewn lips. Zorc tried to rip his own eyes out of his skull but couldn't pull them away from the tight, red stitching. Salt-water droplets gleamed over the polished disks that served as his eyes. Kek remembered being a doll, and how much the salt burned his skin like acid.

That's when Kek understood. He looked up at Bakura. "Did you do it? Sew his eyes open?"

Bakura chuckled. "No. I only helped bless the rice."

Kek felt his brow furrow. "Bless the rice?"

"We stuffed the doll full of blessed grains of rice. To hurt him. Remembered how he always pushed the darkness inside us? Filled us until we wanted to be undone? Well, we decided to fill him with light, and now he knows how much it hurts. It was Ryo's idea."

Marik ran down the hall, his flashlight beam bouncing as he jogged. He spit his water on Zorc's shoulder. Necrophades lunged towards Marik, but Kek used his baseball bat to knock the dark god back.

"I win. I win. I win." Marik splashed the water onto Zorc without ceremony.

"Well done, Marik. You actually managed to do it correctly." Bakura smirked.

"Congratulate me after this is over, Bakura." Marik frowned. His shaken and stressed body language suggested that he didn't know about Ryo and Bakura's trap anymore than Kek had, or perhaps he was tired of being in dark rooms.

Kek saw Ryo enter the living room last. His magnolia white skin looked pale and colorless. His footsteps glided so quiet and smooth across the carpet that Kek found himself imagining Ryo as a spirit, ethereal instead of mortal. Even his hair seemed to float around his shoulders independent of gravity or earthly laws.

Kek and Bakura knelt down to hold Zorc in place so he couldn't fight. Ragged, harsh breaths wheezed out of Zorc's nostrils. He stared at Ryo, angry for only a moment and then . . . desperate . . . terrified.

Ryo dropped to his knees. He bent forward and pressed his lips against Zorc's. The creature wailed through sewn lips in misery as water dribbled down his chin.

Kek stared at Ryo's face. He didn't look satisfied like Bakura. He looked like he felt every single wound that Zorc felt.

"I win. I win. I win."

He raised his hand and tilted his cup so that the salt water trickled into Zorc's eyes. As Zorc thrashed to escape the agony, Ryo bent low and whispered in the demon's ear. Kek couldn't hear, but the sight made him shudder, a strange mixture of grief, and horror, and lust filled his belly as Zorc thrashed to be free of the pain. Grief because of the torment on Ryo's face even as he continued to pour the water with a slow, steady hand. Horror because the sight stirred old, familiar, violent cravings in Kek's heart that he'd always carry with him. Lust because it aroused Kek to see Ryo – soft-spoken, polite, Ryo who loved so purely that he couldn't bare embroidering scars on a doll's back – fight back with ruthless, controlled efficiency.

Part of him wanted to grab Ryo, to take him on the doll's corpse – for it was only a doll now - Zorc was sealed back into the Shadows the moment the last of the water hit the fabric of his skin. Kek wanted to push all his thoughts out of his mind and move, and sweat, and hold Ryo until they both cried out and gave-up that moment when they thought they lost each other.

Ryo dropped his cup to the floor. His shoulders shook as he sobbed. Kek grabbed Ryo and pressed his face against Kek's chest. "It didn't help, did it?"

Ryo shook his head "no" into Kek's chest.

"That's the problem with revenge," Kek whispered, petting Ryo's hair. "Even when you get it, you don't feel any better. You're stuck with the memories, and it hurts, and there's no one left to hate. That's how I felt . . ." Kek pressed his face into Ryo's hair.

Marik sank down beside them, finishing Kek's sentence for him. "That's how we felt when we killed our father."

And Marik wrapped his arms over both Kek and Ryo. A moment later he felt Bakura on the other side. Kek, Marik, and Bakura sat with their arms around each other and Ryo pressed in the center. Kek thought of a jewel resting inside a lotus, om mani padme hum.

"It still had to be done." Ryo dried his eyes against Kek's hoodie. "And I don't regret how I chose to end it. I just wish—" additional tears interrupted Ryo's words until he swallowed them and took back control of himself. "I don't like hurting anyone. Anyone, but, but I was so . . ."

"Angry," Bakura whispered.

"Yes."

Kek nodded. "And you wanted to take all that pain in your chest and cram it down his throat."

"No." Ryo clenched his hand into a fist. "I wanted to take all the pain in your chest and suffocate Zorc with it. I couldn't stand seeing him try to use you. I couldn't stand watching you hurt yourself."

Kek's hand shook as he stroked Ryo's hair. No one ever cared before, not about his pain.

"I don't feel bad. Not at all. He never felt bad for anyone he ever hurt. Besides, If you hadn't blessed the rice, Zorc would have fought, and we would have died," Bakura said.

"I know." Ryo broke their four-way embrace. He took the doll and his scissors and cut the extra threads from the eyes and mouth.

Kek shook his head, only Ryo would try to show kindness to a doll after completely dominating the enemy possessing it.

Ryo noticed Kek's stare. "I know it's dumb, but . . . even a dark god doesn't deserve to be mistreated. We played against him, we won, and we showed him we weren't going to tolerate his presence in the world. It's over. There's no reason to keep the thread on while we burn his effigy. That wouldn't feel right, somehow."

"Let's go." Marik looked out the window. "Before the sun rises."

They put on coats and walked outside. Even in the snow, it didn't feel as cold in the before-dawn air as it had in Ryo's apartment. They took a train to the outskirts of Domino and found an unpopulated area where they could burn the doll without people questioning them.

The sky tinted pink, making the snow around them blush. Even with lighter fluid, it was difficult to light the sopping wet doll, but they managed. Bakura added dose after dose of lighter fluid until the cloth dried and the fabric burned. They stood and watched in silence, putting their hands near the fire to thaw their fingers, none of them having remembered gloves.

They buried the ashes under a bush with the jar containing the remaining Four Thieves Vinegar. Ryo prayed beside the bush for a long time while Kek watched the sunrise, and it amounted to the same thing, really.

As they waited, Bakura held Marik's hands, kneading them and keeping them warm. They didn't pray; instead, they stared at each other, and it amounted to the same thing – prayers, and sunlight, and holding hands, each was the same as the other.

On the train ride home, Bakura stared at the ceiling as if something great and ponderous resided above them. After a few minutes, he stopped looking up. He pulled his switchblade out of his pocket and started sawing off sections of hair right there on the train, pulling the window down a crack so he could push the loose strands outside and watch them scatter in the air.

"Bakura? What the hell are you doing?" Marik asked.

"Cutting my hair."

"I liked your hair long."

"You'll like it short as well."

"You can't just pull out a knife on the train like that."

"Yeah? No one's stopping me."

"Well, no one else is here at the moment, but what if someone else decides to sit in this car?"

"Then they'll probably leave me alone – which is fine with me."

Marik narrowed his eyes. "Do you seriously have to do that right this minute?"

"Yes. I used to wear my hair shorter when I was alive, but I haven't thought about it until now."

Marik rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Fine. I give up. If someone calls the police, I don't know you and I'm not bailing you out of prison."

Bakura smirked as he lopped away one of his rabbit ears. "I've never broken out of a modern prison before, and I do enjoy a challenge."

Ryo tilted his head. "Bakura, I have scissors in my pocket."

Bakura snorted. "I've never used scissors before."

Marik hadn't given up half as much as he said he had. "Or a mirror? You have no idea what you even look like."

Bakura rolled his eyes a little. "It'll look fine, Marik."

"This is driving me crazy. Stop it. I'll take you to my hair dresser if you want a hair cut that badly."

Bakura laughed at that, and it really would be useless to stop with as many chunks as he'd taken off his hair by that point. Ryo joined Bakura's laughter. Kek looked at the three of them sitting in a train car as dawn made everything orange light and black silhouette. He had to laugh as well. He laughed because Ryo laughed, because Bakura sat there and hacked at his hair with a pocket knife, and because Marik sat with his arms crossed over his chest, looking anxious as he watched Bakura. It somehow broke the tension of the night before. Zorc was already becoming something that belonged in the past tense, and the moment was for cutting hair on a train and laughing.

Bakura cleaned up the last stray wisps of hair and shut the window. He scrubbed his hair through with his fingers, testing the feel of the shorter locks. He'd kept the front loose and shaggy, but hardly anything remained of the back. Kek had to admit that it did look good on him. It made him look more like himself in a way and less like Ryo, and that was fine with Kek.

Bakura looked at Marik with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

Marik stared in the opposite direction and ignored him.

"Say it."

Marik snorted. "Say what?"

Bakura scooted a little closer to Marik. "How damn sexy I look."

"Idiot, you have no idea how you look."

"Well, I must look good because if I looked bad you'd be rubbing it in my face."

Marik gave Bakura an irritated growl. He reached over and grabbed a fistful of the shaggier strands in front. He tugged at Bakura's hair a moment before letting go and sitting back. "Yeah, I guess it'll work."

Bakura smirked. "I'll get you to say it later."

"I think it looks good!" Ryo stopped laughing so he could give Bakura the compliment.

"See?" Bakura gestured in Ryo's direction. "At least someone has good taste around here."

Kek leaned against Ryo's shoulder. After a minute, he found himself dozing while Marik and Bakura argued. Ryo shook him awake when they returned to the Domino Station.

When he picked up Kurimu at Marik's, the little Shiba whined and lectured Kek for being late for their walk. He made up for it by taking Kurimu around the park three times instead of twice, and picking up a new rawhide bone for him before they went home.

He expected Ryo to be asleep, but he sat in the kitchen, dangling a crystal from a string.

"Ryo, what are you doing?"

Ryo shrugged. "Divining. We thought Zorc was gone once before. I'm trying to get confirmation this time."

Kek gave Kurimu his bone and allowed the puppy to run into the living room. Kek sat down at the table across from Ryo. "What's it saying?"

"I've asked if the tear was fully closed seven times, and seven times the crystal answered 'yes'."

"How do you know?"

"By the way it swings."

"Does it usually give such consistent answers?"

Ryo smiled, setting the crystal down on the table. "No. It usually varies. That's a good sign, right?"

Kek sighed. "I hope so."

"I mean, there's no reason for it not to have worked, but still . . ."

Kek stretched like a cat. "At least the beds are still safe."

Ryo licked his bottom lip. "Are you suggesting we go to sleep?"

Kek stood and scooped Ryo up in his arms. He carried Ryo to the bedroom and set him down on their bed. They pulled their shirts off. Kek kissed the five scars on Ryo's chest, and Ryo kissed the long scar in the center of Kek's chest. They traced their fingers along each other's torsos. White and brown and brown and white until their bodies swirled together like cream and coffee and became one drink, and they sipped on it together, right off of their lips.

Kek pulled away from their kisses and grabbed Ryo tight, hiding his face in Ryo's hair. "I haven't been alone with you since it happened, but . . . you came back. I thought I'd lost you, but you came back."

Ryo pressed Kek harder against his own body. "I used to fear getting possessed, but when I saw you bleeding I realized the thing I feared the most was losing you."

Kek pulled back enough to look at Ryo. Their eyes held for a moment. The blinds and curtain guarding the window kept the room in shadows, but enough sunlight crept past the barriers to illuminate Ryo's white hair. It looked like a halo of white light surrounded him. Kek reached out and combed his fingers through the glowing locks. He couldn't help the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He hovered his lips close to Ryo's lips, mouthing I love you. Ryo shadowed him, saying it back. Their lips hinted against each other, and somewhere the I love you's became broad, trembling kisses.

Ryo slipped behind Kek and kissed his back, feathering his pale lips against each letter and symbol marking Kek's skin. Kek reached back until he found Ryo's hand. Kek pressed the ivory hand against his scarred stomach, to the second section of scarring below his navel that had transformed to flesh during their first, proper kiss.

Each of Ryo's kisses re-wrote the markings on Kek's back, transforming the symbols into their memories – not the Pharaoh's. Once finished, Ryo pressed Kek down onto his belly, kissing the nape of Kek's neck and caressing down the length of Kek's side.

"Yes," Kek whispered when Ryo's hand fumbled along Kek's inner thigh. He hadn't noticed Ryo get the lube, but as soon as he felt Ryo's slick fingers push inside him, Kek arched his back. His voice growled in a low, rough tone. "Yes, Ryo. Yes."

They hadn't been alone since before Kek went to the hospital, hadn't gotten to truly celebrate the fact that they both still lived. They lived, and it made Kek want to run and cackle like a maniac into the bright, sunlit streets, but for the moment, he only wanted Ryo pressed against him. As close as possible, he wanted to feel Ryo's heart pounding against Kek's scars.

Ryo slipped inside Kek, moving gently for only a moment before building speed.

"Ryo!"

Everything was fire, heat, and light as they moved. Kek spent so much time in cold darkness, but this was the exact opposite. Kek screamed out words far too pretty for his mouth. He told Ryo how sweet it was, and how good, and begged for Ryo to please, please, please give him more, until Ryo couldn't hold back any longer and poured his seed into Kek's body.

Kek shifted on his back. Ryo grabbed Kek's erection and stroked him as he kissed Kek's chest, sometimes dragging his lips across the scar proving Kek was flesh and not thread, and sometimes wandering to more sensitive areas like his nipples. Kek sunk his nails into Ryo's back, clawing at the soft skin while his own orgasm left him incapable of thought.

And when it was over they clung to each other as if the universe would unravel if they let go, and perhaps it would. Kek was rather sure it would, so he held Ryo a little closer as he drifted into a calm sleep, smooth and white like the light slipping through the edges of their bedroom window.

***Next (last) chapter is just fluff and lemons. If my week isn't too hectic I'll post it Friday.***