A/N: Okay, guys, after this chapter I have two more edited up and formatted, ready to go. They'll be going up on Thursdays, two weeks apart from each other. Huzzah, a (brief) schedule!

Historian's Note: This story takes place before, during and (eventually) after the original story through Millennium World, following the canon established in the manga. There will be spoilers, so proceed with caution.

Soundtrack: 'Haunted' on 8tracks.

Beta: SkyTurtle.

Warnings: TRIGGER WARNING. Fairly graphic descriptions of wounds, injuries, violence and death/near death.

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi.

Haunted

Part XIV

Raven Ehtar

It would have been impossible to see had the sky not been on fire with stars, a glowing cloud of luminescent smoke from one horizon to the other which seemed to roil before one's eyes.

Ryou stared up at the sky, transfixed. He had lived his whole life in cities, densely populated places where the light from the ground drowned out the stars until only the brightest could be seen. He had visited the country, of course, and been impressed then by the number of pinpricks he could see while out in the comparative wilderness. And there had been Duelist Kingdom, a private island with almost nothing in the way of light pollution.

Neither experience held a candle to this. It Even the dimmest of stars shone brightly here, all so clear and close that he felt as though he could reach up and scoop a handful of the heavens into his palm. It made his chest ache with a strange tightness, making it hard to breathe.

The stars were so many and so bright that when Ryou was finally able to tear his gaze away, he had no trouble at all seeing the world around him. Not that there was much to see. All around, stretching away into the darkness, Ryou was surrounded by empty desert. It was not like most of the deserts he had come to know through secondhand memories, which were broken up by hills of rock, boulders, small patches of vegetation showing where there could be underground water, or at least where there had once been water. This was more the desert that was shown on television, all sand heaped in great rolling hills, limned in the light of stars. It was beautiful, but…

Where am I?

It had to be a dream. The last thing Ryou could remember was going to sleep after preparing and eating his dinner. Unless Koe had taken over his body for an inordinately long time and dropped them somewhere far from Japan, it had to all be in his mind. Koe wouldn't strand him in the middle of a desert, not when doing so could lead to his being seriously harmed. Whether for his sake or simply because Koe needed him alive and healthy, the spirit was always careful that Ryou remained safe and reasonably whole. So unless something completely unforeseen had happened, he was asleep.

Ryou shivered in the cold, and wrapped his arms around himself.

If this were a dream, though, then there were still a few things wrong with what he was experiencing. It was rare any more for Ryou to have dreams that were just dreams, and not the memories of who the spirit had been in life. His nights were full of Bakhura, surviving as he could and planning to somehow avenge his village. Since Koe had made contact with him again, Ryou had been remembering a lot of what he could only assume Koe had been suppressing before - he had been having memory-dreams nearly every night since the day he'd gotten the Ring. Six years of living two lives at once, his own during the day and Bakhura's at night, and he had forgotten all of it until very recently.

Given where he was and what he was seeing, this wasn't one of those rare dreams that was just his.

He shivered again. There was no breeze, but it was bitingly cold. If this were a dream, then it felt all too real. The chill, the sand that shifted with him under his feet, the very sensation of drawing icy air into his lungs, it all possessed a weight of reality which was never found in ordinary dreams. Ryou was much more inclined to believe that he was, once again, reliving one of Bakhura's memories. But if that were true, then where was Bakhura?

Ryou looked down at himself, and he was most definitely himself. Blue jeans, tee shirt, sneakers he could already feel filling with sands; he was as far from the proper person to be standing in such a scene as he could imagine, and there was no Bakhura in sight. Which was all incredibly wrong if this was a memory. When he relived a memory, he relived it as though it were his own, from behind the eyes and within the mind of Bakhura. Sometimes, and only recently, he was able to remember that he was separate from Bakhura and have thoughts of his own alongside those of Bakhura's, but never had he been given, essentially, a body of his own to experience the world he was thrust into.

And it was definitely his body, Bakhura's. His skin was too pale, the clothes all wrong, his body too lithe, hair too long, and the Ring…

Ryou's hand went to his chest and found nothing besides the fabric of his shirt. He looked beneath the collar and a stab of panic hit him in the stomach.

The Ring was gone.

For an instant Ryou's mind went completely blank as he tried to process, but it refused to fit properly inside his skull. His Ring was gone.

When reality finally hit, Ryou exploded into action, searching frantically for the circle of gold. There was nowhere in the empty sand where it could hide, not even in the half light of stars, but still he looked. He patted himself down, searched his pockets, even though they were all far too small to hold the Ring. When he was certain it couldn't be hiding anywhere on himself, he fell to his knees and began to scrabble through the sand. Fine grains flew up around him as he dug, cold and eternally dry, no matter how far down he went.

Every few seconds one hand would return to his neck, as though the Ring could have returned on its own, or he could have somehow failed to notice it before, but always his hand remained empty. Just as the sand was proving to be. Empty, empty, empty! Only when his shoulders and arms began to burn and his fingertips to sting did Ryou slow and sit back on his heels, breathing hard.

He looked around the vast, empty landscape, a horrible thought occurring to him. What if the Ring really was here, somewhere, and he had to dig every dune down to nothing until he found it? Was this some kind of nightmare, a penalty game where the only rule was to find the Ring, find his 'other self' in order to escape? Though his memory refused to confirm this, he could easily imagine it as happening. Perhaps Koe had taken his body after Ryou had fallen asleep and been caught in a penalty game, and taken Ryou in with him.

If that was true, then what was happening on the outside with his friends? What had happened that would put him here? Where was Koe?

As he had with the sands, Ryou dug through his mind, searching for that other presence which always seemed to be lurking around the periphery of his thoughts. He didn't think he had ever wished so fervently to actually find Koe before, nor so disappointed when there was no sign of him.

He was gone. Like the Ring, Koe was gone and Ryou was alone.

Ryou forced himself to breathe, to calm before panic overwhelmed him. Despite how real everything felt, it was still more plausible that what was going on was no more than a dream, a nightmare of his own subconscious's making.

When his heart finally slowed, Ryou lifted his head and scanned his surroundings again, looking for any clue as to what he was meant to do. He studied the stars, but could make nothing of them. Even familiar constellations were impossible to distinguish with so many other normally invisible stars clustered around them. He looked across the sand dunes, searching for any kind of sign, anything that stood out from the velvety smoothness of the hills. There was nothing, not even so much as a breeze to stir the sands or to steer him in any direction...

Wait. Ryou squinted, thinking his eyes were playing tricks on him, or that in desperation he was seeing things which weren't actually there.

His heart lifted as he became certain of what his eyes were telling him. Yes. Just beyond one of the dunes, there was a faint glow, as of a rising sun or distant city. It wasn't very much to go on, but it was something. It was a direction. Ryou stood, a little unsteady, and began to walk, slipping and sliding in the sloping sands, but determined.

It felt as though he walked for hours on the treacherous dunes. Having to be careful when going down on one side so he didn't fall and roll to the bottom, and then having to work three times as hard climbing back up to the next dune made the distance seem much more than it was. Worse, the source of the light was not just beyond the next dune, or even the one after that, and soon Ryou was sweating in the chilly air. And yet it was hard for him to say just how much time had passed. In the darkness, with no sun and no moon moving across the sky, the desert was rendered even more dreamlike and seemingly timeless.

The first sign of there being anything else in this limbo with him almost made his heart stop. Tracks.

Ryou stared. They were definitely tracks, and looked human enough, with only two feet digging deep furrows on the ascending side of a dune and then, yes, leaving wide sweeps on the descending side. They were moving in the same direction as he was - towards the light. He looked back in the direction they had come from, a path generally the same as his own but at an angle, but there was nothing to see. Ryou decided that it didn't really matter, especially if the rest of the desert was as featureless as what he had seen so far. What mattered was where the tracks were going, and who was at the end of them.

Ryou went on with renewed energy, following the light and the tracks together.

He followed them long enough that he began to wonder if he was somehow following himself through the desert. The thought was enough to make a small echo of panic go through him.

He was so focused on the tracks themselves that he almost didn't see the one who made them until he was on top of him.

Sitting just below the crest of a dune was a man. He sat with his back to Ryou, and seemed to be staring out towards the light, which did at last look a lot closer. Ryou squinted. In fact he could make out individual lights of torches, and the outlines of great buildings. He stared at it a moment, taken aback as his eyes adjusted to the distance and he realized just how large and sprawling the city was.

It couldn't hold his attention for long, however. The man, a deeper shadow in the darkness, was by far the greater point of interest.

Even from behind and in the darkness, it was easy to see that it was a man. His shoulders were broad, and he sat at just enough of an angle for Ryou to make out the firm, squarish lines of his face. His hair was white, silvery in the starlight, hanging in messy locks about his ears. He wore some kind of robe, or possibly a blanket wrapped around his shoulders of some dark color, red or blue or black. His skin was also dark, though in the shadows it was difficult to tell just how dark.

Ryou stared at him. He had gotten very close before spotting the man. Close enough for the man to have heard him, and yet he hadn't moved at all, given no reaction to someone coming upon him out of the night.

He couldn't be absolutely certain of it without seeing the man's face, but he was sure that he was looking at Bakhura. What he could see of him, coupled with their surroundings, it only made sense for it to be Bakhura. More than that, though, it felt like Bakhura. Like the sense he sometimes got that told him when Koe was with him, he just knew.

So this is a memory, he thought to himself. It wasn't a dream or some sort of penalty game he couldn't remember being thrown into, it was another piece of the thief spirit's life. Only this time, for some reason, he'd been given a body of his own and separated from the one whose memories he was reliving. Why or how that would happen Ryou had no idea. But if he actually sat down and thought through any of the events since he turned ten years old, none of it made any sense. It was best not to think about it too much.

Though Bakhura showed no sign of noticing him, of seeing, hearing or even sensing Ryou in any way, he still approached the man cautiously. He could hear himself, and he left footprints in the sand… possibly it was all in his mind, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he actually possessed a presence in this memory.

He scrabbled or the top of the dune, where he paused a moment to watch Bakhura and to catch his breath. When Bakhura still not so much as twitched and Ryou's lungs felt less like they were about to burst, he carefully stepped down until he was at the same level Bakhura's the side of the dune, a little more than arm's length away, and sat down.

Ryou wasn't certain what was going on, either with how he had arrived in this memory or within the memory itself. Bakhura had apparently come out of the desert alone and on foot, with no pack animal, no supplies, and no fire to chase away the cold, and looked as though he were prepared to sit in the sand all night, just watching the distant city. Ryou looked sideways at the disturbingly still profile. He sat on Bakhura's left side, so he couldn't make out the scar he knew was there, bisecting his right eye, but there was no mistaking him. He had seen that face reflected in pools and polished bronze nearly every night for six years, from the time it had been a child's face into adulthood. Although…

Looking at Bakhura, he looked a bit older than the last time Ryou had 'seen' him. His frame looked more filled out beneath the robe, less scrawny, the set of his jaw even more obstinate. It wasn't strange for the memories Ryou relived to make leaps forward, or to skip backward, but atop the rest of the strangeness of this particular memory, this leap of time looked particularly large.

Ryou stared until it began to feel awkward to do so, whether Bakhura could see him or not. Turning his head back to the city, he wondered what was going on. What city was that, and why did it hold such fascination for Bakhura? Why was he alone and unprovisioned if he'd come out of the desert? What was he planning, what was he thinking, what was he feeling as he sat here on this dune in the cold and the dark?

Ryou wished that he could reach out and touch the man, reach into his mind and have that same, familiar closeness that normally accompanied these memories. To be a separate entity while still within them was disorientating. He had no clue of what was happening besides what he could see. And what he could see didn't tell him much.

He wished he knew what was happening.

"So."

Ryou jumped. He looked over at Bakhura, wondering what it was he was about to do, why he suddenly decided to speak aloud when there was no one around to speak to-

And found himself staring for the first time into a pair of violet eyes, framed by a stern and scowling face.

"Who are you?"

Ryou had felt panicked before when he was alone in the desert, more alone than he could ever remember feeling before. Now a new, different kind of fear was squeezing his heart. Bakhura was looking at him. He could see him and was speaking to him! The disbelief and the questions of how it could be possible raced and jumbled together in Ryou's mind, leaving him unable to think coherently at all, and completely incapable of responding to the question which had - impossibly - been thrown at him. He sat in the sand, pinned by Bakhura's stare.

When his question received no reply, Bakhura's head tilted, his brows drawing low. There was no missing the scar on his face now, and it made him look even fiercer.

"Can you speak, or are you mute?" His voice was harsh, clipped. Ryou realized that if he didn't answer soon, then Bakhura was likely to draw his own conclusions as to who he was and whether or not he constituted a threat. He knew from riding in Bakhura's head what conclusions he was likely to draw, and how he would respond if he wasn't given some reason to change that opinion.

But how was Ryou meant to explain who he was or how he had gotten here?

"I… I thought I was dreaming." It wasn't much. It was, in fact, pathetically weak, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. What could he say?

Bakhura continued to stare at him, the deep night shadows only serving to make his expression all the more ferocious, rather than hiding it from view. It was the first time he had ever gotten to see Bakhura's face directly, rather than catching glimpses of it in reflections. The change in perspective was disorientating, almost as though he had stepped out of his own body and was looking down on it. Except that this body was still awake, aware, and angry. The scowl on Bakhura's face did not lighten at Ryou's words. In fact, the dark eyes narrowed at him, scrutinizing Ryou. He wondered how he appeared to the man, who had only ever known a life in ancient Egypt, with his modern clothes and pale skin. Considering, Bakhura's response to him was rather mild, though that knowledge did nothing to lessen the pressure of his stare.

Then Bakhura did something which utterly shocked Ryou.

He smiled.

"So did I," he said. It wasn't a big smile, not one which showed teeth, but it was a smile nonetheless. A smile which lightened and softened his whole face, making him appear younger than he had only a moment before.

Ryou returned the smile, out of relief more than anything else, the tension in his shoulders and in his chest loosening enough so he could breathe again.

But while he no longer wore a scowl, Bakhura didn't take his eyes off of him. He studied Ryou's face minutely, as though searching for something or dedicating his features to memory. He looked over his body as well, and his clothes, but despite how strange they must have seemed to his eyes, he didn't linger long on those details, and soon returned to his face. Ryou had no idea what to say, thought saying anything might make his scowl return, so remained silent throughout the scrutiny.

When Bakhura spoke at last, it was with a softly curious tone, as though he were working out a puzzle someone had handed to him, and not as though he were solving the impossibility of a human appearing so suddenly beside him. "I do not think I have ever seen you before, and yet you are familiar to me. Familiar, but strange, as though I should know you, or knew you once, but have forgotten. The way you look at me, it is as though you recognize me, and then as if you do not know who I am." He paused, and Ryou didn't leap in to fill the silence. Instead he marveled at how he was able to understand what Bakhura was saying. Though he had relived a great portion of his life with him, Ryou could no more speak ancient Egyptian than he could speak German. When he was inside Bakhura's mind there was no thought given to the words that were spoken or how they fitted together, it was just how one spoke.

For some reason now, it was like Bakhura was speaking Japanese, though with an odd, heavy accent Ryou had never heard before. It was strange, but not unpleasant to listen to.

"Your skin is pale," he went on. "Almost as a fish belly. I have heard of those with skin so pale, even seen them at a distance, coming off of the slave lines. But never have I met one. But you do not look as any slave I have ever seen." His eyes moved once again to Ryou's clothes, then to his hair. "Your hair…"

Bakhura shifted in the sand, and reached towards Ryou. He realized what Bakhura was about to do a moment before it happened, and leaned away more out of instinct than any serious attempt to escape. It did no good in any case. Strong fingers combed through his hair, nails raking lightly across his scalp. The man appeared fascinated by the long white strands, holding some between his fingers as though it were a strange fabric. Then he leaned forward, even closer to Ryou, tugging him forward until his face was right against Ryou's hair and inhaled.

Ryou froze. He shivered a little, but otherwise tried to stay as still as he possibly could. Was he… being scented? Like prey? It was all he could think of to explain the odd behavior, and it wasn't a comforting thought. Though with Bakhura so close, he couldn't help but notice how he smelled.

He smelled like spices. Strange herbs he couldn't put names to, and a sweet, sulfurous scent, like wild onions.

His head was released and he immediately sat back, watching Bakhura and his hands in case they made some other move to take hold of him. But Bakhura simply sat back into the sand, his hands drawing back and becoming lost in the sleeves of his robe - red, Ryou saw. He looked at Ryou with an expression that was more baffled than before, but which still showed no real concern.

"It's the same color as mine," he said. "But softer than mine, and smells like no scent I have ever encountered." He leaned back, almost as though he were leaning away from Ryou on purpose. "It made me think perhaps you were a brother from long ago, from when I was a child and had forgotten. A spirit come to haunt me…"

The suggestion sent a small jolt through him, that he might be a spirit. It would make for an interesting switch of roles, but Ryou sincerely hoped he wasn't, nor would ever be one. Then he remembered - one of Bakhura's memories, one of his early ones with the disgraced scribe Iumeri. The elderly man had said that many of those who had lived in the village of Kul Elna had sported white hair - an odd feature anywhere, but especially in a sun soaked country such as Egypt, Ryou would have thought.

His hair was just as white as Bakhura's. Possibly he was the only other person he had ever seen with white hair since the night of screams, and he had come out of an empty desert in the middle of the night. No wonder he thought Ryou was a ghost.

He wasn't sure how to go about denying that he was dead when, to be fair, he wasn't completely certain on that point himself. Instead he shook his head. "No, I… I've had no brothers."

Little as it was, that actually seemed to put Bakhura more at ease. He nodded and looked up into the stars, face contemplative. When next he spoke it was in that same faraway voice, but with an undercut of tension. "Then… perhaps you are my sheut."

Ryou blinked. It was a word he was unfamiliar with, either from his own life or from the memories he had relived with Bakhura. He frowned. "Your sheut?"

Bakhura's lips twitched into another small smile. With his head still tilted back to look up into the stars, he explained. "It was a tale told me once by an old man who was full of nothing but useless words. There are five pieces to a man's soul. The ka, which is the vital essence of a man, and which may become a powerful ally to him - or a great monster. The ba, which is a man's personality, his energy from which the ka pulls its strength. The ib, which is the heart, and contains all of a man's will and thought, and will be weighed by Anubis in the afterlife. The ren, which is a man's name - so long as it is remembered, then the soul will live on. And finally, the sheut, the shadow of a man and a mirror of himself. My sheut is the part of my soul which can go where I cannot, that part of myself that I cannot exist without, nor it me." He paused, catching Ryou's dazed eyes with his own,. "Though, if you must ask what a sheut is, then I suppose you must not be one."

Ryou tried to find his voice. He felt dizzy, and this timeless desert lent a touch of unreality to everything, so anything seemed plausible.

"… I don't know," he managed at last, his voice sounding faint and croaking. "That sounds… what you say, I've thought similar things myself before. I suppose I could be."

Bakhura was quiet and still for a moment, never losing his smile. "Then that is what I will call you," he said, in a voice so soft it was almost lost in the windless night. "Little Sheut."

With that, Bakhura returned his attention upwards. With little else to occupy his attention, and feeling awkward just staring at Bakhura, Ryou followed his example and turned his eyes to the stars. He wondered if Bakhura could pick out any constellations, and if they would match any he knew? There were so many of them, and so close that Ryou felt that with his head tipped back he ran the risk of the heavens pouring directly into him through his eyes, filling him with a ghostly glow.

It occurred to Ryou that the layers of strange, disconnected surrealism of his situation were only being added to as time went on. He would have thought once he found Bakhura he would have a better idea of what was going on. Which didn't make any of it less strange from an objective standpoint, but it would at least put the strangeness into a more familiar shape. But he still had no hint of what was going on or what to expect. Bakhura himself gave no clues, as even his behavior was odd. Ryou had spent so much time riding along inside Bakhura's head that he had a fair idea of what he could expect from him at any given time, in any given situation. And yet, despite how Ryou must appear to him, how he must sound, Bakhura had not responded in any way that Ryou would think of as normal from anyone.

Why was he acting so strangely?

As though to underscore Ryou's thought, Bakhura spoke again, not turning his face away from the sky. "It's curious. I always imagined a sheut was meant to be black, as ordinary shadows are black. But you," the dark eyes sought him out again, "you're nearly white, like moonshine. Though perhaps that's only fitting. Here there is no sun, so to appear a shadow must be as light. Otherwise you would be swallowed up completely." His smile canted slightly. "When you are the sheut of one so dark, you would have to be pale in comparison."

Again Ryou's tongue became heavy and tied into knots. How was one meant to respond to that sort of thing?

Instead of responding to the possibility that he was some sort of inside out soul piece, Ryou focused on something else Bakhura had said, and which had almost sailed right past him without him noticing. "No sun? Is there never a sun in this place?"

He shook his head. "No. In all the time I have been in this place, I have seen no sun. There has been no day to break up the night, nor even any moon to show the passage of time. There has never been any wind, or sound, or animals to offer a sign that I am not completely alone. No human face have I ever seen in this place. Until you, Sheut."

Ryou shivered, wishing for long sleeves, for a lamp, for some sort of idea of what was going on. He was lost in more ways than one, and the one guide he thought he'd had was only heightening his confusion. "What is this place? Where are we?"

Bakhura shrugged, his robe whispering softly. "I do not know. I have been here for… sometimes it seems forever, but truly I can't recall time actually passing. I don't know how I got here or where it could possibly be. The desert goes on forever." He paused, seemingly lost in a train of thought. "I can remember my life before this place, all the way back to my earliest days, but towards the end, my most recent memories, it becomes a muddled mess. And then I open my eyes, and I am here. Did I die, perhaps?" He paused again, teeth digging into his lower lip. When he spoke again his voice went from detached to agitated.

"I was thinking, who knows for how long, that I had died. That I had travelled to the underworld to stand in judgment before Anubis, and that the deeds of my heart were found heavier than the Feather of Ma'at. I believed Ammut had feasted on my soul, and that this place was where those who satisfied Her hunger were fated to wander for eternity, each alone and suspended away from time. But… if you are my sheut, that can't be right. Sheut," Bakhura looked at Ryou, and the expression on his face was much closer to what he would have expected to see, had he expected to find Bakhura in this dark desert at all. It should have unnerved him, but somehow Ryou found that he could look Bakhura in the eye and not be afraid.

"Sheut. Do you know what happened to me? Am I dead?"

Ryou's ability to hold Bakhura's intent, searching gaze dissipated. He let his gaze slip to the sand, not able to stare him in the face. If what Bakhura said was reliable at all, then he had been trapped and alone in this place for over three thousand years. What would the certainty of that knowledge do to him if Ryou told him?

Fingers of one hand digging into the sand distractedly, Ryou tried to find some way of replying that felt truthful without delving into everything he knew. "… I… don't know exactly what happened to you. I know some of your life and what it was leading to - but I don't know how much of it you remember yourself." He took a deep breath and forced himself to meet Bakhura's gaze. He knew his eyes were violet, and in the starlight he could imagine he saw a hint of it, but in truth they just looked black. Patches of the night sky, bereft of stars, made a part of Bakhura's being.

"I know about Kul Elna, and how it met its end. I know how you survived that night - the night of screams. I know how you planned, how you worked to get revenge for yourself and for Kul Elna on the Pharaoh, who was the one responsible for it all. …I know why the people of Kul Elna were killed. Sacrifices made against their wills to forge the seven Millennium Items, keys to a power Pharaoh Aknamkanon used to save his kingdom when he was too weak to do so himself. And I know of the deal you struck with the being to whose power the Millennium Items were the key: Zorc Necrophades."

Bakhura's face shuttered and then cleared. The expression left behind was an odd one, almost guarded. "Ah, yes," he said, voice raw. "That name is familiar. Yes, I remember Him. And I remember that His presence was very much there during the final muddle of my memories. How he fits in, though…"

Ryou regretted telling him almost immediately, but still wasn't certain exactly what kind of effect the knowledge was having on him. He didn't seem shocked or upset, or even curious why it was his 'sheut' would know an even more limited version of his past than he did. But while Ryou had no idea as to the actual details of Bakhura's final days, all of the signs of what must have awaited him were there. Whatever had happened, it had resulted in his soul being trapped in the Millennium Ring for thousands of years.

He touched the place where the Ring ought to have been hanging, his chest feeling oddly hollowed out with it gone, and wondered.

"You see the city there?"

Ryou blinked, pulled out of his thoughts, and looked. This place was still disorientating. He had only let his attention wander for a moment, yet coming back to the present took so much effort it felt as though hours had passed. How had Bakhura stood it so long, when Ryou had only been here - he thought - a couple of hours and he already felt as though he lost his grip?

He looked to the dark city nestled in the dunes, its fiery lights hinting at its shape and size. The flickering movements of those lights, Ryou realized, were the only things that really moved in this place besides Bakhura and himself. Other than the two of them, sitting in the cold sand on the side of a dune, the city below appeared to be the only source of life anywhere, a bastion of light and warmth in a place utterly devoid of both.

Except that wasn't quite true. Some of those lights he saw down in the city couldn't come from torches or lamps, they were too cold and steady for fires. It took a moment for what he was seeing to resolve itself into something that made any sort of sense. When it did, his jaw dropped.

What he was seeing was the stars wending their way through the city. No, not the stars, but their reflections, tossed back up to the sky by the wide, gently curving ribbon of a river. The city was built on both sides of it, coming right up to its banks so the river, carrying the images of stars on its surface, travelled between the buildings.

A certainty came over Ryou, then. A sort of secondhand familiarity that told him what he was looking at. In Bakhura's memories, he had only ever referred to it as 'the river,' but Ryou thought he could put a name to it: The Nile.

"That," Bakhura said, "is the city Waset, home to Pharaoh of the Two Lands, and seat of power. So close to us now that should one of its people rise from dreams and pass before the lights we would see their shape. But they will not. None of the sleepers ever rise from their slumber, if any sleepers even exist within."

"Haven't you ever gone down to look?"

Bakhura snorted, a human sound in such an unreal place sounding strange and out of place. "Where we are right now is as close as we shall ever get, Sheut."

Ryou looked at him, brow furrowed. Perhaps Bakhura's vision was better, or he was just expecting it, but he seemed to read the question on Ryou's face.

"I have tried to go down to the city, many times. I have gone forward with the intent of combing Waset for any other soul in this barren place, of hunting down Pharaoh in his bed, of taking that revenge for my village you spoke of while all of them slept. It would be a fitting justice that the same horror visited upon Kul Elna should come to them while they think themselves so safe." In the darkness, Bakhura's eyes seemed to burn as he stared at the distant shape of Waset, hatred of a kind Ryou had never personally seen before rising up in him within moment.

Just as quickly as it came, though, the fury dissipated. "But no matter how many steps I take, Waset never comes any nearer than this. I could walk for hours, and still it will be just as far away, and behind me will be a mountain where there had only been a hill before. A mountain which I must climb up again if I want to escape sight of Waset." He shook his head, glaring out over the dunes. "Wherever this is, it has no wish for me to reach that city. Perhaps because it knows my heart, and what I would do if I should ever reach that place. And yet, neither does it want me to forget the city and its people."

"What do you mean?"

"For as many times as I have walked down the dunes towards Waset, I have also walked away. I have walked towards the darkest, deepest part of the desert, never stopping for what would be days if days existed here. And yet, never once did I lose the faint glow of the city. I could look back the way I had come and still see it, as though Waset lay just beyond the next dune."

"It seems," he said, his voice empty as the desert around them, "I am trapped here, no matter how long or in which direction I travel, always with that city within my sight, yet beyond my reach."

Ryou stared at Bakhura, and then down at the city, a knot forming in his chest. He didn't like the idea of a slaughter, the concept of 'an eye for an eye' kind of justice, but he understood it. There had been too many times where that exact kind of justice would have been very welcome in his life for him not to understand the appeal, but that wasn't who he was now. He could empathize with Bakhura's desires, but his scruples had him rejecting them.

At the same time… he had been Bakhura for almost half of his life. More than just witnessing the events of his life in Egypt, Ryou had experienced them, he had lived them just as Bakhura had done. He could remember those events of a past life the same way he could remember the events of his own life, the two running parallel to each other. In a way, Ryou felt that he was Bakhura contained in a second skin. Looking down on Waset from their place on the dune and knowing Pharaoh and his Court must sleep within, Ryou felt as Bakhura must feel. The desire to sweep into Waset and lay waste to it all pressed hard into his guts, a tingle of raw energy running into his hands. There Waset lay, helpless, and whatever the part of him that was still Ryou Bakura might feel, he wanted very much to see it burn.

To have such a temptation lain before him, and then to have nothing he could do about it, either satisfying the bloodlust or in turning away to escape it, was a sophisticated kind of torture.

Perhaps he hadn't been so wrong as he thought before. Only this wasn't his penalty game. It was Bakhura's.

"I am glad… that I got to meet you, Bakhura."

He looked over at Ryou. "You know my name." It was a blank statement, inflectionless.

"Of course."

He nodded, his expression thoughtful. "That is good. To be remembered is to live on. To be forgotten…" he trailed off for a moment, blinked, and again looked at Ryou. "Glad I am to have met you, my Sheut. In this dark place it is good to be greeted with light."

Something that felt suspiciously like a blush came to his cheeks. He was suddenly grateful for the cold and the dark. "I don't know how long I'll remain here. A few moments or forever. And if I go, I don't know that I'll ever return. But I am glad that, however it happened, I was given the chance to see and to speak with you. The other part of my soul."

A smile came to Bakhura's face, crooked but soft. He reached out and patted Ryou on the shoulder, and then let his hand rest there. The heat of his palm soaked into Ryou, reminding him this was not a dream. This was more than a dream and less than reality, and somehow, he felt, more true than either of the others.

They sat in silence, heads tilted back. The sea of stars above them was the only witness to this strange meeting, and bound never to tell the tale to anyone.

A/N2: Honestly, this is a chapter I've been looking forward to writing since I first conceived of this terrible fic. It's been years in coming…

Also, my beta hates me a little for this chapter. I give her hardcopies to scribble on, and for this chapter she left me a LOT of sticky notes, most of them consisting of single cuss words per sticky, demanding that these two idiots talk more (and other things). I'm a proud author. ^^

Waset: This was the ancient name for Thebes, (whose ruins are within current day Luxor), and was the capital of Egypt roughly during the Middle and New Kingdom 'eras.'

Parts of the soul: This is… a bit of a mix. From all the info I've been able to find on the ancient Egyptian beliefs regarding souls, this is about as streamlined a distillation as I could get. Fairly accurate, I think, if simplified, and incorporating the (silly) changes made in the original YGO canon to fit in with that. The major changes to lore to fit canon have to do with the ka and ba, in case anyone was wondering.

Sheut: I. Am. So. Frigging. Happy! I finally get to use this little headcanon of mine, where the original soul of TKB gets to use a nickname for Ryou. Every other part has their own names for each other, (Koe, Yadonushi, etc), so I'm pleased I finally get to share what I came up with for Bakhura to call Ryou. :3

Where are we?: Despite Ryou's guesses, we're not in a penalty game. This is actually Bakhura's soul room. The reason that option never occurred to Ryou is that he's never seen one, and I choose to believe he's not heard of the concept from Yugi, who has seen them. What would Ryou's look like? Dunno.

Thanks for reading, everyone, we'll be back with Part 15 in two weeks!