A/N: Hey everyone.
It sure has been a long time, huh? Feels like it's been crammed full of things, as well.
Here we are, the final chapter, minus the epilogue. When I started this fic I figured it would take me about 2 years to finish, based on another I'd just completed that I estimated would be similar in length. Both estimates were horribly off. Haunted is more than twice the length, took orders of magnitude more research, and has taken eleven years from start to finish. A lot has happened in that time. I don't think the me of eleven years ago would recognize the me typing right now. There's a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this work for me, now, as well as a lot of sadness, grief, and pride. The vision I originally had for this story has remained more or less intact, but the meaning of it has become enmeshed somewhat with the life events that have taken place in the writing of it all.
Being here, now, at the end and finally being able to let it go… hurts. I felt very much in line with Ryou and his emotions as I wrote them out, and am only able to loosen my grip reluctantly.
I hope that you all, those who have followed along somehow all this time, and those who come along long after the ink has dried, find something worthwhile here.
See you soon for the very End.
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.
Warnings: Body horror, major character death.
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi.
…
Haunted
Part XX
Ehtar
…
Ink stains the papyri.
Blood soaks into the sand.
Both left their marks, told the tale of events long past, but that was all they were. Stories. Echoes.
Memories.
They were not the events they told; there was no substance to them. They were just what was left for those who came after, when the screams ceased and the scores all tallied. Those who came after could only see the marks of the events, but never experience them. Witnesses, with neither true understanding nor power to alter what came before.
Was that what he had been made into, Ryou wondered? A witness and a record, and nothing else?
He had experienced more than most would even be able to imagine. His own life, the life of another, and the fraught place where the two had overlapped. But the experiences of that other – the horrible, the healing, the fantastical, the nightmarish – they had all been removed. All he had now were the memories of memories, echoes of echoes, bouncing back and forth inside his skull, fading and distorting with every repetition. The experiences were gone, but…
He was marked. Scored deep with the story others could never fully understand. Not the way he did – the way he had… the way he felt slipping away a little more each day…
A history book felt nothing for the words preserved in its pages. Perhaps that was all he had ever felt – the process of being imprinted.
Why, then, the compulsion to seek out that life he had known? If all that he was, was a living record, why must he still be made to feel?
—•—
An alarm was going off somewhere.
The noise was incessant – grating. It hauled Ryou out from the dark coils of sleep which clung and weighed him down like sand. Slowly he came awake enough to roll over, to fumble blindly at the alarm, and switch it off.
He stared at the numbers. He understood them. Time was real, forever unspooling into the future, leaving the past farther and farther behind. The day ahead of him stretched out in its grinding inevitability: Rise, dress, eat, travel, school, interactions, return, eat, homework, sleep. Repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat…
His body ached miserably. A pain sprang up behind his eyes and his stomach twisted.
It was all so useless. What was the point, when he had already done it all countless times before, when the reward for doing it over was the opportunity to do it all yet again?
The future spread ahead of him in bleak predictability, stretching into eternity. The same, the same, the same, himself running along like a clockwork automaton, making the same motions, the same actions…
The clock shifted. Another minute slipped from present to past, pushing Ryou ahead to a blank future.
Ryou put the clock down, rolled over, and drew the covers over his head, blocking out the light.
—•—
There were messages waiting on the answering machine when Ryou's bladder finally forced him to get out of bed. One was from the school, the other from his father, whom the school had also called. Both were concerned about his absence, compounded by his living arrangement and his recent excursion to Aomori. Both were, gently, demanding to know what was going on.
Ryou considered leaving the phone and returning to bed without responding to either message. The idea of speaking on the phone made his stomach twist into even tighter knots… but if he didn't give some reply, there would be more calls. His father had a key to the apartment. If he got too concerned he might actually come to check on his son in person. It would make for a first time, taking such an active role, but it was possible.
Going out into the world was intolerable. The world coming in to him was a nightmare.
He made the calls, first to the school and then to his father. He hadn't drunk anything since waking, and his voice was rough, making his excuse of sickness much more believable. The school was surprisingly understanding, telling him to get plenty of rest before coming back in. The call to his father turned out to be the more difficult of the two, if only because Ryou had to dissuade him from a half-hearted offer to come to the apartment to check on him. An equally half-hearted reassurance that he would be fine was enough to have the busy man abandon the idea.
Sometimes his father's absentee approach to parenting was a blessing.
He thought about crawling back into bed, pulling the covers over himself again and sinking back to sleep and thoughtlessness… but his body rebelled at the idea of so much stillness.
At the same time, moving felt like too much. And where would he go? What would he do? His body rejected stillness, but his mind rejected activity just as much.
Ryou didn't know how much time slipped past him as he sat in the chair by the phone, staring blankly into the middle distance. He wasn't sure when he'd sat down, other than it was after the start of school, and not dark yet. Now it was… later. Still not dark, but the quality of the light said it would be soon. His back ached, but it had ached before sitting, so there was no real indication of how much time had passed from that. Other parts of him also complained, but not his stomach. He wasn't hungry, which would normally suggest that it couldn't be too late in the day. But then, he hadn't been hungry yesterday, either, or the majority of the day before that.
How long had it been since he'd last eaten anything? What had it been?
Ryou stared at nothing, aware that thoughts were rolling through his mind somewhere, but only vaguely certain what they were about.
Time moved, and the shadows grew.
When Ryou stood, he was only certain of it because of how his view changed. His body was numb, each step he took felt very much as though he were controlling a doll, a marionette on strings, distant from the rest of him. Wherever 'he' really was.
The kitchen was dark. He didn't turn on the lights. The less he saw, he reasoned, the more he could pretend he wasn't there. When he opened the cupboards he could see well enough to know what was there, and the inside of the fridge was no issue. The problem lay in that nothing at all looked appetizing. Imagining eating made his stomach clench preemptively, and he wondered if he would be able keep anything he ate down.
He didn't want to eat, he just knew he ought to. He decided that toast would be the least offensive to his guts, and the least effort to prepare. He ate it dry, with a glass of water to help push it down, still standing at the counter.
Bed still seemed too stagnant to return to, but standing was tiring. Sitting in front of a dark television was pointless, and he had no energy to bathe, so he wound up sitting at his desk.
There was very little there to hold his attention. There was no clutter or debris to catch his eye, no random object to consider or to take up in his hands. What little there was – a stack of books, a notebook, a cup with a few pens and pencils – were all placed carefully. A set of orderly lines and angles across the surface of his desk. Ordered, controlled, predictable… safe.
Something fluttered in his chest. He took a deep breath.
Safe. How often had he wished for that? Just a sense of safety in his life, of normalcy, to know when he woke there would be no disturbing discoveries to make? For the world to be just the same when he opened his eyes as when he'd closed them. How long had he craved that, which all others seemed to take completely for granted? How many years had he lived, unable to trust himself, because of the extra soul his body played host to?
… had it only ever been that other soul he hadn't trusted…?
Well. Now he had it. He had his desperate wish for safety and for predictability. So much so that the inside of his skull rang with the building echoes of silence.
A sound escaped him. Something between a moan and a laugh, choked off in surprise. He realized his breathing had become harsh, an uneven staccato sawing at his throat and over his teeth. Too shallow, it made him lightheaded, but he couldn't make himself slow down. He couldn't slow his breath, nor calm his heart.
A familiar feeling was bubbling up inside, fresh and searing, it burned through the cold, empty apathy like fire.
Anger. Rage. Hatred.
Ryou looked at the books and papers on his desk, and he felt nothing but loathing at their neat orderliness. How dare it all be so… so normal—so unchanged in the face of everything that happened?
How could all of it, the whole room, his entire apartment, the larger world beyond – How could it all just move along the way it always had? How could it all continue on without so much as a stumble, and how could it expect him to do the same?
He could move through the world as before if he must. Straighten the books, go to school, smile at the platitudes, he could do all of that. But that wasn't enough, was it? Oh no, he also had to feel those things. Not enough for the actions alone, the world wanted him to be invested, as though that made any difference at all.
It didn't.
What did it matter on a test if he actually cared about the answers he was putting down, so long as they were correct? What did it matter to someone telling a joke if he were actually listening, so long as he smiled at the appropriate time? He was there, he was performing the actions required, that alone ought to be enough!
It wasn't, though. He could feel it even here, alone in his cage with nothing except lengthening shadows, but especially outside of it. He was nothing but a shell filled with the ragged remains of ghosts, and the world pressed in on him, trying to mold him back into a more acceptable shape.
He wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to lash out and shatter it all to pieces.
That rage, and that desire – that was familiar.
It was comforting.
Ryou held on to it tightly, and let the darkness around him slowly deepen.
—•—
There was chatter in the classroom before Ryou entered. It was the usual white noise of voices as students inside socialized as much as they could before the teacher came in to start the day. The sound faltered by his first step inside, and died almost completely by his third.
Ryou took his seat, ignoring the silence, and went about the usual ritual of preparing for the day. He'd been gone for a few days, so there was more to organize than normal. Not so much that he didn't notice when the low buzz of voices began again, nor did he fail to note the underlying strain to them.
This was familiar as well, wasn't it? This feeling of eyes on the back of his neck, of others discussing him, speculating on him even while he was in the same room. He hadn't experienced this particular situation since coming to Domino City, but in every other school between then and when he'd first gotten the Millennium Ring? Oh yes, this was familiar.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Yugi and his friends in their usual knot around one desk. They were all looking in his direction while doing their best to not appear as though they were. All of them wore frowns. Those worn by Yugi and Anzu were by far the most concerned of the small group, whereas Honda's expression showed more puzzlement than anything else, and the set of Jonouchi's face bordered on hostile.
Internally Ryou shrugged, even as a small ache formed under his ribs. If this were the beginning of the end of those friendships, he couldn't say he was surprised. He'd lost the Ring on which he'd made the wish for friendship. However twisted out of shape the original intention had become, wasn't it fitting to lose one along with the other? Better, perhaps, to lose it all quickly, and the quicker the better. Let it all break down and leave him to himself.
He'd become absorbed enough in his own thoughts, he didn't notice Yugi approaching until he was practically at Ryou's side.
The worried frown was still in place, brows drawn together and mouth curving ever so slightly down. When Ryou looked up at him, Yugi froze in place for a moment, and then visibly did his best to relax, attempting a smile.
"Good morning, Bakura. How, um. How are you?"
Ryou just looked at him for a moment, considering. A few days ago he would have answered numbly whatever seemed the best answer to satisfy the one asking, speeding the interaction to its conclusion. Now, several options flashed through his mind ranging from neutral to deliberately abrasive. What sort of reaction did he want to get from Yugi? He was tempted to be abrasive, to have Yugi returning to his desk with no wish to ever attempt speaking to him again. Or maybe the truth. Surely that would be even more effective in causing a retreat. Except he had no idea how to even begin to encapsulate all of that before the beginning of class…
He defaulted to neutral. There would be time to break friendships more thoroughly later. The cracks were already there. "Good morning, Yugi. I'm fine. How are you?"
"Alright," he said, sounding anything but. "I'm glad you're back, we missed you while you were away."
"Is that right?" Ryou kept his tone flat, his expression blank. He'd decided he was through with playing at normalcy, which included the effort of a mask. Yugi fidgeted slightly under the bland response that volunteered nothing.
"Yes…" he said, uncertain. "We heard there was a family emergency, and then you weren't feeling well. Is, um… Is everything alright now?"
No.
"Yes, everything is fine."
Ryou was certain Yugi didn't intend for him to notice, but his eyes flicked up, quickly scanning over Ryou's hair before returning to his face. "Are you sure you're alright…?"
Ryou quirked a smile, a very small one, but not one intended for Yugi's benefit.
He'd known that his entrance back at school would cause something of a stir, and not only for his protracted absence.
Alone for a couple days in his apartment, simply drifting from place to place when he could no longer stand to sit still, he'd become more conscious of… something. Flickers out of the corners of his eyes, a feeling of not quite being on his own, which was somehow able to coexist with the yawning sensation of emptiness embedded into every inch of his skin.
He'd ignored the flickers, and rejected the sensation of another presence.
Less easy to ignore had been whenever he passed a mirror or pane of glass. Whenever he did that, from the corner of his eye he would catch the movement, and for a moment be certain there was someone else there with him.
He knew he was alone. He knew it was his own reflection he was seeing. Yet that knowing didn't stop him seeing another in the apartment with him. Someone who walked straighter, more confidently and arrogantly, someone he would swear flashed him a cocky grin from the other side of the glass, who disappeared before he could turn his head to look fully. Someone who looked a little like him, white hair and all. On the night before coming back to class, Ryou had sat staring into one of his mirrors, daring the phantom to come where he could see him—really see him.
All he saw was his own pathetic reflection, taunting in as much in its differences as its similarities to the one he desperately wanted to be there.
He'd decided to change one of those differences.
Yugi's eyes flicked back up to his hair. They had to flick up now, as Ryou had stood before the mirror the night before and chopped away the length. What was left was an undeniably rough and uneven mane, short enough to leave the back of his neck feeling cold and his shoulders exposed. To his own eye, he looked much closer to the reflection hiding in his mirror.
From the particular brand of concern he saw in Yugi, and in the others who knew the ancient thief, he was certain the resemblance came through to them as well.
"I think you mean, 'do I feel like myself,' don't you?"
His flat tone and ghost of a smile must have had a strong effect, as Yugi blanched slightly. His fingers twitched, and Ryou couldn't tell if they itched more for the deck of cards he still carried with him everywhere, or for the Puzzle that no longer hung round his neck.
Ryou shook his head. "He's gone, Yugi. Don't worry."
If anything, the comment seemed to agitate him more. Yugi's lips parted in an expression of startled hurt, and he looked as though he were about to protest – but the teacher walked in, sending the whole room to their seats.
The class proceeded without any further disruption, but there was an unmistakable air of tension underlying the room. The teacher noticed the change in Ryou's appearance, but drew no attention to it. She merely paused, blinked, and moved on just as though she hadn't noticed at all. The same could not be said for the rest of the class.
He caught furtive glances from several of his classmates throughout the day. The girls in particular kept sending him looks, ranging from hurt to horrified. The boys were, in general, less interested after the initial surprise.
Yugi's group never stopped sending glances his way, and between classes they would speak in low tones to one another. None of them made a second attempt to speak to him.
Ryou tried his best to convince himself that he was glad of that.
—•—
If he'd thought that cutting his hair to more closely resemble the man in the mirror would make the sightings fewer, he'd been woefully mistaken. They were significantly worse, now. And it wasn't because he was mistaking himself for Bakhura. Somehow, appearing more like him made it more obvious how he was 'seeing' Bakhura as well as himself in every reflective surface. The glimpses were not of himself mistaken for another, the other was with him in the mirror, standing beside him.
But only out of the corner of his eye, when he wasn't really looking. Whenever he turned to see, it was only ever himself, alone.
It was as though the experience of all of those years before was being played out once again, only instead of taking place within his mind, it was out in the world with him. He was haunted, and ghosts were hovering around him, briefly catching his notice before fading to nothing again. But he was still there, waiting for Ryou's attention to wander, to peek in on him again. Ryou could feel him.
He found himself standing in front of one of the mirrors in his apartment one evening, a full length one at the end of a hall which he had been avoiding as best he could for days. It was impossible to avoid every reflective surface, especially once he'd found the motivation to leave the apartment again. Windows were everywhere in cities, and Ryou found he was walking down every sidewalk with a smirking ghost by his side. In school he strode next to Ryou down the halls lined with glass, watched over him as he listened to teachers, and sat beside him as he rode the buses and trains. Unable to look his shadow in the eye, Ryou had taken to simply… accepting that he was there. Not ignoring, but no longer trying to catch him fully. Ryou settled into the idea of Bakhura being at his side, but only when he wasn't looking. It was almost comforting.
Until he got home. Once he was home and alone with his ghost…
Why wouldn't Bakhura make himself known? Why this flicker-I-am-here, flicker-I-am-gone game? It made him think it so much more likely that this was all just in his own head. All echoes and no substance. Memories struggling to survive even as they began to fade, like dying embers seeking new fuel to consume.
Perhaps it was consuming him. He already felt hollow, maybe once he was no longer anything more than a terra cotta jar he would be filled with someone else completely. Bakhura had never felt much further away than a breath, and now…
Ryou pressed his palm to the mirror. On the other side, another hand met his. Only the thickness of a pane of glass, but all Ryou felt was a chill running up his arm.
"You are less alone than you think you are."
The words of the itako mocked him. 'Less alone than he thought,' what did that even mean? How alone did he think he was? At times he was convinced he was the last soul alive, and at others it felt as though his entire being were crowded with ghosts – ghosts who taunted and teased, but never truly interacted with him.
What was he meant to believe? What was he meant to trust?
What was he meant to do?
The fingers pressed to the mirror curled, as though attempting to claw through the glass and reach the reflection on the other side. Of course there was no change, no way to reach him… he wasn't even there.
"Reflections," Ryou whispered to himself. "Echoes. Shadows and ghosts. You aren't here anymore. You've gone, you're dead."
A shudder wracked through his body, and suddenly it was hard to breathe.
Bakhura and Koe, Zork, they were all gone, and he was only himself again. Thinking back over all of the years in which he'd been the bearer of the Ring, recalling all of the fear and uncertainty he had lived through, all the people around him who had suffered due to the spirits he bore—
"Good."
His voice came out harsh, nearly unrecognizable to his own ears. The expression glaring back out at him from the glass was one of anger, of hate, and only made the resemblance to the departed stronger – and stoked the fires of anger in his guts higher.
"It's good you're gone," he went on, louder than before. "It's good that you're gone, that you can't hurt anyone anymore. I'm glad you're gone forever! No more nightmares, no more possession, no more people hurt or killed! I am just myself, to live and make friends who will actually trust me! I'm glad you're gone!"
He stopped, panting. His words rang loudly in the empty apartment. In the mirror he looked even more like the lost spirit, and inside… He felt more like Bakhura than ever. That rage that coiled from his guts and up his spine, the desire to lash out and destroy, it was so wonderfully, sickeningly familiar.
But it wasn't Bakhura's rage. It was his. It was his anger, his want to tear the world to pieces until he was the last thing standing. He'd felt it before, but never like this. Before…
Ryou glanced around him, away from his own furious gaze. Everything was so neat. So tidy. Every book on every shelf precisely aligned, every stitch of clothing put away, his games and their pieces meticulously organized and stored…
Careful control, external constrictions on the fury that bubbled up, keeping it all inside.
Somehow, the sight of his own habits made the rage soar even higher, and Ryou—
Let go.
Neat stacks of papers exploded into flurries, spinning to the floor in disorganized drifts. Books were swept off their shelves, and then flung across the apartment. At first Ryou threw whatever came to hand without a care where it would land, it just needed to be away, gone, destroyed.
Then he began to take aim.
He aimed for anything that looked neat and controlled. Anything which felt like a constraint, a cage. He felt trapped and he was going to rip himself free even if it meant tearing down the walls themselves.
Figures cracked under his attack, glass in frames shattered, controllers, boxes, pens, notebooks, anything he could get his hands on joined the storm of his rage. When one room was destroyed, and his blood still felt as though it were on fire, he moved to the next. In the kitchen, dishes were smashed and food flung. In the living room his small television's face was shattered with a chair, and the chair hurled violently enough to break one of its legs and mar the wall it struck. Bottles of shampoo and medicine spilled and mixed in the bathroom. Clothes were ripped and heaped in the bedroom.
When all that was out in the open had been attacked, Ryou sought out his cases of gaming paraphernalia. His crown of organization and neatness, with guidebooks and character sheets arranged together, figures separated by game title, and then internally by class, type and whether they were painted or unfinished. Cards were meticulously ordered, tokens and markers each had their own spaces, even his dice were all ordered painstakingly into sets. Ryou brought it all out, stood over it all, his chest heaving, his pulse loud in his ears, limbs and face and mind all burning.
This was his control. His careful positioning of all those worlds into type and subtype. These games were where he could always decide what happened, where he got to choose what happened next, rather than it happen to him. It was where he was the one truly in control, and others were meant to follow.
How many times had it ever been more than just himself who played in those worlds? And of those times, how often had his control been usurped, and those around him hurt? Even here – here, more than anywhere else, his control was revealed to be nothing more than a lie.
Lids were ripped off their boxes, and Ryou set to tearing every one of those worlds apart.
Books and sheets were shredded, cards crumpled, tokens flung and lost, dice scattered to every corner, figurines snapped and their pieces hurled as hard as Ryou could manage.
By the time Ryou worked his way to the bottom of the last box, he was trembling with exhaustion. The rage remained, but his body was drained. Still, there was only a little left to go, and he reached for the last of his worlds – one last figurine and one last notebook.
He looked at it, the last of his figures, and the rage in him abruptly went cold. He knew this figurine.
It was the one he had cobbled together himself years ago, using the pieces of those which his bullies had broken. The one he had put so much time into reconstructing, all the while wishing for someone to share his hobbies with – for a friend. So much time, care, and wishing, he'd almost begun to think of the figure as a friend. Or of as himself… he wasn't certain anymore.
His Hodgepodge Hero.
Ryou looked at the carnage around him, the figures twisted and broken at his hands, and felt a distant twinge of guilt. A twinge that the rage flared at defiantly.
Numbly, Ryou lifted out the old notebook, never putting the hero down as he did.
His own handwriting stared back up at him from the page. Old writing, the strokes broader and not as neat as it would be if he were writing it today. It told a story, a rough plotline for an RPG he'd never had the opportunity to play, as he'd never had the players to enact it. It was the story of the Hodgepodge Hero, and how he would have become a part of the party.
…along the road, the party will encounter a figure who appears to be lost and wandering, alone in the wilderness…
He'd planned to have a character sheet for him, Ryou remembered. A full character to join the party as a member, played by him.
His memory has been affected by his adventures. Something has happened to him, a curse of some kind. All he knows for certain is he must fight a great evil, possibly the same as the heroes who have found him…
The Hodgepodge Hero would join the party on their quest, determined to defeat the evil, certain that if he did so, his memories would return. Ryou flipped ahead a few pages, past descriptions of possible scenarios, character details, world building, to the end of his writing.
When face to face with the great evil at last, it recognizes and greets the H. Hero: "Ah, back once again, my friend. Have you missed me, or too muddled to recall any longer? I'm surprised you've made it, I was certain you would be too far split to manage any longer."
The great evil was quite wordy, Ryou observed.
H. Hero is confused. Says he doesn't remember G.E., and then shouts that YES, he does remember.
G.E.: "Oh dear. It is difficult when all of you have to speak with only one voice, isn't it? Let me fix that for you."
G.E. waves a talon, and multiple mouths appear over H. Hero's body, all babbling at once. H. Hero falls to the floor, muttering nonsense in many voices. When the party asks what is going on, G.E. will explain:
"My friend here is truly many friends. All those who have stood before me and whom I have cut down, are all a part of this One. Such a waste of bravery, of cleverness, of knowledge to just kill them. Their only faults were to go against me. So I kept them. Put them all into one melded form. They always return, usually with new companions, to come against me again. Inevitably they fail, and they leave again – with their new companions a part of them. It must be getting a little crowded in there by now, but they'll never be alone. And neither will any of you…!"
Ryou took a deep breath, looking down at the figure in his hand. The broken pieces all glued together, whether they fit perfectly or not. The broken hopes he'd had and couldn't ever quite let go of, all there. In his palm.
The notebook trailed off not long after. He'd never decided the ultimate fate of the Hodgepodge Hero. If he would turn into a villain, driven mad by the chorus of personalities within him, if he would prove instrumental to the great evil's downfall, if he would perish with the great evil, unable to survive without that magic to help hold him together, or if there would be a way for the party to rescue him. He'd never decided which he liked best, and vaguely recalled he wanted to see how his players reacted to make that final decision. Would they be so disgusted by the betrayal that they would see the character as a villain to defeat, or would they be determined to rescue this victim of the true enemy who had become their friend?
He'd never decided, and the game had never been played. Hodgepodge Hero was left in a state of limbo, made of pieces of many, but with no certainty as to who or what he really was… if he was truly anything at all in his own right.
Ryou looked up, and caught sight of himself in a mirror.
The mirrors had not come away unscathed in his fury. The glass of this one was cracked, spider webbed from the blow of something which had come from his hand. In its reflection Ryou was fractured into pieces as well, his edges refusing to align, multiplying some features and erasing others in the seams.
Who was he meant to be when he only had himself?
The inside of his chest burned. He reached for something, and his fingers found a hard plastic box. He flung it as hard as he could at the tortured reflection.
He didn't realize he was shouting until the sound mixed with that of shattering glass, the meaning of the words lost along with his own distorted image.
—•—
Ryou didn't remember falling asleep. He hardly remembered anything at all until his vision cleared and eyes adjusted to the dark, and he saw the wreckage. Then he remembered it all, too much, and closed his eyes again.
They ached, his eyes. His whole body ached, and the inside of his skull throbbed. How long had he been asleep? Long enough for the sun to have set, but was it the night of the same day, or the next? It had been Friday evening before, was it still, or had it turned to Saturday while his eyes were closed? He'd only been back to school from Aomori a few days, he couldn't miss more school without triggering some sort of investigation. And given the state of his apartment now…
He supposed he could always just… leave. Pack whatever of his life wasn't already broken to pieces and walk away, start a new life somewhere else, where no one knew him. Maybe eventually he could manage to forget, as well.
How long had it been since he'd drunk any water, or used the bathroom?
His body protested, but he got up, and tended to those needs which were most urgent and easy to solve.
He was careful where he put his feet.
Distantly, Ryou thought he would feel more affected by the carnage he'd wrought on his own home. What he found to truly be the case was that he felt very little. Surprised, perhaps, at just how much he had managed to accomplish in his destruction, and how little he had in way of specific memory for each thing destroyed. He felt nothing in terms of regret. It was as though he had come home to discover an intruder had been and gone, but then realized it wasn't even his apartment. Even his game sets and books, torn apart and scattered, made him feel nothing at all.
No intruder, he thought, sipping his water, slowly to take care of his raw throat. Just me. Who knew I was capable of such violence. And not due to spirits, this was all my own, for once.
He wondered if, in all the years he'd held the Ring, the rage he would feel had ever truly been that of Koe, or if it had always been his own. Who was to say now? It could have been anyone's rage.
Walking gingerly through the detritus, Ryou found himself at his desk, picking up the chair from the floor so he could sit.
He felt… unmoored. Thoughts were scattered, much like his possessions, and it was difficult to hold on to anything, let alone to put it all into some sort of coherent order. He needed to put himself and his thoughts into place, or he was in danger of coming apart completely.
His body worked on autopilot. In the drifts and piles around him, Ryou uncovered a pen and blank sheets of paper, arranged them on his bare desk, and prepared to write.
Dear Amane,
He stopped. He'd written the words without thinking, but what came after? What was it he wanted – what could he tell his sister? Writing letters to her had always been a comfort, it was true, and had helped to settle and organize him, to tell what was happening in his life to another. But this? Where would he even start in explaining it all to her?
A different letter, then, to one who would understand him? Less explanation, and more of a listing, a rumination on all which had passed.
A letter to Bakhura?
No. Bakhura… already knew. There would be no point in narrating his thoughts to the ghost who had shared them for so many years. And Ryou suspected a letter addressed to him would become something close to a one sided argument. He'd had enough venting for now. Now he just wanted… it all to make sense. To be put in order again.
He was holding on to the dead too much, he thought. Amane or Bakhura, they were both gone. It was the living who needed to know.
Ryou blinked in the dimness of his single desk lamp.
That was it, wasn't it? What he wanted – at least, one of the things he wanted. For others to know. They thought they knew, yes, they thought they knew the story of the Thief King, but that was all they knew. A story. They didn't know the history, the truth that lay underneath it all. The lies they were told, that they believed and were repeated until no one thought to question them…
"Yes, yes! Truth!" a voice from millenniums past echoed in Ryou's ear. "That is what matters; to know, understand and acknowledge the truth… Words…! It is by words that others will remember, and cast you into a shape…"
The lessons and passion of the old scribe had left its mark on Bakhura, and so on Ryou. But where for Bakhura the lessons never fully blossomed, choked by the weeds Zorc had planted within him long before, in Ryou they found fertile ground, and began to take root.
For a long few minutes, Ryou sat in thought, still as a statue as he considered where to begin, and what to include. After some time he reached his decision, the only reasonable one in his estimation, and began to write.
As much as I know and can recall, yes, he thought. All of our lives to be put down and remain forever.
…blood stained the papyri…
…ink soaked into the sand…
—•—
. . .
—•—
"You really shouldn't go, Yugi."
The words, spoken in concern but with an edge of something darker, kept echoing in Yugi's head as he rode the bus that would take him the closest to Bakura's apartment.
"It'll do no good. You saw him, and I ain't just talkin' about his hair! The guy just ain't interested in… y'know…"
Jonouchi had trailed off at that point in his argument. When Yugi had first suggested it to the others, the response hadn't exactly been enthusiastic, but both Honda and Anzu had agreed it would be a good idea, at least.
Not Jonouchi. He was vehemently against it from the start.
"No," Yugi had replied, confused and, to his own surprise, angry at his friend's response. "I don't know. What do you think he's not interested in?"
Jonouchi had blinked at him, obviously uncomfortable at the demand to say exactly what he meant.
Yugi thought he did know what Jonouchi meant, and the implication that the answer was so obvious, that Yugi might agree, only made him more angry, even days later.
"Y'know… in gettin' better. Like… all the way back to normal."
Yugi took a deep breath. Yeah, he was still mad even now, thinking over that heated conversation. By the end, Jonouchi had Honda and Anzu convinced it would be best to leave Bakura alone, and they all tried to convince Yugi of it as well. It still made him feel ill to recall it, all three of them speaking against Bakura and advising Yugi to keep away from him. 'Just in case.'
Eventually Yugi had agreed, feeling like a traitor even as he determined to go anyway.
They didn't trust Bakura. It had been hard for them to do so after so many times of his Yami appearing out of the blue, manipulating them all from behind their friend's face. Then, once they were in the ancient past it had gotten worse. To see the Thief King, the one truly behind all of Bakura's actions, and to see just how evil he truly was, the lengths he would go to, it had struck them all deeply. With the loss of the Millennium Items there had been a sense of relief on that front, at least. After all, with their loss there was no evil left to threaten them anymore.
Right?
Except Bakura was… taking the loss of his Yami badly. No one understood why. Well, Yugi thought he understood. Sharing a soul with someone was… it was something too intimate to even attempt describing to those who didn't share the experience. He could only think that was true no matter who the other soul was.
The others, though. What they saw was a friend mourning the loss of a villain, a killer who wanted the destruction of the world. The best which could be interpreted from that, so far as they were concerned, would be that Bakura's Yami had somehow survived and resided in their friend, and not at all subtly. At worst…
In either case, Bakura was not 'safe' to be around, in their view.
In Yugi's view, it wasn't safe to leave him alone.
He'd made his suggestion on Friday, thinking to visit as a group the next day. After saying he wouldn't go, he'd waited until Sunday evening to assuage any misgivings by the others. Only a day's delay, but he'd still chaffed at it, worried for Bakura.
He might not understand completely what Bakura was going through, but he was the only one who would have a shot at coming close. If he didn't stand by Bakura, or reach out when help was needed, who else was there? Bakura had been so isolated this whole time, despite their efforts to support him, by the spirit of the Ring, and for years before any of them had even met. To let him stay isolated, even now, would be too cruel.
Yugi was also aware of some selfishness in his own motives as well. There was of course the guilt in acknowledging that he had participated in any capacity in Bakura's isolation and suffering before. That he'd never noticed until it was far too late, and been unable to help once he had… Guilt goaded him on as much as any altruistic motive.
And there was the matter of his own pain. Just as he was the only one who stood a chance understanding Bakura, Bakura was that same person for him. The others tried, but couldn't, and there was no use in trying to explain it.
There would be no need for explanations between him and Bakura. Not in the fundamentals of their shared experience. Wouldn't it be best for them both to be there for one another? Both of them chosen vessels for spirits out of ancient Egypt, who else was there to turn to but each other?
Yugi swayed with the motion of the bus, and wondered what he would say when he arrived.
—•—
Bakura wasn't answering his door, no matter how many times Yugi rang the bell. He tried knocking and calling out as well, in case Bakura wasn't answering random visitors. Still no response.
He wouldn't be out, would he? Yugi supposed he might be, but it was getting late on a Sunday, it seemed a little out of character if he were. Then again, the whole reason he was there was because Bakura was acting out of character.
Going home now did not appeal at all, but if Bakura wasn't home – or wasn't answering his door – what else was there to do?
In a last ditch effort, Yugi knocked hard, calling out for Bakura, and without thinking reached for the door handle.
It turned in his hand.
Yugi's heart stuttered. That… wasn't right, surely? An unlocked door was a bad sign, right…?
Calling out Bakura's name more softly than before, Yugi pushed the door open slowly, his heart hammering.
It was nothing compared to what his heart did once he got a good look inside.
Bakura's apartment looked as though a hurricane had gone through it. Things were broken, smashed, spilled onto the floor… books, clothes, gaming pieces, food, it didn't matter what it was, it was on the ground and all mixed together, save whatever managed to stick to the walls. Even furniture was scattered or tipped over. Nothing had been left untouched.
Yugi's first thought was burglars had broken in and ransacked the apartment. The unlocked door plus the carnage seemed enough evidence for that. But… the destruction looked complete. Thieves wouldn't show care in their search for valuables, but this looked too deliberate and thorough for careless searching. And what sort of burglars would trash a television set rather than take it?
Something else had happened here.
"Bakura!"
Yugi's voice fell oddly flat in the apartment. There was no sound beside himself, and the air seemed eager to deaden anything which dared disturb it.
It had suffered enough disturbance, it seemed to say. Be silent now.
Yugi ignored the impression and went inside, afraid of what else he might find deeper in the apartment, but unwilling to walk away. He hadn't seen Bakura for two days. How long ago had this happened? Was Bakura alright, had he been home when this happened, when some intruder came in, or—?
Or was it the spirit of the Ring?
He'd been angry at the suggestion that Bakura may still harbor the spirit, but what if… what if he did?
He'd been angry before, but even he couldn't quite shake off that fear.
"Bakura! It's Yugi, I'm coming in!"
Automatically he went to take off his shoes, but reconsidered when he saw the shards of glass and crockery scattered over the floor. He kept them on.
Every room was the same. Yugi had only been to Bakura's apartment a handful of times, but it had always been so clean and tidy, almost like those you would see in magazines. The type of places it was hard to imagine anyone actually living in. Yet Bakura did, and all on his own, as well. The way it was now, it didn't even feel like Yugi was in the right building. The very shape of the place felt wrong.
"Bakura? Are you here? Are you alright?"
No answer, the air continued to choke the sound of Yugi's voice as he went from room to room. With every step Yugi took with no sign of Bakura, the higher his fear mounted. What had happened?
Finally he came to the last room, Bakura's bedroom. It, too, was a mess, with everything in ruins. If anything it seemed worse here, more concentrated than anywhere else in the apartment. Here it looked as though every scrap of paper had been torn to pieces, every drawer opened and emptied, every die and card scattered. Such was the mess that he almost missed the form slumped over the desk.
"Bakura!"
The other boy didn't stir at his name, nor a second later when Yugi shook him gently by the shoulders. "Bakura! Are you alright? Wake up!"
There was no response at all save for a grunt and a heavy exhale. It was enough to have Yugi stop shaking him, to let go and take a closer look at him. So long as he was… as long as he wasn't… He was alive. That was somewhere to begin, and Yugi would take it.
He looked over Bakura carefully, examining his still face, his hands, the arms folded into a pillow on the desk. He looked paler than Yugi remembered him being last, which was alarming considering how pale he'd already been becoming. His eyes looked bruised, though, the skin below them stained dark, the lids an angry red. His chopped hair was a wild tangle of knots and weird angles from where, Yugi assumed, his head had pressed against the desk.
As Yugi's examination moved on from Bakura's face, he was startled to note that the boy was still in his school uniform. It was horribly creased and askew, which suggested he'd not taken it off since Friday evening.
Three days in the same clothes, his apartment a wreck, and himself unconscious and unwakeable.
Yugi stepped back, gingerly leaning against one wall, and tried to think.
It didn't look like it was a break in. Too much was left behind, too many valuable things broken for a robbery to make sense. Bakura himself didn't look as though he were injured. His eyes looked bruised, but in the way no sleep and stress would do, not blows. Just to be certain of the point, Yugi very carefully examined Bakura's skull, burying his fingers into the tangled mane and gently searching for any lumps or evidence of cuts. Again, Bakura's only reaction was to give a heavy exhale, and then go still again.
Nothing. No sign Yugi could find of a head injury. Which wasn't to say there absolutely wasn't one, but it made it less likely, at least.
No robbery. No outside attack. Which left the last option: Bakura was the one who had destroyed his own apartment.
Yugi stared at Bakura's sleeping face. It wasn't exactly peaceful, but it was rest of a sort. He wished he could see into Bakura's head, to understand what was happening fully, so he could help. Of all his friends, he felt he understood Bakura the least, and had in many ways… failed him. He'd known Bakura had harbored a harmful spirit from almost the first day they had met, had known not long after that he continued to struggle, and what had he, Yugi, done to help? What had any of them done? Looking back, it seemed to Yugi that at best they had ignored Bakura… but he knew what it had really been.
Exclusion. They, collectively, had done little to nothing to include Bakura in their group. None of them had been hostile to Bakura, but neither had they invited him in. A gentle sort of exile.
Had it been fear? Their first experience all together had been intense, violent, nearly lost them all of their souls – but Bakura, Ryou Bakura, had been in just as much danger, if not more.
Did they all still blame him for that?
When his other self – Atem, Yugi reminded himself – had first appeared, he had done so in much the same way as Bakura's Yami. Hidden from his host, acting out cruel games on those he considered deserving of it, using Yugi's face to act out his own wants. Eventually Yugi and Atem had come to work together, to act as partners, but Yugi remembered those early days well. He remembered the fear, the confusion, the feeling that he couldn't even trust himself – that he would, without ever intending to do so, hurt those closest to him because of the strange, powerful, and unpredictable soul he carried inside him.
Yugi had been lucky in that Atem, once recovered enough of himself, had proved to be a benign partner.
Bakura had not been so lucky.
And they had all left him to fend for himself.
If Yugi had been left all alone, what would have become of him and Atem?
What might have become of Bakura and his Yami, if...?
Guilt twisted through Yugi's insides, and he wiped angrily at his own cheeks. They'd praised themselves as heroes before, but heroes wouldn't have abandoned friends in need, as they had done.
Bakura was in pain, struggling on his own still, and Yugi wouldn't let that go on.
He looked around at the carnage. The thought that it might all be the handiwork of the Ring spirit flashed through his mind again, but he dismissed it. Not everything had to have a supernatural explanation, and in this case, Yugi suspected it was half wishful thinking. After all, if the spirit of the Ring could return, then surely the same might be true of Atem?
He shook his head, dismissing that notion. The dead were at peace at last. Now it was time to attend the living left behind.
There was no point in trying to rouse Bakura in his current state. However long he'd remained awake was too long by far, and he wouldn't be waking until he'd recovered more. In the meantime, Yugi set to work.
Returning the entire apartment back to normal would take at least two days, more sets of hands than Yugi alone had, or perhaps both. Nevertheless, he got to work on the worst of it, gathering up shards of glass and ceramic before sweeping and then mopping up the slivers. He righted furniture and stacked books and papers into neat piles. Dice and cards and figures all went into their own piles. He didn't attempt to organize beyond the bare basics, just cleared the floors and shuffled the chaos into smaller groups.
When he got to the kitchen there was a lot which ended up having to be thrown out. Whatever rage had taken hold of Bakura, it hadn't confined itself to non-edibles, and there was a considerable amount of food that ought to have been refrigerated on the floor.
As he cleaned up, an idea came to Yugi. He was tired, but also used to late nights. When Bakura woke up he was likely going to be hungry, groggy, and if his lived-in clothes were anything to go by, in want of a bath. With all of that in mind and his second wind pushing him along, Yugi set to straightening the bathroom enough to be functional once Bakura woke. When that was finished, he returned to the kitchen for the more difficult task of finding whatever was salvageable and making something out of it.
He'd just about settled on a very plain dish with the few ingredients that had survived, when another thought occurred to him: How long had it been since Bakura had drunk anything?
He rushed back to Bakura's room, still the worst site of carnage, and gently pinched the back of the sleeping boy's hand. It earned him a very sleepy snort, but nothing else. When Yugi released his grip the skin sprang back. Maybe not quite as quickly as he would have preferred, but still, it went back.
Yugi sighed with relief, and only then noticed the glass on the desk with about an inch of water pooled at its bottom. Whatever shape the kitchen was in, Bakura had at least kept drinking.
From the glass, Yugi's eye travelled to the rest of what lay on the desk. Before, he had been too focused on Bakura to notice anything else, including the glass. Now he looked, and wondered why he hadn't before. In the rest of the apartment, furniture had been tossed or flipped, every book and sheet of paper ripped apart and scattered. But the desk remained upright, and while there was evidence its surface had been aggressively cleared, it was piled with notebooks and pens. One such notebook was under Bakura's folded arms, and what little Yugi could see was thick with Bakura's writing. Curious, Yugi leaned closer to read.
…the boy stared at the old man, suspicious of his motives, but said nothing. If he were captured, there was nothing he could say to free himself. If he were taken in out of kindness, anything he might say could only worsen his situation…
Yugi blinked in surprise. A story? Had Bakura been busy at something so… simple, when exhaustion had overtaken him? Only more curious, Yugi picked up what looked to be the last set of sheets worked on before the notebook currently serving as a pillow. He read, and tried to understand.
"Caught at last, little itja!" the head watchman crowed. Though the boy is stunned, and much smaller than he, he kept a firm grip on his arm.
Definitely a story. About a young boy being captured? What was that odd word about?
"What good is such a fine wig to a useless bug? Idiot! If you're going to steal, steal what you may use! Not just a useless thief, but a useless stupid thief!"
The boy was a thief, then. Stealing wigs? Drawn in, Yugi continued to read…
He sneered at the stupid, slow watchman, in defiance of his helplessness. "Stupid thief? Stupid thief you could not catch, iwiw, so your brains must be made of shit!"
Yugi choked back a surprised laugh. Whoever this boy thief was Bakura wrote about, he certainly had plenty of kick to him.
His smile faded as he continued to read, and realized just who the boy on the page truly was.
A boy thief who would grow into a king.
Yugi looked at Bakura, at the piles of paper surrounding him, the discarded pens, the scraps of jumbled writing which seemed to serve as notes, reminders for future passages. Was Bakura writing the Thief King's entire life?
He was torn between putting the papers down, disgusted with himself to have felt anything for the Thief King other than anger and animosity, and to reading all the rest. The Thief King had been a villain, no doubt… but what else was there to him? A childhood, obviously, which Bakura seemed familiar with. Yugi only knew of Atem's life before the Puzzle thanks to their time in the past, rediscovering it with him, but this? This was far before any of those events. How much did Bakura know of the Ring spirit…?
Curiosity once again got the better of him and he shuffled carefully through the stacks of papers Bakura had written, searching for the beginning.
He found it, what looked like an introductory page or summary. Also attached to it was a sticky note written in a hastier hand. Yugi read the page first.
Once there was a man who craved revenge. There was room for nothing else in his heart but that destructive flame, and it consumed him from the inside until only a shell remained of who he had once been.
History would remember him, if it remembered him at all, as a madman, driven insane by his lust for power. Those who met him and felt his ire and his rage firsthand would all say he was evil, the product of the darkest of spirits. Even he would say that he was beyond redemption.
But this man was more than evil and hatred given shape. He loved the night sky full of stars. The sound of the wind across the dunes would soften his eyes. The smell of damp earth and baking bread would remind him of a home he could never return to.
This man, beyond forgiveness and utterly despised, called me Sheut.
The shadow of his soul.
Yugi stood for a long time, too stunned to process, or even to think, before looking over the note attached to the page.
I am your sheut, and I have your ren – your name. So long as your name is known, your soul cannot die. That's why they blotted out the Pharaoh's, so he could only exist where he was bound, why they tried to forget yours completely, only calling you 'Thief King.'
But I have it, Bakhura. And I won't let them forget you.
Quietly, Yugi put the pages back where he had found them. Bakura… Ryou… slept on, lost in dreams Yugi had no way of guessing at.
He wanted to read the rest, to learn it all… but he decided to wait. He wanted to talk to Ryou first, to be certain he was… allowed to know. Already it felt as though he had stumbled into something private, despite what the note said, and he had no intention of pushing Ryou away even further.
He would start on a meal. He would wake Ryou if he could, perhaps in the morning, insist on a bath and food, and then? Then they would talk.
There was a lot for them to talk about. There was a lot of time to make up for. It wasn't going to be at all comfortable, for either of them, but it had to happen.
At the very least, they wouldn't be alone anymore.
…
A/N2: Betting no one remembered that little figure all the way from the beginning. :) No notes, but a huge thank you to everyone for reading. See you all soon for the epilogue!
