Chapter 2: A not-so-happy reunion
When Ryou happened to look out of his window and spot the man on the pavement, he saw nothing more than a person in need. He didn't give it much thought before he grabbed a towel and an umbrella and rushed down the five flights of stairs and out to the street. And he didn't manage to get a better look at the man on the pavement until he was too close.
The first thing that struck him had been, of course, the mane of hair that covered the man's face: long and white like snow, despite the traces of mud that clung on it. That alone made Ryou stop dead in his tracks as an all-too-familiar jumble of feelings swelled in him.
That had not been the first time to freeze at the sight of someone's white hair. He had spent years constantly looking over his shoulder and jumping even at his own reflection, but he had been over it for a while now. He had finally reached a point where the head of an old man was not enough to throw him into fits of paranoia.
All the same, when he finally managed to distinguish hair from pale limbs, Ryou felt a tweak of dread, accompanied by the feeling that everything but his heart was going numb. In cases of such disturbing coincidences, he usually managed to calm down his speeding pulse with a second, more careful look, but this was not one of those times. This time dread kept scraping at his insides as he squinted, trying to see past the heavy rain and the deep shadows of the night.
The man was thin - too thin, even - and looked like he had trouble lifting himself from the rain-soaked pavement. That on itself should be incentive enough for Ryou to start functioning again and go help him, but he didn't move. The more he looked, the more uneasy he felt. His heart rate had started speeding up to painful levels.
That hair... was just right. Just the right length, the right color, the right texture. Soaked though they might be, he could tell, even from a distance; in all his years he had seen hair such as these only in his mirror. And that hand that clawed at the ground, the thin muscles of the arm tensing in an effort to lift the body off the ground-
Just as panic had started mingling with the dread in the pit of Ryou's stomach, the fallen man, probably intrigued by the sound of footsteps stopping a mere five feet away from him, lifted his head.
Ryou's blood went cold. He could have easily thought that he was, indeed, looking into a mirror, if it weren't for the eyes that pierced him. Even in the harsh chiaroscuro of the street lamps, he recognized that look.
He recognized the way the eyebrows tilted in a mixture of arrogance and annoyance. He recognized the slight squint that made those eyes angular and fierce enough to be considered a threat of their own. He recognized the way the darkness licked those features, pooling under eyebrows and in hollow cheeks, embracing that face as if it were its kin.
It was him.
It was him.
There was the second of pure bewilderment when Ryou thought that he was mad, or drunk, or dreaming, or anything but in his right mind, until the man opened his mouth and spoke to him.
"Hello, yadonushi."
His voice was rasping and hoarse; the sound of flesh dragged on gravel and of nails scratching bronze and of five golden points digging in skin-
"No."
Ryou moaned his weak denial as he backed away, feet moving of their own accord.
His mind was filled with static. Raindrops trailed their way into his eyes, blurring his vision, but he did not bother to blink them away. The rest of the world turned into wavering shapes of light and dark, but the man before him didn't. The man before him refused to disappear like a common trick of the eyes. He remained, body glistening under the sparkling rain, naked chest rising and falling rapidly, tainting the darkness of the night with the white fog formed by his heavy breaths.
Suddenly Ryou became aware that he was no longer holding an umbrella and that he was soaked to the bone, but the chill that had frozen his insides had nothing to do with rain. Something prickling and cold was working its way through each and every one of his nerves like a paralytic drug.
The fallen man was the first to move: he made a feeble attempt to lift himself from the ground, never taking his eyes off Ryou.
As if that was the cue Ryou had been waiting for, his whole body tensed. With the next heartbeat, blood rushed through his frozen veins. It was not a matter of thinking; pure survival instinct made him turn on the spot and break to a run.
"Hey!" he heard the man's rough voice over the sound of rumbling thunder and his own splashing footsteps. The sound only made him run faster, making for his apartment building as if he was chased by the devil himself.
"Hey, wait!"
Ryou ran as fast as he could without slipping on the wet concrete, his thoughts diminished to the single need of not letting that man get to him.
He did not bother to slow down to a halt as he reached his destination, so he crashed on the entrance door of his apartment building with a loud thud that would have surely hurt on any other given minute. He almost ripped out his jeans' pocket in his haste to reach his keys.
"Nonononono-" he breathed as he fumbled with them, heart beating in his throat. He thought he could hear erratic footsteps sloshing around somewhere far behind him and his panic mounted.
He was trying to shove the right key into the lock, but the door was swimming before his eyes. His stomach was churning in anguish and he thought he might be sick right then and there, but he steadied himself when he felt the triumphant click of the lock. He turned the key with such force it was a miracle that it didn't snap and lunged all of his weight on the door.
He did not pause to look behind, he simply scrambled in and tackled the door shut. He planted his feet in the floor and pressed his back against the door, ready to hold it shut with his body if it came to it.
The sound of his own frantic breathing bounced off the bare walls of the hall and up the dark staircase. Nothing else moved. Ryou fixed his eyes on the opposite wall, gasping through his teeth. He could see his own heaving shadow against it, cast thanks to the little light that drifted in from the milky glass panels of the entrance door.
His body trembled as terror and panic fought for dominance in him.
"You're not real... You're not real... You're not real..." he repeated over and over in shaky breaths.
Because that was the only explanation. Obviously, his mind had gone haywire, conjuring ghosts out of rain and shadows. Tricks of the mind, caused by sleep deprivation and stress. Nothing made sense otherwise. What Ryou had just seen could not be real.
The Millennium Ring and its inhabitant were gone and had been gone for the past eleven years. A whole new life stood between the Ryou of the present and the Ryou that walked around with the Ring on his neck and his mind split in half. A whole new, normal life. Normal, with no more magic or shadow games or mad spirits whispering in his head. That was behind him for good; so far behind, that Ryou had finally managed to forget thinking about it.
This was the normal world. And in the normal world, people did not come back from the dead.
"You're not real... You're not real... You're not real..."
The door rattled as something heavy fell gracelessly on it. The shadow Ryou cast on the opposite wall was obscured as another form cut out the feeble street illumination that flitted in. Ryou stopped his mantra and held his breath, watching the two overlapping shadows with huge eyes.
"Yadonushi," a gruff voice called.
Ryou tensed like an animal ready to lash out. No amount of whispering to himself could convince him now that the rasping breath on the other side of the door was not real.
"Open up."
Ryou bit down hard on his lip to hold back the terrified whimper that threatened to escape him. His legs gave in and he slid down the length of the door, ending up in a trembling heap at its base. His head was spinning and he wanted to throw up but, at least, he was far from fainting. He couldn't allow himself to faint now - it was too dangerous.
Because, apparently, the man on the other side of the door was real. His yami was back, in flesh and blood of his own, banging on his door. His yami, the other him, the Thief, the spirit - Bakura - was back, even though he was supposed to be dead, or lost in the darkness, or in whatever afterlife had in store for him.
The door rattled again.
"I can see you're still there." Damned glass panels. "Open up."
The yami's voice was fiercer now, his tone more commanding than before. Ryou cringed as a mess of sleeping memories stirred at the familiar sound. He instinctively reached for his chest in a gesture he had not made in years; he grabbed only the fabric of his sweater, right over his racing heart. No Ring there, which was a slight comfort but did not make any sense at all.
On the other hand, when did something about that man ever make any sense? He had been brought back from the - presumably - dead before. He had managed to withstand 3000 years of imprisonment in a piece of gold in order to ensure another chance in life. Apparently, hell had spat him back out again, Ring or no Ring.
Ryou swallowed this realization, feeling like he was being force-fed acid.
Not even five minutes back and that man already sounded like he'd never left at all, giving out orders with the nerve of a king and the promise of threat dripping off his voice, demanding to open this door so he can strut back into his life and destroy what little bit Ryou had managed to salvage.
Well, Ryou wouldn't have any of this. More than a decade had passed and he had felt the sting of every single day. He had felt time in his bones, had shed his sweet and innocent skin again and again until it had hardened. He was no longer a weak teenager; he was a twenty-nine-year-old man who had stopped putting up with everyone's shit a long time ago.
So, with the next command that slid through the cracks in the door, anger flared up in Ryou. This was not the 'good old days' anymore and he would show his yami just what toll every tock of the clock had taken on him.
"Damn it, open up, it's cold-"
Ryou jumped to his feet and turned the handle, almost prying it off with the force of swinging the door open. For barely a second, he took in the image of Bakura standing naked on his doorstep, sopping wet and haggard-looking, with a backdrop of rain and thunder. Then rage consumed all other emotions and Ryou pounced on his yami, grabbing him from whatever place he reached first and somehow ending with both hands on his throat.
Bakura staggered backwards from the momentum, with Ryou clawed on him like an enraged cat, until they both stood under the heavy rain once more.
"Eleven years," Ryou growled from the depths of his throat, barely recognizing his own voice. "Eleven. Fucking. Years. Eleven years gone!"
Bakura, who seemed ready to hiss another command, froze with his mouth half-open. His eyes met Ryou's - and god damn him, seeing his muddy-red irises from this close only helped to further stoke Ryou's fury.
"Eleven years free of you!" he screamed into the yami's face, ripping through an octave in exasperation.
Bakura's eyes widened a fraction, still fixed on Ryou. His frown slowly reversed to crinkle his temple in confusion.
"What...?" he breathed, his voice so low that Ryou barely heard it over the sound of rain. He wouldn't be sure whether Bakura had spoken at all, had he not seen the frail cloud of steam the little word had left behind.
"Why? Why are you back? Why now? Why?" Ryou shouted, not caring whether he tore his lungs apart or not, shaking Bakura so violently he felt his nails sink in skin.
Bakura's hands went up to Ryou's wrists to keep them still, but he did not try to wrestle himself free. His eyes were losing their angular edge by the second.
"What do you...? Eleven...?" he stammered through Ryou's grip on his throat, his gaze travelling wildly across his hikari's face as if he was trying to read something there. Ryou felt a small gasp catch between his fingers.
His yami was a fine actor but, unfortunately, Ryou was not buying it.
"WHY?" he roared. A streak of pain tinged his voice despite himself, infuriating him because he couldn't show weakness, not now, not to him-
"I don't know," Bakura answered, barely managing to make his hoarse voice audible over the rolling thunders.
Ryou wanted to laugh at that, but he was already spending all of his willpower in refraining from throttling the man before him.
"You lying son of a bi-"
"I'm not lying!" it was Bakura's turn to yell, annoyance creeping back into his frown.
"Bullshit," Ryou spat at him, not believing even for a moment that there was no masterplan behind the bewilderment in the yami's eyes.
"I'm not l-"
Ryou pushed him as hard as he could with a disgusted grunt. His yami tripped several feet away from him, but managed to regain his balance without falling over.
Bakura stayed where he ended up, breathing hard through his mouth without peeling his eyes off his hikari. His usual haughtiness had crumbled, giving its place to something more cautious and guarded. He seemed to have trouble standing completely straight; he was almost doubled over, shaking from the cold as he panted through blue lips.
The fairly pathetic image of his yami did nothing to sway Ryou. If anything, it enraged him even more to see him act all weak and lost. This was no time for games. He wanted an answer. A clear one; one that would grace this mess with at least a grain of logic. One that would mean that the last eleven years of struggle had not just went down the drain.
Ryou's face was burning and he knew that, for once, his fair skin was a bright red that not even the icy rain could cool down.
"How?" he asked this time, voice rumbling in its lowest possible notes.
Bakura huffed and opened his arms.
"I know nothing more than you d-"
"You bastard," Ryou seethed, tightening his hands into fists. Calling names was low, he knew that, but he didn't care. A little while ago, he wouldn't believe that he was capable of feeling such intense loathing, but he was proving himself wrong with every passing minute. He did not have the fondest memories of his yami, but nothing he had felt so far could compete with the hatred that surged through him now. "How?" he repeated, voice rising.
"I told you, you stubborn brat. I don't know!" Bakura shouted back, his stance gaining something of his old confidence as his voice grew harsher.
Ryou actually managed to let out a sarcastic chuckle this time, a sound colder than the rain that trailed down his back.
"Is it the Ring this time? Or some other trinket?" he persisted.
"I told you, yadonushi, I d-"
He never managed to finish that sentence, because Ryou sprang forward and seized his neck, almost lifting him off the ground in his rage. He brought their faces so close that their identical noses touched.
"Call me that again and I'll send you back to wherever the hell you came from," he gritted out, his jaw clenched so hard that it hurt.
Bakura struggled in his grip, but Ryou was relentless. He did not care about anything else any more, except for hurting that man as much as he could. He felt that he could rip him apart, right then and there; and if dying didn't work this time either, he would kill him again, and again, until his anger dissipated.
However, when Bakura started making panicked guttural sounds, Ryou released him. The yami immediately backed off, gasping for air and massaging his throat.
Ryou took two deep breaths through his nose, aspiring to calm himself down before losing control again. His pulse was roaring in his head. He had to get out of there as fast as he could; he did not want to look at his yami a second longer.
He pointed a shaking finger at Bakura and said, voice wavering from restrained anger, "I'm not your yadonushi. I'm not your anything. I don't care why you're here, but stay away from me. You hear me? Stay. The hell. Away."
He did not give a chance to him to respond, he just turned his back on him and stormed off.
This time, Bakura did not try to stop him.
So... This chapter. This was supposed to be only half a chapter. This was also supposed to be 1500 words shorter. And the other half of the chapter was reserved for our other pair, Yuugi and Atem. Well, my plans certainly went out of the window, because this turned out much longer than I expected.
Expect to see Yuugi and Atem on the next chapter, though - and, hopefully, it will be even longer than this one.
As for Ryou and Bakura... You didn't expect a happy reunion there, did you?
No matter what, tell me what you think! Reviews make for great Christmas presents. Or, you know... Great late Christmas presents.
Happy remaining holidays to everyone, and happy new year! :D
