Ryou stared at the paintbrush in his hand, his eyes completely blank. He was frozen in place, staring in front of himself but not really looking at anything.

Malik was sitting nearby reading a book, when he noticed that Ryou was frozen in his seat staring at nothing. Malik didn't think much of it at first. However, fifteen minutes later he looked up again from his book and noticed that Ryou still hadn't moved. Malik went up to Ryou and called out as softly as he could, "Hey, are you okay?"

"What? Huh?" Ryou turned his head to look at Malik.

"You've been staring blankly ahead of you for the past fifteen minutes. Is everything okay?"

"Oh…I just had another emotional flashback, that's all." Ryou rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.

"An emotional flashback? About what?"

"About that time the Spirit stabbed my hand through a plastic tower."

"Oh my god, Ryou, do you have PTSD?!"

Ryou sighed. "Is it that obvious? I thought it was getting better."

Malik shook his head disapprovingly. "Normally if someone does something bad enough that you're traumatized, you're supposed to cut ties with them forever."

"If it were someone outside my system, sure, but this is different. The person who did this to me is another alter, and you know that alters can't disappear or be killed."

"But you don't actually have DID. You have the option to just not wear the Ring," Malik pointed out.

Ryou shrugged. "So what? You know I can't just leave him the way he is. He doesn't have anyone else to turn to. I can't leave him."

Malik tsked. "If I were you I wouldn't be so forgiving. When my Dark Half tried to kill me, I sent him away to the Shadow Realm without a second thought.

"Yeah…about that. I wanted to…um…" Ryou hesitated, unsure if he should continue. "May I ask a question?"

"Go on," Malik said.

"It's about your Dark Half. Do you really think sending him to the Shadow Realm was the right thing to do?" Ryou might've been overstepping his boundaries by asking such a question, but he went for it anyway.

Malik took a deep breath, and sighed. "I knew you were going to ask eventually. To be frank, I don't know."

"I've read all the materials you provided for me to educate myself about DID, and all the sources say that trying to get rid of an alter is a bad idea. It never works. It just causes the barriers between alters to be even more divided, and it causes mistrust, and conflict between parts. Normally it should be impossible to get rid of an alter, but you actually managed to get rid of your Dark Half for real thanks to the Millennium Items."

Malik didn't say anything, but he knew it to be true. Many people with DID have tried to get rid of their alters through exorcisms and other means, but it never works. And yet, he managed to succeed in getting rid of his alter because of magic. But the question is, should he have done it?

"Do you regret getting rid of your alter?" Ryou asked.

"I…I don't know, okay? I don't know!" Malik's voice was strained.

"No offense, but I don't think that banishing your alter to the Shadow Realm was a good call," Ryou said bluntly.

"Yes, I am having second guesses about that. My siblings keep telling me it was the right thing to do. I'm struggling on what to believe."

"Your siblings were wrong about a lot of things."

"Yeah I know! They had me believing that I created my Dark Half by suppressing my anger, but that's not how DID works. Alters aren't created from anger; they're created from trauma. Anger is just a symptom of trauma."

"So how did your siblings come up with that idea in the first place? The idea that your Dark Half was the embodiment of all the anger you suppressed?" Ryou questioned.

"I mean I've always had anger issues. I guess it's understandable that they would think that," said Malik.

"It feels so victim-blamey. It's like they're blaming you for creating your alter and having DID, when it really isn't your fault."

"I just wish they consulted a mental health professional and got me help sooner, and maybe a lot of what happened during Battle City could've been avoided," Malik said.

"To be fair, they were raised underground, isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe they didn't know any better."

Malik stared off into the distance and nodded, deep in thought. "Even if they had consulted a mental health professional, would it have made any difference? Would my behavior during Battle City have changed at all? If I had known that it was my alter who killed my father and not the Pharaoh, I never would've acted the way I did."

"Your siblings had their reasons for not telling you the truth. Your sister used the Millennium Necklace to look into the future and saw that if you knew you were the one who killed your own father, you would've committed suicide. Isn't that right?" Ryou said.

Malik had a sad, distant look in his eyes. He nodded and said, "Yes, that's true. I didn't expect you to pick up on that. You're sharper than you look."

There was a moment of silence. Ryou stared at his feet awkwardly.

"Um…could I ask another question?" Ryou asked.

"Alright," Malik said.

"You know there's this thing called 'system responsibility?'"

Malik groaned. "Dammit Ryou, why do you have to be so well-read?!" He threw his hands up in the air. "Yes, I know what system responsibility is!"

"You're not supposed to use the 'it wasn't me, it was my alter excuse.' If an alter creates a mess, everyone in the system is held accountable, and it's usually the host who has to make amends. That means that even though it's your Dark Half who killed your father, technically…"

"I share the blame for it. I know," Malik groaned.

The Theory of Structural Dissociation states that each person is born with separate states of identity, and DID is a failure to integrate these separate senses of self by the time the individual's personality matures. It means that no matter how different each of the alters may feel, they are still fundamentally connected at the root of what essentially makes them who they are. At the root of it all, Malik and Yami Malik were collectively one whole person. Whatever Yami Malik did, it meant Malik Ishtar as a whole was capable of doing that same action. When an alter did the crime, the ability to do such a thing is at Malik's core.

"Was bringing it up a bad idea?," Ryou quickly retracted.

"No, it's alright. It's about time someone brought it up. It's my responsibility to make sure that my system doesn't abuse people. This includes persecutors coming out and abusing people. I'm supposed to figure out a way to keep people safe. I should be stopping my alter from being near people other than a therapist, working to rehabilitate said alter, and maybe even keeping myself away from people in general if I truly feel I'm unable to control the situation. There is NO excuse for abuse, and that includes DID."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Ryou said gently. "You were ten years old and scared. Your father was about to kill your adopted brother, and he was going to hurt you and your sister. If you really think about it, your Dark Half was just doing his job, protecting the system in the only way he knew how. Perhaps the method he used to protect you was rather…extreme. But still, he was protecting you."

Malik just shrugged.

"It is one thing to have trouble forgiving your abuser," Ryou said. "It is another thing entirely to deny yourself forgiveness. He did the harmful things he did not because he's bad, but because he's stuck in his extreme role and because he is stuck emotionally reliving the trauma. It can be very hard to forgive him for what he's done. I'm not saying it's easy, but it is healing."

"Yes, I know. I already know all that stuff about persecutors. I've read everything there is to read about them. I know I'm supposed to try to have compassion for them, to understand them and be gentle. But the thing is, no one else has persecutors who are like mine!" Malik started pacing back and forth in a frenzy of passion. "Why couldn't he be more like a normal persecutor who does normal persecuting things such as sabotaging my relationships and telling me to kill myself? Why did he have to be homicidal? That's just too extreme! Not even yours went as far as trying to kill your friends and family. He just stole their souls!"

"I think maybe your alter doesn't fit the definition of a persecutor," Ryou said tentatively. "The role of a persecutor is to harm other members inside the system, but your alter harmed people outside the system. There's a different word for that kind of alter, isn't there?" Ryou fell silent, reluctant to finish his train of thought.

But Malik understood right away. He paused, leaned back against the wall and slumped against it. "I know what you're talking about. You're talking about perpetrators."

Perpetrator = an abuser introject whose role in the system is to continue to perpetrate that same abuse against victims outside of the system. A perpetrator alter is an alter who continues acts of abuse such as sexual abuse, torture, and serious violence or who was forced to participate in acts of abuse when they were a child.

Labeling an alter as a perpetrator was very serious and should not be taken lightly. But there wasn't any way to sugercoat it. Yami Malik was a perpetrator. A very extreme perpetrator.

"I don't like using that word," Malik said. "Perpetrator is literally a synonym for abuser. To label a member of my system as a literal abuser is pretty serious. You should only be using the word 'perpetrator' if your alter is as extreme as mine. Don't throw that world around like it's some kind of joke. People make it sound like perpetrators are common, but they're not! The truth is they are rare! They're so rare we almost never see them!"

"I think that even if you have the option to get rid of an alter, I still don't think you should do it. You can't just kill off an entire section of your brain without there being serious consequences. You could suffer from permanent brain damage. Do you feel any different ever since you sent your alter away?" Ryou asked.

"Not really. I still have anger issues. I still have emotional flashbacks every day, and I'm still hypervigilant. I still have all the trauma I've always had. Sending my alter away didn't fix any of those things." Malik sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, and hung his head in his hands. "My siblings encouraged me to send my alter away, and I did it." He grabbed a fistfull of hair and pulled on it. "My god, what have I done? Was this a mistake?"

Ryou sat down next to Malik and put a hand on Malik's shoulder.

Malik said, "Sometimes I feel like I can sympathize with my father, since he was only doing what was done to him by his father, and his father's father, and many generations of Ishtars before that. I know my father was abused by his father and that he didn't deserve it, but I also know it's not my job to care. And that sounds really callous, but here's the thing: it was his job to break that cycle. It's every generation's job to be better than the generation before and my parents couldn't be arsed to do the work. At any point in time there can be a generation of Ishtars who decide to break the cycle of abuse, to realize that the next generation doesn't have to suffer the same trauma as the one before. And I wonder why my father couldn't make that decision. Because I did, so why didn't he?" Malik was on the verge of tears. "However, that doesn't mean what my Dark Half did to my father was right. He tortured my father to death. Literally tortured him to death. He used the Millennium Rod to cut the skin off my father's back and skinned him alive. How am I supposed to forgive something like that?"

By now, Malik actually was crying. Ryou tried to soothe his friend by rubbing Malik's arm comfortingly. However, as was doing so, he accidentally brushed against Malik's back where the scars were.

Malik immediately stood up. "I have to go home," was all he said before he half-sprinted away out the door.

Once Malik was gone, there was an intoxicating silence in the room.

Then the Spirit broke that silence by awkwardly clearing his throat. "Was I ever extreme enough to be considered a perpetrator?" he asked.

"You had your moments," Ryou admitted. "But you heard what Malik said. Labels can be damaging if used in the wrong context. Also, I wanted to thank you for what you have done for us throughout our life. You've done a great job as a protector. I appreciate what you are doing for us."

The Spirit was caught off guard. "Oh. Um. You're welcome, I guess."

"I also want to thank you for what you originally did for us," Ryou continued.

"What?"

"I understand why you did the things you did before, back when your ways of protecting were rather persecutory. I understand why you thought your role was important, and I see the pressure you were under. It makes sense that you would punish my bullies and try to steal my friends' souls so I could play with them forever. You were doing what you thought was good for the system. Perhaps what you did wasn't right, but I appreciate your efforts on our behalf."

The Spirit didn't respond. He just silently retreated into his soulroom, leaving the conversation. And that's okay. Ryou knew the Spirit wasn't used to being praised or appreciated, but perhaps he'd be more receptive to it in the future. It just takes time.

Author's Notes

From what I've read, perpetrator alters only perpetuate abuse that they've been forced to act upon as children, but Malik was never forced to do that. Nobody ever made him inflict violence on other people when he was a child. It makes no sense for him to have a perpetrator alter.

I mean, I guess I don't blame Takahashi for it, at least not on the individual level. Yu-Gi-Oh is a product of its time. If my theory that the author of Yu-Gi-Oh himself had DID is correct, then he would've been a victim of ableism as well. He believed his DID was his own fault for being angry about being abused, and that his alters needed to be sent away. Protectors get sent to the afterlife, and persecutors/perpetrators get sent to the Shadow Realm. Which is a really unhealthy way of thinking by the way. You shouldn't try to ignore or "get rid" of any alters. You should be working on integration.

I have a theory that the author of Yu-Gi-Oh had DID, because he wrote an entire manga series about two personalities sharing the same body. And it's not just DM that does this; GX and Xexal have similar themes too. Most of Takahashi's manga and anime series share the same themes; it's two personalities sharing the same body. If my theory is true, then the writing in Yu-Gi-Oh reflects how he viewed his own mental illness.

I wonder if Takahashi was ever able to get the help he needed before he died. Did he ever manage to achieve healthy multiplicity? It's kind of sad to think about.

But, it makes sense, doesn't it? Only somebody who's neurodivergent can write a story like this. As much as I complain about the ableism, much of Takahashi's writing is actually pretty good. Ryou is a pretty well-written autistic character considering the time period, and Yami Bakura is a fairly well-written ASPD character for the most part. Considering how badly mentally ill characters are portrayed in the media, that's a low standard to follow, but Ryou and Bakura are actually pretty good. Ryou forgets and misunderstands stuff a lot, hyperfixates on his interests, has undeveloped social skills, and never fits in no matter how hard he tries. Bakura is a masochist who self-harms, is manipulative and charming, and a pathological liar. The Yugi System is a fairly accurate (albeit exaggerated) depiction of the relationship between a host and a protector. I just wish he did a better job with the Bakuras and Maliks. For whatever reason society thinks that being possessed by a spirit is more socially acceptable than being mentally ill, so the neurotypical character gets the protector, the autistic character gets the persecutor, and the one who has DID is the one who gets the perpetrator. The more disabled you are, the more you get demonized. Right, right, I see how it is.

Also Takahashi did a great job with the NPD character, Seto Kaiba. The main characters respect Kaiba and try to have sympathy and patience for him, but they won't put up with his bad behavior and criticize him for his flaws. The "be understanding but take no shit" principle is done correctly. As much as I don't like Kaiba, I have to begrudgingly acknowledge him as a well-written neurodivergent character.

I just hate how Kaiba's the only nd who gets treated kindly by the narrative when he's a selfish jerk. There are plenty of NPD people who care about having healthy relationships whereas Kaiba never makes an effort unless someone forces him to do it.

Whatever. I'll still include Kaiba in my fanart of all the nds, even though I don't like him. We need all the positive representation we can get.