Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to
Kazuki Takahashi.
`
How can you have a surface if there is nothing beneath it?
Where is the support?
`
Bakura Ryou was rearranging his apartment.
This was not a very long process, because he didn't have much furniture to begin with, but it was a daily one. Each night, before he turned off the lights and went to bed, he moved everything that he had done the night before. He set chairs in front of doors; he angled the table so that the most of its edges protruded; he moved all his appliances, lamps, and the television so that the cords trailed all over the place.
The only piece of furniture he didn't move was the large armchair that had used to sit in the corner beside the potted plant. The first night he'd set it in front of his bedroom door and he hadn't touched it since, except to push it out of his way and then back whenever he went into his room. Occasionally he would rotate it 180 degrees, always making sure that the back blocked most of the entry. Ryou had picked up a fair assortment of bruises and scrapes in the morning because of this ritual, but they seemed like an acceptable tradeoff to him.
Once the lights were turned off, the maze of obstacles that his apartment had become would make it very hard even for a thief to enter unnoticed.
~~
Mutou Yuugi was sleeping.
That was what it appeared to be. He was bundled up in his bed, the Millennium Puzzle half-hidden beneath his blanket. One hand was resting over the golden Horus eye upon the puzzle's front, the other wrapped tightly in the chain links connected to it. Yuugi often had marks on his hand in the morning.
Instead of sleeping, he was inside his mind, but not in his soul room. He was wandering around the pharaoh's, instead.
Atemu's room was a great deal safer now--the traps and pitfalls that had previously been there were gone. There weren't even any staircases on the ceiling anymore. Yuugi could roam wherever he wanted, examining all of the still-vast room, with no fear.
However, it was very cold in the empty soul room. Yuugi usually didn't get very far before the tips of his fingers began going numb and he had to turn back.
~~
Malik Ishtar was driving his motorcycle.
His family was still living in Japan, though they had moved as far from Domino as was possible, because their exhibit was still in the country. Malik spent most of his time on his bike, driving as fast and as far as he could before he eventually ran low on money for gas and had to turn back home. He usually made it there. And if he didn't, he'd developed a habit of pick-pocketing so he wouldn't have to ask Isis for money, and he just used that to make it all the way back. When he went back.
He'd been returning home less and less as the month went on. When he did show up, it was usually just to eat and repair his bike, and to attempt to make it faster. Rishid made sure he ate three full meals a day whenever he was home, because he and Isis both doubted that the teenager would eat when he was gone. He did, actually, but only when his vision got blurry and he had to stop; and then he only ate or slept so that he would be able to drive again.
The only place Malik wanted to be was on the roads, pushing his bike as fast as it would go--but it was never fast enough.
~~
Ryou returned to his apartment after school, and after he'd pulled off his shoes and traded them for slippers, he glanced at the mirror on the wall, perpendicular to where the sofa was today. For an instant Bakura looked back at him.
Ryou held very still and stared at the mirror for a long time, but it was only his face gazing at him.
Finally, Ryou set down his case and walked over to the mirror, moving slowly. He skirted the sofa and stepped over the TV cables, stopping in front of the glass. His own face continued to watch him, looking cautious and wary. Ryou reached out, still moving carefully, and lifted the mirror off its hook. He turned it around and leaned it against the wall.
A few minutes later, he got the
screwdriver from the kitchen and removed the mirror that was attached to the
dresser in his room. He placed it
against the wall as well, before doing the same to the mirrored door of the
medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He
stared at the tall mirror over the bathroom sink for a long time.
`
It took him a while, but eventually he managed to nail a blanket over it.
~~
Yuugi was slowly growing more used to the cold in Atemu's room. He had been spending increasing amounts of time in there, foraging as far as he could before the chill drove him back. He would stand in small area between Atemu's soul and his, letting the warmth return to his arms and legs, before venturing inside again. He was searching for a specific place.
His grades began to slip more and more as he started nodding off in class.
~~
Malik drove out further each day. Eventually, even the money he stole to pay for gas became useless, because he would become stranded in areas that didn't have gas stations. Sometimes he pushed his bike to a station and then drove home. Sometimes he hitchhiked, when a flatbed or a truck that could carry the bike drove past.
Sometimes he came back with bruises.
Isis tried to cajole and argue and demand that he not take so many risks, but in the end she couldn't stop him from driving away. In the end she wasn't sure if she should.
~~
Yuugi came to visit him one day, to get some help on the day's homework from their literature class--he'd fallen asleep in it again. Ryou let him in, but only because he was Yuugi and he already understood without seeing.
Yuugi took a long look at the
scattered apartment, and then carefully picked his way across the floor,
avoiding the cushions that had been scattered and following Ryou's footsteps
wherever possible. The table was set at
an awkward angle in the corner of the kitchen, but Ryou offered him the free
chair and managed to unwedge the other one from between the table and the
wall. He unpacked his schoolcase, Yuugi
rummaged through his backpack, and they began to study as if they weren't
sitting in an apartment that'd haphazardly exploded.
`
Once Yuugi was caught up with the syllabus, Ryou closed his textbook and asked if he wanted anything to drink.
Yuugi glanced at the potted plant that was sitting quietly in the middle of the kitchen. "Bakura-kun...," he began. "You don't have to do this. They're gone."
Ryou sat back down and looked at him. "Are they really?" he asked.
Yuugi rested a hand over the Millennium Puzzle that he still wore, and it was a moment before he spoke again. "Yeah," he said. "Really."
Neither teenager spoke for several minutes.
Finally, Yuugi opened his eyes and gave Ryou a half-smile. "Why don't we put everything back?" he said. "I'll help you."
Ryou continued to stare at the
table for a while longer, but eventually he looked back up at Yuugi. "...okay," he said quietly.
`
They wound up tearing the blanket while trying to pull the nails out.
~~
"Yuugi?"
He blinked and lifted his head, blinking a few times. "Hey, Anzu."
"It's lunchtime," she told him. "And the teacher gave you detention again," she added, pointing at the slip of paper that had been tucked under his arm while he slept.
Yuugi made a sheepish expression. "Oh...."
Anzu folded her arms. "If you keep this up, you're gonna beat Jounouchi-kun for staying after school, you know."
Yuugi nodded and stretched, then grabbed at the detention slip before it could slide off his desk and onto the floor. "I know...."
Anzu's exasperated look faded and she let her arms drop. Then she sat down on the desk and placed a hand on Yuugi's forehead, making him start and glance up at her.
"You don't feel hot...." The look Anzu gave him was concerned and sad. "I'm really worried about you, Yuugi. You haven't been yourself, since...."
Yuugi offered her a smile. "It's okay, Anzu. Really. I've just been...I've just been working on something," he finished, quieter.
He didn't say anything else, and Anzu let her hand continue to rest on his forehead for a few more moments. At last, she brushed aside one of his bangs and let her hand fall back to the desk. "Take care of yourself, okay?" she asked.
Yuugi nodded. "I will."
There was another moment of silence, and then Anzu stood. "Well, come eat with us already!" she said with a smile, tugging on his arm.
Yuugi laughed a little and pushed his chair back to stand.
~~
The fourth time Malik came back from hitchhiking with bruises he stopped driving off for days and nights at a time. He didn't say anything about it, and Isis and Rishid didn't push him.
Because he was no longer driving for long distances, he made up for it by going as fast as he could. As a consequence, he started racking up traffic tickets. Isis asked him several times to stop breaking the law, the final time even threatening to take away his keys if he didn't. When she said that, Malik instinctively pulled back and clutched the keys tightly; and at the sudden desperate look in his eyes Isis broke off her admonition mid-speech. She said nothing else on the subject, even though he kept getting tickets.
Malik didn't notice when Rishid stopped wearing his earrings, nor when Isis's hands no longer had rings on them. He did notice when she no longer wore the small bracelet that Rishid had given her, but it wasn't until he saw that the man's leather coat was no longer in the closet that he realized what was happening. Malik knew how expensive that coat had been--he was the one who'd given it to Rishid in the first place.
He stopped driving fast.
Malik started having nightmares a few days later, and began walking around with a tension between his shoulders, as though he was expecting something to be racing up behind him. He locked himself in his room more often, and Rishid frequently stayed up late at night until he could no longer hear the teenager pacing around.
~~
The next day, Ryou bought two more lamps, small ones, and several small plug-in disks that glowed a faint green in the dark. He set the plug-ins in all the corners in the apartment, and whenever a socket was too far from a corner he put a lamp there instead.
He had lamps in three corners of his bedroom, and he pushed the bed into the fourth.
He started sleeping with Bakura's old knife underneath his pillow, curling up so that his hands were always near the hilt and the button that made the blade automatically snap out.
~~
For the rest of the week, Yuugi stayed awake in his classes. He didn't oversleep the way he had been, either, and mostly managed to act like he used to.
The next Monday, though, he passed out again after being fifteen minutes late to homeroom. This time it was genuine sleep--he'd spend almost all of Saturday afternoon and Sunday trying to locate a specific place in Atemu's soul room, and so had gotten no rest. Even when Jounouchi tried to shake him awake as the teachers changed rooms, he stayed asleep.
Honda, Jounouchi, and Anzu all were exchanging worried looks with each other as Yuugi would blink awake for a few minutes when the teachers yelled at him, and then promptly fall asleep again; but Ryou only glanced at him once, shook his head, and started taking more detailed notes to share later. He didn't realize that the others had noticed his strange behavior as well.
It also didn't help matters that both Jounouchi and Honda had noticed that Ryou was carrying a knife tucked into the inside of his shoe.
~~
Malik began driving fast again--but this time, instead of pulling over, he just started outrunning the cops.
~~
Several letters came to the Ishtar apartment over the two months. The first one was from Ryou, polite but curt--he was still reasonably irritated about the permanent scar on his arm--informing Malik that Yuugi and the Pharaoh had finished everything that they were planning to do and had recovered Atemu's memories. It would have seemed like a useless letter, because the Ishtars no longer technically had anything to do with the Millennium Items, but Ryou knew that Malik had to know.
Yuugi understood as well. His letter was to all the Ishtars, thanking Isis for her help and asking how Rishid was doing, but in the end it was only for Malik. The most obvious proof of that was one sentence buried among the dozens of others that bubbled over with the tone of crimes forgiven: "They're gone."
The letters arrived a day apart, and Malik guessed that neither had known what the other was doing, or else Ryou wouldn't have bothered to have written.
The third letter was from the owner of Domino City Museum, thanking Isis for allowing them to display her exhibit for so long and for granting an extended date at the last minute. It might have been promptly forgotten, if Rishid hadn't read it as well.
"...Malik-sama?"
Malik, fidgeting in his seat at the kitchen counter, looked over. "Yeah?"
"Do you still have that letter from Bakura-san?" Rishid asked.
"Yeah."
"May I see it?"
"Yeah." Malik pushed away from the counter and headed towards his room.
"What is it?" Isis asked.
"...I think...." Rishid trailed off as Malik returned, holding the envelope that was a little worse for wear by now. The man removed the handwritten letter inside and looked it again, before holding it up next to the typed letter from the curator.
"Isis," he said, holding the papers to the right slightly as she leaned against his arm to look at them, "the signature...."
They were the same handwriting, though Ryou had made an effort to forge his father's style.
The fourth letter was from Honda, who was the only one that didn't have a personal grudge involving attempted murder and/or mind control, and it arrived on the day that Malik rather than Rishid went to pick up the mail. He wrote very abruptly that he'd swiped the address from Ryou, that he still considered Malik to be an asshole, and that if he had any idea why Yuugi and Ryou were acting so weird he would be grateful to hear it. He described what the both of them had been doing.
Malik read the letter three times before finally laughing so hard that he doubled over and his eyes started to tear up. The pitch was faintly hysterical.
Once he'd calmed down a while later, he stared at the single sheet of paper lying on the table for a long time. Then he burned the letter and the envelope it had come in, before either Isis or Rishid could come home and see it.
~~
Ryou was suspended for having a knife on school grounds, and he narrowly avoided being arrested, because automatic knives were illegal to carry.
~~
Yuugi wound up in the principal's office due to the amount of detentions he'd been getting, and his mother and grandfather made him visit a doctor, because they were worried that something was wrong with him.
~~
Malik barely kept from being arrested by the police several times, and Isis finally did take away his keys, but Rishid left them on the counter where he could get them after the teenager locked himself in his room and paced for two days straight.
~~
Ryou shut the door behind him with the heel of his foot, one hand still holding his keys and the other arm cradling the bag of groceries.
He carried the bag with him into the living room, automatically going to check the phone that sat on a small stand against the wall. The answering machine was blinking again, now with three messages rather than two. Ryou still hadn't called his father back to talk about getting suspended from school. He knew the man wouldn't understand.
As Ryou decided not to play the new message and straightened, something moved in the corner of his eye.
He wrenched his head up, staring at the mirror in shock. There was a long pause as Ryou watched the glass mutely, and then Bakura winked at him.
Ryou grabbed the bottle of milk that was in his grocery bag without thinking and threw it at the mirror.
The glass bottle shattered, staining the frame and the wall, and the mirror cracked, spiderwebs of lines trailing all along the length and width. Rather than destroying the image within, though, it just split up into more sections; each with a reflection of Ryou gazing wide-eyed back at himself.
Ryou stared at the mirror for several more seconds before collapsing to his knees, wrapping his arms around his chest and shaking with dry sobs.
~~
Yuugi was hunched over, trying to keep himself as warm as possible, with his hands tucked under his arms and bouncing on his feet to keep the blood in them. His jaw was clenched in order to keep it from chattering.
The cold didn't matter, though. He'd finally found the right place.
Bracing himself, Yuugi pulled his hands away and pushed open the door. The metal stuck to his palms, and Yuugi winced as some of the skin tore off when he wrenched his hands away. Cradling his hands to his chest, Yuugi stepped carefully into the room.
He hadn't expected Atemu to be there, but it hurt to see the room empty anyway.
Yuugi made his way to the throne that sat in the middle of the room. He stared down at it for several minutes, resting a hand on the stone arm, until finally his body started shaking uncontrollably.
~~
Malik tore through the red light, taking the curve so sharply that he could almost feel the sole of his boot skidding along the ground. He was bent low over the motorcycle to get the maximum airstream efficiency.
He wished the cars would just get out of his way. He couldn't slow down for them; there was something...some thing....
...he couldn't slow down.
The sound of a siren began to wail behind him. Malik glowered at the road and pushed on the gas.
~~
The sun had set by the time Ryou stirred from his place on the carpet. Because he hadn't turned on any lights when he'd come in, the only illumination in the room came from the harsh shine of the fluorescent lamps in the hallway outside oozing through the window.
He hadn't noticed the room get dark--he'd been thinking.
Finally, Ryou loosened his arms from where they'd been wrapped around his knees, holding his legs to his chest, and he pushed himself up. He made his way to the fractured mirror, walking unsteadily.
He didn't look in the glass as he stopped in front of it. Instead, he pried his fingernails into one of the cracks and began tugging.
Several minutes later he'd broken one nail down the center, and most of his fingertips were bleeding, but he'd managed to lever the shard free from the frame. He sat down on the carpet again, and after a moment's hesitation angled it in an attempt to catch the light coming in through the window and see. But the glow wasn't enough bright enough.
Ryou looked into the piece of mirror, and in the shadows he couldn't tell whether his eyes were blue or red.
He set the shard against his wrist and pressed down.
~~
Yuugi was shaking so badly that he was almost completely hunched over, trying to bury his nose in his arms while keeping them wrapped around his chest and hidden behind his legs. Finally, though, he managed to move enough to climb onto the throne. The cold stone immediately leeched what little warmth he still had through his jeans and shirt, and Yuugi curled in on himself again.
He closed his eyes, remembering the last time the room had been warm.
They'd only had a few seconds to speak, and Yuugi couldn't think of anything to say. It was hard enough just trying not to cry.
Atemu had smiled at him, his expression a mixture of grateful and sad. "Thank you, Yuugi. Partner." The smile had diminished a little. "You've done so much for me....I'll never forget you."
"Other me..." he'd begun, but then Atemu had faded away. It happened too fast for Yuugi to say any more. "Other me!"
The next moment he'd found himself lying in a sarcophagus-shaped box and blinking at the ceiling. He'd managed to wipe away the tears before his friends woke up. Ryou had been half-collapsed over the table, clutching his chest and panting harshly, so he hadn't seen Yuugi crying either.
Ever since then, the room had been cold. Eventually the chill had trickled into the corridor and his own soul room as well, and even if he'd tried Yuugi couldn't have stayed away.
Feeling his arms and legs beginning to go numb, Yuugi knew that he should attempt to head back to his own room, back to the real world.
He curled up tighter and rested his head against the small corner between the arm and the back of the throne. He kept his eyes closed.
~~
Malik twisted on the handle, feeding the engine more gas, before swerving around a Nissan, and barely avoiding the on-coming traffic. He turned a sharp right at the light, racing towards the on-ramp for the highway. Behind him, the siren was still wailing as the police car pulled free from behind the other vehicle and turned right as well.
Malik smirked. He knew that once he got on the highway, they'd never catch him. They never had.
He didn't see the oil spill until the bike was already sliding out from beneath him.
It was no surprise--most oil slicks were shiny and would have reflected off the pavement. But this one was pure black.
Malik heard the maniacal laughter just before he hit the concrete.