Pairing: Dollshipping (Yami Bakura x Dark Necrofear) Onesided Tendershipping (not obvious... but this is me we're talking about. Never even considered writing Tender before!)

Warning(s): Slightly AU, general creepiness (the dollshipping in itself should give you a good idea...) and abuse of italics and parentheses.

So this is my entry for Round 5 of the YGO fanfiction contest, and oh dear it's shocking. I'm sorry! :( I really wanted to flesh this out, but RL has chosen now to be a right b*tch and I just don't have the time... 'Kay, I'll stop making excuses- that's just me being annoying! xD

So have a drabble. Pointless and predictable, but hey- at least it'll take less time to read than my other stuff! ;D

Hope you enjoy, even just a bit, and Happy (belated!) Halloween everybody! :)

Blue Paint

Blue.

It needed more blue.

Ryou dabbed furiously at the wooden model clutched in his shaking hand, not caring that the vivid turquoise paint was now splashing over his own pale skin.

The tiny statue would be included in the collection that lined his walls- wooden figurines of friends he had known and cared for, frozen in time, trapped for eternity with that final look of despair as they realised they had lost. But this statue (this one model) was not intended as a cage in which to entrap his friends' souls.

He had already completed the figures for his new friends; Miho and her yellow ribbon (a fairy merchant, so superficial), Honda the gunman (it was fitting, he would surely do anything to protect the woman he adored), Jounouchi the warrior (a fighter to the end, after all), Anzu the elf sorcerer (he painted her blue too, but it was a different blue, a kinder blue) and then Yuugi. The magician.

(Ryou had spent an hour perfecting his hair; using a tiny brush to paint the tri-coloured spikes.)

It had become an obsession- as if the only thing he could do to stop this was by creating the perfect figurine.

At first his models had been rough and messy; by now he could shape them exactly the way he wished, even with his hands shaking and his vision blurred with exhaustion.

Ryou hated making the statues.

But he did it anyway. He wasn't sure why.

This figure, however, this one wasn't the same as the others. Ryou had been working on it for three days now; it was slightly larger than the majority of his figures and towered over the other dolls. The barest hint of a smirk graced its face and its eyes were minute slits that seemed to glow in the dim light of his bedroom. The colours were dark; purple, golden orange, dull silver and blue.

(It wasn't perfect. Ryou couldn't get it perfect.)

The clothing (armour was probably a better description) was flawlessly sculpted, the body was exactly right, and yet it still lay on Ryou's table stubbornly wrong. What was wrong with it? Ryou thought in frustration.

He had to get this right. Some instinct in him was demanding that he make this doll more beautiful and more lifelike than the rest; besides, while he was working on his masterpiece he didn't have to think of his new friends' fate- or of the dolls lining the walls behind him, all staring with such mournful and hate-filled expressions- We blame you, Ryou Bakura, for what happened to us-

No.

He wouldn't think of that.

Blue.

It needed more blue.

"And what do we have here?" purred the Spirit in his ear. Ryou didn't even jump; by this point he was used to the Spirit suddenly whispering to him in the night (he had a horribly beautiful voice, Ryou thought bitterly. Someone so evil ought not to have such a seductive murmur at his disposal).

"Nothing," Ryou said, shortly. "A doll."

"I can see that."

"Then you have no need to ask," Ryou continued, his words strong but the quaver in his voice betraying his hatred and anger.

It wasn't so much fear anymore. Because, Ryou reasoned, there wasn't much more the Spirit could do to torture him.

"It's a very pretty doll," the Spirit teased. "Who's soul is that meant for, then? I wasn't aware that any of your friends had such a deliciously evil soul."

"It's no-one's soul," Ryou said through gritted teeth, gripping the brush so tightly that it nearly snapped in two. "This is just a doll."

"Is it a gift?" he breathed.

Ryou tried to steady his breathing. "A gift for whom?"

"Me, of course. Who else would it be for?"

Ryou smiled a bitter smile. "Someone that I don't completely hate?" he replied, softly.

The Spirit cackled in his ear. "You don't hate me, landlord. We both know it's true."

(Ryou couldn't help but wish it wasn't.)

"If it's not for me… Then is it for your sister? I'll admit that it would have fit her- she had evil in her that was left untouched- so tragic, she would have been much more of a help to me than you-"

"She wouldn't have helped you," Ryou whispered, eyes burning. "She would never have helped you, you monster!"

He whipped around in his chair but as always the Spirit wasn't there; just an echo of a dark laugh left hanging in the air.

"I'll have that doll," came the parting shot. "It's too beautiful to waste."

Ryou turned away and sifted through the paint pots and dirty brushes that were scattered on his desk to unearth a single sheet of paper. He cursed under his breath as he realised that there were flecks of blue paint on the crisp whiteness, and brushed them off as gently as he could.

"I'm sorry, Amane," he murmured. "I didn't mean to get paint on your letter." Smiling slightly, he re-read the letter that he had written earlier (it just said the usual, it always said the usual) before signing it neatly and slipping it into an envelope.

Ryou turned his attention back to the doll in front of him and groaned in frustration. Something was wrong. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something missing, something important…

Ryou stared out into the darkening street, tapping the brush against the desktop in a steady rhythm. He was tired, he couldn't concentrate, his eyes were closing against their will and suddenly he realised the fog that was descending wasn't sleep at all, it was the Spirit and it didn't matter if he tried to fight he would just end up-

- and suddenly he was in his soul room, staring at the blank dusty walls and feeling a familiar bitterness swell up inside him.

x-x-x-x

Ryou opened his eyes blearily to see the morning sunlight streaming through the curtains. His neck was stiff after spending the night sleeping in the chair- he must have nodded off, he told himself. Even if that wasn't really what had happened.

(Because it was daytime and in the daylight he could push the Voice and the dolls and everything to the back of his mind and forget about it and insist that none of it was real.)

Blinking, he yawned and stretched in the wooden chair, slowly taking in the objects scattered across the desk. There was the blue paint pot and the brush with dried paint coating its tip, there was the unaddressed envelope with the single word scrawled across its front ('Amane') and there was the doll.

The doll.

It was different. Something about it was different.

Ryou studied it with bleary eyes slowly going over every minute detail until his gaze finally rested upon the object it held with its right arm.

A severed head. A child's head.

Ryou fought the urge to be sick; of course, the figure was only made of wood but it had suddenly become so very real.

The head had only one glassy eye and it gazed up at him balefully from the blue doll's arms as Ryou heard (and hated) the Spirit chuckle in the back of his mind: "Isn't she beautiful?"

Ryou took a long shuddering breath, picked up the doll gingerly and set it on the shelf with the others; then, with one final bout of anger (because he was finding more and more that he just couldn't bring himself to care, it was too painful) he grabbed the blue paint and slammed it into the dustbin that stood in the corner of his room.

x-x-x-x-x

Later Yuugi would ask in his innocent voice: "How come you've got blue paint on your hands, Bakura?"

And Ryou will laugh and smile like he always does, and will try not to think of how the Spirit perfected the doll so lovingly, as he answers: "Nothing important, Yuugi. Just some art homework. It needed more blue."

x-x-x-x-x

The End

*shrugs* Yeah.

(Oh, for those of you who care (aka. Manga elitists- yes, I'm looking at you Ryou veRua) this is classed as slightly AU because in this Ryou knows about Yami Bakura and his Evil Plan of Doom. Whereas he didn't in the manga, amirite?)

Thanks for reading! :)

Bookworm