Aid

Okay, I gotta ask something: Why the actual hell isn't Diabound in the character dropdown list? *flails*

Written at 11 PM while vacationing in Spain. I hesitated to publish it, but Renegadeshipping needs loving and I feel spontaneous today.

Blood poured out of Bakura's mouth, leaving his teeth stained and his tongue slathered with a repugnant taste. He coughed, spitting out a red glob that landed with a splat on the sand, barely audible above the ragged panting produced by himself and his horse.

The animal's steady gallop had gone uneven quite a ways back. She stumbled around on teetering legs, now forward, now near-sideways as if intoxicated. White-hot pain lanced through Bakura's insides with each movement. Something internal—his lungs, he assumed—bled severely, and the constant shifting only made the wound larger and tenderer. An ugly black bruise accented with a scrape stretched along the otherwise already scarred flesh of his back from where a chunk of the tomb had fallen on top of him. Through the initial pain he had barely managed to summon his ka to remove the rubble and get him outside using his ability to pass through walls.

To make matters worse, his horse bolted at the sound of the tomb caving. By the time he retrieved her she exhausted both herself and Bakura before they even began the trip homewards.

A thick sheen of sweat turned her dark hide silvery. The rider urged her on, first in the traditional way of commands and squeezes with his legs before growing desperate enough to start stabbing her in the side with his dagger. What had at first been frantic neighs descended into pathetic nickering after a time, and she barely increased her speed anymore when his blade sank into the torn flesh.

The horse, the thief, and the red splatters of discoloration at first glance appeared to be the only thing around for miles. If one were to turn in a full circle they would only see sand until it disappeared off into the horizon. That, and a near-imperceptible cluster of structures to one side.

Bakura stared through half-lidded eyes as he clung to the horse's neck with his arms, no longer strong enough to sit upright.

Everything was going to be all right. Almost home. His undead family and friends would watch over him as he healed. Just a little further and—

With a soft whinny the horse stumbled once, twice, then fell over on her side, not quite dead but unable to go on. One deep black eye reflected glassy white as she stared up at the moon, oblivious to the pain caused to her rider when she had pinned his leg to the sand beneath her weight and his wounded back hit the sand.

Bakura snarled a curse from between his bloodied teeth as he struggled to get his limb out from underneath the animal but found he had become too tired. His leanly muscled arms shook with a feebleness he shouldn't have felt at the age of seventeen as he clawed and shoved at her sweaty, heaving side. His knife had fallen a distance away, so using pain to get the beast to move was out of the question.

Eventually Bakura gave up and lay down, going just as limp as her. The delicate skin of his scarred cheek prickled as it touched fine sand. Dark gobbets of blood fell to the ground, oozing from between his cracked lips and the newly opened parts of the scrape on his back.

His eyelids drooped. For a moment he struggled to keep them from falling shut, and then gave up on that, too. A sob heaved from his mouth, midway turning into a strangled roar.

This was how the scum of the world died, and, regardless of how the rest of Egypt saw him, Bakura knew himself to be a king. He would not perish alone, in the dark.

Something spooked the horse, if her sudden harsh breathing and flailing could be used to judge. Her pulse throbbed and her muscles undulated beneath her skin, and, in turn, against Bakura's leg, which until that moment had begun to numb. She let out a frantic cry that finally compelled Bakura to open his eyes. He shifted his head, blinking slowly to rid his vision of the blurriness that had suddenly overtaken it.

A gargantuan shape loomed above, haloed by the moon it nearly blotted out with its enormity. Two pairs of eyes, one serpentine and one something else completely, stared down with stoic detachment.

"Diabound." Bakura whispered. Confusion crept into his hoarse voice. "I did not summon you."

He probably could not have called upon his spirit beast if he tried; his will bled out along with his strength. Though this event wouldn't have struck him as unusual had his mind been in a more coherent state. Bakura's ka often appeared without command. During times of great anger, passion…

…or, as in this case, desperation…

Diabound's faces expressed about as much as statues while he reached down and picked up the horse by wrapping his clawed fingers around her middle. He executed the action with extreme gentleness for a monster so large and usually violent. Gentleness that the horse didn't appear to appreciate. Her progressively more panicked screams echoed through the empty desert night as Diabound lifted her off of Bakura and set her down some distance away.

He forced himself to his hands and knees, coughing up another mouthful of blood. A shadow hung over him and he turned to glare at Diabound's descending hand.

Bakura bared his bloodied teeth and crouched low to the ground. "Don't you dare."

Diabound let out a concerned grumble, but the hand halted and withdrew.

"I am no longer a child," he rasped, attempting to stand, "and I do not wish to be treated like one."

His pride had already been wounded enough. He stopped using Diabound to help him rob tombs a long time ago, around when he reached puberty. Having the monster assist almost seemed like a handicap. While the ka, grown massive off of Bakura's anger, was indeed powerful, he didn't want to have all of his thieving skills and other abilities attributed solely to his spirit monster.

At last he got to his feet, only to stumble forward with a hiss of pain as a stabbing sensation ignited in the wound. He would have fallen back to the sand had Diabound's snake head not been there to steady him. Begrudgingly Bakura lay flush against the neck, hacking up more blood in the process.

His shoulders hunched over as he laid his forehead against the cool white scales, wheezing rapidly. The snake butted Bakura's arm with its snout, slit nostrils flaring and tongue flicking out to indicate his back.

"I'm fine," Bakura growled, attempting to shove the head away only to throw himself off balance and have to wrap his arms around it.

In truth he felt dizzy and sickeningly weak. No small amount of blood caked up the wound, but broken stone from the cave-in and now the sand also stuck to the tender flesh. The heat of infection began to bubble up to add
to everything else.

Diabound's hand stretched down again, this time not with the intent of snatching Bakura from the ground without his consent, but palm up. Bakura eyed his claws warily. Curved, sharp things that grew massive along with the rest of the monster. They weren't meant for such tender acts, designed only to cleave through his enemies. Just one possessed the ability to neatly fillet Bakura into an unrecognizable mess of meat. While Diabound certainly didn't plan on doing that to him, one wrong move could end up with a claw through his human counterpart's chest and all of his organs obliterated.

With a withered sigh Bakura allowed himself to be ushered into the hand's grasp. Diabound transferred the injured human to cradle him in the crook of one arm. Bakura's scraped back faced the sky and his side lay flush against his monster's chest, the cool, stone-hard muscle contrasting with the heat exuded from his wound.

"Get the horse," he mumbled near-incoherently as he pressed his face to Diabound's bicep and shut his eyes. No pulse beat beneath the gray skin, only a steady thrum of spiritual energy.

Much to his surprise Bakura could not hear the sound of the horse's protest. Upon opening his eyes and craning his head to get a look at Diabound's other hand he realized why: she hung like a puppet lacking a master from the clawed hand holding her, limbs splayed at impossible angles.

Dead. Or unconscious. Bakura's cynical mind assumed the former.

He groaned. "Wonderful."

At the very least he had a guaranteed source of food for a while. If, in fact, he did not share her fate shortly afterwards. With this gloomy thought in mind Bakura allowed himself to drift into unconsciousness in the sure grasp of his ka, unsure whether or not he would wake up.