Chapter Text
Darkness was the first thing he knew. Not pitch blackness, but a lack of light. Everything was dark, each faded colour only a few shades off black. There was no sun, no heat. Just an intangible black-purple fog, curling through the open doorways and windows of the squat buildings nestled in the rock, which seemed to leech the colour from everything, radiating a chill that settled into his very bones.
Buildings… He knew what they were, what they were for, yet they seemed so alien. A raised hand stretched out to touch the wall of the closest structure but his fingertips were still many arm spans away. Too far away. How? Oh… legs. He looked down at them and then, he remembered. One lifted, stretched, and he started to walk. There was something… They seemed too long, the skin so pale and smooth, his gait unfamiliar. Why was that strange?
The dark sand shifted and welled between long toes. It captivated him, the stark difference in colour, residue left on the skin of his feet, faint imprints of his steps. He turned to look at them, at where he had started from. There was no indication of his presence anywhere else, but there wouldn’t be. He had not been anywhere else.
And finally the building was in front of him. He paused, listening to the slow rasp of his breathing, and once again lifted a hand. Thin, strange fingers gently touched the rough wall. Hesitantly at first but soon more confidently, stroking his palm down, feeling each scrape and bump of the bricks. With each movement he became aware of things changing, of the world becoming more solid around him.
The fog faded away and with it colour began to seep into the world. He marveled at the sight, delighted at the new appearance of this place. So familiar yet completely new, the names of each colour floated through his mind and he relished in this knowledge even when the world was so bright it hurt his eyes.
The cold retreated too, replaced with a more gentle touch of heat. The image, unbidden yet comforting, of the source hanging in a bright blue sky came to mind and he turned to see if it was indeed what he would see. But he was distracted, because the loss of the darkness and cold was not the only thing to have occurred.
The sand, having appeared unremarkable before, was rent untidily. Furrows dug where large things had been dragged across the ground, odd ridges where it had been churned and kicked. Dried brown-red splattered through the sand and on the walls of some of the buildings. And bodies; broken bodies and broken weapons, evidence of fire written in the scorched walls and blackened ground.
He felt his face move, mouth stretching and cheeks tightening as a fierce smile came to him. He breathed in heavily, the smell of death and blood and piss mixed in with the dirt. Better. This coloured world was much better.
But still, something was missing. Then he felt it, as though the words had been branded to his consciousness, the command clear as if it had been spoken aloud. YOUR TASK HAS BEGUN BAKURA. FIND HIM.
“Yes.” Bakura murmured, slightly surprised by the force in his throat as he spoke. “I know my duty Master.” And with that he started to walk. Past the hollow houses and away from the village until he could no longer hear the flies claiming the dead as their own. The desert was vast and empty, but he would find his quarry. He would find this child.