Work Text:
1997
“Go,” Ishizu says, and means it. After Battle City, after Yuugi, after everything—Marik doesn’t quite know what to do with himself now that the family trade has been buried with the pharaoh. But now that he’s seen the world outside, now that he’s seen Domino City, he can’t go back to the tombkeeper’s village. He had told Ishizu as much.
Ishizu uses her position as General-Secretary of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities to wrangle him a job as an aide to a diplomat on a round-the-world circuit. He packs lightly—he’s never had many possessions, and in any case there is not much about this place that he wants to bring with him—and leaves Cairo and the tombkeeper’s village in the dust.
He meets Karim Khalifa for the first time at the airport the day they are to depart. The man informs him that his duties are nominal, and that he will be largely left to his own devices. This arrangement is a safety net, Marik realises on the plane-- an assurance that in case of some unforeseen emergency, he will not be left alone in the lurch. Since neither Ishizu nor Rishid can be there to help him, this is the next best alternative.
It splinters through him then, the sudden awareness that he is loved, but it’s also precisely for that reason that he needs to go.
When they arrive in Washington D.C., he picks up a postcard and addresses it to the tombkeeper’s village in Cairo with a short message letting them know he has arrived safely. On an impulse, he picks up a second postcard and addresses it to Domino City.
It doesn’t take long to unpack, and then to read the orientation material he’d been given. He pencils in his schedule—largely administrative tasks in the office, and occasionally picking up and dropping people off some evenings— and then begins to make a list of places of note he thinks he’d like to visit while he’s in the area.
He is surprised, a week and several days later, to receive a letter from Bakura Ryou.
Marik-kun,
Thank you for your postcard…
The letter is short and polite, little more than an informational update. Yuugi and the others had been glad to hear from him, but they were very busy preparing for the university entrance exams, which was why Ryou had volunteered to write back on behalf of all of them.
How are you doing? Ishizu tells us you have left Cairo…
Marik feels a twinge of guilt. The events of the past year are still fresh in his mind, and Ryou, particularly, could not have left Battle City unscathed. Marik is curious, if only for his own peace of mind, how the boy is faring. So he writes back, and asks—cautiously—about school, and the weather in Domino, and several other innocuous things.
Karim’s tenure here is scheduled for a little more than six months. Marik keeps busy with learning his responsibilities, and finding his way around the neighbourhood and the embassy. It’s often late in the evening by the time he turns the key in the door, and it isn’t until he sees the letter that’s arrived for him that he realises he’d been looking forward to hearing from Ryou again.
He flops onto his bed with the envelope in one hand, and carefully tears open one edge. The Yuugi-tachi have somehow gotten banned from Space Burger after dropping in one evening to visit Anzu at her new job. Something to do with a milkshake and a card game. Ryou’s still not sure how it happened, since he’d had his back turned at the time.
Sorry for boring you with all these little details about my life, but you did ask. I hope you don’t mind. It’s strange, but I feel like I know you, even though I don’t.
Marik has never witnessed Ryou duel, but he knows every card in his deck. He has never seen the house where Ryou lives, but he knows that Ryou dreams of the cosmos beyond the Domino City skyline, stars overlaid with artificial satellites. It’s true, they’ve never talked, not really, if one were to discount the long nights spent uncomfortably in the Ring-spirit’s presence. But Marik had often caught glimpses of Ryou when he walked past the half-open door to the boy’s soul room on his way to meet the Ring-spirit.
Here, alone in this place with the moonlight slanting through one window the only light to read by—Marik supposes that he’s always felt a strange kinship with the boy, ever since that time. They are both survivors, of a kind.
They exchange several more letters, after that. Marik’s are short: little notes about the places he’d been and the people he’d met, scribbled on the backs of postcards or photographs he snapped himself. He drops them in the mail on the way to work, along with other postcards he sends to the tombkeepers’ village to let his family know how he’s doing.
Chesapeake Bay, 8/9/97-- haven’t seen so much water in one place since Domino City.
In return, Ryou writes him long, beautifully composed letters; they arrive in the mail battered and bearing three or four postmarks, evidence of the long distance they’ve had to travel. Ryou writes about everything from KaibaCorp’s stock prices to the leaves changing colours in the park he walks through on the way to school, and after a time Marik begins to think that he’s seen more of Domino City through Ryou’s eyes than his own.
By the way, your handwriting is terrible. Marik imagines Ryou smiling. It looks like chicken scratch. In first grade we’d get our knuckles rapped if we wrote like that.
Ryou’s own penmanship is neat and economical, the script of a student who’s developed his own shorthand for note-taking. From offhand remarks here and there, Marik has begun to piece together things about Ryou’s life: he lives on his own, plays tabletop, and grew up abroad and only recently moved to Japan. He has many acquaintances but few he would call friends; he ran for student council without really wanting to, and his letters are so beautiful because he’s written them since he was seven and writes them every fortnight still.
--just like you send postcards to Ishizu and Rishid, I have to keep my family in the loop, too. Though at this point I just copy them the letters I write you.
Ryou is oddly forthright at times. Of course, it could just be because he’s never had to censor what he writes to the dead.
Do you miss home, Marik-kun?
I can’t say I do, he writes back. Never much liked the place I lived. That’s part of why I’ve always wanted to travel…
Marik likes his job, and he has enjoyed his time here, but he is almost relieved when Karim’s assignment ends. It’s been almost six months and he’s gotten fairly good at the language quirks and the accent, but most of the time he still feels like a tourist. He writes Ryou a last postcard with well-wishes for the university entrance exams, and drops it off at the post office when he goes to set up a forwarding address.
He has amassed several odds and ends during his time here, but nothing that would be worth the cost of shipping them halfway across the globe, so he sorts them out for drop-off at the local donation store. When he gets to Ryou’s letters he considers putting them in the recycling, but then thinks better of it, and bundles them into the folder containing his identity and travel documents.
In the end, he walks out the doorway of his empty room with about the same small volume of things he arrived with. He accompanies Karim on the plane to Marseille, nine hours away. Strangely, it is as easy to leave Washington D.C. as it had been to leave Cairo, and he knows that he will not miss it.
1998
Marik goes to Eastern Europe, and Ryou goes to university.
Yuugi’s gaming professionally now, and Jou is working two part-time jobs to put himself through trade school. Anzu received a scholarship to study dance in New York, like she’s always wanted…
Did you think about going overseas, too, Ryou?
I did apply to a few universities in the UK and got accepted to read law at some of them, but I decided I’d much rather stay in Domino City. I moved around a lot when I was younger, and to be honest I’m quite tired of it.
There are many things about new places that take getting used to, but Marik is nothing if not adaptable. Besides, he supposes he has it easier than most—he has Karim and his job, and the benefits of the Egyptian consulate’s resources. He remembers Ryou writing about setting up the utilities in his apartment and finding his way around Domino’s public transportation; he’d had to do all that himself when he’d first arrived in Domino City, since his father had been travelling for work at the time.
It’s a process. After the initial period of settling in, Marik falls into a routine, and learns to balance his work schedule with the side-trips he takes during his downtime. It’s surprisingly easy to pass for a tourist, and to find other travellers with whom to spend an evening or a weekend. He supposes he’d always had an affinity with strangers; his good looks help, as does his ability to pick up a language quickly. Still, there is always the lingering thought that he shouldn’t get too comfortable, since he won’t be staying here very long. He always picks up a phrasebook and spends some time each day on language practice in preparation for the next move. He wonders if this is what Ryou had experienced, too.
Tell me about that time Ishizu snuck you outside.
It’s a long story.
I’m a GM, Ryou writes back. I like stories.
Ryou evinces a certain abstracted curiosity about Egypt in general and the tombkeepers’ way of life in particular, so Marik tells him what he can remember of his childhood. He is surprised to find that he can remember it now without rancour. Perhaps it is because the alter ego is no longer with him, or because the pharaoh is dead now, or just because he is so far away from where it all happened. He will always carry the memory with him like he carries the pharaoh’s scars on his back, but that hatred-- it doesn’t direct his life any more.
In return, Ryou tells him about growing up in Britain and transferring schools every six months. He rarely mentions the Ring-spirit, even though Marik knows that the thief must have had some hand in it. Although Marik is curious, he also doesn’t want to probe too deeply. He can’t read Ryou’s feelings behind the neat handwriting—there is a distance to it, as if he was telling somebody else’s story.
Ryou is a good storyteller. But that is natural, Marik supposes, for a Game Master.
If you don’t mind me asking, Ryou writes. The Ring-spirit, did he ever do anything to you?
Difficult not to, seeing as they’d had to live out of each other’s pockets for almost the duration of Kaiba Seto’s tournament. But if there was something that the Ring-spirit would have let Ryou remember, Marik supposes it would be those times that the spirit had cornered him and kissed him—bit through his bottom lip and then said “I’m doing this because the landlord likes you.” Marik hasn’t even properly met the boy, but his body remembers the texture of Ryou’s hair and the shift of Ryou’s skin under his hands.
He protected me, Marik writes. He often said it was because he needed to pay his rent. Although I didn’t understand at that time what he meant.
Ah, Ryou replies. … I am sorry that I burdened you with this.
The next line has been carefully whited out and written over. Marik finds a pencil and shades over the reverse of the page until the graphite reveals the pressure lines of letters spelling out It’s just that I remember—
It’s something that Ryou has decided not to pursue, so Marik doesn’t press the matter.
2000
At the end of March, Marik stows his coats away into his travelling cases; he won’t be staying in Moscow long enough to see another winter. Ryou sends him a picture of the girl he’s dating – Nosaka Miho, slender and dark-haired with pretty eyes. They’re standing outside the Domino University archaeology building, his arm around her waist, and smiling at something just outside the picture’s edge.
You look happy, Marik writes.
We are. Marik thinks he’s smiling. Pressed into the fold of the letter is a small flower, the first cherry blossom of the Domino City spring.
P.S. If you have access to the internet, check out Kaiba Corporation’s website.
Marik has a five-hour layover in New Delhi on the way to Sydney, so he commandeers a computer terminal in the business centre and logs onto the web. KaibaCorp has developed an online dueling network, where duelists around the world can register their decks and play against each other. Marik picks a log-in name and selects the Soul Hunter card for an avatar. Then he scrolls through the short list of registered users until he finds Ryou, and sends him a friend request. With the time difference, Ryou probably won’t see it for a few hours yet.
Marik hasn’t had occasion to use his cards for a long time now, but he’s curious, so he puts in his tournament rankings and plays a few games. Many of his opponents use Fusion cards he doesn’t recognise, but his own deck hasn’t lost its edge, either.
In the chatrooms on the duelling network, he learns to watch for the Change of Heart icon at the lower right corner of his screen. Now that they can occasionally talk online, Ryou’s letters are shorter and farther between, but he doesn’t stop writing. It’s been so long now that even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could.
At Central Station watching people go by while he waits for the train, Marik thinks about the many faces to whom he’d said ‘keep in touch’ over farewells at bus stops or and museum gates. He can remember most, but not all, and some more clearly than others. He has written their names and contact information in his notebooks but more often than not he knows they’ll never meet again. He thinks again about Ryou saying to be honest I’m quite tired of it, and begins to wonder again when ‘anywhere but home’ will stop seeming like a good idea.
It's true you've been gone a while now, Marik-kun. Have you thought about going back to Cairo?
Sometimes I think I never will.
You can't run forever, Marik-kun.
That evening, he goes to Karim, and asks after his wife and daughter back in Egypt. Their interactions are largely confined to the professional, but Marik has shadowed the man long enough that he respects him enough to take what advice he might have to give.
“We were prepared for what would happen when I took this job,” Karim says. He makes every effort to bridge the distance to his family; Marik’s seen the long lists of international calls on the phone bills he insists on paying himself. “By the way, Ishizu says she hasn’t gotten to talk to you in a while.”
Marik still sends his family postcards regularly, but it’s true that he hasn’t called them in a long time. The timezone difference makes it difficult to coordinate; besides, work has been especially busy lately. Karim probably reports his whereabouts to Ishizu regularly, but Marik realises with some guilt that it’s been months now since he last talked to her and Rishid directly.
“Your employment isn’t binding,” Karim reminds him. “You’re free to leave whenever you want to.”
Another thing Ishizu would have made sure of before he left. Something stabs through Marik then, almost like what Karim might call homesickness. There is something comforting in the knowledge that there will always be somewhere under the sky where he can be. But right now he isn’t ready to go back to that place. Not quite yet.
The tenant’s renewing her lease today. I don’t remember if I told you before, but while I have to live at the university dorms, I’m letting out my apartment to an expat employed by KaibaCorp. She’s all right, and it’s nice to have income. Although I still jump a little bit when somebody calls me landlord…
Ryou—like him—always uses the phrase ‘my house’ or ‘the place I live’, never ‘home’, like it’s an abstract concept neither of them really care to understand. Marik supposes that there must exist people in the world who will never know the thing called ‘a sense of belonging’. There’s Ryou, sick to the heart of running and who will settle for the first place that will take him. And then there’s him, who will always find someplace to go and some way to live, anywhere, as long as it isn’t the tombkeeper’s village in Egypt. Marik considers the absurd notion that if there was anywhere in the world he wouldn’t mind settling, it might be Domino City.
There are the letters. For now, that will suffice.
2002
Kaiba-san offered me a job, Ryou writes.
It wouldn’t have been a problem for Ryou to distinguish himself to potential employers, given his top grades and extra-curricular achievements. But it must still be a relief to know that he is assured of gainful employment and won’t have to join in the crunch of recruiting season for new graduates in a few months’ time.
Are you going to accept the offer?
//Bakura Ryou is typing…//
Ryou has explained to him before that the reason the stakes are so high at the entrance exams and throughout university— is that the corporate culture is such that once you choose a career path, you are very often locked into it for the rest of your life.
I think I will. So he really is fine with spending his rest of his life in Domino City, then.
If you could go anywhere in the world, where do you want to go?
It’s 12:38 a.m. in Japan, and Marik almost tells Ryou to get off the duelling network and go to bed. But Ryou only has afternoon classes that day and Marik doesn’t have to work, so he lets it slide.
Although the sun had set for some time, Marik hasn’t bothered to turn on the lights in his room; it’s not like he especially needed it while he played one casual card game on the network and spectated another. In the half-darkness lit only by monitor-light, he gives the chat box at the corner of his screen the first serious thought he’s had in a while. Somewhere there is snow, he types back, that falls from the sky like the world is ending. In Cairo there had been only sun, and the desert wind that dusts his skin and clothes with sand.
There’s rain in Domino, Ryou replies, and Marik isn’t certain it’s not an invitation.
2004
My boss will be attending a conference in Tokyo, Marik writes. I could visit Domino City for an evening.
I’d be glad to host you, Ryou writes back.
Domino City is almost exactly the same as Marik remembers it, with the addition of a few new shopping malls, and many of the buildings have been renovated. As he walks through the city square, his appearance draws the eyes of curious passers-by, but he pays it no mind. He’s long gotten used to it.
Ryou’s apartment is in a part of the city he didn’t get to visit, but he finds it easily enough. As he raises his hand to knock at the door, a strange apprehension settles just beneath his sternum.
Ryou’s let his hair grow out—though it doesn’t lie wild about his shoulders like it used to, pulled back neatly instead at the nape of his neck. He smiles. “Ishtar-san. You don’t do the—“ Ryou makes an aborted movement with his hands—“jewelry thing any more.”
The family heirlooms are stored neatly in a locked box in the back of Marik’s closet. “It’s annoying to explain to security. And I don’t really want to get robbed.”
“You could always duel the thief for them,” Ryou replies, and Marik can’t tell if he’s joking. He steps aside and gestures for Marik to come in.
Ryou’s apartment is spartan and neat; the living area is furnished only with two single-seat couches and a low coffee table. On a mantelpiece along one wall is a row of photographs—the Yuugi-tachi, Ryou’s father, and several others Marik doesn’t recognise—along with some Duel Monsters memorabilia, and a replica of the Millennium Ring.
They talk over a card game and a cup of tea. Ryou tells him about his work at KaibaCorp and the company’s impending collaboration with Industrial Illusions. The DM metagame has changed a lot in seven years, and Marik listens as Ryou explains synchro-summoning and XYZ monsters. “New range of cards—not even the beta pool has seen them yet,” Ryou says happily, fanning the deck across the table with a smooth movement. Marik decides he’s been out of the competitive duelling loop far too long, but tries to follow anyway.
“--so you detach an overlay unit and—“
“--like this?” Marik picks up a card. On Ryou’s small handheld display, an orb of light detaches from the monster and spirals upward into the slowly turning galaxy that hovers over the field. In full holovision, it would be breathtaking.
“Mm.” Ryou nods appreciatively. “And the effect activates. It takes a bit of getting used to, especially for duelists who’ve played as long as we have. But we’re getting good results from the kids at the Academia…”
Marik sets the card back in place and picks up his half-empty cup, the porcelain still warm against his fingers. He studies the cards. A breeze passes through the open window, and on the other side of the room, the Ring-replica chimes.
Ryou stands up to get more hot water, and Marik follows to help. In the kitchen, Ryou refills both their cups; he picks one up, and then sets it back down before turning back to Marik. Far too close. “Is it alright if I—“
Marik barely has time to nod before Ryou’s fingers wrap around the back of his neck. God knows it’s been years, but the sensation is horribly familiar, the memory of the Ring-spirit leaning in to draw blood with his teeth and then saying nonsensically, “The landlord, he really likes you, you know?”
But Ryou’s kiss is gentle, almost familiar; he’s grown a little, so he doesn’t have to stand on his toes as the Ring-spirit had done. Marik curls an arm around his back to pull him closer, but the width and angle of his shoulders is different now. Ryou’s exhale ghosts over Marik’s lips. “Yeah,” he says, seemingly to himself. “I thought I remembered.”
The Ring-spirit is many years gone, but his shadow still stretches long over them both. “He said he was doing it for you,” Marik says, to fill the silence.
“He’s a liar,” Ryou says. Then, quieter, “Before Japan, before Domino City and Yuugi and the others. Before you. There was only ever him, you know?”
He picks up his cup, and walks out of the kitchen and back into the living room, and Marik follows. As they take their respective seats on opposite sides of the game board Marik thinks about Ryou, nine years old, building a deck from an Ouija board and writing letters to the dead with only the Ring-spirit for company. He thinks about the car crash, and the child whose fingers might have tightened on the gold ring over his heart—twice now drenched with blood—and said to the white wolf at the door, Yes, I will let you in.
“Bakura-san, are you happy?”
Ryou draws a card. “I make do, Marik. Don’t we all?”
They play through the rest of the game without further conversation. Ryou wins. Marik helps him clear the table, and then makes his usual excuses— it’s getting late in the night, and he doesn’t want to impose any further.
Ryou looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn't. His smile is warm as he sees Marik to the door. “Call Ishizu,” he says. Everyone seems to be saying that recently; Marik supposes she’s been asking after him again.
That night Marik dreams of an ocean of sand, and dunes that break like waves against a rocky shore, and the fading sound of desert wind that howls into the empty sky. When he wakes, he thinks about Ryou’s hard-won life, and then his own. He supposes that he might know now where he needs to go.
At Narita airport waiting for Karim to arrive, Marik slides his phone from his pocket and punches in a country code, then a number from memory. The dial tone sounds twice, then clicks as someone picks up on the other end.
“It’s me,” Marik says, and waits for a reply.