Chapter Text
Ryou awoke in a blind panic. He didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t remember what had just happened, his mind was startlingly blank, and there were alarm bells blaring in his head, screaming at him to move, move, move.
He whipped his head around in the dark, struggling to take in his surroundings. Across the room, the moon winked at him from between a set of curtains, bathing his surroundings in a faint blue glow. Perhaps the sight should have comforted him, but what little light it provided only seemed to cast every surface in deeper shadows, stretching grotesquely high up the walls and leering down at him from every corner. Black and blue blended together, the boundary between light and shadow blurring as his eyes fell uncomprehendingly upon shape after shape, each more distorted and unrecognizable than the next.
My friends are in danger.
That was the last thing he could recall with any clarity. He knew it down to his very core, with a sense of urgency that beat against his chest with every rapid heartbeat. He remembered them arriving at his home, all smiles and friendliness, completely unaware that they were about to put their lives in the hands of the monster that slept inside him. He had opened his mouth to cry out a warning, desperate to say something, anything that would get them to leave, but when he spoke, the voice that emerged from his mouth was not his own.
What did I do? What have I done?
Everything after that moment was a blank. He remembered seeing Yugi’s eyes blinking back at him, wide and trusting and so, so undeserving of what was about to befall him, and then after that… after that…
The Millennium Ring.
His hands flew to his chest, expecting to meet cold metal but instead only finding bare flesh and rough cloth. He blinked down at himself, confused. The telltale wink of gold that should have been visible even in this dim light was absent from its usual spot on his chest. The only thing visible beneath his pajama top was a fresh layer of bandages that the hospital had provided.
That gave him pause. The hospital… he had been to the hospital recently. The disinfectant smell still lingered in his nose, and as his awareness gradually sharpened, a dull ache in his chest slowly began to filter through his sleep-muted senses. His fingers hovered over a particularly tender spot below his sternum, remembering the sight of ugly red puncture marks against bruised and purple skin, cast into hideous contrast by the flickering white lights of the hospital. The Ring’s needles always had been sharp. He’d never expected to find out just how much.
That’s right… Yugi and the others called an ambulance for me after the game was finished.
For the first time since waking up, Ryou let out a deep breath. Everyone was safe. The game was over now. Somehow, Yugi and his friends had outwitted the Spirit of the Ring, expelled it from his body and freed the souls trapped within his Monster World. Everything had been rigged from the start, but against all odds they had still managed to wrestle a victory from the jaws of defeat. It almost seemed too good to be true.
Ryou placed his left hand on the mattress to steady himself, but then sharply withdrew it with a wince as it twinged painfully. He squinted down at his bandaged palm, inspecting it for any telltale spots of red bubbling up through the material. It seemed fine, but the pain that pulsed sharply against his skin for every beat of his heart only made it too easy to imagine a pulled stitch. He held it up to a shaft of moonlight, imagining for a moment that the white reflecting off its surface was a ghastly sliver of bone peeking back at him.
Perhaps their victory hadn’t been without its cost.
---
After what must have been several hours, Ryou determined that the sky was light enough to justify giving up on sleeping for the night. Carefully, he maneuvered himself out of bed, freezing every time his injuries flared up before resuming his movements with exaggerated slowness. All in all, by the time he made it to the kitchen, the sky was already a good deal brighter.
Feeling a bit foolish at his own theatrics, Ryou mechanically went through the motions of getting himself some breakfast. He definitely didn’t have the energy for cooking and the last few days had been so stressful that he hadn’t thought to restock the fridge, but thankfully toast was always an option in these dire times. He was getting towards the end of the loaf, though, so he’d definitely need to go shopping at some point today lest he be reduced to hoovering up crumbs.
At the very least, he was thankful that today was a Saturday, so he wouldn’t have to face showing up to school looking like he’d been mugged in an alleyway. That, or the much more intimidating option of calling in sick, which he hadn’t done in years and therefore had no idea how to do.
Ryou popped the last two bread slices into the toaster (one of them mostly crust) and leaned back against the counter with a sigh, his thoughts returning to the events of the night before. He really hoped the others were alright. They had only had a moment or two to bask in the calm relief of victory before everyone simultaneously freaked out over Ryou’s hand-impalement injury and things got a lot more frantic. He wished he’d had more of a chance to check if everyone else was okay, or even ask what exactly had happened. It wasn’t as if he knew nothing, of course, but it was a lot like trying to recall the events of a dream from the day before. The key points and feelings were there, but he didn’t know how it began or where it ended, or any real details of what had happened in between.
Mostly, he just remembered feeling powerless. He hadn’t been asleep, but he hadn’t been awake either, his mind suspended in limbo between consciousness and unconsciousness and only able to hold onto a few fleeting thoughts at a time before they were again snatched away. He had only escaped thanks to a combination of luck and Yugi’s ingenuity.
Yugi…
Ryou’s brow furrowed. Come to think of it, hadn’t there been something strange about Yugi during that game? Ryou could clearly remember seeing Yugi’s towering silhouette rolling the dice after he, along with everyone else, had been turned into miniatures, but he also remembered fighting alongside an animated version of him on the game field. Was he getting the order of events confused?
He squeezed his eyes shut, focusing hard on the few flashes he’d retained and willing the images to rearrange themselves in a way that made sense. In his mind, he looked across the board at his friends: Yugi, Honda, Anzu, Jonouchi… and Yugi again.
There was already an idea forming in his head, an obvious connection that he didn’t want to acknowledge. The Spirit had said something about a ‘Millennium Puzzle’, hadn’t he? He had thought Yugi’s pendant looked similar to his own, but if they really had come from the same source, then –
Pop.
Ryou yelped and leapt away from the bench with a start, grabbing the nearest object and wielding it in front of him like a weapon. The toaster seemed to blink innocently back at him, apparently unfazed by the threat of a pepper grinder.
“Don’t scare me like that,” he muttered, sheepishly replacing the pepper and feeling very thankful that he lived alone.
Ryou buttered his toast with slightly more aggression than was warranted, then after deciding that his ravaged breakfast wouldn’t survive further assault, elected to forgo additional toppings. This day was off to an interesting start.
He padded wearily into the dining room and immediately his eyes fell upon the Millennium Ring.
The unblinking eye at its centre seemed to freeze him in place. It was still lying under the table where it had fallen the night before, its cord snapped cleanly in two and its needles splayed in all directions. The thought that he must have walked right past it when he got home from the hospital sent a chill shuddering through his body. Its needles were still tipped with red.
Ryou spun back around and walked back the way he’d come, keeping himself from breaking into a run with conscious effort and determinedly trying not to envision long, twisting shadows reaching across the floor after him. He would have his breakfast at the kitchen counter today.
---
The Millennium Ring was not a problem that he could ignore indefinitely. For one thing, he still needed to clear up the Monster World board that sprawled across the entire dining table. It was also impossible to leave the house without walking through that room, and he still really needed to restock the fridge.
Ryou stood in his bedroom facing the closed door, anxiously fiddling with the front of his shirt. He’d spent some time thinking about what to do in the shower, but actually doing it was another thing altogether. He kept telling himself that he shouldn’t be in any real danger, but his chest still ached and the painkillers he’d taken for his hand had yet to properly kick in. He was fighting a losing battle on the reassurance front.
Still, he had to find a way forward. It wasn’t like he could stay cooped up in his room forever, and as long as he didn’t actually touch it, he should be fine. Right?
He was wasting daylight just standing here; no sense delaying any longer. Ryou steeled himself and swung the door open, marching forward with purpose and grabbing a certain jar from the kitchen counter on the way past. Upon entering the dining room, he shoved aside the chair blocking his access to the Ring, popped off the jar’s lid and began to liberally pour its contents in a tight circle around the Millennium Ring.
With the Ring encased inside a ring of its own, Ryou pulled the chair back around to face it and sat down, placing the mostly emptied jar on the floor beside him. He folded his arms and leaned back slightly, trying to infuse the glare he levelled at the Ring with as much severity as he could muster.
“Alright. Listen up.” Good start. Assertive, no-nonsense. “That Ring you’re inhabiting means a great deal to my father. He entrusted me with its care, and I don’t intend to go back on my promise to look after it. So I’m not going to throw it away or destroy it.”
He paused to give the Spirit of the Ring time to process this information, or respond if it so desired. It did not. Had the salt circle been too much? He’d meant for it to function as an extra layer of protection in case the Spirit was still hostile, but it would be embarrassing if it also prevented the Spirit from manifesting enough to hear him.
Ryou’s eyes drifted up to the miniatures scattered about on the table, a grim reminder of the harm the Spirit had caused to those around him. “That being said, I don’t intend to let you off the hook, either.” He paused, thinking back to something the Spirit had said to him before. “You referred to me as your ‘landlord’, right? Back when you first spoke to me. Well, how about this: as your landlord, I’m setting out some house rules.” He leaned forward, raising his voice slightly for emphasis. “Rule number one: you are not allowed to hurt my friends. I said before that I don’t intend to throw you away, and that’s still true.” He felt something almost like rage burning in his chest as he continued, “But if you do anything, and I mean anything, to bring harm to the people I love, then there will be severe consequences. Are we clear?”
The silence that followed was icy. There was no verbal response, or any evidence that he was doing anything but talking to himself in an empty house; in spite of that, though, Ryou did have a feeling he was being listened to. There was nothing physical – no signs of movement or even a drop in temperature – but a certain quality in the air seemed to have changed. This was not the kind of silence that came with solitude, but something far more tense and sinister. He had a feeling that the Ring was glaring at him. He glared back.
Their staring contest seemed to stretch on for eternity. Then, all at once, the hostility that had been filling the room abruptly drained away, leaving behind an aftertaste of begrudging defeat.
“Good,” he said, feeling himself smile despite himself. “I’m glad to hear it. Now, rule number two—” Ryou held up his bandaged hand, “—don’t do this again. The doctors said I’m lucky not to have permanent damage, but it’s definitely going to scar. Ugh, and everyone at school’s going to be weird about it, too…” He slumped back in his chair at the thought of the fussing it would cause. He was already getting an uncomfortable amount of attention from girls as it was, but with this on top of everything else…
Ryou realised he hadn’t said anything for a while and started, scrambling to sit back upright. “U-um, anyway, the point is, you might get to possess whoever you want, but this is the body I’m stuck with for life, so just try to treat it with a bit more respect, okay?”
The Ring failed to respond meaningfully. He hoped that was a good sign.
“Right. Well then, last order of business.” Ryou stood up and walked back into the kitchen, rummaging through the contents of one of the drawers and returning with a set of tongs. He bent down, carefully hooked one end underneath the Ring’s edge, and lifted it until the carved eye was level with his own. “I don’t trust you not to do anything dangerous right now, and you can’t be on the floor while I clean up. So, you’re on time out until I get this all fixed.”
With the priceless artifact suspended in the shaky grasp of the kitchen tongs, Ryou walked back to his bedroom, keeping his gait controlled and level so as to prevent his cargo from swinging too much. The thought of dropping the heavy spike-laden Ring directly onto his foot was at the forefront of his mind, and he was quite keen to avoid another hospital visit.
After a tense few seconds of walking in silence, they arrived at Ryou’s desk, where a large black box sat amongst the clutter. As his free hand hovered over its embossed wooden surface, he allowed himself a moment to be lost in nostalgia. His father had bought this box for him many years ago, when he’d ridden along with him on one of his many antique hunts. Ryou had been eyeing it while his father engaged the shop owner in some dry discussion about musty old things, distracting himself from the boredom of the trip by letting his imagination run wild at what sort of mysterious item it might have once held. By the time the business talks had wrapped up several hours later, he had become quite attached to the box and felt a bit sad at having to leave it behind in that lonely place. He had just been mentally resigning himself to never seeing it again when his father pointed it out to the cashier and asked for its price. The number had been dizzyingly high, but he had bought it anyway and passed it to a bewildered Ryou with a smile and a conspiratorial wink.
He flipped the simple golden clasp open to reveal a plush red interior. It was as empty as the day he’d first laid eyes on it, in all these years never having found anything with appropriate significance to put in it. Now, as he placed the Ring carefully inside, it seemed almost like a perfect fit; a spooky box for a spooky pendant. It was almost enough to make him wonder why he’d never done it before – but then, he reasoned, he had usually been wearing the Ring rather than looking for somewhere to store it.
Ryou placed his hand on the lid of the box. “Try to use this time to reflect on your actions,” he said, trying to sound stern but mostly sounding apologetic. “I’ll let you out when you’re ready to act a little nicer.”
The lid snapped shut and Ryou left to go clean up his mess.