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It was bright.
Watery sunlight reflected off of the remains of the morning's rainstorm. Everything shimmered brilliantly. The last shreds of gray cloud were whispering their way out of the sky, leaving a pale blue canvas behind. It was a beautiful day to visit the cemetery. An eight-year-old boy knelt before a white marble tombstone. Blue-gray veins ran its length, texturing the cold stone. A dove was engraved in the upper right corner, and a border of carved roses enclosed the name and date inscribed. The boy let his fingers wander over the name solemnly, a tender smile gracing his face. In his other hand, he carefully held a deep pink tulip. With a quiet sigh he pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of his pocket.
"Here you go Amane, I won't miss a day. Promise."
He kissed the paper and laid it down in the grass beside the grave marker.
"Ryou, are you almost ready?"
Ryou looked over his shoulder at his father standing behind him. His dark hair was pulled back neatly. He wore a nice jacket over a button-down shirt. He was clean-shaven and seemed put together. Except his eyes. His eyes betrayed what was festering beneath the surface. The pain. The suffering. The mourning.
"Yes…" Ryou replied, "Almost." He looked back at the grave, retracing the words with his eyes.
Amane Elaine Bakura; May 19, 1993 - May 8, 1999
May 8th. That had been just over a week and a half ago. Today was May 19th. Amane's birthday. Ryou thought that May 8th would forever be the worst day of his life. Nothing could be worse than what had happened. What shouldn't have happened…
His mother had been walking he and Amane home from school. Amane, curious and lively as ever, had been running ahead, skipping and sprinting, her bright white-blonde hair bouncing in tight curls. Racing to get home first so she could have the pick of snacks from the cupboard.
"Ryou, keep up with your sister, I don't want her up there by herself," His mother had told him, walking behind him slightly.
"I am. She's right there," Ryou grumbled. He was in a bad mood. He'd had a fair bit of third year testing that day, and his only friend (not his friend anymore) had stolen his best rubber ball that they used on the wall at school, taking turns throwing it as hard as they could and trying to catch it as it bounced back. Some other boys in his class had also made fun of him again that day for his hair, asking him why he looked like a girl and if he dressed like one at home too.
They were catching up to Amane who had stopped at the corner to wait for the crossing light to give the signal. As soon as it did, Ryou knew she would be off again, sprinting towards home.
"Ryou. Please go hold your sisters hand so she can cross the street," His mother said impatiently, her phone ringing loudly. She answered it.
"She crosses the street by herself every day! She doesn't need my help," Ryou complained, scuffling along. He was looking at the ground, kicking a pebble-
-so he didn't see when Amane crossed the street as the crossing light flashed green.
Suddenly the phone his mother had been speaking into clattered to the ground. She sprinted past him. "Amane, STOP!" She screamed as the little girl, giggling, skipped into the road.
Of course, Amane wouldn't look for cars after the crossing light had turned green. It didn't matter how many times she'd been told, because she knew that green meant that walkers crossed and cars stayed. She stopped in the middle of the street to answer her mother's call. Ryou watched as his mother leapt into the middle of the street and wrapped her arms around her daughter.
That was when the car hit them.
Ryou, eyes wide, watched the dark green van speed across the intersection, distracted or willfully breaking the law, it didn't matter. The impact made a dull thud and a sickening crunch as their bodies were knocked backwards. Ryou's heart seemed to stop, frozen in his chest, as though it would freeze time and make it stop. Then it beat, hard, then harder. It was hammering in his chest. He didn't know what to do, and he couldn't breathe. Part of him knew he should run to them. They probably needed help to stand up (because they were ok, he told himself, they had to be) He felt paralyzed. His feet wouldn't move. Eyes frozen open, feet glued to the ground, fingers numb, Ryou gazed at their still bodies lying in the street, those of his sister and mother. He waited for them to get up. The green car that had hit them slammed into reverse, then sped away to the sound of protest from witnesses. Ryou was frozen. But all around him there was movement. People were getting out of their cars. They were rushing past Ryou on the sidewalk, crowding into the street, all traffic at a standstill. Everyone was talking, their words washing over Ryou, threatening to drown him
"Are they ok…?"
"How fast was the car going?"
"God, how hard were they hit?"
"Someone call for an ambulance!"
Feeling started to come back to Ryou. He dropped his book bag and sprinted over to the crowd of people circling his mother and sister. Every thought in his head screamed at him, contradicting, countering, and lying to him.
They're both dead;
No they aren't!
The car hit them too hard -
bu t not that hard, right?
I can't live without them…
I'm going to have to.
He squirmed through the people, pushing them away.
"Amane!" He cried out as he finally broke through. Someone grabbed his arm as he jumped towards the lifeless figures before him.
"Hey, woah, this is nothing for you to see, son," said a tall man with a thin black beard, "This isn't anyplace for you, you need to go on home."
Ryou shook him off, whirled, and collapsed to his knees beside his mother. Ryou didn't want to look. But he had to, he had to. His mother's right side, the side facing him, was bruised almost beyond recognition. Blood soaked her clothes, and was smeared across her skin; more blood than Ryou thought could come from a body. Her right arm seemed...wrong. Twisted and deformed. Her left leg was at an impossible angle. She was like a doll, a doll that had been played with too hard and then forgotten in the yard.
"Hon, is...is this your mother?" He heard the words as though they were coming from somewhere far away. He nodded vaguely, and the shaking voice, a woman, continued, "Is your father here?"
Ryou closed his eyes and shook his head, "No... he's... he's in Africa..." He whispered.
He opened his eyes again. The horror washed over him anew. He kept his eyes away from Amane. He couldn't look at her. Not his sister. But what good did not looking do? So he took a deep breath, stood, and took one step towards Amane's body. She'd been flung a few feet from their mother. His little sister. His only sister. His best friend. As soon as he saw the blood streaking her hair and her face, though, a wave of nausea hit him, panic and terror screaming at him to run.
So he did.
The woman beside him made a grab for his arm but he twisted out of her grip. He turned and ran away. He knew where his grandparents lived from here so he ran and ran and ran.
Ryou felt tears form in his eyes as he looked at her gravestone, remembering. Then he was crying again. He felt like all he'd done for the past week was cry. How could there be any tears left? Surely he'd have used them all up by now.
"Ryou...?" His father knelt beside him, pulled him into an embrace, "Hey, I know. I know. We've...we've gotta be strong now, though. We'll get through it together."
Ryou dropped the tulip and rubbed his eyes, doing his best to stall the flow of salty tears, and failing miserably.
"It was my fault," Ryou cried, "I could have saved her."
"No, Ryou, you couldn't," his father said, kneeling beside him. "What happened, happened. We may not know why, but there's no changing the past. Your mother wouldn't want to see you like this. She wouldn't let you blame yourself. She'd want you to find a way to smile again. She loved it when you smiled." He paused, then said quietly, "Your mother once told me that you had the smile of an angel, you know that? And I think she was right."
"How can you expect me to smile? I didn't listen when she told me to walk with Amane, and now they're both gone, and it's because of me," He wiped his eyes again angrily.
His father didn't respond, and Ryou thought it was probably because he couldn't keep lying. So instead his father pulled him up, rubbing his head gently, and said, "I think its time to go home. I have something for you."
They walked towards his father's black sedan. As they got in the car, Ryou in the back, his father said, "You know what day it is?"
"Amane's birthday," Ryou replied sadly without missing a beat.
His father nodded, pulling out of the cemetery into the busy street. "I had brought a gift for her.... A souvenir of sorts. She'd want you to have it, don't you think?" He watched Ryou through the rear-view mirror, dark eyes sad and tired.
"Why don't you give it to her?" Ryou said, turning away from his father's gaze and looking out the window at the blur of the landscape going by.
His father sighed, "I can't just leave it at a cemetery. Someone would steal it. I could donate it to the museum if you don't want it, but I know Amane would have loved it, and she'd want you to have it... She'd want you to love it for her, I think."
Ryou pressed his forehead to the window and said, "Fine."
As they got back to their apartment, his father went into his bedroom. Ryou looked around as he waited in the entry. It was a new place. His father had found it immediately following the funeral, said he couldn't keep living where they had lived; that they both needed a fresh start. Boxes still cluttered corners, filled with belongings that had no place yet.
Finally his father came back out with a wrapped box, a large bow on top. He shrugged when Ryou gave him an exasperated look. "I wrapped it when I got it, quite a while back while I was still in Africa," He explained.
When Ryou hesitated in taking it he said, "I can donate it if you want, like I said, but..." When Ryou still remained silent he pleaded, "Please just open it. Please, Ryou. For her."
So Ryou accepted the box. Unwrapping it unenthusiastically, he looked inside. A carved wooden box, like a jewelry box, with a garden of wildflowers engraved on the lid, was inside. Ryou opened it up. The lining was red velvet, and it was empty save for a golden pendant. A thick ring surrounding a delicate triangular plate. Trails of gold formed a circle in the middle, and the likeness of an eye stared up at him. On the outer rim of the Ring, evenly spaced, sharp tassels hung from golden pins, five in all. They jingled musically, not unlike a windchime, when Ryou lifted it.
To his surprise…it was warm.
He stated this out loud to his father who replied, "Must be the velvet. It probably retains some heat."
Ryou nodded and looked back down at the item he held. The pendant was very pretty, and Ryou knew that it was true. Amane would have adored it. It was meant for her, not him.
"Thank you," Ryou said, putting it back in the velvet and closing the lid, "It's really pretty. Amane would have loved it. I'll tell her all about it."
His father nodded then said, "Do you like it?"
Ryou paused, then said slowly, "Yes. I love it too."
His father nodded with a smile.
"Here," He pulled a soft leather cord out of his pocket, "If you ever feel like wearing it you can put this on it. You don't have to. Just...if you want to."
"Thank you," Ryou said, accepting the cord, "I'm, um, going to go in my room now." He picked up the box, not waiting for a response from his father, and walked down the hall to the door at the end. He stepped in. The forced smile fell off his face, leaving a solemn visage behind.
His room was small, but he didn't mind. Rather than make him feel confined or smothered, the enclosed space made him feel safe. He looked around his room, putting the wooden box on his small bed. He looked around at the pictures he'd hung up on the walls, taped haphazardly in a collage of memories. It was the first thing he'd done when they moved in, surrounding himself with the times when he'd been happy, trying to live in those moments and forget his new reality. But it wasn't working. Looking at the happy, smiling faces of his mother, his sister, his father, himself... a barrage of the things he'd lost and would never have again. He'd realized that looking at all those fleeting moments only made him sad and angry for what he'd lost. He had decided almost immediately after putting them up that he was going to take all the pictures down. He hadn't gotten around to it quite yet, though.
He moved to the first section of wall, surrounding the door, and began peeling the taped on photos and pictures away, dropping them into an untidy pile on the floor. Memory after memory, face after face. One by one, he took down bits of his past. A birthday party, his own, with Amane sitting on his lap. A class field trip, his mother as the chaperone standing with a smile in the background. A family photo, everyone except dad who'd been in South America researching Aztec burial grounds. Each added itself to the pile until the walls were almost completely cleared save for a few photos of him and his father, and a scattering of postcards from his grandparents.
Ryou picked up the pile and took it out into the kitchen where his father sat at the table with a mug of coffee and a book in hand. He looked up when Ryou entered.
"What do you have there, Ry?" He asked with a puzzled look on his face.
"Just some pictures," he said brusquely, "Do we have a box I could put them in for safe keeping?"
His father stood up with a huff, putting down his book. "If there's one thing we don't have a shortage of, it's boxes. Let's see what we can find…" He walked over to their storage closet and rummaged around inside for a few moments until he returned to the table with three boxes, each ranging in size. "Big, medium, or small?" He inquired.
Ryou looked at each. "The big one, I guess," He finally said.
"Alright, here you go." His father said, spinning the box in his hands and handing it to his son. He put a hand on his shoulder and asked, "You ok?"
Ryou smiled, but though he tried, he knew it didn't reach his eyes.
"I'm ok."
His father smiled back solemnly, the wrinkles around his eyes crinkling. "Okay," he said, then he sat back down and returned to his book. Ryou carefully piled the pictures into the box and took it back to his room where he placed it by his bed so he could continue to fill it with the memories that plagued him like stubborn nightmares.
Sitting down on his bed, the wooden box shifted and settled against his arm. He looked at it for a moment, then opened its carved lid again, pulling out the gift that hadn't been meant for him. On a whim he untwisted the leather cord and tied it tightly around the small loop at the top so that it dangled like a necklace. Would Amane have worn it? He thought she would have. She wasn't one to admire her treasures from a distance. She would have held it often, probably kept it with her day and night. She would have taken it to school and showed it off to her classmates. She would have worn it around her neck and displayed it like a badge of honor, proudly explaining anyone who listened that it was from her dad.
He looked at it, the eye staring up at him. If it were his, he would leave it cradled gently in its box. A treasure to be admired, but not touched, but...it wasn't his. It was Amane's. His father had given it to him, wanted him to love it for her, and appreciate it like she would have. He sighed and stood up to look out his small window. He looked up at the cloudless blue sky. After a moment, he murmured, "I'll wear it for you Amane. Just like you would have. You can look at it whenever I do." With the promise whispered to the sky, he lifted the chord over his head and the pendant settled heavily against his chest, it's metal surface warm even through his shirt.
Immediately, something was different. He knew it must be his imagination, but the hair raised on his arms, and some instinct prickled at his skin. He turned away from the window, facing his room. It suddenly felt darker, like a cloud had passed in front of the sun. A breath of cold air rushed over his skin.
And though he could attribute the dark and the cold to his imagination, he knew he didn't imagine the whisper in his ear:
"Hello, host…"
A shadow began to coalesce before him, as though every shred of dark from his room was pulled to the center, finding shape and form, and he knew that whatever it was, it was not a trick of the light. Or maybe he was going crazy. He looked at the figure that gradually came into focus, and it was like looking in some sort of funhouse mirror. An older, darker version of himself, unsmiling, gaze fixed on him. Ryou knew he should be afraid. Part of him was, some deep instinct repulsed by the strange vision facing him. But it was like he couldn't truly feel it. Like it was closed up in a box in his heart, leaving him on the outside and feeling...nothing.
They looked at each other. Silence stretched between them. Then, finally, Ryou asked, "Who are you?"
A smirk slid fluidly onto the older figure's face. "Who are you?" He returned without answering the question.
Ryou held the pendant between his two hands and said quietly, "Ryou... Ryou Bakura…"
"Hm - What a coincidence…" The shadow quietly contemplated. His eyes narrowed on Ryou, looking him up and down. "Or perhaps not," he speculated. He stepped up to Ryou and took his chin in one hand, turning his face, examining him as one might a piece of merchandise they were considering purchasing. Then he leaned down, close, breath cold on Ryou's face. He looked at Ryou, seeming to search his eyes, but it was as though Ryou could feel his gaze looking deeper, seeking what was under the surface. Ryou stared up at him, and he felt his soul laid bare before the creature. The tragedy of his lost sister, his mother, nothing more than memories in pictures in a box on the floor. He felt that this creature, whatever, whoever, he was, saw his pain. He saw his loneliness. He saw the cracks spreading over the surface of his heart and his mind, like clay left to bake under a desert sun. Ryou felt fragile under that gaze. He felt mortal in a way he'd never realized he could feel. After what felt like hours, the being stepped back. He grinned darkly.
"Ryou," the strange figure said, as though testing the name. Then in a voice like black silk, he introduced himself, "I am known as Bakura."
Ryou released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and nodded silently. Despite how wholly unnatural this was, it seemed to him entirely natural that someone who looked so much like him would have his name too. Suddenly he asked, "Is this real?"
A vicious smile spread over Bakura's face. "Very much so," he chuckled, taking a few steps as he looked over the room, examining the few belongings and the nearly-bare walls. "I'm real, as real as you," He continued, pausing at the box of pictures, lifting the one off the top, a holiday photo of Ryou and Amane in front of a glowing Christmas tree.
Ryou pursed his lips, confused. Was he losing his mind? Fear was knocking at the door, but Ryou silenced it. He watched his look-alike as he dropped the picture back in the box. "How did you get here?" he asked.
Bakura's eyes snapped back to him. He crossed the room, coming back to him, face to face. "I came with this..." He murmured, touching the pendant on Ryou's chest, "You could say it's my home."
"Can my father see you?" Ryou asked.
Bakura lifted his eyes from the pendant. "No, my presence here is for you alone, as the holder of the Millennium Ring. This," He ran a finger around the edge of the pendant, "was a gift to you?"
Ryou smiled sadly, "Yes, it was meant to be my sister's. She...died before…" he trailed off.
"Death plagues us all, child," the figure said, and though there was sympathy in his voice, his eyes were hard and cold as ice. He placed his hand on Ryou's shoulder. "That is why I have a bargain to make with you."
"A bargain?" Ryou repeated.
Bakura nodded sharply. "I give you something you want, something to replace the loss of your sister and fill the hole in your heart. In return, you will you help me to find something that I want."
"What do you want to find?" Ryou asked quietly, mind spinning.
The creature hesitated, but then murmured, "I lost my family too, little one. I need help to find them."
Ryou looked up at him, his hazel eyes wide. The shadow was just like him, he realized. Lonely. Lost. And he was offering him anything he wanted... He looked down, thinking carefully. He knew what he wanted: to reverse the past. That was illogical, though. He couldn't make it so that it hadn't happened. He couldn't bring them back. They were gone. Amane was gone. And he was alone. He just didn't want to be alone. Quietly, he said, "I want friends… I don't want to be lonely anymore. I want friends who will play with me all the time. Friends who don't leave me."
Bending down, Bakura looked directly at him, the smile suddenly gone, his face dark and serious. "If I grant this to you, you will help me and do as I ask until my task is finished," He lifted the boy's chin, forcing their eyes to meet. "You will be a good host, won't you?"
Not truly understanding the gravity of his agreement, Ryou nodded slowly. Bakura stood up, his hand settling again on Ryou's shoulder. "Give me time, you will never want for friends again. Remember our bargain."
He walked back to the place in the center of the room from where he'd originally appeared. His form started to dissolve back into shadow, but suddenly Ryou called to him. "Wait! Will...will you be my friend too?"
The same unpleasant smirk curled darkly on the shadow's face as it faded, and Ryou felt the fear scratching again. Eyes peering unblinking at Ryou from the dark, the shadow said, "I'll be your best friend, Ryou."
And with that he was gone.
The unnatural darkness left his room. Ryou looked down at the pendant, it's eye glowing faintly before it faded back to the way it had been. He took it off and held it in his hands, staring at it, and sat heavily on his bed. The...spirit, creature, person who lived in the pendant had promised that he wouldn't be lonely. Ryou hoped it wasn't a lie or a trick. There was no way to know. He just had to hope. And that mean that he was only left with waiting, and wondering what he should do now. He knew that his father would never believe him if he were to share the strange experience. Ryou realized that in spite of the ring-spirit's promise, he'd never felt more fragile or more alone than he did in that moment.
So, not knowing what else to do, not having anyone to talk to, not having a way to express all that he felt in his heart, he curled up on his bed, pendant folded in his arms, tucked to his chest, and he cried.