Chapter Text
"Amane?"
There's so much wrong with his voice. It's clear and pure as crystal, a February birthstone; if you held it up to the sun it would throw dancing spots of colour on your wall. It has no cracks, no veins. It's a child's voice, still— a child who's trying hard to be brave, to be a man, but who isn't quite there yet and knows it. She runs her tongue along the inside of her teeth.
"Amane, can you hear me? Um. Wow, this is really awkward, haha."
She knows just how he'd scream. He's never been hurt, not really, not like some of the others have, and that's precious. You never forget your first time; it breaks you, breaks you inside, and you never really go back together. That first shattering note of a thing undone.
"Mou hitori no boku says we shouldn't talk to you. He says we'll make it worse, but—but I think that's wrong! I mean, not that he's wrong, he's smart and his plans are great, but he doesn't really know you, Amane."
No, Yugi. He knows me better. He knows trouble, and you don't. Get away.
"Do you remember back at Duelist Kingdom? Well, I—I mean I have no clue if you remember or not, seeing as how the spirit of the Ring was kind of messing with your head. But everything was going crazy with Pegasus stealing people's souls, and—And I know we'd just met, but I feel like you became part of the group, you know? Without you and my friends, I'd have been done for. I was freaking out, and I think the rest of the group was, too. I don't really remember much from that time, but you. . . You stopped freaking out and were just so sensible. It was like you were totally in control, calm in the face of potential destruction. And to be honest, I'm freaking out a bit now, Amane. So. . I don't know. Help calm me down? Be the sensible one, again. I just want my friend back. . . Amane, can you hear me?"
"Yugi, no! Get away from the microphone! I am serious, drop it!"
Ah, the loud, blond one. And he is, too. She can hear real terror in his voice, terror for his friend, and she hisses a little with pleasure at the knowledge.
"I told you—"
"I know, but I'm not going to stick her away down here and ignore her!"
"Yes, Yugi, we have to. That is exactly what we have to do. We need to keep her down here and forget that she even fucking exists. Anything you tell her is just going to give her more power, do you understand? There's nothing left, it's all that thing now. Starting up a chit-chat is like opening a door for the devil and then taking a nap."
"We weren't even talking! I mean, she doesn't even say anything, I was just—"
Their voices move out of range of the microphone, become faint fuzzing noises and are lost altogether. Silence trickles back down the walls. Amane Bakura shifts in her chains so that the cold iron burns more fiercely against her wrists and ankles, and tries not to go to sleep.
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In her nightmares it always escapes.
It doens't matter how; it never does, in dreams. She's just free, free to whisper and slither down and out of the dark tunnels, toes brushing the floor, the ragged tresses of her hair grown impossibly long and fluttering out behind her like wings, free to sniff the cold metallic air and tongue her cracked lips and moan with the hunger of it.
She finds them, eventually, movement aided by shifting from shadow to shadow in mere moments.
One by one they try to fight. Jounouchi's usually first; he runs at her screaming, eyes wild, hands clenched into fists, hellbitch, I knew we should have fucking blown that cave to bits with you inside, but it's not real rage, it's terror playing dress-up, and she's not interested. She punches a shadow through his gut and up into his chest, lets it twist and rummage wetly for a couple seconds as he gurgles in disbelief, then backhands him into the wall and sweeps on. She doesn't even bother to watch him die.
Yugi begs her to remember who she is. It seems only right that even his last words should miss the point. She stares into his precious eyes, wide and scared, and then drives a slim point through each one with a soft crack of bone and a squelch of jelly. How's that for humor, hm? He flops around like a fish on a hook, making high inarticulate noises, until she snaps her fingers and he bursts like rotten fruit.
She licks him off the corner of her mouth and keeps going.
Bakura is lying in wait, knife blade raised and at the ready, but it shakes and he's crying, really crying, tears are trickling down and staining his face, and she's disgusted to think she was ever aligned with this creature, that any part of her ever loved him. She takes a minute to punish him, snakes of black ice finding every gate and weakness in his body and wrenching their way inside deliciously slow, and by the time he finally dies she's confident he's wishing they hadn't separated. Happy that the thing left over no longer looks human, she drops it with a damp slap on the floor and drifts on, humming a tune.
Ishizu, strangely, never tries to fight. She doesn't even try to talk. She just looks up at Amane with knowing, sad eyes, and alone of them all she's not scared. For a second fury boils in Amane's gut— how dare this stupid little wretched woman not fear her? But then something like weariness takes over, and she cuts Ishizu in half at the waist with a single strike and is gone before the blood stops spurting.
That one always leaves her unsatisfied, somehow.
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Days pass, probably. Little Amane, objective Amane, the Amane who doesn't get off on all the ways she's going to kill her friends, notes that she no longer needs to eat. Shortly after that she takes a sort of inventory of bodily functions and realises with ice-water fascination that she's not breathing any more; hasn't been for God knows how long. Once that's on the table she spends a relatively pleasant couple of hours distracted, unable to focus on anything but the way her chest isn't lifting and sinking, the way if she forces the muscles to work and pull in a lungful of dusty, ancient air it just feels weird and awkward 'til she blows it back out; like putting sand on your tongue and waiting for it to dissolve.
She is, officially, dead.
Well, not quite. Death is notoriously hard to define— the problem, of course, is how do you tell it apart from life—but she seems to remember the cessation of consciousness is required, and she's still conscious, even if she wishes she weren't. But her body has stopped, and she can't help feeling that's a significant point on any downward curve you choose to draw. An axis has been crossed. y is less than 0. The jury's still out on x.
Presumably the darkness is keeping everything in one piece. Perhaps it isn't? Perhaps she's going to rot? Sit glumly on the cold stone floor of her brain while the blood curdles and goes thick around her, skin turns papery, eyes and organs crumple. She watched a documentary about forensics once. What order does it happen in? What goes first? How long before bits actually start dropping off?
They all come to see her sometimes, except Bakura. Bakura, Anzu informs her sorrowfully, just can't bear it. I think it makes him too sad, Amane! Amane knows better. Sadness wouldn't stop him. Disappointment's another matter. They say you should never meet your idols, and that goes double when they're stapled to a wall, making noises like something blowing tar through a straw. The whole business is appallingly undignified. Bakura wouldn't like it.
Mai's a regular, though, which figures; frequency of visits and respect for anyone else's leadership abilities are inversely proportional. She's there nearly as often as Yugi —chiding, nagging, mocking, goading. Come on, Amane. They told me you were strong. It's a good tactic, a lot better than anyone else's, and were their roles reversed Amane thinks she'd probably be doing the same. She appreciates it. But it doesn't work. What she really wishes is that they'd all just stay away, because the thing in her is getting stronger and it's getting smarter. She's learnt to feel them, now, up there in their safe station behind branded sheet steel and bulletproof glass, even when they say nothing; bright coloured shapes that wobble and shine, swirly blotches of life on a dead black slide. Yugi's a jagged scribble of amethyst and red and he makes her hungry. Ishizu is a chiming harmony, cream and deep, deep blue. And most often of all there's the fizzing, crackling knot of vivid white that translates as Kaiba. He never talks, never says a word, and if it weren't for her new party trick she'd never know he was there. But he is, every day, sometimes for hours. Math should have told her as much.
One space of time she wakes from winding an obsidian ribbon round Mai's slim throat and feels a new light, a sound-shade that's not in her lexicon yet, and thinks: Bakura! But it can't be. It's dull purple, hard to make out, and cold, and it fades in and out of the blackness of her sight irregularly. Vibrates: the hum of magic, ancient and powerful, the agony from a moment years prior. It tastes like licking a penny. And every minute or so, it flashes with color so bright it hurts her teeth. Gold, shining bright into the blinded pupils of her eyes.
She's not even sure it's a person. But it's new, so she has to try. The same way she does every time, she sends out a thought, the tiniest thought she can think, white and feeble like a new root from a bulb, nothing fierce or demonstrative enough to trip the alarms and drown her brain in black thrashing brine, and she thinks:
help me
And a voice —crisp, commanding, plainly surprised — says okay.