Two months late and unfinished. Very impressive. :D
Characters: Varon (aussie_biker) and Yami (idonthaveityet)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Continuation of this log, astoundingly late and unfinished because I cannot bring myself to write another post, set during the scramble to clean rooms out prior to break. Yami sinks into complete denial takes interesting mental detours when forced to confront The Room, while Varon is enlightened about ghosts, genocide, and bloodstained sheets. And Varon's surname is finally revealed, that too.
Yami's first memory of the color red was a vivid image he could not entirely place. He had the fixed picture of a small hand, slightly cupped, blood pooled in it and smeared across the fingers, sticky against tanned skin, and everything had felt sticky, really, hot and drying. Summer, perhaps. Yami had always preferred summer to winter, liked sudden downpours and the air humming with latent electricity more than the sharp cracking silence of ice and bitter cold. And summer was the thing to think about, summer and his first concept of blood, because those were the important things to think of.
Not rooms and hows and whys and pale unstained hand still clutching the doorknob loosely.
Varon was still waiting, as Yami hadn't walked forward yet, paralyzed in the doorway, and Varon was with him, had promised that, which meant that if he ran out of colors he could always ask Varon for help.
He thought perhaps it'd been a nosebleed, that memory. Fit the pattern; cupping a hand over a gushing nose to try to halt the flow of blood, pulling it back and staring at it, trying to wipe it off. Congealed so quickly. Stunning how much blood could come of one small injury. How much damage something so small could do, and how much actual bloodloss from such an insignificant wound. He'd been prone to nosebleeds.
And Varon was behind him, ready to follow him into the room, but he wasn't here with Varon. He was somewhere warm and his hands were a child's, and while he had little memory of his earliest years, he had this one, this memory that belonged to the person he'd been, and he'd pay attention to that.
"There won't be much." It wasn't him speaking, still blocking the doorway. "We should be done quickly."
When Yami said no, Varon was waiting for the other to turn around and walk away. It would have made sense, considering Yami was treating this room like it was the doorway to Hell; that the moment he opened the door, Cerberus would swoop down and devour him whole. But Cerberus had three heads, and there were two of them, so Varon would be eaten as well.
Which made it lucky that Varon wasn't terrified of the door and the room. But Yami was, and that fear was infectious, contagious, passed by touch and Varon's hand on Yami's shoulder, before Yami had stepped forward. Varon let his hand slide off, swinging down to his side again, watching. It felt like a horror movie.
Horror movies always had idiots going in the wrong direction or to the wrong places or standing still too long. Yami and Varon were standing too long, but the monster, Cerberus, was on the other side of the door. Here was the stupid part about what they were doing; they were going to open the door. You don't open the door to monsters. Was it vampires who had to be invited into a household? He saw that in a Stephen King movie once. Salem's Lot. He had always thought to get a copy of the book, that it might have been scary if it wasn't riddled with unconvincing effects, but he wasn't too big on books.
The sweep of cold air caught him by surprise, sweeping over his face and causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. This was a crappy horror movie. And crappy horror movies weren't scary. But Yami was scared. No, paralyzed, Yami was paralyzed, quite obviously. Which meant the movie wasn't a complete sham.
Varon peered over Yami's shoulder, taking a quick inventory. It was dark, the moonlight streaming in through the thin curtains and dousing the place in an eerie blue wash. The room was small, but tidy; bare, for the most part. From where he stood, the bed was the only thing in straight sight, the white sheets illuminated by the moonlight. The sheets were neatly crumpled, if there was such a thing. The kind from sitting, moving on the bed during the process of a day, but that wasn't what was interesting, and it wasn't what made Varon's eyes widen, made his heart do a quick tha-dunk.
That was blood. It had to be. Dark smears on the bed sheets, too much to have been a shaving accident or something plausible like that, vivid against moon soaked sheets and forebodingly dark.
No, there wasn't much to pack. Plenty of blood, though.. Varon agreed with a nod that Yami wouldn't see. It would be quick. Varon was going to make sure it was. More for Yami's sake than his own, maybe, but blood on bed sheets was disconcerting, and who knew. Maybe Yami hadn't watched Salem's Lot, and so had never been warned against inviting a vampire into his home. Unless it was a master vampire, of course. Maybe Cerberus had already fed on someone before, leaving behind a few remnants, signs, warnings.
Varon was expecting something to leap forward, any moment now. But that was ridiculous, childish. And Yami was frozen enough for them both, so Varon could just concentrate on practicality and helping Yami pack it up as quickly as possible.
"Well, we aren't gonna get much done standing out here," Varon said, donning his most cheerful voice, straightening out his back. "Best get started soon, mate." If we want to avoid the vampires or Cerberus.
But Cerberus didn't lurk in empty bedrooms so stale and plain, and vampires had better things to do than swoop down past thin, cheap curtains and drain people who weren't there. And Yami most assuredly wasn't there.
Blue and silver he remembered from the sea, and that was a first memory he couldn't place. It was in fragments; when was the first time anyone knew the sea? The sea was the sea was the sea, and Yami remembered nothing of the world before it. It was an everpresent concept, and searching for the memories of it, scraps he could recall, was akin to drowning in an ocean of glass. But seas were different from oceans, and Yami no longer wanted such vast expanses of nothing-but-water anyway.
River, he remembered, large as an ocean to a child, so far across that swimming there would seem like miles. And it was so terribly easy to tire and drown. But the trick to that was learning how to float, how to let yourself be carried by the water. It wasn't progress, no, and if you swam against the current, then it was doubly so, because the moment you laid back and left yourself up to the river, you were borne away from your goal, but that wasn't the point.
Surviving was the point. Learning how to let go instead of being destroyed. Sink or swim hadn't been the only choice then, and the sky was so blue.
But that was blue and green and gold, and Yami had to swim now or he'd be dragged under.
And being dragged under wasn't a choice.
More memories of blue and silver -- the blue-green-blue of chlorine in a pool and a silver necklace slipping ever further out of reach. So small, and he didn't think he could sink any deeper, too hard to fight against bouyancy and the instinct to surface again, the need for air.
Because there was nothing stronger than that urge, and Yami had never been one to sink. And his head hurt from pressure and eyes stung from the water, but he'd get that necklace, find it, bring it back. Slipped so far out of reach, small hands slightly larger than the ones stained with blood, because this was after Egypt, and he figured that memory must've been there, if it'd been so warm and gold. Pools were white and blue and green and silver; that hadn't been.
And aquariums. Now Yuugi entered the memory, and blue and silver were tempered by purple and green. Everything so vast and silent. Because it was silent there, unreal, deceptively strong glass keeping strange creatures and worlds apart. Water and air, and Yuugi would grin and press his face against the glass, and Yami would stay back from his brother, from the glass, would watch him, would try to find the top of the tank, try to see up what was above the water, what was where he could reach.
Light was so strange, oscillating and faint but still there, beyond all else, and he found the absense of sound, the peace of it all strange and alien. Cool, too. Cool and slick and silver.
And colors, though faint and distorted by all of the blue. He could understand colors. And he could understand continuing to swim whatever was happening, because he had to find what was at the top of those tanks, what was beyond the false rocks and the enevloping silence of sharks and manta rays, the weightlessness of being underwater, because he belonged watching spellbound over Yuugi's shoulder at the strange creatures in the tanks, not hiding on the far side of the glass. And perhaps the doctor had put him there, but the doctor wouldn't keep him there.
Top. Surface. Breaking the surface. Silver and cool blue that spoke of undertow replaced with gold and the warm blue of the sky.
He'd fixate on that now, and ignore the reality of a room soaked and painted over in the blue and silver of moonlight, white sheets with blood stained a sickening navy on them, his discarded clothing in a crumpled heap where Marik had left it, all of the lights burned out from being left on, his laptop sitting dead, batteries long since used up. This room was abandoned, the air stale, cold, foreign, but Yami wasn't here, and Yami could walk into the room now, ignore everything else, spectre here, a ghost whose presence was unreal, meant nothing, changed nothing. He wouldn't leave fingerprints in this place, and he wouldn't hear Varon's voice, and he wouldn't let anything have changed.
Yami had stepped inside, which allowed Varon to enter, skirting off to the right, looking around the whole place, trying to avoid looking too close to the bed. Dropping the folded up boxes on top of the sheets seemed like a good idea. Spreading them over the sheets might have been a bit obvious, but it would have meant he didn't have anything to glance over to.
No Cerberus so far. No vampires either. There was one corner, on the other side of the room, could have been a likely spot, but the moonlight had dispersed most of the shadows. Turned around, registered desk, chair, shelves, books. Books could be a good distraction.
Varon moved over, squinting at the titles, trying to decipher them in the thin light. Books on all sorts of subjects, varying titles. Most books were battered, used, yellowing. Hardbacks and paperbacks, some shiny new covers which reflected the moonlight back. Couldn't read them properly, though.
He turned around again, spotted the light switch by the door. That would be helpful.
He wandered over, having the freedom of movement now that Yami had progressed to the window, hitting the switch. Waited. Nothing. Hit it again, the same result. Flicked it repeatedly, frowning.
"Great. Your lights are out. Don't suppose you've got a flashlight hiding somewhere?"
Lights? Yami was by the window now, staring. Through glass, that was it. Thicker glass than it looked, holding back so much water, so much pressure. But Yuugi wasn't on the other side, just the night sky, the full moon that was painting the room in this new bluish cast. The courtyard, all strung up with its dazzling lights, wasn't visible from here. Yami wasn't sure it was out there anymore.
Lights. Yes. It was rather dark in here. He hadn't noticed it, hadn't absorbed it fully -- and he wasn't here, so of course not. Flashlight? Shook his head slowly. He didn't have one. Why would he need one? There was the moon there. Laptop as well. He could cross the room and plug it in. Well, not him. He wasn't there. He was swimming.
Thinking about learning how to swim, a memory he didn't have. He'd always known how to swim. Like walking. Thrown out into the water, trusted to know how to keep afloat, but with the promise of support, of being caught and helped to stay above water if you couldn't manage it. Always the concept of a lifeline. But Yami didn't remember any of it, beyond that concept. Might have been invented. Too young for anything coherent to stay anyway.
What mattered now was swimming anyway, not how he'd learned to do it. His thoughts had moved on from concepts of colors, though they hadn't yet accepted that this room was here, even as he turned to the desk across from his bed, the other side of the window, and bent down to find the laptop's power cable. That'd be some light at least. There, plugged in neatly. He flicked on the keyboard light, the computer not having the battery life yet to boot up, then calmly turned the laptop so that its meager light reflected on the room. He didn't need it, but Varon seemed on edge.
Best set to work then. "The clothing can go in there first" -- he indicated the trunk at the foot of his bed with a dismissive hand -- "and then in boxes when if it fills. I'll start with the books."
Varon took another look around by the weak light radiating from the desk. Yami had indicated the trunk, to be filled with clothes. Which were, on second glance, sitting on a bookshelf. Made sense; it saved space.
Varon placed the boxes against the wall, unzipped his jacket, letting the cold seep through his t-shirt as he headed over to the shelves to pull down a handful of t-shirts, moved back over to the trunk, flipped the lid open and deposited the clothes inside. From the trunk, sitting at the end of the bed, the blood was back in view.
The questions were on the tip of his tongue, "Why do you have blood on your bed?" "Yami, mate, what happened here?" "Is this yours?"
He dreaded to think of how Yami would answer him. There was a number of potential reasons running through his mind, and short of finding out Yami was really a girl with a bad period, the other options didn't seem healthy. Or, Yami had a girlfriend, and she had been borrowing his bed. But evidently not taking care of the lights or heating.
He wavered. If he let it pass and never asked, he was pretty sure that Yami wouldn't spontaneously inform him, which would leave him with a gnawing curiosity he'd never be able to sate.
Best to throw it in casually, then.
Moving back to the shelf, slipping into a more nonchalant demeanour, he reached up for the next few items of clothing. "Yami, there's blood on your bed." He pulled down a pair of jeans. "Have an accident?"
Yami glanced at the bed, not even really seeing it at first. He'd known there'd be sheets there to burn, things he'd need to destroy to get out of his head. So much focus on what the doctor had hadn't done to him, no, definitely not, that he hadn't even considered Marik's marks. But those scars were different ones, were fragments and pieces of other lives. Letters carved into his skin and the promise that he could tear his own bones out but never remove the trace left behind.
But Marik hadn't made him feel a thing compared to what the doctor did.
The doctor didn't do anything. He was just confused. None of it was real. He hadn't been changed. He hadn't. He was just the same as always, and it just took a bit of time. Had to acclimate himself and then he'd be fine. And everyone would believe him when he said it. And he'd believe him when he said it. And he would be able to talk to Yuugi and face the world and be everything that he had been, everything that he wasn't now.
Marik. And Varon asking questions about him. Yami set down the book he'd had in hand, placed it back on the shelf on its side.
What was there to say about Marik? He made a deal with Marik. Sold away what was left of his crumbling self. Kamui destroyed what few scraps of him remained. He made a deal with Marik, which was why the clothing -- Yami's eyes flickered there to the floor, a reflex, the clothes dropped carelessly in a heap on the floor, untouched since he'd been there, tears running down his face but no noises coming out -- had been cast off there, and why the corner that didn't exist it wasn't there really it wasn't and he didn't remember being drawn off the floor there Marik touched his cheek made him shiver made everything collapse was the corner, and why there was blood now on the sheets.
"I know," he said finally. But it wasn't his bed, because he was not here, and the Yami that Yuugi needed and that he had to find on the other side of the glass, that Yami would not have been broken and bloodied and torn and with stains on him that no amount of scrubbing could erase. Because he wasn't stained. Refused to be. Knew he was and his skin crawled and the sickness rose. "No accident."
Varon didn't reply at first, instead going over to the trunk again and putting the clothes down, actions slowed down as he tried to think of a decent question to ask now. He stepped back from the trunk, pushing some bangs out of his eyes as his foot sank into something that wasn't carpet. He pivoted, looking down at the bundle of clothes he hadn't noticed before. They had to be Yami's; certainly looked like Yami's.
As to what they were doing in a little pile on the floor, Varon could only speculate. He glanced from the clothes, back to the bed and the incriminating, non-accidental blood stains there. How likely was it that the two were connected?
He stepped away from the clothes. He was going to have to find out what happened here, some way or another. Or, find out as much as he could and attempt to piece it all together for a clearer, logical picture. Unless, of course, it was the blood of Yami's girlfriend. That would explain both the stains and the pile of clothes. Varon wrinkled his nose a little. He wouldn't let a girl on her rag in his bed, especially now he'd seen the result. The thought did occur to him that the blood had been product of some S&M session between Yami and aforementioned girlfriend, but he let that one slide.
But. Did Yami even have a girlfriend?
If he didn't, where did that leave Varon's theory?
He returned to the shelf; "So, you got a bird?"
Yami glanced over from the books he was stacking. "...A bird?"
Varon blinked back. "Heh, you wouldn't know what that means, would ya? I should've realised that, but this can be your lesson on language for the day. It's slang for girlfriend. What I mean is, you got a girlfriend?"
Yami stared, suddenly distinctly aware that Varon was in his personal room, going through his personal belongings, and currently asking quite personal questions. And that he had no idea what exactly Varon expected in return for this help, or what his motive had been in befriending Yami anyway. Or standing up for him in the first place, before -- just before. Surely he didn't expect...? Then again, what else was to be expected from someone with the word slut inked permanently into his very core?
He crossed his arms, uncomfortable and acutely aware of his bare wrist, careful to keep it tucked underneath his arm and out of sight. He'd not yet bought anything to replace the cuffs he usually wore, the ones that had been in this room untouched since Marik before. What exactly was Varon asking, and what was he supposed to do, given the answer? The question was so random and sudden that it had to imply something. Didn't it? Motives; Yami was too aware of motives now, oversensitive to them. Spent too long "knowing" as if he didn't still fear it now that there was no reason anyone could have to help him except a darker ulterior motive.
Weighed his words carefully, judged the distance to the door and the items he had on hand to defend himself. He wouldn't cave again, whatever happened. Couldn't. Refused to. Wouldn't give in again. If Varon had any designs on him -- and he hoped that the worst that could happen would be a disappointed Varon readjusting his notions of what he could get from Yami, but he had to plan for the real worst case scenario -- then he was going to have to fight Varon. The hallways were empty this time of night, when most people had left for home already, which meant that even if he ran, he'd still have to face Varon. And he wasn't going to run.
He could defend himself, or at any rate, the Yami he'd been could defend himself. He'd do whatever it took; there was no other option. And hope for the best. Maybe there was a reason that question came so out of nowhere, or if Varon did mean what he hoped he didn't by it, maybe Varon would just neatly take "No" as an answer and back off.
"I haven't," Yami said calmly, calculating once more the distance between himself and Varon and the door. He could lose him in the hallways easily, take the stairs, get a drop on him, grab a book on his way out the door if he was quick, use that if he could find nothing better. "Why?"
Great. Bye bye relatively safe theory. Varon sighed, raking his fingers through his bangs, "I'm trying to figure out why you have blood on your bed and a pile of clothes next to it."
Yami needed a lot of brainwork. Yami stared a lot.
He pulled down the rest of the pile he'd started on, "I can ask you a hundred and one questions before I shut up. If you'd prefer I didn't know, now is a good time to tell me to stop."
He'd shut up, of course. If Yami specifically said he didn't want Varon to know, and Varon judged that he didn't, then Varon could shut up. He'd have to bite his tongue a lot, and his brain would form ridiculous ideas that were probably beyond rationality, and so much more beyond the truth of the matter, but that would have to do.
Yami nodded slowly in comprehension, relieved but still wary. That made sense, yes, but -- now that Varon's motives had been called in to question, he was painfully cognizant of the fact that Varon had no reason to help him, now or with the dark side. He could handle himself, he hoped, but the concept was still a troubling one. And that's how the world works, isn't it, pet? Exploitation. Strong use the weak. But Yami wasn't weak, he hoped, and the person he'd been wouldn't have accepted that idea.
Blood. So the topic hadn't changed. Was there a way to explain the blood.
He wasn't entirely sure. He didn't know if there was a way to explain any of this. It'd gone beyond what he was quite capable of articulating, even accepting. It'd gone beyond everything. And so had he. He glanced past Varon to the corner, more on edge than a person who wasn't even really in this room should be. Much more.
Yami's first memory of
But it didn't take hold. And Varon was still there, waiting for an answer, and Yami couldn't think of what he was trying to find a memory of. And the answer slipped out of his mouth so easily. "Marik." That was all the answer there'd ever be, for this room.
Yami's answer jolted Varon. He only knew that Marik had done something damaging to Yami, but seeing blood on the bed and a pile of clothes presented a whole new range of possibilities. Rape? Had Marik raped Yami? That was the most obvious reason to blood and piles of clothes. Another good reason why Yami hadn't wanted to come here.
He didn't want to ask, quite honestly. He was quite happy to live in ignorance when it suited him, but then again, wasn't everyone? Block out what you don't like or replace it with what you did. He wasn't close enough to Yami to ask and become involved in a potential rape situation. If it was, then why had Yami gone to that asylum instead of Marik?
He was still holding the pile of clothes -- no, not holding, clutching now -- and still standing beside the shelves. He could walk to the trunk again, throw in another casual comment, but what kind of casual comment can you give to that? He wasn't going to do any of that 'Here, cry on my shoulder' thing. Yami didn't need it, or so he judged, and Varon wasn't that kind of person.
To fill space and time, he walked slowly back to the trunk, placing the clothes in carefully. Yami folded his clothes. Varon threw his on the floor or somewhere to be washed, maybe on top of his bed or under it. They could be ironed when they needed to be. He had plastic boxes under his bed that his mother insisted he take for the purpose of putting clothes in. He'd ended up using them to store magazines, game disks, textbooks, junk food and drink, when he had to. He was even sure he had a couple of small motorcycle parts in there.
Speaking of clothes haphazardly thrown on the floor … he glanced to the pile on Yami's floor. Yami's uncluttered floor.
He had to give a response to the short, 'Marik.'
"He did this?" He gestured to the clothes, then the bedsheets. "Is this why you didn't want to come back here?"
"I never said that," Yami corrected, voice sharper than he would've liked. Than would've been normal. Too much edge to it; he needed to adjust.
He still hadn't looked, dead stare fixed on the books in front of his face. He couldn't read the titles, and it had nothing at all to do with the dark. Someone else's books, anyway. His books. Just like this had been his room, so it wasn't as if Yami should have a problem being here -- and he'd never said that he did, had he, because that wouldn't be normal! -- given that up until...then, Yami had been him, and this had been Yami's room, and all of this had been familiar, and there wasn't a crumpled heap of clothing or sheets with dark stains he refused to acknowledge existed.
Wouldn't look over his shoulder, wouldn't listen to Varon, wouldn't talk to Varon about this.
Of course he'd look. Breathed in slowly, inaudibly, forced the strain out of his voice as best he could, and glanced over his shoulder at Varon, at the bed, at the clothes, playacting unaffected better than he had before. Had to look, and have this conversation, because if none of this had done anything to him, then why should he have trouble discussing it? That was just silly.
"There's nothing wrong with this room," he continued. "Whatever happened here." Smiled as warmly as one could manage with their face painted pale blue and cut harshly with shadows. "And Marik is nothing."
Varon wrinkled his nose. He wasn't stupid, he wasn't blind, and if 'Marik' was a one-word answer for an incriminating question, then Marik was more than nothing.
He bent down, snatched the pile of clothes off the floor and dropped them into the trunk. There. No more clothes lying on the bedroom floor. He wasn't going to touch those sheets.
Yami had said 'Whatever happened here', which meant something definitely had happened, and Varon knew now, without pressing any further, that he wouldn't find out what the 'Whatever' really was. Not that it mattered. He didn't need to know and he wasn't close enough to Yami for that, anyway.
"If you want to be able to use those sheets again, you'd better get round to cleaning them." Varon said, going back to the shelves again. It was a matter of practicality gleaned from his mother. Getting into fights meant bloodied noses and so bloodied white school shirts, which would be placed in a tub of cold water and salt to get rid of the blood stains. Varon liked to marvel at how his mother managed to get rid of such prominent stains. She was good at that.
He grabbed another pile of clothes. Time for a change of subject, since Yami's smile wasn't as comforting as it probably should have been.
"We shoulda set up cameras or something, to see the look on Professor Ishtar's face when she finds her car."
Any relief Yami might have felt in response to the topic change was a nonstart; he'd caught the momentary flicker of...something across Varon's face, and even without that cue, the change in his tone of voice was more than enough of a giveaway. Right. Wrong answer, then? Or did Varon just not believe him? He was used to not being believed in, lately. And this seemed like a good time to explore his first memory of the color yellow, but as appealing as that option was, yellow didn't really have a place here, just yet.
It might, eventually.
Sheets. He remembered the sheets. Knew the sheets quite well, yes. He'd slept on them for weeks, even if it seemed like a lifetime ago, and that generally led to a certain familiarity, yes. Yes. But. Never again. Never again.
Because even if nothing Happened, that didn't mean he'd ever come back to this room again, oh, no. Not in this life, not in the next. This was a door he'd shut behind him for the final time, and a place he'd never revisit. This, this was an altar. One to a god he did not know and upon which had been sacrificed abstract concepts of all assortments, meaningless words like pride and stability and self, that never should've been offered.
And now they were burnt, pretty pale ashes so soft they could be liquid, and this was penance now. He'd had to watch all that lovely dust slip between his fingers, fast as he could pick it up, and no tears to give it substance or hands cupped in supplication could do anything about that. This was a tomb, and he'd leave those ashes here, remains of something long dead, and leave this place.
Resurrected. Untouched untainted image of the thing he'd been in life. Because surely surrender past the point of feeling pain or fear was not life. And when he got to the end of this thing, he'd live. There was no other choice. And perhaps with ashes smeared on his forehead, caked under his fingernails, wet and sooty from tears on his face, but that was irrelevant.
And tangential. Had to focus. Had to. Couldn't remember what Varon had last said, scanned him for some sort of clue. Oh. Sheets. That'd been it. Sheets. Burn them and scatter the ashes, ruin the perfect white of the snow. Would that change all this? Would that seal this in the past and leave the future without memories? It'd lock away the darkness that the stains represented, perhaps, but he wasn't sure what that even meant.
"You can't get rid of a stain like that," he said finally. Calmly, distantly. Lapsing into silence too often lately, eyes fixed darkly on what was not there. "It'll never wash away, no matter how much you scrub. You could bleach it, maybe, but" Split the skin open, break your bones apart and "it'll still be there" a smear on that hypocritical soul of yours. "So it doesn't really matter. I wouldn't reuse it anyway."
His wrist stung now, and he convinced himself his nails were nowhere near it.
Varon opened his mouth to share with Yami his mother's infinite wisdom, then promptly shut it again. Now that he thought about it, he realised how unlikely it would be that Yami still wanted sheets that had bloodstains on them from some activity that probably involved Marik.
He looked back to the shelves; no more clothes left there. Yami, however, still had plenty of books to pack away. He was staring vacantly, not doing much at all. Varon moved over to the window, brushing aside the thin curtains with his fingers, gazing out into the snowy expanse of campus ground. Sparkly and bright, reflecting the moonlight. That was probably why the room was lighting up so well.
Also probably why the room was so cold. He glanced around, trying to find the tree wrapped in fairy lights and the snowman altar, to which the entire campus could pay homage. But they were facing the wrong side of the campus for that. He should have looked to see if it was visible from his own room. He'd do that when he got back.
He liked it better when Yami was cheerful and pelting snowballs at anyone passing.
"Need a hand with those books?" he asked, dropping the curtains.
...Books.
Yami dropped his wrist, startled, suddenly coming to. Yes, books. He was supposed to be packing the books. His books. He hadn't read in a while, not really; settled for writing Kaiba's manual and playing with Defeb and stuffing his head full of Dark designs to play out with Varon. Because Varon was childish games and the sort of sparkling that left innocents spellbound and wide-eyed, and wasn't that so much a better world than the one he currently inhabited?
First memory of snow he did have, because that'd been Japan and Yuugi was already firm in his head by that age, and the sky was dark grey like steel wool and the air just as harsh and the snow didn't stick, just evanesced upon touching the ashpalt, but he walked out onto the sidewalk and stood there, stunned, and watched all of the snow fall around him anyway. Pretty snowglobe world with no accumulation: just the same silver flakes swirling round and round and round.
Books now. Needed to put away books. He'd like the books, once Varon and Kaiba and Noa and all the rest were gone. Because he couldn't go home, not like this; snow globes are finite, are one small sphere enclosed, and he was on the wrong side of that glass. The rest of the world on the outside, distorted. Yes, he'd need the books.
Rubbed his wrist idly, smearing invisible letters beyond comprehension. "Sure. Thank you." He picked up his stack, mind focused again on the task at hand. Ignored the question of how he'd put the books into the trunk without existing in this room.
Varon joined Yami by the bookshelf, pulling books down one by one and cradling them in one arm. "No problem, mate."
It wasn't a problem. Varon didn't mind helping people. Rather liked it. He was just a helpful kinda guy, unless you just so happened to offend Varon. Then, Varon would begin to beat you to a bloody pulp. But Varon was generally a nice person, and he liked having friends. He needed more, considering his best friends were currently his Xbox and its console, but he'd work on that some other time.
As for now, he had a partner in fairy lights and snowmen, which counted as a friend, he guessed. Yami counted as a friend. Varon didn't know anyone else on the campus who would sit in a tree, in baltic weather, hurling snowballs at passers by and building snowmen as a shrine. Not to mention the general button insanity.
It was all fun. A fun Yami. This wasn't a fun Yami, and Varon preferred fun over serious or distant. So, he gave Yami a little nudge.
"Hey, snap out of it. Better get these all packed away or we'll be here all night," he said with an encouraging grin.
All night. That didn't sound very appealing, no. Incredibly unappealing, actually. No one wanted to spend a night in a tomb, of course.
Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. Yami could envision quite a bit of fun being had exploring graveyards, or spending a night in a crypt. Weekend in a haunted mansion, great big Victorian-style house with Christian ghosts that creaked up stairs half-transparent and glided through walls in silence. Or violent poltergeist, perhaps. Smashing things and making odd noises and causing doors to slam shut without warning. That'd be fun.
Or a Mayan temple. Stone with bloodstains centuries upon centuries old, strange rooms built at unusual angles, aligned to stars marking mystic dates that no one had any concept what meant. Altars to greet the dawn with human sacrifice, and subterranean passageways that wound for ages through jungle, strange carvings all throughout and deadly traps. And green all around. Not like Egypt, barren and blinding and vividly gold, but everything green and humid and crawling with life. Rain constantly, hot and sticky, rain like blood.
That got a bit of a smile, cheered him up the way Varon's shift in tone had been meant to, that little nudge. Distraction was was a good thing, the idea of rainforest in every direction, all vitality and bold colors and stifling heat and humidity and the sounds of thousands of living creatures, so much more appealing than a room that breathed of silvered blue and sepulchres. And this place was numbing, a place fingerprints could not be left and breath could not be taken; definitely better to be somewhere dark and mysterious and terrifying, a place that made you cling to life instead of feel that it had already been taken away.
He knelt down to set his books into the trunk, careful to wrap a particularly decrepit old volume on astronomy up in a soft shirt before stacking the rest in, and then glanced up to Varon, still at the bookshelf. "Ghosts -- what do you think of ghosts?"
Heh. Maybe Varon wasn't the only one getting that horror movie feel.
He noted that Yami was putting the older books in carefully, and glanced at the bundle in his arm. Nothing particularly old looking. But, ghosts. Ghosts were interesting. He'd loved scaring his cousins with ghost stories. Their grandparents' home was old enough that he had created a whole host of imaginary spectres, loving the way his irritating, high pitched cousins screamed and ran away from whatever the haunted object was; wardrobe, desk, ink well, thimble. They were so hilariously gullible.
"I dunno." Varon answered, going to join Yami by the trunks and squatting beside it to start putting the books inside, "I used to tell ghost stories to scare my little cousins. Haven't decided if I think they exist, though. It'd be cool if they did, though, I guess. Why do you ask?"
Yami smiled at that. Ghosts. Ghosts inhabited the same silver-plated wonderland that snow and fairylights and Kaiba's button genocide and marigolds and monkeys with huge liquid eyes did, and ghosts he could very much see on the dark side. Schemes were beginning to form, pretty little plots like the shiny brass innerworkings of a clock, all intricately connected and delicately arranged and begging for the meddling hands of an inquisitive child to disassemble them and rearrange them into a clinky, dysfunctional but lovely mess.
Clocks were much more interesting with their insides spilling out, pretty metallic entrails picked apart for the sake of curiosity, and Yami liked a world without time in it anyway. Trapped within and without time, in limbo, but with plenty of interesting angles and springs to stretch and snap and little gears to click together. Time was irrelevant anyway, blurred by perceptions and confused memories and made ultimately into a useless curiosity itself.
"Ghosts would be interesting." Yami waited for Varon to put in the last book in his stack, then shut the trunk, latched it securely. "When you get back, the dark side should look into them." Already pretty pictures of flickering candles and foggy graveyards and wrought-iron gates were taking up residence in his head, flavored by the rattle of bones and creaking hinges and the sensation of blood running cold.
A small smirk, because fear used to intrigue Yami, amuse him before...this, and "used to" Yami would make "does" by sheer force of will. "Unless you're scared, of course."
Varon gave a derisive snort of laughter. "Scared? Of what? Cold chills and a white sheet going 'Boo!' I think not, Mutou." He dropped onto his backside, giving Yami a grin, "Yeah, the Dark Side should adopt ghosts. Fits in with dark, eh?"
He gave an experimental glance around the room, in case some unearthly being had decided to conjure itself up for their viewing pleasure. "Ghosts must be lonely old buggers. People run away from them too fast for them to make friends. That must break their ectoplasmic hearts."
Mutou. He hadn't expected to be called that, having become used to not hearing his surname. For that matter, up until recently, he'd not been used to hearing any of the names he'd once considered familiar. Not Yami, like Kaiba used, or Mutou-kun as was normal, or just Mutou, or aniki from Yuugi. After all, he wasn't Yami, was he? Just "pet" or "darling whore." He wasn't sure which bothered him more.
"First name," he corrected. Term of address was a choice, just like use of a given name required permission, was a gift. "Hardly fair to call me by my surname when I can't return it."
And ghosts. That was still a very pretty idea. Yami shifted, folding his legs underneath him Indian-style and leaning a bit on the trunk, books momentarily forgotten in favor of sitting in the dark like children telling ghost stories.
"I don't think it breaks their hearts, that alone. Much worse to be dead in the first place, incapable of doing anything but watching." Yami smiled though, tone lightening quickly. "To think of those poor creatures, helpless but to stand by and witness the brutality of the modern world, genocidal maniacs slaughtering whole villages of buttons left and right--! It must be very hard on them."
Varon twitched. Of course Yami didn't know his surname. There was a good reason for that. Varon had asked every lecturer and professor on campus to call him by his first name, and they had agreed, after a spell of laughter that resulted in the same pinch of red on his cheeks there was now.
Not that Yami would see in the dark. Which was good.
There was a good reason he hated jocks. Good reason why they loved him. It was scarring, one of the most horrible surnames anyone could ever be cursed with. It would have been fine if it was just a connotation, but no. Instead, he was cursed by meows and cat collars in his locker and even a bag of cat treats. The squeaky mice, however, made for good ammo.
Distraction! Hated his name, hated it hated it hated it!
He swallowed, forcing himself to grin, "Yeah! They must be tearing themselves apart because they can't help! Maybe we should offer the uses of our bodies -- MysurnameisTibbles -- so that they may communicate with the world and help with the grand fight for button freedom and safety!"
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Continuation of this log, astoundingly late and unfinished because I cannot bring myself to write another post, set during the scramble to clean rooms out prior to break. Yami sinks into complete denial takes interesting mental detours when forced to confront The Room, while Varon is enlightened about ghosts, genocide, and bloodstained sheets. And Varon's surname is finally revealed, that too.
Yami's first memory of the color red was a vivid image he could not entirely place. He had the fixed picture of a small hand, slightly cupped, blood pooled in it and smeared across the fingers, sticky against tanned skin, and everything had felt sticky, really, hot and drying. Summer, perhaps. Yami had always preferred summer to winter, liked sudden downpours and the air humming with latent electricity more than the sharp cracking silence of ice and bitter cold. And summer was the thing to think about, summer and his first concept of blood, because those were the important things to think of.
Not rooms and hows and whys and pale unstained hand still clutching the doorknob loosely.
Varon was still waiting, as Yami hadn't walked forward yet, paralyzed in the doorway, and Varon was with him, had promised that, which meant that if he ran out of colors he could always ask Varon for help.
He thought perhaps it'd been a nosebleed, that memory. Fit the pattern; cupping a hand over a gushing nose to try to halt the flow of blood, pulling it back and staring at it, trying to wipe it off. Congealed so quickly. Stunning how much blood could come of one small injury. How much damage something so small could do, and how much actual bloodloss from such an insignificant wound. He'd been prone to nosebleeds.
And Varon was behind him, ready to follow him into the room, but he wasn't here with Varon. He was somewhere warm and his hands were a child's, and while he had little memory of his earliest years, he had this one, this memory that belonged to the person he'd been, and he'd pay attention to that.
"There won't be much." It wasn't him speaking, still blocking the doorway. "We should be done quickly."
When Yami said no, Varon was waiting for the other to turn around and walk away. It would have made sense, considering Yami was treating this room like it was the doorway to Hell; that the moment he opened the door, Cerberus would swoop down and devour him whole. But Cerberus had three heads, and there were two of them, so Varon would be eaten as well.
Which made it lucky that Varon wasn't terrified of the door and the room. But Yami was, and that fear was infectious, contagious, passed by touch and Varon's hand on Yami's shoulder, before Yami had stepped forward. Varon let his hand slide off, swinging down to his side again, watching. It felt like a horror movie.
Horror movies always had idiots going in the wrong direction or to the wrong places or standing still too long. Yami and Varon were standing too long, but the monster, Cerberus, was on the other side of the door. Here was the stupid part about what they were doing; they were going to open the door. You don't open the door to monsters. Was it vampires who had to be invited into a household? He saw that in a Stephen King movie once. Salem's Lot. He had always thought to get a copy of the book, that it might have been scary if it wasn't riddled with unconvincing effects, but he wasn't too big on books.
The sweep of cold air caught him by surprise, sweeping over his face and causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. This was a crappy horror movie. And crappy horror movies weren't scary. But Yami was scared. No, paralyzed, Yami was paralyzed, quite obviously. Which meant the movie wasn't a complete sham.
Varon peered over Yami's shoulder, taking a quick inventory. It was dark, the moonlight streaming in through the thin curtains and dousing the place in an eerie blue wash. The room was small, but tidy; bare, for the most part. From where he stood, the bed was the only thing in straight sight, the white sheets illuminated by the moonlight. The sheets were neatly crumpled, if there was such a thing. The kind from sitting, moving on the bed during the process of a day, but that wasn't what was interesting, and it wasn't what made Varon's eyes widen, made his heart do a quick tha-dunk.
That was blood. It had to be. Dark smears on the bed sheets, too much to have been a shaving accident or something plausible like that, vivid against moon soaked sheets and forebodingly dark.
No, there wasn't much to pack. Plenty of blood, though.. Varon agreed with a nod that Yami wouldn't see. It would be quick. Varon was going to make sure it was. More for Yami's sake than his own, maybe, but blood on bed sheets was disconcerting, and who knew. Maybe Yami hadn't watched Salem's Lot, and so had never been warned against inviting a vampire into his home. Unless it was a master vampire, of course. Maybe Cerberus had already fed on someone before, leaving behind a few remnants, signs, warnings.
Varon was expecting something to leap forward, any moment now. But that was ridiculous, childish. And Yami was frozen enough for them both, so Varon could just concentrate on practicality and helping Yami pack it up as quickly as possible.
"Well, we aren't gonna get much done standing out here," Varon said, donning his most cheerful voice, straightening out his back. "Best get started soon, mate." If we want to avoid the vampires or Cerberus.
But Cerberus didn't lurk in empty bedrooms so stale and plain, and vampires had better things to do than swoop down past thin, cheap curtains and drain people who weren't there. And Yami most assuredly wasn't there.
Blue and silver he remembered from the sea, and that was a first memory he couldn't place. It was in fragments; when was the first time anyone knew the sea? The sea was the sea was the sea, and Yami remembered nothing of the world before it. It was an everpresent concept, and searching for the memories of it, scraps he could recall, was akin to drowning in an ocean of glass. But seas were different from oceans, and Yami no longer wanted such vast expanses of nothing-but-water anyway.
River, he remembered, large as an ocean to a child, so far across that swimming there would seem like miles. And it was so terribly easy to tire and drown. But the trick to that was learning how to float, how to let yourself be carried by the water. It wasn't progress, no, and if you swam against the current, then it was doubly so, because the moment you laid back and left yourself up to the river, you were borne away from your goal, but that wasn't the point.
Surviving was the point. Learning how to let go instead of being destroyed. Sink or swim hadn't been the only choice then, and the sky was so blue.
But that was blue and green and gold, and Yami had to swim now or he'd be dragged under.
And being dragged under wasn't a choice.
More memories of blue and silver -- the blue-green-blue of chlorine in a pool and a silver necklace slipping ever further out of reach. So small, and he didn't think he could sink any deeper, too hard to fight against bouyancy and the instinct to surface again, the need for air.
Because there was nothing stronger than that urge, and Yami had never been one to sink. And his head hurt from pressure and eyes stung from the water, but he'd get that necklace, find it, bring it back. Slipped so far out of reach, small hands slightly larger than the ones stained with blood, because this was after Egypt, and he figured that memory must've been there, if it'd been so warm and gold. Pools were white and blue and green and silver; that hadn't been.
And aquariums. Now Yuugi entered the memory, and blue and silver were tempered by purple and green. Everything so vast and silent. Because it was silent there, unreal, deceptively strong glass keeping strange creatures and worlds apart. Water and air, and Yuugi would grin and press his face against the glass, and Yami would stay back from his brother, from the glass, would watch him, would try to find the top of the tank, try to see up what was above the water, what was where he could reach.
Light was so strange, oscillating and faint but still there, beyond all else, and he found the absense of sound, the peace of it all strange and alien. Cool, too. Cool and slick and silver.
And colors, though faint and distorted by all of the blue. He could understand colors. And he could understand continuing to swim whatever was happening, because he had to find what was at the top of those tanks, what was beyond the false rocks and the enevloping silence of sharks and manta rays, the weightlessness of being underwater, because he belonged watching spellbound over Yuugi's shoulder at the strange creatures in the tanks, not hiding on the far side of the glass. And perhaps the doctor had put him there, but the doctor wouldn't keep him there.
Top. Surface. Breaking the surface. Silver and cool blue that spoke of undertow replaced with gold and the warm blue of the sky.
He'd fixate on that now, and ignore the reality of a room soaked and painted over in the blue and silver of moonlight, white sheets with blood stained a sickening navy on them, his discarded clothing in a crumpled heap where Marik had left it, all of the lights burned out from being left on, his laptop sitting dead, batteries long since used up. This room was abandoned, the air stale, cold, foreign, but Yami wasn't here, and Yami could walk into the room now, ignore everything else, spectre here, a ghost whose presence was unreal, meant nothing, changed nothing. He wouldn't leave fingerprints in this place, and he wouldn't hear Varon's voice, and he wouldn't let anything have changed.
Yami had stepped inside, which allowed Varon to enter, skirting off to the right, looking around the whole place, trying to avoid looking too close to the bed. Dropping the folded up boxes on top of the sheets seemed like a good idea. Spreading them over the sheets might have been a bit obvious, but it would have meant he didn't have anything to glance over to.
No Cerberus so far. No vampires either. There was one corner, on the other side of the room, could have been a likely spot, but the moonlight had dispersed most of the shadows. Turned around, registered desk, chair, shelves, books. Books could be a good distraction.
Varon moved over, squinting at the titles, trying to decipher them in the thin light. Books on all sorts of subjects, varying titles. Most books were battered, used, yellowing. Hardbacks and paperbacks, some shiny new covers which reflected the moonlight back. Couldn't read them properly, though.
He turned around again, spotted the light switch by the door. That would be helpful.
He wandered over, having the freedom of movement now that Yami had progressed to the window, hitting the switch. Waited. Nothing. Hit it again, the same result. Flicked it repeatedly, frowning.
"Great. Your lights are out. Don't suppose you've got a flashlight hiding somewhere?"
Lights? Yami was by the window now, staring. Through glass, that was it. Thicker glass than it looked, holding back so much water, so much pressure. But Yuugi wasn't on the other side, just the night sky, the full moon that was painting the room in this new bluish cast. The courtyard, all strung up with its dazzling lights, wasn't visible from here. Yami wasn't sure it was out there anymore.
Lights. Yes. It was rather dark in here. He hadn't noticed it, hadn't absorbed it fully -- and he wasn't here, so of course not. Flashlight? Shook his head slowly. He didn't have one. Why would he need one? There was the moon there. Laptop as well. He could cross the room and plug it in. Well, not him. He wasn't there. He was swimming.
Thinking about learning how to swim, a memory he didn't have. He'd always known how to swim. Like walking. Thrown out into the water, trusted to know how to keep afloat, but with the promise of support, of being caught and helped to stay above water if you couldn't manage it. Always the concept of a lifeline. But Yami didn't remember any of it, beyond that concept. Might have been invented. Too young for anything coherent to stay anyway.
What mattered now was swimming anyway, not how he'd learned to do it. His thoughts had moved on from concepts of colors, though they hadn't yet accepted that this room was here, even as he turned to the desk across from his bed, the other side of the window, and bent down to find the laptop's power cable. That'd be some light at least. There, plugged in neatly. He flicked on the keyboard light, the computer not having the battery life yet to boot up, then calmly turned the laptop so that its meager light reflected on the room. He didn't need it, but Varon seemed on edge.
Best set to work then. "The clothing can go in there first" -- he indicated the trunk at the foot of his bed with a dismissive hand -- "and then in boxes when if it fills. I'll start with the books."
Varon took another look around by the weak light radiating from the desk. Yami had indicated the trunk, to be filled with clothes. Which were, on second glance, sitting on a bookshelf. Made sense; it saved space.
Varon placed the boxes against the wall, unzipped his jacket, letting the cold seep through his t-shirt as he headed over to the shelves to pull down a handful of t-shirts, moved back over to the trunk, flipped the lid open and deposited the clothes inside. From the trunk, sitting at the end of the bed, the blood was back in view.
The questions were on the tip of his tongue, "Why do you have blood on your bed?" "Yami, mate, what happened here?" "Is this yours?"
He dreaded to think of how Yami would answer him. There was a number of potential reasons running through his mind, and short of finding out Yami was really a girl with a bad period, the other options didn't seem healthy. Or, Yami had a girlfriend, and she had been borrowing his bed. But evidently not taking care of the lights or heating.
He wavered. If he let it pass and never asked, he was pretty sure that Yami wouldn't spontaneously inform him, which would leave him with a gnawing curiosity he'd never be able to sate.
Best to throw it in casually, then.
Moving back to the shelf, slipping into a more nonchalant demeanour, he reached up for the next few items of clothing. "Yami, there's blood on your bed." He pulled down a pair of jeans. "Have an accident?"
Yami glanced at the bed, not even really seeing it at first. He'd known there'd be sheets there to burn, things he'd need to destroy to get out of his head. So much focus on what the doctor had hadn't done to him, no, definitely not, that he hadn't even considered Marik's marks. But those scars were different ones, were fragments and pieces of other lives. Letters carved into his skin and the promise that he could tear his own bones out but never remove the trace left behind.
But Marik hadn't made him feel a thing compared to what the doctor did.
The doctor didn't do anything. He was just confused. None of it was real. He hadn't been changed. He hadn't. He was just the same as always, and it just took a bit of time. Had to acclimate himself and then he'd be fine. And everyone would believe him when he said it. And he'd believe him when he said it. And he would be able to talk to Yuugi and face the world and be everything that he had been, everything that he wasn't now.
Marik. And Varon asking questions about him. Yami set down the book he'd had in hand, placed it back on the shelf on its side.
What was there to say about Marik? He made a deal with Marik. Sold away what was left of his crumbling self. Kamui destroyed what few scraps of him remained. He made a deal with Marik, which was why the clothing -- Yami's eyes flickered there to the floor, a reflex, the clothes dropped carelessly in a heap on the floor, untouched since he'd been there, tears running down his face but no noises coming out -- had been cast off there, and why the corner that didn't exist it wasn't there really it wasn't and he didn't remember being drawn off the floor there Marik touched his cheek made him shiver made everything collapse was the corner, and why there was blood now on the sheets.
"I know," he said finally. But it wasn't his bed, because he was not here, and the Yami that Yuugi needed and that he had to find on the other side of the glass, that Yami would not have been broken and bloodied and torn and with stains on him that no amount of scrubbing could erase. Because he wasn't stained. Refused to be. Knew he was and his skin crawled and the sickness rose. "No accident."
Varon didn't reply at first, instead going over to the trunk again and putting the clothes down, actions slowed down as he tried to think of a decent question to ask now. He stepped back from the trunk, pushing some bangs out of his eyes as his foot sank into something that wasn't carpet. He pivoted, looking down at the bundle of clothes he hadn't noticed before. They had to be Yami's; certainly looked like Yami's.
As to what they were doing in a little pile on the floor, Varon could only speculate. He glanced from the clothes, back to the bed and the incriminating, non-accidental blood stains there. How likely was it that the two were connected?
He stepped away from the clothes. He was going to have to find out what happened here, some way or another. Or, find out as much as he could and attempt to piece it all together for a clearer, logical picture. Unless, of course, it was the blood of Yami's girlfriend. That would explain both the stains and the pile of clothes. Varon wrinkled his nose a little. He wouldn't let a girl on her rag in his bed, especially now he'd seen the result. The thought did occur to him that the blood had been product of some S&M session between Yami and aforementioned girlfriend, but he let that one slide.
But. Did Yami even have a girlfriend?
If he didn't, where did that leave Varon's theory?
He returned to the shelf; "So, you got a bird?"
Yami glanced over from the books he was stacking. "...A bird?"
Varon blinked back. "Heh, you wouldn't know what that means, would ya? I should've realised that, but this can be your lesson on language for the day. It's slang for girlfriend. What I mean is, you got a girlfriend?"
Yami stared, suddenly distinctly aware that Varon was in his personal room, going through his personal belongings, and currently asking quite personal questions. And that he had no idea what exactly Varon expected in return for this help, or what his motive had been in befriending Yami anyway. Or standing up for him in the first place, before -- just before. Surely he didn't expect...? Then again, what else was to be expected from someone with the word slut inked permanently into his very core?
He crossed his arms, uncomfortable and acutely aware of his bare wrist, careful to keep it tucked underneath his arm and out of sight. He'd not yet bought anything to replace the cuffs he usually wore, the ones that had been in this room untouched since Marik before. What exactly was Varon asking, and what was he supposed to do, given the answer? The question was so random and sudden that it had to imply something. Didn't it? Motives; Yami was too aware of motives now, oversensitive to them. Spent too long "knowing" as if he didn't still fear it now that there was no reason anyone could have to help him except a darker ulterior motive.
Weighed his words carefully, judged the distance to the door and the items he had on hand to defend himself. He wouldn't cave again, whatever happened. Couldn't. Refused to. Wouldn't give in again. If Varon had any designs on him -- and he hoped that the worst that could happen would be a disappointed Varon readjusting his notions of what he could get from Yami, but he had to plan for the real worst case scenario -- then he was going to have to fight Varon. The hallways were empty this time of night, when most people had left for home already, which meant that even if he ran, he'd still have to face Varon. And he wasn't going to run.
He could defend himself, or at any rate, the Yami he'd been could defend himself. He'd do whatever it took; there was no other option. And hope for the best. Maybe there was a reason that question came so out of nowhere, or if Varon did mean what he hoped he didn't by it, maybe Varon would just neatly take "No" as an answer and back off.
"I haven't," Yami said calmly, calculating once more the distance between himself and Varon and the door. He could lose him in the hallways easily, take the stairs, get a drop on him, grab a book on his way out the door if he was quick, use that if he could find nothing better. "Why?"
Great. Bye bye relatively safe theory. Varon sighed, raking his fingers through his bangs, "I'm trying to figure out why you have blood on your bed and a pile of clothes next to it."
Yami needed a lot of brainwork. Yami stared a lot.
He pulled down the rest of the pile he'd started on, "I can ask you a hundred and one questions before I shut up. If you'd prefer I didn't know, now is a good time to tell me to stop."
He'd shut up, of course. If Yami specifically said he didn't want Varon to know, and Varon judged that he didn't, then Varon could shut up. He'd have to bite his tongue a lot, and his brain would form ridiculous ideas that were probably beyond rationality, and so much more beyond the truth of the matter, but that would have to do.
Yami nodded slowly in comprehension, relieved but still wary. That made sense, yes, but -- now that Varon's motives had been called in to question, he was painfully cognizant of the fact that Varon had no reason to help him, now or with the dark side. He could handle himself, he hoped, but the concept was still a troubling one. And that's how the world works, isn't it, pet? Exploitation. Strong use the weak. But Yami wasn't weak, he hoped, and the person he'd been wouldn't have accepted that idea.
Blood. So the topic hadn't changed. Was there a way to explain the blood.
He wasn't entirely sure. He didn't know if there was a way to explain any of this. It'd gone beyond what he was quite capable of articulating, even accepting. It'd gone beyond everything. And so had he. He glanced past Varon to the corner, more on edge than a person who wasn't even really in this room should be. Much more.
Yami's first memory of
But it didn't take hold. And Varon was still there, waiting for an answer, and Yami couldn't think of what he was trying to find a memory of. And the answer slipped out of his mouth so easily. "Marik." That was all the answer there'd ever be, for this room.
Yami's answer jolted Varon. He only knew that Marik had done something damaging to Yami, but seeing blood on the bed and a pile of clothes presented a whole new range of possibilities. Rape? Had Marik raped Yami? That was the most obvious reason to blood and piles of clothes. Another good reason why Yami hadn't wanted to come here.
He didn't want to ask, quite honestly. He was quite happy to live in ignorance when it suited him, but then again, wasn't everyone? Block out what you don't like or replace it with what you did. He wasn't close enough to Yami to ask and become involved in a potential rape situation. If it was, then why had Yami gone to that asylum instead of Marik?
He was still holding the pile of clothes -- no, not holding, clutching now -- and still standing beside the shelves. He could walk to the trunk again, throw in another casual comment, but what kind of casual comment can you give to that? He wasn't going to do any of that 'Here, cry on my shoulder' thing. Yami didn't need it, or so he judged, and Varon wasn't that kind of person.
To fill space and time, he walked slowly back to the trunk, placing the clothes in carefully. Yami folded his clothes. Varon threw his on the floor or somewhere to be washed, maybe on top of his bed or under it. They could be ironed when they needed to be. He had plastic boxes under his bed that his mother insisted he take for the purpose of putting clothes in. He'd ended up using them to store magazines, game disks, textbooks, junk food and drink, when he had to. He was even sure he had a couple of small motorcycle parts in there.
Speaking of clothes haphazardly thrown on the floor … he glanced to the pile on Yami's floor. Yami's uncluttered floor.
He had to give a response to the short, 'Marik.'
"He did this?" He gestured to the clothes, then the bedsheets. "Is this why you didn't want to come back here?"
"I never said that," Yami corrected, voice sharper than he would've liked. Than would've been normal. Too much edge to it; he needed to adjust.
He still hadn't looked, dead stare fixed on the books in front of his face. He couldn't read the titles, and it had nothing at all to do with the dark. Someone else's books, anyway. His books. Just like this had been his room, so it wasn't as if Yami should have a problem being here -- and he'd never said that he did, had he, because that wouldn't be normal! -- given that up until...then, Yami had been him, and this had been Yami's room, and all of this had been familiar, and there wasn't a crumpled heap of clothing or sheets with dark stains he refused to acknowledge existed.
Wouldn't look over his shoulder, wouldn't listen to Varon, wouldn't talk to Varon about this.
Of course he'd look. Breathed in slowly, inaudibly, forced the strain out of his voice as best he could, and glanced over his shoulder at Varon, at the bed, at the clothes, playacting unaffected better than he had before. Had to look, and have this conversation, because if none of this had done anything to him, then why should he have trouble discussing it? That was just silly.
"There's nothing wrong with this room," he continued. "Whatever happened here." Smiled as warmly as one could manage with their face painted pale blue and cut harshly with shadows. "And Marik is nothing."
Varon wrinkled his nose. He wasn't stupid, he wasn't blind, and if 'Marik' was a one-word answer for an incriminating question, then Marik was more than nothing.
He bent down, snatched the pile of clothes off the floor and dropped them into the trunk. There. No more clothes lying on the bedroom floor. He wasn't going to touch those sheets.
Yami had said 'Whatever happened here', which meant something definitely had happened, and Varon knew now, without pressing any further, that he wouldn't find out what the 'Whatever' really was. Not that it mattered. He didn't need to know and he wasn't close enough to Yami for that, anyway.
"If you want to be able to use those sheets again, you'd better get round to cleaning them." Varon said, going back to the shelves again. It was a matter of practicality gleaned from his mother. Getting into fights meant bloodied noses and so bloodied white school shirts, which would be placed in a tub of cold water and salt to get rid of the blood stains. Varon liked to marvel at how his mother managed to get rid of such prominent stains. She was good at that.
He grabbed another pile of clothes. Time for a change of subject, since Yami's smile wasn't as comforting as it probably should have been.
"We shoulda set up cameras or something, to see the look on Professor Ishtar's face when she finds her car."
Any relief Yami might have felt in response to the topic change was a nonstart; he'd caught the momentary flicker of...something across Varon's face, and even without that cue, the change in his tone of voice was more than enough of a giveaway. Right. Wrong answer, then? Or did Varon just not believe him? He was used to not being believed in, lately. And this seemed like a good time to explore his first memory of the color yellow, but as appealing as that option was, yellow didn't really have a place here, just yet.
It might, eventually.
Sheets. He remembered the sheets. Knew the sheets quite well, yes. He'd slept on them for weeks, even if it seemed like a lifetime ago, and that generally led to a certain familiarity, yes. Yes. But. Never again. Never again.
Because even if nothing Happened, that didn't mean he'd ever come back to this room again, oh, no. Not in this life, not in the next. This was a door he'd shut behind him for the final time, and a place he'd never revisit. This, this was an altar. One to a god he did not know and upon which had been sacrificed abstract concepts of all assortments, meaningless words like pride and stability and self, that never should've been offered.
And now they were burnt, pretty pale ashes so soft they could be liquid, and this was penance now. He'd had to watch all that lovely dust slip between his fingers, fast as he could pick it up, and no tears to give it substance or hands cupped in supplication could do anything about that. This was a tomb, and he'd leave those ashes here, remains of something long dead, and leave this place.
Resurrected. Untouched untainted image of the thing he'd been in life. Because surely surrender past the point of feeling pain or fear was not life. And when he got to the end of this thing, he'd live. There was no other choice. And perhaps with ashes smeared on his forehead, caked under his fingernails, wet and sooty from tears on his face, but that was irrelevant.
And tangential. Had to focus. Had to. Couldn't remember what Varon had last said, scanned him for some sort of clue. Oh. Sheets. That'd been it. Sheets. Burn them and scatter the ashes, ruin the perfect white of the snow. Would that change all this? Would that seal this in the past and leave the future without memories? It'd lock away the darkness that the stains represented, perhaps, but he wasn't sure what that even meant.
"You can't get rid of a stain like that," he said finally. Calmly, distantly. Lapsing into silence too often lately, eyes fixed darkly on what was not there. "It'll never wash away, no matter how much you scrub. You could bleach it, maybe, but" Split the skin open, break your bones apart and "it'll still be there" a smear on that hypocritical soul of yours. "So it doesn't really matter. I wouldn't reuse it anyway."
His wrist stung now, and he convinced himself his nails were nowhere near it.
Varon opened his mouth to share with Yami his mother's infinite wisdom, then promptly shut it again. Now that he thought about it, he realised how unlikely it would be that Yami still wanted sheets that had bloodstains on them from some activity that probably involved Marik.
He looked back to the shelves; no more clothes left there. Yami, however, still had plenty of books to pack away. He was staring vacantly, not doing much at all. Varon moved over to the window, brushing aside the thin curtains with his fingers, gazing out into the snowy expanse of campus ground. Sparkly and bright, reflecting the moonlight. That was probably why the room was lighting up so well.
Also probably why the room was so cold. He glanced around, trying to find the tree wrapped in fairy lights and the snowman altar, to which the entire campus could pay homage. But they were facing the wrong side of the campus for that. He should have looked to see if it was visible from his own room. He'd do that when he got back.
He liked it better when Yami was cheerful and pelting snowballs at anyone passing.
"Need a hand with those books?" he asked, dropping the curtains.
...Books.
Yami dropped his wrist, startled, suddenly coming to. Yes, books. He was supposed to be packing the books. His books. He hadn't read in a while, not really; settled for writing Kaiba's manual and playing with Defeb and stuffing his head full of Dark designs to play out with Varon. Because Varon was childish games and the sort of sparkling that left innocents spellbound and wide-eyed, and wasn't that so much a better world than the one he currently inhabited?
First memory of snow he did have, because that'd been Japan and Yuugi was already firm in his head by that age, and the sky was dark grey like steel wool and the air just as harsh and the snow didn't stick, just evanesced upon touching the ashpalt, but he walked out onto the sidewalk and stood there, stunned, and watched all of the snow fall around him anyway. Pretty snowglobe world with no accumulation: just the same silver flakes swirling round and round and round.
Books now. Needed to put away books. He'd like the books, once Varon and Kaiba and Noa and all the rest were gone. Because he couldn't go home, not like this; snow globes are finite, are one small sphere enclosed, and he was on the wrong side of that glass. The rest of the world on the outside, distorted. Yes, he'd need the books.
Rubbed his wrist idly, smearing invisible letters beyond comprehension. "Sure. Thank you." He picked up his stack, mind focused again on the task at hand. Ignored the question of how he'd put the books into the trunk without existing in this room.
Varon joined Yami by the bookshelf, pulling books down one by one and cradling them in one arm. "No problem, mate."
It wasn't a problem. Varon didn't mind helping people. Rather liked it. He was just a helpful kinda guy, unless you just so happened to offend Varon. Then, Varon would begin to beat you to a bloody pulp. But Varon was generally a nice person, and he liked having friends. He needed more, considering his best friends were currently his Xbox and its console, but he'd work on that some other time.
As for now, he had a partner in fairy lights and snowmen, which counted as a friend, he guessed. Yami counted as a friend. Varon didn't know anyone else on the campus who would sit in a tree, in baltic weather, hurling snowballs at passers by and building snowmen as a shrine. Not to mention the general button insanity.
It was all fun. A fun Yami. This wasn't a fun Yami, and Varon preferred fun over serious or distant. So, he gave Yami a little nudge.
"Hey, snap out of it. Better get these all packed away or we'll be here all night," he said with an encouraging grin.
All night. That didn't sound very appealing, no. Incredibly unappealing, actually. No one wanted to spend a night in a tomb, of course.
Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. Yami could envision quite a bit of fun being had exploring graveyards, or spending a night in a crypt. Weekend in a haunted mansion, great big Victorian-style house with Christian ghosts that creaked up stairs half-transparent and glided through walls in silence. Or violent poltergeist, perhaps. Smashing things and making odd noises and causing doors to slam shut without warning. That'd be fun.
Or a Mayan temple. Stone with bloodstains centuries upon centuries old, strange rooms built at unusual angles, aligned to stars marking mystic dates that no one had any concept what meant. Altars to greet the dawn with human sacrifice, and subterranean passageways that wound for ages through jungle, strange carvings all throughout and deadly traps. And green all around. Not like Egypt, barren and blinding and vividly gold, but everything green and humid and crawling with life. Rain constantly, hot and sticky, rain like blood.
That got a bit of a smile, cheered him up the way Varon's shift in tone had been meant to, that little nudge. Distraction was was a good thing, the idea of rainforest in every direction, all vitality and bold colors and stifling heat and humidity and the sounds of thousands of living creatures, so much more appealing than a room that breathed of silvered blue and sepulchres. And this place was numbing, a place fingerprints could not be left and breath could not be taken; definitely better to be somewhere dark and mysterious and terrifying, a place that made you cling to life instead of feel that it had already been taken away.
He knelt down to set his books into the trunk, careful to wrap a particularly decrepit old volume on astronomy up in a soft shirt before stacking the rest in, and then glanced up to Varon, still at the bookshelf. "Ghosts -- what do you think of ghosts?"
Heh. Maybe Varon wasn't the only one getting that horror movie feel.
He noted that Yami was putting the older books in carefully, and glanced at the bundle in his arm. Nothing particularly old looking. But, ghosts. Ghosts were interesting. He'd loved scaring his cousins with ghost stories. Their grandparents' home was old enough that he had created a whole host of imaginary spectres, loving the way his irritating, high pitched cousins screamed and ran away from whatever the haunted object was; wardrobe, desk, ink well, thimble. They were so hilariously gullible.
"I dunno." Varon answered, going to join Yami by the trunks and squatting beside it to start putting the books inside, "I used to tell ghost stories to scare my little cousins. Haven't decided if I think they exist, though. It'd be cool if they did, though, I guess. Why do you ask?"
Yami smiled at that. Ghosts. Ghosts inhabited the same silver-plated wonderland that snow and fairylights and Kaiba's button genocide and marigolds and monkeys with huge liquid eyes did, and ghosts he could very much see on the dark side. Schemes were beginning to form, pretty little plots like the shiny brass innerworkings of a clock, all intricately connected and delicately arranged and begging for the meddling hands of an inquisitive child to disassemble them and rearrange them into a clinky, dysfunctional but lovely mess.
Clocks were much more interesting with their insides spilling out, pretty metallic entrails picked apart for the sake of curiosity, and Yami liked a world without time in it anyway. Trapped within and without time, in limbo, but with plenty of interesting angles and springs to stretch and snap and little gears to click together. Time was irrelevant anyway, blurred by perceptions and confused memories and made ultimately into a useless curiosity itself.
"Ghosts would be interesting." Yami waited for Varon to put in the last book in his stack, then shut the trunk, latched it securely. "When you get back, the dark side should look into them." Already pretty pictures of flickering candles and foggy graveyards and wrought-iron gates were taking up residence in his head, flavored by the rattle of bones and creaking hinges and the sensation of blood running cold.
A small smirk, because fear used to intrigue Yami, amuse him before...this, and "used to" Yami would make "does" by sheer force of will. "Unless you're scared, of course."
Varon gave a derisive snort of laughter. "Scared? Of what? Cold chills and a white sheet going 'Boo!' I think not, Mutou." He dropped onto his backside, giving Yami a grin, "Yeah, the Dark Side should adopt ghosts. Fits in with dark, eh?"
He gave an experimental glance around the room, in case some unearthly being had decided to conjure itself up for their viewing pleasure. "Ghosts must be lonely old buggers. People run away from them too fast for them to make friends. That must break their ectoplasmic hearts."
Mutou. He hadn't expected to be called that, having become used to not hearing his surname. For that matter, up until recently, he'd not been used to hearing any of the names he'd once considered familiar. Not Yami, like Kaiba used, or Mutou-kun as was normal, or just Mutou, or aniki from Yuugi. After all, he wasn't Yami, was he? Just "pet" or "darling whore." He wasn't sure which bothered him more.
"First name," he corrected. Term of address was a choice, just like use of a given name required permission, was a gift. "Hardly fair to call me by my surname when I can't return it."
And ghosts. That was still a very pretty idea. Yami shifted, folding his legs underneath him Indian-style and leaning a bit on the trunk, books momentarily forgotten in favor of sitting in the dark like children telling ghost stories.
"I don't think it breaks their hearts, that alone. Much worse to be dead in the first place, incapable of doing anything but watching." Yami smiled though, tone lightening quickly. "To think of those poor creatures, helpless but to stand by and witness the brutality of the modern world, genocidal maniacs slaughtering whole villages of buttons left and right--! It must be very hard on them."
Varon twitched. Of course Yami didn't know his surname. There was a good reason for that. Varon had asked every lecturer and professor on campus to call him by his first name, and they had agreed, after a spell of laughter that resulted in the same pinch of red on his cheeks there was now.
Not that Yami would see in the dark. Which was good.
There was a good reason he hated jocks. Good reason why they loved him. It was scarring, one of the most horrible surnames anyone could ever be cursed with. It would have been fine if it was just a connotation, but no. Instead, he was cursed by meows and cat collars in his locker and even a bag of cat treats. The squeaky mice, however, made for good ammo.
Distraction! Hated his name, hated it hated it hated it!
He swallowed, forcing himself to grin, "Yeah! They must be tearing themselves apart because they can't help! Maybe we should offer the uses of our bodies -- MysurnameisTibbles -- so that they may communicate with the world and help with the grand fight for button freedom and safety!"