[drabble] Slow Burn
Challenge Name and Number: #056, Mirror
Drabble Title: Slow Burn
Word Count: 592
Warnings (if applicable): None
Pairings (if applicable): Rerunshipping (Noa x Yami Bakura)
Summary: After so long inside the Ring, he starts to forget when he's not inside his own mind.
Author’s Notes: Abstract-ish, canon-ish. Hope you enjoy!
Slow Burn
After so long inside the Ring, he starts to forget when he's not inside his own mind. Thousands of years is too long when more time is spent tucked away than it is on the surface, over so many different lifetimes, that after a while they begin to run together like so many watercolor paints.
He sees ghosts in nothing and everything, behind every closed door and closed eyelid. For the longest time it was the ghost of the Egyptian Priest he'd killed, but eventually the man had left him in favor of other haunts, and he'd learned to ignore the shades of the monsters crawling out of doorways and the screams of those he'd consigned to the Shadow Realm.
One ghost in particular is more daring than most, and Bakura first notices him because he acts so different than the others. The shadows linger just out of vision, but this one makes a habit of staring at him, of watching him at every turn with sharp eyes and thin lips pressed together into a pointed smile without the barest hint of teeth.
The next day he is gone, and Bakura turns towards his games, plotting and planning and twisting and dreaming until the Pharaoh he has fought for so long is dead and buried for real this time, his skull smashed underneath Bakura’s foot. He replays the moment over and over again in his head, breaking the bone to dust beneath his feet, laughing until he needs to stop to breathe.
The green-haired ghost continues to stare at him, moving closer and closer, until those thin lips part and he begins whispering in his ear.
“Are you sick of going 500 miles-per-hour in the wrong direction yet?” His voice slithers all around him, and Bakura imagines the breath grazing the shell of his ear. “If you are, I can help you. But all help comes with a price.”
“And what is yours?” Bakura turns, for once acknowledging him as more than a ghost, as a real presence in this world. The green-haired man stands unmoving, and as Bakura leans closer he can see his reflection in the mirror of the other’s eyes.
“What shall I ask for? Hmm, the options are so plentiful…” He sighs, tapping his chin with a single elongated finger.
“I have no time for this. I have to defeat the Pharaoh.” Bakura cannot break first, not when he is so close to his goal; not when he has been so close for so long, not when the opportunity is before him, surrounding him from all sides. Not when he has waited so long. Not when he might have so long to wait.
“I can fix that for you. I can fix problems you didn’t even know you had.” For the first time, his razor-sharp grin shows a flash of teeth.
The next day, the green-haired ghost is nowhere to be seen. Bakura wonders if it was a one-time offer. He searches for him, angry that he has somehow found a way to escape his grasp. There is nowhere he cannot reach, nothing he imagines cannot be made real. One glance at the Ring around his neck is enough to confirm this.
Later, he is back, whispering, “How dangerous is the thought that none of this is real? How dangerous is the thought that it is?”
After so long inside the Ring, he starts to forget when he's not inside his own mind. Today he cannot see the ghost again. Today is real.
Or so he thinks.
Drabble Title: Slow Burn
Word Count: 592
Warnings (if applicable): None
Pairings (if applicable): Rerunshipping (Noa x Yami Bakura)
Summary: After so long inside the Ring, he starts to forget when he's not inside his own mind.
Author’s Notes: Abstract-ish, canon-ish. Hope you enjoy!
Slow Burn
After so long inside the Ring, he starts to forget when he's not inside his own mind. Thousands of years is too long when more time is spent tucked away than it is on the surface, over so many different lifetimes, that after a while they begin to run together like so many watercolor paints.
He sees ghosts in nothing and everything, behind every closed door and closed eyelid. For the longest time it was the ghost of the Egyptian Priest he'd killed, but eventually the man had left him in favor of other haunts, and he'd learned to ignore the shades of the monsters crawling out of doorways and the screams of those he'd consigned to the Shadow Realm.
One ghost in particular is more daring than most, and Bakura first notices him because he acts so different than the others. The shadows linger just out of vision, but this one makes a habit of staring at him, of watching him at every turn with sharp eyes and thin lips pressed together into a pointed smile without the barest hint of teeth.
The next day he is gone, and Bakura turns towards his games, plotting and planning and twisting and dreaming until the Pharaoh he has fought for so long is dead and buried for real this time, his skull smashed underneath Bakura’s foot. He replays the moment over and over again in his head, breaking the bone to dust beneath his feet, laughing until he needs to stop to breathe.
The green-haired ghost continues to stare at him, moving closer and closer, until those thin lips part and he begins whispering in his ear.
“Are you sick of going 500 miles-per-hour in the wrong direction yet?” His voice slithers all around him, and Bakura imagines the breath grazing the shell of his ear. “If you are, I can help you. But all help comes with a price.”
“And what is yours?” Bakura turns, for once acknowledging him as more than a ghost, as a real presence in this world. The green-haired man stands unmoving, and as Bakura leans closer he can see his reflection in the mirror of the other’s eyes.
“What shall I ask for? Hmm, the options are so plentiful…” He sighs, tapping his chin with a single elongated finger.
“I have no time for this. I have to defeat the Pharaoh.” Bakura cannot break first, not when he is so close to his goal; not when he has been so close for so long, not when the opportunity is before him, surrounding him from all sides. Not when he has waited so long. Not when he might have so long to wait.
“I can fix that for you. I can fix problems you didn’t even know you had.” For the first time, his razor-sharp grin shows a flash of teeth.
The next day, the green-haired ghost is nowhere to be seen. Bakura wonders if it was a one-time offer. He searches for him, angry that he has somehow found a way to escape his grasp. There is nowhere he cannot reach, nothing he imagines cannot be made real. One glance at the Ring around his neck is enough to confirm this.
Later, he is back, whispering, “How dangerous is the thought that none of this is real? How dangerous is the thought that it is?”
After so long inside the Ring, he starts to forget when he's not inside his own mind. Today he cannot see the ghost again. Today is real.
Or so he thinks.