Last Waltz Part 6

[apollymi]

Series: Yu-Gi-Oh
Extended Series: Endless Loop
Word Count: 51,502 (total); 7,137 (this part)
Chapters: Master Post
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII
I think I got my wish, and I got it in spades too.

I find myself waking up with the worst headache I have ever had, short of a demon attacking my brain. That's saying quite a bit. I'm not sure if I want to groan or throw up or possibly both. I do know, however, that I don't want to move.

To say I feel like shit would be the biggest understatement of the century, if not the millennium.

Okay, I'm not making that crack about waking up with hangovers when I'm not a drinking man ever again. If this is what a hangover feels like, I'll take a demon attack and concussions any damn day. At least they usually aren't full body events.

"Good morning, sunshine."

I'm going to strangle Mai. Unless she turns the volume down about six points, I'm going to strangle her. Oh, wait, she's already dead. I'll have to bring her back, and then I'll kill her. I manage to grunt something completely unintelligible that might manage to be an acknowledgement of her words.

"Are you back among the living now?"

I peek one eye open. At least it's fairly dark in the... Where the hell am I? Mai's sitting in a chair that is in no way familiar, and I'm lying on a bed that's likewise unfamiliar.

"Where am I?" I croak out. Honestly, I sound like a monster from one of those bootleg horror movies Ryou loves so much, and talking hurts, both the act of doing it and the volume of my own voice.

"First off, there's water on the nightstand. Drink as much of it as you can; it should help with the hangover. You really should have listened to me when I told you to slow down."

I sit up gingerly and drink about half of the glass before my stomach starts feeling queasy. I carefully set the glass back down again before I speak. "I don't remember any of that, Mai."

She snorts, and for once, the sound is not at all pretty. "Oh, I'm not surprised. When you don't drink, it's generally not advised to go straight for the hard liquor."

I wince hard. "I'll bear that in mind, if I ever decide to drink ever again."

"Secondly, I can understand want to move on from Yami, but drunken sex is not part of Project Move On." Oh God. I can actually feel the blood rushing to my face. "Thirdly, you are apparently a clingy drunk, and I do not want to be in the room with you having sex ever again. It is not in my top ten list of awesome things, and gay sex is not one of my kinks."

"Can I just go ahead and die of embarrassment right now?" I moan to myself.

"Nope," she declares cheerily. "You paid the front desk for three hours, and I think your time is about up, unless you want to pay for another hour."

And apparently, I can check 'visit a love motel' off my bucket list, if it weren't for the fact that it actually was never on my list. Apparently, I managed to completely fall off every wagon I was ever on in one go.

"No," I declare decisively. "I want to go home and die quietly in my room. Why the fuck do people drink if the aftermath feels like this?"

"Well, for starters, they don't usually have the aftermath the same night. It looks like you have some of Kaiba's metabolism in this aspect. At the rate you're going, in fact, you might be perfectly fine again before the night is over."

If I weren't completely certain that it would hurt like hell, I would thump my head down against the wood of the door. "It's still the same night?"

"Yep. You've been here about three hours, and I would guess you were drinking an hour or an hour and a half pretty steadily. I mean, damn, I've seen wolves that wouldn't have been able to keep up with you, the way you were chugging back shots. Magnum might have, but he knows when it's best to quit drinking. For the record, it was five drinks before you left the bar with some random guy."

"Great. I'll try to keep that in mind." I have to groan the minute I hit the street. "Goddamn, I feel like shit."

"After all those drinks and all that drunken fumbling attempts at sex, you should."

"Mai, babe, sweetheart, please quit talking about the sex," I plead. "I'm having to repress every time you say it."

"I'm not sure I want you repressing anything. I'm pretty sure that's what led to this." She shakes her head. "At least it wasn't much more than blowjobs and frottage, but it was still more than I wanted to see. Please, please, learn how to let me wander out of the room when you start that stuff."

Well, that's a small relief at least. Maybe. I think. I'm not sure it's a moral victory I really want to call; yeah, I had a one night stand in a love motel, but it's not like it was actual sex or anything; and I'm completely certain that it's nothing I want to talk about from here on out.
"I'll work on that, Mai." I swallow against the bile in my throat. "Thank you."

"Thank me by never doing anything like this ever again, please." The words sound like a joke, but I'm pretty sure that she doesn't mean it that. I'm pretty sure that she's dead serious.

"I don't want to." I summon up a smile and try it out on her. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I want to have a ceremonial burning of the rest of Gouzaburou's liquor. Once my head quits hurting and my stomach calms down, I mean."

"Good." She wraps a frigid and intangible arm around my shoulders. "I'm sorry about Yami, otouto. If I see him, I'll kick his ass for you. Just please don't do this ever again. I hate seeing you like this."

"Thanks, Mai." I'm still not sure if I want her to, but I guess that she offered is...

Well, actually it's really awesome. Somehow I managed to strike gold in the Awesome Ghostly Big Sister contest. I'm none too sure on how, unless I stole someone else's ticket, which oddly makes a lot of sense. Nice shit just doesn't happen to me.

"And hey, on the bright side, maybe Kaiba was too busy with Chono or whatever to pick up on everything that's happened tonight."

"Oh God. Please, Mai, kill me now. I don't want to have to sit through another Kaiba lecture."

She rolls her eyes and chuckles. "He doesn't lecture."

"No, it's worse. He just sits and stares and gives me this disappointed look and sighs. It might as well be a lecture. Hell, it might as well be a funeral, it's so depressing to sit through."

"You haven't exactly been to a lot of funerals, baby boy." I offer a shrug. It's the truth. "Remind me sometime to take you to a wake. Now that's one hell of a party."

"I'm pretty sure I don't want to know."

How the hell far from the bar was the love motel anyway? I don't think we're that far from the house now, but I'm not looking up. Even just the light on the street is almost too bright for me; I don't want to glance up and risk streetlights. That's one headache I really don't need, literally as the case may be.

"It's only half a block further, if we cut through onto the back of the property," Mai supplies.

Okay, so that means we just have to cut across... Oh. Oh, fuck.

"Did I say that out loud?" I have to know.

She nods slowly. "You have a pretty good monologue going here. I didn't want to break it up." She rubs a hand over my hair, and I can almost feel it, like you can feel a soft breeze. "Sometimes your little monologues are the only way I can tell how with it you are. You're too damn good an actor."

"You shouldn't take advantage of sick people like that, Mai."

"Oh, so now you admit you're sick? I thought you told Kaiba that you weren't sure, and you sure as hell sounded like you thought you weren't."
I wince. "You heard that, huh?"

"Bakura, I think half of Domino heard that." Well, fuck. She stops right in front of me, hands on her hips, and fixes me with one of the sharpest looks I have ever seen from someone who didn't have the last name Kaiba. "Pick a point, Bakura. Are you or aren't you still sick?"

She's not going budge until I answer her. Furthermore, she's not going to let me go anywhere until I answer her. Better to get it over with in that case.

"I don't know. Maybe. I'm not with it some of the time... Okay, I'm not with it a lot of the time. I'm somehow missing about two years. And I can't keep my mind on task most of the time. Hell, I carry around a recorder in case I drift off or black out."

Which seems to be curiously missing from my back pocket. My money and all were still in my shoes, but my pocket recorder seems to be missing. I guess I can only blame it on my one night only friend.

"So you are still sick?" She repeats it, almost as if she's trying to put it to memory - or drill into my head. I shrug.

"I guess so."

"Damn," she huffs. "I would have thought that the fourth mark would have taken care of it."

I shrug again. I'm actually starting to get a little tired of this, but it's less the fed up tired and more than hopeless tired. "I guess that demon messed my brain up more than I thought. I mean, hell, even Varon said it nearly killed me, even with the first mark back then, and Kaiba had to give me two more before I could even wake up. I don't know. Maybe there are some things that are outside what even the marks can fix."

And isn't that a goddamn cheerful thought? It's one thing to know these things to yourself, in the semi-privacy of your own mind, but it's another altogether to actually have to say them out loud. Mai is getting way too good at making me doing these confessions. I know they're supposed to be good for the soul or whatever, but I can't say that I like them.

She nods slowly; she's giving herself a moment to think over what I just said. The hands are still on the hips, though; she still not going to budge. "So does Varon think that it's, what, physical? Psychological? What?"

I find myself shuffling from side to side, foot to foot. Okay, now this is going to fucking suck. It's going to suck out loud. Better to get it over with, I guess. "I haven't told Varon about it," I finally mumble.

"Speak up. I'm sorry. I don't speak idiot very well. Did you seriously just say you haven't told him about this?" And yep, I was right. It sucks out loud. "God damn it, Bakura, he's your doctor! That's what Kaiba keeps him around for!"

I roll my eyes. "Kaiba keeps him around because Dartz and the cats would leave if Varon did. Besides, there's nothing physically wrong with me. It's all on a level that Varon can't touch, not with any amount of surgical instruments." She cocks an eyebrow in a very clear question. "The damage was done to my soul, Mai. This is just how it is manifesting in the mundane world."

"Okay, break it down into stupid werewolf terms. I really don't know that much about souls and demons and such."

And yet she's walking around a spirit that I created, even if it was completely by accident and without any actual knowledge on my part that I was doing it.

"The long and short of it is pretty simple. The demon tried to use my powers and my soul - and me too, I guess - to break into this world from where it was imprisoned. With me so far?" She nods. Good. That was the simple part. I would have hated to have lost her there. "When it was doing that, trying to break into this world, it used my powers as a two-way conductor, more or less, which they were never supposed to be. It left great big holes in my souls, in a manner of speaking.

"Most of the holes are plugged one way or another, either with the marks or my ghosts or the little bit of me I left in Marik, but there are still some gaps."

"And then these gaps are where your problems are sliding in," she surmises.

I nod. "It's the simplest way I can think of to explain it. It's not perfect, but it functions. It's a functional explanation at least." I would have preferred, if I had no choice about explaining on this but actually had time to prepare, to give her something a bit more elegant and complete. For what I had to work with, it's okay, though.

"So is there any way to fill in the holes?"

I find myself blinking in surprise and confusion. "What?"

"The holes that are causing you so much trouble. Is there any way to seal them? Maybe the same ways you've sealed the ones that are dealt with, perhaps?"

I actually haven't given too much thought to a fix for my problems. In all honesty, I am pretty much at the acceptance stage of the game. The holes are there, and there isn't a lot I can do about them. Patching them over oddly never really occurred to me, mainly because... Well...
"Actually, I have no idea how the holes that were there got patched in the first place. I don't remember doing it. In fact, it's completely possible that I did it while I was in that coma to be able to wake up at all. At this point, Mai, it's all one big crap shoot."

"Well, then, let's see about changing the odds. We need to find things to plug up the holes, so to speak. Not literally, of course," she offers with a smile and a wink. The hands finally come off her hips, and she sidesteps to move along pace with me. Good, we can finally get out of here, and I take immediate advantage of it. "So what all do you have in the gaps that you do have closed? Specifically?"

I sigh quietly. There's absolutely no chance that she didn't hear that, but I feel a little better just getting it out. I adore Mai, but sometimes she is too damn persistent. I guess that's what makes her so damn good at her job, but still, it's a bit uncomfortable having it turned loose on you. I don't think I'm ever going to be used to it.

"Most of the gaps are filled with the marks. There are great big chunks of my soul filled up by that." And that doesn't make me uncomfortable. No, not at all. Why would anyone think that? "My ghosts are the next biggest pieces."

"By 'your ghosts', who exactly do you mean? The ghosts that come to you for help or the ghosts that you yourself created?"

Yep, I was right. She's not going to let this go, not until she gets the answer she wants. Somehow I get the feeling that that answer is how to fix me.

"The latter."

"So me and Yami," she murmurs. She doesn't look particularly pleased to be bringing up his name, even in passing like this, but I guess she kind of has to if she's going to keep pursuing this line of questioning. And then suddenly her eyes go a bit wide. "So what are you going to do once Yami finally moves on? If he's one of the things holding your soul together?"

I shrug tiredly. The thought has actually occurred to me. I put it off every time it came up, though, hoping that I would have found a way to bring Yami back before it became an issue. "I don't know. Find a new bit of putty to stick there or just have another gap. I really don't know."

"We'll have to come up with something. Is that it? I thought you said something about Marik?"

I nod slowly. "When I separated him and Malik, a little bit of my power lodged itself in Marik. Not enough that it would hurt either of us, but enough that I know he's there. I can tell that he's alive, though that's about it. It does give me a little bit of him to patch into a gap as well."

Mai is silent for several long minutes. Glancing over to my side as we walk, it's pretty easy to see that she looks a little impressed. Some days I can't even believe I managed to do it. I mean, feeling like crap as I was, barely out of the coma, and I still managed to separate the two of them all on my own.

Hell, I even managed to use a wee bit of my power - boosted a bit by Kaiba's - to help Marik build a body just for him. And that's how Marik is always going to be one of mine. Malik was one of mine from the very beginning. I have to say that I claimed Kitty pretty soon after Ryou brought him home.

But Marik? Him I never really claimed. As the more psychotic half of Malik, he was a full part of the gang and a great asset and maybe even something of a comrade, if not a friend, but I'm not sure I would have risked my life for him if he weren't sharing a body with Malik - and Malik I would have risked my life for. I still would.

But yeah, now Marik is mine. No force in the world is ever going to be able to change that. I can't influence him, and apparently, he can't feel me in return. On the other hand, he can't influence me, as far as I can tell anyway, but he's always going to be walking around with a piece of my power stuck inside him.

Obviously, I think this is all kind of awesome. It's nice to know that my power can do something that doesn't directly involve the dead.
"Do you think you would be able to stretch that to fill the gap Yami's going to leave?"

I know I've said it before, but goddamn, Mai's persistent.

"I don't know. Maybe. I haven't ever tried anything like that." And there's that 'long tailed cat' feeling sneaking its way back in again.

"How hard would it be to try?"

I blink at her. Hell, I have to blink at her a couple of times, maybe even more than a couple. "Mai, we're talking souls here. It's not something you try on the street corner, not without a spotter at the very least. You don't do a damn thing with them unless you have time and space and backup who know what they're doing when they're around souls."

"So you do have half an ounce of common sense after all," a chilly voice cuts in behind me. And God damn it, I know that voice. Only one person in the world sounds like that. That's Kaiba. Oh, fuck me.

"Kaiba," I greet him, turning to face him. Somehow I even manage to sound halfway level and almost not at all shaken up by the fact he snuck up behind me. Frankly, he looks pissed as hell, though, so my efforts might be wasted.

"We need to talk."

Oh yeah. I'm fucked.

Mai mouths out the word 'busted' at me. Why is she bothering to be quiet? It's not like Kaiba can hear her, even if she shouts directly in his ear. It's both one of the advantages and disadvantages of being a spirit, I suppose.

Getting home with Kaiba around and pissed is going to suck out loud.

There was actually a car waiting for us, not even half a block away. Seriously, Kaiba had someone drive him less than a block to come retrieve me. If he didn't look so damn pissed, I would be laughing my ass off at him.

He actually seethed all the way back to the house. The car let us off at the door, and with one sharp hand gesture, he motioned for me to follow him back to his office. He didn't say a damn word until the office door was shut.

Seriously, he didn't say a single word from when he picked me up until we get in the door. Even for Kaiba, that's a bit odd. He tends to run cold, yes; anyone with eyes and a brain can tell that; but this is a new level of cold even for him.

He takes a seat behind his desk, steeples his hands before his face, and stares at me in consideration.

It doesn't take me long to break. Maybe that's predictable, but still, damn, I hate it when he pulls this kind of shit. "Will you quit doing that? You look like Ikari Gendo."

I can actually watch the anime reference go right over his head, mostly thanks to the utter lack of reaction in his eyes. Now that I can actually meet Kaiba's eyes, I've figured out that almost all his tells are right there. His eyes are what make the subtle difference in each expression, even when almost every expression is just a variation on one blank face. Without those tells, let's just say that I would hate to play poker against him.

"What the hell were you thinking, Bakura?" The words by themselves might be angry, but his voice is deceptively calm. If I didn't know better, I would think he was bored out of his skull having this conversation. He's not bored, though. In fact, he is actually angry. It might be a bit of a glacial angry, but it is angry nonetheless.

"What was I thinking about what?" I prevaricate. I'm not admitting to anything, not until I know what he's pissed about.

"Tonight. Where you went. What you did."

I roll my eyes exaggeratedly and flop down hard in my chair. "I was thinking that I needed to get out of the house for a bit. Do forgive me for trying to have a normal life."

"You and normal aren't on a speaking basis," he mutters. "So your idea of 'normal' is to go out, get blind drunk, and do who knows what else for hours?" He actually growls faintly. I think I might be shocked. "I wasn't able to pick you up at all for hours, Bakura."

I can't help it: I perk up at that. "So if I drink that much, the connection dies down?"

I probably shouldn't sound so happy about that, but it does mean that Kaiba wasn't able to pick up what was going on after the drinking. It also means that if I have a need for privacy in the future, I might have a method of achieving it now.

Nope, I definitely shouldn't have sounded so happy about that, if the growl Kaiba's letting out is any indication. "You..." He trails off before he even really gets started. He even glances away from me and takes a couple deep breaths that he doesn't need to calm himself back down. Damn, I did manage to piss him off this time. When he speaks again, every word is very deliberate. "Let me see if I can put this in a way you would understand. You went dark and silent for several hours. Chono is in the city. You and I both have enemies, in addition to her. Can you connect the dots yet, Bakura?"

I can't resist letting a smirk grow across my face. It's probably the most honest expression I've worn in the last two days. Another day, that might even bother me. Not today, though. Today, I seriously don't give a shit about much of anything. "You were worried about me."

He lets a breath hiss out between his teeth. "That's what you take away from this? We have a credible threat, and your biggest concern is that I was worried about you?"

It's honestly probably a bit bad, but I shrug. "Chono isn't a threat. Hell, the first time I met her, I nearly shot her arm off... and I don't even like guns. She's a bad penny. She's not a 'credible threat'."

"Akunadin and Vivian are, though. We have no way to track them or trace them. For all we know, they might even be back in the city."
"Not if they know what's good for them," I mutter under my breath.

Of course, he hears me though. He's a vampire. Why wouldn't he hear me? "I don't think either of them really care too much about any threats you might make against them."

"They will," I state direly. It's not a threat any longer. By now, it's become a promise.

He sighs heavily and rests his forehead on his hands, massaging his temples lightly. And here I thought that vampires didn't get headaches. I guess Kaiba has to prove them wrong on that front. It's either that, or I have spontaneously developed the ability to cause tension headaches just by talking. It would be a neat power to have. Why can't I have neat ones like that?

"Do you know that my head starts spinning at least once a night trying to follow your logic?" he finally complains quietly, just loud enough for me to hear him.

"You should probably see somebody about that. I hear we have a very good doctor here on staff."

"You really don't have an off switch after all, do you?" It's an old complaint. I've heard it more times over the years than I can safely count. The first complaint might have been made in the heat of the moment of a zombie attack, but the rest of them have been made when I'm frustrating him over something. "Why did you have to go out and do this tonight?"

I sigh, closing my eyes, and leaning back in my chair. It really is comfortable enough for sleeping in, if Kaiba permitted such things as people sleeping in his office. He pulls out the card of 'You have a perfectly good bedroom' whenever I start drifting off down here, though, so I haven't gotten to try it yet, though not for lack of trying.

"Can I leave it at 'it's been a shitty couple of days'?" I don't exactly have high hopes for that one. Kaiba is, in his own way, as persistent as Mai. The only difference is that Mai will give me a breather every now and then from the conversation. Kaiba, not so much. He will keep asking in different ways, until he gets an answer.

"I would prefer not." It may sound mild, but it's not. He's completely immovable. He would wait right here until I 'fess up. He's nigh on immortal too, so he could.

"Fine, fine, though I don't see what business my personal life is of yours." He doesn't even dignify that with a single word. Instead he just fixes me with an arch look and gestures for me to continue explaining. I bite back a few insults, but eventually I start talking. "Fine. Yami dumped me." And God, it sucks to have to say that. I never thought that day would come, but here it is anyway. "Yami dumped me, yesterday sucked, and I just wanted to go drink a while and forget about it." I chuckle vaguely and rub at one temple where the last of my hangover is starting to fade away. "I learned my lesson about the getting plastered, so it's over and done with."

"Back up. Explain." Damn, I knew this was too easy. It is a very, very rare day when I am able to talk circles around Kaiba. "What do you mean about Yami?"

I shrug, trying for nonchalance that I don't really feel. "He said it was time for him to move on. He waited the fifteen years he promised me, but it's time. He's going to visit for a little while, every now and then. Of course," I add with a sarcastic chuckle, "that was before I told him to go fuck off, so I'm not sure if he's still planning on visits or not. I'm not sure I would, if I were him."

From the look in Kaiba's eyes, I have not done anything here to improve his impression of Yami. The two of them hate - hated - each other, and that's not changing any time soon. Saying he dumped me probably isn't helping matters, though.

I might have accidentally shocked Kaiba silent, though. It actually takes him a few minutes to recover enough to find something to say. "Why now? Did he have to drop that kind of bomb today?"

"I don't think he's been following what kind of cases I've been working on lately. If he has been, then he's been on the down low." Seriously on the down low. I never even got so much of a twinge of a feeling like he was nearby, not for several months. He said that he was around and hiding himself from me, but I'm not sure how he could go about doing that. It wouldn't have been easy. "He said that he was tired of watching me try to find a way to bring him back, that it was time for him to move on, that it was time for me to move on."

"So you decided that the best way to move on was to go out and get so drunk that you, what, blacked out?"

I can faintly hear Mai snicker from at the door, but I'm resolutely ignoring her on this. I don't want to go telling Kaiba about what I don't remember from tonight. "Yeah, pretty much I blacked out. I remember going to a bar and I remember starting to drink - then I woke up and it was several hours later." It's a decent glossing over of what all happened tonight from what Mai told me.

I am not discussing my sex life with Kaiba after all. Talking about my personal life as it stands right now is hard enough. I'm not adding my nearly nonexistent sex life to the discussion too.

There is stillness for a long moment, then he shakes his head slightly. "I'm having trouble with the whole idea that you actually went out and drank yourself under the table, Bakura. It's not something you do. Try to kill someone or rob a museum of everything worthwhile, yes, I can see you doing either of those, but getting drunk, that I cannot see."

"And yet, somehow, that's what I did. Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do."

His eyes narrow. It looks like that barb hit a little close to home. "No, I think I know you quite well at this point, Bakura. I think you wanted to do something totally out of character for some reason. I just haven't quite placed why yet."

"Did you miss the part where Yami dumped me?"

He shakes his head slowly. "That's not all of it, though, is it?"

Okay, maybe I actually growl a little. "That's all of it that you're going to know."

And it's pretty easy to look at Kaiba and know that that answer pissed him the hell off. He actually looks like he just swallowed a lemon. It's not just in his eyes this time. Nope, right now it's written all over his face - and in full Technicolor too.

There's this twinge at the back of my mind. It's not one I pick up often. In fact, it's very rarely that it ever shows up, mainly because Kaiba very rarely tries to meddle in with my mind. In fact, he's said more than once that my mind is a terrifying place that he would generally rather avoid. Apparently, this is not one of those general times.

"Get the fuck out of my head, Kaiba!" I'm on my feet and scowling, and I don't remember moving. I'm not going to blame this one on a blackout or anything. This one is just plain that I'm pissed the fuck off. "You don't get to pry in there."

He pushes himself to his feet as well. The movement is controlled and smooth in a way that all but broadcasts just how angry he is. He's only this level of controlled if he's trying to keep it all together. "And you don't get to disappear for hours on end and nearly drink us both into a coma."

"You don't get to say anything about that."

"Then you don't get to say anything about if I need to pick information from your brain."

"It's my brain, and I think I have the right to say if anyone else can come in it." It's a less than compelling arguing point, but I like to think that it's a valid one.

"And it's my body that started getting drunk off how much you were putting back."

In some deep recess of my mind, I have to be a little amused that Kaiba just pretty much admitted to getting tipsy off how much I drank. If all of the rest of this were not going on, I would be laughing my ass off.

"So, what? I'm not allowed to mourn a relationship dying?" That came out a little melodramatic. I'm glad Mai's not in here. She would never let me live that one down.

"Mourn it if you want. I really don't care! Just mourn it... Mourn it in a more typical Bakura fashion. Knock over a museum. Steal Pegasus blind. Go beat Chono within an inch of her worthless life." He sighs, shoving a hand roughly through his hair. The thought oddly goes through my head that I think he picked that habit up off of me. I know I do it enough. "Just..."

He's actually floundering. That more than anything actually breaks through some of that white wall of anger that was starting to build up.
"It was mostly an experiment anyway," I comment quietly. "I wanted to try to forget, to maybe be somebody normal for once."
He shakes his head. "Just be Bakura. That's good enough."

"Damn straight." Oh crap. That was Mai. So much for my hope that she wasn't in the room to hear me being melodramatic. I'm never going to live any of this down.

And yeah, okay, I guess I do smack my palm against my forehead a little harder than I meant to. It's not like there's that much to damage up there anymore.

"What?" The question comes from Kaiba. And yeah, I can understand the confusion. After all, I just facepalmed in the middle of us talking, more or less.

"Mai agrees with you."

He looks a little nonplussed for a moment before finally nodding. "Good."

I can practically hear Mai grinning from here. "I knew I liked him for a reason. See, baby boy. When the smartest two people in your life agree on something, it's time for you to start listening."

"Mai, I really don't need the 'in touch with my feelings' speech right now, okay?" And maybe I sound a little bit more pitiful than I strictly feel, but it gets even one of them to leave me alone.

And Kaiba actually snorts in amusement. "You would have to admit that you have them first, and that's never going to happen."

Okay, you could knock me over with a feather right now. That was something I never expected to hear come out of Kaiba's mouth in a thousand years. Is it Confusing and Pissing Bakura off Day again already?

"You're one to talk, Ice Prince," I fire back. It's not anywhere close to witty, but honestly, I don't care. I just want to get out of the conversation sooner rather than later.

"Touché" comes from Mai's corner of the room.

"I'm not the one getting lectured, though, am I?" Okay, suddenly, Kaiba looks way too amused for someone who was just engaged in a yelling match with me less than five minutes ago.

"I can change that, if you would like."

"No, thank you. I'll pass on that opportunity. Another time perhaps."

"Perhaps." There's a giggle from the back of the room, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have not to whirl around. "What, Mai?"

She's definitely giggling, a hand covering her mouth and everything. She shakes her head and waves off my attention. "Nothing. Nothing at all, baby boy. Please, do continue."

"Is Kujaku being... helpful?" Kaiba asks, and it's actually almost friendly. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't know what to do with a friendly or cheerful Kaiba. It's a thing unheard of, truthfully. Maybe when Kitty was still here, but that's been years.

Actually, thinking back, has anyone in this house been happy at all since that night? Kaiba's been on lockdown and grumpier than usual. I've been burning myself out trying to find a way to bring Yami and Mai back. Just about everyone else has left. Damn, we're a miserable lot in that case.

"Way too helpful," I answer. "She's giggling like a schoolgirl at something, and she won't say why."

"If you don't know why I'm laughing, Bakura," she chimes in happily, "then I'm not saying. You're going to have to guess!"

"You're not laughing. You're giggling like a loon," I return. "And I'm not sure that I want to try to guess what goes on in your mind."

I can see Kaiba faintly shuffle out of the corner of my eye, and I turn my attention back to him. "Can you promise not to repeat tonight if at all possible?" he asks after what seems to be several long minutes' deliberation. "And especially not to do it for profit or as an experiment or anything like that?"

"I can try" is the best I can offer him. "I can't guarantee something won't set me off or whatever."

"If it does, all I ask is that you don't deal with it this way again. I just ask that you be Bakura, not someone else."

There's really no point in arguing this. It's not like I disagree with him per se. "Okay. Can we drop this now? This might be the most uncomfortable conversation I think I've ever had," I pause for a second, considering, "that didn't involve my brother."

"Good to know."

"Baby boy," Mai chimes in, "every conversation where you can't bully and push your way around is uncomfortable for you." This time I just ignore her. It seems like this wisest path.

"Any word on Chono?" Maybe it's a very obvious job of changing topics, but I would really rather get it off of me and my supposed intimacy issues. I've had this conversation with Mai in many forms too often over the years. "Is she still in town?"

Mai snorts in amusement, but Kaiba at least lets me get away with it. I'll just be glad for small favors in this case, I decide as he settles back into his chair. "Last I heard, no, she hasn't left town yet. It looks like she's trying to lay low here."

"I have to wonder what gave her the bright idea to come here, once she left Osaka. I mean, surely she has to have heard about Hirutani by now. It's been years, after all." It's thinking aloud, yes, but at least this time I'm dong it on purpose. I do it accidentally far too often for my taste.

I really sometimes regret Hirutani. Killing him, it probably wasn't the right thing to do.

I didn't do it right, the way I should have. Honestly, I let him die way too quickly. I should have tried to find a way to keep him alive and in pain until Jounouchi-kitty could kill the bastard himself.

I guess I was just too... too... too something, angry maybe. I was too blinded by what had happened that I didn't even think about drawing it out like I should have. I didn't think about saving him. I just went in, tortured him, and killed him. It wasn't enough. I didn't have nearly long enough with him to sustain over the years that have passed since then. I didn't think that it would take us nearly this long to find Akunadin and Vivian.

Though, of course, my killing Hirutani is how we managed to find out that Jounouchi, Malik, and Marik are still alive and out there somewhere. So that is a major point in the plus column. For that, if I had known it was true at the time, I might have been willing to let the bastard live. Might. He did a lot before then to seal his own fate, and if I didn't do it then, someone else probably would have well before now. The bastard really wasn't well liked.

Or rather, he wasn't well liked except by the bits of the pard that stayed with him after Jounouchi vouched out, the ones who stuck around after Dartz and them left and after Marik ate Keith. That might explain why Chono would have stuck in Osaka all this time, since it was where he last moved the pard before his unfortunate demise, but still, why come to Domino and why now of all times? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, and I don't like it.

"Perhaps she thinks it's been long enough and that it's safe here now," Kaiba offers.

"Which just means that she doesn't know me very well." I don't let go of things very easily. I never have.

"Remember: you can't kill her when you find her." Good job, Kaiba. He said 'when' I find her, not 'if' I find her.

"I won't kill her, I promise." And I actually mean it. "I'll just make her wish that I had."

There's really nothing else to say to that, is there?