"So, Bakura-san. How are you feeling today?"
The thief's eye twitched. "I'm sitting in therapy. My hikari and his idiot friend have nullified my powers until the end of this session. And I have been trapped in a hunk of gold for FIVE THOUSAND YEARS! How do you think I feel!?"
The therapist blinked. "Your...powers?"
"Don't ask," he snapped.
Again the therapist blinked, before scribbling something down on her pad. Bakura squinted, trying to read the kana upside-down. 'Delusions of grandeur,' he made out.
"I AM NOT DELUSIONAL!" he barked.
"Of course you aren't," Dr. Hio agreed with a falsely sweet smile. Bakura glowered at her.
"Now," she continued. "You mentioned something about...five thousand years...?"
"Yes," he spat. "That's how long it's been since I died in Egypt."
"Ohh, so you've been having past-life experiences then?" she asked with wide, falsely curious I-really-don't-think-you're-a-nutcase eyes.
His own eye twitched. "I AM a past-life experience, you ignorant twit!"
"Now, now, Bakura-san, manners. From what I hear, that's part of why you're here in the first place."
"Don't remind me," he grumbled.
The therapist wagged her pencil at him. "Man-ners," she repeated in a singsong voice.
Bakura glared daggers at her. "Don't remind me, Hio-san." He put special effort into the contempt in that last word.
"Better," she replied with a nod. The Tomb Robber's hands twitched in the effort of keeping himself from reaching out and breaking her neck. "So. Back to past-life experiences. When did you begin having them?"
His hands twitched again, and his left eye followed. "I repeat," he said in a low voice, forcing himself to breathe deeply, "I am not having past life experiences. I AM experience from a past life. I died in Egypt. I am dead. Do you understand me? DEAD!"
"...So you're a vampire."
A dark-lined eye began twitching incessantly. "I. Am. NOT. A. VAMPIRE!" He screamed the last word at the top of his lungs. Dr. Hio was suddenly glad of her decision to soundproof the room as she noticed the sides of her hair fluttering. She blinked slowly.
"...Zombie?"
Twitch. "No."
"Poltergeist."
"Closer."
"Ghost."
"Almost."
"Spirit."
"Thank you."
Another scribble on her notepad. "A spirit, hm? You realize spirits are non-corporeal."
"Of course," Bakura agreed.
"Then how do you explain your entirely corporeal presence here in my office?" As if to make her point, she leaned forward, reaching toward him with her pencil.
Faster than she could see, his hand snapped out and wrapped around the pencil. "I realize I'm corporeal. But don't. Touch me." The pencil snapped as his hand twisted, and he dropped the eraser end with a clatter onto the coffee table between them. There was a pause, and the woman then retracted her arm and scribbled something else on her pad. 'Violent tendencies,' he read this time.
"I DO NOT HAVE VIOLENT TENDENCIES!" he roared.
The doctor quirked an eyebrow at him. "Really."
"Ignoring the fact that at this moment I'd like nothing better than to twist your head off your shoulders, yes."
Hio-san nodded, scribbling something else on her pad.
"And why in the sands do you keep scrawling your chicken-scratch all over that tablet?!" Bakura burst out, choosing to ignore the fact that she had amended her previous note to include the word 'homicidal.'
"Merely taking notes on things that interest me," she offered, finishing her amendment with the words 'outbursts' and 'overuse of expletives.'
"Would you like to know what interests me?" he queried. "After all...we are in therapy."
Hio-san paused, wondering if she should make something of 'we' as opposed to 'I.' She decided to shrug it off as his having included her in his statement, and moved on. "Well. Usually my patients don't bring that up themselves, but since you have, yes, Bakura-san. Do tell me all about your interests."
He smirked. "I like to steal things, for one." His smirk widened when he saw her begin writing 'kleptomania.' Before she could finish the word, he went on. "I also beat my other self, when he deserves it." 'Abusive.' "I can show you the bruises," he added, lifting his shirt to show fading spots of purple near his ribcage. 'Self-mutilation.' "For the five-thousand years I was trapped, I lusted after the seven Millennium Items, that I would do anything to get, yet remain beyond my grasp." He took great pleasure into launching into his next sentence before she could finish the words 'obsessive,' 'rambling,' and 'fabricating false memories.'
At the third turn of the tablet's page, Bakura decided to step things up a bit. "And one day, I shall defeat the Pharaoh, and claim the Millennium Puzzle as my own, as it should be and should have been millennia ago. This will bring me one step closer to my goal of opening the Door, and ultimate power! Yes. The Millennium Puzzle will be mine! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!" He concluded with a particularly and intentionally over-the-top evil laugh, ending with a mad grin at the sight of sweat breaking out on the good doctor's forehead as she rounded her fourth page.
"But what interests me most, right here, right now, is the thought of running you through in gruesome and painful locations with the gold letter opener which occupies the top drawer of your desk even at this very moment. ...I'll leave the rest to your imagination," he finished with intense satisfaction, leaning back and crossing his leg over his knee as he laced his fingers behind his head.
Hio-san had just finished one hasty line of kana and begun on another when she froze, blinked, and looked up at Bakura quizzically. "How did you know I have a gold letter opener in my top desk drawer?"
Bakura smirked. "I know many things, my dear Hio-chan."
Dr. Hio instinctively scowled at the low honorific, but was too occupied with her thoughts at the moment to make a reply. She thought perhaps she had been opening a letter when Bakura-san first walked in...? Yes, that would be it. 'Over-observance leading to delusions of ESP.'
She looked up at the pale-haired teenager across from her, as if expecting more. When he remained smugly silent, she sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Well. You certainly do have a lot of interests, Bakura-san." She flipped back through her notes, half of which were illegible, and grimaced at the sight.
"Thank you. I do so appreciate your taking the time to make note of every single one."
She shook her head a little, hunching over her tablet to attempt to decipher and sharpen the hastily-scrawled kana. "All a part of the job," she muttered, proceeding to take several minutes to clear and darken the worst bits of it. Bakura's smirk widened with glee.
"Having difficulties?" he asked with a sadistic pleasure, leaning forward and returning his arms to their resting place on his thighs.
"Oh, no no, not at all," Hio-san returned truthfully, finishing the last bit and straightening in her chair. She smiled her paste-me-on smile at him. "But I do thank you ever so much for your concern."
The Tomb Robber blinked in surprise for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed back to their usual glower, and his mouth turned into a frown. "Persistent mortal," he snorted.
Hio-san blinked, brows knitting together. Bakura saw her mouth the word 'Mortal...?'
"Oh!" she remembered suddenly. "That's right. You're still under the impression that you're a spirit."
Thief King growled in his throat. "I AM a spirit, you idiot! Do I have to beat it into your head with that papyrus tablet of yours!?"
"Manners, Bakura-san," she reprimanded sharply, pointing her pencil at him. But then she noticed she was pointing with the broken end, and that one eye and both his eyebrows were twitching in suppressed fury. She quickly dropped the subject, instead returning to her pad to write down 'multiple facial tics.'
"You will remember, Bakura-san," Hio-san went on, "that we are in agreement on two facts: one, spirits are non-corporeal. And two, you are not."
"I'm not a three-year-old, you idiot, I can do the math and DON'T EVEN SAY THE WORD 'MANNERS' TO ME!" Dr. Hio's lips thinned to a line, but she kept her silence. "Yes, I am a spirit. Yes, spirits are non-corporeal. No, I am NOT an idiot. I am a spirit INHABITING a flesh body. This body is MINE, but I was not born in it. I possess it, thanks to this." Here he held up his pendant. The Horus Eye upon it glinted malevolently.
Hio-san tilted her head to one side, seeming to have forgotten about her pad for the moment. "Interesting. What is it?"
Bakura smirked. "This? This is the Millennium Ring, one of seven that I've been telling you about."
"Fascinating," she nodded, scribbling on her pad once more. "And it's in this that you claim to have been trapped?"
The Ring's pointers jingled slightly as Bakura's fist shook on the gold. "...'Claim'?" he hissed. "'Claim'!? I don't CLAIM anything! I was TRAPPED in this pendant for FIVE. THOUSAND. YEARS!" With each word, his grip on the gold tightened. The jingle became almost steady under his shaking fist. "ME! The great Egyptian King of Thieves! Touzoku-ou! Trapped in solitude with a DEMON! FIVE millennia! GO-SENNEN, you TWIT! How many ways must I say it!? Trapped, demon, item, me! ORE-SAMA!"
The doctor's only reaction was to scribble down the word 'ego-centric,' and then flip back a few pages to find and underline the word 'delusional.'
Having had enough, Bakura leapt to his feet. "I am NOT delusional! And I will not sit here and—and—" he cast around, trying to dig up a phrase he'd heard on the talking picture box once. "—Have my head shrunk by a twit!" He huffed and turned to storm out.
"Bakura-san," Dr. Hio called after him cheerily, "your friends booked you an extra-long session. We still have two and a half hours left."
Bakura froze, his hand inches from the knob. Two... and a half... hours? He wasn't sure he could stand another two and a half minutes in the same room as this...being. His hand moved forward, but then his hikari's words reached him: //Remember our deal, Bakura-sama.//
The yami froze again. Yugi's and Ryou's warning returned to him: 'You'll get your powers back when you finish your first session.' His fingers twitched. Darn you hikari.
Innocent laughter was his answer. //This is for your own good, yami.//
Somehow I doubt that.
"So you've changed your mind?" Hio-san asked as Bakura turned and strode back to his seat on the couch. "Wonderful!"
Bakura snorted.
"Now, where were we...?" the therapist wondered, looking over her notes.
"I'm not delusional," the teenager muttered.
"Ah yes, I'd forgotten, that's where we were."
Thief's fingers twitched.
"Now... what was this about your... 'other'?"
Bakura stiffened. "That's not a subject I'd rather discuss."
"Indeed. And why's that?"
The boy glowered at her. "Because he doesn't exist," he snapped.
Hio-san leaned forward. "Did he tell you that?"
A scoff. "Of course not."
"But do you believe it?"
Bakura rolled his eyes. "No," he muttered, "but it'd be nice if you did."
More scribbling. "You and your... 'other'... don't get along very well, do you, Bakura-san?"
"Not at times, no."
"And why do you think that is?"
Bakura scoffed. Maybe because I'm a five-thousand-year-old thief and he's a seventeen-year-old honors student? Could that possibly have something to do with it?
//Be nice, Bakura.//
I didn't say it out loud, did I?!
"Could it be," Hio-san interrupted into the silence, "because you are the...'possessing spirit' and he is the...?"
"Host?" Bakura finished. "Probably."
"Host," Dr. Hio repeated. "Interesting. And how does your...'host' feel about being possessed?"
Bakura shrugged.
"Never thought to ask him?"
"Never cared. He doesn't complain."
"Doesn't he?"
"No."
Another note. "And how long have you been...'possessing' your host?"
Again the Thief King shrugged. "Few years now."
"And what was your host...what's his name?"
"He doesn't have a name," Bakura snapped quickly. Hio-san raised an eyebrow. "We share our name," Bakura amended. "His name is my name and my name is his."
"So your host's name is also Ryou Bakura?"
The thief sighed inwardly. "Yes," he answered, relieved. The less some stranger knew—really knew—about the two of them, the better. There was no 'yami' and 'hikari'—just tenant and landlord.
"So what was the other Bakura-san like before you met him?"
Both Bakura and Ryou smiled to themselves at 'the other Bakura-san,' for Ryou's being called 'Bakura-san' as much as the fact that neither really remembered either of them ever being called 'the other one.' "How should I know?" Bakura asked. "It was before I met him."
"And you don't share his memories?" Hio-san asked.
"Of course not," Bakura said in mild surprise. "Why the heck would I? I have my own."
"From Egypt."
The glare returned. "Yes, from Egypt. What are you getting at?"
"So you don't have your own memories from the time the other Bakura-san was born to the time you took control?"
"I told you. I was trapped in the Ring with a demon."
"Do your memories ever coincide with the other Bakura-san's?" she asked, pointing back and forth with her pencil between Bakura and an invisible figure apparently sitting to his left.
Bakura's eyes narrowed. He really didn't like where this was going.
***
-Two Hours Later-
***
"So," Yugi asked, "how did it go, Bakura-kun?"
The small boy's constant smile faltered at the sight of the white-haired yami's face. He looked as though he'd seen a ghost—which, given that it was Bakura, didn't make much sense.
"Bakura-kun?" Yugi asked. "Are you okay?" Bakura didn't seem to hear him, and kept walking. Yugi panicked.
"Ryou!" he exclaimed, running forward and stopping the taller boy with a hand on his elbow. "What happened?"
A flash from gold, and a warm but worried chocolate gaze looked down at him. "Ano... Yugi? I think perhaps this might have been a bad idea."
Yugi blinked. "Ryou, what happened?"
The taller boy rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Well, Hio-san has spent the last two hours picking apart the differences and similarities between Bakura and myself—what he'd tell her, at least—and trying to convince him that we're the exact same person, our separation of personas is self-induced, and that he has no powers."
Yugi blinked. Again. "That's crazy."
"You know that, and I know that," Ryou agreed. "But she kept insisting that it's all in our head—that he's delusional. She's good; she almost had me convinced."
Yugi shuddered. "Okay, that's creepy."
Ryou nodded. "Yes. I think perhaps it would be best if we didn't come back here again."
"Agreed." The boys turned to leave—
—When Hio-san popped her head out the door. "See you next week, Bakura-san!" she called with a cheery wave.
Yugi pulled his next step short to avoid crashing into the boy in front of him, who had frozen at the sound of the doctor's voice. Yugi saw a flash of gold, and glancing up saw locks of white hair curving into horns—and felt nearly yanked off his feet when Yami pulled partial control to leap them out of the way, a mere split-second before it happened.
"GYAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" Bakura let out with a strangled yell. "NO! I can't TAKE it anymore!" Everyone else in the room stood frozen, and Bakura spun, Ring glowing blue as it cut the air in a wide arc, taking supreme advantage of his having finished that session—and praying, just praying that it counted.
His eyes were wide, his irises red and narrow, and the horns of his hair looked sharp enough to cut. "PENALTY GAME!" he screamed, pointing a finger directly at the doctor's face.
Everyone. Froze.
For a moment, nobody breathed.
//Please,// Ryou thought,//don't let it have worked.//
Please, Bakura thought, let it have worked.
Onegai, Yugi thought, don't let it have worked.
//Oh,// Yami thought, //NO.//
The good doctor blinked a few times. Then she knitted her brows, and tilted her head to one side. "...Who are you, exactly?"
Bakura smirked in triumph, lowering his arm. "I, dear Hio-chan, am a delusion."
The woman blinked quizzically.
Bakura's smirk cracked into a fanged sneer. "I'm a figment of your imagination, Hio-chan. That's right. You've spent the last four hours psycho-analyzing a figment. You're delusional, Hio-chan.
"After all," he added, spreading his arms, "look at me. Do I look real to you? Red-brown eyes." He pointed at his right eye. "Hair—" he pointed to his horns "—that defies gravity. My jacket—" he grabbed his lapels and shook them, making the tail wave "—defies gravity. My pendant—" he shook the still-blue Ring "—glows. Do I look real to you!?"
Hio-san only stared, her jaw going slack.
Bakura sneered at her. "Good luck with the rest of your clients, Hio-chan. I hope the next one's real." Then he turned and strode out the open door.
There was a pause, wherein Hio-san stood there in confusion and an appalled Yugi looked with horror back and forth between the shrink and the open doorway.
After a moment, Yugi pulled his jaw up, swallowed, and turned to the doctor. "Ano... Hio-san?"
This seemed to knock the woman loose from her stupor, as she jumped, then shook her head as though trying to clear it. "Crazy people are starting to rub off on me..." she muttered.
Yugi tried again. "Are you okay, Hio-san?"
She looked at him as if only just noticing he was there, and her eyes bugged. "Puh—!" she said, pointing at him. He blinked.
"Hio-san...?" he took a step forward.
This was apparently a bad idea, as the woman leapt back, the arm pointing at him now shaking. "Puh... puh-puh-puh-puh!"
Yugi blinked.
"Purple!" she finally shrieked.
...
"What!?" Yugi burst out.
"PURPLE!" she repeated, pointing from one of his eyes to the other. Then her own eyes widened, as her gaze slid higher. "Geh..." she choked out, pointing once again. "Guh..."
"Hio-san?"
"GRAVITY HAIR!" she shrieked, before letting out a final scream, turning on the balls of her feet, and pelting back into her office, slamming and locking the door behind her.
Yugi stood there for a moment with his mouth hanging open. Then:
"BAKURA!" he hollered, turning and pelting out the door.
This time, he actually was lifted off his feet, by Bakura's hand on his jacket collar as he shot past.
The thief set Yugi back down and crossed his arms. The smaller boy looked up at him. The yami's still-red eyes were narrow, his jaw set. Yugi's eyes bugged at him.
"Bakura!" he exclaimed. "Put her back!"
Bakura burst out laughing. "And why should I?"
"Please, Bakura, it's not right; she was only doing her job—"
"No," the thief intruded with a sadistic grin, turning and walking off.
"Bakura-kun!" the small hikari shrieked, chasing after him. "Stop! Put her back!"
"No," the yami repeated, still laughing. "Though I might have to if my own hikari doesn't shut up."
"Ba-kurr-aaa!" Yugi whined.
"Oh hush, Chibi-Yugi. You should be pleased; I must admit I feel much better now."
"Bakura-kun that's not the point."
The thief seemed to ignore him. "And it was more than worth it for what she said about your hair."
"Bakura!" Yugi turned pink. Once more, Bakura burst out laughing.
Yami! Yugi shouted across his link with his other. Help!
What he got in return was a snort of suppressed laughter.
Yami, it's not funny!
Another snort, suppressed with more difficulty this time. //Sorry,// the Pharaoh replied with definite amusement in his voice. //You're right, it's not funny.//
You have the same hair! Yugi snapped.
This time, the Pharaoh laughed outright.
Shut up! Yugi whined. And anyway, help!
//What do you want me to do, Aibou?//
Fix her!
//I can't undo a Shadow Game, Yugi, not one enacted by somebody else.//
Then make him do it!
//You think I can?//
You can try!
//Give me control, then.//
-shift-
//Fine. Now help!// Yugi pleaded.
Yami chuckled to himself. "Touzokuou."
Bakura glanced back at him with a smirk. "Pharaoh."
"My hikari wants me to ask you to undo your last Shadow Game."
"Does he?"
"Mm."
"Well. Now you've asked," Bakura noted, fangs glinting.
"That I have," the Pharaoh returned with a smirk.
//YAMI!//
