Fate: This will have a prologue and seven chapters. That I can tell you now. And since I'm being barraged with ideas, I think it's going to go fairly quickly. This story's about Bakura and his multitude of false hosts, the evilishness of some, the weirdness of others, and ultimately, the nasty ends that they all met at our favorite tomb robber's hands.

Disclaimer: Oh, all right. Yu-Gi-Oh is Kazuki Takahashi's. Not Fate's. Really. Even though everyone here seems to believe the contrary.

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How do you start a story?

Especially one like this?

I'm not sure. It's painful to do, that I'm sure of. Dragging the story out, dredging up all the hated memories, feeling my skin crawl and my body tense in a way it hasn't done in so very long...

Maybe I should start with the present, before I regress so far back I might loose myself...

"Hikari?"

"Yami?" There can be no doubt he is what I have called him. His identical looks, his opposing personality, the family name so very much like my own, and the Ring mark us as bonded for eternity and beyond.

And I know--know as I could never know with any of the others, no matter how much I tried--that he will always hold a piece of me, and I of him.

I'm soft about him, perhaps. But I have reason to be. I can be cruel to the world and to myself and to life in general, but I don't bother with the illusion of evil in front of him.

I am but mere shadows, mere wishing, mere dreams.

"Um..." I crack my knuckles, a nervous habit I've kept for all my countless millennia of popping in and out of existence. "I'm...starting to be afraid...that..."

"What's wrong?" Ryou immediately rounds the couch and sits next to me. He has good reason for doing so. I never profess my fear unless there's a damn good reason.

Like now.

"It'll be seven years at midnight," I say haltingly. "Seven years since...since you got the Ring."

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Ryou comments softly. "But why are you afraid?"

I swallow. "You...you're the seventh."

"Excuse me?"

"You're the seventh person to wear the Ring. The seventh person to have me. And...for every person who wears the Ring, I get one more year with them, for better or for worse, before..." My voice cracks. "Before I know if they're really destined to have it, or if they're just pretenders," I blurt out, putting my head in my hands.

Ryou blinks. "I don't understand." But even as he says it, we look at the clock.

One hour.

One hour until my bloodstained hands might become a little redder.

"I..." I start, fail miserably, clear my throat, and try again. "I'm...attached to you," I begin, nearly choking on the words. "And I..."

"What?" Ryou prompts.

That simple word drags the whole thing out of me. "And if you're a pretender and not my soulmate then when it's midnight I'm going to have to kill you!" I burst out, ending on a near-scream.

"What?!"

Inhale. Exhale. It's not needed since I'm not alive, but the ritual of breathing soothes me.

"I get a year for every person who wears the Ring. I stay with the first person a year before the Judgment, the second person two years, and so on and so forth," I say, forcing my voice to stay calm. "Seven years are up for us at midnight. And..." I look at the ground. "I know you're my hikari. I never truly knew with the others, but I'm still afraid. They never specified that I wouldn't kill you...just that pretenders to the Ring would in the end be punished. But...once someone puts the Ring on...even if they never again wear it, they're marked for death. That's...it happened," I whisper. "And...I'm so tired of killing people that I..."

"That you love?" Ryou finishes quietly.

I nod and swallow, my eyes stinging oddly. "I'll murder to protect someone, I'll murder for myself, but this is..."

"We have an hour," Ryou says. "And then we'll have a lifetime after that," he adds reassuringly.

"Do you...?" Breathe. I don't know how to finish the question, but I have to.

I have to finish the story that it begins.

"I need to tell you...about the other six," I finally say. "I have to. You should...you should know. You should know why I am the way I am. Before..."

Ryou leans into me almost unconsciously. "Then I'm listening," he replies.

I close my eyes. "There's just one thing you'll have to remember, Ryou."

"Yes?"

"Some of these people I loved. Some of them I hated. But in the end, I killed them all. And it might be you that I next destroy."

.y.a.d.o.n.u.s.h.i.

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