all ten toes
yuugiou fanfiction
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying spiders have seven legs.

A/N: Happy Friday. Very drabble-y and incredibly short.

The sun was hot against his back. Under the bandages that wrapped his torso the skin was being broiled. "I'll have a motor-bicycle," he explained, making a vague gesture of gripping two handlebars. "She'll be red like the sun on a river of blood. She will be my lady. You can come with me. I'll take you for a ride."

The shade squatting across him in the sand was his mirror image, a mirage that some merciful god had sent to be his companion. The fingers were translucent and through them the boy with hair like yellow ash could see the bronze sun, but in his hair those fingers danced with the ephemeral rhythm of wind. They pulled and felt and the boy swatted at them absently, with an absent:

"Stop that."

The purple-blue eyes were wide with reproach. Tell me about this motor-bicycle, said the ghost, moving one hand to stroke at the boy's shoulder. They seemed the same age but the wraith had under his eyes many thick strokes of black that crinkled into tired gray lines. His face was old but the childish curiosity with which he touched the boy he seemed the youngest of souls. Red like the sun on a river of blood.

Red like your back?

The boy scoffed. "My back is no longer red," he said loftily. "It will be black soon, and the bandages shall go. In ten years it will be white like the tusk of the beast that wanders the jungles."

The ghost's fingers shifted to his back, tracing through the bandages the left wing of Horus with a cruel wondering pressure, and the boy hissed and pushed at the hand half-heartedly. "Sss! Ibn-sharmuta! That hurts. Nnngh. . .stop!"

The boy lay gasping on the sand.

Pain. It tingles. It means you are alive. That I am alive. The ghost looked at his thin hands and flexed them, his smile blurry like smoke. I was born of your pain. Pain will make you strong. Make me stronger.

"D-don't speak nonsense," said the boy wretchedly, his cheek pressed into the desert, sand abrasive against his lips. A stain of red was spreading across the bandage. "Ibn-sharmuta!" he said again. "You made me bleed."

I have, said the ghost in fascination. Does it hurt?

"Of course not," said the child with foolish boyhood vanity. "My lady shall be red like the purest of blood; I must become accustomed."

A/N: I told you it was short. Ibn-sharmuta means "son of a whore" or "son of a bitch." I think. There was no point to this. . .just had to write something quick. Malik's lady is his motorcycle, could you tell? heehee.