Sympathy for the Devil

Cliché name. XD

THIS IS A STORY THAT MUST BE CONTINUED TO REALLY MAKE SENSE…

So I think I'm going to continue it at some point. Which makes this a prologue of sorts, even though it's really for a contest…

This is one-sided (implied) Deathshipping – well, I guess if you squint it could be total Deathshipping, but then I guess we have to look at the Angstshipping too, right? Yay Angstshipping!

I'm gonna let go of my bad habit of calling Mr. Yami no Malik 'Marik' for this one…

Some of you are going to cry foul at the end of this, and say, "Where is Ryou getting this 'not telling you!' ability from?" And I'll tell you it's straight from the manga (though it is an interpretation) and I'll explain a titch more at the end.

Disclaimer: If I owned even one of these nutty characters, I'd be dead by sunrise. So no. I don't own them.

In the dark of night, Ryou woke with a start. Disoriented, he stared up at the ceiling of the room for a moment until a jolt of pain brought him back to reality.

His arm was bleeding. Bleeding… The Battle City finals, were they over? How long had he been unconscious for? Ryou sat up and looked at his surroundings –

… Only to meet the gaze of a stranger at the side of his bed.

His scream was muffled as the man slammed him into the wall; the hand against his mouth seared his lips. Ryou could only stare at his attacker, drinking in the details as fast as his heart was pounding: sun-kissed skin, pale hair, gleaming lavender eyes…

"Namu?" he whispered, and then realized he was free again. "What are you doing here?"

Had Namu been watching him while he slept? Ryou's cheeks flushed at the thought. Namu had treated him so kindly after finding him – him, a perfect stranger! And he was exotically beautiful; Ryou had never once questioned his sexual orientation before then, but Namu was truly something else.

This man, though… the moonlight streaming through the windows seemed to avoid him, as if afraid. His lips stretched into a dark smirk that didn't suit his rescuer. He seemed very young and yet ageless. What was most striking about him, apart from the symbol blazing upon his forehead (how had he not noticed it before?) were his eyes. Dull, yet piercing, these hollow eyes spoke volumes of pain and suffering and hate. This wasn't the same man that had rescued him earlier.

"You… You're Malik Ishtar, aren't you?" He had blurted out the name without thinking. Ryou had heard things from the others, whispers of evil deeds committed by this person, though he did not know if any of these rumours were true or not. An icy fear was spreading through his chest and, for a moment, he foolishly considered screaming for help. The man could easily overpower him just as he had done before.

The man, however, seemed delighted with what he said.

"Yes," he purred, "I am."

Ryou had never been arrogant enough to call himself empathetic, but the instant the words had been spoken, the man's hostile aura disappeared. Even so, a part of him was wishing, praying, that someone would come into his room.

"Why are you here?" he whispered bravely. "What do you want with me?"

Malik Ishtar had an uncanny resemblance to a lion, Ryou suddenly decided, as Malik's smirk widened to a predatory smile. Comparing him to a simple cat would simply not do justice to him and if all he had heard about him was solid fact, he truly was the king of beasts. Ryou, trapped against the wall, was only his prey, and the subsequent rush from this knowledge frightened him more than the man in front of him.

"Didn't you know?" He purred again, and his face stretched. Ryou recoiled in horror. There was something very wrong with this man; his soul was empty, trying to escape from this body for reasons Ryou could not fathom. Malik continued to speak, oblivious.

"Your spirit unwisely risked you in our little game earlier, and lost. You are dead, and you are mine." His laugh was reminiscent of a child who had been given a great toy.

Dead?

"We're going to have a lot of fun tonight." Malik's low voice shook with excitement and madness. "There are only a few hours until the real fun begins. Play a game with me. I promise you, I will win."

Ryou had heard a lot of things about Malik Ishtar. He had heard of the dangerous duels his friends had claimed he had put them through, the suffering, the heartache. Ryou had heard the anger in the voice of Yugi and his other, and the contempt and hate in Jounouchi's words whenever Malik was spoken of.

But Ryou wasn't Jounouchi, Yugi or his other, or any of his other friends. He had not witnessed any of these horrible acts of this man, nor did he believe anyone could be as terrible as his own spirit that dwelled within his ring. All he saw before him as the shadows wrapped around them lovingly was another person – disturbing, frightening, alluring – who was mistrusted and feared just as he was when he had first come to Domino. And if he was now truly bound by the magicks of the items to Malik Ishtar…

Malik's face stretched grotesquely and his veins bulged as he laughed, but Ryou felt nothing but pity.

-o-O-o-O-o-

Ryou, blushing, covered his drawing nervously as Namu – no, the real Malik Ishtar passed by for the third time with his family and waved. Ryou remembered nothing from the moment the game between him and Malik's darkness had ended until the moment he woke up in the aftermath of the finals. Whether this was for the better or not, he would never know.

What he did know was that the impression left on him was something that even his friends would not understand, and so he carefully kept his picture away from their curious eyes.

He had never quite finished shading in the eyes of his drawing. The hatred, the insane delight, the sorrow and pain of the nameless spirit he had been with for a few brief minutes could not be and would never be conveyed in this picture… but he would try. For the sake of the other Malik Ishtar, he would try.

Ryou knew that his newest doll would be his most precious yet.

… Yami no Malik/Marik… is SO cute. I put a bit of emphasis on the fact that he's only really, well, six years old. Maybe too much. Ah well.

Yeah… I figured the only reason that our favourite tan psycho wasn't too hard on Ryou (cough - too hard on him by his standards) was because after always asserting 'I'm Malik Ishtar!' finally someone acknowledges him as that so… Yeah. XD I dunno. And I always think that the reason Deathshipping can work is because, well, Ryou doesn't really know Yami no Malik, so… Yeah…

Also, I have Ryou being a bit sensitive to people here because of a scene in the manga with Strings, he can sense that… ah, I need to look it up again to be exact, but I think it was that 'he had no life' or something. Darn it, can't remember. Must… look… up…

THE JAPANESE MUSIC FOR THE ANIME IS AMAZING. ESPECIALLY FOR THE SHADOW GAMES. WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. X3

Later!