Thief King/Ryou. Written for the livejournal community "ygodrabble". AT set inside the memory world; using manga canon in that Ryou's "white mage" character is referenced, Ryou makes the endgame model, and Ryou is rather found of his ring and no-one knows why; I feel indebted to expletive deleted whenever I write memory world BakuBaku, so she ought to be mentioned here.

Precious as Gems and Ashes

The host is appalled as he stands before the stone. Bakura has never seen him like that before: the host is a cheerful creature. He admires the gems and silver cups and figurines he brings him with wakeful interest and an exited smile that pushes him to bring, to share more; he stares at his angry ghosts with unrestrained wonder and asks about their names and stories, but shrugs it off when he can't remember. He touches the very walls of the huts and the earth beneath their feet with awe, surprised by how very real they are, a magician surprised by the effects of his own magic. Bakura thought he might love this too: the darkness, rumbling deep beneath the earth and pushing up, the power shivering under their feet, the filaments of magic...

But the stone slab disturbs the host. He looks at the spots where the millennium items will be placed with sadness.

"I don't –" The host breaks off, and turns to look at him. "If you know it was his doing, why would you helphim now?"

"Help him?" He speaks the words with confusion; he is offering no help, and the god waiting beneath the earth is not a person but a dark force that will sweep over the land.

"You're freeing him. You're letting him destroy – That's what he wants."

Bakura laughs at that. Because – Isn't that what you're doing, white mage?But he doesn't say it; the one beyond the sky has warned him not to shake the careful, contradictory thinking patterns the host has created for himself under his guidance.

He needs to answer though; the host is his link to the world beyond and to the pharaoh; he can't bear being separated from him through incomprehension. He takes the host's hand, and the host lets himself be drawn closer, as almost always; Bakura too has been observed and touched with wonder, and he has not known this kind of intimacy before; there's danger in that, he knows, the pleasure high as fire and murder.

"I do not help him," he says now. "I stole him. He is mine, to do my bidding." The host looks confused, and Bakura thinks of the marionettes the host has told him about, tiny puppets on strings, like the ones some priests own; he moves his hand like the host did, silly play of the fingers in the air. "Like you." He gestures at the sky. "Like him."

The host shakes his head, unconvinced, but he stares at his hand and doesn't answer. He doesn't like to talk directly of the other: it makes the carefully built paper houses in his mind quiver, Bakura knows that. The day before, he washed the blood off his hands and healed his gashes without a word.

Bakura draws him close, and the host lets him, pulling their bodies flush together, the white robe's soft material caressing his naked skin. Bakura wants to stand like that when the end comes, when he has spilled the blood over the alter – and it seems right the ring has once pierced the host's flesh and bathed in his blood as well –, when the screams fill the air louder than his ghosts and Ra's sun dies; he wants to feel the warmth of the host's body and, like now, his lips against his, searching and soft almost like regret, before the darkness comes and turns them to sand.