Title: The Centre Cannot Hold
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The end is coming, and the spirits prepare as best they know how.
Genre: Angst/Drama
Pairings: Hints of Yami/Yugi and Bakura/Ryou if you want there to be.
Words: 1124

Disclaimer: Not mine, don't profit, don't sue.

The Centre Cannot Hold

i.
do i dare
disturb the universe?

The click-click-click of cards shuffling, a Duel Disk humming, screams from the shadows. The ones he couldn't save.

Yami jerks awake, coming to in his soul room. The maze has shifted. It has expanded – it's bigger, so much bigger, and there are so many more mazes and doors and stairs that he sinks to the ground, allowing himself a moment of weakness, because it's not fair, it's so not fair, and hasn't he tried his best? Hasn't he given it all he had, hasn't he done enough?

He loves his new life. He loves his games. He loves his friends. He loves his partner. Why does the Puzzle torment him with nightmares, send him visions of screaming souls that were beyond his power to help?

But the power of the Items doesn't work that way, and neither do the gods. How could he stray from Destiny when it has him chained by the wrists and ankles? What other choice does he have?

Yami wishes he had the gall to damn Fate, damn it to hell, but it's all he can do just to curl up against the wall and stop thinking about it, just stop being, because he's tired, so tired, and he wants it to end. He wants to tell Yugi everything, but he shouldn't, he wouldn't, and so his partner sleeps on, unaware and silent.

He tells himself he would cry if he could.

ii.
herr god, herr lucifer
beware
beware.

He fiddles with shadows on clear nights, in alleyways, in rank little pubs that reek of cigarettes and liquor. He offers what he has, and finds the time to even pity his host, between it all. Ryou knows nothing.

Bakura gives everything to the Shadows, lets the monsters feast and rip his soul to pieces and put him back together again. He knows what they want, and he sacrifices it all, relishing in the raw, unholy power that they give in return.

If only, if only his host knew.

Bakura knows that dying is an art. He does it exceptionally well. He rises from the dust, glinting in the moonlight, and eats souls like air.

iii.
our two souls therefore, which are one,
though i must go, endure not yet
a breach, but an expansion,
like gold to airy thinness beat

Yami knows, he knows. He wonders if Yugi knows. He's rotting in the Puzzle, wasting away as Yugi grows stronger in himself.

And Yami knows it's almost over. He knows it's either him or Yugi; one of them will have to go. He could never be selfish enough to give up Yugi, and he knows that he would never let Yugi sacrifice himself – not again – so he knows what will happen. All he wonders is how.

He wants to scream, to throw things, to completely lose control for just five minutes. He was not made to sit and idle and wait patiently for things to happen on their own time. He refuses to play hide-and-go-seek as the world crumbles. This is not who I am, he wants to tell them all, this is not who you need me to be.

He would gladly give his life for them all, but not like this, not like this.

iv.
because i could not stop for death,
he kindly stopped for me

Bakura is here to witness. Until the pharaoh acts, until God changes his mind, or until the pagan gods slip back into their hilltop groves, it's all he can do to just sit and watch the whole inhuman array. Watch the Shadows and give more, more, and take in return what he knows is not his.

He alternates between thinking of the planet as a home or a place he's been tossed onto, left alone to die. He doesn't know where he belongs, but on quiet evenings it doesn't seem to be here, here with rolling mountains and silenced seas. It's not the sort of home he would have thought of – though he lacks the imagination to think of another.

They say that war is death's best friend, but Bakura knows better. War is the boss, shouting in Death's ear, demanding souls. "Get it done, get it done." And Death finishes the job. He licks up humans from the world, carrying their souls into the gentle afterlife that had been promised. But War does not thank him. War asks for more.

The Shadows have come for the night. Bakura takes over Ryou's body gently, so as not to arouse suspicion (he doesn't know where his host got the notion that he was ever terribly cruel to their body, really, he cared for it as he would his own) and pushes the other's mind into bottomless sleep. Ryou's dreams are plagued with him, the white-haired human monster with sharp teeth and a deathly ring and the strength of every gruesome, terrible power that had ever walked the earth.

Bakura knows how much Ryou fears him, loathes him; wants him to stop, wants him out, but still simply wants him. He doesn't try to stop him.

The Shadows feast.

v.
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but a whimper

But he still wants to know why. He waits for the answer, from the Puzzle, the Shadows, from the gods. Who shushed the stars?

What's he been doing all this time but trying to call the gods back to earth, or, failing that, raise a sound of anything that isn't there? Yami has waited, and he has listened. Yami has given his life to listening, and then he realizes, he hears it: there is nothing there. A strong and silent hum? The hum is the silence. There is nothing there. The silence is not suppression; instead, it is all there is.

He wants to interpret it, translate it into a voice or a meaning he can understand. The gods haven't abandoned him, he tells himself, and they are there. Even if he can't see them, can't hear, can't tell. The wind pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper that he can hear on quiet afternoons. He cannot make it out. But the gods know he has tried.

Yami knows the end of the world is fast approaching – the apocalypse, the second coming, the Shadows' victory or their improbable defeat – but when it happens, at least Yugi will be with him. He'll carry these memories as he falls into the abyss, walks through the door, and thrust them out into the void, a last brilliant glimpse of what was and is and might have been, simple and shining and lost.

vi.
and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards bethlehem to be born?