Title: Voices in the Dark

Summary: In which thieves are crafty, brothers are loyal, and Shizuka is braver than she knows. What if Malik had kidnapped Shizuka rather than Jou? Alternate Timeline of Battle City. Platonic Wallshipping, for contest.

Rating : T

A/N: The villains' opinions of Jounouchi do not reflect the views of the author, xD

Also there's bonus platonic Thiefshipping.

Shizuka saw the darkness behind her eyes.

Since childhood, as her vision had gradually blurred and dimmed, as lines and shapes and colors became ever less definite, she'd learned to distinguish varying levels of darkness through her bandages. There was the bright-darkness, tinted red by the blood vessels in her eyelids, which she saw when she stared into the light. It brought sun and summer, the heat on her skin and the scent of fresh-cut grass clippings. Then there was the gray-darkness, the kind she most often encountered in her everyday life. It took on a fluorescent, institutional tint in the school for the blind, which it lost when she returned home for dinners with her mother. Finally, there was the comforting black-darkness, the kind she found in her room at night, the kind that brought the chirps of the cicadas and the softness of the pillow beneath her cheek.

She was so tired...

She'd thought, for a long time, that her world would always be like that: variations on the darkness, sensation without sight. Even now that her operation was complete, she still wasn't quite ready to face the world beyond her bandages. She wouldn't take them off now, not here, not until her brother found her.

This was the gray-darkness.

Not that she could have, even if she'd wanted to. Her hands were bound. The rope was abrasive and tight around her wrists.

"Anzu?" she whispered. The floor beneath her feet felt rough and hard, like concrete.

But not quite the gray-darkness. Bright above and black below...a single light above her.

She and Anzu been taken together, just before they'd reached the aquarium where her brother was dueling. She remembered that much. She remembered the strange, foreign boy holding the bleeding, white-haired boy (Bakura? Was that what Anzu had called him?). She remembered he'd been taken to the hospital...then cloaked figures around them...grabbing them...hitting them...falling.

She'd woken up here, bound to a chair. Someone had tipped her chin up, poured some water into her mouth. It left a metallic aftertaste behind.

Still so tired... Hard to stay awake in the motionless dark, especially when her eyes are already closed...

Muffled voices drifted closer, and through the fuzziness in her mind, she recognized the sound-pattern as that of people approaching a door. Two voices, one higher and louder, the other low and quiet.

She should be afraid...

The creak of a door opening. (No change in the light; she was deep inside.) Soft footsteps entering the room.

She should be terrified...

Another creak as the door closed.

Too tired...

A click as it was locked.

Sleep.

Malik opened his eyes to a blue-green darkness.

Of course, it wasn't actually darkness, nor were his eyes actually open. In reality, he was back at the warehouse. In reality, he was sitting at a table, eyes closed, just down the hall from Rishid, the other Rare Hunters, and the two captives.

But this wasn't actually reality.

He floated down through the swirls of blue-green mist, through the backdrop of this soul or mind or dream, toward the Spirit of the Ring.

The Spirit grinned, and it was razor-sharp and mocking.

"I must admit, I'm surprised to see you so soon. My host's only just gotten to sleep. He was in ever so much pain, you see."

Bakura really shouldn't knit his eyebrows, even facetiously, Malik thought vaguely. The effect was mildly reminiscent of a cobra trying to look cuddly.

"Tell me," Bakura continued. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

He already knew, Malik realized. His voice was positively dripping with how much he already knew, how much he was looking forward to Malik revealing what he had already figured out had gone wrong.

Malik sneered. "There's been a change in plans."

"Ah. I see. So you've come to tell me that you've failed."

"Hardly. This is your fault. If you hadn't been so damn eager to stab yourself , you could have lead me to the Pharaoh's real friends first. The duelists. Not the first two vapid cheerleaders who come running at the sight of Small, Cute and Wounded."

But Bakura was laughing too hard to hear Malik's (rather clever, in his opinion) jab at his host.

"So you're saying," Bakura said, barely stifling his laughter, "that you managed a complicated ruse to protect your identity, carried out a double-kidnapping, and neither of the captives are duelists? That is...that is impressively incompetent."

Malik seethed inwardly, but kept his gaze cool. Now wasn't the time to get combative. If he let Bakura upset him, Bakura would have power over him. And that just wouldn't do.

"We need to find a way to use them to our advantage," said Malik lowly. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Bakura parroted. "Do you even know who they are?"

"Do you?"

"The dark-haired one's named Anzu Mazaki. Head cheerleader. Endangering her life will probably cause the Pharaoh to engage in acts of great bravery and questionable intelligence."

There was a noticeable pause.

"And the other one, Bakura?" Malik prompted, trying to project annoyance into his voice while secretly glad of the opportunity to knock the Spirit down a peg. "The one with the incredibly conspicuous bandages around her eyes?"

"I'm afraid I don't know," Bakura said bluntly.

"I see your clever scheme to infiltrate the Pharaoh's inner circle has been flawless."

Bakura scoffed. "I've never seen her before; she's not in the Pharaoh's inner circle. She doesn't even go to Ryou's school." He shrugged his shoulders, as if Malik's actions had no bearing on his own plans, as if he couldn't care less. "You're still holding her at the warehouse, right? You figure out who she is."

Vaguely, Malik wondered if they'd ever accomplish anything together, or if they'd just continue trying to out-posture each other for the rest of the tournament.

"Both the captives are at the warehouse, yes," Malik said. "Drugged. Sleeping. I've sent Rishid in to speak to the one with the bandages, whenever she wakes up. We'll figure something out then."

"And then we'll use them to lure in the Pharaoh. Excellent." Bakura appeared to be trying to wrap up the conversation.

"Who's this we? You're still drugged up and in the hospital."

"I'll take care of that. Meet me in the warehouse at 6 pm."

"I'm already there," Malik said with a smile. He vanished.

Rishid had been sitting on the hardwood chair for almost three hours when the girl finally stirred.

His head shot up as she made a disquieting whimper-noise that still sounded groggy from whatever Malik had drugged her with. Apparently it wasn't a muscle relaxant, because a few seconds later, she started to panic and struggle.

"Don't..." he whispered, as she thrashed and twisted her shoulders against the stiff chair-back. He rushed over towards her, but once he arrived, quickly realized he didn't know what to do with a terrified, panicking captive.

He was used to dealing with mind-controlled puppets. They tended to be rather calmer.

"S-shh..." he tried, tentatively, reaching out to touch her straining shoulder-blade. He drew back after a light tap, not wanting to frighten her further with excessive force. Fortunately, at his touch, she stiffened and stopped struggling.

Hesitantly, he moved to rest his hand on her shoulder once more, hoping that, despite his current role as kidnapper, it could somehow seem comforting rather than terrifying.

Judging by her ragged breathing, this didn't seem to be the case.

Malik's directive, Rishid reminded himself. Focus on that. Learn the girl's name, and her relationship with the Pharaoh and his friends. Help Malik uncover the best way to use her.

Help Malik.

Rishid and the captive girl both sat silently for a long time.

"Where...where am I?" the girl asked at length. Her voice was higher than he'd expected it to be, and he wasn't sure if it was because she was frightened, or because she was even younger that she looked. Perhaps both.

He didn't answer her question. Malik had been fairly explicit on that point, that he was to get information, not give it. Rishid knew that if the scheme with the girl fell through, Malik would have a backup plan, one that undoubtedly would be better served by the Pharaoh knowing as little about their operation as possible. And if that plan fell through, Malik would have another. That was his Master's one constant: there was always another scheme. There was always another way of getting what he wanted.

It made it all rather futile to resist.

"What's your name?" Rishid asked at length.

The girl pursed her lips shut, and the muscles of her face tightened in a way that couldn't have been comfortable. He was sure that if he pulled her bandage back, her eyes would be squeezed shut tight.

She wasn't going to answer.

It was a strange situation, he reflected. He was used to being physically intimidating. Disregarding his position as Malik's confidante (something he'd never ever want to truly disregard, but never mind), looming and glowering were practically his main jobs with the Ghouls. But that wouldn't work here, he realized. He couldn't be a fearsome sight if the girl couldn't see him.

Unless...under the bandages...

Malik wouldn't even need to take them off.

In the five years since their flight from the tomb, Rishid had grown rather good at predicting his Master's actions and wishes. If Malik were in his place, he'd pace around the girl in a slow, predatory circle, letting her hear the steady, unrelenting click of his shoes on the concrete floor even if she couldn't see her. He'd spin a story of velvet lies and veiled threats, ever drawing closer, ever radiating a kind of power and charisma that would make the girl want to say her name, want to tell her story, want to do his bidding. Malik drew people in like that, like moths to the flame. Or sheep to the slaughter.

Rishid had long since taught himself to be impressed, rather than appalled. Sometimes it even worked.

But Rishid was not Malik, could not do what Malik did, even if he did give his Master's actions unspoken support. He would have to get the girl's name a different way.

His eyes flicked up to the bandages again.

Slowly, he stood. Softly, he pressed a hand to the back of her head, where the bandages fastened together.

Perhaps this would be easier than talking.

She shuddered beneath his hand, but didn't make a sound. He didn't move. And it dawned on him that intimidation didn't need to be visible to be physical.

After a moment, he felt her begin to tremble underneath his hand, with the effort of remaining silent.

He hooked a finger under the top-most coil of the bandage and held back a wince as she failed to suppress a whimper.

"N-no...please..."

He felt slightly nauseous.

For Malik.

He unwound the first coil of the bandage even as he felt a knot of guilt forming in his stomach. He felt Shizuka's hands twisting, still tied behind her, even as many coils of the bandage remained wrapped around her eyes. She was worried about it slipping, he realized.

Subconsciously, contrary to his entire purpose, his left hand shot up to press hold the remaining coils of the bandage in place.

He wished she were a duelist. He'd feel so much better about fighting for Malik if she could fight back.

"What's your name?" he asked again.

She shook her head and didn't answer for a long time. He thought about uncoiling the bandage farther, but neither of them moved. He noticed, despite growing darkness, that her hair was auburn. It was silky under his palm. Absurdly, he hoped his hand didn't slip and knock down the coil of bandages over her eyes.

"My brother will come for me," the girl said at last. "My brother will save me." Her voice wasn't trembling anymore; it was firm, resolute. "And I will not take the bandages off until I can see my brother duel."

There was another long pause. And softly, so quiet Rishid himself almost couldn't hear it, he whispered, "Alright."

Rishid wound the bandages back over her eyes, heard her exhale slowly in relief as he secured them back in place. It was enough. For now. It was enough for her. It was enough for him.

He hoped it would be enough for Malik.

"She has a brother," Malik said. "He duels."

He and Bakura were leaning against the wall in one of the warehouse's many hallways, facing straight ahead at the blank wall opposite them. Somehow, they'd come to this unspoken agreement, because, while it was dull to stare at a slab of concrete, it made their conversations go rather smoother, and with a great deal less posturing, than if they stared each other down the whole time.

"Jounouchi," Bakura said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Her brother. If she was walking with Mazaki, then her brother's got to be associated with the Pharaoh; as far as I've seen, Mazaki doesn't really associate with anyone who isn't. And there's only one other duelist in the Pharaoh's merry little band: Jounouchi. You must have his little sister."

"Rishid said that the girl expected her brother to come looking for her. That works nicely, yes?"

"Explain."

Malik couldn't help himself any longer; he turned away from the wall to smirk at Bakura. "I'm just following your advice, partner. You said to get to the Pharaoh, we should go through his friends."

Malik looked up just fast enough to watch Bakura's sullen glower at being a step behind turn into a nod of sudden understanding.

"Jounouchi is dull-witted and loud-mouthed and annoying," Bakura said. "I'll leave it to you to dispose of him."

"How generous."

"Quite so."

Malik rolled his eyes. "So you think that if I kill his little friend, the Pharaoh will be so inconsolable that he won't be able to duel properly, and defeating him will be easy."

"That or he'll be so angry that he doubles in strength and kills you without a second thought. But it's worth a shot."

"Good to know you're looking out for my best intentions."

"Better you than me."

"But if Jounouchi's as stupid as you say, how's he going to locate a single warehouse in a metropolis of almost a million people?" Malik asked. "Through the power of brotherly devotion?"

There's a pause, and Bakura seems to be genuinely thinking about it.

"We should probably leave clues," he says eventually. Another pause. "Obvious clues." A third. "...We should probably just send someone out to tell him where she is."

"Wouldn't the Pharaoh come with him then?" Malik asked. It wasn't that he didn't think he could take on the Pharaoh; it was rather that he preferred to hold off on revealing his identity to the last possible minute. He always made room for one more contingency plan.

"Leave that part to me," said Bakura confidently, already turning away from Malik, towards the warehouse door.

"Don't kill him without me," Malik called after him.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bakura shot back.

It was night time now, Shizuka knew. She didn't know how many hours she'd lost when she'd been sleeping, drugged, nor how many hours the strange man had been in her room, but somehow, she knew it was night.

It was far too quiet, within these concrete walls. And in the quiet, it was too easy to think. She didn't want to think about things like her brother never finding her, or the man interrogating her again, or what other torments her kidnappers might have in store for her, out there beyond the quiet of this room.

Earlier, she'd heard voices arguing, but distant and distorted, likely coming from a hallway far away. Now the only sound in the room was the muffled scrape of the man's...her interrogator's...shoes against the floor. The man moved around the room like someone accustomed to navigating the darknesses, bright and black and gray.

Fleetingly, she thought of asking him if he gave colors to them as well.

Instead she steeled herself, and then asked, "What do you want with me?" She was proud to note that her voice now barely trembled as she spoke.

The man was silent.

"What do you want with me?" she repeated. She tried to add an edge to her voice, the sort of challenging tone that her brother seemed to take on without even thinking.

The man was still silent.

Shizuka went quiet again; obviously he wasn't going to respond; she was just being stupid. Perhaps the silence of captivity was just another kind of restraint, like the drugged water or the rope around her wrists. Well then, she wouldn't cave to it. She would wait here, until her brother could save her again. But she would wait with dignity, as she'd awaited her surgery and incipient blindness. If her kidnapper could sit in silence for hours then so could she. She could...

"What do y-"

"I can't-"

They spoke at the same time, cutting each other off and stopping. The man laughed lightly. Oddly, it didn't sound like a kidnapper's laugh.

"I can't tell you that," the man said. His voice was low and quiet.

Shizuka paused a moment, glad for the break in the silence, but unsure of what to say. "...Oh," she said eventually. She paused again, thinking, not wanting the silence to return. When it came to warding off thoughts of hopelessness, talking with this captor was inexplicably less frightening than not talking with him.

"Can you tell me your name?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

Silence again, except for the scuffing sound of shoes on concrete. It stretched on tortuously, and she was almost ready to say something again, even something stupid, anything, when the man abruptly spoke again.

"Tell me about your brother," he said

Immediately, she grew suspicious. "Why?" she asked, as darkly as her voice could manage.

"...I'm just curious," said the man, and he truly did sound sincere, if hesitant. "I...I have a brother as well."

"Older or younger?" Shizuka asked, in what she hoped was a conversational tone. Maybe she could get the man talking about his own family. That would both break the crushing silence, and keep Katsuya's name out of the harm's way.

"Younger," said the man. "Your brother is older, I assume."

Shizuka shrugged the best she could with her hands tied behind her against the chair-back.

"You seem...less afraid," the man observed. "Is that because you've convinced yourself your brother is coming for you?"

"I haven't convinced myself. I just know."

There was a very long pause after this, and absolute silence. The man had stopped walking.

"Would he die for you?" he asked softly.

"Would you die for your brother?"

"Of course."

Silence again. He'd said it automatically, she reflected, without a second thought. She wondered if he'd been asked before.

This time it was Shizuka who broke the silence. "Tell me about your little brother"

The man paused, then chuckled softly.

"What?" Shizuka asked.

"It just seems so strange to call him 'little brother,'" he said. 'He's-"

But there the man cut off abruptly, as if he'd caught himself doing something he shouldn't. There was silence once more, a guilty silence, one that shows no signs of being broken.

The last noise Shizuka heard for a long while was the man walking out of the room and shutting the door behind him.

She wondered how long it would be before, like the darknesses, she learned to distinguish different types of silences as well.

A few rooms away, a heavily-drugged Anzu Mazaki was just beginning to awaken, to the altogether unfamiliar sensation of the Millennium Rod pushing at her consciousness.

While she slept, she'd been moved to a room with a pile of boxes just sufficient to reach the skylight in the ceiling, just sturdy enough to hold her weight.

Find your friends, whispered the voice in the back of her mind. It was redundant, but it wasn't taking any chances. Jounouchi must save his sister.

She obeyed, climbing the boxes and pushing open the skylight.

When she finally caught up to Jounouchi, he was off and running the moment he caught sight of her face, and took in the absence of his sister.

"Pharaoh!" Bakura called across the docks. Jounouchi's sudden flight had left the Pharaoh and his friends scattered looking for him and, thanks to Malik's hold on Anzu's mind, she no longer remembered where she'd spent her captivity, nor the address she'd told Jounouchi. All of this made it ever so convenient for Bakura to track down the Pharaoh on his own.

And now they were across from each other on the docks, locked by the ankle into another one of Malik's contingency plans. Bakura supposed it would be a death-trap when it was set up correctly, but at the moment, it was merely an ankle cuff that chained duelists in place until their match was finished. Just long enough to keep the Pharaoh occupied while Malik got rid of Jounouchi.

Monsters and traps were spread across the field; Bakura had even "borrowed" a few illegal cards from Malik's Rare Hunters to make things more interesting. And yet, as he stood there, facing down his single greatest enemy, there was a certain...cheerful indifference to the way he played. The Pharaoh was eyeing him suspiciously already. He smirked across the water.

"Does this game feel somehow different to you, Pharaoh?" Bakura asked, smile still curling around his lips. "It feels different to me."

The Pharaoh merely glared back and played a card face-down.

"It feels like we've...forgotten something," said Bakura. "Something big." He drew a card, looked at it, and placed it in his hand. "Ahh, yes. That's right."

Bakura grinned. "We didn't set an ante. No Ring. No Puzzle. No souls at stake. It's not even a Shadow Game. Just a relaxing game of cards which we can't stop playing until someone wins. What's the maximum time limit on turns? Five minutes?"

The Pharaoh glared back murderously. Bakura just continued to smile.

"You're running awfully low on time to find your friend," he said. "Something terrible could happen to him."

A long time later, the man returned to the Shizuka's room, and shut the door behind him.

"Our brothers are fighting," Shizuka said quietly. She'd been listening to shouts of rage and screams of pain for some time now. But by now she'd lost her sense of time, unsure of anything but the black-bright darkness of the light bulb in the center of the room. She'd never had learned her captor's name, nor he hers.

"Yes," said the man. She listened to his footsteps as he moved to stand behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders.

"Let me watch them," she said suddenly.

"Tell me your name," he replied.

"Let me watch them," she repeated.

"No."

There was silence again, the crushing cloying silence that made her think too much. Even the darkness was losing its comfort, with the knowledge that her brother was fighting out there, beyond her sight.

"I'll take the bandages off," she pleaded softly. "I know you wanted that. I want to see my brother fight." She wanted to see her brother win.

"No," the man repeated.

Silence again, and darkness. Shizuka turned her bandaged eyes deliberately into the light, to see the red-tint of the blood vessels beneath the skin.

The dark was no longer a friend. The dark was keeping her from her brother.

"What happens to me, if...?"

"I don't know."

His hands on her shoulders were warm, but cooling slowly in the cold air of the warehouse. Briefly, they were a comfort in the silence and the dark, but soon that comfort faded. The shouts faded too, gradually into the distance, farther and farther back through the hallways of the warehouse she'd never seen.

The man's thumbs brushed against the back of her bandages, ghosting over them and hovering, as if he was considering taking them off. She hoped he would. With every fiber of her being, she hoped he would. Her brother was here now. Her brother was fighting. And she could see him, could help him, could save him...if only she could break through the concrete and rope and darkness and silence to stand alongside him. Her brother would fall without her. Her brother would be lost to the dark.

Abruptly, the man whose name she would never know, jerked his hands away from her bandages and took a step back. The door creaked open.

"Where are you going?" she asked, and her voice sounded more afraid than it had ever been before.

"There's darkness without as well as within," he said. "And you wouldn't betray your brother. Nor I mine."

The door creaked shut.

And Shizuka was left in the silence and dark.

Reviews, especially concrit, are loved.