Title: Moretum

Author: Doubleplusgoodduckspeaker

Summary: His heart started to race, and to him the beats sounded like the seconds of a timer, ticking down until game over. Morishipping HondaxYami Bakura.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!

Notes: Written for round Ten of Compy's YGO Contest: Morishipping, with a side ship of Protectshipping. Soul Room story #4, again you don't have to read the other three, but this references Mind Games quite a bit… reading that one will also give you an insight into how I view Bakura. I really like both Bakura and Tristan, and when I was watching the ending season, in episode 214 I couldn't help but wonder, 'well where did Tristan go?' Here, I provide an answer.

"Man is but the dream of a shadow…"

--Pindar, Pythian 8.95

Tristan woke up to a throbbing pain in his head, blinking at the harsh lighting and chatter from indiscernible voices around him. "What's going on?" He sat up in his chair and looked around. Way to go, Tristan, class hasn't even started and you're already falling asleep. He mumbled a barely coherent "here" when his name was called for attendance before shifting his attention to the window next to his desk. It's so foggy outside…I can barely see anything! That's never any good… Resting his chin in one hand, Tristan concentrated on the low, droning voice of his teacher. He couldn't decide which was more interesting… the teacher or the fog.

He had been having the strangest dream… He was with all of his friends, and they were in Ancient Egypt. It could have been a dream version of Ancient Egypt; he had no idea what it would have looked like. They were there for a reason, too… but he couldn't remember. It was strange, because the dream in question had felt so real. He felt his eyelids drooping, his mind drifting in that liminal state between dreaming and waking when he swore that he could hear the thunder of horses' hooves and if he moved his arms down sand would sift out of the cuffs.

The class bell jolted Tristan out of his stupor.

Without a word he stood up and left. Class seemed so foreign to him now, what with all the tournaments going on recently, and he felt almost disoriented walking into the hallway. He vaguely remembered something about duels from his dream… had he been the one dueling? Was it Yugi? Tristan wondered why he was trying so hard to remember a dream that couldn't possibly be real. He couldn't think of anything else, he couldn't jolt the idea. How much of it was a dream?

"Oh! Sorry about that." Looking down, he didn't even notice that he had walked into someone. "Are you o…kay…"

The person he walked into had no face.

"Woah!" Tristan blurted out, nearly smacking his head against the door in his haste to look away. Risking another peek… he was still there. He was also still, well… faceless.

The guy didn't appear to notice him (but how could he?), breezing past him into the classroom. It was then that he started to notice it. The hallway began to flood with people, their voices too loud for him to piece together an individual conversation, and as his gaze jumped from person to person, each one of them was utterly devoid of any individualizing features.

He was the only one…

Tristan ran one hand across an eyebrow and down to his nose to make sure they were still there. He wanted to run back into the classroom, but… that guy was in there. Everyone else was in the hallway; he didn't want to be out here either. He couldn't even remember what class he had next, where he had to be or how long he had to be there. It was all so strange… what was going on?

"You mean you haven't figured it out yet?"

Tristan jumped, the skin on his arms instantly prickling from surprise and something a little more powerful. He knew whose voice it was… he wasn't sure. It sounded like Ryou, but it also sounded like him. But how was that possible… where was he?

"Now you're asking the right questions."

Tristan's eyes locked upon him, that voice which didn't seem to fit, and he couldn't help the uneasy feeling settling in the pit of his stomach that something was very wrong.

He spun around in a perfect circle, and the transformation was over in the time it took for him to blink. His hair was suddenly longer, wilder; the school uniform changing to a dark fitted jacket, and his laugh… he knew that laugh. "You're the spirit of the Ring."

"Bravo." Tristan blinked again, and their surroundings changed; the walls becoming impossibly long, framed with molding and draped with satin. The room felt empty in the darkness, and Tristan felt more powerless than he cared to admit. Bakura stood on the stage, a single spotlight illuminating him, his shadow magnified along the wall. He held out both hands and bowed. "You still have two more questions without answers, and I'm not sure I'm in a talkative mood."

"You monster! What have you done?" Tristan's voice echoed.

"Ask yourself: you are here by your own doing. Don't you remember?" Bakura smirked, and so did his shadow.

"This is for the Pharaoh!"

Tristan's body turned, again and again, until he was once again facing the stage. He knew that voice; it was his own. When had he said that?

"I didn't foresee that you would try to attack me like that, but I used you to my advantage." Bakura chuckled, his fingers running over the metal of the Ring. It glinted in the spotlight. "Your mind was pathetically easy to take over."

"You… what…?" Tristan didn't want to believe him, but couldn't think of any other option that explained anything. "How dare you!" He charged towards the stage, his hands instinctively curling into fists.

He stopped just short of the stage. It didn't seem that high up before…

"Since you no longer have a physical form, your mind, intolerably enough, is now… here. In my world." His eyes shone in the light. "I doubt your mind could put together, no less comprehend, the intricacies of this space, of the many rooms that my soul provides, of just how twisted I am…"

"Are you talking about Ryou?" The stage seemed normal height now, and Bakura looked him in the eye, his posture triumphant.

"…Possibly."

Without thinking, Tristan leaped onto the stage, his arm flying back, then forwards, connecting with Bakura's cheekbone. "Bastard! You don't have a soul!"

Bakura and his shadow stumbled backwards, his shoulders hunched over, an almost… giggle? escaping from his bloodied lips. "I almost forgot," he gasped, his eyes knowing. "You like him, don't you?"

Tristan was advancing, ready to punch him again, but Bakura caught the fist almost too easily, twisting his arm back until he couldn't move, his shoulders shaking with anger, his back to Bakura. He faced the dark expanse; he could see his own shadow helpless on the wall. "You hide it pretty well, but I can tell." His voice was a whisper, the projection of each word bringing a puff of air to the back of Tristan's shirt collar. "Do you want to know where Ryou is?"

"Tell me what you did with him!" Tristan considered stomping on Bakura's foot, but at the thought he could feel his arm twisting more, bringing him closer to the man he despised.

"You're in my world, don't forget," Bakura chastised, leaning down to whisper in Tristan's ear. "You follow my rules… and I'm not exactly known to play fair."

"So now this is some sort of game?"

"Is not everything part of a bigger game?" Bakura smiled, and his mind briefly flickered back to a table in the middle of a shadowy void, set with two players and the highest of stakes. "You're here, in my mind. Ryou, also, is here in my mind. Find him, and you win. If you lose, then you're mine. In more than body, but your mind, your soul—mine."

Tristan couldn't see Bakura but he knew that he was grinning, already taking his victory. He wasn't about to go down that easily. Especially when there was more than just his own fate at stake.

"And like I said… I don't play fair." He released Tristan, who immediately brought his arm, tingly from the release of force, back to rest naturally at his side. "I know what you're thinking. You want to find Ryou so that you can protect him—"

"I want to protect him from people like you!" Tristan circled once more, his eyes blazing at how calm Bakura looked.

"You're doing a remarkable job of it." Bakura looked bored. It was infuriating. "Now, you're racing against the clock. And remember—while you're trapped in here, your body is my pawn, and your pitiful friends don't even realize it yet… wonder how long it will take? …I wonder what I can do in that time."

"And when does the clock start?" Tristan's voice appeared angry but he knew that it was a front. He was nervous—he had every right to be? This was a test, and he was always terrible at tests. His heart started to race, and to him the beats sounded like the seconds of a timer, ticking down until game over…

"Five minutes ago."

A loud buzzer sounded, and suddenly the lights came back on. Blinking furiously, Tristan found himself back in the school's gymnasium, the age-worn cinderblock walls and wooden floors blinding in contrast to his previous surroundings. He was standing on the stage, and he was alone. Taking a running leap off of the stage, he sprinted for the exit. I'm coming, Ryou.

From his minimal experience with the Pharaoh's soul room, Tristan started to piece together a plan. There must be a logical way that the soul rooms were laid out… it had to be something simple, like an office or a closet or a classroom—

That's it! It has to be one of the classrooms. It was only a matter of figuring out which classroom was Ryou's room. He got angrier just thinking about Ryou, held captive within this mental prison… he didn't deserve to be here. And once he found Ryou, he would put the Spirit of the Ring in Ryou's place and leave him to rot in his world forever.

At least he had gotten used to the shadows. At first he had stopped in his tracks upon seeing the hallways flooded with them; wherever a person would be, their shadow was all that was present. He would nearly trip over his own feet to get out of the way if a shadow headed towards him, but once he stopped trying to avoid them they merely lingered off to the side. It was as if Bakura was still toying with him—he was going to have to do better than shadows to keep him from finding Ryou. Shadows moved alongside the walls, often disappearing into rooms. To him they were like ghosts, remnants of the people who would normally be at the school. They haunted him.

He would often turn and look behind him, and the shadows continued to wander, each the same size and shape. It was as if they were a single person shattered into a thousand pieces… in each shadow he saw Bakura.

He would also look behind him to keep checking the fact that as the shadows had no physical presence, he had no shadow. It made him feel invisible to the rest of the shadow creatures lurking around the halls, but it also made him even more acutely aware of the differences between himself and Bakura. Bakura held a shadow. In the shadows, everything they touched turned to darkness

The class bell rang, and it was a clear reminder to Tristan that his time was running out. The shadows paused before darting to classrooms, as if something was drawing them to the specific rooms. One by one they vanished underneath the closed doorways until the hallway was empty.

Something seemed wrong. It took him several moments, but then he realized what had happened, what he was going to do next, and it filled him with hope.

The shadows had gone under every door in the hallway—except for one. That one had to be an important room. Maybe it was…?

No. It couldn't be that easy. It had to be a trap. But he had to try.

Tristan flung open the door and stepped inside.

The classroom was empty, the desks neatly lined, the projector screen lowered, and the shades on the windows drawn. He wasn't sure why he expected anything different. The door swung closed behind him as a bright light announced the fact that the projector screen was playing… without a projector. Tristan looked down. He was standing where the projector should be.

Upon the screen were numbers, counting down: 3…2…1…

Tristan watched his dream play out on the screen before him.

"Why are you telling me this?" The Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle was sitting at some sort of game table, but it was a game that Tristan had never seen before. There was a wide expanse of desert, and a twinkling ribbon of blue… with a sickening feeling, he realized that it looked like the Ancient Egypt in his dreams.

The Spirit of the Ring, Bakura, was sitting opposite him, looking incredibly comfortable in the chair, as if to him, it was a throne. His voice was mocking. "If I give you a glimmer of hope it will be that much more devastating when it comes crumbling down. You see, the moment that they discover your true name their excursion will be cut short by my newest pawn."

The Pharaoh slammed a fist upon the tabletop. It was then that Tristan saw the swirling fog surrounding the table. They were playing a shadow game? Would the future of… everything… be determined from this one game? Were the players just those two, or did everyone play a part? "And who is this pawn of yours?"

Bakura smirked, and in that moment looked directly at Tristan. "Oh, I believe you know him quite well. As a matter of fact, he was a faithful friend of yours until he lost his mind."

Tristan kept replaying Bakura's last lines over and over in his head and the images stayed, flickering on the screen, unable to leave him. He wasn't sure what to believe. Was this another trick of Bakura's? Was it a glimpse into the outside world? Past, or present?

Most important was what he didn't dare to even think about. I… I lost my mind? How is that possible? I didn't lose my mind, I lost my body… my mind is right here, in—his world… He didn't want to accept the fact that in coming here he might have already lost.

Maybe this was all just another dream… if it was, Tristan wanted to wake up. He didn't want to be here anymore. Maybe he really was crazy, and this was all something his mind made up… but then Bakura had said that Tristan couldn't create a world like this. For once, he agreed. This was too twisted.

"So you're showing me what I'm missing? Trying to raise my hopes?" His voice seemed unusually loud in the room.

"If I give you a glimmer of hope it will be that much more devastating when it comes crumbling down," came the projector's response, Bakura's sneer showing his amusement at the joke.

"You won't give me answers? Fine, I'll find them on my own!" Tristan exited the room, slamming the door behind him. But as far as he went from the room, he still couldn't shake those last words. It unnerved him. It unnerved him how much Bakura knew that it would unnerve him.

"… until he lost his mind."

Tristan paced the hallways of the school (though he didn't remember there ever being this many hallways; he wondered if it had really been that long since he had gone to school or Bakura's mind was this multilayered). He was alone, and the fact that the shadows were gone made everything seem positively eerie. It was completely silent except for the sound of Tristan's own breathing, and for a moment he considered knocking something over simply to fill the silence. It wasn't like it was his home or anything.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Bakura's voice was dark and threatening. Tristan was getting tired of this routine, and besides, where did he come from? Bakura remained clothed in that mockery of a school uniform, but everything about his posture and his expression screamed fury. He couldn't be this angry over something as small as a tipped over desk; it had to be something else.

"Mad that our side is catching up?" Tristan taunted, his arms crossed. "Maybe we're not as powerless as you think."

Bakura's angry scowl changed, and the corners of his mouth lifted. "Then perhaps I should make the next round a little more… interesting," and Tristan thought of a dozen other things that Bakura might have meant instead of 'interesting.'

"Give me your worst!"

"As you desire." Bakura's voice sounded almost silky. In swift strides he crossed the hallway and entered the corner room. Without even thinking, Tristan followed. He was sick of playing this game. He wanted answers.

He was in an art room. Bakura was gone, and now Tristan felt like an idiot for blindly rushing into this room; now, he would have to face whatever Bakura had in store for him.

When he walked past a small TV set it flickered to life as if activated by his presence. On the screen Tristan watched, too shocked to be angry, as he saw that this clip featured… himself.

"I thought you three were down for the count, but apparently you don't know when to quit." Tristan felt his stomach clench. This was all wrong. Not even in the past, when he lived that life, had his voice ever sounded that cruel. Even the self-satisfied smirk he wore plastered across his face like it belonged there was completely wrong. Couldn't they see that it wasn't him? They were his friends!

"That's it!" Joey stepped forward and faced his best friend. "Consider this friendship over, Tristan!"

Tristan knew Joey better than anyone, which meant that he knew when Joey was serious. Now, any one of his friends would have known that. It scared him more than anything else he had gone through yet. The strength of their friendship had gotten them through so many scrapes, and now it was all over? He felt numb.

That's it. I've had enough. "Bakura!"

"Why interrupt this now, when the real fun is about to start?" Bakura crossed his arms, looking away and appearing particularly interested in a wall painting of a single red flower under glass.

"Take me to Ryou. Now."

Bakura grinned, and to Tristan it was different from any other smile of his he'd seen yet. His eyes lit up, as if the game was now finally starting. "I'll consider it… but of course, I don't do anything for free. You would have to give me something in return."

"Name your price," Tristan kept his eyes on Bakura as he moved languidly through the tables, as if drawing out every moment. He slowly made his way towards Tristan, like a hunter who knows he has caught his prey.

"Kiss me."

"You want what?!" Tristan instinctively felt himself take a large step backwards.

"Give me a kiss. That is my price, as you so kindly offered. Take it or leave it. Consider yourself lucky… I could have asked for something much worse." Bakura was now standing directly in front of Tristan, who was doing his best to pretend like he wasn't there at all.

Gulping, Tristan looked at the man before him. There was no way he could pretend that it was Ryou… they were about the same height, though, so it wouldn't be too awkward. Besides, he had to do this. He would do anything to get to Ryou. Quickly, before he lost his courage, Tristan leaned forward and pressed his lips to Bakura's.

Before he knew what was happening, Bakura's arms were around him and he was pressing back. It was like an impossibly deep void, and Tristan had already fallen too far in to ever hope of going back.

Bakura pulled back first, wearing the same self-satisfied smirk that Tristan found only slightly less irritating this time. "Your debt is paid. In full, and then some." Turning to leave the art room, he beckoned for Tristan to follow him.

Bakura traversed the hallways of the school with ease, and before long they found themselves in front of another door. How he could tell them all apart Tristan would never know, but upon opening the door it revealed a staircase. Wordlessly they climbed the stairs until they reached the top floor landing.

They were in another hallway, this one only with a few doors spaced far apart. The walls and floor seemed grimier, evidence that this part of his mind was often neglected. Tristan fumed, these were the conditions that he kept Ryou in? It was like they had entered an entirely different place.

Bakura went up to the second door on the right and retrieved a large silver key from his pocket. The door swung open on rusty hinges. Bakura stood in the threshold and motioned for Tristan to enter first. "See for yourself."

Tristan all but ran inside the room. It was dark; there was some ambient light but there wasn't a source… it took Tristan a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. "Ryou! Can you hear me? Where are you?" His hands stretched out into the darkness as if they were reaching for him.

Tristan could hear Bakura's footsteps as he entered the room and shut the door behind him. Tristan stumbled blindly around the room, feeling the cold stone blocks under his fingers. His hands reached each corner of the room, and only when he was sure he had walked over every inch of the space did he face Bakura.

"You told me he was in here," Tristan could barely contain his fury. "I swear, if you don't tell me where Ryou is—"

"Do you want to know?" Bakura's voice was hushed, as if the space was almost sacred. His eyes glittered in the darkness as he stepped into the center of the room. Tristan could plainly see now that the room was empty save the two of them.

"Yes. Tell me."

Three words sealed his fate.

"There is no Ryou. There never was." Bakura's voice was devoid of any inflection; there were no hidden agendas or manipulations now. Tristan felt a shiver pass through his entire body.

"The person you know as Ryou was gone the instant he touched the Ring. He summoned me, and we played a little game, not unlike the one we just played. And in the endgame, in his final moments… Ryou lost. Do you understand? Every time you thought you were talking to Ryou, it was me. Every duel, every day, every damned cup of tea, it was me. The one you want to protect doesn't exist. The one you fell for… is me."

Tristan took one step back, then another. "No… that can't be… how could you…?" All those times he had protected Ryou, every moment, every feeling… went to him? He felt nauseous. His back pressed up against stone, there was nowhere else to go. Bakura stood between him and the exit. He understood now that there was no escape. There never had been.

Bakura moved until he was standing right in front of Tristan. The smile he wore now was completely triumphant, and Tristan knew without any words spoken that he had lost. Bakura was about to claim his prize.

Tristan's head was bowed, and he could see his feet, and the shadow that stretched from them alongside the wall. Bakura leaned his head down to whisper in Tristan's ear, like he was sharing a secret. At last, his world was complete. The power and the glory… "Forever… I win."

The End.

Footnotes: 1. Moretum is the title of a poem by Virgil, considered by many scholars to be the original source of the phrase E pluribus Unum, or 'Out of many, one.' Fitting, right?

2. Just to be very clear, the endgame of this story takes place in the setting of Mind Games.

3. Any references are purposeful, if you've got a question about anything, review/PM me, and I'll clear things up.

4. This story beta'd by the amazing Jess! Thanks!

Thank you for reading, and please leave a review to share your thoughts on the story with me!