A/N: A tie-in/follow-up/side-sweep to Season 10 Round 2's Hostshipping [Ryou Bakura x Anzu Mazaki] Chance To Be, Season 9 Round 2's Trustshipping [Seto Kaiba x Ishizu Ishtar] Of All The Mirrors, Season 9 3/4 Round 3 Anruishipping [Yuugi Mutou x Shaadi] May-Day, and is a direct follow-up to non-contest-related Between the Lifelines, which is Lifeshipping [Amelda x Anzu Mazaki].

Some sort of Azureshipping, but you'll have to bend over and all the way to the left to see it. Probably do some cartwheels too for good measure. The one big story tying all this hot mess together is in-progress and will, hopefully, get done before this year's out. Hopefully. Don't take my word for it though because I fail at regular and scheduled updates.

Warnings: mentions of violence and torture.

Disclaimer: Kazuki Takahashi and all associated companies are the rightful owners of the Yuugiou! franchise and I claim no association with any of them. No copyright infringement intended with this and no money is being made from this. Please support the creator by purchasing the official releases.

Like A Domino

They'd had to relocate. Their previous hideout had come under the threat of being exposed and attacked, so they'd hit the back roads to a place that was more remote than anything Anzu had seen before. Amelda had taken her through all the escape routes so that she would know her way out when the house was under the attack. "When" not "If" because it was only a matter of time; she knew it with the same sobering clarity as she knew what exactly her friends' reactions would be to seeing her here, taking care of one very broken Seto Kaiba. After the miraculously successful rescue, he'd retreated into the safety of a shell where he lived out who knew what memories. She couldn't exactly blame him, considering that he'd witnessed his brother being murdered in front of his eyes and who knows what being done to Ishizu and himself during their captivity, but she couldn't make up her mind about his refusal to acknowledge that the world was still turning.

"Do you want to die that much?" Amelda had asked him a few days ago with Anzu unintentionally listening in on their conversation from the other side of the door. She'd been bringing him tea and the redhead's words had stopped her short in her tracks.

Whatever Kaiba's muttered response had been, it had prompted a bullet to the headboard from Amelda, which, in turn, had led to him leaving the house and not showing up for several days. And when he'd finally returned, looking weary and bruised, he hadn't spoken a word to her. He'd moved them again the next day though, to a busy Italian city teeming with tourists where Anzu wouldn't look out of place if she decided to round a corner to pick up some groceries. Not that she intended to wander around all that much. She'd had to learn how to survive when a group of angry partisans was gunning for you – or the person you were taking care of – and sightseeing went against everything Amelda had drilled into her.

Kaiba had taken the change of setting the same way he did everything now – with a blank stare and no sign of emotion or will to move.

"Do you want to die?" she asked, not even realising she'd spoken out loud, too caught up in watching his prone form on the bed. His gaze was directed at nothing and void of everything.

His low, raspy laughter made her jump in surprise. He turned his head to regard her. "Are you offering?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed, mind reeling, trying to comprehend the idea or what she perceived as an idea thrown her way in such a casual way. "W-what?"

"Amelda couldn't." Kaiba's voice was rough from disuse. His gaze – unnerving. "Can you?"

Anzu shook her head, more from shock rather than refusal, trying to make heads or tails of this. Was he really-?

It made him laugh again; a horrible, broken sound from the back of his throat because he took that gesture as a refusal. "None of you can."

She wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words. She was torn between leaving and staying, but where the first option seemed like running, the second left her in an awkward silence that hammered against her senses. He slipped back into his shell easily, ignoring her presence once again, but when she made for the door, she suddenly became aware of his gaze on her back. She thought she could almost hear his thoughts. And he thought of her as a coward, a weakling running away.

Which is why she returned only minutes after, a kitchen knife in hand. "Here," she said, glaring and tossing it onto his bed, just within his reach. "Take it yourself, you coward."

His gaze moved to the knife, then to her, and whatever emotion was in his eyes, she couldn't name it.

"If you can," she added, crossing her arms to stop herself from shaking. While she was throwing a challenge at him, she feared him taking it. She wasn't thinking rationally. She wasn't even thinking, just acting out of pure spite and inexplicable anger that had rattled her deeply for a reason she couldn't name. "You're the only coward here," she said, voice wavering because she'd had enough, and she couldn't, anymore. "You hide in your head, you hide yourself in here," she gestured at the room with haphazard motions, "you refuse to do anything because you're so afraid of pain, of facing the world, of looking at everything without Mokuba. You're a selfish asshole, you know that already. Everyone has told you that a thousand times, so that you don't care if one more person tells you that. So I'm telling you this instead – you're a coward. You've always been. And now you show it. You hide and wait for death because you're too afraid to call for it yourself."

Somewhere, she lost the track of what she'd intended to say. If only she could take the feeling boiling over inside her, if she could take it and throw it at him, drown him in it… Words fled, thoughts unravelled and came out wrong, not unlike they had been in her mind; sentences formed in ways she hadn't intended them to, but it was all the same. Futile. It couldn't possibly even scratch the armour Kaiba had constructed for himself to hide from the world and the truth. "You've had the chance. You've had so many chances to kill yourself in the last few days and you haven't taken one. It's not about Mokuba. You're not grieving. You're not mourning him. It's about you and losing and you're being a self-absorbed asshole having a pity party of one because you lost and you've been left behind and putting on a misery show for whatever audience you can scramble so that..."

"Get out."

Instantly, Anzu was silenced. Kaiba didn't scream at her; he barely even raised his voice, but in that moment he suddenly looked more alive than he had in a while. His eyes were bright again, alight with fury as he glared at her. His shoulders had straightened against the headboard and his fists had clenched. His voice held intensity that allowed no room for arguments. She'd hit a string – but not a nerve, no, never a nerve because he didn't have those – with that; gotten a rise out of him. That was more than Amelda had managed before. Whether that was for better or worse – she couldn't even hazard a guess. She squared her shoulders and mentally ordered the shaking to stop.

"That," she gestured at the knife with her chin in a last bout of defiance and holding ground, "means I win." Before he could nail her to the spot and tear her apart with a well-aimed remark, she turned on her heel and left the room. She needed a drink. Something stronger than tea. And she knew exactly where she could get some.

Once back in the safety of the kitchen, she caught herself chuckling at the image of Amelda's frown if he could see her now, mixing vodka from the half-empty bottle that he kept as an emergency disinfectant for battle wounds with lukewarm tea and the last few sips of orange juice from a carton with yesterday's expiration date in a large mug. Deciding that he'd probably rattle off a lecture on how alcohol impacts performance in emergency situations, she snorted and cleared the table before sitting down with the mug in front of her. The need for a drink had somehow diminished now that she had it, so she reverted to staring at it indecisively. It probably tasted horrible. She prodded the mug, making it scrape against the bare wooden surface.

Anzu jumped when a knife clattered on the table. Eyes wide, she followed Kaiba's hand as it picked up her mug, brought it to his lips and drained it in one long take. She hadn't heard him leave his room. She hadn't heard him enter the kitchen even though floorboards were creaky. Now she found herself frozen in her seat, unsure of what to expect from him. While he drank, she looked over the assortment of bruises on him. He wore a grey T-shirt and striped shorts and, where the bandages didn't cover him, there was a mosaic of burn marks, scars, and bruises that were in an assortment of colour, starting from sickly yellow-green to deep purple-black and in various stages of healing. There were shades she didn't even have a name for. He seemed winded and unstable on his feet, since this was his first longest trip out of the bed. She wondered if she could drag him back to his room if he fainted from the exertion now and doubted it, even though he'd lost weight in the past few weeks. She hadn't been able to lift him a few days ago.

Done drinking, Kaiba tried to put the mug back on the table, but his grip failed him and it slipped from his fingers, shattering on the ground at his feet – his bare feet. He groaned and leaned forward, attempting to steady himself with one hand on the back of Anzu's chair and the other on the surface of the table. She leaned back a little because he was too close, but there wasn't much room for manoeuvring, unless she wanted to fall off the chair backwards. Kaiba's breath came in long wheezes and for a moment neither of them spoke.

"Why you?" he eventually managed, pinning her with an unnerving gaze.

She felt like a deer in the headlights. Stunned into silence and stock-stillness. Trying to focus on anything but his eyes brought her gaze to the swelling around them, the dark circles underneath them, his bruised nose, the cut across his cheek, the stitches on his jaw and the burn marks on his neck. She echoed weakly, "Why me?"

"Why are you here?" he elaborated, now sounding borderline angry. "I get Amelda. It's his mess too. But you?"

"I didn't ask for this. I didn't want this. Any of this," she defended, painfully aware of how plaintive that sounded. Was she really all that better, she pondered.

"Do I assume that Yuugi is here too?"

She watched his hand twitch as if he'd resisted the reflex of tightening it into a fist. There, that was it. The one thing that got him moving. Did he really need nothing else? Was he really that… shallow? And for that matter… Yuugi had been the only thing she'd thought of in the beginning; she'd relied on him the way she always had. Futilely. What did that say about her, then?

"No." Her voice was unintentionally bitter. After a second's worth of hesitation, she cleared her throat and continued, "We haven't heard from him in weeks. He's out of reach."

Was it her imagination, or did his grip on the back of her chair loosen a little?

Kaiba took a steadying breath, but it didn't seem to work on him in any other way but making him even more lightheaded. He assumed it was the lingering anaemia coupled with the fatigue from too much time spent in bed and starving himself as best as he could without risking Amelda force-feeding him. He still hadn't repaid the redhead for that bit of humiliation the first time he'd gone days without eating. He'd been too weak to resist then. He attempted a frown, realising that he still wasn't at the top of his game. And then, the alcohol he'd just consumed was doing its part too.

"Are you-" Anzu began, but fell silent almost instantly. Of course he wasn't okay. She wasn't an idiot. She could see that. Therefore, the question had to change before she got any more lip from him for being just a mindless follower. "Do you need to sit down?"

Words reached his consciousness as if through a thick fog. Sit down? He wondered. Did he need to? Did he want to? He wanted revenge. He wanted to die. And he wanted to pick up a gun, scratch out the bullet from the headboard of his bed with his nails if he had to and shoot somebody with it. Himself. Amelda. The guy who'd slit Mokuba's throat. He felt nothing; he was numb; so he claimed to himself and so he attempted to play it out to the world. Inside, there raged a turmoil so infinite that he wasn't sure where it began and where it would end. Pretending to carry a void inside himself was considerably easier than attempting to sort through the mess of emotions that threatened to suffocate him in his waking hours and plagued him with nightmares in his sleep. That made him get up and strike out on a mission to erase the entire world from existence. He thought he could finally understand Amelda. He thought he could finally get behind the redhead's reason for coming after him years ago; for being ready to drag him down and die along with him in a twisted re-enactment of Romeo and Julian where only hatred overarched their brief encounters and death was the only satisfaction.

"Where is he?" he asked, gaze roaming around the kitchen as the surroundings blurred. "Where is he?" He needed to tell him… He needed to ask him… and threaten if he refused. Threats – a language they both spoke fluently.

The only thing Anzu heard coming from his mouth was a string of incoherent, slurred sounds. Kaiba was swaying on his feet, arms trembling so much that she could feel the vibration of the back of her chair which he was holding in a death grip. She needed to get him to his room, get him to lie down, but standing up only had the chair tilting backwards dangerously now that the leverage her weight had added was gone. Kaiba lurched forward, losing balance and crashed into her, sending her stumbling backwards into the table and almost tripping on the chair's leg. Their combined weight made the light table skid along the floor. She ended up being pulled down and partially pinned by Kaiba's weight, barely holding on the table's edge, with him partially on top of her. The knife clattered to the ground when Kaiba's hand slid across the table in a vain attempt to break his fall. Eyes wide and heart wildly racing from her precarious position, she drew in a sharp breath when a shirk of broken glass reminded her of one very important thing: Kaiba was barefoot.

It didn't seem like he'd realised that he'd cut himself. He hadn't even noticed that he'd cut himself along the side of his palm when his hand had struck the knife.

He muttered something indiscernible near her ear.

"Huh?" She blinked up at the ceiling and strained her hearing.

"Sorry." It was only a notch above an exhalation.

Incredulous, she went suddenly, immediately still. She'd imagined that. Just her mind playing tricks on her. And…

"Sorry." There it was again; louder this time. Kaiba moved, trying to stand up. The motion sent the table skidding a little more, glass crunching beneath his feet, and then he hissed in pain, slumping back down above her. His eyes were closed and his expression, which Anzu could only see out of the corner of one eye, was an interesting study of shattering dignity, broken pride, pain, and something disturbingly close to humiliation, which she didn't dare to explore further.

"Don't move," she said quietly, voice wispy as if she'd be afraid to scare off a rare butterfly. It wasn't a tone she'd ever imagined using on the CEO hovering above her. She'd never imagined him hovering above her quite like this either. She carefully wiggled out of the awkward position, stumbling and almost falling on her bottom in the process, as he tried to shift his body so that she could extricate herself easier from beneath him. She ended up in a low crouch beside the table and the moment she was sure she wasn't going to fall over, she looked at his feet, noting the way he held them and the way at least one shard of glass had coloured red.

She stood up and pulled up the chair, aligning it beside him so that he could sit down onto. She kept a firm grip on the back of it while helping him into it with her other hand. He hissed again, head bent and shoulders tense when the shift made the broken glass cut into his feet at new angles. She retrieved a broom and swept them aside hastily, picked up the knife and put it down onto the counter before pulling out the first aid kit she'd prepared for their emergencies.

Kaiba jerked as if he'd been hit when she crouched down in front of him and touched his foot. She looked up at him, but he turned his head away, hands gripping the sides of his seat so hard his knuckles turned white. There was a hint of colour to his cheeks, but that could have been due to the fever or the alcohol in his system. She gently lifted his foot and involuntarily drew in a sharp breath. The cut itself wasn't that bad, but what made her stomach clench was the number of burn marks on the soles of his feet. She'd seen most of his injuries, therefore having quite a good idea of what he'd gone through at the hands of his kidnappers, but this… She managed to mask her shudder of horror as a mere shift of her shoulders before setting to cleaning the cut and bandaging it up, then doing the same thing to his other foot. There was something oddly disconcerting about the rigidity of his body and the uneasy yielding to her touch. His jaw was set and his gaze trained on the scenery behind the kitchen window without actually registering any of it, too caught up in pretending to be anywhere but here. He'd hissed at the first touch of disinfectant, but afterwards had managed to remain silent; only his foot had twitched every now and then in reaction to the stinging sensation.

"There, all done," she announced standing up and… no, it wasn't her imagination. His shoulders relaxed marginally at that. She left the kitchen for a moment and returned with sandals Amelda had procured for him as an easy footwear, considering the weather, the state he was in, and the fact that they didn't exactly have time to shop with accuracy. Amelda knew his measurements because, once upon a time, he'd been just that obsessed with the man. She crouched down again, about to help him put them on, following some sort of momentum which she couldn't quite explain.

"Stop," he croaked and flinched at the sound of his own voice. And perhaps something else, too. "Don't."

He sounded… But it couldn't be. She decided to chalk it up to the rapidly approaching delirium he must have been feeling from the mixture of alcohol and fatigue, and getting up from his bed for the first time in what had to be weeks. And that's when she noticed the blood dripping from his hand. She left the sandals beside his bandaged feet and reached for the first aid kit again to dress the cut on the side of his palm.

"Tell me everything," he said in a subdued voice when she was trying to carefully arrange a band-aid along the cut.

She didn't let her fingers stop what they were doing, though they trembled slightly and she had to move the strip out of the way for a bit to dab at the blood that was pooling along the shallow gash, then she readjusted the strip and pressed it firmly against his skin to make sure it would stick. She purposefully kept her gaze focused on the task at hand and tentatively started with what she assumed he wanted to hear the most.

"When I last heard from Yuugi, he was on his way to World Championship in Brazil with Jounouchi. I don't know much about it because I was leaving for a school trip at the same time. We… haven't really had the time to look into it. He should be safe?" Uncertainty stained her tone.

He surprised her – and himself, too – by saying, "Not that. I don't… care." He hesitated, as if whatever he said next could irreversibly change something. As if he was about to admit defeat. "Amelda. I want to know… I want to know."

Anzu was still avoiding his gaze. "He… he's been tracking you since your… disappearance hit the news. He feels responsible for… I… shouldn't be… This is between you and him." She shut her mouth suddenly and lurched to her feet, but Kaiba's hand gripped her wrist and pulled her back when she tried to move away from him. She watched the band-aid crinkle, for a moment worried that it would fall off. But the adhesive held. And she remained standing where he'd caught her, her gaze wandering anywhere but up at his face. She didn't try to pull away, didn't try to break his hold on her wrist, even though Amelda had taught her how to do it effectively. "You should ask him yourself."

Kaiba made a sound at the back of his throat that could have been many things. He didn't release the grip on her hand though. "Why are you here?" With him? With us?

"He saved me," she said simply, finally wrenching her hand out of his grip. He watched his arm fall down limply to his side. He made no attempt to move it. Instead of an explanation or further elaboration on the whys and hows, she added, "Apparently, we picked the wrong season to be having a school trip to Italy."

She turned her back on him then to find the shovel and finish cleaning up the broken glass on the floor. She thought she could feel his gaze on her back, but she wasn't sure. She didn't know what to make of his mood swings. She had never been able to understand him before, save for the things concerning Mokuba, but now she couldn't even begin to guess at how his mind must be functioning after all the loss and the terror he'd faced.

It didn't seem like he knew it, either.

She put the kettle to boil and moved the table back into place just to busy herself with something. She made tea because she didn't know what else to do and placed a steaming cup in front of him without offering it and without asking if he wanted any. He didn't touch it. He didn't seem to register much of anything. Suddenly, being here with him was a lot harder than before, when he'd only been a presence in the next room; something she knew as being there, but which could be easily tuned out. No such luck now when he sat right there, looking no more alive for all of the world than he'd been while lying in the coma-like stupor during those first few days after his rescue.

Anzu slipped out of the kitchen and into the living room to curl up on the worn-out couch where she usually slept – when she wasn't passing out on the kitchen floor from emotional exhaustion. She felt shaken to the very foundations, even though nothing had really happened. She gripped the edge of the cushion, thinking back on Kaiba's scars and wishing desperately to be anywhere but here. To be where Yuugi was, perhaps. To have the reassurance of his quiet smile, the overflowing enthusiasm of Jounouchi, which often ended up being applied to the wrong things in the wrong way, but was no less precious for it, and Honda with his still occasionally surfacing beautification tendencies. The exasperation she often felt at their inane dialogues and the ease with which they all fit together. She wished for Amelda to be here. For the way he checked her grip on a gun, the way he tested her balance, the way he made her bristle with a single comment, pulling her back every time she felt like drowning herself in misery and self-pity, because he actually looked at her and saw her. For showing her the frightening potential of what she could be. And she wished for Malik too, with the tentative equilibrium he'd created for himself, still swinging uncertainly between the two personalities which he could have been, trying to find a middle ground where he could merge all that repressed hatred with the pretended friendly boy they'd come to know as Namu, and make something honest out of it. And, yes, she wished even for Bakura, even though she had no idea which one of them was currently in charge of his body.

It had to be a particularly messed-up day, she realised with a start, if she found the other Bakura's presence more favourable than Kaiba's. She bit back a desperate laugh and buried her face into the arm of the couch, breathing in deeply the smell of dust and old mould. She decided that she didn't really have the right to pass down judgements. Not when she felt like she was half-mad herself after everything she'd seen and done.

Suddenly, a cold chill ran down her spine. For a moment she pondered where that had come from. Listen to your instincts, Amelda's voice flicked through her mind and she slowly raised her head, taking a careful look around the room, her senses sharp and straining to find something out of place, something missing, and yes, there. The numbers had disappeared from the screen of the clock radio plugged in the wall on the narrow cabinet across from her. They'd lost electricity. There could have been several different reasons for that, but her mind singled out one only: they'd been found. Terror tore at her senses as she remained on the couch for a moment longer, desperately trying to determine if there was any sound coming from outside the house, but only silence boomed loud in her ears. Her breathing sounded obscenely loud to her. Maybe they were just behind the wall already. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they were already inside the house, up in the attic. Maybe they'd found the entry into the basement below them. But no. The boards overhead would have creaked if somebody had as much as stepped foot on them and Amelda had blocked and buried the entry into the basement.

Slowly she rose to her feet, slipping into the shoes which she had kicked off before getting onto the couch. She now wore them constantly, even indoors, even though her Japanese upbringing made her cringe at that, but she was in a situation where certain sacrifices had to be made and there were at least two instances when not needing to stop to put on her footwear had saved her life. She carefully approached the window. Keeping out of sight, she studied the line of trees a good deal away from the house, tracking the power line with her gaze in passing and seeing nothing wrong with it as far as the view reached. That didn't mean anything. She thought she saw motion, but upon closer inspection, she determined that it might have been only her imagination. She ducked into the small entrance area, snatched up her jacket from the hook beside the door, for a moment hovering there and listening in for any sounds from the yard. Nothing. She stole back into the room, retrieved her gun and packed her pockets with extra ammunition, then moved onwards as quietly as her shoes and squeaky floorboards allowed it. She glanced into the kitchen in passing where Kaiba still sat in the same position she'd left him in, taking a cursory look at the rocky field that stretched out beyond the window there, then entered his bedroom and took another look at the tree line in the distance. It appeared calm and peaceful enough, but this stillness didn't sit well with her.

Better safe than sorry, she decided and picked up some of Kaiba's clothes. She deposited them on the table in front of him, removing the untouched cup of now cold tea and emptying it into the sink.

"Get dressed. We need to move," she said in a low, level voice, managing to keep her emotions in check. The house was halfway up some low mountain range, just outside a small forest, bracketed by rolling hills on three sides. Their only real way out was through the kitchen window and before they took that route, she still needed to gather a few things.

He started at her words and looked at her, but she'd already turned her back on him. Remaining seated for a moment longer, he reached out for the shirt she'd brought him. It wasn't his. It wasn't something he'd even consider wearing. It struck him suddenly then that he didn't know what had happened with his clothes, the ones he'd word on the day when...

Listening to Anzu rummaging through her belongings in the other room, he stood up and put the shirt on, wincing when his cut feet protested. When he tried to put on the jeans, he discovered that he wasn't yet stable enough on his feet and needed to sit down for that task. Then he got to his feet again to pull them up the rest of the way and secure them with a belt, as they were a little too loose. Then he sat down again to put on the sandals and adjust their straps for a better fit. Again, not at all what he would wear, but he wasn't exactly in a position where he could choose. Leaning back again, he found that this little exercise had winded him. Blood sang in his ears and a dim fuzz had settled over his mind.

Anzu reappeared in the doorway again. She picked up the first aid kit that had been left sitting on the counter beside the sink and packed it away into the camouflage-green bag slung over her shoulder. She pushed it behind her and approached the window.

"What," he started asking, but she merely shook her head, signalling for him to be silent.

As carefully and quietly as she could, she turned the latch and pulled the windows open inwards. She took out a mirror from the outside pocket of her bag and carefully moved it so that she could see the ground below the window, then the wall to her left, then her right. Nobody was lurking there. Nothing moved. There was no sound, in fact. Not even birds. She permitted herself a grim smile. The birds were the real tell. Hesitating a moment longer and evaluating their escape route, she put away the mirror and then climbed onto the windowsill and slipped over it, landing with a silent thud. She remained crouched down and retrieved her gun, taking it off the safety as quickly and quietly as she could, and scanning the surroundings, but nothing moved. She moved out of the way, pressing herself against the wall next to the window, and motioned for Kaiba to follow. Once he was beside her, she handed him a key and gestured at the door of the shed in front of them. The house blocked the barn door from view so that nobody hiding out in the forest behind the house could see them enter it. She considered the possibility of somebody hiding in or behind the barn, but she chased that thought away. It was too late to think about that now and much too late to return inside the house. She wished Amelda would be here because she felt terribly lost without the reassurance his presence evoked in situations like these. Now, she had to take charge and make decisions that could possibly get them both killed if she misjudged or rushed it.

"Go," she breathed and they moved across the small distance as fast as they could. Anzu flattened her back against the wall, keeping an eye on the surroundings while Kaiba fumbled with the key. He got the padlock open and Anzu winced at the dull sound it made, banging against the wooden door, coming undone in his still clumsy hands.

He wasn't too happy with himself either. They entered the barn and carefully closed the door behind them. No hinges creaked, as Amelda kept them well-oiled. The only thing of notice inside it was a faded red car. Anzu picked up a flashlight from the shelf behind the door and crouched down to shine the light under the car, making sure nobody was hiding there. Only then she approached it, checking the interior to make sure no one was occupying it either. Then, much to Kaiba's surprise, she put away the gun and laid down on the ground, checking under the car and behind the tyres for any possible explosives. She crawled under it to make sure nothing had been tampered with before unlocking the trunk and making sure it was as empty as it should be, save for the emergency supplies they always kept in it for the times when they needed to hit the road at short notice, then proceeding to lift the hood and make sure everything was attached in its proper place. She'd graduated Amelda's survival crash course – several times – and he'd taught her everything she needed to know about quickly messing up somebody's car, as well as making sure her own vehicle would be in perfect condition. Lastly, she checked beneath the seats to make sure no bombs had been installed there either.

Kaiba watched her with something too close to shock for his own comfort. It was like seeing her for the first time. Which, he had to admit, really was the case, as just moments ago he hadn't even seen her as a person in her own right. He'd only ever viewed her as one of Yuugi's annoying tagalongs.

Deeming the car safe, she walked over to the door on the other side of the barn and unlocked it. She didn't bother opening it, not wanting to alert anyone who might be lurking on that side to her plan. For a moment she wondered if, maybe, she was overreacting only because they'd lost electricity and the birds had gone silent in the vicinity, but shrugged it off. Too late for that now. She turned back around and started for the car, gesturing for Kaiba who was still standing beside the door.

"Get in."

He shook his head. "I'll drive."

That stopped her in her tracks. She frowned at him, considering that. "I don't think you should. You haven't recovered yet."

"I'm fine. I'll drive."

Her frown deepened. They didn't have time to argue. They couldn't risk taking chances and with him not yet entirely stable on his feet… Never mind the alcohol that still had to be coursing through his system.

"Please."

It was more of a statement than a request. His jaw had set and a hint of the old Kaiba she was so used to seeing had emerged to the surface. The one who was usually in control of his own life.

She yielded and changed her trajectory, heading for the passenger side. "Fine. The barn door opens outwards. Go straight down until you get to an overgrown trail that turns left and follow that until we get onto a proper road. I'll tell you when to turn."

He nodded in gratitude and acknowledgement, casting a sidelong look at her when she snapped the seatbelt in place. He followed her example, taking a contemplative look at the door ahead, then revved up the engine and sent the car lurching forwards. The door banged open, slammed into the walls and rebounded, remaining partially ajar as they were already speeding downhill. He missed the trail she had mentioned and swerved sharply to get back onto it. Anzu kept her gaze onto the rear-view mirrors. At first it seemed like it had been false alarm after all, but then, just as they were rounding a rocky hill, she jolted in her seat. It had been only a moment as the house had slipped out of view, but she thought she'd seen something black round the corner of the barn. And then the road unwound before them, twisting this way and that to accommodate the hills and the protruding cliffs, and the overall downwards slant of the landscape. They had just reached the bottom of the hill when a black Range Rover appeared at the top and, ignoring the road, plunged right across the fields in a beeline for their vehicle.

"Damn." Anzu's hands tightened momentarily in her lap. Then she was already undoing the seatbelt, moving into the backseat, and retrieving her gun.

Kaiba spared only a quick glance at the approaching car. The Italian roads were tricky and he needed all of his attention turned in one direction to navigate them. He was feeling worryingly lightheaded from the sheer exertion, but the strict discipline he had grown up with kept him remotely in check. He wasn't about to go back to being a captive and he definitely wasn't going to go down without a fight this time.

"When there's a straight part of a road, let them catch up with us. Five seconds before a turn, let me know."

He made a sound of agreement, hands tightening on the steering wheel while she adjusted herself into a position that would help her keep her balance if the car made a sudden turn. Every now and then he checked the rear-view mirror to see how far away the Rover was. When it swerved onto the road and sped up to eliminate the final distance between them, bumping into them and for a moment sending them skidding forward, he gritted his teeth.

Anzu realigned her gun and bore her gaze into the driver behind the wheel. Luckily for them, they hadn't yet opened fire on them. Which was probably to make this look like just another road accident by a couple of careless tourists.

"Left turn in five," Kaiba ground out, accelerating to keep ahead of the car tailgating them in an attempt to pull up beside them and force them off the road. "Four…"

Breathe, Anzu reminded herself. In her mind, it was Amelda's voice.

"Three."

Relax.

"Two."

Take aim.

She pulled the trigger, flinching at the recoil and the dust from the glass, but her eyes remained open, following the path of the bullet. Much to his chagrin, Kaiba jumped from the loud gunshot in the salon, but the final word was already on the tip of his tongue and it sounded out loud and clear:

"One."

Anzu had enough time to register the spider-web cracks that suddenly blossomed in their rear window, the hole in the Range Rover's windshield, the way the man behind the steering wheel slumped, and then they were swerving violently around a boulder. The other car, out of control, grazed their car's trunk, sending them sliding off to one side. She had only a moment to see it collide with the rock they had managed to round just barely, slide, then tumble sideways and remain flipped over in the ditch beside the road. She lost her balance and fell onto the backseat, managing to loosen her grip on the gun to prevent it going off accidentally in an unwelcome direction as their car jack-knifed. She had no idea how Kaiba managed to pull them out of the skid. The sudden acceleration hit her, making her jolt, tyres howled, and then they had aligned again.

When it was clear that they weren't in any danger of flipping over, she sat up straight to take a look at their pursuers. She couldn't see any movement around the car, though the angle it had landed in hid a part of it, so whether or not anyone had made it out alive couldn't be determined as easily as she would've liked. It didn't matter though, at least not right now. They'd gotten away. No one else seemed to be following them at the moment.

"Where to?" Kaiba asked, bringing her attention back to him.

"Apricena. Ignore all dirt roads. Just follow the asphalt," she quoted Amelda without even realising she'd done so. Not that Kaiba could tell; he'd been out cold when Amelda had sat her down with a handful of maps and pictures to pore over, getting her acquainted with the hideouts he'd lined up specifically for this purpose. Pictures of houses, addresses, detailed area maps. She let her gaze travel across the scenery for a moment before moving back to the front seat, resolved to spend the rest of the trip in silence.

They left the car in a dead-end street on the outskirts of the town before proceeding deeper inside it, both of them painfully aware of just how much they stood out here. Luckily, the streets were relatively empty at this hour and they didn't need to worry too much, but it was still disconcerting. They would have to make their stay here very short and move out as soon as darkness fell. …which proved more troublesome than they'd imagined because it seemed that, with the coming of the night, the populace of the entire city seemed to have hit the streets to socialise with each other.

They ended up staying up late into the night until the life on the streets dwindled down before going back to their car and after Anzu's repeated dance of checking for rigging, explosives, or any other sort of tampering, they finally hit the road again, heading for the next meeting point in San Severo. This was going to be a really long night.