In and Out of Focus: Pt 2: Hiraeth

In and Out of Focus

Part II: Hiraeth

LLLL

“Oh, Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
away,
you rolling river!
Oh, Shenandoah!
I long to see you,
away,
I'm bound away
Across the Wide Missouri”
-Oh, Shenandoah

LLL

It is on the day that they are leaving for New York that Bakura appears to her in rumination. He is set in some far off place that Anzu Mazaki can't fathom, fading in and out of their strange existence. He sees the world in a different scale, one where eons have gone away in the blink of an eye and the erosion of time has left him raw. He is bruised from the passing of ages and it causes her grief in a way she is unable to fully handle at that particular moment. The clock on her phone is a pale reminder of the measurements that he has surely missed. She, however, is in a flurry of movements after her phone chimes in exuberance, vibrating on the night stand by the bed she has taken residence in during her stay, crying out Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. She is swirling with intent, need with each room she passes into, grabbing remnants of her stay. A sweater from the living room, her socks from the bathroom, and her shoes from the door. It seems she will never stop her hurry as she whizzes past a rather sleepy Ryou, sipping his tea with a tranquility that her busyness can't seem to gather.

Despite being able to look directly at Bakura, Ryou passes over the space he occupies with no alarm. The reasoning was something Bakura and Anzu had yet to figure out but were blessed by the knowledge when the first time Bakura had not known Ryou was entering their room. (He called it their room, though Bakura knew it had been Amane's and was now just a memory trapped in the flat that Ryou's father owned.) It had been an accidental learning, when one morning, the gentle Brit came with a cuppa to wake his dancer friend from her nap and the bane of his mental instabilities had stood at the bay window in surprise, having been caught while enjoying the sunlight that filtered through the eaves of the tree beside the house. Ryou had paused at the open doorway, staring at Bakura as if sensing him, but shook his head at the idea of Bakura being right there, placing the cup of tea on the night stand and leaving.

When Bakura had told Anzu, she had a guilt trip that could make a catholic nun green with envy. The accident had been a blessing in disguise as they had learned the important truth that Ryou couldn't see him. In fact, it seemed that the only person who could was Anzu, as they had tested it out on walks around the local dog park when Ryou wanted to walk Ramses.

“I'll go get the lorry started, Anzu. Traffic shouldn't be too bad this time of the morning.” Ryou stands up, stretching his arms before ambling his way down the stairs to the kitchen. The plunk of his mug hitting the bottom of the sink is barely heard as Anzu double-checks the en suite bathroom for anything she might have left unpacked before moving to the stairs. The clawed footsteps following Ryou around the house is a given with Ryou departing the house. The front door shuts, breaking Bakura out of his reflection. The Thief King sighs at the form of Anzu at the top of the stairs with her purse clutched to her shoulder and ready to go.

“Looks like I'm all good, Bakura.” It is an unspoken rule. With Ryou around, they didn't talk. The thought that Ryou could hear him was enough to send Anzu into another guilt trip about lying to one of her friends, even if her friend couldn't see his former nemesis. Bakura gives a noncommittal grunt, earning his stay within the conversation. It has been like this since he touched her on the cheek almost two weeks before, tense and even worse, uncertain about what is exactly proper. When she has tried to talk with Bakura, she has only received minimal grunts and occasional nods since. Bringing up Teanna is asking for silence from the specter that has taken residence within her life. Their talks had been mostly consisting on her comments, almost conversing with herself more than him, but she figures with everything that Bakura had stated the first few times they've talked that he is as unsteady as she with what their lives have now become.

Looking over her shoulder at the silver-haired man, the dancer takes him in. His shadow is on the wall behind him, taunting her with the unknown meaning of its appearance. It whispers possibilities she's unsure of thinking and even worse, it promises something she is sure she shouldn't think upon. The what-ifs and the maybes constantly run through her mind when she pretends she is asleep, the time when he talks to himself, pondering things that leaves her dry inside with her heart beating out of sync with the rest of her.

In mere seconds, Bakura can bring up the thought that everything has just shifted somehow. The world is two inches to the left for him, breaking and shaking his core as he watches Anzu turn to go down the stairs to the first floor and promptly slips. He sees her fall forward and his mind blanks. Time is relative. It goes and goes and the minutes bypass those who wait and for those who don't, for those who have always had the drive to run to their goals.

Falls like that have killed people. It is a good fifteen steps to the bottom landing, enough edges to harm herself upon and Bakura cannot think as he sees her slip. He has fallen enough times in the past that he knows how much the edges hurt. Something in him that he is unfamiliar with knows that he can't have it happen to Anzu with her long dancer legs, and strong form, passionate in her physical arts. He sees the broken girl on the platform, bruised and broken by the whips of the palace guards, legs askew and torn in half by feet so much stronger than her own had been. All he knows is that he cannot see passion like that cut short again.

He dissipates and reappears only a blink later, caught in a second that Anzu is unable to register as her hands reach out to the railing for a grip to catch herself upon. Her fingers fail to find purchase on the banister and she is left to fall, to tumble against the hard wooden edges of the stairs. She closes her eyes tightly, ready for the waves of pain to hit, grimacing in wait.

The scent of earth and sandalwood prevails over her senses, clouding her nostrils. Arms, toned with the weight of a life filled with climbing and running and hiding are holding her to a body that is warm to the touch, filled with a heart beat that shouldn't exist. It pulses beneath her as they roll and she lands with her ear pressed against it. It beats and beats and it shouldn't; she can't breath because something is wrong with this, but everything is so right. It is the heartbeat she heard earlier in the week. She opens her blue eyes and she sees scars marring a tanned chest, a canvas she has never truly seen with her own eyes before. The scars fascinate her, but the feel of the solid man underneath her causes her breath to catch.

He gives out a shaky exhale, looking down to the woman in his arms. Bakura mentally checks over her body and feels a stirring that he hasn't in a very, very long time. Anzu looks up at him and he is caught in the ocean that stares at him. He sees saffron and the smell of incense that he could only find being sold at market. She is dark-skinned with laughter and blue around her eyelids and he knows that he shouldn't see her here in England for she is three thousand years past.

Anzu blinks and he can see Mazaki. With guilt, or what he could conclude as guilt for mistaking her as someone else, Bakura helps her to stand, letting go of her as soon as they do as if scalded by the reminder that he is a relic in this age and she is in her prime. They should not even be friends, but Anzu is the only one here for him, the only one he has accepted for help and it is what it is.

The silence between them reigns. They stand at different sides of a war they did not know they were part of, divisible the thought of whether or not what had just happened was true. Neither know the consequences, nor of the reasons he is able to be here and none of the others are, why he is only visible to her and no one else.

Her hand reaches out to him and for a moment, it looks as if he will not be touched, as if her hand will go through him. Trepidation marks them both in their fear of the unknown.

She gasps, shocked when it does not pass through him. He is a mountain under the tip of her fingers, solid and heated with life that she has no idea he could exhibit. He is bold-ed colors, strong and seen to her eyes with flushed cheeks that brush the silver blonde to the side. His dark brown eyes are frightened, living some unknown horror she does not understand completely. They are both so new to this, the touching between them, the consequence of it and all she can understand is that he is there and she is alright with this revelation. He is no longer a phantom to be seen in the dark. He is real. He is being.

The door opens behind him. Time quickens, making up for the lost minute that it took for Bakura to grab her. He steps back from her hand as if burned. Everything happens too fast for Anzu to follow as she blinks in confusion with Bakura's disappearance to be replaced by the appearance of Ryou reaching for his sweater on the coat rack by the door, not noticing her outstretched hand at first.

“Ready?” Ryou smiles as he looks up from shaking his foot on the welcome mat of any mud. Anzu nods, unsteady on her feet from the revelation that she could touch Bakura and heard an organ that should be long dead throb under her ear. Ryou reaches out for the hand the brunette has outstretched. Without even thinking about it, Anzu brings her hand back towards her, clenching her hand into a fist by her own heart. The look Ryou gives her is questioning at the gesture, hurt as well underneath it. She knows he's blaming himself for all the times he's ever harmed her by accident through the dark being that had possessed him.

Anzu doesn't want to tell him the truth, that the tingle of warmth she had felt jump between her and Bakura was too much to share with anyone else, even more, too special in a way she doesn't want to acknowledge. Smiling sheepishly, Anzu gives him an excuse, hoping that he'll buy it as she walks past him to her shoes.

“Sorry, shocked myself a few moments ago. Didn't want to shock you too.”

She is too ashamed to turn and see if he bought the lie.

LLL

She finds that her seat is comfortable on the plane but there is no one else around in first class with her when he appears again. Bakura is sitting calmly beside her, looking at her with eyes filled with inquiry. With no one else around and being on hour two of her seven and a half hour flight, she speaks quietly.

“Are you okay?” He blinks at her question, not expecting her concern due to their shared past together. The Thief King nods slowly, glancing around them to take in the first class compartment. The stewardess is making coffee to serve and is the only one privy to any thing in the general area. He eyes the dancer beside him with a severity that he once gave to treasures, trying to factor in their true value.

“I should be asking that of you, woman.” He brings forth the reminder that not even five hours past did she nearly crack her head against a flight of hard-edged wooden stairs. The look she gives him is mirthful and he can't understand why. It is a mystery that is pulling at his senses, drawing him in with an idea of something more.

“Maybe, but I think this is worse for you than it is for me.” Anzu clues him into what she wants to talk about. Bakura can only frown as this would technically be the second time they've talked about the sennen ring that he has helped bring to her. Bakura turns to look around at the rest of the first class cabin, seeing that over half the seats are empty and even then, most of them are nowhere near Anzu and him.

“You look crazy talking to no one.” He murmurs halfheartedly to her, hoping that she will take the hint that he actually doesn't want to examine the rules. He's enjoying their strange symbiosis, the fact that he's still existing, not wanting to question a gift horse like this in the mouth until later, until the newness effectively leaves them both with weariness instead, with the desire to become unattached most prevalent.

“Then make it so I don't.” His dark red-brown eyes turn to her from the rest of the cabin in a flash and he can't help but feel off-balance by her words. She holds her palm out for him. Her cheeky smile is enough to make Bakura forget himself and chuckle. She is brave to do so, to want his hand in hers, to even offer such a thing to him, either that or a great fool, but Bakura thinks to himself, perhaps he is the greater fool for even wanting what she is offering. The mystery still lingers. The whys and the hows about their arrangement is what he doesn't understand and has been trying to for the past while. It takes up his thoughts when he finds himself alone for right now, he can't seem to exist without Anzu there, a relationship that is symbiotic enough for them both as she finds someone to talk to and he has someone to listen.

“Don't worry. I don't bite, Bakura.” The silver-haired man quirks a smirk at her, taking her hand and holding it on the armrest as he settles into the seat beside her. The invitation taken and he can't help himself at taking in all of her intricacies. Her fingers are only calloused along her middle fingers' upper knuckles, from holding her pen, he assumes. She's ambidextrous too, from the fact that she has matching ones on each hand. The rest of her long fingers and palm are soft, reminding him of one of the few pleasures he ever took on his previous life with the lining of his coat. He can tell that her fingers are strong, from her art he supposes more than anything else. Leaning towards Anzu, Bakura feels a playfulness rise up in him as he turns his lips towards her ear to whisper to her.

“I do.” The immediate blush that rises on her pale cheeks is confirmation enough for him to realize that she may have stepped into a ring she was not prepared for. When he moves to settle against the back of the seat, he sees a stewardess approach the two of them with a cart. She looks at the both of them, puzzled before shaking her head slightly as if to tear herself away from whichever problem was causing her bewilderment. Bakura knew it likely had to do with his sudden appearance. How does one see a man that isn't there during boarding?

“Did you need a blanket, sir?” The woman speaks in English and his mind whirs constantly with the translations. He shakes his head at her inquiry, taking a moment to glance at Anzu who shakes her head as well. Before the stewardess could ask the next question, Bakura finds his voice, testing whether or not she could actually hear him as well. “Anything to drink?”

“Coffee. Black.” The woman nods, looking over to the brunette beside him.

“And you, ma'am?”

“Coffee, one cream, two sugars please.” She nods before heading towards the front of the plane, taking the cart with her as she does. The Thief King snorts, amused that the woman beside him is interested in coffee when she could sleep the entire trip, not having to deal with his selfishness at wanting to be alive, well, alive enough in their weird quandary.

“Coffee, Mazaki?” He teases her, more out of a need for himself to hide that he feels a very small amount of appreciation for her desire to stay awake and to do so with him. The brunette gives him a snort of derision.

“I want to enjoy the flight,” She speaks it offhandedly, tilting her blushing cheeks away from his eyes to take in the view of darkness from the window. Bakura lets her be for a few moments before he finds the uncertain words departing from his mouth out loud.

“Are you sure?” The dancer returns her blue ocean eyes to his form, taking in his gaze as he tries to look as if he hadn't just said something so out of character for him. Raising an eyebrow, Anzu smiles softly.

“I have no doubt you like feeling like this.” She gestures to his physical form, the hot flesh and pulsing blood he feels in him. The transition is strange enough and full of questions that he can't seem to find no matter how hard he thinks upon it. He looks to their clasp for answers, caught in thought.

“I do.” The answer is frank, but he finds he hates prolonging words that should be said. For the first time in his life, he finds that he appreciates her. He sees himself as something that shouldn't be but she is offering him a chance at physicality, at being human enough, he would not stay a phantom, unable to really affect the world around him. Their coffees come, mixed already for Anzu, and as Bakura takes his first taste of the hot beverage, he is overwhelmed by the taste.

It is taking a new breath in an old world, feeling everything tilt just the right amount to steady oneself.

It reminds him of the times he's wandered the Sahara to the Upper Kingdom from the Lower  where the Persians brought the drink along the trade routes on their way from Ethiopia. It was given at night to enjoy the stars, to praise the gods, and for concentration, when tasks needed the extra focus, but he had only used it for one of those things any time had taken it. He had enjoyed the bitterness when he was alive back then, knowing nothing could be sweet in life when he had already felt that he should be dead, looking up at the sky with anger, praying to no god because they had never appeared to help him before. He had cherished the properties of the drink as a method, but it was also one of the few pieces of happiness he had ever allowed himself on his tale of revenge.

He breaths in the aroma deeply, transfixed on the memories he is lost in. It brings him to a place that heralds laughter and men enjoying themselves on a sunny afternoon that is headed late in the evening with incense burning in the sconces and papyrus spread out on tables with laughter conjoined with the murmurs of men.

Anzu watches him out of the side of her eye before following through on drinking her own coffee. The heated beverage warms her up just enough from the slight cold air in the cabin that Bakura's skin under her own seems to do the rest. After putting her cup into the holder, she raises her finger to press the light above them to off. Anzu leans her chair back and looks up to the darkened ceiling.

Without meaning to, Anzu's thumb circles the back of Bakura's hand, taking in the sandpaper feel of his darkened skin. She is shaping him and she has no idea how or why. He looks at her and is taken in by what he sees in the dark unlit cabin. Unlike the rest of the dark world around them, she is highlighted by the shadows. He can see her nose and her lips and those blue eyes that are oceans and he finds that he wants to see more.

He gulps and finds that he can't really breath at that thought, the wanton wish to view her even more. Everything is overwhelming and makes him want to let go of her hand immediately, but she is also his anchor in the sea of their strange life together and he really doesn't want to let go. He misses the breathing, the feel of his heart as it is beating and the pulse of his blood in his body, things he had given up thousands of years before. He almost feels shame in holding onto her hand.

Anzu moves so she is on her side, facing him and begins to talk idly. It's nothing that requires him to actually care about, but her voice is soothing and he finds that he picks up clues about her life that not even Ryou knew about. He finds out that she loves watching terrible B-movies, the kind with such a low budget that it isn't even made correctly or, as she says you can even see the microphones and the acting is atrocious. She likes the parks, but just prefers walking around and enjoying the local places at any destination she goes. Anzu goes on and on about wanting to eventually make it to Washington DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival there, having gone to the one in Japan a few years before with her mom.

She speaks of philosophy and misogyny infuriating her and he can't help but listen to each word, speaking and questioning in return about the things he finds so different from his past and from his time in Ryou's body. They have a flight long conversation that fills him in a way he hasn't had in a millennium. She brings up Voltaire, Descartes, and Machiavelli, mentioning their words and he finds that shadow games seem such a minor thing when it comes to questions about the human condition and the thoughts of humanitarian theory.

Anzu quotes the Book of War, a book he thinks she would have never once read, except for her mentioning that she took a lot of philosophy classes for her humanities credits (He has yet to ask what a humanities credit is.) and that when she had been depressed, right after the sennen items had fallen in the earth, she fell back on the phrase, “If the mind is willing, the flesh could go on and on without many things,”.

Bakura can't help but swallow a heavy rock down his throat as the words hit home. Just maybe, he is alive, because he finds the will to be and that frightens him more than anything because it speaks of something he has never thought of while he was wrapped in Zorc's essence. With Anzu he finds something he doesn't want to yet give thought to.

He wants to live.

LLL

It is the day after they have settled into New York and the jet lag has caught up with Anzu. She is laying on her side, awake in the middle of the night as London is already mid-morning. She has already stretched, practicing against the wall in the cramped apartment of her friend's, a woman named Eva who is out of the city for a few weeks on a tour with a dance company according to Anzu. Bakura watches her as her restlessness takes over and the dancer begins to make breakfast.

When she makes a second stack of pancakes and puts another plate and glass on the small two-seated table set against the wall in the kitchen, the thief is more than surprised. His surprise melts into hesitating elation when she finishes setting the table and holds out her hand without question for him to take.

He takes it and the transition between phantom and human takes hold. He is breathing and feeling and touching and his nose smells just how wonderful the pancakes smell. Anzu lets him enjoy the sensation before she uses her left hand to raise her tea to her lips and take a sip. Her blue eyes are sharp and determined when the cup leaves her hand, resting on the table between them.

“Was I anyone in the past?” It is a loaded question. Bakura can only contemplate on her question for a few minutes before he knows the silence will annoy her. Her face will become sullen and her lips will pout at the injustice of silence. The thief king knows he can't get out of answering, as he would normally try, because something about the line of clenched jaw, and her over-bearing gaze tells him that she won't quit until she knows.

What he wants to say is a lie. He wants to tell her that he and Atem, the pharaoh, had never known her, that she wasn’t in their lives one bit. He wants to tell such a bald-faced lie so she won’t know what happened to her was his fault. Ryou has asked the same when Bakura, the once great thief king of the sand kingdom, had been in his body. Bakura didn’t answer then, didn't feel the need to. Ryou didn’t need to know really and Bakura didn’t speak directly enough to Anzu to be asked before by her.

He sees Teanna in her and the want to lie dies from the moment he opens his mouth. He has never told anyone about the woman who bewitched a marketplace with her smile and moves. Talking of Teanna is an itch, a regret coming into the light from the shadows of three thousand years. His lips are cracked open, a cask of water to quench her curiosity. He is kept to the reminder that bringing Teanna to conversation is bringing the only regret he had in his quest of power.

He finds that he cannot lie to Anzu and thus, he starts slow, dark earth being turned with a spade of disuse with his voice. Anzu Mazaki leans in close, close enough that he wants to move away, but he doesn’t. He supposes this is part of his new life. She will always be too close at times and frankly, he knows in some small way, he wants that but the reason why alludes him. Her fingers stroke the back of his hand, soothing him before he even lets out his first sentence.

"You were a dancer back then.” He feels the heat of the desert crowd him, the beats of a far off drum as children ran around excited at the girl in the plaza, who was blessed by the nimble feet of the gods. “You danced in the middle of the marketplace, around the slave platform on the afternoons when they weren’t selling the slaves.” Anzu and Teanna merge and he is dropped into the past. Teanna dances out of his lips and her story is told to Anzu. “I don't really know where you were from but I could guess. You were likely an orphan from the war during the previous pharaoh’s reign. You took care of those who lost their families to famine, war, poverty, and their own debts. The thieves tended to leave you alone because of this. Some of those kids were theirs after all.” He licks his lips, letting the food in front of him cool. “You had Jono help you. Jounouchi." He could close his eyes and remember the flutes and drums the kids played for the dark haired woman with the sapphire robes, the one with the easy smile who took care of anyone she met, as far as the rumors said.  

She was poise and grace and Bakura had been fascinated on the afternoons when he’d watch her, mostly during lulls of his night time activity. Her hair was short and kept his eyes on her shoulders to see the strands brush against her tanned skin. By the gods, she would smile and he knew back then as he did now that it was the smile of someone who was passionate and loving despite the cruel world they had lived in. Bakura could feel his lips curve into an unconventional smile at the memory. It was one of the purest memories he had that hadn’t been tainted in darkness, just contemplation of form and an aesthetic eye.

"I think you helped him a time ago before I met you. During one of the drier seasons, when there wasn’t enough to go around, we ended up under the same awning, trying to hide from the heat with no food between the two of us. We talked of meaningless, stupid things." He can feel his heart ache with the image of the girl who sat with him under that white awning, smiling and laughing at some of the worst things Bakura could think she would laugh at. “She….” He pauses as he thinks upon what they were. Malik and he had been comrades after the same mission, but she was outside enemy and ally. She wasn't someone he used for more than interesting conversation when he couldn't get it elsewhere. Thinking back on it now, three thousand years later, Bakura had to frown as Teanna was quite possibly the only real thing he had to a friend at the time. “She became a....friend. One of the few I could ever say I had in my first life."

Teanna didn't ask anything of him besides sharing the awning that one day. She let him be when she saw him in the crowd, not calling out for him other than with a passing smile or wave in his direction. She hadn't been stupid though. She had known all along who he was.

"After that, we met often after the performances. She would sometimes even give me water." He let out a harsh laugh, self-deprecating at her bleeding heart for a man who was on the road to revenge. “It was….” He finds retrospection is a thing he doesn't really want to find himself looking at but he is forced to tell himself the truth. Teanna had spent her time with a man wanting to die for his cause, a man wanting to throw himself to destruction, not to save him from it, but to comfort him during it, to offer her friendship even if he died on his mission. In each scenario, she was only left with him leaving in some fashion. ”It was foolish of her.” He doesn't know why he finds each word so hard to speak about, because during this entire one-sided conversation, Teanna has come out in spurts of calmness and like a river, rocky and sputtering at times.  

“ The guards saw us sometimes and I didn’t….” Bakura can't help but stare at Teanna incarnate. She is Anzu and he sees the past being repeated in front of him. He sees the looks from the palace guards as Atem passes by with his retinue to the temple. His arrogance fails both Teanna and himself as he thinks she is below their notice. In his dark heart, he didn't even think to tell her to hide when they passed by. “I didn’t think they saw her. They…." He is taken back, by all of it, but he can't stop. Teanna wants to be explained. Anzu is on the edge of her chair, leaning forward over her breakfast, mouth partially open, blue eyes wide in earnest amazement. He sees Teanna there in her. The bright blue eyes wide but focused on him, mouth open and waiting for his replies, body leaning forward in her eagerness. He sees the minute they grabbed her from the platform in the middle of one of her dances. He can hear the whip being pulled from the hardened leather belts the guards wore. Their voices calling out, angry and demanding where he was, demanding an answer from her that she never had in the first place. She didn't know who he was more than what they call him. She knew of his title, knew of his deeds, but had no active part in his dealings. She was unfortunate. She was innocent. She was someone that had barely been connected to him for more than a few months. He made her a target.  “After my break in and killing of Mahad, their magician and the original owner of the sennen ring, I came to tell you that you would not see me for much longer, but they…."

He looks at Anzu and the tears are starting to form in her eyes. He wants to tell her not to pity him but he doesn’t. He wants to say he’s sorry that she was caught and put through so much simply because he had found her a captivating jewel in the desert sands. He had wanted her but he knew back then, or at least, he thought he knew that he hadn’t loved her. He continues on speaking, voice stolen of all its depth, hollow and echoing, speaking of his part. If she hadn't ever met him under that awning, if she had never laughed at his grumpiness, if she had never caused him to look at her once, she might have lived a life so different. Teanna could have been a wife to a good man, even had happiness and a home that was so much better than he could have ever offered her.

"They grabbed you and whipped you forty lashes on the place you performed on. They wanted my whereabouts. Those men of Atem’s didn’t rape you. They broke you in front of the market. They broke your legs and shattered your feet and I couldn’t do anything to help you.” His confession lays between them. He had plans. He couldn't be caught, wouldn't let himself be caught. Teanna paid for it. Her blue eyes had found his under their awning as each bite of the whip flayed her legs apart. They had caught his own and kept him watching, kept him from leaving but Teanna kept quiet. “I watched them. You were the best dancer in Egypt and they stole your life from you. The Pharaoh was told you were sold off to slavery, but no slave master would take you afterward when you tried to sell yourself off for the orphans to have some food." He sighed, intently trying to ignore the pangs of sorrow that surged in him from the memory of what he had witnessed and been too much of a coward to come forward to tell them otherwise. His mission though had taken precedence. “The gold I stole from the pharaoh though, I used it to set you up with gold and a home. Jono…..Jono took care of you and Malik, the man he was back then, made sure the children you fostered were fed."

It had been his chosen act of reparations before he went into the tombs for the last time, to want to face the pharaoh, to kill the king of their land in his tale of revenge.

Bakura jumps at the warmth surrounding him. He is no longer watching Teanna's form broken and bleeding on the platform she had once danced upon with mirth. He blinks back the strange feelings as he finally returns from his memory of the dancer and feels Anzu around him. He smells her and is brought to gardens of jasmine and honeysuckles. She is a balm on an old wound. “I know she forgave you. I know she forgave you a long time ago."

Teanna speaks to him, not Anzu, of the feverish words. Bakura says nothing in return. He just sits there, limp in her arms. The food on the table, cold and forgotten as his heart beats loudly and quickly between them.

This is the first time he knows forgiveness.

LLL

Their conversations at times are practically dumb. This is something he decides after they are holding hands throughout the supermarket, bickering about what they should cook. Anzu wants another night of fish and as much as Bakura is fine with fish, he finds that too much is too much. They have had fish for the last four nights in different variations. His choice of beef, a rarity from his time in the past, with a spicy curry sauce and plated with rice and scallions was enough to make Anzu frown, annoyed. She stated that she would likely fall asleep from such a heavy meal and she needed to practice before they went to bed.  He decides this is all stupid to argue about because he sees her trying to make him understand customs and traditions he has seen her do, little rituals that govern her life but he is stuck in the in between and feels frustrated about his status there. She wants to integrate him and that rankles as to what would he find himself integrated into. It hisses and causes him to grit his teeth for he longs for sunny days and sand in a way that he hasn't done in a very long while. He is removed for so long from his native land that it seems strange to dwell upon missing it so fiercely.

He is homesick and the idea makes him want to fall out in laughter till he feels tears prick at the edge of his eyes out of desperation and want. 3000 years and all he wants is to lay in the sand and feel the coarseness of the desert drown him in its very essence. When he glances over at her putout face, upset that she had lost at their game of rock paper scissors about dinner, Bakura sees it in her too. She looks longingly at the aisle of international food that is set aside in the big supermarket her friend has recommended that has more international foods than others in the area. Her friend just assumes he's a fellow dancer when she Skype Anzu a few days after they're in New York City to make sure she's alright and has had no issues while staying at her empty apartment, and it makes him wonder just how much he is being seen and how far he is from being human.

Anzu looks at the packets of pre-seasoned dishes and frowns while he notes there is nothing of his homeland in this aisle. There is the Indian spices and Thai bowls, Japanese and Korean ramen and noodles set aside, but nothing of which he even considers secondary to his taste buds. Anzu instead heads to the meat to pick up slabs of beef for dinner that night. As she's inspecting the packaging, she murmurs to him in Japanese, so that others around them don't understand what they say, so that even in public with him appearing in the flesh, fingers tingling as they hold onto her from her touch, hot and flaming just from holding her hand, they are still closed off from the rest of the world.  

“I miss my home when I'm away.” She has replaced the package with another as she leans over, taking her time to read the weight and cost of the red meat in her hand. Bakura watches her avidly, hoping that she will pick the best piece for him as she peruses the beef section. It takes a few minutes before her fingers pick up two round tip steaks and puts it in their cart.

“I wouldn't know about that.” Bakura's reply leaves Anzu in silence long enough that they finish their shopping, walk to the apartment, start making dinner and watching television. It is when she sets their dinner plates down on the small table, holding her hand out for him to take so he can enjoy the taste of steak in his mouth, that she even breaks the quiet between them.

“Do you miss your home?” He takes her hand, appreciating the fact that she took her time to cut their steaks so he wouldn't have to let go at all for her to do so. Taking a bite, Bakura is not sure how to answer. He thinks on it and comes up with the only answer he can give.

“My home is buried in the sands.” He resumes eating, stating the fact for what it is. Kul Ena doesn't exist anymore, hadn't existed since he was seven years old, too young to stop it from dying in a blaze of war and chaos. He can't go back to it and he can't find it because the remains have likely eroded into nothing by now, swallowed up by the cruel world they lived in.

“I didn't ask where it was.” Anzu's tone is a sword, as her fingers rub the back of his hand, something he finds more soothing than it really should be. Her face is scrunched up and he finds it is more adorable when she's like this, frustrated at his response and annoyed with his glib truth. The thought strikes him as more than strange, but he lets that go to the side. Her words cause his heart to ache with the destitution again, lunacy of desperation crying out the edges of his sanity from the desire to even go back to Egypt. For a long time, he stays quiet, choosing to eat the hot steak that she had made for him, not knowing that beef is a meal he had once in his life before Ryou due to how much one had to pay for it. She sits there in front of him, taking in his silence, eating with him to not let her food go to waste.



“It's buried in the sands.” As they both finish dinner, Bakura stares at her. There is sauce at the corner of her mouth, slowly dripping down to her chin. As he speaks, he reaches out to wipe the sauce from her lips, bringing it to his mouth and sucking on it. The intake of breath is all he gets as he chooses at that moment to let go of her hand and disappear, leaving her with frustration at him and their discussion.

The next morning, she surprises him after her morning routine of stretching and making breakfast for the both of them.

“We're going somewhere. It's a surprise.” She holds out her hand and he takes it without question. It is second nature for him to do so by now. As soon as they are out of the door, she takes him onto a bus at the bus station where the noise is too much for him to handle from the loudspeakers and every other word he has said in response to a question asked has been to repeat the previous phrase said. People on the bus make room for him and for the entire ride, she holds his hand, thumb running in circles on the back of his palm, so that no one will sit on him unexpectedly. The motion sickness rocks him and the English words and Spanish ones above them on the ceiling do little to help calm the roiling sea in the pit of his stomach. Translating in his head of what he is reading just causes it to get worse. He can't tell if this is punishment for his refusal to answer her question from the previous night or not.

It isn't until she tugs his hand to guide him off the bus after an hour or two, having not said anything more to him, that he feels Anzu's kindness is immediately too much for him to handle. She is basked in the sun, though it isn't as warm as the summers from his youth, and smiling shyly to him, shadows playing upon her face. She is hopeful of her intentions getting through to him though she has yet to say a word. His breath is caught in his throat and as he looks at Mazaki, Bakura can't help but think she is one of the most beautiful things in the world that he covets because of her kindness, even for a man like him.

Anzu has brought him to the sand and the sun, to bask in its heat. For a fleeting moment, Bakura feels so grateful he could hug her like regular people do. Instead, he brings his forehead to rest against hers, flushed with the thought that she went out of her way for him like this when he was really being more than petulant about missing his home. They don't speak and the quiet doesn't bother him nor her. It is the river of conversation between them as his eyes are wide and open for her to look into. They are moments in an hourglass that pass. When he steps away, hand clenching onto hers tightly, he looks to the beach and sees his home in a manner that had escaped him before. He takes in a huge breath and lets out the most heartfelt laugh for the first time in centuries.

The brunette with him can't help but find it captivating and is in reverence for the way his laughter lights his eyes and strikes his cheeks with a match. He is burning with life and echoing its favor from his mouth. As he reaches down to the sand, picking some up into a fist, letting it fall out of the bottom. Anzu knows she did the right thing.

He is lost to Egypt, but Egypt is not completely lost from him.

LLLL