ruinsprofessor

[ Bakura absently rubbed his chest, recalling the sensation of a blade sliding into it although no steel touched him and no injury had physically appeared there. ]

Oh, I know what it's got going for it. But as they say, the best weapon is just the pointed end of a bad one.

[Raine glances up, motion catching her eye, and can't help but sympathize with the gesture.]

In other words, anything would do? Is the Ring so vulnerable?

[It sounds like concern. The Ring is metal, and has life woven into it. For some reason she'd thought it a particularly durable thing-- after all, it sustained Bakura thousands of years, didn't it?]

[ Bakura chuckled a little, but it was a humourless sound. ]

Hardly vulnerable, no. It cannot be melted, damaged, or drained of power. The shadow alchemy made sure of that. Its bearers, on the other hand, tend to be a little less indestructible.

[ a mirthless smile ]

I should know, I killed its first one.

Edited 2015-08-06 06:03 (UTC)

[UM.]

[Raine doesn't know that she expected anything less, but even so, it's something a little startling, to have Bakura admit it so bald-facedly.]

[Well. A great many of her friends have killed, after all. This has already happened, and there's no changing it, nor does it change the Bakura she knows. In any case, Raine doubts he killed for the fun of it. Maybe it's just that she wants to believe the best of him, but they've spoken of costs enough... no. Bakura knows the weight of a life.]

But you're still concerned for the sword's possible influence on it.

[She's missing a step, which she hopes he'll be considerate enough to fill in.]

[ It certainly hadn't been for fun, no. It had been a life or death match, with Mahaad as determined to come out of the duel its victor just as much as Bakura had been. That damned claw trap would have taken his leg off if it hadn't had the fortune to catch the cuff he wore at his ankle. That had been too close a call.

And he hadn't technically gotten rid of the man completely, as Mahaad's last act was to fuse himself with his ka, and remaking himself as the Dark Magician that continued to serve the Pharaoh, even in modern times. Damned persistent Priest!

Raine's puzzlement left him wondering if there was any good way to eloborate... but there really wasn't. ]

When I was sealed in the Ring, I wasn't the only thing in there, seba-rekhet. You feel how dark it is, but you're only seeing part of the picture. I was never the worst thing bound to this Item.

It isn't even darkness, per se. [Raine gives this a little thought.] Not as an element, at any rate. There's just something... off. Not like living mana should feel.

[Wrong. It sets her on edge sometimes when she's paying attention to it, like being in the depths of the Temple of Shadow with Abyssion laying claim to the Devil's Arms. Mostly she's used to what Bakura feels like, but sometimes...]

[The fact that there is worse bound into the Ring makes her eyes sharp, and she frowns at him.]

And it came with you? What is it?

Not like how you'd think of it, no. It's more evil, than dark.

[ Bakura wasn't the type to toss around that word lightly, but there was no hesitation in how he used it here. ]

It is... hm.

[ Perhaps he'd better back up a bit. ]

The Items were created through shadow alchemy, which was written in a book called the Thousand Years Tome. The Priests only managed to translate the ritual and its spell, but also inside of it was information on what it had been written to seal away: a being called Zorc. Whether a demon, or a dark god, he's used both titles, and he predates Egypt. The Tome claimed that the gods themselves sealed him the first time, to avoid being destroyed by him.

[That was an exceptionally notable lack of hesitation. Bakura is entirely certain that the word evil applies here.]

[That's... a very bad sign.]

I take it that this being was... unsealed?

[Grim. If the being predates the Items, Raine can really only see one way for it to have gotten bound to one. It got loose, or was set loose, and someone re-sealed it.]

[With the way his past is, the way the Items apparently required quite a bit of sacrifice of life to be made... Raine will not be surprised if there was a significant death toll surrounding the entire debacle.]

It was... awoken, is probably a better term. To unseal it, all the created Items had to be put back into the tablet, and that would break the the seals.

[ a pause, and then: ]

So that's what I did.

[To her credit, Raine neither drops the mug nor throws it at Bakura. This is, however, mostly because her hands have tightened convulsively on it, to the point that her knuckles creak. She stares at Bakura, for a moment without anything to say.]

[He broke the seal on something he himself acknowledges as evil. Why would he-- no, Raine can pinpoint with alarming accuracy why. The thing she already knows he'd do anything for, the 'justice' he seeks for his family and village. She is still uncertain about his distinction between justice and vengeance.]

How was it that this seemed necessary?

[It's flat, not particularly happy. She still wants to think he wouldn't go that far if he thought there was any other choice. Granted, there probably was another choice, which was don't, but... Bakura could not have done nothing were what he sought within his reach, Raine is sure of that much.]

[ He glances up at her, as if he's only just sort of registering what they're actually talking about. Given how the conversation had started, and the brief interlude of peaceful chat in the middle, it does seem jarring. But he does this, sort-of breaks good things when he has them, even when it's not the intent. Still, he's committed to the explanation now, whether by design or default, so he can't very well drop the subject... not with how Raine's looking hard at him now. ]

There was no one else to turn to, to try and make right what had been done.

Akhenaden wiped the minds of all the soldiers who'd participated in the slaughter. Later, when Akhenamkhanen found out about what the ritual had entailed, instead of trying to help them, he had every reference to Kul Elna destroyed. Even the gods' kaa continued to obey his son, like everything was still--

[ there's a faint curdle of the word here, like it burns the back of his throat as he says it ]

--was still ma'at.

[Raine has, unlike Solomon, only bits and pieces of the context, what she's questioned out of the two of them and put together from usage. Nowhere near a complete picture of the Egypt that is Bakura's home, but... enough, she thinks, to know what's so dreadfully wrong about this.]

[She puts her coffee down on the nearby counter before it can fall from her hands or worse. Grits her teeth. And sorts through, piece by piece.]

[To be forgotten is a kind of death; to intentionally obliterate a person, let alone an entire village, from memory as well as life, is an act of cruelty. So the Items were created with the deaths of Bakura's family, and it was further compounded by assuring that no one would or could remember them. Save, of course, one very angry survivor with the capability to hold a very lethal grudge. And all appearances in the world, if she understands him right, were that it wasn't wrong; no person remembered to object and no god cried out against it. The world turned, and the slaughter was forgotten, and Bakura harbored vengeance in his heart like a slow-growing seed.]

[It is not a mystery why.]

[Raine fixes on something small, at first.] You say his son. Not he himself? [It's... odd. But it matters less compared to the rest. A headshake.]

...Never mind. I...

[It's horrific. His choice of tactics is little better, but she can see why. 'I'm sorry' is hideously inadequate; 'how could you' doesn't even enter into consideration.]

It wasn't right.

[But she hardly has to tell him that. Here is the problem: she remembers that utter certainty she had of him, early on, about his ghosts, his family. She doesn't doubt that. And she would not want to be in his way, no matter the good terms they're on now.]

[For all that, Raine finds herself strangely calm. For now.]

Then how did it end up sealed with you?

[ He isn't sure what to make of her restrained reaction. Her motions say she's angry, but she doesn't sound it, not in the same way she'd been earlier.

Raine's understanding of more of the context might then better illuminate why Bakura called justice and vengeance the same in this case. He did want revenge for them being taken from him, for no other reason than they had been deemed too worthless as a thieves village to be anything other than fodder, but there is justice to be had in their salvation, restoring what was taken from them: not just their lives, but their very existences.

And that was why he had taken their loss so hard, not simply because it denied him revenge, but because it meant they were well and truly lost, not merely to him but to everything, to every form of existence. The ghosts had wanted their vengeance, yes, but more than that, they had simply wanted to again be. ]

Akhenamkhanen died, before I was strong enough to-- before I had a chance of beating his Priests, the new wielders of the Items. His son, Atem, boy-king, took the throne.

[ True, Atem had been in his fifteenth year. But he was younger than Bakura, and would always be the child king. ]

When the Items were removed from their tablet after the ritual, the Ring was the last one removed... it was stuck, because Zorc was trying to seal himself inside of it. For the most part, it worked. Not all of him, but some. In the past, when I took my war to the Palace, to take on the Pharaoh and all his Priests, I needed to give Zorc the strongest form I could, to win against them -- I gave him my ka.

But the Pharaoh used his name, living magic, and sealed all the shadow magic away at the cost of his memories. As we were the shadow's players, both of us were were sealed too -- he in his Item, the Puzzle, and myself in the Ring.

Edited 2015-08-13 08:15 (UTC)

[That's... a lot. Raine follows the narrative, watching him with the particular sort of intent that says she is memorizing, that she is going to come back to this again and again until every last scrap of meaning has been teased from it. For now, however, one thing sticks out, and it's probably for the best she put the coffee down.]

You-- gave him your... But that's--

[Congratulations, Bakura, you've stumped her for forming complete sentences with how ridiculous that was. He gave something he calls an evil god part of his soul, and then spent the best part of three thousand years sealed with it. Raine can't even begin. She considers, briefly, slapping him again, but the trouble is she can see very clearly how desperation and being so alone would have led Bakura right to that.]

[Did he never stop to think that maybe he was worth more than just an instrument of vengeance? Raine is equal measures horrified and furious and something approaching offended, both by him and on his behalf, and the end result is that she just keeps staring at him for a long moment.]

You idiot.

[But she closes her eyes, and scrubs a hand across her face, and when she looks at him again it's a studying look.]

Why tell me all this now? Full disclosure was hardly necessary.

[ He doesn't respond to her mild epithet, in fact he barely reacts to it. There's something exhausted in his eyes, like the weight of both keeping this vague, and telling her, has hit him all at once. ]

Because you should know.

[ You should know who you're spending your care on, and what I am. ]

And I should have told you sooner.

[It's a peculiar thing to think they once approached each other so cautiously, circling like wary fighters around the outskirts of exspheres and the Ring, and Bakura's now telling her he should have disclosed the depths of his history sooner. That's care, Raine thinks, or as much as he knows how to express it, that he doesn't want to hide from her.]

[It doesn't mean she knows what to do with what he's handed her, but that tempers it, somehow.]

[Raine picks up her coffee again. Leans against the counter.]

Do you have regrets?

[It's not an idle question, but a relatively calm one, under the circumstances.]

[ Bakura's almost forgotten that he's holding his own cup of coffee, strangely steady through the whole thing. He suspects it will taste bitter at the moment, and not in any way due to the roast. ]

Only that I didn't win.

[She doesn't know what she expected. She laces her fingers a little tighter on the mug, glances down at it only to drag her gaze back up to look at Bakura's face. Reading him is no easier than it's ever been, but she pushes.]

Because that would have made the sacrifice worth it?

That wasn't why I needed to win.

[ But it's a mild rebuke, and the need to win is more telling than the correction. He doesn't think she's misunderstanding, just that she's putting the emphasis on the wrong thing. ]

But yes, it would have been... better, to not have done it all for naught.

That's why I had to go back. The duel I had been in the middle of, the Pharaoh's soul and mine, playing the ultimate shadow game. The winner would get to rewrite history; I could've made it so Kul Elna had never fallen, that the Items had never existed. Except this time around, I had no Diabound to give Zorc, so I gave him myself -- past and future both.

Instead, the Pharaoh got extra help from his vessel and his friends, and he recovered his name and memory at the last minute. He summoned Horakhty, the god of light... and that was it.

[ And Raine had seen what primeval Light would do to the Ring; indeed, the conversation had come full circle back around to the light contained in Valdis' sword. ]

Edited 2015-08-13 10:39 (UTC)

[She would ask if there were any other phenomenally foolish choices he feels the need to get off his chest now, but... that was the end of that, wasn't it.]

[Diabound is a name she plans to remember.]

You idiot.

[She's aware she's already informed him of this, but there's something profoundly helpless about the way she says it now. There aren't enough words to measure either the drive he has or the bounds of his foolishness, so far as she's concerned, and so she is reduced to giving her coffee a look as though it's done something to personally offend and sadden her.]

[He's dead, after all.]

I understand... some of your choices. Not everything. [She might never. Still, it isn't a push for more, just an explication of where they are.] Perhaps enough.

[She's not sure she wanted to know this, but she can acknowledge that she may have needed to.]

Perhaps enough.

[ He echoes the words, weary, and decides it's fine. Three repetitions on idiot in the same afternoon is getting a bit much, however. It's still better than he'd have hoped for, if he'd had the sense to realize this visit might have played out in any way like this. It was probably, given the nature and scope of the things he'd just revealed to her, better than he'd deserved.

In the sudden quiet of the kitchen, he's run out of things to say. ]

[He's given Raine the no-stops tour of his most horrible choices. She doesn't know what he expected. She doesn't know what she expected. In the quiet she sips her coffee, tries to settle the emotional turmoil into something a little more sensible.]

[All she can seem to focus on is how tired he seems, and she knows the rest needs to be given careful consideration, as objectively as she can, but it's still all tied up in the rest of the day's feelings, the relief that he's alive and the anger at his aforementioned horrible choices. Raine sets her coffee down again -- there's only a little left, anyway -- and moves a few paces toward Bakura, reaching out to cover his hands on his mug. It's a gentle, careful thing, but no less present.]

I don't know. I need to think about this-- you've told me a lot.

['I don't know' covers just about everything right now. It's honest. It's also all she has at the moment. Except:]

...will you come to dinner, later?

[ Raine, those were only the chapter titles of his horrible choices in life and beyond. There's whole pages of them still buried. Although at least, none of the others rivalled these in terms of scale. ]

That's fine... I hadn't meant to.

[ Originally, when she'd came to see him today, this conversation had not even been an inkling in his mind. And he doesn't regret having told her -- indeed, she'd just confirmed he regrets nothing, like the very ability has been purged -- but that does not mean he looks forward to any possible fallout. He suspects there will be, and yet the notion is... almost steadying.

Her hands are warm, or his have just become cold, along with the cooling coffee. She invites him to dinner, and Keeliai remembers to exist outside this room. ]

... Okay.

[She huffs a little, and it's almost amused.]

I hardly thought you'd meant things to go this way.

[It just... snowballed, really. If Bakura was actively trying to get rid of her, he'd have been less delicate about it, she thinks. More direct. This seemed more, looking back, like he almost couldn't stop himself laying it bare. That, too, will bear examination.]

[Improbably, she pats one of his hands before letting go. Raine herself is not entirely sure why, but she makes herself brisk.]

Good. I'll get back to you with a precise date in a little while.

[Which may coincide with how long it takes her to think this through to her satisfaction. Raine picks her coffee back up to finish the tail end of it, then, a gesture made with some intent. When she is leaving, it is because she has things to do and thoughts that need examination. Not because she is running. And that's as much for her benefit as his.]

[ Her mannerism helps, and while he suspects she knew it would, he doubts she realized just how much. Bakura nods, setting her now-empty mug in the sink to be rinsed, something for him to give his attention. The air feels like it's slowly coming back into the room, or less like high altitude. ]

Of course. You know where to find me.

[ An obvious jest, though less flippant than normal. ]

Your coworkers will be wondering where you've gone off too.

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