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Sure, Seto turned his head when Isono swerved the car—but the person Isono had been aiming to avoid, in a dark but lit parking lot of all places, smacked themself into the windshield anyway. Isono stopped. Seto scoffed under his breath. Before Seto could roll his window down and congratulate this person on failing to set up a crash in an empty parking lot to sue KaibaCorp over, though, whoever it was slid off the windshield. Seto lost track of them for two seconds before they slammed against the door next to him.
Ghoulish red eyes stared him down. “Do you know,” this person purred foggily through the muffling glass, “how hard you are to find?”
Seto opened his mouth—but it was Atem who gasped, “Bakura?”
Given that Atem was freshly recovered from the afterlife—by Seto himself—there shouldn’t have been anyone who knew he was here. Seto had intended to keep it that way. For now, anyway. And yet—
“What,” Seto said, “that dweeb friend of yours?”
“Not that Bakura.” Atem sounded—strained, somehow, which was incredibly unlike him. “This is the Other Bakura, Kaiba, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about him.”
Seto locked the car door twice. Thoughtfully, he reached for a card in his breast pocket. A sharp card. “I haven’t.”
“You have.”
“I haven’t—”
This Bakura fellow banged his fist on Seto’s window. “Are you even listening to me?!”
Seto glanced at Atem and asked, “What’s his deal, then? He hasn’t shown his face in—”
“Hey!” Bakura shouted.
“—a while, has he?”
“Hey!” Bakura shouted. “Hey! I’m talking to you, Pharaoh!”
The strain in Atem’s behavior grew stronger. “He’s—supposed to be dead.”
“Dead like you?” Seto asked.
“Dead like dead,” Atem heaved. “Gone, deceased, banished, vanished. There shouldn’t be anything left of him after what happened the last time we met.”
“You thought you could get rid of me?!” Bakura shouted through the glass.
“Hm.” Seto stared straight ahead and took his hand out of his jacket. “Isono, drive out of here.”
“Of course, Mr. Kaiba,” Isono said.
The car moved gently—and Bakura slid off the glass with an audible squeak.
The problem—annoyance, really—was that he took this as some sort of challenge to chase after them while shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Hey! Hey!”
“Is he out for revenge, then?” Seto asked casually.
Atem took a second to respond. “It… very much seems like it.”
Seto pursed his lips. “Hm. Well, he can get in line. We still have our rematch to figure out.” Which obviously took precedence.
Atem was quiet at that, though, which did not inspire confidence in Seto.
“Kaiba,” Atem eventually said, all tense and sentimental. “We should head back and—”
Isono interrupted them both though. “Ah, Sir—”
Seto was not in the mood. “What.”
“We’ve run into a slight problem.”
The car was stopped. In front of them, blocking the parking lot exit, was Bakura, huffing and heaving foggy breath out over and over and holding his hand over his eyes against the bright beam of the car headlights.
“You thought—“ He stopped, and spat, and wiped his mouth and shouted louder, still muffled by the glass, “You thought you could escape the afterlife! Without me! Well, joke’s on fucking you!”
Seto spotted Atem leaning forward and clutching the headrest in front of him.
“That’s right!” Bakura shouted. “I swear now!”
“What is that dorkazoid blathering about?” Seto asked.
Atem wouldn’t take his eyes off him. “He’s saying he’s back from the—”
“I heard him.”
“You hear me in there?!?” Bakura shouted with his shrill, hysterical, muffled voice.
This whole experience had gotten tedious. Seto pushed down on the window button and poked his head out once the window rolled down enough to allow space for his head to fit through. “We’re going to run you over if you don’t get out of the way in—”
“We are not running him over!” Atem barked.
“Sir,” Isono said, “I would advise against running him over—”
“We’re running him over,” Seto told Atem. He then turned back to Bakura. “We’re running you over.”
Again, Bakura had his hand hovered over his eyes. His wide eyes. His grin snapped open even wider at that. “Ha! Haha! Ha! Ha. Oh, you’re funny.”
“You have ten seconds to get out of the—” Seto started to say, but—
“Kaiba,” Atem said firmly. “I’ll talk to him.”
Seto nearly spoke. Bakura beat him to it by jumping in during Seto’s intake of breath, though.
“Talk to me?” Bakura snapped. As he went on, he hiked his leg up and stomped on the car bumper. “What’s there to talk about? You—” He stomped harder. “—destroyed—” He stomped harder. “—everything!”
He stomped again so forcefully that the car bounced a small increment.
“The only talking I want to do,” Bakura yelled, “is the talking that involves ramming my fucking fist down your throat!”
“Good god, he’s skipped straight to violence,” Isono wheezed.
Seto sat back inside the car. “Isono, floor it.”
“Kaiba—” Atem snapped.
“Reverse and floor it, now.”
Right away, Isono followed orders. He jabbed the gear shift around and turned so he could see where he was steering—which was as far as Seto felt like being concerned.
What he was more unwillingly aware of was the fact that Bakura was jogging after the car. He looked ghoulish, lit up by the headlights like that; scrawny and utterly inspiring unease—in Atem, surely in Atem and not in Seto—with his haggard, jagged movements. When the car turned, Seto draped his arm over his seat so he could turn and keep an eye on him. When the car continued to turn in circles, Seto really realized how endless this was.
“You don’t have a deck on you,” he said.
Atem let out a strained sound. “Of course I don’t, Kaiba—”
“And he doesn’t even want a card game.” Seto spotted Bakura blocking the lot exit again. “He wants violence.”
“I mean—I understand, in a way,” Atem muttered. “My uncle massacred his entire village to make the Millennium Items—”
“Your uncle what?”
The car skidded to a halt once Bakura jumped closer to it. Bakura took that chance to kick at the bumper again. “Come out here and fight me!”
Some sort of airy, tense look washed over Atem. “The Millennium Items.”
Seto didn’t like his tone.
“Nobody told you?” Atem asked.
“Isono, keep driving,” Seto droned.
Obediently, Isono reversed the car. Once the car stopped again, he made a three point turn and drove on—which failed utterly to phase Atem at all.
“The Items are made of ninety-nine human sacrifices,” he said.
Seto felt nothing. “Even the Cube?”
“I don’t know about the Cube, actually,” Atem said. “That one’s strange.”
“Cube’s strange. Got it. Excuse me.” Seto jabbed his head out the window again and barked at Bakura, “Hey, you.”
Bakura cackled once, his breath puffing out smokily in front of him. “Finally fucking facing me, are we?”
“Is the Millennium Cube one of the Items made out of human sacrifices?”
“The Millennium Fucking What?”
“Right.” Seto sat back down and re-crossed his legs. “Consensus points toward no.”
Atem wasted no time, yet spoke aimlessly. “Kaiba, what does that have to do with—”
“I’m trying to keep my moral dilemmas straight.” Seto glanced at Atem in the poor parking lot lighting. “I never took you as one to benefit from human sacrifice.”
“I—” That seemed to get Atem. Seto should have revelled in cracking Atem’s armor—should have revelled in finding spots of his that were weak and wrong and terribly, awfully human. “I know.”
Atem held his forehead and leaned on his thighs with a heavy sigh.
“I know.”
“Is that what his revenge is about?” Seto asked.
“Yes.”
Seto felt— “I see.”
Atem grabbed next at the door handle. “I should go out and talk to him—”
“He isn’t going to want to talk. You’ve heard him.” They could still hear him. He was banging whatever limbs he could against Seto’s moving vehicle. “He wants to punch you in the throat.”
Bakura immediately howled, “I want to shove my foot down his—”
“I should talk to him,” Atem said again.
Seto felt nothing, strangely enough. “Atem—”
“No, no, let the Pharaoh come out!” Bakura shouted and heaved. “I want to see his pathetic excuse for guilt go away again when someone tells him making the Millennium Items was for the greater good!”
“That was wrong of me, okay?” Atem snapped raggedly. The words seemed to rush out of him the more the car whirled around that moving Bakura. “I was confused, and young, and easily swayed by—”
“By comforting lies!” Bakura shouted.
“By comforting lies, yes!”
“And your black and white truth!”
“And my black and white truth, yes!”
Bakura’s voice seemed to crack from the effort to scream. “And—”
“Yes, yes, everything,” Atem blathered on, “everything! The blind trust, the inherent bias, all of it!”
“I—” Bakura’s volume abruptly decreased. He stumbled haltedly, until the car was turning a corner around him without him chasing after it.
His gaze followed after them, though, and Seto stared back at him.
“I didn’t expect you to—agree so much with me,” Bakura grunted emptily.
Atem jabbed his window down with his fingertips and shot his head out of the car. “I had a lot of time to reflect in Paradise.”
“Oh,” Bakura said, growing louder and louder. “Because of fucking course you get Paradise—”
“That’s not the point!” Atem shouted. “The point is—” But the car rounded another corner in an effort to get back on track going toward the exit. Atem swayed and grunted. “Isono,” he said, turning back into the car, “please stop.”
Isono’s hands were the only thing on him moving. “Sir?”
“Stop the car,” Seto said.
“Of course, Sir.”
The car rolled into some slower speed, then swayed and stilled. Atem again leaned too far out. Atem again spoke with such pathetic conviction.
“The point is I’m sorry for what happened and for my part in perpetuating—”
Bakura, by that point, had lumbered right up to the car and yanked at Atem’s loose collar with his entire fist. Atem gurgled. Bakura then smashed his fist into Atem’s face.
And then he smashed it again, and a third time, and a fourth, and Seto gripped the back of Atem’s clothes and tried to tug him back inside. What Seto didn’t expect was for Atem to swat at him while taking a beating. Seto stilled. Bakura punched on and on, laughing jaggedly and hysterically and gleefully.
“Ahaha! Ahaha! Ahahaha! Ah…” His wide, open-mouthed smile froze, though, and slowly, his fist—covered in somebody’s spilt flecks of blood—swayed to a halt.
He seemed to be thinking. He took a long time thinking.
Then, all at once, he glared at Atem.
“Well, now it’s not fucking fun if you’re not fighting back.”
“I deserve this,” Atem wheezed.
That set Bakura off worse. “Oh, spare me the fucking guilty martyr complex. You don’t get to make yourself feel bad and expect that to be the end of it.”
“What do you want me to do, then?”
“Face me, coward,” Bakura snapped.
Atem’s response was strained. “I—I can’t.”
Bakura’s wasn’t. “You can. You’ve done it before.”
What came out next came out of Atem jaggedly. “The burden of—benefiting from your suffering weighs—heavily on me. I don’t know how to face you.”
“Oh, you can figure it out,” Bakura spat.
“It’s not that easy—”
“You think it gets to be easy?” Bakura’s eyes widened. “You think it gets to be—fuck! You’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”
“Bakura—”
Bakura shook him. “Where did your confidence go? Where did your pride go? You’re nothing but a withering wretch right now.”
“I’m also disappointed in you,” Seto said tersely.
Bakura jabbed his blood-speckled hand’s pointer finger past Atem’s head and at Seto. “You fucking stay out of this, you hear me? I’ll get you. Don’t make me get you.”
Petty. “You’re not used to having people take your side, are you?”
“I’ll fucking get you, don’t play mind games with me!”
“Atem?” Seto went on.
“What?” Atem’s voice was wisp-ish.
“Let the man have his pride.” Seto stared at Atem and Atem twisted to stare back at him. “A worthy opponent doesn’t roll over dead this pathetically when they’re wrong. It reflects badly on both of you.”
Atem’s expression fell into something displeased. “Kaiba, just because you don’t know when to quit doesn’t mean—”
“No, no, fucker has a point,” Bakura butted in. “Fucker does have a point.”
“What point?”
“I don’t fucking know, but it sounds like it makes sense!” Bakura barked.
Atem scoffed in disbelief.
“You’re just not used to being ganged up on when you’re in the wrong!” Bakura went on in the most inane and petty way possible. “Well, suck it the fuck up and—and—”
“What?”
Bakura made some sort of split second decision after his split second pause. “—accept the brunt of your enemy’s justice!”
He smashed his knuckles into Atem’s face once more. Repeatedly. Seto waited, but found the wait for Bakura to stop wailing on Atem much shorter this time. Bakura grimaced after that at Atem mostly.
“This isn’t working,” he grunted.
Seto didn’t miss a beat. “No, keep going. Violent revenge is fulfilling if you try hard enough.”
“This isn’t working! It’s so fucking—empty,” Bakura said, then let Atem’s collar go.
Atem sank back into the car the same moment Bakura paced backwards. Then Bakura turned. Then Bakura looked around, and raked at his hair, and continued on aimlessly.
“Why’d you have to ruin everything?”
“I’m sorry,” Atem said.
Bakura was quick. “You’re not sorry.”
Atem, meanwhile, was slower. “I am. Truly. I don’t know how to apologize or make it up to you, and I don’t think I can, Bakura.”
He unlocked the car door before pushing it open and stepping partway out with one foot onto the tarmac.
“Your village—your family—was stolen from you,” Atem said. “And I rubbed salt in your wound.”
Bakura flashed his teeth. “Tch.”
“I can’t give them back to you, but I can do what I didn’t do last time for you.”
“And what’s that?” Bakura asked.
Atem was—sentimental and gentle, still, but a degree more certain than before. “Listen to you. Give you the benefit of the doubt.”
That seemed to do—something. Seto wasn’t sure what. Bakura’s shoulders had lowered at some point, which only made Seto more aware of how tense the guy had been this whole time. His exhaustion bled through his expression, his posture, his every little thing about him.
“It’s too late for listening,” Bakura heaved.
Atem replied, “It’s never too late for listening.”
Something changed in Bakura’s gaze. He was studying Atem. Surely Bakura was studying Atem.
And Atem held his hand out toward him, but not so obviously as to be mushy. “Come on, Bakura. Get in the car. We can work on this together.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Bakura told him.
“You won’t.”
Atem had volunteered Seto’s car without even asking him, but—Seto supposed it was in the service of moving things along. The moment Atem scooted toward the middle seat, Bakura slid into the car. Seto kept his comment clipped and casual. “I still get to duel the Pharaoh first.”
At that, Bakura sneered at him. “Oh will you fuck off?”
“No,” Seto said before looking ahead. “Drive, Isono.”