Note: POV is stated at the beginning of each break.

Ryou

{Help me....}

It was that voice again. That haunting voice.

{Please...It's so cold here...and dark...}

I couldn't see where it was coming from. Shadows engulfed everything around me. Only vague shapes were visible in this darkness. I knew I was asleep, but I wasn't so sure this was a dream. It seemed like so much more. I could feel the coldness. But the voice was far more chilling than my surroundings. It chilled me to the bone. But it was so hard to resist as it beckoned to me.

{Come to me... Help me... Release me....}

The voice was absolutely hypnotic. Calling out to me. Begging for me to help it. I wanted so much to be able to do what it asked of me, though I didn't know why. It's pleading seemed to pierce my heart. I ran through the darkness searching for the source of the voice. Without thinking, I called out to it.

"Who are you? What is this place?"

{All your questions will be answered... once you release me... Hurry... Please...}

Normally, I would find this to be a very sketchy answer, but I couldn't resist. The voice seemed to be pulling me towards it. I was powerless to stop it. My mind could only register one thought: do whatever that voice tells you to. I have often been told that I am too trusting for my own good, but even for me this was a bit much. Still, as the voice called to me, I could not refuse it. But it was already too late. I was waking up.

I stirred, halfway between asleep and awake, the haunting call from the dream fading but still present.

{You will come again...I will wait for you...}

I opened my eye and blinked as the morning sunshine shone through my bedroom window. Of course, I only had one eye to open and blink.

I yawned and stretched, the dream still present in my mind. I'd had it several times now. I seemed to get closer to the voice every time, but I had never reached it. That dream gave me goosebumps, so I pushed all thoughts of it away and looked at my alarm clock. As usual, I had woken up a precious ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I hated that. It was summer holiday, and I usually didn't set my alarm, but I had plans today. I was going to see my father off on a new trip. His plane left at eight, and I wanted to make him breakfast before he left. My father was far from a morning person (I could relate) and if I didn't make him breakfast, he wouldn't eat until his plane touched down in Peru. He bluntly refused to eat airline food.

I stumbled out of bed and walked to the bathroom in my usual morning ritual. I washed my face and brushed my teeth and hair. All the time my reflection gazed back at me from the bathroom mirror, the millennium eye staring out from my image. I had grown used to it. It was a final "gift" given to me by my alter-ego, usually referred to as Yami Bakura. I had not taken it willingly. But he had done it for his own reasons. He was gone now, banished by Yami Yugi, my closest friend's alter-ego. Now that I had the eye, it had its ups and downs. I had permanently lost my left eye and my vision did suffer for it. The pain of the whole experience was excruciating. And now that I had fully healed, I had to keep the eye hidden from everyone except a small group of friends. Even my father didn't know about it. I didn't tell him because I couldn't be sure how he would react. I liked my relationship with him and I did not want to jeopardize it. The way I figured it, no matter how he would react to finding out his son had been wounded by an ancient Egyptian spirit and now had a magical object embedded in his head, our relationship would be somewhat awkward. Especially since I had concealed so much from him in the past, even before the eye. Like how I really got all those cuts and bruises he had always seen on me. I liked my privacy (the main reason I had been able to hide so much from my father was because he knew this and so didn't question me much), but all this secrecy was really getting to me.

But having the eye had its good points, too. I had learned to use its magic. I felt somewhat guilty about using it, though. The eye allowed me to hear and see a person's thoughts. It helped me know things that I would not normally know. But a person's thoughts shouldn't be accessible to anyone. Talk about the ultimate invasion of privacy. But not knowing how to use the eye properly is very painful. Without control, the thoughts of others can invade your mind with no warning. It feels like your head is splitting apart. It's enough to drive you off the deep end. That's why I was forced to master the power of the eye. It was not by choice. Heck, I would have gotten rid of it if I thought I could live through it. I remembered what happened to Pegasus. He'd died when he lost the eye's power. Of course, my yami had helped cause that.

It took time to master the eye's magic. It took a couple months before I could use it without screaming. But now, six months after I had received it, I could find out anything a mind concealed. I didn't like to go digging, though. I used my power only for more simple things. For instance, it allowed me to see that my father was not even awake yet. His mind was dormant. Asleep. He was dreaming, but I did not want to see what of. He was going to miss his flight if he did not wake up soon. The millennium eye glowed slightly, as it always did when I used its magic. The more power I used, the more it glowed.

I brushed a lock of hair into my face to block the eye from view. I then used liberal amounts of hair spray to make sure that it stayed covered. I trudged off to my room and got dressed in a short-sleeved, button-up shirt and my favorite pair of faded blue jeans. I topped it off by putting my millennium ring around my neck. The ring was vacant. Little, if any magic and no other me. It had been so since the final showdown between my yami and Yami Yugi. I wore it now because of habit and because I was quite fond of it. Despite all the pain it had caused me, it was my favorite possession. My father had bought it for me. I hated the dark powers it had once contained, but I loved the ring.

I walked down the hall and knocked on my father's door, yelling that it was time to wake up. I heard him groan in protest, but he was getting up. A cold shower, and he'd be fine. I went to kitchen and opened the fridge to find something to make. My father didn't care to have fish for breakfast like most Japanese households did, and, truth be told, neither did I. My father and I are English. Bakura was a family name of ancient origin (my father had been meaning to research it to find out exactly what the origin was, as he couldn't remember). I was named Ryou after my dad's best friend and colleague, who died in a car accident before I was born. We lived in Japan because my father did research for the college. I'd lived in Japan since I was five, thought I only moved to Domino City last year.

I pulled out some eggs and a few fresh vegetables. I'd make omelets. I pulled out a frying pan and began to cook. The smell wafted throughout the house, its aroma waking me up better than coffee ever could. My father came into the room, clean shaven, freshly showered, and smelling far too strongly of after-shave. I could smell it even over the omelets, and I wrinkled my nose at him.

"What?" he answered my look indignantly. "I'm going to Peru. After-shave repels mosquitoes."

I sighed and shook my head at him, knowing him to be making it up. "Are you all packed?"

"Yep. Last night. In a hurry to get rid of me, are you?"

"No, just the smell."

He laughed in spite of himself. He walked up to me and grabbed a few of my chopped vegetables, stuffing them into his mouth.

"Hey! I'm cooking here!"

He looked over my shoulder at the contents of the frying pan. "Mmm...omelets." He backed away and sat at the kitchen table (he didn't like sitting on the floor either, so we had chairs and a taller table). "Very well, I'll wait for you."

{I'll wait for you...}

Suddenly I was back at the dream again. The shadows swirled around me. It was so cold, I shivered. The voice was calling out to me again.

{Come to me... Meet your destiny....}

The voice was so tempting. I gazed into the darkness, trying to find the being who had been calling to me. My head was swimming. I could make sense of nothing but what the voice told me to do.

{Come to me...Reach out to me.}

I should just do what it told me to. I lifted my hand and stretched it out towards the blackness.

"Ryou, what are you doing!!!"

My father's yells brought me to my senses but it was too late. My right arm brushed against the burning hot stove and I cried out in shock and pain. Father threw his chair back and was at my side in a second. He tugged me over to the sink and thrust my arm under a stream of cool, running water. It brought some relief, but not much. He held my arm there, letting the water flow over the red, already blistering mark the burn had left on my forearm. He moved it slightly to examine the injury better and I winced. Stretching the skin hurt.

"God, Ryou, what were you thinking?" he asked as he reached over to turn off the stove, finally letting me go. I started to pull my arm back from the water, but he motioned for me to keep it where it was.

"I...I don't know," I said honestly.

"I told you three times to be careful. It's like you didn't even hear me." There was obvious concern in his voice. "Are you okay? Is there something wrong? It's not like you to just space out like that."

I thought about telling him about the dream, but this was one of those weird things that I couldn't really explain. "I'm fine," I replied.

"Are you sure?"

"Save the excruciating pain in my arm and the light-headedness from your after-shave, I'm fine," I said, forcing a smile to let him know I was kidding. He returned it.

I sat at the kitchen table as he dressed my burn. The omelets were long forgotten. I wanted nothing more than to submerge my arm in a bucket of ice water, but Father insisted on putting burn cream on it and wrapping it. He said if I wanted to, I could put an ice pack on it after.

"You sure you're okay," he asked for the fifth time. "I can stay home if you want."

"Don't be ridiculous," I answered. "I'm fine. You better get going or you're going to miss your plane." He shook his head at me, an expression I could not read on his face. So I decided to check into it. I wanted to make sure he wasn't planning on giving up this trip because of me. I was careful to read only his current thoughts about me, so that I wouldn't have any morale regrets later.

[He certainly doesn't look fine. I don't know that I should leave him alone.]

"Don't worry about me," I said to put his mind at rest. "I won't be alone all the time. Yugi and the rest of the gang, we all have a bunch of plans for the holiday. I'll be with them."

He smiled. "Somehow, you always know what to say to make me feel better. You get that from your mother, God rest her soul."

I sighed. My mother had died a few days after I was born. And knowing exactly what to say to my father did not come from her.

"You know, if you kept that hair out of your face, you might have seen the stove before you touched it," he said jokingly. I laughed nervously. "I wish you would let me cut it."

"Only if you let me cut yours," I replied. He had a long ponytail, and he was very fond of it. He thought it made him look "cool".

"No, thank you," he said, getting up. "Well, I better get going. I'll call you when I get there."

"I'll answer if I'm not asleep." He chuckled again.

"Now, no wild parties, no excessive drinking, and try not to break too many hearts."

"So I can have controlled parties, drink moderately, and break a couple hearts?" I asked, smirking.

"Exactly," he said laughing. "See you later, kid." This was our usual good- bye ritual and it put my mind at ease more than anything else could have. I watched him leave through our front door and enter a cab. Then he was off, gone for two weeks, and I was alone. My thoughts returned to the dream. Yugi and the gang had asked me to join them at the movies that afternoon. I decided to take them up on the offer. It would give me a chance to clear my head.
 
 
 

Authors Note:  Whew! Chapter one is loooong! Needed to set the mood and atmosphere. Oh, well. Next chapter up soon. And yes, before it comes up, I did make up Ryou's family history. I'm afraid I was unable to find any information on it that I knew was accurate. I've read so many versions of his family life.^^ If anyone knows the truth, I'd appreciate you volunteering it, but I am not going to change the info in my story. Thank you.