Pharaoh and the Thief

Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: Extreme Violence
Author’s Note: Sorry I’m late. My internet is being crappy so, I wasn’t able to get on yesterday nor most of today. Here’s the chapter you’ve all been waiting for, but be forewarned, it’s violent.

Once again, thanks so much to all my old reviewers which have faithfully reviewed every chapter, and also thank you to my new reviewers, I’m glad you enjoy this story.

Chapter 15

Bakura propped himself on his elbow and watched Atem as he slept. His chest was rising and falling in a peaceful, even rhythm, so different from the tortured breaths only a day before. He ran his fingers idly through the pharaoh’s spikes, wishing the cold fear wrapped around his heart would go away. The relief that had washed through him when he saw Atem had long since subsided and an ugly darkness had filled him in its place.

It had been so close, too close. He had nearly lost the one person he had finally opened up too. Atem was so precious to him. The thought of losing him hurt like nothing else. Even more than Kul Elna. He had finally accepted his survival and finally let go of his past. He had been fully prepared to accept a new life with Atem, and now his world was falling down around him again. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t survive it again.

And then there was Akhenden. Seth had come by a few hours ago after Atem had fallen asleep again and informed him the High Priest was being held in his rooms for the time being. Bakura wasn’t sure if it was to ease his nerves or to assist him in revenge. A little of both, he assumed as he noticed the last glance Seth gave him as he closed the door.

He loved Atem. More than anything in the world. More than himself. And he knew that even though Atem wouldn’t be entirely happy with what he was going to do, it had to be done. He had to protect him. Atem believed so strongly in the law and that justice could be served through it. But people like Akhenden were always above the law. He would never get the punishment he deserved for this. The priests would smooth over this little blunder the same way they did Kul Elna, and it would just become another blurry recollection of history. Bakura could not allow that to happen.

He kissed Atem lightly on the forehead so as not to wake him and slipped out of bed. He murmured an apology to him, knowing the pharaoh would not understand, no matter how much he tried to explain. He was too innocent to understand the evil ways of men. He was still so young and inexperienced to the world after all.

Bakura slipped his red robe on, fingering the tears caused during the struggle. His knives, which had served him well in more than a few scrapes, were carefully tucked into his belt, but not before he tested the edges lovingly by sliding the blade across his finger, satisfied at the welling drop of blood.

With a last glance at the slumbering pharaoh, Bakura slipped out the door into the dark corridor.


There were, as expected, two soldiers at the entrance of Akhenden’s chambers which Bakura quickly silenced. It took him slightly longer than usual to pick the lock on the priest’s door, but he soon had it opened and slipped soundlessly inside.

The room was dark, but Bakura was used to the dark. He crept noiselessly through the room, noticing the candle light flickering from under the door on the far side. He opened the door and slipped inside before locking it behind him. The cloaked figure kneeling in front of the candle lit alter continued his mumbled prayers, oblivious to the intruder.

Bakura stood behind him, leaning against the door and waiting patiently for the old man to finish his meaningless prayers to gods that couldn’t save him. Bakura’s quick eyes caught every movement as the old man pressed to a stand and moved to extinguish the candles.

He froze, his hand hovering over the flame. “I knew you would come,” he said, almost tiredly. “You are so predictable, thief.”

Bakura growled, low and dangerous, in the back of his throat and Akhenden turned to face him, a look of disgust on his face.

“Predictable?” Bakura asked in a dangerous voice. “Did you predict that in a few hours, when the sun comes up, the guards will find only a bloody mess of flesh that used to be your body?”

Akhenden laughed. “You fool. Do you actually think a commoner like your self could kill me? The gods would not allow it!”

Bakura threw his head back and laughed.

“Not allow it? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not asking permission,” Bakura said, his eyes gleaming with murder. “Do you really think your faith can save you old man?”

Akhenden faltered slightly then regained his composure. “Even if you do kill me, you will die for your gross crimes,” he spat, standing up straighter to glare down at the thief glowing in the candle light.

Bakura grinned demonically at him. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. If you haven’t noticed priest, I’m rather good at getting out of impossible situations.”

“Your control over the pharaoh will not save you,” Akhenden hissed in response. “Not even Atem would dare pardon you for the murder of a High Priest.”

Bakura laughed softly. “I know.”

Akhenden’s eyes widened as Bakura advanced on him, a blade gleaming in his hand. “You will knowingly seal your own death?” he asked in disbelief.

“I did that years ago,” Bakura responded dryly, kicking out and sending the old man crashing to the floor. Akhenden grimaced as his knees hit the cold stone, throwing his hands out to catch himself. He let out a strangled cry as Bakura’s foot descended on his fingers, crushing them against the floor.

Bakura watched the old man interestedly as he tried to yank his fingers out from under him, but Bakura only pressed harder, making him cry out again. With a malicious grin, he twisted his foot cruelly; feeling the bones crack under his foot, and removed it. Akhenden immediately drew his abused hand to his chest, cradling it against him and glaring hatred at the thief that dare stand against him.

Bakura smirked down at his victim and walked around him as the candle light flickered menacingly behind him.

“Are you ready to die?” Bakura whispered in a deadly voice.

Akhenden’s only response was to glare defiantly at the thief. From the look, Bakura could tell Akhenden still did not believe he would die tonight.

“Feel free to scream,” Bakura said to him. “No one will come.” He grabbed Akhenden by his hair and cruelly wrenched his head back and let his blade linger against the thudding pulse in his throat. He felt Akhenden stiffen deliciously in his grasp, his breath catch in his throat. Bakura pressed the blade down a bit harder, a slim red line forming beneath the it.

“Did you think it would be this easy?” Bakura demanded with a hiss in his ear. “Did you think after my village and Atem that I would simply cut your throat? Did you really think I could let you die that easily?”

“Go to hell,” Akhenden choked. An evil grin spread across Bakura’s face, looking eerie in the flickering light.

“After you.”

He threw Akhenden onto the floor, feeling satisfied at the sound of cracking bone as his face connected with the stone floor. The old man howled in pain as he clutched at his crushed nose, trying to stem the flow of blood drenching his robes.

Bakura began circling him again, slowly and seductively, teasing his victim as the blade flashed in the candle light. When Akhenden gained the courage to glance at his tormentor, Bakura noted the cold fear frozen in his eyes. Electricity flowed through his blood as all the hatred and sadism that he had fought to crush once he had Atem broke to the surface again and clouded his vision like a drug.

It felt good.

He watched as Akhenden slowly accepted the truth that these were to be his last moments in the mortal world. He trembled in terror as Bakura continued his predatory circling. This really was the end. How could he be defeated? By a mere thieving commoner for that matter? How had things gone so wrong?

Bakura laughed softly. “You might want to pray to your gods that you don’t last long,” he said softly as he kicked the old man in the side, sending him sprawling on the floor. “Because you will receive tenfold every moment of pain you ever caused to others.”

Akhenden regarded him with a sickening fear. “You’re a monster,” he sputtered through the blood still flowing from his nose.

“Yes,” Bakura agreed, eyes glowing red with bloodlust. “And you’re responsible for it.”

Without warning he leapt at the man, pinning him to the ground and plunging the blade through his uninjured hand and wedging it into a crack in the stone. He stood back to admire his work as Akhenden howled pitifully in pain. Bakura pulled another knife from his belt and bent down next to Akhenden’s sprawled form. He pressed the tip into the floor next to the priest’s thumb. His eyes burned into Akhenden’s as the priest held his breath, afraid of what the thief would do.

With a malicious smirk, Bakura brought the blade down. The old priest screamed as his thumb was detached from his hand and rolled a few inches away. The thief’s smile widened in sick satisfaction as he proceeded to give the same treatment to the rest of his fingers.

The priest was whining pitifully on the floor as Bakura cleaned his blade on his robe and looked down on him in disdain.

“What is wrong, priest? Is the pain too much for you?” he asked casually as Akhenden choked on his own blood.

“Please,” the priest asked in a hoarse voice, the dried blood on his face cracking as he tried to speak. “Please just kill me.”

Bakura laughed softly. “You broke too easily. It’s almost a disappointment.”

He kicked the hunched form until he laid on his back, moaning in agony. Bakura stood over him and sank to his knees, straddling the old man’s waist. Akhenden reached for him pleadingly with his broken fingers, and Bakura batted them away as the clutched at his robe. He leaned over the priest, watching his eyes as he wrenched the knife from his hand.

Akhenden screamed hoarsely and brought both of his ruined appendages to his chest, trying to comfort himself. Bakura watched with interest.

“Does it hurt?” Bakura asked as Akhenden groaned wretchedly beneath him. “Does it hurt to know your gods have failed you?”

The priest said nothing but continued to make pained sounds on the floor, his frail body shaking with agony in the growing puddle of blood around him.

“Answer me!” Bakura growled, slapping the man across the face sharply. He still didn’t answer but sobbed pathetically.

“You fool,” Bakura said tiredly. “Do you think I’m done?”

Bakura moved lower down on the man’s body and sunk the knife in his side up to the hilt. He paused for a moment before he wrenched it cruelly up and over to the other side, leaving a gaping hole in Akhenden’s abdomen and a splatter of blood across his face. Bakura knew his blade had torn through the old man’s intestines and stomach from the putrid smell that rose in the room to mix with the strong scent of blood. Dark matter was mixing with the crimson liquid that seeped out of the wound and onto the floor.

Akhenden was past all vocal expression of pain and twitched silently on the ground, his eyes wide and his mouth formed in a pain gasp that couldn’t quite leave his lips.

“The thing about stomach wounds,” Bakura said calmly as he wiped a smear of blood from his face with his thumb, “is that they hurt like hell, but it takes so long to die from them. Hour upon hour of pure agony.” He inspected his stained thumb before running his tongue across it, savoring the coppery flavor.

“I just can’t imagine,” Bakura said in a dangerously quiet voice, turning his focus back to Akhenden and pressing three of his fingers into the gaping wound of his stomach and twisting the mutilated viscera viciously, “how much this really must hurt.”

Akhenden got past his lapse of silence and screamed. It was a delicious scream that sent shivers up Bakura’s spine. It was the same scream that rang in Bakura’s ears for weeks after he witnessed the murders of his village. It was the scream he had been aching to hear and the thought brought a grin to Bakura’s blood splattered face.

Cooling blood was covering the floor, soaking into the fabric of Bakura’s trousers and drying to an uncomfortable stickiness. He shifted slightly and stared down at the man who had caused him so much pain.

“Do you think this will make up for it? Do you think your suffering now will erase your past sins?” he asked quietly. “Do you still think your heart will pass the judgment?”

Akhenden tried to answer but all that came out was a gurgled groan. The blood loss was beginning to affect him, Bakura noticed. He needed to finish this.

He leaned over the old man again, his face so close he could feel the dying man’s labored breaths against his face. The stink of death was thick in the air, invading Bakura’s senses. He ran his thumb gently over the Millennium Eye in Akhenden’s socket.

“All for this?” he asked. “All the death was for this? Tell me,” he said as he rested his thumb in the center and added pressure. “Was it worth it?” He removed his thumb and recovered one of his knives, flipping it so the blade was in the air, the handle pointing down.

Akhenden only had time for a strangled gasp as Bakura raised his knife and smashed the handle into the magic object, pushing it deep into his brain. Bakura let out a satisfied growl as he felt the bone splinter and the brain matter squish sickly and seep around the edges.

The man was barely alive. There was only the faint, uneven rise and fall of his chest and the shallow labored breaths that echoed in the silent room. His eyes were already glazed with the death that was moments away.

“Not quite yet,” Bakura whispered as he sunk his knife into the old man’s chest, just above his heart. He worked hastily, breaking the bones with loud cracks and tearing away the muscle and flesh that got in his way, leaving them in clumps in the puddle of sticky blood that surrounded them. The priest was long dead by the time Bakura revealed it, the slick lump of muscle that only moments before was struggling weakly to pump life through the tortured body of a dying man. Bakura reached in his chest and wrapped his fingers around it, mildly surprised by the smoothness of it. With a mighty wrench, he removed it from the dead man’s chest and held it up to the candlelight.

He’d half expected it to be black and shriveled as the man’s soul undoubtedly was. Instead it was bright and slick with an unnatural sheen in the candlelight. Bakura turned it over in his hands, inspecting it from all angles.

With one last look, he tossed the heart back in Akhenden’s empty chest and rose to his feet. As he stared down at the victim of his vengeance and felt a resounding calm befall him. He had finally fulfilled his revenge. After all these years, all the years of pain and torture, searching and waiting, he had finally killed the man who had killed his family. And nearly take Atem away from him. He was gone and could harm him no longer. He was free.

The jubilant happiness he had half expected wasn’t there, just a calm relief that it was finally over. The bloodlust had subsided the moment Bakura had released Akhenden’s heart and now all he wanted was to go back to Atem and never leave.

He stepped away from the ruined mess of flesh that used to be the high priest and wiped his hands on his already sticky robe before he slipped through the dark palace back to Atem’s chambers. He went straight to the small bath attached to the bedroom and removed his clothes before sinking into the cool water. He sat there for a few moments, letting the water turn slowly red as he reflected on what he had just done.

He didn’t regret it. Even though all these weeks with Atem had undoubtedly changed him, his need for revenge had never left, no matter how furiously he had tried to extinguish it. The only thing left now was to pray that Atem would forgive him. That he would understand that he had done this as much for Atem as he had for himself.

Bakura snapped out of his thoughts and quickly cleaned himself, washing all the blood away. He found a pair of Atem’s trousers and put them on as he slipped back into bed with Atem, wrapping his arms around the still sleeping pharaoh and holding him tightly as he drifted off to the most peaceful sleep he’d had in ten years.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Early the next morning, Seth found two unconscious bodies in front of Akhenden’s chamber. He sent a servant to alert the guards, though this was no surprise to him. He steeled himself and slowly pushed the door to Akhenden’s chambers open.

The room was empty, but the stench of death was obvious. Seth nearly left the room to leave the discovery to the answering guards, but he didn’t. He was, in a small way, responsible for this, and he wouldn’t shy away. The young priest approached the closed door at the other side of the room. The vile smell grew stronger the closer he got to the door, and after a moment of gathering his courage, Seth opened it.

It took his brain a moment to understand that the red mutilated mass he was looking at was actually a body, and that was all he managed before he braced himself against the doorframe and expelled everything he had eaten in the last two days from his stomach.

A guard rushed to support him as he wretched dryly, but he waved the man off and wiped his mouth. “Cover that,” he said, jerking his hand towards the doorway behind him. “And get this mess cleaned up.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Atem woke up to sunlight filtering pleasantly through the curtains and warm arms wrapped securely around his waist.

“Good morning,” Bakura murmured from behind him.

“Morning,” Atem replied groggily and turned in his arms to kiss him. The moment his lips touched Bakura’s, the thief pressed him anxiously into the mattress and kissed him thoroughly and passionately. When he finally broke away, Atem was gasping for breath and delightfully flushed.

He smiled at the thief, but it quickly turned into a frown as he noticed the look on Bakura’s face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, worry apparent in his eyes.

“I love you,” Bakura said, pulling Atem close to him. “Please forgive me.”

“What?” Atem asked as the door burst open and Seth walked in, looking rather shaken up.

“High Priest Akhenden is dead, my pharaoh,” Seth stated in a voice that sounded bolder than he looked.

Atem’s eyes widened and he looked from Seth who slumped against the door, to Bakura whose arms were still wrapped around him.

“What did you do?” Atem asked in a quiet horrified voice.

Bakura regarded him sadly, pushing a stray strand of hair out of his face. “What I came here to do,” he said finally. “What I had to.”