capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

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WHO: Bakura and Keith
WHERE: Central Park chess tables
WHEN: Wednesday afternoon
SUMMARY: Bakura is playing chess with the senior citizens in the park. Keith spots, observes, then cuts in. Awkward.
FORMAT: Para to start, whatever after.

Bakura's walk home from work had been something that resembled a comic strip than the normal straight cross through the park. First he had been spotted by one of the regular customers from Ryoko's and stopped for a chat. Then, after nearly gotten beaned upside the head by the ball a group of young children had been tossing around, he had seen the usual group at the chess tables and gotten flagged down to arbitrate Hashimoto and Takahashi's daily heated argument. Which was of course how he was now playing his third game.

So far, a very good day.

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Bakura blinked. That move seemed...

He looked up at Keith, trying to judge his reaction and blinked again. Was he...

Yes, that was a frown. Something unintended? Something he didn't think of until after he'd done it?

There was something significant to that move, he was sure of it as Keith hadn't done any seemingly random moves yet. He'd have to keep an eye on that pawn...

Right, Keith had asked a question.

"Un, like in the arcades, video games. You have a character who has special moves and you want to knock out your opponent. Normally there's a ladder system so you start at an easy fight, then work on up to the boss battle at the end that's designed to eat all your yen," he grinned. "Power plays work best in that sort of game, since it's one on one instead of team. It's a different strategy set as well, especially since it involves speed as well."

Another seemingly unrelated move setting up a different trap. It was a faint, making it look like he was going to target that pawn when the goal was the queen behind it.

Keith stared at the pawn and the queen one more time, then glanced over the move Bakura had made. With that, he forced himself to detach. Associating himself with the queen as he had just done would lose him the game; he knew that much. He couldn't dwell on why, though. Instead, he moved the queen again, firmly separating it from that pawn. Better that way.

"Video games. Something like them was what we had to train with where I was educated." He didn't add that he'd almost never used them, finding there to be no need except--except that one time. (Shiroe. Who were you, on the chessboard? The rook that had been taken early, perhaps.) "I was good at them." That much was technically true.

Bakura couldn't hold back the smile as his knight jumped to take the queen. He'd most likely lose the knight, but to take out the queen was a worthy sacrifice. His associations with the pieces were always fleeting. Used to playing as the DM, every piece was a different puppet. An NPC to be given life for as long as was needed. It was his opponent who had the player characters, with only his king having any sort of presence as he commanded to the best of his ability. Not that the king was ever him, of course.

He'd really had far too much experience with games where the pieces had become the players to want to think of them that way in a situation like this. Not for chess. But every now and then, the piece he moved became his avatar. Risking ones self to protect the group as a whole-- that was what he always did, after all.

"The ones here aren't for training or anything like that," he assured, looking up to watch for any change of expression at his move. "Even the simulator games really aren't that realistic!" he laughed softly. As if anyone could learn to drive from a racing game-- almost a scary thought! "There's a good arcade, not too far from here, if you'd want to give it a try."

Keith regarded the knight's move with a blank stare. He could not show emotion now, not in the face of the probable loss of a mere game. Instead, he simply steadily moved a bishop to take the knight. Mercifully, he hadn't made any associations with the bishop yet. Nor did he intend to.

He glanced up from the board and gave the smallest dismissive shake of his head. "There's no need. I'll find something more productive to occupy my time."

"You can't be productive all the time," Bakura pointed out with a smile. "And there's no need to be here at the very least! After all, no one back home will ever find out how you spent your time here!" That was something Bakura was VERY thankful for. It had taken him a while to truly understand that no matter what he did, his father would never be able to find out disapprove. Like having a secret life you could never be caught at; a very relaxing thought for someone so used to worrying over what others thought.

Not that he'd ever really stopped, but he worried about it far less now.

Most of the time.

"No," Keith agreed. "I need time to rest as well." He didn't seem to consider recreation a particular need, though.

He paused at Bakura's other comment, though. No one back home will ever find out...

For a moment, he looked distant, maybe even a little lost. The marks of premature age on him (no grey hair, but a few too many lines around his eyes, perhaps) softened a little.

The idea that he was somewhere truly cut off from the system of his world, and could do as he pleased...

No, it couldn't be countenanced. He dismissed it. If he remembered this place, he'd report on it to Grandmother when he returned. If he didn't, she'd see it in his thoughts somehow all the same.

"There's no point in saying that," he finally replied, the distant mask returning to his face. "I still know." Therefore, Grandmother would too. Even here, he had no choice but to follow her wishes and represent the system. That was what he was born for.

Bakura knew that look. Not from having seen it, but from the inside. Even the brevity of it. That breif moment of daring to hope...

Was this what Matsuka saw in Keith? Moments like that that made him seem so different than the Keith in Blue's memories...

"Only while you were here," Bakura pointed out. The thing that he was afraid of, forgetting everything and everyone, maybe for Keith that wouldn't be something to fear but that would reassure? There had to be something there, after all, and if that was his protest...

"And you might not get sent back home. After all, I've been here almost a year now, and Hiruma-kun's been even longer! It's a long time to still be what's expected of you back home in a totally different place."

But that window of could-be-hope was gone now. Keith was back to being the stern-faced statue of a human being that he so often appeared to be. Expressionless, he picked up his fallen queen from the pile of taken pieces and rolled the piece slowly in his palm. "Even if I took this queen to a table with no board on it, there would be no point in moving her like a knight. She wasn't made to move that way."

He put the queen back down and looked up to meet Bakura's gaze. "Your move."

Bakura hesitated a moment. It was a clear dismissal, but he couldn't let it go. Not yet. "..but that's not how people are. They aren't game pieces... they can change."

He looked down at the board after that before making his move, that slight nervous feeling returning. He understood hiding away, he did it himself so often... but not to the extent Keith had mastered it. There wasn't even a surface persona as much as... a lack that seemed suddenly so much starker after that breif moment.

Keith did not respond. Bakura's question was, to him, merely bait that he knew better than to take. The Mu and their allies could claim all they liked about the virtue of the human spirit, but he'd seen the way it worked, and he knew the way it was.

He moved the pawn that had once been next to the queen, clearing up a path between one of his bishops and Bakura's king. "Check." And that was all; no response to Bakura's hopeful statement whatsoever.

Bakura really should have expected that. Like when Kaiba when he declared conversations over, there was no hope for it. It was either change subject or be hung up on. Or in this case, stonewalled, which really amounted to the same thing.

"Sorry," he said softly as he debated his next move. He always opened his mouth and said too much or just the wrong thing. You really would think he would have learned by now.

Bakura's apology earned no words from his opponent. Instead, Keith merely glanced up from the board to flick a gaze of contempt over him, the single subtle expression encompassing everything he thought about the philosophy Bakura offered and, worse, his weak attempt to apologize for it.

No words were needed.

Bakura nearly flinched at that, rather starkly aware that he had not only put his foot in his mouth, but done it in such a spectacular fashion that he might never recover from it. And when they had been having an almost normal conversation too! Aaaa, he was no good at things like this!

"Check..." he said softly, moving his piece, keeping his eyes low.

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Games are like... the one thing he can be insightful about people with :)

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And to add to the symbolism...

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