capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

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(no subject)

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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"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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