okay maybe i'm showing my hand a little but i just wanna yap a bit. i'm thinking about some fic ideas for millennium world.
thinking about like, there's that anime-only scene where atem's dad takes on the hatred of the souls of kul elna. but I think it would be better if maybe a devastated Atem, horrified to know what had happened to those people, decides to take it himself.
A very young, too young man, with a strong sense of justice and equality, suddenly and without warning shoved into the position of god-king long before he was ready (he would never be ready) and then immediately faced with the horrors of what the dynasty before him did. it doesn't matter that he was an infant when it happened, he feels responsible for it. he's the pharaoh now. those were his people and they deserved to have been protected, not sacrificed.
And after he gets over his initial anger with Bakura, how could Atem ever truly hate Bakura for anything he's done? We know Atem is just as capable of violence to protect those he holds dear. He would look at Bakura and see himself. If Atem had been the survivor of a similar massacre, he would have wanted to burn it all down, too. Bakura deserved to have been protected and he wasn't.
And then he finds that the Millennium Items, the thing that killed 99 people and irrevocably traumatized the 100th, supposedly made to protect the kingdom, were actually a long con by an ancient god bent on escaping and destroying everything, and Bakura was just a pawn to be used and then thrown away as soon as he was no longer useful.
I think that should enrage Atem. Taking advantage of a lonely and traumatized child, turning him into an avatar of malice and revenge and nothing else, and then discarding him like nothing.
I think Atem would want to try and save him. At the very least, to wrest Bakura's soul back from Zorc so at least he has the freedom to choose revenge or not.
so maybe when Atem seals Zorc into the Puzzle, what actually happens is that he has challenged Zorc to a game. A long one. One with all 100 souls on the line. It requires Atem to lose his name and his memories, so that he can't remember the stipulations, the rules, or the win condition. If he wins, he frees Bakura and the souls of Kul Elna. If he loses, Zorc goes free and destroys everything.
Of course, Zorc gets to keep his claws in Bakura until then as his own game piece. And maybe he doesn't want to be saved.
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