[Ryou wants to argue, to say that it is his fault, for not being able to fight against his doppelganger and for getting hidden away for days. If he'd just been there to help...then maybe...

But no. He knows Atem won't accept that as an acceptable scenario. It's simply putting too much on Ryou for something that...honestly he shouldn't be blaming himself for. Even he knows that.]

I...I realize that we should never have known this. It's not her fault...the things that the other me said were terrible, he had no right taunting her, or making her suffer through the punishment with him. He earned what happened to him.

[Even if now, Ryou has that death burned into his memory. It scares him, knowing that Ankhsunatem had done that, even to a copy of Ryou. Not because he's scared that Atem might actually do that to him someday, but...because of the involved, specific nature of the apparatuses that he'd created for the purpose of playing a game.

...Ryou goes quiet, just holding Atem for a while. He isn't sure if he wants to ask about this right now, so he pivots to a different question instead.]

A-are you going to be okay?

[It's easier to ask that than anything else right now. They're both shaken, and Ryou can smell blood way, way too much for his own comfort. So he buries his face in Atem's hair, trying to stifle the scent.]