Title: Question and Answer
Genre: Angst. That's it. Lots of it.
Summary: If you're imagining things, it's only because you want them to come true. / Spaceshipping, Shizuka x Dark Marik.
A/N: Written for the YGO Fanfiction Contest Quarterfinals, Round 7—Spaceshipping (Shizuka x Dark Marik), although this story also contains Sedateshipping (Shizuka x Marik). I subscribe to the belief that Marik suffers from dissociative identity disorder, so it is really only one person, and that "Dark Marik" is his alter. Whenever I mention "Marik," I am talking about the normal Marik Ishtar, and when I use the pronoun "he," I am referring to Dark Marik. Italics represent Marik's thoughts. This is an alternate version of episode 142, where Marik and Yugi duel in the Battle City finals…and this time, Marik wins.
Enjoy!
Question and Answer
Once upon a time, a soul splits and a man wins a duel, and claims the soul of his opponent in victory. The Shadow Realm is quite a misnomer—to Marik, it is the second closest thing to hell, but he is acquainted quite well with the real thing, for it brought him to life in a swirl of heated knives and cruel hands and his own blood. He takes pleasure in sending the nameless Pharaoh and his host to the Shadow Realm where they belong.
It's said that Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and brought it back to humanity—but that's the problem with Marik, for he is neither human nor God, but something in-between, a creature of convergence and purpose. One who executes revenge.
The Gods of Old killed humans for sport, for when you live forever watching mortal life be extinguished is the most enjoyable of entertainment—yet the one limitation of being divine is that they do not have the power to die, and their envy is almost overshadowed by anger in gifting that transcendence to others.
It fails to register to Marik that humans did similar actions to themselves and for themselves. The consequence of actions can live forever, too, and actions like murder and vengeance call to mind the most permanent of permanent inks, and humanity does love to repeat their mistakes.
What joy, he thinks, in finally accomplishing his life's work! It was like a dream, where he'd finally reached out and touched the sun. Locked away in the recesses of his mind he has dreamed of nothing else, for so long that for it to finally be complete—he looks around, and asks himself, where are the banners, the trumpets, the confetti, the music? Where is the celebration?
Marik finds the music in their screams, the confetti in their pleas for salvation, the trumpets in the unnatural, all-consuming harmony of their fates.
Those remaining are frightened and unmoving in shock, as if they refuse to believe the truth that lies before their very eyes. Their fate is sealed like a coffin, and Marik doesn't believe in offering second chances to those who dared defy him in any capacity. He doesn't mind extending his revenge to cover those foolish enough to believe in the Pharaoh.
It's such a pity that they believe they still have a chance.
He begins with those who have wronged him first—the Shadow Realm yearns for more, and Marik is glutted on their raw fear and pointless supplications. There is no Pharaoh to save them now.
They all run towards the blimp—what, thinking he wasn't going to follow them? He indulges in their final game for a moment, letting them think they are safe before silently appearing before them, forcing his way into their minds to observe their last, desperate thoughts before he bores of them and sends their consciousness to be swallowed up by the infinite void of the Shadow Realm. He is meticulous in his hunt to get every last one, simply because they are there and so is he and he enjoys watching their last moments reflected back through their eyes.
He doesn't even know their names but the cool metal of the Millennium Rod is comfortable in his practiced grip and they fall, one by one as they run across the dimly lit hallways of the blimp where Marik has followed them, his heavy footsteps loud and resilient, the dead sound of metal echoing in the narrow corridors. He has a proper farewell to issue his dear sister, after all, and his so-called brother, and he will save them for last.
They are all blind. They have lived their whole lives in the darkness, and they will die unenlightened.
Twenty minutes later he makes his way to the top deck of the no-longer stationary blimp to witness their departure—before his visit to the control room someone had lifted the blimp into the sky, and no longer anchored to the fringes of the island, it drifts almost aimlessly through the air.
He surveys the visible world stretched out before him. Everything he sees belongs to him; there is no one to stop him now, for they are all gone. The empty silence is just as comforting as the soft rays of the sun that beat down upon his upturned face.
Marik lives leisurely on the top deck of the blimp for two days, lying on his back on the floor of the Duel Disk Arena, and only moving whenever he needs to find sufficient food or water to sustain his existence. That evening he watches the lingering sun sink into the sky and the sugar-spun clouds are replaced by a canvas of tiny, glittering stars that he tries to count in vain—he must know how many of them there are, to be able to know how many stars in the sky are his and his alone. For the first time he feels complete.
You are complete; the voice presses against the back of his mind. Remember, I'm still here—when can I come back?
Never, he tells him.
Is that so?
But of course. You were so quick to lock me away, weren't you? His lips are moving but no sound reaches his ears. Perhaps he needs to listen a bit harder or speak a little louder. He pauses, listening to the creaking of ropes and canvas and the shifting of steel, until Marik once again interrupts him.
You're wasting our time, you know, he says. Go throw some of the Pharaoh's stuff in the ocean if you want, it'll make you feel better.
Do you really know what's best for us, Marik? Was it your actions, instead of mine, that led us to this triumph?
So many questions.
Answer them all, he says.
You don't listen to a word I say anyway. It doesn't matter what I say.
It was all about the plans they had concocted together—and when we go to defeat the Pharaoh here's how we'll do it and here's exactly how it'll happen. There was never a doubt in his mind that he wouldn't triumph in the end, but what happens next was never a part of the plan. His mind wanders as close to the future as it dares to go, and it's his version of the truth, covered and varnished with high-gloss paint until it shines, distracting and effective.
He's wrong of course—Marik is. He's wrong about a great number of things, but he'll keep on believing what he wants to believe, until his wings melt under the force of his desire to be free and he finally comes crashing, crashing down.
He's wrong about that, too; being free.
Marik never was free. He just never realized it.
His mind wanders again and soon his feet are following it along through the corridors of the blimp, peering into the unoccupied rooms and stepping over the unoccupied bodies of the fallen. He finds himself at a large door in a bland hallway, both painted the same shade of off-white so that one almost blends into the other. He probably wouldn't have even noticed the door if he wasn't standing right in front of it.
It is keycard-locked, but in the chaos of the subversion all of the security control on-board the blimp had been deactivated, so he tests the handle and swings open the door, peering in and letting his eyes adjust to the instant lack of light.
He recognizes the room's purpose soon enough. It is the blimp's infirmary, and the interior of the room matches the hallway he'd just come from—small and narrow and painted in an off-white color that looks gray in the lack of light—and he can see that two of the beds are clearly occupied. His lips stretch into a grin upon seeing the occupants, two duelists he'd faced, and won, as he always did. Well, the Shadow Realm was no longer bereft of their company.
Never miss an opportunity to gloat, do you? Marik asks.
Don't ask questions to which you already know the answer, Marik, he replies.
Who is that? He asks again.
What did I just tell you about—
No, turn around, idiot. There, curled up against the wall.
He turned not because he was following Marik's advice but because it was his own whim that he do so. Just like Marik said, another figure sat on the floor with her knees drawn up to her chest and her hair obscuring her eyes.
Well, who is this? He thinks, and tilts his head to the side as he openly observes her. He would say that she was dead, just like the other two in the room with her, lost forever with the Pharaoh's defeat to the Shadow Realm, but the slight rise and fall of her chest signals her consciousness. Her hair is dirty and matted to her head and her eyes are red-rimmed and resigned. She looks worse than dead.
Her movements are stiff but she lifts her head to acknowledge his presence, her hollow eyes bearing only the remotest hint of shock or awareness. The barest of smiles lifts her mouth and he does not expect the words that she speaks to him, softly: "I knew I wasn't forgotten."
"Forgotten? Ah—" And he realizes it instantly, what they have unknowingly done to her, this pathetic shell of a girl who has lived in a room with the inanimate for company for two days—forty-eight hours, thousands of minutes, listening to their silent screams and replaying every half-substantial memory to try and remember them at their best so she can block out the memory of them like this, cold and hollow and a part of her inescapable reality. Objectivity is not truth, merely a satisfactory attempt to create it.
"Your so-called friends have abandoned you, haven't they?"
So that was how she escaped his purge unharmed—they had forgotten her, abandoned her here, and in the rush to escape, to those whose only thought was to save themselves or to virtuously save another—not one single person had thought of her—and it was only those in this room who couldn't even think for themselves who might have spared her a thought.
How kind of them. Now she is ours.
"What is your name?" He asks.
"Jonouchi Shizuka."
"Do you know who I am?"
"Marik."
She is not talkative, and neither is he, so they spend a few moments in silence before she gestures with a limp hand towards the hospital beds where Katsuya and Mai are neatly tucked in under crisp white sheets.
"They won't…wake up," she says.
"Does a coma imply anything else, Shizuka? Their souls are long gone to the Shadow Realm," he tells her. "You would do well to forget them."
"It's not as easy for me to forget someone as it is for you."
"You presume too much."
"Do I?" They both happen to glance in the other's direction and their eyes lock together and for that moment they are the only two that exist in this world of disorder, deceit and revenge that is his creation.
"Come with me." She gives no indication of movement, so he snaps, "Would you prefer to remain alone or with me, take your pick."
She scrambles unsteadily to her feet and reaches out a hand towards him to steady herself, but her fingertips only brush the skin of his arm before he jerks himself away from her as though burned, the resolution of the memory of the slight pressure of her fingertips blameless and not quickly forgotten. He shouts at her, his voice loud and washed through with the acid of his penalty.
"Don't ever touch me again, Shizuka." He says her name how he wants to—reminiscent of the way he says Marik, with an edge of censure and solitude, suggestion and immoderation, authority and focus.
Touch is a sense, and senses are bad—time and repetition have taught him this, and the memories of the hot knives and flashes of pain and Egypt—there's far too much sand in Egypt and not enough sanity–resurface for a moment and Marik has disappeared.
"Let's go."
"Why?" She asks.
"I don't like being in here," is his answer.
"Why?" Her conclusion is understandable. "Because it's a hospital?"
"It's far too dark in here. Don't ask any more questions."
He finds the prospect of talking to someone else mildly refreshing after so many hours of only his own mind for conversation and entertainment. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, and Marik returns, and the reconnection is so natural after a moment he has to wonder if Marik had ever really left or it was all just his imagination.
He leads Shizuka out of the infirmary and back to the top deck of the blimp, and watches the way her face contorts in pain as she walks before him across the steel floor with her bare feet.
When you place a skull at the bottom of a well, it poisons the water, Marik says conversationally.
What do you mean by that? A smirk and a just barely-visible glittering of teeth to accompany it.
You're poison, and you have no antidote, Marik. Everything you touch turns to dust and dies.
You're quite poetic today, Marik. I am a simple creature, and please speak to me as such.
Don't touch her, Marik.
I wasn't planning on it, he says.
One of us is lying, and it's you, let's not pretend otherwise.
That night the air is heavy and humid because of the clouds and surprisingly chilly because of the altitude. The stars are out again, so many of them that it is dizzying to observe them all at once, and Shizuka is asleep at his side, curled up so he can only see the top of her head and the arms that serve as her pillow.
She has been sleeping for the entire afternoon and evening, and Marik is beginning to wonder when, or if, she will ever wake up.
His patience is brittle and thin as paper, and he leans towards her to be sure that yes, she is still breathing and is actually alive, and he has not been sitting next to a corpse for hours and hours on end.
He had read once as a child that the only way to truly wake someone from the deepest of sleep was through a kiss.
He had also read in that same book of tales that the girl with the cloak stained red from the blood of her family will be devoured by the wolf in secret disguise; he likes that version better, the original—and he draws back from her body when she blinks and opens her eyes to regard him again with her now-familiar brand of expectant hesitation.
"So…what will you do next?" She asks.
"What do you mean?"
"You've won, so now what will you do?"
A very good question, Marik snickers.
No, he retorts, there is no such thing.
"I have not decided yet."
Shizuka pauses in evident concentration, as though seeking to find the best way to pose a question to which she believes she already holds the answer. "Everyone else is—a-aren't you going to kill me, too?"
He smirks. "I have not decided yet."
She gives him a strange look at that, and the words tumble out of her mouth: "Then what are you still doing here?"
"I cannot leave this blimp. I am sure I do not have to explain the mechanics of why that is the case."
"But we're not moving anywhere," she says with some certainty. "And you haven't tried to contact anyone to rescue us…have you?"
"No."
"Why?"
Why?
"It is unnecessary."
It is clear that Shizuka disagrees but does not want to argue with him, so she abandons his company to that of her dreams and Marik, in return, goes back to counting stars.
He helps section off the different quadrants of the sky to make things easier to count, but the darkness of space is infinite, and even a million glittering lights do not make up for the fact that if immortality is infinity, and infinity is space, then he is even more tightly bound to the overwhelming darkness that he hates so much. He can't escape it, and sleep finds him quickly.
Marik has never lived for himself, and upon waking he decides that this course of action is better than doing absolutely nothing at all, so when he discovers Shizuka still asleep against the railing of the blimp he cradles her head in his hands until the sun strikes her face at the perfect angle and leans towards her until he can taste the sweet flavor of her breath.
Shizuka's eyes open slowly and he moves with her as she sits up to reach him at a more comfortable angle. After a couple of tries, their lips meet in a sloppy, rushed imitation of a kiss. Marik clutches her hands in his so he knows where they are, so she does not attempt to touch him again with anything but her lips and her tongue. It is instinct that powers his movements and he feels—what is it again? Complete.
That night they dine on mislaid desolation and mismatched sun-dried aspirations and each other. He can sense Marik's jealousy from within his mind as his curiosity and consequences unfold and expire with every breath Shizuka takes, even in slumber.
It takes some time before he is able to sleep; all thoughts of the stars are forgotten but Shizuka's face is just so captivating because they are two people who know what it is like to be alone and are bound by the collision of their similarity.
Miserable is the man who gets exactly what he asks for, Marik mocks.
I ask for nothing. Everything I need, I can take by force.
The girl is not yours, he says. Don't you see it in her eyes? She yearns for her home. She yearns for her lost family and friends—not for you. You are not the one she truly wants—she is terrified of you.
He notices that he cannot hear Marik's voice as clearly as usual over Shizuka's soft breathing, but it does not bother him enough to do much to correct it. It is as though the volume is muted, but the reception he feels from Marik's words is still there, still the same—it's a little like a shiver or the spark of a static discharge, and Marik just doesn't seem to be listening to him, the fool, so he tries to speak a little louder. He hates repeating himself.
Prove it, then.
I will not have to. She will show you.
Later, the two prove that propinquity is the sincerest form of attachment. It does not matter so much that he is Marik and she is Shizuka, but that they are two people who are alone together and they are both so desperate for contact—now that they have it they will do anything to keep it.
Tomorrow, she will show you, Marik tells him.
And what will I do about it, hmm? Tell me.
You will win, like you always do.
Shizuka makes no secret about watching Marik as they sit in the receding sunlight. She watches calmly as his lips whisper words and phrases, hum melodies that she cannot discern. His attention is not on her, and for one slow moment he tilts his head back and laughs, loudly.
She can only imagine and assume it is loud, for no sounds reach her ears—she considers briefly what he has in this place to laugh about.
That night Shizuka wonders when she has become so accustomed to Marik's behavior, and in turn, when she has become so much like him.
That night, right before he falls asleep Marik remarks upon the chronic dryness of his mouth.
He awakes to find Shizuka, hands braced against the railing of the blimp—still hovering over an endless swath of ocean—with tears running down her face.
"Stop crying." His words are elegant and masked with the relaxed suggestion that they might be anything but what they are, a demand.
"I can't help it," she says. "I hate you."
"I love you."
They are Marik's words but they are coming out of his mouth and that is the moment he knows that the only way he can completely control Marik is through establishing complete control over the girl.
You are wrong about everything, he tells Marik. Every word out of your mouth is a lie.
I learned from the expert of lying to himself.
"I want to go home, please! Isn't there anything we can do—anywhere we can go—"
"There is no such thing as home," he sneers. "Home does not exist. Home is where you grew up, where your family is, correct? Your family split you apart, left you alone, ignored your desires. Left you blind. My family scarred me, tried to kill me, on multiple occasions. Is somewhere like home where you really want to be, Shizuka?"
Once again, the bitter images of silent knives and screams fill his mind and Marik runs and once again he is alone, consciousness blessedly absent from all subsequent possibilities of interference.
"I can take that away from you, you know."
"What?" Shizuka turns her tear-streaked face towards him, both hopeful and doubting.
"Your pain."
"What will you replace it with?"
He has moved to cup her face with one hand, fingers smoothing over warm skin as his other hand moves towards his belt to remove his Millennium Rod.
"Me."
The Wedjat eye of the Millennium Rod is placed before her and Shizuka's own eyes widen as her vision is full of drifting clouds and ocean and sun and him—
–and then everything goes dark—
Shizuka slumps in his arms like a doll, and Marik holds her and brushes her hair away from her face, imagining devotion and love in her unresponsive eyes. Her tears are drying in the sun and Marik wonders if they ever won at all.
What have you done?
We're two of a kind, aren't we?
We're so much more and so much less than that.
Under the Millennium Rod's possession, she is completely ours! I have ensured our eternal victory!
He knows the taste of victory—sweet, like Shizuka. This feeling of falling is not sweet.
What is victory? Marik asks.
An answer without need or necessity is a dream. A question without an answer is a nightmare.
If you're imagining things, it's only because you want them to come true.
Through the Millennium Rod he is connected to Shizuka's thoughts and dreams—she will only dream now, he realizes. Like her brother—like the rest of her friends—she will never wake again. Her complete and total emptiness haunts him; surrounding him like the other ghosts of his past. Like an open window in a cold rain, it chills him. It is irreversible—what is done can never be undone. The Shizuka as he knew her will never return.
"I finally touched the sun."
Did you like getting burned?
In an attempt to restore some normalcy to the routine they had established, Marik tries to get Shizuka to respond to him, but she lies there with the same expression on her face, waiting for him to make her useful.
He sits on the deck for hours listening to the sounds of the world ending. He can feel it as the last of the fuel runs out and the airship begins its descent towards the endless expanse of glittering blue sea, and he holds her unresisting body in his arms as he lifts his head towards the sky.
The last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is the sun.
The End.
A/N:
1) The absent dialogue between Marik and his alter is an intentional stylistic choice. The close third-person narration represents an unreliable narrator, hence the themes of questions, answers, and lies—who ever really knows if Marik is telling the truth about anything he does? The absence of line-breaks also emphasizes this.
2) Prevalent traits of Dissociative Identity Disorder are avolition (apathy), distortion of time, depersonalization, unexplainable phobias, and auditory hallucinations of the personalities inside their mind.
3) It's important to note that Shizuka can't tell the difference between the two and they are never identified for her—she believes the alter to be the only representation of Marik's identity.
4) Yes, "Marik" does "talk" to "himself." xD Canonically, the characters with a spirit attached often talk to their apparitions, but I've always wondered how that might look to an outside perspective.
5) Reviews would be much loved and appreciated! Thank you so much for reading!
~Jess