Discalimer: I don't own the character or events from the series Yu-Gi-Oh!

"Enjoy the exhibit!"

"Thank you."

Shizuka took the ticket with a strained smile and resisted the urge to start rolling it between her fingers. She'd been waffling between her choices for several weeks now, and her sudden decision through a burst of bravery had waned down to anxiety at this point.

"I have to do this," she told herself, but she didn't sound very convincing even to her own ears.

She inhaled, swallowed the painful lump in her throat, and set her shoulders (even though her hands shook as she did so). She was about to face the monster that had been haunting her for months. The shadowy tendrils that would leak from her slightly-open closet or underneath her bed. The demon that could (and would) take away her brother when she was cities away and could do absolutely nothing.

She'd been reliving the most terrifying moments of Battle City over and over in her head, and she couldn't get away from them. Her brother being pulled underwater and drowning; her brother consumed in flames, falling to the deck of the blimp; her brother lying in a coma, dependant on life support… That horrible, insane laughter that rang in her ears as people around her dropped one by one.

She knew Malik Ishtar was still alive and that meant that he was more than just a nightmare — he was a threat.

She'd come all of this way to face him, to see with her own eyes that he was a changed man like everyone was claiming. Yes, he'd acted differently at the end, but was it really possible that whatever "fixed" him was permanent? She'd gone to finally have the surgery she'd needed for years and what did she get as an added bonus? Being thrown into the middle of an apparently magical war. She'd gone with it, despite her confusion, because what else could she have done? But honestly, after it was all over, she was left to think, and thinking meant that none of that made sense to her now.

There it was — the Egypt exhibit. Shizuka tried to steady herself and after several moments, instead of finding herself walking into the designated area, she instead found herself hiding in a bathroom stall. Her heart was pounding in her chest and in her ears, hard enough to give her a headache; she felt cold and hot at the same time, and no matter what, she couldn't stop her hands from shaking.

It took around ten minutes for her to talk herself into leaving the restroom.

There was a rush of relief once she saw the group of people waiting at the entrance for the guide to show up. She wasn't going to be alone with him. Then she felt silly. Of course she wasn't going to be alone! …So why was her stomach still twisting into knots?

A man to her left smiled at her and attempted to start up a conversation. He asked if she was nervous, and she said she was. He told her it wasn't going to be a scary exhibit. She told him she had just never been to this town before. (She was fourteen! That's a perfectly reasonable age to go sight-seeing on her own.) It turned out he was a father, which she found out after his wife and daughter came back from the gift shop.

The chatter at least calmed her down some, and after a few minutes she felt more detached from herself than anything else, like this was just a fantasy. (That was at least better than having a panic attack, right?)

When the talking died down rather abruptly, Shizuka's head shot towards the front of the group and the world stopped turning. There he was, Malik Ishtar. Just… just standing there, dressed in the museum staff uniform, and looking for all the world like… like… like he was a normal person.

But that's not what she saw. In her mind were flashes of death and horror and —

She gasped, startled out of her vision, when he started talking.

"Hello, everyone," he said, and he had the same accent she remembered. "My sister loaned most of these items to the Domino City Museum before. They were apparently very popular, so she's agreed to bring them back for a short while."

As he stared out at them, he sounded… bored. Isis Ishtar, his older sister, had brought her brother with her to help out. She honestly could have gotten anyone to do it, but she'd chosen her brother. She had a lot of faith in him that he'd gotten… better. That knowledge helped to numb Shizuka's fear further, though now there was a troubling thought that sisters always had too much trust in their brothers…

That was when he saw her and their eyes locked. She thought that maybe he wouldn't recognize her because they hadn't spoken once, but by the widening of his eyes and the way his words fell off his tongue and stopped momentarily said otherwise. She gulped again.

The whole event was rather surreal. Malik did nothing terrifying. He didn't twitch. He didn't start laughing or talking about murder. She noticed that he also didn't have that stick he'd had before — the "Rod"? Jyounouchi had said that those were gone, but hearing something and seeing it for oneself were never quite the same.

He went on about how marketplaces worked, what sorts of supplies they used and what they were made out of, he showed them a replica of an ancient bed (which was a lot different than Shizuka expected, honestly), how they had to set up guards around where they worked during the mummifying process to keep jackals from interfering. At this point, the little girl from earlier began to get uneasy. "Mommy, what are they doing?" she asked and pointed at the painting showing priests wrapping the dead bodies.

Her mother whispered back to her that they were just putting bandages on him.

"Why?" asked the little girl, sounding more upset.

"Because he doesn't feel well."

The little girl seemed to have figured out that that meant "dead" after seeing what came next — an actual mummy behind thick glass. She started squealing and crying, and the tour effectively stopped right then and there. Malik winced, but seemed to be at a loss for what to say. Everyone else stared awkwardly at the mother, who, along with her husband, was trying without success to calm her hysterical daughter.

Shizuka wasn't really certain she could help, but she tried anyway. Kneeling down next to the little girl, she set her hand on the tiny shoulder and told her not to worry, that was just a shed skin there. The little girl seemed to quiet down only because she was confused. She looked up at Shizuka with wide eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You know how cicadas shed their skin and you can find them all over the place in the summer?"

The girl nodded.

"That man shed his skin and flew away to be with his family. That's not scary, is it?" she asked. The little girl paused and then shook her head. "Are cicada skins scary?" Again, the girl shook her head. Shizuka smiled. "He's not scary either. One day you'll shed your skin and learn to fly, too. Isn't that cool?" The girl gave a teary smile and nodded.

Shizuka was glad that her parents didn't get angry with her for telling their child something strange like that.

When she stood back up (and after receiving a quiet "thank you," from the parents), she looked ahead and caught Malik's expression. It was like a light had been shined on something important, and he was trying to remember every detail for later. He finished up the finale of the speech and the group dispersed towards the gift shop and food court.

Shizuka didn't move. Neither did Malik.

"I'm no good with kids," he said and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm going to have to remember the cicada thing."

Silence fell once again. Shizuka didn't know how to have a normal conversation with Malik, but at least it seemed that Malik had the same problem with her.

"So, did you… come for the exhibit or…" Malik asked, idly scratching his arm. He didn't have to say the rest.

Shizuka took in a shaky breath and answered, pressing her hands together and playing with her fingers. "I came to see you," she said in a rush. Malik seemed surprised that she'd been so blunt, but what else was there to say? No more skirting around the issue, she thought. But seeing him… have human reactions… took away a large chunk of her view of him as a monster. She peeked up at his face and realized that he was around the same height as her brother.

"Oh," he answered and dropped his hand. He pressed his lips in a tight line before he seemed to make a decision and went ahead with it. "I'm… I'm sorry. About, well, everything." He said it quietly.

Shizuka was stunned but she recovered quickly. She cleared her throat. "Thank you," she said. She hadn't realized exactly how much she'd needed to hear that. Her throat tightened and she felt prickling against her eyes. She blinked rapidly to ward it off. "Thank you," she repeated.

What fell between them next wasn't awkward, but much needed.

"I'm hungry," Malik suddenly said. Shizuka glanced up at him, and only then noticed she'd folded her ticket into a paper heart (something she was never taught, but learned out of boredom when she had chopstick wrappers). She quickly unfolded it and started rolling the ticket into circles instead. "Do you… want to go eat?"

Malik seemed confused about why she was there. Like perhaps if he kept trying in different directions, something would spark a response.

Shizuka shrugged. "I'm not hungry, but I'll go with you," she said. She had no idea what she was even doing. That was also a lie — she just didn't have money. Her mother had paid for the train ticket (on the good faith that she wouldn't go near her brother…), and Shizuka forgot to mention food in her plans. Then again, she'd also been banking on being too nervous to actually get anything down…

It turned out they had a special stall set up to go along with the Egypt exhibit. It was selling koshari, which was apparently the staple of the vender-crawler man's diet. She'd never heard of it before, but Malik seemed happy about it. He was babbling. Actually, he continued to rattle on during the line, the order, and finding a table to sit at, until he stopped dead and stared down at his food (which looked like a mixture between Italian pasta and some form of Thai food).

"Does this look like meat to you?" he asked. He no longer sounded cheerful. Shizuka leaned over the table and looked at the chunk that did, in fact, look like meat. Was it not cooked to Malik's satisfaction…? Was he just making a jibe about how gross it looked, or—

"Oh, great." He looked disgusted and honestly, he sounded pretty darn aggravated, to boot.

Unnerved by this sudden shift in mood, Shizuka quickly fell back into her seat. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Malik took one look at her and his expression changed. It was as if he were trying to calm himself down. "I don't eat meat. Koshari used to be a meat-free dish, but it's becoming more popular to add it," he snapped. Then he sighed. "Look, I'm not mad or anything, I'm just frustrated." Shizuka wondered if he said that to his sister a lot when he lost his temper. He pushed it her way. "Do you want this? I'm going to throw it out if you don't."

Shizuka decided, after a bit of thought, that she would at least try it to be polite.

She was glad she did. She hadn't realized how hungry she actually was until she started eating. It was spicy, but she liked that in food (she took after her brother, she supposed). By the time Malik had returned with a custom-made order of meat-free koshari, Shizuka had eaten a third of her plate.

Over the late lunch, she and Malik talked. It was slow and clipped at first, neither really knowing how to go about it, but after a while… it went rather smoothly. She learned that Rishid was in the back helping Isis with the paperwork. That Malik liked motorcycles. That Isis was really trying to make everything work and she was doing a good job. That sometimes it really was hard for Malik to not be angry or selfish or bratty. He was trying very hard to make this new life work, too.

Shizuka learned how someone could have sympathy for the devil that day. She left to catch her train home and said that she would see him again.

She didn't have a single nightmare that night.