Shadow: …Hear me suddenly screech to myself as I realise my oneshot is due in for the contest this very day, and I only have about forty more minutes left to write it before I get kicked off the PC for the night. Hear the panic, quickly degenerate into coughing, and then self-pity as I curl up around my stomach and recommence feeling exceedingly ill. Yes, my immune system stinks.

Notes: For Compy's pairing contest. This time around it's Obscureshipping – Ishizu x Shadi. This 'shot? Written in about twenty minutes. Forgive?

Guardian

When she put the Necklace on for the first time, she felt hands brush through her hair, gentle, fleeting; a spirit's fingers cool against the nape of her neck. She never took heed of them though, lost in the warmth of power against her jugular, soaring into her chest and heart, lungs filling with possibility as vision blossomed behind her half-closed lashes. Each heartbeat brought her new sights, past and present mingling with her blood, her birthright, her duty –

Lips against her ear. "This is yours to guard, Guardian. But, even for a Keeper, not to keep."

She whirled around, saw her father's face, watching her shrewdly, the eyes of the others of her Clan. No one stood within a good ten metres of her in the dark of the tomb, afraid the Necklace of a Thousand Years would have rejected her, eaten her soul alive and taken those too close to her damned form with it.

Ishizu looked back at them all, suddenly annoyed, but forced herself to remain outwardly serene. "Father," she looked to the man, the Clan-head, the one who decided their fates in this place where the sun never shone, "do I look dead to you? The Shadows have spared me; the Item has accepted me. The ceremony is done."

"Yes," the man agreed, establishing his own authority by turning his back on the teenager, his back on the smooth-faced girl to override any power she may have shown over him. "The ceremony is done."

A cheer went up in the underground cavern, in the tomb, and the Clan proceeded to their Hall to celebrate.

"'Shizu!" Malik, small, innocent and sweet, flew from the flickering shadows as she went by, clinging to his sister's leg. Too young, uninitiated, the boy had been unable to watch his sister take the Necklace upon herself. Rishid, silent as ever, appeared behind the boy, the self-appointed guardian of the future guardian of the Rod.

"Malik," Ishizu smiled at her brother, bending down to wrap her arms around the boy, smiling into the child's delighted face. "Have you been good whilst I was gone?"
"You weren't gone that long." Malik pouted, seemingly ruffled by the reoccurring suggestion that he was capable of getting into some life-changing scrape within the space of ten minutes or so. (Even though, in fact, the ceremony had gone on for about an hour. Ishizu, lost in her own newfound power, had completely lost track of the time.) The boy drew awe-struck fingertips over the Eye at Ishizu's throat. "'S this the Item, 'Shizu?"

"It is." Ishizu nodded, smile growing wider at the innocent wonder on her sibling's face.

Fingers touching just behind her ear, touch to the sensitive skin there sending goosebumps down her spine.

"…Yours to guard, Guardian…but Keeper, not to keep."

Ishizu whirled against once more, haunting voice drifting through the corridors of the Tomb-

"'Shizu?" Malik looked confused at his sister's sudden jumpiness.

The girl looked to Rishid, a little spooked. "Did you…hear anything?"

Solemnly, the elder male shook his head.

The last time she put the Necklace on, Ishizu was looking out the porthole of her room on Kaiba's blimp, using the glass as her mirror. Her hair, long and dark, framed her face much as it had done since she had been a young girl, kept the same length throughout her teenage years and into adulthood.

A voice from behind her. "Keeper…it is not yours to keep."

Ishizu didn't bother to turn around, too used to the shadowy whispers that had haunted her for the better part of her life. "I have no desire to end up like my brother, fighting for a destiny that is not his, clinging to a power that eats away at his own soul."

"Power is a difficult thing to relinquish."

"Power is an even more difficult thing to control, and my soul is not light enough, not balanced enough, to bear its burden for much longer. I won't have to, much longer, will I?"

"I cannot tell you that."

Ishizu laughed at that, finally turning to look at the half-translucent man standing in her room. Tanned, mysterious, appearing and disappearing as he willed. "Can't, or won't?" Destiny was a strange thing, especially for those who could see fate's course. Mouths had to be sealed sometimes, words left unspoken for fate to take the needed path.

"Seer, why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?"

"Because you will never answer the questions that have insofar remained unanswered to me." A vague rebuke lingered in Ishizu's words, a chiding that echoed earlier meetings.

"I cannot tell you the fate of your brother. If the Necklace will not show it to you -"

"Then fate wills it that I am blind." Ishizu cut the man off. "Do you think me guilty of hubris, to go actively against what has been set in stone since before my birth?"

"Your brother has."

"That is my father's fault – he…he warped Malik." The woman's words were quiet. There was silence for a little while, before Ishizu glanced up, up, through the ceiling as if she could see the dueling platform far above, the sky. It was time for Kaiba Seto to meet his destiny. "...If you will excuse me?" Ishizu advanced, waiting for her companion to move aside and let her past. "I have a duel to win."

The man only smiled at her. "May the gods be kind to you, Guardian."

Ishizu paused, one step from the door. "…That sounds uncannily like a goodbye. Shadi?" She looked back – her visitor was gone. Ishizu frowned – and then turned to go once more, stilling when she felt hands brush through her hair, gentle, fleeting; a spirit's fingers cool against the nape of her neck.

Lips against her ear. "This is yours to guard, Guardian." The feeling of a hand pressed over her throat, over her heart, beating with blood, magic and life. "But, even for a Keeper, not to keep."

Ishizu spoke to the door, unmoving. "…I'll see you like this again?"

"As long as you wear the Necklace."

…

Ishizu lost her duel to Kaiba, and handed the Necklace of a Thousand Years over to the spirit of the Pharaoh, to Mouto Yuugi. After that, she only saw Shadi in her dreams.