Nightmares
"Mar...rick..." a voice whispers in the darkness. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." Even without seeing the source of the voice, it sounds as though the speaker must be smiling.
Marik looks behind him as he runs, out of breath but not being able to slow down for fear of being caught. He doesn't see anything behind him, where the voice seems to be coming from. 'I know that voice... Who is it...?' Marik thinks, a confused look on his face as he tries to see through the thick blackness behind him. Giving up, he turns his head back around to the front - and gasps. He is standing right in front of him. Marik tries to stop, doing so too quickly, and he trips. Marik widens his eyes as he falls through the man in front of him - the guy vanishing into the darkness around him like smoke. Marik lands on his right arm, his face narrowly escaping the nonexistent floor. He was expecting pain to rush up his arm from the landing, but it doesn't. As his shoulder length hair falls into his face, he wonders if there's ground, or a floor, underneath all of the dark fog around him, or if there's nothing there at all... He pushes himself up with his free arm and glances around for his pursuer. He lets out a relieved breath when he doesn't notice anyone.
"I see you..."
Marik's pupils contract in realization and he jumps to his feet. He runs, ignoring the stiffness in his legs. "Who are you?!" Marik demands of the mysterious voice.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk... How easily you forget."
Marik again tries turning his head in the direction of the voice but he doesn't see anything. He also doesn't notice the brick wall that materializes a few feet away from him until he runs into it and falls backward into the fog that makes up the ground. The landing doesn't hurt, but running into the wall did.
"Mar...rick..."
"Who are you?!" Marik yells at the top of his lungs.
Marik gasps as he jolts awake. He frantically glances around the dim hotel room. He slowly realizes that no one's here, and wipes some sweat off of his forehead.
---
"Marik... Is something wrong?" Ishizu asks her brother, concerned about how quiet he's been today. He hasn't taken more than a couple bits of his sandwich, and also hasn't seemed to notice the wonderful weather today. 'He usually loves eating outside...'
"Hmm...?" Marik murmurs, looking toward Ishizu. "You say something, Sis?"
"What is it, brother?" Ishizu exasperatedly asks. "You haven't been this quiet since the pharaoh defeated your darker side in the duel."
Marik's eyes widen in realization. "It was him..." he whispers to himself. 'That might explain why my legs ached this morning when I got out of bed...'
"What?"
"N-Nothing," Marik says and looks down. Ishizu doesn't say anything and Marik knows she must be skeptical. "I've just had a lot of things on my mind lately, is all." He takes a bite of his sandwich.
"Are you sure that's all, Hikari?"
Marik's food gets stuck in his throat.
---
After taking off his shirt, Marik looks around the room for any sign of his darker side. He knows that Ishizu is in the next room, and Odion in the room across the hall - now that they're back at home - but he doesn't want either of them to worry about him or think of him as weak and only being afraid of his own shadow. 'That's all he is now... A shadow.' After being certain that no one else is in the room with him, he turns off the light and gets under the covers.
---
"Mar...rick..."
Marik pants as he runs from the voice. He can't see where he's going, because of the thick, black fog, but he subconsciously knows that there won't be any obstacles in his way.
"Mar...rick..."
Marik suddenly stops, a determined look on his face as he decides to put an end to this. He turns around and yells, "I'm tired of running! You don't really exist! You were banished in the final duel of Battle City!"
"Oh, I was, was I?"
Surprised, Marik swings his head around to see his other self. He quickly recovers, with the words, "What do you want!? Why am I dreaming about you?!"
"Dreaming?" Yami Marik laughs. His laugher seems to seep through Marik's skin and chill his bones. "I'm afraid this is much more than a mere dream... darling..." Yami Marik unsheathes the dagger of the Millennium Rod and slowly runs the edge of it down Marik's face. Blood trickles down to Marik's chin from the cut. The feeling of it... the cold touch of the gold, the sting of the cut, the slight tickle of the blood as it creeps down his face - this is definitely no ordinary dream.
Marik wants to yell 'what is it that you want from me!' but can't. His fear won't allow him to say a word or even move, and all he can do is wait. He watches as his darker side licks his lips but restrains from licking the blood off of his face.
"You're so confused... So weak... You need me," Yami Marik purrs.
"B-b-"
"But you've changed...?" Yami Marik asks with a smirk. " 'Good' is weak. You felt better than you've ever felt when I was with you. Together, we're strong..." he whispers in Marik's ear. Yami Marik smirks widely when seeing his lighter half's eyes glaze over, and he takes a few steps back to give him room.
Marik notices his body beginning to go numb. His mind seems to be getting foggy. It's hard to think. 'Does this have something to do with the Millennium Rod's power...?' Marik wonders. He slowly glances down to his side, feeling dizzy with every inch of movement, and notices that he, unlike his dark side, doesn't have a Millennium Rod. 'Oh... That's right... I gave it to the Pharaoh...' Marik thinks.
Yami Marik observes the confused look coming to Marik's face, his eyes fixed on his hikari.
'...Why would I do that...?' Marik notices Yami Marik staring at him and thinks, 'Isn't that me...? Why am I standing over there when I'm supposed to be here...?'
Yami Marik figures that he's ready and steps toward him. He doesn't stop when getting only inches away from Marik, and instead, takes another step. His foot goes through Marik's body, but not out the other end. The yami's other body parts follow until he's totally fused with his lighter half.
"Aaoh..." Marik utters as a reflex. His eyes no longer look cloudy, but they seem different than normal, somehow.
Marik wakes up with a smirk. Although it's in the middle of the night, he gets up and puts on some clothes. He fingers the shadowy Millennium Rod at his side as he opens the door. Although the rod isn't physically here, the ghost version still has it's powers.
'It's good to be back...' Yami Marik's voice echoes in Marik's mind. A smile comes to his face.
'In our dreams, we can have separate bodies... In our dreams, we can have so much fun together, darling... But right now, there's more important things we can be doing.'
---
This is a one-shot for a fanfiction contest I've entered. Hopefully it meets the requirements for the contest...
Some dreams that LadyAuroraPhoenix has had recently may have subconsciously gave me the idea for the beginning of the story. (That, and maybe the dream Joey has about Kaiba in Duelist Kingdom... I knew it seemed familiar when writing it, but I couldn't figure out from where.)
I also wonder if Spider-Man 3 may have influenced me... I'm working on a picture from the trailer, which is for deviantArt. I couldn't stand the first two of those movies, but this one has that symbiont costume in it.