Disclaimer: I don't own the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, and I don't receive any monetary compensation for writing this fanfiction.
"Everywhere I look you're all I see,
"Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be."
- "Something I Can Never Have," Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine
Ishtar hated that slave.
He hated the eyes that softened and melted when they glanced into his eyes. He hated the gentle curve of the back that bowed before his feet so fawningly. He even hated the very shadow and foot falls that announced his slave's urgent approach through the tenebrous and stony halls.
He hated how much the slave tried desperately to please him. The warmer the meal he prepared, the colder Ishtar's heart became. The more honeyed the beer he made, the more bitter Ishtar's thoughts turned. Cleaning until his fingertips bled; slaving over suppers and sometimes literally eating only scraps; watching over the disappointingly unruly Malik with a forbearance Ishtar lacked—the slave galled him in all these acts.
How could he, he, leader of the Tomb Guardians, at all receive such sickeningly doting behaviour with any favour? He had seen very early in his life what happened to love-sick servants; fools who slithered into their masters' lives and sought affection. They all received their just due—oh, yes! A master was a master because he was hard, because he struck with the rod and never wavered in his judgment.
Gods, the slave was just like him, that servant long gone through the gates of Anubis. He too had longed to satisfy his master, a younger and more impressionable Ishtar. Indeed, stupid child he was, Ishtar really believed he and his servant were happy. Happy!Thank the gods his father beat some sense into him, and thank the gods for his father killing...
No. No. It wasn't fair then. Not to me, he thought. It isn't fair at all to me now.
That wretched slave, how he sought to comfort Malik—how utterly... That should have been him and... and...
No, he wasn't him, and yet he was. He was his ghost, brought back to flesh and blood, and it angered Ishtar to see him and no longer be able to be with him. He couldn't be young again and have him, have protection from the storm of tradition, comfort from cruel hands and cruel blades. He'd never feel the warm light in the cold darkness of this world of death—death, death, and more fucking death...
Dead, dead, he was dead! He'd even seen him die. Love-sick fucking fool of a servant—no, a slave, his father had called him. That's all he'd been, and he'd have never been anything more, anything more than... than... just that.
Ishtar absolutely hated the slave. He hated all his attempts to assimilate, to be an heir of a sacred family. He hated that unwavering love, the slave's desire to be close to him.
Love kills, Ishtar remembered. It was antithetical to survival, and that was all that mattered down there: survival at any brutal cost.
Any brutal cost...
Ishtar hated the slave. He loved him only when he suffered under the lick of a whip or under a sadistic blade. He reminded him too much of someone he could never have, and he hated that so much.