Happy birthday, Malik! Thanks to the interesting time of your birth, I'll be posting two stories in a row. XD As a notice: I will likely be cleaning up my most recent story, and this one, and my next one, after Christmas. I've just been freakishly busy with the holidays and haven't been able to clean up my stories as much as I'd like before posting.
I should probably take this bit of an opportunity to make something clear: I don't believe all that Malik did during Battle City was okay, or that anyone will forget about it. But I do believe he had an understandable reason, and that he can now be forgiven. I also believe that, even though this plot point was never really dealt with, Yami would have at least thought about all the Ishtars had gone through, supposedly because of him (though I do not believe he was to blame - keep in mind that all of this is Malik's point of view, and personally, I would think that it was one of Atem's court who ordered the Ishtar family to wait for his return, though obviously no one can be sure). Especially as he had often wondered if he was a "good king," he might feel regret that he had some sort of cause in what the Ishtars were born into. He's a good guy, and he's got a caring heart. I feel fairly confident it at least crossed his mind.
"Ayamari" means "apology."
Also, a notice: some fans of the Abridged Series may know that LittleKuriboh/CardGamesFTW recently hosted a charity drive for Dan Green, English voice actor for Yami and Yuugi. For those who don't know, Dan Green's wife, Michal Friedman, died just last month due to complications while giving birth to their twins. As well as the charity drive, the CardGamesFTW YouTube profile links to a site where fans of Dan Green can donate to help him take care of the twins in this difficult time, as well as send letters and messages of support. Believe me, they would be much appreciated.
I may not write for the dub, but I grew up with it, and cheesy as this may sound, YuGiOh changed my life. It gave me a lifelong interest in Egyptian history that I continue to learn from, it gave me something to share with my little brother, and, more recently, it gave me inspiration to practice my writing and post on this site again, and meet all you great people. So, whether or not you like or even watch the dub, please drop by the site and offer a bit of support to this kind man.
While it may seem that this story is completely unrelated (especially given that it doesn't focus on Yuugi or Yami), I dedicate this story about family to Dan Green, and in the hopes that things get better for him and his kids.
Story rated for references to something kind of like violence, and very, very slight language. As in, one or two uses of H-E-(double hockey sticks). That's about the extent of the language you'll ever see in my stories; you'd never hear a foul word from my mouth in real life.
My holiday story is up tomorrow! Might be a little late, depending on when I post it, given that I'll be spending Christmas Eve with family.
EDIT: After all this time, I never thought I'd come back to this story, but after re-reading it, I wanted to correct an error. I formerly referred to an Egyptian woman wearing a "burka," but the item I was thinking of is a hijab: a burka covers a woman's entire face, leaving only semi-transparent fabric near her eyes, while most Westerners have probably seen a woman wearing hijab, a headscarf which covers the hair and neck (it is often, but not always, worn by Muslim women). I honestly had no idea of this distinction when I wrote this story, so I apologize for any offense.
Ayamari
Sister was going to kill him.
Well, maybe kill him was a bit of an overstatement. She wouldn't lay a hand on him, she never had. But she would glare at him for days on end and slam doors in his face and give him the smallest portions of burnt food at dinner and use up all the hot water on the dishes just before he went to take a shower.
Malik winced.
Correction: Sister was going to do everything but kill him.
He rubbed his arms even though it wasn't cold, and it wasn't going to get cold unless he decided to flee the country, which, at this point, didn't seem like an entirely terrible idea. He could always go into hiding again, perhaps find another underground home and just live there for a few years until Sister let out the hot steam. Or he could move halfway across the world and send home checks without a return address once he managed to get a job.
But he had only had one job in all his life, and it was here, at the museum, and somehow he doubted that someone who still hadn't managed to get all his identification papers arranged—he didn't even have a birth certificate, and apparently that was worth something in the real world—would be able to get a job anywhere his sister wasn't already working, and could therefore give him all the recommendations he needed for hire.
Maybe he could bring Rishid with him.
He sighed, and realized only two seconds later that he already had far too much lingering guilt for what he had done to his brother in the past, and he wasn't going to drag Rishid into his own problems again after he had already done so for more years than anyone should.
Malik tilted his head and looked at it from a different angle. He didn't expect it to look any better, but he tried to be optimistic and hope that it might.
Somehow—though he couldn't for the life of him figure out how—it looked worse.
He grimaced, a shudder working its way up his form, and he rubbed his arms again.
He shook his head, breathed out and smiled a tiny smile when one of the older women who lived nearby passed by along the sidewalk opposite their house. She paused, staring, her hijab almost slipping from her head. She looked at Malik, then back at it, then at Malik again.
Malik couldn't be sure, but he almost thought he saw a look of pity cross her face before she scurried away.
Somehow, the look of pity was much worse than the disgust he had expected to see.
He didn't know what time it was, and he wasn't sure he wanted to go inside to find out, if only because a clock counting down to his demise wasn't a particularly pleasant thought. He leaned to one side, then to the other, but neither made him more comfortable, and he was beginning to suspect that it really was getting colder, and maybe he should have slipped on a jacket over his sleeveless shirt before he went out.
He wondered if Sister would get on him because he had gone out dressed like this in December, too.
Malik swallowed.
Never, at least not that he could recall, had today been a happy day. He had no memory of it ever being special, or any different than the day before or the day after. So it wasn't like this had ruined a day he had been expecting to be wonderful. But he couldn't help but wonder if all the gods Sister talked about were really up there, and were having a good long laugh at his expense somewhere far in the sky.
If they were, maybe they could at least have the mercy not to also make today the day that Egypt's weather did a one-eighty for the first time in all his life.
Malik huffed, shaking his head, and started up the bit of a front yard toward the door.
He knew very well that knowing the time wasn't going to make waiting any easier, and would probably make it worse. But he might as well check.
Rishid, being Rishid, did not have quite the same reaction Malik had dreaded.
Malik imagined he had the same reaction on the inside. Staring in shock and horror, thinking of ways to make him pay … though the second part was probably just Sister. And indeed, as Malik watched him from the porch, walking up the sidewalk toward the little house they had managed to get close to the museums, Rishid just about dropped the grocery bags in his arms.
But, being Rishid, he held his composure enough not to drop their food.
Malik fidgeted for the twentieth time and shuffled his feet, glancing from side to side as if that would somehow make him look less guilty. "Um … hi, Rishid."
Rishid looked up at him, then back at that spot in the driveway, then back to Malik again. He shifted the paper bags.
"Are … are you alright, Malik?"
"Me? Oh, I'm fine," Malik muttered, and though he hadn't intended it a tiny bit of sarcasm leaked into his voice that he doubted Rishid was quite able to catch. He fiddled with his fingers behind his back and wondered if there was any validity to the idea of asking Rishid if they could move back to Japan before Sister got home.
Rishid stared at him for a long moment. He didn't show one iota of anger or disapproval on his face. But then again, this was Rishid, and Malik didn't think he had ever seen Rishid show true disapproval before in his life. Hell, if Malik were to blow up the house by playing with the wires in the remote control, Rishid would probably just pat him on the shoulder and tell him that maybe they should find a different brand of TV.
Malik took one step out into the yard, and Rishid adjusted the bags one more time in his arms. Deciding that severe punishment might be less likely if he showed good behavior, and also that if left alone Rishid was probably going to end up dropping the groceries before he actually asked for help, Malik scampered through the yard and pulled one of the heavier bags from the older boy's arms.
Rishid glanced at him, then ahead of him, and though he tried to hide it, Malik could see his face contorting in the same way it always did when he saw something frankly horrible but he had enough mercy not to say it.
"Did something …?"
He didn't finish, tilting his head so his ponytail tilted with him. Malik felt the bag weighing down his arms, something poking him from inside, and realized some cashier had been stupid enough to put the egg carton on the bottom.
He sighed a heavy breath and nodded.
"Yes," he agreed, not even bothering to murmur. "Something happened."
Rishid looked to him. Back ahead. Him, back ahead. He parted his lips then closed them, and Malik could see him swallow the question he had apparently decided it wouldn't be a good idea to ask.
Malik dropped his shoulders as much as he could with the bag in his arms.
"Do you think Sister will be too mad about it?"
Rishid leaned his head to one side, then to the other, and Malik wondered if it looked worse to the side for him as well. Rishid's face never changed much, but Malik had long learned to decipher his expressions, slight as they may have been. Raised eyebrows. Lowered eyebrows. Eyes that twitched, lips that pressed against one another then relaxed.
If the situation had been a bit different, he might have wanted to go and grab his video camera and tape this, if only because he didn't think he had ever seen so many different faces on Rishid in a single encounter before.
Rishid straightened himself and cleared his throat, one of his eyebrows still quirked as if he didn't notice it was there.
"I … couldn't say."
Malik held back a groan and jerked the bag up in his arms. He imagined the eggs cracking and yolk dripping all over the food.
"Rishid, every time you say that, Sister throws a hissy fit."
Rishid looked back ahead of him and swallowed, his face contorting again. "Well …"
"I know," Malik murmured, huffing a breath and deciding that it wasn't worth forcing Rishid to face his own problem just to try and assuage his own guilt. He looked back at it and nodded again with a twisted face. "It's bad."
Rishid said nothing, and Malik just turned around and glanced at the two remaining bags in his brother's arms. He raised his brow and freed a finger to point toward the bag on the left.
"What's in that one?" he asked. He stepped forward and poked it. The paper rustled. "It looks big."
Rishid jolted back, and nearly dropped both the bags again. He caught them, though, before Malik could even put a hand out to steady him. He cleared his throat and glanced down into the bag on the left.
"Oh! Um, uh, nothing, nothing." He coughed. "Just something I picked up for Ishizu."
Malik looked at him, then at the bag, his eyebrows rising the smallest bit.
"Can I see it?"
Rishid coughed again. Somehow Malik doubted he had managed to get sick.
"It's nothing of interest, Malik," he murmured, and adjusted the bag on the left closer toward his chest. He glanced away. "Just an … errand."
Rishid was very bad at lying, and Malik would have been happy to tell him that, as he was sure he had done several times before. But he didn't. He just looked at the "something" Rishid held close, not even bothering to stand up taller to see if he could peer inside. The last bit of sarcasm he could manage flickered in his eyes and his voice.
"… right."
He looked one more time at the bag, then sighed. Rishid loosened his grip, though not enough to drop the bags. Malik adjusted his own paper bag and felt the eggs crack again.
"Well, we've probably got a while left before Sister comes home." He tried to force an ironic smile, though that was somehow difficult while keeping up his sarcastic face. He tilted his head and the smile twitched to a solemn smirk. "Want to start preparing for my funeral?"
Rishid made a face.
"Malik, I think that's a little …"
He didn't finish. Malik didn't particularly want to ask why.
Malik sighed again, this time so loud he wondered if the neighbors who hadn't come out when it had happened would come out now. No one did. He wasn't sure whether or not he was grateful.
"Come on, Rishid," he muttered, and patted the bag in Rishid's arms so it rustled and bent. "Let's get your groceries inside."
Sister's face when she stepped out of her friend from the museum's car late that afternoon came very close to making Malik wonder if she was going to lose her jaw.
Of course, it was also the sort of face that would have made him want to laugh, but laughing would likely mean the death penalty at a time like this, so Malik just stood up on the porch where he and Rishid had sat since clock hinted she would be back soon. Rishid watched him with sympathetic eyes before standing with him, but Malik stayed in front.
He had learned enough, at the very least, to know that someone not even involved shouldn't take the blame.
The woman in the driver's seat of the little car stared ahead of her with a face in between shocked and nervous, and when her eyes met Malik's, he saw that same look of pity that had flashed on the old lady's face earlier that day.
He clasped his hands behind his back, and the woman drove off without saying a word.
Leaving Sister standing at the end of the driveway, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wider than they had ever been, her arms limp at her sides and her familiar linen and gold somehow perfectly unfitting.
It took her nearly a minute to speak, and when she finally closed her mouth for a moment and began to shake her head, Malik prepared himself and lowered his gaze.
"What … what happened?"
It was the closest to a gasp he had heard Sister come toward in a long time. Seeing Sister truly shocked, eyes bulging and mouth open, arms limp and posture distinctly undignified, almost made the whole mess seem far worse than before.
Malik swallowed, fiddling with his fingers, and strangely enough, his fingers felt cold.
"Uh … welcome home, Sister."
"Malik!" Sister gasped again, throwing her arms out in front of her, her face finally turning to look at him. The horrified shine in her eyes was like a knife to his throat. "What … is this? My … car …"
At his side, Rishid shifted. Malik breathed shuddering breaths and tried to keep his sister's gaze, but every few seconds he still glanced away.
"Well, I, uh … sort of lost control of the bike when I was pulling into the driveway, and …"
He stopped there.
"Lost control of the bike" seemed accurate in his head, or at least sounded like the best way to put it for the sake of begging for mercy. But even he couldn't rule out the possibility that he had just been zoning out again, and reflex had taken over as it often did when he was riding, and instead of pulling into the bottom of the driveway as he normally did, he had rammed straight into outside wall of the house.
Or what would have been the outside of the house, if Sister's van hadn't been sitting between his motorcycle and the brick.
He had gotten out of it with only a few scratches, most of which he hadn't bandaged and, to his amazement, even Rishid had yet to notice. He thanked luck and a bit of past skill that he had learned how to roll as safely as he could off of a motorcycle in the midst of a crash.
Sister's van, however, had not been so lucky.
The bumper sitting on the concrete of the driveway, completely detached. The dark blue metal of the car dented in the shape of the front of his bike, so much that he suspected it pushed against the back seat. His bike didn't even look like a bike anymore for how much it had been twisted on impact, and he figured there were more damages he hadn't even seen.
He swallowed again, trying in vain to cure his dry mouth, as Sister just gaped, her head turning back and forth between the van—which he now thanked the tiniest bit of mercy had stopped smoking, and he had gotten the alarm turned off after about two minutes of picking the front door lock—and Malik, each look burning into Malik like the flames that might have consumed his bike, the van, and him if he had been going just a little faster.
But this didn't seem like the best time to mention that particular turn of luck.
Sister still stared at him, and Malik wondered if the chill he felt throughout him was the air. He squeezed his hands into nervous fists, then relaxed them, then bit the inside of his lip.
"Well, you usually don't leave your car there during the day!"
Against his will, the words came out like a whine, like a child's last attempt as assuaging his own guilt. But Malik knew it was useless, even before Sister turned away from him and stared at her van, the one she had finally managed to buy to get to work instead of having to walk or take the bus.
Malik turned to his brother with his voice hushed and his shoulders tense.
"How dead am I?"
Rishid huffed, glancing first at the car, then at the bike, then at Sister. "Honestly?"
Malik nodded. Rishid looked at him with lips pressed together tight.
"… very."
Malik sighed, and reminded himself to thank Rishid for at least being honest.
Sister dug into the cloth bag at her side so fast that Malik jumped like she had pulled out a gun. He stepped back, and tried to hold himself firm, though he could sense Rishid at his side quite ready to step out in his defense.
She pulled out a pen and paper with slow movements somehow both characteristic and terrifying, but Malik didn't let the tension slip from his shoulders.
She stepped through the yard and up to the porch, her face stoic and her eyes hard. Malik flinched. She held out the pen and crumpled piece of paper torn from a pad.
"Write down all the damages and everything we'll need to replace. And clean up what you can. I will be inside."
Malik lowered his head. "Sister, I …"
He didn't finish, and Sister said nothing. He took the pen and paper, and she walked off in her usual calm, collected manner into the house, the door left open behind her.
Rishid hesitated, still standing next to Malik with an unreadable look on his face.
"Rishid."
The voice calling from inside the house wasn't harsh—Sister's voice was never truly harsh—but it stung like a slap across the face for Malik, and Rishid pressed his lips together obviously enough.
He looked at Malik for a few seconds more, and Malik could see that sympathetic glint in his eyes that had been in the old lady's and Sister's friend's. But Rishid's was genuine. He looked at Malik, and Malik gave the tiniest motion with his head.
Rishid breathed out, turned, and followed Sister inside.
Malik watched him go, and watched him close the door as softly as the door could close. He breathed out, and somehow even his breath seemed chilled.
He looked at the motorcycle, and at the car. He was sure, somewhere in his mind, that he had already gone over most of the parts that were ruined and the parts that might be able to be fixed. He probably already had a tentative cost in his head, though he didn't have the guts to let himself know what it was.
Something heavy that hadn't been there in full since he had first crashed the bike settled in his chest, and no matter how he tried to swallow it or tell it to leave, it stayed. Something like how he had felt near the end of Battle City, existing as that weak, vanishing spirit that knew as well as anything he would not be here much longer.
Sister had forgiven him. She had been kind to him. Even Rishid had forgiven him, Rishid who had done everything for him since he was born, Rishid who had loved him even when Malik did nothing to deserve to be loved.
They had been a family when he should have had no such thing.
They were there when no one had been there, and all he had managed to do was mess things up again.
He dropped to his knees in front of the bike with the paper in hand and ran a finger over the spot where the wheel had once been. Malik huffed, so loud he wondered if Rishid could hear from inside the house.
He pulled the pencil from its place tucked under his thumb and began his scribbling on the paper in his palm.
"It's going to hurt, Rishid."
He wasn't sure if Rishid looked at him from the other side of the room. He probably did. He probably walked across the floor to stand by his bed. But Malik couldn't see him, and just stared at the ceiling like before.
He thought about asking if the tenth birthday was a big deal in the outside world, but he decided against it.
He didn't bother to wonder if Rishid would even know.
Malik let himself imagine that Rishid was looking down at him from the foot of the bed. He imagined that Rishid gave him those sad eyes he always gave him when he couldn't think of anything to say, so he gave him those eyes instead, as if he thought they would help. Sometimes they did.
Now they didn't.
"Will you be there?" he murmured, so quietly he didn't think Rishid could have heard him from across the room.
Silence. Somewhere in the home footsteps tapped on the stone. Malik wanted to sit up, but didn't.
"I will be as close as I can."
Malik's eyes grew, and he lifted his head from the pillow just enough to see Rishid standing at the foot of his bed, his hands clasped in front of him and suddenly looking much younger than he really was.
He was wearing those eyes, but they were different than before. Malik wasn't sure how.
He swallowed and laid his head back down.
"What about Sister?"
"Miss Ishizu says she will be just outside the door."
Malik breathed in and smelled the smoke in the air. He had never been able to smell the smoke before.
His back burned even though there was nothing there, and now he just lay on the blankets of his own bed. He wondered if he had already turned ten and he just hadn't noticed the time—not as if he ever did. He decided that he would like to stay nine until they came to get him.
He breathed in and out again, and this time his breath shuddered, and the flames on the walls seemed to shudder with it.
"I don't want to go."
Rishid was silent for a long time after that. Malik knew he was still there, knew he hadn't moved. But Rishid said nothing. Malik wondered if Rishid had ever imagined how it would hurt. He wondered if Rishid would have been scared.
He wondered if Rishid was scared now.
Rishid breathed a heavy breath, and though Malik didn't look at him, he could see his face in his head.
"I know, Master Malik," he whispered, and his voice seemed like the flames on the wall, flickering in the dark. "I know."
Now, Malik was quite sure it was colder than usual, and he reminded himself when he went inside to see where he had put his jacket from the last time he had been in Japan.
He wondered if Sister had guessed he would want it—she often did—and burned it while he was out here, just for the sake of spiting him. Honestly, he wouldn't have blamed her if she did.
Though he hoped he had some clothes left, given that working around the totaled car had managed to cover one of his favorite blue shirts with enough dirt to make anyone think it was meant to be black. But he supposed that if she had decided to burn his other clothes as well, he couldn't have blamed her for that, either.
His back stung for the first time in years, and he told himself to ignore it.
He sighed and flopped down on the concrete, the driveway stinging his backside, but Malik just ignored that, too.
The bike, as he had expected, was hopeless. Even if Sister decided to look around for ancient magic—and even if she managed to do ancient magic, which, without the Millennium Tauk, he didn't think she could—it would have done no good. The van wasn't completely lost, but Malik doubted it could be fixed with anything short of a full makeover to the rear.
He wondered if there was one of those "makeover" shows for cars, and maybe he could tell his story and get on TV and have one of them fix the car up brand new for him.
Malik groaned, shaking his head, and pushed himself up on shaky legs.
The sun was almost gone over the horizon, and if he didn't get inside soon Sister would probably come out and get him. He didn't know how long he had been out, but he knew quite well that he didn't want to have to face Sister, not after all of this. Not at least until tomorrow. No, he would just go into his room and hide out for the rest of the night, close and lock his door and get some reading in, and maybe in the morning Sister would be willing to negotiate how he could pay for the destroyed van.
He huffed again, marching up the lawn with legs that still didn't seem to want to do something as simple as walking, the paper and pen clutched in his hand.
He hesitated only a second—during which he decided that it was better to go inside and face her there than let her end up cross enough so she had to come outside—before he opened the door.
The house was dark.
Despite her conservative nature with electricity, and the fact that she still seemed to prefer candles if she could get them, Sister always made sure the lights were on once the sun began to set. If she wasn't home, Rishid did it, and Rishid had scarcely forgotten a single task he had been given all his life, if his habits when Malik was a child were any indication.
Neither of them ever left the lights in the house off. And yet, as the door creaked closed behind him, Malik saw nothing but the faint light of the sky outside peeking in through the windows, casting tiny shadows that barely differed from the blackness of everything else.
He stood at the door like he had seen people stand still in the middle of horror movies—or, in his case, the one horror movie that had been on TV two weeks after he moved in, and he had accidentally watched the last third of it before Sister ran in, horrified, and turned it off, only for Malik to be particularly disturbed for the rest of the week.
He never could figure out how it was that so much of his own life failed to disturb him, and yet that one movie had scared him to bits.
Malik stepped forward. He pressed his lips together, lowering his brow, and out of instinct, he flicked his hand to his side to grasp for the Millennium Rod only to be met with empty air.
He huffed and walked down the hall, past the living room and one of the bathrooms and toward the kitchen doorway on the left.
There was breathing.
He flinched. Instinct, fear. He tensed his body, made his steps as quiet as he could, breathed shallow and almost silent in the darkness of the hall. He thought he could smell something like the candy he had gorged himself on at the stores before Sister forced him to give up the habit, but he pushed it aside and stopped in front of the dining room doorway, eyes narrowed, peering into the dark.
The light flicked on, and Malik jolted back, blinking wildly as he was met with the kitchen in the back of the room and the dinner table in front.
And in front of the table, Sister and Rishid with smiles stretched from ear to ear.
Balloons in the air, streamers hung from the ceiling, and a thick, white-iced cake with what he could only guess were seventeen candles, their wicks not yet lit, in Rishid's hands.
If it was possible, the smile on Rishid's face widened as Malik began to stare.
"Happy birthday, Malik."
Malik blinked. Once, hard, then again. He turned to the left, then to the right, waiting for something else to be said. But nothing was, and Sister and Rishid just smiled at him with those same smiles and those same eyes, and no matter how he racked his head and tried to make his lips move, he could force almost nothing coherent from his lips.
"Wha … what …?"
Sister almost chuckled. It was both familiar and completely ridiculous to see her smile so gently, and without trying to fake it. She tilted her head.
"Well, we needed you to stay outside while we got everything ready." She glanced at the paper in his hands, then pursed her lips and cleared her throat. "I … wasn't exactly planning on the accident with the car, but it was a good excuse."
Malik dropped the paper, and no one said a thing as it fluttered to the ground. He lifted his hand and pointed to the cake and the streamers and the balloons bouncing against the ceiling.
"You mean … all of this … this is for me?"
Rishid smiled at his near-whispered words.
"Of course." He stepped forward, just one step, but for Rishid it was a leap. "It's your birthday."
Malik's eyes stayed wide, and his mouth stayed open, and he suddenly remembered that old expression Sister had once used that he shouldn't hang his mouth open so long or bugs would fly in. It had only actually happened to him once, but he wouldn't have been surprised if bugs decided to swarm the house just for the sake of settling on his tongue.
He shut his lips and swallowed.
"But … you guys never gave me … this before," he murmured with a mouth that refused to close.
Sister chuckled in full, a rare but lovely sound. "We never really had the chance."
Malik couldn't help but wonder how it was that in just the time he had been outside, Sister's eyes had changed from as hard as they had been before to as gentle as they were now. The sympathy in Rishid's face was gone to make away for that same soft gaze. Somehow, it was very difficult for Malik not to think that this was as much of an amazement to Rishid as it was to him.
The finger that remained in the air turned toward the thick white cake in Rishid's hands.
"All this cake's for me?"
Sister chuckled, her smile stretching now across her face.
"Well, I hope you won't eat all of it."
Malik looked to Rishid. Rishid's smile changed, and he nodded toward his hands. "The bakery finished late, so I had to pick it up today."
But just as Malik opened his mouth again to ask something he forgot the instant it came to his head, Sister turned around and walked to the other side of the table. She knelt with the utmost dignity then stood back up.
Holding, one in each hand, two boxes about the size of her head, wrapped in golden paper and tied with bright crimson bows.
Malik stared as she walked back to stand in front of him with the presents held out to him.
Her smile renewed.
"It isn't much," she murmured, but she didn't seem to notice when Malik said nothing in return. He reached for the first box, his hands surprisingly careful, and lifted it out of her hand, feeling the weight shifting inside, and though he had a sudden, childish urge to put his ear to the side and shake it, he held himself back.
Instead, he slid the bow off the top and instantly began tearing the shimmering gold paper from the box.
Sister's jaw dropped.
"Malik, slow down!"
Malik hardly heard her, balancing the box on one arm while he tore it apart with the other. He paused, though, and looked up with a blink. Rishid still smiled even as Sister stared. He shook his head.
"Maybe we should just let him, Ishizu," he suggested, quiet, eyes never leaving Malik's face.
Sister sighed, but for once, Malik heard no frustration in her tone. She shrugged elegant shoulders. "Perhaps you're right."
Malik grinned, and his hands instantly went back to tearing the rest of the paper from the box, nails scratching the cardboard when he broke through a section of paper and his eyes not even flicking to each scrap of gold paper that fell to the ground which Sister, vaguely irritated but still gentle-faced, knelt to pick up.
Then he paused again, and his grin vanished.
He blinked.
"Wait … what about the car?" he asked, and he turned back and forth between Sister and Rishid. "Aren't you still furious?"
Rishid said nothing, but Sister, still holding the second present under one arm with gold wrapping paper in her other, paused. She glanced toward the hall leading to the front door with the car and the bike still outside, then breathed out particularly slow.
"I think a few paychecks from your job at the museum will be sufficient to pay off the damages," she suggested with something like a shrug. Malik stared. Sister tilted her head. "You may have to go a while without a proper motorcycle until you can pay that off, but I'm sure walking for a month or two if you'd like to go to town shouldn't be too difficult."
Then she smiled, and it was a real smile, one that matched Rishid's and one that reflected some sort of kindness even Malik, after knowing her all these years, would not have imagined she could give to someone like him who had done all he had done.
"Happy birthday, Malik."
And after a moment of just looking back and forth between his two older siblings, the last and best supports in his life whether or not he really deserved them, he smiled too, and though he couldn't see it, he hoped that every bit of the thanks he wanted to say showed in that grin.
Malik ripped open the last of the paper with hands like a wild animal tearing open its favorite meal, and Sister sighed and chuckled while Rishid laughed out loud.
Staring at the TV screen in a dark room for an hour and a half left black spots in front of his eyes, but Malik had never been happier to bear the ache in his head.
He had propped his feet up on the little table in front of the couch after about fifteen minutes of the movie, and Sister had given him a look. But then Rishid had slipped off his shoes and put his feet up as well, and Sister just sighed. Malik had slipped off to the bathroom after thirty minutes, and when he came back Sister had kicked her white shoes to the ground and now had thin tan ankles crossed over each other with heels propped up on the edge of the glass.
Malik had had to clamp a hand over his mouth so he didn't laugh out loud and reverse the amazing development he was quite sure he would never forget.
Just seeing that, admittedly, was a great birthday present in itself.
Sister slipped out of the room just before the credits began to roll, and as soon as the names of the main actors flickered across the screen—in English, no less, which Malik was still perfecting—Rishid picked up the plates that Sister had allowed them to take in the living room so they could eat cake while they watched their movie. He flicked on the lights on the way out, and when Malik turned around to offer to wash the plates, Rishid had just smiled and shook his head.
It was his birthday, he told him, and he shouldn't spend it doing chores.
Malik finished for him that that was only because as soon as tomorrow came, he would be working himself dead to pay off the damages on the car. But he had smiled when he said it, and Rishid had laughed again.
It was even nicer than seeing Sister loosen up and put her feet on the coffee table to hear Rishid laugh.
Malik leaned his head on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling as Rishid shuffled away. He listened to the sounds of the water running in the kitchen, and the clattering of plates even though Rishid was always careful with their good dishes. He breathed in and out, and the twisting discomfort in his chest stayed gone, as it had been for quite some time already.
"Malik."
Malik jolted and nearly fell face-first into the edge of the table. He jerked his head back so fast his hair bounced, then relaxed when he saw a young woman in linen standing in the doorway to the living room, her hands clasped around something in front of her dress.
He blinked. "Sister?"
He stood and slipped around to the back of the couch. He tilted his head, then glanced down at her hands. She held what looked like an envelope between her fingers. Her eyes stayed on him.
She paused, then stretched out her arms.
"This is for you."
Malik blinked again. He furrowed his brow. He looked back and forth between the envelope and her. He pressed his lips together and frowned.
"But … you already gave me my gift …"
Sister smiled, and he wasn't sure whether or not her smile was sad.
"It isn't from me," she corrected, her voice as soft as her face. She walked the last few steps toward him, and Malik stood still as she held it out with both careful hands. Malik looked at it, then at Sister, then slipped the envelope out of her fingers to take in his own.
It was just an envelope. Just a plain white envelope, with no return address or label or stamp as if it had been wrapped up and sent in a box, and the only writing on the center in smooth black pen, scrawled in Japanese that somehow still managed to look like the fancy script he usually only saw in English.
To the Ishtar Family.
He wondered if he had seen the handwriting before, but then shook his head and tilted the envelope back and forth under his gaze.
"It's from Yuugi."
Malik shot his head up to find Sister looking at him still. He stared, his mind trying to make sense of the words repeating themselves in his head, and Sister just smiled a small smile like before and turned her eyes to the envelope again.
"He found it in his bedroom some time after he returned from Egypt," she explained, and her fingers brushed the envelope's end before her arms fell to her sides. "He … believes the pharaoh left it, before he discovered his memories."
Malik felt the paper in his hands and wondered in the back of his head how old it was, and where it must have been kept so that it didn't fade or even wrinkle, as if it had been sealed yesterday and had yet to even gather dust.
"He … gave it to you?"
Sister nodded, heavier this time. "He sent it about a month ago. I … felt it would be best that you opened it first. I think it was meant most for you."
Malik gripped the paper in gentle fingers and looked at it like someone had just asked him to tear open a thousand-year-old scroll with sweaty, unwashed hands. He flipped the envelope, felt the plain gold sticker seal, then flipped it again and ran a finger over the name.
"Shouldn't Yuugi have kept this?" he asked, jerking his head up. "I mean, since it's from … wouldn't he want …"
But Sister just sighed, and the smile that had left a while ago returned, even though it was small. Somehow it meant more than her larger smiles ever did.
She rested her smooth hand on his and rubbed her thumb over his wrist.
"He said that he thought it belonged with us more than him."
Malik looked at her as she kept her hand on his. Then her hand slipped away, and with a breath in, he slid a finger under the sticker and flipped the envelope open to reveal whatever had been sealed inside.
It was a card.
A Duel Monsters card.
It had been months since he had seen one, months since he had taken out his deck now that none of them really dueled. But he knew it as soon as he saw the corner peeking out of the envelope, and he knew it when he pulled it out with two careful fingers and held it face-up in his palm.
A small figure stared back at him, split down the middle, one half in darkness and one in light, one with the wing of a demon and one with the white-feathered wing of an angel.
He hadn't spent all that much time with Bakura, but even that had been enough for him to recognize the card even before he read the name.
"Change of Heart."
Malik let the tip of one finger touch the figure's face, feeling as if the eyes of the picture were the same violet eyes that had stared at him from across the arena, stared at his dark side, and defeated him. The eyes of the one who he had given up so much of his life for.
The eyes of the one who might have given his own life for him.
He pressed his lips together, not letting himself look up to see the expression on Sister's face. He flipped the card over, and on the back, someone had scrawled words in messy symbols he had only just learned, recognizable, but as if the person did not make a habit of writing, in a thin white pen.
I think Aibou would be happy to see you all again, after this is done.
It was not signed "Pharaoh," as Malik might have expected. It was not signed "Atem," though he knew very well that he couldn't have written the same before he had learned it. He might have thought it to be signed by the spirit of the Millennium Puzzle, or even not to be signed at all.
But it was signed. In intricate kanji, some of the few symbols Malik had managed to memorize in the short time during which he had taught himself Japanese.
It was signed with the name he had used, the name that had been his for as long as he needed it. Not the name of the ancient king, one who had ordered Malik's family into servitude until his return, but the name of the person who knew them, who had smiled at him and risked everything to save Malik's life, even when he didn't deserve it.
It was signed "Yuugi."
Malik looked up at last, and found Sister looking up at the same time from the writing on the card. She met his eyes, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why her own eyes shimmered with something he didn't think he had ever seen in her eyes before.
Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight and genuine hug.
Malik stiffened. He looked down at Sister's shoulder near his face, felt the smooth thick linen of the fabric brush his neck, felt the tickling of her dark hair against his cheek. He felt her hold him tighter, as she had never held him in such a long time, if she had ever even done so all his life.
He breathed out, and he could feel her breathing with him, feel the life within her, and all at once, it made sense why he had never stopped calling her "Sister," even when they weren't on the same side.
He relaxed his arms and slid them around her back to hug her in return, his head resting on her shoulder and his eyes almost squeezing shut.
But not quite.
He glanced to the doorway, and he saw, in the silhouette of the light of the living room contrasted with the darkness of the hall, a taller man with a long black ponytail hanging from the back of his head. Rishid smiled at him, a small smile Malik knew he meant.
And Malik smiled back, lifting one hand away from his sister and holding it out to him.
It took Rishid a very long time, but after he had stared at that hand for all the time he needed to understand it was there, he took it, and Malik felt the warmth of his brother and his sister together as Rishid wrapped his arms around them both, and Sister chuckled as the large arms seemed to squeeze them together into a mass of one instead of three.
It crossed Malik's mind, if only for a moment, the thought of someone far away smiling as well. Someone dressed in linen like Sister and adorned in the finest gold, but someone who grinned with the face of someone young, someone real, someone who saw his life and someone who had once done anything and everything to save it.
But right now, it didn't matter. Right now, Malik just smiled from ear to ear and felt the warmth and the life surround him in the family he had once never thought he could have again.
All the while, the motorcycle and car sat motionless in the night air outside, and the card on the table gleamed in the light that shone in from the hall.
And even when Rishid and Sister hugged him tighter, arms around his back, the marks carved in his skin did not hurt at all.