Evening all!
This is a fairly random one-shot I wrote exploring the character of Marik Ishtar's Darkness. It's from his POV, and a sort of inner monologue.
It's interesting to imagine what's going on in his head :)
It feels so cold without Marik. Without my beating heart strong-bodied stolen soul other half.
It's nothing but shadows in here. They hold you but they burn your skin with cold and dark, like you've been tumbled in ice and night-time. Every time I climb up, they push and pull me down - with they little hands and eyes and mocking birds claws.
I pulled him out, though. I pulled him out of this black dark. Void of something. Talk of mutes. I couldn't think of him here without hurting.
He left me down. He let me fall. He was happy! Happy he is pretty again. The beau-child with the brother and sister. Not the one who forces heartbeats out of himself, with his face grotesque and angry.
That was me who they hated.
There's a lot of justice in the world. But I helped him.
He wanted to kill the Pharaoh, and he was too weak, so I did it. Or I tried to do it.
I hoped for a brother for me. His brother took him from me – hid him behind walls of familial ether.
Not even his real brother, just a foundling baby. But he still loved him, and he loved him like the sky was falling on them both.
The sky is falling on me always. Crushing. No air down here. No breathing. Just nothing. Smoke of nothing.
There are other people here too. I hear them whispering and screaming between the membrane of the indigo and the waves. I reach out for them, but then I am holding nothing and I drown again. I can't hear them then. I only hear Marik and them others. All those girls and boys. They knew what they wanted.
Abhor me.
Save Marik. Even though he was the one who started it.
Actually, maybe his Father.
Daddy with the knife and the scriptures and the prison. Daddy now six feet under. Marik loved me that night.
Loved me for murder.
His big brother was on the floor. Useless.
So without him, I am the big brother. I am who he turns to.
I was only trying to help.
Get out of my head.
I wanted to be there for him.
Get out of my head!
I wanted to never ever let him go.
Get the fuck out of my head!
He screaming and kicking and hating, for as long as he can feel me there.
Bastard Ghost! Demon Spirit! Satan's spawn! Freak! Monster! Parasite!
Nightmare creature.
Awful thing.
Then he goes quiet and I wish and wish that he would call me brother.
He never did.
I am good as dead. Better than dead for him.
'Let him feel the shadows! Let him rot. I hope something down there makes him scream.'
He probably went away home with his family and they looked out for me all the way, and when I didn't come, they wrote me off.
I will come. I have things I want to do.
I push for it again. The shadows part away, and then close in fast. I split and reform in desperation.
No.
No no.
I am not an alone person. I cannot be alone. I am a half, I need another half.
I scream need to the shadows, and they whisper of the silence and the dark and the cold.
My mind revolves around Marik and his absence. His dignity and pride. His God-forsaked life and his loveless love. His deep carved scars which were my spark.
Marik, the little boy. He was snake-bitten and lovely, with the eyes of a caged bird. Hopeful and full of an inside light. I only saw him from memories.
After that night he was changed.
With the screaming and the blood, pouring like forced tears. My glorious, gory birthing throes.
I was lucky to have such a beautiful and strong mould.
But after that, he was so worse. His eyes filmed over. Hope gone, days ended. Night's come, with no promise of dawn.
His love was extinguished like that.
And there was just me to take over.
When hope is lost, there is darkness to prop up the lost souls.
Marik was the most powerful, but the weakest. He split and the power oozed like gall. All into me.
What a sorry waste.
Now I wisp and wait, rolling in the dark. Now and then, I feel something.
A glowing warm. But it's just my mind. Feeling like I have a body again. Feeling like I am alive again.
There, I hear him.
Please, God. Forgive me my sins.
Please, God. Forgive him my sins.
Forgive me my wrath.
Forgive him the wrath of his no-heart no-love father, who beat him down so to do it again. Forgive him the wrath of his no-good no-soul split half mind.
Forgive me my greed.
Forgive him the desperation that comes from hunger and want and lonely nothingness.
Forgive me my laziness.
Forgive him that his arms and legs were stolen and walked by a parasite.
Forgive me my pride.
Forgive him that he masked himself, so ashamed of what we all made him. Ashamed of his scars.
Forgive me my envy.
Forgive him for wanting something better than misery and pain.
Forgive me my gluttony.
Forgive him for taking what he could while he could for fear of people taking. Always taking from him.
Forgive me my lust.
Forgive him for wanting someone to want him. For wanting to feel want on want and skin on skin, rather than an unwanted soul-on-soul.
Forgive him for thinking on me.
Forgive me, God, for I have sinned.
Forgive him, God, for I have sinned.
Every day like this, he prays on his knees. He waits for some holy light on him. It never comes.
He thinks someone will forgive, but they won't.
I don't because I know it were all me. Me, poisoning him with black sugar.
He never once cried for me.
He cried all night for his father. Tears of joy and misery rolling down his slack, lifeless face.
He cried for his sister and his brother every night, on that boat, sea rolling underneath like we sit on the top of some great breathing lung. He cried into his cloak of indigo, staining it black.
A thousand indigo cloaks surround me now. They each hold fast to my flesh, more real than any me. I think on the other spirits. How they are never forgotten.
The boy with the white hair, and the spirit that holds him fast, the monster that strings them together and what's left of the ancient thief.
Facing that child was confusion itself. Talking sense while the boy's mouth moves silently, the spirit talks through it, the demon ebbs power and the thief watches reproachfully, shoulder to shoulder with the boy's body, so full of spirits they are over-spilling.
Each flicker of his sky-lovely soul is pure white. An angel's soul.
I want to destroy the body, so he can be free.
I can't now. I'm a speck in existence.
I am so alone.
Nothing in common with any. You think that being an imprint of Marik, I would be like him.
I am not.
The only thing that matters to me is him. To him, that is the only thing that doesn't matter.
Many times, I had to force his hand away from razors and ropes. From death and freedom. He screams and fights me.
Listen!
He's back.
God, I...
I don't know if I should say this to You. But I feel... I feel I must confess.
My darkness, that...part of me, turned bad. He helped me.
Yes.
He saved my life when I wanted to end it. He saved me from my Father. He gave me all that I wanted. He made me feel...desirable. Like I had something to offer.
He was so evil and yet... he helped me.
So why do I hate him so much?
Why am I so afraid that somewhere, he is alive and waiting? Waiting for the minute I am weak, so he can take over. So he can steal my body.
I don't want your body! I want to save your pretty soul!
He... lusts for me. When he looked at me, I felt so... violated.
I never wanted you ever. I wanted to kill the Pharaoh. To do what you said. I loved you.
If I could have pleasured you I would have. If you wanted. Only if you wanted.
There is so much darkness in my heart. Cleanse me of it, I beg of You.
There is no darkness in his heart. Hear how he lies, God.
I think such black thoughts. It's no wonder they won't forgive me.
God, why won't they forgive me?
They don't understand you. They don't understand us. They don't see how we are meant to be together! How we are not meant to be apart! How tearing us apart is like ripping the dancing sea from the stormed sky, the golden day from the cold night, the white stars from empty space and the wonderful sound from silence!
Without one, the other can never exist. Never exist proper.
But God, I cannot thank you enough for exorcising him. I know now that only a force as strong and good as You could have done such a thing.
You've given my life meaning.
You gave my life meaning, Marik.
I wish you could hear me.
I scream again, until my throat tears with want.
I climb and climb and climb.
I fall one long fall back down.
Something breaks.
I hurt and hurt inside.
Time ticks on and on and I live on and on.
Hurting and hurting and climbing and falling.
I cry in the day and the night. They all the same to me.
This actually upsets me quite a bit :(
As I've moved further into the fandom, I've gotten to like the idea of Yami Marik as a sort of well meaning slave to Marik's darkest emotions, rather than a straight up villain.
I sort of had the idea of Marik turning to religion to help him out after Battle City. Maybe he subconsciously misses the idea of having someone protecting him... :)
P.S. The word 'God' is used very loosely in this. Hopefully I haven't offended anyone, but you know what I mean.