On the last day before he and Bakura finally went back to their base with him in his new flesh, Marik was out looking around for one last thing to burn, and found himself walking through the same marketplace he'd pawned the Millennium Items off in. Steve remembered the place well, even recognized the merchant he'd bought the Millennium Necklace from - which was actually more than Marik could claim, though of course, he'd been rather distracted when he'd sold it.

And then, among the many voices of all the stupid humans who were potential prey to the two dark spirits who walked the earth, one soft, gentle "Thank you" from a woman at a vendor pierced the air and brought Marik to an abrupt standstill. Eyes wide, he slowly turned in the direction from which the voice had come. It took him less than a moment to find what he was looking for: A long, off-white dress, straight black hair, and even from behind, he could see some of her golden hairpiece…

She turned away, carrying a bag, and Marik saw her face: bronze skin, blue eyes, gold decorating her hair…The sight tightened his chest, even though he'd learned to exist without living - his lungs yearned to gasp for air, just so that they could experience the struggle to do so, and he was in too much shock to maintain control. His heart restarted, and began pounding wildly in his chest, color returning to his skin and flushing his cheeks. Needing air now, and unable to take it in properly, a surge of dizziness started to blur his vision.

It took the beautiful woman a few moments to notice the man with light brown hair and hazel eyes who was standing in the middle of the street, completely still and staring at her, but she did notice eventually. When their gazes met, and recognition didn't cross her face, Marik finally fully realized the meaning of what he'd done: He wasn't her brother anymore. He tried to turn, to take a step back, but he couldn't move. He'd thought he would never see her again…

"Hello?" Ishizu asked him hesitantly, walking up to him with a bag in her hand. "Are you…all right?"

Marik gasped for breath. "I…I'm…I…S…" All at once, he broke out of his frozen state and shook his head. Words wouldn't suffice for what he had to say, so instead, he quickly pivoted on one foot to put his back to her face and lifted the back of his shirt to his shoulders.

Something between a gasp and a small scream came from behind him, and he turned back around to look into her wide, frightened eyes.

"…Hello, sister," he managed at last.

"Marik?" she gasped. It was her turn to feel dizzy, her heart's turn to pound, her lungs' turn to struggle for breath…

He gave her a shy smile and nodded.

"But…how?" she exclaimed.

His smile turned more confident, and he reached into his belt and pulled out the Millennium Rod, which had been partly tucked under his shirt. He held it out to her. "This is how," he told her.

Ishizu stared at the golden scepter. "I…don't understand…" she breathed.

"What do you mean?" Marik asked, confused by her confusion. "You were there! What did you think I did, erase myself from existence completely?"

"I…I don't know…" she managed.

He sighed. "Pharaoh Atemu used the Millennium Puzzle to seal Bakura and Zorc inside the Millennium Ring, and himself inside the Puzzle, to force a stalemate and save his precious kingdom," he told her; he knew it wasn't the time or the place, but he couldn't hold back the disgust in his voice as he spoke of the ancient king. "I used it to seal myself inside this, so that I could be with Bakura forever."

"Marik…" Her beautiful blue eyes began to glisten, and she blinked rapidly. "You…gave up life, just to stay with that evil spirit?"

"Watch who you call 'evil spirit'," Marik warned; "that's what I am now, too. But yes. Him and fire." He grinned. "My two favorite things in the world."

"I…" Ishizu shook her head, just as he had moments before, and at last, she couldn't maintain her facade of serenity any longer. "Why?!" she cried, tears streaming down her face. "Why are you…Why do you…just, why?!"

"Oh, calm down, you're making a scene," Marik told her, lowering the Rod.

She shook her head again to tell him that she didn't care. "Why has it come to this?" she sobbed. "Why do you do this? You're not this person, Marik! You're not evil!"

Marik gave a few reassuring gestures to the passers-by who stopped in concern for the woman crying in the middle of the street. To be safe, he put an arm around her and led her out of the center of attention so they could at least have a bit more privacy. She wept uncontrollably against his stolen chest.

"I am evil," he said at last in a low voice, releasing her. "I chose this, sister. I thought you respected that - you agreed to take me home to die-"

"I wasn't going to just leave you there!" she exclaimed. "I was going to stay with you, maybe try to bring you to your senses. I wouldn't abandon you, anywhere, ever, not even if you asked me to."

"Bring me to my senses?" Marik repeated, chuckling. "Ishizu, no one will forgive me for the things I've done - I couldn't have returned to a peaceful life even if I'd wanted to. And I didn't want to. I don't want to be forgiven. I want people to hate me, to know that I took something from them and brought them pain."

"Stop talking like this!" Ishizu wailed.

"Why?" Marik countered. "Because you can't accept me for who I am? Should I lie to you so you'll feel a tiny bit better? I don't think so!"

Ishizu's head sagged, and her hand lost its grip on the bag she was carrying so that it dropped to the dusty ground. "I don't understand," she whispered. "I don't understand…"

"I don't think you ever could," Marik told her, a bit more gently now. "It's not…not really something you can understand unless you've felt it."

"Could you at least try?" she whimpered, forcing her head up so she could meet the eyes that looked nothing like those of the brother she knew. "Please…please at least try to explain to me, my brother. Please, I beg you."

His expression softened, recognizing the same hopeless desperation he'd felt when he'd gone to her, that last night of his life - and she had agreed to help him; it would be wrong for him to not do the same, and not in the evil sort of way he liked.

"Alright," he told her. "Come on, let's find some place where we can sit down. If you want me to explain, it's going to take a while."

She didn't resist as he put his arm back around her and guided her out of the field of stalls and to a nearby bar.

They sat down across from each other in a booth tucked away in a corner. With her tears still staining her face, it was clear to everyone that they were there to talk in private, and no one intruded.

He gazed at her for a minute, taking in her beauty. If any mortal human woman was worthy of the name Isis, it was his sister, there was no doubt of that. He'd almost forgotten what she looked like, though it had only been several months…Not for the first time, he wondered what their mother might have looked like, for he had never seen any hint of the attractiveness the two of them had been born with in their father. Of course, there had been nothing attractive about their father, inside or out - only a woman stolen from life would have been his wife, as he knew their mother had been. So had it been with all wives of the tombkeepers…

His fists clenched at the thought, the memory of the place he'd come from. Then, almost instantly, they relaxed again as he refocused his eyes on his sister - the only one who'd ever done him any real, great kindness in his life.

"How have you been?" he asked softly. "How's Odion?"

"Odion has been well," Ishizu answered in a somewhat broken voice. "I've been…alive."

Marik's stolen lips quirked in an odd smile. "A gift too many take for granted," he noted.

"What are you doing here?" Ishizu asked him, trying to keep with his informal opening to the conversation.

"Recon," Marik answered casually. "Setting fires isn't as simple as cutting someone's throat."

She flinched, but still stuck to the simple exchange. "Where's Bakura?" she asked.

"Off doing his own thing," Marik replied, shrugging. "He likes blood, I like fire - we don't do our things together very often."

Again, Ishizu cringed.

Marik sighed. "Alright," he said, "let's make something clear: This is probably the last conversation we'll ever have - it's actually one more than I thought we'd ever have - and that means I'm going to show you the decency of not lying to you; if you ask me a question, I'm going to answer it honestly. And I'd like to think you'll do the same."

Ishizu nodded sadly. "I…agree," she conceded, "and I will."

"Good."

His sister twitched, and he waited without a word for her to say what she was hesitating to ask.

"Did it hurt?" she finally blurted out.

This wasn't what he had been expecting, and his eyebrows shot up in confusion. "Did what hurt?" he asked.

"What you did." She gestured to the Millennium Rod, which Marik had set on the table and was tapping idly. "Giving up life. Did it hurt?"

The fledgeling spirit chuckled. "Oh, it hurt," he told her. "It was like initiation all over again, only twice as long and on every single cell in by body. Being torn apart like that isn't fun, sister - which is probably why no one else has ever voluntarily done it." He smiled. "But it was worth it."

"And this…person…" She made a vague gesture at his general being.

"We left the Millennium Rod out for any random fool to pick up," Marik explained; "this was the unlucky one who did it. His name's Steve. Apparently, he's actually the one who bought the Millennium Necklace after I sold it - he met Odion once, when he returned it while you were in Domino."

"And is he…?" Again, Ishizu found herself unable to find words to complete her question.

Marik waved his hand dismissively. "He's not important," he told her; "he'd be the first to tell you that. I let him live occasionally, the same as Kura lets Ryou live every now and then - it's a necessity of existing like this. But most of the time, he stays in here…" He patted the Millennium Rod. "…and I use his body. I don't always use it as a living body, either - right now, it's mostly dead. Here, feel." He held out his free hand. Ishizu hesitantly reached out and took it, and the warmth of her living skin all but burned his cold flesh.

She gasped. "You're so cold!" she exclaimed.

"Yep." Marik smirked, taking his hand back. "It keeps the body alive longer." He chuckled again. "See, I have the benefit of Kura's three thousand years of experience being like this, so I don't have to figure stuff out on my own like he did. It hasn't been the easiest transition, but he's helped me a lot."

"I'm…glad," Ishizu said uncertainly.

"Hmm." Marik looked at the symbol on the head of his ancient golden tool of magic, and they were both silent for a minute.

At last, he sighed. "You want to understand why I've chosen this existence," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I do," Ishizu said, nodding. "You're not a monster, Marik, not like Bakura - he was possessed by the Dark One, but you're just a human. There's good in you, Marik…I saw you when we were very young…"

"Very young," Marik repeated, giving an empty laugh. "You mean, before initiation?"

"Yes," Ishizu answered slowly.

Marik shook his head. "That person's gone, sister," he said flatly. "Father destroyed him when he held a dagger over a flame until it glowed and then used it to carve ancient memories into the skin of that person's back." He felt a sensation of cold fill him from the inside as he remembered that horrible day. "I begged him," he whispered, tears welling in his eyes. "I begged him to spare me, to let Odion do it instead like he wanted to. I begged and screamed and cried, desperately, and he just tied me down and started cutting me up without even acknowledging my pleas."

"Marik…" Ishizu felt her own blood run cold, too. He'd never actually described that day to her before, nor to anyone as far as she knew. She hadn't known the full extent of how cruel their father had been to him. "Marik, I'm…I'm so sorry…"

"I know you are," Marik said, shaking his head, his eyes drying. "I know you are, sister, but that doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the fact that all I wanted was to have my own life, and Father told me that our family's duty was to give up life and burn the memories of a man he gave me no reason to believe was anything but dead and gone into our flesh - it was an honor, he told me, but he never gave me any reason why." He frowned, remembering the story Bakura had told him years ago. "To be fair, it was a very important job our family was entrusted with," he admitted. "But I didn't know that - Father gave me no reason to think there was any point to the ritual, to what we did." He sighed. "And even if he had, Odion's dream in life was to be a tombkeeper - he should have been able to do it in my place, since Mother loved him and he desperately wanted to and I desperately wanted not to! Even you got to go outside and experience the world when we were kids, and you were born before me! It wasn't my fault that I was born a boy!" Huh…maybe that's why I love dressing like a girl.

"I know," Ishizu said tearfully. "I know, Marik. We both know. Odion still feels bad that he failed to save you from initiation - he's still plagued with doubts that he really did everything he could, still wonders what else he might have been able to say or do to take your place…"

"Well, isn't that sweet of him," Marik said, and it was impossible to tell if he was being sarcastic or not. It seemed more likely that he wasn't when he added, "You were the best sister I could have asked for, and he was the best brother I could have asked for. You two…you're the only humans I've ever truly considered family…or friends."

She gasped. "But what about-?"

"Yugi?" Marik finished for her. "His friends? Please," he snorted. "They knew nothing about me - they still know nothing about me. They could never have begun to relate to me, to understand me. How could I call them my friends?"

"But I don't understand either…" Ishizu said softly.

Again, Marik softened. "I know," he said, "but at least you were there."

"I'm not anymore," she pointed out. "You've run away - from me and Odion."

"But you saw the reason I chose Darkness," Marik said. "You were there for that."

"I was there…for what created your evil alter ego," she said slowly.

Marik shook his head. "Sister, he might have been a separate being by the time Yugi and his friends helped me banish him to the Shadow Realm, but in the beginning, my Yami and I were the same," he explained. "My pain, my hatred…it grew into its own consciousness, something far greater than it would have normally, thanks to the shadow magic we lived with, but it was always me. Banishing him to the Shadow Realm didn't change that, it just gave me my own consciousness back."

"But you said you were proud to be a tombkeeper when you surrendered," Ishizu reminded him.

"I did, didn't I?" Marik smirked. "Well…I was mostly saying that to spite him. It also didn't hurt that the pharaoh our family spent so much time waiting and torturing themselves for was actually there in front of me by then - that I could show him my scars and then our family's duty would be over. Was I proud? Eh…maybe a bit, given that I was the one who actually got to see our family's plight end. But happy? No, sister, I was never happy."

"But it was over," Ishizu said. "After that duel…well, we kept an eye on things until after that 'Final Shadow Game' of Bakura's, but after that, we were free to live our own lives. You were free, my brother. You didn't have to run away to get what you wanted."

Marik sighed heavily. "That's true," he said, "but by then, it wasn't enough." His eyes unfocused as he looked back on that time, those few days before he'd started digging up the Millennium Items. "All around me, people were happy and carefree because they got to grow up that way. Me? I couldn't imagine their lives. I didn't belong among them, sister. I was an outcast, an alien, on the outside looking in with no one to even notice me. I know you and Odion tried," he said firmly, anticipating the objection she was about to make, "but even you didn't really understand me. You always got to live, too; and Odion…well, if anyone could ever come close to understanding how I felt, it would have been him, but there was still a disconnect between us."

"Was there anything we could have done?" Ishizu asked, finally voicing the question that still kept her awake at night. "Was there anything I could have done, to make you feel better?"

Her brother gave her a sad, almost pitying smile. "No," he answered with absolute certainty. "There was nothing you could have done. You did everything you could - you always did everything you could, my whole life. What drove me to become what I am was a combination of things that were much greater than anything you could have done to counter them."

She didn't feel better. She knew she should, but somehow, knowing that her brother's fall into the Darkness hadn't been her mistake, that it had always been far beyond her control, just made her feel more powerless. It made life seem too big, as though she was nothing but a leaf being tossed around on a stormy sea.

The fledgeling evil spirit watched his sister's eyes, and knew. "You feel it too," he said softly. "That feeling that the world is too huge, like nothing we do will ever matter and there's just no point." He smiled sadly. "You can't understand why I am the way I am now, but you're still my sister. If it helps, it's comforting that there is something about me you can relate to, and that I can relate to about you."

"It does help, yes," Ishizu said, the tightness in her chest loosening just a bit.

He nodded. "Yes, well…it's more than I thought you would be able to get, at any rate. Initiation branded me - not just my body, but my soul."

"Your scars have appeared on this man's back," Ishizu suddenly remembered.

"Yes, they have," Marik said, nodding, a bit of a smile forming on his face now. "Kura thinks those burns stayed with me because they were so much a part of who I am and why I chose this life. They really are a mark of why I'm even here now, a disembodied spirit in a Millennium Item…"

"So it was just initiation?" Ishizu asked. "Nothing else drove you to hurt people?"

Marik couldn't help laughing. "Oh, Ishizu," he said, grinning mockingly, "you're so naïve. You think what Father did to me was a 'just'?" He emphasized his point with air quotes. "It was everything, sister. It was the world. No, it wasn't just initiation itself, it was everything that went with it, everything it meant - being chained underground, cold and alone and bound to a duty that made no sense and wasn't worth giving up my life for. Growing up like that, how could I ever be part of this world?"

"But why do you have to hurt people?" Ishizu cried. "Help me understand that, brother. Unless you've been trying to talk Bakura out of hurting people…?"

"Of course I haven't!" Marik exclaimed, almost offended that she would consider that possible. "I told you, I'm happy knowing that people know I've hurt them. I'm happy watching people burn alive in their homes-"

"Why?!" Ishizu wailed, tears flooding her eyes - not just tears of pain, but tears of desperation. She needed this answer more than anything in the world.

Recognizing this, Marik sighed heavily. "Ishizu," he said in a hollow voice, "look around you."

She blinked.

"No, I mean it," Marik told her: "Look around you."

Still confused, Ishizu did as her brother asked. Her blue eyes swept across the rest of the bar and everyone in it, looking closely but not sure what she was seeking.

"Tell me," Marik said, "what do you see?"

"I…" Ishizu blinked again, turning back to Marik. "I see…people…" she said slowly.

"Exactly." Marik scowled. "You see people. Happy people, carefree people - people who have never had to suffer, for whom suffering is a breakup or getting fired from a job. People who have never been forced to live a certain way, of whom no demands of their entire beings have ever been made. People who take for granted that they have years, decades, to do whatever they want - or nothing, if they feel like it!" He gestured at his stolen body. "This guy here? Steve? He did nothing with his life, and he probably never would have. He didn't work at school, didn't work at socializing, didn't work at making a living; he just coasted through life, never having to put much effort into anything, because everything he needed or wanted was right there in his grasp from the moment he was born, and he took for granted that he was at leisure to do nothing with his life if he so chose."

Slowly, Ishizu started to see where this was going. "You wish you were them," she said.

"I've always wished I was one of them!" Marik snarled. "I've never wanted anything more than to be one of them! And they have no idea!" He gestured to a small cluster of people sitting at the bar who were laughing together. "What do you suppose those people are laughing about, sister?"

She looked. "I-"

"That one was a rhetorical question," he growled, "with the answer being, in all likelihood, something stupid, something pointless that doesn't mean anything at all. But they can still laugh about it as though it's worth something, because that's how tiny their scope of existence is. They have no idea what they have, what they've been spared. They take it for granted - live stupid, meaningless lives because no one has ever forced them to be part of something."

Ishizu turned back to Marik again as he spoke. "That's not their fault, Marik," she said softly.

He shook his head angrily. "It doesn't matter that it's not their fault!" he snapped. "It's not my fault I was born the first-born blood son of our father! Who gets to choose who has to suffer and who gets to live carefree lives?"

"No one," Ishizu answered.

The dark look on Marik's face, even though it was a different face from the one she had known, was so reminiscent of his more-evil alter ego that it was genuinely scary. "And that's why I love destroying things and people with fire," he said. "Because when someone comes home to find that everything they attributed so much significance to is gone, they experience a shadow of what it's like to have your life torn away from you. And when someone burns, as the flames eat away at their flesh until their souls are cast from this world - in those few moments as they die - they understand pain, and they understand just how simultaneously foolish and lucky they were to think that they could take for granted having decades to live as they pleased. And that, sister, makes me feel better, knowing one more person had to suffer like I did rather than getting off easy."

"But Marik…" Ishizu searched for words to explain why that wasn't right. "If you…just…Marik, think about them! Yes, they're lucky to have the life you always wanted - you know how much you suffered, why would you force someone else to experience your own pain? You should…envy them, yes, but you should be happy for them that they don't have to hurt like you."

Marik cocked his head and pondered this for a minute. As long seconds dragged by, Ishizu found herself daring to hope that maybe she'd gotten through to him.

Then he said, "That's…one way to look at it, I guess - the way someone like Yugi would choose to look at it. But not me. It takes Light to see others, sister - in the Darkness, there is only oneself. It's like Kura says, for those who walk in Darkness, the strong are enemies, the weak are prey, and that's all there is. Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant in the Dark, and pleasure and pain are only your own experiences. I'm not sure I'm using the metaphor quite properly…Kura would do a better job at it, if he was here. The point is, when my childhood innocence was ripped away from me and I was broken down to within an inch of my sanity, I chose to take comfort in Darkness rather than Light - and I chose it because the Light was where the pain was coming from."

"But what about Bakura?" Ishizu challenged, clinging to this one last means of contradicting Marik's words. "He's not an enemy or prey to you, is he? You love him."

"I do," Marik said, "but not the way, say, Yugi would love someone." He chuckled nastily. "You should have seen the way Kura tortured me in bed a few nights ago, then maybe you'd understand what love means to those who walk in Darkness a bit better."

Ishizu doubted that, but didn't ask, knowing she didn't want to know more details about that particular subject.

Marik looked at his sister through stolen hazel eyes with pity. "I told you," he said: "You can never understand me, sister. You can never understand why an eternity of setting the world on fire, while being partnered with one who bathes in fresh human blood every day, is the happiest existence I can think of. And…" A nasty look sparked in his eyes. "…a life of taking on human hosts as a parasite, and getting to go through their memories and experience their lives, a new one every few decades - of stealing the life I wanted from other people, not just once, but again and again for the rest of eternity, while I burn people down and make love to a bloodthirsty living nightmare. I could ask for nothing more, sister. My existence is perfect, and I have no regrets."

"Not…" Ishizu choked, tears flowing down her cheeks once more, and fumbled for her voice. "Not even me?" she finally croaked.

Her evil brother's smile dimmed. "I…" He looked away pensively, considering. "I…guess I do regret that it hurts you and Odion," he admitted to her, meeting her blue eyes again to tell her this. "But compared to everything I have now, it's not enough for any part of me to want to back out of this existence even if I could, which I can't. I am sorry, Ishizu, to you and to Odion…but that's not enough." He stood up, picking up the Millennium Rod as he slipped out of the booth they'd been sitting in. "And now I really need to go," he told her; "I've spent too much time here - Kura might be looking for me."

Ishizu stood up as well, following him. "Marik," she whimpered.

He turned to look at her. "Yes?"

She looked deeply into his eyes - eyes that weren't her brother's beautiful violet irises, but behind which was still what remained of her younger brother, however small those remnants might be compared to the monster he was now. She didn't want to let him go…

But he's already gone, she finally admitted to herself.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach, her blood running cold and her head getting hot, as she finally accepted the truth. Marik saw the shift in her eyes, and a twinge of sorrow bit into his heart - which was beating now, had been for a while from his anger. The part of him that was her brother, who still loved her and always would, surfaced one last time, as he allowed himself to put his arms around her and hug her tightly in farewell.

They exchanged no more words. They held each other and shared a moment of sorrow together, the last human experience Marik would ever have; then he stepped back, not meeting her eyes, and walked away. She watched him go, not moving, not speaking, until he vanished out the door.

And this time, she really would never see him again.