When the Seas Turn to Sand
She shook out her umbrella roughly before she folded it and stepped inside the whitewashed building. It had been raining in Domino City for a good three days straight and thus was the height of folly to leave the house without protection from the rain. The fact it was well into October and the weather was noticeably cooler with every passing day didn't really help her mood. She sighed, morosely wondering what had become of the sun. Even the slightest, faintest ray of golden light was enough to lift her spirits and give her enough energy to feel like she could get through the day. But no, the sun had to stubbornly hide behind thick clouds for three whole days, and probably more to come.
There had to be a law against that, surely.
Even so, it did no good to brood about it on the walk-off mat, so instead Anzu set off on her way once more, her heels clip-clapping as she walked down the terrazzo hall. She kept a brisk pace, not that she had any real need to hurry. With the way the bus times worked, she could either arrive nearly forty minutes early for her first class or be ten minutes late. Naturally, she chose the former.
She hurried up the steps—two sets of them—until she reached the third floor and cautiously pushed the glass doors open. The hall—for the moment—was blessedly deserted. Not surprising, really, since most university students tried to avoid classes that began before noon on any given day. She, on the other hand, didn't very much mind the morning classes. While eight might be pushing it, a nine-thirty class was perfectly reasonable, really. Anzu couldn't quite understand why students flocked to night classes; who wanted to go to class in the middle of the evening for a good two or three hours? Might as well get your classes done and over with during the day and saving the night for your work and social life. It just made more sense.
Wearing a bit of a smile now, she walked to the other end of the hall to her favourite couch. The smooth, black material felt soft under her fingers and she sank into it as though it was her favourite couch at home. The digital clock hanging from the ceiling showed a good thirty-five minutes yet before her class was scheduled to begin. To pass the time, Anzu rummaged through her knapsack until her hands brushed over her newest novel. New being a relative term; the book was paperback and horribly dog-eared from carrying it around time and time again. But it was the first time she'd read it in a long while, so she figured it counted as a new choice for the moment.
Settling comfortably back into her original position, she flipped it open to where her bookmark was lodged at the beginning of chapter four. Still early on, but the book wasn't as long as most she read, so it wouldn't take her very long to finish. Chapter four might as well have been the half-way point.
She spent all of five minutes blessedly alone that morning with her book.
The very moment that the digital clock blinked to nine o'clock sharp the glass doors at the other end of the hall opened once more. It wasn't because they were loud or squeaky that she noticed. In fact, normally such a mundane event wouldn't have even registered in her mind. Yet it was a Monday, and beyond that it was a Monday morning. And Monday mornings were always the same, from the very first day of September.
The newcomer walked down the same terrazzo hall that she had not so long ago and take a seat on the couch beside hers in the corner closest to where she sat. She would barely glance up as he arrived, and neither of them ever said a word. She would read silently and try to ignore him but that was hard because she always had the suspicious prickling feeling on the back of her neck that he was staring at her. Yet whenever she glanced up and over at him as discreetly as she could, his eyes would be closed or he would be glancing in another direction altogether with a look of supreme boredom on his face, as though he didn't even realize she was there.
And of course, as soon as she looked away again, the prickling feeling would return.
This Monday was no different than any others. He sat down on the seat closest to her without being on the same couch. He dropped his shoulder bag on the ground in front of him, careful to not let it touch hers, and then proceed to stare. Two or three minutes after his arrival, the prickling would become too much to bear and she would look at him discreetly, bracing herself to ask what, exactly, is so fascinating about me that you're always staring but never speaking? And of course, he was never looking at her when she finally glanced up, feigning unawareness of her very presence and she would try not to shrug and return to her reading.
She would do this two or three times during that thirty minutes they spent together even as other students began to fill the hall with a low buzz of conversation. And finally, once the eight-thirty class that used her classroom first had finally left, she'd drop her book into her bag and prepare to settle herself into the uncomfortable combo desk by the window of her classroom. It seemed the prickly feeling was most prominent as she went to class, but she never bothered to glance back at that point because she was certain she would never catch him staring even though he most certainly was.
It was like a dance, she decided, flipping a page absently and not really remembering what she'd just read. A dance where they didn't move much, never made actual eye-contact and never spoke, but yet they were somehow so connected with each other that she felt her heart speed up just a little every time she heard his footsteps coming towards her. It was nonsensical, certainly, but that's how it was, and Anzu was enough of a romantic not to question it or complain about it.
She just wished she knew exactly why he was always staring at her. And that she could catch him at it.
This Monday was like all the others and yet somehow, it suddenly felt different to her. She risked a glance up at him, and sure enough his eyes were closed as though he was dozing. His eyelids seemed a little too stiff though, almost as though he were trying to gaze back at her from underneath his eyelashes without being obvious so he would know just when to open his eyes and return to his open, indiscreet staring.
Anzu dropped her own blue gaze after only a moment and tried to refocus on her book. Unfortunately, as was a problem whenever he arrived, she had lost her concentration again and couldn't quite remember how she'd gotten to the scene she was apparently at. Not wanting to show him just how much he had thrown her off-kilter she resolutely refused to turn the page back the other way and re-read the previous scene. Maybe she could do that later when he wasn't around.
A dance indeed, she thought, standing up slowly once the eight-thirty class emptied out of her room. Purely by chance, and purely out of a sudden, almost manic, curiosity, she glanced into the room straight across the hall.
Totally empty save for a few of the students in his morning class who had arrived early.
Sometimes, after her Criticism class, Anzu would see her mysterious morning companion packing his bag in the room across the hall. Sometimes, he would be gone before she was dismissed and other times they left their classes at the same time. He always went a different way after class. She wondered about that sometimes, though she had no real reason to. It didn't mean anything to her, and it certainly had nothing to do with her.
On this Monday, he was gone before her.
Anzu glanced into his classroom more out of habit than not. Why it had become habit at all, she wasn't very sure.
On Mondays, her classes ended around three in the afternoon. Having no access to a vehicle of her own, Anzu made her way down to the bus stop with all the other students who had no car of their own and stood alone, sometimes with her book out and sometimes not. It was really too bad that her friends had schedules that were so different from her own. She missed not taking the bus with them. Going home with someone—even with just one person—was a lot nicer than being on your own. You didn't even have to say much; just being with another person was usually enough to make the ride a little more pleasurable.
The rain still hadn't abated by that afternoon, unsurprisingly. The shelter was already too full for her to squeeze into when she arrived at the bus stop, so Anzu was forced to stand with out in the rain under her pink umbrella. She stood well back from the edge of the road so as to not get splashed by cars racing past her, each one going at least twice as fast as they should on wet, slippery roads.
The bus wasn't due to arrive for at least ten more minutes—much to her dismay—so she shifted from foot to foot, anxious to be home where it was warm and dry.
A sleek black car drove past the bus stop—almost too slowly, ironically, to be considered safe driving—just as thoughts of warm clothes were flitting around in her mind. The windows were tinted but the driver's was open just enough for her to catch a glint of red-tipped dark hair with golden bangs cascading around an angular face she had somehow come to know so well. She thought for a moment that he had looked at her fully but the car passed so quickly that she couldn't be sure.
Even though the rain poured down a little heavier, she didn't seem to notice.
Wednesday dawned overcast but without rain. Not one to take chances with the currently unpredictable weather, Anzu packed her pink umbrella into her knapsack anyway so it was within easy reach should the day decide to rain once more which was, unfortunately, rather likely. Monday and Tuesday had rained nonstop. Wednesday was being deceptively peaceable and yet the likelihood of this being little more than a ruse, a false hope for some good weather to come soon was quite high.
Anzu, not feeling one-hundred percent, wasn't feeling as optimistic as usual.
She trudged down the hall, up the two flights of steps and down the next hall without much enthusiasm. It was one of those days, she supposed, where she probably shouldn't have dragged herself out of bed that morning and just stayed home. The extra rest would probably have done her good.
Nevertheless, she sank down in her usual couch seat and curling her legs back against it, she flipped her book open once more to where she last left off. She spared only one irrational glance at the clock. Eight-fifty-five. It wouldn't be long now. She bit her lip in something akin to anticipation of the dance. No, she shook her head, mentally berating herself for feeling like that. There's no reason to act like this. No reason at all to feel like this. It's absurd.
She glanced at the clock again, ignoring her book. T-minus three minutes, she thought in spite of herself. Absurd and irrational, indeed. Anzu vaguely wondered in the back of her mind (as she tried to take in what she was reading, and not really succeeding) why she cared so much about a man who could go straight into his classroom every day if he wanted to right when he arrived but instead chose to sit on the other couch as close to her as he could without actually sitting beside her (and took such pains to drop his book bag beside her knapsack yet keep them from touching even in the slightest). She wondered why she cared so much about a man who never spoke even one word to her or had the decency to meet her gaze when she plucked up the courage to look at him.
Why, exactly, she cared so much about his actions Anzu couldn't say. In the grand scheme of things, did it truly matter why he didn't go into his class right away? Maybe he hated the class and didn't want to go in until he absolutely had to. Lots of people did that. Perhaps he simply wanted to enjoy the softness of the couch before resigning himself to the stiff and squeaky combo desks. No one liked those desks; everyone tried to avoid them for as long as possible. He was, Anzu supposed, perfectly at his liberty to sit wherever he liked.
That, of course, didn't explain why he stared at her for no apparent reason, or why he tried to pretend otherwise.
Abruptly (or so it seemed to Anzu, who had been lost in thought at that moment) the glass doors at the other end of the hall opened and her mysterious companion entered, book bag swinging at his side, hands thrust awkwardly in his pockets yet managing to radiate an air of "coolness" despite that. He very pointedly did not look directly at her, Anzu noticed from beneath her eyelashes (as she pretended to suddenly be incredibly interested in her book).
The silence between them, it seemed to Anzu, was thicker than usual today. The way he jerked forward just so as he sat down made her wonder if he meant to finally say something to her. But no, he spoke no words and she felt too self-conscious now to say anything either. If she didn't spend so much time attempting to puzzle out the meanings of his actions or over-analyzing the way he sat down, perhaps she wouldn't feel like this. She was shy to a degree but she couldn't remember a time when she had felt this self-conscious.
Four minutes of their dance passed. The silence—the tension—was so thick that Anzu thought she might suffocate because of it (although, of course, that could also have something to do with her less-than-one-hundred-percent wellness). With anyone else, it would have made her want to scream. With him, she merely wanted him to speak.
It took a cloud of floral perfume that one of the professors was so fond of for anything to happen.
The woman strode by, ignoring the both of them as she hummed tunelessly to herself, clutching numerous coloured folders in her arms with their contents threatening to fall all over the floor. Her heels clicked across the floor, her curly hair bounced and she walked and her floral perfume hung in the air long after she had disappeared into the offices down by the glass doors of the stairwell. The perfume was horrid, full of the fruity scent of flowers that was so damn fake. Anzu hated it. Her nose, a little more tender than usual since Tuesday morning, caught the scent and twitched in the way that noses do after catching an unpleasant scent.
She sneezed violently, her whole body rocked forward and her book slipped out of her hands onto the floor. Her eyes watered a little and she fumbled with one of the zippered pouches on the front of her bag in search of Kleenex. Another sneeze followed the first, not quite as violent but forceful nonetheless.
"Are you all right? Here."
It took her a moment to realize that the voice who had spoken came from her left. She held one hand over her nose and her mouth to preserve at least some modicum of dignity. Her companion was looking directly at her this time. His eyes, she noticed a little belatedly (having never given their colour much thought) were a very deep shade of violet. He looked concerned for her, she thought. He held out a Kleenex to her, one that was soft and pristine.
She hesitated only for the slightest moment and then accepted it with her free hand, careful to keep her fingers from brushing his. It felt softer than any she had ever used against her skin. Maybe it was because she was suddenly hyperaware of his presence.
"Thank you," she murmured, looking up fully once she had cleaned herself up. Why was her voice so quiet?
His smile was only small but it lit up his already-striking eyes, but it was gone almost as soon as it appeared, replaced by a slight frown. "Keep care of yourself," he said, as though he knew exactly what state of health she was in. He held her book out. "You'll get sick if you get caught in the rain too much."
She nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth (though not quite emerging) as her fingers closed around it. "Right. I'll...be careful."
Apparently satisfied with her answer, he sat back and closed his eyes, pretending to doze again. Having never spoken to him previously and never having ever heard him speak to anyone, the sound of his voice suddenly sunk into her mind, sweet and exotic. It had a lilt that she didn't recognize but that fit him so well that it was a wonder she hadn't imagined him with that kind of voice to start with.
They didn't say anything more after that, but Anzu supposed they didn't need to.
On Thursday, Anzu was sitting in the SAC complex absently munching on a slice of greasy pizza from one of the numerous pizza-joints on campus. Her psychology textbook was open on the table in front of her to chapter sixteen. It was some forty-two pages long and Anzu had yet to turn from the first of them. The print was too small, the writing to dry; oh, there were numerous reasons Anzu couldn't bring herself to keep reading. It was just so boring.
And she had far more interesting things to ponder.
But then Mai—blonde and big-busted—dropped her bag onto the floor and slid into the chair across from Anzu. She began to unwrap the sub she had evidently just bought. "Anzu! Haven't seen you in a while!" she said brightly. "What're you doing here?"
"I come here most Thursdays," Anzu replied. "To eat before going to class."
Mai glanced at her textbook. "Psychology? Are you studying for a test?"
"Trying to," Anzu corrected with a slight frown. "It's not going so well."
"Why not? I should think that—" Mai glanced down again at the book, trying to suppress a snicker. "—reading about 'Why We Love' would be very interesting."
"Well it's not." She shook her head, her mind wandering again. "It doesn't explain why boys act the way they do. That would be more interesting."
Mai raised a delicate eyebrow. She leaned forward, blonde curls falling forward over her shoulders and a glint in her eyes. "Hon, they're men. There are no explanations for them."
Anzu fidgeted and decided that Mai was probably right about that.
Friday morning looked the same and Wednesday and Thursday had, grey rainclouds hovering threateningly in the sky though not one single drop of water fell to the ground. Anzu's head cold from Wednesday hadn't yet gone completely away, and the dull weather seemed to bring it back in full force. Then again, maybe that was just her imagination getting ahead of itself, as though she were (not so subconsciously) hoping to have another violent sneezing attack in which her mysterious companion would give her another Kleenex.
She sighed as she trudged her way up to the third floor, pausing in front of the glass doors. She stared at her reflection, wondering again why he would stare at her so unceasingly. She was so plain, so ordinary that she couldn't understand what was so interesting about her. It wasn't as though she was the only woman in the world with short brown hair or blue eyes. Her skin was like everyone else's though blessedly lacking in the acne problems so many other had. But really, there wasn't one thing about her that would be considered captivating.
Stop thinking like this, she ordered herself sternly and pushed the doors open with a little more force than usual. It doesn't matter why he stares.
Except that was a lie, and the worst part was that she knew it was a lie. It mattered so much that Anzu felt like she might drown with the suspense of not knowing why. More than just that, there was no guarantee—not even the slightest hint—that he might take pity on her internal suffering and reveal the reason. On the one hand, the idea that she might never know threatened to overwhelm her but on the same note, did she really want to know? Maybe he stared at her not because he might like her but because he didn't? Maybe he'd never seen someone so ordinary and was intent on burning her...ordinariness in his mind. In which case, maybe it would be best to never know why.
No, Anzu decided, rummaging through her bag for her book. I want to know. Even if the reason is something unpleasant.
She tried very hard to believe it wasn't something unpleasant.
She was so lost in her thoughts—in her (mostly unfounded) worries—that she almost missed his entrance. It was only when she heard his footsteps coming closer and saw his bag drop onto the floor beside hers that she realized she was no longer alone with her thoughts and that their dance was no longer quite the same. She hadn't noticed him right away, and he'd spoken to her the other day. Things changed as time went on. Dances evolved, or degenerated.
"Are you feeling better today?"
Anzu froze inside. Even though she had been hoping (against hope, it had seemed) that he would talk to her again today, she hadn't truly expected it to happen. She tore her eyes away from her book and sat up straight, forcing herself to look him directly in his lovely violet eyes. It was like a dream come true, in a sense, a new step in the dance she was no longer familiar with. They were dancing in the dark, the steps new and unknown yet exhilarating in that unfamiliarity, that risk of everything falling to pieces at any moment, never again to be what it was before or to become what it could be.
"A little," she replied, her voice surprisingly steady. Could he hear her heart pounding inside her chest? "I've been resting," she added a little spontaneously.
He smiled a little (shyly, she would have said, had he not been who he was), eyes bright. He looked happy to hear that, as though he had been genuinely concerned for her health. It made her feel a little giddy inside, like butterflies were suddenly fluttering in her stomach, trying to escape and failing miserably in the attempt. "I'm glad to hear that," he said, confirming aloud his concern for her. "It would be a shame to fall ill at this time of year."
She nodded in agreement. It was around the time midterms were about to begin—indeed, some already had begun—and to fall ill at this time of year could make or break your mark in a class. Writing one when you were ill wasn't desirable but missing the exam entirely was worse. She was happy that she wasn't so sick, too. It also meant she could be on her couch every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, waiting for him to appear and their dance to begin anew. "Yeah," she agreed, her eyes flicking away slightly, her face colouring only a little. "I've got too many midterms to afford to miss one."
He leaned back on his couch, all cool and suave, a smile playing on his lips still. "No time to even think, huh?"
She shook her head, her own glossed lips pulling into a smile to match his. It hadn't quite sunk in yet, that she was having a real conversation with her mysterious couch companion. That he—the epitome of cool—seemed intent on talking with her before the hanging digital clock blinked to nine-twenty and she could go into her classroom and relive this morning instead of taking notes on a lecture that no longer mattered to her.
There was a comfortable silence then, not full of such tension as others had been, once upon a time. A silence where she didn't pretend to read and he didn't pretend to doze; they sat together and yet separate (but not alone) and Anzu was happy.
So when she rose reluctantly and swung her bag up over her shoulder, her euphoria hadn't quite dissipated and before she could think better of it or stop herself she turned and asked "What's your name? I can't seem to recall it..."
If it was possible, his grin seemed to widen as though he had been waiting for her to ask. It wasn't a predatory grin or a self-satisfied grin or a mocking grin; no, indeed, it was a grin of such pure joy that she couldn't regret her question.
"My name is Atem," he said. A pause, and then: "Anzu."
She didn't wonder how he knew her name.
Atem.
She savoured his name, whispering it quietly when no one was near, letting it roll off of her tongue. Atem. She had a name for him now, a name that fit him so well that in some vague corner of her mind she was almost surprised she hadn't known it instinctively. Even with a name to put with the memory of his vivid violet eyes and the echo of his voice, he was still something of an enigma to her, but she found that she didn't mind all that much.
Saturday and Sunday passed in a haze of Atem.
Monday dawned with a hint of sun—the first in what seemed like forever—and Anzu thought that maybe that was meant to be a good sign, an auspicious beginning for her day, and perhaps for something more. Her mood was noticeably brighter and happier than it had been recently, at least up until last Friday. There was a bounce in her step that hadn't appeared for the past week, being so under the weather and increasingly distracted by Atem's presence.
As she pushed the glass doors open, she noticed the corridor wasn't deserted like it usually was. At first, she felt a sudden wave of disappointment; the dance was interrupted and it wasn't an intermission. And then, of course, she realized it wasn't an interruption at all; she looked down the hall and saw he had beaten her here today, something unprecedented. Her disappointment vanished like mist under the morning sun and her pace quickened just slightly. Not an interruption at all, no, just a new step in the dance that could change for better or for worse at any moment.
Atem looked up as he heard her approach, and smiled. "I beat you, today," he said unnecessarily. His tone was teasing, she noticed. Anzu found that she didn't mind being teased by him.
But Anzu didn't know quite how to respond to that. She took her usual seat and nodded, her silky brown hair swaying around the contours of her face. He noticed that, and her lack of a vocal response. "I had to meet with one of my Prof's this morning," he explained. "So I ended up arriving early."
"Oh," she replied, unsure of what she could say to continue the conversation. "Not about anything bad, I hope."
He shook his head, and she suddenly noticed how the florescent lights bounced off of his hair, giving him an ethereal glow around his face. He seemed otherworldly at that moment and she felt as though she'd been swept off her feet but not quite by a prince about to carry her away into the sunset hoping to live happily ever after. More like by a king who knew she was The One for him and knew they would live happily ever after. Fairytale princes didn't possess near the same self-assurance as a true king; they were young and naive, easily in love and just as quickly out of it.
She supposed she wouldn't want to be a fairytale princess.
"Not at all," Atem replied smoothly, watching her closely. "I merely wished to contend a point he had made about an ancient Pharaoh."
She tilted her head. "It somehow doesn't surprise me that you're in Classical Studies," she said with the slightest hint of laughter in her voice. "I wonder why not..."
He smiled, but he didn't laugh. He continued to watch her closely, as though he was waiting for her to say something more (and not just anything but something very specific). Atem's unwavering violet gaze was suddenly unsettling and enchanting at the same time. It held her enthralled, nearly paralyzed. There was tension again between them, though not the tension of silence. No, this was the tension of expectation, a moment on which rested the outcome of their dance, and yet it was not the deciding moment, not yet.
Anzu sat forward slightly. "What Pharaoh?" she asked, almost whispering. "What point?"
And Atem grinned.
A line had been crossed that day, a line that meant something and marked something. It wasn't yet the point of no return, but it was important in its own way. Anzu couldn't put a name to the importance and she couldn't understand fully the significance of this line. All she knew was that it was a line she had crossed and that it had somehow changed the course of their dance, the tempo, the very music of it.
Tuesday was restless. Her Profs seemed agitated, the students in her classes seemed distracted, and Anzu just couldn't sit still. She twisted and fidgeted in her seat, ignoring the squeaky joints and tapped her foot impatiently on the tiles beneath her feet. She couldn't remember a time when she had been so restless, so uninterested in anything beyond her own life. The wider world had suddenly disappeared from the scope of her thoughts; it simply didn't matter, not after Monday morning. Wars, murders, crime, love, hate, family, friends: everything was pushed to the very back of her mind, to a backburner, the backseat.
Something's wrong with me, Anzu thought. She gripped her pen too hard, her knuckles turning white. It wasn't so much his answer which had disturbed her—certainly it was a normal answer, an expected answer, an answer any Classical Studies major would give—but rather the fact that she had asked. It wasn't that Anzu didn't like history or wasn't intrigued by the classical world but that she didn't know the first thing about Ancient Egypt. She couldn't tell one pharaoh from another much less recognize even one name, had only the vaguest idea of who Nefertiti was and had a skewered idea of where, exactly, Egypt was located geographically.
So why had she asked that? It made no conceivable sense for her to do so.
"...and for class on Thursday, I want you to have read the first two Acts of Antony and Cleopatra."
The pen snapped in her hands, staining her with black ink.
The Prof stared at her curiously, offered her a Kleenex to wipe off what she could. Her concerned voice was impossibly distant, like the echo from a half-forgotten dream that Anzu didn't want to remember. She accepted the proffered Kleenex only to absently remember the feel of the one Atem had given her not so long ago, and conclude that this one was not so soft nor so pristine. It felt rough, like sandpaper. She suppressed a shudder, vaguely aware of not wanting to offend the woman. She gathered up her bag silently and tossed the remains of her pen away.
Her heels clicked against the terrazzo floor once she escaped her class in a sequence not unlike the sound of a ticking time bomb. Anzu barely registered the fact that people were staring at her strangely and whispering behind their hands: what's wrong with her?
I wish I knew, Anzu thought, scrubbing her hands obsessively under the tap in the washroom. The ink was stubborn, staining her hands like old, dried blood. Not her blood; the blood of another. A horror, truly. A waking nightmare, in a sense. She scrubbed harder, soap bubbles floating around lazily. It came, but slowly.
Everywhere she turned that day Atem seemed to be there, in the forefront of her thoughts. From the play in her Shakespeare class to the way the bangles on her wrist jingled as she walked to the way the sun hung in the sky: she saw him everywhere and nowhere. Anzu wasn't sure why he was suddenly so important to her, or when the infatuation had morphed into something that was love and yet not-quite-love.
The hardest part was that she couldn't really regret the change.
When she woke up on Wednesday Anzu thought that she would be sick. She had dreamt the night before, not usually a cause for alarm, of course. Dreaming was normal and natural, and perfectly acceptable. Dreams had always faded quickly for her, like dew on a bright spring morning. She was always a bystander, half in dream, half not. A witness of sorts, watching the events unfold but not a participant in them and not a cause. Dreaming had never caused her such a feeling of wonder and terror simultaneously. And certainly, she shouldn't have felt like she was an active part of the dream.
Her stomach dropped at the memory, still too fresh, too vivid. Fade, fade, fade...
It did, eventually, lose some of its vibrancy and the details became a little bit murky after a few minutes. Still, it stuck with her. The blood, oh the blood. Red, dark, dark red, almost black. It stained her hands and her dress—what had she been wearing? Gone, now, she couldn't recall. It had still been hot on her hands even as it had dried. She hadn't known that it was possible to feel temperature in a dream. Maybe just a figment of her imagination in the aftermath of the dream. Maybe not a part of the dream at all (but she didn't really believe that).
Her breathing came in short, sharp huffs. She knew on some rational level that she shouldn't go to class, not now. Anzu knew it would be smarter to stay at home now, get some rest (not sleep, just rest) and allow the dream some time to fade away completely. Knew it wasn't worth it to go to a class that she wouldn't pay attention to. But the dance, she couldn't abandon the dance, not now. Not too late to do so, she knew that too, but it was no longer a question of could or could not; no, it was more than that now, a question of wanting to and not wanting to.
And Anzu didn't want to.
Perhaps against her better judgment (and perhaps not), she gathered her books and her papers together, shoved them into her knapsack, dressed hurriedly and left to catch her bus. The dance never ended even as the days passed and they did not see each other, but it did increase and decrease in speed at different intervals. Slowly, as she boarded the bus and took a seat, watching as it filled up to claustrophobic levels, she felt her heart beat faster against her ribcage, preparing for the increased speed of the dance. Nearly time, now.
The corridor—as it should be—was empty when she arrived, and Anzu sighed in relief. Finally, a part of the dance that was familiar had come again. It took away some of the sickly feeling that still rankled in her stomach. Not all of it—never all of it, she feared—but some of it. Enough, for the moment.
The familiar feel of the couch relaxed her only slightly. The memory of the dream remained with her, making her more anxious than she could remember feeling in a very long time. This wasn't the anxiousness of a tenuous relationship that might break at any moment. No, Anzu was sure this was the anxiousness of a nightmare that would never quite fade, the fear of it never fading. She gripped the sides of her book tightly, barely aware that she had even taken it out of her knapsack. An anchor to reality.
It came to her then that reality was an unstable thing. You thought you knew what it was, thought you had it all figured out by the time you entered your adult life. You thought it was the Now, the time you existed in. The clothes you wore, the food you ate, the things you did: these things constituted reality because you chose them and you were satisfied with them and the way things were because of them. The vague awareness of a war halfway across the world, the questionable peace in your friend's home: these things made up the backdrop of reality even if they weren't directly related to your reality.
It only took one nightmare to shatter your apparent knowledge into a million unfixable pieces. It only took a few minutes in your unconscious night to change that idea forever. It only took the eyes, the voice, the presence of one person to change your whole conception of it. What was reality if it wasn't what you thought it was? Could you even define reality if it was no longer what you once thought it was?
Was it definable in terms of a nightmare that would never fade?
Was the book in her hands an anchor to reality if she no longer knew what reality was?
"Are you all right, Anzu?"
The second time he had asked her that question now. She looked up, realized her face was probably completely white, her hands clammy and her eyes wide and scared. How could she answer him? Well, I just had a nightmare this morning, one of those ones that won't go away. I can still feel the blood on my hands, blood that I know wasn't mine but a loved one's. It's shaken me up something awful this morning. Otherwise, I'm perfectly well, thank you very much. No, that wouldn't work. He didn't deserve her snappiness, her rage at not knowing anything anymore (and it was rage, she realized belatedly, a cold rage that he didn't deserve). It wasn't his fault that she was having a bad day.
He looked concerned, though his eyes held a hint of awareness. Understanding, she would have said, except that it wasn't possible. He hadn't experienced the dream, didn't know—couldn't know—how it affected her. Not his fault, truly. "I'm all right," she murmured, "I had a nightmare. It hasn't gone away yet, that's all."
Atem continued to stare at her intently; his lips parted momentarily as if he meant to say something comforting to her but didn't quite know which words to use. Words could cause lasting harm if used at the wrong time or in the wrong way, and she could understand his hesitation to speak. Empathize with it, even. She couldn't blame him for not saying anything right away. She didn't really want him to. What, exactly could he say? It wasn't as though she had an idea of what she wanted to hear.
"I'm sorry."
She dreamed again on Friday. Not a nightmare, thankfully, but an unsettling dream nonetheless. This one faded faster, only bits and pieces remaining in her memory. A rustle of silk here, a flash of gold there. The sound of bare feet running across a stone floor. They were little images that together could paint a whole picture but alone were fragmented and nearly lost. It was like reading a manuscript that was half-burnt from a fire in a library: Anzu could piece together the general gist of the story but not the story in its entirety.
Anzu sighed. Gone were the days where everything was normal, where everything went unquestioned. When had this all begun? She supposed it began at the start of this year, when she began to share her mornings with a mysterious couch companion in a dance that could have died but as yet had only evolved. Things were different now, and she supposed the beginning had to be back then. It didn't have to be when they first spoke to each other nor when she started thinking of their connection as part of a dance. It could be hard to pinpoint the beginning.
"You look better, today," Atem remarked cautiously upon his arrival.
"I feel better," she agreed. She smiled. "I...had a dream. It was strange but not scary. Not a nightmare."
Atem's shoulders visibly relaxed and he dropped his bag down to the floor as usual. He sat, still gazing at her intently. There seemed to be a shadow of something more in his eyes, something Anzu couldn't quite name. She was tempted to say that it was understanding. How could that be? She hadn't told him what had happened in her nightmare nor in her dream yet his eyes implied that he knew something more, perhaps even something of them both.
It was severely disconcerting.
Twice on Saturday Anzu had unsettling dreams. They didn't fade as quickly as her first had; they remained longer, more vivid. She could remember dreaming of a tall, round column of stone and of a tall man with dark hair, cool blue eyes. She had woken from that dream thinking that the blue eyes weren't quite as compelling as the violet ones Atem possessed. They were familiar in the same way Atem's were, yet they were at the same time distant, partially forgotten.
It was really too easy to forget things. Whether in dreams or in waking, things faded from your memory, slipped from your grasp so quickly it was almost as though there hadn't been there at all. The vibrancy was lost, the electric blue of the strange man's eyes faded but not totally forgotten. She wondered why that was when he was only a dream-man.
The second dream was of a child, a girl surely no more than three or four. Her face was round and smiling. She had opened her mouth and began to speak, but the dream was silent and Anzu had no idea what she might have been saying. She woke from that one with a strange longing. Who was that girl? What had she been saying?
Anzu didn't sleep well that night.
On Monday, Atem arrived looking more careworn than Anzu would ever have thought possible. There was a frown on his lovely face, a crease between his eyebrows and a deep sadness in his eyes. He brightened a little when he saw her waiting for him (and it was waiting, now), no book open on her lap. A little, but not enough.
"What's wrong?" Anzu asked. A new step, she realized belatedly. She hadn't ever been the one to inquire after him or his health, not really. He always asked after her, never the other way around.
"It's nothing," he replied smoothly. "I just feel a little guilty, I suppose."
"About what?"
He shook his head, his golden bangs swaying hypnotically around his face. "It's nothing," he repeated, a little sharply. "Maybe...I'll tell you some other time. Right now, it's nothing for you to worry about. All right?"
It wasn't all right.
Tuesday came with rainclouds. The weather matched Anzu's mood that day. It seemed that no matter where she walked, students whispered behind their hands as she passed, wondering if what happened last Tuesday would happen again. It made Anzu angry; it wasn't as though she chose to break down like that in the middle of class. Pens broke all the time; it's not as though it was a new thing. Of course, it wasn't everyday you broke a pen and had a sudden thought that it was like blood staining your hands.
No one else knew about that, but their unknowing didn't change how Anzu had perceived the ink. Maybe if she hadn't perceived it that way or they had been able to know how she perceived, things might have been different. And then again, maybe they wouldn't have been. You could never tell how things might have been just as you could never tell how things could be. There are always too many variables to discern how the past might have been different or how the future could turn out to be.
Anzu was careful that day to not make eye-contact with anyone. She was careful to grip her pen loosely, set it down completely during discussions. She took down her notes as quickly as possible, regardless of how messy they turned out to be. Maybe re-writing them when she was alone at home later that evening would be a little better. She hoped so.
She didn't break her pen. Would it have been better if she had?
Rising to leave the room at the end of class, Anzu hurried up the narrow row of desks to escape her classroom prison as quickly as possible. She had to leave the glares and stares and whispers behind. She kept her eyes lowered. Faster, faster, faster...
With the breath knocked out of her suddenly, Anzu swayed dangerously and held out one hand against the wall to steady herself. Against her better judgement she looked up to see who had collided with her. Her stomach twisted in horror (Why horror? she wondered in some back corner of her mind). The cold coal-blue eyes glinted with a hard, cold humour. His mouth twisted into a sadistic grin. Long, white hair spilled over his shoulders like snow on a bare tree. Instinctively, Anzu took a step back.
"Oh, so sorry," her classmate said in a tone that suggested he was not sorry at all. "Didn't see you there, Anzu." A smile, then, cold and predatory.
Anzu's eyes widened but it was his cold and predatory attitude that forced her to stand up tall and straight despite the curling fear in her stomach. She had never paid him much attention before now, never really thought about the fact he existed alongside her and so many others. Thoughts like that didn't matter. He was a background figure, someone with his own life and history but nevertheless someone who held to value for her life and just helped to fill up her class.
And now, suddenly and almost inexplicably, he had forced his way into her life, into the foreground of the things that mattered to her. These things—understandably—had been changing over the last little while: things that had once been of great importance to Anzu no longer mattered. Things that she had never noticed before had become valuable. And now he was one of those things that mattered. He meant something to her now, to the fabric of her life. He had gone from being a background figure whose existence barely registered in her mind to a man who demanded a key role in what once was and what was happening now.
How did you deal with something like that?
"It's fine," Anzu replied, her voice not as shaky as she would have expected it to be. "An accident. Right, Bakura?"
He nodded, his feral grin still in place. His coal-blue eyes held a hint of some understanding of something that Anzu was as yet unaware of. She tried not to let that bother her. A silly thought, in the end. "Yes, quite."
Anzu could hear the lie in his voice. She didn't call him on it. She knew it was a lie and she was nearly certain that he knew she knew it was a lie. And it didn't truly surprise her that he wasn't really sorry; she may never have spoken to him before but she had seen him around, seen the looks he threw at everyone in the class (including her, but those looks...had they been different? She wasn't sure, not now, not of anything) and how cold and cocky he acted. No wonder, really, that he wasn't sorry.
Bakura swung his bag over one shoulder—attempted a cool and suave look that he pulled in a very different way from Atem—and grinned once more, widely and feral. His eyes flashed and Anzu felt her stomach twist again but she resisted the urge to steady herself against the wall again. Feeling so out of control for a period of time (the length of which differs for everybody) sometimes forces people to resist the lack of control and seize it again, even if only for a moment. Bakura did not seem surprised by her sudden cold look or the sudden burst of defiant confidence that lit up her face.
He waved goodbye, grinning all the while.
Anzu woke screaming that night.
Her body was covered with sweat and her heart was pounding painfully in her chest, right up against her ribs. Her hands trembled as she gripped the sheets, knuckles turning white. Moonlight filtered in through her half-drawn blinds, usually a comfort for her. A comfort still, in fact. It calmed her somewhat, allowed her breathing to slow enough to be able to from coherent sentences when her parents ran into her room with wide eyes and fearful faces.
"I'm fine," she assured them, her white face and wide eyes betraying her lie. "I'm fine. Don't worry, please. It was just a nightmare."
Her mother sat fretfully on the edge of her bed, hugging her daughter close. That, too, provided some comfort to Anzu. The closeness of another person—one whom she trusted with her life—calmed her a little more. Her father held one of her hands, stroking it gently, as though she was a little girl still. And in some ways, perhaps she still was. A little girl going through a new stage in her life, an unexpected phase that she had no idea how to deal with and no one to confide in. Dancing in the dark again, though this time alone on the stage.
I'm fine.
Her parents were reluctant to leave her side and she loved them all the more for that. It had been so very long since she had had nightmares so terrifying that she woke screaming and covered in sweat. It was perfectly understandable that they would worry about her, want to stay with her a little longer. Some part of Anzu wanted that too. Some part of her wanted to return to being the little girl she once was with nothing more to worry about than what would be served for dinner or how to finish the math homework she had been set.
That, too, was long ago. Homework was the least of her worries now. Not since she'd met a strangely enthralling young man at the beginning of the year. Not since she'd spoken to him nor since she'd bumped into a classmate who was more than a classmate. The life she was leading now was vastly different than she had ever expected it to be. Of course, no one could have imagined their life like this, full of dreams that weren't dreams at all.
For Anzu, that was the hardest part of all. It was sad, she thought, that it took waking up screaming and full of sweat to instinctively come to the conclusion that should have been obvious from the start. Not dreams. Memories: fragmented memories. Fragments that she could slowly piece together, one by one. She was frightened. Who wouldn't be?
This dream—memory—was so vivid in her mind that it might have happened only yesterday. Anzu shook her head frantically, as if trying to dislodge it or jumble it up again to incomprehensibility. Useless, just as she'd expected. These memories were not natural, not like the ones she'd acquired in this life. "This life," she murmured miserably. "Who'd ever have thought I'd have cause to think like this?"
Anzu sighed. Already she felt older than she should.
Why is this happening to me? she wondered, as the memory threatened to fill her mind again. Why is it happening now?
She closed her eyes, trying to think of something happy. The silver gleam of the dagger, though, tore apart her happy memories from this life. It slashed downwards in a gleaming arc, blood glinted on the shaft, spraying up to splatter the hand on the hilt. Not her hand. She saw it pierce taut and tanned and utterly unprotected skin. Two—three—four times the dagger stabbed the victim, a ringing laughter accompanying it all the while. Wave after wave of cold horror shot down Anzu's spine. Stop, stop, stop!
It didn't.
The criminal pulled the dagger out one last time and turned to face Anzu in the memory. His eyes gleamed coal-blue, a despicable happiness evident in them; he grinned, and he spoke only a few words Anzu couldn't recall. He laughed at her horrified face (as it must have been, though she could not see herself in the memory), turned and laughed at others unseen before he sprang away—quick as a cat—to what she supposed was safety, for him.
Her breathing had quickened again. She forced herself to calm down again. It wasn't so bad now, remembering that time when she was awake. It was only a memory, unable to harm her. As a dream while she slept, it seemed far more threatening to her. That's not to say that it was pleasant or that it was an easy thing to deal with while awake, certainly not. It made her sick to her stomach and Anzu hadn't the faintest idea where to start stringing the memories together. What came first and what came after? It was too soon to tell.
Even stranger—or perhaps not strange at all—Anzu wanted to piece them together, now that she realized they were far more than dreams. Some of the memories scared her more than anything else ever had before, it was true, but others were gentle and sweet, some sad and others happy, but not scary. Together, they would weave a compelling story.
And Anzu was in so deeply now that she needed to know it all.
That night, Anzu had crossed another line. Not yet the point of no return (it was coming, soon, but not yet) but an important line nonetheless. A line that marked where past gave way to present and presented baldly the choice which Anzu had already been struggling with for weeks.
Wednesday was half sunny, half cloudy. Anzu spent her morning sifting through the memories which had surfaced so far in her mind, trying to piece them together. It was hard though, very hard. Most were fragments, impossible to connect without more fragments surfacing. Even then, it would be difficult to know for sure which ones went together. It made her head hurt, trying to connect these memories without enough information. She couldn't stop herself, though, from trying anyhow. Now that she knew that her dreams were not dreams at all, they remained close to the forefront of her thoughts.
"Good morning."
Only Atem—whether physically present or not—managed to push the memories aside.
Anzu looked up and smiled. Something had changed since Monday. It wasn't just that she had come to the realization that her dreams were not dreams at all. It wasn't just the memory she had just remembered the previous night (though it was an important memory and was meant to change things and had changed things) and it wasn't just bumping into Bakura the previous day and not quite knowing why she felt so horrified upon contact with him. It was more than all of that.
His voice was cautious, his eyes held a hint of worry as he sat down in his usual place. That was becoming too normal. Anzu hated to see his eyebrows slightly creased with worry. A step in the dance she hated. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" she replied, a little spontaneously. She hadn't felt like that for what seemed like ages. "You shouldn't be frowning, Atem. Smile."
She couldn't remember saying his name before this, not right to him.
His face brightened almost instantaneously. He gave her a small smile, his eyes not quite free of worry but the creases between his eyebrows were gone. "Sorry," he said, leaning forward a little. "You're right, of course."
"Of course I am," she laughed, "It's not healthy to worry. You've been worrying too much lately." She paused. "Don't think I haven't noticed," she added in a much softer voice.
He shook his head, blonde bangs swaying slowly around his angular face. "I'd...have been surprised if you hadn't," he admitted. "Though I did try to hide it from you. I didn't want to...worry you more than necessary. More than was unavoidable."
She sat back, satisfied with his answer. "I know," she said. "You've been so sweet. So gentle, trying not to make me worry. I haven't been so nice, have I?" She sighed, dropping her gaze downwards towards her hands folded neatly in her lap. "I've made you worry, haven't I?"
Anzu couldn't see his reaction with her eyes cast downward.
"Yes," Atem agreed, laying one hand overtop hers. His skin was warm, comforting. "But it's not your fault."
Never your fault.
Bakura showed up early for class on Thursday. Anzu noted this for only two reasons: firstly, because he never arrived on time (much less early) for class—being the type of student who didn't particularly care if he disturbed the lecture if he bothered to show up to class at all—and secondly because he made sure to lean against the wall next to her as she waited for the previous class to let out so she could go in.
He turned his head towards her, snowy hair cascading artistically over his shoulders and around the pale, gleaming contours of his jaw line. His gaze was coolly arrogant and his mouth quirked in the faintest hint of smirk. With his arms crossed over his chest, he made no attempt to make conversation, apparently content merely to stare at her intently in silence. At first, Anzu pretended not to notice, but the intensity of his stare—so unlike Atem's—was making her skin prickle with goose-bumps until she could no longer bear it.
"Good morning, Bakura," she said primly, as if there had been no awkward silence between them.
"To you as well, Anzu," he replied casually. "Lovely weather today, isn't it?"
"Indeed," she said stiffly, gazing towards the door of the classroom as if she could will the class to end simply by staring at it. "If you like pouring rain, I suppose."
"And I do," he said with a nod. "Especially when it rains elsewhere so little. We are so very lucky here, aren't we?"
Anzu turned her head slightly. His face was as it appeared before: a coolly arrogant gaze with a self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips. One hand involuntarily squeezed the strap of her knapsack a little tighter than before. He was toying with her, trying to get a reaction out of her (Anzu could see that now, she could understand the double entendres in his words). She tried to school her features into a state of cool collectiveness, tabula rasa as it were. He was, she realized, like Atem. Much more than he appeared and not so kindly.
"I suppose we are," she murmured nonchalantly. "But so long as there is sun, people only need so much water for survival."
Bakura blinked. Then he grinned widely, his sharp white teeth glinting predatorily. He chuckled deep inside his throat, shoulders shaking with mirth. Anzu was a little taken aback by this; she certainly hadn't expected him to laugh, of all things. His coal-blue eyes flashed with a sudden understanding. "Touché," he said, inclining his head once his laughter had subsided. "It is as you say. Sun is as necessary as water for survival." He paused, his expression turning more serious. "We are even, for now."
"For now," Anzu agreed.
Anzu reclined on her couch the following morning. Her conversation with Bakura drifted lazily into her mind. There was a connection to make here. There was a reason he chose to speak with her now when he never had before. And that made her remember what Atem had said on Wednesday. Another connection, there. It was so frustrating to know there was something she ought to be seeing and not being able to articulate it.
"A penny for your thoughts?"
Anzu looked up. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, it's nothing," she said airily. "I was just thinking about a conversation from yesterday."
Atem raised an eyebrow. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his intertwined fingers. "Not about anything bad, I hope." An echo, that phrase. Anzu could remember using it herself, before. A step traded during the course of their dance.
Anzu hesitated. "Not bad," she said finally. "It was...a challenge, is all. Bakura's like that, I suppose."
His name hung in the air and Anzu knew that she had said something dripping with meaning for Atem (and for herself too, though she still couldn't quite say why that was). A shadow passed through Atem's eyes, his lips pulled into a small frown. "Bakura," he repeated the name flatly. No inflections, merely a statement. "He wasn't rude to you, I hope." His voice sounded as though he would hunt down Bakura and rip his throat out if that was the case.
She shook her head hastily. "Challenging," she said. "Not rude. Really, I promise."
Atem still looked sceptical though he let the matter drop. He changed the subject rather abruptly. "Are you busy tonight?" he asked seriously.
Anzu shook her head. "No. I was going to study."
"In that case, do you want to go out tonight?" he asked, a faint blush creeping over his cheeks. She hadn't imagined he could be shy, not even a little bit. He was always so confident, so very sure of himself. "I know of a nice little establishment for dinner."
Atem spoke softly, and the exotic lilt to his voice seemed all the more prominent to Anzu's ears. She had become so accustomed to hearing it that it hadn't registered in her mind for some time. Yet now, as soon as his voice dropped and he humbly asked for her to spend the evening out with him, the richness of his voice, the accent she couldn't quite place hit her in full force. It was enchanting. How could she say no?
Did she even want to say no?
"That...would be lovely," she affirmed, her own cheeks heating up a little.
"Then I'll pick you up around seven."
Once Anzu arrived home that afternoon, she threw her knapsack haphazardly across her bedroom into the far corner and proceeded to tear through her closet for something suitable to wear. Atem hadn't specified the dinner location he had in mind, though he had assured her that casual clothing was perfectly acceptable for the occasion. The problem lay in the fact that Anzu wasn't convinced that casual clothing would cut it. Just because Atem said it would be fine didn't mean it would be: the restaurant could be more of a semi-formal type of place than casual, and men didn't always know the difference, as far as Anzu was concerned, at least.
She could play it safe: wear a nice outfit that was comfortable but not overly casual. It seemed like it had been so long since she had had a chance to be a normal young woman with normal young womanly thoughts and desires. The past little while had been a whirlwind of events that she could never have predicted. Going on a date would make for a nice change of pace.
Anzu hummed happily to herself as she stood in front of her mirror holding up various articles of clothing, imagining how they would look in an outfit and whether or not it would be suitable for a dinner out with Atem. She couldn't wear just anything. This (she knew) was going to be an important night (not just because she was going out with Atem).
Nearly an hour had passed by the time Anzu settled on something to wear. Perhaps that was the easy part; she spent more than double that time on her hair, curling it loosely and then applying her makeup carefully so as to not disturb her hair. And then, of course, she had to pick out a pair of shoes—not too fancy and not to casual yet comfortable at the same time. And she did love shoes; Anzu felt a little dismayed when she surveyed the floor of her closet.
But the time flew by without Anzu really noticing, and before she knew it, the doorbell was ringing.
Atem's sleek black car was a beauty, and smelled as though it had been freshly cleaned earlier that day. Anzu felt her cheeks heat up as he opened the passenger's door and took her hand gently in his. He helped her in like a perfect gentleman, and Anzu had to admit that she was flattered by the attention. So many young women nowadays were offended by a man holding a door for them or helping them into a car or any number of other things they did to be nice. Anzu couldn't possibly understand what the problem was; it wasn't a matter of whether or not a woman was capable of doing things herself but a matter of manly pride—and perhaps even more than that, it was an attempt to salvage some of the common courtesies people no longer bothered with.
As it was, Anzu had no complaints about Atem helping her into his car, though she had no voluminous skirts to mind getting caught in the door and no long and lavish silk coat that might catch on something if she was not careful. She smiled gratefully at him once she settled in on the seat, her legs demurely together and her ankles crossed comfortably. The light in the car illuminated his face and she saw his eyes were sparkling and his lips curved into a smile of his own as he gently shut her door and walked around the front of the car to the driver's side.
He slipped in and deftly turned the key in the ignition and the car whirred into life. "I hope I haven't irrevocably impeded your plans for studying tonight," Atem said teasingly, half-twisted in his seat to watch out the back window as he slowly backed out of her driveway.
"Certainly not," Anzu replied, equally teasing, "It isn't as though I really wanted to study. But if I fail my next test," she added in a mock serious tone, "I will blame it all on you."
He laughed as he pulled out onto the dark street and steered the car towards the intersection lights. "I'll have to make it up to you, if that's the case," he said. "But I do assure you, tonight will be worth it."
"I have no doubts about that."
They spoke then on more frivolous subjects, things about school and about the weather, about friends and family but nothing touching on Bakura—who Anzu didn't particularly want to think about to start with and who (she was certain) was someone Atem hated—and nothing about how she had been acting so strangely lately or her sudden return to quasi-normality (because after all she'd been through during the nights, you could never totally return to what had once been your "normal"). Such things could be discussed later.
The restaurant was a nice looking place, not too fancy as Atem had assured her yet undoubtedly the sort of place where one would not generally wear jeans. Anzu smoothed out the front of her skirt self-consciously. Atem took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "You look lovely," he murmured, his earlier shyness diminished somewhat. "Let's go, shall we?"
She nodded, unable to keep from blushing herself.
The interior of the restaurant was cozy looking. Polished wood—as dark as Anzu's hair—shone under the soft lighting. The walls were painted in a comforting beige hue and the tiled floor was perfectly swept free of debris fallen from the shoes of previous visitors. A smartly dressed waitress in a black dress and red apron led them through a maze of tables and booths to a table set for two in a nearly deserted corner of the restaurant beside a lovely window and tall, leafy plant.
The chairs were of the same dark wood that appeared everywhere else in the restaurant with flecks of gold leaf artfully placed here and there to give the appearance of antiquity (though Anzu was quite sure that they were probably no more than a few years old, having seen some of a very similar design in various shops over the years). Still, the plush red upholstery on them was very comfortable and she couldn't deny they gave the place a sense of cozy belonging. She smiled at Atem over the top of her menu.
The waitress came bustling over again within moments of seating them. "Can I get you anything to drink to start?" she asked politely with her notepad already in her hand and her pen poised over it eagerly.
Atem glanced at Anzu. "A strawberry daiquiri, please," Anzu said. She wasn't much of a drinker, truth be told, but in she saw no harm in a social drink every now and then when she went out to eat, though admittedly, that hadn't been very often recently. The waitress scribbled it down with a nod and looked enquiringly at Atem.
"A glass of white wine," he said. The girl nodded again, scribbling it down and proceeded to ask what brand he'd like. Anzu didn't know much about wine brands and so instead she busied herself with arranging her serviette on her lap. It seemed like a dream to be here with Atem. It was strangely comfortable, though, similar to the mornings they spent together before class. Even so, the comfort she felt between them wasn't the comfort of a new friend; it was deeper than that. It was so much deeper than a mere friendship that it felt like she was dreaming and that it would end too soon.
"What do you suppose you'll order?" she asked, glancing up from her menu.
He shrugged. "Perhaps a steak," he said, apparently unconcerned about the matter. His violet eyes glittered, drew her own gaze in. "And you? Anything in particular tickle your fancy?"
She giggled. "I'm thinking pasta, tonight," she said. "This sounds good: noodles in a thick sauce with cooked vegetables. Of course, that one with the sliced chicken sounds good too..." She paused, weighing the choices. "Maybe I'll go with that instead..."
Atem smiled contentedly and folded his menu once more. The waitress hurried over not long after with their drinks. Her smile lingered a fraction of a moment longer than was strictly necessary on Atem but Anzu could feel only pride that she was here with him and no one else. "Are you ready to order?" the waitress asked sweetly.
"Yes," Anzu said after a moment of final deliberation. "A Tetrazzini for me, please."
The waitress nodded and scribbled down her order and turned her gaze onto Atem. "And for you?"
"A New York steak," he said, taking Anzu's menu and handing them to the waitress. His tone was a clear dismissal and he had already turned his attention back to Anzu. "Thank you." The waitress tucked the menus under one arm and dropped her pen and pad into her apron pocket. She looked a little taken aback by his coolly dismissive manner and stalked away in a huff, her back stiff with injured pride.
"Something's bothering you," Anzu said when she was gone, taking a sip of her daiquiri. "What is it?"
Atem blinked, his vivid violet eyes widening a little in surprise. The expression changed after a moment and he smiled ruefully. "You're very perceptive," he observed, holding his wine loosely in his hand but paying no attention to it. A satisfied smile played on his lips, and his eyes held a look of admiration. Of love, she thought. Was that vain, to think that? Was it vain to believe he looked at her with love? Anzu wasn't sure, but she couldn't help but think that anyway, vain or not.
"What is it?" she repeated.
"Later," he murmured. He took her hand again, tracing his index finger over her soft knuckles and then down the veins leading from each finger. "I will tell you later."
I promise.
The meal—as Atem had assured her it would be—was delicious. The smell of herbs and melted cheeses wafted into her nose and teased her senses as the waitress set the dish in front of her, trying not to look sullen over her earlier treatment. Atem pointedly ignored her—though it almost seemed a second nature with the way his attention was focused solely on Anzu. He reminded her of a king—he sat with an air of haughty self-confidence that Anzu couldn't quite label as arrogant (of course, that could easily be attributed to his attention on her, the love she saw in his gaze, the comfortable laughter between them) and an obvious expectation that proper service be rendered to them.
Which, really, any customer ought to expect in such a fine place—in any place, truly. She saw a difference only in his stance, in the way he expected it without saying a word to the waitress, without even looking at her. Others would glare or use their body language to ensure the waitress knew they expected proper service; Atem expressed this expectation by saying nothing to the waitress except a polite "thank you" without ever making eye contact with her and barely breaking his conversation with Anzu.
It was a surreal experience, for Anzu. He seemed as he always did with her—just as if they were sitting alone together on a pair of black couches—yet there remained a part of her that could see things from the viewpoint of a slighted waitress. It didn't matter, of course. She was in so deeply now that no amount of empathy could change her own opinion of the man before her. He was important to her, much more so the feelings of a nameless waitress who she might never see again.
They chose not the stay for dessert; Anzu was quite satisfied with her meal and Atem appeared to have no wish to linger amid the slowly-filling up venue. He paid the bill—leaving a decent tip to the waitress, as common courtesy of this time indicated he ought to—and led Anzu out of the restaurant, curling their fingers together gently, as though he might break hers if he held her hand too hard.
"Where to now?" she asked, as he opened the door of his sleek black car for her and helped her in.
He paused, the moonlight bouncing off his hair but obscuring his face in shadows. She saw his eyes flash for a moment though not with hostility but with apprehension. He stood motionless, silent in the night with only the vroom-vroom of cars racing past on the road to provide a background score to their dance. Anzu felt a sudden fleeting chill shoot down her spine. Apprehension.
"Would you object if I took you to my apartment?"
Had she not trusted him implicitly, Anzu would have refused outright. Having formally known each other for merely a month did not make it proper to visit his apartment in the middle of the night. Yet the fact remained that Anzu did trust Atem. There was a connection she felt with him that was impossible to deny, one that had been deepening ever since the first day she saw him in September.
He didn't take her hand this time. She wasn't a baby to be coddled.
Not at a time like this.
Atem's apartment was furnished simply, nothing in excess but everything of quality. Anzu removed her shoes just inside the door and followed him through the hardwood hall—swept perfectly clear of dust—into the living room. There was a soft couch against a green wall with a delicate end table at either side with matching lamps. The drapes were drawn over the windows and the sleek black and silver TV was off. One chair here, another there and a coffee table on a neat area carpet in the centre of the room.
"Would you like a drink?" he asked, as she sat down on his couch. She couldn't help but notice that it was much softer than the one in the university.
Anzu shook her head. "Thank you, but I'm fine."
He nodded and took a seat beside her, knitting his fingers together and staring blankly across the room. The silence was not hostile but it was not quite comfortable either. Anzu was reminded suddenly of the prickling sensation on the back of her neck when he had stared at her, thinking she had been unaware of it. The silence was similar, high portentous. I'll tell you later, he had said. A promise he had let hang unspoken in the air, louder than a thunderclap, something she had known instinctively.
"You asked me earlier what was bothering me," he began slowly, his voice soft. The soft lighting from the lamp beside him cast a mysterious glow to his skin, his hair, his eyes—she was suddenly hyperaware of him and his lilting accent that had become so natural to hear. "I suppose it is time to tell you."
He was silent again, pondering how to articulate what he wanted to say. Anzu understood the difficulty in that—words were important, more so than anything else. The inflections you gave a word, the tense you used, the diction you chose, what you left unsaid—all these things and more affected people. People are not separate from language. Words can hurt, or heal. She could appreciate the care he was taking in speaking to her, even if it did make her burn inside with curiosity.
"It has something to do with me." Not a question, no regret; a simple statement ringing with undeniable truth.
"Yes," he said, nodding, still not looking at her. "But not only with you. With others, too."
"Like Bakura."
A shadow passed over his expression. His voice turned cold. "Yes. With Bakura, too."
"You both know something that I do not," she murmured. "Something about me. About us."
He shook his head, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes, mouth quirking slightly for a moment. "You are half right. Bakura--" Atem growled out his name. "—and I have already come to remember, long ago, now. You are still in the process of it."
"Remembering?" A pause, long enough only for her to smile ruefully over the fact she didn't need to question what he meant. She knew. He knew—now, at least—that she knew. "That is what is bothering you?"
But Atem shook his head again, soft frustration evident in his voice. "No, not that in and of itself. The fact that it brings you pain. That bothers me."
She placed her hand over his, closed her eyes. "I understand now," she murmured. "But Atem...you shouldn't worry so much. It isn't unbearable."
"It might become so."
"I want to know." Her hand tensed on his, and she forced herself to open her eyes and look into his. She was nervous and her voice wavered a little, but a raw determination deep within kept her going. The speed of their dance had increased now, so much so that she was afraid she might trip and ruin everything. But a risk needed to be taken. A choice had to be made. "Can you help me?"
He didn't respond right away. Anzu couldn't blame him, not really. It was a hard thing she asked of him, a heavy weight. Not a question to be taken lightly. This was the point of no return, the step in the dance that would destroy everything if she was not careful. "I could," he answered finally, fully turning to face her. "If you want. If you feel you're ready for it."
"I need to know the truth," she said. "I need to know it to accept it. To move on from the nightmares, the fear of not quite knowing but feeling the knowledge on the periphery."
His lips were soft, and a scent of cinnamon assailed her senses and after a moment, it faded away.
It was her first time to court.
Her family resided in a spacious villa outside of the imperial capital, rather than in the palace with her cousins. She didn't mind, really, not living in the palace. Her father had taken her to visit parts of the city surrounding the magnificent home of the Pharaoh and she had worshipped in the temple but she had never been brought to the court proper. Not once in her fifteen years had she laid eyes upon her royal cousins.
That made today all the more exciting.
She had spent hours in her room with her mother and maidservants preparing for the day. Her eyes were outlined with kohl and her lips painted a pretty shade of red, her cheeks rouged and her nails clipped. One of the maids painted her eyelids with a glittering gold and another took each of her fingers (and then her toes) and painted them in the same shade.
Meanwhile, her mother had arranged her dark, thick hair. She threaded delicate golden chains dripping with sapphires the exact colour of her daughter's eyes through her hair. Next she took fresh lilies and wove them in too, careful not to obscure the golden chains or the gleaming gems. Never had she felt so pampered in her life. This was far more work than she had experienced even for a festival honouring Re of the Sun.
Now she stood in outside the doors to the central audience chamber in the magnificent palace. A guard stood to either side, spears at the ready, as if they expected an attack at any moment. She wrung her hands nervously, glancing at the tall, stern profile of her father, standing to her left. Nearly time, now. She dropped her hands to her sides, bangles jingling faintly.
The double doors opened seemingly of their own accord and from within the chamber she could hear the buzz of voices—courtiers no doubt, waiting eagerly for her arrival. She fell into step alongside her father, back straight and chin up. She was not a slave or a peasant—she was a lady of noble blood, cousin to the Pharaoh himself. Even so, she couldn't help but feel apprehensive. Everyone's eyes were on her; they were judging her, whispering behind their hands. Was she worthy to carry the same bloodline as the Pharaoh?
The room was bright but she no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make out the details on the Pharaoh's face. He sat in a throne of gold and gems, straight backed and coolly in silent control of the room. She noticed little in terms of his dress—white linen, golden bracers, shining sandals. Her eyes were drawn to his face, to the features she couldn't see very well.
That might have been awe, though, obscuring her view.
The walk towards him seemed impossibly long.
She stopped when her father stopped, bowed properly before him ("You're not a peasant, you don't prostrate yourself!" her father had said earlier that day, on the journey here. That was his way of preparing her, comforting her). She stood as still as she could, acutely aware of her hair settling over her shoulders and the smell of the lilies invading her nostrils. It was calming, somehow, amid the nervousness of being presented at court. Her mother had ever been wise; surely this was no coincidence. The young woman offered up a silent prayer of thanks to Isis that she had inspired her mother to give her this piece of comfort.
"Rise."
His voice was softer—kinder—than she had expected. He was a god-king, a man above men. She had thought he would sound stern, if not cruel. She waited until her father began to rise, unsure if she really could (because, of course, it's so easy to second-guess what you hear). She rose up to her full height proudly and turned her gaze upwards. He was her cousin, after all, and he had bid her rise.
Blue met violet, and in that instant, everything changed.
They were married not long after her presentation. He had no sisters in his immediate family to marry, so his cousin was the next best choice. Love was not guaranteed in royal marriages but she was glad that there was love between them. She hadn't wanted a loveless marriage.
"You're so beautiful," he murmured when they were alone in his—their—chambers. His hand caressed her cheek and ran through her hair. "A pity we had not met sooner, darling."
She smiled, gazing into his eyes again. They were deep as a well, a fountain of knowledge and experience and, for her, love. They drew her in until she was in so deeply that she had to tear her gaze away lest she lose herself. "Yes," she agreed, nuzzling into his hand. "But we are together now."
Some people didn't believe in love at first sight (because it hadn't worked for them).
That didn't mean it didn't exist.
Later that year, their first child was born. A girl with a smile brighter than the sun itself. Daughters weren't quite as desirable as boys as firstborns, but the happy couple took her to the temple regardless and praised Re that he had blessed them with such a beautiful child. They loved her well. She handed the girl to her husband. "What will you name her?" she asked with a smile, her eyes drawn to his (as they inevitably were).
"Raynaseki," he said. "She who is brighter than the sun."
Two years (and two miscarriages) later, the couple stood in the temple again, a baby boy in the queen's arms. He was sleeping soundly, and already she could see his hair would come in the same as his father's. The praised Re once again for blessing them with a child, this time a beautiful little boy. The Pharaoh turned to his beloved after the prayers, smiling. "What will you name him?" he asked, holding her gaze (as he always did).
"Atemnakhan," she murmured, "He who brings joy from the heavens."
They tried for more children, of course, but the gods decreed it must not be. It mattered little, so far as the queen was concerned. She had two lovely little children and she had a husband who loved her and a kingdom who adored them. Life in the palace was good. She was happy here, more so than she would have thought possible, back when she lived in her mother's house, a villa outside of the capital.
"Mama!" Raynaseki called, her bare feet making a soft tap-tap against the wide flagstones inlaid with jasper and marble designs. Her arms were outstretched and the queen swept her daughter up into her embrace in a flurry of golden jewellery and flapping silks of white, red and turquoise. "Mama! The merchants have arrived! Can't we go see them?"
"Of course, my love," the queen said, hugging her daughter close, drinking in the scent of jasmine wafting from Raynaseki's perfumed hair. The scent of happiness.
The girl gave a cry of joy, smiled brightly and wiggled free from her mother's arms. She took her mother's hand and led her down the corridor, excitedly chattering about the things she would love to have—the silks she had seen being brought in and the spices she could smell as she spied on the procession of merchants into the audience hall. Her mother listened fondly but her closer to slow their pace. "No need to run," she whispered to her daughter. "Everything will be there when we arrive."
Her husband was already seated on the stone dais in the audience hall. Raynaseki gave a cry of joy when she saw him, dropping her mother's hand and running forwards across the open expanse into her father's arms. The queen smiled as she followed in her daughter's wake. She glanced into his violet eyes just as she always did. 'I'm happy,' his eyes said to her as he whispered in his daughter's ear and drunk in the scent of jasmine. 'Happy.'
As she seated herself on her own throne, Raynaseki obediently slid off of her father's lap and dutifully sat on a small chair beside her mother's, like a proper princess ought to in the presence of commons. Of anyone, really. The Pharaoh leaned over to his High Priest and whispered something in his ear. The High Priest nodded, and barked an order that the doors be opened and the merchants escorted in. He was a good man. Competent. The queen was glad for him being among their royal staff.
There were only four merchants, all dressed in nondescript brown travelling cloaks, carefully cleaned of travel stains. Three of them wore gold chains around their necks, and flashes of fine linen poked out from beneath their cloaks as they walked forward, slaves bearing their chests of goods a few paces behind. The fourth has his cowl up over his head, face obscured by shadow. They stopped respectfully in front of the dais.
"Your cowl is an insult to His Majesty, the Pharaoh," Seth barked, his cold blue eyes blazing as if the insult was personal to him as well. "Remove it or be removed."
The three merchants glanced at their companion irritably. By his stance, the fourth merchant seemed unconcerned with their glares. He stepped forward—a further insolence, to which Seth opened his mouth to point out—and bowed low before them all, cowl falling away to reveal a wave of long, white hair. The hair was distinctive; there were none in the palace—or, indeed, in the country—who did not know of this man. Seth did not need to be told by the Pharaoh what had to be done; Raynaseki was seized by guards and sprinted from the room with a snap of the High Priest's fingers.
This was no longer a place for a young girl. Some guards moved to remove the queen as well, but she waved them away. How could she leave? Her husband glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. She knew what he wanted to say. She ignored him, staring coldly down at the white-haired man.
"What do you here?" the High Priest demanded. "Thief King!"
Palace guards moved in slowly, spears pointed outwards, intending to corner the man. His grin was feral, pointed white teeth gleaming in the sunlight streaming into the room. He did not respond to Seth's demand. The guards circled in closer, some already dragging away the other three merchants. The insolent Thief King appeared unaware—or perhaps unconcerned—with the spears moving ever closer to him. He was arrogant.
He would die, surely.
The Thief King sprang upwards, higher than the queen would have thought possible for any living man. He kicked the High Priest in the chest, forcing him backwards and then lashed forward towards the Pharaoh, slashing out a silver knife, cutting aside the guards like wheat in a field. One by one, they fell, and the queen suddenly felt a cold dread fill her. Things seemed to move in slow motion. He was too close, now, this arrogant Thief King. It would be too late, now. Even Seth—dear, beloved, great Seth—was sprawled across the room on his back, unable yet to move.
And she was powerless—without even a knife of her own—to stop it.
She thought she might have whispered "No" in a tone of awestruck horror, but she couldn't be sure. No one acknowledged her.
The silver dagger slashed downwards in a gleaming arc, blood glinting on the shaft, spraying up to splatter the Thief King's hand on the hilt. She watched it pierce taut and tanned and utterly unprotected skin. Two—three—four times the dagger stabbed the victim, a ringing laughter accompanying it all the while.
The white-haired man pulled the dagger out one last time and turned to face the queen, a horrid, grotesque, utterly joyful smile on his face. His eyes gleamed coal-blue, a despicable happiness evident in them; he grinned wider at her expression. "My revenge is now complete, Majesty," he drawled, twirling the knife between his fingers. "Be glad my mood is good and my thirst is slaked that I leave your children alone. For now."
He laughed at her horrified face turned and laughed at the guards still closing in, spearing pointed outwards. Even Seth had stumbled to his feet, barking orders to catch the man. "Be glad, Majesty," the Thief King murmured again, a feral gleam in his cold eyes. "Your husband's bloodline remains safe, for now." He began to laugh anew as he sprang away—quick as a cat—to what she supposed was safety, for him.
The queen didn't bother to follow him with her gaze. Seth could take care of the pursuit. Her legs were moving before she realized it and gave way beneath her as soon as she did. Her husband's body was slumped in his throne, his blood seeping down onto the dais. Her silks were stained, her knees sticky. She could feel the heat of his blood; she could feel the very life leaving him, gone already.
Hot tears blinded her vision. His eyes were wide open still, an expression of horror and surprise still mingled within his violet irises. With trembling fingers, she closed his eyelids, careful not to smudge the kohl outline of his eyes nor the shading on the lids. It was only respectful. Of course, she couldn't bear to look into the eyes of her beloved now that they were so brutally devoid of life.
Tentatively, she reached out her hand and placed it upon his, as if by some miracle of Re a beat of his heart remained and he might still be saved, though she knew even as she did that it was not to be so. His skin was still warm, his blood hot and sticky on her hand, but no matter how hard she pressed, she could not feel his heart. It lay still and silent within his body, probably torn apart by the Thief King's brutal attack.
"Why?" she demanded of no one in particular. "Why?"
"It was common knowledge that the Thief King hated him," Seth replied, voice hoarse. He was crying, too. They had been such close friends, he and the Pharaoh. Few could claim as much. "For transgressions not his own. For transgressions carried in his blood." He stopped, stifling a choking noise. She wanted to tell him it was no shame to cry for the loss of a close and beloved friend but she had no energy to spare to console another. "I...never thought he would get close enough to murder him. This is all my fault, Majesty."
"Not your fault, Seth," she murmured, trying to control her sobbing so that her words would not be so distorted. "You always do your best. More than your best. It was clever of him to sneak in as a merchant."
"Visitors to the palace are thoroughly inspected before being granted an audience," Seth growled, more at himself than at her. "His appearance is so well known throughout the kingdom. I will start an investigation immediately, Majesty, into discovering the traitor that let him past."
"Seth, Seth," the queen sobbed, clinging tighter to the Pharaoh's body. If only her love was enough to bring him back. He was with the gods now, sure as the sun would rise every morning, but she had never imagined it would be so hard to lose him. Of course, she had never thought she would lose him so suddenly and brutally. "Take a moment to mourn."
"I will mourn when the traitor is caught and executed."
His tomb was not finished, of course. They were massive constructions, requiring hundreds upon hundreds of labourers and even so, they took years and years to finish properly. Only his sarcophagi were ready, and those only barely. While his body was taken through the embalming process, the queen busied herself with ensuring that all his possessions were moved into his burial chamber with the utmost care. She herself personally went through his things, making sure he lacked none of the necessities.
It was then that she happened upon a poem he had begun, clearly unfinished. It was full of cross-outs and messy calligraphy. He always showed her his poems when they were finished. Hands trembling—they did that a lot, now—eyes watering, she sank down onto the edge of their bed. She held the poem gently in her fingers, ignoring the maidservants who were watching her curiously. They worried for her, she knew, and she was grateful for it. But they were nothing right now, less than nothing. So much ceased to matter.
Forcing back her tears, the queen ran her eyes down the page, memorizing every word.
Sky seen in her eyes
Sun in her smile
She captivates all her see her.
And for myself,
She is the light of life.
The love in my heart
Is branded on my lips,
Held in her heart
And so even when the seas turn to sand,
Our love shall be eternal.
It was certainly unfinished, a work rougher than she had ever seen him produce. Her hands were shaking violently now, and she set the poem carefully onto her lap and wept into her hands. It was unfinished, true, but it was straight from the heart. She knew the late Pharaoh better than any others ever had—except for, perhaps, Seth. He took poetry seriously. He always put so much effort into it. She used to watch him in a chair by the window, writing.
Not anymore. Nevermore.
The years passed and the dowager queen ruled as regent for her son until he came of age. Unlike some would have been, she was not sorry to step down from the throne and hand it over. Her son was wise, the true son of his father. He would be a good ruler.
"I am withdrawing," she announced to the court, only days after Atemnakhan's corronation. She gave no explanation, and none questioned it. The new Pharaoh nodded in silent understanding.
From then until the end of her days, the widow spent her days in prayerful contemplation, turning down any and all suitors who came in search of her hand, and after a time, they stopped pursuing her entirely. She offered them no challenge, and did not rise to their courting. Sometimes, Raynaseki would visit her, and on rare occasions, Atemnakhan would too. He never stayed overlong, though, for which she was grateful; he looked and sounded so much like his father that it hurt to be in his presence for too long.
She kept the poem all of her days, and the memories of his blood never faded.
"Even when the seas turn to sand," she murmured. "Our love shall be eternal."
The scent of cinnamon was strong, suddenly, pulling her back into reality. And it was reality, she realized. This was her life now. This was familiar, the way things were. Atem's soft lips pulled away gently from hers, and she blinked as if waking from a dream. He was concerned, she noticed. His face was pale, his eyes held a spark of worry, and his hands were tense on her shoulders.
She smiled. "It's all right, Atem."
"You remember?"
Anzu nodded. "Everything. And I...I'm happy, now. I-I mean, I'm always happy with you, but now...now I..."
"Stop," he murmured, pulling her close. "Stop. Don't cry. Please don't."
The tears came anyway, though. "I can't," she whispered, "I'm just...too happy. We're together again. Bakura couldn't keep us apart, in the end."
"That was never his objective."
"He made it happen anyway," she protested, draping her arms around his neck and resting her head against his shoulder. Anzu felt his hand move in soothing circles on her back. It was calming, as he intended. Her tears slowed. "I can't forgive him for that, no matter how hard I try."
"I know. I can't either."
There was silence and he kissed the top of her head, holding her close. "I always thought it was strange," Anzu began quietly, looking up at him. "I hadn't ever seen you before that day in September yet ever since that moment, I felt drawn to you. I could feel you staring at me and it killed me inside to not know why."
"I couldn't help it," he said. "Can you blame me?"
"No. We wouldn't be together if you hadn't."
"You would have remembered it all, on your own, eventually," Atem assured her. "And I am sure we would have sought each other out soon enough anyway. But I was presented with a chance to be with you sooner than I had expected, and I couldn't pass it up. It didn't matter that you didn't remember because I knew you would. I just wanted to be with you."
"We're together now," Anzu said, sitting up and kissing him softly. "Always."
Always, until the seas turn to sand.
A/N: This is my first fanfic for the Yugioh fandom, and I've actually been out of touch with it for a quite a long time. So it's AU. I played around with history a bit so not everything is totally historically accurate. Also played around with some of the canon elements of the anime, more or less, but not all, so expect to see some things that sound familiar and others that don't.
Comments would make me the happiest person in the world! Your comments always help me improve, and I read every single one (numerous times).