DH AN: Well, this is a surprise… I've got no excuses since I'm doing what I'm supposed to and staying put. Hope y'all are well and avoiding the nasty virus.
Anyway, enjoy Chapter Seventeen of Healing Presence.
AN 2: Just a friendly reminder, we're in the middle of a Hallucination Marik Scene, and there are a few prominent spoilers for Not As I Know Him and they're parts that have yet to be written.
Chapter Seventeen
"Is there nothing capable of soothing you?"
Within half a minute, a classical piece permeates from a newly present record player tucked in the back corner of the room.
"Shostakovich's Second Waltz, an interesting choice." He watches the sand slowly still in time with the music. "Show me why."
"It also soothed him." His own posture smooths and softens slightly at the softly swelling music. And yet, the answer doesn't entirely sate him.
"That's not the only thing for you, is it?" The room shifts to the blue and grey ballroom of the third night and he's now in that blue suit that complimented her dress far far too well.
"You said it was my mind, my rules."
"I said to a point, ersatz daughter. Ultimately, I am the master of these shifting sands and the course they take." Marik closes the gap between them. "Now, may I have this dance, Ms. Khouri?"
Even though the request is as soft and delicate as he can manage, Marik feels her still in what is distinctly panic. And sees her lips move but her words go unvoiced as the sand shifts madly around them- far too abrasive- whatever he said must have roused something deep within her psyche. A new room comes into his sight. The atrium.
He knows it's nowhere she would ever go of her own choice. Further cementing that assertion is the purple she's now draped in. While it still suits her, it ages her far too severely. Or more correctly, her experience shows far too well. Further still, she's started trembling, clearly choking her cloak pockets. She knows this memory far too intimately. The sand blows loosely through the far too large room and leaves two cloaked figures in their wake, closer to the two rising steps toward the interior of the room.
"You can't just-!" Arlomhe Sharti's voice barely avoids succumbing to her emotions completely. Marik watches any and all slack leave both Arlomhe Khouri beside him and her memory stand-in upon the sound of careful, perfectly punctuated paces- paces that would be his own, but there's something off about them. Harbingers of many a man's dread that stop the girl's objection before it even finishes.
"It would serve you well to learn, Arlomhe Sharti, that I am master of myself, and all within these walls." His words were soft, but with the combination of pinpointed precision and the acoustics of the room, it certainly didn't seem that way. "I control who succeeds." He circles once. "Who fails." She flinches and swallows a ball of air as his boot yields an uncharacteristic squeak. "I am the master of my rare good graces, and whether they are given or withheld." He circles a second time. "I am master of each and every choice made," He circles a third time, his posture still taut, a tautness that bleeds far too easily into his next words. "each and every will mine to sway, persuade and command as I see fit." The R.H. stops before the trembling girl and snatches her chin between his fingers, squeezing harshly to raise her gaze to his. "Learn your place and you'll suffer no repercussions."
The room with the missing eastern wall returns into view, . "Clearly," Again the tonal consideration is about as effective as a bull trying to tiptoe through a china shop, "It's a lesson that you cannot quite seem to take to heart, Ms. Khouri. Why show me that?" His brows rise despite his attempts to rein in the reaction.
"Because you'd understand." The admission is quiet and she still trembles. "Because underneath everything, there's no difference between you and he."
"An arrogant braggart merely after his own pleasure, whoever's in his way be damned?" His lips curl, recalling the assault on his family jewels that followed the first utterance of that statement.
The girl continues on, wisely neither confirming nor denying the statement. "Broken, running after something that may never be found, but desperate to sate this… longing. And yet remains unwilling, or unable, to reveal why."
"There's no shortage on those who stuff their own heart in a drawer, no one should desire to add to that unfortunate surplus of their own choice. Do what you must to keep your heart soft, but take care choosing where you dig your heels in." He watches the sand through the missing wall, avoiding Arlomhe's probing stare. "You can't save everyone, ersatz daughter. Especially when it's uninvited."
"You only prove my point."
"Baring your heart to another only leads to betrayal."
"Keeping it in a drawer only leads to an emotionally stunted, inhumane soul who masquerades as a human being. Not even you would want that."
"What makes that idea even reasonable? Knowing another's desires isn't your burden to bear."
"On the mere fact that you aren't intentionally trying to break me. And in an absolutely twisted way, you help another just by listening." Arlomhe pulls an object from her pocket, her fist curled loosely around it. "I have little choice but to use what I am dealt." She extends her fist and opens it. "You do the same."
He looks at the anatomically correct ceramic heart before him that rests within Arlomhe Khouri's open palm. "You can't save everyone, you mortal Nehmetawy." Only when he sees her brows furrow slightly at the inability to properly place the piece, does he add, "A goddess- an embracer of those in need, Nehmetawy." He carefully pronounces it the second time.
Arlomhe shakes her head in mild denial. "Ma'at." She utters the two syllables with a reverence- even deities long gone from the minds and hearts of humanity deserve that much. "Not Nehmetawy, but Ma'at." She states softly as she wills a silver balance into her unoccupied hand, a large feather already on its left side.
Marik turns to face the missing wall where the sand passes by, but only obscures his line of sight slightly. "I am much too far gone Ms. Khouri. You'll have to pick shards off the floor." He turns to face the balance.
Arlomhe's grip on the heart shifts suddenly- its surface now bearing the weight of her thumb with her fingers forming a false ribcage. "You have no right to assume the heart I hold in my hands is yours." She sets the balance on the table, and only places the ceramic heart on the right side after the scales level. Only when her fingers and thumb leave the heart to rest on the scale, only then does he see an impression wherein he has no doubt her thumbprint remains.
"What of the Forty Two Precepts could you possibly have broken, ersatz daughter?"
"I do not know them." A hazy visual of a book burning grazes his vision merely for a second.
Of course... He himself wouldn't freely explain the pantheon that had betrayed him. "And yet, you know about the Weighing of the Heart…."
"I peek at books before I gift them. Usually they don't promptly get destroyed." She goes taut. "I hope that one remains the exception." He watches her gaze upon the shifting scales as they refuse to settle, and starts to wring her hands.
He steps towards her and sets a hand on her left shoulder, and is somewhat startled at how immediately the girl stills. "This is as it should be, Ms. Khouri- you haven't passed from this existence yet, and hopefully you'll be granted decades more." He too now watches the balance's scales wrestle still, and after a second, he yields to his own struggle… he cannot leave her without incentive to learn what pulls her strongly to that ritual, that deity- the sense of justice which she so readily clings to with both blind faith and a deep knowledge that she will not understand on her own. He stills the scales with a hand lightly touching the balance's horizontal, weight-bearing beam. "You feel sorrow without reason, or rather… you take blame and grief which isn't yours to rightly bear." Two pure white lilies now rest on either side of the heart still present in the balance's right scale which decidedly slightly dips, but at last the balance finally slows and stills of its own accord, perfectly even. He blinks, and for not even a full second- there's another' heart, along with quite the petite burial jar in the right scale. When he blinks again- it's again the lily bloom flanked heart of Arlomhe Khouri. "You bear unneeded guilt over your mother."
He feels her mind pull him as images flash again before him, all far clearer than one of the burning book moments before. A portrait that was painted rather than taken, Arlomhe Khouri at the age of ten looking at five handwritten letters- two of which were open; their contents read- and still reread by another who wasn't her, and a grave that is graced with the largest lily bloom he has ever seen. He's pulled once more to the portrait, but not at Arlomhe Khouri's behest- the head on view and the feeling that he can't pinpoint invading his chest doesn't come from her.
It comes from her true progenitor. As does the girl's true name- still foreign to wrap around- that leaves his lips with a softness he would never of his own choice provide.
DH: Okay, a few acknowledgements are in order as well as a Y'all are not going crazy, there is a part that seems very uncomfortably similar to something you may have read elsewhere.
So the Nehmetawy owes both slight and major inspiration to a part in the third chapter of Ghost Wulf's fic Coming Home Pt. II. It's not Marik X OC, but it's fabulous (I wish I could write Marik as wonderfully cynical as she does) and you need to read it after its predecessor Coming Home Pt. I, YESTERDAY. Both fics are on my favorites page and I promise you won't be disappointed.
The "Master of each and every choice made" bit is a mostly direct lift of what I dub the Power Trip monologue from Chapter 30 of the Fic I coauthor In A Name Act I. (Prologue doesn't count towards chapter numbering) I tried not to mostly cause while AU Marik is slightly better at not being an arrogant jerk and comes across as more well-adjusted in some areas, when push comes to shove, there's not that much difference from NAIKH Marik, who does fall much closer to a canon presentation. It's a hard thing to properly balance, but when I overdo RH Mode, nothing should go to waste- that monologue basically IS RH Marik 101, and I wrote it. My only solace is that I didn't have to write it twice.
Please review and be safe and well.
