Tethered
by Cryptographic DeLurk
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AN: Written for rainstormcolors on tumblr for the prompt Isis & Water Lilies~
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At times, Isis couldn't decide if what she missed more were the people or the memories. That was the problem with destruction, Isis thought: It destroyed its own roots. They'd lost what Akhenaden knew, what the Thief King knew, what the Pharaoh knew. Set had started carving memories into his own back, and Isis didn't have the heart to tell him that flesh rotted quicker than stone.
She looked over the palace gardens. They had a menagerie of fine birds – peacocks and doves and ducks with bright plumage. They had cultivated bright white water lilies where a river tributary flowed through the palace estate. Was this what they had killed to protect? Isis wondered if they'd lost things they couldn't recall even the memory of.
Isis told the servants not to clip the birds' wings, so they could fly untethered. It wouldn't stop them from coming home to roost. The lilies had long roots that slanted and ran sideways through the water under the pads. They weren't really as unrooted as they seemed. Sometimes when the moon was full Isis would wade out into the water and feel herself tangled in their vines, and the ghost of Set's dragon would come to her. The dragon – she would stay for a while, sometimes even touch Isis. On the top of her head, or the side of her arm, or the back of her knee. But she always left.
Isis asked Set once, where the dragon had come from – what country she had hailed from, what had brought her here, if there was anything she had hoped to seek. He never had answers for Isis. The ghost didn't speak. The answers had died with the dragon.
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Eventually the lilies died too. But Isis kept them. They were lined across the slab of stone, behind glass in Domino's museum. They sprouted wherever Horus appeared, up the tops of stone columns, and under the sky. Their kingdom was gone, but Isis believed in the sacrosanct quality of the gallery halls. Memories. Roots.
She called Seto Kaiba to the museum. He had the dragon recorded in his deck of souls. She would give him Obelisk too.
They'd stop Malik. He was carrying too many memories to be left on his own to squander – memories of the Dark One and the Nameless Pharaoh and the Heir to the Throne of the Great Game. But Malik carried more than just the memories on his back. He carried the memories of their father, of Rishid, of the whispers and marbles they'd passed back and forth in the underground dark.
Isis wasn't ready to lose any more, even if the necklace told her she had to be.
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