Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.
Small note: Back in the days of the slum tenements, you
would have a lot of people crammed into one small room. Parents slept in the
same place as their kids, and thus the kids got sex-education very early. And
since all the drawings of the Ishtar's underground home have doorways but no
doors, I wondered how Isis and Rishid would have been effected.
But that's another story, really.
`
Isis faced the door of the room with an almost unearthly detachment. Beyond, the hallways echoed with the sound of the other Malik gleefully demolishing the Battleship. The sound was a decent length away at the moment, but once it got a little closer--and it would get closer--she would move Rishid to a new room. Again.
Isis's muscles were beginning to ache from the strain of carrying the well-built man through the corridors of Seto's ship, and she was running out of places that would fit the two of them, and it seemed as if the noise of the other Malik only grew louder and louder with each move. But there was no trace of weariness or fear upon her face. The time she'd spent wearing the Sennen Necklace had taught her to face the inevitable with a straight back and a cold heart.
Isis and her adopted brother were currently taking refuge in the smaller computer room near the center of the Battleship. It was dark, though there was a soft glow and hum from the monitors--as soon as she'd entered she'd turned off the lights before setting Rishid in the single chair. She'd worried for a moment that sitting might cause the blood to rush from his brain, leaving him unconscious for an even longer period of time, but then Isis decided that they were not likely to remain in here long enough for it to matter. Once she'd managed to position the man in a way that wouldn't cause him to slide out of the chair, she took a seat on the small counter beside the monitors. She set the gun that she had taken from one of the dead guards beside her.
She was not entirely sure why she had taken it. It was just another thing to juggle, and Rishid was awkward enough to carry through the halls. It didn't help that she had never used one, though the basic premise seemed simple enough. Point and click. Hopefully hit.
That still didn't change the fact that the gun was essentially useless. Isis could never bring herself to shoot her brother. Malik was still alive, somewhere, and so she could not harm his body, no matter how unlikely it was that he could be returned. And she could not shoot Rishid, because Malik had asked her to protect him. And she would not shoot herself, because that would be taking the easy way out. But she held on to it nonetheless, as a small token of comfort if a worthless one.
Isis had the feeling that if she fired the gun at all, it would be at one of the remaining guards if she spotting them trying to kill her brother's body.
She also doubted that that would be necessary--with the power of the Sennen Rod, the other Malik could easily trap and hold anyone who seemed even a meager threat to him.
In fact, she wondered what was keeping him from simply using the Rod to take over her mind and prevent the two of them from running anymore. It might have been a trace of respect for her--some faint, faint shred of Malik that lived within his darker personality--but Isis placed no hope in that guess. It seemed more likely that this was just a game, a waiting game, to see what would happen first: the other Malik growing bored of playing and striking them down, or Isis's nerves fraying and resulting in her giving away their position or just staying still as he approached.
The other Malik did not seem to know her as well as her brother had. She would no more be talked into surrender than Malik could have been talked out of his quest to kill the Pharaoh's vessel. Tenacity was an Ishtar trait.
There was another explosion, this time in a new direction, the sound of plastic and glass tubes shattering echoing through the corridors.
The other Malik had destroyed yet another light. Isis touched the smooth barrel of the gun with the tips of her fingers.
He had been doing that for the past few hours: slowly dismantling one light after another in the midst of his other carnage, slowly closing off the passages that she could take to hide--as long as there were still lit passages, Isis was not going to take a darkened one and put Rishid and herself at risk--slowly herding them toward the middle of the ship. It was yet another aspect of this hopeless game she was playing.
Briefly, Isis wondered if the other Malik had taken control of her mind, just enough to have her carry around the gun, and if one of the times when she was moving Rishid from one hiding place to another he would appear out of nowhere, melting out of those shadows that seemed to have soaked into his skin and made him darker than her brother or Rishid or herself. She could see it as clear as if it were a vision--the splatter of blood on the blade of the Sennen Rod, more pooling on the mesh steel as Rishid sank heavily to the floor, never awakening from the final nightmare than Ra's lightning had trapped him in . . . herself, unable to move as her hand lifted the gun and placed it to her temple, staring at the smirk upon the face of the other Malik as her finger began to pull the trigger . . . and behind him, her brother, eyes wide and horrified, wrenched back by his darkness in order to watch the death of everyone he'd cared about. . . .
Isis shook her head sharply, dispelling the image before the sharp crack of the gun could cause her to scream in reflex. Out, she ordered. She was able to make her words firm, but she could not prevent her hands from trembling. Isis pulled her hand away from the gun and folded them in her lap.
There might have been a snicker, quiet, nearly inaudible, drifting across her mind. Or it might have been the sound of the computers.
Isis closed her eyes for a moment and composed herself, slowing her breathing. Once she had calmed her heart down, she opened her eyes again and gazed at Rishid. He sagged limply in the chair, and the glow of the monitors discolored his skin and made him look too pale.
Would you still have followed him, if you had known that this would be the end of things? she asked silently.
She already knew the answer. After all, she had followed, in her own way, and she had known how bleak and hopeless the end would have been. How bleak and hopeless the end would perhaps still be.
It was possible that she had been wrong, that the only difference between this new future and the one she had foreseen was that they would all die a bit differently. She wanted to believe that there was hope, that the Pharaoh's quest for his memories would be enough to cause him to prevail . . . but hope was a difficult concept when she was trapped with a monster roaming the halls, one brother disembodied, another unconscious and marked for death, and every other person on the ship--save the ones that had already been wounded--apparently fallen off the face of the earth.
Hope was a difficult concept when the gods seemed to have stacked everything they possibly could against her favor.
But, faced with such a situation, particularly this situation, Isis reacted against her instinctual attitude. She tried to outrun it. Because as long as the Pharaoh lived, wherever he happened to currently be, there was still hope.
She heard a sizzle of electronics, faint but audible through the thick door of the computer room. Isis unfolded her hands and braced them on the table, leaning forward slightly in an attempt to judge just how far away the noise had been and whether it was time to start moving again.
There was silence for almost a full thirty seconds, and Isis began to stand; but then there was another shattering of glass and plastic--another light broken--further away than the first had been. She sighed and sat back, deciding that they could remain here for a little longer. It was as unsafe as anywhere else. And as the paths in the Battleship steadily dwindled, moving too often was not wise.
Isis glanced down at the floor for a moment, before gazing over at Rishid again. Such trouble, carrying him through the ship . . . she would have a better chance of surviving if she left him. . . .
Out, Isis repeated.
This time, the snicker had an irritated tone beneath the surface, and Isis shivered before she could catch herself. Her fingers instinctively curled near her throat, at the place where the Sennen Necklace would have lain if she still wore it. Then she forced her hand back to her lap.
She glanced at the door once more, before facing Rishid again. The monitors' glow cast strange shadows along the tattoo-scars of his face.
Isis's eyes finally softened slightly, a hint of sadness creeping into them as she studied the marks. It hurt to see Rishid slumped here, half-dead and too pale, as a result of the devotion he'd felt for her little brother. That kindred fidelity had led them both to this room, living only in seconds, but at least her path had not been as rough as his.
The irony of the situation, she thought to herself, was that the cause of all this was the person neither Rishid nor Isis had wanted until he was born and they wound up loving him almost before they realized it.
Her hand curved once again absently over the place of the missing Necklace as she reflected. Though her childhood memories were hazy, filled with shadows and torchlight, Isis could recall from her earliest ones that she had not originally wanted a second brother.
~~
The room was dark as pitch, the kind of dark that could only come from being deep underground, because Mr. Ishtar had no intention of wasting precious lamp oil on a worthless servant. But Rishid had good night vision, born out of necessity if not originally carried in his un-Ishtar blood, so it almost made up for the complete lack of light.
Still, when a hand tugged at his thin blanket, he had to blink several times and wait a few seconds past sitting up before he was able to make out who else was in the room. It didn't help that he was staring upwards, expecting to see Lord or possibly Lady Ishtar, and thus completely missed Isis's small form until she spoke.
"Rishid?"
He blinked and glanced down. "Oh, Lady Isis! What is wrong?"
"Daddy and Mommy fighting again," Isis replied as clearly as a sleepy four-year-old could.
Rishid looked over at the doorway into his room, and the hallway beyond it. The living complex of the Gravekeeper Clan had many doorways, but the only door was on the opening to the outside world--so the noise in any of the rooms could echo through the complex's corridors and be heard a number of the others, depending on the placement and acoustics. Rishid's room was set far apart from the rest, but through the echoes he could faintly make out a few smothered whimpers and the immistakable growls of Lord Ishtar. Rishid wondered why they only seemed to fight like this at night as he pulled the blanket off and scooted up against the wall.
Isis climbed onto the bed and curled up, and Rishid placed the blanket around her. He tucked some of the extra fabric under her head to give her something resembling a pillow, so she could sleep easier.
Isis was quiet for a few minutes, and Rishid lay back on the stone bed and tried to see the ceiling of his room through the darkness. Then she spoke another time.
"You're old now, right?"
He blinked again, a little surprised that she would remember. "Yes. I turned nine some time in last month."
Isis sighed. "Daddy's always grumbling about a son. A lot now." She curled a little further into the blanket. "I wish you were ten right now. Then you would be my brother and Daddy won't fight with Mommy so much."
Rishid was quiet for a very long time, but there was a little smile on his face. "That would be nice," he said softly.
When he felt himself beginning to drift off, Rishid started pinching his arms so that he would remain awake. A while later, once he was certain Isis had fallen asleep, he carefully untucked the blanket and carried her back to her room so that neither of them would be yelled at the next morning.
A month later Lady Ishtar discovered that she was pregnant.
~~
A new explosion of plastic and glass ripped Isis out of her memory and caused her to stare at the door, wide-eyed, one hand instinctively coming up to shield her heart.
The hall light had been broken right outside.
Isis bit her lip to keep her breathing quiet and held herself as still as stone. She glanced at Rishid, still slumped unconscious in the chair, and a breath later her hand drifted down to touch the smooth plastic of the gun's handle.
Isis curled her hand into a fist. Then, making sure that no sound came from the soles of her shoes as they came into contact with the floor, she stood and faced the door.
There were no standard clocks in the computer room, nor even any digital ones, so the seconds dragged by with nothing to announce them. She waited.
The room was silent, save for the drone of the computers and the shallow breathing of herself and Rishid.
The corridor outside was silent, save for the occasional crackle of the broken light.
Isis was beginning to think how a person could be driven insane by anticipation alone, when there was the muffled sound of something heavy and metallic being torn apart, far away.
She held herself still for three more long seconds, before leaning heavily against the counter as the nerves that had been holding her up disappeared and left her muscles relaxed and limp. She took a deep breath quietly.
Then she straightened and moved over to Rishid, lifting him awkwardly out of the chair. The smooth leather of his coat slid beneath her hands, and Isis realized that her palms had been sweating.
Once she'd managed to get a firm enough grip on the man that she believed she could carry him for a ways through the Battleship, she made her way to the door, leaning heavily to one side to counterbalance the weight. There was no time to waste--if the corridor outside was unlit, then she had to move quickly before the other Malik could make his way back.
. . .But how much time had passed since she'd heard the noise? He could have made his way back by now, could he not? And the moment she opened it. . . .
Isis gazed at the door a second longer. Then she set her shoulders as much as she could while still holding Rishid, and tilted her chin up. Shifting the man once more, Isis placed her hand just above the panel that would open the door and closed her eyes, to prevent any momentary blindness as she walked into the hallway from this dim-lit room.
I was born and raised in the darkness. I do not fear it, she said to herself and anyone else who might be listening. I do not fear this darkness. And I will not fear your darkness, either.
She placed her hand on the panel.
As always, the electronic clank of the door sounded unearthily loud in the silence of the corridors. Isis stepped out and waited as the door shut behind her. She opened her eyes.
The hall was empty.
The game was still going.
There was still hope.
There was no time to be relieved. Isis turned to the right, kept to the wall, and began looking for a new place to hide.