Hurray, it's Isis's side of H-cubed! I've always loved how confused Isis is at the end of that scene... I'm not sure I did it justice... oh well.
It's review-talk time! Thank you to everyone who reviewed!
cherry-star-aus: I'm glad you like it--here's a continuation!
Chibi Cheesecake: They do have great chemistry,
don't they? I love watching them interact! ...Isis's first
appearance was actually the first episode that I watched and said,
"Wow, I like this show." (I had watched a few others, but they hadn't
sufficiently caught my interest.) I guess I was set up to be a
Trustshipper from the beginning XD;...
STUPIDHUMANZZ: Yeah, I actually used to hate the couple, a
reeeeally long time ago :) And--mwahahahaha! I am glad I
have begun to convert you! or... something... xD;;
Jean-Luc Lover: That's exactly it--he respected her much more than he expected to, and it completely threw him off :)
zucool: I'm glad you liked it :)
GRR! There are no good smileys you can make without the little up arrow thing above the 6...
Sorry about the title for the whole fic... I was getting desperate to think of one...
She Was Confused
She was… confused. Very confused.
She'd thought she understood his way of thinking, even though it was so infinitely different from her own—but no.
It seemed that she hadn't understood him at all.
The conversation had not… gone as planned. Somewhere along the line, she'd lost control of the situation, and then… What had really happened then?
Where had all her certainty vanished to, her hard-earned ability to hypothesize his every thought? Of course, some of it was gone with the Necklace, but she'd thought she had retained a little.
No, she knew she had. Hadn't she initially been right about how the conversation would go? She had expected his coldness, had known he'd brush past her, acknowledging her existence as little as possible. And that was why she had planned what to say, why she had created a net made of words from his ancient past:
Peret keltu—a prayer to the dead. The prayer from his ancient self to Yuugi's, the one that predicted their present struggles, the one that expressed a desire to duel both as rivals and as friends.
She had tried, over and over, to get him to see that he and Yuugi were fated to be friends. That his hatred for Yuugi was… superficial, caused by this time period only.
But he hadn't cared. Maybe, knowing all that she knew, she should have figured out that he wouldn't. She should have realized that his hatred of Yuugi went far beyond the competition they shared in the past—that it had less to do with fate and more with simply the way he was.
Because really, she understood that too. As much as his apathy about Yuugi frustrated her, disappointed her—she understood that about him. Really, she'd been able to lay out almost all of their conversation in her head, and when she was honest with herself, she'd known from the beginning that her words couldn't shatter the "sacred" wall he'd built between himself and the outside world.
Maybe she'd even believed that it was hopeless all along.
But… had it been hopeless? Certainly, his assistance to Yuugi had not been won by any of her words, not by her firm insistences of fate or by her soft, almost pleading reminder that Yuugi would lose without his help.
His assistance had been inspired by… something else. But she was bewildered as to what that could have been.
All she knew was that suddenly, just after taunting her helplessness, he had stopped and stared at her, his gaze growing more intense and disbelieving by the second. He had looked shocked, almost… frightened.
She had been frightened too, by the way he'd looked at her. For once, she hadn't been able to distinguish what could possibly be hidden behind his frozen gaze. But he had stared so intensely…
And then he had simply stormed past her, in the direction of the duel stage, offering no explanation but that he was "interested" to see Yuugi duel with only a twenty percent chance of victory.
She'd tried to find the real reason, the motivation behind his sudden change of heart, in his eyes—but he avoided her gaze, even when she desperately cried after him.
She had stayed, frozen, staring blankly for a few moments. Nothing was connecting in her mind—nothing made sense.
She'd thought she could predict him. She'd thought she understood him—but she hadn't.
And now she was confused.