Taphoshipping (Mr. Ishtar x Mrs. Ishtar)
. . .
He is not the man she married anymore.
He is not the child who found pretty rocks and presented them to her, calling her his princess. He is not the boy who whispered stories to her through the door at night, when everyone was supposed to be in their rooms. He is not the teenager who dragged her into the deepest parts of the tunnels to explore, to search out the hidden secrets of the pharaoh. He is not the man who wove threads into her hair absently while they discussed their days. He is not even the adult that listened attentively to the stories of her day, sharing his own thoughts with her.
This is not the man that would draw her close to him at night and whisper names for their future children. No longer the man who had such faith and joy in his duty to a distant pharaoh that he still believed to be kind and benevolent.
Where did it go? Where did that beautiful man with the kind smile go? When was he replaced with this monster in a man's skin, who would rant and scream and strike at children because they were not his, who would snap at the slightest provocation, who used the laws and decrees of the pharaoh and tools to further his own authority instead of interpreting with grace?
Perhaps she had missed the signs. Perhaps they had been there all along.
Like the way that he begged her to leave the ranks of the Listeners, would plead with her to no longer go to the surface to search for clues to the pharaoh's arrival, and when she refused, because she loved her days on the surface, the way he would go cold and angry and not speak to her for weeks.
The way he would ask her if she missed him during the weeks she spent topside, and there was a poison at the back of his throat that made her wonder what would have happened if she had said no. The cruel way he spoke of the "heathens" who walked the surface, because they had never learned of the saving grace of the pharaoh that had sacrificed himself so that their world could continue. How his smile would turn sarcastic when she spoke of some new wonder she had seen above the catacombs.
The obsession with an heir, with blood, his growing anger at anyone outside the tribe, the way he tried to curb the Listener's activities with the claim that they were ruining the bloodline by mixing with the topsiders. She had not blamed Shadi for separating the Listeners apart from the Tombkeepers once and for all.
She only wished, sometimes, that she had gone with him.
He does not smile at her now, now that she has finally given him the heir he craved. He does not even give her glance, so intent upon the creation of his blood, ignoring her as she gasps for breaths that will not come.
She reaches for him, one last time, but it is not him that takes her hand. He is already gone.
Her son, her beautiful son, her child despite their lack of blood, grips her hand in one hand, and the hand of his sister in the other.
She smiles at them.
"Take care of your brother," is all she can say.
She tries to caress Rishid's face one last time, wipe away the tears. For a moment, she sees him, staring down at her, worried, like he did when she was ten and she was sick and he spent all day at her side with a bowl of water and a cloth, trying to keep her fever down.
"I love you," she whispers, but she is not certain who she speaks too.
It is the end.
. . .
A/N: oops that was sad. :( Next is back to Tangleshipping (Ryouta x Ryuzaki x Esper Roba x Haga).
