Goldshipping (Atem/Marik Ishtar)
. . .
Stone is cold. It has no heartbeat, no pulse, no breath. It saps the heat from hands pressed against it—it can't make it's own heat. It can only steal it away from the living.
Marik hates stone.
He hates the way it stares at him. The way that eyes of the images painted and carved into it seem to follow him through the corridors when he passes under their gaze. The way that when he lets his fingers brush against it absently, bumping over the cracks, he feels it pulling the heat away from his fingers. Stealing his warmth. What little light he has left in this unending darkness. He can feel it trying to steal the life away from him—the cold, distant figures of long dead kings grasping, reaching for the flame of his heart, trying to take it away for themselves.
He spends as little time as possible in those corridors. He pulls his head down so that his hair will cover his eyes, so that he can pretend he doesn't see them. Pretend that he doesn't feel their cold stone fingers brushing for him, just at the edges of his peripherals.
He can't avoid them the night before his initiation.
The ritual demands that he stand in vigil the night before—alone, in the dark, with nothing more than a single, dying torch. Just him...
And the one in the stone.
He trembles, feet cold and bare against the stone beneath him, and he imagines the gold robed figure in relief before him sneaking under his shadow, pulling life out of him through his feet. Sapping him away.
You can't leave, it seems to whisper. You belong to my darkness.
Marik wonders—if he stays here, will he sink into the stone itself? Will he become a part of the walls, will his soul be eaten away by the image of the pharaoh that he is meant to be sworn to protect?
Marik hates stone.
He hates what the stone immortalizes—the cold, distant pharaoh that he will never know, the pharaoh that is stealing his life, his light, his warmth, condemning him to the darkness under the stone.
He stares up at the shape, the image of the long dead pharaoh that looms over him
No, he whispers then. You can't have me.
I won't die in stone with you.
. . .
A/N: Atem didn't actually show up, but I thought it would be more interesting to explore Marik's relationship with the idea of Atem. Next is Glittershipping (Kisara x Anzu).
