A/N: This story may soon be up for adoption if I can't find the other bits, I'll continue it a-fresh if the reviews are good. Basically I was sorting through half-baked scenes on my laptop for my other fictions (which, at a free moment, will be updated when I have time to attempt syntax fixing the documents) The Core Project has been niggling for resurrection along with Saving Harry and I'll see if I can do anything with my Dr. Death fic this coming weekend. While I was having a rummage I uncovered this little gem, which I consider to be my polar (no pun intended) opposite to "Potter Frost" (which is on the update list just after Saving Harry).

I do not own YGO or HP. Slash, undecided pairings. Ignores DH and HBP Severe underage alcoholism and other nastiness - story may be a twoshot/threeshot OR possibly on-going but with a drabble-like style, depending on response

Chapter Three

He instantly regretted those words, the words that had flown out of his mouth so desperately in some vain attempt at lightening his own burden. Harry felt as though he had put himself knee-deep into his personal turmoil and was trying to get someone to pull him out, and risk pulling them in. It felt like it could have been anyone, but to Marik, it felt like he was the wrong person to be sitting so closely to the stranger. That maybe it should have been Odion, or Isis or even that Weasley, and that he'd wrenched open the floodgates to rather personal admissions. Then again - Marik had awkwardly encouraged it without really knowing what to do.

He was close enough to be able to peer deeply into Harry's expression, being able to read all of the emotions flashing through him as they changed with disturbing accuracy without use of the Millennium Rod.

It was strange that he felt concerned - or something close to it anyway.

Maybe it was because all he could see was the vision of Harry fitting on the bed if he left. After allowing himself to get close to him, he felt like the option of easily leaving as he had before was no longer available. When he did consider it - all he could think of was Odion's appalled voice from last time 'And you just left him there?'

So he just sat there. Eventually patting Harry on the back, comforting wasn't something he was particularly good at.

Marik also didn't know how to handle the admission of coming back to life. Bill had said something about him being the Boy-Who-Lived, but the personal admission of crawling back from death - being a man who did horrible things. War crimes? Was intense.

"I knew this guy once," said Harry, bringing Marik's attention back to him.

"Dean Thomas, he faught in the war too, except he couldn't handle it in the end. So he took some potions to forget. He forgot the war," said Harry softly.

Harry looked down shamefully.

"I thought of doing that too," he admitted.

"Dean forgot everything, he forgot the war, he forgot school, he forgot about the friends he watched die because he couldn't remember befriending them in the first place. He had no memories, just a massive gap of missing time - years. Except now the emptiness haunts him instead," said Harry mournfully, knowing Dean was in the same St Mungos ward as Neville's parents.

"Dean's not the same man anymore," said Harry quietly "-maybe that wasn't for the best,"

"Probably not," said Marik, taking it all in "-a mind is a very delicate thing, wiping it clean like that might have done more harm then good,"

"-at least he can sleep at night," said Harry with a shrug.

"What stops you?" asked Marik, trying to propel the conversation instead of sitting there awkwardly.

Harry paused, - nightmares - that much was obvious. Was the blond expecting him to elaborate on them? He already exposed what happened to him in the final battle, something not even his friends knew, wasn't this what he wanted? An impartial party that wasn't a healer, to listen to him, incase he sank into that personal abyss and didn't come back without anyone ever knowing who he truly was?

"Nightmares sometimes," said Harry "-it's when I'm most prone to fits, but they can just happen," he grimaced as he remembered his legendary fit in the middle of Diagon Alley.

"Ever caused you problems?" asked Marik, reading his expression.

"Yeah, once in public - grocery shopping. Didn't go out for a month after," he admitted.

That was awkward, Marik felt oddly embarrassed on his behalf and his cheeks heated. It was just a cringe-worthy thing to picture - not the moment itself but how he could have guessed people reacted to it. Staring, panic, curiosity and circling like vultures - yes, Marik could guess that was the response, he was well versed with how the minds of the public. An intimate sort of seizure in the streets can't have gone down well in any sort of manner.

Plus Harry had admitted to being absolutely mortified and his body seemed to respond by also being embarrassed on his behalf, even if Harry himself was over it.

"Embarrassing," muttered Marik "-I think I would have gone into hibernation,"

Harry laughed awkwardly - there was no way to really respond to this.

"Look," said Harry after a moment "-I'm sorry for all this, and yesterday, and imposing. But you know, other people are always making these decisions for me. I didn't deliberately choose to impose on your family," he said honestly.

"They couldn't put me back with my non-magical relatives, but they didn't want me in the first place. I was a doorstop baby - left there with a note and a blanket. No other living relations and the head honcho of all thing's magical - " Dumbledore "-had pushed them to make them take me in,"

"I lived at boarding school after, I never really needed a home. I've never really...had one," he pondered aloud.

"-Bill, bless him, he thought I needed one of those 'interventions' because of the.. fits..." he said offishly "- and since there's no treatment for wizards with this kind of thing, not just me - loads of people that faught in the war, had to go back home with their injuries, scars and problems," his eyes almost seemed to glaze over, as if staring pensively into the Mirror of Erised again.

"-The difference is, they got to go home with their problems - to their families, what little was left of them anyway. So Bill brought me here. I feel worse for the younger war orphans. I'm considered too old to be thrown in state care, but they aren't.. " Harry realized he was going off on a tangent and looked to the Egyptian who was surprisingly paying rapt attention.

"What about Bill? Couldn't you have stayed with him?" asked Marik curiously.

Harry reclined into the headboard and let out a very tired noise that made him seem far older then he really was.

"The thing about the Weasley family," he shut his eyes briefly "-is that I fucked them up irreparably and only Bill doesn't blame me,"

Silence.

"They used to be such a big, happy family and sort of regarded me as an extra child when they had to," he said "-I was best friends with Bill's youngest brother Ron, for years at school. We faught in the end battle, except his family fell when they tried protecting me. His mother, his father, one of the twins," he winced.

"I even dated his only and the youngest - sister," he said bitterly "-lets just say the enemy took her and sent her back."

He paused.

"Piece by piece,"

Marik's eyes widened, he didn't know how he should be feeling towards the guest in their home now, but he wasn't finished.

"I put them in danger," he said softly "-Ron won't even look at me. I was...disinvited to the funerary proceedings - not that I blame them,"

"But don't worry," he looked directly at Marik with such a frank and honest, empty sort of look that it unsettled him.

"I'm still paying for it," his voice lowered "-you know when I told you how I...came back?" to life? Yes, it was still constantly being mulled over and absorbed by the bombarded Ishtar. Marik nonetheless nodded silently and leaned in to hear what Harry had to say, it felt like an oddly even more personal admission.

"It's not the last time I died, or the first. But this time, I'm paying the price for everyone that fell," his eyes squeezed shut. "I keep...dying," he admitted softly.

"-And coming back, and dying, and coming back. It's hurts a different way every time, but I always - always come crawling back out again. I think Death might have made it into something of a game. He calls me 'Unconquerable', it's not as nice as it sounds. It just means they find more ways to try to keep me in the dead...place.." "-The craziest part is, I don't know how I come back, but I do,"

He looked to Marik.

"But since I've come here, he hasn't taken me back. Death just sort of lingers here, on the bed," he tilted his head to the side "-where you're sat funnily enough,"

Now Marik wanted to believe Harry was entirely insane, but PTSD aside he'd never heard someone sound so honest, blunt and truthful - so the sentence had made him scared stiff. To be reminded of his mortality so crudely was uncomfortable - and for a wizard to make Death sound like a being that could walk among the mortals he stole was entirely unsettling.

"Either that or I've finally finished up repaying for my war crimes," said Harry wryly "-or maybe I've gone insane,"

"Insane people are never aware they're insane," said Marik with an unsteady smile.

War crimes? Surely not.

He looked at Harry and reassessed him, his personal opinion had changed a lot in the span of a few days. First was annoying leech, then pathetic off-the-rails young drunkard and now? Now he didn't know what he thought of him anymore. Whilst all the words of mingling with Death sounded true to their core, Harry did not resemble a strong man - the kind that would crawl up from death - fighting tooth and nail again and again. He looked too fragile for that - too haunted. Harry's eyes - while beautiful in their rare shade of green were like sunken depths of sadness that he couldn't get rid of. Unfocused and miserable.

He could have been handsome at one time.

Isn't he still? well... yes, Marik's mind agreed reluctantly - but far more withered and weather-beaten in appearance. Lacking the pink in his cheeks - just a sad forgotten youth. Lucky to have gotten away from war with only a broken heart instead of broken limbs.

He wondered momentarily - if Harry should know something personal about him? Sure, his secrets weren't ones that surpassed mortality, but a quid pro quo felt like it was in order. If only to fill the gap of silence. If only to make Harry feel a bit less insane.

Marik's gaze broke from Harry's and wondered up to the ceiling where a low bar hung from a rather strange piping network in the guest room.

"I never really liked this room," he said, and he didn't have to look back at Harry to feel the inquisitive look.

Silence.

"And why is that?" asked Harry patiently, when Marik didn't extend on his flat statement.

Another pause.

"I hung my original self off the bar," he said.

Harry was stupified by the statement - why? What did he mean? Surely not...

"Well, I tried," he brought his stare back to Harry now and the air felt intimate once more, like a locked private moment.

"I sort of used to have a split personality," he admitted "-from being so angry and bitter and... well... alone, I think,"

"It used to take me over a lot, like it had a mind of it's own - and it did, enough to want to erase me completely and replace me with itself. Am I making sense?" asked Marik as Harry slowly tried to take it in.

"I... think so?"

So he continued.

"Odion was good at helping me keep it back - and it's worked for the most part," and there was an unspoken "but," hanging in the air.

So Harry pressed him to continue.

"But I'm scared of getting...so angry it could come back," he said quietly, as if the world could hear him say it.

"-what did you mean you tried 'hanging your original self'?" asked Harry - not missing a beat.

"Well..that part of me felt like it was me... and I didn't want that. The last time it happened I tried regaining control and wanted to get rid of it forever - so I tried hanging myself while it was taking over me." he said flatly.

Harry didn't want to imagine the reaction of the loved one who must have found him in that way - it would have devastated him.

"So who...?"

"Odion, and I made him swear not to tell my sister," said Marik "-it's why he's so protective of me,"

"I guess we're both kind of messed up,"

"I guess we are,"

It was strange to see his little brother so close to the stranger, and Odion might have been a little jealous -if he wasn't so sure that the two were above platonic. The whole week they'd been hanging out, and at night - they'd be chatting in the other's room until late and one of them would leave. He was glad that Marik had a teenage friend that he could get close too, but he was sure there was tension between them that wasn't quite playful or brotherly. Was it too soon to tell? Besides, being Odion - naturally he wouldn't voice these thoughts.

So Isis did.

"Do you think something's going on between our brother and Harry?" she said bluntly one morning. When Odion had tea in his hands. Which he promptly spilled.

What would Marik want him to say? Probably vehemently deny it.

"No! No, I think you're misreading," said Odion calmly, Isis raised a brow.

"There's potential," Odion conceded.

"Thoughts?" probed his sister.

Odion was quiet for a moment and Isis could practically see the cogs turning in his head as he mulled it over.

"If Marik wants this, then it's fine with me. But if it goes wrong, someone's getting in trouble," he said, cleaning up the spilled tea.

"You have no issue with the fact they both have...problems?" put Isis delicately.

Odion shrugged.

"More power to them, this is what family is for, right? If Marik's issues are getting in the way of his happiness, it's our duty to be there to help, but he has to make his own choices," said Odion wisely.

Isis seemed pleased with the answer but then her expression shifted.

"What about Harry?"

"He doesn't have a family to help him out, so he'll have to make do with us," Odion smiled wanly.

Isis beamed, she was always proud of her eldest brother, always one of the more compassionate member of the family even if he didn't show it in hugs and overtly.

"His PTSD is a problem though, I wish there was something we could do, have you seen the poor boy's awful fits? " sighed Isis

"I know sister, I know," he said grimly.