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).

Semi-important note: a lot of Marik's feelings are based around what he did as Yami Marik - which I'm using the manga-Yu Gi Oh version of - because he's far more heinous of a figure then as he was painted in the anime.

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 Four

Friendship was strange - after so long. He also didn't really believe in it's genuineness, years of it could be thrown away with such ease that it almost left a bitter taste in his mouth. Harry was also unawares as to how much he actually believed in the honesty in which it was extended to him from the youngest Ishtar. Was it obligatory - after he unloaded so much onto him and vice-versa that none of them could forget the fact that the gap between them was bridging due to it? Was Harry just too paranoid to allow a good thing to happen? Were they supposed to put that night behind them and move on like a one night stand? A moment of weakness? Were the Ishtars even supposed to get close to him - what did Bill want this all to achieve? Anything?

But there was no option to forget, nothing that would allow either Marik or Harry to leave the other alone. For Marik it was the tantalization of someone who toyed with Death so much that they surpassed it as a mortal coil. And that that person's vulnerability and pain was still there and not only that, but it reached Marik on a personal level that nothing else had. He'd been in the minds of men and women before, and warped them to his own needs, he'd seen many shades of life and the depth of their suffering. He'd never cared. One of his mind-slaves in the past had been battling depression for years, he had no qualms with pulling up his suicidal thoughts and making him end his own life when the slave had failed him. He had broken men just because he could. He was not above torture or killing.

Yet, Harry's plight had made him feel things, made him draw lines in the sand and reassess his moral compass after making him realize that he even had one.

Why did it raise all of these guilty, piteous, sad feelings in him to see Harry suffer when he had his fits?

Because Harry had arrived to the Ishtar family already broken.

This time, Marik could not pull away from it and never try to think about them again - because he was always there. In the home, in the guest room and at the dinner table. Harry's prolonged presence was forcing empathy, he had to see the direct result of evil - the evil that was assumed far worse then his own.

In some twisted way, it felt like him trying to make some sort of effort with Potter was trying to make up for the people he'd hurt and the heinous things he'd done to try to meet his previous goals that consisted of revenge and making others suffer for it.

He started with his own family, repairing the damage he'd done when his decision to leave the Tomb Keeping business and pursue the Pharaoh had caused a divide. When as his Yami, he had threatened his sister and made her cry, held a weapon to her - the Millennium Rod - and looking back, he never forgave himself for doing it. He wasn't sure how Isis did.

Marik also knew he'd thrown his brother - Odion into danger, who supported him even through his terrible decisions and always did his best to steer him right, but it was his own fault for never listening. He had to show he appreciated his older brother, so he tried - but none of these things even scratched the surface when it came to redeeming himself for the depths he sank to with the others.

"When I heard we were finally taking you in, I was uncomfortable with it, so I fronted for a while," said Marik, and then he explained why - as Harry began to pour them drinks. How much alcohol did this guy keep in that trunk of his? He made a mental note to readdress it with him later.

"I thought you just didn't like me putting on you and making me share your family all of a sudden," said Harry, necking down a very harsh drink. Marik didn't know what it was, but it burned his throat so he stopped after one sip.

"That too," said Marik, sitting up on the bed, watching Harry neck down the whiskey like it was water.

"But when I heard we were taking in - well - ," he stopped awkwardly. Harry rolled his eyes.

"It's okay, you can say it,"

"Well, when I heard we were taking in a PTSD kid, and we got the summary about it from Weasley, I was really, really uncomfortable with it," said Marik "-because you're the kind of guy I like to forget exists,"

"-and you tried that for a while," chirped up Harry.

"Yeah," said Marik after a moment "-didn't work though, you're hard to ignore," - and Odion sort of called attention to it when he surprised him by how appalled he was when Marik told him that he'd left Harry there after one of his fits.

"Anyways, why'd you try to ignore me? Do you just go around hating people with PTSD or something?" snorted Harry, putting the bottle down.

"-'cause you're the wreckage of a war, bad people," he articulated poorly "-and I was a pretty bad person," .

"I don't like seeing what reminds me about the result of my actions before," admitted Marik, and then he told Harry about the horrible things he did as 'Yami Marik'. Irredeemable things, severely injuring his followers like they were lab-rats, killing for fun, pleasure.

All the horrible things he did - as he said them, ran through Harry's head. It felt like he was talking to Draco Malfoy about all the things his father did - but accepting them as his own actions. Marik spoke about how he never forgave himself for hurting his family, how he lacked empathy - how his body responded to sadism and and occasionally rung masochistic. He was getting a bit scared by Harry's quietness.

"That's why you tried to hang your original self," said Harry - understanding dawning.

"None of it fixes what I did," said the Egyptian grimly.

"Seeking redemption is one of the most amazing things a person can do," said Harry "-I want to believe every person who wants it, is capable of it, and if they can't pay back the crimes in life, they do it in death," shrugged the boy. "That's one of the afterlife's secrets. You can choose to obliterate yourself or walk through a sea of all of the things you have to answer for, it's just worse if you don't do it in life,"

Marik was intrigued and surprisingly not scared by this, in fact, it relaxed him and comforted him in some strange way that he would repay for the heinous things he'd done in the past. Apologizing had never felt like enough - he'd ruined too many people to count.

"I can't tell you anymore then that, it's hard to explain and the rest are...secrets only the dead should know," he whispered - as if Death was keeping an ear out.

Strangely, on some primal level, Marik understood - and didn't press the subject.

"Besides, I don't think there's an ounce of that evilness in you anymore," said Harry softly "-the fact you're so scared of it coming back - and the hanging, tells me that,"

"The darkness, the...Yami always said he was the 'true' me, " the thought made Marik a bit ill.

Harry blinked owlishly.

"Your disorder - or uh, darkness, isn't unique to you. There's people - good people, who fall prey to these mental strains. There's no such thing as a saintly person either, you should know that it was probably a manifestation of everything dark that every person has the capacity to become," every human had the capacity to become a monster - Harry truly believed this.

"You're not 'especially mentally sick' or anything, people may say you are but you really aren't. You were just pushed past the limit of most people - and I don't know why, but it allowed you to cross the line that a lot of them try not to. I've seen it happen to other men," said Harry bitterly.

"It's not the true you," he said resolutely.

"You haven't even known me that long," pointed out Marik, wanting to desperately believe what he was declaring.

"The true you tried to hang all of the 'darkness', the true you is racked with guilt every day about all the fallout your darkness caused - 'the true you' is currently sat on this bed - feeling empathy and wanting redemption more then anything in the world right now, and lives in fear of ever turning that dark again," said Harry flatly.

A brief period of silence as Marik let the statement wash over him.

"I enjoyed their pain, to kill, I - their suffering, lives meant nothing except my own, I've ruined lives," said Marik darkly.

"I liked my own pain too - and that was weird, I mean, physically," he said.

Harry looked at him pensively and a slow dash of red began to reach over his cheeks as he saw the cogs visibly turning in his mind through the greens of his eyes.

"One way or another, compensation is dealt. The universe has a way of balancing itself out like that -trust me," spat Harry bitterly, pushing the thought aside momentarily. But his hands felt shot of feeling for a minute, and in his suddenly blurry vision he could see the doubles of them shake. His vision whited totally as he looked around wildly and felt raw fear. Harry couldn't see the room anymore, that much was obvious.

He screamed, but it sounded like a loud thought, nonetheless, he felt something holding him still from shaking. All he could see was Luna's body on the grounds of Hogwarts, blood in her mouth, skin in her fair hair and lacerated moon-white skin. Neville's was beside her, in a position of protection - pointless as it was. Both bodies were mute and dead - forever frozen in their love midst the battle until the bodybags came.

"What do I do?" he heard a voice make the scene crack, like a vicious stab of reality.

A primal part of Harry knew he wasn't reliving the scene, but now the war was over - no part of him ever wanted to go back. The Wizarding World did not feel safe to him anymore.

Marik felt raw guilt eat him as he began to talk to Harry as soothingly as he could, pretending he was waking him up from a bad dream. He'd triggered this. All of those confessions had led to Harry having a flash.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed until the wizard had come to his senses, and was griping a wand for dull comfort that seemed to be warming the both of them. Marik didn't even know that wizarding magic had the capability to be so subtle and gentle. It was nice, and Harry's breathing had become steady and his vision was refocusing. Marik could honestly say he'd never been so scared on someone else's behalf before - and also scared for his safety. That maybe Harry wouldn't come out of his fit and he'd have to call Odion and Isis and eventually confess to triggering it.

"Sorry," apologized Marik.

Harry looked at him baffled.

"For what?"

"I triggered your um...," he trailed off, to which Harry just rolled his eyes - as if it were not the case.

"Believe me, they just happen, triggers have to do with very little of it," he said, though in honesty it might have been what Marik professed to doing and feeling - he really did not want to make the Ishtar feel any worse then he did.

"Back to what you were saying before," as Harry said this in a roundabout way to pick up where they left off, he glanced about. First down, then around the room and to his left - which was Marik's clothed chest. It suddenly clicked - and rather late at that - in the period of his little episode he'd been pulled onto Marik's lap. So it was his arms that had been squeezing him and pulling him out of the flash. And whilst he was entirely grateful for this, he could not help but feel awkward - and moving off of him would call attention to it.

"The pain part-"

Something told Marik's intuition to lay that one to rest. That, and Harry's alcohol-tipped mood - however sober he seemed meant that he didn't know how far or crudely he'd push the envelope.

"Ah lets just drop that one," said Marik -oddly insistently. It was curious considering the reaction - maybe Marik sensed the direction it was going in and thought it best to just avoid that conversation. He felt considerably vented out and wasn't nearly close enough - or at ease enough to go down the lines of wherever his pain enjoyments came from because he was ninety percent sure the teenager would make it Freudian. It probably was. But Marik wasn't even close to ready to having that talk.

"Alright," said Harry with a shrug, "-you don't suppose I could get off your lap now?" he had to bring it up, because it was rather uncomfortable now.

"You could have done that ten minutes ago," snorted Marik - trying to break the tension.

"Ten minutes ago your lap was relatively comfortable," retorted Harry.

"Your bony ass is boring a hole through my kneecap anyway," said Marik flatly.

"Oi! My arse is not bony!"

Just like that, the hot tension had dispersed.

Marik learned something interesting about alcoholics. They don't necessarily have to be falling about like Harry had been - the day he'd gone out and gotten plastered. No, sometimes - they could be subtly drunk. It was something he began to notice, the light tinge on his breath or slight pupil dilation. Loads of little things - of course, due to him watching Harry around the clock and all of the nightly chattering sessions, he'd been doing it less. It was a coping method, but not a good one.

That's when Marik noticed that Harry would often scratch his wrists or his fingers would jitter under the table or when out - before he'd shove them in his pockets. His moods were also a very tender sort of thing - and it didn't take a genius to figure out it was just short-term withdrawal.

He was pretty sure Harry would screw at him when he found out, but Marik began to water down his supply.

Then some of it would go missing.

Then Harry one day came into the kitchen at night to see him tipping away full bottles off the stuff.

"The jig is up Marik,"