Here is proof I'm not giving up on this fic even if the updates are as slow as a molasses-covered snail in January. Merry Christmas!

There were a lot of things I had envisioned spending a day chained to Marik Ishtar could entail –not that I thought about such dumb-ass things often, just since we'd actually been chained together– trying to kill each other, succeeding at killing each other, sitting alone in a room in stifling and awkward silence, one of us being smothered with a pillow, sitting on opposite sides of a door with our chain connected underneath of it if we were both feeling charitable.

But sitting comfortably in a tattoo parlor I'd never heard of before, with people who could arguably be said to be becoming fast friends, and playing cards while my co-inmate drew for money (rather well, too, if I were speaking off the record) for hours on end, was nowhere on that list. It wasn't even near that list."Dammit."

I crossed my arms and leaned back, "Shit, Alister, tell me this isn't you bringing your game."

"What can I say? You're good at this."

"No, you just completely and utterly suck at this. I'm not even cheating and you still haven't won a hand yet. Are you naturally this awful, or is today special?"

The redhead frowned down at the cards spread across the counter –because it wasn't like they had to look professional for customers or anything...– "No, usually I school Ryou at this game."

Either the Fluffy One had never played a card game before in his life, or Alister had offended the poker gods at some point in the last week. "I pity Ryou for losing to you if this is the best you've got." Dammit, now I've gone and set precedence of calling the Fuzzy Annoyance by his name.

"I'm just not used to playing with you yet."

I smirked at the pouting redhead, "Want me to play with my cards face-up on the table?"

"Oh, shut up." Alister sighed and sat back, crossing his arms, too, "It's different playing with someone who doesn't wear their heart on their sleeve. I can usually read Ryou's face like a book. He can't hide anything. Every good hand lights up his expression like it's Christmas, and every bad hand looks like he's walking to his execution. But you show... nothing. Not a smile, not a frown; just that same smirk the entire time."

"This isn't the first time I've whiled away a day playing cards."

"And it's very apparent."

We both (well, all three, actually: Marik, too) looked up when the latest customer walked out from the back looking like she was on cloud nine. Marik cracked his neck from side to side to stretch from where he'd been sitting for the last two hours with his legs drawn up and a sketch pad on his knees, glanced around the shop while the girl paid at the counter and scheduled her next appointment, and went back to whatever he was currently investing his artistic skills in.

She left and Alister and I got caught back up in playing again, Valon still in the back to clean his tools of the trade.

"Hey, Bakura..."

I looked back over at my opponent; I hadn't even realized my attention had strayed to a certain head of blond hair. What was he so intent on drawing, anyway? "Hmm?"

"Have you ever considered getting a tattoo of your own?"

Well that got my full attention and I turned completely toward Alister, "No. Too expensive: not really anything I like or think important enough to permanently etch on my body anyway."

"Well, give it some more thought. We could hook you up with something good, maybe even a discount."

I shrugged, then a thought began taking root, "Hey, if I came up with the money– and got him drunk enough, would you be willing to tattoo my cousin?"

Marik's voice chimed in without him ever looking up from his sketch book, "I'm pretty sure that's some form of assault that can get you arrested."

"Nah, he wouldn't do something like that. We have a code of– well, I doubt it could be called 'ethics'... code of conduct–"

"That code didn't seem to stop him from locking you in the closet at school. Are you willing to bet the next two to three years of your life on it?"

To think, I had actually almost forgotten how much I hated him for several hours. "You're just a snuggly little ball of sunshine and optimism, aren't you?"

Dark indigo eyes glanced my way, doubtlessly picking up on the mocking change in my tone, before once again going back to the paper– what in the world was he drawing?! "I'm a pragmatist: I deal with what's actually there, not what I wish was there."

I wanted to be more than pissed at him– like I had never experienced the harshness of the world and so saw only what I fucking wanted– I wanted to be furious at him for being so damn superior and assuming. But, like so many of the infuriating things he said, there was a ring of truth to his words.

When had I become so logical? Had to be from playing cards all day. Had to.

Because as much as it did anger me, he had at least part of that right. It wasn't him that had locked us in that closet, it had been Thief. That... that– betrayal, still smarted, and it was my own cousin I was most upset with; Marik just made the most convenient target.

There were enough reasons I hated the blond Egyptian, from his inability to shut up when told to, to his skill at side-stepping any and all questions without actively lying outright, to his air of disaffected apathy. It just seemed... cowardly, to blame him for something that really had nothing to do with him given how much I already had to blame him for.

I leaned my head on my free hand and snorted at him, "What are you drawing anyway?"

He shrugged, "Several things. When my hands get tired of working on one, I switch to another."

Alister forfeited his hand and I started shuffling the cards back into the deck to redistribute as the redhead got up and stretched. "Want me to refill your cup?"

I checked the coffee level in the cat-decaled styrofoam glass and pushed it toward him in silent agreement. There was no point dirtying a mug someone would just have to wash later when we all had disposable ones from breakfast still. Though the drop in quality was... noticeable. The shop's coffee was... plentiful, to put it kindly. Drinkable was another good descriptor. More bitter than I was used to– and it was not giving me a craving for another one of those creepy pink marshmallow things the cafe girl had given me.

When Alister came back with the pot of black, filling both our cups, I took a drink– with only a slight grimace at the taste– and dealt out our next hand of cards. "So what do you draw?"

He blinked at me. "Me?"

I rolled my eyes, "No, the other tattoo artist in the front of the shop." I made a show of looking around– of course, Valon and Raphael were both in the back– and made a face of mock surprise, "Oh, wait..."

Alister scoffed, "You're such a smartass– it's kind of refreshing to have someone else to bicker with besides Marik."

I held a hand to my chest dramatically in a 'oh, my broken heart' gesture that had him snickering. "Yes, you. Valon specializes in mechanical drawing, right? And Marik does primarily occult and Egyptian themed things. What about you?"

"I specialize in military tats. Which of course includes people, but I can do weapons and things, any flag you care to name, any uniform you can think of. Valon and I cross paths a lot and we even have this one composite armor\uniform we came up with. But my true love is fire, fire and flowing things: plants, water– that's actual water, not those moronic finger-waves japanese amateur\wanna-bes try at."

I frowned, "That's... a rather large disparity."

He shrugged, laying down a card, "Both my parents were in the military when they died. My brother and I have been army brats our entire lives."

"You have a brother?"

Alister smiled, not even minding when I again demolished him. "Mikey. He's in school for another hour before I'll go pick him up."

"On a weekend?"

"Oh, hell yeah. I've got a deal with a tutor I know at cram school, and Mikey didn't do his chores this week, so he's off at school instead of hanging around the shop."

"...You're evil."

Gleaming white teeth grinned at me. "Very much, thanks." He plucked up his next hand, only the faintest wince giving away that it was no better than any other he'd drawn all day, and continued: "And Raph, man, he does living things, at a skill above and beyond anything any of the rest of us can do. Animals –real ones," he quickly added with a look towards Marik,"– myths, people– damn, Bakura, you should see some of the people he's drawn. It's just... completely unreal. His favorite is one he designed for his own body– we went through hell to follow his instructions to the letter so we didn't let him down– his Guardians are just the most beautiful things you'll ever see. He calls Guardian Eatos his personal guardian angel, and I could believe it. Every feather, the look in the eyes... it defies belief."

I looked down at my cards, seeing what may have been the best set I'd drawn so far, but set them down, no longer interested in playing. "He's really that good?"

"Fuck, it's like– I don't even know. Let me go find the concept art for G.E. We still have it up in the back." He tossed his cards down– face up because it didn't matter anymore and neither of us were the least bit concerned with them– and headed for the back section of the shop, leaving Marik and I on our own again.

I contented myself with watching him scratch away at the page before him, oddly feeling no urge to torment him just for the hell of it. It took energy to screw with him, and the expenditure outweighed the entertainment value.

Curiosity had been a nagging feeling in the back of my mind since we'd been chained together and had only been growing with each additional little thing I learned. "Do you draw people, too? I don't remember seeing anything human in any of the books I looked through."

"It's not something I'm good at. I don't... see people right. When I try they come out... lifeless. There's something wrong with them, something missing. I eventually gave up trying."

"So try harder."

His shoulders tensed and seemed to fold in on him. "What?"

I had, surprisingly, no interest in restarting our war at the moment. "You say you draw the occult. You say you draw Egyptian themes. Don't those include witches and gods and whatever? You'll have to be able to do them eventually if you say that those are your areas of expertise."

Marik cast me a wary glance, completely doubting my ability to be honest and non-condescending or abrasive. When I didn't immediately follow up with how completely hopeless or lacking he was, or any other insult in general, his eyes did that sharpening thing I'd seen before– the kind that made me uncomfortable– before he finally nodded and went back to work; flipping the page to start on something else, his shoulders relaxing.

"Found it!" Came the shout from the back, followed by a thump.

"You didn' find anythin', you just made a mess– which you will be cleaning before going to pick up the Squirt. I found it."

"Fine, you win, O Master of house-wifery."

Alister ducked out of the back with something clunky and metal chasing him out and flying just over his head to land on the floor with a loud clang. He was still grinning like an idiot as he came back and spread a poster over the counter top, carelessly scattering cards far and wide.

My breath caught in my throat. "Holy fuck."

"Yeah, it gets that reaction a lot. The one on his skin is black and white, but this is the concept art."

It was a tall blond woman– angel –with some kind of bird of prey hood, and huge white wings. She was leaned forward in some sort of attacking pose. The detail was beyond belief, just as Alister had said. Every single goddamned feather was so real it looked like I could reach out and ruffle them. From feather down to hair, it looked as though a wind had whipped through the shop and caught her in it. Eyes that looked as though they could see right through me, from a face so detailed that I could have seen her walking down the street– she was that real.

"How the...?"

"Told you." There wasn't any sort of smug superiority in the tone, just a kind of reverent awe, like Alister couldn't believe it either. "And here's another Raph did for his sister. This is Guardian Kay'est."

Long, aqua hair flowed over sun-kissed shoulders. Kind, glossy eyes looked back at me from where the mermaid perched upon a stone. Thousands of tiny, barely visible scales decorated her tail in colors so minute they looked iridescent. How the hell was it even possible to be so talented at something?

I didn't even register the words until they were out of my mouth: "I want a tattoo like that. I want him to tattoo me."

When I looked up from the– well, they were posters, really– Alister was smiling at me, "We get that response a lot, too. Take some time to think about it. Figure out what you want, where you want it."

I nodded, staring back down at the fantastically detailed designs.

"If you want to come back next weekend, I can dig out some of the best stuff all of us have done. You should see Marik's, too. And Valon and I would never miss a chance to show off. We can go over it and see if there's anything that sparks some interest in you."

"Why next weekend?"

Valon finally came back out front, wiping off his hands. "Because Alister's a slob and it'll take me that long to figure out where he lost everythin'."

The redhead pouted at his friend while I smirked. It was something else I noticed about Valon: the more comfortable he was, the less accent he had. When he was worried or pissed, it was sometimes hard to understand what he was saying, his accent was so thick. When he and Alister had gotten into a huge argument sometime around two, it felt like I'd been picked up and dropped in the middle of a foreign country, because I discovered Alister wasn't local, either, and had an accent of his own when he got upset. It was all highly entertaining.

The telephone rang and Alister was pulled away from the budding spat to answer with a sweetened tone that made me wince and take a sip of my disgusting coffee to get the taste out of my mouth. The redhead nodded, scrawling something on one of the army of sticky notes he had stuck to the counter by the phone. "Yep, got it." He hung up and turned to the resident Egyptian, "That was your sister: she says she's bringing something home for dinner, so you don't have to worry about it."

Marik finally came wholly back to the physical world, actually putting his sketch book down and standing up to stretch. "Thanks. That means I can put off the shopping trip until tomorrow morning." He looked up at the analog clock hanging on the wall and sighed, "We should probably get back. It'll be dark by the time we get home."

Valon nodded and started cleaning up around the front of the shop, picking up the mess Alister had made of cards and posters and sticky notes. Damn, I hadn't even noticed how much of a disaster area it had turned into. "Good plan. It's not the best idea to walk around the streets of Domino in the dark."

The amber sunlight was already streaming through the enormous front windows and tinting everything honey-colored. Marik picked up another note book or two while Raphael appeared in the doorway connecting the front and back of the shop. "Safe trip back."

Marik flashed him a small-but-genuine smile that surprised me, and when the towering blonde looked at me, I glanced away and felt my face heating. "Uh, yeah, no problem."

Alister handed me my styrofoam cup of caffinated sludge. "Come by any time, even if we haven't rounded up the other materials. I could always use another card opponent." There was a momentary pause: "Plus, I need to prove that I don't actually suck as badly as I did today."

I glanced over and saw Valon and Marik engaged in a last minute whispered conversation over something doubtlessly artistic in nature, then back to the redhead, my lips stretching in a grin I didn't give them permission for. "Yeah, sounds good." How had I felt so comfortable in a place of total strangers all day long? I didn't feel excluded and left out, I didn't feel like I was intruding. Somehow I felt totally welcomed in this strange place full of even stranger people. It was... strange.

I didn't argue as Marik led the way outside, glancing back over my shoulder only once at the silhouette of the odd little tattoo parlor that had somehow changed something about myself that I couldn't figure out. Then we rounded the corner and I lost sight of the Seal of Orichalcos.

I shook my head to get rid of the weird sensations. Marik stopped for a moment to stretch like a cat with his arms over his head as I kept walking, starting to move again as our chain tugged.

There was a satisfied sigh behind me, "It's been such a nice day out."

I glanced up at the darkening sky. At ten in the morning, I had already begun to feel the heat from the sun beating down hard. By noon it had gotten to be scorchingly unbearable and the faltering AC unit in the tattoo shop had struggled to keep up. If this had been Ishtar's idea of a 'nice day' I never wanted to find out what he considered 'hot'. I completely refused to believe he meant the companionship as the reason it had been good, something inside me utterly rebelled at the idea. "It'd have been better if there'd been a breeze or something." Or a twenty degree drop in temperature, but I'd have taken a breeze.

The Egyptian looked at me like I suddenly started speaking French. No, wait. I frowned and took a sip of my awful, and cold, coffee. How many languages did he know, anyway? It had to be at least three, probably more. Maybe he already knew French, able to exchange Oui's and Au revoir's with those baguette-brained pepe-le-peu prats.

And why did it even bother me what language he may or may not speak? Because it does. And I had never needed any other reason than that. I didn't need to justify myself to anyone, especially not myself. I did things because I felt like it, and to hell with anyone that didn't approve.

I tossed the now-empty cup I'd been using all day in a trashcan we passed. "What languages do you know?"

He stared at me in surprise, my question coming out of left field from the discussion on weather. Then he blinked and composed himself. "Well, I know Japanese, and Arabic, and I'm learning English."

"And Egyptian?"

He looked away, "That's a common misconception. Modern Egypt doesn't speak Egyptian, ironically. The national language is Arabic."

An interesting fact, but not the answer to the question I'd asked. He'd used up all his passes with me already and my patience was beginning to run thin. "An answer that neatly sidesteps the question. I'll ask again, do you know Egyptian?"

He fidgeted in place, played with the straw of his own soda, and finally, after several minutes and realizing I wasn't going to let him avoid it, answered, "Yes."

It wasn't like I'd been trying to keep the information hidden, I just hadn't wanted to sound like I was bragging. How many people could admit to knowing several different dialects to an ancient dead language and not have it come off sounding high-nosed? It wasn't like his opinion of me wasn't low enough as it was– even barring the mainly neutral day we'd shared– there was hardly a need to add 'arrogant due to being multilingual' to the already undoubtedly very long list.

Why does he care what languages I know, anyway? Why do I care why he cares what languages I know? I stopped that train of thought before I gave myself a headache.

It wasn't like I'd set out to become a linguist or something, I'd only learned what I'd had to learn. I had to be able to read and speak our ancestral language to understand all the scriptures– I had to know. And I wasn't destined to be an underground hermit forever: the Tomb Keeper had to be able to travel places, had to be able to communicate, and the national language of modern Egypt really is Arabic, though I have a personal dislike of it.

I hadn't had to learn it, not when I had, when I shouldn't have. But I'd already mastered four distinctly varied dialects of Egyptian, and I had to be able to speak the language of the above-grounders if I wanted to be a part of that world, and I did want that, so badly.

There hadn't been much choice, really. My options had been rather limited. I could sneak out, getting glimpses of the world I wanted so much to be part of, learning what I needed to survive out there, even though it was strictly forbidden for me to do it, or I could stay in my dimly-lit quarters bent over studying dusty old scrolls.

Okay, that may have been exaggerating. The Archive was the most cared-for and well-tended set of rooms in the entire tomb, likely not a single one of the one million, seven hundred thousand, eight hundred and thirty-six scrolls it contained had even a speck of dust on them.

An entire cadre of servants bustled around constantly, keeping the chambers swept clean of sand and free of any vermin (scorpions), tending the sconces. Archivists, scribes, and scholars were always in motion amidst the stacks of shelves. I'd always admired the quiet perseverance of the scribes, constantly making copies of scrolls, some for personal collections, some because the current one was becoming hard to read.

It always amazed me that, after thousands of years, papyrus was still the best thing for making long-lasting written records. Stone was breakable, cloth not even practical, parchment was too smooth and could be scraped clean of ink (which was useful for the registry when it got full, but not for keeping anything of permanence), and modern paper was too fragile; turning into mush at the least bit of moisture, or getting brittle with age and dryness, or the inks fading when exposed to too much light.

Despite paper's evanescence, it was becoming popular to have scribes copy entire texts down into books for personal collections. It was easier to flip pages than comb through a scroll unrolled across half your room (significantly more dignified, too, which I'm sure played no part in the decision).

Still, it was convenient. When I copied scrolls and important references in my personal notes, I preferred to use a dark purple leather-bound book. It wouldn't last, not really, certainly not hundreds and hundreds of years. Maybe a century, if I was very careful with it and lived that long, but it wouldn't survive the ages like the scrolls I'd copied the information from.

I liked reading, but despite envying their determined drive, I was glad I wasn't a scribe. I had enough of the scrolls I was forced to recite and copy from on a daily basis; I couldn't imagine having a passion for it. I would be surprised if they didn't see characters of Hieroglyphs and Coptic and cursive Egyptian behind their eyelids when they dreamed.

"Earth to Ishtar, come in, Ishtar!"

I jerked and turned to scowl at Bakura. "I told you, my name is Marik!"

"Well for all you want me to call you by it, you didn't answer the first six times!"

I dropped my gaze, "Oh... Sorry." I was so confused. I just couldn't see any reason for this weird curiosity he was showing about me. I couldn't see any reason for it except as a means for gathering more incriminating information about me and my siblings. Because one had to face facts: Bakura Tozokuo cared about no one but himself.

My sort-of theory could be supported by the fact that he kept asking me things about myself and my family without offering any information about himself. Who did that? No one was that curious naturally, unless they had ulterior motives. Which just brought me right back around to having my brain turn in confused little circles. Ra, I hate this punishment.

Which, I supposed, was the point. To keep me from doing the bad deed again. And it would have worked, the only problem was I hadn't done anything! Unless one wanted to count standing up to him outside of school, leading him on the vengeful path to the closet, but I wasn't a domino-effect philosopher (I was personally a fan of the 'our fate is what we make it' mentality). But if the purpose of this was to punish Bakura, what kind of cruelty was it to chain his victim to him so they couldn't escape?!

Ugh, I'm giving myself a headache. "Ah!" I reached up to rub the new bump on my forehead, glaring at the light pole I'd walked (been led) into.

Then Bakura was next to me with his arms crossed, "If you're done naval-gazing, you might want to extend your attention a little further to include your feet."

I massaged what was sure to be a nice little bruise and glared at him with one eye, "What is wrong with you?! Must you be a complete asshole every time the opportunity presents itself? I didn't lead you into anything when you were lost in your stupid phone this morning."

He faked cleaning his ear with his pinkie finger and acted like he'd just noticed me. "Huh? Did you say something? I was busy ignoring you."

"Argh! You're such an insufferable prick!" I was beyond controlling myself, stomping up to him to punctuate my words on his chest, "You pick, and pick, and pick at me, like you have the right to know everything about me. But you offer nothing about yourself, and every question I do ask is pushed aside or ignored. And you go and treat me like crap when I've done nothing to you on top of it all! You are the most frustrating person I've ever met in my entire life!"

He smirked down at me infuriatingly. "Are you done bitching? Let's go." He turned around and walked to the end of our lead, waiting for me.

AAARRGH! I wanted nothing so much as to throttle him! My clenched hands trembled with the need to throw myself at him, and the sound coming from my mouth was somewhere between nails on a chalk board and a tea kettle set to boil over.

I heard his laugh from over his shoulder. "Kittens are just as much fun to poke as tigers."

I clenched my teeth and stalked toward him, fuming, "Ass. Hole."

He just looked over his shoulder and smirked at me in response.