HOME | DD

Description
Dismounting was my first mistake...

The streets were empty and quickly disappearing into darkness as one by one the lights filtering out through shop windows flickered off leaving nothing but the dim glow of the occasional ancient streetlight overhead, its dying light smothered by a cruelly unsympathetic darkness, exacerbated by the ominous promise of rain. A burst of light illuminated the walls and the street for a moment and then was lost, that one snapshot of luminance exposing for a split second the solitary figure wandering the empty streets, the sigh escaping their lungs drowned out by the rumble of thunder that rolled out of the heavens soon after. A bead of liquid plummeted to earth and found its final resting place upon the bridge of a tanned nose, the rest of its watery army following suit, unleashing a furious downpour upon the unsuspecting ground. The figure made a hasty break for shelter, pulling up the hood on his vest and shivering slightly as he watched the promised storm begin, a storm of his own already a spiralling tempest inside his head.

Opening  my mouth was my second...

The spectacle taking place in the sky was a sight to see. Serpentine lightning danced across the clouds, occasionally making a break for the surface in one loud ear-splitting crack as the rain relentlessly beat down upon the earth, its constant pounding the percussion of nature's electrical symphony, accented by the irregular rhythm of the lightning and its sporadic thunderous crescendoes. This went on for some time and all the while the figure stood, rubbing vigorously at his exposed arms as he waited for a dip in the storm's intensity that never seemed to come. Another crack of lightning darted across the sky, punctuated by a single clap of thunder  and then another bolt streaked off in a different direction. A bitter wind was kicking up, its icy breath slicing through warmth like a knife. A small thin smile turned up the corners of the figure's mouth but it was devoid of any humour as he sarcastically noted to himself that at least one thing in the world hadn't changed. Domino City was still colder than home. The smile faltered. Home... Just what was that anymore? What had it ever been? Another thunderous rumble rolled out of the sky as if to punctuate his thoughts, a ghostly white image flashing before his sight every time his eyelids slid closed...

Teaming up was my third...

Glancing up at the sky it seemed as though there was to be no end to the storm. Darkness seemed to stretch on for miles with the occasional burst of lightning illuminating it and proving that there were still clouds yet to approach. The rain was lashing down as heavily as ever without letting up. Resigning to the inevitability of it all the figure readied himself and left the shelter of the bus stop he had taken refuge in and entered into the wall of rain. It pelted off his skin like millions of tiny stones, soaking him through to the bone within seconds, feet splish-sploshing in puddles as he made a bee-line for the end of the street where there was still one building with the lights still on. Words began to come into focus as he approached but the rain was so thick it was still nothing more than a wobbling mirage of neon shapes. Grasping the handle with slippery wet fingers he darted in the door and heard the chime of a bell sound from just above his head. Panting heavily for a few moments, rainwater accumulating in an expanding puddle around his feet the figure caught his breath and straightened up,  grateful to be in a warm place out of the rain. The thunder outside seemed so much more distant now and the rain nothing more than a clammy, wet memory clinging to his skin. He breathed a sigh of relief and rested against the door but the solitary moments of peace were short-lived as he became aware of movement from upstairs. Creaking floorboards, muffled voices and the sound of feet moving across a landing were followed by the hasty footfalls of someone descending a staircase. The swish of a door opening at the back of the room sounded and a gasp of surprise met the soaking figure's ears, followed subsequently by the uncertain uttering of a name that - by the sounds of it - the speaker hadn't expected to need to say again. "Ma-Marik!?"
The figure whipped round wildly to find the source of the voice and his purple gaze fell upon a familiar head of irregularly spiked purple and blonde hair beneath which a pair of large uncomprehending eyes stared, struggling to understand what they beheld. "Yugi," the soaking wet figure called Marik breathed.
The sight of the spikey-haired boy brought a flood of memories flowing back into Marik's head. Images of faces and snippets of voices. The shaggy-headed blonde, the tall pointy-haired one, three girls and a boy. A boy with a long mass of messy white-hair, spiked up sporadically as it framed his pale face...

Using him was my fourth...

An awkward silence took up residence in the room as the two struggled to find anything appropriate to say. Eventually it seemed that there really was only one way to approach the situation. "Do you want a towel or something?" Yugi offered awkwardly, indicating the growing puddle on the floor that was spreading out from Marik's dripping wet body.
Marik shook his head, his blonde hair whipping around and spraying beads of rainwater everywhere. "No, I was just-"
His eyes fell upon a cardboard cut-out standing poised next to a shelf bearing a sign which read "Retro Collection" - a familiar yet peculiar creature with blue skin and a large bald head with a small child held in its arms. Dark Necrofear. The sight of it only tossed more memories into the mixture already swirling around inside Marik's head. The Battle City tournament and everything that had come with it goodness knows how long ago...
Yugi could see the nostalgic look in his eyes and smiled sadly as he came out from behind the counter to stand as close as was possible without treading upon rainwater. "It's a collection of all the cards that could have meant the difference between victory and defeat in those all-important duels..." - he cast his hand across the entire shelf to indicate the cards on display - "There's Joey's Red-Eyes, Baby Dragon and Time Wizard and my Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl - not our originals, of course. We couldn't part with those..."
Marik nodded to show he understood. Yugi continued to point out various other cards of interest on the shelf but Marik didn't really pay much attention to them. His eyes were more focused on others that had caught his eye. Dark Sanctuary, Destiny Board, Change of Heart. He laughed humourlessly to himself at the last one. Change of Heart. How ironic...

Abandoning him was my fifth...

Marik jumped as a light tap on the shoulder startled him. "Marik, are you alright?"
He nodded automatically and pretended to seem interested in other cards which Yugi gladly told the stories of as Marik's gaze wandered the room again, this time falling upon the Egyptian God-Cards on display in the glass cabinet at the back of the room. Obelisk the Tormentor, Slifer the Sky Dragon and The Winged Dragon of Ra. A painful memory struck at him at the sight of the golden creature - a haunting memory taking flight within him: His broken reflection sneering wildly back at him - contorted face stretched by protruding veins, lips pulled backwards over teeth in a beastly smile as the golden Eye of Wdjat glowed out from beneath the blonde mass of spikes, a single command sending the fiery bird behind him streaking towards where the two duelists could do nothing more than wait for a salvation that would never come... That had been the last time Marik had ever seen him, the white-haired boy with the unsmiling eyes - at least in the way he had known him. The next time his eyes had befallen the albino things had changed, for the better of everyone else. Everyone else but him...
He glanced over at Yugi to see that the spikey-haired boy was still going on about some card that Marik didn't even recognise. Instead of listening to what he was saying he found himself marvelling at how much Yugi had shot up in the years between their last meeting. Once there had been a time when the boy had needed to crane his neck in order to look up at him but now he found that they drew almost level with each other - though Yugi was still slightly shorter. Marik sighed. It only served to show just how much was different - and how much wasn't.
Yugi placed the card back where it belonged and suddenly raced back over to the counter as though a sudden thought had just occurred to him. Ducking out of sight behind the desk for a moment he then reappeared with a fairly large brown box which he prompty sat upon the counter and began to rummage through. After a moment or two he seemed to find what he was looking for and pulled his arm out from the styrofoam sea, taking a long, golden item with it. Marik felt something horribly familiar drop heavily into the chasm of his stomach at the sight of it. The winged sphere atop a long golden shaft, Eye of Wdjat blinking as the overhead lights glinted on its surface. Nostalgia - both good and bad - flowed through his body as he beheld its slender form again for the first time in years. The Millennium Rod. Marik could do nothing more than stare at it in disbelief, unable to comprehend its presence here in Yugi's family's game shop. He'd seen what had happened to the Millennium Items with his own eyes back at the final resting place of the Pharaoh Atem: The Millennium Tablet crumbling away to nothing, opening up a deep chasm of darkness into which the seven items fell, never to be seen again as the rest of the tomb caved in, sealing them away for eternity. It was impossible for them to be anywhere else. Sensing his confusion, Yugi explained it to him. "It was a group of explorers who found them," he said, placing the Rod down on the counter. "Seems as though they had never known that tomb existed so they explored it and handed over everything they found to the museum. My Grandpa visited Egypt a while back and arranged to have them brought back here to join the rest of the exhibit, you know, the tablets detailing the destiny of the Millennium Puzzle..."
He began to ramble on again, clearly enjoying the excuse to talk about the past again - about everything he and the Pharaoh who inhabited the Millennium Puzzle he'd come to own had accomplished together. It seemed as though he hadn't been able to talk about such things for a while. Marik could understand that. He himself hadn't uttered a word about any of it since the day the entire long-running story finally came to its conclusion with the destruction of the tomb. He hadn't uttered a word but that didn't mean he hadn't thought about everything that had passed...
Instinctively, Marik reached for the box, plunging his hand into the styrofoam and fumbling around amongst it, his fingers brushing against and closing around the familiar items as one by one he placed them alongside the Rod on the desk. Necklace. Eye. Scales. Key. Puzzle...
There it was. Peering up at him from the box, partly obscured by the styrofoam peanuts that protected it. His fingers caressed its surface, running along the circumference of its outer loop before carefully lifting it up and allowing his eyes to again look upon it, mesmerised by the hypnotic way each of its five dangling prongs swayed from side to side. This was it. This was the one he'd wanted to see again. And the sight of it was slowly killing him...
Yugi didn't seem to notice. He seemed lost in thought as he held the familiar upside-down pyramid in his hands again, allowing his mind to wander through the vast hallways of those long-since abandoned passages in the complex labyrinthe of the past. "It's weird," he said aloud eventually, the sound of his voice startling Marik and causing the Millennium Ring to fall with a clatter to the floor where the Egyptian could only stare blankly, numbly down at it.
Yugi didn't seem to have been speaking to Marik. His statement hadn't really been directed toward anyone in particular. It was just a statement, preceding further statements that stemmed on from it as he turned the Millennium Puzzle over and over in his hands. "Everything that happened happened because destiny foretold it and yet sometimes I wonder that had destiny not played a part in it and things had gone differently... I wonder how things would have ended up then..."
He may not have been looking at Yugi, but Marik had heard his words echoing inside his head long after he had uttered them. Destiny. The word cut deep into him - deep into his chest - so fast he felt his heart stop for a moment. Everything had happened because destiny had foretold it. It was all predetermined. Everything... And now Yugi's words of "what if" haunted his mind. The ghosts of what might have been if things had gone differently, if mistakes had or hadn't been made. If...
He bent down and picked up the Millennium Ring, again running his fingers along the circumference, lightly brushing the tips of the five prongs and allowing them to sway once more in their rhythmic hypnotic motion. Destiny. Was that really the reason for the way events panned out? Had everything just been following a predetermined path the entire time, taking all the players along the way for a ride? Had everyone's fates already been decided and every heartache and every joy experienced a gift or a curse that had already been set in motion from the moment that little ember of life flickered into existence? Marik frowned. His life had been pockmarked with countless bad choices and mistakes but none drew him any further into the story of Pharaoh Atem than he had been from birth - being born into the Ishtar family as the heir to the clan of tombkeepers and sworn protector of the Pharaoh's secret. In the end, had things not taken the diversion that they had done, the result would still have ended up the same with the Pharaoh finally being laid to rest. Destiny was still fulfilled. Everything else that had happened inbetween as far as Marik was concerned were a series of alternate events outwith the fate destiny held in store for him in the end. Everything else was a series of mistakes - some of which were the greatest mistakes he could ever hope to make and others that left him with deep indelible gashes of remorse and regret that could never hope to disappear. Mistakes... He glanced down at the Millennium Ring and allowed himself a small smile. Wonderful, awful mistakes...
"Marik? Marik are you alright?" Yugi's tentative voice sounded from somewhere nearby, concern and mild alarm suddenly evident in his tone.
Marik didn't look at him. His eyes were glued to the Millennium Ring, their gaze constantly scanning it, engorging themselves with the sight of it again after such a long time. Entranced, lost in a series of memories playing out in the pit of his mind, those "what ifs" hovering like vultures waiting to feast, Marik found himself unable to respond to the world outside his little bubble of growing longing and regret, oblivious to the way his shoulders hitched and his entire body trembled. It wasn't until the sounds from his throat met his ears that he himself realised he was crying. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, knuckles a ghostly pale colour from the tightness of his grip around the Millennium Ring, face a crumpled mask of pain and grief as his eyes unleashed a torrent of tears - something that he had not ever allowed to come out. Not in nearly twenty years...
Yugi was at a loss for what to do. He hurried round to Marik's side of the counter and placed a hand gingerly on his wet shoulder, shaking him gently and trying to get him to respond but the Egyptian just kept crying tears that had waited nearly two whole decades to come out - two whole decades to tell their story, to tell of their pain. "Marik!" he hissed desperately, vigorously shaking him to snap him out of his hysteria - all to no avail. "Marik, please you'll wake up my Grandpa and he needs all the rest he-"
A low moan escaped the Egyptian's lips - a sorrowful, helpless cry drenched in regret and longing and grief and that haunting sense of undeniable defeat and failure. "Too late..." he wailed, body curling up into a tiny ball, the Millennium Ring pressed tightly against his ribcage - against his heart. "It's all too late..."
It had all become far too much. Inside, Marik had known he'd never be able to handle returning to Domino City even if twenty years had passed. But he'd wanted to try. He'd needed to try. He needed to finally release everything that had built up inside him in the twenty years since the fulfillment of the Pharaoh's destiny and everything that that meant... That image appeared behind his eyelids again - the white-haired boy with his pale complexion and those dark unsmiling eyes glaring with cold resentment back out at the world, mouth downturned in a perpetual frown as though it had lost the ability to genuinely smile long ago. All Marik could see was that haunted face - tormented by the ghosts of a past long since buried beneath the ancient sands of Egypt, those dark eyes burning with festering contempt, alight with a passionate bloodthirsty hunger for revenge and cold with an all-consuming, suffocating loneliness born of several millennia trapped within an ancient artifact...
Marik clutched the Ring even tighter, pressing it against himself so tightly he could feel the metal prongs biting into his skin through his soaking lavender top but the pain was nothing compared to what was happening inside, where those prongs couldn't yet penetrate. Tears cascaded down the Egyptian's tanned cheeks, his eyes shut tight in pain and grief, his body a rigid ball of despair and yet Yugi found he was helpless to aid him. He could only stand awkwardly and watch Marik pour out all the tortured agony that had been pent up within his soul waiting for such a moment to break free. All that longing, all that regret... Everything that could have been if things had occurred differently in the past. But it was too late now. Twenty years too late. Two decades too late to change one event that could have changed everything...

My worst mistake...

What would have happened? What would have changed? Would it have changed anything? All the possibilities and doubts that preyed at the back of Marik's tormented mind came bubbling up to the surface, provoking great shuddering sobs to roll out of him as Yugi stood over him, unable to comprehend the sight of the Egyptian who once commanded power and strength now soaking wet and weeping upon the Game shop floor. Weeping about something - Yugi knew not what - that threatened to tear the tormented tombkeeper apart. Frowning, he tried to work it all out - to ascertain from the Egyptian's actions up to and including the present moment just what caused such heartache and pain. Vaguely he could recall the way Marik's eyes had wandered over a specific section of the Retro Collection displaying the cards once possessed by one boy in particular: the boy who had been in possession of the Millennium Ring Marik now held pressed against his very heart. Coupled with everything Yugi could recall from the past - Marik's involvement in the entire Battle City charade and all the events that took place up to and including the tournament's conclusion - he slowly pieced together as much of the jigsaw as he could and felt a heavy sadness grow within him as he understood. He sighed. Never once had he considered that perhaps his victory alongside the Pharaoh hadn't brought happiness to everyone. Never once did he consider the negative consequences of his victory. Never did he even consider the possibility of there even being negative ones. It had all been one great big tremendous success, vanquishing the ancient darkness once and for all. There had been no pause to consider even for a moment that perhaps this wasn't such wonderful news to everybody involved. Yugi knew they'd teamed up at one point - Marik Ishtar and the darkness that inhabited one of his own friends. He knew they'd conspired to destroy him and the Pharaoh. He knew at one time that they were dangerous threats that needed to be stopped. It was all that he had considered them to be - vengeful thieves conspiring together to meet the same goal. Never once did it cross his mind that perhaps what had motivated them was not so different from what he himself was motivated by: the support of others.  It had never occurred to him that friendship wasn't something reserved only for the "good-guys" but as he watched the man he once considered a threatening foe weeping in grief with the Millennium Ring held close it finally came to him. It was just a little late in coming.
It was difficult to say how long these moments of weeping lasted but eventually it seemed as though the wave of hysteria flowing from the distraught Egyptian was beginning to ease. His breathing was becoming a little more regular, interrupted less by those breathless gulping gasps that had punctuated every sob and the violent hitching of his shoulders had dropped to mild trembling but he still didn't show any response when Yugi asked if he was alright. He didn't even hear him. All he could hear was the pounding rush of blood pulsing through his ears, the thud of his heartbeat hammering against the Millennium Ring and the ghosts of a British-accented voice echoing in the dark recesses of his memories. He lifted the golden ring up to his face and pressed his tear-streaked cheek against its surface, all his memories playing out behind his closed eyelids. All those wonderful moments and all the difficult ones. All the joy and all the pain - the grief and sorrow and regret of his greatest mistake. Slowly his eyes slid open, their watery purple gaze fixed longingly upon the Millennium Ring as it reflected his broken expression back at him. The look in his eyes told a story of agonising regret, partnered with the insatiable desire to turn back the clock and save himself from making that mistake - save himself from his own stubborn pride and the cowardice that held him back. It was an impossible wish... Pressing the cool metal against his forehead he breathed a heavy, shaky sigh of defeat. The past was the past. It couldn't be changed. It could be re-lived but it couldn't be changed. His mistake would forever remain an indelible scar in his memory - in his soul. His biggest mistake. His most terrible, foolish mistake...
"I never told you..." he breathed in a barely audible whisper, his breath ghosting across the golden surface of the ring and clouding his reflection. "Never..."
His fingers traced the symbol of the Eye of Wdjat and a sad smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he looked at it, taking in every slightest bit of detail of its design before its image began to waver again, blurred by fresh tears that dripped down onto the ring as Marik pressed it against his heart once more, a single name rolling off his tongue to hang suspended in the expectant silence that had enveloped the room... "Bakura..."
It didn't come as much of a surprise to Yugi to find that his assumptions had been correct. He had already come to expect that all of this had had something to do with the dark spirit that Marik had befriended all those years ago and yet somehow the sound of him uttering the name he had suspected made the blood in his veins freeze in a stunned moment of temporary shock. It had not been the uttering of the name that had made him freeze so much as the way it had been uttered - the way Marik's mouth carefully, tenderly breathed each syllable into life, his sad smile still warmly imprinted across his tear-streaked face and as - with similar tenderness - he whispered three short words into the empty, lifeless heart of the Millennium Ring Yugi felt truly sorry for the Egyptian. Three words. Three words carrying all the pain and anguish that spawned from being held back for so long. Three words that had waited countless years to finally be spoken. Three words he'd never managed to say before it was too late. Three words...
"I love you..."

Description
Dismounting was my first mistake...

The streets were empty and quickly disappearing into darkness as one by one the lights filtering out through shop windows flickered off leaving nothing but the dim glow of the occasional ancient streetlight overhead, its dying light smothered by a cruelly unsympathetic darkness, exacerbated by the ominous promise of rain. A burst of light illuminated the walls and the street for a moment and then was lost, that one snapshot of luminance exposing for a split second the solitary figure wandering the empty streets, the sigh escaping their lungs drowned out by the rumble of thunder that rolled out of the heavens soon after. A bead of liquid plummeted to earth and found its final resting place upon the bridge of a tanned nose, the rest of its watery army following suit, unleashing a furious downpour upon the unsuspecting ground. The figure made a hasty break for shelter, pulling up the hood on his vest and shivering slightly as he watched the promised storm begin, a storm of his own already a spiralling tempest inside his head.

Opening  my mouth was my second...

The spectacle taking place in the sky was a sight to see. Serpentine lightning danced across the clouds, occasionally making a break for the surface in one loud ear-splitting crack as the rain relentlessly beat down upon the earth, its constant pounding the percussion of nature's electrical symphony, accented by the irregular rhythm of the lightning and its sporadic thunderous crescendoes. This went on for some time and all the while the figure stood, rubbing vigorously at his exposed arms as he waited for a dip in the storm's intensity that never seemed to come. Another crack of lightning darted across the sky, punctuated by a single clap of thunder  and then another bolt streaked off in a different direction. A bitter wind was kicking up, its icy breath slicing through warmth like a knife. A small thin smile turned up the corners of the figure's mouth but it was devoid of any humour as he sarcastically noted to himself that at least one thing in the world hadn't changed. Domino City was still colder than home. The smile faltered. Home... Just what was that anymore? What had it ever been? Another thunderous rumble rolled out of the sky as if to punctuate his thoughts, a ghostly white image flashing before his sight every time his eyelids slid closed...

Teaming up was my third...

Glancing up at the sky it seemed as though there was to be no end to the storm. Darkness seemed to stretch on for miles with the occasional burst of lightning illuminating it and proving that there were still clouds yet to approach. The rain was lashing down as heavily as ever without letting up. Resigning to the inevitability of it all the figure readied himself and left the shelter of the bus stop he had taken refuge in and entered into the wall of rain. It pelted off his skin like millions of tiny stones, soaking him through to the bone within seconds, feet splish-sploshing in puddles as he made a bee-line for the end of the street where there was still one building with the lights still on. Words began to come into focus as he approached but the rain was so thick it was still nothing more than a wobbling mirage of neon shapes. Grasping the handle with slippery wet fingers he darted in the door and heard the chime of a bell sound from just above his head. Panting heavily for a few moments, rainwater accumulating in an expanding puddle around his feet the figure caught his breath and straightened up,  grateful to be in a warm place out of the rain. The thunder outside seemed so much more distant now and the rain nothing more than a clammy, wet memory clinging to his skin. He breathed a sigh of relief and rested against the door but the solitary moments of peace were short-lived as he became aware of movement from upstairs. Creaking floorboards, muffled voices and the sound of feet moving across a landing were followed by the hasty footfalls of someone descending a staircase. The swish of a door opening at the back of the room sounded and a gasp of surprise met the soaking figure's ears, followed subsequently by the uncertain uttering of a name that - by the sounds of it - the speaker hadn't expected to need to say again. "Ma-Marik!?"
The figure whipped round wildly to find the source of the voice and his purple gaze fell upon a familiar head of irregularly spiked purple and blonde hair beneath which a pair of large uncomprehending eyes stared, struggling to understand what they beheld. "Yugi," the soaking wet figure called Marik breathed.
The sight of the spikey-haired boy brought a flood of memories flowing back into Marik's head. Images of faces and snippets of voices. The shaggy-headed blonde, the tall pointy-haired one, three girls and a boy. A boy with a long mass of messy white-hair, spiked up sporadically as it framed his pale face...

Using him was my fourth...

An awkward silence took up residence in the room as the two struggled to find anything appropriate to say. Eventually it seemed that there really was only one way to approach the situation. "Do you want a towel or something?" Yugi offered awkwardly, indicating the growing puddle on the floor that was spreading out from Marik's dripping wet body.
Marik shook his head, his blonde hair whipping around and spraying beads of rainwater everywhere. "No, I was just-"
His eyes fell upon a cardboard cut-out standing poised next to a shelf bearing a sign which read "Retro Collection" - a familiar yet peculiar creature with blue skin and a large bald head with a small child held in its arms. Dark Necrofear. The sight of it only tossed more memories into the mixture already swirling around inside Marik's head. The Battle City tournament and everything that had come with it goodness knows how long ago...
Yugi could see the nostalgic look in his eyes and smiled sadly as he came out from behind the counter to stand as close as was possible without treading upon rainwater. "It's a collection of all the cards that could have meant the difference between victory and defeat in those all-important duels..." - he cast his hand across the entire shelf to indicate the cards on display - "There's Joey's Red-Eyes, Baby Dragon and Time Wizard and my Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl - not our originals, of course. We couldn't part with those..."
Marik nodded to show he understood. Yugi continued to point out various other cards of interest on the shelf but Marik didn't really pay much attention to them. His eyes were more focused on others that had caught his eye. Dark Sanctuary, Destiny Board, Change of Heart. He laughed humourlessly to himself at the last one. Change of Heart. How ironic...

Abandoning him was my fifth...

Marik jumped as a light tap on the shoulder startled him. "Marik, are you alright?"
He nodded automatically and pretended to seem interested in other cards which Yugi gladly told the stories of as Marik's gaze wandered the room again, this time falling upon the Egyptian God-Cards on display in the glass cabinet at the back of the room. Obelisk the Tormentor, Slifer the Sky Dragon and The Winged Dragon of Ra. A painful memory struck at him at the sight of the golden creature - a haunting memory taking flight within him: His broken reflection sneering wildly back at him - contorted face stretched by protruding veins, lips pulled backwards over teeth in a beastly smile as the golden Eye of Wdjat glowed out from beneath the blonde mass of spikes, a single command sending the fiery bird behind him streaking towards where the two duelists could do nothing more than wait for a salvation that would never come... That had been the last time Marik had ever seen him, the white-haired boy with the unsmiling eyes - at least in the way he had known him. The next time his eyes had befallen the albino things had changed, for the better of everyone else. Everyone else but him...
He glanced over at Yugi to see that the spikey-haired boy was still going on about some card that Marik didn't even recognise. Instead of listening to what he was saying he found himself marvelling at how much Yugi had shot up in the years between their last meeting. Once there had been a time when the boy had needed to crane his neck in order to look up at him but now he found that they drew almost level with each other - though Yugi was still slightly shorter. Marik sighed. It only served to show just how much was different - and how much wasn't.
Yugi placed the card back where it belonged and suddenly raced back over to the counter as though a sudden thought had just occurred to him. Ducking out of sight behind the desk for a moment he then reappeared with a fairly large brown box which he prompty sat upon the counter and began to rummage through. After a moment or two he seemed to find what he was looking for and pulled his arm out from the styrofoam sea, taking a long, golden item with it. Marik felt something horribly familiar drop heavily into the chasm of his stomach at the sight of it. The winged sphere atop a long golden shaft, Eye of Wdjat blinking as the overhead lights glinted on its surface. Nostalgia - both good and bad - flowed through his body as he beheld its slender form again for the first time in years. The Millennium Rod. Marik could do nothing more than stare at it in disbelief, unable to comprehend its presence here in Yugi's family's game shop. He'd seen what had happened to the Millennium Items with his own eyes back at the final resting place of the Pharaoh Atem: The Millennium Tablet crumbling away to nothing, opening up a deep chasm of darkness into which the seven items fell, never to be seen again as the rest of the tomb caved in, sealing them away for eternity. It was impossible for them to be anywhere else. Sensing his confusion, Yugi explained it to him. "It was a group of explorers who found them," he said, placing the Rod down on the counter. "Seems as though they had never known that tomb existed so they explored it and handed over everything they found to the museum. My Grandpa visited Egypt a while back and arranged to have them brought back here to join the rest of the exhibit, you know, the tablets detailing the destiny of the Millennium Puzzle..."
He began to ramble on again, clearly enjoying the excuse to talk about the past again - about everything he and the Pharaoh who inhabited the Millennium Puzzle he'd come to own had accomplished together. It seemed as though he hadn't been able to talk about such things for a while. Marik could understand that. He himself hadn't uttered a word about any of it since the day the entire long-running story finally came to its conclusion with the destruction of the tomb. He hadn't uttered a word but that didn't mean he hadn't thought about everything that had passed...
Instinctively, Marik reached for the box, plunging his hand into the styrofoam and fumbling around amongst it, his fingers brushing against and closing around the familiar items as one by one he placed them alongside the Rod on the desk. Necklace. Eye. Scales. Key. Puzzle...
There it was. Peering up at him from the box, partly obscured by the styrofoam peanuts that protected it. His fingers caressed its surface, running along the circumference of its outer loop before carefully lifting it up and allowing his eyes to again look upon it, mesmerised by the hypnotic way each of its five dangling prongs swayed from side to side. This was it. This was the one he'd wanted to see again. And the sight of it was slowly killing him...
Yugi didn't seem to notice. He seemed lost in thought as he held the familiar upside-down pyramid in his hands again, allowing his mind to wander through the vast hallways of those long-since abandoned passages in the complex labyrinthe of the past. "It's weird," he said aloud eventually, the sound of his voice startling Marik and causing the Millennium Ring to fall with a clatter to the floor where the Egyptian could only stare blankly, numbly down at it.
Yugi didn't seem to have been speaking to Marik. His statement hadn't really been directed toward anyone in particular. It was just a statement, preceding further statements that stemmed on from it as he turned the Millennium Puzzle over and over in his hands. "Everything that happened happened because destiny foretold it and yet sometimes I wonder that had destiny not played a part in it and things had gone differently... I wonder how things would have ended up then..."
He may not have been looking at Yugi, but Marik had heard his words echoing inside his head long after he had uttered them. Destiny. The word cut deep into him - deep into his chest - so fast he felt his heart stop for a moment. Everything had happened because destiny had foretold it. It was all predetermined. Everything... And now Yugi's words of "what if" haunted his mind. The ghosts of what might have been if things had gone differently, if mistakes had or hadn't been made. If...
He bent down and picked up the Millennium Ring, again running his fingers along the circumference, lightly brushing the tips of the five prongs and allowing them to sway once more in their rhythmic hypnotic motion. Destiny. Was that really the reason for the way events panned out? Had everything just been following a predetermined path the entire time, taking all the players along the way for a ride? Had everyone's fates already been decided and every heartache and every joy experienced a gift or a curse that had already been set in motion from the moment that little ember of life flickered into existence? Marik frowned. His life had been pockmarked with countless bad choices and mistakes but none drew him any further into the story of Pharaoh Atem than he had been from birth - being born into the Ishtar family as the heir to the clan of tombkeepers and sworn protector of the Pharaoh's secret. In the end, had things not taken the diversion that they had done, the result would still have ended up the same with the Pharaoh finally being laid to rest. Destiny was still fulfilled. Everything else that had happened inbetween as far as Marik was concerned were a series of alternate events outwith the fate destiny held in store for him in the end. Everything else was a series of mistakes - some of which were the greatest mistakes he could ever hope to make and others that left him with deep indelible gashes of remorse and regret that could never hope to disappear. Mistakes... He glanced down at the Millennium Ring and allowed himself a small smile. Wonderful, awful mistakes...
"Marik? Marik are you alright?" Yugi's tentative voice sounded from somewhere nearby, concern and mild alarm suddenly evident in his tone.
Marik didn't look at him. His eyes were glued to the Millennium Ring, their gaze constantly scanning it, engorging themselves with the sight of it again after such a long time. Entranced, lost in a series of memories playing out in the pit of his mind, those "what ifs" hovering like vultures waiting to feast, Marik found himself unable to respond to the world outside his little bubble of growing longing and regret, oblivious to the way his shoulders hitched and his entire body trembled. It wasn't until the sounds from his throat met his ears that he himself realised he was crying. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, knuckles a ghostly pale colour from the tightness of his grip around the Millennium Ring, face a crumpled mask of pain and grief as his eyes unleashed a torrent of tears - something that he had not ever allowed to come out. Not in nearly twenty years...
Yugi was at a loss for what to do. He hurried round to Marik's side of the counter and placed a hand gingerly on his wet shoulder, shaking him gently and trying to get him to respond but the Egyptian just kept crying tears that had waited nearly two whole decades to come out - two whole decades to tell their story, to tell of their pain. "Marik!" he hissed desperately, vigorously shaking him to snap him out of his hysteria - all to no avail. "Marik, please you'll wake up my Grandpa and he needs all the rest he-"
A low moan escaped the Egyptian's lips - a sorrowful, helpless cry drenched in regret and longing and grief and that haunting sense of undeniable defeat and failure. "Too late..." he wailed, body curling up into a tiny ball, the Millennium Ring pressed tightly against his ribcage - against his heart. "It's all too late..."
It had all become far too much. Inside, Marik had known he'd never be able to handle returning to Domino City even if twenty years had passed. But he'd wanted to try. He'd needed to try. He needed to finally release everything that had built up inside him in the twenty years since the fulfillment of the Pharaoh's destiny and everything that that meant... That image appeared behind his eyelids again - the white-haired boy with his pale complexion and those dark unsmiling eyes glaring with cold resentment back out at the world, mouth downturned in a perpetual frown as though it had lost the ability to genuinely smile long ago. All Marik could see was that haunted face - tormented by the ghosts of a past long since buried beneath the ancient sands of Egypt, those dark eyes burning with festering contempt, alight with a passionate bloodthirsty hunger for revenge and cold with an all-consuming, suffocating loneliness born of several millennia trapped within an ancient artifact...
Marik clutched the Ring even tighter, pressing it against himself so tightly he could feel the metal prongs biting into his skin through his soaking lavender top but the pain was nothing compared to what was happening inside, where those prongs couldn't yet penetrate. Tears cascaded down the Egyptian's tanned cheeks, his eyes shut tight in pain and grief, his body a rigid ball of despair and yet Yugi found he was helpless to aid him. He could only stand awkwardly and watch Marik pour out all the tortured agony that had been pent up within his soul waiting for such a moment to break free. All that longing, all that regret... Everything that could have been if things had occurred differently in the past. But it was too late now. Twenty years too late. Two decades too late to change one event that could have changed everything...

My worst mistake...

What would have happened? What would have changed? Would it have changed anything? All the possibilities and doubts that preyed at the back of Marik's tormented mind came bubbling up to the surface, provoking great shuddering sobs to roll out of him as Yugi stood over him, unable to comprehend the sight of the Egyptian who once commanded power and strength now soaking wet and weeping upon the Game shop floor. Weeping about something - Yugi knew not what - that threatened to tear the tormented tombkeeper apart. Frowning, he tried to work it all out - to ascertain from the Egyptian's actions up to and including the present moment just what caused such heartache and pain. Vaguely he could recall the way Marik's eyes had wandered over a specific section of the Retro Collection displaying the cards once possessed by one boy in particular: the boy who had been in possession of the Millennium Ring Marik now held pressed against his very heart. Coupled with everything Yugi could recall from the past - Marik's involvement in the entire Battle City charade and all the events that took place up to and including the tournament's conclusion - he slowly pieced together as much of the jigsaw as he could and felt a heavy sadness grow within him as he understood. He sighed. Never once had he considered that perhaps his victory alongside the Pharaoh hadn't brought happiness to everyone. Never once did he consider the negative consequences of his victory. Never did he even consider the possibility of there even being negative ones. It had all been one great big tremendous success, vanquishing the ancient darkness once and for all. There had been no pause to consider even for a moment that perhaps this wasn't such wonderful news to everybody involved. Yugi knew they'd teamed up at one point - Marik Ishtar and the darkness that inhabited one of his own friends. He knew they'd conspired to destroy him and the Pharaoh. He knew at one time that they were dangerous threats that needed to be stopped. It was all that he had considered them to be - vengeful thieves conspiring together to meet the same goal. Never once did it cross his mind that perhaps what had motivated them was not so different from what he himself was motivated by: the support of others.  It had never occurred to him that friendship wasn't something reserved only for the "good-guys" but as he watched the man he once considered a threatening foe weeping in grief with the Millennium Ring held close it finally came to him. It was just a little late in coming.
It was difficult to say how long these moments of weeping lasted but eventually it seemed as though the wave of hysteria flowing from the distraught Egyptian was beginning to ease. His breathing was becoming a little more regular, interrupted less by those breathless gulping gasps that had punctuated every sob and the violent hitching of his shoulders had dropped to mild trembling but he still didn't show any response when Yugi asked if he was alright. He didn't even hear him. All he could hear was the pounding rush of blood pulsing through his ears, the thud of his heartbeat hammering against the Millennium Ring and the ghosts of a British-accented voice echoing in the dark recesses of his memories. He lifted the golden ring up to his face and pressed his tear-streaked cheek against its surface, all his memories playing out behind his closed eyelids. All those wonderful moments and all the difficult ones. All the joy and all the pain - the grief and sorrow and regret of his greatest mistake. Slowly his eyes slid open, their watery purple gaze fixed longingly upon the Millennium Ring as it reflected his broken expression back at him. The look in his eyes told a story of agonising regret, partnered with the insatiable desire to turn back the clock and save himself from making that mistake - save himself from his own stubborn pride and the cowardice that held him back. It was an impossible wish... Pressing the cool metal against his forehead he breathed a heavy, shaky sigh of defeat. The past was the past. It couldn't be changed. It could be re-lived but it couldn't be changed. His mistake would forever remain an indelible scar in his memory - in his soul. His biggest mistake. His most terrible, foolish mistake...
"I never told you..." he breathed in a barely audible whisper, his breath ghosting across the golden surface of the ring and clouding his reflection. "Never..."
His fingers traced the symbol of the Eye of Wdjat and a sad smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he looked at it, taking in every slightest bit of detail of its design before its image began to waver again, blurred by fresh tears that dripped down onto the ring as Marik pressed it against his heart once more, a single name rolling off his tongue to hang suspended in the expectant silence that had enveloped the room... "Bakura..."
It didn't come as much of a surprise to Yugi to find that his assumptions had been correct. He had already come to expect that all of this had had something to do with the dark spirit that Marik had befriended all those years ago and yet somehow the sound of him uttering the name he had suspected made the blood in his veins freeze in a stunned moment of temporary shock. It had not been the uttering of the name that had made him freeze so much as the way it had been uttered - the way Marik's mouth carefully, tenderly breathed each syllable into life, his sad smile still warmly imprinted across his tear-streaked face and as - with similar tenderness - he whispered three short words into the empty, lifeless heart of the Millennium Ring Yugi felt truly sorry for the Egyptian. Three words. Three words carrying all the pain and anguish that spawned from being held back for so long. Three words that had waited countless years to finally be spoken. Three words he'd never managed to say before it was too late. Three words...
"I love you..."