Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Possession ❯ Shelter ( Chapter 19 )

Disclaimer: I get really sick of typing these damn things. Think up some witty way to say "Dia no own Yugioh" and have done with it.

AN: I'm noticing a distinct Ishtar-like theme in here. Yep, it's Isis' turn. Enjoy.

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Sunsets. My brother reminds me of sunsets gleaming over the endless desert sands.

A fitting description for we who were raised in the shadows. Our home was always dark - for who could tell the difference between day and night?

Who does know? You can only look so far over the horizon until the light blinds you, or until the night comes to wrap you into oblivion. My brother has always teetered on that precarious edge - and he has tumbled from it time and time again.

Any mortal creature would be mad by now - a pity that one cannot tell with such a pair. Do they have eternity or only until tomorrow? And what is the price of a shattered soul?

You can't fall asleep before the darkness... you cannot let yourself be so fair and wilting, lest there be no mercy for you.

Unless you can claim that darkness as your own.

No, I'm not jealous. Disappointed, perhaps, but not jealous. Who could be jealous of... that?

They all have hungry eyes. The tomb robber's eyes are covetous - they settle on his other and reffuse to let go. The lunatic's eyes gleam with darkness and insanity - and my brother is all that they see. Even the great pharaoh... Yugi is far too kind to be the object of that kind of jealous pride, but does it even matter? He knows to whom he belongs, they all do, and they like it that way.

They're happy together. My poor little brother giggles and laughs and gets swung off his feet by his yami and doesn't even care about the blood soaking through his clothing and staining his lips. Doesn't care about the corpse left to rot in the gutter. Doesn't care about the fingerprints accidentally left upon the body, doesn't care about the broken family of the stranger, doesn't care about anything at all.

Because that's my job. And even though at times I've had to kick them out for being idiots, I have to keep them safe. I have to do it for all of our sakes. I didn't before... and look what happened then.

I am a fool. Malik will live his life the way he sees fit - and he is living his dream, is he not? Freedom from duty, freedom to choose, freedom to fall in love... and he chooses to live.

Perhaps that is why he cannot let his other go - for who is freer than one who obeys no rules at all? Even sanity is binding - or so my little brother claims, and clings all the tighter to his yami to escape it.

He fears imprisonment more than any other creature I have ever known.

I worry for them. For all of them, but my fragile brother most of all. He hates himself sometimes, hates his yami still more, loathes the world and everything in it - and then winds up tangled in between his yami and myself, soaking us both with his tears.

In those moments he swears he loves us more than anything, kisses his yami and cuddles up to me just as he did on cold nights when we were no more than little children who feared the darkness and the ghostly echoes that whispered down the ancient corridors like a breath from the long forgotten past.

My brother is a strange creature - and guarded jealously by one even stranger than he. To touch my brother is to take your life and your sanity in your hands - and to watch it fall to pieces. Yet it is stranger still that his yami doesn't mind my touch. Not in those times of desperation and need, and not ever.

When we're curled into a heap on the floor, he'll brush his lips across my brother's and coo soft words of devotion into his ears - and when we're drifting on the verge of dozing off he'll kiss my hair and wish me a sweet sleep for the night.

Malik and his yami are more alike than they seem. When one swings into incoherence, the other grows more lucid, and my brother loves it when his yami races home with blood in his hair. They're the most infuriating creatures in all the world - and they're my brothers.

Until a homicidal spirit flings his arms around you and squeals, "Isis-sister is home again, home again!" after you return from a long trip, you cannot understand the strangeness of my situation. His first loyalty is to Malik, but he loves me second best. But for himself and my brother - he would destroy me without a seecond thought.

...and would that I could see the outcome of all of this.

On those terrible nights when my brother is broken, I wake in the darkest hours and untangle myself from the warm heap of my twin siblings. Perhaps we are too old to share such a childish practice... but my brother needs the reassurance of having his big sister and his lover both at his side. And when there is no light to see by - in those moments he proves himself a hikari. His light is strange and warped and broken, but pure as virgin snow in the moonlight. In that mass of pale hair and dark limbs, he shines - and his yami clings to him as though letting go would destroy him.

If I could remember how to weep, perhaps I would, for their sake. The world will not accept them, so they dream of changing it, controlling it, forcing an unwilling planet into compliance. For ones who came so close, they still do not truly understand the price of mad desire and failure - yet they live with the consequences every day.

If you saw the most awful beauty, would you love it or would you flee from it? Which would you choose when you wished to do both?

Denial is useless - I have seen them tangled together and half-drunk with passion, and I have seen my brother with flowers in his hair and a smile on his face that gleamed brighter than the sun in the sky. What is there to deny?

Repulsion? When I love my brother? When I care for them both? When they both adore me? How can you be repulsed by your own family, your own kin?

Despair? No... they are happy, somehow. Why despair in the face of overwhelming joy? Why despair when I have two brothers who are happier together than most people will ever be?

Hatred? I may hate what they do, but never them. Never them, not when making cheap breakfasts on school mornings earns me a kiss on each cheek from a grateful little brother and his yami. Not when the three of us cuddle up in the oversized bed in the master bedroom and tell each other frightening stories like children. Hm. My brother's yami always does win... the products of a twisted mind are frightening indeed. But how can you hate someone when you've had a pillow fight with them? When you've seen them kiss your brother with a devoted hunger that is frightening in its beauty?

I may not understand them, they may drive me crazy with their exploits, and I may have occasionally kicked them out of the house - but I still love them. I still care for them. I still bandage their wounds and kiss them goodnight. I still hold them when they cry.

They may be frighteningly obsessed with each other, they may not care about the rest of the world, but it doesn't matter. It can't matter.

No. No, it doesn't.

They're my little brothers. And that's all that matters. That's all.

"Isis?"

"Isis?"

"What're you doing?"

"Isis has life-book too?"

I now have a brother sitting on either side of me and staring at you. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, they're reading you.

"Aww! We love Isis-sister too!"

"Isis..."

I'll finish with you later. I have baby brothers I need to hug.

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AN: Brothers make good pillows, ne? Feedback?

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