[Scrapped] The Maiden of Kul Elna
Oct. 30th, 2017 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aftanithTitle: The Maiden of Kul Elna
Author: AFTanith
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Notes: This is yet another scrapped draft of Bound by Gold, aka the Battle City finals era installment of The Maiden of Kul Elna.
Emily had never felt fear like she did in that moment. All around her, the Pharaoh's gang of cheerleaders were shouting their horror and protests, shoving past her to get to their fallen friend, but Emily felt suddenly detached from the scene atop the KaibaCorp Duel Tower.
In one fearsome moment, everything had gone wrong. When Bakura had fallen to Marik, she had found no choice but to align herself with the Pharaoh for protection from the lunatic that roamed free around Kaiba's blimp. And now the Pharaoh, the man she had been assured could defeat Marik, could bring Bakura back from the darkness--and the Spirit of the Ring would surely follow if Bakura were freed--was fading into the shadows just as Bakura had.
In that brief and terrifying moment, the people around her lost all meaning. Her ears deaf to their cries, eyes blind to their tears, soul numb to their grief, Emily turned on her heel, raced toward the elevator, and found solace behind its metal doors. She held her finger on the down button for the length of her descent, and when she finally reached the bottom, the doors had barely parted before she was free of them, racing over the metal floor with her every step echoing throughout the immense chamber.
After being in the Shadows and the duel tower for so long, the sunlight hurt her eyes when at first she thrust herself out into its warmth. But she didn't slow her pace; running blind through the scrapyard that was the demolished ruins of KaibaCorp Island, Emily made her way to the blimp.
The guards patrolling it were clearly startled to see her, and obviously suspicious of her urgent pace. She grumbled something about nausea and fear of heights when they tried to stop her, and luckily she was able to dart past them before they had a chance to stop her. She was relieved to hear they did not follow.
The Pharaoh's defeat had changed everything. It wasn't supposed to have been possible, and so she had never once considered what she might do if it occurred. As it was, she had been planning on being reunited with Bakura tonight, at the very least--at most, perhaps even the Spirit would be immediately returned to her. But with the Pharaoh gone, she feared she might be on her own for longer than she dared consider, and with that her thoughts turned to one thing: survival.
She had never liked the way Marik had looked at her. She supposed it had started during his duel with Mai. Perhaps the others had missed the darker implications of their fight, but Emily hadn't; Marik had been toying with Mai in every sense, and he had made no effort to hide just how much he was enjoying it. She had even seen traces of it in his match against Joey; it almost came across to her as a kind of sociopathic flirting, a sadomasochistic intermingling of pain and pleasure, violence and the intent to dominate, and the fact that his victim was entirely unwilling to participate only seemed to spur him on. This was not a man Emily wanted to be anywhere near, let alone cornered by on a blimp with no hope of aid, protection, or escape.
The only thing she had to comfort herself with was that she was unlikely to be his first victim. Who that would be was obvious: his sister Ishizu. Or, if the man still lived, his brother Odion.
If only Odion hadn't fallen to the wrath of the Winged Dragon of Ra. Emily couldn't help but wonder if perhaps... perhaps if Ishizu's claims about Odion's power over Marik's psychosis were true, Odion--had he been awake--might have been able to sway the duel. Everyone had placed their faith in the Pharaoh, but could it be that their real hope had been lying comatose on the blimp the entire time? Emily supposed that now they would never know.
Emily was in the kitchen before she knew exactly what she wanted to do. First, she knew, she needed to stock up. Her first chance at getting away from Marik was going to be the day they landed in Battle City, and that would be several days away at least. She had already survived one incident alone with Marik, when they'd been sidetracked from their journey by Seto Kaiba's adoptive brother, and that had been easy enough to manage. Marik had shown no interest in her then, luckily, and she had managed to stay locked away in her room for the brief experience, surviving easily on the food she'd stored in the mini-fridge and the bathroom adjoining her bedroom. But the ride home was going to be a longer stretch, and what she had stored already wasn't going to cut it. She needed anything and everything that didn't need to be cooked and optimally didn't need to be refrigerated. By the time she had finished going through the cabinets, she knew Kaiba's staff was going to be wondering how they could have gone through so much food so fast.
After stashing away everything she could manage, Emily stopped to consider what to do next. She double-checked her locks on the door, feeling a distinct sense of dread when she realized that Kaiba's employees could all remotely unlock it if they wished to do so, as she knew very well that Marik could easily bend any or all of them to his will if he so desired. She pined for a deadbolt or at least a chain lock, and for one brief moment, she considered breaking the locking mechanism altogether. But she quickly brushed that aside. No sense getting herself more trapped that she needed to be, after all. There was always the possibility that she might need to make a quick exit or seize some opportunity to flee.
A wild thought surfacing in her mind, Emily moved over to the window and peered out. From what she could see, the guards were still standing at the doors of the blimp, obviously still waiting for Kaiba to return from the tower. And if Kaiba was still on top of the tower, it was fairly safe to say that Marik and Yugi's friends were, too. After all, with Kaiba acting so dismissive of his tournament after losing to Yugi in the semi-finals, Emily rather assumed he'd be the first to return to the blimp, ready to put this entire debacle behind him.
So, no. Marik was not on the blimp yet. She couldn't be sure, but... she was sure enough. She darted to the door, making sure she had her key card before it swung shut and locked behind her, and then she sped off down the hall to Odion's room.
She knew what she would find there, and she quickly affirmed it. Ishizu sat at Odion's bedside, frowning at his unconscious form.
"No change?" Emily asked, startling the other woman. Ishizu shook her head. "You know, you really should lock this door."
Ishizu stared at her for a moment, then turned sadly back to her brother. "I assume you come bearing bad news."
Emily nodded, shutting the door behind her and waiting until she heard the definitive click of the lock. "I do. But I want to share a bit of hope, too."
"If Marik's evil side has defeated the Pharaoh, there is no hope left."
"Ishizu, please listen to me. We don't have much time before Marik's back on this blimp, and by then I fully intend to be safely locked away in my own room, ready to weather this damn storm on my own terms. But I am offering you an idea."
"I will hear it."
"You said Odion had some kind of power over your brother. You said he could suppress Marik's psychosis some how, kind of keep the insanity at bay. You stand by that?"
"I do."
"Then it's obvious. We need Odion awake. Immediately." She sat down beside Ishizu, taking her hands. "I know there has to be a way to wake him up. And if anyone knows it, you do."
Ishizu pulled away. "Odion lies unconscious by the will of Ra. I have no power to overcome a god nor the knowledge of how to do so."
"There has to be a way. Look, I don't know a damn thing about this whole ancient Egypt deal, but I know that if there's anything to it--and it sure as fuck looks like there is--there has to be some way to get through this. You said it yourself: Odion's here because he pissed off a god card. Or a god. Or whatever. How do we un-piss it?"
"When the gods have been appeased, Emily, you will know it. Until that time, there is nothing we can do. Or at least, there is nothing we can do here on a blimp on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean thousands of miles away from my homeland. We are lost, and though I would do anything to save my brother from the darkness that has overtaken him, we will remain lost because you and I and everyone else can do nothing."
Emily shook her head in disbelief. "Nothing?" she repeated. "You can't think of a single thing that could help us? Aren't you supposed to have seen the damn future until you gave away your Necklace? What is the point if your predictions are fucking wrong?"
"The power of the Millennium Necklace broke for me when I went up against one I should not have. And so even if I had tried to foresee the Pharaoh's duel, I could not have. The Necklace lies with Yugi, or with whatever's left of him, and it is of no help to me, nor to you."
"Fine," said Emily, standing at once. "Alright. Well, have a nice life--what's left of it. Because you can bet your ass that Marik's going to be here first. His hit list now is going to be you, Odion, and then me. Because we're the outliers here, we're the ones left alone to cope by ourselves. And you're going because he hates you, but I'll be next because he's going to think I'm an easy target. And I'm going to promise you right now that your pathetic piece of shit of a brother is never going to lay a hand on me."
She turned to go, but froze as she did so. Because the door was sliding open before she bade it, and standing on the other side was one of the two KaibaCorp guards who had almost stopped her from getting on the blimp. And Marik stood behind him, a smile curving his lips as he took in the sight before him.
"Well, well, well," he said, stepping past the guard, who immediately started back off down the hallway like a zombie. Emily's heart sunk, but she had no time to regret leaving the safety of her room behind. As it was, she now stood between Marik and his primary goals: Ishizu and Odion. She immediately sidestepped, moving out of the line of fire.
Marik watched her with a smirk as he passed, and Emily took the opportunity to bolt toward the closing door. Marik called casually back to her, "Don't bother. The guards will have you back here before you turn the corner." Then he chuckled. "It would seem Kaiba needs to look into hiring a better security staff. It was stunningly simple to seduce his current guards to my will."
Emily stood inches from the door, close enough to touch it, and yet it offered her no salvation. Marik set up his trap too quickly, intending to catch Ishizu in her room before she had the chance to seek the protection of Kaiba or Yugi's friends, and it was only luck--in his favor and against hers, unfortunately--that he managed to capture Emily in his web, as well. She was little more than an added bonus to him.
"Now," he said. "Seto Kaiba and his brother are on board, the former readying the craft for takeoff and the latter looking into medical arrangements for our fallen heroes." He gestured mockingly toward Odion, making no effort to hide his leering grin. "Poor little Yugi and his friends are still on the top of tower, some mourning, some being mourned." Emily noted the vagueness of it; he could merely mean they were mourning Yugi. Or... "And I find that I now have some free time to attend to some unfinished family business. I hope you don't feel uncomfortable being included, Emily, my dear, but I do feel we've gotten close over these past few days, wouldn't you say?"
Emily definitely wouldn't say that by any means--as a matter of fact, it puzzled her--but she didn't dare disagree.
Amazingly, it was Ishizu who came to her rescue. "Marik, she had nothing to do with this. Let her go, and then we can settle this."
Marik glanced back and forth between the two women once before shaking his head. From the back of his belt, he withdrew the Millennium Rod, and Emily shrank back against the door. Only once had she felt even a brush of the powers of a Millennium Item used for aggression, and she had no desire to relive that experience. Ishizu, however, did not cower. Far from it, in fact. She stood up from her seat at Odion's side and stared determinedly into her brother's insanity-glazed eyes.
"I fear my brother is no longer in there, Marik. But perhaps I am being unfair. You are, after all, borne of my brother, and so I shall speak to both of you, or whichever of you is still able to hear me: you must not do this thing. The Pharaoh has fallen, leaving the world without its shining beacon of hope. You have taken away the planet's one and only hope of withstanding the evil that is to surely rise again. Do not make the same mistake twice; we might have lost the war preemptively because of your actions, but that end is far off and perhaps well past our lifetimes. We may still be able to salvage this battle, the one that affects us immediately. But you must spare Odion. He is the only one left who can balance--"
Marik's hand connected with the side of her face; Emily gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth to silence herself as Ishizu tumbled down onto the bed from the force of the blow, landing sprawled across Odion's legs. She glared at her brother as she stood again, but he didn't waste time in letting her rise. He seized her by the hair, and--
Emily closed her eyes, by that did nothing to drown out the sound of Ishizu's scream, nor the thump that followed. After a moment, she peeked out between her fingers to find that the attack had been swift and more effective than she had imagined it would be. Two single wounds to the chest, the knife end of the Millennium Rod piercing both Ishizu and Odion through their hearts exactly. Now Odion lay in the bed, looking the same in death as he had in his last few days of life, and Ishizu lay crumpled on the ground at Marik's feet, her black hair sprawled across her face. Emily counted that a blessing; she had no desire to see those wise blue eyes, now frozen in death, staring at her.
Marik, meanwhile, was grinning at her. There was blood all over him--his hands, his shirt, even a bit of splatter on his face and in his hair. But oddly the blood was far from the most disturbing thing about him in that moment; he was staring at her with a horrifyingly predatory gleam in his eye, far worse than anything he'd shown when Mai, Joey, and Bakura had been his victims, and so Emily had to wonder if it was borne of his triumph over his siblings or his eagerness for whatever he was about to do to her. She could only hope it was the former.
With her back against the door, she had little hope. She believed what he said about the guards, and wasn't yet ready to risk annoying him with an escape attempt that would almost certainly be quickly thwarted. If there was any chance at all that she might make it out of here alive, she couldn't take that risk.
But then again, this was Marik. There was no pretense here; he was going to kill her, and that much was obvious. Not only that, but he was almost guaranteed to toy with her first. He'd killed Ishizu and Odion in less than a minute; their deaths had been quick and efficient, completely unlike his normal methods of victimization. Emily feared now he was ready to take it slow and savor the torment. Her torment.
Again, though, this was Marik, and there was no pretense here. So Emily put it to a question. "Is there any chance of me leaving this room alive?"
Marik laughed. "That depends."
"On what?"
"On how well you do."
Emily felt a chill run up her spine. How well she did? How well she did what? "Explain."
His eyes glittered beneath their glaze of madness. "Well, my dear, I must admit that you're still something of an enigma to me. The Pharaoh's little band of cheerleaders; they're all open books. But you are something else entirely. Since the first day you arrived, you've been flitting around the blimp like a shadow. More specifically, you were for quite some time Bakura's shadow, and frankly, I'd like to know why."
Her brow furrowed. "What?"
Marik stepped forward menacingly, quickly closing the gap between them until he stood less than a foot away from her. She had to tilt her head back to keep his face in her field of vision, and she didn't at all care for the way that exposed her neck to him. "For all Bakura was a fool, he didn't seem like the kind of man to do anything without a reason. What was his reason for you?"
"I don't--" But before she could get the words out, Marik's hand was around her throat, slamming her hard into the wall and lifting her almost an inch off the ground. Instinctively, her hands when to his, trying feebly to wrench them open, but then she remembered herself, and they shot immediately to his throat instead. It took only a second to realize her arms were too short to reach his throat from where she was being held, so she instantly went for the next best thing, connecting her nails with his forehead and raking them downward over his eyes. He leaned back, laughing almost hysterically, and then suddenly started forward, surprising Emily completely by shoving himself between her extended and desperately clawing arms to slam his lips against hers.
Emily could already feel herself starting to slip into unconsciousness from lack of oxygen, and so her addled brain could hardly process what had just happened. One moment she was desperately trying to fight him off as he strangled her, and the next, he'd forced himself upon her... as he strangled her.
Then the first attack was over, his hand slipping away from her throat, her feet falling back onto the carpet; and the second assault was just beginning, his fingers curling into her hips as he pressed her body into the wall and her mouth to his.
For the first few seconds, she didn't have a chance to struggle; she was too busy gasping for air, trying to get large gulps of it into her lungs in the brief moments when her mouth wasn't otherwise occupied. Then, as her headache started to subside, she finally managed to bring her hands up to his throat; but before she could sink her nails into his flesh, he had jolted her forward, moving her across the room with stunning ease, and dropping her onto the bed while her brain started processing just what he was doing to her.
That's when the screams started. Not only was she trapped in a room with a serial killer and two corpses, one of which lay mere centimeters away from her, this man--this monster--had every intention of raping her right there. In a puddle of his brother's blood.
Whether anyone was on the blimp to hear the screams didn't matter. The Kaiba brothers were certainly on board, and Emily could only assume that by now Yugi's friends were, too. But they would not come running when they heard her scream. And even if they did, there was little they could do. No one could get into the room without overriding the door, which only Kaiba or one of his staff could do--and his staff was at least partially under Marik's control. There was no one coming to save her.
Marik knew that, of course. Emily had little doubt that he'd planned it that way and very much enjoyed the advantage. He could focus his full attention on her without any fears of being interrupted, no matter how loud she screamed or how desperately she begged for someone to help her.
She had no intentions of begging, of course. Not when he started tearing away at her clothes. Not when he started attacking her flesh with a twisted kind of passion. Not even when he started forcing himself into her distinctly unaroused body.
At that point, she had started to cry. She wasn't proud of it, and she would never admit to it afterward, but she couldn't stop herself. The pain was something she had never experienced before, something she'd never dreamed she would experience. As far back as she could remember, she had always believed the Spirit of the Ring would be there to protect her from anyone who even considered harming her. Or at the very least that Ryou Bakura would be there to comfort her after any wrongdoings. But now they were both lost to her, banished to the Shadow Realm by the very man from whom she needed protection.
Slowly her sobbing died down as she realized just how interesting Marik seemed to find it. He had watched her expression intently the entire time, and now as she tried to regain control of her breathing, he bent down so he was kissing her again, mumbling something under his breath as he did so. Emily made no effort to distinguish his words; she merely lay still, taking solace in the fact that with his kiss came a slower, more relaxed pace.
With her clothes lying almost in shreds around her, Marik's hands started to take advantage, open palms and fingertips taking their time to investigate nearly every inch of her exposed skin. She did her best to twitch away from his touch--which was to say that she made small efforts that were immediately conquered--and realized to her horror just what he was doing to her.
It was so much worse that she'd feared he would do. Death was one thing. Pain was another. But pleasure... that was something else entirely.
She closed her eyes then, trying to reassure herself. It was better this way, she reasoned; if she were aroused by his actions, much of her pain would be eliminated. But psychologically she was in turmoil; everything about this was wrong.
But there was nothing she could do about it, nothing at all she could do or say to make this--make him--stop this. There was only one thing in the world she could possibly do that could make him end this, and that was--
Emily let out a sob as she felt her muscles contracting. She was surprised how little pleasure she got from it, really, and it embarrassed her to think that Marik's caresses had been more pleasurable than the orgasm he'd wrenched from her. But that didn't make sense, she realized a moment later; and a moment after that, she felt him pulling away from her.
It was clear he hadn't finished--in either sense of the word. And the glitter that still lurked within his eyes made Emily's heart sink. It wasn't over.
After the second day, Emily started to wonder whether it would ever be over. By the end of the third day, she settled on "no".
It took a total of three days--three brutal, agonizing days--to make it back to Battle City. The only thing Emily had to be grateful for during the entire trip was that Marik didn't force her to spend it in the company of his siblings' corpses. No, those he took care of with surprising ease and swiftness; with perhaps the entire flight crew and security force under his control, getting the bodies out of the room in the dead of night and up to the duel arena was a simple task. And now that they had been thrown casually overboard, it was virtually guaranteed that no one would ever manage to locate the bodies of Ishizu and Odion Ishtar.
The room itself, bloodstained and disheveled from the attack, was another subject; it was addressed similarly. Glassy-eyed janitorial staff members cleaned up the room impeccably under Marik's command, and after they were done, there was hardly a trace of a murder. All anyone would ever be able to prove was that the Ishtar siblings were missing.
Emily, meanwhile, was forced to witness this deception, and yet never once did she get the chance to see how the others on the blimp responded to it. As a matter of fact, until the day they returned to the duel stadium in Battle City, Emily didn't see any of the other passengers--with the exception of Marik, of course.
She saw him almost constantly. He seemed to have lost almost all interest in tormenting the others, focusing his full attentions on Emily. With Kaiba's staff acting as Marik's, there was never any reason for him to leave the room, either. Everything he could possibly need or want could be brought to him without him ever having to lift a finger, and Emily couldn't possibly express how much that infuriated her. If only she could have a single moment of peace, just a single moment of her own to savor, then she could finally stop to relax and think about everything that was happening to her. As it was, Emily had been forced to run on survival mode and nothing else. Her flight or fight response had been stifled and quelled, leaving her now with something else entirely; some kind of anxious dance, a mental game she and Marik were playing. He would push forward, try to get a response out of her, cross over some line, and she would have to respond in any way she could surmise that would enable her to do the only thing she was still permitted--live.
Marik offered her nothing else. Entertainment was a foreign concept during her confinement. The television and all communication devices within the room had been either removed or destroyed by his puppets. There were no books, magazines, gadgets, toys; there was nothing to clean, dust, rearrange, sort. Anything that could possibly have helped take Emily's mind off her situation had been meticulously removed from the room.
As had the lock from the bathroom. The first day, she had taken solace in the fact that Marik had forgotten about it. She'd cautiously announced her need to urinate, and when she was safely behind the bathroom door, she'd locked it. For the first ten minutes, Marik had tried to break down the door, seeming both terribly angry and terribly amused. But after that he'd given up, and a few minutes later she'd heard the sound of someone picking the lock--one of the only traditional door locks she'd seen on the aircraft--and when it swung open to reveal a glassy-eyed janitor and Marik behind him, Emily wondered if that would be the last thing she ever saw.
And yet she'd been wrong. With the door open, he seemed absolutely bored, and so they spent the next few hours sitting silently in two of the room's armchairs. Marik stared at her the entire time. He hardly ever seemed to blink.
The entire time, Emily did her best to focus on assessing the situation--something that was next to impossible with Marik surveying her as he was. It made her skin crawl, but she put forth her best effort to ignore it. She didn't need the distraction.
She'd only managed to make things worse. She had hoped that locking herself in the bathroom would give her a few brief moments in which to calm her frayed nerves, but it had served no such purpose. Marik had gotten her out of the room in less than fifteen minutes, which astounded her. She had expected to be left alone for at least an hour, perhaps hours. But that had been foolish. Of course Marik wouldn't waste time humoring her.
All she had managed to do with that little stunt was to take away one of the few comforts she had taken from granted: the bathroom door. The janitor, under Marik's silent command, had immediately removed it from its hinges and taken it out of the room. After a few hours contemplation--mostly sulking, actually--it occurred to Emily to wonder how exactly the janitor had managed to stow away an entire door or else explain its removal to those who would undoubtedly notice.
But then she rolled her eyes at her own naivety; this crew had managed to get two bodies out of a room in the middle of the night without anyone noticing, and she expected a door to trouble them? The thought suddenly struck her as so absurd that she actually started laughing right there in the armchair behind Marik, with his eyes boring into her all the while.
Her outburst seemed to surprise him at first, but he recovered within a moment. "Well, if you're in such a good mood anyway..." She wasn't the least bit surprised to find herself being forced back onto the bed for round two of this particularly cruel brand of torture.
Emily had already known Marik had a blatantly obvious fetish for pain--he had never bothered to make his sadism a secret, nor had he put forth any effort to hide his arousal during his bouts of cruelty. And so it surprised her that he didn't make things worse for her than he did. As he had the first time, he actually put in a bit of effort toward her enjoyment; and she had to admit that when she reflected on their second encounter after the fact, she was astounded to realize that he didn't seen to be particular impassioned about it himself. It occurred to her that if his enjoyment hadn't been his primary concern, something else obviously had. But what that something else might have been puzzled her--and frankly, frightened her.
The days after that were much the same. Marik toyed with her--staring, touching, taunting. Day after day, rape after rape, taunt after taunt, it went on and on. Then finally, much to her relief, the skyline of Battle City came into view of the windows. Secretly Emily rejoiced; she could loose him in the city, she knew that. She could lose him, and she could find help--she knew exactly where to look for it.
When they exited the plane, Emily saw the other passengers for the first time. The Kaibas weren't there, but Yugi's friends were. Emily did all that she could to avoid their eyes, though she could feel them staring at her. She didn't want their pity, she told herself, and yet somehow she had to admit that she did. She wanted them to understand what had happened to her over the past few days, and she hardly doubted they could possible overlook it. The signs were obvious on her body; while Marik had certainly restrained himself far more than she'd expected, he had by no means been gentle with her, and bruises peppered her skin--the most outstanding, of course, being the fingerprints on her neck from when he'd nearly strangled her to death. She hadn't been sleeping and couldn't seem to keep down any of her meals, so she wasn't healing properly. She looked ragged and tired, and she wanted them to know.
But whether they knew or not didn't matter. They could do nothing to help her, and they didn't try as Marik shoved her past them, his fingers curled tightly around her arms as he steered her in front of him. They stepped down from the craft, Emily's small travel backpack slung casually over Marik's shoulder, and he pushed her out of the arena and down the street.
They walked for a few blocks before they heard the sirens. Marik hesitated a moment, then let his hands fall from Emily's arms, one of them slipping into hers instead. But his grip was tight and painful, clearly a warning against attempting to flee. A police car rolled past them without slowing, and Marik started off at a faster pace. Evidently it had occurred to him that there was a distinct possibility that Kaiba had been absent from the disembarking process because he was busy notifying the police, but that didn't seem to disconcert him too terribly. After taking another block almost at a run, he finally stopped and hailed a cab.
He shoved Emily into the backseat without any pretense of gentleness, and slammed the door behind him after he'd slid in beside her. He glared at the driver. "Drive," he growled.
"Where to, kid?" He looked distinctly suspicious of the pair of them.
Marik didn't have any patience for the man; the blade end of the Rod was out within a moment. "Drive," he repeated, gesturing with the knife so as to make his threat perfectly clear.
The driver nearly killed them in his frenzy to obey, darting into traffic in front of a massive eighteen-wheeler. Marik chuckled, amused by both the driver's reaction to him and Emily's reaction to the driver's recklessness, and then turned to her. "So," he said far too casually, "where are we going?"
"Excuse me? How the hell should I know?"
"Because you're the one who knows what Bakura's address is."
"Wait, what? Since when are we going to--"
"I'm not oblivious, my dear. On the blimp, you and Bakura clearly discussed his living arrangements; that is, you made it obvious that the two of you lived alone together. So, where would that dwelling be?"
Emily winced. "It's his father's house, but his dad's usually away. I don't know if he's there right now. I... don't think so."
"I hope for his sake that he isn't. Now, give the man the address."
"Uh..." She turned to the driver. "1428 Roulette Street in Domino City."
The man nodded stiffly and immediately turned a corner. Then the car settled into silence, and Emily rested her head against the seat. She didn't want Marik in Ryou's house, not for anything. But there was nothing she could do.
They arrived in about half an hour. Marik never paid the cab driver. Another threat sent the man fleeing as fast as he could drive, and Marik chuckled again to himself.
Staring up at Bakura's house for the first time without Bakura, Emily trembled. She loved this place. With Ryou's father being an archaeologist, the manor-like abode brimmed with artifacts both beautiful and thought-provoking, and the idea that Marik would be allowed to roam those halls freely, able to corrupt and destroy as he pleased, terrified her. She wanted to preserve the sanctity of the house, if nothing more.
And yet again she knew she was impotent. Marik could take this tiny point of light away from her as easy as he'd stolen her freedom, and there would be nothing she could do.
He forced her to the open the door, and then they stepped inside the building. The air was stale from the house being shut up for so long with no residents, but Marik slammed and bolted them in the stifling room without any hesitation. He immediately dropped Emily's bag to the floor, then stalked off out of sight.
He didn't need to warn her not to run away. Not yet, at least. She wouldn't even dream of trying to escape until she could be certain the perfect opportunity had arrived; as it was, she didn't know where he was going nor how long he would be gone. So instead of fretting, she grabbed her bag and went upstairs.
Bakura's room wasn't locked, and so she let herself in. She dropped her bag on the bed, then turned toward the television. If the police cars had been about them, there was every possibility that she might be able to get some information on the subject.
She glanced at the clock. Twelve past four. The news was already on.
When she hit the power button on the television, she found it already set to one of the area's news channels. The newscasters were right in the middle of updating a story about a car accident, but when that was finished, Emily's perked up.
"Disturbing news today in Battle City. The KaibaCorp-sponsored Duel Monsters tournament being hosted in the city came to an end several days ago, and the competitors returned from their mysterious final arena this afternoon. A ceremony had been scheduled to announce the winners, but instead of festivity, Battle City found itself in the midst of a tragedy."
Marik's picture flashed on the screen. "Marik Ishtar, Egyptian citizen and finalist in the Battle City tournament is the suspect in the disappearance of Odion Ishtar, Ishizu Ishtar, and Ryou Bakura. All three went missing several days ago while the KaibaCorp blimp was flying over the ocean and are presumed dead."
Emily's picture now. "Ishtar is also wanted for the kidnapping of Miss Emily Robinson, a seventeen-year-old Domino City high school student and close friend of one of the other victims. She was last seen one hour ago being forced off the blimp by Mr. Ishtar. Their whereabouts are currently unknown."
Back to the reporters. "If you have any information on either of these individuals, please contact your local police immediately."
Then they moved on, settling into a lighter story about an adoption charity, and Emily turned the television off.
It was a good sign. Kaiba hadn't let her down after all, and with everyone in the area on the lookout for her and Marik, there was a good chance the police might be able to intervene. Even the Millennium Rod's powers wouldn't be able to stand up against a SWAT team sniper, if the situation came to it.
And so when Marik walked into the room, he found Emily with traces of a smile on her face. It fell away immediately.
"Something amusing?" he asked.
She shook her head mutely. He took a moment to survey the room around her.
"You lived here?" Now she nodded. "With Bakura?" Another nod. She didn't know where he was going with this.
He didn't clarify. Instead, he fell silent, turning back to her with that astoundingly predatory look in his eyes once more. Her heart sank. There it went. The sanctity of the Bakura home was about to flit away and never return; Marik was going to rape her right there on the bed she'd shared with Bakura, and she wouldn't even be able to risk defending herself. The thought had her struggling to fight back tears.
Marik seized her by the shoulders without a word, shoving her down onto the bed with such force that she actually bounced when she hit the plush surface. Her head hit the mattress, and her hand slammed against the remote control. Marik turned at the sound of the television turning on, and Emily took that brief moment to recover. But when she'd sat up and focused her attention back on Marik, her heart sank.
His eyes were narrowed as they surveyed the television screen. It was on a different channel now, and the volume had gone up significantly. The reporter's voice blasted through the room.
"--sees either of these two individuals, call the number below--"
Marik's passport photo and Emily's Senior picture both stared back at them from the screen, and Emily scrambled to turn it off.
There was a moment of silence in the room, then Marik slowly turned to Emily. Suddenly she realized she actually preferred the predatory gaze; what had replaced it was simply terrifying, a horrific and unmistakable fury gazing back at her.
Then the silence broke, Emily's scream shattering its ominous calm as Marik lunged toward her. His fingers wound into her hair, which he wrench backward so hard she feared her neck might snap; then he pulled her to her feet, seizing her Battle City bag from the bed, and dragged her out of the room.
She was still screaming and thrashing as he pulled her down the stairs. She stumbled every few steps, but Marik didn't bother to catch her. Nor did he hesitate for her to regain her footing. He just kept moving, letting her finally fall to her knees on the final few steps, and when they finally reached the bottom, he released her hair.
She had little doubt he'd injured her scalp, being fairly sure she could feel a trickle of blood or two running down through her hair. And yet when she turned her face up to him with a mask of fury that very nearly matched his own in its intensity, he started to laugh.
Then he had her by the arm and was pulling her to her feet, and a moment later they were back out in the sunlight. He pushed her down the walk again and onto the street, then stepped out to hail another taxi.
"No one's going to stop for--"
He sank his nails into her arm, and she fell silent. Blood dripped onto her shoulder, leaving its watery crimson trail down her chest as it disappeared beneath her shirt. He'd definitely torn her scalp. And somehow she didn't think there were stitches in her future.
Much to her surprise, a taxi did stop. Marik had the door open before the driver had the chance to realize who he was, and he immediately pushed Emily and himself into the cab. The blade of the Millennium Rod was against the driver's throat within a moment.
"Domino Harbor."
The driver whimpered, then pulled off. Marik held the blade against his throat the entire trip.
When they arrived at the harbor, Emily didn't know what to think. Did Marik have a boat? Did he plan on trying to go home? Worse yet, did he plan on smuggling Emily into Egypt with him? If so, Emily certainly wished he'd chosen the airport. The abundant security and her lack of a passport might have been her savior there, and yet if he managed to get her on a boat, he might actually manage to imprison her in a foreign country. Her chance of escape then would drop to almost nothing.
She watched wearily as Marik slowly pulled the blade away from the man's throat, warning him not to make any sudden movements. For a flitting moment, it crossed her mind that it would have been much simpler for him to place the driver under his control with the Rod; but then she realized that was the point. The Marik that had arrived in Battle City would have put the driver under his control and been done with it. The Marik that left Battle City liked to play with his food.
The driver kept making odd, terrified squeaking noises as they left his cab, and when they were outside of it, he seemed too paralyzed with fear to even make an escape. Emily stared at him in surprise, trying to will him to flee while he had the chance. Marik simply watched with amusement.
Almost a whole minute passed before the driver suddenly floored it. Without warning, he was barreling past them as fast as his dated car could go, and then he turned a corner and disappeared. Marik laughed, then started tugging Emily off toward a warehouse.
Or at least, she thought it was a warehouse. She was, in fact, quite mistaken; it was an indoor dock of some kind, behind the doors of which hid a large yacht. She feared it was Marik's. And worse yet, she feared he knew how to operate it.
She suppressed her surprise when he courteously helped her board the vessel; she'd never been on a boat before, and in all honesty, she had more than a slight fear of the things. As she stood on the deck, she couldn't ignore the gentle swaying of the craft, a sense of vertigo and nausea almost overwhelming her. Marik seemed to notice immediately, and again surprised her; his vicelike grip on her arm abandoned, he gently helped her down into one of the downstairs rooms of the boat and sat her down on one of the beds. Then he disappeared--but not before locking her in.
Emily stared after him as she tried to regain control of her body, and she milled over it all in her head. Everything that had just happened disturbed her. Immensely. One moment he's nearly scalped her from sheer force, and the next, he's going out of his way to ease her discomfort. If she didn't know better, he'd done the latter with a specific goal in mind: endear himself to her with some twisted kind of non-apology.
There wasn't a lot Emily knew about the world at large. Emily would be the first to admit that. Her memories didn't go back far, and her schooling since the accident she only vaguely believed really happened had been sparse. But she had a thirst for knowledge that Bakura had seemed to encourage, and so she'd had leeway to learn--from books, television, and anything else she could get her hands on--anything she wanted to, as much as she wanted to.
And so she knew a thing or two about Stockholm syndrome.
Truth be told, when she first stumbled across the term, she feared she might have found the reason she was so inexplicably attached to Bakura in the first place. But it didn't fit; as well as she could remember, Bakura had never done anything to harm or oppress her. She didn't know how she had ended up with him, but she never had any reason--nor any will--to leave. She'd never felt afraid of him. Only...
Well, she didn't know how to describe what she felt for him, and she had long since given up trying.
But she did know what she felt for Marik, and that was nothing but contempt. She hated him for what he'd done to Bakura, to Yugi's friends, and most of all to her, and she didn't appreciate any kind gestures from him. If he was trying to win her favor by offering her something for her weakening psyche to latch on to, it wasn't going to work.
Because if there was one thing Emily Robinson would confess to, it was an impressively stubborn nature.
It took some time for Emily's stomach to settle, but once it did, she cautiously peeked out into the hall. There was no sign of Marik, and so she stepped out of the cabin. As she walked back toward the deck, she could hear the muffled sound of a man's voice--not Marik's. She hesitated, baffled.
Did Marik know someone here? Or could it be possible that someone was confronting him, having recognized him from the news?
If it was the latter, she could only hope the person had possessed the forethought to call the police before he engaged Marik. She expected that afterwards, he'd never get the chance.
Slowly, she made her way up the metal staircase, trying to silence her footsteps as best she could. The voice upstairs kept speaking, so she was fairly certain as she emerged from below deck that he hadn't heard her ascent. She hoped Marik hadn't, either.
But her heart sank the minute she set eyes on the stranger. A Rare Hunter, clothed in purple robes, knelt on the deck speaking to Marik. His back was to Emily with Marik facing her, and Marik's eyes flickered toward her the moment she came into view. The annoyance was obvious on his face as she anxiously approached.
The Rare Hunter seemed startled when he finally noticed Emily's presence. He cast an uncertain glance at Marik, who sneered. "Get up."
The man obeyed immediately. "Shall I fetch the others?"
Marik's impatience couldn't have been more obvious; he answered with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, and the Rare Hunter rushed off. Emily hesitated, suddenly feeling awkward. It occurred to her that she still had no idea what was going on.
He turned to her with a bored expression. "I thought you were sick."
"Feeling better now."
"Go back downstairs."
She hesitated only a moment, then turned on her heel. There was nothing she could do with him standing on the deck. Even if she jumped overboard into the water, there would be no escape; she would be pinned inside the building, giving Marik ample time to recapture her.
No, if she were going to make an escape from the ship, she needed Marik distracted and the boat out of the building. Maybe then--just maybe--she could manage to swim to safety.
Marik didn't follow her below deck, and it was several minutes before she heard another voice. And this voice was new to her, and quite surprising. Female.
Two male voices accompanied it, one of them being the Rare Hunter she'd seen before; the three of them spoke in whispers, their words indistinct and unintelligible, and finally the sound faded away as the group moved out of earshot of Emily's cabin.
A short while later, Marik reappeared. He didn't say a word--simply grabbed her by the arm and pulled her with him into the bed. She could feel the boat starting to move in the water then, and she was grateful for the support of the furniture beneath her.
And she was very much surprised when Marik dropped onto the bed beside her and curled his body into hers.
Seasickness eventually gave way to exhaustion, and she drifted off to sleep. When she awoke, the realization disturbed her. She hadn't been able to sleep since the Pharaoh's loss. Not since the moment when Marik had taken her prisoner, had forced her to try night after night to sleep in his bed. She'd never managed it... until now.
The thought that his presence beside her might have relaxed her enough to let her sleep sickened her; he was the reason she wasn't relaxed in the first place, after all, and so she couldn't help feeling her body had betrayed her somehow. And so it was a relief that she found the bed empty when she awoke; she didn't know where Marik had gone, and she would be quite happy to never find out.
Of course, she found out fairly quickly. Almost as soon as she was up, someone was knocking on the door. Not Marik, she was sure, as there was little doubt in her mind that he would never bother to knock. She assumed instead that this was one of the three people she'd heard speaking the previous afternoon.
She glanced at the clock before she answered the door. It had been about five, maybe five thirty when she'd fallen asleep, and now it was noon. After not sleeping for three days, she'd gotten an eighteen hour block of rest. It left her feeling fatigued, but not in the sense she'd felt last night, and she preferred this new stiffness in her muscles to the mental decline she'd been experiencing the night before.
When Emily opened the cabin door, she found a stranger standing on the other side. It wasn't the man she'd seen the previous afternoon, nor was it the woman she'd heard speaking. Instead she stood face to face with the third person in the conversation, a tall man with a dark complexion and dark eyes, possibly another Egyptian. Any other distinguishing features were hidden beneath the purple robe he wore.
He spoke in a gruff voice, but it sounded oddly forced. "Follow me."
She did as she was told without a word, more out of curiosity than any genuine intent to be obedient. The stranger led her down the hall and around a corner, and then an open doorway came into view. Beyond it was a cabin much larger than the one she'd slept in, and within it sat Marik, apparently staring out a window.
Emily's eyes followed his gaze, and her stomach churned at the sudden realization that they had long since left land behind. If there had been a chance for her to escape, she had missed it; to attempt something now would be to offer herself up to death in the form of drowning or shark attack.
He turned to her after a moment and calmly gestured for her to sit down across from him. She didn't know what to make of it, more than a tad surprised by how calm he seemed to be. In all honesty, she'd never seen him so passive. She hoped it was that the sea had some kind of calming effect on him, rather than the more ominous theory that his mind was focused elsewhere.
She sat opposite him for a long moment. When she realized he had no interest in breaking the silence, she bit. "Where are we going?"
"We, my dear, are going back." She stared blankly. "This all began--for me--in Egypt. My own little prison beneath the sands." He grinned at her, the malice unconcealable. "I feel it's only fitting to return to my birthplace as a triumphant man."
"You're... taking me to Egypt so you can brag to your dead father?"
His grin didn't falter. "A very nice try, but no. I'm taking you to Egypt because I'm going to Egypt and just happen to be keeping you nearby. You, of course, don't belong there and frankly don't matter."
"Flattering."
The word was cold and callous as it passed her lips; a mask of strength through sarcasm. She honestly didn't understand how she managed to act the way she did. Four days now--four long, horrific days--that she'd been prisoner, witness to murder, victim of rape. And yet she felt oddly detached from the ordeal, as if it wasn't happening to her. Every bit of it should have traumatized her, and yet she continued on an emotional flatline, as if somehow she couldn't grasp the concept. She was furious, yes, but in the end, it all didn't seem to matter.
Author: AFTanith
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Notes: This is yet another scrapped draft of Bound by Gold, aka the Battle City finals era installment of The Maiden of Kul Elna.
Emily had never felt fear like she did in that moment. All around her, the Pharaoh's gang of cheerleaders were shouting their horror and protests, shoving past her to get to their fallen friend, but Emily felt suddenly detached from the scene atop the KaibaCorp Duel Tower.
In one fearsome moment, everything had gone wrong. When Bakura had fallen to Marik, she had found no choice but to align herself with the Pharaoh for protection from the lunatic that roamed free around Kaiba's blimp. And now the Pharaoh, the man she had been assured could defeat Marik, could bring Bakura back from the darkness--and the Spirit of the Ring would surely follow if Bakura were freed--was fading into the shadows just as Bakura had.
In that brief and terrifying moment, the people around her lost all meaning. Her ears deaf to their cries, eyes blind to their tears, soul numb to their grief, Emily turned on her heel, raced toward the elevator, and found solace behind its metal doors. She held her finger on the down button for the length of her descent, and when she finally reached the bottom, the doors had barely parted before she was free of them, racing over the metal floor with her every step echoing throughout the immense chamber.
After being in the Shadows and the duel tower for so long, the sunlight hurt her eyes when at first she thrust herself out into its warmth. But she didn't slow her pace; running blind through the scrapyard that was the demolished ruins of KaibaCorp Island, Emily made her way to the blimp.
The guards patrolling it were clearly startled to see her, and obviously suspicious of her urgent pace. She grumbled something about nausea and fear of heights when they tried to stop her, and luckily she was able to dart past them before they had a chance to stop her. She was relieved to hear they did not follow.
The Pharaoh's defeat had changed everything. It wasn't supposed to have been possible, and so she had never once considered what she might do if it occurred. As it was, she had been planning on being reunited with Bakura tonight, at the very least--at most, perhaps even the Spirit would be immediately returned to her. But with the Pharaoh gone, she feared she might be on her own for longer than she dared consider, and with that her thoughts turned to one thing: survival.
She had never liked the way Marik had looked at her. She supposed it had started during his duel with Mai. Perhaps the others had missed the darker implications of their fight, but Emily hadn't; Marik had been toying with Mai in every sense, and he had made no effort to hide just how much he was enjoying it. She had even seen traces of it in his match against Joey; it almost came across to her as a kind of sociopathic flirting, a sadomasochistic intermingling of pain and pleasure, violence and the intent to dominate, and the fact that his victim was entirely unwilling to participate only seemed to spur him on. This was not a man Emily wanted to be anywhere near, let alone cornered by on a blimp with no hope of aid, protection, or escape.
The only thing she had to comfort herself with was that she was unlikely to be his first victim. Who that would be was obvious: his sister Ishizu. Or, if the man still lived, his brother Odion.
If only Odion hadn't fallen to the wrath of the Winged Dragon of Ra. Emily couldn't help but wonder if perhaps... perhaps if Ishizu's claims about Odion's power over Marik's psychosis were true, Odion--had he been awake--might have been able to sway the duel. Everyone had placed their faith in the Pharaoh, but could it be that their real hope had been lying comatose on the blimp the entire time? Emily supposed that now they would never know.
Emily was in the kitchen before she knew exactly what she wanted to do. First, she knew, she needed to stock up. Her first chance at getting away from Marik was going to be the day they landed in Battle City, and that would be several days away at least. She had already survived one incident alone with Marik, when they'd been sidetracked from their journey by Seto Kaiba's adoptive brother, and that had been easy enough to manage. Marik had shown no interest in her then, luckily, and she had managed to stay locked away in her room for the brief experience, surviving easily on the food she'd stored in the mini-fridge and the bathroom adjoining her bedroom. But the ride home was going to be a longer stretch, and what she had stored already wasn't going to cut it. She needed anything and everything that didn't need to be cooked and optimally didn't need to be refrigerated. By the time she had finished going through the cabinets, she knew Kaiba's staff was going to be wondering how they could have gone through so much food so fast.
After stashing away everything she could manage, Emily stopped to consider what to do next. She double-checked her locks on the door, feeling a distinct sense of dread when she realized that Kaiba's employees could all remotely unlock it if they wished to do so, as she knew very well that Marik could easily bend any or all of them to his will if he so desired. She pined for a deadbolt or at least a chain lock, and for one brief moment, she considered breaking the locking mechanism altogether. But she quickly brushed that aside. No sense getting herself more trapped that she needed to be, after all. There was always the possibility that she might need to make a quick exit or seize some opportunity to flee.
A wild thought surfacing in her mind, Emily moved over to the window and peered out. From what she could see, the guards were still standing at the doors of the blimp, obviously still waiting for Kaiba to return from the tower. And if Kaiba was still on top of the tower, it was fairly safe to say that Marik and Yugi's friends were, too. After all, with Kaiba acting so dismissive of his tournament after losing to Yugi in the semi-finals, Emily rather assumed he'd be the first to return to the blimp, ready to put this entire debacle behind him.
So, no. Marik was not on the blimp yet. She couldn't be sure, but... she was sure enough. She darted to the door, making sure she had her key card before it swung shut and locked behind her, and then she sped off down the hall to Odion's room.
She knew what she would find there, and she quickly affirmed it. Ishizu sat at Odion's bedside, frowning at his unconscious form.
"No change?" Emily asked, startling the other woman. Ishizu shook her head. "You know, you really should lock this door."
Ishizu stared at her for a moment, then turned sadly back to her brother. "I assume you come bearing bad news."
Emily nodded, shutting the door behind her and waiting until she heard the definitive click of the lock. "I do. But I want to share a bit of hope, too."
"If Marik's evil side has defeated the Pharaoh, there is no hope left."
"Ishizu, please listen to me. We don't have much time before Marik's back on this blimp, and by then I fully intend to be safely locked away in my own room, ready to weather this damn storm on my own terms. But I am offering you an idea."
"I will hear it."
"You said Odion had some kind of power over your brother. You said he could suppress Marik's psychosis some how, kind of keep the insanity at bay. You stand by that?"
"I do."
"Then it's obvious. We need Odion awake. Immediately." She sat down beside Ishizu, taking her hands. "I know there has to be a way to wake him up. And if anyone knows it, you do."
Ishizu pulled away. "Odion lies unconscious by the will of Ra. I have no power to overcome a god nor the knowledge of how to do so."
"There has to be a way. Look, I don't know a damn thing about this whole ancient Egypt deal, but I know that if there's anything to it--and it sure as fuck looks like there is--there has to be some way to get through this. You said it yourself: Odion's here because he pissed off a god card. Or a god. Or whatever. How do we un-piss it?"
"When the gods have been appeased, Emily, you will know it. Until that time, there is nothing we can do. Or at least, there is nothing we can do here on a blimp on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean thousands of miles away from my homeland. We are lost, and though I would do anything to save my brother from the darkness that has overtaken him, we will remain lost because you and I and everyone else can do nothing."
Emily shook her head in disbelief. "Nothing?" she repeated. "You can't think of a single thing that could help us? Aren't you supposed to have seen the damn future until you gave away your Necklace? What is the point if your predictions are fucking wrong?"
"The power of the Millennium Necklace broke for me when I went up against one I should not have. And so even if I had tried to foresee the Pharaoh's duel, I could not have. The Necklace lies with Yugi, or with whatever's left of him, and it is of no help to me, nor to you."
"Fine," said Emily, standing at once. "Alright. Well, have a nice life--what's left of it. Because you can bet your ass that Marik's going to be here first. His hit list now is going to be you, Odion, and then me. Because we're the outliers here, we're the ones left alone to cope by ourselves. And you're going because he hates you, but I'll be next because he's going to think I'm an easy target. And I'm going to promise you right now that your pathetic piece of shit of a brother is never going to lay a hand on me."
She turned to go, but froze as she did so. Because the door was sliding open before she bade it, and standing on the other side was one of the two KaibaCorp guards who had almost stopped her from getting on the blimp. And Marik stood behind him, a smile curving his lips as he took in the sight before him.
"Well, well, well," he said, stepping past the guard, who immediately started back off down the hallway like a zombie. Emily's heart sunk, but she had no time to regret leaving the safety of her room behind. As it was, she now stood between Marik and his primary goals: Ishizu and Odion. She immediately sidestepped, moving out of the line of fire.
Marik watched her with a smirk as he passed, and Emily took the opportunity to bolt toward the closing door. Marik called casually back to her, "Don't bother. The guards will have you back here before you turn the corner." Then he chuckled. "It would seem Kaiba needs to look into hiring a better security staff. It was stunningly simple to seduce his current guards to my will."
Emily stood inches from the door, close enough to touch it, and yet it offered her no salvation. Marik set up his trap too quickly, intending to catch Ishizu in her room before she had the chance to seek the protection of Kaiba or Yugi's friends, and it was only luck--in his favor and against hers, unfortunately--that he managed to capture Emily in his web, as well. She was little more than an added bonus to him.
"Now," he said. "Seto Kaiba and his brother are on board, the former readying the craft for takeoff and the latter looking into medical arrangements for our fallen heroes." He gestured mockingly toward Odion, making no effort to hide his leering grin. "Poor little Yugi and his friends are still on the top of tower, some mourning, some being mourned." Emily noted the vagueness of it; he could merely mean they were mourning Yugi. Or... "And I find that I now have some free time to attend to some unfinished family business. I hope you don't feel uncomfortable being included, Emily, my dear, but I do feel we've gotten close over these past few days, wouldn't you say?"
Emily definitely wouldn't say that by any means--as a matter of fact, it puzzled her--but she didn't dare disagree.
Amazingly, it was Ishizu who came to her rescue. "Marik, she had nothing to do with this. Let her go, and then we can settle this."
Marik glanced back and forth between the two women once before shaking his head. From the back of his belt, he withdrew the Millennium Rod, and Emily shrank back against the door. Only once had she felt even a brush of the powers of a Millennium Item used for aggression, and she had no desire to relive that experience. Ishizu, however, did not cower. Far from it, in fact. She stood up from her seat at Odion's side and stared determinedly into her brother's insanity-glazed eyes.
"I fear my brother is no longer in there, Marik. But perhaps I am being unfair. You are, after all, borne of my brother, and so I shall speak to both of you, or whichever of you is still able to hear me: you must not do this thing. The Pharaoh has fallen, leaving the world without its shining beacon of hope. You have taken away the planet's one and only hope of withstanding the evil that is to surely rise again. Do not make the same mistake twice; we might have lost the war preemptively because of your actions, but that end is far off and perhaps well past our lifetimes. We may still be able to salvage this battle, the one that affects us immediately. But you must spare Odion. He is the only one left who can balance--"
Marik's hand connected with the side of her face; Emily gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth to silence herself as Ishizu tumbled down onto the bed from the force of the blow, landing sprawled across Odion's legs. She glared at her brother as she stood again, but he didn't waste time in letting her rise. He seized her by the hair, and--
Emily closed her eyes, by that did nothing to drown out the sound of Ishizu's scream, nor the thump that followed. After a moment, she peeked out between her fingers to find that the attack had been swift and more effective than she had imagined it would be. Two single wounds to the chest, the knife end of the Millennium Rod piercing both Ishizu and Odion through their hearts exactly. Now Odion lay in the bed, looking the same in death as he had in his last few days of life, and Ishizu lay crumpled on the ground at Marik's feet, her black hair sprawled across her face. Emily counted that a blessing; she had no desire to see those wise blue eyes, now frozen in death, staring at her.
Marik, meanwhile, was grinning at her. There was blood all over him--his hands, his shirt, even a bit of splatter on his face and in his hair. But oddly the blood was far from the most disturbing thing about him in that moment; he was staring at her with a horrifyingly predatory gleam in his eye, far worse than anything he'd shown when Mai, Joey, and Bakura had been his victims, and so Emily had to wonder if it was borne of his triumph over his siblings or his eagerness for whatever he was about to do to her. She could only hope it was the former.
With her back against the door, she had little hope. She believed what he said about the guards, and wasn't yet ready to risk annoying him with an escape attempt that would almost certainly be quickly thwarted. If there was any chance at all that she might make it out of here alive, she couldn't take that risk.
But then again, this was Marik. There was no pretense here; he was going to kill her, and that much was obvious. Not only that, but he was almost guaranteed to toy with her first. He'd killed Ishizu and Odion in less than a minute; their deaths had been quick and efficient, completely unlike his normal methods of victimization. Emily feared now he was ready to take it slow and savor the torment. Her torment.
Again, though, this was Marik, and there was no pretense here. So Emily put it to a question. "Is there any chance of me leaving this room alive?"
Marik laughed. "That depends."
"On what?"
"On how well you do."
Emily felt a chill run up her spine. How well she did? How well she did what? "Explain."
His eyes glittered beneath their glaze of madness. "Well, my dear, I must admit that you're still something of an enigma to me. The Pharaoh's little band of cheerleaders; they're all open books. But you are something else entirely. Since the first day you arrived, you've been flitting around the blimp like a shadow. More specifically, you were for quite some time Bakura's shadow, and frankly, I'd like to know why."
Her brow furrowed. "What?"
Marik stepped forward menacingly, quickly closing the gap between them until he stood less than a foot away from her. She had to tilt her head back to keep his face in her field of vision, and she didn't at all care for the way that exposed her neck to him. "For all Bakura was a fool, he didn't seem like the kind of man to do anything without a reason. What was his reason for you?"
"I don't--" But before she could get the words out, Marik's hand was around her throat, slamming her hard into the wall and lifting her almost an inch off the ground. Instinctively, her hands when to his, trying feebly to wrench them open, but then she remembered herself, and they shot immediately to his throat instead. It took only a second to realize her arms were too short to reach his throat from where she was being held, so she instantly went for the next best thing, connecting her nails with his forehead and raking them downward over his eyes. He leaned back, laughing almost hysterically, and then suddenly started forward, surprising Emily completely by shoving himself between her extended and desperately clawing arms to slam his lips against hers.
Emily could already feel herself starting to slip into unconsciousness from lack of oxygen, and so her addled brain could hardly process what had just happened. One moment she was desperately trying to fight him off as he strangled her, and the next, he'd forced himself upon her... as he strangled her.
Then the first attack was over, his hand slipping away from her throat, her feet falling back onto the carpet; and the second assault was just beginning, his fingers curling into her hips as he pressed her body into the wall and her mouth to his.
For the first few seconds, she didn't have a chance to struggle; she was too busy gasping for air, trying to get large gulps of it into her lungs in the brief moments when her mouth wasn't otherwise occupied. Then, as her headache started to subside, she finally managed to bring her hands up to his throat; but before she could sink her nails into his flesh, he had jolted her forward, moving her across the room with stunning ease, and dropping her onto the bed while her brain started processing just what he was doing to her.
That's when the screams started. Not only was she trapped in a room with a serial killer and two corpses, one of which lay mere centimeters away from her, this man--this monster--had every intention of raping her right there. In a puddle of his brother's blood.
Whether anyone was on the blimp to hear the screams didn't matter. The Kaiba brothers were certainly on board, and Emily could only assume that by now Yugi's friends were, too. But they would not come running when they heard her scream. And even if they did, there was little they could do. No one could get into the room without overriding the door, which only Kaiba or one of his staff could do--and his staff was at least partially under Marik's control. There was no one coming to save her.
Marik knew that, of course. Emily had little doubt that he'd planned it that way and very much enjoyed the advantage. He could focus his full attention on her without any fears of being interrupted, no matter how loud she screamed or how desperately she begged for someone to help her.
She had no intentions of begging, of course. Not when he started tearing away at her clothes. Not when he started attacking her flesh with a twisted kind of passion. Not even when he started forcing himself into her distinctly unaroused body.
At that point, she had started to cry. She wasn't proud of it, and she would never admit to it afterward, but she couldn't stop herself. The pain was something she had never experienced before, something she'd never dreamed she would experience. As far back as she could remember, she had always believed the Spirit of the Ring would be there to protect her from anyone who even considered harming her. Or at the very least that Ryou Bakura would be there to comfort her after any wrongdoings. But now they were both lost to her, banished to the Shadow Realm by the very man from whom she needed protection.
Slowly her sobbing died down as she realized just how interesting Marik seemed to find it. He had watched her expression intently the entire time, and now as she tried to regain control of her breathing, he bent down so he was kissing her again, mumbling something under his breath as he did so. Emily made no effort to distinguish his words; she merely lay still, taking solace in the fact that with his kiss came a slower, more relaxed pace.
With her clothes lying almost in shreds around her, Marik's hands started to take advantage, open palms and fingertips taking their time to investigate nearly every inch of her exposed skin. She did her best to twitch away from his touch--which was to say that she made small efforts that were immediately conquered--and realized to her horror just what he was doing to her.
It was so much worse that she'd feared he would do. Death was one thing. Pain was another. But pleasure... that was something else entirely.
She closed her eyes then, trying to reassure herself. It was better this way, she reasoned; if she were aroused by his actions, much of her pain would be eliminated. But psychologically she was in turmoil; everything about this was wrong.
But there was nothing she could do about it, nothing at all she could do or say to make this--make him--stop this. There was only one thing in the world she could possibly do that could make him end this, and that was--
Emily let out a sob as she felt her muscles contracting. She was surprised how little pleasure she got from it, really, and it embarrassed her to think that Marik's caresses had been more pleasurable than the orgasm he'd wrenched from her. But that didn't make sense, she realized a moment later; and a moment after that, she felt him pulling away from her.
It was clear he hadn't finished--in either sense of the word. And the glitter that still lurked within his eyes made Emily's heart sink. It wasn't over.
After the second day, Emily started to wonder whether it would ever be over. By the end of the third day, she settled on "no".
It took a total of three days--three brutal, agonizing days--to make it back to Battle City. The only thing Emily had to be grateful for during the entire trip was that Marik didn't force her to spend it in the company of his siblings' corpses. No, those he took care of with surprising ease and swiftness; with perhaps the entire flight crew and security force under his control, getting the bodies out of the room in the dead of night and up to the duel arena was a simple task. And now that they had been thrown casually overboard, it was virtually guaranteed that no one would ever manage to locate the bodies of Ishizu and Odion Ishtar.
The room itself, bloodstained and disheveled from the attack, was another subject; it was addressed similarly. Glassy-eyed janitorial staff members cleaned up the room impeccably under Marik's command, and after they were done, there was hardly a trace of a murder. All anyone would ever be able to prove was that the Ishtar siblings were missing.
Emily, meanwhile, was forced to witness this deception, and yet never once did she get the chance to see how the others on the blimp responded to it. As a matter of fact, until the day they returned to the duel stadium in Battle City, Emily didn't see any of the other passengers--with the exception of Marik, of course.
She saw him almost constantly. He seemed to have lost almost all interest in tormenting the others, focusing his full attentions on Emily. With Kaiba's staff acting as Marik's, there was never any reason for him to leave the room, either. Everything he could possibly need or want could be brought to him without him ever having to lift a finger, and Emily couldn't possibly express how much that infuriated her. If only she could have a single moment of peace, just a single moment of her own to savor, then she could finally stop to relax and think about everything that was happening to her. As it was, Emily had been forced to run on survival mode and nothing else. Her flight or fight response had been stifled and quelled, leaving her now with something else entirely; some kind of anxious dance, a mental game she and Marik were playing. He would push forward, try to get a response out of her, cross over some line, and she would have to respond in any way she could surmise that would enable her to do the only thing she was still permitted--live.
Marik offered her nothing else. Entertainment was a foreign concept during her confinement. The television and all communication devices within the room had been either removed or destroyed by his puppets. There were no books, magazines, gadgets, toys; there was nothing to clean, dust, rearrange, sort. Anything that could possibly have helped take Emily's mind off her situation had been meticulously removed from the room.
As had the lock from the bathroom. The first day, she had taken solace in the fact that Marik had forgotten about it. She'd cautiously announced her need to urinate, and when she was safely behind the bathroom door, she'd locked it. For the first ten minutes, Marik had tried to break down the door, seeming both terribly angry and terribly amused. But after that he'd given up, and a few minutes later she'd heard the sound of someone picking the lock--one of the only traditional door locks she'd seen on the aircraft--and when it swung open to reveal a glassy-eyed janitor and Marik behind him, Emily wondered if that would be the last thing she ever saw.
And yet she'd been wrong. With the door open, he seemed absolutely bored, and so they spent the next few hours sitting silently in two of the room's armchairs. Marik stared at her the entire time. He hardly ever seemed to blink.
The entire time, Emily did her best to focus on assessing the situation--something that was next to impossible with Marik surveying her as he was. It made her skin crawl, but she put forth her best effort to ignore it. She didn't need the distraction.
She'd only managed to make things worse. She had hoped that locking herself in the bathroom would give her a few brief moments in which to calm her frayed nerves, but it had served no such purpose. Marik had gotten her out of the room in less than fifteen minutes, which astounded her. She had expected to be left alone for at least an hour, perhaps hours. But that had been foolish. Of course Marik wouldn't waste time humoring her.
All she had managed to do with that little stunt was to take away one of the few comforts she had taken from granted: the bathroom door. The janitor, under Marik's silent command, had immediately removed it from its hinges and taken it out of the room. After a few hours contemplation--mostly sulking, actually--it occurred to Emily to wonder how exactly the janitor had managed to stow away an entire door or else explain its removal to those who would undoubtedly notice.
But then she rolled her eyes at her own naivety; this crew had managed to get two bodies out of a room in the middle of the night without anyone noticing, and she expected a door to trouble them? The thought suddenly struck her as so absurd that she actually started laughing right there in the armchair behind Marik, with his eyes boring into her all the while.
Her outburst seemed to surprise him at first, but he recovered within a moment. "Well, if you're in such a good mood anyway..." She wasn't the least bit surprised to find herself being forced back onto the bed for round two of this particularly cruel brand of torture.
Emily had already known Marik had a blatantly obvious fetish for pain--he had never bothered to make his sadism a secret, nor had he put forth any effort to hide his arousal during his bouts of cruelty. And so it surprised her that he didn't make things worse for her than he did. As he had the first time, he actually put in a bit of effort toward her enjoyment; and she had to admit that when she reflected on their second encounter after the fact, she was astounded to realize that he didn't seen to be particular impassioned about it himself. It occurred to her that if his enjoyment hadn't been his primary concern, something else obviously had. But what that something else might have been puzzled her--and frankly, frightened her.
The days after that were much the same. Marik toyed with her--staring, touching, taunting. Day after day, rape after rape, taunt after taunt, it went on and on. Then finally, much to her relief, the skyline of Battle City came into view of the windows. Secretly Emily rejoiced; she could loose him in the city, she knew that. She could lose him, and she could find help--she knew exactly where to look for it.
When they exited the plane, Emily saw the other passengers for the first time. The Kaibas weren't there, but Yugi's friends were. Emily did all that she could to avoid their eyes, though she could feel them staring at her. She didn't want their pity, she told herself, and yet somehow she had to admit that she did. She wanted them to understand what had happened to her over the past few days, and she hardly doubted they could possible overlook it. The signs were obvious on her body; while Marik had certainly restrained himself far more than she'd expected, he had by no means been gentle with her, and bruises peppered her skin--the most outstanding, of course, being the fingerprints on her neck from when he'd nearly strangled her to death. She hadn't been sleeping and couldn't seem to keep down any of her meals, so she wasn't healing properly. She looked ragged and tired, and she wanted them to know.
But whether they knew or not didn't matter. They could do nothing to help her, and they didn't try as Marik shoved her past them, his fingers curled tightly around her arms as he steered her in front of him. They stepped down from the craft, Emily's small travel backpack slung casually over Marik's shoulder, and he pushed her out of the arena and down the street.
They walked for a few blocks before they heard the sirens. Marik hesitated a moment, then let his hands fall from Emily's arms, one of them slipping into hers instead. But his grip was tight and painful, clearly a warning against attempting to flee. A police car rolled past them without slowing, and Marik started off at a faster pace. Evidently it had occurred to him that there was a distinct possibility that Kaiba had been absent from the disembarking process because he was busy notifying the police, but that didn't seem to disconcert him too terribly. After taking another block almost at a run, he finally stopped and hailed a cab.
He shoved Emily into the backseat without any pretense of gentleness, and slammed the door behind him after he'd slid in beside her. He glared at the driver. "Drive," he growled.
"Where to, kid?" He looked distinctly suspicious of the pair of them.
Marik didn't have any patience for the man; the blade end of the Rod was out within a moment. "Drive," he repeated, gesturing with the knife so as to make his threat perfectly clear.
The driver nearly killed them in his frenzy to obey, darting into traffic in front of a massive eighteen-wheeler. Marik chuckled, amused by both the driver's reaction to him and Emily's reaction to the driver's recklessness, and then turned to her. "So," he said far too casually, "where are we going?"
"Excuse me? How the hell should I know?"
"Because you're the one who knows what Bakura's address is."
"Wait, what? Since when are we going to--"
"I'm not oblivious, my dear. On the blimp, you and Bakura clearly discussed his living arrangements; that is, you made it obvious that the two of you lived alone together. So, where would that dwelling be?"
Emily winced. "It's his father's house, but his dad's usually away. I don't know if he's there right now. I... don't think so."
"I hope for his sake that he isn't. Now, give the man the address."
"Uh..." She turned to the driver. "1428 Roulette Street in Domino City."
The man nodded stiffly and immediately turned a corner. Then the car settled into silence, and Emily rested her head against the seat. She didn't want Marik in Ryou's house, not for anything. But there was nothing she could do.
They arrived in about half an hour. Marik never paid the cab driver. Another threat sent the man fleeing as fast as he could drive, and Marik chuckled again to himself.
Staring up at Bakura's house for the first time without Bakura, Emily trembled. She loved this place. With Ryou's father being an archaeologist, the manor-like abode brimmed with artifacts both beautiful and thought-provoking, and the idea that Marik would be allowed to roam those halls freely, able to corrupt and destroy as he pleased, terrified her. She wanted to preserve the sanctity of the house, if nothing more.
And yet again she knew she was impotent. Marik could take this tiny point of light away from her as easy as he'd stolen her freedom, and there would be nothing she could do.
He forced her to the open the door, and then they stepped inside the building. The air was stale from the house being shut up for so long with no residents, but Marik slammed and bolted them in the stifling room without any hesitation. He immediately dropped Emily's bag to the floor, then stalked off out of sight.
He didn't need to warn her not to run away. Not yet, at least. She wouldn't even dream of trying to escape until she could be certain the perfect opportunity had arrived; as it was, she didn't know where he was going nor how long he would be gone. So instead of fretting, she grabbed her bag and went upstairs.
Bakura's room wasn't locked, and so she let herself in. She dropped her bag on the bed, then turned toward the television. If the police cars had been about them, there was every possibility that she might be able to get some information on the subject.
She glanced at the clock. Twelve past four. The news was already on.
When she hit the power button on the television, she found it already set to one of the area's news channels. The newscasters were right in the middle of updating a story about a car accident, but when that was finished, Emily's perked up.
"Disturbing news today in Battle City. The KaibaCorp-sponsored Duel Monsters tournament being hosted in the city came to an end several days ago, and the competitors returned from their mysterious final arena this afternoon. A ceremony had been scheduled to announce the winners, but instead of festivity, Battle City found itself in the midst of a tragedy."
Marik's picture flashed on the screen. "Marik Ishtar, Egyptian citizen and finalist in the Battle City tournament is the suspect in the disappearance of Odion Ishtar, Ishizu Ishtar, and Ryou Bakura. All three went missing several days ago while the KaibaCorp blimp was flying over the ocean and are presumed dead."
Emily's picture now. "Ishtar is also wanted for the kidnapping of Miss Emily Robinson, a seventeen-year-old Domino City high school student and close friend of one of the other victims. She was last seen one hour ago being forced off the blimp by Mr. Ishtar. Their whereabouts are currently unknown."
Back to the reporters. "If you have any information on either of these individuals, please contact your local police immediately."
Then they moved on, settling into a lighter story about an adoption charity, and Emily turned the television off.
It was a good sign. Kaiba hadn't let her down after all, and with everyone in the area on the lookout for her and Marik, there was a good chance the police might be able to intervene. Even the Millennium Rod's powers wouldn't be able to stand up against a SWAT team sniper, if the situation came to it.
And so when Marik walked into the room, he found Emily with traces of a smile on her face. It fell away immediately.
"Something amusing?" he asked.
She shook her head mutely. He took a moment to survey the room around her.
"You lived here?" Now she nodded. "With Bakura?" Another nod. She didn't know where he was going with this.
He didn't clarify. Instead, he fell silent, turning back to her with that astoundingly predatory look in his eyes once more. Her heart sank. There it went. The sanctity of the Bakura home was about to flit away and never return; Marik was going to rape her right there on the bed she'd shared with Bakura, and she wouldn't even be able to risk defending herself. The thought had her struggling to fight back tears.
Marik seized her by the shoulders without a word, shoving her down onto the bed with such force that she actually bounced when she hit the plush surface. Her head hit the mattress, and her hand slammed against the remote control. Marik turned at the sound of the television turning on, and Emily took that brief moment to recover. But when she'd sat up and focused her attention back on Marik, her heart sank.
His eyes were narrowed as they surveyed the television screen. It was on a different channel now, and the volume had gone up significantly. The reporter's voice blasted through the room.
"--sees either of these two individuals, call the number below--"
Marik's passport photo and Emily's Senior picture both stared back at them from the screen, and Emily scrambled to turn it off.
There was a moment of silence in the room, then Marik slowly turned to Emily. Suddenly she realized she actually preferred the predatory gaze; what had replaced it was simply terrifying, a horrific and unmistakable fury gazing back at her.
Then the silence broke, Emily's scream shattering its ominous calm as Marik lunged toward her. His fingers wound into her hair, which he wrench backward so hard she feared her neck might snap; then he pulled her to her feet, seizing her Battle City bag from the bed, and dragged her out of the room.
She was still screaming and thrashing as he pulled her down the stairs. She stumbled every few steps, but Marik didn't bother to catch her. Nor did he hesitate for her to regain her footing. He just kept moving, letting her finally fall to her knees on the final few steps, and when they finally reached the bottom, he released her hair.
She had little doubt he'd injured her scalp, being fairly sure she could feel a trickle of blood or two running down through her hair. And yet when she turned her face up to him with a mask of fury that very nearly matched his own in its intensity, he started to laugh.
Then he had her by the arm and was pulling her to her feet, and a moment later they were back out in the sunlight. He pushed her down the walk again and onto the street, then stepped out to hail another taxi.
"No one's going to stop for--"
He sank his nails into her arm, and she fell silent. Blood dripped onto her shoulder, leaving its watery crimson trail down her chest as it disappeared beneath her shirt. He'd definitely torn her scalp. And somehow she didn't think there were stitches in her future.
Much to her surprise, a taxi did stop. Marik had the door open before the driver had the chance to realize who he was, and he immediately pushed Emily and himself into the cab. The blade of the Millennium Rod was against the driver's throat within a moment.
"Domino Harbor."
The driver whimpered, then pulled off. Marik held the blade against his throat the entire trip.
When they arrived at the harbor, Emily didn't know what to think. Did Marik have a boat? Did he plan on trying to go home? Worse yet, did he plan on smuggling Emily into Egypt with him? If so, Emily certainly wished he'd chosen the airport. The abundant security and her lack of a passport might have been her savior there, and yet if he managed to get her on a boat, he might actually manage to imprison her in a foreign country. Her chance of escape then would drop to almost nothing.
She watched wearily as Marik slowly pulled the blade away from the man's throat, warning him not to make any sudden movements. For a flitting moment, it crossed her mind that it would have been much simpler for him to place the driver under his control with the Rod; but then she realized that was the point. The Marik that had arrived in Battle City would have put the driver under his control and been done with it. The Marik that left Battle City liked to play with his food.
The driver kept making odd, terrified squeaking noises as they left his cab, and when they were outside of it, he seemed too paralyzed with fear to even make an escape. Emily stared at him in surprise, trying to will him to flee while he had the chance. Marik simply watched with amusement.
Almost a whole minute passed before the driver suddenly floored it. Without warning, he was barreling past them as fast as his dated car could go, and then he turned a corner and disappeared. Marik laughed, then started tugging Emily off toward a warehouse.
Or at least, she thought it was a warehouse. She was, in fact, quite mistaken; it was an indoor dock of some kind, behind the doors of which hid a large yacht. She feared it was Marik's. And worse yet, she feared he knew how to operate it.
She suppressed her surprise when he courteously helped her board the vessel; she'd never been on a boat before, and in all honesty, she had more than a slight fear of the things. As she stood on the deck, she couldn't ignore the gentle swaying of the craft, a sense of vertigo and nausea almost overwhelming her. Marik seemed to notice immediately, and again surprised her; his vicelike grip on her arm abandoned, he gently helped her down into one of the downstairs rooms of the boat and sat her down on one of the beds. Then he disappeared--but not before locking her in.
Emily stared after him as she tried to regain control of her body, and she milled over it all in her head. Everything that had just happened disturbed her. Immensely. One moment he's nearly scalped her from sheer force, and the next, he's going out of his way to ease her discomfort. If she didn't know better, he'd done the latter with a specific goal in mind: endear himself to her with some twisted kind of non-apology.
There wasn't a lot Emily knew about the world at large. Emily would be the first to admit that. Her memories didn't go back far, and her schooling since the accident she only vaguely believed really happened had been sparse. But she had a thirst for knowledge that Bakura had seemed to encourage, and so she'd had leeway to learn--from books, television, and anything else she could get her hands on--anything she wanted to, as much as she wanted to.
And so she knew a thing or two about Stockholm syndrome.
Truth be told, when she first stumbled across the term, she feared she might have found the reason she was so inexplicably attached to Bakura in the first place. But it didn't fit; as well as she could remember, Bakura had never done anything to harm or oppress her. She didn't know how she had ended up with him, but she never had any reason--nor any will--to leave. She'd never felt afraid of him. Only...
Well, she didn't know how to describe what she felt for him, and she had long since given up trying.
But she did know what she felt for Marik, and that was nothing but contempt. She hated him for what he'd done to Bakura, to Yugi's friends, and most of all to her, and she didn't appreciate any kind gestures from him. If he was trying to win her favor by offering her something for her weakening psyche to latch on to, it wasn't going to work.
Because if there was one thing Emily Robinson would confess to, it was an impressively stubborn nature.
It took some time for Emily's stomach to settle, but once it did, she cautiously peeked out into the hall. There was no sign of Marik, and so she stepped out of the cabin. As she walked back toward the deck, she could hear the muffled sound of a man's voice--not Marik's. She hesitated, baffled.
Did Marik know someone here? Or could it be possible that someone was confronting him, having recognized him from the news?
If it was the latter, she could only hope the person had possessed the forethought to call the police before he engaged Marik. She expected that afterwards, he'd never get the chance.
Slowly, she made her way up the metal staircase, trying to silence her footsteps as best she could. The voice upstairs kept speaking, so she was fairly certain as she emerged from below deck that he hadn't heard her ascent. She hoped Marik hadn't, either.
But her heart sank the minute she set eyes on the stranger. A Rare Hunter, clothed in purple robes, knelt on the deck speaking to Marik. His back was to Emily with Marik facing her, and Marik's eyes flickered toward her the moment she came into view. The annoyance was obvious on his face as she anxiously approached.
The Rare Hunter seemed startled when he finally noticed Emily's presence. He cast an uncertain glance at Marik, who sneered. "Get up."
The man obeyed immediately. "Shall I fetch the others?"
Marik's impatience couldn't have been more obvious; he answered with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, and the Rare Hunter rushed off. Emily hesitated, suddenly feeling awkward. It occurred to her that she still had no idea what was going on.
He turned to her with a bored expression. "I thought you were sick."
"Feeling better now."
"Go back downstairs."
She hesitated only a moment, then turned on her heel. There was nothing she could do with him standing on the deck. Even if she jumped overboard into the water, there would be no escape; she would be pinned inside the building, giving Marik ample time to recapture her.
No, if she were going to make an escape from the ship, she needed Marik distracted and the boat out of the building. Maybe then--just maybe--she could manage to swim to safety.
Marik didn't follow her below deck, and it was several minutes before she heard another voice. And this voice was new to her, and quite surprising. Female.
Two male voices accompanied it, one of them being the Rare Hunter she'd seen before; the three of them spoke in whispers, their words indistinct and unintelligible, and finally the sound faded away as the group moved out of earshot of Emily's cabin.
A short while later, Marik reappeared. He didn't say a word--simply grabbed her by the arm and pulled her with him into the bed. She could feel the boat starting to move in the water then, and she was grateful for the support of the furniture beneath her.
And she was very much surprised when Marik dropped onto the bed beside her and curled his body into hers.
Seasickness eventually gave way to exhaustion, and she drifted off to sleep. When she awoke, the realization disturbed her. She hadn't been able to sleep since the Pharaoh's loss. Not since the moment when Marik had taken her prisoner, had forced her to try night after night to sleep in his bed. She'd never managed it... until now.
The thought that his presence beside her might have relaxed her enough to let her sleep sickened her; he was the reason she wasn't relaxed in the first place, after all, and so she couldn't help feeling her body had betrayed her somehow. And so it was a relief that she found the bed empty when she awoke; she didn't know where Marik had gone, and she would be quite happy to never find out.
Of course, she found out fairly quickly. Almost as soon as she was up, someone was knocking on the door. Not Marik, she was sure, as there was little doubt in her mind that he would never bother to knock. She assumed instead that this was one of the three people she'd heard speaking the previous afternoon.
She glanced at the clock before she answered the door. It had been about five, maybe five thirty when she'd fallen asleep, and now it was noon. After not sleeping for three days, she'd gotten an eighteen hour block of rest. It left her feeling fatigued, but not in the sense she'd felt last night, and she preferred this new stiffness in her muscles to the mental decline she'd been experiencing the night before.
When Emily opened the cabin door, she found a stranger standing on the other side. It wasn't the man she'd seen the previous afternoon, nor was it the woman she'd heard speaking. Instead she stood face to face with the third person in the conversation, a tall man with a dark complexion and dark eyes, possibly another Egyptian. Any other distinguishing features were hidden beneath the purple robe he wore.
He spoke in a gruff voice, but it sounded oddly forced. "Follow me."
She did as she was told without a word, more out of curiosity than any genuine intent to be obedient. The stranger led her down the hall and around a corner, and then an open doorway came into view. Beyond it was a cabin much larger than the one she'd slept in, and within it sat Marik, apparently staring out a window.
Emily's eyes followed his gaze, and her stomach churned at the sudden realization that they had long since left land behind. If there had been a chance for her to escape, she had missed it; to attempt something now would be to offer herself up to death in the form of drowning or shark attack.
He turned to her after a moment and calmly gestured for her to sit down across from him. She didn't know what to make of it, more than a tad surprised by how calm he seemed to be. In all honesty, she'd never seen him so passive. She hoped it was that the sea had some kind of calming effect on him, rather than the more ominous theory that his mind was focused elsewhere.
She sat opposite him for a long moment. When she realized he had no interest in breaking the silence, she bit. "Where are we going?"
"We, my dear, are going back." She stared blankly. "This all began--for me--in Egypt. My own little prison beneath the sands." He grinned at her, the malice unconcealable. "I feel it's only fitting to return to my birthplace as a triumphant man."
"You're... taking me to Egypt so you can brag to your dead father?"
His grin didn't falter. "A very nice try, but no. I'm taking you to Egypt because I'm going to Egypt and just happen to be keeping you nearby. You, of course, don't belong there and frankly don't matter."
"Flattering."
The word was cold and callous as it passed her lips; a mask of strength through sarcasm. She honestly didn't understand how she managed to act the way she did. Four days now--four long, horrific days--that she'd been prisoner, witness to murder, victim of rape. And yet she felt oddly detached from the ordeal, as if it wasn't happening to her. Every bit of it should have traumatized her, and yet she continued on an emotional flatline, as if somehow she couldn't grasp the concept. She was furious, yes, but in the end, it all didn't seem to matter.
