Mystshipping: Remains
Title: Remains
Rating: T
Pairing: Mystshipping (Anzu x Ishizu)
Summary: Ishizu's brothers are dead. If she doesn't find their bodies, they'll never reach the afterlife. And Anzu knows this because Malik told her so. Mystshipping, for contest. 10 years post-canon.
Warnings: Character death, violence
You're here to make a deal.
You're sitting in a red plush chair on a red plush rug on a hardwood floor in Egypt. Rishid is next to you, looking worried. Sahil is across the desk, looking smug.
On a second glance, more details become clear. The plush on the chair is tattered and fraying, and it creaks when you shift your weight. The hardwood floor is scuffed and unpolished; there's a bookshelf in the back corner, grimy with dust and disuse. There's a crack in the window-pane, and it looks like a lightning bolt, or perhaps a zigzag because it never rains here.
It's an awfully decrepit living situation for a master forger, you think, somewhat condescendingly. When you were in the counterfeits business, you managed better housing.
"You have the money, Master Malik?" Sahil asks smoothly.
"If you have the papers." You match his tone. You may have spent the past ten years leading the tombkeepers, but you'll never forget how to deal with criminals.
There's a shuffling of drawers, and a rustling of papers, until Sahil withdraws a manilla folder, and sets it on the table in front of you. He smirks.
You roll your eyes and reach across the desk, grabbing the folder and flipping it open. Familiar names greet you―a hundred and fifty forged birth certificates for the now-above-ground society you lead. You meet Sahil's eyes, and pass the folder over to Rishid.
"This seems to be in order," you say softly.
Rishid thumbs through the certificates, and nods.
You reach for your wallet.
Sahil extends a hand.
Rishid closes the folder
And then the universe explodes.
You don't even hear the gunfire until you see Rishid rock forward abruptly and slump in his chair (and that doesn't make sense because the gunfire comes first; it must it doesn't make sense Rishid is dead) don't even register that it's gunfire until there's a second crack and Sahil falls
And gunfire; you remember that you have a gun and you could use it if you could stand and turn around
But it's all moving so fast and it's loud and red and sharp and blood and Rishid and you can't stand can't stand can't stand...
Fall...
You never hear the third shot fire.
And three thousand miles away, Anzu Mazaki wakes up screaming.
Ishizu wakes up to an empty house.
She knows it's empty before she even opens her eyes, knows it from the silence that surrounds her. If her brothers were home, she'd hear the quiet squeak of the faucet shutting off. Rishid is the earliest riser among them; he'd be shaving. She'd hear a soft rustle from Malik's room and know it to be him covering his head with a pillow and rolling over for another hour of sleep. She'd have woken in the night to the rumble of Rishid's truck pulling back down the road, to her brothers' murmured conversation as they returned home, to Malik's laugh and Rishid's admonishment not to wake their sister.
But she didn't wake. Her brothers didn't come home last night.
Ishizu opens her eyes to a blank ceiling, then stretches and stands. Her bare feet are cold on the hardwood floor. (They keep meaning to put down carpeting―all the other tombkeepers' homes have it, have had it for almost ten years now, but the Ishtar siblings themselves were always busy with this managerial task or that one, and somehow they never got around to it.)
Redundantly, she goes to check her brothers' rooms. But no, Rishid's bed is still neatly made, unslept in, the novel he was reading the night before still bookmarked on his nightstand.
There's no point in checking Malik's room. He wouldn't come home without Rishid.
Still, she goes through the motions of an everyday morning routine, brushing her teeth and hair, slipping into day-clothes, trying to ignore how loud her footsteps sound when the house is so empty. She sits down at the kitchen table, stirring sugar into black coffee, and listens for the turn of the key in the door.
She wonders if she should go out looking for them. She wonders if she should report them missing.
The phone rings.
Ishizu jumps up so fast she doesn't even realize she's spilled her coffee, runs around the table to wrench the phone off the receiver, voice tight as she near-shouts into it.
"Malik?"
A pause.
"T-This is Anzu," says the voice at the other end of the line. "Anzu Mazaki. I-is this Ishizu Ishtar?"
"Yes," Ishizu says quietly. She hasn't spoken to Anzu in years.
A deep breath from the other end of the line.
"I-" Anzu begins, voice tentative. "I don't know how to tell you this, and...I don't know if you'll even...believe me. But..." Anzu cuts off again.
"Is this about my brothers, Anzu?" Ishizu asks.
"Yes," Anzu says, and her voice is almost a whisper. There's a long pause, and by the time it ends, Ishizu already knows what's coming next.
"Your brothers are dead, Ishizu."
And slowly, steadily, still holding the phone to her ear, Ishizu slides down against the kitchen wall, as her legs ever-so-gradually refuse to support her weight. Anzu's still saying something, like 'sorry' or 'I'm so sorry' or something about her finding out this way, but she can't even hear her.
She can see through the table legs from down here. She watches the spilled coffee drip down the chair leg across the table.
For a long time, there's silence on both ends of the line.
"How..." Ishizu manages eventually, and then trails off, staring at nothing.
"I..." Anzu begins. "You'll believe me, right? After all the weird stuff we went through ten years ago, and you, with the necklace, seeing the future―"
"Just tell me, Anzu."
"I had a dream," Anzu says softly. "And in that dream, I saw an office, and Malik, and Rishid and a man named...Sahil. I saw them talking about...papers, counterfeit papers. For the tombkeepers, Malik said. And them...something from behind them―" Anzu's voice cracks.
"Killed them," Ishizu finishes for her.
"Shot them all. All three of them. And―" Anzu hesitates again.
"Why do you think you had this dream, Anzu?" Ishizu asks. Her voice sounds oddly...clipped, even to her own ears, and it's strange the way she feels like she's listening to herself, the way she feels like someone else is speaking for her as she sits numbly by.
"I think..." Anzu says at length. "When Malik possessed me in Battle City, he was able to communicate through me even after his darker half nearly destroyed him. I think...I think that's happening again. Even after the dream, I...feel him. There's a part of his...consciousness...in mine. It's silent but it's there. I can feel it. I can..." She trails off.
There's a long pause this time, as Ishizu stands again.
"You need to meet with me in Luxor, Anzu," she says firmly. "I need to find their killer. I need to find...their bodies. I-I'm sure you understand."
"I do," says Anzu.
Ishizu hangs up the phone. A small, numb, and analytical part of her mind watches her leave the kitchen, go back to her room, and switch on her computer. It watches her order airline tickets for Anzu. It watches her call Anzu back.
It watches her return to the kitchen and clean up the spilled coffee.
And quietly, little by little, through it all, Ishizu Ishtar resolves to solve a murder.
Anzu takes an overnight flight from New York City to Luxor, all the while half-conscious of Malik's silent presence watching her from the back of her mind. She sleeps fitfully and dreams of spinning saw blades and bombs on docks, of chains and traps and gunfire. She wakes to the plane landing, and it sounds like the explosions still ringing in her ears.
Ishizu picks her up at the airport.
"We're driving to Sahil's apartment," says Ishizu, once they're in the car together. "That's where Malik and Rishid were headed when they went out." Ishizu pauses. "Where they died."
Anzu hesitates.
"Where they died." Ishizu repeats, softly.
Ishizu looks over at her, and then back to the road. Just for a second, Anzu thinks she sees a flash of...something in Ishizu's eyes, but then they're turned away again, opaque again, like a wall has just gone up behind them. They drive in silence for quite a few minutes after that.
"I stopped by Sahil's apartment yesterday, after you called," Ishizu says eventually. "But it was empty. The bodies have obviously been moved, the blood cleaned up...No one's reported anything; the killer was careful. But I thought that perhaps...since you have a piece of Malik's soul..."
"You thought I might...he might...see something you missed?" Anzu asks, turning toward her.
"Yes," Ishizu says simply, never taking her eyes away from the road.
There's a certain...hardness there, Anzu realizes, glancing sideways at Ishizu's eyes. She would've expected them to be bloodshot from sleeplessness, puffy and red from crying, but...they're not. They're just steely, resolute, as she stares ahead, totally focused on the destination. Gently, but firmly, Anzu speaks up.
"You're...taking this rather well, Ishizu. I think if I was in your position...well, I wouldn't be able to drive around like this. If you ever need to slow down and just...talk..." Anzu pauses, leaving the offer hanging in the air.
"I appreciate your concern," Ishizu begins. "You must understand, though. There's a...strange kind of comfort we tombkeepers can take when faced with this kind of...grief. The sure and certain knowledge of the afterlife and favor among the gods...it was powerful enough to keep my people below ground for three thousand years. I can take comfort in the fact that Malik and Rishid live on...in a sense"- here she grips the steering wheel hard- "but they will only live on if I can find their bodies."
"W-what?" Anzu begins, confused.
"Are you familiar with the Ancient Egyptian concept of the soul?"
Anzu falters, their journey through the Memory World is ten years behind them now; she's spent the last decade far more preoccupied with dance steps and auditions than history and magic. She hasn't even spoken to the men whose murders she's helping to solve, one of whom is taking up silent residence in the back of her mind...in over five years
"I could use a reminder..." Anzu says softly.
"The ba...the soul...must return to the body each night in order for the soul to survive in the afterlife. The body must be intact for the ba to recharge," Ishizu says. "If Malik and Rishid's bodies are allowed to rot, then their ba...their souls, their personalities, what made them...them...will fade away into nothingness." Ishizu's voice grows low with this last sentence, never shaking, never cracking, merely...angry. Almost dangerous.
Anzu glances side-long at her again, and just barely glimpses the transition in her features, from fierce to collected and regal once more.
"You understand then, Anzu," Ishizu says matter-of-factly, "why we must find their bodies. And if we cannot find them ourselves, we must find their killer and force him to bring us to them."
"I understand," says Anzu.
Ishizu merely nods in response, gaze still...fixed. Hard in a foreign way, in a way that Anzu can't quite understand or describe.
Ishizu watches the road, and Anzu watches Ishizu's eyes.
Sahil's building is ugly.
It's not a subjective judgment―not even the architect himself could call this building attractive. It looks like it's made of stacked slabs of concrete, arranged off-center from each other, spiraling up a dozen stories. Here and there, windows are broken and cracked, and the lower walls are near-coated with graffiti. The only clean surfaces within twelve feet of the ground are two dumpsters around the side of the building, one green and one gray. They must be new.
"The police don't patrol near here," Ishizu explains quietly, getting out of the car. "I suppose you could call it a government conspiracy, actually. Powerful people own this building. They rent it out to whoever is willing to pay an exorbitant price to live in squalor. Usually...that's wealthy criminals looking for a place to carry out their businesses far away from police supervision."
"So...the police won't investigate your brothers' deaths? Sahil's death?"
Ishizu nods. "Malik and Rishid don't legally exist," she explains. "That's why they were here...Sahil was a counterfeiter they were seeing about fake papers for themselves and the other tombkeepers." She sighs. "And even if they did...if they were last seen in this building...no chance. One lives in this building...one goes into this building...at his own risk."
"So it's down to us," Anzu says reflectively.
Ishizu nods again.
They scale the stairs together, choking slightly on the dust and grime that clogs the gray stairwell. By the time they reach the seventh story, Anzu is grateful for her dancer's legs and lungs. Ishizu lags behind just slightly, motions her to lead the way through the door from the staircase-landing to the hallway.
Ishizu leads her down the hallway, then pulls the handle of an unlocked door.
The door opens to a cramped office-like space, bare except for a desk near the back of the room and a bookshelf in the far corner. There's a crack in the window, shaped like a lightning-bolt.
"This is the room from my dream," Anzu says softly, turning around slowly to take it all in. Indeed, if she hadn't dreamed it, she would never have thought that this dingy, gray, but altogether stagnantapartment, could have been where the lives of three men came to a violent end.
Ishizu doesn't reply. When Anzu looks over, she's pressing her palms to the surface of the desk, eyes closed.
In the back of her mind, Malik's consciousness stirs...reaches...
Silence follows. The light from the sunset glints of the zigzag crack in the window.
Ishizu straightens up and turns away from the desk, toward the window and the crack on the setting sun. Her eyes are cold once more.
"Do you see anything different here?" Ishizu asks at length. "Anything that's changed since your dream?"
Anzu has to bite her tongue to keep herself from commenting on Ishizu's emotional state; her brothers died here, and she's being so...procedural. Business-like. It can't be healthy.
But no. They have more important things to worry about. Slowly, Anzu walks around the room, looking it up and down, for subtle changes.
"There," she says, pointing down at the floor. "There was a rug there, big and plush and red. It matched the chair cushions" She looks across the desk. "The chairs they were sitting in are gone too."
Anzu closes her eyes, trying to bring back all the dream's details. "I remember those cushions," she says. "I remember that I - that Malik - thought they were...tacky."
The briefest and most fleeting of smiles passes across Ishizu's lips, but it fades as quickly as it came, replaced with a look of wide-eyed realization.
"They died in the chairs?" Ishizu says quickly, as if looking for confirmation. "Sitting up at the table?"
Anzu nods hastily. "All three of them. First Rishid on the left," she says, turning to point, "then that Sahil guy, across the table in the center, and finally Malik on the right."
She turns back to Ishizu, wondering what she's getting at. There's a long pause; Ishizu seems to be thinking. Her eyes are still wide, but now...focused. Full of expectation.
"Press your hand against the table," Ishizu says softly. "If you...if you put the last remnants of Malik's spirit the last place where Malik's consciousness resided...he might be able to show us something."
Anzu scurries across the room to obey, anything to keep that look of realization, of hope, on Ishizu's face, and near slams her hands down to the surface of the desk.
It hits you like a wall and locks you into place. Circular saw blade; bomb on the docks; arrows to a warehouse; key, case, lock...Can't move can't move can't escape; Circular saw blade; bomb on the docks; arrows to a warehouse; key, case, lock...Don't let them move, don't let them escape...Circular saw blade; bomb on the docks; arrows to a warehouse; key, case, lock...
Anzu pulls back, gasping for breath. It's the same images she saw on the airplane, but much more intense. Here, she can hear the whir of the saw, the tick of the bomb, feel the rage of revenge and the heat of explosion and the frustration of defeat and―
"What did you see?" Ishizu demands.
Anzu thinks for a moment. She remembers the bomb on the docks like it was yesterday; ten years and Malik's redemption isn't enough to erase the memory of the trap that almost killed Yuugi and Jounouchi...and Anzu herself. Stretching her memory, she remembers Yuugi telling her about another trap, in the basement of a magic shop...chained by his legs...a circular saw...
"Malik's traps," Anzu blurts out. "He tried to show me on the plane, I think, when I was asleep, but I didn't realize it...I think he's trying to tell us that he was killed by some sort of trap."
Something flashes across Ishizu's eyes, but is quickly quelled.
"Malik was killed by a trap," Ishizu says reflectively. "That's good to know." Her voice lowers just a hair. "In the future, please tell me all even possibly relevant dreams you have, as soon as you have them. We're on a time limit, you know; if their bodies rot..." She trails off.
"I will," says Anzu. "I understand."
Ishizu nods shortly. "We also know that there was a rug in this room when they were killed, and it isn't here anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if the bodies were wrapped up in it, to conceal them somewhat...which should also afford a bit of protection from the elements. That might buy us another..."- she looks like she's thinking to herself, counting in her head- "another day, at most," she says solemnly. "And they could be anywhere. They could be at the bottom of the Nile."
Her words sound despairing, Anzu notes, but her tone is still eerily calm.
There are many faces to Ishizu Ishtar's grief, and she conceals them all.
Anzu comes around to stand next to her, and presses a hand to her shoulder. She fleetingly realizes she's taller than Ishizu, and cannot help but find this strange.
"I don't think Malik's memories would be so...strong...if his body was in imminent danger of destruction," she begins. "And standing here...I feel his presence more than ever."
It's true, she feels him, like a word on the tip of her tongue or a thought in the back of her mind, shifting on the edges of her consciousness. Weak, but there. Silent, but there.
Ishizu turns to her, looking down first at the hand on her shoulders and then up into Anzu's eyes. And for the first time since her trip began, Anzu can identify the emotion she sees in those eyes. Ishizu looks...lost.
But then a different realization strikes Anzu like a thunderbolt and she's leaping away from Ishizu, hand pressed to her own forehead.
"Traps," Anzu blurts out. "He showed me traps. But not just any traps...his own traps. The ones he designed for his Rare Hunters to use in Battle City."
Ishizu's eyes widen as she comes to the same conclusion that Anzu's just made.
"Malik thinks the killer is a Ghoul," she says.
The drive home from Sahil's apartment is filled with far more conversation than the drive there had been. They're making progress, Ishizu thinks; they know the manner in which Malik and Rishid were killed, and they've narrowed down the list of possible suspects from 'everyone' to 'a few dozen people.' A nagging voice at the back of her head tells her they're not close enough, that they won't have time, that their bodies will rot and their spirits will die...but she pushes it aside. Positive thinking. Hope. That's how she defeated destiny last time.
She's saved Malik's soul before.
"The killer won't just be any ex-Ghoul," Ishizu says reflectively, when they pause at a stop-light. "A good majority of them were...quite frankly...stupid. Malik found the weak-minded...the weak-willed...the easiest to control. No, only one of the intelligent ones could set up a trap complicated enough to take three people by surprise."
"Did Malik keep records?" Anzu asks, when they accelerate again. "Of the members of his organization I mean." She fidgets with her seatbelt; it's awkward, talking to Ishizu about this time in Malik's life, when he was so far from redemption, when he struck out through violence and control and manipulation and hate.
"I...don't know," Ishizu says slowly. "He might have something. He wasn't so naïve as to believe that there was no...residual...resentment built up among the Ghouls, after controlling them so long, and then abandoning them so abruptly. But..." - she hesitates - "He was so careful, when the three of us led the clan up from the ground. He might've destroyed any papers he had when work on the settlement began, just so that his name was irreproachable." She sighs. "That would be very like Malik, though. Throwing everything into his goal, even as he's conscious of the risk."
She smiles slightly, and shakes her head. Malik had pursued the construction of an above-ground village for the tombkeepers with a single-minded devotion that Ishizu had not thought him to be capable of. Or rather, she'd known him to be capable of such devotion, but only to serve his own ends. The fact that Malik had an altruistic streak, at least where the freedom of his people was concerned, had been a...pleasant surprise.
"He was very...driven," Anzu says, shifting slightly in her seat.
"He was," Ishizu agrees. "As driven as Rishid was kind. As dedicated to pursuing his goals as Rishid was to following him..." She trails off, contemplatively. "As devoted to his purpose as Rishid was devoted to him."
Another stop-light. Ishizu looks over at Anzu.
"They always loved each other more than they loved me," she says with a sad smile. "I've always known that."
They drive in silence for a long time after that admission, until Ishizu pulls the car up alongside the Ishtar home. Ishizu turns the engine off, and they sit there for a few minutes, as the car gradually fills with the Egyptian heat. But neither woman can quite bring herself to move just yet.
"You know," Anzu says after a long while. She hesitates, brushing the sweat off the bridge of her nose. "Malik died working for the tombkeepers. And Rishid died with Malik. All other things being equal...it wasn't the worst way for them to go."
Ishizu attempts a sarcastic laugh that comes out sounding more like a cough."Malik undoubtedly wanted to live to be a hundred and twenty and establish the tombkeepers as an independent nation. And Rishid...he would have preferred to die for Malik than with him. But all other things being equal..."
"All other things being equal," Anzu says, "it could have been farther from what they'd hoped for."
Ishizu turns away and opens the car door.
"Come on," she says, her back to Anzu. "It's getting hot. Let's go inside."
The first thing Anzu notices about the Ishizu's home is how similar it looks to the ones surrounding it. The Ishtars live right in the heart of the above-ground tombkeeper village they've dedicated their lives to constructing, and their house looks near identical to the rest. Ishizu explains that the houses were built for utility, not aesthetics, and built as quickly as safety allowed―anything to get the tombkeepers out of what Malik referred to as 'that godforsaken hole in the ground' as rapidly as possible.
The second thing Anzu notices about the home is how...uniquely theirs it is. There are three chairs at the kitchen table, three bedrooms, three toothbrushes in the bathroom (and a variety of haircare products she assumes are probably...were probably...Malik's.) She glances into Rishid's room and sees wood figurines on the bookshelf―that's right, she remembers Ryou Bakura telling her they'd been corresponding. Malik's room is neater than she expected it to be, and she spots a stack of motorcycle magazines in the far corner.
She wonders what Ishizu will do with it all.
Eventually, Anzu takes a seat at the kitchen table, and Ishizu sits across from her. They both glance fleetingly at the unoccupied chair, as if the weight of its emptiness is just beginning to dawn on them.
"I understand if you don't feel comfortable taking Malik's or Rishid's bed," Ishizu says, pouring Anzu a cup of chamomile tea. "You can take mine; I'll take the couch. It's very important that you sleep as much as you can, so that Malik can communicate while he still...can."
Anzu sips the tea, and hopes she can sleep―she's awfully anxious and turned around from the journey...but she'll do the best she can for Ishizu.
None of them married, Anzu realizes, quite belatedly. None of them have their own families. The only family they have is...each other.
She glances across the kitchen table at Ishizu, who is staring into her tea as if trying to divine from it.
"I couldn't find any of Malik's records," Ishizu says eventually, taking a sip. "So we're going to have to rely on your dreams, if we're going to find them. And we must find them." Her voice has regained that frightening resolve.
There's a stirring at the back of Anzu's mind again and once more she feels Malik's presence. But it's tentative this time, unsure...weaker.
For the first time, Anzu wonders if they really will find the bodies. She wonders if Ishizu realizes how farfetched their plan really is.
She wonders if Ishizu realizes that even if they find the bodies, she'll still return home to an empty house.
Ishizu wakes to the sound of floorboards creeking softly in the night. She stretches from her uncomfortable position curled on the sofa, walking on stiff legs through the dark house, towards the source of the noise.
There's a light on in her bedroom.
She doesn't know what it is that makes her quiet her footsteps...perhaps it's simply an attempt not to wake Anzu...perhaps it's merely simple curiosity. In either case, when she arrives at the threshold and stands silently against the door frame...she's glad for her discretion.
Anzu's standing beside her bed, one arm pressed against the wall for balance, balancing on a single foot, her leg extended out behind her.
Arabesque, Ishizu thinks, and the word is foreign even in her own mind. Ballet.
The leg floats up, and then down again, and Anzu releases the wall, arms lightly curved above her head as she arches her back to balance. One, two, three graceful steps forward, is all the space the small bedroom allows, but no matter. Anzu's glided through a half turn the other direction, facing towards Ishizu, eyes closed. She executes a complicated jump, then lands and the floorboards sigh, as she rolls through the balls of her feet, down into a soft knee bend, her jump as quiet as a mere step upon the floor.
All Ishizu can do is watch in awe. For a few brief minutes, she's not thinking about the fact that her brothers are dead and fading, not thinking about her empty house or her mission or her grief. She's simply...watching Anzu dance, a long silhouette casting graceful shadows in the half-dark room.
Anzu opens her eyes, and Ishizu abruptly takes a far less graceful step back out of the doorway.
"I'm sorry," they say together, and then Ishizu smiles just slightly.
"It's past midnight," she says, but her tone is hardly admonishing.
"I'm so sorry," Anzu says again, looking guilty. "I just...couldn't sleep. Sometimes dancing calms me down."
Ishizu nods, and steps into the room. She sits down on the bed, and motions for Anzu to sit beside her.
"That's what you study in New York?" Ishizu asks softly. Absently, she reflects that she's still used to speaking quietly at this hour, even when there's no one in the house for her to wake up.
"I...I do," Anzu says. "Well...not really study anymore, now that I'm out of college...it's my job. I'm with the corps of the New York City Ballet, I―" She cuts herself off. "I'm so sorry, I'm supposed to be sleeping so that we can get the information we need to save your brothers' souls, and here I am babbling about New York and my job―"
Ishizu presses a hand to Anzu's shoulder.
"It's fine," she says. "I've told you all about my life, my brothers, the tombkeepers...tell me about yours."
"I...well..." Anzu begins. "I moved to New York after high school, and majored in dance...I live in a studio apartment that charges too much rent...Is this really what you want to hear?"
Ishizu just smiles, the first real smile she's managed since she woke up to her empty house...could that be just a day before?
"Is there anyone special you're going back to?" she asks. Her smile is small, but real. It's tired, but it's real.
"Yuugi," Anzu says with a smile. "It's long-distance, of course; he could never leave the game shop...but we're engaged. I'll retire within the next five years or so...come back to Japan...get married, I guess."
Ishizu's smile fades just a little. "It's wonderful," she manages, "that you have someone to go back to."
"He always teases me about it though," Anzu says, eyes far away. Her mind is three thousand miles from the stress of their mission, her thoughts half a world away from Malik and Rishid's bodies. "He says that dance will always be my first love."
"Will it?" Ishizu asks.
Anzu smiles. "I've dedicated more than half my life to it...moved half-way around the world...In a way, I guess it will be." She blushes slightly. "Is that terrible?"
Ishizu shakes her head. "You set a goal and pursued it to the ends of the earth." She half-smiles. "Malik would approve."
Anzu laughs quietly, and Ishizu suddenly finds Anzu's arm around her shoulder. She starts a little, and then allows herself to find some comfort in it. Out there, in New York, in Japan, in the homes of the other tombkeepers...life goes on.
They chat quietly, sitting side-by-side on the edge of the bed, until eventually, exhausted, upright...they fall asleep.
Your wings are black and feathered and invisible at night, and they emerge from a pinprick in the sky as if created by the darkness itself.
You think yourself the photo negative of starlight. You know yourself to be as substantial as the reflections on the Nile.
You're just a bird with ideas above its station.
But there's another bird beside you, slightly larger, darker still, and you make a handsome pair, soaring on ethereal wings towards a gray edifice in the distance.
And like the obelisks that marked the ancient temples, it's not the edifice itself you seek; it's merely a landmark. From up here, it's merely a gray splotch in a sea of red mud brick and the orange glow of street lights.
Strange how the colors are so clear in the dark. Strange how the world below seems so distant from up here.
Your companion is swooping down now, drawn on by the wings that propel you both, but you fight against it (as you always have) and pull up short.
There's a ledge on the concrete edifice, just for a moment, you rest your wings.
There's a lightning-bolt behind you, and it splits your reflection in two.
But you sweep away from the ledge and down to the ground, beneath a speck of green and gray.
There you join your companion.
There you feed your souls.
Anzu wakes calmly this time, eyes fluttering open, a feeling of...peace around her. In the back of her mind, Malik's presence seems...encouraging. Anticipating.
Next to her, she shakes Ishizu awake.
"I had a dream," she whispers excitedly. "I don't know what it means, but it was...calm. Happy. As if he...Malik...knows everything is going to be alright."
Ishizu's brow furrows, and she blinks the sleep from her eyes. "Tell me," she says.
"There were two black birds," Anzu begins, and she knows it sounds utterly ridiculous, but at the same time she knows it to be true. "I was a black bird. And I emerged from a pinprick in the sky and flew over the land to a gray...pillar. Not a pillar...there were ledges...and I could see my reflection, but it was cracked..."
"Windows," Ishizu says in a hushed voice. "There was a crack in a window."
"It was shaped like a―"
"Lightning bolt," Ishizu finishes. "The bird stopped in Sahil's window. The gray pillar...it's his concrete building."
"I was a bird though," Anzu says. "But I was also Malik...what was that?"
"You were Malik's ba," Ishizu says excitedly. "The ba can take the form of a bird when it returns to the body. You were returning to his body to recharge. That means his body's still intact. That means he's buried in the ground outside Sahil's building."
"There was another bird with me. Was that...Rishid?"
"It must have been," she jumps to her feet. "Come―"
Ishizu suddenly slaps a hand to her forehead, eyes wide.
"How many birds were there, Anzu?"
"Two. Malik and Rishid and..." Anzu's own eyes widen in realization.
"Sahil's spirit wasn't with them," Ishizu says quietly. "Sahil isn't dead...Sahil is a counterfeiter...Malik's Ghouls were forgers..."
"Sahil was a Ghoul," Anzu whispers.
"He played them," Ishizu says, rushing out of the bedroom, changing clothes hurriedly in a rush to get back to Sahil's apartment. "They trusted him for years to forge papers for the tombkeepers...trusted him long enough to let their guard down when they entered his apartment. He must have rigged up guns to fire precisely at their chairs, faked his own death in case there were any witnesses..."
Ishizu trailed off. "But that's not important. Not yet, anyway. Did you see where the bodies were buried?"
"A speck of green," begins Anzu, lost in this whirlwind of sudden revalation, trailing along behind Ishizu, "a speck of gray..."
"The dumpsters," says Ishizu, rushing out the door to the car. "The dumpsters are new; they didn't have graffiti on them. Sahil must have buried Malik and Rishid underneath them."
Anzu runs out the door behind her, and she has to jog to keep up. All Ishizu's usual slow grace is gone from her walk. Now her movement is purpose embodied.
"What are you going to do if we run across Sahil while we're looking for the bodies?" Anzu shouts after her.
Ishizu just stomps across the yard to a shed behind the Ishtar home, opens the door and pulls out two shovels. She hands one to Anzu.
"I think I might kill him," she says.
They find the bodies wrapped in the red rug, under the dumpsters, seven stories down from the window with the lightning-bolt crack. Appropriately, the tacky red chairs are in the dumpster above them.
The bodies are intact, and with them, their souls.
Her purpose in Luxor achieved, Ishizu buys Anzu tickets home, back to her life, and the people who love her. And Ishizu returns to her empty house.
But she leaves again, throws herself into her work as sole clan-leader, gathers the tombkeepers together to perform the proper burial ceremonies. Malik and Rishid's remains are interred in their old home, now finally serving its proper purpose―as a final resting place, a way-station for their souls on the journey to the afterlife.
And a month later, Anzu has a final dream, a final stirring of Malik's presence in her mind.
She dreams of two hearts weighed on a scale.
And both of them are lighter than a feather.