Ride Away

Prologue: Shattered Dreams

Marik sighed as he punched the numbers into his calculator. There was no point, really, checking his work.

He was already certain he had gotten it wrong.

It was not a matter that the boy didn't understand his homework. In fact, Marik was entirely sure that the answer to this very question was lying dormant somewhere in his mind, buried under the deep, complex fragments of his being, but still very much in his grasp.

No. The true source of his failure was nothing more than sheer will alone. Even if he didn't consciously realize it, some part of him wanted, longed, to see the answer come to an incomplete result yet again.

Just like him.

It didn't even bother him, erasing his own work just to write it all over again... In fact, it was somewhat satisfactory, staring at the confused, tiny numbers jotted all over his paper, the dusty pink remains of his nearly entirely rubbed away pencil.

It all represented him.

Ishizu was not taking the news of him failing almost every subject of his first-ever high school nearly as lightly as he was.

Marik could see the constant worry and hurtthat lingered in her blue eyes whenever she merely spoke to him, and it only compelled the boy to believe that he was even more of a disappointment than he already realized.

He could not even succeed in making his family happy.

Marik did not want to hurt Ishizu. It was only because of her wants that he would speak to that awful man in the white coat–the one that sat behind the desk, constantly nodding and scribbling down secret notes he wouldn't allow Marik see.

The boy felt strangely repressed and trapped within that room, very much like those torturous hours he had experienced when the darkened entity had concealed his soul within the shadows.

But the bobble headed man, schooled to nod and agree with every sentence Marik uttered even as he jotted down how insane he was on the perscription, hadn't understand that. (1) He never understood anything.

Instead he only frowned and handed Marik a small bottle of medicine he was supposedto take.

But he never took it. Something kept telling him it would all be so much better if he only threw it away.

Both siblings couldn't seem to reason with Marik's sudden openness in discussing themes such as the Shadow Realm and Millennium Items. Surly he realized normal beings didn't know of these supernatural things?

But that was the problem. It just didn't seem to matter anymore. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.

The boy's only true desire was to only make his family happy–see his sister smile–but even that seemed way out of reach.

A slight smile flickered across his face when he saw the tiny numbers appear on the calculator screen. Eighty-eight.

The true answer was ninety-two.

Both the homework questions and answer sheet fell from his limp hands, falling silently to the floor besides his feet.

A pharaoh wouldn't have these sorts of issues.

Then again–that must have been his biggest mistake of all.

He wasn't a pharaoh. Just a lost, broken soul with shattered dreams...

A/N: Thanks for the help with that line, Caorann fridh Bronach! I basically stole it, but changed it slightly.