Title: Three Prayers to Hathor

Authors: Amarantines and LadyBlackwell

Summary: Trapped inside this woman's body, inside this human mind, among a people who endure for the dead, Bakura lives. Post-series Thiefshipping. Co-written with Amarantines.

Rated: M

Warning(s) for this chapter: Violence of a sexual nature

Part 1: Prayer for a Woman

Chapter 1

The moonlight was dim when they first set out, his hand in hers for the first time since the day that they were married. Moswen guessed that he must know what it all meant, even though his face remained the same the hotter and clammier her hand became. Her heart beat through the hold he had and her steps were short. She was two paces behind him and could no longer see his face, and somehow that was no longer enough.

"Where are we going?"

The pause that followed was just a fraction too long. Two of his footfalls. Three of hers.

"Some place private."

His voice was steady and sure, but he didn't turn around.

Her breath caught in her chest, and she didn't think it was just because they were walking fast.

His legs were longer than hers and he was walking...not exactly quickly, but in that..purposed way he got sometimes. She'd seen him walk like this around the apartment he shared with his siblings (their apartment now, she had to remind herself, her home, hiswife, the first of a generation of tombkeepers to join their masters in making their home above the surface, the first of so many more to come once their leader's vision became a reality.) She'd seen him walk like this from the front door to his office, when he was holding official-looking documents or building plans, or the thick packages he stacked to the side of his room but never opened. Walking like he had somewhere to be.

So, hurrying along behind him, she watched the back of his head as he led her, watched the back of his white-gold hair take on a weird luminescence in the purple desert twilight.

It took all her inner effort not to reach out and touch it, to bury herself close to him the way she had secretly longed to, on the nights where he went to bed just before sunrise. If Moswen went to bed early enough, she would wake up to glimpse him, tired and tousled, shutting off the lamp and closing his book. This week, on the third Monday of their marriage, he had finally seen her watching him through the door, and smiled.

Ahead of them was an intimate, but open area marked with bright fires, the smell of Frankincense and an endless view of the desert beyond. There was an all-terrain vehicle parked off about 100 yards beyond, but it faded out against the sand, like just another dune to frame the scene. The figure of a tall man, straightening with torch in hand, stood just outside the private place her husband had been referring to. It was perfect.

"Rishid," he called. Rishid walked towards them.

He was about 50 feet away, she noticed, and walking slowly, as if the friction of the sand beneath his feet was pulling him back with every step. Or maybe it was just her own anticipation that made it seem like his footfalls came at half the speed of his brother's-his face, when it came into focus, was as impassive and unreadable as ever. Yet...within herself, she felt something change. Something tightening, something coiling tight. Excitement? Fear? She wasn't sure. Since marrying Malik, she wasn't sure of anything anymore.

She turned her eyes to Malik's face, hoping that for once, she might find her answer there.

Ten minutes later, when it was already far too late for it to be of any use, she would realize that the answer had been there. In Malik's face. In Malik's smile.

She'd never seen him smile like that before.

But not yet. For now, that ever-so-slight curl to his lip, that barest flicker of a predatory gleam in his eyes...it was just another inscrutable facet of the enigma that was Malik Ishtar. For now, all that she could understand was Rishid's comforting hand on her shoulder as he reached them at last.

Malik turned his gaze to his brother, and Rishid's hand quickly dropped. Rishid looked away, back over the desert.

"Can you leave us for a while?" Malik asked, and Moswen's heart stuttered in her chest. Was he talking to her? His voice was as smooth and sweet as the honey she mixed into her favorite cakes; she would have called him a low tenor, but Moswen had never heard of opera and now she never would. He was talking to Rishid. He wanted to be alone with her.

"Of course," said Rishid. He bowed his head. More slow footfalls to the all-terrain-vehicle, the revving of the motor, and the sound of the door slamming shut behind him.

Moswen's eyes were still fixed on Malik, standing light in the gathering darkness, a pale silhouette against the Sahara dunes.

He interlaced his fingers with her own.

"We are the stewards of the next generation," he murmured.

"Wh..what?" You had to watch the details with Malik. His voice was low now, not so smooth, cracks of true emotion filtering through the polished veneer. And Moswen was small and quiet and knew how to watch people and she would have seen it, she would have...if his thumb hadn't just then run a slow course down the back of her hand. She shuddered.

"We are the rising sun over the new land."

She could hear her breathing quickening, that tight-excitement-sick-fear, building; she wanted to look away from him, pale hair glowing like the god he'd tried to become, but she was paralyzed.

"We are the stewards of the next generation. We are the rising sun over the new land."

"A-above?" she managed. When Malik started to wax eloquent, it usually preceded an epic speech on Progress and Ascendance and All That Could Be for the tombkeepers once they ripped themselves from their three-thousand year grave beneath the surface.

He laughed and lightly tugged her arm, swinging her around to face him. He put his hand on her shoulders and, for what felt like the first time in days, one of the first times since they'd been married...he met her eyes.

His smile was kind now, and she swore she'd never get used to this. She never would.

Malik's warm fingers trailed up, solid and firm along her neck and into the curve of her cheek. Moswen's heart was thunder and trapped somewhere in her throat. To her he had been, and already was a god. He was, in that secret place inside of her that had always wanted to be his wife, since the moment he'd returned.

"We are," she started, automatically mimicking the words he said to her. Trying to memorize the movement of his lips. "...the stewards of the next generation. We are the rising sun over the new land."

Malik's smile only grew. He bent towards her, his hair intertwining with hers when they touched. "We are the moon and stars of the old," He was so close. So close and she could barely breathe, much less see the stars.

"We are the price paid to the gods, and we are worthy."

She took a step back, without really knowing why, a fraction of a second before he took a step forward. It was as if something was pushing her backwards, further into the clearing, although whether that something was his breath on her face or the nudge of his mind or some dark magic or her own fear, she'd never know. And for the moment, she didn't care. As he walked her backwards, pressed against her, their hair forming a swaying curtain as he leaned over her...the world beyond it did not exist.

And for a frightening moment, in a strange wisp of imagination that she knew was not her own, she wished not to exist. At least, not as Moswen, female-tombkeeper-age-18, small and dark-haired, not like this. She wished for something bigger. Something stronger, more encompassing. In her mind's eye, she saw Malik taking one step further, pushing not against her but throughher, as if she was as insubstantial as the incense that surrounded them. She saw herself fading away, within him.

His knee collided with her own as he stepped forward; Moswen's foot slipped suddenly, jutting off the ground as the other remained caught in the sand, and Malik might have noticed but beared forward nonetheless, staring her in the face, body pressed against hers, as she overbalanced backwards.

They fell together like he'd had it all planned, colliding in a tangle of legs and hands and fingers that pushed over her bust - there, there! - to hold her beating heart through her robes. His eyes were hungry and bright in the darkness, running over her body and inside her, where her soul fluttered against his hands.

It was so hot. Moswen's tongue was leaden. Her breath hitched once, then twice and sharper when Malik's hand brushed over her chest, experimental.

"Say it," he murmured. She could barely make out his face, so close to hers that his lips brushed her cheek when he spoke. Her husband was pleading with her. "Say it, please."

"We are the price paid to the gods," she whispered. She reached up, just grazing his face with her fingertips. "...and we, we are worthy."

The last syllable was barely past her lips before Malik's mouth covered them, swallowing her words, swallowing her whole. It was her first kiss. He rocked against her. It would be her last kiss. The world was spinning.

His mouth opened to hers just as a cloud of frankincense drifted over their bodies; the smell of incense became oppressive, smothering, leaden and heavy. But it was Malik and he was kissing herso it didn't matter, nothing mattered, nothing but his lips on hers and her heart hammering hard beneath his hand on her breast. A door slammed closed and eyes she didn't know she'd shut sprung back open. Blurry through the wafting smoke, out of the corner of her watering eyes, she saw a dark figure emerge from a car.

...Rishid?

But then Malik's tongue was darting against her own and she was blind to all else, and not only because the smoke stung her eyes. His fingers were trailing hot lines down her sides, through her shift, five fingers splayed between five ribs. They probed as if searching, pressing just a fraction too hard, too deep, just enough to crush out the rest of her breath as she grew dizzy in the incense.

There was sand in her eyes. There were heavy footsteps approaching. Malik's mouth was hard against her own, his teeth clacking against hers as he pushed her down into the sand. His hand was on her shoulder now, and too late, far far too late, she realized they weren't so much kissing any more as he was pinning her down: arms, legs, and head.

Rishid's footsteps stopped somewhere in front of her, somewhere invisible, a place where the stinging smoke and the watering eyes and Malik's body blocked her view. The shadows changed as he blocked the flickering firelight, standing above her, then changed again as he crouched to watch her die.

When Malik's hand found her sternum, she already knew what was coming.

The blade was light, not steel, and cut not through her skin but through her soul.

The knife came down with a thud inside of her, the breath stolen by the force of the strike, her blood lurching up into her throat. It surged with her entire body upwards into her husband - Malik, who bore into her with the full weight of himself, shaking and licking his lips.

But it wasn't her blood that filled her mouth. It was something less visceral, something somehow deeper, as if her very essence was bleeding out in thick spurts.

Malik's hand trailed down, searching, his heavy breathing in her face, hotter than the sand under her head, hotter than the wedge of magic in her chest that was burning, burning burning. Sinking into her and spreading like liquid lead through her veins, weighing her arms and legs down when he stopped pushing himself. He whispered in her ear, mumbling some words that she knew and some that she didn't, in that numbing tenor she had thought was beautiful.

She was heating up, no longer able to shake from the weight of the fire inside of her as it burned away her very soul. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't supposed to be-

"...Bakura," Malik finished. "Come."

Darkness.

Moswen's body was still and suddenly stiff, the clenched fingers dead in the sand where he'd left them. Malik reached down to swipe a stray hair from the side of her face, where it had stuck with tears and sweat. The eyes behind them didn't so much as flicker when he came near, or when he breathed over her cheek, just suggesting that he was curious. He didn't dare come too close to the portal he had created. Whether or not he had successfully lured what he needed there was yet to be seen.

He leaned back, quietly listening beyond the wind for a heartbeat, when her face moved. Malik wasn't ready. He looked up to Rishid for those first crucial seconds, as if to ask "What happens now?", but it left him ill-prepared for the flash of chalky brown fingers darting over the earth, gripping his bare arm. Her face had moved and he had missed it's transformation from his dead wife to a long faced creature; the excess tears sliding down into her ears as brown eyes rolled backward, the entire length of her convulsing body in one swift scream. Her spine bowed toward the heavens, heels digging into the sand and pushing and digging frantically for release.

Malik jumped to his feet, wrenching his forearm from her grasp, just as Rishid lunged in to push her body back down. Malik gathered himself just a fraction of a second slower than his brother, whose hands found her shoulders just before Malik's reached her knees.

They pushed. She screamed. They held her fast as she lay writhing in the sand.

Malik's arms shook as he held her down, from the exertion and the fear and the desire to meet Bakura's eyes. That desire lead him to the place where Moswen's body wrenched out of his grip, one leg hooking over his shoulder and crushing him to the earth. Wheezing gasps, like she was underwater and drowning them, rolled out of her throat in place of screams, which trailed off with control. The tension in her thigh gave out, releasing him.

When she breathed again, she was no longer. The light of the stars hit Bakura's vision, pupils narrowed, searching for a face in the darkness. Bakura's new eyes didn't see him or Rishid, he knew - there was no recognition there, only wonder.

And then, victory.

Hegrinned at them, breathing in with all his might and exhaling a triumphant laughter. "This isn't death," he rasped. The voice is his. "This isn't death!"

"This isn't death," Malik repeated, whispering voice harsh against a throat that had gone dry. "This isn't death," he repeated, like the final word of an incantation even though the spell was long since complete, had been complete since Moswen's death, and every breath Bakura took, every beat of his stolen heart, was evidence of that. "This isn't death," he said, looking down as Bakura's face twisted in a manner that was beautifully grotesque. Grotesquely beautiful. "Isn't death," he said louder, "ISN'T DEATH!"

His body swooped out over Bakura's, and even as Bakura still thrashed beneath him, even under the shadows of Rishid's still-restraining arms, he could not deny himself.

He smashed their lips together.

Another muted scream fought him, then broke off again into hysterical laughter. Bakura's teeth clicked against Malik's, opening the mouth that had only been his for a moment or two, sucking air through the spaces in their lips. Somehow Bakura's hands managed to move without Rishid's complete grip on his shoulders, so they pushed against Malik's stomach, working their way to his skin to plant cold resistance there. Fingernails dug into exposed flesh but didn't draw blood; so he just tried harder, harder, harder. His tongue fought against Malik's, their pattern more frantic and chaotic than Malik remembered, but still theirs. Malik knew. And when Bakura raked his fingers over Malik's hips to feel for the familiar landmarks of his own body, Malik knew Bakura knew as well.

"Malik-"

His name. Bakura's voice. Filtered through the vocal cords of a dead woman, perhaps, but Bakura's voice. Undeniably. His name.

He pulled back an inch to meet Bakura's eyes, where he found a manic glee he knew was mirrored in his own. But what reply, what possible replywas there to hearing his name in Bakura's voice once more?

Only one.

"Bakura!" he screamed into Bakura's face, and his voice was a victory crow. Bakura screamed back, a quick, sharp sound, and then again, the interval between filled with hysterical laughter. Two voices laughed together, sharp and hard and dissonant, and it took Malik an embarrassing amount of time to realize the second voice was his own.

He tried to gather himself, even as the adrenaline throbbed at his temples. In a choked voice that smothered another burst of violent laughter, he asked, "Do you know where you are?"

Bakura's throat was burnt, and Malik could hear it when he spoke, shaken after their laughter and trembling from the left over chill of death. His brown eyes were glossed and wet and he licked his lips, struggling to raise his face to Malik's again. "No," he started. "No..."

Realization was slow. The eyes rolled backward to search for the truth in this body, to extend beyond it for some answers that Bakura couldn't find with just a kiss or the sound of Malik's voice in front of him. "No...?"

"You're..." Malik started. He didn't finish. Bakura's eyes snapped back just then, strange, too wide, the pupils far too small. Bakura's breathing had grown shallow and rapid beneath him.

Bakura was...afraid?

"You're-" Malik started again, but was cut short when Bakura suddenly contracted inward, like a taut rope that had been cut, mouth pulling strangely at the corners like an animal in pain, curling in towards his center so rapidly that Malik lost his grip.

A switch flipped somewhere behind Bakura's frightened eyes, which looked through him now. Saw above Malik and on into the night sky and back to the spirit realm, following the trail that Moswen had left. Unreachable.

"Stuck," Bakura wheezed to the sky, not to Malik, bucking against the inexplicable weight of Rishid that he couldn't quite understand yet. One of his free forearms reached past and upward as far as it could, grasping at some invisible line. He trembled, fear and rage and hope mixing into that lost expression, which even with terror was still Bakura. Completely.

A dry scream erupted from the dead girl's lips, pushing against Malik with all the force that this body had to give, though the effort was frail and wasted with fear. It was the name of his former host, somewhere a world away and with no way of hearing Bakura at all.

Why have you trapped me in here?, his panicked eyes plead to Malik. Why this body, why?And Malik had no answer.

He watched Bakura try, gasping with short little breaths, blinking deeply at just the right time, as if doing these things would help him do what he always did when Bakura was faced with dying - splitting his consciousness, and going to where Malik could not follow him. His efforts fell flat inside Moswen's body, dropping him again into the reality where hands held him down and someone with his lover's eyes and lips were telling him things, and this body was fleshy and smashed into the earth. No escape.

"Ryou-" he cracked, one more time. He met Malik's eyes. Then he crumpled, the sneer of teeth and the faraway light in those eyes dimming and rolling backward for good as Bakura collapsed under him.

Silence.

Malik breathed in the sudden calm. He heard Rishid's breathing above him, labored from the exertion of restraining Bakura's body. He bent down, ear pressed to Bakura's lips...yes, hot breath on his cheek. Steady and deep, moreso, even, than his own. Bakura was unconscious but unhurt. Physically, at least.

Malik drew back. Crouched above Bakura's prone form, his vision wavered slightly. His limbs felt heavy. This was exhaustion: physical, mental, emotional. But he would not give into exhaustion yet.

He met his brother's eyes. Rishid, without ever needing to be told, at last released his grip on Bakura's shoulders and stood. He turned his back to them, but didn't yet walk off, back to the ATV. Waiting to see if his brother needed anything else, Malik knew.

Not this time. Looping one arm under Bakura's knees, the other behind his shoulders, he pulled his ragdoll-like body into his arms. He seemed so small. It wasn't even difficult.

Malik took the first step, and Rishid took his cue to begin the walk to the ATV. He pulled the backseat door open before walking around the car to the driver's side, deliberately averting his gaze once more. Privacy, Malik knew, to allow Malik to load his lover into the backseat like a sleeping child. He did so.

Once Bakura's unconscious body was buckled into the middle seat, Malik climbed in next to him and pulled the door shut. He sighed, and felt the empty spaces at the back of his eyes adrenaline had left behind, felt them fill with the warm pressure he'd come to associate with utter fatigue. He paused, considered, and then draped an arm around Bakura's shoulders. The movement jostled Bakura's head, and it bobbed down, falling slack onto Malik's shoulder.
As Rishid revved the motor and began to drive, Malik smiled at the fact that Bakura's cheek was warm.

But the world was going dark for him now, too. Unable to fight off the exhaustion any longer, he leaned his own cheek into the crown of Bakura's head, and closed his eyes.