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Title: Abydos
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Harry Potter/YuGiOh!
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen/Angst/Supernatural
Pairing: Blink-and-you'll-miss Marik/Yami no Marik
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or YuGiOh! and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Bill doesn't immediately like Egypt. It's a strange place, filled with strange people. Marik Ishtar is one of them.
AN: This was written for the 'AU: Crossover' prompt on my Trope Bingo table.
He hated sand. He hated sunlight. There was too much of both, but it was really the sand that you couldn’t escape. The sun at least had the decency to set, and it couldn’t reach down into the tombs anyway. They were blissfully cool in the heat of the day, but nothing – absolutely nothing – would have made him happier than cloudy, grey skies and the patter of rain.
Egypt was beautiful. It was also a harsh, unforgiving, endless wasteland once you left the river banks, and their camp was surrounded by nothing except red rock and sand for unbroken miles. He hated it. He’d thought he’d be able to handle it – had brushed off his mother’s concerns because he’d known it would be hot, and he’d known it would be isolated – but knowing was different from experiencing and none of the warnings he’d received could ever have prepared him for the reality.
The reality was bland, basic food with Arabic labels that he couldn’t understand, meant to be easily preserved but ultimately flavourless; it was in-jokes and hazing pranks that left him with scarabs in his soup and snake skins in his sleeping bag; it was having to check his boots each morning for scorpions and spiders; it was mind-bending and occasionally gruesome work with little reward beyond his own personal satisfaction – something that currently offered him little cheer.
The passion he’d built up from fourth year onwards was beginning to wane. Or rather, it had transformed into a desiccated husk of itself, like the ones they so frequently uncovered in the tombs; dried out and torturously mutilated, screaming in endless silence.
…
There was a boy in the camp. Boy was, perhaps, a little unfair – he could only really be a couple of years younger than Bill – but given that’s how he was seen around here, it was an understandable bias. He was smiling and chattering away with one of the goblin supervisors, waving his hands expressively like all Egyptians seemed to, and the glare of the sun glinted off the gold bangles and rings he’d decked his hands out in.
“Medjai,” Lynch spat.
Bill blinked at him. The Irishman usually got along with everybody. He was one of the few who’d taken the time out to welcome Bill and take him under his wing and explain what all the incessant in-jokes (well, most of them) were about. He’d never heard him refer to anyone with that amount of dislike before.
“His name’s Malik Ishtar,” Lynch explained. “He’s the head of the local Medjai tribe – a bunch of isolated, inbred, desert-dwelling near-Squibs. They’ve been here longer than the tombs, which of course, means they think they own them. Bastard’s always getting in the way.”
Getting in the way and coming their way. Snapclaw was leading him over, smiling in a way that should have had any sensible wizard running for the dunes. Ishtar seemed to be mimicking the expression instead.
Up close, Bill could see wisps of pale blond hair peeking out from under the hood of his cloak, yet more gold in the form of earrings and necklaces, and kohl-rimmed eyes that were an impossible shade of violet. Ishtar was pretty, and in any other circumstances Bill would have flirted, but there was something about him that made him feel cold – even under the harsh desert sun, he could feel shivers running down his spine.
Ishtar, it seemed, wanted to see something in the new tomb, and Bill had been chosen – he suspected it was yet another hazing ritual – to go in with him. Bill pasted a smile onto his face and nodded along and tried not to think about curses and dark, enclosed spaces and the mutilated bodies of unfortunate tomb robbers; nor about the sheer amount of work that had gone into bloody well uncovering the damned thing in the first place, work which Ishtar had had no part in. Going into the tomb with Ishtar was the last thing he wanted to do. It was harsh, he knew, but there was a sense of possessiveness over his first entirely new tomb as well as a growing sense of unease created by Ishtar’s wicked, goblin-smile that showed too many teeth.
But go he would. This was a good job, one that he’d sacrificed a lot for. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t very well slink back to England now. If he did, finding a new job would be near impossible, and worse, mother would never let him leave again.
…
Ishtar set off into the dark without a backwards glance, apparently not needing a lumos to light his way. Bill scrambled after him, lighting his wand and holding it aloft, trying to ignore the way the pale light caught the painted eyes of gods and monsters and made them seem alive. He caught up quickly enough; Ishtar had paused to read something on the wall – again, not needing light to do so – and he’d shed his cloak somewhere along the way. It hung over his bare forearm like a shed skin; the shirt he wore beneath was thin and sleeveless and the exact same colour as his eyes.
“You’re new,” Ishtar stated. The hairs on the back of Bill’s neck rose and he glanced behind him, uncertain. He’d thought he’d heard a voice whispering into the shadow between himself and the Medjai - “always new, habibi” - but the only voice was Ishtar’s.
“How are you liking Egypt?” he asked.
Everyone had been asking him that lately. His rote response of “I love it” was never questioned and even he had difficulty sometimes finding the lie; in the peaceful moments when the sun was rising and the sky exploded with colour, or at night when the Milky Way soared up above the camp, perfectly clear. He loved it then. He loved the satisfaction of a curse newly broken and the triumph and exhaustion that accompanied the reward of hard work. He loved the thought of the adventure of it. He loved it then.
“I love it,” he said automatically.
Ishtar’s lips curved upwards in the wandlight and the shadows hissed with laughter. “Liar,” he said, not believing Bill for a second. “But you will.”
It almost sounded like a threat. Bill turned his attention to the hieroglyphs, but Ishtar chose that moment to move on, further down the corridor, and he had to scramble to catch up again. As he did, he thought he felt something invisible rush past him, and mad, alien laughter echoed in his ears.
…
The return to daylight left him blinking. What Ishtar had been looking for, he wasn’t any the wiser; didn’t even know if he’d found it. There had been pauses at certain friezes and studies of hieroglyphs, but nothing that he’d been able to figure out. It had been brief.
And creepy.
When Ishtar had paused to put his cloak on at the entrance to the tomb, as he’d moved, Bill had caught a glimpse of elaborate scarring on his back when his shirt – already short enough to bare his midriff – had ridden up. He’d frozen, stunned, and by the time he’d managed to right himself and head back to the surface, Ishtar was deep in conversation with Snapclaw again – flitting between Arabic and Gobbledegook at a rate that made Bill’s head swim.
He cancelled his lumos and holstered his wand and stared in disbelief as an inky segment of shadow slithered out of the tomb to curl around Ishtar’s feet like an obedient pet. He glanced at Ishtar’s face; it showed no sign of anything unusual beyond, perhaps, the toothy goblin-grin he was wearing again. The shadows at his feet seethed and settled and, for a moment, Bill could have sworn that Ishtar had two – one cast by the blazing light of the sun; the other spiky and unnatural, not moving with Ishtar’s body – until sweat dripped into his eye and he blinked and it was gone.
“Wha-“
Lynch was there, pulling him away by the shoulder. “Don’t,” he said. “It’s not just the tombs around here that are cursed.”
…
Ishtar had been right, though. Once the hazing was over and the culture shock gone, he realised that Egypt had seeped under his skin and under his nails and become a part of him. He grew out his hair and – in a moment of whimsy – pierced his ear; he learned to read and speak Arabic and barter with the people in the nearest towns; he learned to ignore the sudden cold, and the dancing, laughing shadows that appeared when the Medjai stopped by.
And he learned that some tombs aren’t meant to be opened, and that some curses can never be broken.
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Harry Potter/YuGiOh!
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen/Angst/Supernatural
Pairing: Blink-and-you'll-miss Marik/Yami no Marik
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or YuGiOh! and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Bill doesn't immediately like Egypt. It's a strange place, filled with strange people. Marik Ishtar is one of them.
AN: This was written for the 'AU: Crossover' prompt on my Trope Bingo table.
He hated sand. He hated sunlight. There was too much of both, but it was really the sand that you couldn’t escape. The sun at least had the decency to set, and it couldn’t reach down into the tombs anyway. They were blissfully cool in the heat of the day, but nothing – absolutely nothing – would have made him happier than cloudy, grey skies and the patter of rain.
Egypt was beautiful. It was also a harsh, unforgiving, endless wasteland once you left the river banks, and their camp was surrounded by nothing except red rock and sand for unbroken miles. He hated it. He’d thought he’d be able to handle it – had brushed off his mother’s concerns because he’d known it would be hot, and he’d known it would be isolated – but knowing was different from experiencing and none of the warnings he’d received could ever have prepared him for the reality.
The reality was bland, basic food with Arabic labels that he couldn’t understand, meant to be easily preserved but ultimately flavourless; it was in-jokes and hazing pranks that left him with scarabs in his soup and snake skins in his sleeping bag; it was having to check his boots each morning for scorpions and spiders; it was mind-bending and occasionally gruesome work with little reward beyond his own personal satisfaction – something that currently offered him little cheer.
The passion he’d built up from fourth year onwards was beginning to wane. Or rather, it had transformed into a desiccated husk of itself, like the ones they so frequently uncovered in the tombs; dried out and torturously mutilated, screaming in endless silence.
…
There was a boy in the camp. Boy was, perhaps, a little unfair – he could only really be a couple of years younger than Bill – but given that’s how he was seen around here, it was an understandable bias. He was smiling and chattering away with one of the goblin supervisors, waving his hands expressively like all Egyptians seemed to, and the glare of the sun glinted off the gold bangles and rings he’d decked his hands out in.
“Medjai,” Lynch spat.
Bill blinked at him. The Irishman usually got along with everybody. He was one of the few who’d taken the time out to welcome Bill and take him under his wing and explain what all the incessant in-jokes (well, most of them) were about. He’d never heard him refer to anyone with that amount of dislike before.
“His name’s Malik Ishtar,” Lynch explained. “He’s the head of the local Medjai tribe – a bunch of isolated, inbred, desert-dwelling near-Squibs. They’ve been here longer than the tombs, which of course, means they think they own them. Bastard’s always getting in the way.”
Getting in the way and coming their way. Snapclaw was leading him over, smiling in a way that should have had any sensible wizard running for the dunes. Ishtar seemed to be mimicking the expression instead.
Up close, Bill could see wisps of pale blond hair peeking out from under the hood of his cloak, yet more gold in the form of earrings and necklaces, and kohl-rimmed eyes that were an impossible shade of violet. Ishtar was pretty, and in any other circumstances Bill would have flirted, but there was something about him that made him feel cold – even under the harsh desert sun, he could feel shivers running down his spine.
Ishtar, it seemed, wanted to see something in the new tomb, and Bill had been chosen – he suspected it was yet another hazing ritual – to go in with him. Bill pasted a smile onto his face and nodded along and tried not to think about curses and dark, enclosed spaces and the mutilated bodies of unfortunate tomb robbers; nor about the sheer amount of work that had gone into bloody well uncovering the damned thing in the first place, work which Ishtar had had no part in. Going into the tomb with Ishtar was the last thing he wanted to do. It was harsh, he knew, but there was a sense of possessiveness over his first entirely new tomb as well as a growing sense of unease created by Ishtar’s wicked, goblin-smile that showed too many teeth.
But go he would. This was a good job, one that he’d sacrificed a lot for. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t very well slink back to England now. If he did, finding a new job would be near impossible, and worse, mother would never let him leave again.
…
Ishtar set off into the dark without a backwards glance, apparently not needing a lumos to light his way. Bill scrambled after him, lighting his wand and holding it aloft, trying to ignore the way the pale light caught the painted eyes of gods and monsters and made them seem alive. He caught up quickly enough; Ishtar had paused to read something on the wall – again, not needing light to do so – and he’d shed his cloak somewhere along the way. It hung over his bare forearm like a shed skin; the shirt he wore beneath was thin and sleeveless and the exact same colour as his eyes.
“You’re new,” Ishtar stated. The hairs on the back of Bill’s neck rose and he glanced behind him, uncertain. He’d thought he’d heard a voice whispering into the shadow between himself and the Medjai - “always new, habibi” - but the only voice was Ishtar’s.
“How are you liking Egypt?” he asked.
Everyone had been asking him that lately. His rote response of “I love it” was never questioned and even he had difficulty sometimes finding the lie; in the peaceful moments when the sun was rising and the sky exploded with colour, or at night when the Milky Way soared up above the camp, perfectly clear. He loved it then. He loved the satisfaction of a curse newly broken and the triumph and exhaustion that accompanied the reward of hard work. He loved the thought of the adventure of it. He loved it then.
“I love it,” he said automatically.
Ishtar’s lips curved upwards in the wandlight and the shadows hissed with laughter. “Liar,” he said, not believing Bill for a second. “But you will.”
It almost sounded like a threat. Bill turned his attention to the hieroglyphs, but Ishtar chose that moment to move on, further down the corridor, and he had to scramble to catch up again. As he did, he thought he felt something invisible rush past him, and mad, alien laughter echoed in his ears.
…
The return to daylight left him blinking. What Ishtar had been looking for, he wasn’t any the wiser; didn’t even know if he’d found it. There had been pauses at certain friezes and studies of hieroglyphs, but nothing that he’d been able to figure out. It had been brief.
And creepy.
When Ishtar had paused to put his cloak on at the entrance to the tomb, as he’d moved, Bill had caught a glimpse of elaborate scarring on his back when his shirt – already short enough to bare his midriff – had ridden up. He’d frozen, stunned, and by the time he’d managed to right himself and head back to the surface, Ishtar was deep in conversation with Snapclaw again – flitting between Arabic and Gobbledegook at a rate that made Bill’s head swim.
He cancelled his lumos and holstered his wand and stared in disbelief as an inky segment of shadow slithered out of the tomb to curl around Ishtar’s feet like an obedient pet. He glanced at Ishtar’s face; it showed no sign of anything unusual beyond, perhaps, the toothy goblin-grin he was wearing again. The shadows at his feet seethed and settled and, for a moment, Bill could have sworn that Ishtar had two – one cast by the blazing light of the sun; the other spiky and unnatural, not moving with Ishtar’s body – until sweat dripped into his eye and he blinked and it was gone.
“Wha-“
Lynch was there, pulling him away by the shoulder. “Don’t,” he said. “It’s not just the tombs around here that are cursed.”
…
Ishtar had been right, though. Once the hazing was over and the culture shock gone, he realised that Egypt had seeped under his skin and under his nails and become a part of him. He grew out his hair and – in a moment of whimsy – pierced his ear; he learned to read and speak Arabic and barter with the people in the nearest towns; he learned to ignore the sudden cold, and the dancing, laughing shadows that appeared when the Medjai stopped by.
And he learned that some tombs aren’t meant to be opened, and that some curses can never be broken.
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Date: 2014-05-13 10:39 pm (UTC)From:There's a lot of personal experiences in this fic. From Egypt as I remember it (long-ago, amazing holiday), to the homesickness Bill feels.
His job is one that sounds absolutely fascinating - and a lot of hard work to boot - but it's kind of implied in the third book that it involves a lot of camping in the desert, hence the environment the fic is set in. Tight-knit, wary communities spring up in circumstances like those, and Bill would have had a tough time at first, adjusting to his new life as well as being seen as an outsider.
And Marik? He's always been one of my favourites, the creepy bastard. ;)