6Step.
Step.
Step.
Turn.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Turn.
Malik hissed, pacing his room from one end to the other. He wouldn't hate them. He refused to hate them.
(No one could hate like he could.)
(He didn't want to hate again.)
Step.
Just because you sealed away something didn't mean it was gone. The Shadow Realm was as good a chain as anything, but the Shadows dealt in souls, and his other was a part of his mind. There was no separate soul to banish.
Step.
And the Shadows had always come easily to him. Like a puppy, eager for affection - no coaxing was needed. If he ever decided, even for a moment, that he wanted that hatred back...
Step.
Turn.
There weren't any God Cards in this place. The people here had rules, ideas of what was possible and what was not, and as usual, the Shadows (dancing at his fingers) weren't taken into account. If required, a fatal, multi-hour long game could take but a few seconds, and his other was a master of manipulating games.
There would be no stopping him.
Step.
Family always was a big thing to him. Carve hieroglyphs into his back, go ahead, but hurt Rishid and you were dead. His father was dead because of his new family, and his cousin suffered... well, not as much as he had. But she wasn't strong enough, and he could see what it was doing to the girl.
Step.
It was a little strange for him. The Tomb Keepers locked themselves away just like his new family did, and while they weren't as (strictclosedoffcold) distant, they always stayed away from him before his father's death, and afterwards he hadn't cared to deal with them.
Step.
He'd had cousins in his last life, too. Lots of them. They'd helped to pin him to a cold stone slab and set him up for weeks of pain.
He'd had a brother and a sister and loved them both, though, even if they weren't there for him here.
Turn.
(Maybe it was his turn, to be the big brother now.)
Step.
His father, in a series of night in which he'd carved his family's legacy into his own son's skin, had spawned enough hate and pain and rage to form its own personality, something that could not understand anything else. The comfort, the calm his siblings had brought him had shelved that pain.
Until he'd seen Rishid on the ground and hurt and maybe dead and it was his father's fault. Then his hate had reached a new level, leaving him open to his other's manipulations. Because after that night? He filled a separate personality with his hate and still had enough left to turn him murderous.
Step.
(He never had named his other. Yugi and Ryou had, sharing their names with them for other people, though between them each had used something else. But his other would never be anything more than that. He refused to let him be anything else.)
Step.
(He'd never forgiven his father, either.)
Turn.
This new family was so similar to the old. If Malik weren't living it, maybe he'd have laughed. They walked in the light, yet caged themselves all the same. They branded their own kin, made them slaves, and kept a single line unchained. The Seal was a horrible fate, acknowledged by such by the main family, and yet...
Step.
He should talk to his cousin tomorrow. The younger was a brat, but the older was... nice. Maybe giving himself something (anything) to hang onto would help him. He couldn't let himself keep hating. Without Rishid to snap him out of it...
Step.
And if that didn't work, he'd try to find someone else. Maybe when he got a genin team, he'd find someone tolerable, someone he could rely on to distract him. Hate was the enemy, had since he was ten the first time. The more he hated, the more of a foothold his other had. The louder the whispers, the less he could control himself, the more likely he was to-
Step.
He had the key to his other's chains, and was always just a breath from opening the lock. His other could get free from both a moment of temporary insanity (which he had all the time in the world to arrange) and just by accident. And if he ever succeeded...
The Pharaoh was dead, Rishid probably was, too, and Ryou...
Ryou might be here. But 'might' wasn't good enough.
Turn.
Hyuuga Neji paced back and forth across the room as he thought of how he could best avoid his fate.
A/N- Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I could say things are a little hectic for me right now, but the truth is that this is the first time I've uploaded anything with a schedule, and I find it really easy to lose track of the days. I honestly just forgot.
Anyways.
Malik is a fun character to write. So very restless... his thoughts are a little all over the place, aren't they? That's the joy of stream-of-consciousness, though.
I think the reason I chose Neji for him is obvious. I don't think my Malikmuse appreciated the irony, though. Of course, unlike Neji, Malik has a habit of deciding 'Screw destiny!' and has several friends who support him here. There's no such thing as an impossible situation to the Yu-Gi-Oh! crew, after all. It's all just a matter of how hard it is to reach your desired outcome.
Regardless, the Hyuuga family is basically one big pressure cooker, as far as Malik is concerned. Neji compacted and hardened under it, but Malik has a major explossive risk. His number one support base has always been family, but that's gone, and has been replaced by the very source of his problem - talk about a one-eighty.
Thankfully, Hinata's a nice person, and even if you decide these are in separate continuities, she'll do her best to hold her cousin together once she finds out about the problem. That being said, that only changes the situation from Malik being a ticking time bomb to Hinata being a land mine. Less inevitable, sure, but while 'touch her and die' works pretty okay in some situations, Hinata is a ninja. The chances of her spending her entire life without so much as ever being sent to the hospital are incredibly slim.
On the bright side, that might give her a bit more motive to get strong fast, and stay out of danger. Hinata's badass, but she reaches her best when there are people she cares about other than herself on the line. 'I die and I'm dead' is much less motivating to her than 'I die and my cousin snaps and everyone I know and love dies horribly'.
Next update... will probably be next Sunday.
Unless I forget again. But hey, this was all pre-written for once. That last chapter's already done. I'll get it up eventually.