Archive of Our Own

For a woman who could see the future, Ishizu Ishtar was blind to many things.

She is professional to the letter, and it is only him who spends his nights dreaming of her, who takes every opportunity to speak even in passing, or to brush his arm against hers when distance would be far more appropriate. He finds himself irrationally hating how much the other Priests monopolize her time, realizing the truth of his fears when he is wandering the palace one evening and spies the Priestess and his High Priest, alone in an alcove. Hidden, he watches them for a whole five minutes, feeling both fascinated and repelled by the simple, hesitant way that they interact. She seems intent on discovering his body, mapping his face and arms with careful fingers, while he handles her like glass.

A kiss against her shoulder. A kiss against her hair. Atem watches, romancing her in his mind, putting himself in Seto’s place. A proper kiss, this time.

He searches for his opportunity.

After seeing the two of them together, in a fit of well-concealed rage the Pharaoh orders the High Priest to lead the assault against an approaching Assyrian army. East of Egypt lies their country, just like east of his ribcage lies his heart.

Atem would do anything to protect it, and tries to feel neither jealousy nor guilt as he separates the two.

He feels only the first.

When news of the High Priest’s death reaches them, Isis wonders in horror why she didn’t see it coming, and falls gratefully into the Pharaoh’s arms, held open for her.

In the second universe, he never lets her go, and she never wishes him to.

In the first universe, Isis chooses the High Priest only out of necessity—the Pharaoh is gone from them, sealed within the Puzzle along with every bit of his very self. His memories, his name, his identity—is it all to be taken from him?

Seto reminds her that, if one was to mark everything taken from them both during the fierce battle against Zorc, they have in fact lost just as much. Their identities are gone; Seto names her as his new High Priestess, and she serves him as faithfully as she served Atem.

Thinking of him is too painful, so she shoves the memories aside, mourning him and then, eventually, forgetting him. Gone, too, are those from her. With enough time, she no longer even misses him.

Kisara is dead. The Pharaoh is gone. The only ones they have left are each other.

In one universe, they never even got the chance—a boy named Noa never died, and the boy named Seto never inherited the Kaiba name, and the three never even got to meet.

This does not stop a curious, young Egyptian woman from having visions of herself, a dark-haired man, and a third with a blazing, stylized eye on his forehead.

She recalls her lessons, and spans the ages back to the Ancient Egyptians, who had no concept of zero and therefore no number for it.

There are many things about her he could set his focus on. Her beauty is incomparable. She is not just intelligent but wise to the world and the lives of its people.

In his youth, he would have idolized her. Now, it is her strength which compels him to glance twice her way when someone else would only get one. Isis is not a warrior in the way of Karim or Seto, but he believes her to be the strongest of them all.

She’s completely free, or so he thinks.

“The Necklace chose me,” she tells him once. “I saw it, and had a vision where it was mine.”

“Then you had no choice at all.” It is not a question, but she treats it like one.

“Of course.” Her smile is brilliant and intoxicating. “I can choose what to do with the visions. I can tell you about them or I can say nothing. I can try to thwart their passage or I can do nothing to prevent them at all.”

“Would you?” he asks.

“Never,” she says. “My service is for your benefit and that of our kingdom. It is not for me to decide what their purpose is—I can only bring them to you and the rest of your Priests and together we will make sense of them.”

“You would not keep a vision from me?”

She looks offended just from his asking, and this time her smile is fierce, unflinching, unerring. Isis discerns the repetition. “Never.”

The season of Shemu had just begun when Isis’s words would be tested. Atem’s lunch that day had been burned, and he waits in his throne room, speaking to his advisors individually before Ishizu asks for a moment of his time.

She approaches him slowly; she is standing, he still sits upon the throne, and begins to talk. “You’ve had a vision, haven’t you? Tell me.”

“Imagine you are on the top of a hill,” she says. She never would have spoken at all had they not been alone. “No, make it a cliff. A precipice.”

“Yes? Go on—”

“You know you’re not supposed to be near them. Somehow. They’re dangerous. But what if you didn’t know? What if no one had ever told you, and so you walk to the tip and lean over the edge, climbing down backwards just because you can. Should you?”

“Isis, I don’t quite understand,” he says.

“No, I can’t imagine you would.” She nods in agreement. “Imagine a sword, then. If you didn’t know they were used for battle, what would you do with one? If there were no swords in our world, you would never pick one up and play with it as a toy, would you?”

“Is there a point to this story?”

“Then, how can you excuse—” Her face crumples, and he can see it now—she has seen something, something involving him, something where he broke his propriety towards her, where he did something impolite or inopportune. Sometimes, he wishes she did not have the ability to see the future.

“How can I apologize for something I have not yet done?” he asks her. “Do you have a riddle for that?”

Her voice shakes just the smallest bit. “In a world with no swords, the swordsmith has little to apologize for.”

“It seems you do, then,” he said, and she cringes again.

“You said something so similar…in my vision. Right before you kissed me.”

Feeling emboldened, he stands, and with her height they are almost equal in stature. As if noticing this, she inclines her head.

“All of your visions eventually come true, Isis…” His voice is a whisper, something meant to coax her. He knows full well that he could order her to do anything he wishes, yet the meaning would be completely dashed should he resort to such crude methods.

“Not this one,” she says. “You are the Pharaoh, and I am—I am not worthy of you.” She spins and leaves in a flurry of sand-colored linen, disappearing from his sight too fast for him to call her back. If she had waited for his dismissal, she knows he would never have given it.

In this universe, they never let themselves, believing it wrong. Happiness is not to be found, here.

They’ve spoken only a handful of times—at the museum, at his company headquarters, on the phone, briefly—but she finds herself drawn to him with a quickness that surprises even her. She can share her visions with him, something she long thought impossible. The most she can do with others is describe, but with him the act becomes more real, more intimate.

It’s like sharing a secret, except her newest visions she would rather have kept to herself.

He seems the type to never show his true thoughts or emotions, a practice long-kept until the pretense became performance and turned into fact, irreparable. He couldn’t be any other way even if he tried.

On her part it is an act borne out of necessity and the fact that she has never found a person to love her until that moment. Even now as she recites the vision in her mind for the third time she knows it isn’t love they share, not yet, but it could be. It could grow into that, and it’s that hope that propels her forward and into his office late one afternoon without an appointment.

All it takes is the press of her hand against the side of his face, and the vision is his.

—a loss of control, his palms hot against her back, fingers slipping beneath the hem to touch skin as she grabs the collar of his shirt in both hands, lips pressing together, insistently—

A moment of stunned silence follows. Seto looks at her, at the slight flush of color in her cheeks, and makes at least an attempt at sincerity.

“If we’re bound to break,” Seto says, “and it will happen eventually, then it is only a matter of where and when and why. I would rather—” And he pauses, exhaling through sharply clenched teeth. “I would rather just have you now then deal with the waiting.”

“Patience is a virtue,” she says. He doesn’t need to tell her how hollow her voice sounds.

“Why do you hesitate? Is it someone else?” She considers saying yes for a second, but banishes the thought as she reaches her arms up to wrap around his neck, pulling his head down and closer to hers, sealing any insecurities with a kiss. If she was capable of making promises anymore, she would make one for him.

In this universe, she chooses him, and forgets the other.

The Pharaoh stands with the Priestess against the backdrop of a starlit evening in the courtyard of his Palace, as they have done many times in the past since they enjoy each other’s company.

“Is it possible to surprise you?” he asks her once. “If you can see everything, surely it is impossible?”

“I am not sure,” she answers honestly. “I suppose it is possible.”

He leans forward with only the slightest bit of hesitation and kisses her—something soft and lingering and just as hesitant. “Did that surprise you?”

“Y-yes.”

“It seems you can, then,” he says.

He closes his hands around hers, and in this universe they are happy.

He knows he might only have days left, and although he wants desperately the afterlife that has been denied him, one small misgiving lurks at the back of Atem’s mind. It is a question not even Yugi can answer, who prods at him, noticing the difference and chalking it up to the resolution of his identity. If only it was that easy.

When he sees Ishizu Ishtar again—and how different she looks in this new light, the light brought on by his revelation—he asks to speak with her privately.

“In Bakura’s game, a version of the events of the past was replayed…a version where the Pharaoh and his kingdom faced off against the evils of the Darkness and won. There was a woman who looked remarkably like you there.”

“I see.” If Ishizu is perplexed by this news, she does not show it. “Is there a point to this story?”

“Yes,” Atem says. “She…and the Pharaoh…I saw them once. Together. The two of them were in a romantic relationship.”

“You think this might have something to do with the two of us?” She allows her composure to slip for just a moment, anger surfacing. “I’ve seen the many ways that history has repeated itself in you and the Items’ bearers. That, I believe, could be an exception.”

“And if I don’t want it to be?” he asks; his composure has shattered completely, wanting to be analogous but instead finding only desperation and the threat of loss. “Seeing them gave me hope. Do we have a chance, Ishizu?”

“I…don’t know.” She seems more stunned by the fact that there is something out there that she doesn’t know; she can no longer use the Necklace to see the answer, and she can provide none herself. Not knowing things—it’s so uncertain, so imperfect, and she both hates that and loves it. They both know how much is at stake.

“I would like to try,” he says. “I would like to know if we can. Try with me?”

He grasps one of her hands in his; he’s far too warm.

She nods, vaguely, unsure even of that much. The action is unsure and the consequences are unsure and she can’t know what is going to happen—or if it’ll be anything at all—and it’s both liberating and the most constricting feeling that has ever overtaken her.

Atem squeezes her hand. She squeezes back. When she walks away from him to return to her siblings, she at least tries to feel something about it.

When he walks away from her, he looks back once before turning the corner.

In this universe, whether they succeed or they fail, at least they try—

For a woman who could see the future, Ishizu Ishtar was blind to many things.