Ascension [A Yu-Gi-Oh! FanFiction]

33: Ask

Peace.

That was what Satiah felt — wrapped in her husband's arms, skin against skin, heart against heart. With a long sigh, she ran her fingers across Atem's chest, tracing the line of his clavicle and drawing circles on his bronzed skin. He lifted his own hand and laid it over hers, bringing it to his lips to kiss the top of it. At this, Satiah tilted her chin up and looked into his eyes — deep and calm as the night sky that stretched across the heavens outside their window.

It was strange to think that only hours earlier, they'd been staring into the face of a god, unsure if they would ever see that sky again. Now, such fears were no more than a shadow in her mind, eclipsed instead by the warm glow of joy — and love. Oh, how far they'd come, she thought. And how much more they had to look forward to.

"Where are your thoughts wandering?" he asked, releasing her hand to stroke his thumb across her lips.

Satiah smiled and drew her free hand up to rest her chin on it, continuing to trace lightly over his shoulder with the other. Against her better judgment, she let slip the curiosity perched on the tip of her tongue: "Atem, have you ever been in love before?"

He raised his eyebrows and pulled in a deep breath. Satiah felt herself rising and falling with the swell of his chest. A silence took hold, and she lost his gaze to the pull of the sky, though his expression remained measured as he flicked his eyes from star to star. "Once," he said finally. "Or at least... I thought I was."

Satiah made a low noise. "It was the servant woman — from the temple. Wasn't it?"

He looked back, and again, surprise played across his features. But it was muted — charmed. "How did you know?"

Satiah grinned. "You are always subtle, my dear — except when you're trying to be."

A red tinge flared on his cheeks, his eyes dancing away in shame.

At this, Satiah reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair away from his face, summoning his gaze back to her. "I'm not bitter," she said. "She helped make you into the man you are today. And for that, I thank her."

The soft arch of his brows lowered, creasing pensively. He then leaned up, cradling her cheek to draw her in for an adoring kiss. When he lowered his head back to the pillow, Satiah was happy to see him smiling again.

He took another steep breath. "What about you, then? Has any man ever captured your heart?"

Satiah hissed a wry laugh. "Oh, I thought I was in love with every boy I kissed from the moment I knew what kissing was." She giggled again at the skeptical look on her husband's face. "It's the natural consequence when you've had no mother to tell you to stop flirting all the time and a father who turned a blind eye to it. It actually took admonishment from my mentor to get me to finally change my ways." Satiah sighed wistfully thinking about her youth. She could still picture Jahar's severe stare from the last time she'd been caught necking with a classmate behind the temple. "He used to say, 'Sati, if you don't stop chasing boys, you'll never become a high priestess.' I suppose he was right, in a way."

When Satiah returned her eyes to Atem, he was looking rather guilty again. "I didn't know you wanted to be a high priestess," he said, holding tenuously to her upper arm. "I thought you — and your father—"

Satiah tilted her head. "My father and I don't see eye to eye on everything, you know," she said. "It may seem hard to believe, but I even encouraged him to seek peace with your family at first. I never wanted violence. And I don't think he did either. He was just ... misguided."

Atem lowered his eyes, nodding once in understanding.

In the silence that followed, Satiah found her attention drawn to the bureau on the other side of the room, upon which sat the Millennium Pendant, gleaming softly in the light of a nearby candle. "The truth is, I do still fear the Items," she went on. She felt her husband's eyes on her, but she remained mesmerized by the flame flickering along the planes of gold. "Perhaps even more now than I did before."