I wrote this with the manga canon in mind, although it's compatible with the anime canon.
Warnings: violent imagery, references to child abuse.
A child and his bodyguard walked through a hospital corridor. The child's even gait fell with imminent adulthood, while behind him Isono kept pace the best he could. Above, the buzzing overheads burnished Seto's dark hair with sick yellow green as he passed beneath. His soles clacked sharply over the rubber floor. It was the only sound Seto had made since they left the office. Isono watched the tiles, tracing with his eyes the invisible footprints left by the fifteen-year-old ahead of him. Each square of rubber had a spray of black marks over its clinical green in lieu of a design, presumably to hide the dirt, but to Isono it felt as though they were grinding dead insects beneath their heels. It was the most awful thought to have on the way to a mortuary.
Isono hoped that Seto had not received the same impression, but his brisk pace was unfaltering. He was still so small, little Seto Kaiba. The white folds of his uniform made him seem smaller still, the way they always had, just as they were intended to. And this was Kaiba Corporation's new CEO. Not the boss's kid, not Isono's charge, but the company president. Gozaburo's young heir was now full grown, at least according to the will. The kid still didn't come past Isono's shoulder.
"Master Seto?"
The child inclined his head but did not turn.
"This really isn't necessary." Isono's voice tumbled forth in uneven, broken pieces; a manhandled jigsaw. "We don't need to be here. Please don't do this to yourself."
Seto laughed with the same cadence as his dead father.
"Don't be a coward. I'm just satisfying my curiosity." A quieter, icy bell-like laugh followed. "If it upsets you so much you can wait in the car."
"It doesn't upset me. And I won't leave your side no matter what. Certainly not at this time."
"'At this time'? We're in a hospital, Isono. There are cameras everywhere. No one is going to try to assassinate me here."
"That's not what I meant." You know that's not what I meant, Isono thought, but swallowed the words. He would never let Seto out of his sight by choice. If Seto flew into the sun Isono would keep staring until his retinas were burnt to ash. The times that he couldn't see Seto were the times he got hurt. But that wasn't his fault, not really – or so he told himself, night after night. For after all, if Gozaburo's absolute rule called for Seto to bleed then there was nothing Isono could do to stop it.
But Gozaburo was gone. Five hours, seventeen minutes since ETD. And still he followed like a spaniel in the boy's footsteps.
They reached the mortuary door. Seto paused before it and Isono stopped a few paces behind, wanting to say something, or perhaps throw himself in front of those doors and lead Seto by the hand away from this place.
"Seto," he started, and Seto turned, finally. It wasn't that he looked calm. He looked like every concern, every thought, had been purged from his mind. His face was pure black nirvana.
"I need to ensure that he's really dead," Seto said. "He is a resourceful man. I've seen him play dirty. 'Losing is death' – perhaps he really believes that. Perhaps not." The faintest echo of an expression nudged his face. "I'd like to think his last lesson was a valuable one."
"He fell nineteen storeys. No one can survive that."
"You'd be surprised." Seto half turned and rested his forearm against one of two double doors. He only let his sleeve touch the surface. It was a tic now so familiar to Isono that sometimes he caught himself doing it. "What doesn't kill you..."
The door opened and Isono found himself in a large, clean room. Desks and cabinets gleamed in sterile silver, and an antiseptic smell flooded his lungs with ice. He was thankful for his heavy suit. One doctor occupied the room: a balding man in his fifties. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his white coat and was staring at a wall of small, square, metal doors. Isono very suddenly realised that he had never seen a dead body before.
The doctor turned and smiled exactly like someone trying to disguise how much they're enjoying their day.
"President Kaiba, I've been expecting you." He bowed lightly and then glanced back to the wall of doors as though struggling to pull his eyes away, though he eventually managed it. Isono wondered what could be so fascinating about the contents of those horrible square mouths. "I have to say, we don't get a lot of requests of this nature. This is rather... unorthodox." He said 'unorthodox' as though he would much rather say 'thrilling'. "If you'd like to just see a copy of my notes instead then I can assure you that they're very thorough." His lips drew back in a parody of a smile. "The autopsy was very conclusive. I can assure you that I took my time with this one."
"I've read your notes," Seto said. "Quite exhaustive. But I need to see the body."
"Yes, yes," breathed the doctor, walking over to the desk. He and Seto both seemed to understand something about this room of immaculately ordered corpses that Isono didn't. "Can I ask what exactly you expect to find? You know, there's not much left. They had to scrape him off the sidewalk."
"It's a personal curiosity."
The doctor nodded. Isono felt like the only person who wasn't dripping with eagerness to see the contents of whichever door was about to be opened.
"Well," the doctor said brightly, pulling a pair of latex gloves out of a box on his desk. "He's in this cooler. I hope you have a strong stomach." He advanced towards it and closed his fingers around the handle, then cranked it open.
A long metal frame was rolled out. Over it was draped politely a thin white sheet. There was something apologetic in the hang of it: I'm terribly sorry, there has been a most appalling accident... But the shape cast by the sheet was not that of the man Isono had stood beside that morning. That man had been broad and strong and so very alive. The gravel of his voice and the stench of his cigars cemented his presence. He forced your focus upon him simply in the way he held himself. There was something so solid about him, so real, which was entirely unlike little out-of-focus Seto. Seto always but haunted the rooms in which his father lived so definitely. Surely what lay before them was not the same man? Parts were missing.
The doctor's fingers closed around the edge of the sheet, and then without warning he drew it back with the flourish of a chef revealing the evening meal. There was a flash of dark purple, and then Isono looked away. With the glasses, no one could see him flinch; but then, no one was looking at him.
In the smudged plane of his peripherals Isono saw Seto lean forwards.
"I can't tell. This could be anyone."
"We checked his dental records-"
"Those can be fabricated." Seto inhaled smoothly. Isono didn't want to breathe at all, lest something infect his lungs. "He has a birth mark. Gloves?"
The doctor only hesitated for a moment. This is absurd, thought Isono. You couldn't just give a child anything it asked for. But the doctor didn't understand that. He wasn't a parent.
The heap of parts swelled white and red and yellow in the corner of Isono's vision. Isono was not a parent either.
Two snaps of latex resounded through the hollow room. A pause – and then the sound of dead flesh rubbing against dead flesh wound into Isono's ears. It was a dry sound. The body was almost entirely desiccated.
"Do you think he would fake his dental records but neglect a birth mark?" the doctor asked. His mild voice overlaid the soft sound of dryness giving way to something damper.
"Bureaucracy makes deception remarkably easy. All he would have to do is pay the right person to exchange one file for another. Flesh is different." Seto's voice started to reach Isono's ears as though through a long tunnel. "A scar could be easily replicated, yes, but melanocytic nevi are a little trickier. Of course, if that part of the body was obliterated, then..." An echo of clammy flesh sliding against itself. "It's here. This is definitely him."
Isono saw the blurred mass of insides disappear again behind white. He looked back to the table and saw the sheet had been replaced. Seto was pulling the gloves from his hands. His face was still completely empty.
"Will that be all, then?" The doctor grinned. "I'll put him away again if you won't be needing him any more."
"Do whatever," said Seto. He dropped the gloves into the medical waste bin and turned immediately for the door. "I have no further business here."
"You're not going to come back for the funeral?"
The double doors swung open before Seto's wake.
"I have no further business here," he repeated.
The road wound smoothly around the buildings away from the hospital. The tarmac shone wet and black, interrupted by flashes of reflected sky blanching off the fresh, shallow puddles that yawned along the side of the road. Isono had taken this route many times, but never in such a strange, clinging silence. It was also the first time he had not driven the route in a limousine. The BMW, Seto had said, would attract far less attention.
He sat in the back seat. His arms were folded in his lap and his head was inclined to the window, watching through the rain and the grey, his face neatly drawn into one blank plane. His uniform was stark and white against the black seats and interior of the car, and in comparison to Isono's black suit and glasses. Isono wondered if it was normal not to change your clothes for an occasion like this. And then he thought, with a low pang, that if anyone knew it would be Seto.
Isono forced his fingers to lie flat against the wheel. They were full of twitching vigour and anxiety; that special kind of floating, abstract vivacity and uneasiness that fills people after a death. An impulse to do something; the sense that time is being wasted.
"Shall I put the radio on, Master Seto?"
Seto's eyes flicked to meet his in the rear-view mirror. They were very blue against the white and the black.
"We never listen to the radio."
"I know, but..." Isono forced his voice into casual, unnatural notes. "You know, I thought you might like a change."
Seto only stared back. Then his eyes drifted away to the streets outside his window once more.
They drove on in silence for a while. They had nearly reached the main road when Seto suddenly barked out: "Isono!"
Isono nearly braked right there; the alarm in his employer's voice ran out like a klaxon.
"Master Seto?"
"Stop the car." The syllables fell sharp and full and unsteady. Isono pulled over immediately, skidding onto the curb with a screech of tyres. Fortunately the street was deserted.
He heard the car door open and then Seto's running feet filled his ears with a rapid, pounding urgency. Isono threw his own door open and immediately hurled himself after Seto, instinct overriding everything else. He chased after the white figure as it disappeared down an alley while his right hand found his gun. He rounded the corner in time to see Seto drop to a crouch just inside the alley entrance. Seto stared at the ground for a moment, his body trembling, while Isono stood frozen with adrenaline and confusion – and then Seto vomited onto the wet cement.
Isono remained where he stood. He detested the familiarity of that awful smell. He averted his eyes as Seto threw up a second time and another wave of the smell hit him, this time accompanied by a broken staccato retch.
"Are you alright?"
"Get away from me," Seto spat, even though Isono hadn't moved. Seto remained crouched, one hand pressed flat against the alley wall. His back was heaving with uneven shivers. Rainwater mixed with the vomit and it began to slide through the asphalt towards Seto's perfect black shoes.
"We all cope with death in different ways," Isono said. Seto's head slowly turned towards him. Through the sweat and rain-wet hair Isono saw two blue eyes staring black viciousness into his own. "How about I take us back to the mansion? You can take the rest of the day off. Tomorrow will be a fresh start, and..."
Seto stood slowly. He took a step back from the polluted water. Disgust was seeping into his face.
"How many people have you seen die, Isono?"
"Well-"
"So many people say that death never gets any easier. That's not true. It does get easier." Seto wiped a smear of vomit from his flushed lower lip. "Those people are just weak."
Isono searched for something to say. He filtered through his memories and sought out something relevant; anything that would translate him into the moment through which Seto was reeling. He thought of his mother, the last time he saw her. Her small papery body on that hospital bed. The milk of her cataracts. Her tiny fingers holding safe his hand, and her voice: "Child, sometimes you need to be brave."
Isono didn't even realise he had spoken aloud. For a moment he had left the alley entirely. But when he drifted back to it he could taste the revulsion in Seto's face just as he felt the stomach acid stench hit the back of his throat.
"I don't want your idiotic clichés, Isono. I never want them. I want you to do your job and drive me to KaibaCorp." Seto breathed out and tilted his head back. A fresh spate of raindrops had started to fall, although some wisps of his fringe were already slick against his forehead from sweat. "My company," he said, as though testing out the taste of the words between his acid-flecked lips.
Isono dipped his head with obedience and infinite fidelity.
"Of course, Master Seto."
Seto's eyes roamed upwards to the roof of the building and they hovered there, staring at the grey lip of the anonymous skyscraper whose alley he had sullied. The white uniform clung grotesquely to his body in the sweat and the rain, like a cocoon that would shed, like dead skin that would not be sloughed. "We have work to do."