If I'm going to keep obsessively rereading parts of the manga like an, uh, obsessed thing, I might as well get some writing out of it. This story directly follows the Death-T arc in v.4-5 of the manga. Some liberties have been taken with names, as I've been unable to find the canonical name of the bald KC bodyguard; and with psychiatry, since evidence suggests that the soulless state falls somewhere between a true coma and a catatonic stupor.
Closing Day
The crowd started dispersing the moment the duel ended, filing out of the bleachers, confused and excited murmurs echoing around the arena with their footsteps. Random words sounded louder than the rest, speaking as the audience's fragmented voice. "Kaiba? Lost? Yugi won? Who is he? Yugi! He won? He lost? Kaiba? Yugi! Where'd he go? Yugi? Yugi! Yuu-gi!"
Yugi wasn't around to hear their chant. Mokuba had sent him and his friends out by way of the private elevator, straight to the ground floor, so they could get to the hospital to see Yugi's grandfather without being mobbed by autograph seekers and challenging duelists. He knew what to expect, from what his brother put up with all the time. He owed them that much.
A few eager kids jumped down from the bleachers, sidling around to the walkways to approach the dueling stage where Kaiba Seto sat. Mokuba hastily gestured to them, ordering, "Saruwatari, stop them."
His bodyguard instantly moved to obey, his bulk enough to scare the kids off without a word. The really determined fans would be going after Yugi now anyway. Kaiba Seto was no longer the world's greatest duelist.
Kaiba Seto sat, mouth gaping open, eyes gaping open, staring ahead at nothing at all.
Most of the crowd was gone, but those left were starting to point, the buzz of their muttering taking on a different pitch. Starting to realize this was more than the shock of a defeated champion, noticing that Seto had yet to say anything, yet to even move.
They couldn't see his brother like this. They wouldn't understand. "Get rid of them," Mokuba told his bodyguards. "Clear everyone out of here, now." He considered for a moment, then went over to the switches by the wall. Unlocking the speaker box and picking up the phone, he called down to central administration. "This is Mokuba. Please contact the fire department and tell them we're running a drill, so they don't have to respond to the alarm."
"Yes, sir."
He punched a special code into the phone, then stood on his toes to yank the switch of the fire alarm. The lights overhead flipped to emergency yellows, and a whooping siren began to sound. A reassuring voice started repeating over the loudspeakers throughout the building, "This is a drill. Please follow the flashing lights to the closest emergency exit. Thank you for staying calm. Please follow the flashing lights..."
It shouldn't take more than twenty minutes to clear the building, according to the safety specifications. The arena was already empty of everyone but him and his two bodyguards, and his brother. Mokuba hit another switch to cancel the stadium's alarm, leaving the vast room bright and silent. His footsteps thudded without an echo as he crossed the walkway back to the holographic imaging dome.
"Now what, Mokuba-sama?" Saruwatari asked, as he and his partner rejoined Mokuba in the arena's center. Furukawa adjusted his shades and looked over at Mokuba's brother, said, "Seto-sama?"
He didn't answer. Didn't say anything at all.
Mokuba didn't look at him. "We're closing for today," he said. "Furukawa, you make sure security clears out all the patrons who didn't listen to the alarms. And have some workers go outside and hand out free passes to the grand opening to everyone who was here."
Furukawa nodded and started for the elevator. Saruwatari said, "Mokuba-sama, what about Seto-sama--"
"Saruwatari, you get together the Kaiba Land project heads. Everybody was supposed to be here today already in case of problems, so it shouldn't be hard to find them. I want to meet with all of them in two hours, in Nii-sama's office upstairs. I need to know if we're still going to be able to do the grand opening on schedule in three days."
"Why would there be a problem? I thought Kaiba Land was complete as of today, Mokuba-sama."
"It is," Mokuba said. "But I don't know how long it'll take to take down Death-T."
"Take down--"
"Death-T is over," Mokuba said. He looked around at the empty arena, at the dome of the dueling stage where his brother had lost. Where his brother sat now. "It's all over."
He felt his throat thicken, wrapped his arms around himself and told himself he wasn't going to cry anymore. His big brother never cried. Not even now, not even when he had lost.
Lost everything. The game. His title. His heart. His mind.
But Yugi said he would get it back. Yugi said he would come back. All Mokuba had to do was wait for him.
Forever couldn't be that long.
He couldn't cry. There was a lot of stuff to do, while he waited. "Saruwatari, before you go find everyone, call Dr. Takada. Tell him something happened to Nii-sama, and to come to the mansion. And have the limo come around to the private entrance in the underground garage. I'll have the medics on staff bring a stretcher..."
Mokuba stopped. The more people who saw his brother, the more people would be able to talk about what had happened to him. Once it became public knowledge that the president of Kaiba Corporation wasn't in charge anymore, of anything, even his own mind--there had been a lot of trouble, right after Gozaburo died, all those other companies thinking it would be easy to take on or take over a monster like Kaiba Corporation when it didn't have a head. Seto had shown it had one after all, and smarter than Gozaburo ever had been, but his brother had had to work so hard at first to get anyone to respect him, to listen to him, even if he was the greatest gamer in the world.
Though Mokuba was KaibaCorp's vice president, he knew most people assumed that was a joke, a fake position given to a spoiled brat to keep him out of trouble. He wasn't old enough for most people to listen to him, even if his brother did. Sometimes, if he didn't say certain things.
His brother couldn't listen to him at all now. But he wasn't going to cry. "We need to get Nii-sama to the limo, so he can be driven home, but if I call the medics, everyone will know he's really hurt--"
"I can carry him down, Mokuba-sama," Saruwatari said, went to the chair where Seto sat and picked him up. Seto's head didn't flop back but tilted forward, eyes still open, staring at his hands folded over each other on his stomach, while his long legs hung down from Saruwatari's big arms.
"Wait," Mokuba said, climbed up to the dueling stage and carefully gathered his brother's cards, the three Blue Eyes still laid out, and all the others. He shuffled them together and tapped the deck's edges even on the table, then reached up and put the deck into Seto's limp hands, curling his fingers around them. "Here, Nii-sama."
Once holding the cards, Seto didn't let go of them. But if he could see them in his hands, there was no flicker of recognition in his eyes.
"Let's go," Mokuba said, walking to the elevator with Saruwatari striding at his heels, carrying his brother easily, as if he weighed next to nothing, his dangling legs swaying.
Everyone in the audience had seen his brother lose, but not how much. They had been too far away to see Seto's shattered face, to hear Yugi explain.
Saruwatari knew. Furukawa knew. Yugi knew, and his three friends, but for some reason Mokuba thought that they wouldn't tell anyone. And Saruwatari and Furukawa were the Kaiba's bodyguards and assistants, had been their stepfather's loyal employees, and now they worked for Seto. They were trustworthy.
Don't trust anyone. How many times had his brother told him that?
But he had to, now. He was too small, too young, too weak to do this on his own. Not without his brother.
In the elevator, standing in his bodyguard's big shadow, Mokuba stepped backwards until he was against the far wall, out of Saruwatari's line of sight, and wiped his dripping nose and eyes on his sleeve.
* * *
The first two stages would be converted back into real games. Non-lethal laser tag and a classic haunted house, no themepark would be complete without either. Simple enough modifications, with the mercenaries' fees already paid, and now that the Chopman was...no longer a concern. They could probably collect a reward for performing that civic duty--dead or alive, wasn't that the usual provision?
But Death-T-3 through 5 were different. "How long will it take to disassemble them?" Mokuba asked.
The six project heads all stared at him across the conference table. Mokuba stared back. Even sitting on his knees, with the swivel chair raised to its highest height, he was still shorter than everyone else sitting around the table. He had met all of them at least a couple times before, but usually he had been beside Seto, not alone. Saruwatari was standing by the door behind him, but it wasn't the same. The men at the table were all looking at him, not at his bodyguard.
"Mokuba-sama," one of them began, the short, scrawny guy who looked like a Spear Egret--level 3 Capsule Monster, decent enough piece for its rank. Mokuba couldn't remember his name at the moment, but he had designed the stadiums of T-4 and T-5. "After all the time and expense devoted to these--"
"I already know how much time and money went into them," Mokuba cut him off. "I want to know how much will be needed to take them out."
Another of them, Morimoto, he thought it was, cleared his throat. "As this was Seto-sama's personal project, I'd feel more comfortable if he were here to--"
"He's not, though," Mokuba said. "I am. And I'm vice president." He couldn't raise his voice. His brother could make people jump with a couple sharp-spoken words, but if he tried to yell he would just sound like a whiny kid throwing a temper tantrum. "My brother's gone home. To rest. He's been very tired. So I have to do this. Death-T will never be open again." It would only be Kaiba Land. A place for kids to play games. Real games, not ones that could hurt people
He had to handle these guys. If he couldn't get them to cooperate, when they were all employees on Kaiba Corporation's bankrolls, he would have no chance standing up to the Big Five. They would steal the company away from him and his brother in a second, if they thought they could get away with it. He would have to tell them about Seto's condition--or at least the bare facts of it, since he doubted any of them would believe the truth of what Yugi had done, nor would they want to hear that Seto would be coming back. Mokuba knew that the stockholders wouldn't let him assume the role of president. Not an eleven-year-old kid, VP or not. But there had to be a way to negotiate it so that no one else got the position either, until his brother's return.
But first he had to make sure Death-T was gone.
"What about the technology, Mokuba-sama?" the chief programmer Dr. Yamazaki asked, in his quiet voice. "The block-dropping computer, the holographic dueling platforms?"
Mokuba frowned. He didn't like Yamazaki. He didn't like any of them, these men who had been so willing to work on Seto's special project, but he especially didn't like the way Yamazaki never raised his voice, and how the doctor would look him in the eye only once in a while. Like he wasn't worth glancing at, unless Yamazaki was trying to figure out the best way to use him to his advantage.
He took a breath. "I want that stuff destroyed. All of it. And the computers will be wiped." Mokuba would do that himself; he didn't trust Yamazaki to.
Don't trust anyone.
Yamazaki was looking at him now, that disconcertingly speculative gleam in his eyes. "Including the penalty boxes?"
Only the winner is allowed out of that duel box. A penalty game awaits the loser! Nightmare monsters swirling around him, he could feel the brush of their claws, their scales, their leathery wings. Darkness closing in and he was screaming and his brother who had thrown him to it didn't answer. Wasn't listening. Couldn't hear him.
Seto couldn't hear him now, but when was the last time he actually had? Had he since Gozaburo's death, really?
Mokuba realized he had shut his eyes, opened them again quickly. "The penalty boxes are going to be demolished." He'd do it himself with a baseball bat, if he had to. It'd be fun.
Yugi had said he had destroyed the evil in his brother's heart. Which left it up to him to destroy what that evil had built. Death-T had never been his brother's dream. Death-T couldn't make anyone smile, not a real smile. It never would have, even if they had won.
The project heads were exchanging glances across the table, over his head. "Mokuba-sama," the short egret man said, in a jovial way, "what about your CapMon virtual platform? Surely you at least want to keep that, for your own gaming--"
"No," Mokuba said. "That goes, too. I said all of it." It wasn't like he'd have any reputation in Capsule Monsters now, after Yugi had defeated him so soundly. And he wouldn't have time for kid games like that now anyway. Not when he had to protect Kaiba Corporation, so it would be there for his brother when he returned.
His brother needed Kaiba Corporation, if ever he were to fulfill his dream. And Seto still cared about that dream, Mokuba knew. He might have forgotten it for a little while, distracted by vengeance, choking on the evil Gozaburo had forced down his throat. But dreams don't die. It was still here, waiting for Seto to come back. Like his deck. Like Mokuba.
"Mokuba-sama," the project heads were saying. Some of them sounded chiding, like they were scolding a kid; some of them sounded genuinely pissed.
His head hurt, like it never had before. Mokuba wondered if this were one of the headaches his brother occasionally complained of, or if it were something different, the way his brain seemed to be shoving and pushing against the front of his skull, like a baby bird trying to crack out of its eggshell.
"This is what my brother wants," he said, over their voices, over the ache pecking behind his eyes. "If you want to question it, ask him yourself. But you might not like the answer." Actually he was sure they wouldn't. Men like them cared for silence least of all.
But they all blanched at the threat, even Yamazaki. And though he couldn't trust any of them, when they said, "Yes, sir," he knew they would do what he told them to.
* * *
The maid met him at the door of the mansion. "Oh, Mokuba-sama," Akari said, her eyes red and puffy, and she looked like she wanted to bend down and wrap her slender arms around him, but she didn't. Instead she just untied his coat and helped it off him, and said, "Dr. Takada came and saw Seto-sama, and called over one of his colleagues instead, a psychiatrist. He's just finished examining him."
She walked with Mokuba to Seto's rooms, next to his own. In Seto's study outside his bedroom, she introduced him to Dr. Hoshino. The doctor got down on one knee, so their eyes were level, and said, gently, "Well, Mokuba-kun, it looks like your big brother has been working so hard that he's gotten very tired, and has fallen sick. But it's not like a cold--"
"Doctor," the maid interrupted, "just tell Mokuba-sama everything. He'll understand."
"Thanks, Akari," Mokuba murmured, gratefully, too tired to have said so for himself. "So what's your diagnosis?"
The doctor appeared slightly affronted, but stood up and said, in a much more ordinary voice, "I can't be positive, this isn't quite like anything I've seen before. Physically Seto's vitals and reflexes are normal, but he's in a semi-autistic stupor, barely responsive, with a minimal level of command automatism--he's able to feed himself when instructed, if a fork is put in his hands, but he won't stand or walk or answer questions."
He looked down questioningly at Mokuba, to see how far the terminology had gone over his head. Mokuba only nodded. "Go on."
Discomfited, the doctor continued, "His mental activity doesn't seem much farther advanced than that of a coma case--he's completely nonverbal, and won't respond to his name or any visual or physical stimuli. I'm going to want to do a CAT scan, but based on what I've seen here, my best diagnosis is a sudden onset of advanced catatonic schizophrenia, probably stress-induced. I'm going to prescribe chlorpromazine; it's a standard antipsychotic, and depending on how effective it is, I can develop a treatment regime--"
"No," Mokuba said. "No drugs. Forget the CAT scan, too."
"But--"
"None of that would help my brother. That's not what's wrong with him. But thank you, doctor. You can go."
"Mokuba-sama," Akari began.
"It's okay," Mokuba said. "And oh, yeah, Dr. Hoshino? I know there's laws about doctor-patient confidentiality. And that you could get in big trouble for breaking them. You could even lose your medical license, right?"
The doctor regarded him, puzzled. "Yes?"
"So if that schizophrenia diagnosis gets around, if it shows up in newspapers or anything, I'll know you broke them. And I know who to tell that you did, to get you in trouble."
The puzzled confusion in the doctor's face cleared, hardened into insult. "Understood, Kaiba-san," he said curtly.
"Good," Mokuba said. "If anyone does ask, and you want to tell them something, say it was just a nervous collapse. Because of exhaustion. Nii-sama's been working way too hard lately, everyone knows that. But he'll be fine soon. Got it?"
"Understood," the doctor ground out again.
"Thanks," Mokuba said. "Akari, please see Dr. Hoshino out."
"Yes, Mokuba-sama," Akari said, lowering her head obediently, not meeting his eyes. "This way, doctor."
He should apologize to her later. Akari had always been kind to him.
Don't trust anyone.
After she and the doctor were gone, Mokuba went to the back of the study and opened the door to the adjacent bedroom, turning the handle slowly so there was no noise. Like he would if he were trying not to disturb his brother's sleep.
But Seto wasn't asleep. Seto was sitting in the chair before the window, empty eyes staring forward. With night dark outside and the lamp on, the window glass became a mirror, so he was gazing blankly at his own reflection, the ghostly pale circle of his face floating in the curtain's shadows.
Only Seto rarely did that, looking at himself, he only had one mirror in his bathroom, and none in his bedroom at all. Just the windows.
Mokuba tugged on the curtain cord, hard, and closed the drapes in a swoosh of heavy fabric. Then stood there, still holding the cord, tightly like he was hanging from it, would fall without it, and looked at his brother. "Nii-sama," he said, helplessly.
Seto didn't answer. But then, it had been a long time since he really had.
"Nii-sama," Mokuba said again, "I've closed down Death-T. It's over. We lost."
He stopped. Realized he was waiting to be yelled at, but he wasn't going to be. "I lost, like you said I would. Yugi beat me. But I'm still here--I was supposed to die, wasn't I, Nii-sama? Losers die. Like he taught. I should've died. You gave me that penalty game, I should've, but--I didn't, Nii-sama. I'm still here. Yugi--" That hand reaching for his, through the swirling nightmares, and he had thought it was his brother's, had known it must be his brother's, reaching to save him.
But when he had clasped that hand, he realized it was too small to be Seto's. Then before he could let go, he had been yanked out. Pulled free of the monsters, into the light. Alive and sane, even though he had lost.
He had wrapped the curtain cord around his hand, so his fingers had gone red and now were going white, throbbing dully like his head. Slowly he unwound the string, dropped it and stretched out his fingers, feeling the blood tingling in them. But his head still throbbed. "Losers die. But Yugi won and I'm still alive, and you're still alive, Nii-sama. So I think our stepfather was wrong about that. I think he was wrong about everything. But you know that, don't you, Nii-sama? Because he lost, after all. If he were right, he wouldn't have lost.
"And Yugi won. So maybe he's right. He has to be right. He told me you're going to come back, and I know you will. Once you've put yourself back together. And you'll be able to smile again, too, for real. Someday. You'll return. He promised.
"Nii-sama," Mokuba said, "please say something. Please."
Seto said nothing. Seto didn't move.
Mokuba took the photograph out of his pocket, held it in both hands. He hadn't shown it to anyone in years, even Seto. Seto probably didn't remember he had it anymore. Might have forgotten that it had been taken at all.
He tilted the snapshot toward the light, looked at his brother in it. Touched his fingers to the tiny image of his face, his small and happy smile. Remembering that day, the loud, rambunctious boys at the orphanage, jostling them as they gathered around to watch, and how his brother had ignored them, leaning over the chessboard to study the pieces, his blue eyes bright and focused.
Not blank, not empty. The Seto in the photograph, creased and scratched and faded, was yet more real than the brother sitting before him.
More real than the other kid in the picture's foreground, the little boy on the other side of the chess game, that silly black-haired brat he usually ignored. Looking at him now, Mokuba almost didn't recognize him. Seto then, he remembered clearly, every time he looked at his brother now. But that stupidly grinning little kid, he barely could remember being him at all.
Mokuba thought of the weighted, polished smoothness of the wooden chess pieces, the soft sound they made when he set them down. Except for the one black bishop with the felt scraped off the bottom, so it clicked when he placed it on the board. And his brother's smile. He remembered all that exactly. But not why the Mokuba in the picture was laughing. He had never laughed like that when playing CapMon chess, even when he won.
He wondered if his big brother might miss the Mokuba in this picture, that laughing little boy, almost as much as he missed the big brother smiling there.
Carefully, slowly as to not rip it, he tore the photograph in half, dividing the chess board, the brothers over it. The half with his brother's smile he returned to his own pocket. The half with himself, Mokuba took to his brother, slid it into the breast pocket of his nightshirt, above his heart. "If you want to see me, Nii-sama," he said, "I'll always be there."
Seto remained silent, motionless.
He should get a case for the picture. A locket, maybe, to hang around his neck, so he couldn't lose it, too, after losing so much else.
Mokuba took his brother's hands in his, the long fingers cool and flaccid, not clasping back. His brother hadn't held his hand in a long time, but he remembered at the orphanage, when he had squeezed Mokuba's hand until it almost hurt, saying he wouldn't let go, promising that he wouldn't ever let them be separated.
He tried to look into Seto's eyes, but there was nothing there, it felt like falling, like if you dropped into his blind stare you'd never hit bottom. He looked down at their hands instead. Knelt and rested his head against his brother's knees, still holding onto his hands, tightly, tight enough to hurt, because Seto couldn't hold on back.
"I'm waiting for you, Nii-sama," he said, trying to catch his breath, trying not to cry. "I promise, I'll wait for you. And I'll protect Kaiba Corporation, so it will be here when you get back."
With his eyes closed, his tears falling on his brother's hands, he couldn't see anything but darkness, pitch-black shadow. He pressed his eyes against his knuckles, hiding in that utter dark, until he saw a glitter in the shadow, a sparkling like crystal fragments, like white scales catching light.
In the hush between his caught sobs, he heard a sound. A faint click, like the black bishop set down on the wooden board, like two puzzle pieces being fit together. And then, even fainter, further away, a voice, a boy's voice that was almost singing from the smile audible in it. Look, Mokuba, I did it!
Mokuba opened his eyes, lifted his head. His brother's hands hadn't moved in his. His blue eyes still stared, dazed, at nothing.
"I know you can do it, Nii-sama," Mokuba whispered. "And when you do, I'll be here. I'm waiting for you. As long as it takes. Forever."
His brother didn't answer. But Mokuba had heard the happiness in that distant voice. He wiped his eyes, stood up. Smiled for real, the way he barely, barely remembered how; and said to the shadows, one more time, to be sure it would be heard, and wouldn't be forgotten, "I promise, Nii-sama."
owari