Glass Wall

When Seto opened his eyes, his first thoughts were something like, "where the hell am I?" He was laying on a cot in an empty room, a large glass wall separating his room and what looked like another's. He didn't know if anyone was in there, the air was still and the bed looked empty. He sat up, cradling his head in his hand, moaning in brief pain as what felt like a lightening bolt ran its way across his skull. He took in a deep breath and stood, trying to keep his knees from buckling. He held onto the bed frame, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Where exactly was he? There was nothing that could give him any clues as to where he'd woken up.

He made his way to the glass wall slowly, placing a hand of it. He saw the bed in the other room move, or, the body in the bed move. Seto's eyes widened, and he took in a deep breath. There was someone there, someone who was suffering the same fate as him. He didn't hit the glass, afraid of waking the other up. But instead, the other turned to face Seto, yellow cat-like eyes focusing on the body beyond the glass. The stranger picked himself up, running to the glass, placing his hands on his side, and Seto got a good look at the person on its other side.

His face was thin, cheekbones prominent, obviously malnourished, and the clothes on his body were torn and barely considered clothing. Seto wondered what this poor boy had to go through while he was trapped here. His mouth opened and moved, but Seto couldn't hear what he was saying. He wondered why it was so damn quiet in here. He cupped a hand over his ear and gave the boy a pitied look, who simply pointed behind Seto, toward the brunet's bed, where a small box sat by its' leg. Inside, there were a few pieces of chalk. When Seto returned, the boy also had a stick of chalk, and a single word was written on the glass wall.

Crow.

The boy pointed to himself with a small smile. His name was Crow? What an odd name. Seto slowly wrote his name, pointing to himself. Crow smiled, sitting down cross-legged on the floor, the chalk created words on the glass.

What are you doing here?

Seto's facial expression turned grim.

I wish I knew.

Crow and Seto exchanged messages using the chalk for some seemed like days, pausing and erasing only whenever they heard a guard come 'round with their food. They learned a lot about each other; Crow had apparently worked for a traveling circus for most of his life, while Seto laughed and gave the boring story of how he lived with his grandfather and was always fascinated with the stars.

It seemed as though there was an endless supply of chalk, even if when Seto first found the box, he didn't think that there would be enough to last him a week given the amount of time he spent writing to Crow. But it looked to be refilled every few days. Did someone actually know that Seto and Crow were contacting each other? Or was Seto really losing his mind?

He wouldn't even get started about the multitude of questions regarding the glass wall separating him from Crow. He was the only one he couldn't hear. When the guard came around (was it even a guard? Or some helpless human trapped to give these prisoners food?) that was the only noise Seto ever heard apart from the scraping of chalk against the wall. The sweet melody of a voice other than his own when he talked himself to sleep at night.

That is, until the last day that Crow and Seto talked.

It started off normal. In fact, it was a little better than the previous days. According to the calendar Crow and Seto had made to keep track of the days, it had been twenty-seven days since Seto awoke in this strange room. The two were engaged in a game of tic-tac-toe, where Crow was winning an astounding five rounds to zero. He was clearly boasting, Seto could tell from the fist pumps and short dances Crow performed while he sat across from the brunet, and while Seto thought it was adorable he was also getting a little annoyed and wanted to finally win a game.

And then Crow's door flew open, and for a split second Seto could see the fear resonating in Crow's yellow eyes as he turned around in a frenzy. This was a new face. Seto hadn't seen this particular person before, and in all honesty he didn't want to find out who he was. He just focused on the frantic writing Crow was trying to scribble onto the glass: i love you please help me i don't want to le—

But he couldn't finish as he was ripped away from the wall. Dropping the chalk, Seto all but screamed his heart out, begging that man to let Crow go, but it was to no avail. Crow was dragged out into the hallway Seto hadn't seen for weeks, and the brunet ran to his own door, screaming and pounding. "Let him go!" he cried. "What are you going to do with him?!"

The meal flap (as Seto had so kindly dubbed it) flew up and almost hit him in the nose. "Shut up brat!" a stern voice answered back, and that's when Seto heard it. A sound unlike any he's heard before.

"Seto!"

Crow's voice. A final piece of the puzzle that fit into Crow. The rough texture of its' scream tore at the corners of Seto's heart, and he responded the only way he could, hand holding onto the flap as the guard attempted to close it.

"Crow!"

Days morphed into weeks. Eventually it had been almost fifty-three days since Seto had been locked up. He continued writing on the glass wall, doodling little stars and arranging them into constellations he remembered. For a while he had stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Praying that it would kill him. But the guards eventually found out and threatened to force feed him if he didn't start eating on his own. So he did, but wasn't happy about it. He was almost certain that Crow was dead. He hadn't returned for almost a month. His old room was empty. Collecting. The box of chalk was still full.

Memories ate away at Seto like flies to a corpse. He relived that day every night in his dreams, a different ending every time. Some nights he dreamt that they killed Crow right in front of him: a bullet to the head, a knife to the throat, a sword through his chest. Other times his dreams were of him dying in Crow's stead, with the boy's face contorted into fear being the last thing Seto saw before he woke up.

None of these were any better than what had actually happened. At this point, Seto just wanted to die.

One hundred and ninety-four days. A disgusting amount of time.

For a while, there was a new resident in the room. A young girl who introduced herself as Ren. She was already a petite girl; skinny as skinny could get and hair the color of snow. She and Seto exchanged messages and started a new calendar for her on the other side of the glass so to not interfere with the brunet's. It was only fifteen days before she was taken away as well. Seto didn't scream and beg like he did for Crow. Instead he watched from his cot as Ren was dragged out of the room by guards, tears falling down her cheeks. She looked at Seto, screaming and her eyes begging for him to help, but he just looked away, his now long hair falling in his face.

Two hundred and nine days. Seto missed Crow terribly.

When it neared three hundred and sixty five days of imprisonment, they gave Seto a haircut. He couldn't see himself, but he assumed he looked almost similar to the young, innocent boy that came in on day one.

Three hundred and ninety-two days. A full year since Crow had been taken away. A new girl was thrown into the room, and at this point Seto didn't bother trying to get too close with her. A new calendar was started, and briefly after their first conversation Seto wondered how long Sai was going to last.

Turns out, it was only forty-seven days.

Five hundred and thirty-three days since the day he woke up in that disgusting cot, guards rushed into Seto's room for the first time. He let himself go willingly, smiling softly at the drawings on the glass. But his eyes widened as he saw Crow's old door open and a familiar body be pushed in. The pent up voice in Seto's lungs shot up through his throat.

"Crow!"

And the boy's yellow eyes met his dark blue.

Seto lost count of the days he was away from his room. There was a strange scientist—Shin? Is that was he said his name was? Seto couldn't be bothered to remember—who did some even stranger experiments on him. Seto desperately wanted to leave.

Shin eventually promised him that he would.

The sun was beautiful, Seto realized, but the moon and stars after so many months of being held inside were even better. His first few moments of being outside with the warmth of the summer air were filled him him standing there, letting the wind blow through his torn clothes and grown out hair.

He heard a snip behind him, before a soft, yet still rough voice calmly said, "Six hundred and one days."

Seto turned around, smiling at Crow's yellow cat eyes, before reaching over and hugging him. At that moment, he didn't care what Shin had wanted him for. He just cared that Crow was alive and that he was by his side once again, no glass wall separating the two.

Seven hundred and fifty-seven days. Two years since Crow had first been taken away. A terrible disease spread through all of Tokyo, incurable. No one was safe from it. Seto and Crow both knew that it was all Shin's fault. The experiments he had done which had killed Sai and Ren (Seto only assumed. They never came back. Only Crow did.) were tests to see how it would affect the human body. And when Seto and Crow survived, he had no use for them. They were the only ones that would survive, it seemed.

And they did. Hand in hand, they returned back to the underground laboratory where Shin had conducted his disgusting work, only to find him and the rest of his guards dead. Even they couldn't live through the virus. Seto grabbed something heavy: a hammer for himself and a crowbar for Crow (the pair laughed at the sheer irony of Crow getting a crowbar) and headed for their respective rooms they had lived in for over six hundred days. With a final smile at the sloppily drawn calendar, they raised their weapons and smashed the glass before picking the boxes of chalk up and running back out into the sunlight.

Together, they ran from Tokyo. From their past. From the broken glass wall that started it all.

Author's Notes:

what spurred this, i honestly don't know.
in reality, i had planned for this to end with Crow and Seto both breaking the glass and escaping without anyone else dying, but that idea was literal years ago when i first came up with this story. now, writing this probably almost two years after i first came up with the idea, it's much more dark and took on a more confusing tone. hell, even i had to stop for a few minutes and think to myself, 'what did i just type?'.
either way, i hope you guys enjoyed my normal spark of tragedy. i've decided to publish all of the one-shots i never got around to finishing before continuing on with the projects i've put on hold lol

-Eternal White Rose