I do not own Yugioh, its characters, its settings, or its plotlines. I am not trying to make money in any way, I am just trying to have some fun.
The summer nights here in Domino are hot. Even here in the most expensive mansion in town they're hot, and sticky. Nii-sama doesn't notice things like that, but he does notice the cooling bills, so no one, not even his brother, ever dares turn up the air conditioner. They just try to sleep, in their hot tangled beds, wearing as little against their hot sticky skins, as they can manage without embarrassment.
Mokuba's trying to sleep. He's already kicked his sheets off and pulled them back up about a hundred times, and it's just two o'clock right now – or something close to it maybe; he doesn't want to keep looking at his watch over and over, that just stops him from going to sleep. He's stretched out with his tousled head about to fall off at one end, and his big bare feet about to fall off at the other end (because somehow nii-sama never notices that maybe he's too big for the same bed he's always slept in), and the beloved old Blue-Eyes t-shirt he's been sleeping in every summer since he was 11, all ridden up and showing the undershorts that are the only other thing he's wearing. He's listening to the rhythm of the fan in the window, and he's trying not to roll around too much, because that keeps him from falling asleep worse than anything.
And when his mind drifts away, he doesn't even notice. His body relaxes into the curled posture he's always slept in, and his face smoothes into its old, innocent expression. He's somewhere else now, a friendly green world, with flowers, and fruit trees, their branches overhanging the sparkles of a rippling stream.
It takes him a while to recognize Noa's world. It was a weird place, and it kept changing, depending where you were, and probably that's why he doesn't recognize it. Although there's no sense of fear here this time, either. No one's threatening him. The Big Five aren't popping out from behind things to force him into a duel. He's just walking along by the creek, enjoying the cool air and the feel of the damp grass under his feet.
Then when Noa's walking along next to him, he's not surprised. There's no noticeable change: One minute he's alone is all, and then after that, his half-brother is there. – Half-brother? Do they even count as half-brothers? Gozaburo chose Noa, then later on he rejected him for Seto, but he never chose Mokuba. He was just along for the ride.
Noa's there though, anyway. He's walking along next to Mokuba, on the side closest to the stream. And just like before, he's just the same height as he is. They look at each other face-to-face, one set of dark, blue-grey eyes, looking straight into the other. And Noa looks just the same as before. His hair flops across his face just like before, and he's wearing the same white uniform, with the dorky, ultra-short shorts. Mokuba grins. He thinks about teasing Noa about those shorts. Then he looks down and realizes he's still wearing the too-short Blue-Eyes shirt that shows half his undershorts. Maybe the less said about dorkiness, the better.
For a while, they walk along under the trees without saying anything. Mokuba feels at home, he feels comfortable, and he feels natural about being here with Noa. There's no worries in his mind, no questions about what he's doing here or what it all means. If he's thinking about anything, all he's thinking about is how good the fruit looks, on the branches of the trees they're going by. He's starting to think maybe he should stop and pick a few pieces while he still has the chance. He wouldn't like to leave here and never have tried it.
But then when they do stop, it's because of Noa. He stops them in front of a door. A door out in the middle of a grassy field just makes sense, in terms of how his Virtual World really was, but here in his dream, Mokuba feels surprise when he sees it. And he turns to look at Noa.
"What's that?" he says.
"Mokuba-kun," his half-brother tells him, "it's time for you to choose."
Choose? He doesn't say anything, but he looks from Noa, to the door, and back again.
"That door will take you back into your brother's world," Noa says. "You can choose to follow him your whole life, or you can stay here and be your own self."
"Nii-sama's through there?" Mokuba says. He puts his hand on the doorknob.
"His world is through there," says Noa, and while he's saying it, Mokuba pictures tall buildings crowded together, and the darkness of the street-canyons between them. "Is that the world you want to live in, Mokuba-kun?"
And there's a hundred million ways he could answer that, maybe if there were fewer, it would be easier to think of what he wants to say. He thinks to say, "Seto's world isn't really like that," but that's not right, because it is. And then he thinks of, "you've always lied to me before Noa," only this isn't really Noa, is it? This is dream-Noa, that he's creating out of his own mind.
He looks from the door, to dream-Noa, then he looks back again. He pictures the crowded streets and the echo-y traffic sounds on the other side of the wooden panels. He thinks about the cool green grass where he is right now, and the fruit overhanging the rippling stream, fruit he hasn't had a chance to taste yet.
Then he thinks about nii-sama, and after that he doesn't have to think any more. He looks back at dream-Noa, and for once his half-brother looks totally sincere, not calculated, not scheming, just friendly, and concerned about what he'll decide. If he feels bad bout anything, it's leaving dream-Noa, who's way nicer than real-Noa ever was.
"Nii-sama needs me," he says. "How's he going to survive in that world if it's not for me?" And he opens the door, and he goes through really, really fast, too fast to notice if there's the sound of honking traffic, or the ugly smell of wet asphalt, after the street-cleaner's been through.
When he opens his eyes, he's back in his own bed. – Of course; that's how dreams work, isn't it? It's still dark, and it's still hot, and his sweaty sheets are still tangled around his feet at the end of the bed. Mokuba looks at his watch again: It's only 3:45, but he decides to give up on the fight for sleep.
The smell of coffee from the kitchen tells him Seto's already up. Whether he even went to bed last night or not, is a good question. Sometimes there's only a very fine line between when it's night and when it's morning for his brother, Mokuba thinks, and you can only tell which one it is right now, by how fresh the coffee smells.
This smells like a fresh pot though, so that's one good thing. Seto's gotten some rest, it's going to be a good day. Mokuba smiles as he heads for the kitchen to grab a cup for himself. And he sits down and drinks it alone in there, because his brother, of course, is already closed in his workroom, with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door that even brothers aren't allowed to disobey.