A/N: This is a short, drabble-type thingy I wrote about Mokuba thinking about Seto and remembering how they got where they are now. (Based around an exaggerated version of the abuse Seto suffered at Gozaburo's hand while he was being raised there.)
Martyr (Guardian Angel)
He knows what people see when they look at his brother.
They see the youngest CEO in the richestcircle of the business world, who views money as a tool to achieve whatever goal he sets his sights on, and people as even less than that. They see a fierce refusal to accept the idea of failure backed by the justified confidence that continues to guard his well known record of never having lost to anyone at anything. They see a cruel disregard for anyone's well-being but his own that fits perfectly together with his cut-throat methods of getting to the top and staying there. They see the arrogant smirk doubled with the icy gaze when he looks down at his defeated opponents before stripping them of everything they have and fight for.
He knows that's exactly what his brother wants people to see.
But he has seen a different side of his brother, a side no one else can ever know.
He sees the young boy who held his hand so tightly and glared challengingly at the other children when the two of them arrived outside the orphanage gates. He sees the stubbornness that pulled them from the orphanage and into the home of the owner of the greatest weapons manufacturing company in the world. He sees the desperate strength that refused to break for so very long under the cruelest of torments that sought to tear a fragile mind and soul apart. He sees the bitter cries that have been locked tightly away and wrapped in the silent echo of scars so that no one will ever find them.
He knows that his older brother is dead, killed long ago in a horrific battle that no one was witness to.
He knows that the Seto Kaiba everyone sees is simply the young man that stepped up to take his brother's place when the boy finally broke under the agony of his own self-sacrifice.
But he also knows that when he sees Seto Kaiba sitting on the edge of his bed in the early hours of the morning, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent tears…
He knows that they both remember and grieve for the little boy who turned everything he had to give into a shield to protect the one thing he had to lose.
A/N: In my eyes, the fact that Seto was willing to suffer so much at Gozaburo's hand so he could give his little brother a good place to live and grow up makes him both a martyr and a guardian angel. Thus the title.
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