Disclaimer: Needless to say, not mine.
A/N: Yet another one from As Deep as the Sky that went beyond the time limit. The idea of that ficlet collection is you put your music play-list on random and have to write a fanfic based on whatever song pops up, but you only have the duration of that song in which to write it. Since I didn't follow the rules and spent far longer than just three minutes on this one, I decided to upload it separately.
Sacrifice
© Scribbler, September 2008.
We've seen our share of ups and downs,
Oh, how quickly life can turn around
In an instant.
-- From My Sacrifice by Creed
Noah hated them on sight. He was fairly certain Seto felt the same way, which made it easier. He glared right back at Noah, but Mokuba hid behind his brother and peeped out like a mouse ready to bolt back into its hole. Noah had the urge to say 'boo', to see whether he'd run around in circles and then smack into the wall.
"I had planned to wait a few months before bringing them here," Gozaburo said mildly, watching them like a science experiment – rats in a cage, or mixed chemicals slowly changing colour and bubbling over the brims of their beakers. "But you're becoming inadequate as you are, Noah, so I pushed the paperwork through early. Meet your new brothers."
Never, never, never, Noah thought, while another part of him dwelt on 'inadequate'.
"You're not his real sons," he whispered later at dinner, before Gozaburo came to take his seat at the head of the table. They all sat on one side, Seto in the middle like the highest point in a triangle. Mokuba stared in horror at the range of silver cutlery on either side of his plate, which pleased Noah, but he kept his focus on Seto. Even then he knew Seto was his biggest threat. "You'll never measure up to me."
"You're right," Seto said mildly, sounding so much like Gozaburo that Noah wanted to hit him. He'd never been a violent boy, so the reaction was startling. "I'll be better."
"You were only brought here out of pity – orphan brat"
"Noah, are you baiting your new brother?" Gozaburo asked as he passed behind their chairs, lightly trailing a hand over Seto's shoulder. It was a possessive touch, and Noah noticed how Seto froze at it, though he noticed his own burning rage more. His father had never been given to physical displays of affection, but now he didn't even glance Noah's way. "Stop that."
You're not my brother, Noah thought acidly.
Twice, Mokuba dropped his spoon into his soup, getting noodles in his hair and squeaking like a baby. He was as pathetic and annoying as Seto was aggravating. Seto never gave any indication he didn't know what he was doing, even leaning across and mopping up Mokuba with his napkin.
Neither of you are.
Mokuba was weak and Seto was strong. Noah supposed that balanced them, but really it just made them both pathetic. Even as the Kaiba name closed around them, they stuck together. It was sickening how much they depended on each other. Noah didn't depend on anyone. That made him stronger than both of them, even when Seto did outshine him.
And Seto outshone Noah a lot.
Whenever they started up another one of their competitions to outdo each other, Mokuba was there in the background. Noah wanted to surpass Seto in his father's eyes, as though by doing so he could force Gozaburo to send the two boys back where they came from. Seto had a need to prove that just because he wasn't some spoiled rich kid didn't mean he wasn't worth something. He'd been brought in to challenge Noah, to force him to better himself, and he did just that.
Mokuba, on the other hand, was a freebie. He wasn't there for any reason other than Seto wouldn't leave the orphanage without him. Gozaburo was intrigued enough by Seto to allow him this one thing, though he did his best to keep Mokuba out of the way once they were installed in the Kaiba Mansion. He didn't want Noah being distracted by the unnecessarily soft-hearted brat, just sharpened by Seto's exceptional intelligence.
Yet somehow Mokuba always managed to be there, lurking on the periphery whenever Noah and Seto competed. Never when Gozaburo was around, but always when it was just Noah and Seto. Noah often caught glimpses of unruly black hair from the corner of his eye. It was as though Mokuba couldn't bear to be separated from his brother for even a moment, like a limpet or a vine of ivy – incapable of surviving on its own without something else to cling to.
Or at least that was what Noah thought. It never even occurred to him that weak little Mokuba might be trying to protect his brother, or that he might mean anything to the kid. Noah saw Mokuba like his father did – surplus to requirements, inconvenient, and a constant pebble in his shoe.
"For you," he said once, offering a drawing of a stick figure with bright green hair under a blazing purple sun. "I ran out of yellow crayon."
Noah just turned away without a word, nearly bumping into Seto behind him.
"Say thank you," Seto growled.
"Make me."
Gozaburo chewed them both out for fighting. It wasn't becoming for the sons of Gozaburo Kaiba to be rolling around like street urchins. His gaze flicked to Seto on these words, and Noah felt a frission of pleasure until he realised that once more his father had encased Seto under the title 'sons'.
Not Mokuba, though. Gozaburo never called Mokuba his son. He called him Noah's brother, but never claimed Mokuba as his own the way he did Seto.
And why should he? Mokuba wasn't for anything. Even Seto had a purpose, but Mokuba was just there. More than once Gozaburo came into a room where Seto and Noah were playing chess, nodded at them and then curled his lip at Mokuba, who could be writing or making collages, or even just quietly reading in the corner. Gozaburo thought even less of the youngest 'brother' than Noah did.
"We're supposed to be a family," Noah heard the pitiful brat whimpering one night while on his way to the kitchen for a snack. He and Seto had been forced to miss dinner for fighting again, and this time Noah had actually managed to blacken Seto's eye. Of course, Seto had slit Noah's lip, but the feeling of victory still remained.
"Mokuba," Noah heard Seto murmur, in quite a different voice than he usually used. He sounded almost tender – certainly nothing like the boy who barked out answers like a machinegun in lessons, or the dutiful 'son' who spoke deferentially to Gozaburo, and nothing at all like the growls and snipes he directed Noah's way. This was another side to Seto, and one which made Noah pause outside the slightly ajar bedroom door.
"You're not even trying," Mokuba accused.
"Neither is he."
"Noah would be nicer if you just stopped antagonising him all the time."
"Where on earth did you learn a word like that?"
"I … I heard Father saying it to the butler."
Seto paused. Noah held his breath. "You're still calling him that."
"Because that's what he is. That's my point, Seto. We're supposed to be a family now – you, me, Noah and Father – but you won't even -"
"That's enough. I'll call him Father to his face, but not when it's just us. We already have a Mom and Dad, remember?"
"But they're -"
"I know they are, but they still supersede Gozaburo Kaiba."
"Super … what?"
Seto chuckled. At first Noah didn't know what the sound was. Then he realised, and he was so surprise he nearly made a noise and alerted them to his presence. Quietly he crept away, forgetting about his snack and plans to tell on Mokuba for not being in his own room. Noah huddled under his own bedclothes, processing what he'd heard and wondering what they meant for him.
Seto didn't think of Gozaburo as his father. He wasn't trying to replace Noah as Gozaburo's son.
So … what did that make him?
But Mokuba, the one Gozaburo didn't want, did want to be a Kaiba son. And Noah knew in his heart that it would probably never happen; not in the way Mokuba wanted. Adoption certificates were just pulped wood when it came down to it. He would only ever be a Kaiba boy on paper.
Stupid idiot, Noah thought. Can't even understand a simple thing like that. Father doesn't want you, Mokuba. And Seto doesn't want Father, the ungrateful cretin. The only one who deserves to be here is me. I'm the only Kaiba son who matters.
Noah didn't think differently until the day he was competing once more with Seto on their way to elocution lessons, marching along so fiercely and trying to pull ahead of each other without quite running. Noah was so engrossed in the competition that he didn't look before crossing the street. The loud screech of brakes jarred him before the blow itself. When he hit the ground all the breath had gone out of him, his chest and back were on fire with pain, and he honestly though he was going to die.
That is, until he heard Seto's anguished scream.
"MOKUBA!"
Mokuba's tiny hands left perfect bruised imprints on Noah's chest, which he stared at when dressing to visit the private room at the most expensive hospital in the city, and which made him contemplate the true meaning of the word 'brother'.
"Don't worry, son," Gozaburo told both he and Seto, not distinguishing which of them he was referring to. "I have a way of saving his mind, at least. And Mokuba will finally prove his usefulness as a true member of the Kaiba family." His smile was small and didn't reach his eyes.
Despite himself, Noah found himself fearing for little weak-but-not-weak Mokuba, broken to pieces in his hospital bed with only life support machines keeping him alive. He shook himself. He wasn't supposed to care about that brat. Mokuba was the unwanted Kaiba boy, and Noah had to distance himself from the black sheep if he ever wanted to be unchallenged first in his father's estimation again. Yet Mokuba had saved his life – probably at the cost of his own.
"Father," he had said hesitantly, "what do you mean?" Mokuba was in a coma. They'd studied this sort of thing in science lessons. The longer you were in a coma, the more brain-dead you became. You couldn't save a mind unless you also saved the body and woke it up, and all the doctors had said Mokuba's tiny body was beyond repair.
Not long after that Gozaburo gave the order for the life support machines to be turned off.
Seto screamed for hours. He screamed at the hospital, on the way home, and all the way up the grand staircase. He screamed and beat his fists on the floor, begging to be allowed back to the hospital. He wasn't allowed to stay when they unplugged Mokuba because he was causing a scene. Gozaburo sent him away and his loyal butler physically dragged the older boy back to the mansion.
"This is no time for sentiment, boy! You're embarrassing me."
Noah was allowed to stay at the hospital, but instead, though he couldn't understand why, he chose to go home. As he left he heard the squeak of wheels and saw a posse of attendants he didn't recognise wheeling Mokuba's gurney away down the hall. Noah wondered where they were taking him, and why they couldn't just let him die in the same room he'd been all along, but by then the elevator doors were closing and he was whisked away after Seto's limo.
Afterwards Seto sat, hollow-eyed and unresponsive in his bedroom. Clearly, something of himself had died alongside Mokuba. Noah went to him, though he wasn't sure why. He stood in the unlocked doorway of Seto's room, but he couldn't bring himself to go any further. He couldn't even bring himself to look at Seto's back, curled over on the bed and the only thing of him visible in the darkness of drawn curtains and grief.
Seto never called Gozaburo 'Father' again, even to his face.
"Ridiculous," Gozaburo snapped, marching away from Seto's room when he finally got home and went to talk to him. Noah didn't know what was said, but heard this last exclamation and the bang of a door bouncing shut and then open again.
"Seto?" Noah crept inside the room this time, feeling out of place and prickly-skinned. He'd never been inside before. Mokuba's heavy-handed crayon pictures adorned one of the walls, though a few had been torn loose and were still fluttering to the floor. There were piles of books everywhere, signalling how Seto had always managed to outshine Noah in lessons. The light from the hallway cast them in sharp relief.
"He said he'd save his mind," Seto whispered, not really to Noah, but not to anyone else either. He was facing the door this time, his eyes staring at an unseen point in the middle of Noah's chest. "But he didn't save him at all."
Noah bit his lip. He knew he was supposed to feel victorious that Seto was in pain, but ball he felt was confused and a little achy. "I'm …"
Seto's gaze finally ticked up to his face. "You're what?"
"I'm sorry," Noah said at last, dropping his own eyes. "It was my fault."
Seto stared hard at him, as though trying to crack him open to examine whether his guilt was real. Noah was a Kaiba, and Kaibas lied, just as Gozaburo had lied when he said he could save any part of Mokuba.
"He was stupid," Seto said instead, harshly. "He thought you were important enough to save. You wouldn't have spat on him if he was on fire."
"I never … I mean I …" Noah's words failed him. Even he didn't know what he was trying to say. In the end he left Seto to his grief, retreating to his room and declining supper when Gozaburo summoned him.
"I would have expected such impertinence from Seto," Gozaburo said when he came upstairs to ask why he was alone at the long dining table. "He's not as strong in mind as I originally thought. But from you, Noah? This is unacceptable."
Noah gazed at his father, whose favour both he and Mokuba had worked so hard to win, and which, ultimately, neither of them had. It came to Noah in a flash that nobody would ever be truly good enough for Gozaburo Kaiba, blood-related or not.
The servants were already emptying out Mokuba's room. One of the maids brought a crumpled piece of paper to Noah. When she smoothed it out and tentatively handed it over, as if afraid he'd yell at her for suggesting he might want such a sentimental thing, Noah saw the shock of green crayon hair under a purple sun. He tucked it into the pocket of his pyjamas, and into the pocket of his shorts the next morning, and every morning after that.
When he cornered Seto after an enforced and surly breakfast in the dining room, he made the taller boy freeze when he pulled out the drawing and trust it under his nose.
"He was my brother too," Noah said simply, meaning every word more than he'd ever meant anything in his life – even 'I am Noah Kaiba, son of Gozaburo Kaiba'.
The three of them completed the traditional vigil over the body together, the night before the funeral. Gozaburo knelt with his eyes closed, thoughts obviously occupied elsewhere – probably with the new project the servants were whispering about, but which Seto and Noah had heard few details of.
Somehow without Gozaburo seeing, Noah's hand found Seto's.
And, impossibly, Seto didn't push it away.
Fin.