By ElveNDestiNy, written February 6, 2005
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: Amelda (original Japanese), Alistair (English dub), Alister (English subtitles), Alastor...you get the point. I originally wrote using Alistair but I think I'll just stick with Amelda, since everything else is the Japanese name.
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He hadn't come here since the funeral. It was raining, and the cemetery was deserted. The effort of battling the elements was too much for most people, even to remember their loved ones. Kaiba wasn't even sure why he was here now. Maybe to reassure himself that Gozaburo was dead. But he hadn't needed reassurance for all these years, until now. He knew what had changed, but his mind still shied away from the name, the image of an angry and bitter duelist with red hair.
He studied the gravestone in silence, remembering the day with a strange clarity. He had killed him, hadn't he? Pushed him out the window with his own two hands. Didn't stay to watch, turned away with a dark and deadly satisfaction. He still didn't regret it.
Someone was coming now, a man and a little girl with a bundle of flowers in her hand. They came close to him, stopping on the burial site next to Gozaburo's. The little girl placed the flowers in front of the marble block while Seto read the carved script. Beloved wife and mother. Irritated, he turned back to his own object. There were no such niceties carved into Gozaburo's slab of rock. It had been neglected and the white marble had turned a dirty green. He had been fifty-two when he died.
"What's your name?" The little girl asked before her father could stop her. She was looking at him with curiosity.
It took him longer than he realized to find his voice. "My name is...Kaiba." He had never hesitated calling himself that before.
It was true, wasn't it? He'd become like the one who had shaped him, despite his promises to himself to be different. In the end, he was Gozaburo's legacy, his heir in all the ways, just as he was supposed to be.
The father grabbed the girl's hand and they hurried away. Seto watched them leave, the child's plastic raincoat a bright, garish spot of yellow color in the grey world.
He has nothing to do with me. Kaiba remembered saying it to the one who hated him. So many people hated him, but this was the only one who mattered. Not that he could blame him for it. He hated himself, for his weakness and all the ways that he had succumbed to Gozaburo's rules and dictates and whims. He hated himself because he had let Mokuba be brought into this kind of hell, had failed in protecting him because the person that should have protected them became their greatest danger.
It gradually came to his senses that there was someone standing behind him, and he knew exactly who it was. He looked down at the flower he grasped in his hand—a white rose—and wondered why he had bought it. Wondered if Gozaburo was laughing at his weakness even now.
"You loved him." The words had him stiffening instinctively, the harsh but somehow caressing tone reminding him that he was caught forever between love and hate. There wasn't anything to deny. It was the most ironical thing—and maybe that was why he had bought a flower, because even now he hid under the mask of being normal.
It was worse than the physical abuse—he could have taken it, did take it. How could something like love be so ugly? How could it be a nightmare? His mistake was that he had loved a monster. He had been young and naïve and trusting, and he had been a fool.
He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. Except maybe he already did, with this young man that showed him a reflection of himself, who forced him to face the truth and all of its accompanying cruelties.
They were so very similar, really. And eventually it becomes hard to determine who's on the 'good' side and who's on the 'bad' side. Wasn't it right, to cleanse the world of such horrors as war and power and corruption? At the expense of everyone's lives—to wipe the world clean, a blank slate?
He wished he could do it with his own life. But even if he could have started over, it might not have changed anything. Perhaps he would have protected Mokuba better. Taken care of him more.
It would have been different for the lithe duelist standing behind him. He might have saved his brother. Again, Kaiba was struck at the similarities in their lives, bound and destroyed by Gozaburo. He remembered being trapped in the illusion during their duel, remembered the sheer terror of knowing Mokuba was on a crashing plane. He hadn't been afraid of losing his soul, because he didn't matter anymore. But Mokuba…
They were standing in the rain. Neither of them had umbrellas; both wore trench coats. It might have been a funny scene. It was only sad.
They stood there in silence like statues, and the world wept for them, because they couldn't weep for themselves.
Kaiba finally turned around, and serious gray eyes caught his. They blazed hatred and pity, and something harder to accept. Understanding.
But it didn't change anything.
"Amelda. You've come for me, then?" In a way, it was a relief.
"I've come to make you suffer."
"I know. Thank you."
"But I won't. What you do to yourself is worse than anything I could do to you, so what's the point?" Kaiba could have cried out at those words, but he didn't. Numbly, he accepted them, knowing they were true.
"There's a fine line between love and hate, isn't there?" He waited, maybe for a response that he didn't get. "Sometimes they're even the same thing." There was still no answer, but there were a million words trapped in those blue eyes. Blue eyes with all the turmoil of stormy seas.
"Goodbye, Kaiba."
- o - o - o - o -
This was pretty much a one-shot before I decided to develop this into a story, so please review!