A/N – The Hyatt Regency is a real place, and the 1981 catastrophe really happened. For once I'm not making stuff up.
Continuity – This is a bit of an odd fic, in that it could easily be placed in several different points throughout the various seasons. I wrote it thinking about immediately post-Battle City; post the Big Five's first takeover bid (the one where they trapped Seto in his own swords n' sorcery game); and post his very first battle with Yuugi (waaaay back at the beginning of the dub). But there are loads of other places it could also go. So, in short… um, open to interpretation.
Feedback – Being that this is my first proper piece of Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic, I'd appreciate some feedback. I need to know if I totally ballsed up the characters. So, reviews welcomed with open arms and treasured like children.
Knowing is Only Half the Battle
© Scribbler, December 2004
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, but knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful – Samuel Johnson
Seto never slouched.
It was an odd thing to think, but seemed entirely appropriate when Mokuba walked into his office and saw him at his desk. He was at his computer, menacing the keys with long fingers, and didn't look up when the door opened. His posture was perfect. The sound of typing echoed in a cold counterpoint to the warm russet décor.
"Seto?"
Not a flicker. His eyes never left the screen – though they didn't seem to be moving along with whatever he was typing. He typed faster than his secretary, and the one before her. Maybe he was retyping the notes he'd given her this afternoon. It wouldn't be the first time, and it would explain why he was here so late. Maybe he'd fired her and was finishing the job himself. Again, not the first time. The lights were off, and in the computer's glow Seto looked like some implacable spirit from the netherworld.
Mokuba crossed the room without waiting for an invitation. Nobody else would have been allowed to; but then again, hardly anyone ever got into this, the sanctum sanctorum, anyway. Business meetings were conducted in the boardroom, or in the formal office with its frosty blue furnishings and polished wooden table. Mokuba wasn't fond of that room, but Seto got a fierce little smile whenever he led someone into it.
Seto leaned back, steepled his fingers, let the knuckles slide past each other into a half-praying position. He looked thoughtful, which meant he was. Act as you want to be seen. One of the first lessons, and most repeated.
Finally, his eyes shifted. "Mokuba?"
The plastic wrap made a crinkly noise on the desk.
"I thought you might be hungry."
Seto looked at his brother with something a little too long to be a blink. Then his eyebrow quirked. "No food in the offices," he said, but there was less coldness to his words than before.
Mokuba shrugged. He took his victories where he could.
Seto didn't lean forward, or pick up the sandwiches. He just flicked his eyes at them and pressed his mouth against his thumbs. They weren't the best food in the world, but there was only so much you could do with a corner store and the back of a comic book as a breadboard. Mokuba didn't even want to know why Goei had a butter knife stashed in the glove compartment of the limo, or how he'd known which store to go to without being told. There were at least three within a block of Kaiba Corp. HQ. The idea of someone combing the streets, unasked, specifically for him gave him the shivers a little.
Mokuba always had change in his pocket. Enough so that he could get something on the hop – something inexpensive and simple, without having to bother anyone or let them know where he was going. Sometimes he gave it away to street people and buskers instead, but only when Seto wasn't around. Explaining the action to him was… too complicated. Too complicated to get a positive response, anyway. And he wanted to be able to keep doing it. It was one of the ways Mokuba remembered where he came from, a way he kept himself grounded. He and Seto hadn't had the best breaks, but they'd had breaks. Some people would never be that fortunate.
"Are you hungry?"
Again, Seto didn't say anything. He stared at the crudely made sandwiches, at the way the fish paste dripped a little out of one side and the way the bread had torn mid-cut.
"Hello? Earth to Seto." Mokuba waved a hand in front of his face.
Seto's eyes flared – came alive – in a way that made him realise just how distant they'd been before. There was a part of him that wondered why he hadn't noticed his big brother's attention was elsewhere, but he pushed it away again with a cheerful smile. Act as you want to be seen.
"There's no need for that," Seto said simply, reaching for the sandwiches. He paused. "Thank you." Then he picked one triangle up, took a bite and swallowed after the bare minimum of chews.
They'd learned about making sandwiches in school, when they had that Englishteaching assistantwho pronounced all her words wrong. Culture Vulture, their teacher had called her after she went home. Trying to absorb their ways through osmosis. She used to eat homemade sandwiches on the remembrance bench at lunchtime. Sometimes kids would mimic the way she tucked all the lettuce in before raising one to her lips, others would imitate her walk, and the way she kept falling off her kitten heels. The day before she left, some girls went over and asked why she never ate with anyone else. Mokuba never found out what she'd answered, but for a while after that it was cool to bring sandwiches instead of bento boxes and tuck the lettuce in before eating them.
The corner store didn't have any lettuce. Even if they had, Mokuba doubted Seto would spend time tucking it in.
There was a subtle kind of accusation to the way Seto bolted his food. He didn't gobble it. In fact, he treated bread and fish paste with the same kind of refinement as a three-course dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in town. Yet it disappeared quickly, each bite underscored with a question. What have you been up to? Where have you been? What have you been saying?
Mokuba knew Seto didn't mean to. It was just the way he functioned.
When the sandwiches were gone Seto nodded and balled up the plastic wrap Mokuba had used to protect them during the rain soaked dash from limo to foyer. He didn't toss it into the waste paper basket, even though his aim was good enough, but stared at it the same way he had his computer screen. Then he placed it to one side and resumed typing.
Mokuba looked around, wondering not for the first time how the interior decorator had got this room sanctioned. It was everything Seto hated – all fake wooden panelling and soft maroon chairs. The only thing that didn't match was the hard-backed swivel chair at the desk and a photograph on the wall above it. Where most offices may have had soft watercolour paintings, or jagged impressionist art, or even pictures of famous people who had done business with a company, Seto's office had a large greyscale photograph of a hotel lobby in a gilt frame. At the bottom was the name of the photographer and the words 'Hyatt Regency'.
The Hyatt Regency was a hotel in Kansas City, America. Not many people outside the States had heard of it. Not many people in the States had heard of it anymore, either, and those who knew the name had either stayed there or took an interest in morbid history. In July 1981, close to two thousand people had been gathered in the Regency's main lobby – an immense open-air atrium of at least seventeen thousand feet square – to watch a dance contest being held in one of the upstairs walkways. The walkways were the hotel's pride and joy, sometimes referred to as the 'floating walkways' or 'skyways'. During the contest the wide flange beams supporting them had broken loose from their moorings and collapsed into the four stories below, killing over a hundred people and injuring hundreds more.
It was an odd sort of photograph to hang in such a prominent place. Seto had never been to Kansas City, nor took any interest in hotel disaster trivia. All Mokuba knew was that the photo, which depicted the Hyatt Regency lobby before the catastrophe, had belonged to Gozaburo Kaiba, and had originally hung in another part of the building. Everything else he'd found out online. The day he took over, Seto put it up in here and declared that nobody should ever touch it. Not even Mokuba dared suggest a more appropriate piece.
"So," he said, breaking the silence. "We got our math tests back today."
Seto paused. "Is there a reason you don't want me to finish my work tonight?"
"It's almost eleven o' clock."
"Don't you have school in the morning?"
"It's Saturday tomorrow."
"Oh," said Seto, as if he truly had forgotten what day it was. "What did you get on your test?"
"Thirty."
"Out of what?"
"Thirty."
Mokuba could hear the perfectionist part of Seto writing that across his synapses in permanent marker. The closest the outside Seto got was a curt nod and a grunt that could have signalled approval or trapped wind.
"Are you coming home soon?" he asked, forgoing further pleasantries and getting right to the heart of the matter.
Another grunt. Seto's eyes flipped to his computer screen, his hands still positioned over the keys.
"Is that a yes or a no?"
"I have a lot of work to do."
"Can't it wait until morning?"
"Mmmf."
Those grunts could get very tiresome after a while.
"Big Brother…" There was a time Mokuba could get him to do anything he wanted, just by using that name.
Seto's jaw set, his gaze hardened and narrowed, and it was such a weird response that it actually took Mokuba aback. He blinked and tried to see what the screen said; certain it wasn't him who provoked the reaction.
Seto grunted again and closed the laptop without shutting it down first. The action was quick and brusque, leaving Mokuba nonplussed and a little worried. He owned part of Kaiba Corp., but he didn't understand a lot of what went on behind the scenes. He trusted Seto to know what to do in a crisis.
Trust your instincts. Trust mine if you doubt your own.
"Seto? Is everything okay?"
"It's fine, Mokuba."
Mokuba bit his lip. "Are you okay?"
"That's none of your concern."
The irony tang of blood. He hated when Seto snapped like that. "I was only asking."
Seto tossed him a look, and then another. Mokuba looked down. He'd wiped blood from his lip on his sleeve. There didn't seem to be an appropriate response for that, so he just pasted on another smile and asked, "Does this mean you're ready to come home, now?"
Seto pulled a tissue from the box on his desk and handed it over. "Wipe your lip."
Mokuba dabbed more gingerly than was necessary. It wasn't a deep cut, just a sliver he'd nibbled loose throughout the course of the day. "Does it?"
Seto looked at him, looked straight at him, and for a moment Mokuba thought he was going to brush his hair from his eyes the way he used to when they were small. Where Seto had always been perfectly coiffed, Mokuba had never grown into his hair. It refused to be tamed and slicked back, soft black waves falling in counterpoint to his brother's sharp, downturned spikes. Sometime he caught himself wondering which parent they each took after to look so different. They had no pictures from that far back for him to know.
Seto didn't touch him. He just got to his feet and began methodically packing things into his briefcase. When he was done he went to the door, apparently confident Mokuba would follow. Which he did.
Seto didn't slouch as he walked.
Act as you want to be seen.
Seto never slouched.
And Mokuba was a little glad, because it made measuring himself against him a bit more accurate.
FINIS.