A couple of warnings and notes up front:

warnings for this chapter: Profanity, spoilers

This story is primarily manga-based because it centers around Death-T from a different perspective. It helps to be familiar with that story because I'm not interested in re-writing that story in detail; I'm writing around the edges of it. If you're not interested, please don't waste your time.

There are SPOILERS throughout this story for both the manga and the anime, but especially for the manga. If you do not want to be spoiled, proceed accordingly.

Depending on how you look at it, possible implied prideshipping, rivalshipping, and/or blueshipping (possibly even guardshipping or tabloidshpping? Hm ...). Not a romance per se.

I've started this out in journal form, but it will not be written that way in its entirety.

Characters: Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Mokuba, Motou Yugi, Yami Yugi (mostly through his absence); many mentions of Gozaburo; Featured appearances by Isono, members of the Big Five, Pegasus J Crawford. Cameos by the Yugi-tachi.

corrections: 2014/02/12, 2014/03/07, 2014/3/16

Now, to the story ... finally:

.

Chapter 1: To Lose Is To Die

From Kaiba Seto's journal:

Of all of the game shops in all of the towns in all of the world, I had to walk into his …

They were drooling over it like … like they deserved to be in its presence. Like they were qualified to touch it. Like they had the … the right to call it forth into play.

The Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

But what confuses me is my own reaction.

The need to have it at any cost … that old man didn't know—thank the gods, he didn't know—I would have given so much more.

To rescue that one card.

To … to rescue—?

They had seen my reaction, of course. They had all stared at me, but they hadn't really seen.

They hadn't seen how the earth seemed to open up underneath me. How everything had changed in an instant.

They were looking at the card like …

… like it was a card.

They didn't see it.

They didn't see anything.

I shouldn't have touched it. Except, having seen it, I couldn't leave without holding it in my own hands just once, but I shouldn't have done it because then I knew for sure.

The Blue-Eyes White Dragon was more than a card. And I knew … I just knew, in that selfsame instant, that it was somehow alive. It was as though that card was an extension of myself and that I was the only one who could be permitted to touch it.

In fact, the sight of anyone else touching it is an anathema, an abomination. It made me feel almost physically ill to see even the box containing it in the old man's hands. Seeing the box disappear beneath the counter was like having my heart ripped from my body. I'm not sure what I felt when I left that store. I can only describe it as … grief?

But that would be stupid. It couldn't have been.

Still, whatever it was that I felt, it was good that none of them saw it. If only that old man had known, it would have been very dangerous because …

because …

I wouldn't just have exchanged the entire case of cards that I was holding for that one card, I would have exchanged my fortune, my company … everything I own for it.

Why?

Afterward, I was left in a state of agitation. I never felt like this before: broken, like a fundamental piece of myself was missing. For the first time, an obsession has been engendered within myself that I don't know how to resolve. There was no moving that stupid old man with rational arguments. I certainly have enough money to buy the card and more than enough cards in trade … and the idiot's reply was not that the card was too valuable or unique to give up—that's why I want it so much, right? It has to be!—but because of his affection for the man who gave it to him (and what fool would just give away such a card in the first place?!)!

I have to find some way to set my mind at rest or all aspects of my life will suffer.

The problem is that I seem to have exhausted all honorable means and I don't think I can stand to wait for that old fogy to kick off (I'm pretty positive I can either cajole or browbeat that little Yugi into giving me what I want), so that only leaves dishonorable means.

Ugh!

I haven't cheated since I schemed my way into the Kaiba family and I vowed never to do it again. I'm more than capable enough to accomplish things honestly and I hate the idea of stooping so low when I don't have to.

Of course, that doesn't keep me from pushing people when things have to be done …

But this …!

It was so easy to duplicate the card from a catalog illustration. That card …

I stared at the counterfeit for a long time. I'm so familiar with the card, after all. I knew ever since I first saw a picture of the card that I wanted one. It's powerful, after all, and it's a beautiful, rare card, but it wasn't until I saw the real thing that it was like this. What the fuck is it about the real thing, anyway?

All I know is that the sensation of looking at the real card is completely different from looking at the counterfeit, even though the counterfeit is identical.

I had to put the card face down on the table and put my head in my hands for a while because my head was throbbing.

What's wrong with me?

I should stop this, but I know, in the end, I'm going to do it. I'll switch cards at the first opportunity.

Yeah, that went well …

I didn't get the card.

The Experience of Death was extremely unpleasant.

That guy, Yugi, claimed he'd shut me up inside the card, for crap's sake, and … hell if it didn't actually feel like I was in some sort of alternate universe chock full of monsters.

No Blue-Eyes White Dragon there, either …

Somehow—despite the flat-out terror of the situation—I still had time to feel slightly disconcerted by that fact.

I'm still not sure how the hell he did it. Bringing the monsters out, putting me into that "Experience of Death" thing—all of it. I'm positive it's not technological know-how; his grades are abysmal. Hypnotism? Pft, before now, I would have thought myself immune to such charlatanry. Whatever it was was surprisingly real.

And yet, after the whole thing was over, I felt oddly invigorated.

Other than not having the card, that is. I'm still going to have to do something about that.

Seriously.

Reflecting, though, there's something that bothers me more about the entire experience than the Experience of Death.

First of all, there's something about that guy, Yugi. When he started dueling, he changed. I mean changed completely. It was as though he was an entirely different person, someone with authority and bearing; gravitas. Not the little wimp that I met in his grandfather's game shop.

The other thing was that Blue-Eyes White Dragon card. There was something wrong with it. I can't get over that, either. It wouldn't fight. She didn't protect me. That felt just wrong. Yugi said it was because the card wasn't mine, but that didn't seem right to me. No matter what, Blue-Eyes should have obeyed me. I don't care what that Yugi thinks.

And since then, the obsession is getting even worse. I think it was having seen the card brought to life that did it. Now, thinking of that card in the hands of that old man … It disgusts me. It fills me with a murderous rage that I can't even begin to understand. I don't want to think about it at all, it's so abominable, but somehow I can't get it out of my mind.

But it's not just that, it's Yugi, too. The change that came over him.

That man … that dragon … the way it behaved … all of it disturbed me in a way I can't describe. It was all worse than the Experience of Death in a way that …

I don't understand it. I don't want to think about it …

But I can't stop.

But the invigorating part. I'm now working hard on a new system. That's something I can do.

The stupid thing about it is why I never thought of it before!

I'm going to make Duel Monsters mine. Well, sort of mine. They'll be my own because I'll be the one who's going to make them come to life.

I have to make Blue-Eyes White Dragon come to life … I and no one else. My gaming system, my card …

There are only four Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in the world.

Thank goodness.

Otherwise, it would be so much harder to track them all down.

Seto paused, looking over what he'd written and thinking. Should he write about the nightmares? He'd just awoken from one and finally started writing, and it had happened days ago. Yet the nightmares kept coming, and they were as vivid as ever. It was a wonder he didn't wake up screaming.

And that was the hell of it, really. If it had just been losing, for fuck's sake, Seto thought, I could let it go. The problem was the sheer disrespect that guy had shown him. He didn't just beat him, he took delight in rubbing his face in it; knocking him down and then kicking him with this "Experience of Death" for good measure.

After locking the journal away in his briefcase, Seto jammed the pen into the mug Mokuba had given him: Best Brother Ever! Was even the mug mocking him?

As if to punctuate Seto's fury, a soft knocking was heard.

"Nii-sama?" Mokuba slowly opened the door, looking at him with those large, worried eyes of his.

Seto sighed deeply. He knew this was coming. He didn't know how they'd managed to both keep Isono from calling in mental health professionals—it must have been Mokuba's doing—and keep Gozaburo from becoming involved, but somehow things had worked out. This, despite the fact that Seto had been immersed in that "Experience of Death" for—how long? It felt like days—it must have been an hour. It had taken him several days to recover. He was only now beginning to feel like himself again … only angrier, somehow. It's like that boy had kicked a dog that Seto would have much rather had left sleeping for his entire lifetime: Cerberus, maybe.

And now Mokuba wanted to talk about it.

It isn't his fault, Seto told himself, trying not to glare at the boy as he forced himself to look over toward him. To distract himself, he got up and got into bed, sitting up against the piled pillows and pulling up the covers above his waist.

Mokuba took this as a signal to bound over to the bed and jump on with him and give him a tight hug. "I was so worried about you!" he exclaimed. "You had that-that look on your face for so long. Are you OK now?"

"I'm fine," he said flatly, his jaw painfully set.

"Good! I mean … the 'lesson' Gozaburo assigned—it's almost due. This is really bad timing for this sort of thing."

"I know," Seto said irritably. He felt like he wanted to break something, and had to restrain himself from pushing Mokuba off the bed. His mood disturbed him. That sort of impulse—violence against Mokuba—shouldn't even surface in his mind, and yet, this blinding rage was pushing him more and more. It was all his fault. His and Gozaburo's. He had to get them both out of his life.

Mokuba was right after all. They absolutely had to complete their plan. "We finish this ASAP. I have something else I have to do right away, and I can't start until that's done."

"Something else?" Mokuba sounded unsure, but didn't ask about it. Instead, he asked the question Seto was dreading. "So … Nii-sama, when are you planning on telling me about what happened with that kid?"

Well, I wasn't, Seto couldn't help thinking as Mokuba plowed on, "Isono said—well, he said he heard you yelling when that kid was leaving, and he had to restrain you. It was good that you calmed down before too long, but we still had to hide you so that Gozaburo wouldn't find out. It was lucky that it was Isono with you that day and not someone else or …"

We'd be up shit creek. Mokuba didn't have to finish that thought. It was obvious. Fuck it, Seto thought, I don't want to talk about it.

But Mokuba just wouldn't leave it alone, and reached out to shake his knee. "Nii-sama, you have to snap out of it! I mean, our plan! We're almost done, and we need you at full power, right?" Mokuba waited for his brother to answer, and when he didn't, he said, "At least tell me what happened, Seto. Don't we talk about everything?"

"Tell me how talking about it is going to help!" Seto blurted out. "It's not like it's going to change anything. Just because we talk things over doesn't mean … It's too unbelievable."

"I don't care if you both teleported to the moon," Mokuba said. "If you tell me it's so, it's so. You promised you'd never lie to me."

"I won't. But I don't see why that means I have to tell you every little thing."

"This wasn't a 'little thing,' Nii-sama. You don't just … fall apart."

"OK," he said, slipping out of bed and standing up.

When Seto simply walked past him and out the door, Mokuba hurried behind him, saying "Wait, where are you going? 'OK'? What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'll tell you about it, but not here," he said without breaking stride. Mokuba trotted after him all the way downstairs, out the door, through the manicured gardens and well into the natural gardens, pausing only to slip on shoes. Seto didn't stop until they arrived under the shade of an elm tree, where he seated himself. "I'll not have any of the servants listening in—or him."

Gozaburo. Mokuba knew that Seto wouldn't talk about anything extremely sensitive within the walls of the mansion in case they were under surveillance of one kind or another.

"All right, go ahead. Tell me about it."

Gradually Seto began to open up. And as the story began to trickle out, it gained force, like a spring thaw. Soon Seto had told him the entire story in minute detail, including each play of the Duel Monsters game and the odd change that had come over his opponent.

When he'd finished the two brothers sat in silence, staring into one another's eyes as Mokuba tried to comprehend it.

"But you say you're going to be OK?" Mokuba asked finally.

"Of course I am. It'll take a lot more than that to knock me down."

"We can't let him get away with that!"

Seto smiled grimly. "Don't worry, I'm already putting plans in place to take care of that. But first, we have plenty to attend to with our so-called father."

"I know, but …" Mokuba couldn't stop thinking of the vacant look that had been on his brother's face while he was recovering. If Gozaburo had seen, what would have become of them both? "So you said it was this Motou Yugi who did this?"

"Yes, but don't go anywhere near him," Seto said. "He's dangerous. This 'penalty game' or whatever? It's nothing to mess around with."

"I know."

"I mean it. If I lost to him, you wouldn't stand a chance, and who knows what sort of penalty game he might impose on you? I'm not sure you could stand up to that sort of thing, Mokuba."

"I get it, Seto," Mokuba said, standing to go back toward the mansion. As much as he adored Seto, sometimes he hated being the weaker younger brother.

Mokuba felt Seto's hand on his shoulder, stopping him. "Promise me," Seto said. "Promise me you won't try to get revenge on your own."

"I promise," Mokuba said, shrugging Seto's hand off, but as he walked ahead and felt he was safely out of his brother's earshot, he added under his breath, "not to play into that kid's hands."

Mokuba glanced over his shoulder. Seto was following, at an unusually slow pace in the twilight, his face even paler than usual in the light of the gathering stars. How could he? Mokuba thought. How could anyone dare hurt someone so magnificent as Seto? He had to be punished. Seto was planning on taking care of it, only Seto was the one who was always protecting him, Mokuba. For once Seto was the one who'd been hurt, and Mokuba wanted to take care of him for a change.

Watch out, Yugi! You'll be sorry!

"What's that, Nii-sama?" Mokuba lisped in a high, piping voice.

Seto looked at him, thinking that there was something not quite right about him, but he couldn't quite figure it out. They were sitting in a sandbox together, as they did so often after he came home from school. "This? It's the visitor's center. And this is the big roller coaster, and I'm going to make a Ferris wheel right here …"

Fashioning a Ferris wheel out of sand wasn't the easiest thing to do, and required water. He looked around for his green plastic pail, and as he did, the sandbox seemed to get larger and larger. The edges of the box were retreating from him on all sides, carrying Mokuba away, still sitting on one of the border slats.

"Mokuba!" he cried out, beginning to run, but it was no use. Sinking knee-deep into the sand with each step, he couldn't keep up with the expanding universe that was the sandbox. Soon he was standing in an endless landscape of shifting sands the color of freshly baked bread. The sun was glaring down on him from clear blue sky. The air was still and so dry that he could almost feel his skin crack.

Seto was overcome by the strangest feeling. He pressed his palms to his eyes.

I don't want to see this! Don't show me this!

With a jolt he opened his eyes.

He was awake again, staring into his cool, dark room. He could almost hear the thumping of his heart in the silence. He could certainly hear himself panting, gulping down air to supply his suddenly alert body. He seemed to have been flooded with adrenaline.

Frowning, he wondered how it could be. All he remembered seeing was an endless landscape of sand. It had nothing to do with him.

Still …

He had the strangest feeling that he did not want to stay there, in that place. What he might find there …

In fact, even thinking about that dream was—Fuck, it seemed somehow dangerous.

I have to make this stop!

This all started—all these dreams—yes, he didn't have any dreams like this before the Experience of Death. The dreams about the experience itself were bad enough—in fact, they were some of the worst nightmares he'd ever had—but, in some ways, this was worse.

Seto's mind wandered to his nascent plans for revenge. For some reason, that eased his mind a little. Perhaps it was just the idea of taking action—any action. He nodded to himself, his face rigid. I'm doing the right thing. Definitely. I have to make this stop.

Author's notes ...

2014/3/16: Added spoiler warnings; these will be added throughout this story.

2014/3/12: updated author's note about Yugi's class standing.

2014/2/12: Removed random extra words

Wow, it's been a long time! Sorry about the wait for a new story. I'm not quite finished filling all the little bits and pieces but I'm ever so close and I'm dying to publish the first chapter. Plus, the kick in the pants of actually having a chapter out is probably just what I need to get it done. ;) I'm a little worried whether people will like this one. It follows the canon closely and it's not very romantic. At. All. But I hope you'll bear with me anyway. It's an idea that came to me a long time ago and wouldn't let go of me. I felt like I needed to "do it right," and I hope that this effort doesn't fall short. I hope you'll let me know either way.

Of all of the game shops in all of the towns in all of the world ...: Yes, the paraphrase is from Casablanca. You want to hear some witty dialog? Go check it out.

my company: I can hear the quibbles already, but this is intentional, my friends! Although, technically, it isn't Seto's company yet (see the "lesson" note below), he's anticipating that it will be soon; he sees no chance of failure at this point.

I haven't cheated since I schemed my way into the Kaiba family: Mokuba tells Yami Yugi that Seto cheated to beat Gozuburo at chess to get them adopted. Although ... I still think it's probably harder to find a way to cheat at chess than actually beat Gozuburo at chess. Think about it.

shut me up inside the card: Yami Yugi states that he turned Kaiba into a card, but Kaiba's experience is more of a three-dimensional universe; therefore this description.

[Yugi's] grades are abysmal: It's established in Duel 41 of the manga (Let's Find "Love"!) that Yugi's grades are nearly as bad as Jounouchi's. Out of 400, Yugi is ranked 372, Honda 380, and Jounouchi 392.

the 'lesson' Gozaburo assigned—it's almost due: I'm taking poetic license here. Although it's not completely clear that Seto was free from Gozaburo from the outset in the manga, that may be implied. For the purposes of this story, I'm assuming Gozaburo to be alive at the time of Seto's first duel with Yami Yugi/the beginning of this story. "The 'lesson'" refers to the return-on-investment task that Gozuburo assigned Seto (see the Virtual World arc (anime)). (As usual, I'm merging manga and anime worlds. ;) )

all these dreams: Yep, more dreams in this story, but at least the recurring nightmares about the Experience of Death are canon from the manga. And this story is very much about what's in the mind. So I don't feel too bad about it.

... and a preview of chapter 2:

"He wasn't supposed to—to die."

"No. That was his choice. He couldn't face failure," Seto said matter-of-factly. "Some people can't."

Hm ... can we say, "pot, kettle?" A death in the family puts a new wrinkle to Seto's plans.