Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.
Warnings/Notes: For an incredible friend, Bellamy Taft. You are the warmest, most genuinely thoughtful person I've ever met. I have learned and grown so much from your creativity, love, and support. You inspire me every day.
I was a bit confused about the timeline for the death of the Kaiba brothers' parents. Yugioh Wikia says they passed when Seto was 8 years old, meaning Mokuba would have been 3, so I went with that. In the scenes below, they are therefore the following ages:
Scene 1: Seto – 5, Mokuba – Newborn.
Scene 2: Seto – 5, Mokuba – 1 day old.
Scene 3: Seto – 8, Mokuba – 3 ½.
Scene 4: Seto – 10, Mokuba – 5.
Scene 5: Seto – 12, Mokuba – 7.
Scene 6: Seto – 15, Mokuba – 10.
Scene 7: Seto – 16, Mokuba – 11. (Canon.)
Mornings with Mokuba
"Seto? Let's have breakfast together, the sun is awake."
The sheets, soft and warm beneath him, shifted as he winced away from the sun.
"Can we see Mama?"
"That's right, and your little brother."
Seto shot up in bed, hair full of static, and shoved the blankets to the side as he tunneled out of them. "It's Mokie day? Today is?"
"Mmhmm." His father replied proudly, "He was born last night so today is his first time feeling the sun on his face. He's waiting for his big brother to tell him all about it."
"I will!" Seto said, rushing to the folded clothes on the shelf of his closet and putting his "promoted to big brother" shirt on backwards. "I will teach him all the things about the sun and the moon and breakfast and – Tousan? Are we making Mama breakfast too?"
"She's eating at the hospital."
"And baby Mokie?"
"Him too, Mama will feed him before we get there."
"You have to start cooking without me!" Seto said, trying to smooth his hair with little hands and finding that the strands only clung to his fingers. "Sensei will understand if I don't go to school today because I have to see my baby brother!"
His father laughed, the same sound that made his dreams so sweet, and pushed up from a crouch to his feet. "She'll be very excited for you, maybe you can take a picture in to show your friends tomorrow. I'll get cooking if you get dressed, but first—" He bent to pull Seto's shirt back from his neck a bit, showing the tag. "I think we should flip your shirt around so everyone can read it."
Seto giggled his way out to the table and sat in determined silence on the train to the hospital.
What would be the first thing he'd say to Mokuba?
Would he be a good big brother?
He almost told Tousan he wasn't ready for their stop to be here. He wasn't ready for the nurse that smiled and congratulated him, telling him Mama was in 322.
But when he peeked in the room – because he was definitely ready to see Mama – the bundle in her arms was quiet. Like a little doll.
Curiously, Seto tiptoed forward. "He is very quiet, Mama."
She smiled, shifting to cradle Mokuba in one arm and extend the other to Seto. "He's still sleeping." She whispered, and Seto's soft 'oh' had no sound as it cupped his lips.
He crawled up on the mattress and tucked himself against Mama's side, peeking at the pink face beneath a mess of Tousan's black hair. "'Hayo, Mokie-chan, the sun is 'wake."
Tousan messed with the blinds a bit and soon sunlight spilled in, in streams against the bed, lining Mama's chest and Mokie's blanket. His face scrunched up, just for a moment, and a little arm stretched out of the swaddle.
"Look, Seto, he wants to hold your hand."
Seto moved hesitantly to take it – Mokuba's fingers were so small – and smiled when a fist wrapped around two of his fingers. "That is my hand, and you are feeling the sun and since it's summer you will see it a lot. This is morning. Morning is the very earliest. I'm Seto, your big brother, and I'll make you lots of breakfasts, okay? Let's be friends, okay?"
"Better than friends," Mama whispered, "We're family."
Seto didn't go to school the next morning, but Tousan woke him before the sun, face red and eyes puffy.
"Are you sick?" Seto asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"No, son." Tousan said, his voice thin and tight. "We're going to bring Mokie home, but Mama –" He covered his face with a hand and took a minute to swallow down the sob. "Mama isn't coming back."
He didn't understand on the bed, in Tousan's arms, riding the train to the hospital. He didn't understand when the same nurse didn't smile today. He didn't understand.
Mokuba cried with Tousan on the train and in the house, but Tousan didn't rock him like Mama did. Seto stood on tiptoe and reached a hand through the bars of the crib. "Don't worry," He whispered, "It's Seto, I'm right here okay? The sun is still awake, but you can't feel it so good. Mama will come back soon."
She had to come back soon. He could take care of Mokie until then.
Oh.
"I love you a whole lot."
"Niitama?" Mokuba mumbled against his shoulder as the car rattled in and out of a pothole.
"I'm still here, Mokie." Seto promised, knuckles white around his father's funeral program. "We have a long ride, so you can keep sleeping."
Mokuba doesn't know how to ask if Seto will still be there when he wakes up, but Seto knows, tucking an arm around him protectively.
"We'll get through this together."
Their new room is a set of bunk beds in the hall of their uncle's house. Seto puts their bags down awkwardly beside the bottom bunk and bows to the couple he only remembers distantly, an echo of voices in the crowd at Mokuba's first birthday.
"I'll study hard." He promised, "And Mokie listens really well."
"Just get him out of the car, you're coming at an ungodly hour." When his aunt spoke, it wasn't to address the man who drove them. She doesn't use the same, tired tone with him as she does with Seto, and he only hopes when he rushes back out to Mokuba that sleep won't swallow her like it swallowed Tousan.
When the sun comes up, he doesn't know that they'll only see it through that bathroom window three more days before they move again. He doesn't know that these people will not love him as much as they love his money. Tousan's money.
He doesn't let Mokuba eat at the table with them while they talk about how it isn't much. Instead, they huddle in the small bathroom while Seto gets ready for school.
"And I'll be back when the little hand is between the three and the four, just like always." He promised.
"Sun is not 'wake." Mokuba said, rubbing his eyes sleepily and pointing an accusing finger at the dreary sky out the window.
"It is," Seto promised, "It's just hiding behind the rain clouds."
"Rain…pway?" Mokuba asked, and Seto smiled.
"Yeah, the rain came down to play with the sun."
The storm went on even after Seto stood like a fool in his old school's uniform, expecting to be told how to get to his new building. Through the scolding form his aunt and uncle that made him burn with shame.
"You're not enrolled. Don't you know that takes time?!"
Seto's bow lowered until he was almost on his knees, "I'm sorry," He said, "I'll go play with Mokuba."
"Do it quietly."
If he would have known, when Mokuba remarked that the rain was not a good finder, he would have listened to the next request.
"We can help?"
He would have taken him out to splash in the muddy, wet, spring without a care for what it would do to their aunt and uncle's reputation.
"Okay, Mokie, first let's look up in all the trees." He would have said, and put the boy on his shoulders. "Can you help me shake the leaves?"
Like the sun would come tumbling down.
Let's find it, he would have encouraged. Let's find the sun and tell it to find Mama, too. Let's tell it to bring her back.
When his aunt and uncle left for work, leaving them alone in the new house too, he would have ignored their comment not to eat all the food and cooked Mokuba the best breakfast he knew how.
It would have been a feast.
But he didn't know.
He should have the first time they said – "It isn't much."
And he should have said, "Neither are you."
"Niisama!" Mokie said, bouncing on the bottom, twin-sized bunk to wake him. "The sun is awake!"
The orphanage, where director Nakamura was already yelling at a group of boys for smoking in the old utility room, had been the first place Mokuba's smile ever faded. The day they arrived, he cried. As soon as Seto knew he understood, he did the only thing he could, he reminded him that they were family.
I'll be your Tousan now, and I will always, always protect you.
Two years later, looking at him and pretending to be groggy, he was proud the smile was back.
More than that, he was relieved.
Mokuba made every morning worth it.
"Is it?" He asked, stretching beside him and sitting up to look out their little window. "I don't know, it still looks kind of dark."
Mokuba scrambled down from the bed, "That's the curtain, silly!" He said, and threw it back to let the brightness spill in.
"The sun is awake!" Seto marveled. "What should we do?"
"Sandbox!" Mokuba cheered.
Every day, without fail, it was the sandbox.
Among throngs of unfeeling and broken people, it was the only place in the orphanage he genuinely loved.
For the thirteenth day, a jolt of anxiety woke Seto in the study and he frantically skimmed the textbook in front of him, trying to force it to make sense, trying to force himself to remember.
He was so tired.
He was always so tired, and Daimon never took long enough to get the coffee and pastries he wasn't allowed to touch. He strained first to make out footsteps, then any trace of Mokuba's voice.
They would see each other at dinner, but he missed him now.
Mokuba had never woken up without him before, and Seto had been forced to abandon him in a strange house with cold people, hardened more than Nakamura had ever been, even at his sternest.
He hoped Mokuba still announced that the sun was awake, even to himself.
And downstairs, amidst a pile of scribbled dragons and stars, Mokuba did.
For the first time in their lives, they were just two people in twenty-some rooms, but the mansion felt anything but empty. All around them were reminders –Victorian paintings and antique furniture – that this place never belonged to them. That, for all their work, they had never left their mark here.
Mokuba had, Seto realized, sitting on his made side of the bed to watch the boy pretend to sleep. Just a little while, in short glances over his shoulder so Mokuba wouldn't panic under the weight of his stare.
They had both been doing that since –
He cut his mind off with a hand over his eyes and stood to wash his face with cold water.
Every drawing Mokuba ever made for him was spread through the house, at least one in each room, more in those with painful memories. Seto had never set foot back in the study, but wasted no time tearing down everything in Gozaburo's office.
That was his now, and Mokuba's Blue Eyes White Dragon was framed on the desk. Soon, he would have a real one.
When he came back, towel around his neck, skin damp and cool in the late fall air, he realized the window farthest from him was open.
"Mokie?"
How many years had it been since he called him that?
"Is he really dead?" Mokuba asked. It wasn't the side of the house he'd plummeted down from, but Seto knew, as keenly as instinct could, that his brother was imagining the bloody imprint of their stepfather's body on the courtyard.
"Yeah," He said, crossing the room to put a hand on Mokuba's shoulder. "He's dead."
He wasn't sure if either of them felt sadness, but what was rooted in his own heart was not relief, either.
"Hey, Niisama?"
One year.
Seto glanced over the laptop and the paper he wasn't really reading, barriers on the desk Mokuba walked around to lean over his chair.
He was big enough he didn't have to stretch to rest his head on top of it. Long ago, he stopped announcing that the sun was awake.
"Can we have ice cream for breakfast?"
Seto folded his newspaper and smiled.
"Sounds great, kid."
If someone asked him what changed he would look to them with love Mokuba taught him to feel, and say, "Not much."