Seto and Mokuba sat beside each other on the couch, Mokuba's foot bouncing anxiously and Seto's hands clasped together around the bottle cap. He stared out the window in the waiting room and watched the rain glide down the pane in uneven streams. It distracted him from the flickering gazes that couldn't seem to keep away from him.
The world knew he was alive. People were bound to stare, especially in a therapist's office.
"Seto? Mokuba?" Jennings called from her office door. It drew the gazes of the few other people in the waiting room, hopefully all scheduled to meet with another doctor, but Jennings ignored the eyes and held the door open for them.
Seto stood before Mokuba, who jumped to catch up a second later. They walked side by side into her office and followed her direction to sit on the couch while she closed the door. Seto waited to hear the lock turn, but it didn't. None of the locks ever turned anymore. He ran his thumb over the bottle cap.
Jennings took her seat and left her notebook on the table beside her chair, a sofa built for one that looked less comfortable than the couch.
"I'm Amandine Jennings," she said. "For today, I'd like the three of us to talk. See if you're comfortable with me, because if you aren't, I can refer you over to some of our other counselors."
"Our insurance only covers fifty-two visits yearly," Mokuba said. "So I won't be around much."
"It's still important for you to feel comfortable, Mokuba. I'm going to be spending a lot of time with Seto, so if you feel something is off, tell me. We'll find something that works."
Seto couldn't tell if she was trying too hard or actually being genuine. He also couldn't tell if she was real, but as long as Mokuba was acknowledging her, Seto would do what he could to really see her, not the green eyes that never stopped staring.
"How does this work?" Mokuba asked.
"It's just talking. We can start with the last few days, if you like. It's almost been a week now."
Seto rolled the bottle cap around his fingertips and closed his eyes. She was asking for his opinion. His mind couldn't interpret his kidn—Haru's—words into that. This was real. They were here.
"It's going," Mokuba said. "Roland and Olivia don't have that much of an income right now, so one of us is having to sleep in the recliner every night. Can't afford another bed, I mean."
"You're sharing a room?"
Mokuba nodded.
"How's that going?"
An uneasy glance at Seto preluded Mokuba's answer. "I'm fine with it. I like knowing he's there."
Seto forced his gaze up to meet Jennings's eyes, nodded, then looked back down.
"Then it's just the bed thing that's a little uncomfortable."
"It's not like there's really space for another one—a cot, maybe. The recliner's not bad."
Seto liked the recliner, but telling her that would spark questions he wasn't ready to go into. Sleeping while sitting up triggered the part of his mind that let him know he was awake. Not awake as in not-sleeping, but not that haze he had been in, and still fell in too frequently. The bed was raised off the ground, and that did some to help once he had woken up. Just not nearly as much.
"And Roland and Olivia, they're your guardians?"
"I guess?" Mokuba said. "I'll be eighteen next month, but that's probably where we'll be staying for a while."
"Will you be starting college?"
Mokuba looked down and exhaled slowly. "No, I still have to do my senior year."
Jennings nodded and Seto got the feeling she would have written something down at that moment if she had her notepad in hand. He didn't think it was that big of a revelation. Maybe just that Gozaburo let Mokuba stay behind a year.
"Classroom? Online?"
"Probably online. Senior year seems like a pointless time to start a classroom setting."
"You might try for a GED," she offered.
"I've thought about that too. I'd like to get a job somewhere so I can help Roland and Olivia with the bills. Having my days open would really help with that."
He hadn't mentioned that to Seto. If he worked even part-time, that was twenty hours a week Seto wouldn't know where he was, twenty hours for him to slip back into the haze. The bottle cap might not wake him back up if Mokuba wasn't there to double-check. He didn't know how he would adjust to that, if he would adjust to it.
"What sort of work would you be looking for?"
"Anything that will hire me? Maybe low profile. Working as a cashier in a city where everyone recognizes me would be pretty tough."
"Has it been hard? Being recognized?" she asked, without missing a beat, as if she had rehearsed the entire conversation a dozen times beforehand.
Mokuba looked to Seto again. "Not really," he said, "We haven't left the house much. The reporters coming by was the worst so far. They're still looking for pictures of Seto."
They had probably gotten some on their way over. Leaving the house hadn't been discreet. There wasn't a garage to park the car in, so they had been forced to leave out the front door where the cars had been loitering for days, waiting. Maybe people would get their picture and be done with the stalking.
Seto doubted it.
"Then how have you been spending your time indoors?" she asked.
Seto focused on her for a moment. She looked every bit the part of a therapist, glasses, light, shoulder-length hair that had a wave by the ear that looked like it was from a pen constantly being tucked there, cardigan, and neutral colors. He understood what she was doing and couldn't decide how he felt about it. It wasn't quite to the point of coddling him, but it didn't feel as considerate of his space as she was trying to make it seem.
"Watching movies, talking, reading. It's been quiet, which is sort of great." Mokuba's eyes widened when he turned to Seto. "It's been great for me," he said. "Since it's with you."
"I know," Seto said, rolling the bottle cap around his thumb.
"Is this really what you want to talk about? We're only here for an hour, once a week," Mokuba said. "Shouldn't we be talking about…I don't know, anything relevant?"
Jennings smiled and folded her hands in her lap. "I won't bill this visit since we're just trying to decide if we're a good fit. Ask me questions back. Let me know anything you think I should know. I want to make sure you're in the best possible hands. That may not mean me."
"Why would we say anything if you might recommend us to someone else?"
"It's fine," Seto said.
Even though Seto didn't want to talk with anyone about what had happened, he understood it was a necessity. Not just for him, but for Mokuba as well. Mokuba would need to talk to someone, and he wanted Seto to do the same.
"If talking about school is all you need to do," Jennings said, "Then we'll talk about school. Having someone who wants to listen never hurts."
When Seto didn't answer, Mokuba checked with him, twice, before deciding, "I'll step out for a while. Just outside the door, okay, Seto? I promise. Right outside."
Seto nodded once and touched the bottle cap to his lips. Jennings sounded nothing like him, either of them. There was no way he could get her voice confused with either of them, and that meant there was less risk of him zoning out. He would be okay. He had to be.
But the door closed and Mokuba was gone, leaving Seto alone with his thoughts and a stranger who wanted him to share the memories the bottle cap left at bay. The darkness began to creep into his vision, followed by the voice he knew too well, the voice that always came when Mokuba was gone.
"Why are you here?" Jennings asked, her tone confused and different enough Seto stopped spinning the bottle cap. He had thought the answer self-explanatory. What else were people supposed to do after a trauma?
"I don't know."
"You don't have to be," she told him. "Did someone put you up to this?"
Seto couldn't remember. Maybe Mokuba had suggested it, or it could have been one of the detectives, or Roland. He couldn't remember why he had decided to come talk to someone about something he wanted to forget. It would have made much more sense to stay home in the house that didn't feel like his own, but to have stayed with Mokuba where they could be together.
Mokuba had left the room. He was gone and there was no guarantee any of this was real, save the bottle cap.
"I don't know."
"You don't have to talk about it. Your life is much more than what happened."
How did she know? The man—Haru had taken his life and maybe there was nothing left to reclaim, nothing to cling to for the hope of moving on. Maybe Seto was gone and the only thing that mattered was knowing what was real and what was all in his head. Why did he want to keep going when he would end up back there every night?
Mokuba would want him to talk, about anything.
"He was my world for four years," Seto ended up saying. "Now it's stopped spinning."
"And I'm sure you know what I want to say to that."
Seto did.
"People…people tell me they're glad I got out," Seto said, clipping his words and holding back anything personal. "Their wording is upbeat, like if they mention anything honest, I'll break."
How was he supposed to tell them there was nothing left whole to be broken? That his world had been real before, that there was nothing left to coddle or talk around?
"They're happy," Jennings said. "And they probably feel guilty about it."
"They should." Except Mokuba. "They shouldn't get to be happy."
She nodded and slouched a little in her seat. Seto's back remained straight and rigid, and he scrutinized her to decide if him being uncomfortable meant she should feel the same. The slouch was so slight she could have not realized she was doing it. Could he hold an accident against her?
"What would you like them to feel?"
"Nothing."
"Would it be easier if they only talked about missing you? Certainly they did."
Seto shook his head and started rolling the bottle cap again. "Most didn't." Only Mokuba, and maybe Roland on occasion. And Seto wasn't sure how confident he was in assuming Roland did. It was more likely he just felt guilt over letting the men walk out and disappear with Seto.
"Have you heard anything from your father?"
"Other than being disowned?"
"Other than that, yes."
He hadn't been trying to get in touch with Gozaburo, and hadn't been interested in looking into contacting someone in prison. The most he had done was check, to be sure, that they hadn't ended up in the same one. The only thing that could have made any of this worse was for the two of them to exchange stories.
"No."
"Do you think you'll ever want to?"
"No."
What point would there be in talking to Gozaburo? Seto wasn't the heir to anything, he wasn't a Kaiba, he wasn't anything. Gozaburo didn't want him just as much as Seto didn't want Gozaburo. He had no need for that life anymore.
So what did he want?
"What do you want?" she asked, almost right as Seto had the thought. It caught and held his attention more than anything else she had said to him before. He wanted to forget, didn't he? If he could forget, then…
Then what? Forgetting was practically the same as forgiveness, and those two, those two didn't deserve anything resembling forgiveness. Was that what she would tell him to do, maybe not today, but on the fifty-second visit? Seto, you have to let go of the hate in your heart and accept things as they are. Move on and forget.
No.
"What do you tell people to do?" What was the advice given to people without any life left? Find something to live for? Make the most out of what they left you with?
"It's not my job to tell you how to live your life," Jennings said. "I'm here for you, however you need me to be."
"And if I need you to tell me what to do?"
Seto hated the sound of his voice. The more he spoke, the more it grated on him. Had it always been this rough, this broken, this harsh? Was it only the years of silence making Seto forget how he had sounded all along?
"I think you need to answer that for yourself. Maybe not today, but eventually, you'll know what you want."
What he wanted? How could he want anything?
Seto ran his hands over the couch, thinking back to the leather one in Gozburo's office that squeaked every time Seto had crossed his legs the other way. It had forced him to sit so rigidly while he waited for Gozaburo to get off the phone or to get to whatever point he had called Seto in to lecture on. But this couch was covered in cushion and fabric, too much to make any sound.
"Would you be more comfortable if we brought Mokuba back in?"
His own comfort had never crossed his mind. The nearest exit, the bottle cap, Mokuba's location, the lingering memories of hands on him, those all crossed his mind, but not whether he was comfortable. Seto couldn't think of any answer. He didn't know if he was comfortable now on the couch that didn't protest with his movements. He didn't know if he was comfortable anywhere.
"No."
Jennings rephrased. "Would you like me to call Mokuba back in?"
After thinking about it for a moment, forcing his mind to accept wanting anything to be achievable, Seto nodded. Experimenting with him out of the room had failed, and the darkness at the edge of his vision was threatening to close in on itself. That would just leave the voice in his ear that promised forever.
She stood and went to the door, softly asking Mokuba to come in once more.
"I'd like to ask you the same question I just asked your brother," Jennings said. "Which is what you hope to get out of these sessions."
Mokuba paused like Seto had. "I don't know. I guess we need some sort of…I don't want to say closure, but, oh, I don't know, understanding? I guess that's as close as I'll get. We need to come to an understanding about everything. I mean, it happened. We aren't supposed to just forget all that."
"It happened," Jennings repeated, nodding as she spoke. "I think that's the mindset you should base everything on moving forward."
"That's it?"
"That's it. What happened to you both, what you both went through, it isn't something anyone should have had to. But it happened. Maybe the first thing we need to work on is accepting that."
Seto fiddled with the bottle cap and Mokuba bounced a foot, just like the had never left the lobby. They both looked ahead, but not at Jennings. Anywhere else felt like a safer focus, or at least, it was Seto's mindset. Mokuba could have been distracted for any number of reasons. Seto let the words echo again and again—it happened it happened it happened it happened—because hearing them didn't make them feel any more real.
How could it have happened? How did one man, against all reason and odds, break into KaibaCorp, and keep Seto under everyone's nose for four years? It shouldn't have been possible, but it happened.
It happened.
"How do we accept it?" Mokuba asked.
"It happened," Seto said. "She's right."
"But Seto—"
"It happened," he said again. "He kept me for four years."
"I don't think talking about it is a good idea," Mokuba said. "You haven't seen him when he zones out. Sometimes it takes forever to get him back."
With a quick nod, Jennings answered, "I understand what you're saying. But if that's the case, Seto, do you feel grounded in the present?" She waited just long enough for Seto's reply, a minor shake of the head, before going on. "I think you zoning out is your mind trying to find any truth to cling to. And accepting what happened as a part of your present will help with that, given time."
She was right. Seto didn't know how she had figured it out in such a short amount of time, but just the fact that she had pinned down so much with just one meeting made Seto trust her, not fully, but enough that he wouldn't mind seeing her again. At least she seemed to understand the struggle. She was the first person not to look at him as though he was too far gone.
"What happens next?" Mokuba asked.
"We get started," Jennings said.
And Seto almost felt ready for it.
