IV

"Who do you invite to a funeral?" Jounouchi asks over another uneaten dinner. He's on his second glass of wine; the pain is slowly becoming background noise, the elevator music to his life. He feels like one of those has-been sports stars - nursing the chronic ache that ruined all his plans. Mokuba looks up, and Jounouchi is surprised to see the boy - no longer, Jounouchi reminds himself - man chewing.

"I don't think there are invitations, per se," Mokuba says after he swallows. "I've never... We've always attended the funerals."

"We can't just let anyone in. He wouldn't want to be on display like that."

Mokuba nods thoughtfully, eating some more food with what looks like genuine hunger. "A list, then. We'll check people at the door. Should we let the press in?"

Jounouchi doesn't like the way Mokuba is slipping back into his normal skin. It's too soon; Kaiba isn't even buried yet. "No. Let them get their kicks at some other funeral."

"Yeah." Mokuba stares down at his dinner plate. Jounouchi finishes his wine and reaches for the bottle to pour himself another glasses. "Jounouchi? What do you think niisama would want me to do about the wedding?"

Looking up, Jounouchi realizes that he hasn't seen Elle since the press conference. "I... Why would you ask me?" He needs a stiffer drink, but settles for the third glass of wine. "He was your brother - you know him better than I did." It hurt to say that aloud. It had always been true, though; Jounouchi was never been privy to the bond that Kaiba shared with Mokuba. Their phone calls and e-mails were always most private thing in Kaiba's life. It stopped bothering Jounouchi (mostly) in his late twenties.

"That was true," Mokuba looks up from his plate with a certain shy curiosity, "when I was a teenager, or even ten years ago, but for years he kept his confidence in you. He loved you enough to let you shoulder his burdens."

Funny how Jounouchi had never noticed the weight. He feels an all-too-familiar prickling in his chest. Lead in his stomach. When had his mourning become a litany of clichés? "We didn't really talk about this scenario. He was happy that you were in love. He did - " Jounouchi pauses, the full thought unravelling in his mind before he voices it. He did hope you would be as happy as we were. Jounouchi clears his throat and sips his wine with god-like restraint. "He hoped your marriage would be perfect."

"So did I."

Mokuba doesn't finish his dinner that night, though he's bounds ahead of Jounouchi, who hadn't even started.

#

"You know," Kaiba said, "I still haven't thought about the speech I'm supposed to give at the reception."

"Say what comes to heart."

Kaiba laughed shortly, so rare and infectious that Jounouchi couldn't help but smile. "You've always said that like it comes easily. I don't think I loved you so much, at first, as I did your ability to work so easily with what comes to your heart."

Jounouchi wakes with a start, bolt upright. He holds his breath before he looks over, only to be disappointed again. His memories are the dream - the dead are the reality. A moment passes with his breath the only sound.

Then his stomach growls loud enough that it may have been a monster under the bed, or at least what had woken Jounouchi up. The clock at his bedside reads 2:27AM. Jounouchi sighs. He needs food. He wants to sleep until the universe gives Kaiba back for good.

Instead he stands, pulls on some jeans and a sweater, and finds the keys to the car that Mokuba is letting him borrow. He steps into the hall.

"Don't you dare blame this on me!"

Jounouchi freezes in a panic, searching frantically for the source of the voice. A thin strip of light shines from under the door to the master suite. Unsure, Jounouchi listens.

"I'm not, I'm not," Mokuba says, his words apologetic where his tone is not. "No one would have predicted this. But I need you to understand where I'm coming from. We can't get married two weeks after my brother's death!"

"Why not? Do you realize how hard your superstitious delay is for my family? They're not like you, they can't afford to get another plane ticket in six months, or a year, or whenever you crawl out of your brother's grave and rejoin the living."

It's the most Jounouchi has ever heard Elle say at once.

"It's not like that. Yes, I'm mourning, but I also intend to respect my brother by letting him settle before I move on."

"Oh my God," Elle bursts. "It's always so theatric with you, your family - you treat every single thing like life or death. If we had just gotten married in Italy like I wanted - "

"You'd have me be a grocer in Italy, like your father!"

"A happy grocer! A married grocer! A grocer with a - " A sound like a sob interrupts her speech. "I can't keep waiting to start our lives, to start a family. I've waited for you for so long." She's softer now, subdued - broken? Jounouchi can't help but feel guilty; what chaos has he introduced into their lives? What chaos in their lives has he not known about?

Mokuba's voice is quieter, but no less relenting. "What's one more year?"

Elle laughs, but it sounds more like crying. Jounouchi remembers the feeling, wants to interrupt to assure her that it will pass. "What's a decade? After nine years... I can't do this, Mokuba. Maybe I can't be the wife a Kaiba son needs. I'm not hard enough for this."

Jounouchi walks away, unable to hear anymore, unwilling to bear witness to anymore pain. He has enough of his own, without Elle's to add.

#

He finds himself at a loud diner near the airport where he and Kaiba last enjoyed lunch. He orders two cups of coffee and sets one on the other side of the booth. The steam is like a phantom keeping him company. Jounouchi drinks his while he looks over the menu.

"Would you like to wait for your friend before you order?" his waitress, a plump matronly woman with dark hair, asks with a matronly smile.

Jounouchi shakes his head. "He could be a while. He wouldn't want me to wait." Swallowing bitter bile that builds up in his mouth, Jounouchi orders toast and poached eggs, handing the menu back to the waitress with a plaster smile. When his dinner/breakfast arrives he looks up to notice a gaggle of younger waitresses looking at him from behind the cash register. One of the girls, with a ring in one nostril and long platinum hair, seems to silence the others.

She steps around the counter and walks over to him. Despite her noticeable looks she has an unassuming walk, a natural muted stance in her gait. She stands at his table. He takes a bite of his eggs. They're probably delicious, but taste like ash on his tongue.

"Mr. Jounouchi?" She has a familiar cadence to her voice, and the plumps and points of her features remind him of... Her colorful name tag has "Alice" written in thick English letters. Jounouchi almost laughs, but doesn't want to embarrass himself if he's wrong.

"Alice Bakura?" he asks in English. She looks at her shoes and then over her shoulder. She nods. Despite having recognized her, Jounouchi can't help but stare for a moment. She smiles at him, one side of her mouth quirked higher in amusement. She looks a little more like her mother when she does that, if Jounouchi recalls the woman correctly.

"I haven't seen you since you were... God, seven?" The reality of having crossed paths with his old life disorients him a little. He hasn't thought of his old friends - or really anyone - since the accident. "How is your father?"

"Well," she replies, perfectly polite. "He had hoped to hear from you. He worries." She frowns at the untouched coffee across across the table. "I'll tell him you say hello."

"Thank you."

She turns back to her staring coworkers and shouts in the rudest Japanese Jounouchi can recall - the kind he remembers speaking at her age - "It's not him!" as she walks back to the register.

Jounouchi finishes his food without really tasting it, and wonders for a moment how his life could have been, without the tragedy that was Kaiba Seto.

#

Jounouchi wakes up late the next morning in the den, curled into the leather armchair - Kaiba's favorite - with a bottle of scotch between his knees. Elle is glaring at him from the doorway, but she walks away without speaking.

[tbc]

Notes
I think that so far this is one of my favorite parts, and I suspect it's because I like the fight. But, no lies, I wrote this fight before my husband and I decided to get married - and I suspect I channeled some of my frustration into it. (Granted, we'd only been together four years and had a baby at this point, so it's not like I didn't think it was going to happen. And then we did get married, in, like, eight weeks last October.) I know, way to ruin the magic of creation, right?

Also, randomly: what are you listening to right now?

Thanks again to Kagi! Much love.