Some of these chapters are short. Some will be substantially longer. It depends on what needs to be added. I was extremely limiting on myself as I wrote the first draft, so as to ensure that I wouldn't get off-topic. This is a very centralized story. I meant for it to be that way.

These first few chapters are relatively short, because there isn't much that I needed to change from their original, 500-word drafts. Also, they were meant primarily to set the stage, and get used to the characters. The Seto and Mokuba of this tale are vastly different from the Seto and Mokuba that you'll find in any of my other stories.

There's good reason for that, and it's not just because they're modeled after their initial, manga counterparts.

I'm being deliberately vague here at the beginning more to set the mood and atmosphere. Don't worry; before we finish this first section, you'll know what happened.

Mostly.


.


Kaiba Mokuba was nine years old, but he had the eyes of a bitter man more than thrice his age. Grey and violet swirled like angry storm clouds in his eyes, and he was already learning his brother's art of using his stare as a weapon. Not six months before now, the first question people asked when they looked at him was how a child like him could possibly be the vice-president of anything. Now, the question was how they hadn't seen it sooner.

His brother insisted that he go to school. Mokuba often found himself thinking long and hard on the futility of a so-called "formal" education. He already spent much of each day at the Kaiba Corporation's central offices, filing and copying, and generally assisting however he could. He attended his brother's meetings, took notes, found classes and tutorials online while other workers were on their lunch breaks. He learned public speaking, marketing; he learned how to deal with people.

He learned. He produced. He contributed.

What he could possibly learn from, produce with, or contribute to a classroom full of half-dead drooling sheep was a mystery he had yet to solve. At Kaiba-Corp., people called him "Kaiba-fukushachou." At school, people called him "that Kaiba kid." At Kaiba-Corp., people bowed their heads and smiled deferentially when they saw him. At school, people stared and pointed, and whispered snide remarks. People knew what they were doing at Kaiba-Corp. People hadn't the faintest clue what they were doing at school.

It didn't take a child psychologist to determine which setting Mokuba preferred.

He'd asked, a few times now, if he could be home-schooled, like Niisama. But so far, his requests had been denied. Apparently interacting with his peers was an important life skill, too, and Mokuba wasn't permitted to shirk a situation just because it made him uncomfortable or angry.

Even now.

Kaiba Mokuba rose from bed as his alarm sounded, dressed quickly but perfunctorily in jeans and a t-shirt, slipped on a pair of expensive-but-battered sneakers, and trudged into the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom to comb his hair. He did none of these things because he wanted to do them, but because his brother did. That was a deciding factor in a great many things that Mokuba found himself doing. His own moral compass was warped, he knew that, and societal norms could go fuck themselves. But Niisama's expectations still held true for him.

Once, he had tried to explain himself and his motives. Mutou Yuugi and his band of friends were the only people he thought even might passably understand; the jury was still out on if they did. "I don't care what pain I have to go through," he'd said to them, "as long as I can help my Niisama."

Since his first moments of conscious memory, Mokuba had been at his brother's heels, hoping in whatever small way to help him, to please him, to make him proud. There were a lot of people who had those same hopes, especially these days, but Seto wasn't interested in any of them; that he still tolerated Mokuba's ministrations, clumsy and ignorant as they tended to be, was a matter of rather furious pride for the young Kaiba.

Even now.

Mokuba still strove to make his brother smile. Strove to make him proud. He supposed, in whatever capacity that served him for reflection anymore, that that was why he never complained about it. Why he never talked about it. Even though sometimes he thought it might drive him into an asylum. Why, when he woke in the middle of the night with sweat and self-inflicted scratches on his face and a scream still halfway-trapped inside his throat, he didn't go running for Niisama's bedroom and break down the door.

He had no right to expect his brother to soothe the nightmares away, to stroke his hair and rock him back to sleep. Even after what had happened, even though he was still so small for his age, even though people said that was Seto's job as his guardian, Mokuba had no right to expect it from him.

Niisama had gone through hell first. Niisama hadn't had anyone to nurture him, to whisper tenderly to him and make everything better. Niisama couldn't sneak out into the hall at night, in pajamas and a pair of socks, hoping for someone to tell him a story so that he could get back to sleep.

And Niisama never bitched and moaned about the lot he'd been handed in life.

So Mokuba never did, either.

Even now.