It did turn out to be his aunt and uncle who'd reported him for child abuse, and while those charges probably wouldn't stick, his lawyers had pointed out that he didn't need to get convicted for him to lose his little brother for good. All they had to do was prove that was an unfit guardian, and his aunt and uncle would get full guardianship of Mokuba, just as they'd petitioned along with the charge.

The first day in court, after four months of compiling their cases during which the Kaiba brothers were forbidden from seeing each other, was a media circus, a total nightmare for Seto. He was relieved that the court-date had finally arrived, which meant that something would finally be decided, but at the same time, this was his chance to screw things up, and he was afraid that he would no matter how hard he tried not to. He'd already missed Mokuba's twelfth birthday; he didn't want to miss anymore of his brother's life.

The worst part of it all was that Mokuba had been barred from giving any sort of testimony in court. So much was going wrong in all of this that Seto wished he could blame it on a conspiracy, but he had no evidence for one. Yet.

Although the number of press allowed in the court-room had been limited, it was still far too many for his taste. He couldn't help but notice that the number of people who'd shown up to support him was dismally small, composed primarily of Yugi and the dweeb patrol.

Alright, show time, he thought to himself as he approached the witness stand. Don't screw this up.

"What is your name?"

"Seto Kaiba." The lawyer sighed slightly.

"And what is your real name?" the prosecutor persisted, trying to clarify his intentions.

"That is my real name." Seto smirked, and a wave of suppressed chuckles rippled through the audience.

"And what name is on your birth certificate, Mr. Kaiba?" He was irked, feeling like the defendant was trying to make a fool of him. Seto's smirk faded.

"Seto Sasaki," he answered grudgingly, speaking the last name of his birth family for the first time in years. He ignored the whispers that fluttered through the audience, pretending that the rumors which would be circulating by the end of his questioning wouldn't bother him at all.

"And your mother was Sayuri Nakamura Sasaki, correct?"

"Yes."

"And she was the sister of Mr. Nakamura"—he gestured to Seto's uncle with a nod—"correct?"

"How is this relevant?" Seto snapped, something trembling deep inside him. Joey winced, knowing that Seto's aggression was only born of anguish. Seto missed his mother deeply, which was why he never spoke of her. The brief period of his life before she died was the happiest time he'd ever known, free of stress and sorrow and fear and pain.

"Answer the question, Mr. Kaiba," the judge chastised with a surly expression, as if he could tell that Kaiba was going to be one of the more difficult witnesses in this whole case.

"Yes," Seto said with a sigh, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair in a defensive manner that made his adviser sigh with exasperation.

"And is it true that Mr. and Mrs. Nakamura took you and your little brother in when your father, Satoshi Sasaki, passed away?"

"Yes." Seto's eyes burned as he imagined himself annihilating the stuffy lawyer with his Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon's neutron blast. It was the only thing keeping him from making another outburst.

"And did they not treat you fairly and kindly while you were in their care?" Finally, a chance for Seto to actually say something.

"No, they did not." He straightened up a little as he felt the urge to speak against them swell up inside him. As much as he wished to ruin their credibility, it was still difficult for him to say anything at all on the subject of his childhood. "They treated us like the outsiders we were, an unwelcome intrusion into their lives. They didn't even pretend to consider us as family, let alone care for us like we were their own sons, as they would have you believe."

"And what facts do you have to support this claim? What specific events lead you to this conclusion?" the prosecutor asked. Seto grit his teeth, wondering if the damned lawyer knew that he was putting his witness through hell all over again by asking him that question. If he knew, he certainly didn't care. Well, Seto couldn't get away with not answering the question, so he did the best that he could.

"When Mokuba broke a china plate, they sent him to bed without dinner for a whole week."

"Yes, but what did they do to you?" the prosecutor interrupted. Seto sat back, his jaw clenched tightly as he stubbornly held his tongue. The silence stretched out uncomfortably, restless audience members shifting in their seats, whispering their speculations to those around them.

After what felt like an eternity to Seto, the defense attorney finally spoke up: "Objection, Your Honor. This is putting my client through psychological distress. I would like to request a brief recess."

"Sustained," the judge ruled, already looking fed up with the whole lot of them. He banged his gavel and said, "The court shall take a twenty minute recess."

The prosecutor, with a look of triumph, said, looking straight at Kaiba, "Then the prosecution rests, for now."

Yugi glanced at his friends with a look of concern as they stood. "Why do you think he didn't answer his question?"

"I think he doesn't have anything substantive to bring against them. Like, they may not have been nice people, but they didn't actually do anything that bad," Tristan answered, almost dismissively.

"But his lawyer called it 'psychological distress,'" Tea protested, looking thoroughly confused by all of this.

"She just said that to bail him out," Tristan explained. Yugi wasn't comfortable with Tristan's explanation, and looked back at Seto, who was now striding along the perimeter of the room as he approached the door, escorted by his irritated attorney. Joey had already left his seat and was working his way past the press to reach his boyfriend. Yugi thought it odd that Joey had refrained from commenting on the matter. Odd, unless it was something personal that he didn't wish to share.

"I think it has to be more than that," Yugi said suddenly, making the both of them turn to look at him. "I mean, it makes sense that if he was mistreated as a child, it would be hard to talk about. Don't you think?" Grudgingly, Tristan agreed, but he didn't seem to accept the real possibility that Kaiba could have been mistreated when he was young. He simply couldn't imagine Kaiba as anything other than he was: an arrogant, rich, stoic adult who was always either smirking or scowling.

"Try another stunt like that, and they'll arrest you for being held in contempt of the court, which will NOT make them look favorably upon your defense!" Seto's attorney was chewing him out when Joey entered their meeting room, going straight for his boyfriend and hugging him tightly. Seto returned the hug before releasing him and addressing his lawyer again.

"What you're forgetting is that they have the burden of proof, not us. They need to prove that I'm an unfit guardian, not the other way around. Their line of questioning is irrelevant."

"But they could use your childhood trauma against you and say that it makes you unfit, especially if it's had any long-lasting effects on you!" she pointed out rather aggressively. "Judging by your performance out there, I'm assuming that it has, so it would work to our advantage if we had all questions about your mental stability cleared up with a psychological evaluation."

"Hell no!" Seto protested, Joey putting a soothing arm around him. The lawyer sighed in frustration and turned away for a moment while Joey tried to talk some sense into the stubborn brunette.

"Calm down, Seto," he said gently. "Nobody thinks you're crazy or unstable. But not everybody knows you as well as I do, so not everybody can tell."

"A psych eval would work really well in our favor if you're as stable as you claim you are," his sassy lawyer pointed out.

Seto looked at Joey with uncertainty, and Joey didn't understand why at first.

"I may not be stable, but it certainly hasn't affected Mokuba," he said quietly.

"You're not unstable," Joey insisted as the lawyer became exasperated. "You're coping after having gone through hell, and you're doing a fine job of it."

"Alright, I did not just hear that," she declared, washing her hands of both of them. "If anybody asks, you two were speaking too quietly for me to hear you." She pulled out her cell pone and started looking through her contacts. "I'll get you the number of the psychologist I know. He can help us with this, ma chérie." She left the room with Joey watching her in admiration.

"Where'd you get her?"

"Caroline Julian? The U.S. I only pay for the best lawyers."

The rest of the first day went fairly miserably. Today was the day that the geek squad was called up as character witnesses. They'd been drilled by Seto's lawyers, but apparently, it didn't make much difference to their performance.

"Kaiba cares about his brother more than anything or anyone else," Tristan answered. "He once even threatened suicide when he thought he wouldn't be able to get Mokuba back."

Seto ground his teeth as he barely restrained himself from smashing his head against the table in frustration.

"Is that so?" the prosecutor said, a smile in his voice that mad Seto glare at him all the more. "So, Mr. Kaiba has exhibited suicidal tendencies before?"

It was all Seto could do to keep himself from shouting a protest that he was not suicidal and never had been. Joey noticed his hands balling into fists as he crossed his arms, and he wished that he could be closer to Seto to comfort him.

"Well, I'm not sure if I would say he was suicidal," Tristan said, looking uncertain. "It was more like he couldn't stand the thought of living without him. You see, Pegasus had kidnapped Mokuba and threatened to hold him captive permanently unless Kaiba could beat Yugi in a duel and then beat Pegasus in a duel as well. He was going to win, but then Yugi turned the tables on him and he realized it was hopeless. Well, they were dueling on the roof, and when Yugi was about to win, Kaiba stood on the edge so that if Yugi attacked him, he'd go over the edge, and it would be Yugi's fault."

"I see," the prosecutor said, looking devious. "And did you believe that he would stay on that ledge and not seek to save himself if Yugi had attacked?"

"Well, yeah," Tristan answered, making Joey wince. Even he could see how this was hurting their case. "He was dead serious about it."

"Thank you, Mr. Taylor. The prosecution rests." Seto began to grumble German under his breath, and Yugi could just make out some of the words from where he sat behind him.

"Scheisse. Verdammt in die Hölle und zurück, versuchen Sie, mich zu schrauben über? Dummkopf. Scheisse," the executive growled, his accent flawless.

"Are you cursing in German?" Joey asked in a faint whisper, impressed. The very nature of his reaction was enough to make Seto's temper simmer down, if just a little, as Seto turned softening eyes on him and nodded slightly.

"You've seen my library. Did you think those books were just for show?"

"Well, yeah," Joey admitted with a faint blush. "I didn't realize you could actually read them all, let alone speak in those languages." Joey noticed then that the judge was throwing a glare their way, and he shut himself up.

Author Notes: All translations acquired from Google. Please tell me what you think! More reviews = more chapters!