"Calm down, Joey," Seto ordered, holding Joey's face in both of his hands as wide brown eyes stared up at him in terror.
Sirens wailed as the ambulance rushed to the Kaiba mansion to take Seto to the hospital, because they simply didn't have the antivenom he needed here at the mansion, and it was too risky not to go.
"I am going to be fine," he said calmly, even as he felt his skin burn and itch. "You're not going to tell Mokuba what happened. Tell him that something came up at the office and I had to go in to fix things. Don't worry about me, don't let him worry about me. I'll call you with an update when I can, but you'll stay here with him."
"I want to go with you!"
"You can't do that."
"But Seto—" Joey couldn't stand that Seto was making him stay behind. Tears slid down his cheeks as the ambulance got louder, closer.
"Joey, I need you to be strong for Mokuba and I need you to tell Roland to figure out where the spider came from and make sure there aren't any others. The last thing I need is for someone else to get hurt."
"What if you don't come back?" Joey whispered, his eyes wide with horror at the prospect.
"Joey, I've been catatonic, abused, abducted, bound, exploited, arrested, sued, and assaulted. I've had my soul trapped once in a trading card and twice in the Virtual World. I've survived a lot. I'll survive this too."
He kissed Joey's forehead one last time before he let himself be dragged away by the paramedics. Joey wiped at his cheek, trying not to cry as he and Seto exchanged a final glance before the back doors of the ambulance slammed shut and drove him away.
Several of the staff members were standing behind Joey on the salted sidewalk, watching with him as the ambulance drove away, eventually out of sight. When he turned around to go back inside the house, Roland was just arriving, bidding the servants to get back to work.
"I've been informed of the situation," he told Joey, looking as calm and unflappable as ever. "Did Mr. Kaiba leave any instructions for me to carry out in his absence?" He knew Seto well enough to know that he probably did.
"Uh, yeah." Joey rubbed at his red eyes, barely self-conscious about his tears. "He wants you to figure out how the spider got in and get rid of any others that might be around," Joey answered, still wiping the moisture from his face as he tried to calm himself.
"Can you show me where he was bitten?"
"Yeah, follow me."
Joey traced his steps along the route they'd taken to get Seto to his nurses. He stopped when they came to the brightly-colored, half-smushed spider on the floor.
"I recognized it as the Emerald Emperor spider," Joey said somewhat quietly, his insides trembling as he fretted for the stubborn brunette he loved so deeply. "It's only found in Australia, so I have no idea how it ended up here." He lifted his gaze from the spider to Roland, and saw that Seto's right-hand man was staring at a door about a dozen feet away. "What's that?" he asked, wanting something to distract him from his nerves.
"That," Roland answered slowly as he approached the door and pulled a keychain out of his pocket. "Is the room where the late Mr. Kaiba would school his step-son." A chill went down Joey's spine. "It's been sealed since he passed away, and the current Mr. Kaiba is not in the habit of owning deadly exotic species of anything." He slid a key into the lock of the door, turning it carefully, cautious in case the locking mechanism had rusted into place over the years. "Gozaburo Kaiba, however, was fascinated with the specimens. I know for a fact that he owned at least a few, but we never did find them after he passed."
"Wait!" Joey held his breath as Roland turned to look back at him.
"Is something wrong?"
"If that," Joey pointed to the spider, "Made it out of there, then maybe we should have someone in a hazmat suit go in there. Just in case. We don't know what we're dealing with."
"Fair point. I should have realized that myself." Roland locked the door again and put the keys back in his pocket. "I'll have someone properly dispose of this one and call professionals to examine the room and assess the possible threat."
Roland started to walk away, but Joey followed along with him, much to his own surprise.
"How do you know that much about Gozaburo?"
"I once worked for him, though not in the same capacity as I now serve Master Kaiba."
"What was your job for him, then?"
"I was a security analyst, part of his personal security detail." A pause. "Gozaburo required a personal security detail more so than Seto-sama does. He was far less liked, and I think he realized that it increased his chances of being attacked in some way. I worked for him both here and at the KaibaCorp Headquarters, which is partly why I'm so familiar with the ins and outs of both locations."
It was the first time Joey heard Roland call him Seto-sama.
"Then you knew what was happening to him, what Gozaburo did."
"Yes, I knew, and I wasn't the only one." They started descending a set of stairs, Joey keeping pace with Roland. "Then how come you never stopped him?"
Roland came to a standstill on the landing, turning to face the upset teenager with a small sigh.
Joey had never stopped to consider this before, but Roland's words had triggered a realization that induced Joey's line of inquiry. He looked up at Roland with an expression of anger and defiance, but Roland remained unfazed.
"I knew Seto-sama when he was a child, and I've watched him grow up. It's true that I did nothing to stop his abuse, but the situation was complicated."
"That's not a good reason to—"
"Hear me out," Roland interrupted calmly, lifting a hand to stop the blond from blurting out the first things that came to his mind. "The only staff-member who ever confronted Kaiba-sama about his treatment of his step-son was deported and never heard from again. The rest of us who shared his sympathies realized that there was nothing we could do that would stop what was happening. We always did the best we could, though, to make things easier for them." He was speaking of Mokuba now too. "If we tried to contradict him, we would be removed and replaced with people who wouldn't argue with him, people who might even condone his... educational practices. Besides that, it was physically impossible to stop him while he was administering punishment." The was a tone in his voice that hinted at his disgust with his former employer. Joey swallowed hard, his anger fading in the light of Gozaburo's cruelty.
"Kaiba-sama would lock them into that room alone, with the door locked and deadbolted such that nobody could enter from the outside. He had the room soundproofed. He had a collared length of chain attached to the desk, which ensured that Seto couldn't lock him out when he left him in there alone. Nobody was ever allowed in there but the two of them. We did what we could for Seto-sama. We did more than he'll ever know, more than any one person knows, actually. But he knows who was on his side, and those are the only servants he retained after his step-father's death."
Joey was disturbed by all of this, and was looking just as upset now as he had been when the ambulance drove away. Even more so, actually. Everything Seto had told him before now seemed sugar-coated in comparison to the raw truth.
"He was not alone, Joseph. He was never truly alone here. But if Kaiba-sama left venomous creatures in that room, and if they remained there after he died, Seto-sama would be the one to know about it."
Joey nodded a little and dropped his gaze, trying to process everything he'd just heard.
"Is that satisfactory for now, or do you need anything else?"
"One last thing: can you get me a copy of Seto's medical records?"
Joey sat cross-legged in Seto's desk chair, nervously fingering the thick folder containing his lover's medical records. Were all medical records this thick? Should he be worried by that? Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he should have asked Seto about this first. Maybe...
No. He would ask Seto first. He trusted Seto, whether he was forthcoming with painful details or not. After all, if Seto ever got it into his mind to ask Joey about the first time his dad hit him, he wouldn't really want to talk about it either, would he? Or the first time he'd come home from school to find his dad shooting up on meth...
He wouldn't look at the file until he talked to Seto. It didn't matter that he wanted Joey to stay away, he was going to visit him in the hospital anyways. This was one thing Joey was willing to be completely stubborn about. He left the file behind and went to visit Mokuba. He stood outside his bedroom door and took a deep breath, plastering on the fake smile he'd worn so often back when he still lived with his dad.
"Hey, Mokuba," Joey said softly as he stepped inside, the sleepy, sick child lifting his head to smile at Joey. "How are you doing?" He approached the bed, sitting down on the edge of it near Mokuba, facing him just as Seto had done.
"I'm okay." He yawned, opening his mouth wide like a cat. "What's up?"
"Something urgent came up at work and your brother had to go back to the office," Joey lied glibly. "He probably won't come home until late tonight, so he wanted me to tell you that he won't be able to visit you again until tomorrow."
Mokuba's face fell, and he looked both disappointed and angry. The disappointment made sense, but he didn't understand the anger at first.
"He promised he wasn't going to do this anymore," he whimpered, his eyes starting to tear up. "He promised!"
Joey felt guilty for lying to Mokuba, but at the same time, he knew that this was better than telling Mokuba that his brother had been bitten by a deadly spider that shouldn't even be in this country, let alone this house. If he knew that Seto might die, he'd be inconsolable, which would only make his illness more miserable. It might even make him sicker.
"I don't want him leaving anymore!" Mokuba tried to shout, but he was too weak to actually raise his voice as much as he wished to. "Why can't he just stay home…"
"Hey, pal, don't cry." Joey handed Mokuba some tissues, but quickly realized that it wouldn't be enough. He pulled Mokuba into his arms and hugged him tightly, trying to reassure him.
"He doesn't like leaving you anymore than you like it," he assured. "He would do anything to be able to stay home and just take care of you, but right now he just… he can't do that…" Joey started tearing up now too as he thought about the danger Seto was in. He may have told Mokuba not to cry, but now he couldn't help but do so himself.
At Mokuba's behest, Joey stayed with him the rest of the day. He was vaccinated, after all, so he was safe. His cell rang every couple hours with an update from the nurse at the hospital-apparently, Seto had arranged for Joey to be frequently updated about his condition, a thoughtful gesture that Joey appreciated immensely. Once they'd hooked him up to all of their machines and started an antivenin drip, they sedated him so that he wouldn't be in any pain. He was supposed to wake up that evening, and Joey planned on being there when he did.
At around eight, Joey told Mokuba that he was going to KC HQ to make sure that Seto had at least fed himself. He stuffed Kaiba's medical records into a tote bag, pulled on a winter coat, and departed for the hospital, praying the whole time that Seto would make it through the night.
Author Notes: Poor Kaiba~! :'3 I swear, this is the last time in this saga that I'll throw in another "Gozaburo did something to Seto and he just doesn't want to talk about it." The fourth installment will have a very ORIGINAL plot, I promise! ;)
DISCLAIMER: The Emerald Emperor spider is a fictional spider species that I made up because I couldn't find a real spider species that I found satisfactory for the purpose of this story. They are not real.