Authoress's Note

I'm psyched about all of the feedback I'm getting on this! Ya'll are SO awesome! . All-you-can-eat digital strawberry mousse Pocky for all of you!

Oh, by the way: this fic has its own soundtrack!!! I've made it up myself – yay me! Hahaha...

It kinda makes sense: like if this fic was a movie, what song would be playing in the background. I don't own any of the songs on it, either, just to make a general disclaimer – they're mostly your average mainstream rock/punk rock songs. This chapter and each one to follow will have its own song.

Same Time Next Week Soundtrack

Chapter Six, Track 1: "How to Save a Life" – The Fray

CHAPTER 6 (NOT the last chapter, either! )
"My name is Seto Kaiba, as I've said before," Seto started, keeping his mouth set in a narrow line and his arms crossed. Ironic how he looked and acted so much as Gozaburo had – and Gozaburo was the reason that he was here. However, he continued unflinchingly. "Some of you know me, of course – I'm the CEO of KaibaCorp. But I haven't always been so well-known."

Joey sat back, almost pleased that Seto was acting the way he was. He sounded like he was reading some pompous, best-seller account of his life so far. If he really was just a stuck-up jerk (which was certainly the way he was coming across now) Joey could hate him in peace. But let him go on. Joey was interested in where this was going.

"My mom died when I was very young, my father soon to follow. My younger brother, Mokuba, and I ended up in an orphanage. I imagine some of you have also been in that situation – those of you who have know how terrible conditions there are. My escape was in playing chess. I would sit for hours at a time, figuring out the perfect moves and the ideal strategy. Mokuba would watch. We'd make a couple hundred yen now and then by betting the other boys that I could beat them. The former CEO of KaibaCorp witnessed one of these times. He was intrigued to say the least, and offered to play me as well. I'm not going to lie – it wasn't an easy win. But it was a win none the less."

The group whispered hesitantly amongst themselves. Where was this going? Seto seemed to neither notice nor care.

"He adopted me after that – his reasons were quite bizarre. Apparently, I was the perfect likeness of his supposedly deceased son, Noa. In mind and appearance. He was determined to take me home and train me to be the heir to KaibaCorp. However, our first argument happened when I refused to go without Mokuba."

Joey clenched and unclenched his fists unconsciously. The way that Seto mentioned Mokuba brought to mind his feelings about Serenity. This was a part where his story bizarrely paralleled Kaiba's. But enough of that. They had nothing in common – and weren't going to.

"I guess there was some part of his compassion that hadn't died yet," Seto continued bitterly. Now his emotion was starting to show a little more than he had intended it to. "Because he let me bring Mokuba along. When we got to his house, neither of us could believe it – we'd never seen anything like it. As we walked through the rooms, it looked like heaven. There was plenty of room, plenty of food, plenty of computers and games – and they were all ours. We didn't have to share or worry about having enough. But we didn't know what we were in for.

"The first time I ever saw him really get mad was the next morning, when he found Mokuba playing one of the duel monsters games. Apparently they were just prototypes and we weren't supposed to touch them or mess with them. I remember it like it was yesterday – one second Mokuba was happy, playing the game, the next – he was on the ground crying. I didn't even know what had happened!"

Seto looked up now, blinking rapidly. He noticed that he was talking faster and faster.

"And that was just the beginning. Every morning I'd see Mokuba at breakfast, but not again until midnight or so – and that's if I was lucky. Sometimes I'd have to work straight through until two or three AM, and if I tried to sleep late the next morning, I'd be in for it all over again. Bruises, burning, the works. I can't really recall a day when there wasn't at least a little bit of blood. He'd stand over me as I worked, with a ruler in his hand. If my eyelids drooped, I'd hear it crack lightly on the palm of his hand. If they closed, it would be cracked hard across the top of mine. I was twelve then."

Seto shuddered.

"It didn't end there, though. One time we tried to run away – I'd been planning it for months. I placed bets on Duel Monsters games at school, much as I had with chess before. Every cent that I didn't spend on food on the way home – I really didn't have much time to eat otherwise – went into a loose board in the back of my closet that I hadn't even told Mokuba about. I know that we could have stolen from him, but I didn't want that hanging over my head. It wasn't a good idea, no matter how you looked at the situation. I'd spent hours plotting this. And again, understand how precious time was at that point. We were going to get on a bus and just ride, for at least a day. Then we'd be so far away nobody cared anymore. I could get a job, and we'd find an apartment or some other kind of place to stay. Worst case-scenario, I figured, we'd end up back where we started from. The orphanage, a foster home, anything would be better than this hell. Finally the day came. When I left for school that morning I'd taken all of the spare money – which amounted to a substantial handful of yen – and put it in a secret pocket that I'd cut into the hem of my jacket. That afternoon after school was over, instead of turning to go home, Mokuba and I took a left to go to the bus station. Just as we neared the block on the other side of the street, a black limo pulled up behind us. I heard a voice inside say 'Get in the car' and chills ran down my spine. But heaven knows I did as I was told."

Seto paused and took a deep breath as a tear ran down Christina's cheek. Derrick put his arm around her. They all listened intently. Seto's resolve, however, was beginning to shake. He hadn't been ready for this; this was nothing like him! He had just reacted and stood up to spite Joey. He hadn't ever told this out loud before; he was getting into the part that he hadn't even admitted to himself. However, unwilling to give in to his better judgment, Seto pushed forward. Now the words were just tumbling out; it was stuff that he'd never thought back on after it happened – he had blocked it out. It was as though it had happened to somebody else entirely. The ground below him was growing shaky and his resolve was shrinking smaller by the second.

"One night, about a week after our attempted run-away, I got home from school to find Mokuba crying. At first I thought that he had just skinned his knee at school again – little did I know what was coming. It was the worst thing. He told me to go away, pretend I hadn't gotten back at all. If I had known what was going to happen, I really might have run. I hope I wouldn't have, but I might have. Then I had no idea. I wasn't leaving him. About that time, we saw the shadow come into the room again and …"

Seto's voice trailed off, his eyes fixed on something not in that room, but in the distance. Something in his voice became far-away and unknown. His next few words seemed as though he were in a trance.

"The bruises hadn't even healed from the day at the bus stop…" he said softly, his voice sounding young and innocent. "Why did he do that? What good did it do?"

Suddenly, Seto was nine years old all over again. He was there, in that horribly quiet living room, waiting for the terrible pain and humiliation that he knew was coming, the hurt that he couldn't do anything to stop. As the adrenaline pumped, his fight-flight reflex began to kick in. But there was nobody there to be fought – not now. His chance had passed. He hadn't run then, when he had the chance, and he'd had to take the pain for it. He wasn't going to take the pain again.

Stepping to his seat wordlessly and taking his briefcase, Seto barely saw the group sit in awed horror as he picked it up and walked off the stage. For the first few steps, he walked calmly as he always did. As he neared the center of the row of seats, however, he broke into a run. As the auditorium doors slammed behind him, the group looked around at one another helplessly. Luka was the first to come to her senses. Her voice shook.

"I'm following him. Guys, just talk – or something like that. I'll be right back."

They nodded and watched her walk quickly from the stage, breaking into a run almost as Seto had only moments before. She knew that he was leaving, and wanted to catch him on the way out. She couldn't let him go home – or go anywhere, for that matter – in the state that he was now.

Seto ran blindly back through the hallway, by the vending machine, down to the lobby, into the parking lot. The car, the car… Where the hell had he parked it, anyway? Finally, though his vision was clouded over, he managed to spot the shiny convertible in a spot far off from all the others.

Clicking the button to unlock it and throwing himself into the driver's seat, Seto sat for a moment. The thoughts started coming normally again – the vault was sealed back up. And it never should have been opened, never should have been touched. There was a reason it had been locked for so, so long.

Now he was thinking normally again. School was coming back, work was coming back. The people at the meeting – they had come back too. But he didn't want to think about that anymore.

Leaning his head down onto the steering wheel, he took a few deep breaths. His stupid, stupid pride. That was Gozaburo's fault, too. Seto Kaiba had been taught politeness by being treated rudely, honesty by being constantly lied to, and pride by being deeply shamed.

And most painful of all, it had all worked.

Seto wouldn't – couldn't – connect with anybody. And this was exactly how Gozaburo had wanted it to be. The less reliant you are on others, the more powerful you are yourself. And power was everything.

But despite all of the years of pain, fear, and suffering that had been used to compound this into Seto's brain, he knew in his heart of hearts that it simply wasn't the case. People were meant to love and be loved, to laugh and make one another laugh. But was it worth all of the shit that came along with it?

Somehow, it seemed like it had to be.

"Seto!" a voice behind him called.

His heart still pumping, Seto jammed his key into the ignition. Just as he was about to rev up the car, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Seto," the voice repeated, now seeming winded from running and exhausted from worry.

Not turning around, Seto looked in his rearview mirror. Luka. Of course. Didn't these people ever quit? He had nothing to say to her – he'd been humiliated enough for one day. Now all that was left to do was to drive home and shut himself in his office, alone to work away the hurt.

"You can't spend your life running from this," Luka said softly.

Seto took a deep breath and collected his emotions before turning around, a familiar smirk again overtaking his features.

"Is that what they tell you at shrink-school?" he asked coolly, raising an eyebrow.

"Chill out, Kid," Luka sighed, walking over and taking a seat in the passenger side of his car. "What the hell do you have to prove, anyway?"

Seto knew that she hadn't just told him to chill out – and called him 'Kid' – in the same sentence. And to top it all off, she had just taken a seat in his convertible, without his permission. Who did she think she was? He gave her an incredulous look, which she promptly ignored.

"I'm not gonna lie to you – you need a lot of help," she said, crossing her arms. "And no, that isn't from shrink-school. There, they tell us to tell everybody that they're really okay. But that's all crap, because nobody's really okay."

"If you're not even 'okay,' as you put it, what makes you think you can help other people?" Seto asked calmly, still staring her down. Luka didn't miss a beat.

"Seto, if I was 'okay,' I would be zero help to anybody. Did you ever wonder why you had to live with what you did for so long?"

Seto looked down. What kind of a question was that? Aside from a downright obvious one. Clearly she knew this much, for she assumed his answer.

"I have too – for all of my life. And I've finally found my calling: reaching out to people like Joey and Susan. And you, Seto."

"I don't need anybody 'reaching out' to me," Seto said, becoming again defensive. Luka shook her head, her pink hair catching the sun very oddly. If he weren't so offended at her disrespect and presumptuousness, Seto might have laughed.

"Seto," Luka sighed, "anybody who would say that needs reaching out to more than anybody."

Seto paused as his anger flared up again. Was there no getting out of this conversation? He said the first thing that came to mind. He surprised himself with the volume and intensity it carried with it.

"Damn it, why don't you call me 'Kaiba' like everybody else?" he exclaimed, pounding his fist on the wheel of his car in frustration at being backed into a corner. Luka laughed silently, almost to herself.

"Because that's just another defensive mechanism you've developed over the years – when people call you by your first name, it makes you vulnerable. They might actually be learning something about you and becoming a part of your life," she explained patiently, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. Funny; he hadn't even noticed that it had been shaking.

"I just can't do this," he said, becoming more and more certain of his words. "I can't tell this stuff, I can't come here and see these people, I just can't do it."

Luka placed a hand on his shoulder, all but forcing him to make eye contact. As he looked up, his cold, lonely blue eyes locked with her sharply intent brown ones.

"Seto, you're not a 'can't' kind of a person," she said firmly. "I can tell that about you. No, don't freak out on me. It's the truth. Anything you believe you can't do, it's because somebody's told you that. But you're the one that decided to believe them, whether you admit it or not. I'm not saying you have to do anything, because I know better than to do that. I'm just telling you that you'll never live with yourself if you give up on anything – and that includes facing your inner demons. Think about that, Seto."

With these words, Luka silently opened the passenger door and stepped out. However, Seto didn't immediately crank the car and drive away as he had planned. He just sat there, deep within his own thoughts.

Facing his inner demons… Was that the same thing as opening the vault again?

"How To Save A Life" by The Fray

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
And you begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life