Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
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Face, Voice, Hands: Epilogue
by Animom
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Complacency. It's a hazard of living with someone for a while: up close, you sometimes forget some of their key qualities.
It generally doesn't end well.
"When do you plan to explain what's going on?" Kaiba was sitting in a deep chair in the central "family area" of the loft. Everything about him set off alarms. His body language – arms folded, legs tightly crossed – his expression – scowling, with hard eyes – and his tone of voice – absolutely calm in the way he only was when he was beyond furious.
"Could you take 'later' as an answer?" Jounouchi asked, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Nah, I guess not." He had planned for this, of course, but had half-hoped he wouldn't have to put it into place. He should have known that those qualities that made Kaiba a genius – his powers of observation, his constantly churning brain – would apply to his personal life as well. "What tipped you off?"
Kaiba sighed, and for an instant he looked unhappy; then the emotion was wiped. "You're no good at being secretive. Hanging up the phone when I come into the room? Weekend trips that you haven't offered to explain? Three large cash withdrawals from the joint account?"
"Yeah, that's not a good list." Jounouchi looked at the floor. "I suppose you know what I've been up to?"
"Sending time with your old gang member. Including staying overnight at his apartment."
"You had me followed?" Well, of course he would have. Kaiba still had his guard up, even after all this time.
"Not right away," Kaiba said, and unfolded his arms enough to let Jounouchi see a folded sheaf of papers. "But when it became clear that you weren't going to tell me what was going on …"
"It's not what you think."
"Oh? And what, exactly, do I think?" The emotion was starting to come through now.
"You tell me," Jounouchi said. He knew that Kaiba was – well, whatever the opposite of demonstrative was – but apparently there was a lot more possessiveness behind his indifferent act than Jounouchi had estimated. He was surprised (and a little flattered) that Kaiba was acting this way, but mostly he was sad that it took this kind of a situation to get Kaiba to display anything resembling concern. It scared Jounouchi a little, too, because he had a feeling that Kaiba was capable of the You belong to me thinking that stalkers in the movies and TV always seemed to have. "You're the one with the over-active imagination."
"And then," Kaiba shook the paper. "Human Resources tells me you've had four doctor's appointments in the last six weeks. And lab work. And you changed the password on your computer. What the hell is going on?"
"Didn't I tell you? I think I'm pregnant," Jounouchi said, clasping his hands and using his best falsetto. "It's a miracle, isn't it? I wanted to hold off saying anything you until I was sure, but I can't help myself – Honda and I have been shopping for baby furniture on-line!"
Kaiba was across the room in an instant, shaking him. "Stop fucking around, Jou!"
"Lighten up!" Jou said, laughing. "Look, Kaiba, it's no big deal. I was waiting for the right time to tell you, which I guess is now. Now that you've gone back to work, I decided to finally do something I've wanted to for a long time."
"Which is?"
Jounouchi shrugged. "Travel. You're always telling me it's okay if I spend money, so I finally did."
"Alone?" Kaiba let go of him, and his expression changed from anger to something like bewildered hurt. "You're going to travel alone?"
"No, I'm going with Honda." Jounouchi held up his hand. "I figured it was okay, since it'll be hiking and canoeing and camping. Trail mix and tons of bugs and using leaves for toilet paper. Not your kind of thing."
Kaiba turned away. He stooped to pick up the papers he'd dropped, and left the room. A moment later the door to his office closed – not slammed, though, Jounouchi noticed with a wry smile. Mister Ultimate Control had not left the building.
Jounouchi waited a few minutes before going down the hall and carefully trying the doorknob to Kaiba's office. It was locked, which was good. He went to his room, turning off his cell phone and setting it on his desk. From a drawer he took his passport and a cheap prepaid white plastic cell phone; then he grabbed an already-packed duffel bag from the back of his closet and tiptoed to the elevator.
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He walked a few blocks before hailing a cab. When he reached the address he'd given the cabbie – a free clinic – he waited until the cab had pulled away before he went in through the clinic's bathroom, changed his clothes, donned sunglasses and a baseball cap, and then slipped out the back door into the alley. As he walked the last two blocks to his destination he pulled out the white plastic phone. "Head's up – I had to tell him … yeah, thanks man … yeah, I hope so too."
Satisfied that he hadn't been followed, he opened a battered gray metal door set into the crumbling brick wall of an old warehouse. Inside, next to a nondescript black van, two men in sunglasses and a blonde woman stood waiting.
The woman hugged and kissed him. "So, we finally ready to do this?"
"I couldn't be any readier," Jounouchi said, tossing his duffel in the van, then climbing in to sit next to the neatly-stacked piles of equipment as one of the men opened the warehouse's loading dock door.
"Was it bad?" she asked from the front seat of the van as they drove out into the alley.
"Not too. He'll get over it." I hope.
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The little white plastic phone was ringing.
"Heya, Yug," Jounouchi said, twisting around in the sleeping bag he was sharing with Honda. Through the mosquito netting he could see that it was almost dawn: it was just like Yugi to get up in the middle of the night to make sure that his call came at a convenient hour for Jounouchi. "What's up?"
Yugi was reporting that Kaiba had discovered that Jounouchi had left his regular cell phone behind. "So he called me to ask where you were."
"And you gave him the letter?"
"Yeah. I said I'd mail it, but he insisted on coming over right away to pick it up." Yugi sighed. "He looked horrible when he came by. He asked me some weird questions, and I think he's been making himself sick imagining all sorts of horrible scenarios. Not that I asked him about it," Yugi added quickly, "it's just what it seemed like to me. I still think you should have told him."
"Did he read it right away?" Jounouchi was not going to go over this territory again.
"I think so. He went back to the car, but it was a while before he drove away." Yugi paused. "Jou, I just hope he doesn't do anything stupid before you get back."
Jounouchi hoped so too. The letter said that Jounouchi needed a break, that he'd left his cell phone behind so that his location couldn't be traced, and that he'd keep in touch. This roommate thing probably isn't gonna work for me, long term. I have to figure out what I need, he'd written, and if that can fit with what you need. Jounouchi was hoping that the letter would stall Kaiba long enough for all questions to be answered.
And if not, he could only hope that the trail would be cold by the time Kaiba started hunting him down.
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In the end, the thing everyone thought would be the hardest – for Anzu to talk Kaiba into letting them use his place as the location of a party for Yugi – turned out to be simple.
In the weeks following Jounouchi's departure, the gang's movie and game nights had tapered off, as Kaiba's idea of "hosting" was to unlock the door when Yugi, Anzu, Ryou and random others arrived, disappear into his office until Yugi knocked to say that they were leaving, and then nod goodnight, barely hiding his eagerness to lock the door again after they left.
When his initial response to the party had been a flat "No," the canny Anzu had pleaded, "I know you're not feeling that social while your roomate's gone, but birthday celebrations mean a lot to Yugi. I'd handle it, but I'm due any day."
Kaiba hadn't said anything for almost a minute, and then asked, "How many guests?"
"Oh," she said casually, "A few dozen. Definitely no more than – forty. Can your place hold that many?"
"I have no idea. Most likely. Tell me the date and what people will want to drink. My caterer will take care of the rest. Should there be cake?"
He had asked so solemnly she had almost giggled. "No, Kaiba-kun, I'll take care of the cake. And various people have offered to bring … various things." She crossed her fingers; Yugi would kill her if she gave it away. "I'd like to do it as soon as possible, since Yugi's birthday has already passed. What's your schedule like in the next week?"
"Evenings are entirely open," he said.
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The party had been going for about an hour. Cake had been eaten. Yugi had opened a few gifts. The guests had broken into clumps. One group was gathered around the couch, video-gaming. A smaller, older group had gone to sit in the deep leather club chairs of the small library room and talk. A number of couples had snuck into the darkened home theater room across the hall from the library. A board game was going at the kitchen table, and various pairs sat in chairs or on the floor playing Duel Monsters.
Kaiba sat on a barstool at the far end of the kitchen. He'd ensconced himself there as soon as Yugi and Anzu arrived, letting them take over the party as he sipped ginger ale and stymied Otogi's attempts at conversation with one-word answers. He seemed slightly surprised to see Noroshi arrive with Jounouchi's sister, but he neither acknowledged nor questioned them.
Yugi's phone rang. The father-to-be moved through the crowd, toward the hallway in the middle of the condo where the private elevator from the sixth floor was located. When he finished the call he nodded to Anzu, who clapped her hands and called out loudly for everyone's attention.
"As you know," she said, "We're here today to celebrate Yugi's birthday – "
"A little late!" Otogi called out.
" – Yes, a little late," she said, waggling a finger. "Now usually the birthday boy gets all the gifts, but today we're going to be giving the biggest present to someone else."
There was a murmuring in the crowd that didn't quite mask the sound of the elevator.
"And it's being delivered right about now," Yugi said.
The elevator door opened.
Two bearded men – one with dark hair, one with blond – in ragged vests and khaki shorts stepped out, escorting between them a third man. This person was a strange sight: dark-skinned, barefoot, muscular, with buzz-cut black hair framing a tattooed-and-tribally-scarred face.
And pale pale gray eyes.
Kaiba barely noticed as someone took the glass of ginger ale from his hand. Someone else caught the barstool that fell over as he stood. The crowd parted, and he stood in shock, whispering, "It – I – how – Mo – Mo-?"
The strange man walked forward. "It's good to be home."
The embracing brothers were oblivious to all else as the crowd clapped and cheered.
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"I don't understand … " Kaiba said. He was kneeling in front of the couch where his brother sat, oblivious to the tears that ran down his face and dripped off his jaw. "How?"
"It was his idea." Rebecca Hopkins, who was sitting next to Mokuba holding his hand with both of hers as if she thought he'd float away, tilted her head at the bearded blond man sitting on the arm of the couch (who everyone had finally recognized as Jounouchi).
"No no," Jounouchi held up his hands. "Anzu should get all the credit."
Anzu huffed and shook her head, rubbing her huge stomach. "Okay, so Jounouchi was visiting while I was watching a telenovela – "
Jounouchi coughed a thank you.
" – and suddenly one of the characters who had been missing from the show for years came back. Her character was supposed to be dead, but in the plot they gave her amnesia to explain why she hadn't come back sooner. We both laughed and said, Wouldn't it be crazy if that's what happened with Mokuba? But then Jou called Rebecca, and she said that if Mokuba had survived the crash, depending on where the plane went down he might have been picked up by one of the rainforest tribes, since they've helped crash survivors before."
Rebecca nodded. "And I remembered how he'd always joked that he'd like to go native."
"Well, I wouldn't have wanted it to be that way, to go so long without letting you know I was alive," Mokuba said, his voice deep and lilting. "I know it must have been hell for you." He leaned forward and put his hand on Kaiba's shoulder, and they spent a beat just looking at each other.
"So where were you?" Shizuka asked.
"I was mostly with the Matis and the Marubos. I gotta say, 'Becca's a hell of a good teacher." He looked at her and grinned. "I didn't remember her, but somehow I remembered all the dialects she taught me."
Noroshi, who had spent most of the party sitting out of sight of Kaiba, took up the narrative. "We'd done aerial searches after we lost contact six years ago, but Miss Hopkins said that they planned to do a ground search based on the flight plan, traveling along the rivers in the Javari Valley to see if they could pick up any rumors of strangers that had been adopted into a tribe."
"It was a huge long shot," said Honda, whose beard made him look rather satanic. "But as usual this guy is swimming in luck." He nudged Jounouchi with his elbow.
"That's why I wouldn't let you know where I was going," Jounouchi said to Kaiba, "because I didn't want to get your hopes up. But I guess I didn't realize how my leaving would look from your perspective."
"You mean the perspective that you'd gone gay backpacking with Hiroto?" Otogi said brightly. When Honda slapped the back of his head he squawked, "What? What? I can't be the only one who thought that!"
Everyone laughed except Kaiba.
"How did you get your memory back?" Shizuka asked Mokuba.
He raised an eyebrow at Rebecca. "You wanna tell this part?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "So, we went up and down the rivers, talking mostly to traders, until about a week ago we followed a lead, stories of a man with strange eyes. There are dozens of tiny tribes in the isolated areas that haven't had outside contact yet. So we go tramping through the jungle, and then right after our guide ditches us we're surrounded by a dozen guys with blowpipes as long as your arm. I only understand about one word in ten of their dialect – "
"– but fortunately it was enough for us to not get darts of death in the neck," Honda chimed in. "And you forgot to mention that all those guys were naked."
"Nah, they were wearing belts," Jounouchi said, picking up the story. "Anyhow, one of them maybe looks kinda familiar in the face, and I think he could be Mokuba since he's the only one without brown eyes. So I hold up this –" He reached into his vest and pulled out a wrinkled, much-handled paper, then unfolded it to show an enlarged color photocopy of a Blue Eyes White Dragon card. "I had a bunch of these with me, since I knew I couldn't take any of Kaiba's cards from storage. Which was okay, since a real card would have been too small to show around anyhow."
"Yeah, and as it turned out, those photocopies were like, gold or something," Honda said. "We traded them for food, water purifying tablets – "
" – socks," Rebecca said with a laugh. "Oh, and that horrible stinky snake butter that was supposed to keep the mosquitoes off."
Mokuba shook his head. "A hundred years from now those dragons are gonna seriously make some anthropologist's career. Or ruin it."
"So," Kaiba asked, his voice thick with emotion, "The Blue Eyes picture brought back your memory?"
Mokuba nodded. "A little. I knew I'd been called Kaiba Mokuba, that I had a brother with blue eyes. 'Becca and the guys kept talking to me a lot as we traveled out of the jungle back to Iquitos, and more stuff comes back almost every day. Though there are other things – Gozaburo, Duelist Kingdom, high school – that I can dimly picture if I'm told about them, but it feels like they happened to someone else." He smiled at his brother. "I remembered you though. Being in the orphanage, us playing chess. Oh and I remember being your Battle City Commissioner, too. My silver whistle. Can't remember the tournament, but I remember the whistle."
Everyone laughed at that, and Kaiba swiped his sleeve across his face.
"Oh!" Rebecca said. "I have pictures!" She pulled a stack from her bag, passed them around. Most showed a slightly sleepy looking Mokuba in an I Love Brazil t-shirt, his hair in a flat bowl cut, surrounded by the very happy Rebecca, Honda and Jounouchi.
"Aw, no snaps of you in your loincloth-belt? How disappointing!" Otogi said, then added, "Nice hair though, Moe. Do Curly and Larry know you're back?"
Mokuba grinned and rubbed the black fuzz on his head. "I left all that behind in Iquito."
"So what do you want to do first?" one of the Roba Brothers asked. "Movies? Pizza? Shower? Get un-tattooed?"
"Probably sleep. Spend time with my brother. Catch up with what's been going on around here the past few years." He waved a hand. "Nice place, by the way." He looked down at his feet. "Wow, I guess I have to get used to wearing shoes again. That'll be weird."
"Pfft. I pity the shoes," Rebecca said. "Right now you could pound nails with those calluses, I swear."
In the midst of more laughter, Kaiba stood suddenly and strode from the room.
"I'll be right back," Jounouchi said, then hurried after.
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"Knock knock." Kaiba's bedroom door was open, but the room was mostly in shadow, partly illuminated by the light from the hallway.
Kaiba was a dark silhouette against the nighttime Domino light-scape, staring out the window, his arms folded. "Is the party adequate?"
"More than. It's great that Yugi and Anzu got so many of Mokuba's friends to come. Seeing all those faces might help get back more of his memory." Jounouchi stopped. He got the impression that Kaiba was angry at him, and he didn't understand why. Not that he expected that finding Mokuba was gonna get Kaiba to proclaim him the best friend ever, but he had expected at least a little thank you from Big Brother.
"You could have told me, Jou." His voice was icy. "It was humiliating, trying to explain to people that I had no idea where you were without making it sound as though you'd – run away." He snorted. "It didn't help that that peacock Otogi has been calling me and offering to take me to dinner, talking as if you were never coming back."
"I know, but – it was such a long shot, it just seemed better that you didn't know what we were up to. In case we didn't find him. I mean, we were hoping, but deep down none of us really expected to."
Kaiba gave a soft, sharp half-laugh. "I still can't believe that you did."
"Neither can I. It was like a miracle. A really well-planned one, but still." Jounouchi was thinking that this was as close as he was going to get to a thank you.
"When Yugi gave me your letter," Kaiba said slowly, "before I read it, I asked him if the letter was going to tell me that you had a fatal disease and that you'd gone off somewhere to die. He said Jou wouldn't do that. If he was dying he'd want to be with friends. I didn't know what to make of that."
"Why?"
"Is it true? Do you really feel that way? You see me as a friend?"
"Well, of course." Jounouchi walked across the dark room. "We are friends, aren't we?"
"That letter," Kaiba said, now sounding irritated. "When I read it – after what Yugi had said – I couldn't figure out what you could possibly mean. 'This roommate thing probably isn't gonna work for me, long term.' I began to think I'd missed some key fact. Or was all that just bullshit to distract me?"
"Yes and no," Jounouchi said. "The letter was supposed to throw you off, but it had truth in it." He could hear the intake of breath, as if Kaiba was about to say something, but he didn't, so he went on, hoping that what he wanted to say wouldn't sound too cold. "I'm glad we found Mokuba for you, because – "
"No need to explain." The voice was flat, matter of fact. "You're off the hook. Mokuba can take over as my babysitter."
Jounouchi winced. "That's putting it brutally."
"It's putting it honestly."
"Kaiba, you know as well as I do that it's time for me to go." Jounouchi felt bad that they were having this out in the middle of a party, but he supposed that to stop the conversation now would be worse. "I've enjoyed being here, and I hope that you've enjoyed my being here too. But it would be awkward if I stayed."
"I don't see why." Kaiba sounded irritated. The unasked question hung in the air, unanswered for long moments. "Where will you go?"
"Probably back to Australia for a while," Jounouchi said, having decided this on the spot. "Kajiki has been after me for years to come down and help him run the reef tours again."
"It's true," Kaiba said mildly, "that with Mokuba back I won't be alone. But all this you've said – " He unfolded his arms and turned around. "– it proves to me that you are still an idiot," he said quietly, in the voice he had usually reserved for Mokuba, "if you think I will not miss you if you leave. I didn't realize being here, and not … I didn't realize it was difficult for you." He paused. "I want you to stay."
"Now you tell me," Jounouchi said.
"Yes," Kaiba said. "Now I tell you."
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~ The end ~
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P.S. Pretty please, reviewers,
it would be much appreciated if you would avoid spoilers for this chapter
in your comments. ~
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Concept, 17 July 2010
(15) 10 October 2011 ~ some edits. Moved AN.
