A/N: Finally done with the ACET! -sighs- It feels so good to be rid of worrying over entrance exams. Hah. -grins- First things first, apologies are in order: for letting you wait for two weeks before an update, for taking such a long time to write a chapter, and of course, chances are, for delaying the uploading of the chapter.
Feel free to kill me. Hope you don't have plans to actually kill me, my study table might miss me. (And here I ramble about my apparent loss of a functioning mind after taking a five-long, mind-melting entrance exam about numbers, words and more numbers.)
Oh yeah, I send my apologies to Magician April Aries and Toxic Hathor for promising to dedicate this chapter to Mahado. I'll write something about him next time.
Disclaimer: The quote I used in this chapter doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Severus Snape in the fic 'If You Are Prepared'. For more information, please don't ask me. The author has all the rights so I'm just borrowing his words.
This note is so long. Thanks for reading. Don't forget to drop a review, okay?
Chapter 10: For Once
"Sometimes people bury the truth because the truth does an awful lot of unnecessary damage." Severus Snape, If You Are Prepared
Their faces gave away all the information he needed to know. He woke up to greet the uncertain stares of Mahado and Bakura and at that instant, something was wrong. At first he had wondered why his lover wasn't there but the rational side of him told him the CEO was at work.
Seto would be there if he needed him to be there—that's it. It wasn't wrong to be at the office when his lover was in the hospital after all. Well, for them, that is. He gazed at the two and wondered how peculiar they might have looked. Bakura wasn't meeting his questioning gaze, nor was Mahado.
The crimson-eyed agent would have shrugged if he could; he sighed instead. Apparently, whatever happened involved him again and who knows what the casualties were—correction, who the casualties were.
He knew better than to ask when the question wouldn't be answered.
"How do you feel?" asked Mahado. The tomb robber, though unnoticed at the moment, smirked devilishly at the corner, watching their exchange in amusement.
"Dead," Yami replied impassively, not even noticing how the priest paled at the response.
"Doctors refuse to release you," Bakura said in his most casual voice (if that exists). "Paul's with them right now."
Yami turned to him, an eyebrow deliberately rose doubtfully, and "You know, Bakura, I find that hard to believe. You guys really want me out of the hospital? Forgive me but that rarely happens under your watch, pal."
He wanted to make it clear that they achieve nothing when they lie to him—and by the way both of his friends were reacting, it seems he was winning. Easily so, it seems too.
Asking for the answers in this form was a game of strategy and perfectionism. This was a game where making the mistake of saying the wrong word or making the wrong body language would eventually result to defeat. His partner once wondered why he didn't need to ask questions, why he suddenly knew things others hadn't known, and at that time he didn't give an answer. 'You'll know eventually,' he said back then.
"Who died?" he asked seriously, letting them know he was far from being amused or entertained, in this case. What came out was a hoarse, throaty question of who went o the afterlife or whatever other religions called it.
He saw Mahado look away but he turned to his partner, betrayed at the thought of the WPO keeping secrets from him. If it was his fault, whatever happened already happened and it was better to face it now when he can still do it. They didn't need to protect him. Bakura shook his head as if debating on what to do.
"Spit it out," he hissed, feeling the effects of the medicine the doctors made him take. A headache wasn't needed in this kind of situation, he thought. Someone apparently hated him to actually ruin his day.
Bakura opened his mouth as if to answer when the door opened, silently reminding him to thank whatever deity he believed in for saving his ass. Paul entered with a swarm of doctor (which Yami thought was Seto's doing) asking how the crimson-eyed agent was doing. The doctors scowled when the pharaoh sat up.
"Mr. Motou, you are in no state to—"
Yami glared at the doctor, "What is my state, then?" he asked before his gaze whirled to his chief. "Paul, what am I doing here?"
"You're gravely wounded, Yami. By the looks of it, it seems you're already improving. The doctors were pretty worried you wouldn't recover. Did you know you were unconscious for two days?" his boss asked. It was all Yami could do not to glare rudely at his boss. Of course he didn't know, no one apparently bothered to tell him anything!
"Where's Mr. Morell?" he asked instead.
His boss breathed a shaky sigh, probably thinking of ways to tell him the bad news. 'Sorry Yami, you messed up pretty bad this time,' obviously wasn't the best way to tell him something. Same message nevertheless. He remembered having exchange gunfire with unidentified people but what happened afterwards? He was quite sure his cover was blown—people were shooting at him, after all. No one shoots at random people, right? (Unless of course a person happened to lose his mind but—the sane part of the agent knew better than to let the argument continue.)
He remembered approaching Edmond Morell, seeing the disbelief and anger in the old man's eyes. The man had insulted them openly, threatening to sue them for abuse and all those bunch of crap people guilty of something do but what happened to the man after that?
Bakura and Mahado's body language spoke in unison. It was clear Mr. Morell was either dead or in a critical condition. Paul was frowning now, he noted and he knew. He just knew. "He's dead, isn't he?"
It wasn't a question. It was a statement—the type where one points out the obvious and expects someone to disagree and prove him wrong. But this time, no one did. No one told him he was wrong, that Mr. Morell, the same man who called him an insolent, naïve boy when he was being arrested, was just in the next room recuperating or talking to his lawyer for a future case against one Mr. Yami Motou.
No one.
"How?" he asked in a whisper, knowing his voice cracked. It was probably his fault… again. Bakura usually tells him about deaths involved in his cases. Mahado rarely keeps secrets from him especially during times like this. Where was Seto?
He could feel the WPO chief stare at him in concern. He heard the doctors leave quietly, probably upon Paul's orders, probably because they were tired of seeing the same agent who kept getting hurt. Bakura and Mahado were still standing by the side of his bed, quietly listening to their conversation. The tomb robber, well wherever he was, he hoped that albino finally decided to terrorize someone else and leave him alone.
All in all, what existed in the room was unnerving silence. A silence that begged to be broken, snapped, crushed into pieces—just simply destroyed. Frankly, it was annoying him. "Because of me, that's why he died, right?" he started, glancing at Paul then at Bakura. "I know the why now, tell me how!"
"Why don't you remember, Yami?" Bakura asked. It was an honest question, curious, of course, but honest nevertheless. He looked at his partner—
"I don't know why."
"There was an explosion, do you remember that?" his partner asked again. He shook his head. If he did, he would've added that to the list of things he could've prevented. Well, at least he knew now that there was an explosion.
Car explosion, he supposed.
Paul sat at the chair beside the bed, still thinking. "I need to know," Yami said, "Whatever happened is my fault. Mr. Morell was my charge, what caused his death?"
"At the night of his arrest, seven men identified as Nightstalkers shot at you. Their intention was to kill you and Mr. Morell, they failed. The four of you were able to escape to the port where we were waiting for you. You received a phonecall—"
"Yami?"
The former pharaoh didn't know he fell into a trance while listening to his boss.
"Give it up, Motou!"
"Rot in hell, idiots."
Gunfire.
"We need to get out of here, Yami."
"Tell Gregory to sneak into the Civic. We'll follow later."
Sounds of tires screeching, a haste defined only by the desire to escape.
"Too late, you are…"An explosion.
A cry of pain echoed by another. Two bodies fell into a bloody heap.
Yami faltered, his eyes widened. He fixed both of them at his partner. In a hushed voice, he asked: "Where's Leon?"
XXX
Seto Kaiba was wide-awake, typing frantically in his sleek KC laptop when the call came. He assumed it was his lover and when he looked at the caller ID, he didn't need to do anything else. He snapped the phone open and answered the call.
What greeted him wasn't the soft baritone voice of his lover, Yami Motou. It wasn't even the impatient, troublesome voice that belonged to Yami's partner.
"Yami's in the hospital. His cover was blown and one of the agents with him is dead. He was admitted just ten minutes ago in the hospital you bought." It was Mahado's voice; shaky at the moment but compared to Bakura's, it was calmer, more calculated and precise.
He didn't have to think twice. Seto took his car keys and his trench coat before rushing to his Ferrari. Domino City didn't know what hit them after the CEO's car rode the streets in frenzy.
Let's clear some things, shall we? Seto Kaiba was a heartless bastard to the outside world. He was the most sought bachelor (since Yami didn't reveal himself to the public ever since he became an agent) despite having made clear he was attached to someone, the youngest CEO in the world and owner of the weapon-making-turned-software-developing company that sent other companies to a close. He was cold, bitter and angry at the world but the world simply loved him too much.
He never gave a damn.
Except if it concerned his brother and Yami Motou.
So entering the hospital with an angry glare that sent even the best of his doctors into a panicked mood was a reasonable way of saying 'If something happens to Yami, you'll have your pink slips by the end of the hour.' He made his way to the ER just in time to see Bakura and Mahado return with coffee. One of them had bloodied hands; the other was simply too exhausted and stunned by whatever happened to acknowledge his presence.
"How's Yami doing?" he asked. What he needed to do was to calm himself and wait patiently for the doctors to appear. Experience had enough telling him to stop barging into the emergency room or demand to know what his lover's condition is.
"Unconscious, faint pulse but he'll live," was the nonchalant answer.
"He—how was his cover blown?"
"We don't know yet."
"Kaiba, relax." It was Mahado this time that told him to calm his nerves. He sent a glare that was gladly returned before drinking the coffee he was offered. "Thanks," he muttered.
"What happened this time?"
The explanation was brief, void of emotion, he noted, and by the way Bakura was reacting, it seemed this was the last time the former pharaoh would work on a case technically alone. Paul graced them with his presence a couple of hours later, telling them that the two wounded agents were transferred to their respective private wards.
The explosion had injured and sent the two into the gravest conditions they have experienced. Same explosion killed two others, one an agent and the other the person his lover was supposed to protect. But no amount of storytelling or subtle warnings could prepare him the moment he saw Yami in the room.
A pale, seemingly dead Yami greeted him. His former pharaoh who knew him better than everyone else had his eyes closed, depriving him of the rich blood red eyes that could make him smile no matter how ridiculous that idea is.
He knew what would happen the moment his lover would wake up. He'd find out, he'd blame himself—he'd do all those things he did every time he gets sent to the hospital and he'd have misery written all over him again. Yami didn't need that in the wee hours of the morning he decides to wake up.
The sound of the door closing told him there were visitors. Two of them, actually. He didn't need to turn around to know Bakura and Mahado were there. "Promise me not to tell him what happened when he wakes up," he said, his voice caught in an arrogant whisper. Soft, true, but unyielding—paradoxically firm and void of space for questions.
"We can't do that. He needs to know."
"He doesn't need to know what happened this soon."
"I still can't do that, priest."
"You would if you don't want to see him blame himself just like he did in his past cases. You know better, Bakura."
"Paul will kill me."
"No I won't."
The old man entered the room with such confidence that his presence wouldn't be rejected that Seto chose to glare at Yami's partner instead. Bakura had blanched slightly before nodding passively. "Fine, I won't," the former tomb robber grumbled.
"Good."
Mahado didn't have to be convinced. If the former tomb robber would do it, apparently, the CEO was asking the same from—albeit in a more subtle way—from him. He didn't have to voice his answer either.
"Mr. Kaiba, please, it's 8:30 AM. Take a trip back to your mansion and sleep, my boy. Yami's going to be fine," Paul said, smiling warmly at the executive.
Seto thought the WPO chief was trying to convince him to relax. He would, seriously, but he found himself unable to do so. "I'm fine. He'll want to see me when he wakes up," he answered stubbornly. "I'll go home at 9 to check on Mahado, though," he thought to himself, knowing he wouldn't.
"Your concern for Yami is understandable, Mr. Kaiba. But while he needs to recuperate, you are also a human being who happens to need a huge doze of sleep. Please take the opportunity when it presents itself," Paul insisted again. "I'll contact you personally the moment he wakes up."
Seto hesitated.
"Bakura, do be kind and escort him to his home. Make sure he sleeps."
The CEO stared at the WPO chief, stunned. This was a new perspective of Paul Montague's personality, he thought to himself. Defeated, he walked towards his unconscious lover and kissed him lightly before leaving.
"I'll sleep but make sure he doesn't blame himself in the end," he said in the end. He knew no matter how incredulous the idea was, the WPO chief wouldn't tell Yami what happened unless the situation asked for it. And knowing the former pharaoh, Paul wouldn't have a choice but to tell him what happened.
Ah heck, he tried.
As for himself, he had to admit it. He really had to sleep.