I had initially intended to publish this story on a much quicker basis than I ended up doing. For that, I apologize. On the plus side of things, however, I do have a somewhat lightened writing schedule now. Though it wasn't on the most impressive of terms, one of my longest stories, "No Longer Alone," has reached its close.
This means that my Big Three—the three stories on my account to have eclipsed 1,000 reviews—are all finished. Time to forge ahead, right? This story is one of the few that I have which has a definite ending, so I've decided to focus on it.
Hopefully that will manifest in such a way that I'll be able to at least mimic the schedule I'd initially planned.
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On the one hand, Kaiba Mokuba looked like a cornered rat staring into the maw of a hunting cat. On the other, he also looked like the cat. It wasn't fear that Yuugi and Jounouchi managed to read in their young friend's face, and eyes, and body language. It was more a determined sort of resignation. It was the look of someone with his head already on the chopping block, yelling at the executioner to just drop the fucking axe already! It was an aura decades too old for such a small boy, and even though Jounouchi didn't really consider himself to be very sentimental, he felt a great stab of pain go straight through his heart; Yuugi, for his part, looked like he was attending a funeral.
Kiko refused to leave her master's side; she stood by the young Kaiba's chosen section of the couch with a hand mere inches from his right ear, ready to jump at anything he might require of her. She had the countenance of a mother hawk, green eyes boring straight into her houseguests as she kept watch for any threat—real or imagined—to Mokuba's state of mind.
"Um . . . hi," Mokuba offered quietly, finally, looking at them both in turn. He didn't wave, or nod, or offer any other physical manifestation of welcome; and rather than sheepish, his gaze was rapt and attentive. It struck both Yuugi and Jounouchi that this resolve they saw in Mokuba was also too old for a nine-year-old boy. Whatever it was that had Mokuba upset, it should have had him crying in a corner. It should have had him begging for help, or a hug, or something. But it didn't. He was that condemned prisoner, meeting his end without the faintest trace of shame . . .
. . . Or hope.
"Hey," Jounouchi replied, in a breathless little voice that sounded hollow to his own ears. He cleared his throat. "Been kind of quiet on your end of things, you know. Starting to worry about you. We came down here to see, you know, if there was anything we could do. Anything we could help you out with." He forced the words to come out straight and clear; though the longer he looked at Mokuba the more he felt like stammering and fumbling all over his thoughts. Those deathly grey-violet eyes sent a shudder of superstitious terror down his spine. Jounouchi Katsuya was no stranger to ignoring impulse and forcing his mind to obey his commands, however; discomfort be damned. Mokuba was young, but he was a Kaiba. And Kaibas didn't tolerate bullshit.
It was one of the few things that Jounouchi respected about both of them.
". . . Thanks," Mokuba eventually said, and there was the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Really. Thank you. But no, there isn't anything you can really do. It's . . . well, it's private."
"Bocchan," Kiko whispered, frowning. She dared to put a hand on the boy's shoulder. Mokuba flinched, but caught himself and didn't pull away. "They're your friends. Aren't they? They're worried about you. That isn't something to feel insulted about. You worry about your brother, don't you? Your brother worries about you, doesn't he?"
It seemed like this woman knew the precise words that could cut through a Kaiba's anger even before it started to show itself. Yuugi and Jounouchi watched as Mokuba went to war with himself, struggling between wanting to listen to his attendant, or to his instincts.
"I don't want to talk about it anymore," Mokuba finally said, and he somehow managed to not sound like he was whining.
"I know," Kiko replied gently, and it sounded like it was the last thing she wanted to be saying right now, "but . . . you know Seto-sama is right. Ignoring it isn't going to help anyone, least of all you. I know it's your choice, and I won't say anything else if you decide to stay quiet about it, but . . . I think you should talk to them."
"Talk to us?" Yuugi repeated, not because he felt like it was necessary to imitate a parrot, but merely to fill the resultant silence as Mokuba looked up at Kiko like he thought she might change her mind if he pouted at her. "About what?"
Realizing that he was locked into something, by some sense of obligation that he probably didn't even understand, Mokuba sighed and shook his head. When he looked back up at his friends, he was scowling in a way that would have made his brother either furiously proud, or just plain furious, had it been directed at him.
". . . About Cecil Normack," Mokuba said slowly, "and what he did to me."