The first of the Dear Mokuba letters that I wrote never made it into the final draft of Dear Mokuba. It is mentioned in the first chapter, when Mokuba first is given the copy of Seto's notebook, but I never gave you all a scene of him reading this letter. I've included it here, since it is kind of a pivotal moment for Seto.

Seto angled his head away from the bite on his jaw. The man held Seto's hands together against Seto's own chest, sitting on the edge of the bed. Restraining his hands was unnecessary. It had been a while since Seto hit back.

Once he had sucked long enough to leave a deep red mark on Seto's jaw, the man leaned away. He moved his head into Seto's sight line, catching Seto's gaze.

"You seem focused today."

Seto blinked and gazed elsewhere. He did feel more aware than he had been. His hands were numb in his kidnapper's grip. They didn't shake or waiver. Seto didn't pull away. He held his gaze on the bookcase, counting each title. He had only made it through the top row. The books didn't hold his interest. Nothing held his interest. Staring at the words on the page could distract Seto for short intervals. He would just stare at words until they didn't look like words, and then relate with their lack of identity.

"Did Jim bring your food already? I haven't seen you eat in a while."

He released Seto's hands, which fell to his lap.

"Answer me, Seto."

"He did."

"Did you eat?"

Seto turned his head away from the man. His kidnapper sat on the bed beside him and sighed. He put his hand on Seto's thigh and rubbed the area between his knee and hip. Every so often, he would dig his fingernails into Seto's skin.

"Honestly, Seto. You would think that after two years we wouldn't have to break out the funnel."

Seto looked back just in time to see the man close his eyes, press his lips together, and shake his head. He made a mistake. After so much time of not knowing time, the man slipped. Seto couldn't move, stuck frozen waiting to see if the man would try to cover it up. He could have been pretending to err. It might be another game inside the twisted game.

It couldn't have been two years. Two years was too long. The police were supposed to find him. Someone was supposed to find him. He couldn't have been trapped for two years. That would make him nearly twenty. Mokuba would be fifteen, or maybe sixteen if it wasn't specifically a year. It had to be a lie.

The man tapped Seto's leg twice before removing his hand. Seto kept waiting for an explanation. Until that moment, everything the man had done to keep Seto in the dark had been flawless. He wasn't the sort to make little slips. He planned out toothbrushes and a babysitter.

"I'm bringing you food, and you are going to eat."

The man stood and left. Seto stared at the open door, expecting him to return with an excuse. Seto heard the door at the top of the staircase. He couldn't have been telling the truth.

But if he had told the truth and it had been two years since that day at KaibaCorp, there was nothing else to hold on to. Two years would make Seto a cold case. No one was coming for him.

Seto covered his face and squeezed his eyes shut. This was it. He really was nothing more than the chain.

Seto breathed.

His breaths echoed in his head.

His breaths felt tight, like he was forcing them down a throat that was too small. When his chest rose and fell, the movements were so small that Seto didn't see them at first glance. He had to part his lips to get more air. While he breathed, he couldn't breathe.

Five minutes ago, Seto would have struggled to define the time spent in the basement. Having such a definite as two years made him question it all. He wouldn't have guessed two years. It felt like his entire life had been trapped. Everything that happened before had been a dream. Nothing he remembered was real.

Seto almost smiled at that. He might have been able to believe his life was a dream if not for the thick series of scars covering his body. Gozaburo had been real. Mokuba was real.

Seto choked trying to keep from crying at the sudden thought. Mokuba was real and he would never see him again. He had hoped that with the time deprivation, it would actually turn out shorter than he feared. The gaps between his kidnapper's visits weren't days, but hours. The intervals between sleeping and sleeping again were minutes. He didn't want to believe that days disappeared from him, not just days, but weeks, months.

Two years.

It was such a specific period of time. It made everything too real. Seto remembered his first day, leaning his head against the door and telling himself that it wasn't happening. He wanted so badly to believe that it wasn't true. He wanted to believe that Gozaburo had hit him hard enough to knock him into a delirium.

It was too long to be a dream.

Seto tilted up his chin, leaning backward until his center of weight pulled him down to the bed. He rested on top of the blankets with his legs still over the bed's edge. Seto had been sleeping on the man's bed for two years.

He rolled to reach the notebook hidden under the mattress. Seto ran his fingers over the black cover, feeling the bends and tears that formed after years of use. Years, Seto thought. He rubbed his thumb over the fraying corner. Three pages had fallen out. Other pages had begun to rip at the binding. The pages were falling out and it was all Seto had left in his world.

Maybe the man had made the statement on purpose. Maybe he pretended to make the mistake to further ruin Seto's perspective. Seto knew that time had past. He didn't know what to believe for the length of his imprisonment. He didn't want to believe it had been so long. He wanted to go back to before the man made the statement and keep it from ever happening. It was one piece of information that he didn't want to know.

Flipping through his past letters, Seto found the first empty page. It was closer to the end than he remembered being. He had maybe thirty pages left. If he wrote smaller, he might be able to make the pages last longer. Seto looked at the previous page. He already wrote small.

Seto put the pen to the first line and started to write, only to find that no ink came out. He scribbled the pen against the top margin, but still nothing. Seto put the tip of the pen in his mouth and tried to suck out the ink. He put the pen to the page, but again nothing came out.

He stopped trying. It had been two years since he had been given the pen. It had to run out at some point. Seto held it between his index and middle finger. The man might not give him another.

Seto waited until the man walked back in. He didn't carry any food, only a bottle with a thick liquid inside. The contents sloshed with each step, leaving little chunks of the drink mix stuck to the top of the bottle. The man crossed the room and handed Seto the bottle.

"Vanilla this time."

"It's out of ink," Seto said, holding up the pen.

"Hm. It's lasted a while."

"Two years?"

The man smiled. "Perhaps."

"What kind of strategy is it to say something and take it back?"

"Strategy? Are we playing a game, Seto?"

Seto's kidnapper continued to hold out the bottle until Seto looked away. He exhaled and set the protein shake on the floor.

"I expect you to drink that."

"Will you bring me another pen?"

The man pursed his lips and then made a clicking noise with his tongue. He drummed his fingers against the side of his face as he stood over Seto. Seto remained still under the scrutiny.

"Drink the shake," he said. Seto waited, hearing the moment's pause in the man's voice. "In front of me. Now."

With no answer to his question, Seto could only assume that drinking the protein shake would earn him a new pen. Seto set aside the notebook, bent forward to pick up the plastic bottle, and touched the lip of the bottle to his mouth. There was never a cap on the bottles. They were a choking hazard, and Seto would use anything to end it all.

Seto took a sip and rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth to try to get rid of the aftertaste. He repeated the action with every sip, until the contents of the bottle were half-gone.

Seto's stomach protested to having so much inside of him. Seto never ate much, just took the bites required to make Jim leave. Half of the shake was more than he had ingested in, well, what he now knew was two years.

"I can't anymore," he said.

The man nodded and sat down beside Seto. He took the half-empty bottle from Seto's hands and reached forward to set it on the bookshelf. Leaning back, he wrapped an arm around Seto's shoulders and pulled him into a side hug.

"You have no idea how happy you've made me, Seto," the man began. "It's hard to remember a time before you were here."

Seto caught himself before nodding in agreement.

"And you have been so good recently. I love how good you have been."

The words "I love you" had never been spoken in the basement room. A part of Seto had expected to hear it, months, years ago. The man had professed love for Seto's eyes, lips, neck, chest, ears – but never for Seto himself. The man loved Seto's body and Seto's obedience, nothing more.

"You're never going to leave me. Are you Seto? You are going to stay with me forever."

The hand that wasn't around Seto reached for his hand. Seto's hand stayed limp when the man intertwined their fingers. The man's thumb stroked the back of Seto's. A long run of goosebumps branched up Seto's arm. Seto didn't shiver. He remained with his head resting against the man's shoulder, their bodies touching everywhere the man could manage.

"It could be worse, right? I could have built a dungeon rather than this lovely little room. I could have built display cages and crosses to play with you. And now your father can't hurt you anymore."

Seto's mouth felt dry. His tongue felt like it had never experienced water rushing over it. His vocal chords tightened, like they were going to snap like a string on a violin.

No, it couldn't be worse. At least those things would make his life make more sense. Seto could understand the man's behavior if he was a straight-forward psychopath, rather than the odd mix of psycho and sociopathy. Seto would rather be left with no option than have to pretend like he was adjusting to the man's attention. Seto understood abuse.

The man repositioned Seto so that they faced each other. He put a hand on either side of Seto's face and stared. Seto didn't know for how long. It didn't matter. There wasn't time anymore. There was just the man holding Seto's face.

"You are still so beautiful."

"You're disgusting," Seto whispered. Seto knew that he was angry; he felt what once would have been anger bubbling in his consciousness. But the bubble popped, leaving Seto with a vague notion that he was supposed to be upset about something.

The man laughed and pressed his forehead to Seto's. He pushed his face forward until their noses were side-by-side and their lips were touching.

"You know what they say," the man said, speaking his words directly into Seto's mouth. "If you don't have anything nice to say-"

The sentence trailed away, turning into a kiss. Seto's hands remained in his lap, and he left his lips parted for the man. Moisture from the man's mouth leaked into Seto's, but he did nothing to try to stop it. He focused on the lingering taste of bitter vanilla and resolved himself to not say anything at all.

Stopping, the man pulled back to brush Seto's hair out of his eyes. The man's gaze drifted across every inch of Seto's face.

"I'll get you a new pen."

Seto nodded, actually grateful. The gratitude was all that it took. For the first time in years, since the first night in Gozaburo's home, Seto felt a warm streak of water slide down his cheek. He lifted a hand to wipe it away, clutching his fingers into a fist to hold the tear.

It took two years for Seto to fully accept that there was nothing he could do. He felt more tears building up in his eyelashes and didn't try to stop them. Seto pressed his lips together because now that he had the realization, he didn't know how to be anymore.

The man wrapped his arms around Seto's head and hugged him tightly against his chest. The man rocked him forward and back without a word. Seto pressed his face against the man's neck and tried to find any comfort that he could. The entire world, the whole universe could melt away, and Seto would never again know anything more than this.

"This is better," the man whispered. "Isn't this better?"

The man rocked Seto until the tears evaporated. Seto came to understand that landmarks were the only way that he had to mark what he used to view as time. The length that the man held him, the seven-hundred page novels, the gap in-between meals – those were all Seto's calendar.

He left Seto lying on his back, wrapped in the blanket, and with a promise to return shortly with a pen. Seto waited until he heard the door close before rolling to his side and wrapping his own arms around himself. His body kept breathing although there was no point. He couldn't kill himself, but he couldn't keep living.

Seto stopped everything but breathing until he felt a hand stroking his hair. The man had cut Seto's hair the last period of time before Seto was asleep. Each time the man passed his fingers through Seto's hair, the moment was a breath shorter than it had been before.

"Here is your pen. I'll take the old one."

Seto had never been able to gather enough force for the pen to do any real damage to his veins. He had broken the skin with it once, but then spent several sleep cycles keeping the injury hidden from the man for fear that he would take the pen away. The wire binding of the notebook was too flexible to dig into his skin and then drag out a gash deep enough to split an artery.

Seto wanted to try, but was terrified of getting caught and losing his contact with Mokuba. So when the man left the pen on the pillow in front of Seto's face, he didn't grab for it right away. He had so much to say to Mokuba, but could not think of a single thing to say. He wanted to tell Mokuba everything, but at the same time, didn't want Mokuba to know anything that happened in the basement.

After some length of his life past, Seto's muscles screamed to move. They flexed and twitched, as if testing to see if he had fallen asleep. He tried to stay locked in place, but was outvoted by his limbs.

The pen was identical to the previous one. It only lacked the small scratches on the plastic case from two years of being clipped to the notebook and taken off. In another two years-

In another two years, Seto prayed with every ounce of strength he could gather, he wanted to be dead.

The only other option would be to given in to the man, to not only allow him to own Seto completely, but to go along with what he wanted, to act first. That would never be a real option for Seto, not with Mokuba loitering in his mind. What kind of message would that send to his baby brother?

Seto grabbed the pen and touched the tip to his lips. He understood that such thoughts were out of line with reality. The room was his only reality. Nothing that happened in the room would leave the house, but even so, the insanity Seto had long-feared won. As long as Seto wrote to Mokuba, Mokuba would know everything.

If Mokuba knew that Seto was alive, then at least Seto could do something good from his chained imprisonment. Seto drew a spiral in the top corner of the page until it turned a shiny black. He started to write because it was the only thing that made sense.

Dear Mokuba,

He says it has been two years, but it feels like so much longer. It feels as though I have been in this room for decades upon decades. Time here doesn't exist.

At the same time, it feels shorter. I have been here for one long day, for the worst night's sleep I have ever had. I have been here for the length of an epic nightmare.

It is unbearable. I have lost everything, my life, my clothing, my locket, my self-will, my hope, time itself, and most importantly, I have lost you.

It terrifies me to think of what he might be doing to you. He needs an heir, and without me, you have to take the brunt of that. But, you never were as stubborn as me. You have no one to protect. That was all that kept me going. You are all that keeps me going, even now.

I often wonder what you would think of my letters. I understand that you will never read them, so I ramble a lot. I never rambled before. I blame it all on this room. Every moment I spend in here drains some of my sanity with it.

And here I go on about time again. Perhaps it would not be so terrible if I just knew that outside this windowless room, the world still revolved. It is the not knowing that is driving me mad. Or perhaps I am mad already.

-Your Brother