Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the characters. I own everything else in this story, though.

Chapter Twenty

In spite of Seto's wish to not allow the children to see Athena's in her current condition, as the day wore on, the two teenagers grew more and more insistent about needing to be with their protector. He figured since Athena was out of danger after Arthur declared he expected Athena to make a full recovery, he gave in and brought the young ones to the bedchamber he had left Athena a few moments earlier. As they came forward, Seto heard voices coming from the bedchamber, and when they got to the door of the suite, Seto grabbed Yugi and Rebecca to keep them hidden.

Athena was awake, and she was not alone. Seto's fury grew as he listened to Mokuba's accusations against Athena's character.

"If you care for Seto and the children at all, you will live here now and never return. Your presence here has been like a terrible curse, all you bring is death and destruction."

Mokuba had Athena backed up against a wall near the wardrobe. She was wearing a black breast band, her bandages, and her black trousers. One arm, the left one, was wrapped around her stomach where Seto could see blooming crimson spots of blood begin to spot them. She looked pale, she was sweating, and she was panting lightly from pain. Her right hand was pinned behind her back, concealing the silver claws still adorning her hand.

Mokuba had a dagger in his hand and it was poised at Athena's throat.

Seto could feel Yugi trembling as the boy's own anger grew within him at Mokuba's words, but before either of them could do anything, Athena spoke, "It is a little difficult for me to leave now, I would not last through the night in this condition. However, I will consider your proposition at a later time, when I have a chance to recover."

"I do not care if you die and rot. You have endangered Seto, and the children, by staying here for as long as you have. We were just fine with you dead, and we will be better off without you again. I am not giving you a choice. You will leave here one way or another." Mokuba hissed, pressing the blade against Athena's throat, but the action did not elicit the desired reaction from her.

Athena stared into Mokuba's gunmetal gray eyes with a face of stern indifference.

"Are you actually planning on killing me, Mokuba? More and better people than you have tried and failed to kill me. What makes you think you can?" She goaded.

"I will protect my family from you and your devices. I do not care if I sully my hands in your blood to do it, I will not allow you to bring harm to Seto, Rebecca, or Yugi."

"Bring them harm? I have done nothing but protect them since the moment I arrived here. And in case you have not noticed, it is not for you to decide whether I stay or leave. You do not hold supremacy over Seto in this house. If Seto tells me I have to leave, then I suppose I will have to, but I do not take orders from any limp-wristed Englishman who cannot even grasp a dagger properly, let alone probably even knows how to use it. Your eyes betray your arrogant words. You will not kill me. You are not man enough to do so." Athena shot back.

Before Mokuba could confirm or deny Athena's comment, Yugi broke away from Seto's grip and slammed into Mokuba's side.

"You leave Athena alone." Yugi cried as she stood between the downed man and his precious guardian. "She speaks the truth. She has done nothing but defend and protect us. Is this truly the gratitude you give to her for rescuing you out of the Wellingshire Manor before it burned to the ground? I thought you were a decent man, Mokuba, but I suppose I misjudged you. If you even think for a moment that Athena could bring harm to me you do not know anything at all!" Yugi shouted.

"Yugi…"

"I am ashamed of you, Mokuba." Yugi murmured, his small frame trembling with the ferocity of his emotions. "I cannot believe that after all she has done for all of you people, you think you can just throw her away like she means nothing to any of us. Well I love Athena! She is the closest I have had to a mother since my parents died, and I will not stand idly by as you try to force her to leave me here alone with you people! She risked EVERYTHING for us today, and you have the nerve to accuse her of being a curse? Your family would not even be here if those men who came here today had been left to their own devices. I would not be here right now, and your cousin you believe you are acting in the best intentions for would be dead because before Athena arrived, he was fighting that man alone! You owe her your family, Mokuba, not your enmity!" The boy screamed as his large amethyst eyes began to moisten with tears and he turned and pressed his face into Athena's stomach, "She will not ever leave me…"

"Are you satisfied, Mokuba?" Athena spat, her eyes narrowed in rage, "You act selfishly in an act that should have been selfless. All you care about is your family's status and their image. It is why you have distanced yourself from your younger cousin, after you discovered that he was capable of torturing a woman until he finally finished her off a week later. You want me to leave and bury the evidence of any heinous crimes that have occurred here because you do not want a woman like me to sully your family's good name. You are just like all of those other nobles out there, thinking off no one else except for yourselves. If you could have given me a better reason for leaving my precious ones behind, I may have listened to you. However, I do not take death threats lightly, and I especially do not take half-hearted murder attempts."

Mokuba looked hatefully up at Athena, "You have warped their minds."

"No, she has merely opened our eyes."

Mokuba swung his head around to find Seto in the doorway, looking especially livid at the situation, "Seto, I-"

"I do not want to hear your excuses. I have heard plenty just now." He strode into the bedchamber and walked toward Athena and Yugi's side, "You have done enough damage for one day. If you were not family, I would send you away for this." Seto watched as Athena moved back to the bed and sat down, he kept a wary eye on Mokuba. "I know that somewhere inside of you, you do still love me as a brother, but you have too much of Vivian's blood in you to not be so avaricious, if not in fortune, then in reputation." Seto said as he leveled his glare at his older cousin. "If you think that you or this family will benefit from sending Athena away, you are sadly mistaken. I believe when she arrived at Wellingshire, she had every intention of leaving once she was certain Yugi would be safe and cherished, but she found something that she never expected. Did you not notice that before Athena arrived, Rebecca was miserable and lonely? That I was little more than a walking, talking dead man? Did you not stop to think that if Athena had not been here that everything would not have turned out the way that it did? Time does not bend, and it does not flow in one direction. If Athena was not here, we would be dead two times over. And aside from that, who do you think you are ordering people around in my home?"

"I was only trying to help."

"Yes, help yourself." Seto remarked. "Athena was never a danger to us. It was merely your overactive imagination and paranoia that made you think you could send Athena away and everything would be fine."

Mokuba remained silent for quite some time before he left the suite without saying another word. As he entered the hallway, he passed Rebecca, and he saw the rejection and disappointment in her eyes.

What have I done?

Yugi was still furious over the things Mokuba had said to Athena, and still astounded and awed by Seto's defense. Rebecca had come into the room and she cried herself to sleep against Athena's shoulder, the events of the day and the thought of never seeing Athena again became too much for the girl to handle. Yugi was faring not much better as he leaned against Athena's shoulder and cried out his frustration. They did not know how long the stayed clustered together this way, but after a while, Seto came and sat beside them.

"I am sorry you had to go through that. All of you." He said in a quiet tone of voice.

"Seto, do you believe that all Mokuba had said was a lie? I feel like a curse sometimes…" Athena wondered.

"No, I do not believe in curses." Seto replied, before he sighed and continued, "You just have rotten timing sometimes. However, that does not mean that you have to isolate yourself from the ones who love you." His eyes shifted to the children laying against her, "The young ones would be lost if it was not for you." And so would I.

Athena smiled gently at his answer. As blunt as it had begun, Seto was refreshingly comforting, "Thank you, Seto."

"You are welcome." He muttered, looking away for a moment, "It is getting late. The moon has risen a few hours ago, and it has been a long day."

"I want to stay with Athena tonight." Yugi commented, and Rebecca nodded in agreement, "Me too."

"Well…their room is a bit unsuitable at the moment." Athena replied, by way of accepting.

"Come on then, I will put you in a more comfortable room. This bed does not seem large enough for the three of you. And I want to check your wounds." Seto offered.

Athena glanced down at the bandages. The crimson stain has not grown larger, but it would not hurt to have Seto take a look. Well, it would hurt if he had to use that godawful ointment again…

The children scrambled off of the bed and they followed Seto and Athena out of the room and down the corridor in the direction of the children's old room. They stopped at a door that was right across from Seto's bedchamber and he opened the door and lit a lantern to spread some light in the room.

The room was a little chilly, the window had been left open to air the stuffiness out, but that was easily remedied as Seto closed the window and began to start a fire in the hearth. The children burrowed under the blankets and it did not take them long to fall asleep.

"Lay down on the bed." Seto instructed as he used the billow to coax the fire to burn brighter and warmer. He set the billow and the iron prod that he used to arrange the logs so that the fire would burn longer, and then once he was finished, Seto turned to find that Athena had only partially obeyed his order. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and grinned lightly at him, "It would be difficult to unravel the bandages if I were lying on my back while you make the attempt."

Seto blew out a breath in irritation before he approached Athena and pulled out one end of the bandages and began to unravel them. The sutures were in excellent condition, and there was no reddening or swelling to signal infection to his relief. The stab wound Kalim had dealt to her had stopped bleeding again. He wondered if it had been just residual blood after the ointment was spread over it. She still had a few tendrils of blood flowing when Arthur had wrapped her.

Seto found the fresh roll bandages Arthur had left and he wrapped them around her stomach.

"You know that it was foolish of you to let down your guard like that in the end?" Seto asked as he wrapped the bandages around her.

"I know…I suppose I was not thinking quite right. I thought I had him pinned well enough, but I had forgotten about how strong he had been during our first encounter." Athena replied sounding a little embarrassed.

"You are fortunate that he did not strike you any further to the right or else you would not be here now." Seto said.

"Would that be such a terrible thing?" Athena wondered.

Finished wrapping her bandages and satisfied that they were just tight enough, he took his hand and cupped Athena's chin, tilting her head up a little so that they were eye to eye, "Yes, it would have been a tragic thing. I do not care what Mokuba believes, Athena. I believe that you are a warrior who simply brings the battlefield along with her. You have done your best to protect us, and aside from a few people who died in the Wellingshire fire, you have succeeded in making sure that we all are more or less harmed. You took the brunt of the damage, and you fight your own battles without dragging anyone else down with you. I saw what happened today; Mokuba can only assume." Seto replied.

"I could have sworn you had gotten caught in the crossfire this morning as well." Athena murmured.

"Yes, but that did not count. I am stubborn and act on my own, and I did it to protect the children until you arrived, so that was all on me, and therefore it was my own fault that I had been injured. At least we survived."

Athena nodded in agreement, "You are right." She conceded.

"Of course I am." Seto remarked arrogantly.

They looked into each other's eyes for a few more minutes before Athena stood and hooked her hand around Seto's neck, pulling his head down until his lips met hers. It was a fast kiss before they separated. Seto looked bewildered and stunned, but a moment later, he leaned back in for a long, heated kiss.

They broke apart again for air and Athena pressed her forehead against Seto's chest to catch her breath. She felt Seto's arms around her waist and his chin on her head.

"Seto, I am sorry for worrying you today." She whispered.

Seto took a moment to reply, but then he said, "I never want to feel that ever again."

"I cannot promise, I am a warrior after all. But I can promise that I will try to be more cautious." Athena compromised.

Seto grunted, and then said, "I suppose that will have to do."

Athena raised her head once more, and the moment that she did, Seto was kissing her again. All of the strange emotions he had ever felt, the devastating fear that he might lose Athena came rushing back to him, and it influenced their kiss, making Seto's kiss almost punishing. Seto heard a soft sound come from the back of Athena's throat, and Seto pulled back once again.

Seto saw the flush in Athena's cheeks and the slight glaze in her scarlet eyes, and he pressed his forehead to hers, wanting to express how he felt in that moment, but hesitated when he remember her wounds. He sighed and pressed a kiss to Athena's forehead and let her go.

"Good night, Athena." He murmured huskily before heading out of the room. Athena followed him to shut the door behind him.

"Good night."

Seto gave a slight nod in acknowledgment, before he disappeared behind his bedchamber door.