Ieyre: Hello my faithful readers ^_^ Sorry it's been SOOOOO long since I updated, I have been going through depression and writer's block, plus I was working on a contest fic which took up some of my time (I won third place! Joy for me, considering it was so bad I wasn't even expecting to PLACE). After 2 months of reflection, I decided to change what I said last chapter about THIS chapter, because it just didn't work...so this chapter is ever so slightly different from what I said it would be in my last update. I would also just like to say that I appreciate all the reviews and I'm glad you're all enjoying the ficcy...which, coincidentally, is my most successful ever ^_~
Yami Ieyre: Well THAT'S a high standard.
Ieyre: Grrrrrrrr.... and I would also like to thank you all for putting up with my psychopathic Yami because I know she can get annoyingly bitchy at times. In conclusion-
Yami Ieyre: HEY!
Ieyre: *sighs* Sorry, Yami.
Yami Ieyre: It's okay, hikari, I forgive your rudeness...hey, ya know what sucks? All these stupid airhead anime character guys have millions of screaming, idiotic fan girls, and I ain't got nothing'! Not a single fan! What's up with that?
Ieyre: You can't think of even ONE?
Yami Ieyre: Maybe Zutso-kun...yeah...
Ieyre: *laughs hysterically* Zutsokaki...yeah right...*continues evil mean laughter* HAHAHA...good one...! *even more evil laughter*
Yami Ieyre: *lip trembles* Zutsokaki doesn't like me? *runs off to bathroom crying*
Ieyre: *stops laughing and realizes what a damn b**** she's being [I really just wanna diss myself today...don't ask.]*...no, wait....Yami.....I was just kidding, honest.......oh, sorry guys, I guess I better start the fic and comfort Yami while you read it...
Disclaimer: READ THE FIRST 5 CHAPTERS!
*********************
"Seto..." Adele's eyes widened in horror "Seto...you don't mean that..."
"I do." Was his icy response. "With all my heart."
"..." Water raised to the surface in the form of soft, warm tears and quiet, gentle sobbing. Everyone in the room stopped.
Silence.
*SLAP!*
"SETO KAIBA! How could you say such a thing?!"
Seto staggered. The slap hadn't hurt (much), but the outburst had surprised him. Her, of all people...
"I asked a question, Kaiba! I want an answer!" Tea glared angrily at the boy-billionaire, fists clenched. He stared at her in shock, momentarily speechless.
"Seto...why?" Mokuba was on the verge of tears. "Why? WHY???"
Joey, Tristan, and Bakura rushed to aid Adele, who was sobbing quietly into her hands. Her long strands of hair and fallen, concealing her tear-stained face.
"You don't understand..." He hissed. "What do you know of pain? Of loss? Of the REAL world?"
Tea's eyes softened slowly at the look of pain on his face.
"We can't ALL live in a world of SUNSHINE and DAISIES, Tea." He continued, spitefully. "There is...hurt, there is hatred, there is...betrayal."
Adele looked up at him in mute shock.
"Seto...you don't think I...*I* betrayed you, do you?" asked Adele, eyes shining.
Seto faltered for a split second, and nodded.
"...Seto...why...? When did I...?"
"You left us." He spat, venomously. "You left us in that...that HELL HOLE to rot."
She teared up again.
"...You think I had a CHOICE?" She wailed. "You know I didn't want to! They forced me to go! Since we weren't blood relatives I wasn't allowed...I
couldn't...please, Seto, please...you know deep down I didn't want to go...you never blamed me THEN!"
She had now been reduced to pathetic, wailing sobs. Seto was having an internal battle with himself...
//She's so...unhappy...does she really care so much for us...? Could I have been wrong...no! I have seen her likes before...I have been deceived before...life has taught me not to trust...//
Yugi and his friends looked on to the scene anxiously. Adele crying, Kaiba looking so...torn...and Mokuba, so very...young.
"S-s-s-seto? P-p-p-p-please, answer..."
Seto's eyes widened. His brother. Adele. Yugi-tachi. Everything was so complicated...one side of him was winning...then the other...until...
"STOP CRYING, YOU FOOLISH GIRL!" He screamed at her, blue eyes flashing in an unnatural way, unlike his own. "Your crying will get you no sympathy...tears are for the weak...the weak like yo-"
He froze.
//No...NO! I have become him...//
#FLASHBACK#
A single tear ran down his cheek...
"Ah...crying, our we?"
He looked down at the floor, trying to conceal it.
"You think you can hide from me? Lift your head, look at me."
He trembled slightly.
"I told you to FACE ME boy! Now do so...or face a far worse consequence..."
He lifted his face slowly, fear in his eyes.
"Here me, boy...your crying will get you no sympathy. Tears are for the WEAK!" He struck the buy across the face, harshly. "The weak...LIKE YOU!"
It all turned black.
#END FLASHBACK#
//...He has gotten what he desired...I am his perfect heir now, his protégé...there is nothing human within me...how could I have been so blind to the truth...all when I thought I was going against him...it was all part of his lessons, everything...//
The room was silent for a long moment.
"He's won, Mokuba."
********************
Mokuba slowly walked over to Adele and raised her off the floor, to her and the five teens surprise. He turned to his brother.
"He's won." Seto repeated, hollowly. "All when I thought my rook had won the game..." Seto trailed off. "...He had a knight in waiting..." He smiled bitterly at his own metaphorical comparison of chess.
Yugi, Joey, Tea, Tristan, Adele and Bakura stared. Mokuba, seeming to understand, timidly approached his brother.
"Seto...it's not over yet..."
"Mokuba, after checkmate...he's won..." Seto spoke with a sort of lost hope in his voice.
"But Seto..." Mokuba stepped aside to reveal Adele. Seto looked upon her as if he had forgotten she was there.
"Adele! Oh, Adele...Addy..."
Adele looked up at him with surprise.
"What...what did you call me?" She whispered.
"Addy...it's you're name, isn't it? Addy Sinclair..."
She ran to embrace him once again, but stopped short at the sight of his face.
"Adele...don't...please don't."
She gave him a half-hurt, half-perplexed look.
"But...why not...Seto-kun, why not?"
"Because...I'm not human. He's won...he..." Seto turned away. "You're not fit to...you're too good...and I'm too..."
"Too...what? And who's...who's 'he'?" Adele asked.
Yugi, Joey, Tristan, Tea, and Bakura were still puzzled and a little alarmed by the situation. It seemed as if Kaiba was giving up...not on them, Adele, the company, or beating Yugi...he was giving up on himself.
"I know it wasn't your fault, Adele...I see that now...you, you...wouldn't have left us for anything..." He sat down with a defeated look. "There's nothing left, now...Mokuba..." His blank blue eyes suddenly widened with realization. "Mokuba...he threw the game! He could've won, I remember now!"
Mokuba turned to face him in shock.
"Seto, you can't start thinking things like that now! Big brother, please..." Mokuba pleaded.
"Yes, yes...I remember there was only...was it...five pieces...? Five left and then-" He turned around in his seat to face Mokuba. "-Then he...he could've moved his...his bishop...and it would've been check...checkmate..."
"Seto...why would he have...thrown it...all that would have been accomplished would be..." His gray eyes also widened. "...No...he couldn't have...have done it to...to use me to...hurt you?"
"Yes, Mokuba. That was his intention."
Mokuba turned away, shaking slightly with the weight of tears, the weight of a thousand nights of worrying...
"...And?"
One eye peeked behind his shoulder at his elder brother.
"And it worked."
***************
Yugi stepped forward timidly to the shocked Adele, the saddened Mokuba, and the seemingly defeated Seto Kaiba. He and his group of friends all had the same questions running through their minds. Who really was Adele Sinclair? How did she know the Kaiba brothers so well? Why did she seem to feel such strong love for the seemingly cold-hearted Seto Kaiba?
As for he himself...why had he shone such contempt for Adele... what had caused him change? What had snapped within his desolate soul and hardened heart to cause him to break down so...?
These mysteries had even intrigued their minds to wonder other things...they never questioned the Kaiba brothers past before...why had they never wondered? Why had it never occurred to this group of loving, caring young people that the beginnings of a boy can shape the man he becomes and that the worst pain of all...is the loss of those closest to us...that nothing can be compared to and looked upon so as a boy, forced to grow up to fast...?
It had never occurred to them because the one called Seto Kaiba chose not to tell people of him...his feelings, his emotions...all had been kept bottled up so long that the want for friends...for someone to look to...they had been lost forever...
Seto looked up at Yugi forlornly as he approached. The short, timid boy immediately transformed into his dark half, the former Pharaoh and King of Games, Yami Yugi Mouto.
"Kaiba...please tell us...you must know that you can always come to us for help..."
"Yeah, Kaiba...listen ta' Yami...you know we're there for ya'." Tristan and Bakura stared openly in surprise at Joey, who glared back at them.
"Please Kaiba...please listen to us." Tea pleaded with the emotionless billionaire.
"...It...it's too late now..."
Yami's eyes narrowed at his rival, seemingly misunderstanding what he said.
"Kaiba, do you mean what I think you mean? Does this mean you've..." He softened his tone. "...Given up on yourself...?"
He didn't respond at first...he seemed in his own world...
"Mokuba..." Tonelessly, Seto rasped. "Please, little brother...please understand...I've failed you..."
Mokuba screamed and flung himself into his elder brother, sobbing and hugging him. Seto didn't respond.
"...I've become just like him."
"No, Seto! No, you haven't!" Mokuba cried, shaking his brother repeatedly.
"I said the exact same thing to Addy...that I promised I'd never say...I've become just like him..." He repeated.
"No, Seto...NO, NII-SAMA, NO!"
Everyone in the room watched as Mokuba tried desperately to shake his brother to his senses. But it was to no avail...
Something had snapped in Seto Kaiba that day. Something he had heard...said, seen...something jarred a memory which in turn...
He had lost the belief in himself as a good person.
"Please, big brother, please, tell me you're all right!"
Seto's eyes had glazed over and gave him the appearance of someone who had lost their soul...he simply sat and stared at the sight of Mokuba, Yugi-tachi, and Adele.
"Mokuba...has he...?" Bakura walked slowly up to the small boy.
"...I...don't know what's wrong...his heart's beating, he's still fine, but...he can't hear me..."
"Hear you?" Tea asked, perplexed.
"It's something weird my big brother and I do...we can always feel each other...but now...it's as if I've been cut off from him..."
"No way!" Tristan exclaimed.
"Yes...I think I've lost him!" Mokuba cried into his brother's shirt.
All stared upon what looked to be, miraculously and strangely enough, Seto Kaiba's last hour.
A tear slowly sliding down his face, Yugi looked down at his shirt and gasped...the Millennium puzzle was glowing as it had never done before! Amazed, he pointed it out to the others and came to a startling conclusion: Bakura's Millennium Ring was glowing in the same strange way!
Mokuba looked up from his brother's shirt at them both, when a small voice whispered in his ear,
"All is not lost for you, little one."
Suddenly the room dissolved around everyone and everything went black.
*****************
Ieyre:...Well, we're back from the bathroom.
Yami Ieyre: *sniffles*
Ieyre: Aw, it's okay, Yami-chan...why don't you insult this chappy, to make you feel better?
Yami Ieyre: I-*hiccup*-can't think of anything really WRONG with it.
Ieyre: *surprised* Really???
Yami Ieyre: *sniffle* Really.
Ieyre: Wow...listen, everyone reading. I really hope you enjoyed this chapter (sorry again it took so long!)and please, please, PLEASE R&R! I need reviews DESPERATLY, and the next chapters will come along better if I get them (please nothing too harsh, I'm freakily sensitive.) Well, bye!
Yami Ieyre: Yeah...*sniffle*...bye...
Yami Ieyre: Well THAT'S a high standard.
Ieyre: Grrrrrrrr.... and I would also like to thank you all for putting up with my psychopathic Yami because I know she can get annoyingly bitchy at times. In conclusion-
Yami Ieyre: HEY!
Ieyre: *sighs* Sorry, Yami.
Yami Ieyre: It's okay, hikari, I forgive your rudeness...hey, ya know what sucks? All these stupid airhead anime character guys have millions of screaming, idiotic fan girls, and I ain't got nothing'! Not a single fan! What's up with that?
Ieyre: You can't think of even ONE?
Yami Ieyre: Maybe Zutso-kun...yeah...
Ieyre: *laughs hysterically* Zutsokaki...yeah right...*continues evil mean laughter* HAHAHA...good one...! *even more evil laughter*
Yami Ieyre: *lip trembles* Zutsokaki doesn't like me? *runs off to bathroom crying*
Ieyre: *stops laughing and realizes what a damn b**** she's being [I really just wanna diss myself today...don't ask.]*...no, wait....Yami.....I was just kidding, honest.......oh, sorry guys, I guess I better start the fic and comfort Yami while you read it...
Disclaimer: READ THE FIRST 5 CHAPTERS!
*********************
"Seto..." Adele's eyes widened in horror "Seto...you don't mean that..."
"I do." Was his icy response. "With all my heart."
"..." Water raised to the surface in the form of soft, warm tears and quiet, gentle sobbing. Everyone in the room stopped.
Silence.
*SLAP!*
"SETO KAIBA! How could you say such a thing?!"
Seto staggered. The slap hadn't hurt (much), but the outburst had surprised him. Her, of all people...
"I asked a question, Kaiba! I want an answer!" Tea glared angrily at the boy-billionaire, fists clenched. He stared at her in shock, momentarily speechless.
"Seto...why?" Mokuba was on the verge of tears. "Why? WHY???"
Joey, Tristan, and Bakura rushed to aid Adele, who was sobbing quietly into her hands. Her long strands of hair and fallen, concealing her tear-stained face.
"You don't understand..." He hissed. "What do you know of pain? Of loss? Of the REAL world?"
Tea's eyes softened slowly at the look of pain on his face.
"We can't ALL live in a world of SUNSHINE and DAISIES, Tea." He continued, spitefully. "There is...hurt, there is hatred, there is...betrayal."
Adele looked up at him in mute shock.
"Seto...you don't think I...*I* betrayed you, do you?" asked Adele, eyes shining.
Seto faltered for a split second, and nodded.
"...Seto...why...? When did I...?"
"You left us." He spat, venomously. "You left us in that...that HELL HOLE to rot."
She teared up again.
"...You think I had a CHOICE?" She wailed. "You know I didn't want to! They forced me to go! Since we weren't blood relatives I wasn't allowed...I
couldn't...please, Seto, please...you know deep down I didn't want to go...you never blamed me THEN!"
She had now been reduced to pathetic, wailing sobs. Seto was having an internal battle with himself...
//She's so...unhappy...does she really care so much for us...? Could I have been wrong...no! I have seen her likes before...I have been deceived before...life has taught me not to trust...//
Yugi and his friends looked on to the scene anxiously. Adele crying, Kaiba looking so...torn...and Mokuba, so very...young.
"S-s-s-seto? P-p-p-p-please, answer..."
Seto's eyes widened. His brother. Adele. Yugi-tachi. Everything was so complicated...one side of him was winning...then the other...until...
"STOP CRYING, YOU FOOLISH GIRL!" He screamed at her, blue eyes flashing in an unnatural way, unlike his own. "Your crying will get you no sympathy...tears are for the weak...the weak like yo-"
He froze.
//No...NO! I have become him...//
#FLASHBACK#
A single tear ran down his cheek...
"Ah...crying, our we?"
He looked down at the floor, trying to conceal it.
"You think you can hide from me? Lift your head, look at me."
He trembled slightly.
"I told you to FACE ME boy! Now do so...or face a far worse consequence..."
He lifted his face slowly, fear in his eyes.
"Here me, boy...your crying will get you no sympathy. Tears are for the WEAK!" He struck the buy across the face, harshly. "The weak...LIKE YOU!"
It all turned black.
#END FLASHBACK#
//...He has gotten what he desired...I am his perfect heir now, his protégé...there is nothing human within me...how could I have been so blind to the truth...all when I thought I was going against him...it was all part of his lessons, everything...//
The room was silent for a long moment.
"He's won, Mokuba."
********************
Mokuba slowly walked over to Adele and raised her off the floor, to her and the five teens surprise. He turned to his brother.
"He's won." Seto repeated, hollowly. "All when I thought my rook had won the game..." Seto trailed off. "...He had a knight in waiting..." He smiled bitterly at his own metaphorical comparison of chess.
Yugi, Joey, Tea, Tristan, Adele and Bakura stared. Mokuba, seeming to understand, timidly approached his brother.
"Seto...it's not over yet..."
"Mokuba, after checkmate...he's won..." Seto spoke with a sort of lost hope in his voice.
"But Seto..." Mokuba stepped aside to reveal Adele. Seto looked upon her as if he had forgotten she was there.
"Adele! Oh, Adele...Addy..."
Adele looked up at him with surprise.
"What...what did you call me?" She whispered.
"Addy...it's you're name, isn't it? Addy Sinclair..."
She ran to embrace him once again, but stopped short at the sight of his face.
"Adele...don't...please don't."
She gave him a half-hurt, half-perplexed look.
"But...why not...Seto-kun, why not?"
"Because...I'm not human. He's won...he..." Seto turned away. "You're not fit to...you're too good...and I'm too..."
"Too...what? And who's...who's 'he'?" Adele asked.
Yugi, Joey, Tristan, Tea, and Bakura were still puzzled and a little alarmed by the situation. It seemed as if Kaiba was giving up...not on them, Adele, the company, or beating Yugi...he was giving up on himself.
"I know it wasn't your fault, Adele...I see that now...you, you...wouldn't have left us for anything..." He sat down with a defeated look. "There's nothing left, now...Mokuba..." His blank blue eyes suddenly widened with realization. "Mokuba...he threw the game! He could've won, I remember now!"
Mokuba turned to face him in shock.
"Seto, you can't start thinking things like that now! Big brother, please..." Mokuba pleaded.
"Yes, yes...I remember there was only...was it...five pieces...? Five left and then-" He turned around in his seat to face Mokuba. "-Then he...he could've moved his...his bishop...and it would've been check...checkmate..."
"Seto...why would he have...thrown it...all that would have been accomplished would be..." His gray eyes also widened. "...No...he couldn't have...have done it to...to use me to...hurt you?"
"Yes, Mokuba. That was his intention."
Mokuba turned away, shaking slightly with the weight of tears, the weight of a thousand nights of worrying...
"...And?"
One eye peeked behind his shoulder at his elder brother.
"And it worked."
***************
Yugi stepped forward timidly to the shocked Adele, the saddened Mokuba, and the seemingly defeated Seto Kaiba. He and his group of friends all had the same questions running through their minds. Who really was Adele Sinclair? How did she know the Kaiba brothers so well? Why did she seem to feel such strong love for the seemingly cold-hearted Seto Kaiba?
As for he himself...why had he shone such contempt for Adele... what had caused him change? What had snapped within his desolate soul and hardened heart to cause him to break down so...?
These mysteries had even intrigued their minds to wonder other things...they never questioned the Kaiba brothers past before...why had they never wondered? Why had it never occurred to this group of loving, caring young people that the beginnings of a boy can shape the man he becomes and that the worst pain of all...is the loss of those closest to us...that nothing can be compared to and looked upon so as a boy, forced to grow up to fast...?
It had never occurred to them because the one called Seto Kaiba chose not to tell people of him...his feelings, his emotions...all had been kept bottled up so long that the want for friends...for someone to look to...they had been lost forever...
Seto looked up at Yugi forlornly as he approached. The short, timid boy immediately transformed into his dark half, the former Pharaoh and King of Games, Yami Yugi Mouto.
"Kaiba...please tell us...you must know that you can always come to us for help..."
"Yeah, Kaiba...listen ta' Yami...you know we're there for ya'." Tristan and Bakura stared openly in surprise at Joey, who glared back at them.
"Please Kaiba...please listen to us." Tea pleaded with the emotionless billionaire.
"...It...it's too late now..."
Yami's eyes narrowed at his rival, seemingly misunderstanding what he said.
"Kaiba, do you mean what I think you mean? Does this mean you've..." He softened his tone. "...Given up on yourself...?"
He didn't respond at first...he seemed in his own world...
"Mokuba..." Tonelessly, Seto rasped. "Please, little brother...please understand...I've failed you..."
Mokuba screamed and flung himself into his elder brother, sobbing and hugging him. Seto didn't respond.
"...I've become just like him."
"No, Seto! No, you haven't!" Mokuba cried, shaking his brother repeatedly.
"I said the exact same thing to Addy...that I promised I'd never say...I've become just like him..." He repeated.
"No, Seto...NO, NII-SAMA, NO!"
Everyone in the room watched as Mokuba tried desperately to shake his brother to his senses. But it was to no avail...
Something had snapped in Seto Kaiba that day. Something he had heard...said, seen...something jarred a memory which in turn...
He had lost the belief in himself as a good person.
"Please, big brother, please, tell me you're all right!"
Seto's eyes had glazed over and gave him the appearance of someone who had lost their soul...he simply sat and stared at the sight of Mokuba, Yugi-tachi, and Adele.
"Mokuba...has he...?" Bakura walked slowly up to the small boy.
"...I...don't know what's wrong...his heart's beating, he's still fine, but...he can't hear me..."
"Hear you?" Tea asked, perplexed.
"It's something weird my big brother and I do...we can always feel each other...but now...it's as if I've been cut off from him..."
"No way!" Tristan exclaimed.
"Yes...I think I've lost him!" Mokuba cried into his brother's shirt.
All stared upon what looked to be, miraculously and strangely enough, Seto Kaiba's last hour.
A tear slowly sliding down his face, Yugi looked down at his shirt and gasped...the Millennium puzzle was glowing as it had never done before! Amazed, he pointed it out to the others and came to a startling conclusion: Bakura's Millennium Ring was glowing in the same strange way!
Mokuba looked up from his brother's shirt at them both, when a small voice whispered in his ear,
"All is not lost for you, little one."
Suddenly the room dissolved around everyone and everything went black.
*****************
Ieyre:...Well, we're back from the bathroom.
Yami Ieyre: *sniffles*
Ieyre: Aw, it's okay, Yami-chan...why don't you insult this chappy, to make you feel better?
Yami Ieyre: I-*hiccup*-can't think of anything really WRONG with it.
Ieyre: *surprised* Really???
Yami Ieyre: *sniffle* Really.
Ieyre: Wow...listen, everyone reading. I really hope you enjoyed this chapter (sorry again it took so long!)and please, please, PLEASE R&R! I need reviews DESPERATLY, and the next chapters will come along better if I get them (please nothing too harsh, I'm freakily sensitive.) Well, bye!
Yami Ieyre: Yeah...*sniffle*...bye...