A Boatload of Thanks:

Malik Fan – I'm flattered you think so.  I was kind of worried because I don't know all of Seto's and Mokuba's history together (simply because the newer episodes haven't shown in the US yet), but I mainly wanted to get the emotions/feelings across.  These two really do rely on each other, and it makes you wonder how that came to be.  I hope this final chapter lives up to your expectations.

Misura – Well, I think these two will be able to handle themselves – it's only an orphanage, right?  That's what they keep telling themselves.  Thank you for the great review!

Zidane – Ooh, a tearjerker.  :-) That means I'm pullin' on the right heart strings.  Really though, Seto's my favorite char in the show, and it's just so much fun to write about him and his little brother when they were young.  With these two guys around, how could this story *not* be a tearjerker?  *lol* Thanks for the review!

Author's Note: I'm not certain, but I'm trying to decide if I should write more fics in this fashion – Seto and Mokuba as kids, dealing with numerous problems.  If I did write it, though, it might tend to be rather graphic.  I don't imagine they had a very pretty childhood.  Let me know what you guys think.  If I get enough positive feedback, I might consider it!  *wicked grin*  Oh, and please leave a review too!  Us writers are starved for responses!

-- Sylvia

*****

Chapter 2:

Seto gave a listless nod, moving almost mechanically as he helped his brother out of the car seat, and pulled him out into the pouring rain.  The elder boy stared up into the man's pale face, blinking as the heavy droplets of rain fell into his eyes.  Their temporary caretaker nodded and with a gloved finger pointed toward the front doors of the looming orphanage.  In the pitch black night, the building seemed to simply emerge from the darkness, as though it were apart of it, and it was hard for Seto to tell where the edges of the building ended and the cloudy skies began.  He clutched Mokuba's hand in his own and waited for the man to move. Instead of guiding the boys, however, the man simply opened the driver's side door, gesturing absently toward the dark structure in the pouring rain.

 "Go on.  She's waiting for you inside.  Looks like you boys have a home, now."  The man in the white trench coat seemed pleased with himself, patting Seto's drenched hair with one gloved hand in mock affection.  Disgusted, Seto pulled away, backing toward the orphanage reluctantly – the lesser of two evils. Slowly, the two boys approached the doorway, uncertain of what to expect on the opposite side of the monstrous wooden doors.

"Seto, I'm scared." Mokuba's voice trembled and seemed to falter in the rushing wind. 

The elder boy squeezed his hand harder, trying to give comfort.  "Its okay, Mokuba, I'm here with you."  They climbed the steep jagged stairs and Seto pushed the slick white doorbell, awaiting a response.  He couldn't figure out why the two adults had spoken, and then the door had been closed.  Hadn't they known the two boys would be coming inside?  Shouldn't someone be waiting for them? He swallowed hard and turned around to see the two red brake lights disappear through the entrance to the driveway.

"He left us!" The bushy-headed toddler whispered with wide eyes, pulling on Seto's hand.  "Seto, he left us!  What're we gonna do?  What if they don't come?  Where're we gonna go?"

"Shh!" Seto elbowed the boy, his heart pounding in his ears as he heard footsteps within the darkened building.  A light turned on within the foyer, a cloudy illumination through the thin lace curtains cheerfully illuminated the two boys on the stoop.  A clanking of a key being turned in a lock, and slowly with a long drawn-out creak, the great wooden door was opened.  A woman's head poked out from around the corner, her hair was done up in rollers and piled on her head, covered with a thin blue cloth.  She wore a fuzzy pink bathrobe with dingy white slippers, and her hand clutched at the door as though she were afraid the two boys would assault her.  She looked at the brothers up and down with suspicion.

"You tha two kids he dropped off?" She produced a tiny cigarette from behind the door in her other hand, taking a long draught on it as she waited for an answer, completely oblivious to the pouring rain that drenched the two children.

"Yes, ma'am," Seto's teeth chattered uncontrollably in the cold, and he balled one of his hands in his pocket to keep it warm while he clutched Mokuba's with the other.  "I'm Seto and this is my little brother Mokuba.  We're… we're orphans, ma'am, and we were wondering if you would…"

"Well of course you're orphans!" The woman let out a squealing cackle, smiling with delight as she puffed again on the cigarette.  She squinted behind them, attempting to see through the black pitch into the driveway, "It looks as though he just left you two here, huh?" She frowned in irritation, leaning heavily on the wooden door as her eyes flittered back and forth at the two soaked and ragged children.  "You two look an absolute mess," she stared hard at Seto, as though she were waiting for something, but even though the shivering boy raked his brain for what he should say, his nerves and chilled limbs were overwhelming any ability to think.

"May we come in?" Mokuba's high-pitched voice chimed through the uncomfortable silence, and a long smile spread across the woman's face.

"Ah, finally he learns some manners." She shot a glare at Seto and took Mokuba's hand in her own, attempting to pull the boy away from the elder and into the house.

"No!" Mokuba cried, tears brimming once again in his large blue eyes, "Not without Seto!"  The woman watched him curiously, as though he were an oddity in a traveling circus.  Her beady eyes rested once again on Seto, waiting again for an answer.

"Ma'am, may w-we please come in?" Seto tried to stop his hands from shaking, and he wondered absently if it was from the chill or from his nerves.  He never was very good at talking in front of others, and now more than ever he wished he had his young brother's knack at public appearances.  She smiled again, gesturing for the two boys to enter, and closing the massive wooden door closed behind them.

Although the building looked massive from the outside, Seto discovered that the interior was far different.  He found he was standing in the main room, an old bedraggled coat rack stood to his left and before him was a tiny television with three sofas spread about that looked as though they were just about as old as the coat rack.  A narrow staircase rose up directly in front of him and bordered the main room.  He moved forward, noting that on the opposite side of the stairway, there was a hall that seemed to lead to a kitchen.  He could see no further than that, and he turned again to see the lanky woman was watching him.

"Are you finished? Then put your coat over there and take off those shoes." She gestured to a large pile of shoes that had been haphazardly stacked beneath the coat rack, almost as in offering.  "Rule number one, kids, don't get my stuff dirty.  That means you stay clean and you keep your jackets and shoes down here, I don't wanna see either of you prancing around getting dirt and mud and God knows what all over my clean furniture.  Just because it doesn't belong to you doesn't mean you can go around disrespecting people's things.  Got it?"  Mokuba's head bobbed like the dolls you'd put on the dashboard of a car, and for a flashing moment Seto thought of what his mother must have looked like, fused to her car seat, arms and legs a bloodied mess, everything still except her head which bobbed up and down like a hideous joke.  The boy put his palm to his forehead and closed his eyes, willing the vision and the nausea that accompanied it to pass.

"Eh?  What's up with him?" The beady-eyed woman watched Seto with worry, gesturing to Mokuba to answer her.  "Is he sick or something?  Damn it, if that bastard brought me a sick child again, I'm going to ring his little…"

"No, ma'am, Seto's not sick… he's just sad, that's all." The bushy-headed toddler rubbed his big brother's arm affectionately, aiding the taller boy out of his coat.  "He'll be okay, won't you Seto?"

Absently the elder boy nodded, and tried to focus on untying his shoes.  He wasn't quite sure why these gruesome sights kept haunting him, but he'd only started to have them since the night he'd been told about their parents.  It had been raining that night too, but at the time it seemed as though it was more than just rain; it was as though the entire world was weeping the passing of their mom and dad.  The sky had taken on a strange quality of light that gave everything a yellowed tinge, the sight had made Seto sick to his stomach.  The police officer had been a tall man, and the elder boy didn't believe it when the man had explained everything to him.

"They were going to have dinner together, is that correct?"

"Yessir," Seto barely remembered his own words, all that seemed important at the time was what the tall man with the funny mustache was saying to him.

"And they left a sitter here to watch over the two of you, right?"

"Yessir, they go out together once a week, and Ms. Sweeney always looks after us."

"Yes, she's a nice lady.  Well, little Seto," he hated it when people called him that, "I've got some bad news for you.  It seems that while your parents were going to dinner, they were hit pretty hard by a drunk driver.  The car seems to have spun out of control, and they knocked into a tractor trailer that was carrying some highly explosive liquid and…"  The man couldn't look at him, and that only made Seto all the more terrified.  He had no idea what it meant if a car spun out of control or what a tractor trailer was or what an explosive liquid was, but he knew that whatever this man had to say, it wasn't good.

"Well, Seto, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your parents are dead.  They burned to death in the vehicle and… and we're going to have to send you to some relatives now."  Seto had been shocked. He'd expected that perhaps they were badly hurt, or that maybe they were in the hospital like the time his brother had broken his leg when he fell out of a tree, but he'd never even considered that they might… not be coming back.  It seemed like their return would always be inevitable, like tomorrow following today or knowing that the hours of the clock were going to eventually come to a certain time.  He'd stared at the man for a few minutes, his eyes wide and his face pale, and then had asked the only thing that gnawed at his mind.

"Does Mokuba know?"

"Your little brother?  No, no, I'm sorry Seto, but you're going to have to tell him yourself." The policeman had already put his hat back on as he twirled his funny mustache, but Seto was in a haze, hardly noticing as the man gathered his belongings to leave.

"I… I have to tell him?  But how do I do that?" Seto had tried to move after the tall man as he'd begun to walk away, but his legs wouldn't obey him.

"I don't know, kid."  The policeman fastened his black parka and went back out into the rain, the yellow light had bathed him in its sickly ambient glow.  "Guess you'll just have to figure that out on your own."

Seto was pulled from his reverie when he stumbled over one of the stairs; his feet tangled together like a klutz.  He flailed one of his arms out, catching the railing before he landed, the rusty metal making an angry squeak as his weight pushed against it.  He smiled sheepishly as Mokuba held firm to his other hand and helped him up again.  The woman was further up the stairway, glaring in irritation as the two youngsters started up the steep climb again.  Mokuba spoke with blatant worry, his brow furrowed, "Are you okay, big brother?"  He rubbed Seto's hand reassuringly with his small fingers as they climbed.

"Yeah, I'm okay now," the elder boy sighed, dragging his attention away from his thoughts and back to the real world.

"Now over here's your room," she pulled a long ring of keys from her bathrobe pocket, fingering through them for a moment before sliding it into the lock.  She knocked on the door as she entered the dark room, and for a moment Seto couldn't see as his vision readjusted.  After his eyes had compensated for the lack of light, he began to make out rows of beds, about five rows in all with four beds in each.  In almost all of them he could make out some lumpy figure, some were snoring louder than any noise his father had made, and Dad was well-known for the insomnia-inducing sound. Others tossed and turned in irritation at the noise made by the three visitors.  The woman produced a small flashlight from her other pocket, making Seto wonder exactly how deep those things were, and she began flicking the yellow beam over each of the beds in turn.

"Okay, one, two, three, four… five… six…" She counted nineteen in all and he made out a thin smile on her lips as she turned to them.  "Well it looks like this is your lucky day, kiddos.  I've got just enough beds for you two, but you'll have to share.  Hopefully that won't be too much of a problem," she left no time to argue as she sauntered to the back of the room to the only empty bed left.  She bent down onto her knees and pulled out a large plastic tub from beneath it. 

"This'll be where you put your things, and this," she produced a small lunch pail and shook its heavy contents, producing a few irritated moans and groans from around the room.  "This is your soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush… anything you should need.  I'll get you another of these, all in due time," she motioned to Seto before reaching into the larger plastic bucket and pulling out two thin sheets that the elder boy soon realized with disgust that they were meant to be pajamas.  "Change into these and toss your dirty clothes back there," she jutted her thumb out behind her toward a large pile of dirty clothes.  "You'll have a new pair in the morning and I'll have some of the other kids show you around." She grinned once again and stood, sucking in a harsh breath as her knees popped.  Checking that her hair rollers were in place, she strode back to the door, "Nighty-night, boys."

The door closed with a thump and Seto cringed as he heard the key turn in its lock.  The two boys were left relatively alone in the chilled room, and Mokuba turned to Seto with worry, "Did you catch all of that, big brother?" His voice was hardly a whisper and fear danced in his large teary blue eyes.

"I think so," Seto began to shrug out of his wet shirt, looking at his little brother in confusion when he didn't do the same.  "What's wrong, Mokuba?  Don't you wanna go to bed?"

The bushy-headed boy nodded, but looked with embarrassment at all the rows of kids packed the room.  "Yeah, but I don't wanna get dressed in front of them…"

Seto smiled at the small boy in understanding, "Okay, I tell you what.  You can either crawl under the covers to get dressed or you can lean down onto the floor and I'll make sure nobody watches."

Mokuba looked from the bed to the floor for a few moments in consideration.  "Well, I don't wanna get the bed wet, I'm wet enough already." Seto nodded, standing beside the bed with his arms on his hips.

"I shall strike down anyone who tries to watch Mokuba!" He kept his voice to a whisper as he melodramatically swept his right arm over the room.  He smiled as Mokuba giggled from behind him and finished getting dressed.

"Did anybody see?"

"I don't think so, my spectacular x-ray vision didn't spy any traitors." Seto smiled as he peeled off his own wet socks and trousers, slipping the thin white pajamas over his head and poking about for a few minutes until he was able to successfully put his head and arms through the right holes.  "There we go. Well, climb on in."

Mokuba nodded sleepily, and Seto grinned at how quickly the sight of a bed could make his little brother tired.  The kid crawled in and the elder boy had to keep from laughing out loud as the toddler's tiny legs flailed for a few moments until he could pull himself up the rest of the way, the springs of the bed squeaking loudly.  Mokuba lifted his hands from the thin mattress in shame, "Oops, I'm sorry!" he whispered to the sleeping mass.  Seto simply chuckled and crawled in next to his baby brother, wrapping the toddler in his arms to keep him warm.  The pajamas and sheets were thin and the room was cold, but between the two brothers, they kept each other warm all night. 

--Fin--