Chapter Three: Loveless Lullaby

"One, two, he's coming for you…"

Lifting his somnolent lids, the brunet stared groggily at the floor. Chills…he couldn't explain the icy sensations coating his insides, nor could he properly describe the emotions drowning his mind, but they were there, just like his sibling was in front of him now, only--

"Three, four, better shut the door…"

Seto, who was able to suppress his internal fatigue, lifted his fists to his eyes. Grinding the sleep out of his sapphire orbs, he shook his head a few times. He had to do that, since he obviously couldn't trust his own vision to tell him the truth these days--

"Five, six, impaled on sticks…"

"Mokuba," choked the brown-haired boy, still shivering from the sound of the morbid nursery rhyme, "Stop it. He--Daddy's not here anymore, so you don't have to be hurting like this."

Appearing to be locked away in a torture chamber, the child with long tresses continued to chant the awful melody. "Seven, eight, loving to hate…" he sang robotically, his young accent burdened with mentally ill attributes.

"Little brother?" called the older relative apprehensively.

Staring out the window of their closed in space, the younger male tapped his fingertips against the base of the glass, almost as if he were keeping time to the music he echoed. Clearly, there was no one home in the body of the shorter person, for his body seemed to move on its own accord. Painstakingly, he dragged his little hand up the glossy surface, not even registering the potential danger his flesh was about to find itself in.

"Oh, Christ! Don't!" begged Kaiba, reaching over to his best friend with a trembling palm. "Not after what happened to us today!"

Looking as if he actually heard the desperate plea the older individual was making, the small adolescent glanced at his sibling. For a moment, his features softened, and he allowed himself to smile. His gesture was wistful, but not devoid of love or adoration for his big brother. Speaking in a heart-wrenching whisper, he rasped the title of his relative.

"Seto-chan?"

Feeling a tad more relieved than he had been previously, the other boy grinned himself. "You okay there?" he asked, just to be sure nothing would possess his favorite playmate and force him to do something he would regret later.

Mokuba flashed him a sweet expression. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Don't ever scare me like that again, you hear me?"

"I won't anymore." promised the youth with blue green tresses. "It'll never happen again."

"That's good." the boy on the carpet replied, feeling a bit more at ease. "I can't take anymore of that kind of behavior." Sighing deeply, he brought his knees up to his chest and curled up into a cozy ball.

"I know."

"It's not your fault, alright? I don't want you to start thinking it is or anything. I mean, I just get tired, so sick of all this--this--" Incapable of finding a better word for their situation, he used the one noun that was typical descriptive language for soap operas. "drama."

"I know," repeated the shorter child, "and I'm gonna make it to where you don't hafta deal with that stuff."

Seto blinked in astonishment. "What are you talking about?"

It wasn't until the petite adolescent resumed singing the haunting music that Kaiba fully comprehended the meaning of his relative's phrases. "NO!" cried the brunet, practically in a tremulous scream, "DON'T DO IT! YOU SAID YOU WOULDN'T DO IT!"

Without heeding the statements his sibling was shouting at him, the longhaired child balled his hand into a fist and hurled his the limb through the transparent panel. "Nine, ten, being raped again…"