Lightning-Dono: This chapter is mostly Mokuba and Kara. It's sweet and filled with realizations and discovery! (On Kara and Mokuba's part...) Kara is an original character that I made up on the spot. She is in no way related to the Yu-Gi-Oh series (Okay, well, she is now in my fanfic.) and I have yet to draw her. She's quite adorable the way I picture her...And this might be where Mokuba x OC come in...Just kidding.
The song that was put into Kaiba and Isis's section is called "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day. I left out a few lines and verses because they didn't make any sense to put into the story. And I didn't bother leaving out a few 'questionable' words because if you're reading a PG-13 fanfic, you should know how to control yourself.
And I don't know the names of the Kaiba brother's parents, so bear with me.
Answers to the Reviews
Vanessa463 – Whoa, big word alert! (I'm STILL with that STUPID bout of Writers Block so my mind has officially been cleared of large words. I'm going to pull out my thesaurus now. o.o) Seto will come after her. :)
can't think – ((gasp)) Bad lazy can't think! ((shame shame sign)) Just kidding. We need some conflict so...yeah. That was my idea of a conflict. OOOH! What fanfic was it? I wanna reeeeadd!
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Kara's face became stony. "What happened to him?"
"He's...Down on earth...Somewhere. Probably having a lot of fun with his girlfriend." Mokuba grinned sheepishly. "He used to hate her, too."
The girl beside him cuddled up against his shoulder shamelessly. Even though they weren't alive and on a partially deserted mountain where a flurry of flakes were flying around them, he felt a little embarrassed to have her fawning over him like that. For some reason, in his mind he was picturing her cooing at him amorously, embracing him like there was no tomorrow. Then, snapping back to reality, his let his arm swing around her shoulders like a warming cloak.
"I used to have a boyfriend who hated me at first," she smiled distantly. "Well, it was more on a friend-friend basis because we were only eight, but...He thought I was too happy for him. One day his father saw me coming in and he shooed me out because he claimed that ever since I had come he had been neglecting his studies." Kara rolled her eyes. "He certainly was talented but I didn't know it was from hours slaving away at a piano and groveling at his father's feet."
Mokuba laughed. "I had a father like that. Stepfather, actually. He'd force my brother to work to the limit! He was a control-freak and did everything he could to get his way. Gozaburo was such a harsh-,"
"Gozaburo, did you say?" Interrupted Kara, looking aghast, like she was seeing someone living traveling on the mountain. "No way! That was my boyfriend's father!"
There was a jolt of remembrance somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. "What was his name?"
Kara's hand stroked her chin in thought. "I do think his name was Noa...Kaiba Noa. Yes, that's right! Sea-green hair, dreamy blue eyes...And a strong love of conversation." She giggled. "I guess I'm getting a bit too deep now, huh? But...He died. In an accident...I remember being depressed for weeks, not being able to get to sleep..."
"That's my stepbrother!" Mokuba piped cheerfully, despite the sob story that was being told to him. He had received his daily dosage of sadness already. "He was mean, but then he went nice!"
Kara forced her mouth into a grin – her personal mask to disguise her internal despair. "Before his dad hired tutors, he used to go to a private school with me. We were called the 'Lovebirds of the Year'...It was great. But after his dad forced him into being home schooled, I only saw him on the few occasions that he went outside."
"Gozaburo's a freak," Mokuba declared, his voice echoing around the wide mountain. "Look at what he did to me!"
"What did he do to you?"
His eye started to twitch uncontrollably as the question burst forth. Wouldn't the Buddha's own messenger know of the horror Gozaburo had caused? Especially with the fact that he had murdered numerous other people?
"He killed me! What else? Without him, I'd still be up and alive instead of in this place!" Mokuba regretted those spiteful words as soon as they escaped his lips. Instead of looked hurt, Kara nodded.
"And without that wind storm I'd still be alive," she said gloomily, burying her face in Mokuba's thick coat of hair. "I just had to walk home from school on the day of that wind storm. I didn't want to go on the bus because I felt like walking alone and thinking about Noa a bit." She grinned, but it looked more like a fake-happy grimace. "An evergreen on the other side of the street came tumbling down and I misjudged it's height. I tried to run to someone's porch, hoping that the tree wouldn't hit there. Instead, it crashed down on the roof and I found myself under debris and a heavy tree..."
A bout of horror washed over Mokuba like a cold tidal wave. "Let's not talk about that," he said quickly, not bothering to respond to the soft eyes that searched him for sympathy. "Shouldn't we keep climbing?"
Kara sniffed and, to Mokuba's surprise, hugged him to tightly that he could feel her ribs pushing against his. "I really want to forget everything, Mokuba, I really do. But I can't...Whenever I see a newly-dead the memories come back." She refused to get up
- - - - -
The sidewalk felt like her red carpet. She felt so exposed on this lonely street with hardly a soul walking on it. It was an industrial street, yes, but this block was just filled with parked cars and people packed into buildings. There were no restaurants or entertainment centers for anyone to come rushing to.
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
As she stepped broadly by the buildings, she took out her rage by wiping away the miscellaneous graffiti on deserted work places, knocking over pots of dead plants with her foot, and knocking her knuckles against the wall. Hardly any damage done, but it made her feel so much better.
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone
"Kaiba wasn't who I thought he was," she concluded in a heavy breath after clearing a couple of blocks. "I knew he had a past that scarcely anyone survives, but treating his caretaker that way?" A small, ceramic pot containing a meager amount of dirt and a dying petunia flew onto the ground. The white, stone-like element cracked open like a pumpkin and dirt was spewed across the sidewalk. "...And now I'm disrespecting the dead? I'm such a hypocrite..." Isis gazed down upon the sorry figure, it's roots suspended above the ground, desperately groping for a nutrient source. Slowly, suddenly feeling laggard, she knelt down and scooped it carefully back into the pot.
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone
- - - - -
"ISIS!" Kaiba roared, more in desperation than in insensitivity. Where had she gotten the nerve to yell and then storm out of the room on him like that? A hollow, empty feeling took him over and, like a marionette at the hands of a professional marionette-wielder, he flawlessly thundered down the stairs and out into the street.
I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone
Spittle sprayed the gray cement as he uproariously ran down the street, fuming with insults he could give Isis. But first, he felt that he had to vent about what she had said about him. To be frank, he didn't exactly care whether or not he could get the chance to call her something insanely terrible that it'd send her soul flying through a black void of loss. He was much more interested in ranting about the few words that had made his vocal cords want to explode in response to.
Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone
"I feel like this everyday," he suddenly realized as he reached the end of the street to face an intersection where he waited for the right time to cross, reviewing his thoughts. I always feel angry...And lost...But it's so much different. For some reason I never know where I belong even though another part of my mind knows where I do...Was it even worth being alive if he had constantly bicker with his own conscience about where he fit in to society?
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone
The world was a hostile place and Kaiba felt like he couldn't even imagine what lay around the corner. He was all too comfortable with looking up decks on his computer, learning strategies for duels, and crammed inside his office under a hefty accumulation of paper work. Kaiba felt like a lousy businessman that knew nothing of the outside world other than what was happening in the stock market. Until the past week he had no clue how to love another person in a way that could determine his course in life. And now he had lost that newfound ability. What's wrong with me? He questioned himself.
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...
A tanned woman was crouched by the front door of a small cafe that had gone bankrupt more than a month before.
"Isis." He approached, softly saying her name.
"Go away, you heartless beast," she snapped, not even turning her head but somehow recognizing his presence.
"Look, I'm sorry." Those words, when coming out of his mouth, sounded so emotionless to his ears. Not a hint of sympathy swelled from the three words. They were just words spoken in a senseless fashion, apparently apologizing for something. The sender and receiver could only know the deeper meaning.
Isis snorted. "Throughout your entire life, 'I'm sorry' always began a sentence that would reject someone. So where is that sentence now?"
The man was instantly tired of the comments thrown back at him like the offense on a soccer team, always weaving through the defense while the defenders themselves had nothing to protect themselves with.
"What more could you want?" He asked loudly. "You could atleast stand up to greet me. You aren't an avowed environmentalist – you don't need to chose plants over me."
Silence followed this statement. Isis dared herself to say it. "...And what if I do?" She hazarded, going into territory that she shouldn't have been wandering into.
A look of horror flashed onto Kaiba's face for an instant, and turning back to get a full view of her previous love, Isis thought she had captured it.
"Isis, you know what my stepfather did!" He yelled. The noise wouldn't matter, all he wanted was the point to stick like a needle in Isis's mind, pinning down her common sense and making it see what she couldn't. "He tortured me! Killed my little brother who was worth more to me than my own company! What do you want me to do? Serenade his corpse and do rituals around him, tossing flower petals?"
Isis laughed bitterly. Kaiba hadn't meant for the last line to sound as humorous as it had, but the rest of it should've had an effect on her. Didn't she even bother seeing beneath his tough overcoat?
"So you think it's funny? This is no laughing matter, Isis."
Isis stood up, faced him and her hand reached up, hovering above his nose. "Kaiba, take off that mask."
"I'm not wearing one," Kaiba insisted, completely missing the point.
"I mean the one you wear everyday. Show your true self, not something that you wear only to look formidable." Her hand vanished from his visual range. The pale man nodded and collapsed onto Isis.
"Now do you see what I am?" The impression his voice was giving Isis was that he was fading from her. "An empty shell. A person can only lose so much." He sighed contentedly in her arms.
"What do you think you're doing?" She demanded. Except her voice was searching, softened and smooth.
"Showing you my true self." Kaiba grinned impishly. "Now you owe me a kiss."
Isis's hand traveled to her face and she smacked herself on the forehead. Now I know what he's really like on the inside. Weak but playful. "Are you sure you're not going to squirm away when I do?"
"Why should I? Now stop stalling, I've been waiting for this."
The woman just stood there, rigid like a frozen penguin that had accidentally become encased inside a glacier. "What happened to you?"
Kaiba laughed, but it wasn't the sardonic one he usually used. It was happy. "Now that my stepfather is gone, what more could I want? I have you...But when we get back to the building...Don't mention this to anyone." His dark eyes lingered around the street. "Word spreads quickly among them."
She smiled, nodded, and leaned into kiss him. But yet another something halted their own moment together. It wasn't exactly a parade of people marching down the street, eyes glued to them, but it was bad enough to send them running.
Jounouchi, Yuugi, Anzu, and Honda were coming down the street, swinging their arms and in deep conversation. Jounouchi's left hand was in his pocket and the other arm was making enormous, exaggerated gestures that would have been humanly impossible had he not been so desperate to prove his point to Yuugi. Yuugi was watching his best friend with imploring violet eyes. Anzu was walking alongside Honda, chatting rapidly about something Honda apparently didn't understand, but was replying to.
Then, Jounouchi's free hand shot right out of his pocket and he jabbed a finger in Kaiba and Isis's direction, drawing the group's attention to them. Isis felt her cheeks turning red, burning across her face like a little kid playing with a cherry-colored marker.
"Hey, look, guys!" Jounouchi exclaimed cheerfully. "Isis and Kaiba are marrying each other right on the sidewalk!" Apparently Jounouchi had no clue what kissing was.
"Shut up, Jou, and leave them alone," Anzu replied, urging the group alone. They continued to leave Kaiba and Isis alone without words, but their heads often turned in the most obvious way, watching them with amusement.