By ElveNDestiNy, written March 9, 2005
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: I never realized that orphanages are so popular in Amelda stories. Actually, for me it's a reappearing theme that somehow works its way into my Kaiba stories, along with chess. Recently I've become fixated on the DOOM warriors as a result of reading some awesome writing – check out "Empty Bottles" and stories by LuckyLadybug. I'm also a fan of Varon/Mai, since I just can't stand Joey. Oh yes, the rating is upped for suggestive stuff and violence, now and later.
o - o - o - o -
At the sound of his name, the youth turned towards him, eyes widening in recognition. For a moment the world narrowed down to only him, and Amelda couldn't breath. Couldn't react, could only stare at him with numb disbelief, and then the emotions washed over him, so strongly he almost gasped.
"Miruko," he whispered again, feeling as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down, leaning into the wind. He was alive…
But rather than stepping forward when Amelda unknowingly raised his hand to reach out to him, the teenager took a step back. Those beautiful grey eyes had been stricken with shock, wide and vulnerable, but now they narrowed and became icy, filled with some emotion that Amelda couldn't recognize, didn't understand.
"You," he said in such a vehement tone that even Kaiba reacted, rising to stand tall and tense besides Amelda.
"I've found you, you're here…" In his mind he saw Miruko, smiling up at him with trust, a naïve and absolute faith that his older brother could hold their world together, even if everything was being destroyed around them. Amelda had promised never to leave him alone, when he'd taken a bullet once and lay there bleeding, trying to reassure him that he wouldn't die, not when Miruko still needed him. Yet while death froze memories at that last moment, life meant that things continued changing.
Somehow, even when Kaiba had told him, he had not been able to imagine it—that Miruko would be older, achingly familiar, and yet the child that Amelda remembered him as was gone.
Miruko was no longer looking at him, but past him, at Kaiba. He took in the expensive white trenchcoat, the KaibaCorp insignia on the lapel, the aura of authority that the young brunette had about him that spoke volumes about his confidence in his power. Amelda knew the exact moment when Miruko realized who it was that had brought him here.
"I hate you," he hissed at Amelda, violently struggling to free himself from his two captors, who had no choice but to release him. "I should've known you'd have ended up with him!"
"It's not like that—" It was too impossible to explain, too unbelievable to know that Miruko was here and yet nothing was right. There was an ugly expression of hate on Miruko's face and for one confused moment Amelda wondered if he'd looked that way when he had dueled Kaiba, when he had wanted to crash the plane in a murder-suicide attempt. There was nothing he could say; the turmoil of the situation overwhelmed him.
"You betrayed me!" He looked at Kaiba. "And now you're twice the betrayer!"
"No, Miruko, I—listen to me—"
"No, you listen to me." He saw the small thing clutched in Amelda's hand then, and all his rage boiled over. In a blur of speed he had grabbed a chair and swung it with incredible force at the glass wall, again and again. Such was the force of his anger that all of a sudden the glass shattered with a harsh musical rain of shards.
"You want to know what you meant to me, Amelda?" Miruko challenged him. "You want to know what I think about the stupid dreams you fed me, the trust I had in you?" He grabbed Amelda's wrist and wrenched the charred toy figurine from his grasp. "This is what I think of it!"
He seemed to see it so slowly, so perfectly clear. Miruko's arm drawing back, the throw as precise as any athlete's, the small piece of melted, burned plastic hurled outside, arching up, up, up — and then it was falling, lost in a thousand feet of empty air. He'd cherished it for so long, built his life around his memories of his brother and the war that had destroyed their world. And even as Miruko's scathing words told the story, Amelda remembered…
"Go with these men, Miruko. You'll be safe," he said even as he helped Miruko into the waiting arms of the man in the tank.
"But what about you, big brother?" The hand seemed so small and cold in his own, and Miruko grasped tightly, afraid to let go even though he was being pulled away.
"I'll find you again," he promised. He'd turned around to go save the other children they had lived temporarily with – the orphans that he'd taken in, become the leader for because he was just a few years older, ten to their seven and eight year olds.
But he hadn't taken more than a few steps when a loud explosion behind him threw him to the ground with its violence. He looked back, sudden fear in his heart, and saw the tank enveloped in fire. The orange and red flames burned so brightly, flickering, hungrily reaching up towards the sky, the heat so intense…
"NO! MIRUKO! No, no…" His brother's life was extinguished, just like that. In a space of a few heartbeats, the laughing, crying child that he loved was gone, while he watched helplessly. And he might as well as have killed Miruko himself.
"I hate you, I HATE YOU!" At the cry of rage, Amelda was brought back to the present with a painful jolt, and he could no longer see the face of the child that was his brother. The teenager that stood before him now was a stranger, wasn't real, could not really be Miruko…but he was. It was all wrong, but it was all true.
"I'm so sorry—" the words he'd cried to heaven's deaf ears for so many years came spilling out, so low, so softly that only Kaiba, standing next to him, could have heard it. There was no way that the sound could have carried over to the youth, but he sensed it anyway.
"I don't need your apologies. I don't need you at all anymore, Amelda!" Miruko's voice seemed to waver for a moment, betraying his youth, but when he continued it was steady and filled with bitterness. "I've found another family now, and they've given me everything I want. What, are you shocked? The gang was the best thing that could have happened to me, after I was released. Didn't you ever wonder?"
"I thought you were dead," Amelda whispered.
"I spent a year in prison and then I was turned out into the world with absolutely nothing. You know what happens to young, vulnerable children on the streets, Amelda? What, you can't imagine your own brother being used, being controlled by older people who rented us out like toys?" Miruko's eyes glittered with tears and with hate, yet he kept them fixed on Amelda. "There are people in this world that would pay well for their fantasies to be fulfilled, and Madame Rouge had extensive contacts. Big names, people that wanted discretion. People like Gozaburo Kaiba."
Besides Amelda, Kaiba seemed to have stopped breathing, so motionless it was as if he wanted to disappear. Amelda was about to look at him to see what was wrong. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw the brunette shudder and with painful clarity he guessed the reason why. But the two employees were still in the room, and Kaiba would never allow himself to show weakness in front of others.
Miruko watched them avidly, gauging their reaction. So bitter, so hateful, wanting to hurt them as much as he could. He was so young, but there was nothing childish or innocent about him. He used his words as effectively as blows, slashing carefully with the intent to maximize the damage.
"I would have killed myself, but if there's anything that the war taught me, it was how to survive. Even if you become less than human. Even if you become just a desperate, powerless animal. Do you know that even if you forget why you're living, your body still survives, still carries on without meaning? I lasted for a year, but I couldn't fight forever. I jumped off a bridge. But maybe it was fate, or luck, but I didn't die like I was supposed to, and the gang that found me ironically accepted me because of it. Like it was a test, like I was daring life – what they saw as the biggest risk of all. They never realized that I did it because I had nothing to lose."
I've failed you, Miruko. He had been there all along, alive, but Amelda had given up too soon. If only he had searched a little longer, if only he had not been so certain the tank that blew up was the one that his brother had disappeared into…if only he had a little stronger faith, believed, trusted… The words were in his throat, but he could not say them, useless as they were. I'm so sorry. I loved you so much. I tried to hate Kaiba, to blame him, but all along I knew it was my fault, that I had killed you. I failed to protect you as I should have.
"So, brother, I've told you my story. Don't cry for me, Amelda. I am what I've become, when you saved yourself long ago and forgot about me. Come on now, what have you done these past few years? Enjoying life? Ever spared a thought for me?" Miruko stared at him, his eyes wild, mocking. His arm was bleeding; he must have hurt himself because the blood tricked down over his clenched fist.
Somehow Kaiba's employees had snapped out of their shock. The two uniformed workers grabbed him by the arms as he began to turn. Miruko struggled madly in their grasp and broke free for a moment. Then the anger was abruptly gone, the emotions locked away behind blank eyes. He looked calm, controlled. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a gun, aiming it at Amelda expertly.
"Don't move," he warned as he slowly backed towards the door. One of the two employees seemed to tense, as if for a sudden lunge, but the click of the trigger froze him. The sound seemed unnaturally loud as all eyes were fixed on him.
Ever spared a thought for me? If only Miruko knew how he'd based his entire life around his brother. He'd been so idealistic, not so much as Raphael, no, but he'd still believed. Amelda had still put his faith into DOOM, given it to Dartz because he had dreamed the dream—to end the violence, to erase war from the world. Oh, he had wanted revenge against Seto Kaiba, but part of it was still his fool's hope that he could prevent anything like what he'd experienced from ever happening again. To spare all the children that would come after him from the same kind of horror.
Amelda looked at Kaiba briefly, despite the gun still pointed at him, and he knew that the only reason why he had hated him was because he hated himself. They were so similar, but…the difference between you and me is that I would do anything to save my brother. I would never let him die. I would never fail him.
Kaiba's words to him during that airborne, insanely risky duel had been too true. Even when he'd felt the pain of having his soul torn from his body, he'd known he wouldn't be able to forget them, or the expression on Mokuba's face, or the numbing realization that he'd directed all his anger and hate towards Seto Kaiba, when it should have been for himself.
If only Miruko knew…but Amelda could only gaze at him numbly, the gun between them, held steadily. He had joined Dartz to end it, but now Miruko was here before his eyes, and he'd already become part of the violence, the ugliness of the world. Because to survive in that vicious cycle, you had to become part of it.
Miruko stopped before the door and shifted the gun to his right hand so that he could reach behind him and twist the doorknob. One of the employees took the opportunity to take a few steps forward, and he raised the gun and fired a warning shot into the air, hitting the beautiful marble chess set decorating Kaiba's desk.
Amelda stared at the broken chess pieces, taken back into another time, another game. He was teaching Miruko how to play, trying to explain the complexities of the game to the younger child when it was almost impossible to even tell the pieces apart from each other. The biggest bullet was the queen, the one that was copper-plated was a bishop, but the rest all looked alike. One of the pawns was the bullet that had been taken out of one of the other children, wounded on a food run.
Miruko looked at him and suddenly he tossed something towards him. Amelda raised one hand instinctively to shield himself, but the thing that fell to the floor besides his feet was harmless. It was a necklace, made of cheap quality metal so that the silvery color had worn away to a dull grey. The locket fell open to reveal the picture of a woman. It was their mother, and Amelda had given it to Miruko when she had first died and he had had to explain why she would never be coming back.
"Don't try to find me again," Miruko said matter-of-factly. He stood in the doorway and there were a few screams at the sight of the gun in his hand. "I'm not the innocent child you remember. You're nothing to me, Amelda. You ceased to be long ago, from the moment when you gave me up to the soldiers in the tank."
He looked around at the stunned people and smiled dangerously. "Kaiba, call your dogs off. You know I won't hesitate to shoot."
"Let him go," Kaiba ordered, but everything was out of his control anyway. Miruko turned to him and Amelda, assessing the two of them with a look before he was gone.
It was like a nightmare, with the only difference being that it was all reality.
o - o - o - o -
Notes: Revised somewhat when I watched the air duel between Kaiba and Amelda again and realized my information on the necklace was wrong. Anyway, please review! It's true that everyone updates faster when there's encouragement!