Chapter Two: True-Life Nightmares

I had forgotten about this for over a year at least. And now, what has driven me to it? Something foolish and mundane, childish even. It shames me to want to even seek comfort in this way. I shouldn't need it.

I had a nightmare again. No, not really, "a" nightmare. The nightmare again. The one I always seem to have no matter what happens in my day. The same boring, disconnected dreams might exist for awhile, but always, this one comes up and even seems to interrupt the ones I have to envelope me in its presence.

It always begins with the damn penalty game Yugi put me through, the vision of seeing my death in multiple ways by Duel Monsters.

I still hear his words echoing in my mind: "Kaiba…you will probably experience death in that world, but don't worry, it's only a nightmare, only an illusion."

Only a nightmare? Only an illusion? It was only the very dream I tried to stifle forever by creating Death-T.

Death-T didn't work. Or, at least, not recently.

But now the dream has a different ending and one that seems worse, but not just because of my perfectionist nature and a compulsive need to have everything orderly and complete. Instead of simply being engulfed by the monsters and devoured, they laugh and leer at me as I'm working on some round-shaped puzzle. And I have all the pieces by my feet, or so I think. Working furiously quickly, trying to finish under the guffawing monsters and their ridicule, I finish it in various stages depending on how much I sleep.

But never have I ever finished the puzzle. I've used up all the pieces at my disposal and gone crawling amidst the monsters' scaly, rotted limbs to seek out the final piece that leaves the ball with a gaping hole. Without the last piece, it can never be completed, and without that last piece, the ball can never be a ball. It is simply an incomplete puzzle.

I've crept on my hands and knees for countless minutes and sought out answers fruitlessly, I've gone to face my fears and asked help from the monsters and searched their bodies in my desperation to finish this strange golden orb, but never do they cooperate and never do they, sneering, hold out the last piece to taunt me.

I just seek and stumble around, trying to find it…

And I never find the last piece.

The monsters, the horrible faces and auras of malicious power, all were surrounding him. Claws and fangs savagely attacked him and froze him to his seat in the same instant. The overwhelming scent of his sweat born of fear made his nose cringe and seemed only to spur on the monsters so close to him. Soon, so soon, they would reach him with their frantic attacks, hatred coming to wash over him like a simple breeze.

"Big brother! Help me! Seto!"

But no one ever answered his cries, and just when the monsters' eyes gleamed hungrily and their claws raked his face and hair, tearing his clothing to shreds, the view switched to hold utter blackness.

Emptiness.

Not daring to move for fear lest he stumble and fall for an eternity, the boy crouched and quivered. Even breathing seemed like too much movement that would, in an instant, topple him over the edge to never return.

Voice barely the softest dynamic in music, he whispered, "Brother, where are you? Please, help me…"

A tickle of cold wind accented his sweat and uneasiness, carrying along with it the solitary stench of a single person locked up in a close space. Locked up? But…he was going to fall! The wall might be one foot in front of him, and still, Mokuba feared to move and risk plummeting. And now, even his small whispers vanished into a tiny whimper, but no one ever came to help.

Eyes so heavy, body so weary, he began to weave and grow too weak to hold himself so stiffly tight. Without meaning to, he nodded off to sleep for a split second, and that was all it took to make him careen over the edge and begin the descent that would keep going. Forever.

Screaming, no longer caring about being silent, Mokuba kicked and flailed, but nothing was present to slow his fall in the slightest, and a bubble of laughter burst out of him as he thought about falling forever and ever, no one ever finding him and how he'd grow old just falling and falling…

With a jerk, Mokuba opened his eyes and gave a kick like how he had been trying to slow his descent.

The covers were tightly wrapped around him as if someone were trying to suffocate him or wrap him like a mummy. Frantically, the nightmare still real in his mind, he jerked and freed himself from the blankets with a wild struggle. Then, landing on the floor with a heavy plop, Mokuba stopped moving long enough to catch his breath and let his heart slow from winning its race.

"That dream again," he whispered to himself.

Only, it hadn't been a dream. His mind had exaggerated it somewhat, that was true, but both had happened.

Wondering if he ought to call his brother or pad down the hall to find his brother and seek some solace that way, Mokuba slowly shook his head.

"He wasn't there for me then." His big eyes almost began to fill on remembering how it had been his very brother to press the button to make him see those nightmares of the monsters attacking him, guaranteed to drive a person insane. Seto's hand hadn't been the one to pull him free from the horrors.

Yugi had. Or Yami.

And the other nightmare, the one with the capsule and sitting in the empty blackness, there, his brother hadn't rescued him either. The set length on the "penalty game" had just run out and released him from the prison. That time, it had been Yami himself who had imprisoned him. But Mokuba knew he had deserved it for what he had planned and how he had cheated.

His brother couldn't help him now. Most likely, Seto'd just want Mokuba to never mention anything to do with penalty games or Death-T again.

After all, who would want to remember such nightmares?

Mokuba Kaiba was not the only one who had such nightmares or who had suffered from such penalty games.

Why did Seto Kaiba never want to sleep? Such nightmarish concoctions always awaited him whenever he shut his eyes.

He so desperately wanted to find that last puzzle piece, but never had he managed it yet. Always when he awoke from that dream that never failed to arrive like an unwanted guest at a party—who, to Kaiba, would be Joey Wheeler—Seto felt bereft and utterly lonely.

With a start, his eyes slid to the journal Mokuba had given him a long while ago. After one hasty first entry that he had written more than fourteen months ago, he had never even used it except to comment on a certain birthday occurrence a few months ago. And once before that, a similar dream to the one he had just dreamt had ended up within it before the young CEO could convince himself it was too unimportant to be included.

Glancing at the first entry, the teenager gave a half-smile. The book had neither been used as a ledger or journal as Mokuba intended. It had simply been ignored after those three entries and plenty of times between them. Not any longer. It would finally have a use. A continued use.

This dream, as would the ones that followed, was one that only found itself life in his long-forgotten journal; never did Kaiba pester his brother with the dream. In the daylight, no doubt Mokuba would find it foolish. Just putting his dreams down made him seem weak and susceptible to fancies. But it was better than having his brother think him so.

While Kaiba could never completely shake the feeling that something was missing, was forgotten even in the day, it didn't mean that everyone else would see it in the same light. And his brother's respect was something the CEO would not risk losing, not even if these nightmares caused him to lose all his sleep.

"You don't look like you're sleeping well. Do I have to make a deal with you every night so that you sleep?"

"I'm not the only one with bags under my eyes, Mokuba. And mine are nothing you need to concern yourself with."

"Then neither are mine." The ebony-haired boy poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat down silently at the table, not looking in the cheeriest of moods for once.

Rubbing his eyes and wondering if he looked as terrible as he felt, Kaiba realized he was going on about this the wrong way. He got himself a cup of scalding coffee and began to sip it in the vague hope it'd be able to burn away the recollection of his nightmares. Then the lanky young man took a seat by his brother.

"Reason for a reason?"

Glancing at him suspiciously, Mokuba shoved aside the cereal box of which he had been reading the back.

"You'll really tell me why you haven't been sleeping well?" he scoffed.

"If you explain why you haven't been."

Swirling the spoon in his bowl, Mokuba pondered the whirling eddies as if they held the mystic answers found in a crystal ball and could whisper the loophole in his brother's suggestion. Seto never talked about his dreams. He found it foolish.

"I had a bad nightmare." The preteen's voice was tiny, a mere paper-thin slip of sound that would have become lost in the slight nervous tapping of his finger or in Seto's uncharacteristically disheveled hair had not the young man inclined his head just right to catch the small voice.

Silence took control of the kitchen and barricaded the doors and windows so that nothing other than those allowed could enter. But it had mistakenly let the wind slip past, forgetting how the wind could be quiet one moment and roaring the next: a tremendous sigh escaped Mokuba's small frame, seeming larger than his body could possibly hold prisoner even with the strongest bonds.

"I know it's foolish," he added quickly, turning back to his cereal like a squirrel eating up before winter. "Forget it."

Staring out of the window at the neatly-trimmed trees in his backyard, Seto slouched back in his chair. "That's why I couldn't sleep, either. Seems we both have a problem with giving in to foolish whims and fancies. I'll stop letting my imagination cart me away if you do the same."

Slowly, Mokuba's eyes went from the spoon still dripping milk to find his brother's distant, faded blue irises. Seeing Kaiba return to the present and gain a spark of life despite how weary his body appeared, the younger Kaiba smiled.

"All right, it's a deal, big brother."

A/N: Once again...thanks so much for reviews, especially places to improve! I don't want to give anything away about the story, but since you explicitly asked, Kuramarulez, the odds of a Yugi/Yami pairing are...slim. I'd love to thank you all personally, as well, but there was a rumor about that not being allowed...But as to your first question, Seq, yes.