Between Master and Slave

A/N: My first YGO fic! I'm excited but a little scared 'cause I've read so many great Seto/Yami fics and I don't think I can even compare to the others. But it's my first and I'm proud. I just want people to know that it took me an extremely long time to write it, I don't usually write seven page long chapters, I hope this isn't a trend...

I've decided not to name Seto's father because I don't want people to sympathize with him, though who would? When characters get names, they get a personality and a soul, and I didn't want "Seto's father" to have a soul.

Set around the 1700's, I don't really know, before modern technology, before electricity, during the time of kings and queens, etc. Just let your imagination run wild.

Warnings: None yet, there's no bad language, no yaoi, nothing really, yet. There will be Seto/Yami later, so keep that in mind.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, just twisting these characters around so they fit my story.

Chapter One:

"Young Master...?"

Seto felt a gentle nudge on his shoulder and opened his eyes. He wasn't actually asleep, but it didn't matter, he may as well have been. Listening to his tutor was about as interesting as pulling his own fingernails out, and he didn't think that desire was ever going to strike him. He sat up against the back of his chair and stared at the tutor.

"I understand that you don't want to do this, but your father made it perfectly clear that I am to teach you the finer points of warfare." The tutor stood with one hand laying on the desk and the other wrapped around a thin book; he looked the perfect image in an oil painting.

Seto grinned. "You know what?" He asked, waiting for an inquisitive look from the teacher. "I don't want to right now, we'll continue this later." And without waiting for the inevitable protest, Seto walked out of the study.

The large stone hallway was cooler than the study. Seto wrapped his long, black velvet coat tighter around his body, and scowled at the weather, like it would help. He hated when the castle got cold, and it wasn't even winter yet. The green trees outside the windows were starting to change color. He resented winter with his entire being. Not only was it damnably cold, but something bad had happened over the winter, three years ago. He shivered when he remembered, and shook the memory away. He thought it a waste of time to reflect on the past.

Seto reached his bedroom and was relieved to find that the fireplace had been lit. He took his coat off and threw it on the dresser next to the entrance. He found himself drawn to the warmth of the fire, and fell down on the couch sitting in front of the fireplace. For some reason he was tired, or maybe just bored. He had nothing to do, for he had done everything already. He outgrown hunting with his father, now he could barely stand being around the man for more than five minutes. He had read all the books in his library, some of them more than once. He didn't like writing. He had already explored the great expanse of their property on his horse. But most of all, he didn't like being alone.

Seto stared at the high stone ceiling above him. Time seemed to be going faster because he could literally see the light diminish into the darkness of night, the fire burning itself out, and by the end of twilight, he was in complete darkness. Still he didn't move. He was bored of his life and wanted something new, a new life. Then an idea hit him; he would simply go and spend his nights in the village tavern. Surely alcohol could give him a more interesting life, and no one would deny him because he was the son of a very powerful man.

And that's how it began. He would go almost every night, and for the first couple of nights he would get drunk and then return home. But after that, he found that he could easily seduce anyone in the tavern, and took to staying the night there. He started out seducing women, but quickly found that too easy, the men gave up more of a challenge. In the end, he would always win though, no one could resist.

This had been going on for about a month before he got caught. He was sitting at one of the various secluded tables, starting to talk to someone who had caught his eye, when he was suddenly pulled by the collar of his vest to the floor. His drink went flying and landed with the harsh sound of glass breaking, while he landed roughly on his back, his gaze directed up at a very angry face. Immediately, Seto's facial features hardened, and he started to get up, only to be forced down again. He landed on his stomach and gasped for breath, his eyes widening as he felt like his lungs were going to collapse in on themselves. He breathed deeply and tried again to stand up, this time fulfilling his intention. He glared up at his father, who was now more red in the face than he had been when Seto first saw him.

They were both silent, the air between them crackling with electricity.

"What are you doing!" His father suddenly screamed. The musicians stopped playing and everyone in the room turned around to stare.

"I was enjoying myself," Seto replied coolly, but with venom lacing his every word.

"You weren't enjoying yourself, you were embarrassing yourself, and me!" Seto's father lunged at him, grabbing at the lapels of his vest and dragging him out of the tavern. Seto barely had enough time to grab his coat off of the hanger and put it on before he was thrown into the dirt outside. He landed in a shallow puddle of mud in front of his horse, thoroughly soaking his coat in mud.

"Get on, we're going home," the old man ordered. He himself mounted his chestnut Bay and started to trot away, when Seto noticed that his own black Friesian was tied to the other horse. He jogged a little beside his horse before he got an opportunity to get his foot hooked in the stirrup and swing his other leg over. He peeled his dirty coat off of his body and draped it over the horn of the saddle, looking at it in disgust.

They rode to the castle in silence. Seto didn't care, he didn't want to talk, but he got the feeling that his father was just buying time before he would blow up. Seto needed this time to gather his own thoughts, to think rationally so that he could present a valid case against his father. Not that rational talking had ever worked before, they usually ended up screaming at each other so loud that the servants had to cover their ears, and the two men would end the argument doubled over, breathing heavy and raspy, their throats in shreds.

Seto looked out at the scenery, he didn't feel like fighting tonight, it was late and all he wanted to do was go to sleep. But if it was unavoidable, then he would make sure he won. He felt invigorated with this new resolve, and right on time too, because they had passed through the castle gates without him knowing and were making their way to the main doors.

Upon reaching the entrance, two servants came to take their horses away, and Seto's father motioned for his son to follow him. They walked quickly up the stairs and through the two huge wooden doors lined with thick black iron bars. Seto always hated the castle, it seemed like it was built to keep people out, or keep them in. He always felt trapped in there, and even going out on the grounds wasn't enough free space. He was trapped by the idea of being someone important, someone that struck fear in the hearts of regular men. When he was out at the tavern, drinking and playing with the villagers, he had gotten a peek of what it must be like to not have a huge burden of a reputation on his shoulders. But now that he had gotten caught, he would never be allowed outside the grounds again without a guard. His father would probably set guards outside of his room and below the balcony, just to make sure that he didn't run away.

They walked into the large sitting room to the right of the main entryway, and Seto sat lazily down on one of the plush couches, and just to annoy his father he placed one of his heavy, mud-encrusted boots on the coffee table.

"Get your boots off the table," his father said automatically. Seto responded by slowly bringing his foot back down, all the while staring at his father. He could see the calculating look on his father's face, and knew he was in big trouble this time. He had never gotten in this much trouble before, and usually it was something that could be fixed. It would be hard to fix this one, if Seto even wanted to.

"What were you thinking?" Seto's father turned around suddenly and slammed his open palms against the table. Seto could now tell the magnitude of what he had "done" by his father's opening statement. Never before when Seto was in trouble had the argument started out slow, almost rationally. "Going out and fraternizing with common people..." He almost sounded as if he was talking to himself, ignoring Seto completely.

"I was just having a little fun," Seto replied. He didn't really know how he was going to explain the extreme feeling of loneliness to his father, or even if he could, if the older man would understand and sympathize. Seto doubted it, his father was only capable of feeling things that directly affected his well-being. Seto sighed quietly, his father still wondering to himself.

"'A little fun'? You have ruined our image in the eyes of these people, you have made us laughing stocks of the town. No longer do I have the same command of people like I did only weeks ago. They don't respect me anymore." Seto grunted at the last sentence, of course his father only thought of himself, what about if they respected Seto? They probably didn't, Seto wasn't a figure of authority anymore, he wasn't mysterious, he was now someone that the people knew.

"What happens when they start to find me too weak to control even my own son? What happens when they don't fear me anymore?" Seto didn't answer, he knew his father wasn't done, that he would answer his own question. "They will rebel, they'll put someone new in this position, someone that they feel can do the job. And I will not let that happen! This is my right, I can still rule, and if that means having a tighter grip on you, then so be it."

"You can't control me," Seto said defiantly. "No matter what you do, I will find a way to do what I want."

"Why can't you 'enjoy yourself' with the slaves?" It sounded like he was almost pleading, but then again it seemed more like an order.

"They're yours. I would never touch something that was yours."

Seto's father sighed heavily. "Then you'll just have to contain your urges. And until then, you are no longer allowed out of the castle."

Seto rolled his eyes at his father's empty threat. There was nothing the older man could do to keep Seto from doing something that he wanted to do.

"Leave. Before I lose control."

His father seemed to be done with his tirade, so Seto stood up and walked out of the room without another word. His fatigue was coming back; the adrenaline from the unknown was wearing off. He meandered through the halls looking at stones on the walls and not really trying to find his room. All he wanted to do was stay in the state he was in, floating in between this world and the world of dreams, but his body was quickly yielding to sleep. He found his room and stumbled into his bed, closing his eyes and falling asleep instantly.

Seto woke up at dawn. It didn't matter if he went to sleep in the early morning, he always woke up at dawn. It seemed to him that he couldn't sleep if there was a ray of light in his room. He wasn't complaining, though, he always felt refreshed after his small amounts of sleep. Maybe that was one of the reasons his father didn't know what he was doing, because he was never sluggish in the day.

For a second, he didn't know where he was. He was so used to waking up in a cheap bed rather than a soft, huge bed and it didn't feel right. He opened his eyes and upon recognizing his own room, the images from the night before flooded his mind. He scowled and turned over on his side, noticing that he was still in his clothes from the night before. Sitting up, Seto saw that the covers on his bed would need to be changed. Seto edged to the side of the bed and kicked his boots off. He would need to take a long bath to get rid of the layer of mud that clung to his body.

Seto stood up and walked over to the door that lead to the hall. He opened it and looked out, wanting to catch one of the servants so they could clean his room while he bathed. There was never a shortage of servants wandering around the halls, so Seto only had to wait a couple of minutes before one passed his room.

The servant looked at him expectantly. "Would you like something, sir?" She asked.

"Get someone to clean my room up while I bathe," he ordered.

"Of course, would you like someone to wash you?"

"No." Seto didn't like it when the servants washed him, they never did it right. They would miss spots, or they wouldn't scrub hard enough, or they would make the water too hot or too cold, the list went on and on. Seto liked things to be just so, which meant he got to do a lot of things himself.

Seto turned back inside and made his way to his private bathroom, taking his clothes off in the process. He threw them on the ground, not caring where they went because it wasn't his problem.

The bathroom was extravagant. The one aspect of his father's personality that Seto admitted to have himself was an intense taste for the luxurious. His family was richer than most in the same status, so they had more room to buy the things they wanted. Seto's bathroom was made entirely of white and gray marble, with a deep, sunken tub in the middle. It was always full of clean water because they had a spring that supplied the castle, and Seto had requested that a small finger of it be routed to his bathroom so he would never have to wait for the servants to fill the tub up. The only thing he had to wait for was heating the water up. They had this ingenious system where a large fire was kept going constantly underneath the tub, so all Seto had to do to heat the water faster was turn a knob and the fire would get bigger.

Seto removed the rest of his clothing and threw it outside the door while he waited for the water to heat up. There were five windows lining the top of the room that let light and air in, but Seto never opened them, even when the room was full of steam. He didn't like the air to be cool and the water warm; it was shocking to his body when he got out of the tub, but he had them put in because he liked to gauge how long he was in there. Sometimes it was strategic, if he wanted to avoid someone he would go and read in his bathroom, watching the sun move across the sky and waiting for dinner.

The room was starting to fill with steam, and Seto turned the knob down a little bit so he wouldn't boil. He bent down and tested the heat with his hand, then slid in and let the water wash away the events of last night. He proceeded to wash his hair and body, and then just sunk beneath the water level and held his breath. He was weightless, suspended in the water and time seemed to stop. He could hear nothing but the water passing by his ears and he could see nothing.

When he couldn't hold his breath any longer, he surfaced and wiped the water from his eyes. He was starting to get wrinkly, and he hated that feeling, so he decided that it was time to get out. He lifted himself out of the tub and took one of the white towels that was hanging on the wall. He wrapped it around his waist as he cracked the door to his room open. It was perfectly clean, and there was no one still in it, so he opened the door completely and went over to his bed. For some reason, he was feeling tired again, and without drying himself off, he climbed underneath the covers and went to sleep.

He woke up later in the day, when the sun was high in the sky. Its rays were warming Seto completely, which would have been a nice thing if he wasn't already under his down comforter. Little droplets of sweat were just starting to form on his brow when he decided to get up. Seto sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, shivering as he remembered that he had gone straight from the bath to his bed. He sighed and grabbed the forgotten towel, draping it over his shoulder and walking to his closet. The closet was actually a small room with multiple shelves of clothing, most of which were black or blue. The shirts and pants were separated on either side of the room, then further divided into the type of fabric. Seto didn't like the tight knee length pants that were in fashion, so whenever he went to the tailor he asked for a longer length, which always earned him strange looks.

Seto ran his fingertips along the folded edges of his pants, and when he found one that suited his mood he pulled it out and unfolded it. The pants were made of a high quality cotton that was dyed black. He nodded his head and put the pants on while turning around to search for a shirt.

He paused in his search to listen for a noise that he thought he heard back in his bedroom. It sounded like someone was at the door, but when he was quiet, he heard nothing else. He pulled a random shirt out of one of the stacks and started to unbutton it on the way to his door. When he passed the bed, he threw the shirt on it, not wanting to bother with the buttons anymore. As he got closer and closer to the door, he could hear a faint knocking, and wondered to himself why the person on the other side wasn't knocking louder. He figured that the servants had learned to stay away from him after he had a fight with his father, because the last time someone had caught him in that bad of a mood he had thrown a book at their head. Seto had missed by little more than a foot and it sent a clear message.

Seto reached the door and swung it open, scowling at the servant he saw before him.

"What?" He said callously, walking back into his room toward his shirt on the bed.

"Your father asked me to bring something to you," the male servant said politely while motioning to another outside Seto's field of vision. The servant had a slight look of disgust on his face, and another, larger, male servant came around the edge of Seto's door frame, pushing in front of him what looked like a wild man-animal. It was skinny, covered in what could have possibly been considered clothing a long time ago, with a mop of tangled black hair flattened to his head and obscuring his down-turned face. On second thought, maybe his hair was dark red, Seto couldn't really tell. The large man-servant shoved the "thing" toward Seto and it stumbled down to its knees. Seto looked down in shock, what was he supposed to do?

"What's this?" Seto asked the first servant.

"I believe your father said it was a gift. I believe he said 'something that was yours alone,'" The servant looked at Seto slightly confused, but didn't have the courage nor status to ask why.

Seto looked back down at the thing. He couldn't really call it a gift; gifts were supposed to be something nice, something that one didn't have to fix before it would be presentable. His father had obviously not put a lot of effort into finding Seto something that wouldn't embarrass the older man publicly. Seto took it as a victory though, his father knew that he couldn't stop Seto from doing what he would, so the old man made it easier for Seto to get what he wanted at home. He had cut his loses and retreated. Seto smiled devilishly at that thought, he had won and he hadn't even had to raise his voice.

One of the servants cleared their throat, and Seto pulled himself out of his thoughts. Both of the servants looked uncomfortable, even though they didn't know why. Seto waved them away and cautiously bent down to get a better look at his "gift." Seto kneeled down all the way to the ground and reached out for the other's chin, placing his index finger and thumb on either side and gently pulling up. The "thing's" head was not resisting, but it seemed to take forever just to get it to look at Seto's feet. Seto paused pulling the chin up and tilted his head, he couldn't see the other's face, but his bangs were blond, and coupled with the black-or was that red?-hair above it, proved a very interesting picture. Seto shook his head and continued pulling up at the slow pace. He could see his fingers and the chin they were resting on, the skin a honey-bronze color. Then he uncovered the other's nose, thin and straight. The bangs were still a problem, covering the eyes of the other person, but when Seto had brought it's face up so that they were staring each other straight on, he let out a little gasp.

Blood red eyes were staring back at him.

A/N: And that's the end of chapter one. Hope it was enjoyable, I've read it over a lot and think it is. Next chapter is REALLY long (goes into a corner and rocks back and forth, crying with bloodied fingertips). I don't know when it's gonna get posted, I still need to read it over and over and send it to my beta to see if she can find any errors I missed. Reviews are very appreciated, I have yet to get a flame, so if you would like to be nice and not send me any I'd like to keep my record free of them. Though it might be a nice experience, just don't flame me 'cause I said that. Criticism is welcome. One can never get enough when aspiring to become a better writer. And, well, I guess I have nothing else to say. Review!