Mirrorshipping (Seto x Noa)
(watch me sneak Nellshipping references in here XD)
At first, Seto had assumed the old laptop he had found in a secret desk compartment was useless. He hadn't even been able to log in to it at first; it was password protected. He almost just tossed it; he didn't want to keep anything that had been in the house before Gozaburo's death.
Just another computer with backup files, like the other ones I found in other secret compartments, Seto started to think. But he paused. This one had been in his own room. Why would Gozaburo have ever hid a computer with sensitive information in Seto's bedroom? Unless he had forgotten it was there after adopting Seto, but Seto highly doubted that man could forget anything.
Curious in spite of himself, Seto tried to log on. A password hint prompt appeared.
Best friend, it read.
Seto stared at that for a moment. Best friend? Did Gozaburo have any of those? He shrugged, and retrieved a flash drive with his password cracking software on it, plugging it in.
The code was cracked in just under two minutes. It was short, just a single word: Amane.
The desktop was relatively simple, with only a few icons. Seto opened up the documents and tried to find the name associated with the computer.
He paused when he saw the name.
Noa Kaiba.
His hand hesitated over the trackpad. This was Noa's computer, he realized. How long had it been since they had met Noa?
An irritation settled over him him, remembering how infuriating and immature the boy had been. How he had taken Mokuba away and nearly gotten him killing. A boy so desperate for the love and affection of a man with a heart made of acid. Anything that Gozaburo had spawned was something Seto wanted nothing to do with.
He started to close the laptop, resolving to burn it. But instead, his fingers moved back to the trackpad and he clicked on the documents icon. He went into the music folder and found it full of classical tracks. How typical of a child prodigy. Seto had never cared for the genre himself. He tried the pictures folder next. That was when he started to slow down.
There was a whole folder devoted to pictures from vacations. The Noa in those pictures looked so...happy. His eyes were so wide, his smile so big, his cheeks flushed with excitement. He was so young, too. In most of these pictures he was no older than eight. There he was in Paris by the Eiffel Tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Damn, this kid had been everywhere.
In some of the pictures, Gozaburo was there too, and Seto felt like punching something every time he saw the man. But in most of them, Noa was accompanied by a slender, pretty woman, with long, thick brown hair and warm eyes, smiling as brightly as Noa. There were more pictures: Noa holding awards from school, some candid shots of him doing homework or reading, or something. He looked like a typical, spoiled, privileged kid who had never had to work hard for anything in his life.
And then suddenly, something changed. He stopped smiling as big. Seto frowned. Noa's face had made a significant change. He not only looked older, but something had changed in his eyes. He looked professional, now. There was the picture of Noa and Gozaburo that Seto had seen in the virtual world, where Noa stood behind his father's chair, looking all proper and noble like the son of businessman should.
Seto flicked through the rest of the pictures before he realized what had changed.
The woman with the warm eyes was gone.
Seto backed out of the pictures file and starting flicking through the documents, telling himself that he was just checking to make sure there was nothing that was going to hurt Kaiba Corp on here. Most of the documents were boring: school projects and the like.
But there was one file, tucked neatly away within several sub-folders where no one was likely to look for it, that drew his attention. Seto opened it to find a child services report inside.
He skimmed the document.
Possible abuse...known cases of anger issues in the past...mother acknowledged marital tension...Noa insists there is no cause for alarm...strange bruises on his arms...psychological profile seems to have worsened since death of wife...recommendation to the court to remove child from custody...
Seto sat back in his chair, looking at the words but not reading them.
Damn, Noa, he thought.You stole these directly from the social worker's computer. Probably erased them from his files, too. It would explain why that custody charge against Gozaburo that I read about fell through so quickly...
Seto stared at the screen for a long time.
...bruises on his arms...says he fell down the stairs. …admits that father gets angry, but denies being hit. Interviews with house staff...some express worry about the child...others unwilling to comment...
"Why did you do that?" Seto murmured. "Noa...they could have taken you away from him. Why did you protect him?"
Why would anyone protect a piece of garbage like Gozaburo?
Seto back out from the document. Slowly, as though in a dream, he returned to the file with the photographs. He looked at each other again. He watched Noa's smiles get smaller and smaller.
Seto leaned back, away from the computer, staring at the last picture of Noa and the woman with the warm eyes – his mother; there could be no doubt. He sighed, from deep within his chest.
He got it. He understood, despite not wanting to.
You thought you could go back someday. You thought things would be happy like that again. You hung onto that.
He rested his head in his palm.
We were more alike than I thought, weren't we?
A/N: Here take these feels k-thx bye. (Also, told you I would sneak some Nellshipping in there. XD). Next is Mintshipping (Esper Roba x Haga).
