Sometimes my general experiences flavor what I write. Which is to say that you can usually tell what I'm watching, reading, researching, or listening to, based on whatever cultural references I make. This chapter is something a little … trickier than that.
I had a plan for this installment that ended up … well, not happening. I was hit with a pretty hard cold for a few days, and the result was this.
1.
Four days before his first official Magic & Wizards tournament, Seto Yagami wakes up feeling like the end of the world is a physical presence, and it's taken up residence inside his ribcage. He can barely open his eyes in the morning, and even though some part of him knows that he has school today, the rest of him knows that he isn't going to be able to stand upright for at least another six hours.
At least.
Seto keeps a watch. He doesn't wear it, because too many kids comment on how old and ugly it is, but he always keeps it nearby. Usually, in a pocket. When he sleeps, he puts it on the small end table that he shares—fights over—with David Whittaker.
Seto checks the time. 7:27.
He's slept like the dead, straight through his alarm.
The panic that wants to well up in Seto's chest can't gain much traction, because his head is too fuzzy to figure out what he's trying to freak out over. Groaning, moving like he's underwater . . . no, not water. Something thicker, more viscous, like salty gelatin.
Then something stirs next to him, and Seto realizes that—in the absence of morning routine—Mokuba is still sleeping, curled up in a little ball right next to him. The panic surges through. "Mokie!" Seto hisses. "Mokuba, come on. Up you get, little one."
At least, this is what he tries to say. Seto barely manages a word or two before he descends into a hacking fit that threatens to dislodge at least four ribs.
Seto thinks, once he's sure that he hasn't coughed up any blood—it certainly feels like he should have: I have to get Mokie out of here. He isn't fully conscious why. He stumbles out of bed, nearly falls flat on his face, and somehow manages to gather up his brother in a bundle of pajamas, a pillow half-out of its case, and a bedsheet that he eventually tosses in frustration over one shoulder.
Mokuba fumbles around as Seto makes his laborious way across the room, blinks several times, and stares up at his brother with one visible eye. "Nii'tama?" he asks, clearly wondering why the bed is moving.
Then Seto starts coughing again, and Mokuba flails around for a while. Once the excitable little bundle of hair finds his feet, he puts on a stern face. "Nii'tama go bed," Mokuba declares sharply.
"M-Mokie . . . I—"
"Nii'tama?"
". . . Yes, baby brother."
"Go. Bed."
And Seto realizes he is in a bad way when he can't construct anything even close to an argument. He lets his three-year-old sibling guide him, and is unconscious again mere moments after lying down.
2.
Ellie has a guitar.
For reasons that cannot be pinpointed—he tries, for at least an hour—this strikes Seto as alien. Absurd. Not that Ellie is holding a guitar. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how often the thought occurs to him as a singular concept. He feels like he's drowning, he has all morning, and certain facts are like driftwood left off from the shipwreck of his intellect.
The sun is a star.
Human beings have opposable thumbs.
Ellie has a guitar.
When first she saunters into the room with the instrument at her side like she's brandishing a weapon, he tries to ask . . . something. What time is it? Where did Mokie go? Why do you look embarrassed? Why can't I feel my face?
He isn't able to ask any of these questions, but he thinks them at her. As though she is supposed to pick up on them.
She doesn't.
Ellie sits down on David Whittaker's bed. She smiles, tilting her head to one side. "Hey, there, Yagami," she says. She sounds as flippantly casual as she always does . . . except not quite. There's something different about her tone. This is instinctual. If Seto were in any condition to analyze anything more complicated than how many fingers he has on his left hand, he might have figured out the answer to most of his queries without much thought at all.
But Seto hasn't been sick—well and truly ill—for some time now. Years, probably. And it feels as though the abstract concept of sickness is making up for that fact by barreling into him with all the subtlety of a space shuttle.
"H . . . H—"
That's all he can manage before coughing again. His entire body shakes.
Ellie flinches, and kind of coos, and sets her guitar down before stepping up to his bedside and looking down at him. "You really are down for the count today, aren'tcha, kiddo?"
"Nnnnnnnnnngh . . ."
A hand brushes against his forehead, and Seto closes his eyes.
Pretty soon, he hears music. Soft, strumming strings. And then singing. A voice, slightly scratchy, crooning a song that Seto feels like he's supposed to know. Maybe he's heard it before. Maybe it was one of Mom's favorite songs.
Mom doesn't listen to the music she listened to when she was little. She likes listening to music in English because it helps her stay fluent. That's important. And she likes current music. The first thing she does in the morning is turn on the radio in the kitchen, and the last thing she does at night is turn it off.
She says sometimes that she'd like it if she could find a station that played instrumental pieces. But since she can't, she settles for this. It's fun to sing along sometimes, and ever since she's come to this country her personal preference for violin concertos and atmospheric flutes has been buried by a deluge of sappy love poetry set to guitars.
Mom says she isn't sure she minds so much.
Someone asks, "What're you doing in here?"
Someone answers, "Gotta practice if this thing's gonna be worth anything. And I figure if Mister Crawford's gonna get me a Gibson, I oughtta make good on that."
"I'm pretty sure that isn't a real Gibson."
"Yeah, I know, but I keep tellin' people that's what it is, so clam up, huh?"
"And what about your choice of venue?"
"Hey, not like he's going anywhere. Kid's barely got the faculties to hack up his lungs."
"You're getting pretty good, Ellie. Keep it up."
"Man, whatever."
"Hm. Well, I suppose I'll leave you kids alone. Keep an eye on him. He likes you, y'know. I'm sure he appreciates that you're thinking of him."
". . . Shut up about it, already. I ain't goin' anywhere."
When the singing starts again, Seto has a handful of moments to be relieved before he falls under again. Only this time, he feels kind of . . . warm.
3.
Pegasus Crawford never looks quite so much like a king as when he's thinking. He lounges in his chair like it's a throne, and he was born to it, by God. The fact that he's wearing a tailcoat, and that the vest underneath it is as crimson as the blood of the proverbially innocent, brings to mind a classic sort of gothic monster.
The smirk on his face only accentuates the comparison.
He's still wearing his hair in a ponytail.
He drinks wine from a glass that should be a goblet, and doesn't respond to Croquet's question until at least a minute has gone by. "What can I do for you, my good man?"
Croquet gestures with the device in his hand: a telephone handset. "A call for you, sir."
Pegasus's entire demeanor shifts, from vampire to goodly church chaplain. "Hello?" he asks in a lilting, public-servant sort of voice. His face crinkles with honest concern, which looks to Croquet like the grimmest, bitterest bit of comedy he's ever stepped into, considering . . . the rest.
Croquet closes his eyes and lets out a breath. "This job will be the death of me," he murmurs to himself.
"Shhhh . . . sh-sh-shhhh . . . there we are. Now, now, little one. Everything will be fine. Slow down. What's the matter?"
He sounds so earnest, and Croquet has been affiliated with the Crawford family for more than long enough to know that this is Pegasus Crawford. The man is no sociopath. The soft, gentle artist is still living inside him, and one thing for which he will never be able to thank those Yagami boys enough is that they've brought it out in him again.
But a stark problem remains in the monster that sometimes settles over the artist's heart, like today, and leaks into his—
eye
—subconscious like a serpent in a forbidden garden. What is there to be done about that? What to do about the warbling sonata that whispers dark secrets into Pegasus's mind at night in the place of lullabies? What to do with the thing that wraps a murder weapon in a silk kerchief and sometimes honestly thinks that's enough to hide its true face?
What to do about the creature summoned by that man from Egypt? That man who might not be a man at all anymore? That man who hangs in a place of honor in the dining hall, next to the lost but not forgotten?
". . . Listen to me, Mokuba," Pegasus is saying now. "I'll be right there. Okay? No—Mokuba, your Niisama will be just fine. We'll take care of him, you and I. All right? Don't worry. I'll see you soon. Be strong, little warrior."
Pegasus hangs up the phone and rises smoothly to his feet. As he's adjusting his coat, he slips a manila folder off the table by his right hand and glances casually at Croquet. The meager lighting in the room makes his face look at once ghoulish and transcendent.
"It seems I must make a change of locale. Seto isn't feeling well, and Mokuba isn't taking it well." He smiles impishly. "The joys of parenthood. No?"
Croquet clears his throat. ". . . Indubitably. And, ah . . . what will happen to Mister Gabrielli, then?"
Pegasus turns his golden gaze upon his old mentor, slumped on the floor and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Abele Gabrielli's eyes are glazed over, like frosted glass. They see all . . . and yet they see nothing.
The master slips a Magic & Wizards card into an inside pocket of his coat.
The devil's smirk returns, and he doesn't answer.
.
The song that Ellie is singing, in case anyone wonders, is "Let Her Cry" by Hootie & the Blowfish. This will probably be a longstanding bit of symbolism with her. I don't necessarily see her becoming a professional musician or anything, but I think music defines her existence a lot of the time.
Hence why Pegasus got her a guitar for Seto's birthday.
Both Ellie and Dan seem convinced that the model isn't anything particular, nothing to write home about … but I'm pretty sure it's the single-most expensive thing she's ever owned.
Pegasus just kinda strikes me as that kind of rich guy.
Generous to a fault.
The fault being … he seems to do it in order to justify the, um, Other Things™ he does.