I'm doing my best to keep myself on a schedule now, which means I had to make a judgment call. This chapter doesn't end the way I intended for it to end; it's kind of a cliffhanger. Which makes this chapter groundwork, rather than a finale. However, in order to make this chapter what I initially envisioned, it would have taken a lot longer to get it out.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm cheating you out of anything. Trust me; I have the rest of this storyline outlined, and this is still necessary information.

Excuses aside, let's get to this.


1.


". . . It is my fault."

They sat on a gurney, tucked into a corner of an emergency room. Mokuba stared at the floor, trying to banish the guilt twisting its way through his gut. Connor was moments away from crying, but all Mokuba felt was relief. Joey was in critical condition, Connor was having a nervous breakdown, and Mokuba was just grateful that it hadn't been him.

He put an arm around his friend's shoulders, pushing these thoughts aside because he couldn't afford to feel them. Not right now. "No. It wasn't."

"But . . . ! If I hadn't gotten caught, if I'd been more careful, then—"

"He was going to shoot that gun. Something would have set him off, even if it wasn't you. This is on me, Connor. I . . . I kept antagonizing him. Ever since he showed up. It's all I've done. I never gave him a reason not to target me. I should have counted on him being a freaking nutjob." The young Kaiba shook his head. "I should know better than to get too cocky." His expression turned dangerous. "It's not like I haven't seen this before."

Connor flinched. "You couldn't have seen this coming."

Mokuba sneered. "Yeah. I could've. I should've. This isn't the first time I've had a gun pointed at my face." The dismissive tone of Mokuba's voice at this admission made Connor flinch again. "But I just . . . froze. If you hadn't made that phone call, a lot worse could've happened." Mokuba heaved a disgusted sigh. They'd been sitting here, alone, for several minutes now. They'd already been checked out, everything was fine, and nobody knew anything relevant about Joey.

"What were you gonna do?" Connor asked. "He could've shot you!"

". . . Could have. Should have. Might have. This all just . . . sucks." Mokuba looked up. "Because nobody is bothering to tell me anything about my friend who got shot!"

A few people glanced in his direction, but nobody responded.

They seemed to know better than to try reasoning with an angry Kaiba.

The two boys sat in silent meditation for a while. Connor was still shaking.

The fact that Mokuba was able to sense his brother's footsteps—sharper and louder and angrier than the other multitudes in the room—made him smile. He looked up, and felt a new stab of guilt. There wasn't a word for the number of emotions running across Seto Kaiba's face as he thrust himself through the room like an impatient lightning bolt on two legs. Not that it was difficult for him to move; everyone seemed to realize that getting in this man's way was a horrible idea.

There was a sound, almost like brakes screeching, when Seto forced himself to a stop in front of them. Mokuba wondered for a moment how many traffic laws his brother had broken on the way here.

Seto hunkered down and put a hand on each boy's cheek, staring down at them with more gentleness than anyone in recent memory had ever seen in him; including Mokuba. He stayed that way for a while, perhaps to calm himself down. In those moments, Mokuba saw something else behind that gentleness. Something fierce, with sharp teeth, about to boil over. Seto's hands eventually moved to the boys' shoulders, and stayed there. The weight of those hands was soothing.

For Mokuba, at least.

Connor seemed scared.

The first words Seto spoke weren't "Are you okay?" for which Mokuba would always be indescribably grateful. As always, his Niisama knew more about the situation than anyone else could have, just at a glance. Seto knew that his brother was fine, and that his brother's friend was not.

There was no point in reaffirming what he already knew.

Instead, Seto leaned forward and said:

". . . What happened?"


2.


"It's all my fault, Mister Kaiba!" was the first thing Connor shouted, unable to hold back even though Mokuba had been about to speak. Judging by the look on the young Kaiba's face—guilty, exasperated, bordering on angry—Seto surmised that the two boys had been discussing this for some time.

Of all the ways to spend the afternoon. Of all the . . . fucking things to happen. The hospital? They couldn't walk to a movie theater without something sending them to the goddamned hospital?!

Seto forced himself back into the moment. "Why would you say that?" he asked, then berated himself for asking a stupid question. He reiterated: "What happened?"

"We were walking to the movies," Mokuba started, in a tone of voice that bespoke quiet calm and reassurance—which, paradoxically, threw up entirely too many red flags for Seto to count—and Connor hung his head in shame. "William Hunter and his gang. They showed up, cornered us. We ended up in an alley."

Immediately Seto took stock of his brother's condition again, even though he'd done it three times already. He could see no injuries, and Mokuba was obviously fine—physically. But Seto couldn't shake the suspicion that something was wrong. One, Mokuba wasn't telling him everything. Two, he was distracted, and his eyes kept seeking out something behind Seto's back; a nurse? A doctor?

Connor unraveled the mystery for him: "Mister Wheeler got shot! Mister Wheeler got shot and it's all my fault!" Something snapped in Seto's brain, and he felt a sudden urge to vomit.

What?!

"If I hadn't . . . ! If I hadn't . . . ! If I'd just been quieter, then maybe Matt wouldn't have—"

The world ceased moving.

An arctic chill settled over the limitless landscape of Seto Kaiba's imagination. A distant compartment of his mind registered the fact that Connor was still talking, still falling on his sword. Another compartment saw that Mokuba flinched, and looked like he was preparing for an onslaught.

Most of him, though . . .

"What did you just say."


3.


Mokuba watched his brother's expression bleed out, leaving a mask that conveyed less emotion than a cinder block . . . or a headstone. The gentleness was gone. The fire was gone.

There was just a cold, grey slab of nothing.

Connor looked suddenly terrified.

Seto's voice came back: "He did this. Matthew . . . Kerns . . . did this."

Connor let out a strangled noise that sounded like a sob: "Y-Yes."

"Niisama . . ."

Seto rose back to his full height, closed his eyes, and turned away. "Stay here."

"Niisama? Where—"

He started walking, looking like he was headed for a firing squad.

Whether as one of the executioners, or the condemned, Mokuba wasn't sure.


4.


Shot to the gut with a .357. In surgery. Critical condition.

After all the jargon and the psychosocial double-talk, that was the information Seto had on Joey Wheeler's condition. The elder Kaiba stalked down the hallway, at war with seven different sides of himself. Chief in him was the question why he was so . . . worried. Why did the health and safety of a . . . of

a friend

a hot-blooded idiot with a reckless streak bother him so much?

He had something—someone—else to worry about.

By the time he made it back to the emergency room, Mokuba and Connor were still there, but they had guests: Enid Brinkley, Leonard Brinkley, and Detective Darren McKinley.

Enid was fussing over her son and Mokuba in equal measure. Leonard was talking to Darren, every so often glancing at the two children with a guilty look on his face. Like he wanted to join in his wife's ministrations, but felt like he shouldn't. Seto wasn't sure on the specifics of the conversation, but didn't miss the fact that, as soon as he approached, Leonard took one look at him and thrust something into Darren's hands.

". . . partner, his name's Kevin," Darren was saying. "He'll be coming down here to finish things up." He turned and looked Seto in the eye, very pointedly. "I've got some business to take care of."

Seto forced something out of himself that he barely recognized, and said: "Mister and Missus Brinkley." Enid and Leonard looked at him. "Look after my brother for me."

Enid's face was unreadable. "Of course. We will."

"Mokuba."

"Yes, Niisama?"

". . . Look after your friend."

Mokuba smiled for three seconds before his face turned grim. He nodded. "Yes, Niisama."

Seto turned away, and Darren fell into step beside him. "You're surprisingly calm about this," Darren said, in a tone of voice that was obviously manufactured to sound neutral and unassuming; just like when Mokuba had done it, this only made something twisted and ugly flare up in Seto's mind. "I assume you know everything I do."

"Why would you assume that?" Seto asked mechanically.

"Because you always know everything I do."

". . . Why are you following me, Darren?"

Darren grimaced. "Take a guess." A silence. "I know damn good and well that you're hiding something behind that poker face of yours, Seto. And if I don't follow you, I'll have to collar you. I'd really rather not have to do that, so . . . you get a chaperone."

Seto breathed slowly. ". . . What did Leonard give you?"

Darren flashed a bronze key, then pocketed it. "Our boy lives two towns over. Only way he could have made it home already is if he caught a Greyhound. Brinkleys are convinced he's hiding out at their place. Seems he's been staying there for an extended vacation."

Seto took another deep breath. Let it out.

"I trust you're telling me this for a reason."

"Figured I'd expedite things."

Seto locked eyes with his only friend, searching for something he couldn't name.

That didn't stop him from finding it.

A flood rushed through Seto Kaiba's mind, as he suddenly felt like screaming and laughing at the same time; he settled on his usual smirk, but it felt . . . more feral than usual, even to him.

". . . We'll take your car," Darren said. He, if anyone, knew what that look meant. "It's faster."


5.


"I thought your brother would be . . . really mad."

Mokuba tried to stop himself from flinching; he failed. Connor still looked like he'd done thirteen rounds in a back-alley boxing ring, despite the fact that he had no injuries whatsoever. He looked . . . completely defeated. He also looked like he was waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.

The young Kaiba thought about lying. He dismissed the thought immediately.

"He was," Mokuba said. "He is."

"Huh?" Connor blinked. "What do you mean? He just . . . he almost looked . . ."

"When my brother gets mad, he puts up a wall." Mokuba sighed, shook his head. "Gozaburo taught him to use his emotions. Control them. Never let them cloud your judgment." He said this like he was repeating a mantra, something he'd heard a thousand times. Connor didn't look like he understood in the slightest. "That's what he does. Niisama's always mad at something. It's how he is. So when it looks like he's totally calm, like there's nothing wrong with the world and he's just sitting there, it means he's so mad he doesn't trust himself anymore. It means he's faking everything. It means he wants to . . ."

He stopped.

Connor dared to coax: "Wants to . . . what?"

Mokuba hung his head low. "You know how . . . Matt kept talking about how he's corrupt, and he uses his power and influence to break the rules?"

"Yeah . . . ?"

Mokuba finally looked at Connor directly in the eye for the first time since they'd arrived at Saint Claire's Memorial Hospital.

"Niisama's about to prove him right."


6.


Darren felt like he was playing bodyguard for a hand grenade wrapped up in an expensive suit, and more than a bit of him was wondering when he would have to leap onto that grenade.

Seto looked calm. That was precisely the problem. Darren would have been perfectly at ease if the man were seething, gnashing his teeth and cursing God, because it meant he was caught in the moment and had no intention of doing anything with his anger, except perhaps ruin a punching bag or make holes in a few walls. The fact that Seto had responded to the latest insult to his brother's safety with so much nothing meant—well. There were no other words for it, were there? Anger, fury, frustration—all of those things came from not knowing what to do. The calm on Seto's face meant that he felt none of that.

He knew exactly what he was about to do.

Seto Kaiba wasn't wearing the face of a man caught up in a crime of passion.

It was, plain and simple, the face of a murderer.

So, instead of snapping at his friend to slow down and at least try to remember that he was sharing his vehicle with a law enforcement official, Darren closed his eyes and prepared himself for the explosion.

He was so stuck on this sequence of thoughts that when Seto started to speak, at first Darren didn't even hear him.

". . . not going to go on a rampage," was what Darren caught. "The fact remains that Mokuba is fine. Connor is fine. Wheeler is . . . in bad shape, but the immediate danger is passed. Oh, I want to make him eat his own teeth, but the fact remains that I have no justification. I'm not interested in going to prison for him." Seto's face pinched into something scornful. "But I do want him to know exactly what he's done to himself."

Then the smirk came back, and with it everything that Darren had been anticipating ever since he'd gotten called into his sergeant's office and told, in no uncertain terms, that no one else in the Domino City Police Department was even coming close to touching this one. No one was going to inform Seto goddamned Kaiba that his little brother had been involved in a second shooting in the past year, because everyone who'd lived in Domino City for longer than six months knew that this man was not above punishing messengers.

Darren McKinley had a specific gift: that was, he was one of the only people in the hemisphere who was (very nearly) unafraid of him.

Though, some part of Darren wondered whether or not that was a good thing.

Seto adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and clenched his teeth. "That sniveling little afterthought is about to find out just what my resources will do to him . . . once he's caught in the system."

Somehow, Darren was unable to feel better, about anything, as his friend began to laugh.


END.