Chapter Two
The flash of a knife blade in his mind's eye woke him. He had to stop that killing edge from touching... from touching... Fire raced across his hands igniting them before proceeding to lick up his arms. Violent, green poison dripped in a tube leading into his arm. Moaning, he thought to reach up and prevent the poison from seeping into him, but his hands were cruelly wrapped into uselessly bandaged clubs at the end of his arms. The tearing sound of Velcro filled him with dread. No, no! Not again! He moaned again as his flailing arm was expertly caught and wrapped tightly in a canvas restraint.
Help me! he cried out in his mind. Someone, make them stop! Just... make them stop. Don't let them hurt me... anymore...
"What are you doing?!" Kaiba demanded as he smashed open the door to the room.
"He's delirious, Mr. Kaiba. The restraints will prevent him from hurting himself until the rest of the precipitating drug..." the nurse began still trying to loop the strap of the arm restraint around the raised side of the hospital-style bed.
"Mr. Larson -- find another way. Don't use those restraints on him."
"But..." The nurse dropped Yugi's partially-restrained arm to grasp his shoulders and keep him firmly on his back in the bed. Yugi seemed to calm easier under the touch now that the nurse's attention was not fixed on fastening the arm restraint.
Kaiba eyed the man. Mr. Larson was nearly as tall as he was, and brawny, too. He had to be skilled at nursing, else Dr. Karasu would not have sent him over this morning to tend to Yugi.
"He's -- tiny. Hardly a threat to you," Kaiba began. "I don't want to see him in restraints. Surely you are capable enough to keep him from hurting himself, without having to use demeaning, artificial aids to tie him down." Kaiba raised a challenging eyebrow at the nurse as he slid the hateful thing off Yugi's arm and flung it to the floor.
Sure, he could. But that would mean sitting here in the room until the rest of the drug pushed through the patient's body, to be on hand to manually restrain Mr. Mutou, instead of chatting up that cute honey in the kitchen downstairs. Feh. He'd wait until this bout was over, Mr. Moneypants left, then restrain the kid and...
The nurse's thoughts were rudely interrupted when Kaiba picked up a chair from the corner of the room, placed it next to the bed and sat down. "I suggest you find a chair for yourself. It's going to be a long day."
-- -- -- --
Kaiba didn't bother to count the number of times Mutou roused to semi-coherent awareness, raving about knives, fire and poison. The pattern was easy to follow, as Yugi vocalized each step of the way. Once he started talking about the poison dripping down toward his arm, Kaiba would stand and firmly pin Yugi's shoulders to the bed while Mr. Larson restrained his legs. Kaiba couldn't help but read the terror in Yugi's wide, strangely violet eyes as he pleaded with him to stop the poison. At some point, without him making a conscious decision about it, he'd started talking to Yugi.
"Mutou, it's okay. It's not poison. It'll clear the drug that's doing this to you..." Kaiba was amazed that Yugi had somehow known that something given to him in an IV had done this to him. Otherwise, why would he be so concerned about poison dripping into his arm? After each bout, Yugi's eyes would close in what appeared to be exhaustion and he'd rest. Sometimes it was as short as half an hour, sometimes as long as two hours between episodes of pitiable ravings. Mokuba peeked in at one point. Fortunately, Yugi was quiet. Kaiba didn't want his little brother to realize the toll this had taken on Yugi.
"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" Mokuba stood next to Seto's chair and unconsciously leaned into his brother's shoulder for comfort while he asked.
"Sure he is. Dr. K. says he will recover fully."
"Why is he still sleeping?"
"It's just taking a while to undo what the hospital staff did to him, that's all. Nothing we can't handle," Seto replied easily. Mr. Larson grimaced.
Mokuba stepped back and looked his brother full in the face. "You didn't eat lunch again, did you? No, don't answer. You're a rotten liar, big brother! I'll get something for you!"
Only a moment after Mokuba left, Yugi started raving again. "No! Dark Magician, stop! Thousands of knives... I can't stop them all! Help me!"
This was new. 'Dark Magician'? At least the reference to knives was still there.
"There's no knife here, Mutou," Kaiba murmured.
"No. Knives. A thousand of them," Yugi replied.
Kaiba blinked. Yugi responded to him? Was he starting to come out of it? "No knives. Not one, not thousands," Kaiba told him firmly.
"Yes, yes, there are. I have to draw them. They have to come to me. Otherwise... they might hit..."
"You stopped them. You already stopped them. You don't have to..."
"FIRE!" Yugi cried out, twisting on the bed. "Fire soul... In my hands -- hinotoma..."
Knowing the pattern, Kaiba reached down to take Yugi's shoulders between his hands. Wearily, Mr. Larson reached for Yugi's ankles. Mokuba chose that moment to push open the door with his hip, a tray of food balanced across his hands.
"Poison! Poison dripping into my arm!" Yugi cried out as he started to thrash against the hands restraining him. Mokuba had enough presence of mind to put the tray on the desk by the door before approaching Yugi's bed in a stunned sort of daze.
"Mokuba. You don't need to see this. Go away," Seto told him, grimly holding Yugi down.
"I should see it," Mokuba whispered. "He wouldn't be like this if he hadn't..."
"This -- is not -- your fault. It's the damned hospital..." Seto ground out. "And that damned man who kidnapped you... And those damned assholes on the Board of Directors..."
Mokuba reached up to squeeze Seto's arm. "If it's not my fault, then let me stay. So I can help my friend, too."
"Poison! Dripping... Help me! Stop it from getting into me, again!" Yugi raved.
"Yugi! It's okay! You're okay. There's no poison here..." Mokuba leaned over and told him intently.
"No... poison?" Yugi asked. "Mokuba? You're--you're okay?" Yugi blinked up, trying to focus on Mokuba's face.
"I'm okay, Yugi. You and Seto got there in time. I didn't get hurt... You did. But, you'll be okay."
"Mokuba's okay..." Yugi repeated. "Mokuba's okay..." His eyes closed and he eased into unconsciousness again.
"Huh. I think Mutou might be coming out of it. Finally."
Mokuba shot an indulgently reproving glare at his older brother. "I brought food. You and Mr. Larson should eat something."
-- -- -- --
Awareness crept slowly into his mind. A strange sort of unsettledness made him aware that some measure of time had passed, unmarked by him. Vague, phantasmagoric memories pushed at his mind, teasing him with lurid images and imperfectly recalled nightmares. A distressing lassitude weighed him down, as if he were suddenly more susceptible to the pull of gravity than usual. He'd only felt such a lack of energy once -- when he was recovering from chickenpox, but he didn't feel itchy. His hands throbbed and ached with dull pain. A spike of more intense pain snaked across his right palm.
I've been sick? his mind questioned. The sense of missing time worried him, as did the baleful presence of looming nightmares. Nightmares in which people looked down at him, held him down, tied him down, threatened him with knives, burned his hands, poisoned him. He shook his head against these dark fancies. Nightmares. Those had to be nightmares, not memories of true events. Well, yeah, his mind admitted. But they really seemed real -- at the time.
Oh. His mind was finally quiet, and consciously his own, not rocketing off into a frightening land of hallucinations under the tenuous control of his subconscious. That was why he felt so weak, and as if he'd lost a chunk of time. He'd been... Well, he'd been out of his head, for a while. That would explain the strange nightmare-memories. What happened?
It all came rushing back. The odd, unsettling tingle deep in his mind that wouldn't let him sleep however many days ago it was. Giving up on trying to sleep, padding over to his desk, firing up his laptop, mindlessly playing a few hands of solitaire when his chat window remained a friendless, empty wasteland; opening his personal project document, staring blankly at the screen -- too tired to add anything coherent, and finally closing it unchanged again. Belatedly realizing he hadn't looked at the Internet news feeds since coming home from work to find out what was up in the world. With his Grandpa out of the country, he tried to at least look at the news headlines in the morning before heading out to work, and once before he went to sleep each night.
Sources claim Mokuba Kaiba (13), brother to Seto Kaiba, CEO of Kaiba Corporation, has been kidnapped. Substantial reward offered for any information leading to ...
The local headline had resolved the vague tingle into a nearly-painful, clawing insistence to do something, and a psychically clear burst of an image against his mind's eye. He recalled that the headline and the computer screen in front of him faded into transparency. Then, the color had leeched out of his vision. Suddenly thrust into a strange world of black and white, Yugi had gasped as new images swam before his eyes. A man raised his arm to strike at a child with bound arms. The prideful grunt of the boy, denying his captor the satisfaction of crying out at the pain. A defiant, ''My brother will find me, and then you'll pay!"
His strained attempt to recall more shattered as his stomach gurgled unhappily. He was so suddenly aware of internal emptiness that he swore the sound actually echoed. His eyes snapped open in surprise.
Well, that was why his hands felt weird. Both were completely swathed in layers of gauzy cotton. A glance to each side showed he was in a hospital bed with both side-rails up. He was no interior decorator, much less of facilities like hospitals, but the fine-grained, light-toned wood paneling seemed quite at odds with the utilitarian bed. An elegant writing desk next to the door also seemed 'wrong' -- rather, the bed he was in seemed wrong for the rest of tastefully understated, yet opulent room. A huge window caught his eye next -- no, the view through the window pulled his attention. A perfectly manicured park spread before his surprised gaze. None of the hospitals in Domino abutted the park. Where the heck was he?
The door opened quietly. Much to Yugi's astonishment, Seto Kaiba stood there, holding a tray in his hands, his supercilious gaze sweeping across him.
"You're awake, finally," Kaiba said. Yugi shrugged, not knowing how to answer such an obvious observation. "Hmph."
Kaiba placed the tray on the handy desk, and crossed the room to loom over the bed. He reached down, over Yugi's head, and slid a small rotating table, attached to the hospital bed, to a place next to the bed.
"You've been out of it for two days," Kaiba noted as he retrieved the tray and placed it on the table between them.
Kaiba? Why was Seto Kaiba here? More memories came back in a flood.
"Mokuba?" Yugi managed to croak out. His tongue felt like it was twice its normal size, and dry as a desert.
"He's okay. A damn sight better than you, Mutou." Yugi thought he caught a hint of something vulnerable in Kaiba's eyes before the expression opaqued into his cool, unreadable gaze again.
"Why am I -- here?" Yugi lifted his bandaged hands helplessly to indicate his total lack of understanding. "Where are we?"
Kaiba didn't answer for a moment, intent on offering Yugi the business end of a straw until Yugi drank some of the water.
"Chessex Memorial was screwing you. After the paramedics arrived, Roland accompanied you there, to make certain you were admitted quickly and given the best possible care..."
"My insurance doesn't cover that hospital..." Yugi shook his head.
Kaiba glared, a spoonful of something that smelled marvelous en route to Yugi's mouth when Yugi had moved. Meekly, Yugi remained still and permitted the spoon to advance into range.
"My money does." Kaiba told him, finally answering Yugi's comment now that Yugi was cooperating. "You were supposed to have a private room, not share a double. The fact that you were sedated and restrained was distressing to -- Mokuba. It seemed best to bring you here, where my personal doctor could tend to your recovery. I assure you, everything he needs to treat you is available to him here."
"I'm not worried about that," Yugi said before Kaiba effectively stopped any further conversation with another generous spoonful of the delicious beef and barley soup. Strangely enough, it was exactly what Yugi wanted.
The steady and very matter of fact way Kaiba offered the thick, hearty soup defused any potential for embarrassment. Well, most of it. Kaiba maintained silence for several minutes until Yugi had, with his assistance, emptied the entire bowl of soup.
"Uhm... Thank you. For looking out for me."
Kaiba stood and damn-near glared down at him. "You're an idiot." He turned on his heel and put the empty bowl on the desk. He returned to the bedside with the cup of water, leaning down to place it on the table and swivel the straw to within easy reach of Yugi's mouth.
It was sudden. It was violent. Yugi had absolutely no warning, and no way to stop it. His stomach went from being quietly content and pleasantly happy with the warm, savory soup to massive, irresistible upheaval at the mere thought of this alien substance 'food'. One mortifying and abject moment later, Kaiba was liberally 'decorated' with the evidence of Yugi's trenchantly unhappy and swiftly voided stomach.
With an incredulous, actinic blue-eyed stare, Kaiba glared at Yugi for a full minute before slowly turning and walking from the room.
Yugi stared after him miserably, wanting to scrub at his suddenly stinging eyes. He sighed, looking down at his bandaged hands, and settled for slamming his head back into the pillow, silently cursing in every language he knew.