You can't help but feel bitter at the Pharaoh for leaving. Maybe if he hadn't, your brother wouldn't be like this. But it's too late for regrets now. You know Seto Kaiba better than anyone else, and you know your brother will never rest until his ambitions are realized.

So you help him. You smile, you sneer at his enemies, you support him unwaveringly, because he needs support when no one else will give it. Yugi may have helped heal his darkness, but this new darkness is born from a lack of it.

Part of you knows it's unfair, that they got closure and Seto did not. Another part just wants the whole world to stop, to imagine a world where Seto did get a proper goodbye, one last duel with no regrets, anything to save himself from this spiral. A third part knows it's madness, the current running deep and dark like at Death-T.

The only thing you can do now is wait for Seto to succeed.

Then—maybe then—it will truly be over.

Sometimes it feels like you've been waiting your whole life.

At the orphanage you waited patiently for the right man to come along and deliver you from nothingness, and you knew he would eventually because Seto said so. When Gozaburo Kaiba turned out to be nothing but a petty tyrant, you waited for your brother to rise above him, to take what was his and make it yours. You waited for the torture to stop.

By the time Gozaburo fell, and your brother claimed his success, he'd changed so much you found yourself waiting for him to smile, a real smile, not a sneer of victory. You waited for him to acknowledge you, as a brother and a person.

You were still waiting when he finally lost a game, and by then you were more concerned with waiting for the nightmares to stop. When they didn't, you decided you'd gotten sick of waiting and set out for revenge on the kid who'd beaten Seto. (Wasn't that what brothers did, you thought? Looked out for one another?)

You wanted to win—you'd rigged it to win—and were horrified to lose to Yugi. No problem, you'd try again, waiting for the perfect moment. When you lost again, you were more concerned with getting your stomach pumped to remove the poison. (It took a while for you to stop being sick, but you couldn't delay; Death-T was starting soon!)

When the games began in earnest, and you saw the madness in your brother's eyes as if for the first time, you recognized it in yourself too. But by then it was too late to back down. You'd win this time, even betting Yugi would die to you rather than Seto. You'd show Seto you could play just as well as he could. All he had to do was wait and see.

(And if you remembered his smile, and how kind he was, well—maybe after you won you'd see it again.)

You didn't win, he didn't smile, and he left you to die. You still have nightmares of that tiny glass box filling with monsters, ready to tear you to shreds—and the hand reaching out, saving you when your brother would not.

You'd told Yugi everything then: your past, Seto's past, and if you couldn't help him maybe he could. As thanks you saved his friend Tristan from the falling blocks room, getting them all together—like you imagined Seto and you would be someday, like you used to be.

Yugi won, and his victory put your brother in a coma. The Mind Crush would heal the darkness of his heart, but the crucial element was that Seto would rebuild it himself, one piece at a time.

You vowed to wait as long as it took for him to return.

You vowed to wait forever.

Six months, one kidnapping, and several stolen souls later, you saw your brother for the first time since you were young. You learned you were the last piece of his heart.

Your brother finally smiled.

Joey looks at Seto and wonders how you two are related, or even why you love him so much. What he doesn't get is that his sister looks at him the same. (Or maybe he does, and just doesn't want to admit it.)

Now, though…

Now Seto's smile is dark, like at Battle City when he was seconds from victory. The oppressive smile of crushing a foe, or attaining that which was thought unattainable. You know that smile; you've seen it before. You've worn it yourself.

But you matter to him; you know you do. You matter more than his wounded pride, more than his obsession, more than his madness. (You shout against the whispers of Death-T and battle boxes and penalty games. You're over that. Seto is too.)

You want to wait for this to be over. But there is no over. It will never be over.

Not until your brother breaches the boundaries of life and death to duel the Pharaoh one last time. Not until he gets what he wants or dies trying.

You try not to think about how literal that once was, and how it could hold true again so easily. You had to stop him yourself, just days ago, when he tried to transcend without any protection at all. Even his Blue-Eyes had dissolved from the strain, turning into dust.

But he has protection, now, you remind yourself. He has Aigami's Quantum Cube; he has his own, unstoppable willpower, the will to succeed that only Yugi and the Pharaoh brought out. And right now his will is concentrated into this—this final attempt at closure.

You try and talk him out of it anyway, but he refuses to wait, and you refuse to stop him. You know you can't, so close to his ultimate goal. You wish you could join him so you wouldn't be apart, not even for a moment.

But he left KaibaCorp in your hands, Mokuba, and you must protect it like you did at Duelist Kingdom.

Even if he didn't promise to return, you'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

He wouldn't leave for good, he wouldn't leave to die, without telling you first.

(Or would he?)

You shake your head to cast out doubt.

It doesn't matter what happens, really.

You've waited this long for Seto.

You can wait some more.

Even if you end up waiting forever.

The movie itself leaves what happened ambiguous, so I tried to too. I think it's up to the viewer/reader to decide.