-1A/N: Shadow: I don't have half your brain…why would you think that…

…

SO MANY NEW PEOPLE I AM AMAZED AND FLATTERED, NOW START REVIEWING ¬_¬

~Ava

~XxX~

It's always a little disconcerting to wake up in a bed that isn't your own, I had done so twice recently. The sight of a handsome, blue eyed blond is usually an excellent sedative, but not, I noticed, when he wearing bloody scrubs and checking the drip line that snakes it's way down to the back of your left hand.

Well, I wasn't dead.

Which was good.

I waited until the doctor left before I sat up. I glared down at my hand, feeling a little spacey. It was bandaged, a little dried blood round the palm area of the white, probably stitched underneath it and other than that, seemed fine.

Which wasn't fine.

I remembered the pain I felt earlier and compared it to how I was feeling now. Nothing, and coupling that with the spaceyness and the, just recently come-to-the-fore, light-headedness I realised that whatever was in the IV was a powerful painkiller.

"Methadone?" I thought aloud, looking out of the window next to the bed and noticing a slight slur over my 'th,' "No, that's for Heroine addicts…"

"Morphine."

"Yes! Morphin-" I had slurred slightly over the 'ph' too, but had stopped short of the whole word due to who it was that had materialised in the doorway. "Mokuba? Wh-" And then all the events of the past few hours came rushing back to me. I looked to the kid who had walked to the side of my bed for answers.

"Joey's…not waking up - but he's not dead -" The kid added quickly at the look on my face. "Mai isn't waking up, I'm gonna call an air ambulance for Joey and Teá's been hovering around your room every ten minutes." I stared at him for several seconds, this made the count of 'people who could get an annoyingly good read on me' bump up to four. Teá, both Kaibas and Joey. I fixed my slightly blurring gaze onto the black-haired boy, who looked back at me intently.

"Thanks, Mokuba…." I hesitated on how to say what I was going to when Mokuba smiled at me.

"You want the IV out, don't you?"

"Urgh. You're as bad as your brother." I groaned, great, another mind-reading Kaiba. Mokuba, however, appeared to take it as a compliment, holding himself straighter for a second.

"Nah, you're just easy to read." He laughed while busying himself by ripping out the infernal device from the back of my left hand while I stared at the bandages round my right. I had forgotten something thanks to the Morphine-induced haze I was in. It wasn't too bad, back when I was in the hospital for a broken pelvis and fractured ribs, I had been given so much that I could barely formulate cohesive sentences.

"Well, that's probably because your doctors weren't as good as ours! Bro only hires the best for a reason you know." My eyes bugged out of my head as I whipped round to look at Mokuba.

"Did I-Did I say that out loud?"

"Did you not mean to?" Mokuba looked over at me, now having moved back over to my right side. I sighed, concentrating on keeping my thoughts in my head. I was going to have to watch myself for the next few hours or so. I thought a lot of incriminating things.

"Nope…" I focused on swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, keeping my right hand out of the way of my body completely. I wobbled a bit but otherwise was fine. "Huh. Your doctors are rather good, I'll give you that." I stretched and looked down at Mokuba, "They struck a good enough balance on the dosage, I don't feel too bad…"

"You're going to wait until it wears off, right?" Mokuba said, phrased as a question, yes, spoken as an order however, that too. I glanced down to Mokuba who was looking at me seriously. It was odd, though the kid was cute as hell, he had somehow inherited his older brother's intense glare. I winced.

"I'll…go to see how Joey's doing…and then I'll…see?" My voice went up at the end and I briefly thought about how absolutely absurd it was for me to be seeking the permission to walk around from a twelve-year-old, but there was also the fact that he wasn't a normal twelve-year-old and I actually listened to him in the first place. He fixed me a stern look from his two-foot-shorter-than-me stance and I splayed my palms. Mokuba sighed at me.

"Bro wouldn't like it if I just let you stumble around unsupervised while drugged." He folded his arms at me as I pursed my lips and folded my own.

"Well," I flushed slightly at Mokuba's words, disliking my vague liking of the connotation behind those words, "Wh-" My question was cut off.

"Seto said that only a moron would try to move around after being given a strong analgesic." Mokuba appeared to bite back a laugh, I narrowed my eyes, guessing where this was going. "Then he told me to go check on you." I sighed in utter exasperation.

"I just can't win, can I?"

~XxX~

I had walked into Joey and Mai's hospital room and been greeted by my subdued friends. I noted that each hospital room had two beds and my mind instantly went to Odion, the man Marik was looking for. I supposed the other bed in the room I'd been in had been for him, but who had hidden him?

"What did the doctor say? About his condition I mean." I asked quietly. No-one's voice rose above 'quiet,' Serenity especially, spoke only with a whisper when she did speak. Teá answered me.

"He's…" She glanced to Serenity, which gave me enough of an answer, he was bad enough that she didn't feel right saying his condition in front of his sister. I nodded, looking back to Joey and Serenity. It wasn't fair. That may have sounded immature, but it wasn't fair that such a strong person could fall to such a cowardly bastard.

"The air ambulance should've been here by now." Duke mused, looking over his shoulder to the window behind him. I followed his look and stared out of the window. There was no sign of anything, but there was a weird surround on top of the duel tower. From where we were it looked like a coliseum. Odd.

"I'm sure Tristan and Mokuba are doing everything they can to get help. But…" Teá looked to me for a second and I nodded.

"I'll go check." I stood up from the edge of Joey's bed and walked out of the door without another word, part of me thankful to be leaving the emotional minefield behind for a while. I shivered as I wandered through the corridors over to the lift at the end of the hall. The floor was cold and since I had taken to holding my shoes in one hand so that I could walk barefoot and not snap my neck if I stumbled, I really felt it.

Franticness greeted me once I'd gotten off the lift and entered the control-room.

~XxX~

A/N: Sorry for the lateness, there's a number of reasons. Reason one: I went to see the Book Of The Dead at the British Museum, handy considering I'm planning to own the place one day. Two: I've been in writer's block (hence the shitty chapter) and Three: I've technically finished three other chapters, one of which I think you lot might like immensely. First kiss before Christmas anybody? XDDD

REVIEW, BETCHES. AND THE GIGOLOS TOO. I KNOW MALES READ THIS.

~Ava