Seto had turned back to his Duel Monsters cards for comfort. Mokuba had smuggled them to his brother in hollowed out books way back when Seto was still being abused by Gozaburo, and they—with the emotional link they carried back to Mokuba—had given him hope and strength. Maybe they would give him hope and strength once again as he endured this second round of abuse from what he still believed to be a hallucination.

Whenever the mental and emotional pressure grew to be too much for him, he took out his brief case filled with rare cards and started shuffling through them in search for a new possible strategy. Not that he needed a new strategy, but the act itself helped put his mind at ease.

The physical pain was no longer an issue. His denial was strong enough that he could will the pain away. Physical pain was always far easier to handle than any other kind for that very reason: willpower was all he needed in order to deal with it. He'd learned that as a child.

Thanks, Gozaburo. That's one lesson of yours that I actually use.

Duke's difficulty in sticking to his sex-strike grew worse for a couple weeks before it started to get better. Once Ryou found a shrink that wouldn't argue with him or assume he was delusional when he said that he had been possessed by an ancient Egyptian spirit, he started attending weekly sessions. On his very first one, he'd asked about the sex-strike theory on his roommate's behalf.

"He said that it works best if you can do it for six or seven months," Ryou informed Duke that evening over Chinese take-out—they'd both been feeling too lazy to cook, which happened maybe once or twice a week.

"You're kidding, right?" Duke looked pathetic as he heard this news, as if Ryou had just told him that all the puppies and kittens in the world had died.

"No, I'm not kidding," he said gently, making Duke groan with frustration. "You don't have to do this, you know," he commented casually. "You chose this, after all."

"I know, but if I keep doing things the same way I've always done them, I'll always get the same result. I want something different."

It was rare that Ryou ever heard Duke speak so seriously and abstractly. It used to never happen at all, but since Ryou'd moved in and Duke had started his sex-strike, he'd grown more contemplative.

"Whatever it is you're looking for, I hope you find it," Ryou said sincerely before taking another bite of white rice.

Duke believed that he was already starting to find it, with Ryou: a genuine human connection. Until now, he'd sought that with sex. Now he understood what it was like without the sexual component.

He was learning how to be vulnerable and honest and accept other people for who they were. In the past, he rarely stayed with one person for more than one night simply because he knew that if there was even one thing about them that bothered him, he'd have a hard time dealing with it. He'd had various girlfriends and boyfriends over the years, but none of them had lasted more than a month because Duke would tire of them and grow restless, or get annoyed and irritated with them—or both.

Ryou was turning out to benefit Duke as much as Duke was benefiting Ryou.

"I've decided to limit the number of hours you're allowed to spend playing video games per day," Seto informed his brother. Gozaburo was gone for now, and while he was relieved by that, he was also on edge, anticipating his appearance at any given moment.

"That's not fair," Mokuba whined, starting to pout.

"Of course it's fair. You know what would be unfair? If I took away all of your videogames, but I'm not."

"What's the limit?" Mokuba asked suspiciously.

"Two hours a day."

"Two hours!" Mokuba's reaction was dramatic. "What am I supposed to do all the time, though?"

"You could read. That's what I did when I was your age," Seto said, unable to keep the pointedness out of his voice. He didn't look up from his laptop, but he could see in his peripheral vision that his words had stunned Mokuba into an uncomfortable silence. They both remembered how Gozaburo had taken all toys and games away from Seto, and he'd survived, more or less.

"All the books in the library are big and hard and dull," Mokuba complained with a frown.

"No they're not, and you can't possibly know that, because there are books in there that even I haven't touched." Seto took a moment to look up at his brother for a few moments, wondering if his enthusiastic complaining was some kind of cry for attention. "Do you want me to show you where the interesting books are?"

"Yes please," Mokuba mumbled after a few moments, uncrossing his arms as Seto stood from his desk chair and led his little brother to the large library he'd inherited. It was huge, like something out of a fairytale or a Disney movie, with multiple levels and rolling ladders attached to the shelves so that books far out of reach could still be accessed. He led Mokuba to the corner of the library that had helped Seto cope during those hard times. True, the books weren't the typical literary fare for a ten-year-old, but he didn't doubt Mokuba's ability to read and understand them.

Unlike Gozaburo, Seto had actually given thought to Mokuba's intellectual potential. After all, if Seto was a genius, who was to say that Mokuba wouldn't be his equal when he was fully grown? And also unlike Gozaburo, Seto refused to put his little brother through such an insanely rigorous education. He would let his brother have time to be a child, to do silly things and make mistakes and enjoy the vacations he had from school. He wouldn't let him be lazy, but he would let him be a kid. Mokuba had already skipped a grade at school, which put him at a slight social disadvantage, but at least he, unlike Seto, got to be around other children in middle school.

"Do you want to pick one out, or shall I?" he asked, looking down at his brother's raven hair.

"You can pick one out."

Seto knelt down and reached immediately for the volume of Shakespeare's Complete Works.

"That's huge!" Mokuba's eyes grew wide as he saw which book Seto was reaching for. "I can't read that whole thing!"

"Nonsense, of course you can." He handed the book to his kid brother, who wrapped both arms around it as he hugged it to his chest. "Besides, it's not just one story, it's multiple plays in one volume, so it's like carrying one book instead of thirty-eight." He stood up and was several steps away when Mokuba's voice stopped him.

"I don't know where to start."

He turned around, saw how lost Mokuba looked, and sighed, giving in to his better instincts as he walked over to the nearby leather couch. He sat down and patted the spot beside him, making Mokuba perk up and scamper over to join him. Seto opened the large book between them to the table of contents.

"We're going to ignore the scholarly essays included in this edition, although I do recommend that you go back and read them when you're in high school." Seto glanced over at Mokuba to make sure that he was paying attention before he continued, "There are the histories,—"

"Boring."

"—the comedies,—"

"Those aren't even funny."

"—and the tragedies."

"Isn't there anything else in here?" Mokuba asked, reluctant to engage in anything too difficult. He was still resentful of having his videogame time limited. He peered at the page and asked, "How about the sonnets? What are those?"

"Shakespeare wrote 157 sonnets. The word sonnet itself means 'little song,' but they're short poems, fourteen lines long—"

"Short? I like short. Let's do those."

Seto started to move the book off of his lap so that he could get back to work, but his brother grabbed his sleeve to stop him.

"Can you please read them with me?" Those big grey eyes were hard to say no to. Most of the time, Seto managed to do so, but, knowing that his brother was just trying to find a way to spend more time with him, he gave in. It had been a long time since he'd read Shakespeare's sonnets anyways. He turned the pages to the beginning of the sonnets as Mokuba settled himself comfortably beside Seto, eager to hear his brother read to him, not realizing that he'd be asked to explain it when his brother finished the poem.

"From fairest creatures we desire increase,/ That thereby beauty's rose might never die,/ But as the riper should by time decease,/ His tender heir might bear his memory..."

Even in the poetry, though, Seto couldn't escape his step-father.

Author Notes: Sorry that this chapter was so short. I wanted to fluff things up a bit to make up for the angst in the previous chapter.