"I've almost gained back the weight that I lost," Ryou informed Duke with a hesitant smile over breakfast one morning.

"Congratulations! I'm really glad to hear that."

Ryou beamed at him. Duke's praise for his roommate's little victories in the recovery process never failed to encourage Ryou and boost his mood. It was a good kind of weird to be around so much positivity on a daily basis, and he thought for not the first time that moving in with Duke was one of the best decisions he could have made.

"I'm going to bring some cream-puffs home from the bakery tonight to celebrate." Ryou took another bite of his toast.

"That sounds like a good idea, so long as you share them," Duke added with a wink.

"Of course I'll share them!" Ryou knew Duke was teasing, but he couldn't help but respond anyways. "When do your splints come off?" he asked, nodding towards Duke's left hand.

"I have another appointment next week, so hopefully then."

Ryou studied Duke's left hand for a few moments. Something about the injury had been bothering him for a while now.

"If your hand got slammed in a heavy door, then how come your pinky didn't get broken?" he asked curiously, making Duke freeze in the process of washing the frying pan.

"I didn't slam my hand in a door," he admitted with a long sigh. Before Ryou could ask him what did happen, he continued, "It's a long story, and you have to get going soon, so I'll just explain it to you tonight, okay?"

"Okay." Ryou was worried about him, but since he'd already agreed to tell Ryou the truth, he wasn't going to push the issue. He glanced down at his watch, then started in surprise. "Wow, you're right, I have to get going NOW." He jumped up from the counter and grabbed his hoodie, starting to pull it on. He was already leaving later than he should. How had the time gotten away from him? He should stay and take care of his own mess, but he was already running late… Duke sensed Ryou's inner conflict and laid it to rest for him.

"Go on, I'll take care of your breakfast dishes," Duke said, smiling at Ryou over his shoulder.

"Are you sure?" Ryou was hesitant to accept Duke's offer, feeling like he ought to clean up his own mess, but at the same time, he didn't want to be late, and thinking about being late made him anxious…

"I'm sure. I have time before I have to go downstairs. You should get going before you really are late." Duke smiled again, reassuring the Brit and making him smile back, his worried expression relaxing a bit.

"Thanks, Duke. Have a good day!"

"You too!"

It was Tuesday, and Ryou didn't have classes today, so he worked from morning to evening and did his homework at night. He was working as many hours as he could while still keeping up with classes, but Duke was starting to worry that Ryou needed to back off on his working hours so that he could get adequate rest. True, Ryou had earned a full ride to the public college in Domino that already had a lower tuition rate for him because he was local, but public colleges weren't as good as private colleges, and didn't have quite as many perks. Other colleges might have free counseling services for their students, but this one didn't, leaving Ryou to pay for his own.

Seto continued reading Shakespeare's sonnets to Mokuba at a rate of maybe seven a day. He didn't just read them, though; he talked Mokuba through them, helping him to understand the abstract and poetic language. If he could get Mokuba to understand Shakespearean poetry, after all, then getting him to understand any other literature would be a breeze.

It took him some time to warm up, but Mokuba was doing really well with the reading. He often read them during the day before Seto came to him in the evening to work through them together so that he had some familiarity with them already. When Mokuba requested something easier for him to read during the day on his own, he gave his brother a complete anthology of Emily Dickinson's poetry and a copy of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, since it read more like an archaic fairytale.

It was true that Seto wasn't really one for the poetic—he simply never made time for it since he had far too much to do. He did know, however, that fMRI brain scans had demonstrated incredible increase of activity when someone was reading classic poetry (like Shakespeare) as compared to the amount of activity generated by reading prose. Not only did he think Mokuba would enjoy the poetry more, but reading poetry was encouraging his brain development, so it was good for him too, which mattered very much to Kaiba.

"I'm really sorry to hear that," Ryou said softly, looked concerned as he sipped his green tea. Duke had just finished explaining how his fingers had really gotten broken. "Were you scared?"

Duke opened his mouth to lie, hesitated, then answered, "I was a little, once I realized that they wouldn't just be holding me captive this time. And I guess… I was always kind of scared, because it's completely a matter of chance whether or not my dad can get together the money he owes and pay them back. He's not exactly what you would call dependable."

"I know what you mean," Ryou sympathized, staring down into his tea as he remembered his own father. His cellphone rang just then, and he picked it up to see who it was, scowling as he read the name. "Speak of the devil," he grumbled before silencing his phone and putting it on the coffee table. He tipped his head back as he drained the last of his tea.

"At least your dad is trying to talk to you, though," Duke pointed out gently. "Mine doesn't do that unless he needs money."

Ryou looked back at his phone, suddenly regretting that he hadn't answered the call. After years of pining for his father, didn't it make sense to welcome him back with open arms?

"I think you should call him back," Duke advised quietly. "At least see what he wants. What's the worst that can happen?"

"You're right," Ryou conceded with a sigh, picking up his phone again. He stood and went to his room to call his dad back, and while he was gone, Duke stood to wash their empty mugs.

When he was done with that, he was contemplating what they should do for dinner when he heard a voice from his flatmate's room.

"That's a terrible reason! I was hardly old enough to take care of myself!"

Duke winced. He never heard Ryou raise his voice like that. Ryou was usually gentle, forgiving, understanding. He never hated people, never stayed angry, never held a grudge. The only person he expressly hated was the Spirit of the Millennium Ring. The only people he couldn't forgive were the Spirit and his own father.

"Checks aren't enough! The least you could have done was call every now and then to see how I was doing!"

Duke stood very still, feeling somewhat guilty for listening, but it wasn't like he was trying to eavesdrop.

"If I hadn't run into you in Egypt, would you have ever talked to me again? Did you ever plan on telling me that you had a new family? That you were even still alive?" Ryou's voice was taking on a new tone of anguish as he yelled at his father. Less than a minute later, he emerged from his room, looking like he was on the verge of tears. Duke straightened up, concerned for his friend, who didn't seem willing to offer any details of his conversation.

"Do you need a hug?" Duke asked softly. He hated seeing Ryou looking so crushed.

"Yes please." Ryou sniffled, and Duke came over to hug him tightly, putting one hand in Ryou's hair to cradle his head against Duke's shoulder while using his other to hold him close. Ryou's arms were wrapped tightly around the dice master as he tried his best not to cry. They stood in relative silence for several minutes, Duke more than willing to hold Ryou for as long as it took.

"You give good hugs."

"Is it thy will, thy image should keep open/ My heavy eyelids to the weary night?/ Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,/ While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?/ Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee/ So far from home into my deeds to pry,/ To find out shames and idle hours in me,/ The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?/ O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:/ It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:/ Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,/ To play the watchman ever for thy sake:/ For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,/ From me far off, with others all too near."

It was a love poem about jealousy and separation and suspected infidelity, but what Seto saw was how Gozaburo would continue to spy on him from beyond the grave, jealous of any happiness his step-son might have found in his absence. Not that he was a ghost. Definitely not. Seto still believed his step-father to be a hallucination, and any pain the visage inflicted was just the somatization of some repressed memory. He was helping Mokuba decipher the first few lines, when he began to balk.

"This is too hard!" Mokuba pouted, his face all scrunched up with frustration. "It takes so long to understand just one of these. Can't we just read them and not bother talking about them?"

"What good would it do you to read them without knowing what they mean?"

"They sound pretty…"

"That's not enough."

"But they're so difficult!" Mokuba sighed and leaned against his brother's shoulder. "I feel like I'm not any good at them, anyways."

Seto chuckled at that. "You're better at understanding these than a lot of adults are, Mokuba."

"Really?" Mokuba was hopeful, but incredulous. It was a hard thing to believe, but he also knew that his brother wasn't the type to engage in idle flattery.

"Yes, really." He'd read somewhere that children's brains weren't developed enough to comprehend abstract logic and theoretical philosophy until they were twelve, and he couldn't help but wonder if that contributed to Mokuba's difficulty grasping the meaning of the words. Perhaps if he spoke in more concrete terms he could reduce the mental strain for the child.

After he completed a few more sonnets with his brother and put him to bed, Seto went back to his office to work, but Sonnet 61 was still circling in the back of his mind. In frustration, he pulled it up online and skimmed it again, hoping that by discerning which part of the poem was bothering him, he could put it out of his mind.

If he replaced the word "love" with "fear" and "hate" as appropriate, the poem seemed to perfectly describe his current situation: It wasn't because Gozaburo was so spiteful that his desire to torture his heir was being continued after his own death by his ghost, but Seto was so afraid of him that his own mind was conjuring up his image out of nothing but shadows and memories. If he could just overcome his fear, then that meant Gozaburo would leave him alone for good, right?

"Ha! You think I'm still just a delusion. That's cute, but I thought you were smarter than that."

Seto didn't need to look up to know who owned that voice, but he did anyways, pinning his step-father with a glare. "Get out," he ordered, looking back to his computer as he closed the browser tab that had the poem open.

"It's not that easy to get rid of me, Seto. When I said you would never be free of me, it was a promise."

"Do you really have nothing better to do with yourself than to taunt me?" Seto scoffed. "You're so pathetic that you feel like you have no meaning to your life aside from the power you hold and the pain you inflict."

"And the fear I inspire," Gozaburo added with a vile grin as he leaned forward over Seto's desk and pushed his laptop closed. "And right now, I'm absolutely high from how much you fear me." He grabbed his step-son by the hair and attempted to pull him close, as if to kiss him, but Seto's terror leant him strength and enabled him to shove the late Kaiba patriarch away, telling himself that his hair didn't hurt, he was just imagining it. Gozaburo, shocked by his heir's retaliation, stumbled and fell back onto the floor. Seto stood and glared daggers down at the man who'd made his life miserable for too long.

"You're going to leave me alone from now on, Gozaburo. I'm done with you and your nonsense. You're insane, and you should have fallen on your ass in hell long ago."

"Is that the best you have for me, Seto?" He laughed loudly, only confirming Seto's statement about his sanity. "Fine, then, I'll leave for now, but I'll still be watching you, unseen, and you'll never know if or when I'm there."

Those words haunted Seto for the next several days, during which he would feel his skin crawling at the thought of Gozaburo watching him when he showered or when he slept. Granted, he made it a habit not to sleep more than five hours a night (and he rarely accomplished even that), but still, he felt vulnerable during that time.

He had no power over this, no control, no understanding. That alone scared him even more than Gozaburo himself, prompting him to become paranoid. Mokuba noticed and expressed his concern, asking his brother to take a day off, but Seto refused. His work schedule hadn't changed since Gozaburo died: morning to night, seven days a week, no weekends, no holidays. He couldn't afford to take a day off, he had too much to do.

Mokuba then begged him to at least get a full night of sleep, even if he had to take sleeping pills, because he definitely needed it. Seto obliged, but when he woke up, he was still paranoid.

Mokuba, sensing that his brother wasn't much better off than he'd been the day before, suggested that Seto throw some kind of big party for his birthday. That would cheer him up for sure, he thought. Seto took his suggestion under consideration, not making any promises. He was, however, grudgingly tempted by the idea. He needed a release for the tension he'd pent up for so long, and he didn't have any better ideas.

Author Notes: I'm sorry if the story feels really disjointed right now. I promise that'll change within the next few chapters. Please review if you enjoyed it!

Also, POETRY FOR THE WIN! ;D Everything attributed to Shakespeare is actually written by Shakespeare.