Disclaimer: Let's play a game: who doesn't own Yu-Gi-Oh!? A: me B: me C: me, or D: me?

Trigger Warning: cutting

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"I heard you say you're feelin' like a change now

But I warn you that no exotic scenery
Will solve your problems or make you feel easy

The precious book you clutch so tightly in your hands

Won't help you sleep at night, won't iron out your plans.

It's always the lonely who pay a price for love in the end."

~Fight it Out, Pat Benatar

Chapter 22

Alistair's departure marked a change in Seto's behavior. He became even more withdrawn and ill-tempered, yelling at and firing employees left and right for the most minor of infractions and reducing one girl in the marketing department to hysterics after she accidentally dropped a stack of files in front of him.

Mokuba tried his best to apologize for his brother's behavior and began spending more time at the KC headquarters as preparations for the KC Grand Championship Tournament started to pick up. Shortly after Alistair left, Seto had sent his brother to California to fetch Yugi and his friends for which Mokuba was thankful; even he was starting to get sick of Seto's temper, especially when he was on the receiving end of it.

Yugi's friends, namely Joey Wheeler and Tristan Taylor, had seemed resentful that Seto hadn't come to retrieve them himself, but if they could have witnessed Seto's new demeanor firsthand they would have been grateful that it was Mokuba offering them a lift home.

Seto couldn't even bring himself to feel bad about the way he was treating everyone. He cursed Alistair in his head every chance he got. If it weren't for the reckless redhead, flying straight into danger, he'd be able to actually focus. As it was if he wasn't stalking the halls of the headquarters, he was locked in his office staring at his cell phone, keeping an eye on the app he'd designed prior to Alistair leaving, an app that allowed him to trace the whereabouts of the helicopter he'd lent him down to the exact latitude and longitude. He knew it was irrational since something could easily happen to Alistair when he wasn't in the helicopter and Seto wouldn't know, or something could happen to the helicopter and Alistair could be fine, but even still, seeing the little orange dot pulsing on his screen comforted him.

Alistair had arrived at the indicated location without incident, though he'd held his breath while crossing the border, afraid he might be shot at.

A wild-looking man with a stubbly face and long scraggly strawberry blonde hair who introduced himself as Neakail, and two other members of Robinhood were there to meet him as well as, and more importantly, search him and the plane to make sure he wasn't a spy. Finding nothing they'd led him to their base.

"I know that you're used to a life of luxury," Neakail said snidely, "but around here there's no such thing. Everyone here gets a cot and enough food to keep them alive." He'd shown Alistair to a room packed with cots and indicated one close to the door. "That's for you." Alistair set his backpack under the cot, put off by Neakail's unprompted dislike of him. "As for the extra clothes and any money and food you've got, you have to turn those in to the head of inventory." Alistair nodded and obediently relinquished the money, food, and clothes he'd brought with him including his trench coat, opting to keep Kaiba's winter coat instead.

Neakail had then showed him around the rest of the base which included a 'computer room' which was really little more than a mishmash of the technology they'd been able to acquire including a printer which they used to print lottery tickets, a room in which Kam held strategy meetings with the captains, a hanger that was crowded with vehicles and now the KC helicopter, a weapons magazine, and a few other chambers that Alistair wasn't permitted to see. Finally, Neakail had shown Alistair where the food was prepared.

"This is where you're going to work," he'd explained.

"What? But I thought-!"

"What, that Kam was going to trust you enough to fight? Look at you: what help would you be in a fight?" He'd laughed uproariously at the very thought and Alistair had thrown a punch in anger only to have it easily parried by the larger man who was more amused than upset that Alistair had swung at him. "See? No, you're better back here peeling potatoes, princess. You wouldn't last five minutes out there. Oh, there you are," he said to a haggard and bony middle aged woman who'd appeared from behind a stack of crates holding a sack of carrots.

"Who's that?" she asked upon seeing Alistair.

"This here is the princess from Domino. He's going to be helping you back here." She looked Alistair up and down and snorted.

"If you say so. You know how to cook?" she shot at him.

"Of course," he'd lied.

"Hmpf. Alright. I guess I gotta show you around."

"Have fun in the kitchen ladies," Neakail had taunted as he left.

"You got a name?" she asked him.

"Alistair. You?"

"Maude. Now come on, we have a lot of hungry mouths to feed." There had been little in the way of a tutorial. Maude had simply sat him down at a rough wooden table, given him a knife, and told him to start chopping carrots for the night's meal. He managed to cut himself twice and by the time she was satisfied with the pile he'd created he had the beginnings of blisters on the fingers of his right hand.

"You got to get used to working hard if you wanna make it around here," she'd warned him when she caught him nursing his aching hand.

"I am used to working hard," he'd snapped back. "I come from here too, and it's not like I was just relaxing for seven years: I was working really hard to try and take down Kaiba Corp." She looked at him blankly and he realized she didn't even know what that was. "It's a gaming company out of Domino."

"That's cute. You wanna know what I've been doing for the last seven years? I've been here cooking for a couple hundred starving men and burying some of them, including my son, so you watch your attitude princess."

It was a nickname that stuck, much to Alistair's annoyance. Few of the men knew who 'Alistair' was, but everyone knew 'Princess'; the pampered lapdog of Seto Kaiba who worked in the kitchen.

For the first two weeks he was there his schedule was different than the others that slept in the same room as him; their missions kept them out all night whereas his job was carried out during the day. But at the beginning of the third week it switched and the men started working during the day; apparently one of their minor bases had been hit and they had to go help repair it. Alistair prayed that first night that he wouldn't wake them up with one of his nightmares, but it was in vain. He was jolted awake by one of the men slapping him hard across the face.

"Shut up!" the man grumbled. "We're trying to sleep. Unlike you, we have to work hard tomorrow."

"Working in the kitchen is hard work," Alistair argued, embarrassed to have woken them up. Those in the near vicinity laughed.

"Right, cutting up the vegetables we risked our lives to get must be so stressful. Then again, maybe for you that is hard work, eh Princess?" Anger bubbled up inside him as the others continued to laugh. He snapped and tackled the man who'd slapped him awake.

"Don't. Call. Me. That," he snarled as he punched the man repeatedly in the face.

"Oi!" the man, Nate, exclaimed, too surprised at first to react, trying to shield his face with his arms. Someone lit the large candle in the center of the room to shed some light on the situation while two of the others pulled Alistair off of Nate and pushed him against the far wall where he continued to struggle before finally resolving to simply glare hotly at the man lying on the floor, his face covered in blood.

Neakail walked in holding a flashlight.

"What's going on?" he demanded, taking in the overturned cots, Nate's bloody visage, and the two men restraining Alistair.

"He broke my nose," Nate said thickly, trying to stem the flow of blood from his nostrils with his shirtsleeve while pointing unnecessarily at Alistair with his free hand. Neakail's gaze shifted to a wild looking Alistair who was still glaring at Nate.

"Why?" he asked simply.

"He was accusing me of being lazy and spoiled!" he replied hotly, worming his way out of the grip of the two men holding him against the wall, and crossing his arms.

"You mean to tell me that you attacked this man because he called you names that in all fairness suit you?"

"I was just joking around," Nate put in, his head tipped back. "Besides, he'd woken everyone up talking and carrying on in his sleep." There was a general murmur of agreement.

"I was dreaming about the day my little brother was killed!" Alistair shouted.

"I've lost two of my brothers and some of my best friends," Nate shot back. "We've all lost someone here but you don't hear us yelling about it in our sleep!" Alistair was momentarily silent; he was used to his story eliciting pity. Here though, that wouldn't work. Nate was right; everyone here had lost just as much if not more than he had. He lowered his eyes, suddenly ashamed.

"Everyone, go back to bed," Neakail said finally. "Nate, go see Maude about your nose. And you," he added to Alistair, "learn to control your temper or you're going to find yourself having to call Kaiba to come pick you up; we have no tolerance for fighting amongst each other here."

Amidst the laughter of the rest of the platoon Alistair rightened his cot and lay down to go back to sleep, shivering in the cold air and realizing that his blanket was still lying on the floor. He reached down to pick it up, and while he was at it, fished Seto's coat out from under the bed and wrapped himself in that too, breathing in the scent of Seto's musky cologne and wishing that he had never left Domino. He wasn't helping anyone here, including himself. Before he'd left he'd had visions of fighting on the front lines, taking out enemies and rescuing people from burning houses, not chopping potatoes and getting called 'princess.'

One day, during a quiet moment, he pulled the photograph Trudy had given him out of the inside pocket of Seto's coat and sat on his cot staring at it longingly. More than anything, he wished that he and Seto had left on better terms, though he often thought back on the few nights they'd had together fondly.

Before he had a chance to stow it away, several of the other men trooped into the room.

"What'cha looking at Princess?" a beefy man named Michael asked.

"Just a photo," Alistair explained, hastily stashing it under his pillow.

"Of what? Come on, you can show us. Is it porn?"

"No."

"What of then?"

"Nothing."

"Go on then, show us."

"I don't want to." Michael shoved him aside, despite his best efforts to stop him and pulled the picture out.

"Hey, isn't that the Kaiba kid?"

"Give that back," Alistair said.

"Why do you have this?"

"Because we're friends, now give it back." He reached for it, but Michael held it out of his reach.

"You're friends with Kaiba? Right."

"They were probably fucking," one of the other men said. "I always thought Kaiba looked like a fairy."

"We were not," Alistair denied vehemently.

"They were, look at his face!"

"You like taking it up the ass Princess?" Michael asked him, still holding the picture out of his reach. "Or did you just do it so he'd take care of you?" Alistair glared at him.

"Neither," he replied through gritted teeth.

"You must have liked it if you keep this under your pillow. Do you miss him?"

"Shut up!"

"Cuz I'm sure there are plenty of guys here who would be more than willing to go gay for the stay if it meant they got some kind of action, and you're more of a girl than anyone else here, including Maude." Alistair suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

"You guys are pathetic," he sneered with much more bravado than he actually felt. "How can you even think about getting off when there are people out there getting blown up?"

"It's not like there's anything we're going to be able to do about that, is there? We save the people we can, but we're not like the rebel army; we're not going to solve the conflict, just help the regular people whose lives get destroyed by it.

So yes, getting your rocks off when you can is something you think about when you work here because you never know if you'll ever get the chance again. But seeing as you were living as Kaiba's little bitch, I wouldn't expect you to understand that." He threw the photo at Alistair and spat at him as he stood up. "You better watch your back," he said before he and the other three proceeded to the opposite side of the room to play cards.

Shaken, Alistair quickly slipped the photo into his back pocket and left the room after grabbing the coat off the bed, although he wasn't sure where exactly he was going to go seeing as he had no place here where he felt in any way safe or secure. He knew though that he had to get outside. He hadn't been outside, had hardly been out of the kitchen since he'd gotten there and he was starting to feel caged. He snuck through the main part of the building and edged his way towards the door at the back of the kitchen. When he was sure no one was looking, he slipped out.

There were three inches or so of snow on the ground, enough that it crunched under his boots. He breathed in the fresh cold air contentedly and sat against the wall, looking out at the bland, white landscape. Still, it was better than being inside.

He pulled the picture out of his pocket and wondered how Seto would handle this situation. Would he be strong enough to stand his ground if these guys threatened him? Kaiba walked around like he wasn't afraid of anything and that nothing could get the best of him, but of course Seto wasn't invincible.

He looked at the photo and reminisced for a few more minutes before tucking it away and returning inside to start his second kitchen shift.

Back in Domino Seto awoke from yet another nightmare in which Alistair had gotten killed. He fumbled around for his cell phone and checked the app. As the orange dot flickered into view he breathed a sigh of relief and lay back down. If Alistair really did die his blood would be on his hands. He never should have let him leave.

He sighed and sat up. It was one of those nights. He'd thought that after the last time when Alistair had interrupted him he wouldn't need the knife again, but ironically it was because of Alistair that he felt he now did. If he hadn't been so stubborn (weak) Alistair would be lying beside him not off in the middle of a war. It was all his fault.

He mechanically got out of bed, padded to his desk, pulled out the black lacquered box and removed the knife. It glittered in the moonlight, the blade reflecting his own stoic face back at him. He looked away. He was not proud of that face, even less so of the man it belonged to. He was ashamed both of what he was about to do and of the reason he was going to do it.

He slipped out of his room and down the stairs, everything around him silent as the grave. He had no idea what time it was, but knew he couldn't have been asleep long since it was still pitch black outside.

Stealing into the parlor, Seto closed the door, took the violin down off the wall and tuned it, becoming more and more disgusted with himself as he did so. Alistair's words floated back to him: How would Mokuba feel if he knew?

He would scoff at his pathetic excuse for a brother, Seto thought grimly, placing his chin on the chin rest, setting his fingers into position and commencing to play.

He tried, he really did. He felt that he owed it to Alistair not to cut himself, to be strong, but as one song turned into five and his fingers started to tire he wasn't sure he could stop himself, his own lack of self-control only serving to make him feel worse. He set the instrument aside abruptly.

I'm sorry Alistair.

The moment the cold tip of the blade touched the thin skin of his wrist, already crisscrossed with scars, he felt a familiar rush of adrenaline, the very same rush he always got from winning a close dueling match, from flying, from diving, from Alistair. It was with Alistair in mind that he pressed the knife into his skin and cut, red blossoming in its wake. The sight of his own blood against the steel of the blade and the creamy whiteness of his skin was as beautiful as it was terrifying. A small stream ran down into his palm.

I'm holding my life in my hands, he thought wryly and wondered briefly what would happen if he didn't stem the flow of the bleeding. How long would it take to stop? Would it stop? Surely he wouldn't bleed out from such a small cut, would he? Who would care if he did? Mokuba would, and Trudy too he supposed, though they hadn't been on good terms recently, but Alistair wouldn't. Seto had ruined that by shutting him out.

If you keep pushing people away you'll regret it. He hadn't believed Alistair at the time but now he sorely wished he could take back their last fight.

Author's Note: This and (spoiler alert) the next couple of chapters are going to serve the following purposes:

1. Giving Alistair the opportunity to face his past head on and try and reconcile for it on his own terms.

2. Forcing Seto to face his own feelings of loss and learn to take responsibility for his actions if he wants to have a snowball's chance in Hell of being happy, not to say that I think cutting is an appropriate way to atone, but fairly characteristic for the Seto that I've painted in this fic.