Disclaimer: If I owned Yu-Gi-Oh! there'd be a live-action movie, as stated previously, so clearly, I don't.

"Guess this means you're sorry
You're standing at my door
Guess this means you take back
All you said before

Maybe I was stupid for telling you goodbye
Maybe I was wrong for trying to pick a fight
I know that I've got issues
But you're pretty messed up too
Either way I found out
I'm nothing without you."

~My Life Would Suck Without you, Kelly Clarkson

Chapter 21

As removed from just about everything as he was these days, Seto couldn't help but wonder what had caused Mokuba to storm into KC headquarters demanding to see him given that his sibling wasn't exactly prone to going around demanding things, especially not of him.

"What's wrong?" he asked as soon as Mokuba closed his office door behind him, getting up from his desk. Looking into his older brother's questioning face, the teen realized he didn't know what he wanted to say. He wasn't sure if he was angry at Seto for not telling him, sad to find out that he had been self-harming for at least over a year, or upset that the brunette had felt unable to confide in him.

Since Mokuba hadn't yet said anything, Seto tried to decipher his spooked expression, but could think of nothing that could have caused it. Without warning, Mokuba threw himself against his brother and hugged him tightly. Startled though he was, Seto eventually hugged him back.

"What's wrong?" he repeated. Not letting go, Mokuba finally spoke:

"You're not just my brother; you're my best friend, and I feel like I let you down." Seto still wasn't sure what had prompted this display of emotion, but he hated seeing his brother upset and so he tightened his grip on the smaller boy's shoulders.

"When we were kids I promised to protect you, and I told myself that if I had my way nothing bad would ever happen to you. It was never your duty to look out for me; you were supposed to grow up with no worries at all. For the most part I think I've done a pretty good job, so don't insult me by acting as though I need your protection." Mokuba finally let go and stepped back so that he could face his brother properly.

"You also told me that you and I are a team. And for a long time it really felt like we were. But ever since our step-father died you've pushed me away. Why? Why did you feel like you were so alone that you wanted to die? You weren't alone! I was always there for you, and I always will be, no matter what. Always." He clicked open the locket hanging around his neck to reveal the picture of his brother he kept inside it, and Seto went to do the same before remembering he no longer wore it.

"You're right. And this isn't the first time you've pointed out that you and I don't talk like we used to. I'm sorry."

"That's not good enough!" Mokuba said angrily, snapping the locket shut again and letting it fall back against his chest. "I want to know what it was that you didn't want to burden me with. And don't tell me that I'm 'too young' because I'm not a little kid anymore; I'm sixteen years old." Seto felt his chest tighten. This was not a conversation he thought he and Mokuba would ever have and he had no idea how to explain to him why he'd given up.

"It's complicated."

"Then it's a good thing I'm smart enough to be able to keep up."

"What do you want me to say?" Seto demanded. "It was a mistake!"

"That's not an answer."

"I just couldn't do it anymore!" he shouted. "It was everything! I felt like every time things started to go right for me, something always happened to ruin it and I'd had enough. I was sick of never feeling good enough and of being everyone's punching bag. Our step-father's, Noah's, Siegfried von Schroeder's, Alistair's. And why? Because I had dared to want something better for myself and my little brother than anything we could have found within the walls of that orphanage? Because I had the audacity to always strive to be the best? No. It was because it was easy. Why bother taking responsibility for yourself when you can just blame your problems on me?"

"I had no idea you felt that way." But even as he said it, Mokuba supposed that he should have. Seto always did seem to shoulder the blame for things that had in no way been his fault, which would certainly have gotten to most people after a while, but Seto had always seemed so strong and confident that it had never occurred to Mokuba that the pressure and the unfair blame placed upon him might finally come to be too much for his brother to bear, especially in light of discovering that someone he'd come to trust more than almost anyone else had been one of the people who despised him all along. Suddenly Mokuba remembered the original purpose of his mission. Before he could bring up Alistair however, Seto spoke again.

"The last thing I want you to think is that what I did was in some way your fault. I made that choice because I thought I had nothing worth living for, but that's not true, and I should have known that that wasn't true. But I know it now, and I swear to you that I won't lose sight of it again."

Mokuba had always been proud of his brother and had always idolized him, so Seto calling him someone worth living for meant a lot. But it also posed a moral dilemma. Having had this conversation, Mokuba felt as though Seto was on his way to being back, not only to normal, but maybe even to being more like the person he'd been before Gozaburo had stamped the humanity out of him. And what was more: it was just the two of them again, like old times, and so long as he didn't play his recording of Darren, Seto would never know the truth about that meeting which would mean Alistair would never come back in the picture. But that was a bratty, childish thought, and he knew it. He took a deep breath.

"Seto, there's something you need to hear." It was a very odd transition, and Seto couldn't keep the confusion off his face.

"What are you talking about?" Mokuba pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and crossed the room in order to place it on his brother's desk after pulling up the file.

"I went to talk to Darren Wiley this morning-."

"You what?" Seto was outraged.

"Hear me out. I went to go talk to him because there was something about that whole situation that didn't add up and I wanted to know exactly what it was that he'd said." Seto realized then that Mokuba had heard from Darren about Alistair walking in on him cutting himself, and the overly emotional way he'd burst into his office suddenly made sense. He was glad that his sibling hadn't directly asked him about that. "Anyway, I think you might want to hear what he had to say about it." He pressed play.

Seto listened in silence and even after the recording was over he didn't say anything until Darren's words sank in. Alistair hadn't been plotting with Darren that whole time? He had in fact tried to prevent what had happened from happening to protect him?

While the recording had been playing he'd stayed standing, but as all of the things he'd yelled at Alistair that day began to come back to him, he found himself sitting down heavily in his desk chair.

Putting his phone back in his pocket, Mokuba said:

"He came to visit while you were in the hospital you know."

"Alistair?" Seto responded unnecessarily and Mokuba nodded.

"He didn't want you to know he'd been there because of how mad you were at him, but he came to make sure that you were ok and I told him that you were even though I guess that wasn't really true at the time." Seto admittedly wasn't listening to his brother anymore. Shock, relief, and something akin to joy were all suddenly flooding through him. It hadn't been a lie; Alistair really did love him.

"I have to fix this."

"Right now?" But the teen shouldn't have been surprised; Seto had an impulsive streak that could run quite deep at times. "Ok, then I'll look after things here while you're gone."

"Are you sure?" Seto was taken aback. He usually left Roland in charge if he left in the middle of the day. Mokuba nodded.

"While you were out of commission I was able to take over for you without too many problems, and now I have a better handle on things so it should be fine, just give me your schedule. You don't have any meetings today, right?"

"No. But I do have to call the lab to see how the new virtual reality pod is coming; they were having some problems with the internal cooling system."

"Yeah, I read the report. It was because the air conditioning wasn't circulating fast enough, right?"

"Right." Seto had had no idea that Mokuba had stepped up so much in the last month or so and that he was still keeping up with the goings on at HQ even though he by no means needed to anymore.

"I might have to go over the design files first, but I would be more than capable of running some tests with them. Is there anything else that needs to be done today?"

"That was the most pressing…I may have some correspondence or something like that to deal with, but that should be easy for you to handle."

"Should I sign those emails with my name, or yours?" Seto thought it over.

"Mine," he said finally and Mokuba practically glowed. Seto had never allowed him to do that before out of fear that he might make a mistake in the email that would reflect badly on him given that the receiver would think Seto had written it.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, I think so. But just in case, I'll have Valarie pull up my schedule and you two can go over it together."

"Ok." There was a pause.

"Thank you for doing this for me," Seto said finally and Mokuba knew he meant both taking over for him and providing him with the reason to leave early. Mokuba smiled.

"Of course."

Alistair had finally gotten to a point where he was mostly comfortable with Ryou's friends even though he still didn't consider himself a part of their group, so having any given combination of them over at the apartment didn't put him off as much as it had at first so long as they did something more than just sit around and laugh about adventures they'd gone on together in the past.

This particular afternoon, both Joey and Yugi had come over so that the four of them could watch Mai being interviewed about the tournament she'd competed in recently as well as her new status as the highest ranked female duelist in the world, a title she'd earned after defeating Chinese champion Vivian Wong.

The interview was set to start at five, so in the meantime Yugi had offered to go pick up a couple of pizzas from a nearby pizza place leaving Joey, Ryou, and Alistair to hang out in the living room until his return.

Ryou had just gotten up to check if the brownies in the oven were finished when the doorbell rang.

"Can you get that?" he asked the room at large.

"That must be Yugi!" Joey exclaimed, scrambling to his feet to buzz him in. "It's about time too; I'm starving!" He walked over to the door and opened it, proceeding to call: "Yug: what took you so long? We were wasting away up here!" down the stairs.

As soon as Joey's obnoxiously loud voice reached his ears, Seto cursed his bad luck. When Mokuba had told him before he left that Alistair was living with Ryou Bakura he'd been more than a little surprised given that he hadn't known that the two even knew each other. It also complicated the situation because as he'd been hacking into the library's files to find the address, he'd realized that there was every chance Alistair wouldn't be alone in the apartment, meaning he'd have to potentially deal with Bakura plus any members of the Geek Squad that might be lurking about. The whole situation would be awkward enough without an audience. Still, he couldn't bring himself to wait and plan out a better strategy; waiting the six and a half hours that he knew Alistair would be in class had been bad enough.

As he rounded the corner, he told himself that at least this time he didn't have to walk through a wasteland or go through a bunch of burly, gun-wielding soldiers to get to Alistair; he just had to get through Wheeler.

"Hey!" Joey said in surprise when he saw that it was Kaiba and not Yugi walking up the stairs. "What are you doing here Richboy?"

Since Joey responded to just about every situation with a raised voice, Alistair and Ryou didn't think anything of him yelling down the stairs, nor were they paying attention to what he was saying. Ryou had gotten melted chocolate on his fingers while transferring the brownies from the oven pan to a plate and Alistair was playfully licking it off while Ryou giggled and reminded the redhead that he wasn't a lollipop.

Suddenly there was a commotion at the door and they both looked over.

"You can't just invite yourself to our party, Kaiba!" Joey said loudly, trying unsuccessfully to physically push the brunette back out the door.

"Can it Wheeler! I'm not here to talk to you," Seto snapped, shoving Joey off of him with one swift motion that caused the sandy-haired duelist to sprawl backwards onto the floor. Ryou and Alistair could only watch on in shock from where they were standing behind the kitchen counter.

Seto's eyes met Alistair's, and unlike the last time their eyes had met, Seto did not look betrayed;

in fact, he almost looked happy, but given his audience he quickly tried to bury the emotion under an impervious mask.

"Alistair," he started as Joey struggled to his feet, muttering obscenities. "I need to talk to you." Alistair glanced briefly at Ryou who shrugged helplessly, before walking around the counter.

"Why?" he asked, not so much to put Seto on the spot, but to gauge why he was there and whether or not he came in peace. Seto realized this and tried to respond accordingly.

"We left things unresolved the last time we talked." Alistair searched Seto's face a final time.

"That's an understatement."

"I have a car waiting outside; could we take this somewhere else?" He glanced sideways at Joey, who was still glaring at him, and at Ryou, who was seemingly staring at the counter.

"Fine. Let me get my keys and a jacket." He turned and retreated to the back room of the small apartment, Bakura following after him for reasons Seto couldn't fathom.

"What's he doing here?" Ryou asked as soon as they entered the bedroom, trying to keep the resentment out of his voice.

"I have no idea."

"And what unresolved business is he talking about?"

"Probably the day he kicked me out."

"Why would he want to talk to you about that?"

"I have no idea." He grabbed his keys off of the nightstand and his trench coat off the desk chair. "Don't worry," he added after seeing the look on Ryou's face. "No matter what he has to say, I'm coming back here to you, ok?" The Brit nodded and allowed Alistair to kiss him goodbye.

Alistair walked back into the living room where Joey was in the middle of telling Seto that he didn't care how many millions he made; he had no right to go around demanding things of people.

"I'm ready," Alistair announced before Seto had the chance to retort.

"Good, then let's go. Oh, and Wheeler," he said snidely over his shoulder. "I wouldn't go too near that cat if I were you." He jabbed his thumb in Sewell's direction. "Cats and mutts don't get along."

"Why you…!" But Seto was already climbing back down the rickety stairs, Alistair trailing behind him.

The two bumped into Yugi who had just returned with the pizza's, on their way out the apartment complex's main entrance.

"Kaiba?" he said questioningly, looking back and forth between the two. "What are you-?"

"I don't have to explain myself to you, Yugi," Seto said shortly before passing the 'King of Games' without another word. Alistair avoided meeting Yugi's eyes as he followed after him.

Alfred was quite relieved when Seto got back in the car with Alistair in tow; this was a dodgy neighborhood and he hadn't been keen on sitting outside alone.

"Hello Alistair," he greeted the redhead.

"Hey Alfred."

"Take us to Kaiba Land," Seto ordered him.

"Yes sir."

"What is this about?" Alistair asked after they'd started driving, suddenly jumpy. Seto wasn't planning on murdering him and then burying his body in some remote corner of the amusement park, was he? Seto nodded towards Alfred and shook his head. He didn't want to discuss this in front of the driver; this was a private matter.

He spent the entire ride looking at Alistair, who was staring out the window. He wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them and pull Alistair against him so he could feel the brush of his vibrant hair against his cheek and the pressure of the redhead's mouth against his. But that couldn't happen, not yet. Not until he found a way to apologize to Alistair for what he'd done.

Alistair could tell that Seto was watching him and it left him feeling unsettled. Could it be that Seto had tracked him down to try and patch things up between them after all this time?

They arrived at the back entrance to Kaiba Land and as Alfred drove off, Seto swiped his Duel Monster's locket which doubled as a skeleton key to most of the Kaiba Corp owned buildings, and opened the gate long enough for the two of them to slip inside. Alistair followed Seto past several buildings in silence.

The theme park was obviously still open and there were scores of laughing people flooding the paths. Families with wide-eyed children, teenage couples holding hands, and groups of friends all mixed together as they waited in line to ride the park's various roller coasters and other attractions.

Seto and Alistair slipped past all of them unseen thanks to several employee only passageways that snaked behind the kiosks. They didn't stop until they ended up in the Kaiba Land hanger that was designed to look like a cave where the Blue Eyes White Dragon jet was stored, the fading sunlight glinting off its windshield.

"What do you want?" Alistair asked again, his expression wary. Seto took a deep breath.

"I want to apologize to you," he started. "I jumped to conclusions before giving you a chance to explain. I shouldn't have done that." Suddenly Alistair was angry.

"You're damn right you shouldn't have!" he snapped. "How could you do that to me after everything we'd been through together? I shouldn't have told Darren any of that, and I'm not going to try to justify it, but how could you possibly believe the word of someone you'd never even met before over mine? And how could you try to kill yourself like that? It would have haunted me for the rest of my life if you would have died! How dare you come to me now with an apology?" He scrunched his hands into fists and glared at the ground. "I don't want to hear it."

"Just listen to me."

"Isn't this just ridiculously ironic? You want me to listen to you after refusing to listen to me? That's a laugh."

"I was wrong, I already said that."

"And what brought you to that conclusion?"

"Mokuba went to talk to Darren who told him that you and he hadn't been in on that plan together. He admitted that you hadn't been feeding him information about me, and that you were actually trying to protect me." If anything, the statement only served to piss Alistair off more.

"There you go again, trusting everyone's word before mine. You believe it when he tells you, but not when I do? Screw you Kaiba." He started to stalk back out the hanger door when Seto grabbed his upper arm from behind.

"Stop!" he said, a note of desperation in his voice.

"Let go of me," Alistair replied firmly and Seto relinquished his grip, but he wasn't going to give up just yet.

"I love you, Alistair!" Somehow that hurt more than anything else Seto had ever said to him. It was cruel beyond belief to say now what Alistair had wanted so desperately to hear from him all along.

"You don't love me," he said quietly, without turning around. "At least not anymore. If you really loved me you would have believed me, but instead you decided you'd rather be right than listen to what I had to say."

"That's not true!" But it was, at least in part; he had been far too quick to believe what Darren had said, though Alistair was wrong about why he had. It hadn't been about being right, it had been because he had at no point felt worthy of Alistair's love, so when presented with the idea that the redhead never had loved him, he'd very easily accepted it as true.

"It doesn't matter. Maybe you do, and maybe you don't, but the fact is that either way you're too late. I don't know what you've been doing for the past month, but I've been getting on with my life and I found someone else."

"What?" Seto was aghast. The possibility that Alistair would have found someone new hadn't even occurred to him. He'd self-centeredly thought that it was just a matter of apologizing and then Alistair would come back to the mansion again and everything would return to how it had been before. He hadn't considered Alistair's feelings at all. "Who?" he asked after a pause. Before Alistair could respond Seto figured it out. "Bakura," he breathed.

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes."

"That snake!" Seto balled his fists up. Alistair turned back around to face him, his anger abating. He suddenly just felt horribly sad.

"Don't. Don't do that. Ryou hasn't done anything wrong. Neither of you have really; I'm the one responsible for this mess; I had no right to talk to Darren about you even if I didn't tell him your name. I had the chance to tell you when I realized he and Britney might try to use that information against you but I was afraid you would be angry with me if I told you what I'd said, so in order to protect myself I tried to handle it a different way, but that backfired—as we both know.

I shouldn't have gotten mad at you for reacting exactly the way I knew you would. But that was always our problem; I kept stupidly setting unrealistic expectations for you and then got angry when you didn't meet them. So I'm sorry. And I really am glad that you're alright; I was worried about you." Seto felt a glimmer of hope.

"You don't have to apologize to me, not after everything I said to you…" He looked away.

"I guess we're even then."

"Won't you at least let me try to make it up to you?"

"You can't make it up to me any more than I can make what I did up to you. Don't you see? We both made decisions that day that we can't take back, and those decisions made it very clear to me that you and I can't be together. And to be honest, I'm not sure I can ever forgive you for some of the things you said. But I'm sure you could say the same to me."

"So you're just giving up?" Seto demanded, the leaden weight in his gut that he'd thought had finally gone back in full force.

"I'm being realistic. We both deserve better than waking up next to someone we feel so resentful towards."

"And you think Bakura is better?" Alistair shrugged.

"Who knows?"

"And that's good enough for you?"

"That's life, Seto. Ryou and I could wake up tomorrow and hate each other for all I know. I've decided to live without expectations in that regard, and so should you. And I hope that eventually you can find something that makes you happy."

"You make me happy."

"See, that's your problem; you're always letting other people determine how you feel. It took me a really long time to like myself, and it's mostly thanks to you that I even can, and let me tell you: I feel so much better now that I can look in the mirror and not despise the person staring back at me.

You're not a bad person, Seto; I don't understand why you can't see that too. If you could you wouldn't need me or Mokuba or anyone else to make you happy; you'd be satisfied with just yourself."

"You sound like my psychologist." Alistair shrugged.

"Maybe you should listen to them."

"Is there nothing I can say that will make you come home with me?" The use of the word home caused an unexpected ache in Alistair's chest and he suddenly found himself wishing that he could just give in and go back with Seto to the mansion where Trudy and Mokuba and all the others were. It would be so easy…

"No," he said finally, his expression sad. "There's not." Seto was far too proud to beg, and Alistair wouldn't have relented even if he had. Still, he refused to let this be the ending to their story.

"I'm not going to give up on you." Seto's voice was determined.

"Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

"I'm not; I'm just informing you that I'm going to prove that you belong with me." Alistair set his jaw.

"This isn't a contest and I'm not a prize," he snapped angrily, vexed.

"No, but you're the best thing that's ever happened to me and I won't lose you again."

"Funny how 'the best thing that ever happened to you' was something you were so ashamed of you hid it in your house for a year."

"I was going to change that."

"Yeah, because it was suddenly convenient."

"I was trying to protect you!" Seto said loudly.

"You were trying to protect yourself!" Alistair yelled back at him. "Your stupid reputation was always more important than me! The only times you ever showed me even the slightest scrap of affection were when there was no one around to see it!"

"That's not true! When I flew out to rescue you all of those people at that base knew exactly what you were to me!"

"That's your big example?"

"I don't do the whole public displays of affection thing, ok? Did that somehow escape your notice?"

"That's not what I'm talking about; you ought to know me better than that."

"Than what do you want?"

"I'd like to be able to call the person I'm with my boyfriend without being made to feel ridiculous for saying it for one thing. And for another thing, I want to be able to talk to whomever I want to without having to worry about them figuring out who it is that I'm dating."

"Done," Seto said quickly.

"This isn't a negotiation; this is for your future reference for the next time you're dating someone."

"You really don't love me anymore?" Alistair chose to be honest; he'd had enough of lying.

"I don't want to love you anymore." It wasn't the answer Seto'd been hoping for, but he could work with it.

"But you do. You know just as well as I do what a great team we make, and that's not something I ever thought I'd say.

I always thought that the only person you could rely on was yourself and that to be powerful you had to do everything on your own. Yugi always preached about the power of friendship, but I didn't understand what he meant until I met you. Because of you I know now that the power of unity is stronger than the power of being alone.

With you at my side we'd be unstoppable!" Seto's enthusiasm was catching, and for a moment Alistair allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy. But then he thought of Ryou waiting back at the apartment for him to return and he shook his head.

"I can't. I'm glad that you're starting to realize that you can never really be happy standing alone, but I promised Ryou that I'd go home to him, and I'm not going to break that promise for someone who in all likelihood will forget all about this conversation as soon as they get their way." They stared at each other without speaking, blue meeting silver, much like the first time they'd stood face to face, but now it was Seto whose eyes were full of sorrow. Alistair finally looked away and turned to face the exit.

"Take care of yourself Seto. Goodbye." Seto found himself incapable of speech and merely watched on as the redhead left the hanger and began the long walk back to his and Ryou's apartment. Only once he was out of sight did Seto allow himself to fully feel what had just happened. He sank to his knees next to his Blue Eyes White Dragon jet, but he did not cry, not this time. The redhead clearly thought that they'd found some kind of absolution, but Seto was far from ready to close the book. He was determined to win Alistair back and prove that he was finally worthy of him.

Author's Note: I, like lots of other people, certainly love it in movies when the leads get back together after breaking up over a misunderstanding, but this isn't the time for that for Seto an Alistair. They both have said and done some pretty hurtful things, and in real life I'd find two people getting back together just like that a little unbelievable. Besides, Alistair is no pushover, and he's told Seto before that he isn't a toy that Seto can just pick up and toss aside at his leisure.