When I first wrote this, it was meant to be a chapter for the core story of "Paved with Good Intentions," which incidentally has now been updated with its 19th installment, "Raison d'être" as of yesterday. Those of you who haven't read it, I warn you that there are spoilers for the most recent story arc (which was just concluded), and that this chapter likely won't make much sense for a while.
That said, I felt that this was more suited for this project, and that after the last chapter, it fit well as a companion piece. While it's longer, and there's more to it, it still focuses on Seto's reactions and the emotional repercussions of the Von Schroeder Incident.
The first scene, like the last chapter, was written in present-tense.
Subsequent scenes are in the more standard past-tense.
He stands just in front of the doorway.
He isn't thinking very well right now, and he doesn't even realize it because that's the way the mind works when you're stressed out; it doesn't even really work at all. Your body kicks into instinct mode and you don't have any clue what's going on. That's the way he feels right now.
He's scared in that way that comes from PTSD; he's scared in that way that leads to psychosis. He's so scared that he doesn't feel anything anymore, he's numb and he doesn't even realize the significance of that because he's numb and that means there's nothing there. He's holding the gun out in front of him because that's what you do with guns and that's what he needs to do right now. Somebody's going to die; he just doesn't know who it is.
He knows distantly why he's there. It's distant because it's an entirely separate compartment of his brain that houses that information and it isn't exactly important to know right now. But Mokuba looks scared, and he knows that Mokuba is important. Mokuba is special, and Mokuba shouldn't look scared. It's not right, and that's why he's holding a gun in front of himself and preparing to shoot the motherfucker responsible.
The only thing he knows about his enemy is that he's German. That's as far as he thinks because he knows that any time now, the guy's going to be nothing but a body, and bodies don't get names. Bodies are just bodies, and the names they used to carry don't matter anymore, especially to him.
He's waiting because the Enemy is smart, and knows what's going to happen. The Detective is beside him, inching his way to the side, trying to line up a shot. He knows that the Detective means well, but he also knows that it's not going to do any good because the Enemy sees him.
The Enemy puts the barrel of a gun into Mokuba's mouth and he nearly snaps. Now Mokuba is terrified, and he can't think. Damn it, he can't focus! Mokuba…Mokuba, don't cry. Oh, please, baby, don't cry. It's okay…but it isn't okay, and he knows it, and Mokuba knows it and the Enemy knows it and every-goddamn-body knows it and damn it, what the hell is he supposed to do?
He can't…he can't think. Damn it all, he can't think.
Don't cry, little guy. Please.
He needs to fire. He needs to shoot, he needs to do it right now but he…but he can't. How can he shoot? How can he shoot when Mokuba is so…so—how can he shoot when Mokuba looks so scared? When Mokuba's crying—poor little Mokie is crying and he can't move and he can't save him and…and…
Oh, God.
He can't…he can't do this.
He can't handle this. It's too much, and he's going to break. He can feel it, and it hurts, and he doesn't know how much longer he can keep his feet. He's going to fall. He's going to drop his gun, his arms are heavy and he's going to drop his gun.
And the Enemy wins.
The…the Enemy wins.
"He wins, boy, because you never listen."
Electricity runs up his spine, and his mouth opens wide. No…no, it can't…it can't…!
"Always so sure that you knew better. Always so positive that you had it right. You're a fool, boy, and now there's proof to it. You never listened, and now look where you are. Let this teach you, Seto."
Is…is it the Detective? Is that who…?
"Don't be an idiot!"
He flinches, and his body tenses because he knows what comes next.
"What are you going to learn from him, boy? How to lose? He couldn't save his son, either, and now you're relying on him? Do you do this to spite me? Do you act so abjectly stupid just to make me angry? Is that your goal in life?"
Shut up. Shut up!
This can't be happening. It's not, it can't be, it's—
"How many idiots do you think have said that right before they make the worst mistake of their lives, boy? How often do you think some whimsical sheep thought, 'this can't be happening,' only to be proven wrong? Don't delude yourself. You've insulted me enough already."
Damn you. Not now. Not fucking now!
"Yes, Seto," Otousama says, and he takes a gun of his own from within the crimson folds of his jacket, holding it up. He's right behind the Enemy, and he looks like a witness to an execution, and he looks like he's enjoying it. He smirks. "Right now."
He fires.
The sound is distant, and it doesn't sound right but of course it doesn't sound right because Otousama is dead, damn it, and what the hell is going on and why the fuck is this happening now and why can't he focus?
"Because you could never focus!" Otousama shrieks.
Shut up…shut up…
"Because you're weak."
Shut up!
"You're useless."
NO!
"You've lost."
The Enemy flinches in surprise when Otousama fires his gun, and turns. And he realizes that the time has to be now, and he lifts his gun again, and he prepares to shoot because the angle is perfect now, and damn it if he can just get it right, he has the chance now. He can do it. He can do this! It can happen!
Otousama is laughing. "Your mother would be ashamed to have such an idiot for a son."
Wha—no! No, that's not true! It's not fucking true!
And he aims, and he fires.
But the Enemy is too fast. No, this isn't supposed to happen this way. It isn't right. No, damn you, this isn't—and the sound of his own shot is deafened by another, and everything shifts, and it's too late. It's…it's…too late…
"You've failed, Seto. And now…there's proof to it."
And he can't see Mokuba anymore…
…Because the blood is too thick.
Hit by two bullets at the same time, Mokuba is decapitated.
He has failed.
And Otousama is still laughing.
Seto screams.
He'd always loved the Swordstalker.
Even when he hadn't been all that interested in Magic & Wizards (like he was now), Mokuba Kaiba had kept a collection of cards. Even when he hadn't played, he'd enjoyed looking through the artwork. He remembered that for the first booster set (which included the Swordstalker), Pegasus Crawford had painted each design by hand; if there was one thing he could say with absolute certainty that he liked about the man who had kept him prisoner in a dungeon cell, it was his ability as an artist. Most collectors Mokuba had talked with online agreed that, while the artwork for subsequent sets (for which Pegasus had allowed other, specially selected, artists to showcase their work) was good, none of them could truly stand up against the first.
For his seventh birthday, Seto had had a plush toy of his brother's favorite monster made. Mokuba had been ecstatic to have his own personal Swordstalker to guard his room, and he'd slept with it tucked under one arm for the next three years.
He didn't sleep with it very regularly anymore, choosing instead to keep it displayed on the shelf that held his stereo. But he found himself taking his little Stalker down from its post more and more often as of late, as if a part of him thought that maybe it would use its flimsy golden saber to ward off nightmares for him. He woke up to find it just where it had been for those first few years, and Mokuba immediately found a faint smile whenever he did.
He couldn't remember anymore what he had dreamed, but he found the darkness surrounding him to be especially imposing tonight, and after a few minutes trying to ignore it, the young Kaiba tossed his sheets aside with a grunt and tossed himself out of bed, holding his old toy by one arm and slipping out into the hallway.
Part of him felt a twinge of embarrassment as he thought of what he was doing, wondering what his brother would think of him if he just popped into his room, pouting, and said, "Nii'tama? I ha' ba' dweam. C'I sweep wif you?"
Shaking his head, Mokuba decided he didn't care.
As he approached his brother's bedchamber, the same room where their adoptive father had once spent his nights, Mokuba frowned as he heard something unusual. Opening his brother's door, the black-haired boy was surprised to see Seto twitching, turning, almost flailing in his sleep. His face was contorted half with rage and half with fear, and suddenly thoughts of his own nightmare fled Mokuba's mind.
"Niisama!" he breathed.
Seto wasn't mumbling or muttering so much as he was growling. Mokuba thought that he was saying something, but he couldn't make anything out; it was gibberish. But whatever it was, it sounded angry. His breathing was harsh, his body tense nearly to the breaking point, and Mokuba half-expected his brother's muscles to snap, with the twang of a guitar string tuned too tightly.
Clambering up onto Seto's bed (his Swordstalker falling, forgotten, to the floor), Mokuba shook his brother's shoulder. "Niisama! Niisama, wake up!" Seto's eyes flared open with a sharp intake of breath. He stiffened, and nearly shook Mokuba off. "Niisama?" the boy asked tentatively. "Are…are you okay?"
Seto blinked, rising to a sitting position and looking around himself like a boy afraid of monsters hiding in the shadowy corners of the room. He put a hand to his chest and lowered his head as he forced his breathing to slow. Mokuba kept a hand on his brother's upper arm, waiting.
"..ead…" Seto whispered.
"Niisama?"
"…Dead…""
"Niisama? What is it? What…what's wrong?"
"Goddamn it…he's dead…"
"Niisama!"
Seto flinched and turned, dazed, as if he hadn't noticed that Mokuba was even there. When he saw the black-haired boy beside him, he seemed not only surprised but downright stunned, and he stared openly. He tried to speak for several seconds, managing at best to barely choke out the first two syllables of his little brother's name but never all three. Mokuba saw something in those cobalt eyes that he'd only ever seen once before, and he thought he knew what his Niisama's nightmare had been about.
That kind of desperate, shaking, painful terror had come only from one source: Siegfried von Schroeder. And when Seto pulled Mokuba to him, hugging him with such force that Mokuba grunted in sudden pain, he knew for sure. He said nothing, even though it hurt. He reached around and linked his arms around his brother's neck, trying to remember how Seto always comforted him.
He dared to whisper,
"It's okay, Niisama…I'm here…"
Seto's only answer was to tighten his grip.
He was the strong one.
That was the one unflinching truth to existence in the Kaiba family (such as it was). Seto was the strong one. Seto was the shield. To love someone deeply gives you strength, said Lao Tzu; being loved by someone deeply gives you courage. And if he'd been in a romantic mood (not that he ever was), Seto would have said that he had both; he depended on both.
The Kaibas had a symbiotic relationship, and the handful of people who understood that said that they were one person in two bodies; in Seto was the strength, the courage, the power and the drive. In Mokuba was kindness, empathy, forgiveness and patience. Each could not function on his own traits alone, and thrived on the other's. Without Seto, Mokuba would wither into dust, and without Mokuba, Seto would burn into ash.
Seto knew that it was his job to be the fighter. It was his job to be strong. When Mokuba was scared, or sad, or just in need of someone to be there, that was Seto's place in life. When Mokuba wasn't strong enough to stand on his own and fell, it was Seto's job to help him up. And Seto appreciated that. He thrived on it. Being his brother's shield, being the hand that his brother reached for, was a position that he was proud to hold; indeed, he coveted it.
Over the decade during which Seto had grown into that role, there was no way for him to say just when he had decided that being strong meant being cold, but he knew that it had been during those hellish three years under Kaiba Gozaburo's fist. He would have never learned such a sentiment from his mother.
Yagami Yuki's definition of strength was similar in its own way to Gozaburo's, but only in the way that English and Spanish were similar languages by virtue of using the same alphabet; they were connected, but to a native speaker of either, the other was still foreign. Yuki had believed, Seto thought with some confidence, that negative emotions were to be held back, drawn away from the forefront and dealt with quietly. She had never lost her temper in all the eight years Seto had known her; even on those rare occasions that he—still a child in spite of his intellect—had had the temerity to disobey her, Yuki had never raised her voice to him, and had never dreamed of raising her hand.
Yuki had also believed, however, that positive emotions were to be expressed. Not just expressed, but elevated, embraced and celebrated. While her anger was muted, her happiness had been transcendent; Seto had always known when his mother was happy, or proud, or touched, by her eyes. Even though it seemed a bit too poetic for his tastes, he could think of no better way to say it than that they would sparkle.
Gozaburo had been the polar opposite, a mirror image. To the founder of the Kaiba Corporation, happiness and pride, and especially love, were to be summarily ignored. And negative emotions, while not particularly "celebrated," were nonetheless utilized. Gozaburo had been a master of utilizing anger as a tool, almost as a weapon, and this had eventually been passed on to his heir. Seto had learned to follow in his adoptive father's example despite his own wishes, and it had come to be habitual.
And so, in light of his decision those long, long ten years ago, Seto had determined that in order to be strong for his brother, to fulfill his mother's final wish of him to "be a big brother little Mo-chan can rely on," he had to be the breed of strong that could withstand anything. He had to be a father, and the only father he knew with the kind of strength he would need…had been Kaiba Gozaburo.
These thoughts did not so much pass his mind as their essence sparked into life in him as Seto held his brother close and tried to block out thought. That spark resisted this…it fought. Because this was wrong. This was not strong. This was not what he needed to be.
When Mokuba said, softly, gently, "It's okay, Niisama…I'm here," Seto very nearly cried.
Because he knew that he needed to hear it.
Weak. Worthless. Expendable. Just another sheep…
Seto hugged his brother, feeling tears burn his eyes, and ignored that voice. The voice of the man he had once called "Otousama," because that man was dead. And that man didn't understand. Not like Yuki understood. And not like Mokuba understood.
Strength didn't have to be cold.
Seto Kaiba woke late that next morning.
He opened his eyes slowly, and as he sat up, he realized that he couldn't even remember the nightmare that had so viscerally affected him during the night. He couldn't see it, couldn't hear it…couldn't even feel it anymore. It was gone. It had been banished.
He looked down, and realized that Mokuba was still sleeping, with one hand draped across his brother's middle, and Seto realized what had happened. He remembered with vivid clarity so many nights when Mokuba had come slipping into his bedroom asking to sleep with him, because he had had a bad dream and he was scared. And Seto would let him, and would wrap an arm around the boy's shoulders and they would sleep, Mokuba curled up against his brother, Seto holding him close with that arm. And Mokuba always told him, that next morning, that no more nightmares had plagued him that night. Niisama, he would say, scared them off.
Seto understood with a sudden jolt that Mokuba had done that for him this time.
He blinked, looking down at himself, and didn't know what he felt.
Habitually, he slid out of bed, careful not to wake Mokuba, and headed to his closet. Taking out a relatively inexpensive suit for the day—it was Saturday, and he thought he would actually take the day off this time—he headed into the bathroom. After shaving, showering, dressing, and brushing his teeth and hair, all with that kind of mechanical efficiency that comes with long-ingrained habit, Seto stepped out into his bedchamber and drew in a deep breath.
He was about to head out, thinking that he would make Mokuba's favorite breakfast, until he saw something. Well, not so much saw as felt. He stepped on something soft, and looked down. It was a toy. Picking it up, he realized that it was Mokuba's plush Swordstalker, something Seto had had made in conjunction with Industrial Illusions (this was before the Duelist Kingdom tournament, and Seto had known without thinking that Pegasus Crawford would love the idea) for his brother's seventh birthday. It was still, remarkably, in almost pristine condition.
He looked at his brother.
You came in here looking for comfort, Seto realized, and…you ended up giving it, instead.
Without a word…without a single word…Mokuba had ignored his own fear and focused on his Niisama's. Had forgotten his own vulnerability to defend his Niisama against nightmares. That thought struck Seto harder than just about any other than he had ever had. He looked down at his little brother's toy, and smiled. Not a muted smile, not a smirk; not the sort of smile he was known to sometimes—about as rarely as a solar eclipse—give in public.
But the sort of smile his mother might have had.
Broad, open, and honest; perhaps the first real smile he had had since…since Yagami Yuki had, lying in a hospital bed and keeping herself awake with only the greatest willpower, smiled so gently at her eight-year-old son and asked if he would like to hold his baby brother.
Seto turned, and set the plush Duel Monster into the crook of Mokuba's arm. The boy held it instinctively, murmuring softly in his sleep, and turned onto his side. Seto pulled up the covers and tucked Mokuba in. He stroked back the boy's hair and tucked it behind an ear, and thought that he would not only make Mokuba's favorite breakfast…but his favorite lunch, and his favorite dinner, too. And when Mokuba asked why, Seto would shrug. Because I felt like it.
He leaned down, and kissed his brother's temple.
"I love you, Mokie," he whispered.
Mokuba smiled, and Seto was relieved; his dreams were peaceful. That was good. That was what should be. He patted the boy's shoulder, still with that smile on his own face. And he marveled at just how much Mokuba looked like his mother. You used to love him because of how much he reminded you of me, he heard Yagami Yuki's voice echo in his mind. Now, I think you still love me…because of how much I remind you of him.
He stepped into the hall.
And when he felt the urge to laugh—for no reason other than that he just felt good—he didn't resist it. And when part of him thought that Otousama wouldn't approve, it just made him laugh harder.
Do you remember, in the three-episode filler story right after Duelist Kingdom in the second-series anime, when Seto is trapped inside his own virtual game and Mokuba commissions Yugi and company to help save him? Do you remember, when Mokuba sneaks into the Chamber of Sacrifice and saves his brother from being given to the five-headed dragon, upon which monster he calls?
Yes. Fukushuu no Soudo-sutaarukaa. The Swordstalker of Vengeance or, in our particular version, just the Swordstalker. That is partially what inspired this piece. I rather liked the idea that there was more to that choice than sheer luck and the fact that it had a sword; I like to think Mokuba picked that monster on purpose.
Seto's favorite monster is a creature almost entirely composed of light. How ironic, then, if Mokuba's were a figure of darkness? I decided to run with it, and hence you have the second scene of this chapter.
These two brothers depend on each other in equal measure. Each cannot thrive without the other at his side. I wanted to show that in this chapter; as Seto says to his brother (translated from the original Japanese) during the filler-only Noa storyline of the second-series anime,
"As long as you're by my side, I can fight."
That, I think, just about sums it up.
