You had to see this one coming.
I can't keep my boys separated for long.
(A note: owing to FF-Net's rules, I had to remove the lyrics to the music referenced in this chapter. It's Fall Out Boy. Seto's favorite band is Fall Out Boy.)
.
The elder Kaiba brother always felt like a prison guard when he waited for the front gates of the Kaiba Estate to permit him. Mostly, he thought, because if he allowed himself to feel like a prisoner, the cheap, rage-tempered bravado that served him for courage would shatter like a stained glass window that had made acquaintance with a brick.
It had been a lot easier to work with the metaphor, Mokuba reflected, ever since Daimon had—through some form of corporate sorcery—landed him a permit to carry concealed. Mokuba was a Kaiba, after all, and a Kaiba was always a target. Even at school. Even at the grocery store. Even asleep in his own bed.
He parked in the garage next to Travis Copeland's pine-green Subaru Forester, idly wondering what sort of car he should pick out for himself now that the old man was no longer an obstacle, and transferred his gleaming, stainless Sig Sauer pistol from its place in his backpack to the shoulder holster underneath his jacket.
He hoped that it would be nothing more than a macabre good luck charm.
The estate's house staff seemed, at first glance, to be going through their normal, everyday routines. But there was something about the speed at which they milled about the halls and parlors that set Mokuba's teeth on edge.
A young woman in a navy suit stopped him and bowed. "Welcome home, Master Kaiba," she said quickly. "I've taken the liberty of taking some of the most pertinent pieces of paperwork to your bedchamber. I'm . . . sure you've heard." She said this last as an afterthought, and turned her eyes up to Mokuba's face.
Mokuba nodded. "I have," he said. He clapped the woman on the shoulder. "Good work."
"My condolences, Master Kaiba."
". . . Thank you, Aya."
She smiled. Perhaps she was surprised that he knew her name.
The previous Master Kaiba surely hadn't.
He stalked across the front parlor to the stairs leading up to the second floor, making a point to catch the eyes of any worker he saw, nodding, and seeing who nodded back. Everything on the Kaiba Estate was a power play, and Mokuba knew better than anyone who had bothered to teach him that he needed all the allies he could land right now.
But then Mokuba found his brother's bedroom, and his primary mission shouldered its way past paranoia and staged itself dead-center in his mind.
The door was closed, and that was no real surprise. The door was locked, and that was only slightly less of one. Mokuba could hear Seto's favorite music blaring from behind the threshold.
"He's been playing that song on repeat for two hours," came a voice on Mokuba's right. "Master Daimon checked in on him. Said he was . . . sleeping."
Mokuba glared silently at the door.
He knocked.
Nothing.
He knocked again. "Seto," he said.
Still nothing.
Mokuba closed his eyes, conjured up something old and nostalgic, and licked at his lips. His glance to the man still standing beside him was an involuntary muscle spasm, but it was enough to get the message across. The man—thisone Mokuba didn't know—disappeared.
When Mokuba spoke next, it was in the gentlest voice he could muster.
"Seto? Hey, c'mon, baby brother. It's me. You can open the door for me, can't you?"
He knocked again.
Mokuba didn't realize that he'd been holding his breath until it came out in a rush, as the music turned down and he heard quiet shuffling inside the boy's room. Mokuba knelt down.
When the door opened, and Seto barreled directly into his brother's arms and started to sob, Mokuba was ready for him.
The elder Kaiba cradled the younger like a newborn. Seto clutched at his brother's jacket and wailed, and some part of Mokuba reared up and roared because it was patently obvious that no one had thought to honestly check on Master Kaiba's prized protégé.
"Hey . . . hey, now . . ." Mokuba whispered. "It's okay, baby, I'm here. Big brother's got you. Cry it out. You're okay. You're safe. I'm right here."
Mokuba rested his chin against the top of his brother's head, and wondered just how many of the old master's confederates would join him in the afterlife by the time night claimed the remaining shards of the day.