An hour later, and still no news on Seto.

Ryou's mother had stopped by to drop off food for everyone and speak with the nurses on staff before taking her daughter home. Amane's departure left Mokuba feeling even more lost, and he refused to connect with anybody that tried to talk to him. Ryou stayed near him, though, making sure he was close even as he, Marik, and Duke tried to talk about something normal and mundane.

Rishid stayed close to his sister and spoke to nobody else. He was only here for his family.

"Do you think Joey's okay?" Yugi whispered to the women sitting close to him. Mai and Anzu turned away from their conversation to look at him and at Joey.

The blond teen had finally stopped pacing and dropped himself into a chair that was as close to being in the corner as he could get, for the corner was occupied by a small table with a lamp and a few outdated magazines. He held one of his own shoes overturned in his hand, scraping at the bottom of it with his fingernails and occasionally brushing away the dirt.

"Let me talk to him again."

Mai stood and approached him, waiting a moment to see if he would notice her presence on his own. She was hoping he would snap out of this on his own, if she gave him time, but their friends were getting worried. She needed to step in and say something.

"Joey."

He looked up, surprised to hear his name in such a firm tone.

"Put your shoe back on and give me your hands."

Mai sat in the chair on the other side of the corner table and held out her hands. Joey dropped his shoe to the floor and slipped his socked foot back inside before placing his hands in hers.

"You've really chewed them down to nothing, haven't you?"

Mai clicked her tongue disapprovingly at the state of his fingernails—he had bitten them all to short rough edges within an hour of arriving at the hospital—and dropped one of Joey's hands to reach for the nail file in her pocket.

The teen's hand shook slightly as she held it and focused her efforts first on his thumb.

"It's not the first time I'll have to clean his blood off my shoes."

Joey's whisper was unexpectedly bitter.

"Here's hoping it's the last," Mai replied, her voice quieter than usual but not a full whisper like his. She was calm, and it was a peripheral comfort to Joey.

"It's not the first time I've had to follow his ambulance to the hospital either."

Mai paused in her filing to blow the particles off his thumb.

"What happened the first time?"

"His dad hit him on the head with a beer bottle." Joey's voice was still a whisper. He didn't want to be overheard sharing Seto's secrets, but he couldn't keep them all contained any longer, not when they were so tangled up in his own distress.

Mai said nothing and traded his thumb for his forefinger.

"It knocked him out cold and his head was bleeding. Mokuba called me for help—I had just dropped them off at home, so I was close."

"That must have been hard for you." Mai dropped her voice to a volume that matched his.

"Yeah… but I couldn't do nothing, ya know?"

"Of course not." Mai smiled sympathetically. "I think I've figured something out about you."

He watched her blow more dust off his fingernail and shift to his middle finger.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Her eyes twinkled at him. "Underneath your goofy tough-guy cover, there's a shining knight underneath. You're a hero, Joey. A real one." She leaned even closer, close enough that he could feel her warm breath on his cheek as she whispered, "And I'm not just saying that because you're my hero. Don't think I'll ever forget what you did for me back in Duelist Kingdom."

Despite himself, Joey blushed.

"I wouldn't be anyone's hero if it weren't for Yugi and Seto. Before them, I was a real jerk."

"Yeah?" Mai leaned back a little and went back to work on his nails.

"Yeah. Seto showed me that I needed to change. Yugi showed me how." It was a vast simplification of his personal journey, but the details weren't important right now.

"That's why you're so loyal to them." Mai smiled and kept working on his nails, leaving them in comfortable silence.

Talking to Mai was making Joey feel more grounded. For the first time since arriving at the hospital, his head finally felt clear. The blurry numbness in his mind had finally receded, and it was a welcome relief. He felt like himself again, thanks to Mai.

How much convincing would it take to make her stay in town a little while? It could be nice to have her around for awhile…

Joey's train of thought was cut off by Mokuba suddenly yelling, "No! Just leave me alone!"

Anzu and Yugi had taken it upon themselves to look out for everyone in their group, and they'd been wondering together why Mokuba was still alone. While Ryou's dad and Yugi's grandpa were having a quiet conversation out of ear-shot and Mai was speaking to Joey, they finally approached him together.

Anzu crouched down and tried first: "Mokuba, is there anyone we can call for you? Any relatives that live nearby?"

"No." His grip on the Rod tightened.

"Are you sure?" she pressed. "Maybe there's a grandparent we could–"

"No!" Mokuba's eyes narrowed to glare at Anzu as his protest caught the attention of those nearby. "Just leave me alone!"

"Mokuba." Yugi's voice was gentle, and Mokuba turned his head to meet his soft gaze. "What about your parents? They should be here."

Ryou tensed at the word parents . He knew half the answer. Maybe he was about to finally know the truth. Joey was crossing the room quickly to join them, Mai following close behind.

"Mom's dead," Mokuba announced, the words loud and pointed. "She died when I was a baby."

"What about your father?"

Yugi had barely completed the question before Mokuba burst out, "Dad can go to hell! Fat lot of good he ever did us!"

The words seemed to vibrate through the entire waiting room, and Ryou was sure he saw a few of the other visitors and hospital staff looking over at them.

Joey sat down next to Mokuba, his arm around the kid's shoulders, pulling him into his side.

"Keep your voice down," Joey murmured, his eyes meeting Yugi's gaze for a split second.

"He deserves it–" but Joey cut off his protest.

"I know he does." Joey believed their father deserved much worse cursing than that. "But keep your voice down."

"Did you meet him?" Mokuba asked, one eyebrow raised.

"No, I didn't need to." Brown eyes darkened. "And it's better that I didn't; I'd have slugged him for what he did to your brother."

Mokuba sighed, remembering now what Joey was referring to.

"What aren't you telling us, Joey? What did their dad do to Seto?" Ryou asked, voicing the question on everyone's minds, because everyone in the group was staring at them. Eyes of blue, brown, lavender, green, hazel, violet, all aimed at Mokuba and Joey because a secret was slipping out. Even the adults were returning to them, cutting their conversation short because the child everyone was worried about had found his voice.

Joey looked at Ryou, at Yugi, then back at Mokuba.

"Is it okay if I tell them?"

"It doesn't matter," Mokuba grumbled, casting his gaze down and turning in against Joey, hiding his face from view. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"I didn't find out what a problem their old man was until after Duelist Kingdom," Joey started, pausing as he tried to find the right words. Seto would be so pissed at him for this, but it felt stupid to keep covering it up after the kid's outburst. "I dropped these guys off at home, and ten minutes later, Mokuba called me in a panic."

"Dad never knocked Seto out before." Mokuba peeked out at their audience from behind his hair. "He hasn't lost a fight to Dad in years."

There was no ambiguity about what kind of fight Mokuba was talking about.

"I went back, called an ambulance. They gave him stitches at the hospital. He was lucky it wasn't worse." Joey glazed over as many details as he could. It was easier that way, for everyone. "That was when I started asking Seto to move in with us."

"Move in with you?" Yugi echoed, his voice steady but his eyes were shining. "Your parents were okay with that?"

"I didn't exactly tell them, okay?" Now Joey felt defensive, not just for Seto's sake, but for his own. "I knew they'd never notice them because they're barely home anyways."

"The way you guys talked about it after the fire," Mokuba realized, putting together the pieces of what his brother hadn't told him. "It sounded like you had talked about doing that before."

"There was a fire?" Anzu asked at the same time Ryou demanded, "What fire?"

"A week later, I think, their apartment building caught fire." Joey's eyes flicked between Ryou, Anzu, and Yugi. Everyone else was staring too, but he could only handle "That was when I finally convinced Seto to come live with us."

"But your parents didn't know about this?" Kenji asked, and Joey started a little before shaking his head.

"No. They needed to get out of there, and we have plenty of room."

"Joey, that was two months ago." Kenji's eyes hardened. "They've both been living with you for that long without your parents knowing?"

Anger instantly flared up inside the blond teen.

"You can't tell me I did the wrong thing! You don't understand what he–"

"I actually have a pretty good idea of what he was dealing with, Joseph." Kenji stared hard at Joey, realizing that Seto hadn't told his friend that he was involved. Either that, or he'd forgotten. "I don't think you realize the significance of your actions." He removed his glasses and polished the lenses with the hem of his shirt. "I know you were trying to help him, but you didn't think this through." He replaced his glasses on his face and pulled out his phone. "Excuse me, I need to tell my wife what's going on." Kenji stepped away from the group again, wishing that Seto had simply accepted his help in the first place.

Joey frowned and slouched back into the chair, hugging Mokuba close. He didn't think there was any other option for Seto at the time; he'd made the best decision he could, and he wasn't going to feel guilty for what he'd done, no matter what anyone said.

Anzu and Yugi looked at each other while Mai moved to sit on Joey's other side. She placed a hand on his knee and he reached down to accept her hand and squeeze. The two teens walked a little ways away as Yugi started to cry and Anzu took him in her arms with whispered comfort. The tension in the air was slowly easing, replaced with the weight of a horrible truth. Duke exchanged a worried look with Marik, who glanced from his friend to his sister. Ishizu wouldn't look at him, though, and from that alone, Marik could tell that Ishizu had known. He took a deep breath and released it slowly, deciding that he wouldn't mention that to Ryou. He trusted his sister's judgment, but Ryou might still be upset that his sister had known and done nothing.

"You know…" Mokuba glanced up at Ryou briefly before looking back at his hands. "Even when Seto was always losing to Dad, he never stopped fighting."

Ryou laughed weakly.

"That sounds just like your brother." He was choking on tears that he hadn't shed, and Ryou rubbed at his eyes. "It takes a lot of strength to keep getting up like that."

It was one thing when life knocked you down and discouraged you, but when your own father was the one dealing the blows? How much of a betrayal was that? And how many times had it happened? When did it start? How long had Seto been fighting back against his own father, desperate for reprieve, until finally one day, he tasted victory?

Ryou shuddered with a full-body chill, and tried to slow the runaway train of his imagination. He could picture it, though: that eerie glow in Seto's eyes that always appeared when he won a fight or a duel, paired with a smirk of satisfaction, but on a much younger face than the one he's known. The image was unsettling.

"It's no wonder he's so protective of you," Ryou realized aloud, "Or why you guys are so close."

The kid nodded without looking up.

"Seto's gonna be mad that I told you about Dad."

"I think Seto's going to care more about the fact that you're safe," Ryou assured, glancing over to his friend. "Right, Joey?"

"Yeah, but…" Golden brown eyes met dark chocolate ones. "He's still gonna be mad. He worked so hard to keep it all a secret."

"I had to say something. I can't go back to our dad."

"You won't," Ryou said, confident enough in his parents to make that promise. They cared too much to not interfere. "We'll make sure that doesn't happen."

Mokuba nodded, again without looking up.

"Your dad," Ryou began hesitantly. "Did he ever hurt you , Mokuba?"

He shook his head.

"No, Seto never let him." He properly met Ryou's worried gaze this time. "That's why he needed you to watch me all the time. He didn't want to leave us alone together."

"I see." That certainly made sense. "And your brother was working all the time because… your dad didn't?" Ryou guessed.

"Yeah. As soon as Seto started working, Dad started stealing from him. That's… one reason they fought so much." It was easier for Mokuba to just call them fights, even though when it started, Seto couldn't yet fight back. He'd been too young, too small, too weak.

Another question had arisen in Ryou's mind, but when he saw Yugi walking back to them, he opted to keep it to himself for now.

"Joey, can I ask you something?" Yugi's sweet voice implored, tears still standing in his eyes, but he looked calmer.

"Sure." The blond braced himself for a difficult question about Seto and Mokuba, and the string of decisions he'd made regarding them.

"Where does Seto's father live?"

Brown eyes blinked. Not the question he'd expected. Joey released Mai's hand to take his phone out of his pocket and unlock it, pulling up Seto's page in his contacts and handing it to Yugi.

"That's where they lived until they came to stay with me." Joey thought that Yugi was trying to get a better sense of what their lives had been like on a more mundane level. He was trying to understand, perhaps, the way Seto had been thinking back then by understanding his environment. Maybe he was trying to understand Seto's behavior. There were a dozen things that Yugi had never understood about Seto, and maybe these truths gave him the insight he needed.

Vivid eyes stared at Joey's phone screen with determination for long seconds before he handed it back to his friend.

"Thank you." Then he stood and walked away, pulling out his own phone. Joey stopped paying attention, to Yugi and to the whispered conversations happening around him. He was only aware of Mai holding his hand and Mokuba curled up against his side. He wasn't sure how long he zoned out for, but the next thing he knew, Dr. Bakura's hand was on his shoulder, trying to get his attention.

"Joey, I think you need to call your parents and tell them what's happened."

The teen looked back at his friend's father with shock.

"They'll be pissed–"

"They need to know what's been going on," Kenji interrupted, his tone stern but kind. "Better that they hear it from you directly than from me or the police."

Joey grit his teeth. He was implying that he'd go over Joey's head and tell his parents himself if he needed to. Joey would get raked over the coals whether he called them now or talked to them about it later, so it wasn't really a question of how they would respond. He just wanted to avoid this entirely.

"There's no way they won't find out," Joey muttered to himself, finally starting to realize that he was in way too deep. He looked down at Mai's hand holding his and sighed. "My dad's probably working right now. Mom probably is too, but she might actually answer her phone…"

The blond sighed and stood up, releasing both his seatmates, reluctantly met Dr. Bakura's eyes.

"Okay, I'll call her."

"Good. If you need me to help explain anything to her, just let me know. I'm not just here to help Seto and Mokuba." He smiled kindly and Joey nodded.

He stepped away from the group and dialed his mother's number before putting the phone to his ear. She answered faster than he expected.

"Mom, I–"

"Joseph Wheeler, what the hell is going on?!"

He winced and moved the phone a few inches away, listening to her rant about "when did you plan to tell me that our house was broken into?" and "who was the little boy that they took from our house, and more importantly, why was he there?" Which turned into "where have you been for the last two days?" Joey tuned it out pretty quickly, barely registering the questions that she wouldn't let him answer even if he bothered to try. Instead, he found a wall to lean against as he continued to hold the phone six inches away from his face, waiting for her to finish.

Mrs. Wheeler used some of her favorite words during the rant, though, and Joey didn't miss a single one: careless, irresponsible, reckless, immature, juvenile. A full bingo. She had no idea what had happened, only what the police had told her about Mokuba's abduction yesterday, but she already made up her mind that this was all Joey's fault somehow.

She was going on fifteen minutes of solid ranting, during which her son tried to ignore the sympathetic glances from his friends. When he saw two of the police officers from before reentering the waiting room, he realized that he'd run out of time.

"I get what you're saying, but–" he interrupted, and was immediately shut down.

"There's always an excuse with you, Joseph! I'm not interested in–"

"Mom, can you just let me talk?!" Joey snapped, and sighed when he finally got silence from his phone. "I'll tell you everything that happened, okay? I… might have screwed up, but… I really need your help."

Solomon and Kenji had convinced the cops to leave without speaking to the children again tonight, claiming that they were all still too upset by the day's events, but would be free for any necessary interviews tomorrow.

While Joey waited for his mother to arrive, Anzu's parents called her.

"Sorry guys," she apologized with regret written on her face. "I wish I could stick around, but my parents say I have to get home now. They don't want me staying out any later."

"Grandpa and I can take you home," Yugi offered with a light touch on her arm. "We'll come right back, and you'll call us if anything changes, right?"

"If we get an update, you'll be the first to know," Duke promised, and Anzu departed with the Mutous.

Joey tried to warn his remaining friends about his mother.

"She's kinda intense. Better that you don't try to talk to her unless she talks to you first."

"I'm not scared of your mother, Joey." Mai laughed a little at the idea. "I can handle 'intense.'"

"Just, please be careful, okay?" he begged. "The more upset she gets, the more she's gonna yell at me, and I'm already in a heap o' trouble."

"If it means that much to you," Mai replied, a teasing tone in her voice and a smile on her bright lips. "I won't talk to her."

"Thank you!" Joey's relief was visceral, and Mai couldn't help but giggle.

"C'mon, Joey, how bad can your mom really be?" she asked, and his smile instantly disappeared.

"I could explain it to you, but she'll probably be here before I finish." He sighed. "The short version is that she thinks I can't do anything right."

Even at this time of night, Mrs. Wheeler looked impeccable. Her skirt-suit was wrinkle-free, every bright red hair was still stiffly stuck inside the tight bun at the back of her head, and she showed not the slightest bit of weariness. Rather, she seemed invigorated by her frustration with her son.

"I'm not that kind of lawyer, Joseph, and you know that," she scolded, looking up at her son. Even with high-heeled shoes, she barely came up to Joey's shoulder. "Even if I defended him, that doesn't guarantee the outcome you want."

"Maybe not, but it'd give him a fighting chance!" Joey protested. "You might be his only shot at getting out of this!"

A lot of arguing followed that statement. Arguing between Joey and his mother about the quality of his decision-making, and why she should consider defending his friend from inevitable murder charges. Arguing between Dr. Bakura and Mrs. Wheeler about where Mokuba would be spending the night, and what to do with his brother's possessions in the meantime. Arguing about whose fault and what next while the rest of the gang tried not to eavesdrop (much) from only fifteen feet away.

When a doctor armed with a clipboard pushed through the doors labeled "Trauma" and glanced around at the waiting room occupants, Ryou was the first one to his feet, pulling Mokuba along with him to hear the news they'd all been waiting for. Once the doctor was convinced that he was speaking with the right people, he proceeded to tell them exactly what they needed to know.

"Your brother is in stable condition and should make a full recovery. There's not a single broken bone and no sign of brain damage so far. We're keeping him for a couple days while he recovers from the surgery, and we'll run a few more tests during that time just to be sure."

"Surgery?" Ryou echoed, his hand tightening on Mokuba's shoulders.

"To remove the glass and other debris. We also went in expecting to find organ damage, but there was barely anything, just some minor internal bleeding. It's miraculous, really."

"He's really… okay?"

Mokuba's quiet question was answered first with a smile, then, "Yes. Your brother is going to be just fine."

"Praise the gods!" Marik declared and hugged his boyfriend tight. Ryou closed his eyes and returned the embrace, then pulled out a few seconds later to hug Mokuba, who'd begun to cry.

Beyond Mokuba, Duke was already calling Yugi to fulfill his promise. Ishizu had begun to weep, Rishid offering her wordless comfort, and Mai was approaching Joey. He'd been cowed into submission by his mother and stood to the side as the adults argued. Mai touched his shoulder, and he looked up. She was smiling.

"Is he…?"

"Doctor said he's going to make a full recovery. He didn't even break a bone."

Then they were embracing too as Kenji voiced his gratitude to a higher power.

Now that Seto's fate was known, they could all go home. It was agreed that Mokuba would be staying with the Bakuras and his brother's things would be staying at the Wheeler's house because if Joey's mother decided to defend him, she wanted to keep a close eye on her client.

If.

Heeled boots clicked on dirty pavement. Their wearer, a shorter than average teenager with spiky hair, didn't belong here. Anyone that saw him walking the streets at this time of night in this part of town knew that just by glancing at him. But he walked with purpose, checking his phone occasionally for directions. He cast a glare at anyone who stared at him, a challenge that nobody he passed was brave or stupid enough to accept.

Then he found the apartment building he was looking for. It took several seconds to find the entrance, but once inside, he goes right for the stairs, rightly assuming that the elevators are out of order.

Finally, he reached the right floor, then he stalked the halls with deliberate steps until he found the unit number that matched the address in his phone. Three eviction notices on the door announced to the teenager and the world that its resident wouldn't be here for much longer.

He knocked three times on the door, and waited, listening to loud curses and the crunching of clutter that followed.

The door opened.

"Who th' hell are you?" the drunk occupant slurred from behind the half-opened door.

"I'm your son's friend," was paired with a haunting smile. "Would you like to play a game?"