The elevator shifted and began to descend, a young stomach sinking with it.
"I'm alone now, aren't I?"
"You don't know that for sure," Joey said breathlessly.
"I'm not stupid." Mokuba's voice carried a bitterness Joey had never heard from him before. "Nobody could survive a fall like that." He sighed. "The police will probably take me back to our dad… That won't last long."
"What's your brother's blood type?" Joey asked, pulling Mokuba from his thoughts on the inevitable. "The paramedics will need to know when they get here."
"Don't give him false hope." Duke scolded Joey in a whisper, as if his volume would make a difference when Mokuba was standing between them.
"He can't be gone. He just can't be."
Duke looked at Joey, green eyes studying the blond's face.
"His blood type is A." Mokuba didn't think the information would make a difference, though.
The remainder of the elevator ride was completed in relative silence, with only the sound of heavy breathing and the small sniffles of someone who refused to cry.
Once the elevator doors opened, Mokuba ran out first, the teens following close behind. Duke caught up to him just outside the front door of the building and grabbed his arm, pulling the kid to a stop. The shattered glass was everywhere, even just outside the front door, crunching under their shoes.
"Let Joey look first," Duke ordered, pulling Mokuba around to the back of Joey's car. The blond was already running over to the front of his vehicle, where the bodies were. Duke was trying so hard not to look, and to block Mokuba's view.
Duke held his breath, waiting to hear the awful truth.
"He's alive!"
Mokuba's head jerked up, and after a moment, he took a step towards Joey's voice.
"No, stay here." Duke held Mokuba's hand tighter and reached for the other one. "Trust me, Mokuba, you don't want to see this."
"I have to be with him! Let go of me!"
Duke struggled against Mokuba's grief-fueled efforts. He didn't want to hurt him, but he didn't want the kid to see those broken bodies on the pavement. Duke didn't doubt that the volume of blood on the other side of the car would be enough to make him sick, and Mokuba's reaction to the sight could only be worse.
"Mokuba."
They both stopped and looked up to see Ishizu standing a few feet behind Duke. When had she gotten here?
"Mokuba," she called softly, holding her arms out, palms facing up. "Come here."
Duke was relieved when Mokuba obeyed, releasing the kid's arms and straightening up, turning his back on Seto and Joey; he was determined not to see the carnage.
Mokuba stood facing Ishizu, looking at her outstretched hands, then at her face as he tried to make up his mind about her.
"He's going to be okay, but only if we stand aside and let the doctors take care of him."
Mokuba studied her a few moments longer.
"Did your necklace tell you that?"
"Yes."
Gray eyes narrowed.
"Has your necklace ever been wrong?"
"Never."
Mokuba stared at her hard.
"Okay."
Ishizu held out her hands a little further. Mokuba took them and the world felt a little steadier under his feet.
"We're going back to the car, then we're going to the hospital." Ishizu glanced up at Duke. "You too. Come on."
Ishizu led them both to where Kenji had parked their minivan a little further down the block. She opened the door to the back, Mokuba climbing in first and immediately being welcomed into the backseat between Ryou and Amane. Ishizu took back her spot in the passenger seat and Duke took the seat behind her. That left one empty seat behind the driver, for Joey.
Mokuba was buried in Amane's embrace, so Ryou leaned forward in his seat to speak with Duke in a low whisper.
"What happened?"
"You mean, you don't know?"
"Ishizu won't tell us anything." The frustration in Ryou's voice was surprising. "She's been telling my dad what to do, but she's not explaining anything to the rest of us."
"Noah had Mokuba tied up in his office," Duke whispered as he leaned back, not turning his head as he kept eyes on Ishizu in front of him. "He had a loaded gun, too. He wanted Seto to trade himself for Mokuba, then made the rest of us leave the room and locked it. While I was looking for the keys to the office, we heard gunshots. When I got the office open, they were gone. They'd both fallen out the window."
"Oh my god." Ryou's eyes widened with horror.
"Noah's dead. Seto landed on Joey's car. Joey said he's alive. I was trying to keep Mokuba from seeing the…" Duke swallowed. "I don't think I could stand to see it either."
It was a lot of information to process. Ryou looked over at Mokuba, still trapped in his sister's arms. Amane looked up at Ryou, concerned and questioning. Ryou just shook his head.
Later. Maybe he could try to explain this mess to his sister later.
Joey had found Seto's body slumped against the front of his car, a head-sized indent in his shattered windshield, the hood of the car massively dented, and broken glass everywhere. The first thing he did was lift Seto's body off the car, arms wrapped around his torso to hold him close, and lay him on the ground, away from most of the glass. Seto's neck was intact—he couldn't let himself look yet at the source of the blood that had seeped into his own clothing—so Joey pressed his fingers there, searching for a pulse. Air caught in his throat and he choked for a moment.
"He's alive!" he shouted, and repeated quieter to himself, "He's alive."
He was alive, but he needed to stay that way. Joey began removing his jacket, not sure yet what his plan was. He just knew that he needed to do something. Seto's clothes and body were perforated with glass and he was bleeding fast from a wide cut on his stomach, but Joey didn't know where to start.
He stared down at his friend, frozen as his mind tried to churn out a command.
Pressure. Pressure to stop the bleeding, right?
His hands started to shake as he folded his jacket and pressed it to Seto's deepest wound, praying to whatever god might exist that this made a difference.
Should he be praying to Slifer, Obelisk, and Ra?
Shit, maybe.
"Joey."
It took a few moments for the name to sink in, and a few more for Joey to find the will to look away from Seto towards the voice.
Ryou's father stood there, hand extended to the teenager.
Joey looked back at Seto.
"No, I'm not leaving him."
"They won't let you ride in the ambulance with him," Kenji replied calmly. "Even if you were family, they wouldn't let you."
For a moment anger flashed across the teen's face.
"The paramedics will be here any minute. We need to get out of the way and let them do their job."
Joey hadn't even noticed the sound of sirens.
"We know what hospital they'll take him to." Kenji stepped closer, keeping his voice calm. "We'll go right there and wait for him."
"Okay." Verbally, Joey agreed, but he didn't move an inch. He was staring at his friend's still face.
Kenji stepped closer and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, startling him. He looked up at his friend's father with an expression of anguish that helped Kenji begin to understand what Joey was feeling.
"We're going to the hospital now."
Joey stared at him for long moments and finally nodded. He let Kenji help him to his feet and start to lead him away.
"Wait." Joey turned back and looked around until he saw what he needed. He stepped closer to his car and grabbed the Millennium Rod from the ground beside it, close to where Seto had landed. Now they could go.
He walked back to Dr. Bakura, his foot brushing against something as they walked past Noah's body. Joey glanced down at what his foot had touched; he saw it, but it didn't register in his mind.
The lit cigar lay on the pavement as they walked away, slowly smoldering amidst the broken glass.
When Joey climbed into the back seat of the minivan, both friends looked horrified. Duke couldn't believe how much blood had soaked into his clothes and looked away. It couldn't all be Seto's, it just couldn't. Ryou couldn't believe how vacant Joey's face was, how numb he seemed. He sat there gripping the Millennium Item in both hands and staring at nothing at all.
"Have I missed anything?" Kenji asked quietly as he buckled himself into the driver's seat.
"No, you did everything right," Ishizu answered, her voice so close to pleasant that Joey glared momentarily in her direction.
"Okay, time to meet the others at the hospital."
Just as Kenji said, Yugi's grandpa had already brought their other friends to the hospital, where they'd waited, pensive and uninformed.
"Joey?!" Yugi gasped, jumping out of his seat. "Are you alright?"
"He's okay, Yugi," Ryou was quick to assure, even as Joey stared dumbly at their friends, looking, with his blank expression and blood-soaked clothes, like he should be the one getting admitted to the hospital. "It's… it's not his."
"What happened back there?" Anzu asked, looking between Joey and Duke in search of an answer.
"I'm not sure where to start," Duke said with a sigh. "Noah took Mokuba and sent Seto a text…"
Yugi was listening to the story, just like Anzu and Marik and Ryou were, but he was also studying Joey's face. Wide empty eyes were unfocused and he'd smudged blood on his forehead from trying to brush aside his hair. Yugi looked down at his hands. More blood. When he looked back at Joey, he found those brown eyes had fixed on him. Yugi stepped closer and wrapped his hand around a clean part of Joey's arm.
He squeezed.
Joey blinked.
Duke finished telling the story of what they knew.
"That's terrible!" Anzu burst out, reaching for Yugi's other hand as she started to tear up.
Marik didn't respond, but his face was set in a grim expression as he placed a comforting hand on Ryou's shoulder.
"Trouble seems to follow that boy," Solomon muttered to himself beside the teens, remarkably calm as he stroked his beard in thought. He'd paid attention to the whole story as well. "Serious trouble."
A/N: New chapter every two weeks. Any comments/reviews would be so greatly appreciated because FFN isn't counting new views on my stories anymore, so I don't know if anyone's even reading this without a review.
Also, I'm trying a new chapter-naming convention, let me know what you think of it.