To anyone who has given, is giving, or will give this particular story a shot, thank you. I know it's a weird pairing. I'm not using it because it's weird, or because I'm trying to prove a point. It's because, in my personal understanding of the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe, it's how things unfolded for both of these characters.

I don't choose an OTP based on anything other than compatibility and sustainability. I don't toss characters together for nothing.

I normally wouldn't feel the need to justify my choices, but I can admit that this one takes some getting used to.

.

Ryou found Noa in a random room; but then, he realized, it wasn't random. It was the room he'd been allowed to stay in, the last time Ryou had spent time on the Kaiba Estate. He remembered this room: it had been filled with every luxury that money could afford.

Now, it looked like a broom closet.

Noa was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall, speaking into what looked like a tape recorder. "What would've happened if I'd survived," he was asking. "Hm? How about that? Think about that. What if I'd lived? Would you've still adopted them? Accepted the challenge because—fuck, why not? Maybe it would've given me incentive to rise to the occasion. A real challenge! Right?"

Ryou flinched when a voice came out of the tiny device in Noa's hand: "It might have at least convinced you to take your inheritance seriously. Which is more than I can say for what you have done."

"Awww . . . po' baby," Noa sneered. "Listen to you. Acting like you have any reason to be offended. Do you think I don't know what you did? How you handled things after my unfortunate demise? You talk about me spitting on our legacy."

"I did what had to be done to ensure the Kaiba name lived on."

"You threatened the safety and stunted the development of a four-year-old in order to manipulate the important one," Noa snapped. "You tossed him into some throwaway elementary school, you never once enforced any of the rules of propriety and decency that you expected of Seto and me. He was collateral damage. You didn't give a single flying fuck about him. But that didn't stop you from using him, did it? Did it?!"

". . . Argue against my methods all you like, son. They worked."

"In direct spite of you," Noa hissed. "Don't kid yourself, old man. You tortured two children for three years because you couldn't handle the truth. It offended you that yourprogeny would have the humiliating indecency to be mortal. I hope you know something, Chichiue. If I had lived . . . if I'd been there to watch you ruin them . . . I'd have killed you with my own hands. You're pathetic. Useless. Weak. And I hope you spend the rest of eternity understanding just how little you matter. Just how much your memory has been stomped into the dirt. Nobody remembers you. Seto and Mokuba are the only real Kaibas to ever come out of our fucking bloodline. You're a sick joke."

Noa pressed a button, and threw the little device across the room.

The room was suddenly cold. Ryou shivered.

". . . I know you're out there, sunshine," Noa said.

Ryou stepped into the room. "It can't be healthy to . . . do that," he said. "The past is over for a reason. Arguing with it isn't exactly . . . productive."

"No, but it's mildly cathartic." Noa sighed as he stood up. "I wasn't the only one to survive that . . . event horizon. I found him, hidden away, soaking in every pinprick of information about Aniki's business that he could find."

"Your father," Ryou guessed.

"Mm." Noa stretched, groaned, and shook his head. Ryou knew that he wasn't actually tired. Noa went through the trappings of normalcy simply because it amused him to do so. Also, some part of Ryou guessed, he did it to make the other people around him more comfortable.

It was easier to forget Noa Kaiba was a machine when he didn't act like one.

"I put him into this," Noa said, picking up the little device he'd been talking into; it looked like a pen. "Every so often, I like to remind him that he failed. Miserably. That his methods were pointless, and that his legacy is dead. Everything he sacrificed for, everything he made horrible decisions for, is gone. Nobody remembers the Kaiba-Corp that bought and sold lives."

Ryou found a smile, but it didn't feel particularly sincere. He shivered; there was still a chill, a malaise of discontent, that permeated through the room.

"You're more like Mister Kaiba than you like to admit," Ryou said, gently resting his fingers against Noa's left arm, where a certain tattoo was currently hidden by his sleeve. "This isn't about your father's legacy at all, is it? You're hurting him . . . because of little Mokuba. Aren't you?"

Noa smirked. "Little Mokuba," he repeated.

"Come on, now," Ryou said, holding Noa's hand as they headed back down the hall. "It's his first camping trip. Stop with the sour faces. You don't want to ruin his memory of this vacation by being all . . . disgruntled and pouty, do you?"

"You have such a way with words. Guilt-trip me with Mokuba. The way to get me to do anything."

Ryou put on a smirk of his own; it almost felt natural. "Don't pretend it doesn't work."