I feel like Noa would have a whole mess of things to unpack, when and if he came back in his own body. And while this story is focused on his and Ryo's relationship, sometimes it just makes sense to me to focus on that part of it.
There are things only Ryo can help him with.
But there are also things only his brothers can help him with.
That's just how it works, sometimes.
.
Noa refused to go under at the dentist.
He'd had to fight multiple people about this by now; it turned out that, for as miraculous as Seto's technology was, Noa still had trouble with his teeth. He brushed, he flossed, his did his best to keep everything clean and healthy, but it seemed like the gods were having entirely too much fun with him, apparently.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Mokuba asked. The youngest Kaiba had long gone on the record that any dental procedure where it was possible to knock him out, he was going to be knocked out. Mokuba hated anything and everything to do with drills, needles, hooks, any such implements, near his mouth.
"Oh, absolutely," Noa said. It's atrocious and I hate it. But I'm not going under. I'm not letting anybody put that thing on me. I'm not going to count backwards and I'm not going to lull off to sleep and I'm not going to—"
Noa had to sit down; something about his nerves was making it difficult to focus.
"Noa," Mokuba said, softly, gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"I'm not doing it," Noa insisted. "I'm not. I'm not."
"Okay. Okay." Mokuba reached over and gave his brother a hug. "It's all right. Nobody's gonna make you do anything. You're okay. You're safe."
It wasn't until they brought this incident to Seto that either of them realized what was going on, because Seto always had the answers. It was just what he did. It was how he established himself This, he said, was what it meant to be the head of a family.
He said that about a lot of things, and nobody could ever tell if he was being serious.
"If I remember correctly," Seto said, "you were placed in a medical coma after the accident. The one that claimed your . . . first life. Considering there wasn't a single person in the city, except my predecessor, who thought you could survive, the likelihood of you waking up again was . . . slim. I think you're remembering the first day you woke up in your father's machine. You went to sleep in a hospital and woke up in a cage."
Noa didn't look like he much appreciated this revelation. "It always comes back to that old bastard, doesn't it?"
"Usually," Seto said.
"So," Mokuba guessed, "it's better to endure the pain, to just deal with all the complicated stuff, than go back there. At least the pain proves you're still alive. You're still here. You aren't going to wake up in that . . . place again." He paused for a moment and then, tentatively, asked: "Do you . . . have trouble sleeping?"
"All the time," Noa said. "I think, if I could, if it was possible, I'd never sleep again. I know, I know." He held up his hands, warding off both his brothers' interjections. "It's important for my health. I understand. I get it. But . . . I don't like the dark. I don't like how long it takes, when I wake up, to remember where I am."