Who would Gozaburo Kaiba marry? Who would he have a child with?
More to the point, who would marry Gozaburo Kaiba?
I've spent years working out the answer to this question, and the answer is seen most clearly in this story. The wife of Gozaburo Kaiba, to me, could only ever be a force of nature. A queen. A conqueror.
Someone who could look the devil in the eye and laugh.
.
A specter, clad all in black, with swept-back hair and a time-chiseled face, stood sentinel in one of Saint Claire Municipal Hospital's sterilized hallways; he looked like he never intended to move again. Somehow, even though they weren't next to each other—even though nothing about their appearances matched in any way at all—it was still clear that the grim woman sitting beside the boy in the hospital bed, in the room into which the specter was gazing through a crystalline window, was a part of him.
This man, and this woman, belonged to each other.
Sun, moon. Candle, shadow.
Both moved in perfect concert, defying any distance between them; they were, in their way, the ultimate metaphor for a dance even though each was currently cast in iron. The unfortunate puzzle, the thing most people couldn't work out no matter how hard they tried, was figuring out which one burned and which one smothered.
There wasn't a single person passing through the hallway who came within ten feet of Gozaburo Kaiba. Just the thought of inadvertently catching this titan's attention, never mind touching him, frightened people. This perhaps explained why, when a balding man in a pinstriped suit actually came up to him and reached out a hand to touch his arm, nurses and doctors and patients and visitors all stared in numb horror.
"Ah. Mister Kaiba. Sir."
Gozaburo blinked slowly, deliberately, and did not turn his gaze from the window. "Not now, Edmund," he said.
"Mister Kaiba, you know that's not an option. I think you know full well that—"
"Not. Now."
Did this man, Edmund, have a reputation? Did he have important business? Was he a friend, an ally, a servant? No one watching this exchange had any way of knowing; it was impossible to even guess. There was nothing to read on Gozaburo's face, and he would not speak again.
"After what's just happened, in your office no less, you can't just stand here and tell me—"
Edmund's face went pale as a sheet as he choked on his words. His lips fumbled. It took enough courage to face one shadow of death; as Amaya Kaiba drifted like an austere winter goddess out of her son's sickroom, to stand vigil beside her husband, the temperature throughout the building dropped twenty degrees.
"My son," Amaya murmured, her cold eyes gleaming like lanterns in a cemetery, "is fighting for his life in there." The lanterns flared. "If I hear one . . . more . . . word . . . about business right now, of any persuasion, I will make you fight for yours."
The lady Kaiba watched, expressionless, untouched by vindication or amusement, as Edmund scrambled to disappear around a corner. When she spoke next, she did not look at Gozaburo, but at the boy in the bed, hooked up to monitors and breathing through a machine.
She said, eventually: "This ends now. This changes now."
Gozaburo didn't look at Amaya either. "You'll have to be more specific, dearest."
Amaya's face twitched. Barely. "I have always been prepared for the sacrifices you've laid at my feet," she said. "I have always been ready to bleed for your ambition. I'll not shed his blood. I will not sacrifice him. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
Gozaburo's jaw flexed. "I hear you," he said. "I would never ask for any such sacrifice." He paused for a moment, calculating. "A total rework of house security. I'll gut them. Those who can't be retrained to a higher standard will be dropped immediate—"
"No." Amaya's voice was a whipcrack, and any other man would have flinched. "That's not the weak link and you know it. It's not going to make a difference." She finally looked directly upon the man to whom she'd sold her soul so long ago. She waited for Gozaburo to look at her before she continued: "If this empire you're building is going to endanger our child, then it will be sacrificed. I will see everything burn before Noa sheds another drop."
Gozaburo's face turned grim. "Amaya," he said. "Shedding ourselves of the Kaiba Corporation won't do anything to protect him." His voice was almost gentle. "Our name is still a part of us, still tied to us, to the history and reputation we have built. It's all still a part of him. That will never be banished. There is no way to exorcize it."
Amaya grimaced. "Keeping in contact with your old . . . friends," her tone turned rancid, "has now put our son in mortal danger." She glared suspiciously at her husband. "Or do you mean to tell me that things didn't turn out the way you thought they would, with Ishmael?"
"He was guilty," Gozaburo said, and his voice rolled like thunder on the horizon; quiet, but apocalyptic. "I don't know why, for what specific reason or on whose orders, but this," he gestured to the boy, "was his work."
"I trust he paid for it." Gozaburo eyed his wife incredulously. "Then get rid of the rest of them. All of them. If the one man out of them all, the one you came closest to trusting, could do this." She gestured in turn to their son, so small, so vulnerable; it was a wonder he still lived at all. "What use is any of it? What use are they?"
Gozaburo drew in a calming breath that did nothing to calm him.
He asked, eventually: "What do you propose?"
Amaya's eyes narrowed, then widened. "Pharmacology. Space travel. Fucking electric cars. What difference does it make? Your innovations, your people, extend to any number of disciplines. Do not stand here and tell me that you couldn't make a transition, to step into a safer field. You know damn well that it would end up just as, if not more, lucrative than whatever the hell Kaiba-Corp is now."
Gozaburo's face twisted with disgust; he hated that nickname.
Amaya's eyes glittered. She cast out the line, hook sparkling. "Or do you mean to inform me that the great Gozaburo Kaiba has been unmade? Is your legacy only worth chasing, only worth celebrating, if it involves entangling yourself with the lowest dregs of humankind? Is your greatness only measured in graveyards and bullet casings? Did I marry such a simple man?"
Silence dominated, like a spirit best left unnamed lest its attention be drawn.
Gozaburo lowered his head. Had he been anyone else, he might have been mistaken for a man praying. Amaya stepped back toward the door to Noa's hospital room. Gozaburo looked back up and watched her. "There are people," he murmured, "so frightened of me that they would sooner swallow cyanide than say what you just said . . . to say nothing of saying it where I can hear."
It wasn't a threat; merely an observation. If anything, Gozaburo looked amused.
Amaya glanced over her shoulder. "I am none of those people."
Gozaburo actually smiled as he fell into step behind his wife.
"No," he said, chuckling lightly, "you most certainly aren't."