Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Desideratum ❯ Home ( Chapter 2 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: KatsuyaKaiba 
Home
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 04.18.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.9K | Visits: 358 | Status: Work In Progress
Home
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 04.18.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.9K | Visits: 358 | Status: Work In Progress
Desideratum
A Seto Centric Thingy by Katsuya Kaiba
AN: Here we go again. I really like Eidolon and I plan to finish it for sure, but this is my very first time ghost writing for Seto Kaiba, and he's a much tougher client than Joey ever was. Oh, Seto, I'm nothing more than a tool for you, aren't I? But bear in mind, if I am nothing without you than you are nothing without me. And I sincerely doubt that there are others out there willing to channel you and your snotty attitude for this long. I swear he's the one that's been keeping me up at night. Joey never did this to me. Being a medium for Joey was like a dream compared to this boy. I'm not an insulting kinda guy, but ever since I took on Seto, I've been pissing people off right and left. Seto, I hope you really appreciate the opportunity I'm giving you....He doesn't care, does he? Is he even listening? Hello...?
Seven, eight, nine...
The footsteps I left behind were like an endless trail spinning into nowhere helplessly, spanning the entirety of Domino City. My toe hit a twig and cast it slightly aside, and I continued regardless. I never even saw it.
Eighty-one, eighty-two...
I would count to one hundred, and then begin again at zero. Each step had a number, an identity. Everything in it's place, nothing was amiss, and I was satisfied. I was.
Ninety-nine, Zero.
I stood still. This Zero seemed to call to me, in a strange way. This Zero was different from the countless others.
Zero. I tried to take another step forward. Zero. The step halted before it began, and I gave it up, knowing it would be futile. I looked up for the first time in a very long while, taking in my surroundings at long last. I found that I was nowhere I had ever seen before, and certainly nowhere I ever wanted to find myself. This was a terrible area of the city, where the houses and tiny apartment complexes were cramped and shoved together, all of them leaning this way and that way, searching for support and finding none. Both trash and hollow looking people littered the streets in disarray, misplaced and unkempt. It was dirty and unpleasant, and I wanted to go home. Wherever that may be. I thought about what that truly meant, to want to go home and to have no idea where home might be. I knew exactly where my house was, and precisely how to get there. But I did not want to go to my house. I wanted to go home.
"Anything at all...whatever I wish..." My voice cut through the distasteful air that surrounded the neighborhood, and I heard myself as I never had, lost and alone. No one here would hear what I had to say. No one here would care.
"What will it be?"
Home. I wanted to go home. Perhaps that wasn't the big, meaningful answer that I was supposed to have given Joey when he asked me that question, but right at that moment I had never wanted another thing as I did just then. It wasn't a solution, but it was a step in the right direction. But which way to step...? Which way was home?
Zero. I was frozen in place. A step in the right direction was a step into the unknown. A step into the dark, and a foolish one, no doubt. Best to stay put, and think things through. But wasn't that how I managed to get myself here in the first place? So intent on counting each step, making sure each calculated footfall fell exactly the way it was intended to. Each one a masterpiece in it's own right, and the beauty of each step had led me absolutely nowhere. No matter how much control I had over my footsteps, whether or not I had watched them so closely, I still had somehow ended up in this dilapidated mess of a community. I was missing something, something akin to 'the bigger picture'. I had failed to look up, and instead busied myself with the perfection of the moment. Was that how I did everything?
Perhaps that was the secret, the elusive hint that Joey had been discreetly trying to give to me time and time again, only to be scoffed at and disregarded by me. I wondered why he had cared to this extent. Well, it didn't matter here. Joey was somewhere else, and I was here. Standing here, unable to remove myself from Zero, and unable to answer any of the simple questions that I had never guessed would matter.
"What will it be, indeed? What do I wish for, exactly?"
Home. This place, wherever it was, was not my home. I wasn't entirely sure how I knew that, since I had never once been to a place I felt might be home. No, not home.
Home.
I heard myself and my thoughts, and I realized that what I had just said to myself may in fact be part of this problem. I had never once felt as though I were Home. So how could I be missing it, wanting it, if I didn't know what it was? How could anyone feel the absence of anything if they never even had it? There is no loss that comes before gain, only afterwards. No one can lose a thing they never had. So why this sudden craving?
Was this Joey's doing?
I thought back, racking my mind for a moment in time that I did not remember, hoping to recall anything that might have triggered this desire in me. Had he ever said anything about Home? Had he asked me about that?
No. Never. I don't forget anything, especially something as important as this. But, I thought with a small sensation of dread washing over me, I had never regarded those conversations with Joey as important. Well, perhaps it was time to start. I refused to enjoy them no matter what, and I definitely wasn't enjoying where I found myself at the time, but it seemed as though this strange game that Joey was playing was not just a game to him. It certainly wasn't any fun for me. Especially now.
I cried in front of Joey. Oh...hell. Now what could I do? I was so thankful that no one else had been around to see that particular slip up of mine, and I silently cursed myself and my wretched emotions for being so damned weak and submissive. I had to keep this thing together, or else it would all just come apart at the seams. I could feel it, plain and simple, deep in my chest and even further down, in a place that was probably not located anywhere on my person. I supposed one might say 'inside my heart' or something equally ridiculous. Wherever it was, it wasn't welcome here.
Joey was going to fix what he had torn inside me. I would make him do it. That little brat thought he could just waltz up to me, uninvited, and deconstruct my carefully constructed world to pieces with his...benevolence? Heh. He had better watch himself, because I was going to be on him twenty-four, seven. He'll never want to help another soul again.
Serves him right, digging around in people's hearts, where he wasn't wanted. I certainly didn't want...this. This upheavel, this revolt from within, and I knew that Joey wasn't to blame, but I also knew that he had become the catalyst for my undoing. And I wasn't too happy about that. Of all the people to cry in front of, it had to be Wheeler. That fool. Just the thought of him feeling sorry for me pissed me off.
"Seto...I mean...Kaiba!"
I began to wish that I had never gotten out of bed this morning.
I turned my head and followed the trail of noise until I came upon it's owner. Not more than twenty feet away and rapidly closing in, the sunny form of Joey approached me fast. His schoolbag was slung over his shoulder, and he ran at me smiling softly, as if he were happy to see me. It doesn't matter whether or not I was happy to see him. I wouldn't say it if it were so, anyway.
Zero. Zero. Zero. Damn it, feet. Move! He came up fast, and his lightly placed footfalls came to a slow and steady halt just a few feet from where I stood.
"What are you doing here?" I felt the need to question him before he started up with his philosophical nonsense. I could just feel it on the tip of his tongue.
He smiled at me in a funny way, as if I were joking. "What do you mean? I should ask you the same thing. I live here."
I looked at him without speaking. Wheeler lived in this dump? How fitting.
"What are you doing here, anyway? Don't you live, like, twenty miles that way?" He pointed exaggeratedly in the opposited direction, the way from which he'd come.
"Yes. I do." I felt no need to clarify myself further. It wasn't any of his business what I was doing, and although he did live here, he didn't own the area. I chuckled inwardly at the thought, however. That, too, would be fitting. Joey the slumlord.
"Okay..." Joey looked away from where I stood, either put off by my attitude or suddenly remembering the events that transpired the last time we had been so close. "Well, are you just going to stand there, or what? How long have you been here?"
"What's it to you? I don't feel the need to report to you every time I want to stand somewhere, so just go on to your shack and leave me alone." Even I could hear the pathetic tone in my voice, and I mentally cringed as I felt the words leave my mouth. That had not been some of my best work. I gave up altogether, feeling no obligation to him whatsoever, and continued with what I had been doing before I was so rudely interrupted. After a few moments passed and still Joey had not moved, I turned my head back to him to see just what it was that he was doing. He was watching me...waiting for to turn my head. Waiting for me to do what I had just done. Waiting for me to turn back to him and look. I immediately felt stupid and glared at him, hoping to scrape some of my dignity up off of the pavement between us.
"Alright then, I guess I'll just stand here too, then. I've got some homework to do, anyway." Joey, after having said this, proceeded to get comfortable on the lawn just a foot or so from where I stood.
I sighed in defeat, or perhaps frustration, and sat down beside him.
"Hey...I'm not gonna tell anyone about...you know." I looked over at Joey, who was currently refusing to make eye contact. My eyes narrowed in response and I laughed quietly.
"I know you won't. You had better not."
He glanced up and saw my face, looking surprised at my reaction.
"How do you know I won't? I was only trying to be nice, but if you're gonna be like that, then I might just have to tell everyone I know. Imagine that, the Great Seto Kaiba, crying like a little schoolgirl with a broken heart." Joey broadly grinned and I smirked back, not fully enjoying this sappy sort of shared moment, but not wanting to punch him out, either. What a strange feeling this was.
"You won't." I broke our gaze, and thought about what I truly wanted to say. He, too, felt the oncoming cloudiness and his eyes fell back to the sidewalk before us.
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
I decided to charge in headfirst and storm the castle, so to speak. I would simply tell him how things were going to be. He didn't have much of a choice, honestly.
"Wheeler."
"...What?"
I took a deep breath and jumped.
"You've somehow managed to disrupt something in me and I'm not too happy with you right now. So, I suggest that you fix it. Now."
Joey never moved, nor showed any reaction upon hearing my words. He didn't even blink, and I continued watching him out of the corner of my eye.
"I don't know if I can. I never meant to upset you, or make you unhappy. I was aiming for the opposite, really..."
I spoke before I could think of what those words might mean.
"Your aim is not my concern. My only problem is you, and your ridiculous questions. Now fix it."
He stood up abruptly, and stared down at me in horror.
"Fix what? You? I can't fix you! You have to fix yourself! Look, I'm really sorry, okay? I never meant for anything like this to happen!"
I jumped up from where I sat and loomed down at him as ominously as I could. There weren't words for the amount of fury that I was witholding at that moment.
"You keep saying that, Wheeler, but you never say what it was that you were meaning to do. Just what were your intentions, exactly?"
Joey looked away from my heated glare and waved at me, as if trying to banish the sight. "Nothing. I wasn't trying to do anything, alright?"
I grabbed his hand and held him firmly where he stood, furious that he was being so casual about this. He was hiding something, I knew that much, but what could it be? I didn't even have the slightest clue what he might not want me to find out, but I was going to find out, whether he wanted me to or not.
"Nice try, Wheeler." I closed in on him and grabbed his other hand, holding him fast in place. Quickly I forced him towards me and our noses nearly met in the middle. Joey's eyes widened farther then I 'd ever seen before, and he struggled in my grasp. His efforts amounted to nothing, and I smiled at him as he vainly tried to escape. I wouldn't allow it.
"Now, what the hell are you after? You know as well as I do that you'll never escape, so I suggest that you start talking. What is it that you wanted?"
Joey stopped struggling for a moment, and he appeared to be running something through his head, weighing out his options. He of course had none, and I think he realized it just then, because he lowered his head to the ground in defeat and opened his mouth to speak. Something inaudible spilled from his hidden lips and I shook him roughly.
"What was that?"
"It was you..." Me? What about me? Was he trying to take me apart, piece by piece? Had I really forced him to hate me so? I was taken aback by this, but before I could react, he spoke again.
"I wanted you...to be happy. You always seem so sad and alone, and I just wanted to help. Not like the way I help everyone else, because I know that's what you're thinking. It isn't like that. I wanted to help you because...you're you. I...I like you."
His body had grown slack as he was confessing these things, and when I unintentionally released his arms he slumped down to the pavement below. I did it without thinking, and simply stood where I had been standing when he had spoken, unable to move from Zero.
AN: Ahhh...perhaps a happy ending will do me some good. Indulge a little. This is progressing past the point I had planned, and it's becoming a beast all it's own. But I do like where it's going. This is lots of fun to write, so many tense moments and underlying intentions... Hooray! My first cheesey romance! Maybe I'll give that lemon a shot. I'm feeling confident. What do you think?
Converting /tmp/phpPtWexO to /dev/stdout
A Seto Centric Thingy by Katsuya Kaiba
AN: Here we go again. I really like Eidolon and I plan to finish it for sure, but this is my very first time ghost writing for Seto Kaiba, and he's a much tougher client than Joey ever was. Oh, Seto, I'm nothing more than a tool for you, aren't I? But bear in mind, if I am nothing without you than you are nothing without me. And I sincerely doubt that there are others out there willing to channel you and your snotty attitude for this long. I swear he's the one that's been keeping me up at night. Joey never did this to me. Being a medium for Joey was like a dream compared to this boy. I'm not an insulting kinda guy, but ever since I took on Seto, I've been pissing people off right and left. Seto, I hope you really appreciate the opportunity I'm giving you....He doesn't care, does he? Is he even listening? Hello...?
Seven, eight, nine...
The footsteps I left behind were like an endless trail spinning into nowhere helplessly, spanning the entirety of Domino City. My toe hit a twig and cast it slightly aside, and I continued regardless. I never even saw it.
Eighty-one, eighty-two...
I would count to one hundred, and then begin again at zero. Each step had a number, an identity. Everything in it's place, nothing was amiss, and I was satisfied. I was.
Ninety-nine, Zero.
I stood still. This Zero seemed to call to me, in a strange way. This Zero was different from the countless others.
Zero. I tried to take another step forward. Zero. The step halted before it began, and I gave it up, knowing it would be futile. I looked up for the first time in a very long while, taking in my surroundings at long last. I found that I was nowhere I had ever seen before, and certainly nowhere I ever wanted to find myself. This was a terrible area of the city, where the houses and tiny apartment complexes were cramped and shoved together, all of them leaning this way and that way, searching for support and finding none. Both trash and hollow looking people littered the streets in disarray, misplaced and unkempt. It was dirty and unpleasant, and I wanted to go home. Wherever that may be. I thought about what that truly meant, to want to go home and to have no idea where home might be. I knew exactly where my house was, and precisely how to get there. But I did not want to go to my house. I wanted to go home.
"Anything at all...whatever I wish..." My voice cut through the distasteful air that surrounded the neighborhood, and I heard myself as I never had, lost and alone. No one here would hear what I had to say. No one here would care.
"What will it be?"
Home. I wanted to go home. Perhaps that wasn't the big, meaningful answer that I was supposed to have given Joey when he asked me that question, but right at that moment I had never wanted another thing as I did just then. It wasn't a solution, but it was a step in the right direction. But which way to step...? Which way was home?
Zero. I was frozen in place. A step in the right direction was a step into the unknown. A step into the dark, and a foolish one, no doubt. Best to stay put, and think things through. But wasn't that how I managed to get myself here in the first place? So intent on counting each step, making sure each calculated footfall fell exactly the way it was intended to. Each one a masterpiece in it's own right, and the beauty of each step had led me absolutely nowhere. No matter how much control I had over my footsteps, whether or not I had watched them so closely, I still had somehow ended up in this dilapidated mess of a community. I was missing something, something akin to 'the bigger picture'. I had failed to look up, and instead busied myself with the perfection of the moment. Was that how I did everything?
Perhaps that was the secret, the elusive hint that Joey had been discreetly trying to give to me time and time again, only to be scoffed at and disregarded by me. I wondered why he had cared to this extent. Well, it didn't matter here. Joey was somewhere else, and I was here. Standing here, unable to remove myself from Zero, and unable to answer any of the simple questions that I had never guessed would matter.
"What will it be, indeed? What do I wish for, exactly?"
Home. This place, wherever it was, was not my home. I wasn't entirely sure how I knew that, since I had never once been to a place I felt might be home. No, not home.
Home.
I heard myself and my thoughts, and I realized that what I had just said to myself may in fact be part of this problem. I had never once felt as though I were Home. So how could I be missing it, wanting it, if I didn't know what it was? How could anyone feel the absence of anything if they never even had it? There is no loss that comes before gain, only afterwards. No one can lose a thing they never had. So why this sudden craving?
Was this Joey's doing?
I thought back, racking my mind for a moment in time that I did not remember, hoping to recall anything that might have triggered this desire in me. Had he ever said anything about Home? Had he asked me about that?
No. Never. I don't forget anything, especially something as important as this. But, I thought with a small sensation of dread washing over me, I had never regarded those conversations with Joey as important. Well, perhaps it was time to start. I refused to enjoy them no matter what, and I definitely wasn't enjoying where I found myself at the time, but it seemed as though this strange game that Joey was playing was not just a game to him. It certainly wasn't any fun for me. Especially now.
I cried in front of Joey. Oh...hell. Now what could I do? I was so thankful that no one else had been around to see that particular slip up of mine, and I silently cursed myself and my wretched emotions for being so damned weak and submissive. I had to keep this thing together, or else it would all just come apart at the seams. I could feel it, plain and simple, deep in my chest and even further down, in a place that was probably not located anywhere on my person. I supposed one might say 'inside my heart' or something equally ridiculous. Wherever it was, it wasn't welcome here.
Joey was going to fix what he had torn inside me. I would make him do it. That little brat thought he could just waltz up to me, uninvited, and deconstruct my carefully constructed world to pieces with his...benevolence? Heh. He had better watch himself, because I was going to be on him twenty-four, seven. He'll never want to help another soul again.
Serves him right, digging around in people's hearts, where he wasn't wanted. I certainly didn't want...this. This upheavel, this revolt from within, and I knew that Joey wasn't to blame, but I also knew that he had become the catalyst for my undoing. And I wasn't too happy about that. Of all the people to cry in front of, it had to be Wheeler. That fool. Just the thought of him feeling sorry for me pissed me off.
"Seto...I mean...Kaiba!"
I began to wish that I had never gotten out of bed this morning.
I turned my head and followed the trail of noise until I came upon it's owner. Not more than twenty feet away and rapidly closing in, the sunny form of Joey approached me fast. His schoolbag was slung over his shoulder, and he ran at me smiling softly, as if he were happy to see me. It doesn't matter whether or not I was happy to see him. I wouldn't say it if it were so, anyway.
Zero. Zero. Zero. Damn it, feet. Move! He came up fast, and his lightly placed footfalls came to a slow and steady halt just a few feet from where I stood.
"What are you doing here?" I felt the need to question him before he started up with his philosophical nonsense. I could just feel it on the tip of his tongue.
He smiled at me in a funny way, as if I were joking. "What do you mean? I should ask you the same thing. I live here."
I looked at him without speaking. Wheeler lived in this dump? How fitting.
"What are you doing here, anyway? Don't you live, like, twenty miles that way?" He pointed exaggeratedly in the opposited direction, the way from which he'd come.
"Yes. I do." I felt no need to clarify myself further. It wasn't any of his business what I was doing, and although he did live here, he didn't own the area. I chuckled inwardly at the thought, however. That, too, would be fitting. Joey the slumlord.
"Okay..." Joey looked away from where I stood, either put off by my attitude or suddenly remembering the events that transpired the last time we had been so close. "Well, are you just going to stand there, or what? How long have you been here?"
"What's it to you? I don't feel the need to report to you every time I want to stand somewhere, so just go on to your shack and leave me alone." Even I could hear the pathetic tone in my voice, and I mentally cringed as I felt the words leave my mouth. That had not been some of my best work. I gave up altogether, feeling no obligation to him whatsoever, and continued with what I had been doing before I was so rudely interrupted. After a few moments passed and still Joey had not moved, I turned my head back to him to see just what it was that he was doing. He was watching me...waiting for to turn my head. Waiting for me to do what I had just done. Waiting for me to turn back to him and look. I immediately felt stupid and glared at him, hoping to scrape some of my dignity up off of the pavement between us.
"Alright then, I guess I'll just stand here too, then. I've got some homework to do, anyway." Joey, after having said this, proceeded to get comfortable on the lawn just a foot or so from where I stood.
I sighed in defeat, or perhaps frustration, and sat down beside him.
"Hey...I'm not gonna tell anyone about...you know." I looked over at Joey, who was currently refusing to make eye contact. My eyes narrowed in response and I laughed quietly.
"I know you won't. You had better not."
He glanced up and saw my face, looking surprised at my reaction.
"How do you know I won't? I was only trying to be nice, but if you're gonna be like that, then I might just have to tell everyone I know. Imagine that, the Great Seto Kaiba, crying like a little schoolgirl with a broken heart." Joey broadly grinned and I smirked back, not fully enjoying this sappy sort of shared moment, but not wanting to punch him out, either. What a strange feeling this was.
"You won't." I broke our gaze, and thought about what I truly wanted to say. He, too, felt the oncoming cloudiness and his eyes fell back to the sidewalk before us.
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
I decided to charge in headfirst and storm the castle, so to speak. I would simply tell him how things were going to be. He didn't have much of a choice, honestly.
"Wheeler."
"...What?"
I took a deep breath and jumped.
"You've somehow managed to disrupt something in me and I'm not too happy with you right now. So, I suggest that you fix it. Now."
Joey never moved, nor showed any reaction upon hearing my words. He didn't even blink, and I continued watching him out of the corner of my eye.
"I don't know if I can. I never meant to upset you, or make you unhappy. I was aiming for the opposite, really..."
I spoke before I could think of what those words might mean.
"Your aim is not my concern. My only problem is you, and your ridiculous questions. Now fix it."
He stood up abruptly, and stared down at me in horror.
"Fix what? You? I can't fix you! You have to fix yourself! Look, I'm really sorry, okay? I never meant for anything like this to happen!"
I jumped up from where I sat and loomed down at him as ominously as I could. There weren't words for the amount of fury that I was witholding at that moment.
"You keep saying that, Wheeler, but you never say what it was that you were meaning to do. Just what were your intentions, exactly?"
Joey looked away from my heated glare and waved at me, as if trying to banish the sight. "Nothing. I wasn't trying to do anything, alright?"
I grabbed his hand and held him firmly where he stood, furious that he was being so casual about this. He was hiding something, I knew that much, but what could it be? I didn't even have the slightest clue what he might not want me to find out, but I was going to find out, whether he wanted me to or not.
"Nice try, Wheeler." I closed in on him and grabbed his other hand, holding him fast in place. Quickly I forced him towards me and our noses nearly met in the middle. Joey's eyes widened farther then I 'd ever seen before, and he struggled in my grasp. His efforts amounted to nothing, and I smiled at him as he vainly tried to escape. I wouldn't allow it.
"Now, what the hell are you after? You know as well as I do that you'll never escape, so I suggest that you start talking. What is it that you wanted?"
Joey stopped struggling for a moment, and he appeared to be running something through his head, weighing out his options. He of course had none, and I think he realized it just then, because he lowered his head to the ground in defeat and opened his mouth to speak. Something inaudible spilled from his hidden lips and I shook him roughly.
"What was that?"
"It was you..." Me? What about me? Was he trying to take me apart, piece by piece? Had I really forced him to hate me so? I was taken aback by this, but before I could react, he spoke again.
"I wanted you...to be happy. You always seem so sad and alone, and I just wanted to help. Not like the way I help everyone else, because I know that's what you're thinking. It isn't like that. I wanted to help you because...you're you. I...I like you."
His body had grown slack as he was confessing these things, and when I unintentionally released his arms he slumped down to the pavement below. I did it without thinking, and simply stood where I had been standing when he had spoken, unable to move from Zero.
AN: Ahhh...perhaps a happy ending will do me some good. Indulge a little. This is progressing past the point I had planned, and it's becoming a beast all it's own. But I do like where it's going. This is lots of fun to write, so many tense moments and underlying intentions... Hooray! My first cheesey romance! Maybe I'll give that lemon a shot. I'm feeling confident. What do you think?
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