Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ I Guess It was in the Cards ❯ Comforting Thoughts ( Chapter 5 )

PLEASE READ AND REVIEW. I would love to know if you like it, how you think it's going, and if everyone is staying in character. It was really encouraging to see so many reviews.

MANGA NOTES: In the dubbed version, Seto's motives are very simple - protect Mokuba and get Egyptian God Cards. In the manga, beyond protecting Mokuba, Seto has several intertwined motives. He has promised Mokuba that they would build Kaiba Land as a paradise for unwanted children, he has destroyed Kaiba Corporations capability for manufacturing weapons, and is trying to create only things that will make people happy (such altruistic goals, for such a dark, seemingly self-centered character). He also feels guilty over his role in designing weapons, although the manga indicates that he was tricked into it. In Noa's Arc in the subtitled anime they have Kaiba designing a video game that gets used as a weapon. I think that's pretty far-fetched, so I came up with my own more ambiguous explanation.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know, this is another very short chapter, but I felt that it needed to stand alone.

CHAPTER 5: COMFORTING THOUGHTS

SETO KAIBA'S NARRATIVE

I found Yami's presence almost… comforting. A word I shied away from using, even in my thoughts.

Yet I returned to it.

Comforting…

I rolled it around on my tongue, like an enticing and possibly poisonous fruit.

Comforting…

I prodded it with my mind as if it was a sleekly beautiful snake that might spring at any moment.

Comforting…

I suppose to most people, the word is bland, even boring. That just highlights the gap between me and "most" people. I found the word exotic, even wondrous.

I suppose those same people would also find it an odd word to apply to the presence of a man who, at last count, had almost killed me three times. But Yami had only been the latest in a long line of people who had wanted, or tried, to kill me.

Besides, the second time at least, I had deserved it.

It would be a comforting (that word again!) self-serving conceit to pretend that anyone faced with my choices would have made the same wrong turns. Or I could pretend that I was misled; that when I had first met him, I had really thought Gozaburo was a kindly old man. But why add hypocrisy to mass murder on my list of sins?

I thought I knew everything about Gozaburo that I needed to. I knew adoption by him would give me the money and power I needed to protect Mokuba, not just the scant, temporary protection I could offer in the orphanage, but for life.

I knew Gozaburo was crazy enough and vengeful enough to adopt me if I beat him publicly. He would want me under his control, where he could pick me apart at his leisure. And I knew that he would be so focused on destroying me that Mokuba would be safe, unnoticed in his house. I really should have considered a career as a fortune teller.

But the one thing I didn't know was that he would win.

And I didn't know what I would become, or the death and destruction I would cause.

When all is said and done, how many people have designed missile guidance systems, bomber jets and fighter planes before their 13th birthday? I could claim ignorance, I suppose. After all, I was just a child. (Except, I was never a child.) I actually thought the weapons I was designing were homework assignments. It seems a strange thing to believe, but that brief stint at Domino High School after Gozaburo's death was the extent of my formal education. I had nothing to compare Gozaburo's bizarre lessons in engineering and biochemistry to.

But that doesn't absolve me, and I doubt my victims would take any comfort in being killed through ignorance rather than malice. I might not have known much about the standard school curriculum, but I did know Gozaburo. So why did I believe his explanations? I suppose the truth is that I was too numb to notice or care, until it was too late. All completing an assignment meant to me was one more hour of sleep; one less beating. And I had learned to ask no questions that did not relate directly to my own survival.

Most people never meet the demons inside of them. But I know precisely how evil, how vile I can be. After painfully gathering the pieces of my soul once, I don't think I would ever embrace that darkness again. But the point is, I can't be sure. So I find myself comforted by the presence of a man who can shatter my heart with a word, who has the power to kill me, if it becomes necessary.