Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ I Guess It was in the Cards ❯ The Kaiba Brothers Reflect ( Chapter 7 )

PLEASE READ AND REVIEW. I would love to know if you like it and how you think it's going. It's really encouraging to see so many reviews - it really encourages me to update as quickly as possible.

MANGA NOTE (MOKUBA): I love any and every version of Mokuba. In the dubbed version, I find his unquestioning devotion to his brother absolutely endearing. But in the manga he's heart-breaking, precisely because his devotion is not blind. He understands just how troubled and damaged his brother is, and it is part of his love for him. One of the saddest things is watching him endlessly trying to enlist Yugi and his friend's sympathies in his Nisama, hindered, of course, by Kaiba himself, when conscious and out of the Shadow Realm. This is the Mokuba I am trying to portray.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I had originally planned to have the chapters, (with one exception in the third-person) narrated by either Seto or Yami. Each chapter was going to have a single narrator, and chapters would not be shared. Then I kept hearing this little, insistent, impish voice. Mokuba seemed to feel that he should have a say in anything that concerns his Nisama. But it didn't feel right to leave him on his own, especially in his first appearance, so his narrative is right where it belongs - following Seto's.

I have another AN at the end, but I didn't want to take up any more space.

CHAPTER 7: THE KAIBA BROTHERS REFLECT

CHAPTER 7A: NISAMA'S TURN

SETO KAIBA'S NARRATIVE

I had always thought of Yami as an enemy - I had no other word for rival. Now, I began to see him as a person. For once, familiarity was breeding not contempt, but understanding. I think to Yami, being alive meant being part of someone else. I could see him, sometimes, listening for Yugi's voice. But he was also starting to enjoy the freedom of his own mind, his own thoughts. He was learning not to feel guilty that every move he made was stealing time from Yugi, unless it was a move made in his defense. Yami walked the streets of Domino for hours. Although he must have known them by heart, they were new to him, because this time, he was seeing them by himself. He never spoke of his time before Yugi. I wondered about all those years in that little puzzle. Had it been anything like my stay in the Shadow Realm? I hoped not, surprised and annoyed to find that I cared. But maybe, we had always cared, a little.

There are many people, myself foremost among them, responsible for my damnation. (A word I do not use loosely, or for effect.) But it is Yami who has been responsible for every painful lesson on my journey back; Yami who taught me to look at life through a prism other than Gozaburo's.

He had shattered my soul, then forced me to look at the shards of the person I had become. But he also gave me a second chance, an opportunity I did not deserve, to leave the darkness that had become my world. To return to the brother I had betrayed. I've never thanked him - the enormity of his unwanted gift was too great. How do you thank someone who gives you back the broken fragments of your heart?

I thought I knew power. My life had been defined by it. The power to protect myself. The power to protect Mokuba. But Yami had given the word new meaning. In our duel with Lumos and Umbra we had been more than uneasy allies. Together we accomplished what neither of us could do alone. It was more than just a matter of combining good cards. As our decks complimented each other, so did we. I drew on Yugi's steadiness, clung to him for the support I could never admit I wanted. But in the end he had needed my recklessness, my willingness to sacrifice even my Blue Eyes -- the best part of my soul -- if necessary to win.

It was a painful epiphany. In a world where trust leads to betrayal, and defeat to death, you can rely only on yourself. I had survived that world, mastered it. Could the lessons I had learned so painfully there, the lessons that had assured my survival and Mokuba's happiness have been wrong? Could I have been not only arrogant and self-destructive, but blind and stupid too?

I remember sitting in the helicopter flying to Domino Port, waiting for Yugi to experience a painful awakening of his own. It is one thing, I thought, to prate about friendship when your friends are there cheering you on. But Malik had brainwashed Jounouchi. Yugi was in my world now. And I needed to know -- Could he hold on to friendship when everyone was against him; when his feelings were nothing more than a tool to be used against him? I didn't know if I wanted the grim satisfaction of being right, or the tentative hope that would come with being wrong. Yugi might have been fighting to save Jounouchi, but Yami was fighting, at least in part, to give me an answer.

I was glad that he had seen my duel with Isis. Had cheered me on as if I was Jounouchi, or someone he cared about. I was glad he had seen me fight with strength and pride rather than hatred and anger; glad he had seen me win.

He had managed to turn my proud words to Isis back on me in our last duel. Why, he had asked, if I believed that my future lay on a road of my own creation, was I choosing to create a future ruled by hatred? A future that was, in the end, controlled by the past I denied.

Yami had answered my question. I'm still trying to answer his.

CHAPTER 7B: MOKUBA'S TURN

MOKUBA'S NARRATIVE

Jou was funnier, Yugi was nicer, and Honda had a cool motorcycle. I liked all of them better than Yami. Although he was more fun than I thought he'd be. It wasn't just that he'd sit and play video games with me for hours. Nisama never did that any more, he'd just check online to make sure no one had beaten his scores. Yami made up a lot of new games too. Sometimes Nisama would actually stop working long enough to join in.

Yami even got him to play chess - sort of. I don't know where he had dug up the chess set from, but I sure recognized it. It was stepfather's. Nisama recognized it too. He flung it right out of Yami's hands across the room. Yami calmly picked it up and attached it to the wall, announcing that they were going to play dart-board chess. They could both see the positions of the pieces in their heads. I don't know how they did that. Anyway, they had to throw their pieces at the square they wanted on the board. If they hit the wrong box, it was too bad, they were stuck with that move. If they hit a box where their piece shouldn't have been able to get to, they lost their turn.

As far as I could see, Yami was actually following a strategy, but Nisama was just throwing the pieces as hard as he could. He actually smiled when the bishop got stuck by its point in one of the squares, even though it was the wrong box and he lost his turn. He threw the rook he used to beat stepfather so hard it splintered, and he managed to knock the cross off the king's crown when Yami declared checkmate. His eyes were blazing and he was out of breath, but his face was relaxed for once. I'd never seen Nisama look relieved to lose a game before.

It was weird. Yami was actually taking care of my brother, and Nisama was actually letting him. The only thing I could think of was they both took that promise to Yugi way too seriously. Yami had a thing about promises, just like my brother. I mean look at it - he must have hated my brother by Duelist's Kingdom, but he rescued him from Pegasus anyway, just because he promised me - and it wasn't like he was crazy about me either. I had been a real brat to him, and I know it.

I guess Yami was okay, but he still scared me, a little. Some things you just don't forget - like being shoved into a monster capsule, or being forced to eat poison. Like seeing your brother in a coma for months. It all worked out okay in the end, and he did save us from Pegasus. But in my book, anyone who could beat both my brother and Pegasus, not to mention Malik and the rest, was someone to avoid. I mean a guy doesn't get called Darkness for nothing. My brother's named Turmoil though, so maybe that's why Yami didn't scare him like he did me. It's pretty funny when you think of it - I was living with Turmoil and Darkness.

Or maybe my brother was cool around Yami because he could relax around him. Yami had already seen him at his worst, and it didn't seem to bother him. It wasn't like it was a one way street either -- they had both been pretty horrible to each other. My brother had kidnapped Yugi's grandfather, ripped up his Blue Eyes White Dragon, and tried to kill Yugi and his friends. Yami had knocked my brother into a coma and tried to push him off a tower. Yet neither seemed to hold it against the other. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say that Nisama liked having Yami around.

MANGA NOTE (KAIBA): One of the main things that drives me crazy about the dubbed version is that all the complexity of Kaiba's character literally gets lost in the translation. In the manga, the duels are actually about something, and Kaiba reassesses his life and beliefs throughout both the tag team duel he has with Yami Yugi, and while watching Yugi's duel with Jounouchi.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I decided that it was important to show the two characters falling in love before becoming lovers (in a PG-13 way) - even if they don't realize it, and (in Kaiba's case) aren't ready to acknowledge it. But I realized for Kaiba that wasn't enough. He's wound so tight, that however much he likes being cuddled while he's asleep, I couldn't see him letting anyone touch him while awake. So I decided, if Yami's going to get him into bed by the next chapter, I needed a scene that showed him releasing some of that pent up rage first. I wanted to show Yami helping him to let go a little. At first I wrote this fluffy scene where Yami suggests they all play 'Truth Consequences, Promise or Repeat'. Mokuba and Yami won't let Kaiba pick 'Promise' on the grounds he makes too many of them anyway, and Mokuba makes Yami repeat 'I suck at games'. Anyway, it was pretty fluffy, and cute, and funny - and then I realized it was wildly out of character for the story. So I started over and put in the chess scene instead. It's darker and edgier, but I think it fits the story better. I kind of wish fanfiction had outtake videos though.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed Chapters 5 and 6. It was nice that people commented on the parts I had worked the hardest on. I'm trying to portray Kaiba as someone haunted not just by what was done to him, but by the damage he caused, even if inadvertently. I love the relationship between the two brothers it' one of my favorite parts of the manga. In the manga, even in Battle City, when they're on the same side, Yami gets so mad at Kaiba, yet there's a real underlying concern, so I tried to portray the reasons. I'm glad people liked the endings of both chapters. I don't usually do cliff hangers. For the most part my chapters seem to fall into natural endings. Sorry for the long Ans. Please review - is there too long a lead up to the characters finally becoming a couple?