Story: YGO, "Ghosts" [Gen]
May. 31st, 2010 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxysquidalsoI'm still working on request stories from that suggestions post, so if you asked for something, don't give up on me yet! I liked everything that everyone asked for. As usual, I'm slow, yet I also write more than is necessary, which makes me extra slow.
This story was written for one of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
armistice_day's prompts. However, it was spurred on by redvelvetaddict and me needing some serious cheering up last night. redvelvetaddict asked for some Kaibas, and I thought I could feed two birds with one seed, so to speak. (I just decided I don't like the version of the saying that involves killing birds.)
This story is a little bit inspired by what made us sad.
Title: Ghosts
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh DM
Word count: 3,240
Pairing(s): none
Rating: All audiences
Characters: Mokuba, Seto, Noa
Spoilers: For the part of the Battle City arc that involves Noa.
Warnings: Mentions of death? A little light sadness?
Summary: Mokuba thinks there's a ghost in his room. Seto thinks Mokuba's imagining things. Maybe they're both wrong.
Notes: Could be viewed as a slight AU, I guess? No wait, anything is possible in YGO, so it's fine.
Ghosts.
"There's no such thing as ghosts, Mokuba," said Seto with such an air of authority that almost anyone else would have come around to his point of view at once.
Mokuba, however, was used to his brother's authoritative tone, and he answered as if he hadn't really been paying attention, although really he had. "What? No such thing as goats? But I saw one at the petting zoo once."
Seto didn't always pick up on jokes right away. "I said ghosts."
Mokuba turned to him. It was all he could do not to roll his eyes, but he'd learned that rolling his eyes at Seto tended to put Seto in a bad mood, and then it was no good talking to him at all for several hours. "Seto, is that what you really think?" he asked patiently, hoping that something in his voice would serve to remind Seto of what they had been through over the course of the past several years.
Seto looked at him blankly. That look could have meant anything, but Mokuba knew his brother well enough to guess that he was at least listening now.
"I know what I saw," said Mokuba.
"What did you see?"
"I didn't exactly see, it, I guess, but I kind of felt it. And heard it. It was suddenly really cold in my room--"
"Anything could have caused that. Offhand, I can think of several scientific expla--"
"Don't interrupt me, please. I'm trying to answer your question."
"Ah. Go on."
Lately, Seto had begun to listen to him more often. Maybe that was because he was growing older. No matter what the reason, Mokuba considered it a change for the better. "After it got really cold, I tried to see if the window was open, or if there was a draft, but there didn't seem to be any reason for it. And then I heard someone breathing."
"Breathing?"
"Just normal breaths, like there was a person in the room with me. So I turned the light on, but no one was there. So I thought I must have imagined it."
"Which was almost certainly the case," said Seto.
"But then," Mokuba continued, pointedly, "someone said my name."
At this, Seto straightened. "What did they say?"
"My name is Mokuba, remember?"
Seto's lips narrowed into a line. "I meant, did they say anything else?"
"That's all. Just my name. I didn't hear anything else, and then it got warm again."
"Did you recognize the voice?"
"No, it was too quick. I was almost too surprised to hear it when I heard it--if that makes sense."
"The unexpected nature of the stimulus distracted you from thorough analysis."
"Yes, that. So, what do you think, Seto?"
Seto's narrowed mouth twitched. "Paranormal nonsense," he said, but Mokuba thought he detected a trace of doubt somewhere in there.
"It isn't nonsense. I know I heard it."
"You might have been dreaming."
"I was wide awake."
Seto rose to his feet. "You were imagining things, Mokuba." Did he mean that, or was he trying to convince himself? "Now, I have work to do. I'll see you at dinner in an hour." Without another word, he swept out of the room, the bottom of his suit coat flaring behind him.
Mokuba sighed. "Fine, Seto," he said, although Seto was no longer there to hear him. "I'll just go to my room until dinner, then." He stood, addressing the empty living room. "It was nice talking to you too, big brother."
The house was quiet, as always. The servants kept their voices down, and Isono was probably working with Seto or running an errand for him. Mokuba walked up the stairs alone. He wasn't angry at Seto for not listening to him. Of course Seto didn't want to believe that there was a ghost. If there had been a ghost, he would have had to worry about it. Mokuba knew that Seto worried about him, though Seto took great pains to disguise the fact.
Ghosts were real. He knew it, and Seto knew it.
Mokuba sat on his bed. If this had been a couple years ago, he might have pouted, but he was too old for that now. There was no sense pouting over his brother's behavior. Seto was like that sometimes: difficult to reach. He'd come to accept that fact. Instead of sulking, he picked up the book lying on his bedside table and started to read. It was a book Seto had given him, about the history of philosophy, and it didn't make for the easiest reading. He tried his best to follow it, and he was soon so caught up in figuring it out that he forgot about his conversation with Seto, forgot about ghosts.
Until the voice spoke again, saying his name: Mokuba.
He jumped, dropping the book. His room had grown colder again. It couldn't have been a malfunction of the heating system. He'd checked it himself, after the first time. "Hello? Who's there?" He climbed off the bed and searched in every last corner of his room: in the closet, under the bed, behind the curtains. There was no one there. "Who is it?" Mokuba asked. He was a little afraid, but more than that, he was curious.
More than that, he was startled to realize, he was--hopeful. "Can you please talk to me?"
No one answered him.
"Please," said Mokuba.
The room was growing warm again.
Mokuba clenched his hands into fists. "I know there's a ghost here, Seto," he murmured. "I'm going to prove it."
***
"What are you doing, Mokuba?" Seto asked, his eyes widening as he stepped into the room that had once been Mokuba's playroom for the first time in weeks.
"Research."
"Researching--what?"
Mokuba had converted the old playroom into a workroom, something a little like a lab. It still contained the same tables and toy box, the drawers stuffed full of games, only now, on top of every piece of furniture, various computers, sensors, detectors, and other appararti had been carefully arranged. "I believe you called it paranormal nonsense."
"You're researching ghosts?"
"I told you, I thought I heard a ghost. Now I'm testing my hypothesis."
Seto stood in the doorway, speechless for a few moments before he managed to reply, "I--see."
"I'll present my findings to you when I've completed my study."
"I don't think--," Seto began, then broke off. He paused before amending, "I look forward to reading your analysis."
"Thank you, Seto."
Seto remained in the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room, as if he were itemizing it. At last, he focused on Mokuba himself. "If you find anything that gives you cause for concern, I want you to inform me at once."
"I will."
"Good."
Mokuba smiled as his brother turned his back. He'd been right. Seto was worried about him. "I love you," he said to Seto's coat tails.
As Seto was already striding away down the corridor, his reply was difficult to hear, but Mokuba knew what it was.
Research was a great deal of work. In discovering this, Mokuba acquired a new and greater admiration for the work his brother did in the R&D department. Mokuba's own task was made more difficult by the fact that paranormal studies weren't exactly a science. A lot of what he'd read on the subject did seem like nothing more than nonsense. However, there must be a way to research ghosts accurately, since they were real. He had seen them. He didn't always like to remember them, but they had been real.
The gleam of cold eyes. A sharp smile.
Mokuba shuddered. Whoever or whatever the new ghost was, it wasn't a ghost like that. It wasn't a bad ghost, he was sure of it. It wanted to talk to him, not hurt him.
The only place he'd sensed the ghost was in his room. He had experienced the haunting--or maybe visitation was a better word for it--a few more times now, but each encounter had been the same, providing him with no answers: a sudden chill, the sound of his name, nothing more. Why his room? The only reason he could think of was that the ghost was connected to him somehow. That meant there was probably only one person it could be.
That night, he sat in the middle of his bed in the dark, unable to sleep. "Noa?" he asked quietly.
No one answered.
***
Months later, when none of the devices Mokuba had bought or attempted to design were of any help in his research, he decided to stop using them. He packed up them in boxes. He did it alone, with the door of his workroom--which was really a playroom--locked. When he was done, he called the servants in and had the boxes taken away. He didn't have enough data to show Seto to warrant a report. He spent a few hours trying to make something out of nothing, but at the end of that time, the report was no longer than when he'd started, and he sat in his chair watching the cursor blink in and out of existence, like it was a ghost, too, impossible to catch or measure.
He had to consider the possibility that Seto might have been correct in his initial estimation of the situation. The ghost could have been the product of his imagination. If that were true, did that mean there was something wrong with him? Was he ill? That did make him feel afraid, in ways that the idea of a ghost had not.
That night, in bed, Mokuba hugged his knees to his chest, as he used to do so often when he'd been little, sitting there alone in the dark in a bed that was too big for him, trying to stop himself from sneaking into Seto's room and slipping into bed beside his brother.
"I don't know why I thought you were here," he said to the dark. It made him feel even more like he might be crazy, talking to the possibly imaginary ghost, but that didn't stop him. "I guess I liked thinking that you were okay, somehow. That you were still here. I didn't think it was fair, what happened to you."
Mokuba shivered. He felt cold. Beside him, the mattress shifted, as if someone was sitting down on it. He heard breathing.
"I feel like you're here," Mokuba went on, his worries about being crazy fading as the temperature continued to drop, "though I could be imagining it. I've been thinking about you a lot lately. Sometimes I wish you were really back, alive again, living with us. Though I don't know how much Seto would like that. Maybe he would grow to like it. He's not as uncaring as he seems. I think he'd like you, if you could get to know each other somehow. I think you two are a bit alike. That's probably the main reason you wouldn't get along. You're both so smart, and so proud and stubborn--"
Mokuba felt wetness on his face and discovered that he was crying. "I'm sorry, Noa. I couldn't help you."
"Mokuba," the voice said, clearer this time than it had ever been before.
Mokuba's eyes widened as he peered into the dark. There was nothing there but shadows.
"I'm not in the room with you," said Noa. It was definitely his voice. Mokuba remembered that voice, though he hadn't heard it in years.
"What do you mean?" asked Mokuba, softly.
"I'm inside you. Part of me. Where I used to be, once." It sounded as if Noa was sitting right beside him, though there was only empty air.
"But--you left."
"I know. I'm mostly gone. But something was left behind." His voice was sad. It sounded so young. Mokuba knew that must be because he himself was older, and a child's voice sounded young to him now. He touched his fingertips to his forehead. Was it possible? He supposed it was. What had happened between the two of them had certainly been strange, even unique. There might have been a side effect no one could have foreseen. Something could have been left behind.
"Why are you talking to me now? You never did before."
"It's difficult." Noa's speech did sound labored. There were pauses between his words, longer ones between sentences. "At first I didn't know how, but I had to figure it out, how to access the part of your brain that would allow me to communicate with you."
That might have explained why he felt so cold. If Noa was affecting his mind in some way, it could have changed the way he perceived his environment. "But why now?"
"You were starting to forget about me. I couldn't let that happen."
The accusation stung. Noa was his brother. He wouldn't have forgotten him. "No, I wasn't!"
Noa didn't sound angry. Only resigned. "You were. Before the first time I talked to you. You're growing up. Thinking about other things."
He opened his mouth to protest again, but his protests died in his throat as he thought it over. Noa was right, wasn't he? He was growing up. Focusing on his studies, his work, his life, he had been thinking less and less about the past, about those old adventures. It was telling that he even thought of them as old adventures now. "I'm sorry."
"If you forget me, there won't be anything left of me."
"Does that mean you'll die?"
"I'm already dead." Such a sad voice. People forgot about Noa. They left him alone. As Mokuba had said, it wasn't fair. He was old enough to know that life wasn't fair and never would be, but he still thought it should be, that people should try to make it as fair as possible, if they could.
"No, you're not," Mokuba said.
Noa didn't say anything at first, and for a moment's breathless span, Mokuba thought he was gone again, or had been a figment after all. "What do you mean?"
"You're here, with me. Right? Talking to me. So you can't be dead. A truly dead person can't talk to someone who's alive." It was a little like what Yugi had had, wasn't it? Though different, because this wasn't magical. It was scientific. This was something Seto might have even begun to acknowledge, if he could have studied it, the side effect of a new and untested medical procedure.
Mokuba touched the side of his own face, as if, somehow, Noa could feel it, too. Maybe he could. Mokuba smiled. He wasn't crazy, and there was no ghost, only Noa. "I'll take care of you," he said. "I won't forget you. I'll always love you."
There was no real answer, just the sound of a voice, fading away, saying his name one more time. Mokuba. It didn't sound sad anymore.
Even if he had imagined it, the voice was right. He shouldn't forget about important things and people he had once known. But he didn't think he had imagined it. It had been real.
***
"Hey, Seto, can we go somewhere fun today?" Mokuba plopped himself down on the couch beside his brother. Seto had been peering intently at his laptop, on the screen of which some kind of spreadsheet was open, but when Mokuba's landing jostled him, he looked up, closed the laptop, and set it aside, in a fluid series of movements.
"Somewhere. Fun." It took a minute for those words to make their way past the dense barrier of Seto's logic. "You mean, like Kaiba Land?"
"Yes, it's true, Kaiba Land is fun," said Mokuba carefully. He didn't want to hurt Seto's feelings. "But I meant somewhere else, a little less crowded and hectic. Like the beach! Or a park."
"The beach," said Seto thoughtfully, frowning, and Mokuba decided that that meant he preferred the beach to the park, if only a little.
"All right," said Mokuba brightly. "We'll go to the beach."
Seto continued to frown. All at once, Mokuba was overcome by a rush of warm affection for his serious, silly, brother. He leaned in and hugged him as hard as he could.
"Hm," Seto grunted, but he sounded pleased.
"By the way," said Mokuba, when he finally released his brother from his embrace and drew back, "I've concluded my research."
"Research."
"On the ghost."
"Oh, yes, your imaginary friend."
Mokuba was sure to wait a minute and take a deep breath before replying. "I've concluded that there isn't any ghost after all."
"That's a relief." Seto's dry tone was accompanied by a studiedly blank look, as usual.
"Yes, it's just an ordinary person."
Seto thought this over. "You mean you."
"I am an ordinary person," agreed Mokuba. He wasn't exactly lying about it. He wouldn't have lied at all, except Seto would have worried, and maybe he would have decided to do a study on him or attempt to extract Noa, or something ridiculous like that.
"You're not ordinary," said Seto, without hesitation. "You're a Kaiba."
Mokuba laughed. Maybe Seto was right. He wouldn't have minded being ordinary, but if he'd been given a choice, he would rather have been a Kaiba than anything else. He rested his head on Seto's shoulder. "That's right, I am. We all are."
If Seto thought there was something odd about Mokuba's phrasing, he didn't say.
***
Mokuba ran along the beach with Seto. That is, he ran, and every so often dashed back to tug on Seto's arm, hurrying him along. Even on the beach, Seto had to remain fully dressed, in a collared shirt and pants, but at least his sleeves were short, his pants were rolled up past his ankles, and he'd taken off his shoes. It had taken Mokuba a while to get Seto to relax this much. Getting Seto to relax was an ongoing project, and one he wasn't about to give up on, since he'd already put so much work into it.
Seto had insisted that they go to one of the private beaches they owned, and Mokuba hadn't been in the mood for an argument, so he'd agreed. Though he liked to be around other people much more than his brother did, it was nice to have all that unbroken, unblemished sand stretching out before them, just for their enjoyment. The wind was gentle, and the sea was calm. The foam crests of the waves rising farther out were thin. They looked as soft as cream.
Mokuba ran ahead again, racing as fast as he could, right alongside the water, dancing on the edge of the incoming tide, so that every other footstep was a splash. "Seto, you're so slow!" he cried. "You--" Still running, he glanced over his shoulder to look back at his brother, then faltered and slowed to a stop.
Seto was there, striding towards him at a steady, unbroken pace. But much farther back, there was someone else, standing on the sand, raising a hand to wave at him. A slight figure dressed in white, the same color as the waves' foam. He was only there for a moment, like a flicker of memory, and then he was gone.
Mokuba waved back.
This story was written for one of
armistice_day's prompts. However, it was spurred on by redvelvetaddict and me needing some serious cheering up last night. redvelvetaddict asked for some Kaibas, and I thought I could feed two birds with one seed, so to speak. (I just decided I don't like the version of the saying that involves killing birds.) This story is a little bit inspired by what made us sad.
Title: Ghosts
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh DM
Word count: 3,240
Pairing(s): none
Rating: All audiences
Characters: Mokuba, Seto, Noa
Spoilers: For the part of the Battle City arc that involves Noa.
Warnings: Mentions of death? A little light sadness?
Summary: Mokuba thinks there's a ghost in his room. Seto thinks Mokuba's imagining things. Maybe they're both wrong.
Notes: Could be viewed as a slight AU, I guess? No wait, anything is possible in YGO, so it's fine.
Ghosts.
"There's no such thing as ghosts, Mokuba," said Seto with such an air of authority that almost anyone else would have come around to his point of view at once.
Mokuba, however, was used to his brother's authoritative tone, and he answered as if he hadn't really been paying attention, although really he had. "What? No such thing as goats? But I saw one at the petting zoo once."
Seto didn't always pick up on jokes right away. "I said ghosts."
Mokuba turned to him. It was all he could do not to roll his eyes, but he'd learned that rolling his eyes at Seto tended to put Seto in a bad mood, and then it was no good talking to him at all for several hours. "Seto, is that what you really think?" he asked patiently, hoping that something in his voice would serve to remind Seto of what they had been through over the course of the past several years.
Seto looked at him blankly. That look could have meant anything, but Mokuba knew his brother well enough to guess that he was at least listening now.
"I know what I saw," said Mokuba.
"What did you see?"
"I didn't exactly see, it, I guess, but I kind of felt it. And heard it. It was suddenly really cold in my room--"
"Anything could have caused that. Offhand, I can think of several scientific expla--"
"Don't interrupt me, please. I'm trying to answer your question."
"Ah. Go on."
Lately, Seto had begun to listen to him more often. Maybe that was because he was growing older. No matter what the reason, Mokuba considered it a change for the better. "After it got really cold, I tried to see if the window was open, or if there was a draft, but there didn't seem to be any reason for it. And then I heard someone breathing."
"Breathing?"
"Just normal breaths, like there was a person in the room with me. So I turned the light on, but no one was there. So I thought I must have imagined it."
"Which was almost certainly the case," said Seto.
"But then," Mokuba continued, pointedly, "someone said my name."
At this, Seto straightened. "What did they say?"
"My name is Mokuba, remember?"
Seto's lips narrowed into a line. "I meant, did they say anything else?"
"That's all. Just my name. I didn't hear anything else, and then it got warm again."
"Did you recognize the voice?"
"No, it was too quick. I was almost too surprised to hear it when I heard it--if that makes sense."
"The unexpected nature of the stimulus distracted you from thorough analysis."
"Yes, that. So, what do you think, Seto?"
Seto's narrowed mouth twitched. "Paranormal nonsense," he said, but Mokuba thought he detected a trace of doubt somewhere in there.
"It isn't nonsense. I know I heard it."
"You might have been dreaming."
"I was wide awake."
Seto rose to his feet. "You were imagining things, Mokuba." Did he mean that, or was he trying to convince himself? "Now, I have work to do. I'll see you at dinner in an hour." Without another word, he swept out of the room, the bottom of his suit coat flaring behind him.
Mokuba sighed. "Fine, Seto," he said, although Seto was no longer there to hear him. "I'll just go to my room until dinner, then." He stood, addressing the empty living room. "It was nice talking to you too, big brother."
The house was quiet, as always. The servants kept their voices down, and Isono was probably working with Seto or running an errand for him. Mokuba walked up the stairs alone. He wasn't angry at Seto for not listening to him. Of course Seto didn't want to believe that there was a ghost. If there had been a ghost, he would have had to worry about it. Mokuba knew that Seto worried about him, though Seto took great pains to disguise the fact.
Ghosts were real. He knew it, and Seto knew it.
Mokuba sat on his bed. If this had been a couple years ago, he might have pouted, but he was too old for that now. There was no sense pouting over his brother's behavior. Seto was like that sometimes: difficult to reach. He'd come to accept that fact. Instead of sulking, he picked up the book lying on his bedside table and started to read. It was a book Seto had given him, about the history of philosophy, and it didn't make for the easiest reading. He tried his best to follow it, and he was soon so caught up in figuring it out that he forgot about his conversation with Seto, forgot about ghosts.
Until the voice spoke again, saying his name: Mokuba.
He jumped, dropping the book. His room had grown colder again. It couldn't have been a malfunction of the heating system. He'd checked it himself, after the first time. "Hello? Who's there?" He climbed off the bed and searched in every last corner of his room: in the closet, under the bed, behind the curtains. There was no one there. "Who is it?" Mokuba asked. He was a little afraid, but more than that, he was curious.
More than that, he was startled to realize, he was--hopeful. "Can you please talk to me?"
No one answered him.
"Please," said Mokuba.
The room was growing warm again.
Mokuba clenched his hands into fists. "I know there's a ghost here, Seto," he murmured. "I'm going to prove it."
"What are you doing, Mokuba?" Seto asked, his eyes widening as he stepped into the room that had once been Mokuba's playroom for the first time in weeks.
"Research."
"Researching--what?"
Mokuba had converted the old playroom into a workroom, something a little like a lab. It still contained the same tables and toy box, the drawers stuffed full of games, only now, on top of every piece of furniture, various computers, sensors, detectors, and other appararti had been carefully arranged. "I believe you called it paranormal nonsense."
"You're researching ghosts?"
"I told you, I thought I heard a ghost. Now I'm testing my hypothesis."
Seto stood in the doorway, speechless for a few moments before he managed to reply, "I--see."
"I'll present my findings to you when I've completed my study."
"I don't think--," Seto began, then broke off. He paused before amending, "I look forward to reading your analysis."
"Thank you, Seto."
Seto remained in the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room, as if he were itemizing it. At last, he focused on Mokuba himself. "If you find anything that gives you cause for concern, I want you to inform me at once."
"I will."
"Good."
Mokuba smiled as his brother turned his back. He'd been right. Seto was worried about him. "I love you," he said to Seto's coat tails.
As Seto was already striding away down the corridor, his reply was difficult to hear, but Mokuba knew what it was.
Research was a great deal of work. In discovering this, Mokuba acquired a new and greater admiration for the work his brother did in the R&D department. Mokuba's own task was made more difficult by the fact that paranormal studies weren't exactly a science. A lot of what he'd read on the subject did seem like nothing more than nonsense. However, there must be a way to research ghosts accurately, since they were real. He had seen them. He didn't always like to remember them, but they had been real.
The gleam of cold eyes. A sharp smile.
Mokuba shuddered. Whoever or whatever the new ghost was, it wasn't a ghost like that. It wasn't a bad ghost, he was sure of it. It wanted to talk to him, not hurt him.
The only place he'd sensed the ghost was in his room. He had experienced the haunting--or maybe visitation was a better word for it--a few more times now, but each encounter had been the same, providing him with no answers: a sudden chill, the sound of his name, nothing more. Why his room? The only reason he could think of was that the ghost was connected to him somehow. That meant there was probably only one person it could be.
That night, he sat in the middle of his bed in the dark, unable to sleep. "Noa?" he asked quietly.
No one answered.
Months later, when none of the devices Mokuba had bought or attempted to design were of any help in his research, he decided to stop using them. He packed up them in boxes. He did it alone, with the door of his workroom--which was really a playroom--locked. When he was done, he called the servants in and had the boxes taken away. He didn't have enough data to show Seto to warrant a report. He spent a few hours trying to make something out of nothing, but at the end of that time, the report was no longer than when he'd started, and he sat in his chair watching the cursor blink in and out of existence, like it was a ghost, too, impossible to catch or measure.
He had to consider the possibility that Seto might have been correct in his initial estimation of the situation. The ghost could have been the product of his imagination. If that were true, did that mean there was something wrong with him? Was he ill? That did make him feel afraid, in ways that the idea of a ghost had not.
That night, in bed, Mokuba hugged his knees to his chest, as he used to do so often when he'd been little, sitting there alone in the dark in a bed that was too big for him, trying to stop himself from sneaking into Seto's room and slipping into bed beside his brother.
"I don't know why I thought you were here," he said to the dark. It made him feel even more like he might be crazy, talking to the possibly imaginary ghost, but that didn't stop him. "I guess I liked thinking that you were okay, somehow. That you were still here. I didn't think it was fair, what happened to you."
Mokuba shivered. He felt cold. Beside him, the mattress shifted, as if someone was sitting down on it. He heard breathing.
"I feel like you're here," Mokuba went on, his worries about being crazy fading as the temperature continued to drop, "though I could be imagining it. I've been thinking about you a lot lately. Sometimes I wish you were really back, alive again, living with us. Though I don't know how much Seto would like that. Maybe he would grow to like it. He's not as uncaring as he seems. I think he'd like you, if you could get to know each other somehow. I think you two are a bit alike. That's probably the main reason you wouldn't get along. You're both so smart, and so proud and stubborn--"
Mokuba felt wetness on his face and discovered that he was crying. "I'm sorry, Noa. I couldn't help you."
"Mokuba," the voice said, clearer this time than it had ever been before.
Mokuba's eyes widened as he peered into the dark. There was nothing there but shadows.
"I'm not in the room with you," said Noa. It was definitely his voice. Mokuba remembered that voice, though he hadn't heard it in years.
"What do you mean?" asked Mokuba, softly.
"I'm inside you. Part of me. Where I used to be, once." It sounded as if Noa was sitting right beside him, though there was only empty air.
"But--you left."
"I know. I'm mostly gone. But something was left behind." His voice was sad. It sounded so young. Mokuba knew that must be because he himself was older, and a child's voice sounded young to him now. He touched his fingertips to his forehead. Was it possible? He supposed it was. What had happened between the two of them had certainly been strange, even unique. There might have been a side effect no one could have foreseen. Something could have been left behind.
"Why are you talking to me now? You never did before."
"It's difficult." Noa's speech did sound labored. There were pauses between his words, longer ones between sentences. "At first I didn't know how, but I had to figure it out, how to access the part of your brain that would allow me to communicate with you."
That might have explained why he felt so cold. If Noa was affecting his mind in some way, it could have changed the way he perceived his environment. "But why now?"
"You were starting to forget about me. I couldn't let that happen."
The accusation stung. Noa was his brother. He wouldn't have forgotten him. "No, I wasn't!"
Noa didn't sound angry. Only resigned. "You were. Before the first time I talked to you. You're growing up. Thinking about other things."
He opened his mouth to protest again, but his protests died in his throat as he thought it over. Noa was right, wasn't he? He was growing up. Focusing on his studies, his work, his life, he had been thinking less and less about the past, about those old adventures. It was telling that he even thought of them as old adventures now. "I'm sorry."
"If you forget me, there won't be anything left of me."
"Does that mean you'll die?"
"I'm already dead." Such a sad voice. People forgot about Noa. They left him alone. As Mokuba had said, it wasn't fair. He was old enough to know that life wasn't fair and never would be, but he still thought it should be, that people should try to make it as fair as possible, if they could.
"No, you're not," Mokuba said.
Noa didn't say anything at first, and for a moment's breathless span, Mokuba thought he was gone again, or had been a figment after all. "What do you mean?"
"You're here, with me. Right? Talking to me. So you can't be dead. A truly dead person can't talk to someone who's alive." It was a little like what Yugi had had, wasn't it? Though different, because this wasn't magical. It was scientific. This was something Seto might have even begun to acknowledge, if he could have studied it, the side effect of a new and untested medical procedure.
Mokuba touched the side of his own face, as if, somehow, Noa could feel it, too. Maybe he could. Mokuba smiled. He wasn't crazy, and there was no ghost, only Noa. "I'll take care of you," he said. "I won't forget you. I'll always love you."
There was no real answer, just the sound of a voice, fading away, saying his name one more time. Mokuba. It didn't sound sad anymore.
Even if he had imagined it, the voice was right. He shouldn't forget about important things and people he had once known. But he didn't think he had imagined it. It had been real.
"Hey, Seto, can we go somewhere fun today?" Mokuba plopped himself down on the couch beside his brother. Seto had been peering intently at his laptop, on the screen of which some kind of spreadsheet was open, but when Mokuba's landing jostled him, he looked up, closed the laptop, and set it aside, in a fluid series of movements.
"Somewhere. Fun." It took a minute for those words to make their way past the dense barrier of Seto's logic. "You mean, like Kaiba Land?"
"Yes, it's true, Kaiba Land is fun," said Mokuba carefully. He didn't want to hurt Seto's feelings. "But I meant somewhere else, a little less crowded and hectic. Like the beach! Or a park."
"The beach," said Seto thoughtfully, frowning, and Mokuba decided that that meant he preferred the beach to the park, if only a little.
"All right," said Mokuba brightly. "We'll go to the beach."
Seto continued to frown. All at once, Mokuba was overcome by a rush of warm affection for his serious, silly, brother. He leaned in and hugged him as hard as he could.
"Hm," Seto grunted, but he sounded pleased.
"By the way," said Mokuba, when he finally released his brother from his embrace and drew back, "I've concluded my research."
"Research."
"On the ghost."
"Oh, yes, your imaginary friend."
Mokuba was sure to wait a minute and take a deep breath before replying. "I've concluded that there isn't any ghost after all."
"That's a relief." Seto's dry tone was accompanied by a studiedly blank look, as usual.
"Yes, it's just an ordinary person."
Seto thought this over. "You mean you."
"I am an ordinary person," agreed Mokuba. He wasn't exactly lying about it. He wouldn't have lied at all, except Seto would have worried, and maybe he would have decided to do a study on him or attempt to extract Noa, or something ridiculous like that.
"You're not ordinary," said Seto, without hesitation. "You're a Kaiba."
Mokuba laughed. Maybe Seto was right. He wouldn't have minded being ordinary, but if he'd been given a choice, he would rather have been a Kaiba than anything else. He rested his head on Seto's shoulder. "That's right, I am. We all are."
If Seto thought there was something odd about Mokuba's phrasing, he didn't say.
Mokuba ran along the beach with Seto. That is, he ran, and every so often dashed back to tug on Seto's arm, hurrying him along. Even on the beach, Seto had to remain fully dressed, in a collared shirt and pants, but at least his sleeves were short, his pants were rolled up past his ankles, and he'd taken off his shoes. It had taken Mokuba a while to get Seto to relax this much. Getting Seto to relax was an ongoing project, and one he wasn't about to give up on, since he'd already put so much work into it.
Seto had insisted that they go to one of the private beaches they owned, and Mokuba hadn't been in the mood for an argument, so he'd agreed. Though he liked to be around other people much more than his brother did, it was nice to have all that unbroken, unblemished sand stretching out before them, just for their enjoyment. The wind was gentle, and the sea was calm. The foam crests of the waves rising farther out were thin. They looked as soft as cream.
Mokuba ran ahead again, racing as fast as he could, right alongside the water, dancing on the edge of the incoming tide, so that every other footstep was a splash. "Seto, you're so slow!" he cried. "You--" Still running, he glanced over his shoulder to look back at his brother, then faltered and slowed to a stop.
Seto was there, striding towards him at a steady, unbroken pace. But much farther back, there was someone else, standing on the sand, raising a hand to wave at him. A slight figure dressed in white, the same color as the waves' foam. He was only there for a moment, like a flicker of memory, and then he was gone.
Mokuba waved back.
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Date: 2010-05-31 11:59 pm (UTC)(sorry this is such a dumb comment)
I LOVE SCIENCE, AND MOKUBAS, AND BROTHERS <33333
It did bring me cheer, so thank youuuu <3
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Date: 2010-06-01 12:56 am (UTC)I too love those things, so we're alike in that. Also, your comment is not dumb!
Thank you. ♥
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Date: 2010-06-01 11:15 am (UTC)This is so sad, yet it makes me happy. :)
It is nice to think of a way that Noa can stay with Mokuba and belong to them somehow.
The supernatural touch in the beginning is just perfect, because it kept me wondering how you were going to do this - the idea with a part of Noa staying inside Mokuba works so well in YGO verse!
I appreciate your skills in applying YGO logic. :3
And now I'm going to pretend that Noa will master this way of communication some day and there will be much happy talk between him and Mokuba. Because his faint brief appearances are really, really sad.
I love thinking about Mokuba and his relationship to Seto when he starts growing up, and I enjoyed this to bits and pieces! <3
Mokuba is quite open to interpretation, so reading about him can be very interesting - and I liked your Mokuba very much. :]
The dialogue between him and his serious, silly big brother was wonderful and it made me smile so much :)
I especially love the fact how Mokuba is now trying to educate Seto in a way, how he knows when to take him seriously and when not, and how he makes Seto relax and give in. <3
Communicating with Seto is a science - a highly entertaining one, though. :D
I do hope to see more Mokuba centred stories from you some day!
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Date: 2010-06-02 05:06 am (UTC)I'm very glad you liked it. Yes, I really like Noa, so the idea of him being able to stay with his brothers appeals to me so much. I'm also glad you approve of my YGO logic in dealing with the issue. Haha, I tried!
I do like the idea of Noa and Mokuba working together to try and communicate more regularly (without Seto knowing about it, of course). If I do decide to play around with this idea again, I'd probably do something like that. Because I would love something a little happier for them as well.
I'm so glad you liked my take on Mokuba, too. I really like him a lot (obviously), and so the idea of him growing up and his changing relationship with his brother as he does is something I enjoy thinking about. Also, writing Seto being serious and ridiculous is always the best. I think it would be hard not to tease him a little. Haha, but Mokuba is probably the most likely to fully master the science of communicating with him successfully, since he has the most practice. I also really like the idea of Mokuba taking care of Seto in some ways as he grows older.
Thanks again, so much! ♥
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Date: 2010-06-02 09:19 am (UTC)The idea is now stuck in my head canon because it works perfectly in solving the problem to somehow bring Noa back without contradicting the series. Applying magical science is a very good solution! :]
Aww, now I see Mokuba staying up at night, sitting on his bed and talking to Noa all night long. <3 Maybe they will manage to play games together, which would probably make them very happy indeed.
It is strange that Mokuba was once a character I didn't waste much thought on, until I discovered it could be pretty interesting how his relationship to Seto works and what would happen if he grew up.
Of course, knowing you and liking your art, it was impossible not to develop a soft spot for the Kaiba brothers! ;)
But I really do like Mokuba a lot now, and what I love most is him taking care of Seto in one way or another, as you put it. <3
It came across so well in the last scene at the beach - one can only imagine how much time and patience Mokuba needed to get Seto to take off his shoes and walk along the beach. XD
I highly support his project! :3 Also, it is just for Seto's own good to not take him too seriously. Mokuba is just teasing him fondly. ;)
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Date: 2010-06-01 05:23 pm (UTC)Dealing with Noa post-canon is sadly very difficult to do, so it makes me happy to see that you've used an idea that really works. :D I don't think this needs to be AU at all, it fits in quite nicely.
As always, Noa needs a hug and Mokuba needs a medal for attempting to prove the existence of ghosts to his brother. I like that he chose to research and write a report, that seems like a good method to get Seto to listen to you.
Really very nice. ;0;
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Date: 2010-06-02 04:54 am (UTC)Yes, it's true, post-canon Noa is tricky. I'm glad you like my take on it and think it fits in with the series. Where Yugi seems to have to deal with regular magic, it seems like the Kaibas always are confronted with something more like "magical science", in that it's supposed to be scientific but really isn't at all. :D
I agree, Noa definitely needs hugs. And yes, writing up a report and showing your research is the only sure way to get Seto to admit that you might have a point. Mokuba knows his brother best!
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Date: 2010-06-03 02:44 pm (UTC)This was a good read, looking forward to reading your Phoenix/Diego story too.