Fixation

Chapter 24


When some switch in Jou’s brain finally decided that he could handle seeing the world at a normal pace again, the weight on top of him vanished. For a moment, he saw Seto and Honda standing over him, saw the uncharacteristically terrified expression on Seto’s face, and then saw them both bend down a few feet away from him. Jou rolled to his side and pushed himself up on to his forearms. Men and women in uniforms were rushing around him, towards the stage where Roland fell and towards the blood-soaked ground around Mokuba.

Honda was holding both of his hands over one of Mokuba’s wounds, trying to slow the blood flow from his chest. Seto sat back on his knees, staring at the bleeding young man with a confused expression on his face. Aside from confusion, Seto’s eyes were a complete blank. Jou knew that Seto had taken basic CPR and first aid, but he seemed too catatonic to move.

Jou waved away hands that were pulled at his clothing. He glanced up at a frantic paramedic and, through the din of background noise, made out the shouted questions.

“Let go of me, ya idiot, I’m fine! Help them!”

Jou pushed himself to his knees and crawled over to where two paramedics and Honda were trying to apply pressure to bullet wounds, press a portable oxygen mask over his face, and slide the smaller man onto a backboard at the same time. Jou nodded to the other paramedic, who took over covering one of the wounds while Jou reached underneath Mokuba and pulled the baseboard under him. At a nod from the paramedic on the other side, Jou gripped the handholds on the backboard and hoisted Mokuba off the ground. The crowd around them had become a wall of kahki trousers and camera flashes. The closest ambulance was about thirty feet away, but it would take a miracle to get through the wall of people blocking their way.

Jou carefully passed the handholds off to the stressed looking paramedic, then moved forward at a jog, set his arms wide, and began to shout. “Back! Everyone clear a path, now!” He didn’t wait for people to move but carefully shoved them out of the way. When a young man in a tweed jacket slipped under his arm and began taking rapid pictures of Mokuba’s injuries, Jou ripped the camera out of his hands, took his right wrist in an arm bar and twisted until her heard a satisfactory snap. He shoved the man into the side of the path he was clearing. Around him, the flashed and the shouting died. “I said move and I meant it!”

“But you’re a police officer, you can’t do that!” someone shouted.

“Would you like to be the second to test that theory?” Jou didn’t shout, but he might as well have. A void formed around him as the entire crowd inched backwards without actually trying to look afraid. Jou walked forward, the paramedics following behind like pallbearers carrying a casket.

At the ambulance door, the paramedics ushered him inside along with the now unconscious Mokuba. They insisted on checking him for injuries and handed him over to an emergency room nurse who proceeded to do the same, and then handed him over to a doctor who repeated the process for a third time.

It was a solid two hours before he was left alone long enough to out of his ER bed. He almost made it to the privacy curtain before it was shoved open and an aggrieved reporter, his arm in a plaster cast, who stormed in, pulling a uniformed police officer behind him.

“That’s him, officer, that’s the man who assaulted me!”

The young man in blue stared at Jou for a moment, recollection and amusement mixing in his eyes before his face became a professional blank. “Good afternoon, Jounouchi-san,” the officer bowed, “May I ask you some questions regarding this morning?”

“I assumed someone would,” Jou said simply. He sat back down on the bed again, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees so the drying blood on his shirt wouldn’t stick to his chest, again.

“You were at the press conference, Jounouchi-san?”

“Yes.”

The officer was quiet for a moment, waiting to see if Jou would fill in the details just to avoid the uncomfortable silence. Jou stared into his eyes quietly, waiting for him to continue.

“And in what capacity were you present?”

Jou shrugged. “I was offered the position as head of Kaiba Corp Security, by the previous director, so when Kaiba Seto needed me to perform maintenance on one of his pneumatic locks and the director was unavailable, he called me.”

“So you are supposed to be Roland’s replacement?”

Jou shrugged again. “I was offered the job. I haven’t decided whether or not I will accept.”

“And after the press conference, can you give me your account of what happened?”

“Kaiba Mokuba personally told me a very different version of events, and since the man I was supposed to be replacing looked as though he was expected to spend his life in prison as a pension, I wanted to confront Kaiba-san about the differences. I was facing away from the podium at the time, but I heard Kaiba-san tell Roland that it was alright, that I wasn’t going to hurt him. I think I felt Kaiba-san spin me around before I even heard the first shot fired. Then, when I recovered from the shock, I saw that the man who had just taken three bullets for me might end up dying on the scene, and on public television,” Jou glared at the reporter, “because the press was crowded so tightly around the scene that there was no path to the ambulance. Even when Detective Hiroto and I tried to push through with the stretcher, this gentleman pushed back into the path and began taking more pictures. I took him by the arm and moved him back into the crowd.”

“You broke my arm is what you did! You didn’t try to move me anywhere!”

“I did break your arm,” Jou agreed. Turning back to the officer, he continued, “I’m afraid that I may have behaved overzealously. The man who just saved my life was bleeding to death three feet behind me and this gentleman was impeding emergency personnel who were trying to save him. I might have lost my head.”

“Might have! You’re a psychopath! You can’t go around doing things like that to people!”

The officer looked back and forth between the two men. “Would you agree with Jounouchi-san’s account of events?” he asked the man.

“Absolutely! He admits that he broke my arm without provocation!”

“As I understand it,” the officer said carefully, “You intentionally impeded emergency personnel in the execution of their duties, so you could take a few more sensational photographs…”

“Which I don’t even have any more since he dropped my camera!”

“Is that true?” the officer looked at Jou.

Jou could read just enough in the officer’s face to feel sorry for the reporter. “Absolutely true.”

The officer nodded. He stared at you critically for a moment, then pulled out a small gold colored citation booklet and began to scribble out a ticket. When he finished the first, he flipped it over and began to write out another.

The reporter got a smug grin on his face. When the officer pulled off page of each ticket and handed them to the reporter, the grin vanished. “What is this?”

“Impeding an officer of the law, that being Detective Hiroto, in the execution of his duty, and impeding emergency rescue personnel in the execution of their duty. They’re separate statutes, so it counts as two violations. If you are concerned about the value of your camera, I suggest you pursue the matter in small claims court. However, I must suggest you talk to an attorney before doing so, since I’m quite sure that Kaiba Corporation will counter-sue for damages caused by your intentionally delaying treatment for their vice president. The extra time it took to get him to the emergency room could well end up costing him his life. If it does, I will recommend the maximum penalty for the criminal violations you’ve committed, and you’ll likely face a civil suit for wrongful death.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“I also advise that you leave now, before you lose your temper. Jounouchi-san is not the type of man you want to anger. He took on every member of the Domino Police department in a combative tactics exercise and defeated each of them. You are lucky that he just broke your arm.”

Jou opened his mouth to say that he did no such thing, but the way the other man grew pale made the lie worth it. After the reporter stormed out, the officer smirked. “Are you injured, Jounouchi-san?”

“I’m alright,” Jou insisted. “Is Kaiba Mokuba okay?”

“Still in surgery, from what I’ve heard. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Jou waited a moment after the officer left and then poked his head out of the curtain. He had to find out if Mokuba was alright, but he knew that if he hung out he was just going to end up feeling useless. Eventually the blood on his shirt would start to take on the putrid odor of rotting flesh, and Jou knew from experience that his stomach didn’t tolerate that particular smell, so he decided to walk back to his hotel room to change. He didn’t bother to check out, since he knew they’d stop him and just shove him into a hospital gown if he complained about his clothes. The usual crowds on the streets of Domino went to great lengths to get out of his way, and soon a police car pulled up beside him.

“Thought it’d be you,” Honda said from the driver’s seat. “Got a report of a blond man walking around the streets covered in blood… Figured you might need a ride.”

“I’m two blocks from my hotel, Honda, I think I’ll manage.”

“You’re scaring the civilians, Jou. Get in the car.” Jou knew it was pointless to argue. Plus, a police escort to his hotel would mean a clean set of clothing was just that much closer to being within his reach.

“You heard anything?” Jou asked, once they were moving.

“Not yet. Mokuba was pretty messed up. Seto hasn’t said a word to anybody… Had to be walked into a waiting room like a senile old man. Roland was pronounced dead on the scene.” Jou nodded. Just assimilate facts, Jou told himself. Reactions could come later, for now he would just process facts. Facts were unemotional and always safe.

Running on autopilot, he stripped off his bloody clothing and threw everything he was wearing in the trash, took a quick shower and pulled on a clean pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt. Honda drove him straight back to the hospital, where they found Seto, Yugi, and an army of Kaiba Corp employees filling every chair in the large surgical waiting room.

Jou tried to get Seto’s attention. He tried to talk to him, to get him a cup of coffee, even to get him to talk about duel monsters, but nothing broke through the blank expression on Seto’s face. Eventually, he settled for sitting down next to him and waiting for something to change.

Eventually, an exhausted looking Nakamura, dressed in a clean surgical gown, inched his way through the crowded waiting room and stared between Jou and Seto for a moment. “I would have expected him to have a meltdown already,” he said conversationally. “We have to get him somewhere isolated. I cannot allow him to breakdown here. There’s too much risk of him hurting himself or others. Help me move him, Katsuya-kun.”

“How is Mokuba?” Jou asked, helping the doctor pull Seto to his feet. Jou felt Seto shudder under his hold, as though he was in physical pain. There still wasn’t a hint of emotion on the other man’s face.

“No,” Nakamura hissed over Seto’s head. “Not a word here.”

Together, they walked Seto to an elevator, then up to the second floor, though a door labeled Mental Health. Nakamura steered them into an empty room that had a comfortable looking bed and little else. They placed Seto on the bed. He didn’t fight, move, or respond at all.

“What’s wrong with him, Doc? He’s acting like some kind of robot…”

Nakamura nodded slowly. “Nothing’s wrong with him. He just can’t process the emotions he’s feeling the way normal people can. He will either deal with what he’s feeling logically, or physically. If he deals logically, he should be back with us as though nothing happened at all, although I have no idea how long it will take. If he deals physically…” Nakamura scratched the back of his head nervously, “he’ll throw a fit. Kicking, hitting, biting, screaming, vomiting… Not the type of thing that every employee and reporter off the street need to see.”

“Can you help him?”

Nakamura shrugged. “I can try to move things along… But Mokuba is his focus, his only focus, besides you, so I don’t really know if I’ll be able to get through to him. It’s very odd for someone like Seto to focus on a person, you know… Usually it’s a hobby… Someone who’s a little weird about baseball cards and such…”

“He still owns a copy of every normal duel monsters card ever produced, including new releases,” Jou pointed out. “They’re organized in a custom made rotating display case in his den.”

“Good point, good point. Alright, here goes… Seto-kun,” Nakamura began, his voice calm. “Mokuba-kun is alive, Seto-kun, but in a very fragile state. If he survives the next forty-eight hours, his chance of recovery is approximately eighty-two percent. Would you like to see him, Seto-kun?”

Seto didn’t even look at the doctor. He didn’t move.

The doctor sighed and seemed to shrink. “Come on, Katusya, he’s not going to respond to anything for some time, I’m afraid.”

“How long will he stay this way?”

“However long it takes him to process what’s happening. There’s nothing you or I can do that will get through to him like this. There is a surveillance camera set up in the corner, so if he does have a meltdown, the orderlies will be able to keep him from hurting himself. Come along, now, there’s a lot to talk about.”

Jou stroked Seto’s unresponsive hand before following the doctor out the door. Nakamura took Jou down to the main floor and to a small cafeteria. Nakamura bought them both some vending machine coffee and led him to a table off on the corner. As he sat down, Nakamura rubbed his eyes, as though he was trying to rub away some of the day’s exhaustion.

“Hell of a day,” said Jou, trying to break the silence.

“Yes,” Nakamura agreed. “You know he always went out of his way to help you, don’t you? That he saved your life that day in the alley?”

Jou nodded.

“He carried around so much guilt for the things he allowed to happen… so much guilt… I’m afraid Mokuba had no qualms whatsoever about manipulating that guilt… Even at the cost of his life... Mokuba has trouble with empathy, I’m afraid. I tried social stories in therapy, to convince him that other people feel things, but he just took the opportunity to learn how to read other people in order to better manipulate them. All Mokuba sees when he looks at someone who sincerely feels guilt for what they’ve done is a weakness. It was not his fault, Katsuya. It was not Roland’s fault.”

Jou nodded again. “He’s the one the world is going to blame, though.”

Nakamura shrugged. “Some parts of the world, perhaps. The part of the world whose lives were touched by Kaiba Gozoboro will likely find it in their hearts to forgive him. They tell me you helped get Mokuba into the ambulance. Why?”

“Because I’m a cop,” Jou said simply. “The officers who shot Roland were the first to begin CPR. It’s part of the gig. Why did Mokuba do that? He set the whole damn thing up, I’m sure he did, so why did he stop it? I’d have been out of his way and his name would be clear? What the hell was he thinking?”

“The same thing he’s thought about every moment of every day,” Nakamura said simply. “Protecting his brother. Mokuba’s focus extends to three aspects of his life—martial arts, chess, and protecting his brother. Somehow, he came to see you as being necessary to his brother’s happiness. If he let anything happen to you, he would have failed to protect his brother.”

“But he started this whole thing! This entire fucking mess is his fault!”

“Yes. And he would likely say that he did all of it to protect his brother. At least he found other interests… Seto is far worse. Everything he has ever done as revolved around Mokuba. He built a multi-billion dollar gaming empire for Mokuba. With you gone and Mokuba grown, I’ve wondered many times when I would receive a late night call informing me that Seto had committed suicide. Now things are especially critical. If Mokuba dies, then I am quite certain that Seto will simply give up on life. The only other fixation he has ever had is you.”

Jou stared at the man, stunned by how willing he now seemed to discuss the most intimate details of his patients care without any concern for doctor patient confidentiality.

“And, unfortunately, once either of them has set their mind on something, getting them to focus on anything else is next to impossible. What would be an interest or concern for anyone else becomes an obsession, an absolute fixation for those boys. Do you know anyone else who would devote millions of dollars, years of time, and unimaginable mental prowess to a card game?”

Jou considered the question seriously. “Well, Pegasus. Yugi would if he had the money. There was a time when I probably would have, too, if I hadn’t had other financial obligations.”

“But you were capable of separating yourself from the game because you had other obligations. You were capable of getting on with your life.” Nakamura shook his head slowly. “Forgive me, Katsuya, I’m just frustrated. Traditional therapy doesn’t work when the child you’re attempting to treat knows the treatment methods well enough to play along and does so just so they can maintain their fixations without criticism. Do you know how long it took me to get them to wear something other than that trench coat and the padded vest? Two years, and we have to move to different trench coats and different vests for a year before they would even consider it! I can’t tell you how much I want to wash my hands of the whole thing!”

“But you’re the only one who knows what they’re dealing with,” Jou reminded him.

“I know what they’re supposed to be dealing with. Throw their symptoms into a pair of minds with a collective IQ of over four hundred and suddenly it is an entirely different challenge.”

“They don’t seem that hard to figure out,” said Jou cautiously.

“No, they’re really not,” Nakamura admitted. “They are just extremely frustrating. Finish your coffee, let’s go.”

“What?”

Nakamura rolled his eyes. “I’ve done everything I can for Mokuba, which is largely handing his care over to more talented surgeons. I can’t do anything for Seto until he decides to come out of his own head. I have fulfilled my professional obligations for the moment, and now I have to attend to a personal matter than you will help me with.”

“Hu?”

“Roland’s memorial,” he said simply. “I am disappointed that he let himself be manipulated so easily, but he was still a friend and colleague. And if you were small minded enough to hold a grudge over a little thing like him trying to kill you, you wouldn’t be Jounouchi Katsuya.”

“Wouldn’t Sakura know more about that sort of thing?”

“Yes. But someone has to keep Kaiba Corp afloat and she’s the only one who’s qualified.”

“What? Sakura is taking over Kaiba Corp?”

“For the duration of the emergency, yes. Don’t worry, she seems to be the only one in the world who doesn’t actually want the job.”

“Sounds like she’s perfect for it, then.”

“That was Kaiba-sama’s assessment, too. Are you ready?”

Jou drained the horribly bitter coffee and nodded.

Planning a memorial took a surprising long time. Having never actually been to one, Jou found the entire process overwhelming. He spent an entire day digging through Kaiba Corp’s personnel records trying to find any reference to Roland’s next of kin, but he couldn’t come up with anything.

Despite the lack of family, the cemetery where Roland’s ashes were being interred was packed. Jou had arrived early, because he wasn’t sure how well his presence would go over with Roland’s subordinates and co-workers, and even arriving two hours early, he found that hundreds of people had shown up. There wasn’t a single reporter among them, just line after line of somber mourners.

A Christian priest gave a short sermon, then opened up the podium to anyone who wanted to say a few words. Nakamura said an eloquent public goodbye, followed by several of Roland’s co-workers. Jou watched from the crowd, but he found himself staring at the people around him, his paranoia on high alert, his brain trying to draw his attention to something that just didn’t feel right.

Many of the mourners were women, and most of them were holding the same set of flowers. Each one held a white tulip and a pink carnation. A woman near Jou held the flowers clenched so tight that the stems were breaking. Jou was certain she looked familiar, but he couldn’t place a name to her face.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” said Jou, his voice dripping with as much charm and courtesy as he could manage, “May I ask why you all have the same flowers?”

The woman stared up at him, obviously suspicious. “You’re that writer…” she said slowly. “I suppose you’re here looking for more material for your book?”

Jou thought back over the past three weeks as quickly as he could, then smiled somberly. “Mr. Roland worked for the Kaiba family for a very long time. During the last few weeks of my research, we became friends. I suppose,” he said carefully, “That I seen some kind of nobility in the things he confessed to…”

The woman’s glare softened slightly. “Forgiveness and gratitude,” she whispered. “Another wife organized it. White tulips for forgiveness, pink carnations for gratitude.”

“Gratitude?”

She smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, gratitude. My husband worked for Kaiba Gozoboro, you know. And during those years, being married to an employee of Kaiba Gozoboro was nothing short of a nightmare. His people either became too afraid of him to do anything, or they became just like him to earn his approval. Those years convinced me that there really are monsters in this world.” The woman shut her eyes and tried to hold back the tears brimming around her eyes. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, careful not to smear her mascara. “Roland-san saved us all. He’ll go down in history as a monster himself, you know. But to those who were there… to those who had to live in that nightmare… Well, he proved to me that there are still fairy tale heroes in the world—he proved that monsters can be killed.” She looked down at the flowers in her hand and Jou noticed that only the white tulip was mangled. Her fingers were clenched so tight that her knuckles were white under the strain. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers and let the white flower fall to the ground. “He doesn’t need forgiveness,” she said bitterly. “But he has earned our gratitude.”

Jou stood rigid as row after row of mourners passed by, carefully placing the same two flowers. He heard the whisper spread back through the line and saw more and more people approached with a single pink carnation. As the crowds finally paid their respects and left the cemetery, Jou stared at the ground where the mourners had lined up. White tulips littered the ground, petals rumpled under hundreds of shoes. Nakamura sat, his suit jacket open, next to a mountain of pink carnations that Jou knew to be Roland’s memorial. Sakura stood a short way away, dressed in an immaculate suit, and giving a short interview to a journalist with an open notebook.

“My pager went off about twenty minutes ago,” Nakamura said quietly. “Mokuba is awake.”

“And Seto?”

Nakamura shrugged. “The hospital staff took him to see his brother as soon as he woke up. He hasn’t had a meltdown yet, so that’s a positive sign.”

“You heading to the hospital now?”

“Yes. I have to assess them both. You coming?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

Jou caught a ride to the hospital in Nakamura’s car, then followed him to a private recovery room just outside of the ICU. Jou waited outside, leaning against the wall while Nakamura disappeared inside the room. A few minutes later, the short doctor emerged and nodded to Jou, then hurried down the hall without a word.

Jou took a deep breath and cracked the door open. The slow beat of a heart rate monitor sounded against the steady puff of a mechanical ventilator. In the bed, hooked up to more electronics than Jou thought should be possible, Mokuba lay with his eyes open. The ventilator tube sticking into his throat made it impossible for him to talk, but his eyes shot to the door when he saw it open. In a rigid plastic chair beside the bed, Seto sat, still in the same suit he wore three days ago and still as robotic looking as ever.

Jou met Mokuba’s eyes for a moment, and for a moment, the younger man’s eyes seemed to smile.

“Seto?” Jou placed his hand on the other man’s shoulder, but immediately pulled it back again when he felt Seto cringe away from his touch.

“Leave, Jounouchi,” Seto hissed, his voice calm and controlled.

Jou noticed Mokuba’s eyes glancing frantically from Jou to Seto and back again. It seemed to be as close as the younger man could manage to shaking his head.

Jou stepped backwards out of the room, wishing he hadn’t bothered opening the door at all. He didn’t really know what he’d been expecting. If anyone knew Seto, Jou did. Jou was responsible, however indirectly, for nearly killing Mokuba. Even if Seto could forgive Jou for going to the press with Kaede’s claims, he would never turn away from Mokuba when his brother needed him. He had taken Seto’s confidence before the media stories broke to heart, he really thought that they might be able to work things out, but that just wasn’t the type of person Seto was.

Jou strolled out of the hospital, part of his mind dared to whisper that he had a couple of emergency room bills he probably should address, but he threatened to crush that part of his mind with sledgehammer’s worth of alcohol. At his hotel, he shoved his passport, wallet, laptop, and phone into his messenger bag, then left telling the housekeeping staff to dispose of everything else and bill his credit card accordingly. He hopped on the next plane to Tokyo and caught a late night flight back to LA.