Room 401

Pick
up the glass of water. Watch it shake.

“Mercury poisoning…” he
mutters. “Doesn’t it suck?” He looks over at the other occupant of the room.
“Doesn’t that suck, Kaiba? The fucking school blows up – and I get mercury
poisoning. Goes to show you, you can’t even be safe standing in the back of
the classroom, can you? Just fucking wonderful.” He sets down the glass of
water again.

“You know, Kaiba, you’re
good company. I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate – never bother me,
let me eat all your food, keep visitors away. Who’d want to visit us anyway,
right? Just a couple of jerks – well, you’re a jerk. I’m just misunderstood.”
He takes a bite of his special food – have to be careful what I eat now, can’t
have any fish, those things are all just chock full of mercury, and I can’t
have any more of that, can I? “A week and a half and no visitors. Probably a
record, huh? Guess the Yugi-tachi are too busy healing themselves to pay us a
visit, huh? Or maybe they all just gave up on us finally. Decided we’re both
telling the truth when we say we don’t want to be their friends.”

Poke the Jell-O… watch it
wriggle. Watch the hand holding the fork tremble. It wriggles in time with the
Generic Gelatin Desert Number One… isn’t that interesting…

“And I guess little
otou-chan can’t come visit anymore, can he? Too bad you couldn’t get out for
his funeral – you should have asked. Maybe they would have wheeled you out, if
you asked. Me, I’ve only got yadonushi – wonder why he hasn’t visited yet? He’s
such a worrywart – he gets nervous whenever anything’s even just a little bit
off. He has a good reason, though.”

An almost whispered voice
comes from under the blankets of the other bed, rusty and gravelly from disuse.
“Dead…”

What? Hikari- Oh, yeah…

“Shut up, Kaiba.”
Clenching the hand on the fork stops the trembling… who knew? “Did I ask you?
Just go back to envisioning Moki’s cherubic little face and thinking how you’ll
never see it again.”

Kaiba falls silent. He
does that a lot. Wonder why?

The white-haired boy idly dumps the Jell-O over on
his plate and walks over to the other bed, and sits, shoving the brunet’s legs
out of the way. There’s a hiss of pain that he ignores. “See yet?” He yanks the
blanket down and sees still-unfocused cerulean eyes. “Guess not.” He grabs the
tray of food and sits back with it. Ooh, fish fillet. Can’t eat that.

“Yum, fish. So’s this whole side burned?” He pokes
the other boy’s lower leg. There’s another hiss of pain. “Would that be a
‘yes’?”

“Won’t that kill you?” That’s approximately the
single longest phrase he’s uttered in a week.

“What, poking you?” He does it again. “It’s fun.”

“Fish. Mercury.”

Huh? “Oh, yeah. Whatever.” Poke. No reaction.

Poke. No reaction.

“What happened to ‘hisssss’? Doesn’t it hurt
anymore?”

Poke. No reaction.

“You just don’t care, is that it?” He pulls the
blankets completely off of him. The brunet makes a noise of surprise and tries
to yank them back up, but that’s not allowed.

He pokes his roommate in the side – the burned one,
of course, drawing a quiet hiss of pain again. “You’re getting really skinny.”

Kaiba pulls the covers back, hiding himself again.
“Leave me alone…” The voice is barely audible.

Shrug. “Whatever.” He drops the empty tray and goes
back to his own bed, and turns on the TV. “You don’t care what we watch, do
you, Kaiba-boy?” Click. Channel changes. Click. Channel changes. Click.

“Hey, look, there’s Mokuba!”

The other looks quickly, too quickly, and the thin
skin of his neck actually tears a little.

“Oh, wait, I guess I’m just screwin’ with you. Never
mind.”

Brunet head hides back under the blanket again, and
he grins. Click. Channel changes. Click. Channel changes. Boredom…. I might as
well sleep if it’s going to be this boring. Even Kaiba’s no fun anymore. Who
would ever have thought that Kaiba would ever stop being fun?

“Why are you so boring, moneybags?”

No reaction.

“Damn it, I’m talking to you. Don’t you fucking
ignore me like yadonushi’s doing.”

Still no response.

“You know, it’s a good thing you’re already in the
hospital, because I’m gonna beat the crap outta you…”

The door opens before he can make good on his
threat; the doctor comes in. He glares at Kaiba but sits back in bed, clicking
the channels around on the TV as the doctor tends to the other boy.

“I don’t really understand it – you’ve been eating
all your food, but you keep losing weight. This isn’t healthy. Are you really
eating it, Seto, or just throwing it away or something?”

He gets no response either.

“Seto, you can’t keep doing this. You have to talk
to somebody.”

“Don’t even bother, doc. Kaiba’s being no fun like
that. He’s not talking today.” Click.

Doctor glances at him, then back to Kaiba. Stupid
Kaiba. What makes him so special?

“We need to start therapy with that hand soon if
you’re ever going to regain any movement in it. It looks like we can start that
next week; if the healing continues as it is now. Do you have any feeling in
it?” He sees the blanket move slightly; Kaiba nodded. “What is it? sensation,
or…” Different movement – he shook his head.

“He means pain,” he supplies helpfully, looking back
at the TV. “He means it hurts like hell. Isn’t that right, Kaiba?”

No reaction. That’s okay; I’m right. Stupid Kaiba hurts
and he won’t tell anyone. Idiot. They could make it better if he told. Or at
least I’d get to laugh at him.

“Well, that’s to be expected, Seto. The nerves were
badly damaged, and as I’m sure you know, nerve tissue doesn’t regenerate. The
muscles and tendons are healing slowly. If it continues to hurt, be sure you
tell someone. We might have to do something drastic, if the pain is too bad…”

Again, no reaction. Doesn’t he care about the
thought of maybe losing his hand? What else could they mean by ‘drastic’? It’d
be funny to see Kaiba without a hand. See him duel then – yeah, right. Wearing
a DuelDisk on a stump.

“And how about you, Bakura? How are you doing?”

“Meh.”

God, I hate that smug smile… “That’s not much of an
answer, you know.”

“Neither was Kaiba’s.”

“But you translated for him well. Care to translate
for yourself?”

“Meh. M-E-H: meh.”

Still, that smile. Kaiba’d have the right word for
it. Patro-something? Patronating? “And what do you mean by ‘meh’?”

“I mean I don’t have much of an answer for you, oh
great doctoral one, and Meh means Meh. I don’t feel like I’m doing any
particular way. Meh.”

He gets a pat on the back. “There, that wasn’t so
hard, was it?” And another smile – ooh goody. “Have you talked to anyone about
Ryou yet?”

Talk about…? Oh. Right. Dead. Why do I keep
forgetting that? I’m slipping. “No. And I won’t. Get the hell out of my face.”

“You haven’t even talked to Seto? I’m sure you two
could help each other.”

“Go away.” Now. Go away. Stop talking about Ryou. So
what – that fucking brat’s dead. Why would I want to talk about him?

Doctor stand up. “All right, I’ll go. I think it’d
be good if you would talk to each other, though. You both suffered a loss of
someone close to you, and you can help each other through it.”

Silence from both of them this time, until long
after he’s gone. Then he slides form the bed and sits on Kaiba’s. “Gonna lose
your hand,” he smirks. “You don’t care about that?”

He is answered, at least – a small shrug.

“I think it’d be funny. What happened to it, anyway?”
He pulls it toward him, but it’s bandaged so that he can’t see anything.

“In the explosion…” Kaiba answers slowly and quietly
after a moment, almost as though he’s forgetting how to speak. “I was holding a
tube of… I can’t even remember what… it blew up in my hand…”

“Hm. Sucks for you.” He lets the hand go, no longer interested,
and peers into Kaiba’s mostly unfocused eyes. “Still can’t see, I see.” No
answer. “How’s the world? Blurry much?”

Still no answer. It seems that Kaiba’s talkative
streak has run out.

There’s a while of companionable silence, before he
speaks again, casually, inspecting the blank walls. “I’m slipping, you know,”
he says. “Not doing so great. Half the time I forget that Ryou’s dead. Keep
expecting him to walk through the door. Weird, right? Of course, I’m lucky
compared to you… you just sit there all the time, thinking about him. Not Ryou,
your him. Poor bastard.” His facial expression is happily blank and casual, has
nothing at all to do with his words.

“You’re insane…” Kaiba says quietly; he just nods
absently and begins to play with the Jell-O, watching it quiver in his
trembling hand.