Consequences
Consequences
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Disclaimer:
I do not own YugiOh.
Warnings:
This contains NCS, Underage sex, and may be disturbing.
Consequences
Seto
paces around the room. Both you and the lawyer watch him. You say, “Nisama,”
and Seto stills, reaches out his arm, to touch, to reassure you when Seto
remembers. Seto’s blue eyes, sharp and lucid, become foggy mirrors, and he
looks away with such a blank expression, you are reminded of the time after
Death-T when Seto was in a coma, and every day for you was agony.
“It’s
better,” Seiichirou insists. Seto’s attorney is a frazzled-looking man in a
deep navy suit. His gelled hair is falling into disarray.
“There’s
no evidence,” Seto murmurs. “I’m not going to say that.”
“No
evidence!” Seiichirou shouts. His face is livid, and the tendons around his
knuckles are visible. “No evidence?!”
Seiichirou
starts towards you, and you lean back further on the table you are sitting on.
He yanks you forward by the collar of the dress-shirt you’ve never had to wear
before and pulls down the top folds, revealing a reddish purple mark on your
neck. “You call this no evidence?!”
“I’m
not Gozaburo,” Seto says lowly. His hands are clenched into fists, and you can
only see the back of his head. “I’ll never say I hurt Mokuba.”
“Mr.
Kaiba,” Seiichirou pleads. He is at a loss.
“Never!”
Seto whirls. “I’ll never be like that scum!”
“No,”
Seiichirou says, slumping into his seat. He hides his face in his hands, and
his voice is like a broken thing. “The jury will find you much worse.”
You
come out of the room, and the police officers at the exit smile at you and
glare at Seto. Seiichirou hurries forward, putting space between you and Seto,
and the uniformed men relax their hold on their guns. As you make your
way to the courtroom, the officers flank you from all sides. When you arrive, a
few of them leave to open the doors, and you dart out of the gap in their
defense, hurry to Seto, and latch onto a hand.
Seto
looks down at you with a weary smile. You place your other hand tenderly on the
small of Seto’s back over what you know is a canvas of faded whip-marks.
“You’re
not Gozaburo,” you say, squeezing Seto’s hand although security is now pulling
you away. “You’re not!” you shout even as one of the police officers manhandles
Seto to remove his overcoat because the grip of your fingers is like a drowning
man’s hold on a piece of driftwood.
In the
courtroom, you are forced to sit down on a chair. Seto walks across the floor. His heels click sharply against
polished marble and then Seto takes the stand. A man in black begins to circle
Seto. He asks what Seto means by shutting down Kaibaland once a year to bring
orphans there for free.
“Surely,
it costs your company a considerable amount of money to sponsor events gratis.
As a businessman, I would fail to see why that would be profitable...unless
there was a more personal type of vendetta.”
The man
asks Seto when he touches himself.
“Often?
At home? In the office? On the phone...with unnamed parties?”
The man
asks Seto if he is a good brother.
“Do you
hit Mokuba?”
When
Seto answers no against his lawyer’s wishes, the prosecuting attorney - yes,
that’s what Seiichirou was trying to explain - hauls you in front of the court
and pulls down the collar of your shirt. Seiichirou is fuming, but Seto looks
away.
“So how
do you explain this then?!” The attorney asks while all around you the
room gasps in understanding. The judge chokes on her water.
Seto
can’t give an answer. He looks down at his feet like a child who has been
scolded, and you boil inside with anger and protectiveness.
The
attorney fills in the gaps for Seto, twisting sweet true things you have felt
with gladness into perverse sadomasochism. The man’s arguments break something
deep in Seto’s eyes, create hairline fractures in the all the parts that define
who you are. You stand up.
“You’re
lying!” you shout. “Nisama loves me,” you try to say. With horror, you realize
you are crying. Suddenly, you can’t stop. You cry so hard that
against something bigger than the man who now looms over you with pity. “He
loves me.”
The
judge decides to freeze all of Kaiba Corp’s personal accounts. You are left
penniless until you are 20. Seto gets life.
They
cut off the long locks that Seto used to like to grip when you were between his
legs. They take away the name that Seto used to moan so sweetly in the dark,
when you were encased in his heat, and the hammering in your chest made it feel
like it was about to burst.
At the
foster home, the other kids whisper about you. They tell lies. Seto’s never
done that to you because he never wanted to cause you pain, so even though Seto
has loved you with his whole body, you’ve only been loved back with his fingers
and mouth. That used to be a great injustice to you, but when the other kids
shun you, and the adults keep telling you that you were a victim, that Seto did
Bad Things, you think the accusation is the greatest crime possible in the
world.
There
was once. Just once, when you doubted Seto, when the man’s words - wrong,
perverted, sick - came back and haunted you, drew blood from your skin with
sharp bites. But when you fall asleep, the dreams make clear what your heart
has always known. Logic talks in the man’s voice; you decide not to listen to
it anymore.
Seiichirou
comes to visit. He only took your case because he owed Seto for something, but
over the days and then weeks, he has become your friend.
“How is
Seto?” you ask.
“He’s
as well as can be expected,” Seiichirou smiles tensely, but he passes candies
to you since he cannot honey his words. He’s dressed down in slacks, yet his
shirt is still perfectly pressed.
“I
wanted it,” you whisper. “I forced him to.”
Seiichirou
doesn’t answer. He probably doesn’t believe you. None of the adults do.
“When
can I visit Seto?” you ask.
Seiichirou
won’t answer.
A week
later another kid arrives at the foster home. He has bright blue eyes and a
very shy smile. It’s crowded in the house, so they put you in the same bed as
him. He smells like Ivory soap and mint toothpaste. He’s too young, too small,
but the warmth is almost the same, and for the first night since you’ve come to
the foster home, you don’t curl up into a miserable ball and cry into your
pillow.
“What
are you doing?” the boy asks. You don’t know his name. You don’t want to.
“Touching
you.”
“Stop
it,” the kid frowns. He squirms away.
Your
eyes are perfectly dry when you climb over him and press him into the bed.
“Shut up.”
You
clamp a hand against his mouth, and he begins to kick. So you clamp your hand
over his nose until he’s woozy without air. You do all the things the adults
say Seto did to you. The boy cries and whimpers - all the things you’ve never
ever done - and you become Gozaburo.
In the
morning, they find you.
The
sheets are stained with blood from the Very Bad Thing you have done. The adults
look like they might believe you now. You look up into their horrified faces,
the boy’s choked mewls are background noise, and ask hopefully:
“Can I
go home to Nisama now?"