Silver shards of sunlight filtered through the damp early morning air, washing the room in a bleak and bitter clarity that made Seto's eyes sting as he pulled them open. He couldn't remember where he was or how he had gotten there; the entire previous day seemed obliterated from his memory. The only thing he could clearly identify was the sense that the world was warped, unapproachable, and unfamiliar.

Floating, bobbing listlessly on a wide, grey ocean, detached and softly shattered; it was finally Mokuba who reeled him back into reality. His brother's sweet, wispy breath rolled thick and heavy, like warm billows of cream, slowly filling in the gaping holes that were the mark of Seto's fragility.

Limbs heavy and despondent, flesh fallow and footsteps taciturn and morbid, Seto and Mokuba slowly slid into the procession of children as they made their way to the dining hall for breakfast. All eyes were absorbed into the floor, all voices were chained, beaten, bruised, and silent. The only thing that seemed alive around them were the walls, always seeming to sway and hum with some kind of omniscient smugness that was just barely suppressed behind the moldy wainscoting and creaking floorboards.

As he walked, Seto had to blink deeply and make his footsteps slow and steady. Despite everything his senses told him, a deeper and more primitive sense seemed to speak up from somewhere dark and frightening within him telling him that this was not the reality that he was used to. The air seemed heavy, and when he tried to breathe he felt like he might as well have been underwater. Everything seemed foggy and fluid, and the harder he tried to struggle against the sinking feeling the more it drew it him, chaining him in the tight steely grasp of fantasy.

The process of eating felt even more strange and unfamiliar to them. The food seemed to always be in motion, floating, sinking, or spinning about their plates and bowls as if they were all in suspended gravity. And just as they had been in the bedroom at night, just as they had all woken up that morning, the other children were deadly silent, as if the breath had been compressed out of their lungs through their skin.

Seto and Mokuba sat close together, all the while shooting stealthy glances at the children around them at the table. In the daylight they were even more frightening than they had appeared before. Their skin was fallow and heavily veined; their eyes seemed close to dropping out of their skulls and rolling across the table. Everyone kept their faces down and movements as delicate and languid as possible, as if afraid of disturbing the very air that festered all around them. And suddenly Seto recognized what it was that was responsible for the sweaty smell that crawled across the bedroom walls, the constant feeling of being compressed into a box that was too small, the itching feeling in the back of his eyes: it was fear.

Seto was familiar with fear, both the giving and the receiving end. He had learned that fear produces a unique smell—it sets off a primal trigger in all those who inflict or witness it, a trigger that supersedes the power of vocabulary and strikes directly at the nerves like a poisoned dart. And these children emitted it, all of them. Seto could feel his heart beat faster and climb up through his neck as the realization continued to seep in. There was something foul and horrible going on here and there could be no doubt that he and Mokuba were now in danger.

Seto's first instinct was to turn to him, to yell, push, run, and tumble until the two of them were out the door. Even the wild, unknown country with its faceless rolling hills and fierce jaws of ocean current seemed safer and more comforting than this oppressive and phantasmagorical world swirling around and threatening to swallow them.

However, the instant Seto made up his mind to take them away, his body suddenly felt rigid, as if he had been turned into stone. His voice suffocated, movements suppressed, Seto could only sit in horror as his tumultuous and troubled feelings struggled to find an outlet.

Eyes watering, forehead burning and sweating, he longed to tear off his own skin. The feeling of being trapped in his own body was horrifying. His vision seemed to swim as the world around him went in and out of focus and seemed to lose all its shape, form, and texture. He was drowning, choking, fruitlessly struggling against the steely fist that had suddenly sprouted and entwined itself around him.

That was when Ms. Cole came up behind them. The gentle pressure of her hand on his shoulder and her gray, anemic whisper of a voice dissipated the fog and terror that had gripped Seto just a moment before, abruptly returning him to his crystal-clear, continuous world.

"I hope you boys slept well your first night here." Her voice, her mannerisms, were like a thin wisp of cloud in the rising summer sun—mere instants from being cut down completely. Mokuba looked up to Seto, confusion lightly etched in his downy youthful features. He was expecting Seto to reply, for his big brother to build castles out of words that would keep away prodding words, cruel whispers, and prying eyes. But there was nothing.

Seto could feel the nerves in his face sizzle. Something, somewhere, was biting down on him, caging his mind, his voice, every fiber in his body. Everything that had once been in his power and under his careful control was suddenly turned against him and was draining the life out of him as if a hole had been poked in his soul. He shuddered violently like a tree being thrashed by the icy jaws of a wild rainstorm, and he suddenly felt exhausted, as if he had gone centuries on foot and without a moment of sleep.

Both Mokuba and Ms. Cole became increasingly concerned as Seto's already pale face lost its composure and became contorted and damp. Mokuba grabbed frantically at Seto's hand, trying furiously to shake the life back into him, to set off a spark of movement. He jerked sharply, as if freeing himself from the descent into a prison of sleep, and suddenly his eyes were open, pulsating and vivid.

Seto sat up straight, as if being pulled by a chord that dangled from the ceiling, and replied in a fresh, clear, and crisp voice, "Yes, thank you." His face, which had been plied and twisted almost beyond recognition just a moment ago was suddenly as smooth and serene as the surface of a frozen pond, and Mokuba could sense immediately that neither the tone of his brother's behavior nor his words were truly his own. The words didn't feel like Seto's own—they were smooth and appeasing where they should have held their rigidity, they were sweet where they should have been bitter. There was a ghost inside him, breathing and speaking for him.

Ms. Cole, however, did not seem to notice that anything was amiss and continued. "That's very good to hear. We're very happy to have you here, and remember that if you ever need anything, feel free to ask." Mokuba nodded weakly, not daring to relinquish Seto's still clammy and shaking hand. "I hope that you've had a chance to meet some of the…other children." She paused for a moment to cast a furtive glance around the room. "If not, then you'll have plenty of opportunities today. You see, here we usually split the children into two groups. All the big kids—around your age—go up to the tower after breakfast, and all the little ones like him," she nodded in Mokuba's direction, "go the big playroom at the other end. When breakfast is over—"

Mokuba cried out in alarm as he felt Seto's grip tighten around his hand, now strong enough to bruise his bones. And as if a shade had been lifted off the sun, Seto's facial features rearranged themselves once again like pebbles migrating across the bottom of a river. The ghost was gone now.

"No." His voice was cold, stern, and heavy, throbbing to an undulating, stubborn beat that he knew only he and Mokuba could hear. And Mokuba—fears instantly assuaged—knew that his brother was back. Ms. Cole was taken aback, allowing Seto to continue.

"Allow me to explain to you precisely why that will not occur. My brother does not leave my supervision. No matter what the legal documents might say, I am his guardian and I do not take that responsibility lightly. We will stay together, and for your safety I strongly recommend that you do not try to change that."

His words were so firm, so infused with an authority that was heavy and sharp enough to cut ice, that for a moment Ms. Cole's eyes widened in fear and apprehension, and she looked close to obeying him. Then she swallowed down her momentary panic and remembered the more pressing concern, the fear that went beyond her anxiety regarding his particular strong-willed boy and his little brother, the omnipresent fear that swallowed and shadowed them all.

"I'm sorry, dear, but that's just the way things go around here. We have to split you boys up, it's for…your own good really. For the good of everyone."

"I said no!" Seto stood suddenly, causing the table to rattle on its moldy legs and sending their dishes shattering to the floor. In an instant all eyes in the dining room were on them, and the weight of the collective attention was suffocating. Seto adopted his sternest, most intimidating and adult manner but his skin was thin and cracking under the pressure, allowing a scared, petulant child to poke through and speak for him.

"You will not split us up!" he stamped his foot resolutely, causing several years' worth of dust to take to the air, swarming around them like a fog of death and decay. Seto was aware that he had broken something very delicate, that he had stared in the eye some kind of shadow or demon that was usually only discussed in hushes and whispers.

"You can't tell us what to do! You can't split us up! You'll be sorry!" He continued shouting, not caring about the eyes all around that bore into them, Mokuba's shaking and tugging at his arm begging him to stop, nor about the figures that crept closer and closer to him, slowly wrapping their arms around him and bearing him away. He saw, heard, and felt nothing but indignation and fury until the world slowly lost depth, focus, and color, then faded away to nothing but echoing silences and swirling shades of gray.

He was gone now, and Mokuba was completely beyond his control.

Seto's rapid departure brought an abrupt and uncomfortable end to the breakfast hour, and the children were dully sorted out and directed their separate ways. Mokuba watched in confusion for a moment, his body trembling and eyes wide and fearful. He felt as small as a mouse and many times as vulnerable.

He quickly found himself swept away in the currents of other children, easily absorbed into a melee that he could neither control nor understand. The world without Seto was scarcely recognizable. It was wider, like a gaping open cavern yearning to cave in and crush him. Mokuba bit his lip and tried to swallow the anxiety and fear, but he couldn't dislodge the aching feeling that he was floating across a tumultuous ocean like a ship without a mast.

His anxieties were smoothed slightly when he entered the younger children's playroom—but only slightly. Whereas the rest of the orphanage ached with stale air that stunk of malevolent intentions, the atmosphere in the playroom seemed slightly lighter and less oppressive. There was a wide bank of windows that gazed out over rolling green hills and a few milky beams of soft, feathery sunlight. It was the first natural light that Mokuba had seen in days, and he gravitated towards it almost immediately.

Leaving the other children to their noisy, colorful, and half-broken toys, Mokuba wandered towards the windows and settled himself in a small patch of dusty sunlight on the floor. He placed his hand up to the dirtied glass and imagined for a moment that he could melt it with the power of his palm. His heart stung for Seto, who now felt like he was miles away, holed up in a cave or in a prison. Either way, he was completely inaccessible, and that meant that Mokuba was completely alone.

He bit his bottom lip and tried to imagine Seto standing next to him, putting his hand on his limp and ragged shoulders in an attempt to steady them. He imagined his stern but caring face, willing him to be strong and not to cry. It was difficult, but he managed to swallow down the tears and keep from drowning. He couldn't, however, keep from trembling.

At that moment, Mokuba was encased as if in a glass sphere. The contents of his mind—his worries and his fears—painted the walls of the playroom in an ink that was invisible to all of the children except one. Heart beating fast, breath sorrowful and eyes glazed over in mourning for the loss of his big brother, Mokuba had no idea that he looked exactly like a bird about to be caged.

"Do you want to see something magic?"

Mokuba nearly jumped at the voice that slipped up beside him, feeling almost as though it had reached up inside him and twisted him around. His shock, however, dissipated across his skin like a wave sailing over the surface of a lake, and he couldn't help feeling that Seto would be proud of his burgeoning ability to contain his emotional responses.

Mokuba turned around to face the newcomer, a small, twig-like boy with skin as pale as evaporation and sharp, clever eyes. Those eyes were different than the eyes of all the other children at the orphanage. There was no fear in them—on the contrary, they seemed to overflow with an intrepid hunger for life and adventure. Mokuba sized him up the same way that he had seen Seto do to countless other boys in the past, assessing him for any possible threats.

His eyes, unfortunately, were not as sharp and discerning as his brother's. Still being young, still being Seto's shadow, he saw everything through a pearly fog, and many small but important details were lost on him. The one thing that did stand out was the boy's smile—a smile like waves and ripples of unadulterated sunlight that spilled out of his mouth and puddled on the floor. He ate Mokuba with that smile.

"My name is Tom Riddle, what's yours?" the boy inquired. Mokuba didn't notice how far away the other children were, as if they were unwanted toys that had been confined to the corners.

"Mokuba."

"You came here last night. With your brother."

Mokuba nodded. It might as well have been a signal of submission.

"Where is he now?"

Here his words failed him. His name was a fact, something that followed him around and clung to him. But now Seto was shrouded in a cloak of fog, and Mokuba could do nothing in response but shake his head and bite back the fiery tears.

"They took him away, didn't they?" Tom's face was painted in purple shades of sympathy. "Adults do all sorts of terrible things like that. I don't trust any of them." His words pelted out of his mouth as if forced, as if he were trying to crush them as he spoke. "It might be for the best that he's not here, though. The big kids are scary. And dangerous. It's best to keep away from them as much as possible, or they might try to hurt you."

Mokuba shook his head resolutely. He couldn't deny the dangers of the older children in general, but an affront to Seto was more than he could bear. "Seto would never hurt me."

Tom waited for a moment, then drew closer and lowered his voice to a silky whisper. "You never know with these big kids, Mokuba. They act friendly when Ms. Cole is watching us, but the second she has her back turned they're all claws and fangs. And the ones that seem the nicest on the outside always have the most anger bottled up inside them, just waiting for a fuse to set it off on the people who can't fight back."

Mokuba could feel himself shaking, but he struggled to keep his words coming out smooth and level. "Seto would never do that to me. He's always protected me. You don't know him at all."

Tom raised an eyebrow, silently accepting the challenge. "But I think that I do. I know a lot about the both of you, actually. I know that you've been to five orphanages, and the last one was the worst one. They locked you in a closet and no one found you for three hours. When your brother tried to free you they almost locked him as well. And when the teacher finally found out she thought it was your fault and sent you both outside in the rain. At the place before that you used to hide in the basement—until you discovered the rats. Your favorite thing is your sketchbook, and your brother's favorite is his cards. You drew him a card—his favorite one, in fact. A giant blue and silver dragon. I know that you were born in Russia, but you don't remember anything but the colors. You think that your mother's death was your fault, and your brother things that his father's death was his—"

"Stop! Stop!" Mokuba had clapped his hands over his ears to stop the onslaught of the words, but they still found a way inside him. They crept up through his tear ducts, licked at the pores of his skin, slid down his throat. There was something about those words, all those secrets so bluntly laid bare, that made Mokuba feel small, shaken, and completely vulnerable. They were crueler than any taunts or threats he had ever heard. "How—how do you know all those things?" he barely managed to sputter the words out through his frantic and scrambling breathing. Eyes wide, he moved himself as far away from Tom as he could manage. "How..how?"

The words died in his throat and turned to smoke. "I know much, much more than just that." the boy's mouth twisted like thorns into something that was supposed to resemble a smirk. "I know everything there is to know about you and Seto, and I know that you can't count on him to protect you. Not here."

Mokuba felt an icy shiver race across his skin and sink its teeth into him. He felt frigid despite the sun.

"But I know good things, too." Tom continued. "I know all sorts of tricks and magic. Lots of the other kids are scared of me because of it, but you aren't scared of magic, are you?"

Mokuba was still rattling on the inside, but he shook his head.

"I didn't think so." The malice and sinister shadows that had been piercing through the boy a moment before seemed to have melted into soft quilts of friendship and comfort, and for a moment Mokuba pitied him. He must be lonely. "If you promise not to tell anyone, I can show you some of what I can do."

Mokuba's eyes widened and he felt his breath catch. But there was a small wall inside him, a wall that held on stubbornly and forced Mokuba from tittering over the edge. That wall was Seto. "What about my brother?" he asked, already have expecting the answer.

There was a wind inside him, a gentle and soothing summer breeze that was made of Tom's sweet and fluid words. The breeze lifted him up, bundled snuggly around him, absorbed him.

"You can't tell Seto." There was an electric spark in Tom's eyes, a spark that begged to be explored. And that bright ball of light, combined with the winds and the sunshine, made jumping over that wall the easiest thing in the world.

-break-

Seto awoke with a start at the opposite end of the orphanage. He felt like he had spent the last several hours struggling with death and had just barely managed to wrest his life back out of its cold, moldy hands. The stench of death still clung to him. The smell of fear.

"Wh—Where is Mokuba?" he called out, notes becoming sharper as his panic heightened. "Mokuba! Mokuba!"

He was standing, prepared to tear the orphanage apart when he caught sight of the other children—or young adults, like him—who were regarding him from across the room with cynical eyes and thin mouths.

Seto turned on them. "Where is he? Where is my brother? Take me to him—now!" His years of migration had given Seto a set of sharp edges, like razors, and while he chose to maintain a benign presence when it meant safety, there were times when he preferred to let his metallic and iron sides out as well. He was about to begin clawing at them when one of the boys spoke up.

"You don't want to go where he is—trust me." The other children nodded earnestly.

"What? Why? What have they done to them?" the words came out in a whirlwind with so much force that they left Seto gasping.

"They haven't done anything to him," the boy continued. "He's just playing with the other younger kids."

"Then why can't I go to him?" Seto questioned, eyes thin and voice terse. An uncomfortable silence settled over the group, and they shifted it around awkwardly for several moments until someone was finally brave enough to break it.

"You don't want to go in there." It was a girl this time, hair and skin both the color of the floor. The rest of the words came out in short spasms, almost more from the cracks in the walls and floorboards than the children themselves.

"There's this awful kid there—"

"Evil kid—"

"—dangerous—"

"—he stole all my books and toys—"

"—doesn't let us sleep—"

"—tells us horrible things about our families—"

"And we finally decided a couple of days ago that we should do something about it." This was the first boy who was speaking again, and Seto could tell by the dangerously low tones of his voice that he was worth listening to.

"What are you talking about…" Seto took a few cautious steps closer, never letting his rigidity falter.

"We're going to do something about it. We're tired of being so afraid all the time—of letting him control us. We've been forming a plan to get rid of him once and for all, but it's difficult planning because we know that he can hear us whenever he likes. It's like he's always there, watching us."

Another silence descended, but this silence was thicker and darker.

"So we've been planning in secret—or, as secretly as we can. We think that we'll have our opportunity tomorrow, when they take us to the picnic at the coast." The gang of half-children exchanged a collective acidic smile. "We'll finally get rid of him."

"You—you want to kill him?" Seto was not often inclined to stutter, but he was genuinely shocked. Of all the horrors he had seen at his previous orphanages, murder had never been one of the activities on the schedule. He had faced astounding degrees of cruelty, but an unspoken wire had always held back the harshest of the bullies, the most insensitive and oblivious of the teachers. It was the reverberating wire of moral truth that taking the life of another was wrong, repulsive even. Seto was sure that that wire had saved he and Mokuba several times, and he had no desire to cross it.

Sensing Seto's indignation, the other children gathered closer around, pressing him with their eyes. They seemed to speak with one voice.

"You don't understand what it's like. You haven't lived here long enough. You don't know what he's capable of putting you through. It's worse than torture—worse than death. "

"Killing that kid will be doing the world a favor. And you leave your brother alone with him for more than he a few hours then he's as good as dead as well." It was that boy again. He flung his arm over Seto's shoulders and whispered harshly in his ear. "You will help us, or we'll think you're on his side." The words scraped at Seto's eardrums like gravel, but the more he tried to writhe away the tighter the grip around him became. "And you will not tell anyone about his, understand?"

Seto's mind flickered to Mokuba. Mokuba—alone and helpless, perhaps in the grasp of a deranged child sociopath. He felt his heart tighten at the prospect of keeping secrets from him a letting him wander blindly into danger, and for a moment he considered fighting. He was here to keep Mokuba safe, after all, not get involved in murder schemes. But then his mind flickered back to something much more immediate, the hand on his back that he was sure was drawing blood, and leers of the children around him, glowering like so many starved vultures.

Seto took a breath, deep and blue and icy, and spit out the words, "Fine, I'll help you."

-break-

The dinner that evening was soaked in secrets. Seto, still breathing uneasily and teeth on edge, sat rigidly across from Mokuba at the same little table and refused to take his eyes off him. There was something odd in Mokuba's face, his demeanor. It was like there was something bubbling below the surface, just yearning to break free and gulp down the daylight.

"How was your first day, Mokie?" Seto tried to coat his voice with sympathy, but there was still something overly formal about it. He was too shaken, too afraid of letting his secrets spill out, to speak openly or completely.

Mokuba responded between mouthfuls. "It…wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." His smile was diluted, and there were holes in his words just as there were holes in Seto's.

"What did you do?"

"…Played with the toys, mostly. They have some nice games."

"Good." Seto studied his brother carefully, and had to fight down a wave of nausea when he realized something important: his brother had never been anything but completely honest with him in the past, but something was different now. Words and ideas were hiding behind shifting walls, and try as he might, Seto couldn't peer past them.

Mokuba was lying to him. And he was lying back.

-break-

I'm sorry that it took a ridiculously long time for this chapter to come out. The problem was, while I knew from the moment I started exactly how I want this story to end, and I hadn't really thought of a good middle.

Also, Mokuba was being bewitched by Tom when he agrees to keep the magic a secret from Seto.