A/N: No, I haven't forgotten about all of you after all these years. I apologize for the ridiculously long hiatus, though. For the note, Onegaishimasu will probably never be touched again; it's far too old for me to even attempt at redeeming it let alone dignifying with new chapters. It was flowery bullshit. Then again, that's always been my style, I guess.

Basically this is a group of drabbles mashed together into one story. God knows I don't have the patience to actually write a story. Figure out where the drabble transitions into another one on your own, because physically separating them with astericks or something turned out looking awkward as hell.

I agree that religion should be kept out of fandom when its canon has no mention of it. However, I'm somewhat of a bibliophile, so my work seems to be littered with literary—and god forbid biblical— allusions.

Thus, this failed attempt at being artistic begins.

Pairings: Pegasus/Seto, Pegasus/Cyndia, implied Mokuba/Seto and non-consensual Gouzaburou/Seto.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! nor do I own any of the characters used in this fan fiction.

--

Tea time. He ate like a bird; like he did, really. But his movements, all so fluid, genteel—never a mechanical, autonomic motion. Not like him. Pegasus ate like a prisoner enjoying a final meal to its every last savory mouthful, just before his very head would be rend from his shoulders.

Pegasus was lithely sipping his tea, almost humming as he did so. It was completely beyond him why this man was always so insufferably cheerful, even at an ungodly hour like this. At one point, he convinced himself it was the alcohol. But in retrospect, he came to terms with the fact that it was an expertly crafted mask Pegasus had fashioned for himself after a presumably hard youth. Heh. Even at an age as tender as fifteen, Seto knew more than enough about the latter.

He caught himself all but staring at the other man, his beautifully kempt hair, his soft voice lost to the steam of the tea mingling with air, his subtle but graceful mannerisms that differed with a nuance of birth into wealth as opposed to an adoption into one. He hated himself for even so much as glancing at the man with any thoughts that undermined the platonic. But it kept him up, thinking about him. Touching him. Nothing as vulgar as sexual transgressions, but fantasies as peurile as consensual little kisses, lashes brushing one another, caresses, running long pale fingers through that golden hair...occasionally, his mind would stray and dwell on the sensuality of forcing himself on the man. But he'd be damned if he'd allow the ideologies of that bastard to possess even as much as his libido.

Truly, he was the only one who understood him. The boy related to this man on a level he couldn't hope to match even with his own brother.

Pegasus understood wealth. He understood working for a future. The occasionally grating responsibilities that come with maintaining--or, more appropriately, inheriting--a corporation. Reputation. Loss. Humility.

A bullion eye darted his way, a trace of a smirk with it.

"Seeing as you won't touch your food, why not have a grand tour of my gallery?"

There it was. He recognized it almost immediately.

"Oooo. This one. This is--"

"Pieta."

"Ahh. You know it?" He laughed softly, almost purred. The sound was all but a caress to Seto's ears. "Strange that you'd recognize a Michelangelo but not a Raphael."

Seto's voice descended into a perilous softness. "Mother kept it on her hope chest."

"Roman Catholic? Huh. Bizarre. I wouldn't take you to be religious."

"I'm not. I'm athiest--agnostic, if anything. But she believed in it more than life itself. She--" A cold laugh sputtered from him. He reeled suddenly, aching in the realization he regarded that woman so bitterly. "she was a simpleton. She chased dreams even while she was forcing her husband to watch her die."

Pegasus continued staring at the statue, gaze safely hidden beneath a glossy curtain of hair. He laughed again, like wind chimes. "What are we without dreams, Kaiba-boy."

"Rational creatures."

"You would not be here without an irrational dream, would you?"

The silence spoke for him.

"I'll tell you something, Kaiba-boy. It's silly, but," golden eyes fluttered shut and a sigh escaped tightly drawn lips, "I was once in love with him."

"What?" Blue eyes dared to regard him with an unspeakable disgust.

A manicured hand descended on stigmata and Pegasus continued, ignoring the gesture from his colleague, "He was always my favorite among the Renaissance masters. He was a fallen god among men. And yet, for all his efforts, he died alone."

He was a bitter workaholic. A perfectionist. Always working, always alone, pushing all else out from his passions, the Sistine Chapel, the tomb of Pope Julius II. And when he found the work anything short of perfect, he sought to it that it was destroyed. Truly, no one could understand the man--such genius."

Seto snorted. "Pleasant guy."

Pegasus smiled in spite of himself and turned back to the boy, "You know how old he was when he made Pieta?" He didn't wait for the expectantly sarcastic retort. "Twenty-two. Makes my heart sink thinking how far beneath that realm of talent I am. No one can touch him."

"The man's dead. It doesn't do a damn thing to dwell on the past."

Seto suppressed a gasp, finding the man's face drawing closer to his, a near-agony flickering onto his Romanic features. "I wanted him to touch me, even for a second. I was chasing dreams of my own." Lips barely traced over his teeth, tired, resigned breaths escaping his throat. "We both were. And she--" His breath hitched and he swerved back to the statuette, mouth upturned into a sad smile.

Seto stared again, hotly, mourning the lack of breath, warmth, his scent, that mingled with his for that savory moment being torn away so agonizingly soon.

A robe. And presumably nothing else beneath it on that willowy frame. Seto wanted to strip it off. Seto wanted to kiss that sylphlike neck. More than anything, he wanted that desire to be mutual. He drew his breath away and with that, his startling scent—the scent of his mother. He was inwardly snarling at the near Oedipian arousal.

"Have you ever loved?" Tightness crept to his throat and bile threatened to follow it.

"—Have you ever modeled—"

stay right there

your smile

I want to finish your eyes

Pieta. Mary still clutched the gaunt frame, mourned, bided in her lamentation of the lamb.

—bide—

bride

open casket

be with me forever

yes she said

"Yes, yes, please! I love you, Pegasus."

The robe parted. Pegasus was suddenly sprawled there, naked now. His nerves burned with a shameful carnality. This wasn't nearly the same as those coquettish phrases he purred at Kurosuke, the non-committal brush of fingers past an Armani lapel, or even the playful quips Pegasus purred against broad-shouldered, black suits, while palms swept beneath dinner jackets and the heated, sturdy bodies enveloping the holsters of .45s. They never touched him back, goodness no. Not even Kurosuke, his closest hand. The first newcomer that'd even tempted such a feat was found inexplicably hanged at his own hands the following evening. They merely stiffened at the teasing and held their breath lest the pleasure of the half-hearted gestures boil them down to their very loins.

Pegasus never went beyond fond caresses or whispered sweet-nothings. He couldn't cross the threshold of flirtatiousness to the raunchy one-night stand—lovemaking was a length far beyond his reach, weighted down by the self-appointed limbo of his loss.

His love for her was Platonic; a dimension beyond lovers. She was the woman he wanted to grow old with. Not once had he drawn lusty caresses over his length in her fond name, never eagerly dredging past innocuous handholding in favor of fleshly tongue against teeth. Cyndia was his sweet breath, so lifeless now. Pecked cheeks, the rare, puerile brush of lip atop lip, butterly and Eskimo kisses. Gold enmeshing with rivulets of silver. The love transcended all desire for life.

Drunkenness. A poison that ebbed the rock of his long-abandoned resolve, but the vice not enough to perilously consume him in one fatal, intoxicating blow. Just like he wanted it. He was so tired of dealing with this sudden quagmire of reality. So long had he swam in drunkenness that all else seemed a grotesquely blurred, post-alcoholic illusion produced by his very state of incapacitation. Some days it was a mere therapeutic three glasses of sherry, and whence stormy nights were concerned, it was a good dent in one of the hundreds of liquor cabinets. He might as well have been a modern Van Gogh lobbing appendages and reeling beneath indigested lead paints.

Then he came. Such a cliché…he saw him, and everything stopped.

Pegasus' hand wouldn't even shake at the lack of satiation when those blue eyes—the bluest damned eyes he'd ever seen—traced his every contour.

Pale hands on the page, pencil tightly grasped in the other, stroking boldly, rawly, decisively—only to quickly erase the marks seconds following their recreation.

"This is pointless. Why a self-portrait, it's so—"

"Boring? Predictable?" A smirk accompanied the whisper. "An easily accessed subject, unique at every turn, and equally complex…I see nothing dull about it, Kaiba-boy."

Seto inaudibly gasped when a silk cravat traced the nape of his neck and pretty hands ghosted over the page in lieu of his right hand. Pegasus' lips touched a strand of dark hair dolefully hanging by his ear, purring, tantalizing, sweet, soft.

"Give me your hands…here—yes, that's it! Hear this? This chord is C major."

"Goodness, you have a deathgrip on the poor thing." Seto could feel his very pulse rising to the shoulder blades Pegasus' lapels played against. "It's a tool; not a weapon. Attack the page and I can assure you, it will be anything but forgiving."

He hated how innocent a gesture could drive him so effortlessly into unease.

Seto could smell Pegasus now. Mother. Dammit, that was his mother's scent; it was harrowing. Lithe, long fingers enveloping his, heel settling against the angle described by his wrist, and weightlessly drawing over the pad. Seto bit back the flustered expression tempted to ease over his features, watching Pegasus' visage traced in concentration reflected in the mirror before them. He looked appealing as ever, nipping at a pursed lower lip, brow faintly lowered over narrowed, golden eyes, and that sheet of hair—god, it was spilling over Seto's shoulder, teasing his cheek, and that scent may have been damned well alcoholic. Seto felt naked every time Pegasus' eyes would glance up at the mirror from the page and back, airy ocher molesting icy blues.

His hands all but fondled the surface, strands of charcoal sublimely classical in their strokes. Contour, thin to thick accordingly with every nuance in his silhouette. Seto found he was unable to resist a pang of jealousy at Pegasus' prowess. It looked exactly like him.

Pegasus spoke breathy tongues against his ear. "Drawing, painting—creating—it's all like making love, really. You allow yourself the guilty pleasures of private, almost masturbatory art—your crudest work—but when it comes to the work you revel in, you pour your soul into every stroke; you breathe against that surface and how your hands treat it and anticipate a beauty to emerge from it. Not your own pleasures."

Your touch

it's like rape.

Scoff. "Awfully poetic for a washed-up drunkard talking about something as asinine as drawing."

Pegasus laughed gently, hotly against his neck. Did the man even sense the intimacy of his all too friendly gestures? Seto could feel him drawing his torso gently forward, pressing irresistibly against his back. "Kaiba-boy," Seto's lashes followed the finger that indicated his crude marks. "You like it rough, mmm?"

A Dionysus whispering drunken sweet-nothings to a cold Athena.

That assent, that…proposition? He just couldn't contain the shiver that it elicited. Seto grumbled when he found his hands growing clammy beneath Pegasus' ministrations, very gently shaking. He drew a sharp breath inward—cursing himself silently as he did so—and glared at the other man through the mirror.

Seto growled, "Stop it."

He carried on as if he hadn't heard, hand continuing to flit against the paper, retracing ghost lines. "Come now; give me that little grimace from earlier. It was turning out rather well."

Being violated, taken by force—even against his own will—although by no stretch of the imagination a comfortable feat, was something he was familiar with. Even being approached adoringly was something he'd been forced to adjust to on account of his often—infatuated? lovesick?—over-affectionate brother. But being teased…led on so deliciously with mere undertones of verbal foreplay that was literally unreadable considering the man who spoke them…he didn't know how to respond. They aroused him, even if it was of anything but his own volition being attracted to someone he found to be an utter joke only two years ago. Seto could bitterly admit to respecting him more now, but attraction was the last thing he expected.

In so many senses, he was an idol. But of all, he was the only man outside of family that qualified as the closest thing to a friend to Kaiba.

Pegasus never touched him inappropriately, never dabbled beyond a threshold of brotherly warmth like Mokuba tended to do these days—with mistaken kisses and heavy petting and blithe rambles on his love for him—or never deflowered with unsettling death threats bristled against his ear lobe. Bitter irony settled in the realization that Pegasus was the only one he wanted to do both to him—among other indefinite things. It plagued his dreams, rattled his undesired libido, and grated on every nerve that dared to sway against him in favor of leaning so candidly into Pegasus' faint, fond, nearly fatherly touches. More of a father than Gouzaburou ever was, anyway. Maybe even urge that playful finger to descend from his stomach right down to a groin that burned so longingly in response.

Slung on the bed, bare body all but glistening beneath duress of Jupiter and its moon, knee bent in delicate contrapposto: a recreation of the Donatellian David; a sleepless beauty.

Seto forced himself to stop in mid-turn, the bleariness of his gaze describing womanish features on the man spread-eagled before him. Mother again, and her withering smile. If he squinted and gave a flourish of his lashes, he could almost envision the IV and sterilized sheets draped over her gauzy frame. It made nothing easier when he found himself kneading sinewy, persuasive flesh and the impotence weighing on his midriff melted along with any and all doubt that he truly wanted this. God, he did, and desperately.

"Have you ever loved?"

Hardly recovering the nerve to gaze back directly into those golden eyes. He stared back, but his expression was empty enough to suggest his mind was elsewhere--the piercing stare had long left him. Even the will to summon up one comfortably beneath that stoic mask he'd been abject to ever since his early adolescence. He hated feeling like this. This rattled him; it forced him to swallow everything he'd spent so many years repressing. And the relish of those experiences was anything but sweet, no. They were even less savory than the vomit...and those stupid fucking tears. He found himself speaking softly back; Seto was so tired. "I--" Dammit, he couldn't keep looking into his eyes. He flitted softly away, turning his head into the mattress, easing beneath his body with arms wrapping almost self-consciously around his bare upper half. "No. Not like this."

Seto had never loved romantically before. All love he'd ever associated with was a fickle, senseless pastime two self-interested persons would engage in for the sake of killing time and inevitably settling down and having kids with to align with a banal biological clock's quota. This weightlessness in his chest, it went beyond something as histrionic as romance. It smoldered and strained and shuddered and strewed all at once, so pleasurably, he didn't even know how to process it.

He felt his lower half pool with warmth, and grimaced at that fleshly sensation. Seto willed himself with every one of his nerves to not give in to it. The moments this unclean, lucid sensation would overtake him, he'd put forth his stringently practiced art of taking his mind elsewhere--curl up in the womb of his brain. Weaving restive fingers throughout the convoluted blacks and whites of an all-consuming chess board, pawn jumping the King, as the King has everything to lose once his forces are disposed of, while the slave, everything to gain; Galilean invariance rocking in the oceanic tides of Newtonian relativity even as Maxwell's demon himself bore presence in Pegasus' soft caresses against his cold skin--good god, if this wasn't the same now. He had to shake himself out of those hypnagogic defenses. This was consensual. Seto had expressly asked for this. He wanted this. So much, his exhausted body ached. He found himself assuring his uncertain mind with such a bizarre anticipation lastly, one out of the blue traced in his irises; reflecting the older man's mirror image--that, one day, none of this would hurt anymore. He'd lie with him in the lounge just as he did now, Pegasus playfully whispering to him appreciative little questions on the scars he himself had encouraged him to ask, raking a nail softly into one imprinted on his shoulder, and he'd offer him an expression of thorough amusement, murmuring against his lips and relishing that agitated sensation of his finger bearing down on tattered flesh. Pegasus wouldn't cringe, he wouldn't undulate into silent discomfort, no, they'd kiss deeply, swaying one to the other like Newton's cradle, loosely embracing, laughing gently in the midst of it all. He would've long accepted his past, seized it, emerging as a new man. No, delusions. He'd lead no more of a provisional life than he did at his deathbed.

Pegasus kissed him, startling him, and he stopped himself in mid-head feint, half-expecting those lips to bristle--his breath smelled liked lavender. Not like alcohol. Seto finally tore the strained silence with a moan and, after a moment of hesitation, he swept his lips past his cheek. He felt as wan as the fading moonlight, nearly waiting for shaky pleas to follow the gesture. BEGGING. For this. For something that might as well be him subjecting himself to that dreaded role of a cum bucket. An orifice to be plundered. Just to be touched for once in his gorforsaken life and enjoy it, even if there was no intimacy to speak of. But no way in blood-gutted hell he'd reduce himself to that. The saddest part about it all was the fact that he, Pegasus, could reduce him to that. He had so much utter control over him at this very moment, and curiously enough, he was willingly offering himself up to that control. His touches drew his mind to his own Snowdens of yesteryear, but slowly, they were healing him.

"This…—you of all people know it's wrong."

Finally shifting his head again, russet hair falling away from his eyes now, and mustering the determination to stare at him back--even in the face of the humiliation he'd had himself so thoroughly convinced that he embodied. He bore witness to his ultimate low--that made Pegasus more than an association with those despicable memories, every time he'd glance his way...but staring so decisively into his frank eyes, his expression the most vulnerable he'd ever seen on him, the bitterness fell to the wayside almost immediately.

The arms wrapped around his torso gave way now, baring himself to him, almost a gesture of offering himself to the man. His body suddenly didn't feel like his anymore; it didn't feel torn. His resigned eyes melted into vulnerable ones--the rise of his brow so ethereal of a feeling, after forcing it down all those years--and he gasped out to him. "Don't give me half-assed excuses after you subject yourself to this much." He blinked up at him now, pursing his lips. And god forbid, he found himself adding, "Please."

"Tell me you won't regret this."

"Don't project; I know what I want. You tell me. Make up your damned mind."

"I…" He stopped unexpectedly and laughed, almost sadly, and whispered, "I do. It's never been a question of what I want. I love you. I--"

Seto frowned.

He knew everything. And the moment they made so-called amends, he'd probably slip out of the room, slip on his coat, and leave with no intentions of returning after this utter chaos. That was fine, though.

He could deal with rejecting; he could deal with losing. Abuse. Seto couldn't deal with opening up, though. Trusting.

The sharp, calculating defenses he'd had in so high a gear didn't even attempt to assess the man's emotions now. The openness of his gestures, his soft hand squeezing his long, pale fingers, his very breath against the air, those last words he said so self-assuredly...the very thought crashed violently against the shore of his mind: he wasn't going to leave him. Seto's expression barely suppressed the wince that tempted to contort it as a shudder ran down his spine at that realization. He wasn't going to leave him. He LOVED him. No, this wasn't a trophy fuck for the man, not an empty opportunity at satisfying sexual urges with a supple body rather than his own hand. Seto had never prepared himself for something like this, seldom hearing such ordinarily banal words directed at the likes of him, of all people. But in this context, in this post-traumatic revelation, in this godless night, he said it. Did he know? Did he know Seto practically mirrored those sentiments? Oh god.

"--I've loved you ever since I first set eyes on you. Even when I thought I couldn't ever love again, you...practically coaxed it out of me."

The paranoia manifesting itself as that unneeded bulge in the back of his throat evaporated, leaving a nearly buzzed desire to be held in its midst. Pegasus' brow wasn't crinkled in a condescending arc of pity, and the tears he realized were now glimmering along his pale face were anything but intentional.

It was such a vapid thing to succumb to, something he'd merely glossed over in cheap romance novels, but it did, and so uncontrollably. He restrained himself from clawing gently at the flesh that withheld his wretched, now-bleeding heart, but his own warm breath brushed against his lower lip and he fell immediate victim to how pleasurable the sensation felt. His body tingled, and once again, he was drawn out of his scars, his past, and he felt born again. Strong beats, thudding a number with such a corporal presence that he felt unconditionally overwhelmed by it all in the throes of these dreamlike circumstances. He forced Prussian eyes shut, deeply in a frown, and wagged his dark lashes open again, as if unsure of the actuality of this situation--urging himself to wake up. His eyes met gold again. God, it couldn't be real. Telling him undeniable truths about afflictions with words that went well beyond a puerile age. His body took on a sensation of near flight. Not even considering the countless times he'd struggled for his very life had he felt alive like on this night. A broken god, resurrected. The hand Pegasus cradled against his chest twitched gently and ushered him down, sylphlike neck straining up again, and his mouth finally colliding with his. Seto didn't dither this time or second-guess himself; his movements were still traced with tentativeness, but more assured than he'd been the entire evening. He strained himself to lean even coyly into his touch, when not so long ago, he shied away from so much as a subtle brush of the man's fingertips against his clothed stomach. Pulling away after a moment of heated embrace, he murmured against his lips, "Then don't hold back, you idiot." He flitted against him, nose to nose, lips barely brushing against one another into a brief second kiss. His eyes didn't leave Pegasus'--he'd be damned if he was going to hide now. "Don't act like it's rape."

He was distracting himself from the hands spreading along his bare body, fondling his hair and nipping at his ear, but his conscience nagged at him to revel in it. It was demanding; taking every last bit of his self-restraint against allowing his fight-or-flight instincts to consume him. He'd been touched gently like this before, but after years of such assiduously conditioned fear of human contact, his gut reaction was to shrink away, swat at hands that pried, abrasively push, even attack, if necessary. Pegasus' touches were so soft, though...when he offered a nurturing kiss to his hand, inevitably, he found himself melting into his caresses, falling beneath them. Seto reclined slowly onto the mattress, chin swiveling up; clutching the hand he pressed against his ragged chest, and urged his lover to straddle over him. He didn't need protection, but from him, he yearned for it. He wanted those golden eyes to always align with his own, he wanted Pegasus to look at him, watch over him, and keep him. Never had an evening come with monstrous pain that his perpetrators looked him directly in the face. This would be his failsafe, if these precarious mental fixes crumbled and succumbed to his inability to open up.

His resolve returned when he saw amber again. Gentle, gentle explorations of his body swelled in warmth and his skin eagerly drew toward his strokes. It felt surprisingly nice. His scars almost felt papery beneath his duress, as if they could break up and fall away from the immaculate flesh hidden underneath it by a needy brush of his hand. Seto felt his shoulders loosen from abandoned tenseness as his midriff eased past his thighs. The warmth was still very present in his groin, but the uncontrollable reaction didn't mortify him as much now. He wasn't nearly ready for Pegasus to touch him there quite yet, but god...he wanted him to touch everything else.

Seto pulled the older man down toward him into a frenzied kiss, one he'd been holding back the entire night, and he groaned huskily against his mouth when his torso made contact against his. He was addicted to his skin. His hands hesitantly but candidly ran up his back and arms, weaving through silken hair as it brushed against his own, and he breathed, "Don't you dare fucking stop."

"I won't."

They'd lasted. How that had happened was completely beyond him, but he didn't want it to fucking stop. He didn't want to dealt with fluctuations of cold to hot in all that incessant teasing. He wanted something real for once in a life that may as well have been a joke at his expense.

Seto was lying in the lounge with the older man, a scene bizarre in and of itself, sprawled on his back, and shirtless, no less. He never felt comfortable undressing, even behind the privacy of a closed door, but the man had a soothing presence to him that made his very lips relax when he was within his reach. Pegasus was lying beside him, stroking the thick hair at the nape of his neck--fingers tracing his spine, and shifting so decisively over the tendrils of scars that he'd long come to accept would mar his pale form until his dying day. But he didn't care anymore. Not when he touched him like that, or looked at him with such an innocuous stare. Never once following their first confrontation did the man gaze upon those physical deformities with a sense of pity. Pegasus didn't think any more or any less of him in spite of his experiences--cutting him "slack" for fear of touching base on such delicate matters, bringing up a badland of horrors long past like pent-up bile shrinking away from the blemishes. He didn't ignore the scars, but he didn't dwell on them either. Nothing had changed, and he relished that more than anything. He accepted him and his body, damaged as it may have been, with decadence, and the sensation that swept over him was something so alien to him after being deprived of it for so many years. Love had been long involved, yes. Even lust. But it was something even more valuable than that.

Trust.

Pegasus kissed his shoulder now and brushed coy hands against his ribs, the warmth of his lips over his suddenly needy bare skin eliciting a small shiver from him. Seto's body had always been firm, tight, a scarcely muscled gauntness ever since his ascent into early adolescence, and never so freely divulged as it was around his lover. He didn't care for the beauty of his form, much less even recognize it. Even if he subconsciously cared for the way he looked, he didn't want to.

"I love you, Seto Kaiba."

One month of absence—oblivion, really—and already everything had gone awry, with a single—no, second, and publicized, no less—loss to the thorn in his side that would have him questioning his established reality.

And that third confrontation, so much more than pride as the stakes, would be preordained in the diabolical, pale hands of a man he once embraced. The man he accepted as his lo—

God, no. That word sounded so crass; such a fucking sham. He didn't meddle with such a self-seeking, parasitic struggle for vicarious highs. "Love," as he had it, didn't fucking exist.

"Why the hell are you doing this."

"Why do you love me."

"Funny you should even ask. It's obvious, isn't it?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?"

"Why take it all by force?! Why at all?! To hell with my assets; they're the least of your concern. There's something beyond this. This—"

"—Isn't like me?"

A beat of silence.

"Kaiba-boy." He almost sniffed at the younger man, wearing that glaringly familiar shit-eating grin that suddenly looked so disagreeable. Not on a face he'd grown to love. "You're so deliciously naïve. Adolescent. You pride yourself in your judge of character, your self-sufficiency, but truly, you're a complete amateur. In your world of shadows, your eyes atrophy and when the lights emerge, you're blind, and yet. You continue denying their very existence."

"Shut the hell up. I don't have time for your sad attempts at being cryptic. Kurosuke is my hostage, and you're going to give me information on the location of my brother, or he fucking dies."

It was obvious. Beautiful hair drawn from Pegasus' gouged eye socket—that beautiful façade—as if to personally divulge to Seto the cause of death being hemorrhaging.

"You gave me one of the most beautiful things I could've ever asked for."

Blood. So much blood. The brackish odor mingled with hers and had his mind tempting to stray to post-traumatic episodes of Mokuba's birth. Dear God, he was only being used.

To hell with this woman.

To hell with dreams.

To hell with chasing the past.

He oversaw the platform, and offered the corpse a near nostalgic expression. The desire to spit on the man and carry on cursing his godless name had suddenly faded after the release from his cell, a mixture of pity and self-loathing left in its wake. Paling tendons bit hard against the duralumin briefcase. The past was better left out of his life, and it always had been. Time went out of its adulterous way to show him how little the world valued his existence; always a bridge between intentions, never the intent itself. As much as his thoughts inhabited in delectable self-delusion, like anyone else, he didn't want to deal with the hassle of being an object of desire, anyway.

The man was already dead to me.

Mokuba would grow up, find a love of his own, and Seto, he would grow old, bitter as ever and inevitably unable to tend to his work, but it would be a blissful death alone. Just like he wanted it. He knew nothing better and he didn't want to.

And as he strode past the castle doors, a chill running through his frame, he could've sworn, the burst of blinding light traced a silhouetted Pieta in the bloodred skies. Trick in the light. One he could do without remembering.