Chapter Thirty-One

As told from the perspective of Mokuba Kaiba-

I was surprised when I entered Seto's bedroom and found that he wasn't here. I exited the room and went back to the deck; I spotted him on the starboard side, sitting in a lounge chair, staring off at the dark riverbanks. I approached him; he heard my footsteps and looked up at me.

"Good evening," he said as I sat down in the armchair next to his. "Is something the matter?"

"Well, not really… it's just that it's still my birthday," I said, pointing at my watch. It was 10:15 at night. Seto turned his head just a little bit to glance at my wrist and chuckled. "Yes, it is. How does it feel to be thirteen?"

"I'm a teenager," I said. "So… I guess that means hormonal and rebellious. Right?"

He sighed blithely. "I'm sorry that we didn't do very much celebrating for your birthday today. When we get home I can get you a cake… we can reschedule the trip."

"I'm thinking we had quite a hell of a trip already," I scoffed.

He raised his eyebrows and asked, "You don't want to do a birthday vacation anymore?"

"It's not that I don't want to go on a trip, I guess…" I began. "I just want to take it easy for a while."

"I know what you mean," he said.

We sat in silence for a moment. The breeze was cool and refreshing; it nipped at us pleasantly and lightly picked at our hair. Even though it was comforting to be out here, like this, though, I still felt upset. Seto glanced down at me after a little while, and I knew that he could sense how I felt. He held his hand out to me, and I gratefully took it.

"Are you sure you don't need to see a doctor?" I asked nervously. "You look white… does the cut hurt?"

"No," he said. "It's fine. It only hurts particularly when I move. I don't think that I need to receive a blood transfusion or anything like that. Really."

I lifted my head slightly and looked up at his face. He looked a little bit sad. "Are you thinking about Kisara?" I asked.

He turned his head slightly and looked down at me. Then, he sighed and said, "I do miss her. But, as we were saying goodbye… she helped me realize that she never is really away from me. Things will just go back to the way they were before I met her like this- she is always watching over me."

The corners of his mouth were just barely turned upwards. I reached out and took his hand and said, "I miss her, too. I really liked her."

It was true. It was hard to accept that she wasn't coming back like that, even though I had only known her for mere days- even having her for that long made me see her as the big sister- maybe even mother- that I never had.

Seto looked sadly down at me before saying, "One of my earliest memories took place exactly thirteen years ago…"

"The day I was born…?" I asked confusedly. He continued, "Yes. I'll never forget it. I was in the hospital with Dad… he was mourning for our mother, but I didn't understand that yet; I was more interested in seeing what the hell you were."

I laughed, and he amusedly continued, "I wasn't even five- I had never seen a newborn baby before. I had my little hands pressed up against your glass incubator and I asked Dad, 'That's the baby? He looks funny.'"

I laughed again. "I hope I've grown more handsome over the years…"

"Slightly," was the response. "Poor Dad… I think he didn't know whether to be thrilled at your birth or devastated at Mom's death or concerned at how I would respond to Mom's death. I asked him why he was crying; that was the first time that he tried to explain death to me."

"What did he tell you?" I asked, surprised that our father hadn't made up a story about Mom being on vacation or something. "I mean, did you understand…"

"He gave me the five-year-old's version, of course; he sat me in his lap and kind of composed himself for a millisecond and said, and I quote- 'Sometimes, when people get sick, there's a special place they go called Heaven. They have to stay there, and it means that we don't get to hug or kiss them anymore.'"

My lips parted. He sighed. "That was the first time that I realized that Mom wasn't coming back; that is when I started crying, too. Dad kind of went on, the best he could, 'But sometimes, if you listen hard enough, you can still hear them talk to you and sing to you.'"

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he whispered, "I understood what he was teaching me. He said, 'There's something that Mom wants you to do for her. Will you do something for her, Seto?' And of course I wanted to do something; and he said, 'Since baby Mokuba doesn't get to meet Mom and hug her, we have to give him all of the extra love and hugs that Mom would. Will you promise me that you'll love baby Mokuba twice as much because he doesn't ever get to see Mom?'"

He was holding my heart as much as he was holding my hand, right now; eyes glistening, he said, "And, I made Dad that promise. I hope you know that."

I nodded; I couldn't speak for fear of crying. His smile faltered slightly and he said, "The reason that I told you that is because I also want to express how incredibly sorry I am that you had to see me get hurt, like that. You've had so much pain in your life… the last thing that you need is to believe for even a second that you've lost your last family member."

"It… nothing was your fault, Seto…" I whimpered.

"I know," he replied sadly, "But it still breaks my heart that you had to suffer in the way that I know you must have."

I swallowed hard and sighed and wiped my eyes. "Thank you… thank you for saying that... I love you, big brother."

"I love you, little man. Happy birthday. Really!" He smiled at me for a moment before frowning; his eyes grew wide. "I've just remembered. I found something out."

I raised my eyebrows questioningly and he said, "I'm going to say something, and I want you to tell me what it means to you. Okay?"

"Sure…?" I shrugged. He said, simply, "The most graceful of ibises knows the balance between sorrow and hope; knows that tears of grief and tears of joy can often be the same."

I knitted my eyebrows. Huh…? "Seto, I don't get it," I began, but then my every nerve prickled and a chill went down my back. I felt short-of-breath with shock, but inexplicably I knew; I clutched at my chest and whispered, "What… what is that…? I know that phrase…!"

He said nothing; only smiled and looked back out at the river. "That's all that you'll ever want to know."


As told from the perspective of Joey Wheeler-

Tristan and I were leaning on the railing of the ship, staring out at the scenery. It was real dark but the ship's lights lit the embankment of the river so we could see some stuff. I felt melancholy. I knew that we were all reminded of the last night we'd known Atem. Exactly like this, I'd leaned on the railing of the ship. I'd felt the wind in my hair and I'd thought of all of the good times.

I sighed sadly, and Tristan sighed too, "I like to think of old good memories on days like this."

"Yeah?" I asked him. "I thought of a good memory not too long ago."

"There were so many," Tristan responded happily. "Which one?"

"Remember we shoved that fat guy into an outhouse?"

Tristan threw his head back with laughter. "Yeah, dude! I'm surprised that he didn't, like, poison our drinks or something, later. I wonder what he's doing now."

"He's used to the smell, so I bet he's a septic-tank-cleaner or somethin'," I said smartly.

"What else did we used to do to people who pissed us off?" Tristan asked thoughtfully. "I'm sure we've got lots of awesome events…"

I opened my mouth to respond with a really great story that involved a bag of cat puke and a waffle iron, but I was interrupted by Kaiba's voice from behind us- "When I was nine, I mixed toilet water into someone's soup thermos."

Tristan and I whipped around and saw him standing there- frowning, but…

"Come again?" Tristan shrieked. "You …huh?"

Kaiba walked slowly towards us. Staring off at the distance, he continued, "One of the boys said something cruel to Mokuba, so later, I stole his lunch box, and waited for the hairy kid who never flushed to finish going to the bathroom, and then had another kid dump out half of the mean kid's soup, and then re-fill the thermos with the toilet water."

"You made another kid do it…?" I asked hesitantly.

"Of course," Kaiba replied, wide-eyed and disgusted. "I wasn't going to stick my hand in that water. I made another dumb kid do it. Once he'd made a nice mixture of soup and the hairy kid's piss, I put the thermos back into the mean kid's locker. I watched him eat from it two hours later."

Tristan and I stood in dumbfounded shock. Absolute disbelief. Then, Tristan found his voice and exclaimed, "Dude, you're awesome! You're so awesome! Why did we not know this before…?"

Kaiba sighed. "Well, I'm only having this conversation with you cool people at all because I'm doped up on about forty different kinds of pills that the ship doctor insisted I take, but… yes, that story really did actually happen."

"You seem happier," I told him cheerily. "I like it, dude. You're still an asshole, but you're like, the funny kind of asshole that's awesome."

He sighed again. "It's a strange thing, to let go of hatred."

"Can we call you our friend?" I asked eagerly.

Silence for a moment, but then he muttered, "I don't know," and he walked off.

Tristan and I stared at each other for a moment. "Dude, that's the closest thing we've ever got from him. I'll take it!" he then exclaimed happily.

"There you guys are!" someone else said- a boy… someone who I'd never met before. He was short and had large, bright eyes. His hair was oddly-colored: his long, face-framing bangs were yellow, and the wavy black locks that hung halfway down his back were purpleish at the tip.

"Hey dude," I said confusedly. Then, the boy spoke again- "Hey, Joey," he said, in… Yugi's voice?

…then I realized. Oh, woah. It was Yugi, standing in front of me.

I stood in silence for a moment. Then, after minutes of trying to find my voice, I finally gasped, "Y….Yuge! Dude! Seriously!"

Yugi laughed. "I did promise you, right? Well, here. I just got out of the shower and I didn't style my hair. This is my hair, down, for just one night."

I couldn't believe it. No effing way. He looked so different! Like, he was even shorter, of course… but, it was the damnest thing, because his hair was actually …pretty. Like, it was shiny and thick and actually looked pretty good, down like this.

He walked forward and stood between Tristan and me. I looked over at his face. He looked a little bit sad. I frowned at him and said, "You okay, man?"

Yugi looked over at me. He looked so weird with his hair blowing in the wind like this. He sighed and said, "I miss Atem. I miss him all the time."

He turned his head back towards the setting sun and sighed sadly. I put my hand on his shoulder bracingly. "Being around here makes me think of him so much," he whispered.

"Do you ever stop thinking of him, though…?" I asked, bracingly. Yugi frowned thoughtfully. "No," he told me.


The ship docked in the major port city and we were carpooled to the airport. Ishizu received a report from Pegasus' caregivers that he was in stable condition and had undergone surgery to insert a glass eye.

"It was wonderful seeing you all, again. Marik has been away at school, lately, but I will send your greetings to him," Ishizu told us all, as we left her and Rishid at the front dropoff. She and Rishid had bought the plane tickets for us.

At the airport in Domino City hours and hours and hours and hours later, our plane was greeted by a very hysterical Serenity, a couple of Kaiba's head worker guys, Bakura, and Yugi's proud grandpa. "I didn't know what happened!" Serenity shrieked, throwing her arms around me as soon as she saw that we'd walked off of the plane. "I saw that Tristan got hurt and you were gone and I was so scared, I cried for hours and nobody knew anything because Pegasus was gone and so was Yugi and Téa and-"

"I'll tell you the entire story over a good cup of coffee," I told her happily and lightheartedly. She sniffled and let go of me and stepped back and wiped her eyes and nodded at me and said, "Ishizu is the one who called all of us to come get you guys… she told us a lot of really scary things…"

"Really?" I asked her, surprised. She continued, "Yeah, that you guys were in the temple and fought Zorc and it was really dangerous…"

"I promise it's all good," I told her. "None of us is hurt too bad."

She smiled mildly at me through tears, and then she went over to Tristan and they started kissing and holy shit I really, really don't like Tristan.

"In only a few days, a lot of things have happened," Yugi's grandfather laughed. "Everyone from the party was safely evacuated and no real harm was done to anyone. But, look at this!"

Grandpa held up a newspaper that was folded to the middle section, and I took it from him. The headline of this story reported that in western Europe, every fashion designer is following the trend of the most stylish businessman in the world…

Wait, what? I read the headline aloud, shrieking, "Ziegfried Von Schroder Sets New Viral Trend! What the hell is this? Dude, everyone in western Europe is wearing tampons on their heads! Are you serious?"

I furiously flipped through the pictures that were shown there. Tampon-shaped barrettes, hats, hat decorations, headbands…

Téa was totally laughing at me and so was Grandpa. "No! No, that was our idea, damn it!" I shouted at Tristan. "Do you see this?"

…no, he didn't see this, he was making out with my baby sister in the airport.

"You son of a bitch, look at this," I screamed, and I threw the newspaper at him as hard as I could. It whacked him in the back and finally he let go of Serenity and growled, all annoyed, and said, "What, Joey," but then noticed the newspaper at his feet and picked it up and yelled, "What? Ziegfried got three billion dollars of contracting from these fashion companies? Dude, that was our idea!"

I noticed that Bakura had slowly gone up to Mokuba, while Kaiba was rummaging through paperwork that his aides had brought him. "I know that Pegasus gave you the Millennium Ring, to fight with," I heard him say.

"Yeah," Mokuba replied quietly. "I know you had a rough time with it, huh…"

"Well, we released the soul of the Thief Bakura, as well as Atem. I know that when you held the Ring, he wasn't here, anymore, even though Zorc was… but, please, I feel like I have to apologize."

Mokuba looked a little bit surprised. Yugi was paying attention to this conversation, too, and Bakura noticed this, so he started talking to all of us. "It was my ancient counterpart who started so much misery in the past," he said. "I know that Akhenaden had the largest part, but, still, my evil counterpart fought for Zorc's revival too. I am sorry to be associated with him."

"It's not you, Bakura," Yugi insisted. "We all know that, you didn't ask for any of it…"

"Yeah," he smiled peacefully. "I'm grateful that you don't. I still feel like I have to distance myself, sometimes, too. Thanks for being better at that, than I am!"

Yugi was smiling at him. I sometimes wondered if Bakura ever missed his alternate ego the way that Yugi missed Atem. Bakura's alter ego had been cruel and mean and a pretty big dick overall, but… well, he was part of Bakura, to an extent… the same way that Atem was part of Yugi. Atem was gone, but Yugi still pined for him and missed him as though missing a part of himself…

And it was then that I knew- I knew that, no, Atem was not gone. He lived eternally in our hearts, as our friendship all did- as we felt this forgiveness for Bakura, and as Kaiba extended his hand to each of us to say goodbye, and as then Serenity took my hand and Tristan took her other hand and everyone waved goodbye to Kaiba's people and we stepped out of the airport... Every day that we remembered Atem, and remembered everything that made him so incredible, and were grateful for what he brought to our lives: each other, and these experiences that made us love each other… well, that was one more day that he'd live on.