kittensinboxes | Hang My Head, Drown My Fear [Lab of Nature AU, Suffering Is Magic]

Kaiba's eyes flitted from side to side, seeing nothing at all, hearing nothing, feeling nothing for the longest time. His face is darkening, for lack of breathing. This is where he dies, isn't it? He can't stop it, he's tried it all, but the truer he is to himself, the more he bleeds. The more the others threaten, the harder he falls--

--Yuugi's hand on his shoulder is what pulls him out of it, making his eyes regain the slightest focus, and his seizing throat finally draws in an aching, desperate breath as he realizes he has fully working lungs. Not the ruined, split things that only choked him on his own lifeblood.

He could breathe, even if it hurts, even if his eyes had gone red already as if someone was strangling him.

"Hhhhh...!!"

It's such a thready, thin sound. Voiceless. Powerless.

But the way he reaches an arm out, shoving Yuugi away? That's not so powerless. He's still reedy and weak, unable to have recovered by being in this hellhole...but he still has some strength, despite it.

Don't. T...ouch me.

Yuugi stumbled back with a high-pitched squeak -- no matter what, that voice never seemed to grow deeper -- but managed to stay on his feet.

Kaiba didn't like to be touched.

...Good to know.

"You..." He didn't step forward, instead shuffling a single foot against the floor with a soft scrape. "You weren't breathing. I had to get you to breathe."

He tapped his foot against the floor.

Again.

Again.

And again.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to overstep anything, but I'm not going to just stand by while someone is in trouble."

He couldn't. He wouldn't.

Because that was the right thing to do.

Right, Ryou?

Right, Dad?

Right, blue-eyed stranger...?

Kaiba wants to scoff, but doesn't. He instead lets his head droop forward, focusing on evening out his breathing and trying to determine whether he was experiencing some kind of mental trauma.

He remembers how it felt, to be sliced in half by the elevator, and to be stabbed in the throat with the ceramic shard. Neither situation was pleasant, but he knew they were over with now.

So then why...did it feel so real in his mind just then? Almost as if he were reliving that moment. Like the nightmares of dying at the hands of Duel Monsters, over and over.

He shakes his head violently. Now, the nightmares struck while he was awake, huh? A fitting punishment for his insolence, he's sure their captors believe that.

Finally, his lips move with purpose.

Don't waste your time. It won't stop them. Even if I didn't breathe again, I'd be put back once they fixed me.

I have died so many times. It does not matter to me anymore.

But it does hurt. Every single time.

It didn't matter.

It didn't matter.

It

Didn't

Matter.

Breathe, Mutou. Breathe. Let the anger leave your body so you don't lose yourself. He doesn't know. Nobody in the experiment floors know.

Yuugi lowered his head, wheezed ragged breaths as he tried to keep himself upright.

Now Now, don't cry. Your Light is going to help others.

He had his trachea ripped out last time, before he was thrown in here.

A regenerator like him could heal wounds so quickly, after all. So long as his heart or brain were undamaged, he could keep living and living and living--

Who was his trachea given to?

"Kaiba."

His voice quivered... before knocking on the wall to get his attention.

Do you know... how they keep you coming back...? I can tell you.

Kaiba looks up when Yuugi says his name, even though he doesn't care to. He's tired, his mind is buzzing, and he's not in the mood for anymore conversation. But, just as he'd tried doing with Sunny, he exercises a modicum of patience and flicks his gaze to Yuugi.

To what he was mouthing.

...?

What are you talking about?

Yuugi smiled, but it wasn't a happy one.

There are other experiments here, away from the cells. The scientists use them to 'harvest light' in a different way than how they do it with you and the others.

And when they harvest light...they make sure to get the most out of it.

He didn't want to say it; it was insane to say it out loud, even though he lived it. This couldn't have been his reality, right? He wasn't strapped to a gurney, stared down at by a halo of doctors as they--

Yuugi's throat twinged, and for a moment, he winced and touched it with his right hand.

Are you making fun of me?

Kaiba mouths it without thinking, when he sees Yuugi touch his throat. He's ever the same, self-centered, and being keyed up over the situation isn't helping. But again...experience with Sunny tells him that's a fucked up thing to ask, all things considered.

Yuugi just told him that there were other experiments.

He...was telling Kaiba because there was a point, right?

Never mind...what's important is that you are talking about another way of getting Light. A way you know.

Is that why I have not seen you until today?

A bit interrogative, but what the hell else are they going to not-talk about?

I'm not.

Yuugi shook his head.

And.... yeah. I used to be like you, but, I...

A deep, shuddering breath.

They told me I was better suited somewhere else. With the others.

How could he describe it without this guy thinking he was faking? He glanced around, searching...searching for something sharp--

Oh. There was a little sharp edge on the bedpost.

We...

He walked to the bed, motioning for Kaiba to pay attention.

They did something to us.

... before he sliced his own hand, deep.

Yuugi didn't even flinch.

As the blood poured down his palm, the wound was already starting to knit together.

With what others?

He asks it, but Yuugi's already moving towards one of the beds, and before he could get an answer to the first question, there's more being laid out for him to think about.

Not the least of which is...Yuugi laying his own skin wide open with the edge of the bedpost, which makes Kaiba flinch. He's not even sure if it's sympathy so much as disgust, seeing his rival split his own skin open without so much as a sound of pain.

And then...his eyes widen, as he looks at the flesh stitch itself together like an invisible zipper being tugged shut.

What...happened to you?

"It's complicated."

Yuugi shook his head, sighing at the wound. It was like he was getting a papercut, rather than a deep wound.

He mouthed:

I wasn't breaking under the usual experiments. I kept surviving. I made friends. They wanted to see if I could break. So they put me with the others, who...

He swallowed.

We were kept in pens, like animals. We had to go to the bathroom in the corner and eat whatever they gave us.

Hunger strikes didn't work.

He tried, and now he knows how geese feel when they make foie gras.

They called us 'Harvesters'. Harvesters of Light, and...

A swallow.

...flesh. For the other experiments, in case they... you know.

Died.

Edited 2025-03-13 02:45 (UTC)

Kaiba lets that sink in.

He lets it sink in for a very long time.

At first he's angry. Angry at Yuugi, for being so weak as to allow himself to be taken advantage of. Angry at the scientists, for deciding to take the man that he still needed to defeat and doing it long before he even got there.

The way Yuugi acts...the way he doesn't lend a thought to his wounds...that's the attitude of a man who gave in, made do, and accepted his fate.

Kaiba didn't like that look on him. To have his faith shaken, it was almost as painful as having his throat slashed.

But...he eventually circles back to an amalgamation of emotions that he's not even sure how to parse. He's...upset. He's thinking harder than he wants to, about what Yuugi was saying here.

Harvesters.

Harvesters of Light.

They were meant to patch up the other experiments.

Like Kaiba.

When he died...they hadn't just fixed the wound, had they? That's what Yuugi's getting at here, isn't it?

You're saying...that they take pieces of you and use them to bring us back to life?

Why...is he smiling at Yuugi that way?

You're saying that parts of you are in my body?

Why does he look like he wants to laugh again?

So every time I died, I caused you pain?

Is he happy? Is he upset? It's so hard to tell, with that face he's wearing, but inside, Seto Kaiba is fighting the urge to vomit at the idea of all of this. That Yuugi was a living organ donor, and that Kaiba was...was not himself anymore, and that if he wanted to remain as much himself as possible, he had to stop fighting.

Stop...fighting?! Is this a joke?!

That... look on his face.

Fuck. That look. That manic glow in his eyes, that way he mouths the words and looks like he's going to...

He had to be careful.

So, so careful.

I...I don't know if it was every death. There are a lot of us. Everytime the experiments died, we were left to...

He was lying.

Yuugi knew he was lying, but he...

He didn't--

-- want to lie.

Not to who could be his new ally and friend. He knew him, he was broken up, but who wasn't in this awful place? Maybe they could finally get out...!

...But I think with this most recent death... yeah. You do.

The confirmation is enough. Kaiba lets his head tilt back, and he glares at the ceiling with that pained rictus on his face. The same as when he'd died in front of Javert. The same miserable, spiteful expression that made him tear the ceramic shard out of his throat and ruin the last room he was in.

He's been rebuilt with new parts, because even this sophisticated alien culture can't just clone a piece of him and make him just like new. No, they have to produce Light even beyond the pain and suffering of a Light Bringer dying.

It's a perfect system. Suffering on suffering.

I suppose you want me to say I'm sorry.

His head lolls to the side, catching Yuugi's gaze.

Is that it?

Yuugi blinked.

"No? Why would I want you to do that? It wasn't your fault.

You didn't know...nobody does."

He sat down on the bed, glancing down at the hand that was now good as new.

"Not even the enforcers know."

Because no one gives anything for free.

And you have every right to hold a grudge.

Still...Yuugi's answer seems to bring Kaiba around enough to stop looking so manic, even if it's just a little. Maybe not completely, but...enough that he knows this man as the one who he still sought a victory against. It's still Yuugi. But the question is, if Seto is still himself?

The more time passes, the more he wonders.

Even if the Enforcers knew...it wouldn't stop them anyway.

Yuugi's lips turned up, but that smile wasn't a happy one. He shook his head with a resigned sigh.

You're right. They... they make sure of that.

The enforcers were bent to the will of their captors. Brainwashed--

Or were their brains physically manipulated...?

I don't, though. I blame the people holding us, not... you. Or any of the others.

I just want the others' pain to stop. I saved one, I know I can save more.

That's not possible.

Kaiba doesn't say it with a tone of resignation. He says it as if the statement is fact.

No one can get out of here.

He's too intelligent to dare himself to hope. If it were possible to escape, he would have found that way out by now. Yuugi must have been mistaken.

That's what they want us to think.

He still remembered the boy's eyes, the fear in them as they made a break for it and dashed across the labs--

There was a weakness in their security. Nobody believed me but one little boy. He was new, had only been here maybe a few days.

He knew him, too. He was looking for someone--

I took a hit meant for him as we ran. He got through and managed to run away. I didn't want to slow him down.

Look at his eyes, Seto. His face. This serious, unflinching face.

A weakness...?

Kaiba still looks dubious, but...he hasn't known Yuugi to lie. Between them both, he was the one who had ever been dishonest about anything. Yuugi had no reason to lie either, unless he was trying to make Kaiba act less erratically.

Is...is that what he was doing?

No.

No, not with that face.

They won't have that weakness anymore, not if you exploited it. Don't you think they'll have fixed it by now?

He still doesn't yield to the idea that it was possible. How could he? There couldn't be a way out, not for him...not for anyone.

Yuugi nodded.

Oh, that one? Probably. But there are some places where this place is coming apart.

There. Right there in his eyes: there was the playfulness. The boy who thrilled at solving a good puzzle.

For all their tech and computers, they're pretty lousy at making sure this place is in good condition. At least anywhere outside the major lab areas.

He could smell it when he was led, blindfolded, to The Sunroom: the waft of outside air, the hint of grass.

And he was right.

He was right.

(What a sick name for a torture chamber...)

How? How could something so simple strike a chord in Kaiba's heart, fractured, pitiless thing that it still was?

He wanted more of that look. He wanted...something that he hadn't been able to get here. Something that he'd given up on finding a partner for, after Akechi had dangled the carrot in front of him and then made sure to impale him upon his own hubris for even thinking he could...just...play a game.

For a moment, Kaiba's not thinking about what Yuugi's really saying here, the hope he's trying to instill. He's thinking about how very alone he felt, without the thing that had gotten him through his difficult life, something that had molded him, made him who he was, given him his success.

You...you really are the Yuugi I know. You aren't something I've made up.

For all his creativity, Seto Kaiba could not replicate Yuugi Mutou. His mind had tried to replicate Gozaburo, to replicate Pegasus, and they'd been more successfully crafted than this, to torture him.

But this was torture too, wasn't it?

But if you aren't...then what if they made you?

There's something in those blue eyes of his, a twinge of something that is not fear. It is not! Fear!

But it's something close. Apprehension.

Something he made up...

What had these monsters done to him? That tortured everyone, but Kaiba...

There was something in his eyes.

Fear...?

This place took so much from Yuugi: family. Innocence. Friends. But it couldn't take away his identity, the core of who he was. It couldn't take away his warmth, or his heart.

That soft heart that wanted to take all that pain away and bring it into himself.

My friend said the same thing when we planned our escape.

He was so sure this was all a dream, conjured up by some guy named Pegasus. A really bad dream, and he needed to find his--

He was like you. He knew me from...somewhere. He was looking for his brother; I hope he found him after he got out...

Seto Kaiba...who was he, really? He'd spent six months alone, in the darkness with only pinpricks of light that manifested as he needed them, tickling at the edges of his mind and unlocking bits at a time.

For six months, he was alone, and it hadn't felt like six months. It had felt like a strange, impermanent eternity during which he had to remember who he was.

Not Seto Kaiba

Just Seto.

So long he'd built himself from the ground up, trying to stray from the darkness and stick to the light. After all, weren't children afraid of the dark? Was he...? It felt so, in that prison of his own mind.

Even when he'd been pulled back to reality, his mind was barely kept together by a singular purpose. The seams of those pieces were visible, barely slotted against each other. The barest bit of pressure rattled him to the core and awoke the monster that hadn't fully been beaten down.

But there was a single thing, one thread that wound itself around the puzzle of his mind and kept it tightly bound. The pieces didn't slip too much, so long as that string held them securely, and it was a thin thing, something which he wasn't sure of yet. Thin, but powerful. Carbon-fiber filaments twisted together tightly.

Brotherhood. Family. Mokuba.

Oh yes. Mokuba.

His brother. His brother who he had been searching for and when he finally found him, the pieces of his mind began to come undone, shaken by the efforts of a man who only wanted to take everything that he could from Seto Kaiba.

Here too, they start to slip out of alignment, and Kaiba feels dizzy at Yuugi's words.

His name.

Tell me. Tell me his name. What is your friend's name?

Why is his pulse throbbing at his temples like a barely suppressed oil line, fit to burst and drown him in ichor until he can't breathe? Why is his stomach twisting itself into such knots that he can barely bite back the bile creeping up his throat?

All he wants...more than anything, is for Yuugi to say someone else's name. Not the one on his mind, building into a cacophony raging in his head so loudly that even he douts that he could hear Yuugi's answer.

Yuugi bit his lip. He could see the wheels turn in those eyes, but he could never fathom the depths.

How much had he suffered?

How much was this place, and how much was from a time long before?

There was something in his eyes, though. A recognition. A haze building like dust on scattered puzzle pieces.

...

No. It couldn't be.

The person he was looking for was actually...

"Hey..." Yuugi whispered instead. "We can talk about this, but we both need to calm down a bit. I don't know about you, but my heart is ready to burst out of my chest."

No.

Kaiba rises to his full height, but his stance looks anything but steady. He makes his way towards Yuugi, reaches a hand out to fist the front of his shirt and pull him close.

When I first got here, Helios played a voice that she should not have had any knowledge of. She played my brother's voice to taunt me.

So I won't wait. I will not be calm!

Tell me the name!

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