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

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!

Yuugi did not react, even when he was grabbed. He just stared, firm and unyielding, into Seto's eyes.

...Before they softened with sympathy.

"Do you remember what Mokuba was saying? Or what he sounded like?" Yuugi asked. "He was only here a few days at most, and we were together the entire time; I can tell you if that recording was real or not."

Mokuba.

Mokuba.

Seto drops Yuugi once he has what he wants, or what he doesn't want, really. The truth. The reality of the situation. He drops to a knee, his eyes wide and frantic, his lips don't move to answer Yuugi's question for so long that perhaps the other teen might come to the conclusion that he hadn't heard it at all.

He had.

But all he can think about is whether Mokuba could also do the same thing Yuugi could now, whether he could slice himself open and stitch back up, and whether he was put under the knife to fix the degenerates who lived and died here.

He finally mouths words, and they don't answer the question, they only convey the pain of failure.

He was here. He was here and I didn't help him. I.

I.

I can't help...my brother. My little brother. My brother. My brother, my brother, my brother...

It's probably for the best that this Yuugi didn't know him. What shame he would feel, knowing that Yuugi was right to pity him, and probably did.

He was pitiful. He was The Loser they dubbed him as after all.

Shit...Shit!

Shit, he was spiralling. Yuugi had to do something, something...!

"Kaiba, please. Listen to me." Would this work...? "Mokuba's safe. He was the one I got out. He's not here. I didn't let the scientists touch him."

He didn't know if he had the regenerative powers, but he knew.

He knew that he was not cut into. Nobody went through their "physical" without losing themselves.

"He asked me... he asked me to find you."

You got him out...and to where?

Kaiba's eyes flick up to Yuugi, shifting with a lack of focus, looking at him, but not seeing him.

He's out there, alone, because I failed him. They could find him, if they expended the effort to look. And I can't let them do that!

So then why aren't his legs moving anymore? Why is he stuck like this, knelt and shaking, being useless here?

If he got out, then I'll get out, and then--

And then he'll find what's missing inside, he'll be able to figure out who Seto Kaiba should be! Whole...he wants to be whole, but if chasing the light doesn't suit him, then perhaps the darkness really was the only way to claw his way to the top.

Maybe...just a bit of the monster, until he can get out of here.

But not towards Yuugi. He can't. He owes Yuugi a twofold debt that he's ill-equipped to repay.

You have to help me. Now. I can't wait!

I wish I knew what was out there. I could smell trees and water when I got close to the rubble, but...

He took the hit meant for Mokuba. He got him out. He was safe somewhere.

He's safe. He's tough and determined; he'll be okay.

Better out there than in here.

But--

Was Kaiba serious?! He was just ready to run for it, with no preparation, no nothing?! Didn't he realize that this place banked on people feeling this intensely?! On reacting with emotion?!

These cells are reinforced with no easy way to break out. We'd have to make a break for it when we're being let out.

But we just got put in a cell together; we're gonna be watched closely! We can't just do this now, we'll get caught!

Edited 2025-03-17 12:17 (UTC)

No. NO! Why would they put us in cells that we aren't able to leave?

The cell doors always opened, to let the Light Bringers out to feed themselves, to relieve themselves...why was this different?! Why had the rules changed?!

You're wrong, Yuugi. That can't be.

A hiss of annoyance slips out, then Kaiba fights harder to get to his feet, forcing his legs to cooperate and very nearly losing his footing as he does so. He can't be trapped. He wouldn't accept it! And so he moves to the door.

Yuugi did not get up to stop him; it was easier to let him see than to continue a song and dance of denial and insistence before the truth was revealed.

Still, his body was taut, ready to run to him if anything was wrong--

Wait.

Wait, what if they--

Shit.

"Kaiba, wait! Don't touch the bars!"

Would he listen to the worry in his roommate's voice, though...?

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