Tricksy Whimsy

This is the one post I was dreading the most, and the reason I've not posted more head-canon stuff is that I sort of feel like I ought to get through the heroines, more or less, first. (Well, except for Thom, and Numair's the next post slated.)

I love the concept of Daine. I like her a lot in WM, and I think she's a fine secondary character in later canon.

I cannot stand the later three books of her quartet, and she is a large part of why. (The really horribly done cutesy animals are the rest of the reason. WM gave me hope; WS took it all away again.)

First, what I like. I like the sweet, somewhat shy commoner of WM. I like how in WM we see how she has troubles identifying with humans, and overidentifying with animals, and it's all treated like just more, well, problems that she'll have to overcome. (Numair's random curing her madness was a touch too pat for my tastes, but bearable, especially since WM makes it pretty clear it doesn't cure her of her identification issues.) I love the idea of her magic, and watching her tentatively explore it was hella fun.

And then boom, in WS, we no longer have Daine, we have Generic Spunky Heroine (Ecowarrior Subtype). There is no progression from Daine in WM to Daine in WS, psychologically; nothing that we're shown. If there is one thing I absolutely demand in stories, it's a sense of psychological realism; I can assume a lot, but you can't just expect me to assume necessary character growth. I have to see it, and we never do with Daine, not between any of her many changes.

Let me interject here: I am passionately, rabidly environmentalist (though of the "use all of the animal and kill it humanely" subset). But if there's one thing I loathe in fiction, it's the ecowarrior, especially the one who Has A Magic Bond With Nature. Daine in WM was most definitely not this; her overidentifying with animals was a problem. In WS, we suddenly get a really obnoxious aspect of Later Daine: her overidentifying with animals leads to her fucking up with humans - and the narrative treats this all as totally right.

We see this same obnoxious trait over and over again in EM, where Daine repeatedly does things that jeopardize the diplomatic party of which she's a part. She may not be an official negotiator, but you know what? That doesn't matter. There are standards of behavior expected of all members of a diplomatic party, and Daine's not excused just because she's "only" there for the Emperor's birds.

Later Daine is also incredibly judgmental. She (really rudely, esp. for a member of a diplomatic party) decides to teach the boys a lesson in EM - and I hated the sense that I was supposed to cheer her on, just like I hated the sense that I was supposed to root for Daine being an utter ass and jeopardizing the Dunlath mission because the wolves wouldn't understand. Daine, honey, that's what explanations are for.

Most irritatingly, Daine is incredibly judgmental towards Varice. This bugs me greatly for reasons I'll expand upon in a Varice post, but what really irks me is how the text gives Daine what's supposed to be this character-growth moment where Daine realizes she's being judgmental ... except Daine comes off as incredibly condescending. And she's condescending towards her mother, too.

Daine, to me, is the most Sue-ish of Pierce's heroines after Aly. (All Pierce's heroines are Sue-ish. It is, admittedly, part of being a hero ... except Pierce's heroines never really struggle, and are never really wrong. Unconvincing lip service is paid to both notions, and it's never really less convincing than here with Daine.)

Daine being godborn just felt really tacked on, and irked me. Pierce has this trend, with Tortall, of never really being able to write commoners without making them noble or better; the only two commoners, eventually, are Daine and Numair - and Daine's (unconvincingly) godborn, and Numair is so damn powerful and such a fixture of Jon's court that he might as well be noble.

I also loathe to no end Daine/Numair. Honestly, I knew pretty early on that Daine had a crush on Numair, but it never ever felt like real love to me, even though all of the fourth book was contrived to take Daine and Numair away from the main action and force them into a really squicky romance. (It's not the age gap that bothers me, so much - it's that RotG reads like she's still his student. And it all still reads as a crush.)

This is all probably why I have a tendency to break up Daine and Numair in my fics, or never have the relationship form; I see it only forming under really contrived circumstances. Also, no matter what Pierce says, Daine is not mature for her age; she's really rather immature.

Daine/Numair is like Alanna/Jon - they don't really click, and the relationship is bad for both parties. With Alanna/Jon, Pierce actually took a step back and really thought about it, and broke them up; I wish she'd had the insight to do that to Daine and Numair.

...I just realized another reason Daine/Numair squicks me: Numair is just about the only person Daine hangs out with, after WM where she spends time with Onua. Sure, lip service is paid to Daine still working with Onua later - but we never, ever see that again. It's the Daine and Numair show, and it creates this feeling that Daine is only ever around him. The world of TIQ is really claustrophobic, basically, and Daine/Numair is now starting to seem incredibly creepy to me.

Daine, by the way, is superb with a bow, which feels very Sue-ish, the way it's handled. She's the commoner girl SO GOOD she leaves everyone in awe - oh, please. (Incidentally, anyone else note that throughout the Tortall books, it's the ladies who don't/won't/can't fight who get scorn and condescension? The Tortall books are very clear: girls, if you don't want to fight, you're useless and silly.)

And, lastly, I hate the dehumanization of people in the later books. "Two-legger" sets my teeth on edge; calling all the animals "The People" and acting like they're more worthwhile than humans drives me nuts. In WM it was interesting because Daine's tendency to do this was treated like a problem, which it damn well is. The later books throw that all right out the window and expect us to be on Daine's side on all of this - sorry, no. Humanity will always come first for me, and I find the dehumanization we see in TIQ morally repugnant.

Also, wtf is up with acting like humans aren't animals? Or acting like animals are all morally right and wouldn't understand attacking others of their own kind? And while we're at it, can Daine's magic please stop randomly changing to fit the plot? And could more animals than rats hate her, or be suspicious of her? Also, it'd be lovely to see some kind of animal that she can't control; her perfect ability to control all vertebrates is a large part of what makes her so Sue-ish.

OMFG, how did I forget the one thing that made me start actively disliking Later Daine? The fucking temper tantrum she throws in the Carthaki palace. You cannot convince me no one died in that dinosaur rampage; you cannot convince me that the devastation she wreaked was justified. Why did she pitch such a colossal fit? She thought Numair was executed. Okay, you know what? I can understand that, especially for someone who really isn't shown to have much of a moral compass beyond "whatever the animals want is awesome!".

Then the text turns it into a joke. Daine is worried people back home might be upset; every Tortallan in the envoy is all "don't worry about it at all, dear, it's just a story to them". Kaddar and the text act like it's amusing that anyone could possibly want Daine punished for destroying the Carthaki palace, killing God knows how many people, while part of a diplomatic envoy suing for peace. Um. Am I the only one who wonders why it's so cute and okay and funny for Our Heroine to destroy a palace, when it was so Hideous and Awful when a certain smiling duke tried that in Corus?

Let me stop while I'm ahead and simply say that any argument that hinges on Daine being forced to by the Hag, or being distraught, or any other such excuse that lets her off the hook for her actions does. not. work. for me - unless you are willing to make the same excuse for Roger, who was out of his fucking mind at the time. I'm sorry, but madness is more justifiable for me than a fit of temper. Oooh, gee, Numair died. Well, honey, what are you going to do when he eventually does buy the farm? Trash Corus if he died in bed? Rip another country to shreds if he dies on a mission?

The Daine who throws that temper fit I unabashedly hate. If it weren't for the fact that her character as written is so damn disjointed that I can't really connect the Daines of each book, it would ruin her character for me entirely.

I have no head-canon for Daine, other than that I'm starting to become convinced she's some kind of sociopath, and I'm starting to become more and more certain that her marriage with Numair falls apart real fast. (I suspect she'd just take off one day and leave him with the kids. I ... don't really see her being mature enough to raise them.)

I want to reiterate: I really like the idea of Daine. I like to explore her interactions with characters not named Numair in fics; I like to see how my AUs would affect her plot. I think her story and character were horribly mishandled, and part of what angers me so much with the later three books is that I can almost see what Pierce was going for - and it fails miserably for me.

***

My Fics
Canon compliant:
None yet.

Allegiance AU:
Difference - Daine comes to Tortall. Things are different, in this world.

Making the Best of Things AU:
Weird Folk - Ten friends Daine makes in Tortall.

Snake in the Grass AU:
Daine is an important secondary character in the foundation fic for this 'verse.
The Morning Star - Thom is stuck visiting his family at the Swoop when a certain fleet attacks it.

What a Flicker Brings AU:
Daine becomes a pretty major secondary character in this 'verse.
Fools in Love - Daine asks an impertinent question.
The Way to His Heart - Numair can cook a grand total of three things.

Of all the Tortall series, I fic most for SotL, so I have to spend a lot of time thinking about Alanna. After Kel, she's my favorite of the heroines, but I always feel at least a little bad writing her - it always feels like I'm taking something away from her, because I mostly write AUs, and things go so ridiculously, implausibly perfectly for her in SotL that literally any change makes things start falling apart. (Not that this means her life in these AUs turns out bad, just different.)

So I guess, in retrospect, what bothers me most about Alanna is how contrived her life is by the end of SotL. Also, in getting my thoughts in order to make this post, I came to realize that I unabashedly like SotL-Alanna; it's the glimpses we see of her later that drive me nuts. She really starts going off the rails for me in that first scene in FT, where it seems she's almost become a parody of herself.

I don't find even early Alanna unproblematic, though. It bothers me endlessly that the story never grapples with her biggest flaws - her temper (which is treated as cute), her self-righteousness (she's always right), or her hypocrisy (she's all about duty, supposedly, yet repeatedly runs away and encourages others to do so). The story also never grapples with how her ambition and her drive are double-edged swords. I think that her being made Champion only serves to exacerbate these flaws, not temper them; I can think of few jobs she's more ill-suited to. I honestly think she would have been better served and even more useful as an ordinary knight.

This next thing is a problem I have with all the heroines, but I might as well mention it here: they never seem to lose anything, never seem to give anything up that actually matters. That's one of the reasons I'm so mean to Alanna in fic; I want to see what she'd do if she actually lost something - an opportunity, an accomplishment, a person who actually impacts her. I firmly believe that it's how we react to failure that really matters - but Alanna never really fails.

I am endlessly intrigued by the little glimpses of more depth to Alanna that we get in SotL - I am especially intrigued by her clear interest in the Old Ones and Myles' ruins, and I wish all that hadn't been dropped like a hot potato.

Head-canon
-A lot of Alanna's success is, actually, due to the fact she's god-touched. If nothing else, it's the only way I can satisfactorily explain away the progress reports.
-Alanna doesn't have a great relationship with her kids. At the least, it's a distant one fraught with a lot of misunderstanding. How bad it is, exactly, depends mostly on how angsty I feel like writing at the time.
-Jon only sent Alanna off on that diplomatic trip to Carthage because she was getting on his nerves and he wanted her gone for a while. (In fact, I think that explains everyone he sent, since that envoy's filled with a lot of dumb choices.)
-I sometimes like to think that later, if she ever actually matures a bit, Alanna ends up retiring from being Champion to take over Myles' role as history teacher. I liked the glimpses we saw of Alanna the teacher, though I think she'd be a shitty training master, and I liked the glimpses we got of Alanna being interested in history. (I can see basically two paths for Alanna - she never really grows up, and so never really retires, or she eventually learns to accept aging with grace and finds some other way to be useful.)
-She was never afraid of magic, but she used it as an excuse enough (because she didn't like practicing it) that she half believed it. Honestly, though - even before the Sickness she's awfully quick to threaten Coram with visions, and the whole thing with the cook's visions sounds far more Alanna-ish to me than Thom-ish, not least because she seems to be the more dynamic of the twins.
-She never had the best relationship with Thom, and is not entirely sure why. I see her as a rough-and-tumble girl, and there's that line about her ducking him in the pond that she uses to basically shut him up. I suspect that what she saw as just roughhousing he saw as bullying; I also think she sees him as somewhat pathetic. She really doesn't seem to think too highly of her brother in canon.
-Alanna thinks she got over Thom's death, but never really did. (Why yes, it does rather disturb me that in canon she seems to grieve more for Liam than her own brother.) I sort of suspect that she's used to pushing thoughts of her brother aside, even while he was alive, and she just does the same here and thinks she's over it. I also suspect this colors her relationship with her eldest, because superficially there's enough similarity there to raise all sorts of old ghosts. (Again, how deeply this taints Alanna's relationship with her son depends on how angsty I'm getting.)
-I'll get into this more in a later post on the kids, but I think Alanna feels that none of them turned out quite right; I also think the one she actually understands is Aly. Alan (even my happy version of him) deeply unsettles her; Thom is different and distant in ways she can't quite get.
-At some point in the ten-year gap between LR and WM, someone actually made Alanna get some more comprehensive/official training as a healer. (Honestly, in canon this bugs the SHIT out of me - all other healers we see in Tortall are trained; Alanna isn't, but somehow that's perfectly ok, she's just as good as the trained ones. See also: WWRLAM, and how barely-trained-in-magic Alanna is suddenly competent enough to be a Bazhir shaman and teacher of magic.) Either that, or somehow despite Alanna's apparently incredible reluctance to learn, Maude somehow forced her to learn enough healing that Alanna's actually qualified to do so.

***

My Alanna Fics
Alanna is a secondary or background character in a lot of my fics, and in compiling this list, I realized that I have written a lot of fics that are about her but do not have her in them. Those fics aren't linked below, only ones in which she is a major character.
Canon compliant:
Midwinter Tradition - It's Midwinter, and Alanna has someplace to be. So of course she has to kick Neal out of bed for it.

Canon-compliant but I consider it AU:
Red and Yellow - Jon really shouldn't have sent her to Carthak.

Miscellaneous AUs:
Kiss and Tell - Delia figures out a thing or two about Squire Alan. Could, with some juggling, be considered canon-compliant.
Song of the Seer - My first "the twins don't switch" fic. I am not nice to Alanna in this fic, at all.
Stricken to the Bone - Thom and Alanna both go for page training.

Allegiance AU:
Difference - Daine comes to Tortall. Things are different, in this world.

Discovery AU:
Discovery - Lord Alan gets two progress reports.

The Iron King AU:
This AU is all about Alanna, in a way, as it is her decision to marry Jon that starts the divergence. The only fic so far directly featuring Alanna is The Iron King.

Making the Best of Things AU:
Another series heavily featuring Alanna; the fics where she is a major or main character are the only ones listed below, but she shows up in others.
First Impressions - Jon and company meet Alanna.
Odd Couple - Francis attempts to woo his ladylove.
Burning Brightly - Jon attempts to clear out the Black City.
Heroism - the major Alanna fic in this 'verse. What happens to Alanna when she goes to convent instead.
Scrap of a Dream - Alanna dreams.

Patchwork AU:
Another AU that heavily features Alanna, though so far she only shows up in the founding fic. In this 'verse, the Grimhold Mountains are their own country, and Tortall itself is very small.
Ten Scenes from Another World - A short history lesson, and what happens when Tortall sends an embassy to Grimhold.

What a Flicker Brings AU:
This AU diverges because of and centers on Thom, but you can't really write any AU about Thom that doesn't heavily feature Alanna. She's central to these two stories in particular.
What a Flicker Brings - Thom gets a glimpse of the future in his mug.
Three Months - What happens during the time skip in What a Flicker Brings.

I spend a lot of time dissecting the stories I read. A lot of time. I like looking for the flaws in seemingly perfect characters, and the virtues in unremittingly evil ones, and the places where the world just doesn't quite hold together.

That's half the fun, to me. If there were no broken bits, no ragged edges, I would grow bored. I certainly wouldn't be able to fic; I need those snags to hang stories off of.

None of this means I hate the characters, or the stories. I may hate how they're presented; I may find that the execution fails for me. But if I didn't like them, I simply wouldn't bother.

So no matter how often I rag on one character or story, remember this: if I truly hated them, I wouldn't waste my time on them.

A lot of times I linger on the flaws because it seems like few others do; there's an attitude in a lot of fandom that if you're interested in the flaws at all, you must hate the characters/stories, and I'm a knee-jerk devil's advocate. The more people praise something the more I want to find its broken bits.

(I'm debating, since I'm currently down with Head Cold, Round 2, spending some time over the next few days putting up some posts on Tortall and my head-canon for it, both so I can get it down and so I can really explore, at least a bit, both what doesn't work for me and what does.)

Something was going on with Niisama. (Well, that was an understatement. Wasn't there always something going on?)

But he'd been acting just a little ... off, since waking up from that coma. At first, Mokuba had just chalked it up to, well, to the coma, and rebuilding his heart, and getting stuck in a card by a soul-stealing jackass, and all the stress Niisama had gone through when trying to make sure the fallout from Duelist Kingdom didn't wreck KaibaCorp, too.

But stress doesn't generally cause people to lapse into speaking long-dead languages. Or absently put on eyeliner in the morning, before freaking out and washing it off.

Mokuba, not being an idiot, had a pretty good idea what was going on, especially after seeing that tablet at the museum and meeting that weird Isis lady. Niisama being able to read the text on the Ra card only proved to him what Mokuba already knew.

...Not that Niisama was likely to admit it, anytime soon.

But Mokuba was a Kaiba, and while whatever was going on with Niisama could be explained by reincarnation, given all the weird shit the Items had caused, and the fact that at least one of the Items clearly had reacted to Niisama, he was ... keeping possibilities open.

Until the morning he walked into the kitchen to find Niisama sitting at the table (surprisingly), staring blankly into a bowl of oatmeal (which he hated), and and muttering what sounded like a half-remembered prayer to himself in a language with some damn weird consonant clusters.

"Niisama?" Mokuba asked timidly, hanging onto the doorframe.

Niisama turned to look at him, eyes blank and unrecognizing, and Mokuba shivered. "You look like Nefernebet," he breathed, looking ever-so-faintly bewildered.

"Who?" Mokuba asked, really truly trying not to freak out.

"Nefernebet. My willful daughter. Are you a relative?" Niisama asked, and the question seemed to flip a switch inside of him, because the next thing Mokuba knew those blue eyes sharpened into a familiar piercing stare.

"Mokuba? What's wrong?" And that was his Niisama, back from wherever his mind had taken him.

Mokuba did something he'd sworn never to ever do again. He burst into tears.

Niisama was at his side in an instant, wrapping long arms tightly around Mokuba's shoulders. "What happened?" he asked softly after Mokuba managed to calm down some.

"You don't remember?" Mokuba asked, almost more worried about this than the incident itself. Was his Niisama possessed by some wayward spirit, too?

Niisama was frowning. "Remember what?"

"I came down to find you and you were doing that thing again, you know? Where you're not speaking Japanese anymore? And then you looked at me and didn't recognize me," and damn it all to hell, he was tearing up again, "and asked if I knew someone named Nefernebet. Your-"

"-Willful daughter," Niisama breathed, and his eyes were distant again, but the normal distance of someone recollecting something, not the eerie distance from the kitchen. "Damn it all. Mutou was right. Damn it, and damn him while we're at it."

Mokuba smiled, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. That was his Niisama, all right.

Niisama's hands were still gripping his shoulders. "I'm so sorry, Mokuba," he said, staring intently into Mokuba's eyes, and that was so typical of Niisama, apologizing for things that weren't his fault.

"It's ok, Niisama. Really. It was a little freaky, but it's ok now."

Niisama stared at him as if looking for something, then nodded slowly and released him. "Come on, then. You're late for school."

When Bakura showed up on Ryou's doorstep, Ryou sighed, shook his head, and let his former yami into the apartment, slipping the knife back up his sleeve* and hoping that the ex-thief hadn't noticed.

By Bakura's smirk, he probably had.

Ryou busied himself by getting out the spare futon (that they'd never had to use for years - it wasn't like people ever stayed over) and tried not to wonder just how the former spirit had gotten himself a body.

And it was pretty clearly Bakura's body, or a decent replica thereof - tall, tan, muscular, with chopped-short white hair and eyes that sometimes seemed blueish and sometimes reddish, depending on the light. And one hell of a nasty scar that probably should've ruined that eye.

Ryou hadn't been in the Memory World, hadn't actually seen Bakura's real form, but the way the thief moved was just too natural for it not to be his body. Even at the end, after all those years of sharing Ryou's body, he'd always been ever-so-slightly hesitant when it came to actually doing anything. Ever-so-slightly off on his timing. Not so as anyone would notice, but enough that Bakura hadn't felt up to really resuming a life of crime.

Thankfully. He'd caused enough trouble as it was.

And now Bakura was looking at him funny, and Ryou realized he was staring.

"Yadonushi?" he asked, and Ryou noted idly that while Bakura had obviously retained Ryou's knowledge of Japanese, he'd somehow acquired an accent.

"Hm?"

Bakura was not by nature a hesitant person. But he was hesitating now, hovering in the bedroom doorway, looking like he was getting ready to bolt, and Ryou realized that for all his assured confidence at the front door, Bakura really was unsure of his welcome.

Ryou smiled faintly, unsettling Bakura further, and motioned to the futon. "You don't mind, do you?"

Bakura shook his head, leaning warily against the doorframe.

"It'll be interesting trying to explain you to Father, whenever he next bothers to drop by."

"Nn," Bakura said, still warily watching Ryou.

"And Bakura," Ryou said as he drew even with him, "if I find you sticking souls in my figurines again, you're out on the curb." He graced the skittish thief with his sweetest fake smile.

And Bakura laughed.

It was cold on the airship, Isis noted idly, setting her trap. Kaiba was looking at the field, eyes narrowed, and unbidden her fingers brushed the Tauk, and she knew that she had won.

All he had to do was play the God card. And he would, for Kaiba Seto was nothing if not power-hungry.

He reached for a card, and Isis almost smiled. She could feel her brother's evil spirit smirking at them both, and though she knew she would inevitably lose, that he would inevitably win, she was one step closer to at least trying to reach him, trying to get the God cards to their rightful owner.

Kaiba paused, hand on the card, and looked at her. At the Tauk.

"You keep telling me you can see the future," he said, and Isis frowned at the note in his voice. "That all this stuff is inevitable," he waved a hand, encompassing the dueling platform. "So tell me," he asked, idly, "was my brother supposed to die?"

Isis blinked, taken aback. "What?"

He slammed his hand down on the dueling platform, and she jerked back involuntarily. The cluster of friends surrounding the Pharaoh went silent. Even Malik - or rather, his evil spirit - was staring. "Was my brother supposed to die?"

What was she supposed to say to that? Isis settled for honesty. "I never saw him, in any of my visions." She half shrugged. "Perhaps he was just not-" Too late, Isis realized the trap.

Kaiba's eyes narrowed dangerously, his eyes poisonous slits of blue. (On the edge of the platform, a watching Jounouchi thought that he'd never seen such a vicious look from Seto. Ever. He shivered, and stepped back, and onto the Pharaoh's toes. Yami barely twitched, eyes fixed on Seto with an intent look of his own, looking ready to kill Isis for him. Jounouchi was just thankful Bakura wasn't here, or she'd already be dead.)

"Wasn't what?" Kaiba asked, silken and deadly like a serpent.

Isis clamped her mouth shut.

"Wasn't important? Wasn't part of your grand scheme? I am so sick of you people," Kaiba hissed, slamming his hand onto his board again hard enough to cause the holograms of his monsters to waver, and Isis knew enough of him to know that it was when he got quiet that you really needed to worry. "You come here with your grand schemes and pat little answers and expect everyone to just fall in line, and you don't give a shit who gets trampled in the process," he said, and Isis flinched. There was enough truth in that to hurt.

But it didn't matter. She knew what the future held, had seen the visions the Tauk had shown her, and nothing would change.

Kaiba's hand was still on his God card. "This is what you want me to play, isn't it?" he asked, smirking at her expression as he flipped it around.

And then his grin went vicious, and he tore it in half, and tossed the pieces into the wind.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then, off to the side, Malik started to laugh.

He doubled over, laughing so hard he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face as he succumbed to a hysterical fit the likes of which Isis had never seen. The Pharaoh's girlfriend gasped, then blinked, herself again as Malik's wayward spirit repossessed his own body, and then Isis' brother and his evil half were one laughing, sobbing, distraught mess.

Kaiba was watching her, Isis realized, and his lip curled in disgust when she turned back to the duel.

He'd played his card while she wasn't looking. The Blue Eyes White Dragon stood before her, magnificent and godly in its own right, and Kaiba breathed, "Attack."

And Isis lost, in defiance of all the future.

Kaiba had taken to awkwardly haunting the game shop.

He never spoke to anyone. He barely spoke to anyone at all anymore, Yami understood from what he'd overheard Isono telling Sugoroku. Kaiba just drifted, keeping his company afloat by dint of long practice (and, Yami was certain, the efforts of his many loyal employees), randomly disappearing for weeks at a time before showing up to skulk around the game shop's stockroom, or sit at his chair in the kitchen, or hide in what was once the guest room and was now collectively thought of as Kaiba's bolt-hole.

He'd stopped playing Duel Monsters, refused to even touch his deck aside from the three dragon cards Yami knew were part of his soul, and one crudely-made rendition of a Duel Monsters card that Yami didn't need to see to know was the one Mokuba had drawn for him years ago, back when they still lived at the orphanage.

Yami felt a sudden surge of rage at the utter loss of a good duelist, a worthy rival, and just as suddenly felt ashamed. Of all the things to get upset over...
It's ok, other me, he felt his aibou say. You're allowed to be upset.

Yami snorted, and Kaiba's head poked out from behind a shelf, staring at him in vague interest before retreating. Yami stared at the spot where Kaiba had disappeared, train of thought utterly derailed.

That's more of a reaction than he's shown to anything, Yugi said, nonplussed.

Yami's instincts said push it, and Yugi wasn't sure that was a bad idea, so Yami did. "Kaiba?"

Kaiba muttered something from behind the shelf.

Yami and Yugi exchanged mental glances. "Come again?"

Kaiba moved a boxed console, blue eyes glaring at Yami through the shelving unit in a way Yami had despaired of ever seeing again. "I said," he snapped, glaring a little more hotly at Yami's grin, "that if you're going to call me by my family name, you'd better call me by the right one."

Yami could feel Yugi blink. "But we don't know your real name," Yami said in the tone of utter reason he knew drove Jounouchi nuts.

It had the same effect on Kaiba. Before Yami realized what he was doing, Kaiba had reached through the shelf and snagged the front of his shirt, dragging Yami forward. "Takashiro," Kaiba snarled, then blinked and let Yami go.

Yami staggered, watching in confusion as Kaiba blankly put the box back. "...What's wrong?" the spirit asked gently.

"I'd forgotten that," Kaiba said in an almost singsongy voice. "Mokuba-" He cut himself off.

And that's the first time he's mentioned Mokuba, Yugi said, like Yami didn't already know. They waited, patient and calm, for Kaiba to continue.

To the surprise of both of them, he did. "Mokuba asked once, what our family name really was, back when he was still alive." There was only one he, the gang had long since sussed out. Kaiba Gozaburo. "He'd already forgotten. They didn't like to use family names at the orphanage, and Mokuba was so little when we were sent there." Kaiba paused. "I told him it didn't matter, and to drop it. I didn't know I remembered."

And he started to shut down again. Oh no you don't, Yami thought. "So are you changing your name back, then?" If he didn't want people calling him Kaiba anymore, he'd have to.

The stare leveled at Yami was flat, but there was something alive there that had Yugi doing a mental cheer. "I only became a Kaiba for Mokuba's sake," he said, tone sharp and flat all at once, and oddly determined. "I fought for the right. But Mokuba isn't here. And that bastard deserves no such remembrance."

Wow, Yugi said, impressed by the vehemence.

No kidding, Yami replied, before idly asking, "So we should call you Takashiro, then?" And before Kaiba could answer, he raised his eyes and caught Kaiba's stare with a level one of his own. "Or can we move on to 'Seto'?"

Kaiba blinked, then gave an awkward shrug, mouth sealing into a tight line as he moved off towards the back room.

Yami watched him go. "Seto it is, then."

Honda felt the soulless body in his arms twitch once, then go, if anything, even more lax than before. Uh-oh.

He glanced down just as Mokuba gave one last rattling breath, and fell still.

Bakura's head whipped around at the noise, mouth twisted into a grim line. The Spirit of the Ring was at his side in an instant, hands expertly searching for any trace of life in that suddenly-too-heavy body.

But they both knew. Kaiba Mokuba was dead.

"Something must have happened to the card Pegasus trapped him in," Bakura said, in a grim, serious tone Honda had never heard from the yami before. "Rip the card, lose the soul. Lose the soul..."

"...Lose the body," Honda finished, feeling cold rage solidify his stomach. There was only one person who could have done this. Only one person who had access to the cards containing the Kaibas' souls.

He kinda hoped Yami actually would kill Pegasus. Or trap him in a penalty game, or something.

"There they are!"

Anzu, Jou, and a wearily triumphant Yugi ran up to Honda, only to take a step back as they realized just who was in control of Bakura at the moment. But the Spirit of the Ring was just crouching there, staring at a small, motionless form.

Anzu gasped. Yugi's eyes went, impossibly, wider, and filled with tears. Jounouchi's face closed off, reminding Honda vividly of their days as bullies.

In the back of Yugi's mind, Yami was very still.

Footsteps on the stairs behind them jolted them out of their grieved denial.

For a moment, none of them moved. They knew who that was. Kaiba's footsteps were as distinctive as his damn trenchcoats.

Kaiba paused on the last step, coolly taking in their stricken expressions, and Honda realized that he was masking confusion.

Then he saw the body, and something in him snapped.

Kaiba lunged forward, shoving Anzu harshly to the side, and a guttural wail tore from his throat. His eyes wild in a way Honda had never seen on anybody, Kaiba dropped to his knees beside his brother's body, shaking hands frantically searching for life - any life - in that still frame.

But there was nothing to find.

Kaiba pressed both hands flat to the center of Mokuba's chest, as if willing life to flow into his body, and then crumpled forward to rest his forehead on his hands, his breath coming in harsh gasps.

The Spirit of the Ring was the one who finally moved, kneeling by Kaiba's side and wrapping one arm firmly around him. Bakura's face was set, and Honda found himself vaguely wondering what had happened to the spirit, to make him so intimately familiar with grief and death.

Kaiba, Honda was unsurprised to realize, was crying.

So were most of the rest of them, especially Yugi, who'd fought for Mokuba's soul as much as his grandpa's, who'd promised Kaiba's own soulless body that he'd get his brother back.

Jou knelt at Kaiba's other side, not touching him, not saying anything, just a solid presence anchoring his nemesis a little more, and Honda remembered why he put up with Jounouchi's idiocy, and stuck with him through the gang years, and was still his best friend. Jounouchi Katsuya was, at heart, one of the most fundamentally kind people he'd ever met, kind enough to offer unwanted support to a guy he utterly despised, and smart enough to offer in a way he couldn't refuse.

Anzu walked over, and reached down, and gently slipped the string holding Mokuba's locket off his neck. Kaiba made a small strangled sound and clutched at it, but Anzu, gentle and mothering in a way that usually infuriated the rest of the gang, pried his fingers off and slipped it over his head, letting the locket fall to dangle next to Kaiba's own matching one.

They clacked faintly, and Kaiba sat back on his knees, still crying, eyes feral and bewildered, one hand still pressed to Mokuba like if he just held on long enough his heart would start beating again, the other reaching up to grip the lockets tight enough to cut his palm.

Anzu knelt next to Bakura, and Honda dropped down across from Kaiba, and Yugi came over to sit at Kaiba's back. And then Kujaku Mai found them, and started up a fire and a kettle, and they started the long task of bringing Kaiba home.