EnsTren: hmn... he Setotes
EnsTren: "...Seth?"
Edmondia: "Mmm?"
EnsTren: "Was it necessary that I be fucked up like I am?"
Edmondia: "Uh?"
EnsTren: "Did I have to be adopted by Gozaburo? Could I have kept my sanity?"
Edmondia: "I don't know."
EnsTren: "Did I need to make all the duel monsters things?"
Edmondia: "You didn't need to do anything."
EnsTren: "But you made those gold fan thingies in the past."
Edmondia: "So?"
EnsTren: "Things are repeating themselves, right?"
EnsTren: "And... could I have derailed the prophecy before I did?"
Edmondia: "Not entirely, no, and... how am I supposed to know?"
EnsTren: "I don't know."
Edmondia: "Seto?"
Edmondia: "This isn't the past."
EnsTren: "Sometimes I live in it though."
Edmondia: "You don't have to."
EnsTren: "Can't help it."
Edmondia: "Why not?"
EnsTren: "Because it's inside my skull and engraved there. Even though I try to ignore it and make it gone its fingers keep on trying to pull me back."
Edmondia: "The past?"
EnsTren: "Yes, mine, not yours."
Edmondia: "Why?"
EnsTren: "It would be easier, maybe."
Edmondia: "Easier how?"
EnsTren: "Self-imposed walls that are called morals."
Edmondia: "You're losing me, sweetums."
EnsTren: "I have enemies, I have rivals, right?"
Edmondia: "Yes?"
EnsTren: "I could have them killed."
EnsTren: "Very very easily, I know all of Gozaburo's old contacts."
Edmondia: "And that's not nice."
EnsTren: "Morals. I could... do a lot of things. Things I can think up too easily because I think too much."
Edmondia: "So your morals are good things."
EnsTren: "It'd be easier if I didn't have them. Or if I didn't even need to make the decision."
Edmondia: "But you do have them, and this is good."
EnsTren: "Is it? I don't see much in the way of logical factual evidence to support the existance of morals except in a very broad sense."
EnsTren: "In fact I see just the opposite."
Edmondia: "That would be why people break the law, yes."
EnsTren: "I'm not talking about little things, I'm talking about big things."
EnsTren: "Millions of people live in squalor, China has laws reguarding how many children you cna have. And because everyone is so keen on carrying on the family line they'll kill their girl infants."
Edmondia: "...wouldn't that eventually make it rather difficult to carry on the family line?"
EnsTren: "Yes, but people don't think ahead. And the world is overpopulated and we're eating up our resources too fast. So wouldn't it be right, not just, but a good thing to do... to kill them?"
EnsTren: "Or others, or make it possible to ease up the load."
EnsTren: "Or push a thread of an idea onto other people, controling things from behind the scenes with invisible strings."
EnsTren: "Take control of the free press, since they seem to be abusing their freedo,m especially in America."
EnsTren: "Or outsouce in some backwards country and bring in private soliders in the name of security, because they might steal or bomb the place. Then covertly force them to civilize themselves."
EnsTren: "I've made poisons, and even diseases. Things the medical comunity hasn't seen yet. It would be ridiculously easy to put some in a water supply and watch the numbers go down."
EnsTren: "And thinking all this makes my head hurt and numbers and things spiral out further than I can reach. And then it hurts more when I realize I was actually contemplating it."
Edmondia: "Seto?"
EnsTren: "And it hurts worse and I really hate myself. Truly deeply hate myself and stare at the ceiling and think about all the lives out there with a single view and think just like I do but not the same thoughts and it makes my head hurt along with my heart. Because..."
EnsTren: "because I... I..."
EnsTren: "Because I was closer to that than I'd like to think during Death-T."
Edmondia: "Seto."
EnsTren: "..."
Edmondia: He leaned over and kissed him.
EnsTren: Seto turned his head and looked at the wall.
Edmondia: Gentle hands twined into his hair and turned him back. "Pretty light, look at me."
EnsTren: "Why?"
Edmondia: "Because I want to see you."
EnsTren: "Why?"
Edmondia: "Because you're beautiful and I love you."
EnsTren: "Why?"
Edmondia: "Because."
EnsTren: "Why?"
EnsTren: But he rolled over to him anyways.
Edmondia: Seth smiled down at him. "Because you're you," he said, and kissed his nose delicately.
EnsTren: "Wish I weren't sometimes."
Edmondia: "If you weren't you, would I be sleeping with you?" Seth asked mildly.
EnsTren: "Dunno, would I be me if I grew up in the orphanage?"
Edmondia: "If you grew up in the orphanage, would I be here to sleep with you?"
EnsTren: "You could be there to sleep with me."
Edmondia: "How?"
EnsTren: "I don't know. But you'd be able to go into my soul room."
Edmondia: "Seto, I'm glad you're you."
EnsTren: "Why?"
Edmondia: "Because."
EnsTren: "I don't understand."
Edmondia: "What don't you understand?"
EnsTren: "Why you're glad I'm me."
Edmondia: "Because you're a good person."
EnsTren: "I don't think I am."
Edmondia: "I know."
EnsTren: "How can you?"
Edmondia: "Think that you're a good person?"
EnsTren: A wordless nod.
Edmondia: A soft smile. "Because you are."
EnsTren: "How am I? If I can think those things, if I almost did those things?"
Edmondia: "Because you didn't."
EnsTren: "I almost did, I called up some of those assassins against Yugi and his friends in Death-T."
Edmondia: "You weren't exactly yourself then, my love."
EnsTren: "I was me, I was just mad."
Edmondia: "Seto?"
EnsTren: "Yes?"
Edmondia: "You regret it."
EnsTren: "So?"
Edmondia: "So you're a good person."
EnsTren: "I don't think I am."
Edmondia: "But you are nonetheless."
EnsTren: "There are better people."
Edmondia: "Of course there are. That doesn't make you less of a good person."
EnsTren: "I don't see that."
Edmondia: "Why not?"
EnsTren: "Because when I think about it I feel like scum."
Edmondia: "Sweetie?"
EnsTren: "Yes?"
Edmondia: "Mine."
EnsTren: "Eh?"
Edmondia: "Biaw."
EnsTren: "That doesn't make a diffrence. I'd still be yours even if I were a mass murderer--which I am but you get the idea."
Edmondia: "Oh, but pretty light, I think it does make a difference."
Edmondia: He tweaked his nose. "You're a darling, my love."
EnsTren: "I am not. Ryou is, Yugi is, Malik and I are not."
Edmondia: "Daaaaaaaaaaaarling-mine."
EnsTren: "So?"
Edmondia: "So, sweetums, you have a very bad-self image and obviously a problem with depression."
EnsTren: "Again, so?"
Edmondia: He tweaked his nose. "Are you going to say that to everything I say?"
EnsTren: "...No."
Edmondia: "...so, will you kiss Yugi again?"
EnsTren: "Why?"
Edmondia: "You get really really really shiny when you do."
EnsTren: "...I still... feel... not like before, but still, not as good as you think I should."
Edmondia: "Then why do you keep kissing him?"
EnsTren: "You like it, I feel like I should like it, and... I really want to be him."
Edmondia: "...?"
EnsTren: Seto looked at his hands, flexing them and turning them over, "Even if I beat him... yeah, it would make me feel better but... I still wouldn't be happy. Too many things in my head, to many horrible things I've done with these hands."
EnsTren: "So... I wish I were Yugi, or even Ryou."
Edmondia: Seth blinked slowly, gently taking his wrist. "But you're not." He kissed his palm. "And Yugi has his own demons."
EnsTren: "Everyone does, but that doesn't change the fact that I wish I were."
Edmondia: "Well, I'm glad you're not."
EnsTren: "Why?"
Edmondia: "I don't want to be melted."
EnsTren: "Sometimes I dream of that," he admitted, drawing estoric shapes on the coverlet with his fingertip. "Me, not you."
Edmondia: "Of melting?"
EnsTren: "Going up into space and getting colder and colder so I can't feel anything, bits of ice coating me and natural gravity so soon I become covered in rock as I travel towards the sun. Ages and ages. Cold and quiet and then finally reaching the sun. I'm dead, though I'm still there, and aware, one with the ice and rock. And I can feel it as I melt, and turn into molten and vapor and then nothing at all. But I wasn't alive so it didn't hurt--the hurt finally ends though."
EnsTren: "Sometimes I toy with the idea of being an irregular comet, streaking across the sky and just... very beautiful for a few brief moments."
EnsTren: "And then my orbit gets disrupted and I go into the sun."
Edmondia: "..."
EnsTren: "...Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice... I hold with those who favor fire. Robert Frost."
Edmondia: "I'd rather you lived."
EnsTren: "Sometimes I think I'm dead. I think that's why the first penalty didn't work too well on me."
Edmondia: "He wasn't aiming to hurt you, lover."
EnsTren: "'S funny, you know?"
Edmondia: "Mm?"
EnsTren: "The people... The penalties seem to make them happy. One who is greedy gets to believe he is surrounded by money."
Edmondia: "One, yes."
EnsTren: "If he wasn't trying to hurt me then what did he mean to do?"
Edmondia: He leaned over and tapped him on the forehead. "Get rid of the ickies."
EnsTren: "I don't understand."
Edmondia: "What's not to understand?"
EnsTren: "What you said."
Edmondia: "He didn't actually hurt you much, lover."
EnsTren: "Did he mean to?"
Edmondia: "No, baby, he didn't."
EnsTren: "Why not?"
Edmondia: "Because you're not a bad person."
Edmondia: He touched his cheek. "Seto?"
EnsTren: "But I was."
EnsTren: "If I wasn't a bad person then he wouldn't have had to mess around with my soul."
Edmondia: "And you're better now, baby, and you recognize that."
EnsTren: "You're dancing around the question."
Edmondia: "He didn't hurt you because there was something of you to save."
EnsTren: "I refuse to believe that I was somehow better than the others he played games with."
Edmondia: "He didn't kill you."
EnsTren: "So?"
Edmondia: "So you were better."
EnsTren: "He didn't kill some of the others."
Edmondia: "I don't see you drooling in an asylum, either."
EnsTren: "I was comatose for a while."
Edmondia: "While you reassembled yourself. You're very strong, lover."
EnsTren: "Perhaps he didn't expect me to be able to. Perhaps some of the others are trying to put themselves back together as well."
Edmondia: "Seto, darling, you're stretching things."
EnsTren: "I'm proposing a hypothesis."
Edmondia: "Maybe he just likes you."
EnsTren: Seth didn't like it when his hikari laughed like that. No mirth, all the shining sparkly edges like glass and pointed inwards.
Edmondia: "Seto."
EnsTren: Hikari was giggling like what he said was hilarious. Yami no Yugi, like him? HA! Maybe now, tolerance at best, but then?
Edmondia: "Seto, it's not that implausible."
EnsTren: Hikari was having trouble breathing.
Edmondia: He seriously considered smacking him.
Edmondia: Then he decided to kiss him instead.
EnsTren: Hikari kissed back through his self-depricating laughter.
Edmondia: He kissed him a little more deeply.
EnsTren: Hikari's hurtful laughter eventually drained away.
Edmondia: He bit hikari.
Edmondia: Just a little, not enough to really hurt him, but a little.
EnsTren: Hikari batted at him but he could feel the hurt that he laughed at still inside.
Edmondia: He bit a little harder.
EnsTren: Hikari squirmed.
Edmondia: He licked, then bit again, digging his nails into his skin.
EnsTren: Hikari mewled and it slid further away from his mind.
Edmondia: He tilted his head a little and bit just a little higher, gently raking his nails down his sides.
EnsTren: Pretty hikari gasp, it was all but gone now. Good good, hikari brooded too much.
Edmondia: Lick. Nibble. Bite. He slid his hands down furthing, clawing lightly at his hips.
EnsTren: Now he had Hikari's mind on him and him alone. He knew because Hikari started to make those sounds he liked without sounding complaining.
Edmondia: Good. Hikari should be distracted and happy. Hikari was very young, after all.
EnsTren: And Hikari had so many burdens.
Edmondia: He could at least take them away for a while.
Edmondia: He nibbled.
EnsTren: He wished he could fix them.
Edmondia: Hikari wouldn't let him.
EnsTren: He wished he could set to ease some of what plagued his mind. But Hikari's logic could turn night to day and black into white.
Edmondia: He rubbed hikari's tummy.
EnsTren: Hikari had a very nice tummy.
Edmondia: He licked it.
EnsTren: And hikari sighed and dragged him up by his hair to kiss him.
Edmondia: "Merpfh?"
EnsTren: "Yami-mine is tricky."
Edmondia: "Oh?"
EnsTren: "You're trying to distract me."
Edmondia: "Is it working?"
EnsTren: "A bit."
Edmondia: He bit him. "Pretty cousin likes you."
EnsTren: "Tolerates me now."
Edmondia: "Thinks you quite honorable, actually."
EnsTren: He doesn't know the half of it, "So?"
Edmondia: "He likes you."
EnsTren: "Bah."
Edmondia: Another bite. "Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes you."
EnsTren: "Tolerates me."
EnsTren: "For your sake."
Edmondia: "Not quite, lover. Not quite."
EnsTren: "Now has no bearing on the past."
Edmondia: "Now is what came out of the past."
EnsTren: "Things change."
Edmondia: "Change is good."
EnsTren: "Not always."
Edmondia: "What has changed since we met that is bad?"
EnsTren: "I have to spend more time around the mutt."
Edmondia: "And?"
EnsTren: "That's bad. I may get fleas."
Edmondia: "He bathes regularly. For Mai."
EnsTren: "Bathing regularly won't help if you go rolling in dirt. He'll get them as soon as he gets out of the shower considering the pig pen he lives in."
Edmondia: "Sweetie, don't be mean."
EnsTren: "Why not? I'm good at it."
Edmondia: He tweaked his nose. "I'm good at killing people, doesn't mean I should do it."
EnsTren: "You want to."
Edmondia: "Shadowborn, lover. S'like breathing."
EnsTren: "So what should it be like for the Lightborn?"
Edmondia: "Dunno. I'm not one."
EnsTren: "Well, you can observe things, what do you think of Ryou and Yugi, and even Malik."
Edmondia: "Nasty things happen to them when they are young?"
EnsTren: "But what do they want?"
Edmondia: "I don't know."
EnsTren: "How do they react on instinct?"
Edmondia: "To protect."
EnsTren: Seto's mind drifted to those hidden files he had, the ones from the police.
Edmondia: He kissed his throat. "Pretty lover... you're brilliant."
EnsTren: "...Where'd that come from?"
Edmondia: "Just a random observation."
EnsTren: "...Suddenly I am sad and I don't know why."
Edmondia: "Is it me?"
EnsTren: "No."
Edmondia: "Will you kiss me?"
EnsTren: "Why do you want a kiss?"
Edmondia: "Because you're sexy. And pretty. And taste nummy."
EnsTren: Seto kissed him.
Edmondia: "Yum," he purred into his mouth.
EnsTren: Hikari smiled a little.
Edmondia: He twirled a lock of silky brown hair around his finger. "Pretty, babe."
Edmondia: "I like you."
EnsTren: "...I'm glad."
Edmondia: "You are?"
EnsTren: "Yes."
Edmondia: "I'm glad you're glad."
EnsTren: Seto kissed his yami on the nose.
Edmondia: "Mew?"
EnsTren: "That's a hikari noise, not a yami noise."
Edmondia: "...rar?"
EnsTren: "...Better."
Edmondia: He nibbled.
EnsTren: "Mew."
Edmondia: He snuggled for a bit. "You're pretty."
EnsTren: "Thank you."
Edmondia: He kissed his nose.
EnsTren: "Do you think I'll ever be completely better?" Edmondia: "What do you mean by better?"
EnsTren: "Isn't that obvious?"
Edmondia: He kissed his nose. "You'll get better, lover."
EnsTren: "...Sure?"
Edmondia: "Yes, I'm sure." Another kiss, this time to his forehead.
EnsTren: A sigh and a cuddle.
Edmondia: Two kisses to his cheeks. "I'm surrounded by such pretties, it's nice."
EnsTren: "...Who are the other pretties?"
Edmondia: "Mokuba-chan is little brother-pretty and looks like a girl."
EnsTren: "He does not."
Edmondia: A polite cough. "Princess Edina?"
EnsTren: "...Well he hasn't hit puberty yet."
Edmondia: "Mmmhmm. Just like a girl."
Edmondia: "Hikari-pretty is of course the prettiest."
EnsTren: Seto looked very pleased at the compliment.
Edmondia: "Hmn, who else..."
EnsTren: Hikariprecious was pouting very slightly at him.
Edmondia: "Hm?" he blinked at him. "What, o lovely one?"
EnsTren: Hikari was happier imedetly.
Edmondia: "Hikari is by far the prettiest hikari I've ever seen."
EnsTren: "Truly?"
Edmondia: "Truly. Theif's hikari's too girly, cousin's hikari's too short, and loony's hikari is too blond."
EnsTren: "Ryou and Malik have better hair though."
Edmondia: "Too fluffy."
EnsTren: "It's long and shiny... nice."
Edmondia: "And biiiiiiiiiiig. Too easy to choke on whilst boinking."
EnsTren: "How would you know?"
Edmondia: "Cousin and Yugi have big hair too."
EnsTren: "That you might hurt yourself on."
Edmondia: "Cousin's hair is pretty when it's down though," he said thoughtfully, "And it's less dangerous then."
EnsTren: "It goes down?"
Edmondia: "Mmmhmm. It's really long and soft, actually."
EnsTren: Hikari was stunned silent.