Through The Looking Glass

By: Michiro-Chan

Title: "Athwart The Looking Glass"

Type: One-shot / Seto & hypothetical alter ego

Viewpoint: 1st person: Seto

Disclaimer: Yuugiou and its characters are all a property of Kazuki Takahashi, Shounen Jump, Konami, and any other title that may retain its name. They're not mine, as much as I've always wished they were… Seto, above all. (HOTTT, HOTT, HOTTT!)

Warning: Extremely complex language and angst of which I am not going to be gutting anytime soon.

Michiro-Chan: I was in a mildly dark mood when I wrote this (^_^00 So what else is new?), and it took me no more than maybe two hours to slap it together, so please excuse the quickness of the sequence of events. The plot is really meaningless, but I drew a portrait of a younger Seto gazing into a mirror and an invented other half embracing him in the back. It's really more of a story created around the basis of the artwork.

I thought it would be interesting to write a narrative about Seto speaking about a fictional other half. It took me by surprise, because it reminded me strongly of Ryou and Yami Bakura, but it clears out toward the end. I wasn't really fond of it--nothing really special here--however, bother me enough and I might make add another chapter.

Unending apologies, but Mokuba's dead in this fan fiction. TT0)

XXX

Until recently, there's been a disquieting, daunting voice within my mind, telling me things…

"Seto…"

…Knifing me with only disparagement. He seemed pleasant enough to begin with, but it seems that gain in life never lasts. Throughout my childhood, this voice carried me through the pain, prohibiting me from vocalizing my final requiem. He almost mentored me, so to speak.

"…Seto…"

This nameless specter within the inner-sanctities of my mentality goes about apathetically for the sake of humanity; which may regrettably include myself on occasion. As hard as he endeavors at controlling every aspect of my standard of life--so like the totalitarian nature I had first thought him of--he hasn't grasped every treasure with his sullied tentacles quite yet, of which he is well aware.

"…Are you deliberately ignoring me?"

The apparition digresses the veering paths of my brain, plaguing everything he traces in his means, and addressing me with a composed, yet somewhat intoxicating tone. A tone of which I always demand its receding, though somehow deeply desire it to linger still. A tone of which used to send childish, teeming tears hurried departure from my nasal glands… saline, blinding, and bittersweet in their wake--acidic like blood; dulcet like the sin I'd committed so many a time… retreating downward along my inundated lashes to my dampened cheek to my desiccated, arid, flaking upper lip… every knoll of my features once velvety to the senses, pilfered of their pale finery. But that was a long time ago.

"I can't speak with you just now."

His appearance has continuously been counterpart to my own--ever since my twelfth elegy of a bicentennial. He's even grown with me throughout my adolescence. I always take in his simulacrum hovering to the rear of my own when I gaze into a mirror. White, supple facial form; lanky yet deft limbs fabricated with nimble-fingered, synchronized, adept members; glamorously gaunt in stature; graced with kempt garnishes of anatomy; his phantasmal surfacing never ceasing to rattle me at times… for the reason I see that this presence is my exact likeness.

I used to be so benevolent, so unbroken, so untarnished, so feral within my own ignorance prior to meeting this poltergeist, but that unexpected encounter of his lips upon my own utterly took me unawares. An orphan and his vaporous genetic copy osculating with a futile intention to fulfill estrangements of their souls by means of creating an aberrant love… two starving--famished--boys.

"…Is that so."

As much as it pained me to lisp my finishing response, I still murmured a falteringly desolate, "Yes."

His stare used to torment me. So coveting and harried, in the absurd rendering of a comic general practitioner wielding a lobotomy just before a terrified sanatorium patient. His ghoulish, chilling hands seemingly of a substance no more than air were inured to frivolously fingering or even cleaving to invulnerable domains of my body with greenish eyes, penetrating its cast-iron vicinities, and taunting toward blemishes or supposed shortcomings, so covetous of the gift of matter I'd been given to compose my thinned alabaster breadth.

"Have you forgotten everything I've ever seen to on your behalf?"

This oddity of a creature now anticipates my pity concerning his overtone… but as he is aghast to learn, he knows that I've lost all condolences over those years of abuse. He is dismayed to find his own credulous, little puppy grow into a matured, full-fledged canine and bite back with no force spared. Neanderthal. His little bitch can't be manipulated now… the dog he once knew to be so unquestioning has been in this day and age impelled within the wary bounds of the eminent crate of cynicism. No distrust done without, for I know now no one may be trusted… with the shaky exception of myself; more often than not.

I pose a defiant glare, "Exactly what have you done for me that could have ever been of anything worth thanking?"

The banshee boy of my nocturnes draws nearer just before my leave-taking, taciturn shoulder blade, tautening the hiatus between us into an outlandishly mutual reunion by use of his docile arms. A white, spectral forefinger strays down my pulsing and consequently flushed midsection, bracingly pinching the trim of my blazer through his invasive, piecemealed feelers, and strips away the moistened textile at lone a snail's pace from the ashy panes of my tingling, all but deadened flesh. With poise I so much detested…

Scarcely an unintended purr takes flight from the depths of the congealing, mingling fluids of my oral cords. "W--what are you doing--!"

"Proving my point clear to you. Lift your arms, Seto. I'd advise you do as you're told…"

…So eerie yet breathtaking listening to my own drawl pronounce my name.

Desultorily, I rouse my upper limbs, fathoming the dank brush of a cloth slaked with cold sweat whence it restfully passed over my head--gathering my ginger-ish locks into a bedraggled forelock scattering on my brow. The looking glass facing me… a trifling vibration runs down my spine. Nevertheless, it's enough to keep this significant other incited, as he attends his subaquatic eyes to my every movement, my every progression, and my every malfunction.

I remember the years back when we'd hardened to ridding of our dress like unwitting infants, those days back when Gouzaburou would offer me only ruins of oblivion--bareness--to eat, when I'd toy with my withering hands for private leisure, nothing to be thrilled for, nothing to stir my weary body upon the dawn's hemorrhaging, majestic dyes. Those times I loathed my reflection--not that I don't do so now.

Those times when I had only… my alter ego to shepherd me in the hardships. A doppelganger who pledged me everything but nothing.

At what time I seemed to deposit each and every quantity of my scrapped metal artillery onto the badland theatre of battle and into a weary capitulation against my iniquitous adoptive father… when my cherub drifted into a sleep of death by the sinner's dissipated, atrocious proceedings… as I wilted at what dreams would afflict upon my late lamented brother… how he would endure without me beside him--or "live" to tell the tale, if you will.

I would've done anything for it to be my blood slicked in its place. Given that I could've come to grips with it; that I could've very well been crucified thrice and manage to abound in the struggle to survive. And for a long time, I told myself it was because I was stronger than him… but I knew that indoctrinating my program with this deposition wouldn't be truthful. I knew the little one--his fragile smile--was stronger than me right from the moment of his brittle outset, to the finale of his gory, telltale demise.

"D'you honestly think this concerns me? I'm not obsessed with appearances like you are. I could easily ignore it… even if I was ugly."

…I hardly even know if these words are truth.

Phantom fingers play their way onto my kindling bosom, a twang retorting softly and coaxingly in that so familiar yet unrecognizable husking tenor. It's always strange to hear yourself speak in a recording. Be that as it may, it's hardly an improvement when hearing your own brogue being released from another's mouth. People are so insensible of their own lapses… so uninformed of their own awareness of being… so oblivious to their own identity… "You don't know how mistaken you are."

…Maybe you're right.

Perhaps I'm the superficiality of the superficial; I may very well willingly elope and bind the twofold-tethered knot with my mirror alone and paint my town a lively red in euphoria; and never really hit upon what was not within the reflection when beauty was driven down to how insignificant it more or less truly was.

Human anatomy has always been interpreted as the portrait of tangible beauty, no? But when the insignia is rendered asunder, when the flesh is reduced to ashes, when the psyche is left to mingle in the ruins of purgatory, what do you have left to relish?

If one were to peer into the windows of my soul, doubtless they would only see a pane of shattered glass. Scrape past the rubble and scramble through the transom and its flaking fibers, you would stumble upon the interior of a dilapidated home; its tattered furniture collecting mere dust, redundant wallpaper wilting unbecomingly from the barriers they clung dearly to, its terminally ill carpeting threadbare, and moldering, perished floorboards visible through its openings. But the residence's outer ramparts… seemingly a gilded fortress, that all would marvel toward--for they knew not what its inlands held. Painted golden, indeed, to hide all the ruin within… to give refuge to all the incurable wreckage so no one would ever hope to pay visit to its bounds. So they would never find that the noble quarters truly gave all but haven to a prisoner in a king's disguise.

…I'm the broken shelter of an orphaned emperor.

"You're beautiful now. And it's because of me." Beautiful? The word's so fickle. But am I really…? Feh--I'd never seen it before.

Even so, does that imply that one with bad looks can do less than the other? Oh, no… no… that's never the case. Homo-sapiens only search for what's pleasing to the eye, which always has a tendency to piss me off. They don't read between the fucking lines. I could park myself here in this venue for years on end only admiring the view until I'd mindlessly atrophy into a Narcissus, and ultimately to no avail; shorn of nothing.

"You wouldn't have continued living to this day if it weren't for me… Seto."

The closing note strummed a brittle, unraveling, clanging cord of my mindset.

I'm too rational to care about appearances… true?

"Hn. I see no reason to thank you for anything. I haven't changed. I look exactly the same as I did before your little intrusion."

He resumed the avowal with a hoarse "No," and I strained a grimace pertaining to this abrupt response. "You were poisoning our sanctuary."

"Hmph." I lifted a skeptical brow. "How so?"

Electric-cerulean suddenly clashed with blunted sapphires. "You know very well what I mean, Kaiba Seto," he whispered. "You were basking in your own misery and self-pity, thinking only the worst was yet to come day by day… you nearly brought flaws to this perfect body we share by Gouzaburou's withering assaults. I led you out of the darkness."

"I didn't need your pity; and I never needed it from anyone. Had you other ambitions at the time, you could have freely been on your merry way out of my life. Con artist… you're only a parasite living off my body like some scrounging tick… and, in any case--" My eyes began drifting from his prying, sullen gaze. My forefinger traced an old scar along my shoulder and I snarled, "Scarred tissue is stronger than fresh, untouched tissue." I trembled. "That man may have been beyond despicable, but he taught me strength…"

"--The hard way, of course."

"That monster taught me that life is the basis of a game that can't be won; even if directed turn by turn according to the rules…"

"--Cheaters can easily win in the game of life, not surprisingly."

The two of us whispered in unison, "It's not about whether you swear by your victory, it's about whether you win or lose."

He smirked. "Right you are."

Those times when Gouzaburou abused me; those rancid, lonely, seemingly poverty-stricken times when he starved his brittle, adoptive, boy-toy of a son and that'd left ad nauseous, brackish, bitter traces and hunger pangs; the hard times I managed to pull through because of my own strength of will; the death of the one thing I couldn't protect in the end; those times…

…When I had only my shadow to linger and shift patterns of light and dusk beneath my path.

The while…

I had only you, Set.

End.

XXX

Michiro-Chan: Not only is the story beyond obscure, but I noticed while reading over--it's so goddamn depressing. Set? Is he a figure of adversity or a figure of defense? Not sure, really. Seto doesn't really have a say in which he turns to, seeing as Mokuba and/or any other person he ever cared about (--Is there really anyone else other than that…?) is dead. So Set is really the illustration of witless, mad, little Seto's desperation and somewhat of a sick, corrupt hellion playing the warped version of a "guardian angel."