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He's read the various doctors' reports. He wasn't expected to recover with any of his mind intact, much less all of it. That he woke up at all, that after six months catatonic he woke able to talk and walk and think, is nothing short of a miracle. That he suffered so few side-effects is an even greater one. After a coma that prolonged, even given the physical therapy, most patients would have been hard-pressed to feed themselves for days after. He had been flying a helicopter and fighting hand-to-hand within hours.
Most doctors, hearing this, refuse to believe it. Impossible, they say, because they can't understand that it wasn't a matter of possibility but of necessity.
Still, he lost more than just six months of time to the coma. He used to be a crack shot. On the firing range now he's good, above average, but not perfect; his hands aren't steady enough, even if his eye is still clear. When he first returned he could bench barely half of what he once could; months older now, bigger, and he still can't get within ten kilos of his former record.
His mind is untouched; he duels now as well as he ever did, better. But he can't run as fast as he could before, or as long, and the couple opportunities he's had to test his judo against a master's, the sensei noted that his reflexes were slower. What used to be instinctual now is intellectual; he has to think and force his body into what once was automatic reaction. With long practice he might regain most of that, but he doesn't have the time.
He had headaches before, but migraines are regular now, two or three times a week, more if he doesn't rest, though he used to go a couple nights without sleep with no significant consequences. The medicines the doctors give him help little. 'They'd be more effective if you took better care of yourself,' they tell him, but a corporation has no accounting for human frailty; he can't afford it. But late at night, when his vision blurs from the pounding in his head and his hands tremble, all he can do is take a break, tilt back his chair and close his eyes for a few minutes, silently cursing his weakness.
Mokuba will come in and find him like that, sometimes. Before Death-T, Mokuba hardly entered his office at all, and wouldn't dare interrupt his work. Now, even if he locks the door, Mokuba will barge in with a midnight snack, or a video or a game, will grab his brother's arm and yank him over to the couch—kids grow quickly; Mokuba got taller in those six months, and stronger, too. He'll have Seto eat, and they'll watch a movie, or play a few rounds of a fighter or a shooter, Mokuba shouting as he loses—or wins, because new games have come out, and Mokuba has six months' experience over him and is fighting to keep that edge.
Sitting there in the dark office so late at night, just the two of them, Seto listens to Mokuba laugh, and thinks about how close he came, thinks about how this, this he almost lost. And knows then that everything else lost is worth it, that he didn't lose this instead.