Two stories on the same day- double feature! To be honest, I get almost high off the reviews for my other blueshipping stories, Weakness and Recreate, so I'd been meaning to do another one for a while now, because I'm vain and I like praise (not that I got any from my mother...). It's taken so long because I figured that another one would be repetitive, since I think I've exhausted the angle I've taken it from with two stories already. Then this one came along, because I was trying to think of a new angle, and I wanted to go back to even before canon rather than after, with Kaiba's first encounter with the Blue-Eyes. I'm not sure if it meshes with canon perfectly, but I tried. I really wanted to highlight how consuming Kaiba's hunger for Kisara was, to shed some light as to why he's so desperately obsessed. I truly don't think this one's as good as the others for it, I know that the ending feels rushed, but at least it's a fresh take. So for now, no more blueshipping. Sad face. Here's my send-off to the greatest Yu-Gi-Oh! pairing of all time. Of all time (is it too late to still be making Kanye jokes?).
Desire
Though he wasn't quite sure why, Kaiba noticed his hand shaking with rapid, minute tremors as he slowly reached for the card on the glass desk in front of him. It sat quietly on top of the deck, nondescript as any paper card could be, bearing a simple sketch of a white dragon, terrible in its majesty. Yet, for all its simplicity, the card captivated him with an inexplicable silent calling, a powerful, overwhelming siren's song that pulled him into a primal hunger that growled from depths unknown.
While his hand crept forward, time stretched into an eternity even as the shaking intensified; he could feel the shaking spread through his body and beads of sweat forming on his temple. Kaiba held his breath as he neared the card, still unsure of why he was feeling such trepidation. With the lightest of touches, he felt the card, still nothing more than paper, with just the flat of his middle finger.
In a split second, a rush of fiery lightning tore up through his arm, and a beastly roar rocked his mind violently. It was a cry that washed over louder, more aggressively than a crashing tsunami, harsh and fierce, but still somehow carrying a faint tinge of joyous triumph. Still reeling in pain, Kaiba whipped around wildly for the source, but the confused expression of the German entrepreneur sitting across from him told Kaiba that he alone had heard the noise.
Another roar, even more earsplitting, a nearly supersonic train that slammed into Kaiba and threw him back. He found himself falling, grasping frantically for the leather edge of his chair, the side of the desk, anything, but swiped uselessly at thin air. Passing the ground, he fell and fell, crashing down into a sea of blinding white emptiness.
A girl. Was that what it was? She had appeared from and disappeared into the nothingness in the briefest of moments, so quickly that he hadn't caught the slightest detail. He stared at the space where she had been for a moment longer, then realized an inner peace that he had never felt before. A massive weight that he hadn't noticed was there had been lifted without his knowledge; gone were the prison of an orphanage, the lash of his adoptive father, the savagery of the corporate underworld. In their place was a curious ache- he wanted to see her again. Why? He'd barely seen her at all, let alone recognized her. But he needed to see her.
He ran. He tried to think as he ran, about what he was doing or why, but nothing seemed to make sense, or need to, and he cleared his mind. His lungs screamed in painful protest with every stride through the endlessness, but the cries were nothing to the gaping hole inside of him. He ran and continued to run, searching for a sign of the fleeting image.
As he stopped for a moment to catch his breath, Kaiba felt an icy hand pressing softly, feather-light on his back. He spun around, but was greeted merely with more of the same empty white abyss. Disappointed, he turned around again to meet a pair of deep, radiant sapphires that pierced his every mental wall with ease.
She floated before him silently, clad in a simple frayed, brown dress contrasting with the long waterfall of beautiful silver tresses that cascaded down her back. She smiled, a sad, mysterious smile that seemed a simultaneous hello and goodbye. Without thinking, Kaiba reached his hand to her, but his fingertips felt only the void. She stood motionless, a thin stream of tears mixing with her half-smile.
He felt himself mirroring her, crying his own tears. Seto Kaiba didn't cry, but he cried nonetheless; his tears flowed because he wanted to share her tears, to hold and protect her, to be one with her, but he couldn't even touch her, and so he cried.
The girl stopped crying, though her half-smile remained, torturing as they stood apart. She finally reached a slender hand to Kaiba's face, but he felt nothing at all as she passed through his cheek in a thin wisp, and she shook her head slightly as if expecting it.
"Seto…" she whispered.
A rushing blast of wind erupted from the nothingness behind Kaiba, a deafening hurricane that snaked around his appendages with a ferocious howl. He fought desperately against the invisible tendrils, but could do nothing against the inescapable pull backwards.
He couldn't leave- not now. What he had felt, that fleeting peace when she smiled, he couldn't place any name to. But he needed it. That smile, her smile, he thirsted insatiably for it, addicted. Straining far beyond his limits, his lower body already swallowed, Kaiba stretched out for her one last time. "Who- Where can I see you again?" he begged. She reached for his hand, but faded away into the white as she brushed his fingertips.
A passing warmth, a warm gold flecked with silver, kept with Kaiba as he was completely enveloped by the emptiness; a moment later he slammed back into reality, into the leather chair in front of the glass desk in the German executive's office above the heart of midnight New York City.
That girl. Her smile. That warmth. He needed it.
Nearly tripping over himself in his rush, Kaiba knocked aside the chair as he lunged forward. Again and again he slammed his fingers to the dragon, growing more desperate with every roar that failed to echo. He was already forgetting her face. He finally smashed the card with an agitated fist, but remained standing in the office with the frightened executive. Kaiba's heavy breathing hung alone in the air.
"…Herr Kaiba?" the man asked warily. "Everything is all right, yes? We continue with the deal?"
Kaiba blinked. "Deal?" Something about a business partnership from a minute ago floated up to mind, but he waved it off, shaking his head. "Never mind that. This card- where did you get it?"
The executive seemed baffled with the change in subject, but complied, holding the card with a gentle fondness. "It was a parting gift from a friend that I grew up with. Joseph gave it to me before he left for America. I have been trying to find him ever since I too came here, but no luck. I can, at least, remember-"
"How much will you sell it for?" Kaiba asked quietly.
"Sell? Oh, no!" the man exclaimed, clutching the card to his chest. "This treasured keepsake- I would not sell this for any amount!"
Kaiba's hand twitched involuntarily as he held it back. A smirk slowly crept across his lips- soft, hungry. Sadistic.
"Mr. President," he said, standing. "You will give me that card."