Dreams
Summary: Seto Kaiba's capacity for love was exhausted long before he was born. Blueshipping, in a strange, twisted way.
Seto Kaiba has never been in love before.
He's never had the time, nor the want. For whichever reason, he feels like all the love he can muster has already been used up caring for Mokuba or lost because both his parents were dead by the time he was seven.
His capacity for it has been filled to the brim (and the cup was only the size of a shot glass to begin with), which is why sometimes he feels strange when he has those dreams, and the only feelings in them are love, love, love.
And sadness.
He supposes one and the other are interchangeable.
Kaiba has nightmares.
They are the kind that make him wake up in the night with flashes of phantom pain running up and down his spine and skittering over his face and arms, breathing hard and wanting, just for a moment before he collects himself, to die.
All he feels in his nightmares are distinct out-of-body flashes of pain, and all he sees are a younger self wearing white shirts (blood seeping through). White is the color of innocence, and he thinks it's disgusting that white and red appeal to him in a way, aesthetically.
They are sharp dreams, the kind that cut into his mind and make him shut everything out for the day so he'll stop remembering. He's developed the habit of humming tunelessly under his breath, so that there is nothing but buzzing in his ears and the sensation of tapping of computer keys under his fingers.
He has been taught from an early age, by himself and by others, that dehumanization is the only way he will ever get through life, and he's gotten good at it. He thinks of people as objects, shadows that pass by and are gone. He thinks of himself as an object to, something plain and robotic, because he has been taught to believe that too.
The only person he truly thinks of as a person is Mokuba, because he has never managed to become less than flesh and blood to him.
(And the girl in those dreams he pretends he doesn't dream, that girl has never been anything but human, and he hates it hates it hates it because she doesn't even exist.)
But there is always lots of blood in these dreams, and illness, and the sensation of being cut.
Kaiba has dreams, too.
They are the kind that make him wake up in the middle of the night with a certain warmth spread all over him, and also a certain sadness and sense of loss, before he collects himself and begins to dehumanize and tries to forget everything.
There is a girl in every one of those dreams, and she is sometimes sitting next to him, at least, who he thinks is him, he never manages to see a face or even a body, it's always just her. She has white hair and eyes that are a penetrating ice blue. She's very beautiful, at least to him, because he feels something inside of her that there has never been before. He feels more feeling than ever, because he knows he shouldn't (or at least the person in the dream knows he shouldn't) but he wants her. So much.
So much it makes him hurt, and that just makes him (no, not him, the person in the dream, not him) love her more.
The dreams change sometimes, unlike the nightmares, which are always just blood and white.
Sometimes he sees her, like a mirage, on the distance, crowd of people surrounding her. She wears only a coarse sort of dress and looks like she is dying, dying of thirst.
Then there are strange feelings of tenderness, and the dream man (who isn't him, can't be him, even though, yeah, sometimes he's been spotted and he looks like him, but can't be because for whichever reason, he's wearing clothes that look like they belong in Ancient Egypt) picks her up.
He gives her water.
He loves her.
Sometimes he meets her, and even though when they kiss her lips are badly chapped and bleed sometimes, they kiss and make love (but Seto forgets these parts of the dreams, he does).
She's beautiful, and the peaceful way she lies there afterwards, moon streaming onto her face, makes feelings so nice they hurt in his chest.
He loves her.
Then there are the dreams that don't seem to be visions, don't seem to be moments in time, don't seem to be anything at all.
She simply stands there in soft sand, hair blowing easily in the wind, light blue eyes half-lidded and peaceful. There are stars in the deep blue night sky.
Seto feels as though she is trying to tell him something, and after a few more dreams, she does tell him something.
Her perfect lips open in a half-smile, and she whispers the words,
"You love me too."
He loves her.
The other dream, the one he only dreams once but sees as a bitter ending all the same, the man (the man who just might be him, but isn't at the same time, which doesn't make any logical sense, but being in love with a girl from his dreams doesn't either) is holding the girl.
There is chaos around him, but the only thing that is focused on is the fact that the girl is lying in his arms, cradled there, dead.
She's gone, gone forever.
Their faces are shadowed and somehow it becomes one moment in time, a snapshot. A portrait.
Kisara.
Oh, he does love her.
Seto Kaiba dies when he is thirty-one, and he never falls in love.
(There is a woman, one night, who looks like her, just like her, and is pretty and intelligent--acts like her in a way, and he finds himself unable to consider her an object, but he leaves in the morning after their one night stand, feeling as though he is leaving the most perfect thing, and tries not to feel any emotion about it, and finds it ends up being simple. He's like a robot: he erases her from his memory drive, which may be faulty but still works well enough. Anyway, if they could never have a happy ending, he will never have one either. He knows history, and history is doomed to repeat itself. No matter what.)
It's true: his capacity for love, for romantic love, was full before he was even born. It was all used up a time long ago, thousands of years ago.
It only came to him in dreams.