Disclaimer: I don't own YGO, or "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield.
Warnings: None, really. Kaiba terribly out of character, but that's the way the fangirls like him, I guess. I use all original Japanese names.
Love Letters
Oneshot
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Has the world ever noticed my entire state of being? The fact that I am so dark (I know it to be true) and yet the world around me is bright, shining? My company reaches for the stars as I dwell in my own personal hell.
I clothed myself darkly until I first saw you. Not that it was truly you, it was not in person; I saw you smiling in a photograph, and immediately, somehow I knew such a photo could not do you justice.
It was leaving the Duelist Kingdom that the Pegasus J. Crawford character I occasionally did business with that I had the opportunity. By our chosen method of transport, it would be a long and bothersome time from there back home to Domino, so I was forced to make conversation with Yugi and his friends - and, consequently, your brother Jonouchi Katsuya, the mutt I had thought to be far below my stature. It was not of my choice, let me tell you; it was my own sibling Mokuba, who felt a bond (or something of that sort) with the young King of Games and his entourage for saving our lives, as it were.
Mokuba and I had known Yugi's reasoning behind entering the tournament - to regain the soul of his grandfather, much like I had duelled to retrieve the one beloinging to my brother - but Mokuba felt it necesscary to learn your brother's motives. The thing that suprised me the most, initially, was that it was for the benefit of another, and not his own gratification as I thought it would be. He seemed for so long to be the type who's only in the running for the fortune and fame, but I have to guess I was wrong.
I remember, sitting just across from him, next to Mokuba, that he fished into his back pocket and retrieved his wallet, flipping to a laminated picture inside and passed it to my brother. Mokuba had smiled - "She's very pretty," he'd said, and for some reason handed the tattered tan leather container to me, as if I would have been interested.
I should've known that such an image would've been burned into my mind.
The smile, the angelic face, wrapped in pastel tones that brought out just how pale and fragile your skin appeared to be, the long hair with bangs hovering around the undersides of your cheeks; and those eyes, that beautiful shade of cerulean, more true in color than any sky or ocean I had ever seen. It was a sight to remember, that much was for sure.
Being a business executive, you try to deny the very simple fact that everyone has a heart. The conscience I had supressed for so long in order to cut deals and mark up pricing panged when I heard of the steady onset of blindess you were afflicted with, hearing that without the Duelist Kingdom prize winnings you could not afford the surgery to save your eyesight. For the first time (however briefly) I recognized your yankee brother as a decent human being, regardless of his attitude or placement on the social ladder, in being selfless. Your brother was everything I was not, all in this one instant he was everything I could never be. My life from the age of eight on had taught me that being the good samaritan would get you nowhere in the world, that underhanded tactics would sometimes need to be used.
It did not suprise me when your brother entered my Battle City tournament, after all he was and always will be the wingman of Yugi Mutou. And yet he still cared for you, entrusting your life to his oldest current friend until you could recover fully. I understand he would regularly call, just so hear you speak, just to make sure you were completely fine. Though you may not realize it, but he was (and still is) the fighter guardian angel you deserved.
And you returned the favor amiably, tearing the bandages from your face and diving into the water to save his life. The guardian was instead the one being rescued. I had to shake my head and blink no less than three times to make sure I hadn't envisioned wings of feathery white flapping gently behind you, no matter how insane it may make me sound.
Sometimes people call me a devil, a fallen angel or a demon, sent to wreck their businesses and families through the expansion of my own corporation. I have often mused on this, and no matter how much I clothed myself in the paler shades you fit perfectly in, I will always be suited in the deep, muted colors that dominate my wardrobe. The black, the blue, occasionally green and the like - all of it as dark as the wings the media has given me, the shade of my soul that they pretend they can see.
I am not sure if I will ever summon enough courage to have you read this; however, in the small chance I ever do, it will always be there for the giving. As much as I would love to tell this to you in my own words, I would lack the poetics needed to give it justice. I would stumble and fall through my speech, and end up in a jumbled, bewildering mess that would only confuse you more than I.
I realize that there is no need in adressing this letter, now that it will most likely not be delivered. To any other eyes reading this, I ask that you pass this on to the woman it was written to, as I lack the backbone to do it myself.
Signed - no.
With love,
Kaiba Seto
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Shizuka let her tears fall onto her lap. No spoken confession could have ever moved her like these three sheets of Kaiba stationary had, and she smiled through her tears. "Thank you, Mokuba," she mumbled, reaching out to pat the black-haired boy on the head. "Where did you find this, anyway?"
The teen smiled. "It was peeking out from under his pillow. It's been two years since then, look at the date! He's slept just above it every night." Grabbing
Shizuka by the wrist, he pulled her from the living room sofa in her apartment up into a standing postion. "Well, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? That's just as much invitation as you'll ever get."
The ride to the Kaiba Mansion didn't take horrendeously long, but time passed so sluggishly that Shizuka felt it took forever. The staff simply ducked out of the duo's way, niether caring that they were speeding through a household with countless antiques, Mokuba leading the way to the study where his older brother should still be, finishing up tidbits of work for the night. It was only ten o'clock, still an early hour for the young CEO.
The older brunette barely had time to glance tiredly up before Shizuka had burst through the heavy oak doors without so much as a knock. She stood in the center of an oval rug, just in front of the darkly stained desk Seto sat in, catching her breath, hands resting just above her knees. head down. The elder Kaiba stood, setting down his pen and circling the desk until he was resting on the front of it, arms crossed. To be entirely truthful, he didn't know quite what to make of his own secret love interest bursting into his study unannounced.
"I..." Shizuka started, taking another couple of gasps, "Mokuba... your pillow... the letter-"
"You read it?" Seto asked, his voice a little harsher than he had intended it to come out. Two long years of waiting, two years of not enough guts to give it to her himself and his brother had snuck into his room to deliver the personal piece of literature?
"Yes," she answered, looking up, smiling at the 'what should I do?' look in the senior student's eyes. "It was..." she trailed off, walking toward him at what seemed to be an ungodly slow pace. Seto wished that if she wanted to slap him for such advances, she should just get the deed done and over with
already. "The letter was... belated."
He let out a breath he wasn't aware of holding. So that was it, it was late in coming to her? No 'That was so sweet it gave me cavities, now pay for my dental bill' or 'What, you think you can bed me with a few pages of sweet words?' But instead she was silent. She reached out and grasped a hand of his, pushing up a buttoned shirt sleeve and swatting him square on the wrist.
"That was for being cowardly," she announced, a defiant glare in her eyes he'd never seen before. But without warning it melted into a softer gaze, taking the same wrist up to her lips to kiss the small sting away. "And that's for reciprocation, no matter how late it was."
Mokuba smiled. Two years the two had secretly wanted to show their love but niether had acted on it until now, until she had known about the three pages he'd written completely by hand, professing how he had fallen in love with her.
Maybe someday she would show him the love letters she'd written him and never had the courage to deliver.
But regardless, now that the cat was out of the bag, the only thing left was to write out their future.
Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.
-"Unwritten", Natasha Bedingfield