A/N: Finally this idea poured out of me, all at once too. Kinda annoying when I also had homework to do, but at least it came out fast.

Disclaimer: Don't own YGO.

Surreal

Chapter One:

Waves. There were waves around him. That meant he was in the water. And it tasted salty. In an ocean? Must be. He tried to open his eyes, but there wasn't enough energy stored up for that. Something had drained him, all he wanted to do was sleep. But his mind was telling him not to go to sleep. Already, he couldn't feel his legs, hands, and torso, maybe they weren't there anymore? He would have laughed if he wasn't so tired. Why was he so tired? He couldn't remember, it seemed all of his life had been composed of being in that water. Long, long stretches of feeling nothing but the rhythmic crashing of the waves against his body. There was nothing before that, so why should he think any different?

There was a log underneath him, keeping him floating above the water. His body was frozen around that log, hugging it like it was his only tie to reality. In a way, it was. It was keeping him from drowning in the dark waters. Anyway, he couldn't stop holding on to the log, even if he wanted to. His muscles were stiff and stuck in that position.

He could see no end to this torture. No angels were going to come out of the sky and pick him up. If they did, would he go to heaven? Obviously he didn't remember ever doing anything bad, so why should he be declined that paradise? But what if he had done something bad and just forgot it? He couldn't imagine being held accountable for something he didn't remember doing, unless... No, he couldn't think any further, these philosophical theories were too much for his frozen brain to comprehend.

Would he be saved, though? Either spiritually or physically, at the moment it didn't matter much to him. He just wanted to be warm again. Warm, and able to move. Instantly, he felt sorry for paraplegics. He definitely wanted to walk again.

The waves got bigger and pushed his body. But, this time, it wasn't so much a wave as a bump in the water, the beginnings of a wave that hadn't crashed yet. Far off in the distance, he could hear shouting, though he couldn't make out what they were saying. The tiniest amount of hope in him blossomed bigger, though the crushing depression that had been ruling over his body for what he considered the entirety of his life would not be easily pushed aside. He still felt no hope over being rescued, doomed to live the rest of his life on a log in the middle of an ocean somewhere. And if those shouts weren't directed at him, he feared his life wouldn't be that much longer.

The shouts got closer. But, he didn't allow himself to become too optimistic. He still couldn't hear what they were talking about, so it could be nothing. Maybe being near death made the senses heighten. Or maybe it was making him go crazy. He couldn't think anymore, his brain was near shutting down. But before he could pass out, he felt a pull on his chest, like nothing he had ever felt before. Had the angels come to get him? That must be it, because he was being raised out of the water. He could feel his body becoming heavier, the water no longer supporting his mass so he didn't have to. He left the life supporting log in the water, his muscles no longer rigid in their grasp on it.

He fell on a hard surface with a loud thump that would have hurt if he could feel any part of his body. Arms wrapped around him, lifting him onto a slightly softer surface. It was warm, too, but the warmth stung, like being on fire. But he couldn't resist. Something was placed over him, a blanket, a jacket...he couldn't tell. His head lolled around of it's own will, but he felt another hand go underneath his neck, supporting it so that it stayed close to the warm body, or what he assumed was a body, it felt more organic than the surface underneath him.

Talking! Someone was talking. It hurt to listen to it, the sounds were loud and echoed in his head. But he could hear it, and make some of it out. "Do you... dead?... breathing... what... hospital..." He moaned, amazed with himself that he could actually make a noise, and turned further into the body. The voices stopped, much to his comfort.

His head was moved, and he felt his eyes being pried open. The image was blurry, and the light was scorching his retina, so he quickly shut them before they could get too far open. But the person on the other side was persistent. He could feel fingers on his eye lids again, and heard the person mutter something. It sounded like "come on... check... damage." Internally, he sighed. There wasn't enough energy in his body to open his eyes, he had tried before, but this time with help, he managed to open them halfway. Again, there was a blurry image, with bright white light behind it. But the longer he kept his eyes open, the more focused the picture got, and right before he passed out, he could identify a pair of blue eyes.

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Cold and alone, surrounded by people. That's the way it always was with Seto Kaiba and corporate functions. He would make sure that he did the barest minimum of socializing, just to keep up appearances, but would then find some secluded part of wherever the party was being held, in this case, a rather large yacht, and spend the rest of the evening there. A chilling wind blew over the bay, but the cold never really bother Seto. It wasn't like he was ill-equipped for being out on the freezing bay, he was wearing a black wool suit and a heavy trench coat.

Seto took a sip of champagne and stared out at the hills of the East Bay. Tiny lights were on, illuminating the hillside. On the other side of the yacht, facing west, there was San Francisco, no doubt even more lit up than the East Bay. It would seem any large city such as San Francisco could be the city that never slept. He took another sip of champagne and looked down at his watch. It was only 10.24, usually these parties lasted well into midnight. There would be a long way to go, and he knew he was going to get dragged back into the party by drunken idiots that wanted him to do inane things with them. He would politely refuse on these occasions, or if they pressed him a little too far, not so politely refuse the invitations, and find another, more hidden place where he could be alone.

Little did Seto know, this party wasn't going to be one of those boring parties where he had to stay until way after the novelty of being with other humans had worn off.

What's that? He questioned himself. It was very white in the black waters of the bay. It almost looked...human? He squinted and leaned over the banister. It was. It was a human. How could anyone survive in these waters?

Suddenly, Seto realized he had to do something, anything, so that the person in the water wouldn't die there. Where this sudden burst of compassion had come from, Seto couldn't say, but it was there, and every moment he didn't do anything was almost physically painful for him. So much adrenaline was rushing through his body that he only vaguely remembered yelling for help and watching one of the crew pull the white-blue body out of the water.

Against any common sense he had left, he pulled the soaking wet, and completely nude, body closer to his body and took his coat off to place on the shivering form.

"Do you think he's dead?" One of the crew asked.

"He's not dead," Seto said. "He's still breathing."

"What should we do?" A guest from the party said.

"Take him to the hospital," Seto replied, amazed that these people couldn't think for themselves.

Seto almost stopped breathing when the body in his arms moaned. He was still alive, and at least well enough to moan. That was good, but there could still be a lack of oxygen to the brain. Seto brought his head down to the person's chest to hear the other's breathing. It sounded normal, so there was little threat of brain damage, but just to be sure...

He turned his attention to the head, the eyes, specifically. This boy was oddly colored, even through the water Seto could see that he had black, red, and gold hair. Very unusual indeed. Seto frowned as he noticed the blue lips, but wasn't deterred from his objective. Gently, he placed his fingers on the boy's eye lids and tried to separate them. They went, but difficultly, and after barely opening them, they shut tight again.

Seto frowned and tried again. "Come on, I need to check for brain damage," he muttered to himself, not actually thinking the person in his arms would, or could, hear him. Again he tried to separate the lids. This time they opened easily, as if by themselves. Seto gasped when he saw the color of the irises. Red. Like wine, or blood. The eye moved as if looking straight at Seto, but then the other's head fell heavy against Seto's hand. He had passed out.

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Having influential power over almost everything in the city of San Francisco had it's benefits, and it's pitfalls, but those were irrelevant at the moment. The current most useful benefit was getting immediate medical attention. All Seto had to do was make a phone call and there they were, sitting in a helicopter on their way to the hospital. The unconscious body laying on the stretcher next to him had IVs sticking out of his forearm and blankets wrapped tightly around him. There was a sense of urgency floating around the helicopter, and why shouldn't there be?

The emergency medical team were busy around Seto, pulling things off the shelves and scribbling on the clip boards. They asked Seto if he knew anything about the patient, but they ran into a dead end on that one. He told them they had just come across him floating in the ocean when they passed by.

"Very lucky boy then," one of the EMS said.

Seto's eyes narrowed as he studied the body. He was very lucky, and should, actually, be dead. Judging by the color of his lips and skin, he had likely been in the water for a long time, and though it can be warm during the winter, it almost never is during the night. And it being slightly warmer doesn't stop the water from being freezing all the time. There was something strange with this individual, something Seto couldn't quite pinpoint.

They arrived at the hospital, and in a flurry of blue EMS uniforms and white doctor's coats the unconscious body was taken into the building. Seto followed them until one of the doctors turned around and told him to wait in the waiting room. She attempted to comfort Seto, telling him that they would take good care of the 'boy,' as people kept calling him, but what did Seto care? This person was a nobody that he just happened to run across in the normal activity of his life. The doctor was making it seem like he was his lover or something.

When she disappeared behind the doors, Seto shrugged and took a seat in the room across the way. There was a small television screen, which some children were raptly paying attention to, a few magazines from the early nineties strewn about the coffee table, and some toys in the corner. It wasn't particularly loud, but there was a low hum of voices, and every once in a while a scratchy voice would come over the intercom and ask for someone to go somewhere.

Seto drummed his fingers on the arm rest. This was going to take a while. Even with his infinite influences, he couldn't make the doctors go as fast as he wanted them to. That would just be unrealistic, though this entire night was a bit unrealistic. How many people are out on a yacht and come across an almost unconscious body in the bay? That boy was really lucky it had been Seto who found him. If it had been any other person, he would have died before they could get the EMS over to him.

The clock on the wall read close to eleven. If Seto hadn't found that body, he would still be at the party, probably fighting off drunk business partners and women that were hitting on him. Silently, he thanked the unconscious boy in one of the backrooms of the hospital. It was a macabre way to get out of a party, but it worked. He rested his head on one of his hands, and before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.

Seto's dreams were never really dreams, at least, not in the traditional sense. He dreamt, but it was never much more than a darkness he could never control. It felt like dark water had poured into his brain, working its way through the folds and crevices, until it reached the end. Yet, right before it could completely consume his mind, he always woke up. And it didn't matter how long he was asleep, the seeping liquid would always get to that point just before it got complete control and then he would rouse and the liquid would retreat.

A gentle nudge halted this dream from it's completion. Seto slowly opened his eyes to observe a small male doctor holding a clip board, looking at him.

"Are you the one who brought in the John Doe?" He asked, looking down at his clip board and checking things off.

After a short pause, Seto decided that the doctor didn't mean it as a rhetorical question. "Yes, I brought him in."

"Alright, then, we have stabilized his condition, started to warm him up. He had a pretty severe case of hypothermia, but we are confident by the results of the last hour that we won't have to amputate any of his limbs," the doctor said, flipping closed his notebook and returning his gaze to Seto. "His metabolic rate is steadily raising, which is also a good sign of a full recovery, though we would like to keep him here for three days after he regains consciousness to track his recovery. All in all, he's very lucky to have gotten here so quickly."

"So I've been told," Seto muttered.

"I need you to sign these forms, though, just as a legal precaution. Shall we?" The doctor motioned toward a table and started walking over.

Seto and the doctor easily glided through all of the paperwork, Seto because he was head of a multi-billion dollar company and thus did a lot of legal paperwork, and the doctor because if he didn't do it right, he could loose his job and his license.

Just as the doctor had collected all the papers up into one neat stack, a nurse ran into the lobby. She looked frantically around the room, and once her eyes came to rest on the doctor and Seto she sprinted over.

"Doctor," she said, apparently winded. "We tried paging you, the hypothermia patient...he's awake."

The doctor's eyes widened. "What? How is that possible?" Seto looked from the doctor to the nurse, trying to figure out what was wrong. Obviously, it was strange that someone whose body had been put through that much stress would be up and moving around less than two hours from being out of that stress, but the tension in the room had clouded up everyone's judgement.

"I don't know, but he's ripped out his IV and is threatening the other nurses," she said.

Both the doctor and Seto stood up and ran through the double doors into the emergency wing. Seto didn't know where to go, but the doctor was pretty fast, so he had no trouble following him with the urgency the situation called for. The doctor turned into one of the rooms, and halted in the doorway.

"How is he conscious?" The doctor whispered to himself.

Seto moved into the room after the doctor joined the melee to calm the patient down. There, in the corner of the room and standing on his bed, was the very conscious person Seto had plucked out of the waters of the San Francisco bay. He was breathing raggedly, and had the look of a cornered wild animal. Seto had a bad feeling about what was going to happen if they pushed that animal too far.

And with that thought, a nurse ran by him, holding some kind of syringe. Seto could only assume it was a tranquilizer.

Once the patient saw that needle, Seto saw the situation go from bad to worse.

"No," Seto heard the person on the bed say quietly. No one else appeared to hear him, for they all continued with their business, one of which was to prepare the needle for insertion.

There are moments in times of high stress and tension where all the activity just seems to stop. The moment that came next was like that. The doctors and nurses in the room slowed down to about the speed of a snail, Seto's breathing slowed, the air in the room almost froze up solid. The only one who could break this spell was the one who started it.

"No more needles!" The patient screamed. And time continued, but not only that, it went faster, to make up for time lost. All of the sudden, three nurses, one female and two male, were flat on their backs, the needle was spinning wildly on the ground toward Seto. It stopped with a small clink on Seto's shoe, and he stood there looking at it. When he looked back up, the wild patient was staring at him, a vague recognition playing on his face.

Before Seto could react, the patient ran over to him.

"Mr. Kaiba, watch out," the doctor from the lobby said.

But the patient had already attached himself to Seto. Seto pulled away, annoyed that someone he didn't know was all of the sudden clinging on to his coat, but he couldn't shake the guy off. His size betrayed how strong he was, and for fear of ripping his clothes, Seto stopped struggling against him.

Seto sighed. "Get these people out of here," he said, waving his hand. The doctor looked around at the nurses and other doctors, nodding slightly to let them know to follow the other's orders. They all left, and the patient glared at each one of them as they passed.

Seto walked awkwardly toward the bed, where he tried once again to get the unwanted clinger off. He didn't have to try hard, as the patient now figured it would be safe for him to be cooperative. The patient climbed onto the bed and sat there, eyes focused on Seto.

"Who are you?" The patient asked.

Seto was incredulous to the patient's forthrightness. "I think the better question is who are you?"

"Me?" The patient paused and thought about it. "My name is Yami, I think."

"Amnesia, interesting," the doctor behind Seto said, writing more down.

Seto ignored the doctor's comment. "It's just Yami, nothing else?"

"What else would there be?"

Seto shook his head, amnesia was right. He couldn't stand there all night and teach this boy about the world, and luckily the doctor chimed in.

"I'm sorry to interrupt this conversation, but we really need to check his vitals," the doctor said, pulling out his stethoscope. "You may wait outside, or in the lobby again, Mr. Kaiba."

Seto nodded, and chose to wait outside. This way, if he got called upon again, he would be at easy access.

He leaned up against the wall right outside the room. This was one of the most strenuous evenings he had ever been through. Though comparing corporate parties to a hypothermic in a hospital was definitely comparing apples and oranges. He watched nurses and a few doctors walk in and out of the room, but no more disturbances to speak of.

Then, all at once, the nurses and doctors walked out of the room, the head doctor stopping behind the group.

"Ah, Mr. Kaiba," he said. "Well, we've run all the tests we can think of, and he's come up normal. It's like he was never in those waters. I just can't explain it."

The doctor paused, then continued. "And we can't get anymore information, he doesn't remember anything but his name and being in the water. The only options for his release is that you sign for him, or we try to find his parents, which given the current circumstances, seems unlikely. In that case, we would have to send him to an orphanage, since he looks to still be a minor."

"An orphanage," Seto repeated to himself. "When can you release him?"

"With all of his tests proving that he's in good health," the doctor answered, "we would like to keep him overnight, just to be sure, but he should be ready to go by tomorrow morning. Or, rather, later this morning."

"I'll be back at 9," he said. He walked out of the ward, and onto the street. He hailed a taxi, and on the entire way home, he thought about every point in that evening where something had turned for the worse.

A/N: Right, chapter one. Review please.