Gave Up On Shallow Incisions

Fiction Rated: Let's say, R… just to be safe.

Disclaimer: Actually, I do own Yu-Gi-Oh. (Pause for effect.) Now enjoy my fanfiction.

Summary: Breaking hearts is always more fun when you're being watched. Some things are just dead on arrival—me, for example. Poor boy never had a chance. (MOTS companion piece.)

A/N: This is just a little something I thought up—decided to get it down. It's all Ali's POV, I never write in POV… so this is new. It was just a character development exercise I was doing, but I decided maybe it was worth getting up.

So maybe I should have given more thought to a few of my decisions… or all of them. But I wouldn't really be here if I had sat down and thought things through. I mean, let's face it… if I had never thrown a textbook at that stupid sophomore boy, he never would have called me that horrible name, and I would never have wound up in Mrs. Gillis office.

And I never would have run in to them. It's not unusual for me to meet people, I get out a lot… but that kid, he caught my attention. I'm more than convinced that Mokuba is a prodigy, travel the world and bring me back one other kid like him.

I'll sit here while you do that.

No really, I'm waiting.

My point? If I didn't act on impulse and get in trouble now and then, I'd be at a completely different point in life, wouldn't I?

Mokuba both saved, and changed my life in less time than it took me to light a cigarette… which he has told me many times I should do less often. Maybe I'm even more screwed up than I used to believe, because I relate more with that kid than I have with any other person I've ever met. We talk for hours, age doesn't seem to exist… maybe he's old for his age, or maybe I'm young.

Of course, when a door opens… a window closes.

Case in point: Seto fucking Kaiba.

Even thinking his name bothers me, I just kicked a chunk of ice into the road. That earned me a few angry stares from travelling cars… I'll just politely flip them off.

I suppose that's a pretty perfect image—kicking a chunk of ice, great way to relieve stress. If only I could kick the chunk of ice that truly deserves it.

Honestly, though… he never speaks. Once I saw him stare at the front page of the news paper for a good twenty minutes. His eyes didn't move, and he didn't say a word. Albeit, he didn't know I was watching him.

Don't judge me, I was just walking to his kitchen to get food, and he happened to be there.

Anyway, sometimes I think he's more of a mess than me. Seriously, did you know that he only eats one meal a day? Well he does, and it's usually barely even that—half of a meal, more like. In between cups of coffee and bottles of water, I'm surprised that he hasn't devolved into a fish. The guy drinks more than a whale.

Not to mention the weird way that he never looks like he's part of the world. Most people can be read like books—just by looking at their eyes. Seto… well I don't see anything when I look into those empty blue holes. Sometimes I see my own reflection, but that doesn't count.

Sometimes I have to physically restrain myself from beating into his chest and screaming… just to get a reaction. Just because his life might not have been perfect, why does he need to take that out on the rest of us?

Okay… so maybe 'not perfect' is an understatement… not that I would know. Like I said, talking to him is like pulling teeth. But sometimes I get the feeling that he's more broken than I could possibly imagine.

Did you know that I actually think about him, sometimes? When I'm ordering take-out and the guy on the line is being snippy, it reminds me of the rich bastard. When I see a trench-coat in a crowd, I almost always analyze further to see if it's wrapped around a skeletal CEO.

Sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll suddenly get hung up on something the idiot said, and immediatly I'm playing it backwards in my head—looking for any sort of hidden meaning.

But nothing is as hard to deal with as when he looks at me; I swear that those unseeing eyes can see right through me, sometimes. And that's when all of my rational actions go out the window…

…well, I may not have many to begin with—but you get the picture.

He gets this eerie look on his face, and I can just hear the sirens… like he knows something. That's usually when I say something that I'll regret later. But it's not my fault, honestly! If the jerk would just talk once and a while…

And then, it hit me that what bothered me about him is that he isn't interested in me.

At all.

I could leave the country and never come back, and he wouldn't care! He doesn't laugh when I say something funny; he doesn't watch when I'm trying to get him to look at me. I don't think he even notices the way I've, more than once, made up a stupid reason to get him to acknowledge me.

I'm just another person in his ever-dreary life, filled with ever-boring people.

But once, he snapped…

The pills… ever since that day I've felt a little guilty every time I call him an insulting name. No nineteen year old should be taking copious amounts of drugs like that. At first I thought, maybe it was just stress—from work. But Seto isn't the type of person who loses it over one board meeting gone wrong. There is something deeper there.

The middle of the summer…

Mokuba had said that Seto used to be different, and he was lost forever in the blink of an eye. Why? Why? Why?

Abuse? It must have been… Gozaburo hit him, that much I know. But I just feel like there was something deeper, something that took the kid and broke him—turning him in to the icy CEO I know today.

I just wish I could find out what happened; no one loses themselves over a few angry slaps.

I wish he would talk. I wish he would react.

When he saw me with Mikhail… he barely blinked. I'm running around behind my 'boyfriend's' back, and he doesn't even acknowledge it. Not that I mind but…

I half-wish that he would have slapped me, or told Joey, or been disgusted by me. Something, at least… I needed the disapproval. My commitment issues aren't going to solve themselves, but I can't put that on Seto.

Maybe if I knew what love felt like… outside of the platonic variety; maybe if I didn't act on impulse and need to be constantly amused, maybe then I would be less of a train-wreck. But I don't want to be left with my thoughts… I don't want to stare at the news paper for twenty minutes lost in heartbreaking thoughts.

It's an obvious fact—I hate Seto Kaiba. Seto Kaiba hates me. We're perfectly fine with the arrangement. We both love Mokuba enough to not kill each other while he's around. I still enjoy toying with the jerk from time to time, but I'm not wasting time trying to make him my friend, when he'll never return the effort.

Not that I would want the bastard as a friend. I can't even imagine going bowling with his barely-there figure, even if he moves with inhuman grace and manages to stand with enough confidence to make up for all the insecure teen girls out there. I can't imagine eating greasy Chinese across from his stony blue eyes. Those, pretty, pretty eyes. Did you know that Seto Kaiba's eyelashes are a mile long? Well they are. Thick, too. I don't know if I'm jealous or awed every time I notice it… I never have time to think it over.

I don't think I'd be able to have a normal conversation the jerk. Because his perfect teeth tend to blind me at regular intervals, the way they sit behind impossibly pretty lips. As a woman, I'm insulted by my chapped mess of a mouth and off-white teeth, I can't compare.

Nope, it wouldn't work—we could never be friends.

Because I think I just might be the slightest bit attracted to him.

R&R
KC.