A/N: Trying a little of something different, inspired by all of the Kaiba-is-a-toxic-broken-character-discourse I've been seeing everywhere. It is a little bit hard to see Seto wanting to be in a healthy relationship, isn't it?

So this was my (best) answer to what that would feel like, to him. If you would read and review I would absolutely love that! And even if not, you get a sample of "I Don't Like Who I Was Then" by the Wonder Years, possibly one of my favorite songs of all time.

"You left me walking in circles.
You were a shot in the dark.
You're scattered like ashes across every song that I write.
You're where the light pollution starts.

I think I'm growing into someone you could trust.
I want to shoulder the weight until my back breaks,
I want to run until my lungs give up.
If I could manage not to fuck this up...

Enough is enough."

~The Wonder Years, "I Don't Like Who I Was Then"

He had never been a sympathetic villain. Actually, long before he could be considered anything akin to a villain, he had never been very sympathetic in the first place. Prospective parents had never used gentle, high-pitched voices when talking to him. Nobody ever intervened when he was being bullied, even if it was five-on-one—five on one and a half, if you wanted to count Mokuba shouting hysterically for as he watched his beloved older brother selflessly defend his honor. So it was hard to be outraged with Gozaburo for the years of mistreatment—he shuddered away from the word abuse, because he would have stood up for himself it really had been abuse—and the yelling and the hitting and the constant barrage of you worthless ingrate, you good-for-nothing brat, you pathetic little shit. He almost found it difficult to blame the man—it wasn't Gozaburo's fault, really. It was just his destiny, and he had long since resigned himself to it—to be perpetually at war with a world that never loved him. Gozaburo, Pegasus, Atem, everyone, everyone was just a pawn of a world hell-bent on destroying Seto Kaiba. In his darkest moments, that so much had failed to break him gave him the courage to fight on. It made things simple, to know that the world was never for him, that it, in fact, aggressively hated him. The pain, the loneliness, the isolation—it wasn't personal; he was just never destined for happiness.

That was just how it was—he was always meant to be at war with the world. So he couldn't hate the people who had tried to ruin him, to break him down, to torture him. What he could hate were the people who pitied him. It was why he couldn't look Yugi Motou in the eye—Yugi knew full well about his war with the world. What he hated was, Yugi thought he had lost. Yugi thought that he was been so thoroughly broken that he was in need of someone to save him. It was demeaning, really, was what it was—he hadn't been through hell and back for someone to coddle him and tell him that the world wasn't really out to get him. He knew how hard he had worked to get to where he was, spitting boldly in the face of a world that had never loved him, and he didn't want to be pitied for it—that was just his fate, and it was what it was. And if everyone couldn't help but to pity him, then he would stand alone and continue to fight. That was just how it was.

He didn't want to need anyone. He had long surrendered himself to the fact that he needed Mokuba, and that Mokuba needed him, and that he would forever love his brother with an intensity that terrified him, and he took his role as Mokuba's protector very seriously—he would hold his chin high, and keep fighting against the world, in the hopes that Mokuba would never have to. But the concept of dependency still terrified him, because it meant that he would be vulnerable if that person were to leave him. And when the world hates you, you simply cannot risk putting your fate into the hands of a person, because people are notoriously fickle and mortal and imperfect, and split almost perfectly into two categories—opponents, who were hell-bent on hurting him, and people who pitied him for having nothing but opponents, and wanted to save him. He wasn't sure which type was worse. Actually, no, he knew exactly which one was worse. He respected a good fight, but he would be able to face the people who saw him as a failure, as a poor little shell-shocked boy, broken miserable kid with a broken miserable soul that could never be healed, a pathetic kid who needed to be saved.

He didn't want to need anyone. But then, there was her. There was Kisara, with her beautiful silvery hair and her gentle, soft eyes and her voice like the gentle twinkling of the stars and her movements like the spiraling dance of mist on a cold night. Kind, sweet Kisara, who had never tried to make him into someone that he didn't want to be. Who could look him in the eye even after he told her about his war with the world, and all of the things he had done to survive that war, all of the darkness and the evil and the cruelty and the madness and the violence and the hurt. Who could hold his shaking hands without trying to save him, without having to whisper those stupid words, everything is going to be alright. He should have felt guilty, he knew, for bringing such a soft and gentle and bright spirit into such a dark and hopeless battle against everything, but for all of the darkness that was his past, and his present, and most definitely his future, she remained soft and gentle, sweet and bright and playful and vibrant, and he found himself marveling at the fact that such a warm and wonderful light could exist in such a grim and painful world. In his worst nightmares, in the dark recesses of his mind that he could not bear to conquer, he was the darkness that spread through everything he touched, he was the chaotic, evil force responsible for his parents death, and Gozaburo, and Death-T and Duelist Kingdom and everything, everything bad that had happened was his fault. But even in his darkest moments, when everything felt lost, her light remained, steadier and stronger than ever, and it gave him hope that maybe there were things more powerful than the darkness inside of him. She was a single beam of starlight in a moonless, starless sky, a reminder of hope in a bleak world.

He was at war with the world, navigating a dark world that had never promised him light. But even when the world felt darkest she was beside him, playful and kind and so, so brilliant, without ever trying to pick him up and guide him towards a light that he wasn't sure existed. If there ever was a promise of salvation, he knew she would be beside him when he found it. She wasn't his savior, she was his partner.

With her, he felt hope.

This doesn't really fit into the whole vibe of Extras, which I wanted to be kind of more of little domestic blueshipping moments-not really plot-focused per se, but not really plot-less exposition, haha.

As a side note, I haven't written in Seto's perspective since high school :-O He ended up being a little bit dramatic-melodramatic, maybe, depending on who you ask-but it felt true to his character.

Also, I highly, highly recommend the Wonder Years.