Blueshipping (Kaiba Seto/Kisara)

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((minor spoilers for Dark Side of Dimensions))

. . .

She wasn't exactly what he had been looking for but...she was here now, and he wasn't entirely sure what to do with her.

Her name was Kisara, but he only knew that because of that time that he had met the memory of her in an alternate reality. She didn't speak Japanese, and despite his ability to read hieroglyphics, he didn't seem to be able to understand her speech. Maybe it wasn't ancient Egyptian or Kemetic or whatever it was supposed to be called; maybe it was something else. Yugi had come to visit a few times and he said he didn't recognize her language either. She didn't seem able to read, so writing hieroglyphs back and forth seemed out of the question as well.

She lurked, now, as usual. He could sense her like a prickle at the back of his neck, like static that filled the air and made his hair stand on end. It had unnerved him at first, the moment that she had appeared inside the machine that was supposed to be pulling Atem's soul into it. The way that the air had actually sparked and crackled with white electricity, her eyes wide and wild, hair swirling around her like a whirlpool of light. Scared—she had been scared, and confused. Tumbling headfirst out of the pod when he fumbled to open it up as quickly as possible, stumbling for him with her hands outstretched until she fell against his chest and cried, fingers curling into his shirt.

He had only understood one word out of her babbling. Set. Set. Set. Set.

It was his name, but it wasn't. He wasn't her Set. He didn't know how to be.

Somehow, she had understood, in the end. The way she had stared with wide eyes at her hand against hers, spreading her fingers out against his and tilting her gaze at his fingers, her hands searching across his arms and his cheek, staring at the way that her skin was the same color as his, now. "Set?"she had whispered again, and somehow, the tremble in her voice made him feel like something in him was breaking.

He could see her eye peering through the corner between his door and the doorframe—dark and cold and deep as the ocean. He was just staring blankly at his charts and diagrams—he was no closer to figuring out how to use the dead Plana to make a bridge between worlds and find Atem again. Every attempt had ended in failure. Atem hadn't come to him when he had called—she had instead. Part of him wanted to be angry at her for it.

He found, though, that he didn't have the heart to be.

"Kisara?" he said finally, looking up. "You're there, right?"

The door fumbled a bit, and he thought he must have made her flinch. After a beat, though, she carefully pushed it open, just wide enough to fit her head around the corner of the door. She was wearing an old turtleneck and jeans of his; he had bought her other clothes after quickly having Mokuba find her something for the time being (she had come out of the pod naked), but she didn't seem to want to change out of the ones he had given her. He saw her curled up on the couch sometimes with the neck of the sweater rolled up over her nose, and he wondered if he had the same scent like the Set she had known. He wondered if it comforted her.

She looked fragile, standing there in the crack of the door, hands gripping it pale against the wood. She had been so bony when she had first appeared. Dehydrated. As though she hadn't had food or water in years. She was putting a little more weight on recently, but she still looked like the wind would blow her away.

"You can come in," he said, even though she probably wouldn't understand.

She hesitated for just a breath, and then, she seemed to get it, and stepped tentatively inside, feet bare against the carpet. His skin prickled a bit at the sight of the way she moved. It felt...familiar. Like he was experienced deja vu. He wanted to hate it—wanted to despise the way that his body reacted to feelings that weren't his.

He found that he couldn't.

She stepped lightly across the room and stood in front of the desk. Her eyes stared at the papers all over the surface. He wondered what she thought of them. He wasn't sure how to teach a modern language to someone that spoke a dead one. He had heard her and Mokuba trading words with each other sometimes, Mokuba pointing at things and saying what they were in Japanese, and Kisara repeating the word, and then saying something in her own language. He wondered how much either of them were picking up.

She pointed down at something, and he blinked—was she trying to say something? Her finger rested on an etching of the stone, the one that had his own past life and Atem drawn onto it. Specifically, she was pointing at Atem. He looked back up at her, her eyes glimmering in the dim light of his desk lamp.

She said something, something in that strange, lyrical language that he didn't understand.

"What?" he said.

She licked her lips. She tried again.

"...lost?" she whispered, coming out in thickly accented Japanese. "...looking?"

He dropped his eyes away, his heart thrumming in his chest. He nodded. He didn't know how else to explain it. He saw her hand move back up out of the corner of his eye, her fists squeezing together against her chest.

"Lost," she whispered again.

"You said that already," he said. But then he looked up.

There were tears in her eyes as she pointed at herself. He felt something in him seize up.

"Lost," she said again. "Looking."

She pointed at him, then, finger trembling. And then...a small, tentative smile broke over her face, and it made his breath catch in his throat as though he had just seen a sunset catch the light just right off of a prism.

"Found," she said, still pointing at him, and then pointing at herself again. "Found."

These weren't hisfeelings. They were the feelings of someone else—someone he might have been once, but they weren't him. They weren't...they weren't...

He realized, all at once, that he didn't care whose feelings they were.

He stood up and walked around the desk. She jumped at first, but then her whole body melted into his immediately as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face gently against his shoulder as he ran his fingers through her hair.

"Found," he murmured in response.

. . .

A/N: Thank god I finally got to write something I ENJOYED for this project :'D Next is Bloodshipping (Yami no Marik x Gozaburo)