Hey, hey, welcome back :) I have a pretty lengthy note at the end/would appreciate some feedback, if you have time! Otherwise, happy reading. Or...hitting the back button to read something else.

Joey's pace was brisk—he wasn't much shorter than Seto, and was nearly as gangly and long-legged—and Kisara had to jog every few meters to keep pace.

They continued the two blocks back to school in such a manner—Joey with his head down, walking briskly, and Kisara struggling to maintain pace. Her mind was spinning.

"Wait—just wait, one second," she huffed, as Joey began to cross an intersection as the light turned yellow. There was no way that she would make it across the intersection with him, and then he would be able to lose her for good. To her surprise, Joey turned about-face, and leaned against the telephone pole on the curb, staring off into the distance. A trickle of traffic made its way through the intersection Joey had occupied just moments before.

"Can I ask you something?" Kisara asked hesitantly, feeling her heart thump uncomfortably in her chest.

Joey shrugged. "I can't stop you, if that's gonna answer your question," he offered.

Kisara drew in a deep breath and spit out the words before she could stop them. "What's going on?" she asked.

Joey rolled his eyes. "You insisted on giving me a ride home tonight, like ya didn't think I could do it myself. So. We're getting your car."

Kisara grimaced, berating herself internally for not using a more precise phrase. "You know what I mean," she complained.

"I might." Silence. The lights changed, and Joey started making his way across the street with the same brisk stride.

Kisara sighed and hurried after him. "Fine. Why do you have such a problem with me and Seto?"

Joey's momentum stopped abruptly. Kisara paused, glancing cautiously at him; he looked disgruntled, but wasn't looking towards Kisara.

"I don't," he said finally, then continued walking again.

Kisara groaned. "Okay, seriously, come on. What's your deal?" she insisted.

Joey's voice was uncomfortably bitter. "I'm guessing what you and Kaiba have in common is neither of you know when to let sleeping dogs lie."

They walked in silence until they reached the parking garage. There, Kisara realized that she suddenly had the upper hand—Joey didn't know where her car was, or what it looked like. Their pace slowed considerably.

"I don't know what your history is with Seto," she started.

"You mean, he didn't give you the maniac psychopath killer backstory?" Joey asked.

Kisara's heart jumped and caught in her throat. Joey was right, there were certain aspects of Seto's past that she didn't know much about. She recalled a moment when she had reached out to grasp Seto's hand as he curled his fingers around his locket, asking with a gentle smile where he had gotten it; his face had turned to stone so quickly that a lump rose in Kisara's throat and her lungs felt cold. She knew the locket contained a picture of a young Mokuba, but she had been afraid to ask further details about the piece since.

"You can drop me here." Joey's sounded over the soft hum of radio-rock guitars.

Kisara looked around, frowning. The street they were driving on was a quiet, lined with warehouses on one side and the train tracks on the other. "Where?"

Joey sighed. "Pull over, anywhere's fine. We're close, I promise." Kisara turned her car into an empty lot, sliding into a parking space between a pool supply warehouse and a closed shop that advertised lunch specials on chicken parmesan.

"I feel kind of bad leaving you here," Kisara confessed, twisting her hands.

Joey sighed. "Yeah, don't worry too much about it." His voice softened a little, and he looked at her with a slight smile. "You're a'ight, you know that? Of course you have to be dating Ol' Moneybags."

Kisara allowed herself a small smile. "We could get a drink sometime, maybe," she suggested. "I'm not just Ol' Moneybags' girlfriend." the words sounded funny coming out, and she chuckled to herself.

Joey looked uncertain for a moment, then reached for his phone. "Aaahhh, what the heck. Just don't blame me if Kaiba doesn't want us getting' too close. I warned ya."

"I can handle him." Kisara fumbled through the center console for her phone, and the two exchanged phone numbers.

"See ya." Joey slammed Kisara's car door behind him, and she watched triumphantly as he glanced back her, giving a half-wave, before he walked away. Suddenly aware that she was alone in an abandoned lot, Kisara locked the car doors and slid down into her seat, taking in the events of the night.

"You saw what?" Kisara had been expecting Seto to be surprised that she had spent the evening with Yugi and his friends, but Seto's eyes were wide; his face was pale.

Kisara sighed gently, reaching out to rub Seto's shoulder. "I met Yugi Motou. He was tabling for a Duel Monsters club. They invited me out to dinner." Seeing Seto shake his head almost imperceptibly, she added, with a hint of indignation, "I don't need your permission to make new friends, Seto."

After a good deal of thinking, Kisara had driven to the Kaiba mansion. Mokuba had answered the door, already dressed in pajamas and looking slightly surprised to find Kisara on his doorstep at eleven-o-seven on a weekday night, but ushered her inside without a second thought before heading back to bed. Alone in the dark living room, Kisara looked at the new contact "Joey W" on her phone, wondering whether the right move was to tell Seto at all.

She wasn't afraid of him—at least, she tried to convince herself that she wasn't. And yet, there was something about the way Seto's face drew tight, and his voice choked ever-so-slightly, whenever the mention of Yugi Motou came up, that made her hesitate. She shook her head, remembering Tea's words—happy, but so surprised that Seto Kaiba would have a girlfriend—and stubbornly resolved that she had to, nay, she wanted to tell Seto about her new friends.

Seto glanced away for a moment; there was a flash of something in his expression that made Kisara shudder. "Yes, of course," he said finally. He drew his knees to his chest, and clasped his hands around them.

Kisara felt her eyebrows furl, and she leaned against the headboard of Seto's bed. All at once, the frightening glimpse of anger she had witnessed in Seto was gone, replaced by a meek, silent version of her boyfriend that seemed somehow less than the person he had been just moments before.

"You all have a history," she said quietly, inching her way towards Seto until they were shoulder to shoulder on his crumpled navy-and-silver bedspread.

"Did they tell you?" Seto asked. His voice sounded flat and distant, as if it were coming from a voice recording. She brushed a lock of his dark brown hair behind his ear, gently running her finger tip across his cheek, but still he did not look her way.

...Maniac psychopath killer...the sharp vitriol in Joey's voice as he spat those words at her echoed crisply in her mind, as if the blonde-haired boy were in the room. But Kisara shook her head. "I know stuff happened, Seto. And I know it was years ago." Her voice, calm and matter of fact, softened slightly as she saw Seto's shoulders raise even higher than they were already. "It doesn't mean that...whatever happened...is who you are now."

Her words were met with silence. Kisara pursed her lips. Roughly four months with Seto, and she was becoming accustomed to the silence that sometimes followed difficult pieces of conversation. Seto Kaiba was not one to choose words lightly.

"I did bad things, Kisara," he said finally. His voice wobbled slightly, and Kisara was alarmed as she realized that his shoulders were shaking. Tenderly, Kisara crawled across the bed until she was behind him, wrapping her arms across his and resting her head on his shoulder.

"You don't have to be who you were then," she whispered softly, kissing his cheek.

"You don't know."

Kisara grimaced, gently squeezing Seto's wrist. "Maybe not. You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to. But it's going to be okay."

Seto's voice was bitter, ice-cold, almost impossibly abrasive. "Don't patronize me, Kisara. You don't know."

Kisara sighed, letting Seto go and slumping down on the bed. "You're right, I don't. But Yugi...and his friends...they're fine. They're...they're just people, our age." She flicked Seto's kneecap lightly with one finger. "Yugi said he was happy for us."

Seto looked disarmed. "He said that?" He asked.

Kisara nodded. "They wanted to know if you could come with us tonight. I said you were working, but..." her voice trailed off into nothing before she finished her sentence, but Seto's eyes looked different, and his face more relaxed.

"We could try," she suggested.

Seto turned to look at her, and Kisara met his gaze. They stayed fixed like this for a long moment, with blue eyes meeting blue. Kisara had never fully admired Seto's eyes, she realized—strikingly large and pale blue, deep-set and framed by sharp eyebrows. He had once confessed to her that his vision was nearly bad enough for him to be considered legally blind, and yet she had never seen him with his glasses on. She wondered if he was still wearing his contacts, or if he really couldn't see her much at all right now, if she was just a blur of pale peach skin and dark blue eyes and silvery hair.

Seto nodded at long last. "If you want to."

Kisara knew Seto well enough to know that he wanted to take her lead, under the guise of being disinterested. She smiled, feeling a rush of warmth to be given such a task in his life as mending the bridges he had burned as an angry teenager. The warmth enveloped her, and she wrapped her arms around him; unsuspecting, Seto toppled backwards, landing with a soft thump onto a mound of pillows and crumpled comforter.

"Sure," she smiled. "Sure, I'll see if Yugi and his friends ever want to get dinner again," she said, kissing his cheek.

Seto put his hand against her cheek, looking at her with a meaningful stare; his blue eyes blazed with emotion. Kisara fidgeted, almost uncomfortable with the intensity in his eyes, and the meaning behind it—Seto, in his own way, was confiding in her that he wanted to make amends, and possibly ? Kisara dared not extrapolate—make friends ?

"If you want to. It doesn't much matter to me," Seto added. Kisara rolled away from him so she wouldn't see her smile.

"Sure," she said. "C'mon, let's go to bed, Seto."

Notes: Short, but technically, this and the last chapter were supposed to be one chapter :P I've been kind of considering doing a spinoff of this fic about Kisara helping Seto befriend Yugi and the gang, and more fully flesh out how I imagined each of the characters to have ended up at this point in their lives. I don't remember whether or not I stated this at the beginning of the fic, but Seto is very dear to my heart, and has been since I started watching the show (I was nine, and now I'm twenty-one). So being the sap that I am, I always wanted Seto to have a happy ending, which I don't think he was really given in the canon (or in DSoD...it's all the same, kind of ambiguous, kind of thing). Now that I'm older than Kaiba, and working in/studying a tech-heavy field, I've met a lot of people who have helped me kind of shape my ideas for a realistic 'happy ending' for Seto. A big part is finding a partner who understands him, which is the point of this fic. And another part is friendship, and making amends for the past, and learning-it sounds kind of melodramatic, but I think blow-up-a-tower-to-represent-leaving-the-past-behind Kaiba would approve-how to bury the person that he was "back then" (in the DM and manga canon), which I think could be another, and more linear, plot-based story.

Please let me know what you think! And have a happy holiday season, to everyone who gets one-and to everyone working retail, I have so much respect for you and wish you nothing but luck :-O

~Mei