Mokuba: "You know, you never told me about yourself. Like, where you grew up. Where did you come from?"

The words are jarringly abrupt to Kisara, who is perched at the stovetop making crepes. Crepes are finicky: timing and crepe batter volume and consistency are all finely tuned variables for the perfect tender, lacy-brown pancake. Mokuba's sudden question startles her mid-pour, and too much batter spills into the pan. She sighs, trying to spread the mixture as thin as she can, but now she is dealing with a deflated flapjack.

"From nowhere," she says, wiggling a spatula under the crepe before it burns on the edges. "A little town by the mountains, in northern California. That's a weird question to ask."

Mokuba is sitting at the table, half-listening to Kisara and half-scrolling though something on his phone. "Not weird," he says, sounding a little indignant. "You're from California. That's not nowhere."

Kisara flips the pancake, and it lands in the middle of the hot pan with a sizzle of steam. "Where I'm from is, basically, nowhere. The biggest attraction is a state college party school, in another town." She rolls her eyes. "It was never really important, is all. That's why it never came up."

Mokuba sets his phone on the table, looking thoughtful for a moment. "It's important, though," he says. "Where you come from. It's all a a part of who you are, and where you're going."

She hoists the sad pancake up and drops it onto Mokuba's empty plate. "For you. And, I mean, maybe for you and Seto. Not for me. It wasn't eventful. Other kids thought I was an albino computer nerd. My parents managed a cafe near Chico State." She stops, holding her breath as she flicks her wrist to evenly distribute crepe batter around the pan. "I like to think of myself as rising out of the northern California redwoods like a phoenix." She sets down the pan, drumming her fingers against the countertop as she waits for the crepe to cook. "Or a dragon." She smiles serenely, imagining one of Seto's beloved blue eyes white dragons launching itself into the air, breaking through a canopy of redwoods, emitting a joyful screech as it circles the mountains and flies, higher and higher, into the moonlight.

A familiar Saturday night scene: Seto sits on the couch, with his knees propping up his laptop as he types away steadily at something; Mokuba is on the carpet, lying belly-down watching a movie channel on the television; Kisara's head rests against Seto's shoulder while she reads something on her phone. Empty delivery boxes of rice and various flavors of curry are scattered across the coffee table. The brothers have half-empty cans of soda near them, and Kisara holds a wine glass full of sparkling rosé.

"Kiki. That could be your nickname." A promotion for the upcoming showing of Kiki's Delivery Service makes Mokuba turn his attention towards Kisara.

Kisara bites the inside of her lip, and she takes a sip of sparkling wine. "When I was a kid, I tried to get the other kids to call me Kiki," she offers, adjusting her position so she's looking at Mokuba. "My parents didn't like it, though. They said that they named me Kisara for a reason, because they thought it was pretty, and Kiki was just a cheap bastardization."

"Like Seto thinks about Mokie." The younger boy frowns and he looks up to gauge his brother's response; Seto, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, offers only a soft grunt.

Mokuba purses his lips, gazing thoughtfully at Kisara for a moment. "Kisara suits you, though," he says, finally, with a little nod. "It's graceful and pretty."

Kisara blushes. "Thanks, Mokie," she murmurs softly, pausing for another sip of wine. "I guess I like it too."

"Why'd you want Kiki, then?" Mokuba presses. He pushes himself up onto his knees, searching through the delivery bag for fortune cookies. Finding one, he extracts the cookie from the cellophane paper, dropping the wrapper on the ground. Seto sighs loudly, and he puts the wrapper back into the bag, rolling his eyes.

Kisara thinks for a moment. "Nobody had a name like Kisara where I grew up," she explains finally. "I was already different enough with the white hair. A name like Kisara made me different, and I didn't want anyone to bother me."

"Did they?" Mokuba asks.

Kisara stops to reflect for a moment. "Yes, they did. But I was quiet, and I liked to spend my time learning how to do things on the computer, and I learned that if I got good enough at things, then I could go somewhere far away and study them at a university. So I guess I grew out of caring, really."

"Whatever you say, Kiki," Mokuba says, a devious smile creeping up his face.

"Oh, shush, you," Kisara chuckles, waving her hand at him in a playful-dismissive way. "The movie's starting. I like Kiki's Delivery Service. Watch with me."

"Tomorrow is Mother's Day." Seto, trimming his stubble with a razor, pauses, staring at Kisara's reflection in the mirror in front of him.

"R-right," Kisara responds. She stands beside him, leaning over the sink to apply a pearl-pink lip balm.

"I take Mokuba to our mother's memorial plot every year. We bring flowers, and have a picnic." He pauses for a moment, setting the razor down.

"That's sweet," Kisara offers, faltering slightly.

Apparently satisfied, Seto splashes his face with cold water. "She died when he was born. He doesn't remember her," he says, his voice cold and matter-of-fact.

Kisara screws the lid onto her pot of lip balm, reaching out to grab Seto's arm. "You remember her, though," she says softly, glancing into his eyes. His brow is knit tightly together, and she knows him well enough to read the subtle sadness written into the lines of his face.

"She was a good mother, kind and devoted. So was my father. When they learned that they were going to have another son, my father started working more and more, to provide for a new member of our family. I wouldn't see him for days. But my mother always made sure, no matter how many hours she had to work, that she came home to feed me dinner and see me to bed at night." Gently, Kisara guides Seto by the shoulder onto his bed, and they sit together in silence for a moment.

Seto's voice cracks almost imperceptibly. "She was an emergency room nurse at the hospital—smart, and brave, and very kind. I think she would have approved of you."

A lump rises in Kisara's throat, and she leans her head against Seto's chest, intertwining her fingers with his. Guilt prickles under her skin as she envisions her own mother: probably wearing an apron, with her long silvery-white hair pulled back into a neat bun under a hairnet, with a queue of plates on one arm and holding a customer's latte in the other.

Seto gives her hand a squeeze. "We can arrange to send you back home to see your mother tomorrow, as well," he offers.

Kisara sighs deeply. "I was just going to call," she says. "Mother's day is busy for my parents, at the cafe. Parents come to visit their little college kids. They stay up all night making cinnamon roll dough."

"You're not close," Seto remarks cooly, facing Kisara with unblinking cobalt eyes.

Kisara frowns. "Not really," she says. "She's a nice lady, and they sent me to college on cafe-owner money—that's not so easy, really. But she just-" Kisara shrugs, feeling at once sad and guilty. "They never really understood me so well. They wanted me to go out into the world, and be around people like me. They're happy because they're around people like them. So it just..." she trails off for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut. "Everyone' supposed to have these really formative stories about their parents and their childhood, right? But maybe not me." Uncertainly, she chews the inside of her cheek. "I sort of think my story is starting here, now. With you."

Seto's eyes are distant, focused on something she can't see. Finally, he nods. "You're welcome to come with me and Mokuba," he says at last.

"Sure. I'd like that." Seto swiftly hops off of the bed, and Kisara follows suit. He strides across the room to lace up his work shoes, and Kisara searches for the boots she kicked off last night.

"Kisara?" Seto says suddenly, mid-lace.

"Yeah?" Kisara asks.

"Do call your mother."

Author's notes: First, a huge, huge shoutout to Moonluster and her characters from the Blue String of Fate, who were instrumental to helping me explore Kisara's past and personality over the past few weeks. If you aren't reading The Blue String of Fate, you ought to check it out-it features a very different Seto and Kisara, but I am loving watching it progress :)

Second, re: Prideshipping. I don't know if I saw any romantic or sexual attraction between Seto and YY either, to be honest-but I think, at least for Seto in that part of his life, that obsession would feel, at least in some ways, very much like he would imagine attraction to feel. He has some pretty interesting lines, especially in the Manga ;P
I don't plan to make it a centerpiece of the story, but since that obsession cut so deep into Seto's heart, to me it plays a huge role in his psyche, which would become especially relevant to Kisara in the abandonment issues he faces after the Pharaoh returns to the Millenium world. So while it's a very Blueshipping-centric story, it's also a very fundamentally Kaiba-centric story, with all of the baggage that Kaiba brings into a relationship in his mid-twenties :)

As always, I would love a review, message, all of those types of things! Till next time ~