Her green eyes stared back at him, cracks of pain etched deep into her iris.
He took two cautious steps back, gathering his distorted thoughts, trembling fingers and stammering voice enough to make him feel the control over his body rapidly spiral out of his hands.
She was dead; the dead couldn't come back. Not when he saw her body in the mourge, saw it sealed away in a coffin for all eternity.
Images came rushing into his mind from his past experiences with Yugi and his companions, spirits, ghost, everything had seemed so real, so palpable, and now this.
He let his eyes shut as hard as they could, steading his breaths. There was no way he was going into panic mode over an illusion, over what was probably just a side effect of many sleepless nights.
Kaiba inhaled, his neurons racing to the insane beat of his heart. In the dark of his pupils, images came ripping through them. Demons, ghosts, monsters tearing him to shreds, his body falling, Skyelaar as a walking corpse, her limbs falling from her body,
To stifle a scream, he ripped his eyes open to find his bedroom once again, empty.
"So anything that bastard tells you is just a big fat pile of bullshit, you understand that?" Her father shouted in an angry tone, his cheeks tainted blood red.
Silver shifted her attention to the rear view mirror where she met her father's steely gaze peering back at her, his fists clutching the steering wheel, digging into its leather.
Ever since the lawsuit had been filed her father spent most of his time shouting things, a frown etched upon his brow. His relationship with her and her mother was now hopelessly strained, the lawsuit keeping him out of the house all day and maintaining him there at night long enough to brew up a shouting storm.
It disgusted her how much effort he was putting into this mess, especially when the chances of him winning, she knew were slim.
As much as she loved her father and would have liked to see him prevail, she was eerily aware of the power Kaiba had to control things in his favor. She knew that the CEO would pull whatever strings he could in order to secure his company and his reputation, no matter the expenses.
He had gone as far as threatening her and everything her father had worked so hard to achieve with years of serving KaibaCorp., and as much as she didn't want to believe it, she knew he was capable of following through with it.
She sighed and looked her father deep in the eyes.
"I understand." She muttered, tired of the same subject.
"Good." He barked. "I want you as far away from him as you can get, at least until this is all settled."
Silver held her breath, easing the words sitting on her tongue back into her chest, it was of no use to continue speaking of the matter.
The large brick building came into view as her father rounded the last bend, her hand already wrapped around the door handle.
She hastily muttered a farewell before stepping out of the car and onto the pathway leading to the main entrance, her gaze immediately pulled to the ground when confronted with the large multitude of laughing teens that littered the school grounds.
The dark sky painted for another rainfall, the sun well hidden behind the thick clouds, its pleading cries emanating in the form of howling winds.
The smell of wet dirt enveloped the atmosphere into a coaxing mistress, alluring before unleashing its fury.
She walked into the large school, greeted with the contrasting loudness of the human youth. She swerved and slipped through the mass of peers before arriving at her locker, a familiar figure standing inches away.
He looked tired, shoulders drooped as if reaching for Hell and tense at the same time, resisting its temptation. He stood, gaze lost in the confines of his locker, disconnected with the world around him, fragile rings sketched underneath his eyes.
She approached quietly, the awkward spell of the situation mildly suffocating.
Her cold fingers wrapped themselves around the locker handle, clicking it open and evoking Kaiba's attention.
His head turned to face her, though Silver feigned she acknowledged it and continued placing book after book inside her locker.
He continued staring, lost again in the confines of another world, as if Silver were carrying the universe on her shoulders and he simply couldn't look away.
She felt the heat rise to her cheeks, her breathing becoming labored, though from fear or something else she couldn't discern. Knowing Kaiba, anything could be sitting on the tip of his throat, ready to shred through a person's morale.
Perhaps there had been a change in the status of the lawsuit, perhaps it had affected him as much as her father though in different ways, perhaps he planned on apologizing-
"Are you alright?" She asked, interrupting herself and facing the CEO, her silver orbs trembling into his, pity injecting her heart when met with his hollow gaze.
His lips parted, as if the words on his tounge had found their realease, as if they were pleading to jump unto her awaiting ears.
His eyes fixed unto hers only seconds before she saw a familiar ice creep back to his defense. His brow furrowed and a scowl dug deep into his mouth, his sudden transformation frightening Silver.
"What the Hell do you think you're looking at?" He spat, his voice rough like sandpaper on skin.
Silver let a gulp squeeze down her throat, pain releasing into her mouth.
"Are you alright?" She asked again, knowing she was foolishly stepping unto a pond of fragile ice, her voice trembling without her consent.
She saw Kaiba's expression falter, almost as if a mask were sliding off his face, he felt it falter.
Who the Hell was she to ask that?
Ever since she had arrived all she had done was stick her nose where it didn't belong.
So what if he wasn't alright? She didn't need to know that, she wasn't going to know that. She had been prying in the wrong places at the wrong times, and it was going to end up costing her.
"Don't you ever ask me that again." He growled sicker than an angry beast, his voice rising higher and higher above the noise that surrounded them both. "We're not friends, I don't know you, and you don't know me. So stop trying to act like you do, all it's going to do is disappoint you, that I can promise."
And with that he slammed his locker, silencing the vast hallway.
He brushed past her, again ramming his shoulder onto her just to make his point clear, his harsh steps taking him further and further until they reached the men's room.
The teens surrounding remained hushed, their widened gazes landing on Silver.
Kaiba slammed the bathroom door behind him, throwing the lock into place with frenetic fingers.
The events of the previous night had resurfaced familiar emotions in him. The guilt of letting her drive into the night, the guilt of hurting her after she saved his life, after she saved Mokuba's life. All those thoughts brought along questions, doubts.
Was he being the right example for Mokuba? Was he spending enough time with him?
Was he heading in the right direction with his company? Was it really taking up that much of his life?
Why did he have no friends? Why did everyone avoid him? Was it his fault?
Kaiba groaned in pure frustration, letting his body sink to the floor, head buried between cold hands.
His parents had been taken away from him almost instantly, Mokuba had almost been taken away from him that day in the orphanage, Gozaburo had left them to fend for themselves. Skyelaar had been taken from him in the cruelest of forms, and now this.
His company, the thrive of his life, was being threatened as well.
His youth he gave up, his emotions he cast away, any markings of a normal life had been stripped from him, sending him to his knees to scour the scum of the planet and remake his heart from it.
He wasn't blind, he wasn't daft. He knew who he was, they knew who he was.
Was it going to cost him his life's work? Was it going to cost everything he'd lost?
The exact same Hell he could put the LeRouse's through could be directed towards him if things continued going in the same direction and an outburst at Silver certainly wasn't going to help.
Surely she would speak ill of him to everyone, spill details about the lawsuit, about his behavior towards her and her father and the way he treated his employees, gossip about his nasty temper and the way he had threatened her in what now seemed like a weak attempt to save his sinking empire.
Long minutes passed before the hallway outside became silent, the watch on Kaiba's wrist telling him class had long since begun.
He stood, stretching his sore limbs and taking in a deep breath before wrapping his hand around the doorknob and letting himself out.
The hallway was as empty as he had expected it to be, for his sake.
Math was half over now, there was no use showing up late and having to explain why he hadn't been punctual. He walked silently over to his locker, turning the knob with the combination that had been etched into his memory since day one. He pulled the metal door open and neatly stacked his books back inside, gathering the ones he would need for his following class.
He scanned the locker one last time when he spotted it.
A piece of notebook paper neatly folded, wedged between the thin slits at the top of the locker door.