Disclaimer: Sweetly not mine.

A/N: Written for Nuitsongeur, who requested Kisara and 'addicted'. This was intended to be a one-shot, but it's pretty open-ended, so I may come back to it someday. For the moment, however, it's meant to be a complete 'what-if?' fic. Reviews appreciated!

Sugar Rush

© Scribbler, July 2011.

"I wasn't sure whether to … I mean, you're so busy, I didn't want to … but the staff didn't know what to do, and she kept saying she knew you … she really was very insistent–"

Seto swept past the irritating aide, who hop-skipped to keep up with his long stride. The movement was made more difficult by her pencil skirt, which threatened to ride embarrassingly high if she took more than baby steps.

Generally Seto's female aides came in two categories: hard-boiled harridans who endured his behaviour with the kind of tight-lipped fortitude usually reserved for war survivors, or naïve ingénues who thought he was a misunderstood nice guy under his icy bastard exterior, and that it was their duty to reverse this through inappropriate touching and wearing as little clothing as possible while remaining (just) within the bounds of decency.

"Nobody knows where she came from," this one prattled. "She keeps talking nonsense and –"

Seto held up a hand to silence her. Irritating idiot. Besides, they had arrived at the kitchen. He rarely came here, choosing to exist on coffee from the percolator in his study and whatever food his aides brought him. He shoved open the door without overture.

Like all rooms in the Kaiba mansion, the kitchen was lavish. The walls were lined with all the cutting-edge gadgets money could buy and its centre was dominated by a large brushed-granite work station. It should have been pristine. Instead, the scene could generously be called 'devastation'.

Every single cupboard had been thrown open, creating a hazard for any inattentive person taller than six feet. Food packets lay strewn where they had been tasted and discarded, or emptied and abandoned. Seto's lightning-fast ability to notice details, honed by years of Duel Monsters, perceived that all the discarded packets were plain foods – crackers, unsweetened cereal, wheat-germ, uncooked rice. The ones that had been consumed were high in sugar, fat and salt. Crumbled pieces of mochi rice cakes lay spread over the work station; bits of potato chip fell off the side; empty wagashi trays had been dumped in the sink; a chocolate bar wrapper fluttered in the breeze from the ceiling fan and fetched up against Seto's feet.

The massive fridge door was open, blocking his view of someone snuffling through the plates of leftovers.

"She said she knew you," the aide whispered fearfully, not picking up on the need to stay silent if she wanted to keep her job. Then again, maybe she figured she was fired anyway. She had, after all, allowed this stranger into his home, while Mokuba was around, with no firm evidence of identity or intent. Considering how many kidnap and assassination attempts the two brothers suffered per year, this was definitely career suicide.

Seto gritted his teeth. "A lot of people know me." He had been on the cover of three magazines this week alone.

"Well … yes, sir, but … the things she knew … they were of a … a …"

"What?" he snapped. "Spit it out."

She flinched. "They were of a personal nature!" she squeaked.

He shot her a sidelong look. Gossip rags were always publishing 'exclusives' about his personal life. Most were lies, but sometimes facts slipped through the net. He was still in a legal battle with a couple who had fostered himself and Mokuba but sent them back to the orphanage when they realised they couldn't keep the cute younger brother without the unfriendly older one. They had gone to the press with stories of how Seto had been abusive towards them, prompting his return to state care. Since they had frequently deprived him of meals while treating Mokuba to McDonalds in a vain attempt to make him want to leave and make Mokuba want to stay, Seto was actually enjoying the lawsuit.

"Such as?" Was this useless woman blushing?

The aide didn't get the chance to answer. At the sound of his voice, the fridge door slammed. A stranger stood barefoot and in the middle of his kitchen, like a ragamuffin brought in from the cold without the manners or social skills appropriate to indoor living. In one hand she clutched an open box of Pocky, in the other two sticks of the chocolate-coated biscuit. She had dipped them in the bowl of trifle in the fridge, judging by the cream and impaled strawberries. A third stick jutted from her mouth in a way that would have been deemed 'cute' by anyone not named Seto Kaiba.

She hastily chewed and swallowed. Then she beamed at him, her mouth rimmed with chocolate. "Seto!" she cried with delight. "You're here!"

It couldn't be. Outwardly, Seto didn't change. Inwardly his thoughts raged. This was impossible.

He had long since rationalised his experiences in Egypt, especially what he had seen in the tomb of the Nameless Pharaoh. It had been a dream, or a hallucination. He had even hypothesised about mass hypnosis. He barely believed in magic. He had tenuously accepted some of the things that had unfolded there, and come to a fragile acceptance that magic possibly did exist with the help of illusion, delusion and blind belief, but this? This was flat out impossible.

"I knew it!" The girl in his kitchen said excitedly. "I knew I had the right house. I knew you'd be here." On impulse, she held out the Pocky box. "Would you like some? It's very good. I've never had it before." She blinked at it, momentarily frowning. "At least, I don't think I have. I don't remember much." She beamed at him again. "But I remembered you, and I knew I had to find you, and here you are!"

The Pocky was Mokuba's. He adored the stuff. Seto had instructed the staff to stock the entire range of flavours to suit Mokuba's mood at any given time. He stared at the box and then back at the girl, whose long hair was greasy, tangled around her head and down her back. She wasn't dressed in sack-cloth or covered in sand. She wore jeans and a ratty tee-shirt, of the kind you might pull out of a donation box at a homeless shelter. Her hands and face were grubby and dark rings encircled her eyes. She looked like a down-and-out; someone most people crossed the street to avoid. Yet her face was so bright with happiness at seeing him, the rest of her appearance faded into the background.

"Ki…" he almost said the name that popped out of his memory, but stopped himself just in time.

This was impossible!

"Seto?" Her smile faltered like a candle flame guttering. She looked between him and his aide. "They let me in. I thought … I thought you knew I was coming. I thought you could … I thought you'd be able to help me …"

"She hasn't been making much sense," the aide told him, as if the girl couldn't hear. "She keeps babbling nonsense about you and how she knew she had to find you, but when we questioned her, she wouldn't tell us why, or even who she is."

"Because I don't know!" the girl cried. "I told you, I don't know who I am! That's why I had to find him. I knew Seto would help me. That much I did remember! I knew he'd help me." She faltered again, her brightness dimming. "At least, I thought I knew…" She trailed off, her expression going from delight to misery in a heartbeat. "The doctors said I had head trauma. They said I might never remember some stuff, but this voice kept telling me to find you. I was so certain. I left the hospital and spent all this time looking –"

"Sir, should I call security?" asked the aide.

The girl shrank in on herself. Ridiculously, she dropped the remaining Pocky and clutched the box in front of her like a shield. She even seemed like she was trying to hide behind it as he broke from his stupor and strode towards her. Food and cellophane crunched under each step he took.

"Mr. Kaiba!"

He towered over her. She recoiled. This obviously wasn't the reaction she had been expecting. She didn't know him at all, by reputation or personally. She was a stranger; a nobody. In short, she was none of his concern, and the memories she inspired remained what they were: impossible.

That wasn't me, he reminded himself. That was someone else. He wasn't Priest Seto and she wasn't Kisara.

Except that she looked and sounded just like her.

"You don't know your own name?"

She looked up at him. "Wh-what."

"Are you telling the truth?"

"I … I …" She swallowed. "Yes. I woke up in hospital. That's the first thing I remember."

"You obviously like sugar."

She looked at the box, confused by his non-sequitur. "I … I guess so –"

"Did you know you liked it before you got into my kitchen and made all this mess?"

She looked around, as if seeing it for the first time. Her eyes rounded. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, but I was so hungry –"

"You need to get cleaned up. You." Seto rounded on the unfortunate aide. "Whatever your name is. Take her upstairs and get her into a bath. Find whatever clothing is suitable. Send for some in her size if we don't have any. Make sure she's taken care of."

"S-Sir!" the aide sputtered. "But –"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Is there a problem?"

"No, sir," she said quickly. She hurried into the kitchen and took the girl by the shoulders, steering her away. "C'mon," she hissed, "before he changes his mind."

"He won't," the girl whispered back, her smile returning. "He's kind and good and wonderful. I k new he would be."

"You don't know your own name but you know that about him?" the aide snorted. Realisation of what she had just done crossed her face. She nearly broke the land speed record pushing her new charge out of the room.

Seto loosed his own snort. Kind? Good? Wonderful? She really didn't know him at all. He looked around at the wreckage she had left behind and set about hauling in the cleaning staff to make it right again.

Leaving them to do what he paid them for, he returned to his study and slumped in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of is face. It was the nearest pose he ever came to complete bemusement.

What now? A good question indeed. The girl looked like the 'Kisara' character from his dreams, or hypnosis, or hallucination, or whatever it had been. Magical time travel? As if. Still, part of him wondered …

He shook his head. Real or imaginary, this girl in his house was not the same one. If nothing else, he had seen 'Kisara' die. He had watched as Priest Seto, the man who looked disturbingly like himself, cried over her and laid her body to nameless stranger was obviously not the same girl, just like he wasn't Priest Seto. She was some damaged street-person who had fixated on him for some reason. He supposed it was now up to him to find out why.

Why was it up to him? He had no obligations to her. He didn't even know her. She wasn't his responsibility in any way. So she resembled a figment of his imagination. So what? Yet that had spurred him into acting completely out of character. He hoped his investors never found out. Their confidence in him would be destroyed if they learned he was chasing shadows like this. Then again, they hadn't objected too strongly when he organised Battle City or built a jet shaped like a Blue eyes White Dragon, so what would they care what he did with his spare time, so long as he kept bringing in money for them?

"Kisara," he said aloud. The pale girl's grubby face came to mind; the brightness of her smile and her bare feet edged with crumbs and lint. He shook the image away, but it lodged in his head. Kisara, yet not Kisara. A stranger.

And, apparently, a house-guest. At his invitation.

What the hell had he been thinking? How was he going to explain this to anyone who noticed her wandering around? How was he going to explain her to Mokuba? And what was he going to do now?

All very good questions, none of which he had answers to.

He poured himself a coffee from the percolator and buzzed his PA. He had a secretary at the office, but the aide who had risen through the ranks to the questionable accolade of PA was on-call there or at home. "Send Mokuba to see me."

"Sir? Is this to do with the, uh, commotion earlier?"

Seto pinched the spot between his eyes. "That's not really any of your concern. Just send my brother to see me. Now."

"Yes, sir."

He sighed and sipped his lukewarm coffee. Mokuba was more open to bizarre things than he was. His little brother's brain wasn't quite so linear and could accept the impossible more with fewer problems. Maybe he would have some idea what to do next.

Or maybe Seto had finally succumbed to the Kaiba family curse and gone insane.

Only time would tell.