The city moved on.

Cars trundled along down the roads, honking at each other as they came to standstill. Taxis wove in and out erratically. People flooded up and down the streets, with bikes zipping past in their lanes. The blue sky hung high overhead; sunlight sparkled across the glass fronted buildings to make the whole city look like it was made of diamonds.

Kaiba Seto, however, did not look down out his windows, as his back was to them, shoulders hunched over his laptop. His fingers hovered over the keys, but they did not move. This proposal needed to be finished but…he couldn't focus.

He was glad of the sound of his door opening, as it gave him a chance to drag his eyes away.

"Oh," he said, blinking with surprise. He had expected Mokuba, or Noa, or maybe even Yugi. He hadn't expected Ishizu. "They didn't tell me you were coming."

"Mokuba caught me in the lobby and sent me up without talking to the receptionist," Ishizu said, wincing apologetically. "Am I distracting you?"

"No," he said, closing his laptop. "Actually, yes, but thank you for doing it."

Ishizu smiled, and the sun coming through the windows painted the relief of her face in bronzes and golds. She made her way across the wide room until she reached his desk, the wood standing between them.

"Having trouble focusing, then?" she said.

"Not sure how I'm supposed to, after all the bullshit we've been through," he grumbled. "I don't know how any of the others are just…going back to normal."

"You could take a vacation?" Ishizu said, raising her eyebrows with a smile. "Heaven knows you've never used your vacation time before."

"I have, actually," Seto said. "To see you. That one time."

Ishizu's eyes dropped to the table, and he found his own cheeks burning for a moment, so he looked away.

"Have you heard about the Kira case?" she said.

He nodded. The newspaper was already in the recycling bin. "Kira Case Declared Cold," it had read on the front cover. There were no more deaths, no more messages. No more Death Notes. In a smaller section, there had been a brief article about police chief's son, Yagami Light, and his supposed girlfriend, Amane Misa, had both been found unconscious in an abandoned warehouse. Neither of them remembered how they had gotten there, or indeed the events of the last five months.

It seemed an unsatisfying conclusion.

"He got away with it, in the end," Seto said, resting his head on his hands, looking down at the table. "He'll never face charges for what he did."

"I know," Ishizu said. "And neither will she. It's…well, I'm not sure what it is."

They both fell silent. She rested her fingers on the table.

"But…we stopped him. We stopped all of them. Yagami will never be able to hurt people the way he did before. Who knows…maybe without that unfettered power, he'll become someone else. A better person."

Seto snorted softly. He wasn't sure he had so much hope. But…perhaps there were time for miracles, now.

"Have you seen any of the others?" he asked, looking up. "Everyone going back to their normal lives?"

"Yugi proposed to Anzu," she said.

"I heard that. About goddamn time."

"And Jonouchi is thinking about going back into the professional dueling scene."

Seto snorted again.

"Well then, I wish him luck. He'll need it."

"Oh, stop," Ishizu said with a faint laugh. Her smiled faded a little then, and she looked off towards the windows, distant. "Have you…heard from…her since then?"

Seto sighed, and looked down. He knew who she was talking about.

"I can sense her, here," he said, putting his hand against his chest. The place where he could feel the lightning, crackling and burning, always in his soul. "She's…in there. But no. I can't hear her as clearly as I could anymore."

He rested both of his hands across the table.

"Yugi said that the removal of Apep, and the subsequent changing of power to L, has made the world a little uncertain again," he said. "Magic will fade back for a few years while everything settles. So it'll be harder to summon our spirits, if we can at all."

Ishizu nodded.

"He told me much the same."

Again, they fell silent. The quiet spread between them, far wider than the desk. Ishizu opened her mouth, and then closed it again. For a moment, Seto's head was only buzz.

"We'll see her again," Ishizu said. "We'll definitely see her again."

He nodded, but he wasn't sure he trusted himself to speak. Ishizu shifted from foot to foot.

"My visa is running out soon," Ishizu said finally. "My exhibit is going to have to pack up."

"You'll go back to Egypt?" he asked.

She didn't respond, or even nod. For another moment, there was silence.

Then she reached across the desk, across the space of silence, and grabbed his hand.

"Ask me to stay," she said, her voice thin and breathy, making his heart clench.

He grabbed her hand back, twisting her fingers into his. He stood up. After another beat, without letting go of her hand, he walked around the desk so that there was nothing in between them.

"I have a better idea," he said. "You're right—I do have some vacation time to use up."

Ishizu broke into a smile.

"L did ask us to go to that orphanage and help him pick a new L," she said.

"Ugh, the whole trip can't be just business," Seto said. "Let's pick someplace to go."

"What do you have in mind?" she said, smiling.

He took her other hand in his, and the two of them pressed up close together almost automatically.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "As long as we're going somewhere. Anywhere together."

Her lips brushed his first, and then for a moment, there was only silence in his mind. Beautiful, blissful silence. When they broke away, he almost forgot to breathe.

She smiled at him, and it was dazzling.

"Sounds beautiful."

A/N: Well...that's it.

It's been quite a ride, and while it wasn't always enjoyable for me, I was happy knowing that there were lovely readers like you out there who were still looking forward to this story, and that was what pushed me to finish. I don't know that it's satisfying enough, but...unfortunately, this is as far as I can push myself with this concept ;w;

Thank you all so much for coming with me this far. Aside from An Hourglass of Stars, this will be the last fanfiction that I post on , and I'll be moving more permanently to Archive Of Our Own. If you followed me this far and are interested in continuing to see my work, I suggest you come find me there (I'm still Homura Bakura, so it's not too hard to find me :) )

Thank you all again so much. I wouldn't have come this far in this story without you, and I can't begin to express my gratitude. I hope to see you all again on Ao3. Stay lovely, my dears~