How? How could something so simple strike a chord in Kaiba's heart, fractured, pitiless thing that it still was?

He wanted more of that look. He wanted...something that he hadn't been able to get here. Something that he'd given up on finding a partner for, after Akechi had dangled the carrot in front of him and then made sure to impale him upon his own hubris for even thinking he could...just...play a game.

For a moment, Kaiba's not thinking about what Yuugi's really saying here, the hope he's trying to instill. He's thinking about how very alone he felt, without the thing that had gotten him through his difficult life, something that had molded him, made him who he was, given him his success.

You...you really are the Yuugi I know. You aren't something I've made up.

For all his creativity, Seto Kaiba could not replicate Yuugi Mutou. His mind had tried to replicate Gozaburo, to replicate Pegasus, and they'd been more successfully crafted than this, to torture him.

But this was torture too, wasn't it?

But if you aren't...then what if they made you?

There's something in those blue eyes of his, a twinge of something that is not fear. It is not! Fear!

But it's something close. Apprehension.