Heart of the Cards [COMPLETED]

Malevolent Nuzzler:

[A/N: Kaiba is a bit OOC, and this is an AU. Sort of a mix of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. Hope you enjoy though I'm not actually entirely happy with this one ._. ]

He'd been searching for so long. Years of his life spent waiting for this exact moment when he could make his little brother healthy again.

"Please, please I wish my brother to be healthy again, to get better and stronger, please!"

Her green-tinted skin seemed to glow in the moonlight, a third red eye was placed perfectly centered in her forehead and she was completely naked.

Besides the skin and third eye, she looked human. Her nails were semi-long and pointed, painted a dark forest green color and she had a silver tint to her exceedingly dark blue eyes.

Her gaze unnerved him and she stared him down, as if searching him for all the answers of the world. She rose up from her perch on the ground, graceful and fluid reminding him of a swirl of smoke as it lifted itself from the tip of a cigarette towards the sky.

"In order to make someone healthy, someone else must get sick. Is this something you're willing to risk?"

Seto Kaiba thought hard about this. His initial response was to say that nobody was as important as his baby brother, who was only weeks away from death. But if Mokuba ever found out what Seto had done, it'd kill him anyway, especially if it was one of Mokuba's friends. He'd hate his older brother, without a doubt.

"Can I choose who becomes sick?"

"Of course. But think upon it carefully, for if you make the incorrect choice... Well I'm volatile, to say the least."

Her eyes darkened considerably as she grinned, and suddenly he was scared. Her teeth were long and probably sharper than a newly sharpened dagger, her tongue was forked like a snake's and her pupils slitted themselves into the likeness of one as well.

"Me."

"Very well, Mr. Kaiba. Each week you will get weaker and your brother healthier. At the end of a year, your brother with be healed and you.. You'll be dead."

"Thank you."

"Mr Kaiba, this is the first time anyone has thanked me for killing them."

"In my place, a much better person will live, and love."

When Kaiba and the djinn went their separate ways, the djinn thought on his words. Nearly two weeks past and his selflessness was lost on her. She didn't understand why someone else would die just so another would live. That wasn't something she'd come across in her centuries of servitude to humanity.

Sighing, she changed her mind about the deal and separated the two parts of it. The young brother would continue to be healthier, the older brother would not only live but be prosperous in his ventures.

Sighing, she continued on with her life.

*** a year later ***

"I'm not dead. Why?"

"Do you want to be dead?"

"No."

The djinn tilted her head, wondering why Kaiba would come all the way back here just because he wasn't dead. Normally, if people had gotten out of the bad end of a deal, they wouldn't go to the dealer and ask them why they got left off a bad contract.

"Then why are you here, Seto Kaiba?Why have you returned?"

"I want to help someone else, someone who did a lot for me and I owe them the world. I saw this in a movie once, not sure if it'll work. But I want to know what your greatest wish is, and then I wish that it'll happen."

The djinn laughed, it was good natured though with her teeth on show, slightly terrifying. "You are unlike any other human I have met, Seto Kaiba, and I thank you for it."

"What is your deepest wish?"

"To be broken from my curse, to be able to walk through crowded streets and not be shunned or attacked, but to be stared at in awe. I wish to be human again."

"Then it is what I wish as well. Can it be done?"

The djinn laughed once more before her face seemed to sink in on itself. "No, it cannot. I cannot be freed, this curse cannot be lifted. You've wasted your time, little human. Now leave, and don't return."

"I wish for you to be human again."

Kaiba didn't give up, he refused to leave someone who saved his brothers life, and spared his own. He refused to leave her alone.

"It doesn't work, it will never work. I can be freed but I cannot tell you how, and you will never figure it out. Give up."

"No. Come home with me. We have a large home, and I will not give up trying to free you from this prison you seemed to have created for yourself."

The djinn grinned, her dark eyes lightened as she was proved wrong for the very first time in her life. He would figure it out, he already had.

"You accept me as I am? Green skin and sharp teeth, I am the monster in children's nightmares Seto Kaiba; please explain to me why you would invite me into your home."

"I am no child, and you stopped my nightmares from coming true. You are nothing to be afraid of, and you are everything to be proud of."

Given time, he would fix her. Mend her. Lift her curse. She would be herself again; in time.

She held out her clawed hand and watched in fascination as he placed his own in hers without fear or hesitation. His dark blue gaze swept over her before nodding and helping her to her feet. She would be going home with him, and he would find a way to make her right. To make her happy.

He just needed some time.