People assume that working for Mr. Kaiba is difficult, hectic and fraught with constantly shifting laws of gravity. In a sense they would be right but it also involves a great deal of boredom. Isono was feeling like an enormous hypocrite. He always felt this way between disasters.

Bored and slightly on edge. All those nights edging on horror hoping for peace time, for a time without bullets and corporate espionage and fucking Gozaburo and now with life settled he had the audacity to be bored?

However no amount of moralizing was going to change it, he was bored. There were only too many times he could check the security of a building as safe and insular as the Kaiba mansion. Therefore Isono, at this moment had spent the last four hours doing background checks. Or rather re-checking background checks. Of people who had failed. Because they were interesting and bizarre. And he was bored.

In reality while Mr. Kaiba seemed to get himself into the most ridiculous and action packed trouble, he was not an antagonistic CEO. He was polite and firm after the spout of insanity in his youth and through intimidation and admirable intelligence he had eventually gained more parasites than competitors. Isono was starting to associate the genial young man with the ridiculous hair with the kind of trouble that eluded guns and made him completely inadequate as a protector. On the other hand he was open, welcoming and encouraged the young businessman to actually act as young as he was able.

And Isono couldn't turn that away, even if it meant he occasionally watched the laws of physics shatter around him.

Even when Kaiba had been a grim, empty eyed child, he was never as young as when he was teasing Joseph Wheeler or sassing Yugi. While being haughty and arrogant, they were descriptors of a young person.

These diatribes were not well thought out and he often embarrassed himself but Isono knew he could avoid or manipulate them if he needed to. He would rather watch his charge get his pride dashed than see him slip back into the immoveable alien he had been. That vacancy had given him enough nightmares.

But his employer had been acting different. He no longer seemed to find joy in the small aspects of being Mokuba's parent. In fact since Mokuba had gone to college (early because apparently Kaiba's could not just take life at life's pace) they hadn't spoken as they used to. It was almost cursory. The gang of gentle card game ruffians hadn't been to the mansion in over a year. Understandable without Mokuba, it wasn't as if Kaiba had ever invited them.

So there days had taken on a predictable route. Kaiba would wake desperately early (he slept as rarely as ever though he seemed to take on more ware for his trouble). Then he would go to the office and work there for the entire day. Kaiba would nibble a sandwich without interest around two and the day would continue on with Isono's only point of interest being the drive home. He took on the job of driving Mr. Kaiba since it was apparent that the greatest danger to the man's health was aggressive drivers.

During that drive back and forth, he had noticed that Mr. Kaiba was getting thinner but no amount of leaving steaming food around or nagging would entice him to change his routine.

It was as if he were trying to recapture the machine life he had once lived. But he got out of the car slowly; his shoulder slumped in the elevator.

And Isono had begun to notice that he typed slower, his eyes narrowed in intensity as if he were having trouble churning out his thoughts. He was probably just suffering under the workload of refusing to utilize his Board of Directors. They were good men, checked and rechecked by Isono himself, but he could see why Kaiba would be nervous. The last Board had ripped him out of his body. Isono winced. It was one of his most glaring failures as a bodyguard.

Isono looked up at a clock on the wall that had been clicking away the lonely afternoon. It was seven. Time to try to force food into the brick wall that was his boss.

He headed down to the kitchen where Ms. Hirohita was stirring miso soup absently. She heard him coming and turned, smiling. Her kind dark eyes were pinched with worry.

"I hope you'll be able to make him eat this time. I saw him this morning foraging for coffee. He's starting to look a little…well…drowned, I guess is the word."

"Don't let him hear you say that" Isono laughed and Hirohita smirked coyly.

"I wish that young man would say something, and then I could give him a piece of my mind without blindsiding him with human emotions."

"He doesn't take mothering well". Isono admitted and thought of Kaiba's confusion whenever faced with one of Anzu's impassioned pleas. Like he was reading a book which continuously switched languages. He could just see this little woman tearing into his sallow façade of "I'm fine".

She gently pressed a bowl into his hands, tempered with a cloth. The heat radiated through. Kaiba might actually eat this.

"Try to get him to close that laptop lid. I think his eyes are hurting him."

Smart woman, Isono thought and he nodded at her respectfully. Halfway up the stairs a maudlin mood settled over him. Most likely, the CEO would just push the liquid in circles as if it would evaporate from sheer will.

He got to Kaiba's heavy office door at about the same time that the dread in his stomach had coiled into something very tight.

He slid the door open.

He didn't feel the hot soup splashing up his shins. He didn't know whether or not the bowl broke on contact. He just knew that his body was not keeping up with his brain.

It took him a damned long time to get to the other side of the office. Kaiba's shoulders felt small in his hands, jerking and shuddering. His blue eyes were rolled high in his head. He couldn't remember his training. The last time Kaiba had had a seizure was so long ago. The man choked helplessly and Isono turned him on his side, holding down his head with a large hand. Kaiba's hair was soaked with sweat.

How long had he been suffering alone in here?

After a few agonizing seconds, the body under his hands shivered into stillness. Isono turned him onto his back and shrugged off his own jacket, using the soft inner sleeves to wipe Kaiba's mouth. Kaiba's eyelids were fluttering open and closed slowly, as if he were just waking, like a normal person who slept. His breathing evened out. Isono put his hand on the shallow chest and rubbed in circles.

"Breath", he whispered. "I'm here."

He brought him close to his chest and held him tenderly. He evened out his breathing as best as he could. His sunglasses were all glazed and fogged with unshed tears. He waited for his heartbeat to slow down a register and for the acrid taste of adrenaline to ebb away. He looked back down. Seto Kaiba was looking up at him and he looked small and scared in the shelter of someone's arms. Then his eyes iced over with that sardonic black humor that had appeared a few years ago.

"I think we're in trouble", he whispered.

Isono should be calling a doctor, set the limp body in a chair. Restoring his dignity as an innovator and a man. He could have done all those things in a minute. Instead he took that minute to let Kaiba breath, until the last of the shudders had dissipated from both of them.