Photographs, a yu-gi-oh gx fanfic

P H O T O G R A P H S

Fan-based fiction written by Katsuya Weller

Rating: T for Teen- Note for Shounen-ai (Japanese for boy love)

Featured Pairing: Jaden/ Judai Yuki and Jesse/ Johan Andersen; Spiritshipping

Inspired by the novel "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

Juudai had arrived home late afternoon in his cabin lodge in Hudson Valley of Up State New York from his long travels of this past year. He'd missed the home-sweet-home feeling from when we lived in the same neighborhood, and though he would have to drive into the city for work, he didn't mind. He still enjoyed laying down on the soft grass atop of a cliff on those warm, sunny, summer afternoons. He found a spot along the Nyack Beach State Park under some Royal Paulownia trees. No matter how he continued his life as time moved forward, he kept a tight hold of his usual habits. Typical Juudai; that's what I would tell my friend up here. I remember I sat with him once, and I admired the light blue-violet petals just blissfully floating downward. Down, down, down, and onto Juudai's tanned cheek. One had landed right under his nose, and he sneeze so outrageously that he flew forward, and his eyes watered up. I laughed at that petal's genius.

He settled his small luggage down carefully and let Pharaoh out of the bag. He was a tan tabby cat- a proper shade of an Egyptian tan, which was suitable for his name- who was very stubborn, and not let a lot of folks pet him or carry him. He almost reminded me of Garfield a bit, though he never ate lasagna, wasn't really considered to be lazy, and didn't vocalize any cynical or sarcastic opinions. Pharaoh pounced out and gave a loud yawn, releasing Daitokuji-sensei out. He had also died, but it was due to his alchemy practices that only Juudai, Shou, and Hayato had known of. But since he never passed into the In Between, and into Heaven, I never got to meet him. He was a kind man with a strange disposition and a wise man of the world that ruled of "The Equivalent Exchange." Juudai then pulled out his cloths for the laundry, some postcards he received from my brother and my father, and then my murder files in a single vanilla envelope. Whenever he was bored in a foreign hotel room, he would pull out my file and restudy all that he had collected. What he had asked from Jonson before he left for New York City. My locket that was found in Connecticut by a hunter. Giese's sketchbook and Juudai's favorite photograph of me that he took. The only photograph he took. One out of the five thousand, eight hundred and sixteen.

It had been eight years and five months since my murder, and that long since I've watched Juudai. Growing up through his high school years, taking criminology in New York City and working with Special Victims Unit, and traveling around the world in eight months over twenty countries. When he started traveling, I followed him to all the sites he'd go, like one time he was on the plane traveling to Paris, France from Brasília, Brazil after helping a twelve year old boy. I was at a cafe, watching an old woman tossing bread crumbs to the birds when Juudai was helping a young girl in Venice, Italy. She, like the other boy, also had a talent for seeing the spirits that others didn't. Spirits from Duel Monsters like Ruby Carbuncle, not the dead like me.

Juudai and I had discovered our abilities when we heard noises in Juudai's closet one night. I came over to his place for a sleepover about a month after we had met at the swing. We followed it over to the our Duel Monster cards, and that's when we saw my Ruby Carbuncle and his Hane Kuriboh playing. We thought we were sleep walking, or that we had too much sweets from Juudai's mother like how parents say you can get nightmares if you eat all your Halloween candy at once. I saw him glance at me as I glanced at him, and then back at the two spirits who were glancing at us. As everything was registering in us, we all laughed. We all smiled. We all played in that closet. It was funny later on in life, remembering how Juudai's mother found us passed out on the closet floor the morning after.

At that cafe, from my observation, she told Juudai she started to see the spirit of her favorite Duel Monsters card that her mother gave her for her third birthday. Hanewata had resembled much like his Hane Kuriboh, except for the pompom intenas that sprouted from above his eyes. It had a smile that reminded so much of Ruby Carbuncle- me- and Juudai smiled. Heartfelt and pure. No remorse, no grief, no guilt. It had been eight years, and he still managed that smile.

He had help over many children of all backgrounds and nationalities and ages understand of Duel Spirits. He helps victims and families deal with crimes and wrongful deaths; what he and I went through. He became so much more from what I had anticipated since my death. I even bragged to everyone here in heaven about Juudai's success stories and they would ask me when I would watch over him. He was a celeberty on Earth and in Heaven.

On the day he met that girl, and when he smiled, we both knew it: He's coming to acceptance that my living being was gone. It made me content but it sadden me, and it felt weird with opposite emotions waging wars in my heart.

Out of everyone who my murder had affect their world, Juudai's life had been impacted most. Since my murder he'd tried every possible method of solving my case, without getting in trouble with the police department- well trying not to. When he broke into Giese's house and recovered the sketchbook that had every proof that I was murdered in his hands, an officer that was on duty had lectured him about how to rightfully help the police. But because of the sketchbook, the Detective Jonson had finally got the lead that we all had prayed for. With the sketchbook gone, so did Giese, so did Juudai. Giese only came back in his memories, slowly and patiently. Juudai only came back when my name was called, hurrying and determined for something. Something good.

He had matured, and understood so much, and so much through the dilemma of the times after my murder, and all its emotional hardships and inflexible transitions. All on his own. Finally, can he call himself a grown-up. I felt proud.

I honored him. I fell in love with him all over again.

Daitokuji hovered over to Juudai's mailbox and noticed a letter from my grandmother. Mine because the return address was from Flåm and the stamp was the Norwegian flag. Juudai had met my grandmother in his travels in Scandinavia after remembering me writing a letter to her. He was baffled. Juudai had only met her once.

"Who's it from, nya?"

"Johan's grandmother. I wonder it could be?" Juudai sat on his chair at his work desk and studied the envelope carefully. He felt along the edges of the envelope to trace out any folded paper, and its width and height, guessing what she had send him. From what he felt along his finger tips, her letter composed of a folded note of sort, and another sheet suggesting a postcard or a photograph.

It was starting to warm up in my hometown of Flåm when he arrived in Norway through a train from Oslo. While he was in London, he pulled out my files, like before, but that time he was reminded of our conversation about our grandparents. Before moving to the United States, I had lived in her soft-light colored house with my mother and father until my grandfather died when I was six. We lived nearby the river and I remember my grandparent's sailboat that I went on during the warm days as a family. I remember, when the Midnight Sun was around in July, my grandfather took me out into the waters of Aurlandsfjord to show me the amazing wildlife. He photographed them, and would tell me interesting facts about them. After my grandfather died, I inherited his photographs of that time, and my dream of being that very wildlife photographer. Well, on the side of my dueling career, of course.

Juudai walked towards the house that had a metallic sun hanging along the wall next to a second floor window from a photograph my mother kept. He approached the coral pink patio and knocked on the seafoam green door that had a sailboat and wooden seagulls decorating around the walls like a never ending rainbow. In Pennsylvania, anything that had to do with me- the cornfield, my home, our model airplanes hidden in Juudai's closet, would omit a bad omen. Here at the coral pink, seafoam green, sky blue, and sunny yellow house, when he saw my first model plane I made swing in the wind, it was enlightening. Heavenly even.

The door opened close to a minute after he knocked once, "I'm Juudai Yuki. I'm a friend of your grandson, Johan Anderson." and that was all that took to let him into her home. He wanted to say: "I'm Juudai Yuki. I'm a friend of your grandson, and his loved one," and I couldn't help wanting the same thing.

My grandmother was the nicest woman you'd ever meet. Before she had my mother she was quite the adventurer. She took flying lessons in England, and went to theater hits in New York City. She also enjoyed the simple things in life, and had a love for painting like Juudai's for Duel Monsters. She would have art shows all over Europe of her paintings from her travels. She called it, "The Painted Passport." All her paintings were sold at her shows, but she kept the ones of Flåm and Aurlandsfjord, and some of the places where my grandparents traveled to in her den. Though with the adventurous charisma she radiated, she had an adult disposition when she raised my mother. In a way, she was almost like him.

She settled Juudai comfortably with her gingerbread shortcakes, organic milk, and made the oversize chair into a bed where you can rest for eternity. Even though Juudai was twenty-three, he felt the yearning to be treated like he was seven again. He found it comforting. He found it a distraction from his work and Detective Jonson and my family and his family. My murder. But not me. Juudai knew that I would be mentioned. There's no avoiding it.

"So, how do you like Flåm? It's a wonderful place. It's still warming up, but when the Midnight Sun comes Aurlandsfjord... it's a beauty at midnight." her soft voice from the years she lived echoed. Inviting into a campfire story.

"It's wonderful here, Mrs. Anderson. I see why Johan loved nature."

There was a moment of silence between the two after his statement. However, my murder didn't come across them. Judai's memory of us hiking with our families, and my grandmother's memory of seeing me and my grandfather arrive from sailing was all they could think of. And suddenly they laughed.

"I remember you from his letters. He can't stop talking about you. Please, call me Alina, hun."

"Really? What would he say, Alina?"

"From what he says, it's no wonder why you're his friend." I cried.

And Juudai heard. "Did you get a boo-boo, Johan?"

She came back from the den with a small box filled with letters from my eight years to my fifteen years on Earth. The letters showed the evolution of my handwriting and my stories and my drawings. One letter, I wrote, was from April of my thirteenth birthday. I told her of the camera that my parents had given me, shared all the exhilarating thrills- the power I discovered behind the camera's eye piece- and I send the photographs from the developed films. Juudai went through them, carefully like evidence, and listening to my grandmother's captions of each antique. She refers to my grandfather's items as antiques as well. It was her way of respecting the dead. Respecting him and respecting me.

There were photos of our neighborhood, of our family functions, of our school and friends. He was walking through gallery at the Museum of Johan Anderson. Sometimes, Juudai would laugh hysterically at the funny moments that had happened around a photo, and sometimes he would stare long into it, finding someway to jump into that photograph and walk through it. Perhaps he was asking me to take him back into time, and keep him locked there, and put his favorite memories on repeat. If I had that power, then I would do it, and I would selfishly trap myself with him.

And then his impossible thought was reality: a photograph of him. Staring into the sunset as we sat that summer day, having ice cream atop the billboard. Juudai was fourteen. It wasn't just the photograph that shocked him. It was the moment that happened after the photograph was taken: that memory he had to compress into the burrows of his heart to avoid the pain. To hide the pain so that I wouldn't worry about him. It hurt him, and it hurt him even more.

It was the summer evening after we had taken the last of our exams, and the temperature couldn't have been any more excruciating than the day before. We traveled out to Carvels ice cream, got our usual soft twist cones, and made way to our special spot on the billboard along a hidden highway. We discovered this spot when we were both eleven, reenacting the crimes we thought up off when we played Clue. It was a place where we ate our ice creams and watched passing vehicles through the afternoons, and laughed at corny jokes and gossiped about classmates through the evening.

That day, I brought my camera with us, and he and I were taking turns capturing snapshots of interesting cars, wondering people, and random portraits of us. There were some portraits with spots of ice cream on our faces, some making funny faces with our fingers, trying to replicate Spider Man, and our tongues and eyes to look so alien and goofy. We felt so embarrassed for ourselves that we laughed so hard until breathing was a necessity. While we sat there, replenishing our oxygen, I took the camera, and scored a candid shot of him.

He wasn't photographed as the lovable, headstrong, and energetic teen we knew and loved. He was the fire red, calming at bay in the light of twilight, stabling to the earth. A man, Yuuki Juudai, with a looks of a cheerful boy, hosting a heart of enigmatic supremacy.

When I lowered the camera, and slowly I did this, I stared in awe. My heart was thumping against my bones. My thoughts, and composed state of mind- gone with my breath. The only thing I could feel was my emotion bubbling up my chest, up my throat. And when Juudai glanced to me... it slipped.

It all slipped.

"Juudai... I love you."

He took my bangs with his finger tips, slid them behind my ears, and caressed the side of my face along the jawline. And just when I blinked, his lips were pressing on mine. They attracted so fast like a magnet, and time had stopped; the end of the world as we knew it. The flavors of vibrant chocolate and luscious vanilla hurried aboard onto my lips, my tongue, my throat. I liked it, enjoyed it, savored it, commit it to memory. Even now in Heaven, I can still taste it.

We pulled away, our lungs begging for oxygen in exchange for carbon dioxide. He still had his hand along my face, and during the kiss I had placed my hands on his shoulders. I smiled and teared. He smiled and said, "I love you, Johan."

"...I knew how much you miss my grandson when I saw you react to that photo. I received it from Johan a few months before he died with this postcard. I forgot to mention how I wanted to give this to you.

Juudai, don't let this be something grieve, but let it inspire you to live more ..."

Juudai kneeled his head to his knees, and cried, holding the photograph to his heart. His heart had felt it was being lifted a thousand feet into the clouds on puppet strings. Any defect and he would fall into the concrete and boiling core of the Earth. He thought he had it in him to cast away the one memory that would threaten his recovery. Just as Daitokuji-sensei was about to say something, Pharaoh swooped down and swallowed his soul whole.

How I wanted to go down there and hold him close, making him feel my flesh to cease his tears. I wanted. I longed for it. Oh, how I wished for a worse punishment just to be there with him. But Heaven would never grant me this impossible wish, and Earth would only guard their gates within a sea of security.

I was forced to watch him cry. Watch, and not speak, and not touch, but feel.

My postcard and the photographed slipped out of his hands and onto the wooden floor. My postcard landed face up with my handwriting:

"Dear Grandma,

Juudai and I went down to that Coke-Cola billboard again the other day. Those exams were so hard, I thought I was gonna pass out from stress, but we both passed them! Thank goodness, or else we would've went to summer school and I wouldn't be able to see you here in Penny. But that day was so... rare. I can't even begin to describe it. It felt like I was flying through a hurricane, but a beautiful and safe hurricane..."

"Johan...?" Juudai walked out to the back patio of his cabin as he continued to read my letter. It was so alarming of how much detail I had jotted down, and he could only recall about a third of that day.

"...Both of us kept taking so many funny photos! One of them I took was of two birds playing some sort of aerial tag, but Juudai took one of a woman swinging a bat at a blue Chevy, but when the man arrived, she apologized 'cause she thought it was her ex-boyfriend. Can you believe that? We were a bit frightened but we just ended up laughing...

...Then when I got the camera, and took Juudai's photo, I realized something. Remember how you wrote me of what it's like to fall in love? What you wrote was how I felt. It was a mysterious feeling, mixing happiness and fear together...

And I told him. I said those words to him. At first, I just did it with out thinking. But then, I realized it was right. You were right: love does come around in a mysterious way. I won't forget this day. Ever..."

"And neither will I. Not anymore." Juudai closed his eyes, and dreamed of me. My face, my body, my eyes were all being painted right on his patio, and I was standing right in front of him. I was nervous, but I reached my hand out and touched his shoulder. He looked up to me, with tear stains and smiling. That beautiful, unforgettable smile. He smiled like this when he won his duels, and see Winged Kuriboh or his other Duel Spirits or Ruby, and when he's with his friends. And when he's with me.

I glided my hands to his cheek. I tried to wipe the missed tears away. I know he couldn't see me, but I learned that he could feel me. He placed his hand on top of mine. I froze, and he kept stroking my hand.

"And I won't forget this, either... Johan. I can't see you, but I can feel you. That's something, right?"

"Yeah. It is." And within the same wind as Juudai's,

I vanished.

Critiques, reviews, etc. are always welcomed. Thank you for reading this fanfiction. Have a good day/ evening.