Title: Unexpected
Challenge: Heart of the Cards
Genre: Romance/Angst
Canon: A Tangent from it…somewhere after Battle City and into the Atlantis Arc.
Length: 922
Rating: PG-13 (suggestion of incest)

This is for ygoficchallenge, but feel free to review anyone who wants to!

Summary: Mai gives Jounouchi a card before she goes to America, a card he's never heard of before, but will prove to be the one monster that can liberate Mai from the darkness…

Mai had given Jou the card as a gift, so he would always remember her. He wondered what the card was supposed to represent in the gaping hole within his heart, how he was to take the card's symbolism. Jounouchi could be deep sometimes.

Turning the card over in his hands as she drove off in her lilac convertible, Jou smiled at the monster's stern expression. "Not bad," he thought to himself. "Four stars with an attack of 1800! I don't have to sacrifice any other monster to summon him, plus he's got enough attack points to be a threat to any duelist not holding him in his deck." Jou smirked as he imagined a faceless, meaningless opponent cower in fear. "'With eyes like a hawk and a flying speed exceeding Mach 5, this monster is a master of the sky,'" Jou read off the card.

Sighing, he tucked the card into his deck, then gently slid all the cards back into his dueling disk. "Harpie's Brother…I wonder what that's supposed to mean?"

Jou had not expected to see Mai again, not after she left for America. Now that he saw her again, he was filled with a melancholy bitterness. He was not happy to see she had changed so much- where was the old Mai he knew…and loved? She said she gave up that part of her, the part that had befriended them all, the part that loved him.

The part of Mai that had given him that card. Jou held the card precariously in his hand, his mouth open slightly as his heart swelled with hope. Perhaps Harpie's Brother would bring Mai back to herself. Seeing that card, seeing it take down her Harpies, perhaps she would be impressed. Jou prayed silently that she would as he played the flight-gifted monster.

"This one's for you, Mai," he whispered.

Harpie's Brother glanced back at the human through his hologram wings and the human smiled at him. It was a shaky, uncertain, but hopeful grin and Harpie's Brother took heart. Then, facing forward, his heart stopped.

The human didn't know him, though he had plenty of time to learn about his monster. Clearly, the human with the uncertain smile did not understand. He was their brother; he could not possibly attack them; could not possibly destroy them. They were his blood.

And the one in the middle, with the long pink hair and the cocky smile…well, perhaps she was more, but Harpie's Brother suffered in silence and did not acknowledge this thought.

That is, he ignored his heart until she froze upon seeing him, and a faint glimmer of a wish he had buried a long time ago began to glow within him. Harpie's Brother reached out towards his sister, towards the one he loved more than that, towards the one he could never have. However, his hologram pixel hand could not caress Harpie's proud cheek; they were bound within the confines of the game and were not allowed to speak, to seek each other as they once did as creatures of flesh and bone.

Harpie's Brother sighed within and let his hand fall. Of course he could not reach her. He could not have her, for she did not want him like that. Looking back again, the human that had betrayed him, the human who had forced him into a struggle he could not win, frowned at his monster's hesitation and persuaded him forth into battle, but Harpie's Brother shook his head. He would not fight, and so looked away from the human.

The Harpies, his beloved sisters, and the one in the middle his beloved, watched him with cold eyes, as cold and empty of feeling as the human behind them. Harpie's Brother started; she knew him, she knew what this was doing to him! She had known for a long time and she was the one that had separated Harpie's Brother from his only life. And as she matched his gaze, she beckoned her darlings, their darlings, back to her.

They flew as fledglings to the nest their mother pushed them out of, desperate and desiring her warmth again. The human raised her arm as though to embrace their holographic forms, beautiful despite being nothing more than an illusion. A cold but wonderful chill came crawling down Harpie's Brother's wings as the human exchanged unknown words to her monsters. Then they jumped back from the human as if by an electric shock and they turned to face their brother once more.

There was warmth in their eyes and, as Harpie's Brother could never have dared to hope, his beautiful one with the cocky, arrogant smirk and the languorous pink hair reached out her hand towards him, stopping at the boundaries of the duel.

He smiled and raised his hand to meet hers, a mere fraction apart, but in his heart and imagination, they kissed.

"Do you see now, Jounouchi?" Mai asked from across the room. Jou could barely breathe as he watched his monster reach out to the Harpie's outstretched hand. "The old Mai, the one who loves you and could never truly disappear, the one who has returned from the corner of her heart, gave you that card for a purpose. Do you know what that is, Jounouchi?"

Jou, whose eyes were still locked on the nearly touching hands, lifted his head to gaze into Mai's violet eyes that were much less violent than before. "Yes. I understand now." He smiled gratefully. "Welcome back, Mai."

End