Well, this is my entry for the YGO fanfiction contest, round 7. The pairing was Conflictshipping, a pairing that had the potential to be really brilliant but unfortunately I've been struck down with a horrible bug this week. I'm feeling absolutely terrible which made writing rather hard (looking at a computer screen makes me feel ill after about ten minutes) so I'm just throwing out this drabble. Unless you have to for the contest PLEASE don't read it. It's not good at all, and the only reason I'm entering it is because I don't want another pairing to have to be cut from the contest. So I'm sorry, it's nothing like the awesome story I had planned out in my head, but I guess these things happen and I hope that if I get through I'll be feeling better for the next round.

Pairing: Conflictshipping (Jou x Mai x Valon)

Warnings: drabble, mentions of sex

In the fairytales that Mai's nurse read to her when she was young (her mother never read to her- too busy partying and relaxing and living her life at one hundred miles an hour to take care of her child) the heroine was always beautiful and sweet and was eventually rescued by the prince.

Mai never really believed that. It was too perfect- she knew by the age of ten when she watched her mother cry tears that left mascara trails down her perfect face and her father leave with angry eyes, she knew then that those sweet fairytale heroines would end up like her mother. Alone. Helpless. Sad.

Mai swore that it wouldn't happen to her.

So she made herself beautiful; blond curling hair, perfect figure, red lips, and, of course, the outfit that left so little to the imagination. She taught herself how to make herself irresistible and unattainable to men- finding bitter pleasure in the way they fell over their own feet in their attempts to win her, but remaining just out of their reach.

Mai was always so good at keeping them wrapped around her little finger. She knew how to smile that smile that had them on their knees, how to bat her eyelashes in the way that made them rush to her side. She sometimes felt exultant in her power over every man she met.

Until she met him.

Jounouchi. He was different to the others- he thought she was beautiful, of course, but he didn't fall for her tricks or stumble into the traps she set. And when he didn't fall for her charm she turned it into anger, and yet he still didn't leave. He ignored her frosty attitude, he just laughed at her fury and stubbornly stuck to her side until Mai, exasperated to the extreme and with no idea how to deal with him, just gave up and decided to put up with the boy.

He wasn't much of a fairytale prince, but for Mai that was just what she needed.

But when everything started going wrong he wasn't there. When the darkness in her mind began to trap her in- when that monster had left his poison eating away at her sanity and Jou wasn't there to help her, it was then that she met Valon.

Valon was similar to Jou in many ways, not least in the way he treated her. Mai always knew that despite the anger and hatred that festered in his heart he still cared about her. He treated her with respect. He would fight for her. He, in his own way, loved her.

So she allowed him to kiss her, to touch her, and didn't care that he thought it meant she may return his feelings. Mai didn't love him. Mai never would. Maybe he knew that, but he never acknowledged it.

And when the whole mess had been 'fixed', when Jou and his friends had saved the day as they always did, Mai realised that she didn't have any other choice but to run and never look back.

That's exactly what she did.

Run.

x-x-x

"Mai, please. I know you get these messages. Just... Just come back to Domino. Please. One day, that's all. I just want to talk to you."

"For God's sake, I'm getting sick of you ignoring my calls- just come home!"

"I'll call every day if that's what it takes to bring you back, Mai. Please."

"I won't give up. You know that."

Mai looks at the blinking screen of her phone and knows that, as he has done every day for the last year, Jou has left her a message. Sure enough: 'Jounouchi mob' flashes up on the screen.

Mai smiles a sad smile and tries to ignore the voice in her head which whispers 'Don't stop running'.

Maybe one day she'll go back. Maybe one day she'll be able to face up to Valon and apologise. Maybe one day she'll find something close to her fairytale ending.

But for now, this will have to do.

Hesitantly, she presses the 'answer' key on her phone. "...Hello? Jou, it's me."