Defeat the Dragons

Summary: Fairy-tales don't go like this. OneShot- Natsume, Mikan. There is a story about a girl living by herself in a house in the forest.

Warning: OneShot. Angst.

Set: During the time that Mikan is the prisoner of the Elementary School Principal (ESP), post-story.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

The best thing about fairytales is not that we learn that dragons exist, but that they can be beaten.

Natsume's mother had loved fairy-tales.

She didn't read them to him and Aoi but used to re-tell them, often taking the part of multiple characters, changing her voice and illustrating scenes with vivid descriptions. Aoi had loved these story-telling times, even if she didn't remember them anymore. Natsume had loved them, too, and in contrast to his little sister he remembered. The way their mother's voice had sounded when she retold her favorite story, her contagious laughter and the way she always altered the Princesses' fates so they weren't just damsels in distress waiting for the Prince on his white horse to ride to their rescue. Years later, when Natsume picked up a collection of fairy-tales, he was surprised by how different the originals actually were: in none of them the Princess, instead of running away, managed to trick her evil stepmother into being sucked into her own mirror, becoming an enchanted mirror in the process. In no fairy-tale he read the dark fairy was actually the twin sister of the good fairy godmother and had become dark because she had wanted to save her sister from being eaten by a dragon. There were dozens of further examples and at some point Natsume seriously began questioning whether his mother had actually known the original stories from which she had borrowed her characters or whether she had just enjoyed inventing.

You know the story of Rapunzel, don't you?

Stupid Imai. She was annoying, but she cared for Mikan. He would give her that much: she had found a way to send Mikan a message through the stupid books, however veiled (or obvious) they were. Natsume didn't think Mikan was a princess, though, and he didn't think he was a prince. And Rapunzel. Please. Why the hair? What had the hair to do with anything? As far as he could see it was the story of a girl who had never learned about the world outside her window, so a prince had to come to show it to her first. But why the heck did the guy have to climb her tower using her hair as a rope? What sense made that? There was no tower needed to seclude a person from the world outside, Natsume knew that very well. In fact, not even walls were effective enough. The only thing that held Rapunzel in her tower was her own ignorance, and duh, she wouldn't get better just because a stupid guy tried to pull her out by her hair. She would have to go and see the world for herself.

Natsume wasn't quite sure if that was his own opinion or his mother's. Probably both.

So no. Mikan was no princess who didn't know what was going on. And she didn't have to be saved from herself. Mikan was a prisoner because she was a hostage, and she was a hostage because they had known too much and acted. And although Natsume liked it better when she wore her hair open he was pretty sure that was neither an integral part of their problem nor a possible solution. Ahh. He missed her. It was impossible to measure up in words what he felt: the dull, constant ache in his heart was ever-present. Searching for Mikan blindly, he knew, wasn't a very good way to conserve his strength. On the other hand, it was a very good way to keep himself busy. If he had even a few minutes more to think, he might go crazy.

Stupid idiot. Send her this. She will understand.

Books were nice means to pass the time, but they would never be a substitute for human closeness. And Imai was clever – very so, over-the-top so. Natsume acknowledged her intelligence but he would not acknowledge her taunts. It wasn't true that he sent an Alice stone of his with each one of his letters. Natsume wasn't stupid – he wouldn't do something as pointless as that. He didn't even send letters. There was no way she would get them, so it was pointless. Besides – what was he supposed to write? There were things that couldn't be said, couldn't be put into words, could only ever be conveyed wordlessly. And this was one of those. It was one thing to tell Mikan straight to her face that she was stupid and idiotically self-sacrificing, and one to actually put those words into text and see the ink flow over the page. Forming the words in his head only they felt futile and empty. And Natsume wouldn't do anything empty like that, not with the things that mattered and the people that were precious to him. Luca could attest to that: he had never once said good bye.

Fairy-tales didn't go like this.

In fairy-tales, there always was a beautiful princess, and the princess might be innocent and naïve but she was never stupid and a crybaby. She didn't wear her hair in stupid pig-tails that made her look three years younger and didn't suit her at all. In fairy-tales, there was a blond, blue-eyed prince who was loved by everyone, including his friggin' horse and the birds and the rabbits of the forest, and who came by to save the princess. She, of course, immediately fell in love with him and they rode off into the sunset, to live happily ever after. There was no dark-haired, bad-mannered, sickly best friend who stole away the prince's stage time because he wasn't the main character and even if that side character loved the princess, well, she would never love him back because she obviously had it for the prince. There were no stupid cross-dressers who pretended to know it all, no perverted men who had plenty of girlfriends or annoying mages who controlled the shadows. There were dead mothers plentiful in fairy-tales, but Natsume had yet to encounter the princess's best friend who had a habit of hitting her and of inventing useless (or not so useless) stuff, all the while blackmailing the prince using old photographs. Oh, and talking bears. There definitely were no bears in fairy-tales. Although there was that one story about a little bear that had intruded on a human family's home and slept in their bed… Or something like that? Either way, Natsume doubted there were stories with living, violent stuffed toy bears.

He could see why his mother had liked to reinvent the tales. They just didn't cut it.

Winter had come early to Alice Academy. The cold was shattering, clear like crystal. On cloudless nights the air seemed to be made from splints of glass, painful to breathe and radiant in its pureness. Nights were the worst. Nights where when Natsume tossed and turned sleeplessly, unable to take his mind off the one person that had always been able to calm him. Granted, Mikan had aggravated him plenty. But thinking of her – seeing her brown, warm eyes, her huge smile, feeling the warmth of her arms as she wrapped them around him that night they had spent in one bed, all those months ago – had a soothing effect on Natsume. Only for so long, though. Because inevitably, his thoughts would wander to the point in which he wanted to hold her and then he would remember she was gone and far out of his reach. And then the pain would be back – doubled, tripled – and he would sneak out of the dorms, roaming the cold, icy nights for a sign of her. Sometimes, when the night was very clear, Natsume thought he could hear her voice. But he dreamed of her, too, and woke up hearing her voice – so who was he to say whether the things he heard at night weren't his own, desperately clamoring, calling, longing thoughts.

And wherever he searched, he couldn't find her anywhere.

His mother's favorite story had been about a girl. Not a princess. Just a normal, plain girl who lived in a house in the woods, and lived there all by herself. She was very lonely there but she had animal friends who played with her and helped her with the chores. The forest around her house had been enchanted so that nobody could enter. Only once a year, the barrier would lift for a few hours at night, and people could enter the wood and find the house. The girl looked forward to those times because on those days, she wouldn't be alone. She had arranged her life around the one day that her loneliness was broken, and spent the rest of the time saving up the hope she still kept. Only when people found her little home, well-cared for, clean and tidy, it would be empty. There would be no sign of the fact that someone had been ever living there.

Because the girl was a ghost, and had died a long time ago.

Natsume.

No words. There had been no words to describe his feelings for her, and nothing would ever measure up to the terrible grief that was the knowledge that he had lost her. That he had been too late, that he had searched in all the wrong places. Natsume was no Prince, he had no fairy-tale timing. He had no winged horse and no sword that cut through the thorn hedge around the castle, no speaking lion to guide him and tell him the truth. In a fairy-tale he would have saved her just in time, just before the Elementary School Principal managed to get his hands on her. Mikan wouldn't have to have fought him, she wouldn't have to deny him and, worst of all: she wouldn't have killed herself in order to avoid watching him hurt the people she loved most. She was like that: an utter idiot, always thinking of others first. Natsume wished desperately that, one freakin' time, she would have thought of herself first. Maybe it would have saved her. Maybe she would have survived, maybe he'd have seen her one last time before she died, maybe she would have smiled at him one last time. But it was too late. The Mikan he had met the first day in front of the Academy gates, the Mikan that had fought him tooth and claw, calling him names, crying when he burnt the tips of her hair, that Mikan that had run to stupid Baldy every time he'd forced her to do something against his will. The Mikan that had smiled so brightly every morning, that had given her all at every occasion, the Mikan that had made his heart speed up with her gaze.

That Mikan was-

"Natsume. Natsume!"

Someone shook him and Natsume resurfaced from the depths of the nightmare. It felt like trying to resurface from a dark, dark ocean that was unwilling to let him go, weighted down his bones, fought tooth and claw to keep him while he struggled madly to wake up. His hands that had, seconds before, been sifting through dust and ashes, the last splinters of a person that had left the face of the earth long ago, grasped for something, anything – someone – desperately and found the warmth and closeness of a person. A muffled sound of surprise was quickly silenced. Natsume grabbed for the closeness and held on. It was the only thing that stopped him from screaming out the terrible, terrible grief that filled every cell of his body, up into the painful emptiness that other people would have called their heart.

Only gradually he became aware of the contours and familiarity of the body now aligned with his. It was warm, it was alive – it was a person, and he did not want anyone except for Mikan. His first reaction was cold anger (at himself, at Mikan who had left), focused and icy, and the impulse to push aside whoever had invaded the privacy of his bedroom. And then, gradually and in between small bits of anger, large pieces of grief and a heart-shattering sense of sorrow, understanding set in. The part of a human's brain that governed the differentiation between reality and dream scape separated the nightmare from his reality and gently placed it into its own sphere of fears and terrors of the darkness. And Natsume realized there was only one person that would be there to wake him from his nightmares, and only one person that would be able to get that close to him while he was asleep. The body on his was warm and soft, definitely feminine, and didn't move except for the soft rise and fall of her chest.

Warm breath ghosted over his neck.

Natsume's arms tightened around her, desperation still reigning over his instincts while his mind became clear. His heart, hammering against his chest rapidly, seemed to resonate in Mikan's chest, as well. Her scent and her shape and her warmth were familiar, as familiar as her heart-beat. He could feel his own panicked rhythm slow down, calm and synchronize with hers, until they breathed in concert. Mikan didn't say anything, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder, her arms loosely at his side. Although it had to be uncomfortable to her after some time, she did not make any move to extricate herself from his tight grip and Natsume appreciated it. He needed to know she was real. And she undoubtedly was: warm and breathing in his arms, her body against his, the sweet scent of strawberry shampoo of her hair tickling his nose.

When he had enough control over himself to look at her being sure he wouldn't start crying any second, he loosened his arms a fraction. Mikan, to her credit (she wasn't the most intelligent at times, but she at least was able to read him surprisingly well), didn't pull away immediately. Instead, she lifted her head just enough to look at him, her hazel eyes concerned. Natsume forestalled any embarrassing questions on her part by asking questions himself.

"You're not a ghost, are you?"

"Huh?" Whatever she had been wanting to ask was instantly wiped from her mind. Mikan stared at him, flabbergasted. "What's gotten into you?"

She was so honest when she was surprised, and sometimes naïve in her ways. The fact that he had been trembling in fear only minutes ago seemed to have left her mind completely, pushed aside by the usual sense of aggravation Natsume knew, for a fact, he could incite in even the most even-tempered person. He also knew she wouldn't forget about it completely. This incident was bound to return to him once Mikan had recollected her thoughts and had made up her mind, and she would not let him get away with hollow responses and the cape of ignorance Natsume was pretty sure worked with most people. He had the slight suspicion that some of them worked harder on him because they cared, Mikan being the first and foremost person to annoy him – literally – into cooperation. Others perhaps didn't care that much, which meant they generally left him be.

"Nevermind. Just a story I heard once. Forget it."

Sometimes in the past few years – he wasn't exactly sure when – Mikan had acquired and perfected a look of threatening lethality that very much could measure up to his own look of complete and utter disdain. How something that small and harmless – there was no way her Protection Alice, the one that had been conserved by her Alice stone and that she had re-acquired after her return to the Academy – could be used in a harmful way – could be so persuading? Natsume had a sliver of a notion, but he preferred to pretend he didn't have. Pushing herself up unto her elbows, she glared at him from above. In the dim light of the lanterns outside shining into the room, Natsume could see the outlines of her face, the beautiful contours of her nose and lips and the tilt of her chin. Her hair, open and tousled, fell past her face messily. Natsume lifted a hand and carded his fingers through it, carefully straightening out a few tangles.

"Don't worry, it's nothing," he attempted to soothe her, using the tone he reserved for her only.

Mikan's look of threat turned into worry. "Natsume, you were suffering. Are you alright? Is everything fine with your Alice?"

"That's not it," he assured her hastily. "Really, it wasn't. I just-" Coming clear was always easier –"Dreams."

"Oh." Mikan thought about that, her eyes searching her face for a lie. She seemed to conclude he was honest, because she asked: "Was it bad?"

"Horrible," he answered, compelled into honesty by her warmth and her presence. "I thought-" He had to swallow, close his eyes and collect his courage before he was able to tell her. "You died… The Elementary Principal."

His arms tightened around her almost involuntarily, desperately, and Mikan didn't protest as she collapsed back onto his chest. Burying her face in the crook of his neck, she whispered something he didn't catch, but it didn't matter. Natsume lost himself in her closeness and warmth. Every time he even dared to think about what would have happened had she really died – for whatever reason – he found himself looking into a darkness without end, so profound it would have scared him had there been any emotions left in him besides the pain. When had it happened? When had he started loving her so much he couldn't even imagine a life without her anymore?

Mikan was still whispering, a halting, broken stream of words he couldn't hear. The way her body was melded into his was familiar and warm. But her shoulders – Natsume resurfaced from his darkness to consciously feel her heart beating against his. It was fast and irregular, her shoulders shaking slightly, and with a start he realized her hands were fisted into the sheets at his side with painful desperation. That was when he made an effort to listen to her. When he realized what she was saying, his own pain was forgotten instantly.

She had never told them about her time in the Labyrinth Mansion. They had known – from the High School Principal, from Shiki-san – that she had been kept there all by herself, with regular visits but mainly alone with Bear. He had known the Elementary Principal had wanted to get his hands on her – but Mikan hadn't told them of her encounters with the cruel, twisted man, had never as much as dropped a hint as to what their weekly meetings had been like. Listening to her whispered, broken words now, Natsume's anger flared like a fire out of control. He could feel his body temperature rising and made an effort to breathe slowly and calmly as to not hurt Mikan. Wrapping his arms around her again – trying to put all his feelings for her into his embrace, his promise to protect her – he held her until her words dissolved into soft sobs, and finally into warm huffs of air against his skin.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't want to make you go through this."

For a few heart-beats – maybe for more, but he didn't count – there was no sound to be heard except for their combined breathing. Then, the Mikan he knew so well appeared in the cracks of her wall again, chuckling weakly.

"I'm sorry, too. I didn't think-"

Natsume held her.

"Wow," he finally said. "We're seriously messed up."

He made her laugh, and the sound chased away the last remnants of his own nightmare and her pain away better than anything else would have been able to.

"You are messed up, you mean. I'm the stupid one here."

"I'm sorry," he deadpanned. "For a second I thought you've grown up."

"Are you insulting me?" She tried to elbow him but wasn't able to find the necessary leverage, sandwiched as she was between him and the covers. They were now completely entangled. Not that he minded.

"Probably," he murmured and released his grip on her for just the time he needed to direct her head where he wanted it. When he kissed her, Mikan smiled.

"Tell me a story," she whispered and curled up against him.

"Do I look like a damn story-teller to you?" He returned gruffly. "Go read a book or something."

He was rewarded by a head-butt to his chest. "Grumpy-cat." Her voice was teasing and reprimanding, at the same time. Natsume sighed.

"What kind of story?"

"A story I don't know yet."

The hell. What was he doing here? Just because it was her asking. He'd never do this for anyone else, except, perhaps for Aoi, Natsume wasn't the kind of person that went around smiling, playing nice and inventing fairy-tales.

"I don't really like fairy-tales."

Mikan's fingers were drawing spirals onto his skin. "Me neither."

"So what do you want to hear?"

"A real story."

Natsume sighed. "There was this girl I knew, some years ago…"

At that, she smiled, and Natsume was reminded why he loved her that much. Even in the darkness of the night, she radiated. "Sounds good."

"She was a stupid girl, too stupid to realize what she was doing was stupid. But maybe her stupid qualities were what made her the way she was. She ran away from home one day because she had stupidly thought she wanted to follow a stupid friend of hers…"

"Over-use of certain verbs."

"… And stupidly came to a place she would have avoided at all costs, if she had even one ounce of foresight and instinct in her. But as it was, she stupidly-"

"Adjectives, too."

"...Stupidly gained entrance to another world. And that was how it all started."

"Natsume, you're enjoying this, aren't you?"

His non-answer was answer enough to her.

"Should I continue or not?"

"By all means," Mikan answered, mock-exasperated. "Go on, please. Just tell me one thing."

"Hm?"

"Does your story have a happy ending?"

"I suppose."

"Are there villains? Oh, and dragons?"

Natsume frowned. "Dragons? Why dragons?"

Mikan shrugged. "Because?"

"So maybe there are dragons," Natsume allowed. "And a money-obsessed witch."

"A mage," Mikan suggested.

"A bald wizard who's completely under the thumb of his girlfriend. And a transsexual hunter and a womanizing peon."

"Not a prince?"

"Definitely not, but there's a prince in the story, too. He's too nice for his own good."

"So who are the main characters?"

Natsume blinked down at her. "I was getting to that point before you interrupted me, you know."

"Well then." Mikan settled back into his arms comfortably, her smile wide. "Then let's go, defeat the dragons."

Yes, Natsume thought, smiling inwardly. Let's defeat the dragons.

There was not much he wouldn't be able to do with her at his side.