A/N: Originally written as an English essay, but it screamed out to be an AU Mikan/Natsume angst fic, so here we are. Hope you enjoy.
1st June: Just updated some grammar issues, HUGE thanks to Poisentia who pointed them out to me and left a great review- thanks!
Windmills of His Minds
Outskirts of London, 1819
He slammed his open palms against the tree; and then slumped forward against it like an old man. His anger released as quick as it had arrived.
"Why?" The word barely made it through lips that were clenched as tight as his fists. A tear started to make its down his cheek slowly, showing quite plainly to anyone who watched and vaguely knew him that he was upset. Natsume hadn't cried since he was five.
Natsume took a deep breath and coughed a couple of times before peeling himself away from the tree and angrily wiping the tear away. He was furious.
Furious with the hospital with its family only policy.
Furious with the arrogant doctors who thought they knew best.
Furious with himself for crying over a silly, stupid girl (he was
Natsume Hyuga for hell's sake- he was too tough to cry!).
And especially furious with her. And yet, at the same time, he knew he could never be mad at her.
Natsume gave a wry smile as he turned to place his current archenemy. Alice Academy Hospital. Its uncomfortable, wooden, rigid, hard-back brown chairs that rested near the lobby's walls, its sterile, antiseptic, nose burning smell that filled every room announcing the presence of disease and illness like a herald; and its pompous, arrogant staff, who thought they were better than him because they had a smattering of letters after their names and didn't grow up in the city slums.
Well. He'd show them. Natsume was determined to see her, regardless of the cost. It was not as if he had anything to lose anyway, only the pleasure of seeing her smile. At the memory of that, Natsume's rock features soften for an instant, then grew harder as he returned to his scrutiny of the hospital with even more determination. There had to be a way in, he knew it.
As his eyes methodically scanned the hospital's exterior, Natsume's mind drifted through the memories to the years before he had met her. They had been painful, filled with fights and arguments. Then suddenly, she entered. The soft-spoken, pale girl who had not judged him, even though those around him had already condemned him for eternity. She had never given up on him, not even when her own father, the local preacher, had screamed into her face that she was going to hell, she quietly replied:
"At least I will not be going alone." And then walked out.
He had found her, half an hour later, calmly waiting for him outside the school they had attended and first met. From that moment on he promised he would never leave her. And now he was breaking that promise! Just because he was not her family according to the law, even though they had been living together for the past two years!
Natsume forced himself to breath slowly as the rage started to build up in him once more. Getting irate now would not either of them. Natsume's eyes started another fruitless search along the hospital's roof, when he felt and heard the coal cart coming to a stop.
"There, there girl," Natsume watched silently as the coalman comforted his horse and then proceeded to unload the heavy bags of coal that the hospital required daily to keep its patients healthy. Or so the hospital authorities said. Natsume was more prone to suspecting that the doctors just liked the temperature of the hospital high and stuffy so they could go around in short-sleeved tunics all day. They probably don't even now what the word cold means, Natsume thought darkly, not without a trace of envy, remembering the times the pair of them had gathered close to each for warmth during the cold days. Sometimes they were lucky and managed to find some coal to light.
But it seemed to Natsume that no matter how much coal he found, no matter how many bits of old clothes he had draped round her, no matter how hot she insisted she was and that he should take some of the clothes for himself; she would start coughing.
It started with a hacking, as though her insides were trying to escape from her mouth, like soldiers from the gaping mouth of the cannon. And then that terrible breath that always sounded like death's bell to Natsume, signalling that the end was nigh. Then, she would cough non-stop for what seemed an hour. Finally the spectacle ended with her spitting (which was so unlike her, Natsume could hardly believe his eyes the first time it had happened) red liquid from her mouth. Blood. Blood that should have been inside of her, being pumped around her body, but was been ejected from her body instead, like a king overthrown by his country.
As Natsume watched the coalman lug the heavy sacks into the hospital's coalbunker, he smiled, a plan hatching in his mind.
Tobita Yu came out of the hospital coalbunker for the 3rd time, already sweating like a pig roast, and he still had five more sacks to budge. He bent over for a moment, trying to gain some reprieve, and heard Anna, his horse squeal. He looked up and saw her rearing up, almost upsetting the cart. Within moments he was by her side preventing the cart from up tipping. He was so absorbed in comforting the shaken horse that he didn't see the male figure slip into the bunker, the stick he had used to provoke the horse lying on the ground.
Once he was inside, Natsume made his way to the door of the coalbunker, and then into the hospital boiler room. He took a step backwards as the almost visible waves of heat attacked him, and it was only the frightened look on her face as he reluctantly handed her over to the doctor that kept him going.
"I'm sorry," Natsume whispered, as he drudged through the room, one hand over his eyes like he was fighting his way through a snowstorm. "But I had no choice, here you have a chance of recovering, in our cellar you didn't."
Still, no matter how many times Natsume had repeated that phrase to himself over the past week, no matter how many times the doctors, nurses and the kind receptionist on the front desk had repeated it, Natsume could not stop the overwhelming rush of guilt every time he thought of her. He had to be with her, look after her, she had given up a comfortable life for him; he had to do unpleasant things to be with her.
Natsume kept this thought in mind as he knocked the sense out of a passing orderly, before taking his uniform and replacing it with his own clothes. Just as was about to continue his way along the hospital corridor towards the treatment rooms, he felt a rush of guilt and turned to the man.
"She needs me, I need her." Natsume turned away just as another coughing fit overtook him. He impatiently wiped his mouth on his sleeve and walked away.
Ten minutes later, they saw him walking along the corridor of the hospital where he knew she was residing. Natsume quickly looked round the door of yet another room and smiled as he saw the clean, well-furnished room. Although it was empty, the room had pillows had looked as soft as clouds and a bed that was aching to be lain on. However, it was the shelf of books on the bedside table that had caught Natsume's gaze.
"She'll be happy," he murmured, "there's lots to read here." He remembered the way she had devoured the scraps of newspaper he had managed to scavenge most days, and how she had read out to him all the article after article, sometimes adverts for holidays, other times a debate about the current political situation.
The next room held the treasure, Natsume had been seeking, he went in, knowing there was no point in donning the protective gear on the door and leant over to kiss his sleeping beauty.
"Hello Mikan," he whispered as she fought the powerful sleep the doctor's drugs had given her and smiled at his face.
The next morning, Hotaru, the nurse entered Mikan's room, to find two stone-cold bodies lying across the bed. Both had a slight trickle of blood coming from the corner of their mouths, confirming what the nurse had already assumed- both had succumbed to consumption. The nurse carefully exited and called for someone to come and bury the two young adults. The pair were buried in the same grave, for nobody could part the two from each other, even in death.
A/N: If anyone's curious/didn't know, Consumption is the old fashioned name for Tuberculosis (aka TB), a disease that mainly attacks the lungs and was all too common in the 1700s and 1800s (the time in which this story is set) when they didn't have the treatments we have today.
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