Disclaimer: I wished to Santa to have this as my present but I think I burned his butt when he tried to climb down our chimney last Christmas, Oh well…..Here : I love it but never will I own it sighs

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She couldn't stand to see him like that anymore. The raven haired flame caster just sat there, looking depressed and down trodden. He would not speak for days, nor did he eat or even move. The forlorn form just remained there, like a statue, like no eminent life present within. No emotion. Just stone cold with the sadness hanging around him like thunder.

Melancholy orbs of brown stretched out over the lone figure, taking in the loneliness and depression that poured from the flame tamer. She knew there was something wrong. Recalling actions of the past, she knew that her "partner" was not happy. She could see it in his lonely eyes when he looked at his surroundings and even in class. No matter how much the Hyuuga could mask it with an emotionless façade, there was always a sad story about it.

When Mikan thought about it, there were few times she could recall her partner ever being completely happy. He would make the rare perverted joke, and at times, smile casually at their classmates remarks. The Black Cat also made a false happiness when in the presence of others.

But now it was just the two of them. Hyuuga, Natsume and Sakura, Mikan, both experiencing being apart from the most beloved persons to them.

Or is it just the same from before?

Those same brown orbs have been locked on him since she was 10 always admiring him for his bravery or sometimes admiring him for his natural features and his selflessness to risk his life for those who are close to him. Then again Natsume was always like that as what Ruka had told before, owning an alice he didn't even like. Mikan had wondered what happened to the famous Kuro Neko that made him that way. Did he lose someone important or did he already lose himself?

"I don't want you to get hurt anymore so please just leave me alone."

The brunette remembered that phrase that Natsume had said to Mikan personally. Hard to belive but at first she did not understand what he meant but after the 4 years of being with him she understood.

The young Alice remembered that phrase uttered by the Black Cat during a festival. It was hard to believe that she had come such a long way. She was now 14 and an experienced Alice, but during the last three years, she tried to be close with Natsume and everything went well. He was no longer her partner, but a comrade and friend.

Or is it more than that now?

It seemed as if he could be himself around her, even if himself consisted of a perverse, manga reading Alice user. She never had to see his smile, the real smile, to know that he was happy. His eyes said it all, even without words. There was a certain shine within it's depths that signaled that he was content with her.

Deep within her swirl of emotions, she was happy to bring out that side of him. In ways, she had idolized him for hiding his emotions so well, through all situations. Even when me and the Sumire tried to sacrifice ourselves, and Ruka and she could not hold emotion well, but Natsume was back there being as stern as ever. Even if he at times seemed cold.

She knew it was all a façade to hide his true emotions. Though the Hyuuga seemed simple enough to comprehend, in reality he was an intelligent and complex individual who remained shrouded in mystery.

But it was no mystery that he was sad and needed someone now.

It crushed her heart to see a long time partner and friend in shambles and feeling helpless to aid him in his time of need. She knew that those people at the Dangerous Ability class weren't supposed to show true emotion, but perhaps, when he was all alone and his mind was falling the pit of black despair, he could let some of those emotions go. Keeping things in was bad for mental stability.

She could see those eyes, looking slightly out of it and unhappily downward, as if to concentrate on a sole piece of paper on the floor in front of him. The young woman wondered if he would have even noticed if she approached him.

Thinking that there was no time like noe, she took one uneasy step towards Natsume, inching towards him as her number of steps increased.

When she finally reached his sitting form, she kneeled down and gently wrapped her arms around him from behind, bringing him out of his deep contemplation. A masculine hand reached up to touch her forearms, wrapped snugly around his neck.

"Mikan?" His faint question reached the ears of the brunette.

"You know they said that being alone always make a person a crazy." Mikan told him.

"Really." Natsume felt a little better having Mikan there. Over the past three years the two of them developed a friendship that span long past a simple schoolmates relationship. He produced his false happy eyes, but Mikan knew him better then that.

"You didn't look that happy before, Natsume-kun." She noted.

"Am I really that old to you?" He asked casually. "Just call me Natsume"

"Even if you call me by my first name I still like calling you with –kun it sounds so cute." She smiled, moving to beside of him, sitting closely to him and grabbing his fist.

There was a small look of flattery from the flame caster shown through that depressed gaze.

The young woman was silent for a few minutes, as if she didn't want to say a sentence caught in her throat. She knew that if she didn't, Natsume would just ask her what she was thinking, so she decided that now was better than never.

"I'll always be here for you and you know that…..I will never leave you………I promise" The brunette told him in a whisper that can be carried by the wind.

The black eyebrows brow was arched in perverse contemplation. "Really?"

"Really." Mikan said in the same voice putting his hands on her cheeks.

The raven haired boy blinked, realizing that his partner seemed very serious about it. He looked up at her face, which held a mix of emotions. She looked as if she were trying to hold back a tsunami of emotion within her.

It wasn't some perverted joke; she was being real about it.

Natsume felt strange himself, confused at the simplest things about her and reading into deeper meaning of the words through her eyes.

He pondered to himself for a few minuets, before his eyes met with two brown colored eyes. Looking across from him, he gazed into fields of brown, twisted in a brilliance of color and emotion as the sun danced around in a trance of mixed emotion, to a forbidden beat all on its own.

"Mikan…" Her partner uttered in a confused voice.

Softened brown orbs looked back at him, almost as if tears would be released, and come cascading from her eyes. Dark eyes held anticipation of their own.

"Yes, Natsume-kun," She replied, head inching closer to her partner, as her mind had protests of reasons why she shouldn't be doing this, like; this is her perverted, manga reading, classmate. They also have something called a relationship difference. But all of that didn't seem to matter.

There had been times in the past, where she stopped herself from doing anything too friendly with him and was freaked out by it. Afterwards, she felt bad for turning him down.

This time, she couldn't turn him down. Not now. Not when he was looking for the one person who cared.

The woman couldn't handle it any more; she wanted to help him, to be with him, to belong to him.

Before either of them could have the opportunity to speak again, lips touched. Eyes widened. The hug tightened, as if he didn't want to let her go. A whirlwind of confusion faced through the loud mouth's brain.

Thoughts clashed, and he pondered on Mikan's motives, whether she was doing this out of friendship or something else. He soon learned that friendship would be ruled out when she pulled back and put her hands around his arms

"May I?" She asked.

"Mikan…"

"…"

"We shouldn't be doing this..."

"It's something I want to share with you and only you." She told him. "I want to see you smile again. All my life I just had to sit back there, watching, denying, unable to do anything. Watching everything go by and do nothing. Now I can do something about it. Now I can right what is wrong. I can pay for all those lonely days that I didn't even do anything. Because I was weak, stupid, you can even say I became a bitch, because I just let you be."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I love you, Natsume…I don't care if my life would be in danger. I don't care what other people will think anymore." She told him, flattening her hands on the side of his face, caressing it gently in her hands. "All I really want…Is for you to accept me."

"But…"

"I don't love Ruka. I'm tired of pretending to people. I realize now that I was just making myself more miserable than you. I'm not a little girl anymore, and I realize that I was foolish. I made a lot of mistakes back then, but now I'm turning it around and making things right. It's my turn to hold the dice of destiny a change its course."

There was a silence between them. A moment of contemplation.

The flame caster leaned his head in and when he got close to her lips he said, "I feel your pain. Thank you." Lips brushed against lips. "I will accept your help."

Mikan blushed, as she could feel his lips against hers. "Does this mean…?"

"I love you, Mikan. More than ever……Know no one not even Ruka can take you away from me ever, not ever"

The brown haired girl leaned her head downward and kissed her love. He returned the kiss and wrapped an arm around her, feeling a new found warmth take over him.

They were lovers.

Comments, grammar errors, tell me…please