Disclaimer: Gakeun Alice is not mine. I've got no claims on this, no worries. Totally not stealing. Nothing wrong here, nothing suspicious. Go on, look away. What do you mean, acting strange? I'm cool, I'm me, everything's legal here. No, really, believe me!
"Hotaru!" shouted a girl, one with a surprisingly loud voice, considering her pigtails. Wait, are those two things related? Anyways.
"Let me hug you!" she cried, running with a bright smile and tears in her eyes towards a certain girl with surprisingly great tolerance, or was that an ingenious sound-blocking earmuff around her head? It very well could be!
In a sudden movement, right before the first girl reached the second, the aforementioned Hotaru whipped out a cannon and shot it right at her friend. The loud "baka" rang out two more times, proving the theory that one baka gun shot is never enough.
Ruka sighed. "There they go again," he said to Natsume, but there was a slight smile in his voice, though his face was blank as usual. "The class is so noisy because of them."
Sumire had joined the fight, because why not, and she was now loudly proclaiming with her sharp voice that Mikan was too annoying, that Iinchou would do better without trying to comfort her. Iinchou only smiled helplessly before going at it again.
"Mikan-chan, Imai-san is just like that sometimes, you know it..."
In the long range of things, it was funny how the class had pulled a one-eighty and was laughing together, when just a few months before they'd barely been on speaking terms as a whole. Sumire hadn't even ventured close to Hotaru before, much less advise Iinchou (though it must be admitted that she did have a bossy streak since she was young); Anna and Nonoko hadn't laughed half as much in class as they did now; and, more importantly, Ruka hadn't had a smile in his voice in such a long time, especially not with company.
"Koko! Don't you dare read my thoughts!"
"Hai hai, Sumire. But Mikan, be careful, Sumire's going to hit you on the head in a moment."
"Koko!" There was some sort of cattish "meow" followed by an angrier bark.
"Ack, Sumire! Ruka-pyon, save me!"
Mikan suddenly launched herself behind the startled boy, flinging her arms over his shoulders and hiding her face in a desperate attempt to withhold an angry Sumire from scratching her.
It was a good plan, Natsume had to admit, because what better shield than Ruka? Sumire skidded to an abrupt stop in front of them, and changed back into her non-Alice form.
"Oh, Ruka, I didn't notice you there, hohoho," laughed Sumire in what she imagined was an attractive manner. She was batting her eyelashes, as if that would help. "And Natsume! How are you doing this fine day?"
At the same time, Ruka yelped "G-get off of me!" and wrestled Mikan off of him. The red dusting on his cheeks didn't escape Natsume's notice, though he made no comment (as usual). Mikan immediately wailed and ran, still wailing, for Hotaru.
Without further ado, Sumire excused herself and ran snarling for Mikan once again.
"This class sure is noisy today," Ruka noted.
Natsume heaved out a deep exhale. "It's been this way for weeks now," he grumbled. "The class has changed."
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"Ever since that girl" he nodded towards the girl running crazily (no, not the cat/dog one, the one being chased, with the pigtails? Yeah, that one) "came to this class, it hasn't been the same."
Ruka pondered this for a moment. "Now that I think about it, seems about right. Everyone's getting along more."
"Including you."
The blonde boy patted his rabbit absentmindedly before replying, "And you too, you know." When their eyes met, there was a smile in his eyes now. "You're not as sad as you were before she came. I'm glad."
They lapsed into silence thereafter. There was nothing much to say on that subject except to return to their previous occupations of watching the class silently.
Natsume didn't doubt what Ruka had just said. He knew. As his eyes came upon Mikan, his heart dropped. As much as he wanted to let himself go, show Ruka that he was not just better, but he was actually totally fine, as much as he wanted to join the class in his silent way, he knew he couldn't- or, more like, he shouldn't. The class was too pure, and in the middle of the happy chaos was that girl. Purer than the rest. Brighter than anyone else.
Mikan deserved someone like Ruka, or even Iinchou. She shouldn't be dirtied by people like Persona, like the elementary school principal, like...
Like him.
"Natsume!" called out Mikan. She was smiling that bright smile of hers, the one he didn't deserve- the one that made his heart speed up when clearly it shouldn't.
He shouldn't even be looking at her like this, his heart a little lighter. He didn't deserve this kind of treatment. And besides, he should look away with a "tch," but his eyes refused to. Sometimes, it was like his eyes were conspiring against him, making him notice all these little things about certain people. Especially Mikan.
"Natsume," Mikan said again, a little softer, a little happier, and Natsume foolishly continued to listen. "You wanna join us at the forest after class today?"
He saw out of the corner of his eye that Ruka was glancing at him, that Hotaru had stopped making adjustments to her machine to listen, that the pervert sensei Narumi had tuned in to the conversation, but a part of his heart still refused to look away from Mikan's smiling eyes.
Curse those eyes.
"As if I would," he muttered, loud enough for her to hear, for Hotaru to start her work again, for Narumi to look away.
Disaster averted.
Mikan pouted. "Aw, c'mon Natsume, I invite you every single day, can't you say yes just once?"
"What's in it for me?"
"A very fun time with your fellow classmates and friends!"
"Anything else?"
She sputtered a bit indignantly, as if she couldn't believe that wasn't enough. "Natsume!" she exclaimed, flushing a bit with anger. "I can't believe that isn't enough for you! Fine then, if you come, I'll give you, um, five rabbits!"
This made Ruka, who was still glancing at the two of them, stifle a chuckle. What was five rabbits to a special star, a principle student like him, he who got three hundred rabbits a month?
"Ruka-pyon, don't laugh! That's my whole fortune right there!"
Ruka maintained his poker face, but the rest of the class laughed at her.
"Guys," she whined, "I'm trying to convince Natsume here, be quiet! Anyways, um, I can give you a shoulder massage?"
"As if."
"A foot massage!"
"Do I look crazy to you?"
"I'll iron your shirts!"
"You'll burn them."
"Hey, how'd you know- never mind that! I'll do your homework!"
"Give up, polka." By now the whole class was immersed into their conversation. It was a good show they put on, really. Hotaru was selling some popcorn on the side, one rabbit for a handful.
"Humph! Then what will it take for you to come join the rest of us, huh?" Mikan huffed.
"Nothing." Duh.
Then she started giggling. Creepy. Natsume glared at her a good while, suspicious of what was going on in her head. After a few moments, she literally started cackling like a villain or something, and then she gleefully threw him a triumphant glance before taking Hotaru and Iinchou away into a corner to whisper what was probably a devious plan to get him out there. The class dispersed.
His eyes slid from their corner back to his page in his manga, but his mind refused to budge from that girl. He knew Ruka wanted him to become good friends with all the people in the class, but they didn't know how much he'd done.
For all that Natsume was, the thing he was most afraid of was hurting his friends. His loved ones. He couldn't chance dirtying them with his soiled thoughts and his blackened heart. The deeds that he'd done, the crimes that he'd committed- he wasn't selfish enough to force those innocent people into the darkness he now resided in.
"Triumph!" Mikan suddenly yelled, bringing him out of his mood.
It was just like her to yell out like a soldier at a time like this, he thought to himself. He felt a smile tug at his heart despite his outward frown.
If he was in the darkness, absolute, choking darkness, then, he thought, Mikan lived in the light.
(Perhaps that's why he was almost afraid of touching her.)
She was the representation of everything he wasn't. She was pure. She didn't know the harshness of reality, the sadness of the world, the torments of life. She was, in a way, a light: a light that darkness should not contaminate.
A light that he should not contaminate, and a light he cannot reach anyhow, regardless of how much he stretches himself towards her.
While Mikan was busily proclaiming supposedly the upcoming victory against him, he strengthened his resolve to quell all the wants of his heart and the smiles that threatened him, and let Mikan keep all of her heart.
It was for the best.
Natsume stood up. "Let's go, Ruka," he said shortly, and the two of them walked right out, amidst the sputters of that girl and the protests of Iinchou.
Soon after, when class ended, while Ruka was on a slight detour to check up on his animal friends, Natsume found himself at the edge of the sakura tree, ready to take a brief nap and then have some good manga reading time.
Drifting, drifting, off to sleep, Piyo-chan singing in the woods...
"Natsume!" hollered a girl from the nice far distance of three (yes, THREE) inches away from him. His eyes snapped open, anger stirring inside him, and he glared at (who else?) Mikan.
Trust that girl to ruin a good nap for him.
"Geez, Natsume," she complained, completely ignoring the glare and the fact that she'd literally screamed a few inches away from him. "I've been calling you for five minutes now, and you haven't replied until now! Can you please stop ignoring me?"
He made no reply. Wasn't he the one that had been wronged? She'd disturbed him first!
"Why are you so dark all the time?" she asked, plopping down next to him, still totally ignoring the evident anger that was brimming right under her nose. "How come you don't join the rest of us? I know already that you really like it when you're together with all the class, you know. It's kind of obvious," she half-whispered.
Was Mikan really saying that something was obvious? The world was going crazy.
"C'mon," she prodded after a while. Natsume had stayed silent, his arms behind his head against the tree. "Tell me something, at least. I'm not going to leave until you do."
He wouldn't get any peace and quiet until then, either. Fine.
"Too noisy and annoying," he said.
"True," Mikan shot back, "but you're even more annoying. At least saying too much is better than saying too little."
"False. Saying too much is dangerous in any situation."
"False. Not when you're talking with your friends."
"False. If your friends turn out to stab you in the back, you shouldn't say too much.
"True, but I trust my friends! But... Hey, since when did we start playing true or false?"
He hadn't even known that was real game.
Mikan thought carefully, then asked, "Wait, is that even a game people play?"
So it wasn't a game after all.
"But anyways, with you, you're always thinking by yourself, not even speaking out your thoughts, and you only insult everyone. Can't you, I don't know, talk some more?
He stayed silent for a while, then said, "You speak too much."
"Well, you speak too little!"
"I say what I need to."
"Actually, I'd say that you say what you want to say but never what you need to say. Did that even make sense?"
"I know myself better than you do."
"But we all know that you never say what's really important!"
"And what's that?"
"Things about yourself! How you're feeling! Your thoughts and theories and philosophies!"
"Whoa, philosophies? I didn't know you even knew that word."
"Ignoring that, all you do is tell us to scram or something!"
"You probably deserve it."
"Stop avoiding my questions! We want to know you better, Natsume, but you always hold us off."
Before Natsume could think, he fired off bitterly, "Maybe it's for your own good."
They fell into silence. There had been too much bitterness in his last statement for it to be taken as sarcasm, a hint of too much sadness to show that it might be more truth than lie.
Only Mikan, thought Natsume. Only Mikan can make me say these kind of things without meaning to.
After a little longer, Mikan stood up silently. She looked down at her feet for a moment then turned to look at Natsume to speak. She was probably going to spout some nonsense about how you should think about yourself first or something foolish and naive like that. He turned away.
"You know, Natsume," she said, "we're still your friends."
Natsume started- this wasn't what he was expecting.
"Even if the rest of the world hates you for what you did, or who you are, or whatever, we won't leave your side. And just so you know, we like having you with us. We like it when you're playing with us. It's more fun with you around."
He let his eyes wander back to Mikan's, who was now smiling that smile of hers that held his heart.
Curse that smile too.
"By the way, Natsume, you do know that darkness can never overcome light, right? It's light that chases away darkness, not the other way around."
Natsume's suspicious and blank stare turned into shock. Did she just- how did she- huh?
Mikan stretched towards the sky, turned halfway, and called out, "The whole class is waiting for you, so come, okay?"
And with that, she ran off, and Natsume kept staring. Where- what- how had she known what he was thinking?
Had Mikan suddenly developed a mind reading Alice?
As he was calculating the possibilities of such a thing happneing, a boy ran up from the other side of the hill, yelling that Mikan and her group had taken Ruka captive with some sort of blackmail, something about pictures, so he had to come to the forest to save him.
What was he, a knight in shining armor?
But as he dusted himself off and made his way towards his classmates, he felt something lessen. Some kind of burden, some kind of weight, whatever that was. It actually felt... good.
The closer he came to the edge of the forest, where the bunch of them were playing dodgeball (without the Alice ball, thank goodness), the more he felt the tiniest bit of hope enter his crushed heart, the littlest speck of light settling into place among the darkness.
And maybe, he thought- hoped, wished, desperately prayed for- he was risking everything, even his classmates' hearts, for this- maybe instead of his darkness contaminating them...
"Natsume! I knew you'd come!"
...their light would purify him.
[EXTRA]
"Ruka, you have to stop being defeated by their blackmailing."
"But Natsume, the pictures Imai has...! They're too awful for words!"
"I don't get it, Ruka-pyon!"
"Ack! When did you get here?"
"I think your pictures are quite nice! So cute!"
Click.
"I-Imai!"
"I think this picture of blushing "Ruka-pyon" will sell for a nice penny or two."
"Natsume, help!"
[EXTRA FIN]
Hm, not one of my best works, but I couldn't get that analogy out of my head. I think it describes a lot of why Natsume does what he does, but I tried not to make it too angsty. It's a little weird, yeah, but then again, aren't I always? Speaking of which, these days I've so many ideas for Gakuen Alice... and besides, what in the world are their ship names?! How come there aren't any prominent nice ones in this fandom?
Hope you enjoyed!