No, I don't own Gakuen Alice.

I'd never been in the hospital before, and I hoped that I'd never have to go back. The food, as I'd heard, was awful, and I often begged Hotaru to smuggle me food from home. I'd been lying in the same bed for four days. Today was my last day.

Ruka came in around ten thirty that morning. "Hey, superstar!" he said in a tone that made me smile. "Are you excited to get out?"

Hotaru stood upon his entrance and planted a kiss on his cheek. I didn't ask.

"Yeah," I said, stretching my ever-aching arms into the air. "What's the scoop on my next race?"

He grinned. "Natsume managed to bribe them to postpone it until you're fit to run. Don't bother asking me what he said. I don't have a clue."

I suppressed a flinch at the mention of Natsume. I hadn't seen him since the night he'd come to rescue me. I hadn't taken the time to ask why he hadn't come around, too terrified to hear the answer.

At night, his words from that night replayed endlessly in the back of my mind. Good. How are you going to make it work, Polka? I honestly didn't have a clue what he was trying to hint to me. I'd told him that I loved him, and he'd said that. What was that supposed to mean?

"And here I was hoping I'd get out of it," I said with a laugh.

Hotaru sat back down in the chair that had been at my bedside since my arrival here, either occupied by her or my mom, who was at work today and wouldn't be around to visit. "Nice try, idiot. You're finishing this."

I sighed. "Sure, sure."

Ruka perched himself on the wooden arm of the uncomfortable chair. "You'll never guess what's going on with the wedding."

I frowned. They hadn't spoken about the wedding at all since I'd been here, and they barely spoke about Natsume.

Hotaru shot him a sharp glare, but he waved it off. "It's about time someone updated her on the life of celebrities." He turned back to me, his blue eyes bright. "Luna's been trying to put it off."

I tried to keep my mouth from dropping open, unsuccessfully. "What?"

"We have no idea why. The media is asking all sorts of questions, but she won't give them answers, and Natsume claims he knows nothing about it. But the thing is, their parents won't allow it. They're set on having that wedding to bind their companies in three days."

I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Well, that screws things up nicely."

Both Hotaru and Ruka raised their eyebrows.

"Never mind," I said flatly. I didn't want to have to explain anything to Ruka.

Truth be told, I wanted the wedding over and done with so that I could stop being so confused. I had no doubts that I would be overly upset about the whole thing, having let a great opportunity to be happy just slip through my fingers, but there were some things that I just couldn't stop.

"That's why Natsume hasn't visited," Ruka went on, snapping me out of my thoughts. "His dad won't let him. Believe me, he's tried to visit, and I think he's managed to get away a couple of times, but only at night when you've been sleeping."

My heart skipped a beat. That was just maddeningly unhelpful. I'd been trying to get him out of my head since I'd arrived here, knowing very well that there was very little that I could do to change what was going to happen. Way to ruin it, Ruka.

"Why don't you go get her something to drink?" Hotaru suggested in a cold voice. "She looks parched."

She had already brought me a full bottle of water. I was far from thirsty, but I could tell that she wanted to talk to me alone.

"Sure." He left the room.

I turned to meet Hotaru's violet gaze. "Yes?"

"I'll pick you up from your house tonight. Or I guess it's not really a house." She paused. "You and I have to talk about that, by the way."

I rolled my eyes. "Later. Where are we going?"

"I'll drive you to Natsume's mansion, and I'll tell you how to get to his room, but then you're on your own. You need to get things sorted out with him before the wedding."

Heat rushed to my cheeks and I had to look away. "Don't be ridiculous, Hotaru. He's my coach."

She snorted. "Haven't we been over this already? You're so obvious, Mikan. I know you're probably too naïve to realize that you actually do love him, but it's plain to the rest of us."

I looked down at my hands, folded together on my lap on top of the bland sheets. "No, I realize it. I don't really remember very well, but I think I told him I loved him just after he came into the van the other night. I'm trying to ignore it."

"You can't deny love, Mikan," she said fiercely. One of the few times I could hear emotion in her voice. "Since when do you give up on something just because the odds aren't in your favor? You have to stop the wedding, Mikan. You have to stop him from ruining his life, and from ruining yours."

Before I had a chance to reply, Ruka walked back in with a bottle of water in his hand. "Did I miss anything?"

It felt so good to be able to walk outside without worrying about walking back to the hospital. On top of that, my ankle felt amazing. There was no trace of a limp in my stride, and though my arms were still sore and my wrists burned from where the ropes had sawed through my skin, I felt like I could run a marathon.

My mom was still at work, so Hotaru and Ruka took me out for lunch, where I ate an amazing meal of steak and mashed potatoes. This was probably violating my diet, but Natsume wasn't around to nag on me.

Of course he wasn't around. He was with Luna.

No, he didn't love her. He couldn't, because he'd been giving me indirect hints that he wanted me to stop the wedding.

But how?

Ugh. Life was just too complicated.

Hotaru paid for lunch, and then she and Ruka bid each other goodbye. I got in Hotaru's car with her, and she announced that me and my mom would be sleeping at her apartment. I wasn't sure when she'd found time to buy an apartment, and now that I think about it, I was sure she must have had to return to her studies.

I decided to ask about it. "I thought you were only staying here for a little while. You're moving back?"

She nodded, leading me to the elevator of her building. It was huge and expensive, as was expected from Hotaru. "I'm not going to leave you to deal with all of this rich and famous people drama alone."

My lips pulled up into a smile. "Thanks."

"And someone has to be around to get photos inside the life of trainers Ruka and Natsume and growing athlete Mikan Sakura."

I slapped her arm.

She smiled a ghostly smile.

I tried not to think about what she was making me do later that night. I was mostly worried that his room would end up being very, very high up and I'd fall and break my neck or something awful on my way up. But I was also terrified of what he would say to me.

What if he told me that he'd been playing me the whole time? What if he'd done it just to get me to keep running in his stupid races? What if the only reason he saved me from my kidnappers the two times I'd been kidnapped wasn't because he cared but actually was because I made him loads of money?

I tried to think of how badly that would hurt, of how much I would cry, but I gave up after a minute, because even thinking about it tore my heart in two.

Could he do that?

I thought of the way that he had kissed Luna on the high jump mat that day at the track, and the way he had kissed me at the cabin before, and I knew that he probably could.

"This is my room, you obey my rules, and if you make a mess, I'll mess you up." Hotaru threw the door of her apartment open and stalked inside, barely giving me time to slip inside before slamming the door shut again. "You have five hours before I take you over to Natsume's house. Make the most of it."

I looked around the room in wonder. It was mostly open space, the only walls being the ones around bedrooms and bathrooms. The living room and the kitchen were just open space with blood red walls and hardwood floors. It was nice, and definitely newly made.

"I suggest a shower," Hotaru said, dropping her keys on the marble kitchen counter. "You smell like hospital."

I frowned and dropped my purse next to her keys. "Where's the bathroom?"

"Down the hall. You can use my shampoo, but you're cleaning your own hair out of the drain."

Rolling my eyes, I walked in the direction she pointed and flicked on the light switch in the room at the end of the hallway. The bathroom, as expected, was huge. The walls were the same red color as all the other walls, the floor was black tile, and everything was polished to a sparkle.

I wondered briefly how she got all of this money only from taking pictures.

I closed the door behind me and began to peel off the pajamas I'd been wearing since my mom had brought them to me when she'd gotten the call from Ruka saying that Natsume had found me and that I was in the hospital.

I'd had two showers at the hospital, but the shower there was gross and they didn't have decent hair products. I found that Hotaru had expensive stuff, though that was no surprise.

The hot water pounding from the showerhead felt like a water massage to me, except on my wrists where it stung so bad that I almost screamed. I was sure that the water pressure might have been painful if I hadn't been in a hospital for four days, but now, the pellets of water that shot out worked the knots out of my back and eased all of my muscles.

The only downside was that, now that I was relaxed for the first time in awhile, I had a chance to think about anything but how miserable I felt.

Natsume's face flashed through my head, and I pounded my palms against my forehead. I could not think about him, because if I did love him, and if he really was just playing me, then I had to make it easier for myself, so it wouldn't hurt as much when he told me.

My attempts to rid his face and voice from my thoughts were impossible. Every time I thought I had it, and I thought of something else, those thoughts would just bounce right back to my obnoxious, hotheaded trainer.

I scrubbed shampoo angrily into my scalp.

Being in love with a celebrity sucked.

I snatched the bar of soap from the edge of the tub. As soon as the water hit the bar, it slipped from my fingers.

I stared blankly at the soap sliding across the bottom of the bath with a growing sense of irony. I remembered my mom telling me a quote once.

Love is like a bar of soap; just when you think you've got it, it slips away.

I found myself laughing, sort of maniacally.

When I decided that I'd probably been in the shower for an hour, long enough for the skin on my fingers to shrivel like raisins, and when I was sure that staying without company much longer might make me insane, I climbed out of the hot water.

Hotaru had left a pile of clothes outside of the bathroom door. They all still had tags on them, and I felt my lips turn up into a smile.

The smile didn't go away until I saw what it was that she'd bought me.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror, clad in very short jean shorts that barely covered my butt and a yellow tank top that was a little too low-cut.

My eyes flickered to the pink bands around my wrists, and I felt the memories of the night flash back to me. I barely remembered details, but I could still clearly recall the pain I'd felt in my arms, the hole in my chest that I had when I'd thought of never telling Natsume that I loved him, or never saying goodbye to Hotaru, my mom, and Ruka.

Tears welled in my eyes. I blinked, and they escaped from my eyes and streamed down my cheeks.

Was that something anyone ever forgot? Would the memories fade with time?

Unlikely. That night was branded into my memory, almost as badly as my first kidnapping was. But the difference was that I hadn't been scared for myself at all the first time I'd been kidnapping.

I thought of the sound of Natsume's car crumpling under the impact of the white van, recalled as I flew through the windshield and over the broken mess of glass and metal…

I stepped out of the bathroom, shaking my head viciously. I couldn't think of that. I couldn't scare myself more.

Hotaru was on one of the white leather couches in the living room, eating something that looked like fish and watching some photography documentary on the flat screen TV.

I flopped down beside her and released a heavy sigh. "You're rich and famous. Why don't you ever get kidnapped?"

She gave me a skeptical glance. "One, people kidnap rich peoples' friends and family, not the rich people themselves. Two, a kidnapper wouldn't last ten minutes with me before they were dead."

There was a note of truth in that, which was frightening.

"Your mom will be coming over later tonight, after I take you to Natsume's," she said, turning her attention back to the television. "I'll pretend you're sleeping in your room."

I shrugged. "My mom won't mind if I'm at his house for a bit."

"If things go well, you will not be welcome back into my house tonight."

I gaped at her. "I'm seventeen! He's nineteen."

"It's only two years difference," she said, dismissive.

"I'm not sleeping with him!" I growled.

"We're not arguing about this."

"He's getting married!"

"Because he has to, not because he wants to." She stuffed a piece of fish in her mouth. "Besides, just because you sleep with him doesn't mean you have to have sex with him or anything, though I'm sure that's what you want."

I slapped her arm. "Don't even go there!"

She shrugged.

Rolling my eyes, I wrapped my arms around myself and sat back into the soft couch, careful not to rub my wrists against anything. Sleeping freely on a bed when I wasn't connected to tubes might result in me thrashing around. I would have to bandage my wrists tonight.

I sat on the couch for an hour with Hotaru, or until she warned me that I only had three hours left. I could have sworn she'd been counting the seconds in her head, because I didn't see her look at a clock.

I went to blow dry my hair and do my makeup before asking Hotaru where I would be sleeping so that I could go and lay down for a couple of hours.

The room was an average room, nothing special, except for the massive bed in the center of the room that had the comfiest mattress I'd ever dreamed of sleeping on. I was out cold in matter of minutes.

"Idiot, time to get up." Hotaru shook me awake.

I peeled my heavy eyelids open and saw that the time on the clock said that it was almost ten o'clock. A glance out the window told me it was dark out, and I understood that it needed to be dark to ensure that I didn't get caught sneaking around.

"Right, I'm coming, against my will." I climbed reluctantly out of bed and scrambled out of the door after her.

"You've really got to stop drooling," she told me as she slipped a pair of flats on. "Guys don't usually like girls that drool all over their pillows."

"I'm not sleeping with him!" I insisted, sliding my flip-flops onto my feet.

"Is that you being stubborn or are you saying you don't think it's going to go well?" She pocketed her keys, handed me my purse, and then opened the door.

"Both. How can it possibly go well? I'm sneaking into his bedroom. He's probably not even going to be there."

"Trust me, he'll be there."

"If he's fooling around with Luna when I get there, I'm going to do a dive off the roof, and I hope you'll be happy when I snap my neck and die." I folded my arms over my chest as I followed her down the hallway.

"Relax. He won't be with Luna."

"What makes you so sure?" I demanded, and then I paused. "Is he expecting me? God, Hotaru, if he's-"

"He's not expecting you, either," she said impatiently. "That wouldn't be fun at all."

"Of course this is all about fun to you," I grumbled as the elevator surged down. "You don't care how humiliating this is going to be for me."

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eyes. "It won't be humiliating." She sounded so sure that I almost believed her, but not quite. "I wouldn't do that to you."

I thought about it, and then said, "Yes you would."

She unlocked the passenger door of her car first, and I climbed in while she unlocked the drivers' side and climbed in. "You're right, I probably would, but not for something as serious as your future."

I stared at her in disbelief for a minute, and then turned to stare out the windshield, taking on the unhappy expression of a kid being force to go to church. She folded her arms across her chest again to add to the expression.

"Stop pouting," Hotaru scolded after a little while of driving in silence. "You'll thank me later."

"I doubt it," I replied dryly. "This can not turn out well."

"Why?"

Because I love him and I'm beginning to believe that he doesn't love me, I wanted to say, but I just shrugged indifferently and kept silent.

My heart started to beat oddly when Hotaru pulled into a gravel driveway lined with huge spruce trees that blocked my view of everything except what was behind us and what was in front of us.

"I can't believe I'm actually doing this," I grumbled.

It was dark outside, and Hotaru had to shut the headlights off so that no one in the house knew we were there. She stopped a great distance away from the lighted mansion at the end of the drive.

"On the left side of the house, there's a deck," Hotaru said hurriedly. "Climb up onto the railing and swing yourself up onto the overhang in the roof. It's not a far distance. Then you're going to need to climb up the wall on those crisscrossing wood things that I can't remember the name of right now, and-"

"Lattice?" I asked.

"Yes, lattice. Now shut up and let me finish. On the right side of that, there's another overhang, and Natsume's window is right there. Don't fall, and avoid all windows except for his."

I scowled and climbed out of the car, popping my head back in once I was out in the cool night air. "And if it doesn't go well?"

"You won't have to worry about it not going well. Have a good night." She reached across the passenger seat and slammed the door shut, giving barely enough time to pull my head back.

I stalked angrily up the driveway. Of course she was leaving me alone while I did this. If I got caught, she didn't want to be around. If I fell and died, she didn't want to be around. If Natsume hated the sight of me, she didn't want to be around when he tossed me out of his window.

As much as her and her silly ideas made me angry, I had to admit that I did want to sort things out with Natsume.

I followed her directions carefully, finding that it was actually very easy. I wondered how she knew, and then decided that she probably took this route to get pictures of Natsume for her job. You'd think that he would do something about it if he saw his sleeping picture in a magazine.

Climbing up the final stretch to his window was the worst, because my wrists kept brushing the wall and sending pain shooting through my hands. A few times I almost lost my grip and took a deadly tumble.

Now, I stood on the overhang next to Natsume's window. I wasn't in front of it yet, but standing off to the side taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart. All of my fears kept coming back to me, and it took everything I had in me not to climb back down the way I had come and hitchhike home.

I bit my lip, shook my head, and then dropped to my knees and crawled in front of the window.

Peering inside, I could see that the room was huge. There was a bed on the far wall, right next to the door that was slightly ajar, and it had to have been a king-size. It was neatly made, and I assumed that they had maids here. Just in front of the window, to the right there was a closet, to the left and computer desk with a Mac sitting on it, and that was all I could see. The walls blocked the rest of my view.

The light from the room came from a bedside lamp, and it was enough to tell me that there was no on inside.

I sat back on my heels, contemplating my next move. Before I had a chance to decide between jumping off the roof or taking the much safer, slower climb back down, the door inside the room swung open.

Seeing his face after four days brought the memories of when he'd come to rescue me flooding back. Tears sprang to my eyes when I recalled how much I hadn't wanted him to come and get me, because I didn't want him to get hurt.

He didn't see me at first. He looked exasperated as he closed his door behind him and then peeled off his shirt.

I tried not to stare. I'd seen his naked upper body before, but it was still as enthralling as the first time.

Sighing, I knocked on the window.

I would have been extremely happy if that had scared him, if he had jumped and spun around, his eyes wild with fear, but I hadn't been expecting it. He turned his gaze slowly to me, his face now blank, and when he saw me at his window, one perfect eyebrow arched.

I shrugged.

Tossing his shirt onto his bed, he strode across the room to the window. He stared at me for a second, as is making sure I was actually there, and then he slid the window open and popped the screen out into my hands.

"What are you doing here?" As he spoke, he held out his hands to help me inside.

I hopped carefully inside, handing him the screen while I recovered. "Hotaru didn't give me much of a choice. She claimed that we needed to sort things out, and I guess I kind of agree with her."

He shut the window and then turned around, so fast that I stumbled back. Before I could fall, he caught my elbows, holding my arms up in front of his face.

I realized he was looking at the grooves around my wrists. Looking at his face, behind the usual blankness, there was fierce regret.

I pulled my arms back, wanting to get rid of that look. "Those are nothing."

He scowled. "You were kidnapped and bound and gagged and you can honestly say it was nothing?"

As much as his obvious concern made my heart fly, I didn't like it. He was blaming himself.

"Well, I'm here now, aren't I?" I folded my arms across my chest. "You and I need to talk, right now. Let's start with my confession of love to you that night, and your nonsensical reply."

He smirked; that was more like him, and it made me want to smile. "What do you think I meant?"

"I don't know!" I exclaimed, though I kept my voice down in case someone heard. "Nothing you say or do makes sense. One minute I think you love me, the next I think you love Luna."

The smirk didn't falter. "I don't love Luna."

I stared at him, uncomprehending. Then, with a start, I realized that this was as close as he was going to get to admitting that he loved me.

"Why didn't you visit?" My voice was almost a whisper now.

"I wasn't allowed. My father thinks I spend too much time with you and not enough time with my fiancée."

"You're nineteen. He has no control over you."

"When I'm in his house, he does. And I'm not allowed out of his house until I'm married." He paused. "But I did visit you."

I raised my eyebrows, remembering what Ruka had told me.

"Just because you couldn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't there." His smirk grew. "You drool when you sleep."

I scowled. "So this relationship is pretty much impossible?"

His smirk disappeared. "No."

"Well, you're getting married soon, and your dad doesn't give you a free will, and there's nothing we can do about that."

He stepped closer to me, his hands coming to rest on my arms, just below my shoulders. "There is something you can do."

"Me?" It was hard to think with him so close, hard to think when I was resisting the urge to launch myself at him and never let go. "What am I supposed to do?"

"That's for you to know and for me to find out."

Then he kissed me, gentler than he had ever kissed me before, and tingles erupted throughout my entire body. It took everything in my power not to throw my arms around his neck.

Before I really had a chance to wrap my mind around the situation, I was on my back on his bed, and he was on top of me, still kissing me, and I had my fingers in his hair.

He pulled away for only a second, just to breathe. He was straddling my waist, on his knees. "You're not going home tonight."

"That's what Hotaru said," I agreed.

He brushed the side of my face with his hand, and then flopped down beside me, pulling me against him. "You need to sleep."

"Yes, I think you're right." I buried my face in the skin on his neck, breathing in the scent of him. "I'm not sleeping already, am I? This isn't a dream?"

I felt a sharp pain on my arm, and realized he had pinched me.

"Ouch," I mumbled.

"You're not dreaming."

I smiled absently, already feeling darkness pulling me under. "I love you."

I heard a mumbled reply, but couldn't imagine him echoing the same words back to me. That was just not like him. Still, my fingers dug into his bare chest as I let sleep have me.

And while I drifted, I planned.

That wedding would not happen, not over my dead body.

A/N: Ohmigosh. it's been a very long time, and i'm so very sorry for that. I had this huge, giant wall in my mind, also known as writer's block. This chapter was quite short. It's the second last chapter, so i'll try to make the last chapter much longer, but i don't know when i'm going to be able to start writing it. I still have one week left of school, which is mostly exams, and then I'm gone on vacation for a week, but i will TRY to get a chapter up when i get back. Anyway, i thank you all for your patience, and for all of the reviews! 333

xoxo
Ducky-san