A/N: Longer note at the end.
Where The Light Enters
"Tangible"
Pain is a tangible thing.
At first it seems invisible, intangible.
Insidious, even.
After all, something that can devastate one person can faze the next one not at all.
But bruises fade, cuts heal.
Yet the pain can still remain.
For some it is a quiet companion. For others it is a mountain they either carry or climb.
But in all her life, Mai thought that mainly, pain was simply the shape of absence.
The absence of a pulled tooth, no matter how rotten, still hurts.
The absence of your father at your wedding day.
The place where something precious should be and wasn't.
The absence of the person your had accepted as your own, personal forever.
That was a big one.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0–0-0-0
Mai blinked awake slowly. Light filtered through the hotel's room's drapes, falling softly across the bed and the boy beside her in it.
She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.
Between half the team being in the hospital, dealing with the police and dodging the press, she'd barely spoken two words to him since her attack.
At first he'd been unconscious. Then, Lin had pleaded with her not to risk upsetting him.
She'd only been released the day before. Naru was supposed to have stayed another night, so how was he here?
"Naru?" She said softly, staring up at him.
There was a stillness about him.
He looked tired, and the book he stared at unseeingly was grasped in hands bruised and scabbed. He'd beaten Kurosawa so badly he'd had a hairline fracture in one hand.
If Kurosawa hadn't been in the process of trying to murder Mai, Naru himself might be in jail at this moment. As it was, she suspected a number of people on the team had called in favors.
"I was worried about nightmares." He said tonelessly, and she frowned, sitting up slowly.
There was a sinking feeling in her stomach.
"There were no real ghosts on this case." She said softly, staring at him, willing him to meet her eyes, but he stared stubbornly down at his book.
There was a weighted pause.
"I wasn't talking about you." He said lowly.
Her breath caught, because there was pain and regret in his voice.
And those were the worst kind, she knew. Of all the nightmares she'd ever had, the ones where she lost someone she loved were the worst.
But more than that... there was an edge of something in his voice...
Something she didn't want to hear.
She leaned forward suddenly, sure that if she could just touch her lips to his this frightened spiraling in her chest would go away.
His hand caught her shoulder, stopping her just inches away.
"I nearly killed a man." The words dripped with self loathing. "I nearly got you and Masako killed. I lost control of my powers and nearly died."
She stared at him, already knowing what he was going to say.
But damn it, she wasn't going to make it easier on him.
"We can't do this." The finality in his voice made something in her want to scream.
"How dare you." Her voice was shaking with anger. "You started this. You started all this. You came after me. You always come after me. You kissed me!"
"I know." He answered.
She wanted to shake him until his calm demeanor fractured, the way she was fracturing right in front of him.
So she said it.
"You love me."
And she finally accepted that he did. It wasn't about his brother. It wasn't about their abilities.
It was just about them.
"I know." His face was blank, his eyes unreadable as he finally met hers.
Mai felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach.
How do you do that?
How do you walk away from someone you love?
"Then why?" She whispered.
"Because you're all I can think about, and I can't live like that. I can't take those kinds of risks. I can't afford to lose control. People could die, Mai. People nearly did die. I want you too much. I'd die for you, and that's fine. But I nearly killed for you. Not because I chose to, but because I lost control. You make me lose control." The words poured out of him like poison.
"You're just scared." She said, shaking her head.
It was okay, she was scared too...
"And then next time?" His words were bullets, designed to hurt. "If I flip over a car, or fracture a gas line? If I kill someone's child?"
She caught her breath, shaking her head as tears fell down her cheeks. "You won't."
She knew he wouldn't. He just needed time...
"I nearly set my own mother on fire twice, Mai. I nearly electrocuted Gene when we were younger. My control is the only thing that that stops my powers from destroying everything around me."
He looked at her, his eyes shuttered.
"Because there is a monster inside of me. A monster I've fought my whole life to control." For the barest second, she thought she saw grief in his eyes.
"And you're the thing the monster loves the most."
He meant it. The whole time he'd been lying in his hospital bed, while she'd been thinking of being with him, he'd been planning this moment.
"People like me can't afford to fall in love."
She could see his absolute conviction.
He truly believed loving her would destroy him.
Worse, that she would make him destroy others.
And she could see his pain.
He didn't want this. But he'd decided, somewhere between "please" and "we can't do this", that this was the only alternative.
And she understood just what was at stake.
Lin had warned her over and over again.
Naru had the power of a god, carried on the shoulders of a twenty-two year old boy.
He had a right to be terrified. He had a right to question and fear and doubt.
And maybe he was right.
Maybe they were simply too dangerous.
Her shaking stopped.
But he'd never had the right to decide all this himself.
"Get out." Her voice sounded strange even to her own ears.
Something in it must have alarmed him also, because he looked at her closer.
"Mai-"
"Get. Out."
Oh.
That was power she was hearing. She'd never heard her own power trickle through her voice before.
Despite all his fears, she thought perhaps she was the monster.
Because she wanted to slam and scream and break things.
"I love you." She didn't say it because he deserved to hear it. She said it because she deserved to say it.
He watched her for a moment before he stood gracefully, walking towards the door.
"You know..." She said conversationally.
He paused.
As if they were discussing the weather. As if they were talking about sports.
As if hadn't just plunged his fist into her chest, leaving nothing but a gaping hole to mark his passing.
"That thing you call a monster? Most people just call it a heart. I don't make you monstrous. I make you human."
He looked over his shoulder at her, just for a moment.
She swore she could hear it, the exact moment her heart broke into a million unrecognizable pieces.
"I don't get to be human."
Watching him go, she thought perhaps she could hear his heart break too.
A/N: Cue the hate mail! Fear not, we have one last case to go! I know how frustrating it is, but every time I tried to think about Naru, and what he would do...
Guys, I think he would panic. I think he would pull back. His control literally keeps his life together, and anyone, even Mai having that much power over him, I genuinely believe would end like this. Plus, he's only twenty one. He's new to love. He sucks at emotions. And he's literally a psychic nuclear bomb.
So yes. That just happened.
But on the plus side...
Now they're fighting. And it occurred to me that since this whole story has been about character development as opposed to ghosts, that I have yet to write one truly, drag out knock down creep as f* case.
Since I literally grew up reading Stephen King, that simply won't do.
Plus, Mai has a little baggage of her own to hash out.
She's been so set on taking care of everyone else around her.
So I asked myself, what would be so bad it could pull these two back together, finally get Mai to talk about her own back story, and let all my favorite SPR characters get to kick some ass before the story concludes?
I mean, at this point, it would probably take an army.
An army of ghosts...
A whole army of creepy dead children ghosts...
Hehehehehehe...