EXODUS

Chapter Thirteen: The Characters We Play

A/N: I know…you all want to kill me…yes…yes…I understand completely…dodging kunai's and knives. Yes, I deserve to be punished for making you all wait for so long…running for my life from the mob that chases me

He felt weak.

Cold sweat plastered his raven hair on his forehead, covering the rest of his face that hadn't disappear behind his folded hands as he leaned against the bathtub. His breath was still ragged and to his frustration, his hands shook.

His expression twisted in disgust at his reflection.

After a bout of dry heaving, he had crawled to the bathtub to wash the acrid taste out of his mouth, but there it still remained and he had a niggling suspicion that it will linger for an uncomfortable length of time.

Oh, if they could see me now.

He thought that he couldn't feel any worse but his stomach did a slow turn and his aching limbs tensed when he heard someone open the bathroom door. His lungs clenched painfully as he came to the realization that it can only be her.

Why is she still here?

The sound of her steps was enough to breach the fortress of silence that he hid behind and once again he was reminded of what caused his current distress.

It was unbelievable that a package so harmless can carry something so dangerous within.

Oh, if they only knew.

Natsume resisted the urge to look at her and remain where he was. He tried to be as silent as he could, as unmoving as he knew he could, maybe if he could do that he would also be untouched by the rage of emotions that were starting to fight their way into his blissful numbness.

It had always been like this even from the very start.

Everytime.

It was impossible for him not to feel whenever she was near. Even from the very start, Sakura Mikan can make him miserable or happy or something in between simply by her existence alone.

But no more.

No more, he demanded. He gathered his fingers into fists when his conviction echoed its way into his hollow heart.

Something flash at the corner of his eyes and reflex made him shift his eyes towards it. Bitterness threatened to swallow him when he identified the flash came from a glass of water that she was holding out to him.

What the fuck is she…?

Strength came back into his limbs as anger seared and suffocated him at the sight of it. It wasn't the gesture that had him steamed, it was the silent look on her face that finally pushed him over the edge. His voice was brittle and hoarse, it hurt, but he welcomed it. "I thought I told you to go."

He saw the way her fingertips tighten around the glass but she pushed on. "And I said I will. After."

She flinched when he raised heated eyes towards her face and the dark satisfaction it gave Natsume showed in the ironic twist of his lips. It was childish, immature, something he knew he wouldn't hesitate to do a couple of years ago but damn, it felt so good.

The sound of broken glass echoed in the acoustics of the bathroom as it scattered all around the floor, and he saw the way Mikan's eyes followed the spinning pieces across the marble floor, her hand still suspended in the air, even after he managed to raise himself up and passed by her.

His instincts were slow, it always was when it came to her, so he only managed to twist halfway when she did a full body tackle and pinned him to the ground.

He cursed vehemently as his aches and pains made clear that sudden moves like that was not welcomed, a lump at the back of his head where he hit it on the ground joined his others injuries. He opened his eyes to the sound of harsh breathing and the feeling of warm hands on his shoulders.

"You are not going to do this again, you hear me? I won't have it!"

Natsume met fierce amber eyes that drilled onto his. Their position was vaguely familiar and he remembered that she was also yelling at him back then.

She won't have it? He bared his teeth at her. "Get the fuck off me."

She bared her teeth right back at him. "Not until you hear me out."

He kept his hands fisted at his side, afraid of what he'd do if he actually touched her. His voice lowered dangerously, showing her that he meant every word. "Move or I will make you move."

She leaned down closer to him and narrowed her eyes. The stubbornness hardened her jaw and gave an unholy light in her eyes. "Go ahead and try."

He thought about it, oh, how he thought about it. He considered on what kind of maneuver he'd use, various scenarios flitted across his fevered brain. He was spoiling for a fight and she opened the field wide open for him but before he could do anything, Mikan shook his shoulders and he hissed as a stinging pain rippled across his muscles.

"I am not going to let you indulge in your bout of self hate, okay. You are going to stop it, right now!" The fed up tone in Mikan's voice rubbed at Natsume's pride. "Who the hell are you to tell me that?"

"Who the hell am I? I'm the one whose about to smack some sense into you."

He sneered at her and he could see she took it the way he wanted her to when flecks of gold came to the surface in Mikan's eyes. "You think you can?"

"Hell yeah!"

Natsume scoffed. "You really think you can take me?"

"Why not?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because I've got years of experience on you and all this time you've never even beaten me once."

Mikan's fierce look took on a cocky one. "Well, I'm not the one pinned to the floor now, am I?"

Natsume lifted an eyebrow as he observed the smirk on Mikan's face. "True, but then again, things change." He relaxed his shoulder and braced.

Mikan didn't even have a chance to blink before she found herself flat on her back. She let out a little growl when she realized that Natsume was already on his feet above her.

"Oh, no you don't." Mikan scissored her legs against Natsume's, messing up his balance but his superior reflex made him curl his upper body and he executed a flawless roll, he was back on his feet a second later in a low crouch. He dodged Mikan's kick that managed to barely graze his left shoulder and swept Mikan's feet from under her. She made a sound of frustration when once again she landed on her back but before Natsume could pin her, she thrust out both her legs and used the momentum to flip herself back on her feet. She gritted her teeth when Natsume appeared on her back and grasped her wrist in a painful angle.

She blew out a disgruntled breathe and tried to twist her hand but Natsume held fast."Don't move."

Natsume tightened his hold on her when she lowered herself, trying to get leverage but he pulled her up and closer. "I said don't move."

She wiggled in front of him, still trying to twist her arms away from his, her hair brushed against his face and her scent filled his nostrils. The sensation of her soft skin and hair against his naked chest was damn distracting.

Natsume snapped back at attention when he heard her stifled a cry of pain and before he knew it, he loosened his whole…and ended up on the floor…again. His throat thrummed with a growl of frustration that hitched when she appeared in his line of sight. It wasn't the look on her face that gnawed on his insides along with humiliation and anger, this time it was the way she slid up against him, the oblivious way she pressed herself against his chest and the result it got from his body.

He didn't want to feel that way.

He didn't want to respond to her nearness.

He didn't want her so close…so close and yet unreachable.

He glared at the victorious look on her face though anger was still there. "You cheated." He threw those words like an insult, referring to the way she oh, so slyly faked a cry of pain.

"You said it yourself, a win is still a win."

He never thought there would come a day when he'd feel irritated because she paid attention but he did, extremely. He narrowed his eyes at her. "If you put it that way."

Mikan didn't have a chance, she should've known really, this was Natsume beneath her, not Yuu or Ruka and Natsume never did have qualms about doing whatever it was that needed to be done. But even if she did, even if she could read his mine, she never would've guessed that Natsume would be that desperate…or as crass as to actually do it…but then again, this was Natsume underneath her.

Mikan stiffened when she felt his palm slipped under her shirt, slid along her ribs and rested lightly…a mere inch under her left breast.

"You wouldn't."

Natsume's blank face didn't tell her anything, he merely flicked his eyes towards the hand that was pressing slightly on his wind pipe, telling her without words to let him go…or else.

It was a stand off.

Hesitation was mirrored in her eyes, but she lifted her chin. "If you just list-eeep."

Mikan pull back sharply when Natsume's hand slid up and firmly palmed her bra covered breast, her hands across his breast. She stared at him in disbelief but he merely sat up with a bored look on his face though his movements were jerky and tense.

"That was low, even for you." She said spitefully.

His movements still just for a second before he lifted himself up. "A win is a win."

Temper, frustration, embarrassment and exasperation washed Mikan's dwindling and 'not much there to begin with' reason, he always did manage to push her buttons unlike anybody else. She knew it was a bad idea to provoke Natsume but damn it, she was sick of his attitude. Her searching hands found the thing she was looking for and she flung it at him.

Natsume found himself drenched from head to toe with freezing cold water, to add insult to injury, something also hit his back with a wet, full bodied sound that grated on his already frayed nerves. For a moment, he merely stood there and watched the now empty plastic bowl clattered on the ground but a second later, his anger reared its ugly head and he snapped towards her….but can only winced when a hand slapped at his shoulder.

"You are such an idiot! Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Why-?" She let a sound of exasperation and slapped at his shoulder again.

If it was somebody else, if it wasn't her, Natsume would've already bitten that person's head off but in his current mood, he would've fought her…if not for the hurt that slipped out of the anger. Confused of the reason since he was sure he had more reason to be angry and hurt, he took her little slaps on his chest even as she had him against a wall, his eyes glued to her face.

But he resisted when she grasped his shoulders and shook him. "Stop it."

He clenched both of her wrists and yelled at her to stop since to his shock, he was sure that Mikan was on the verge of being hysterical. "For Kami's sake, ojou. Be quiet! You want to wake the whole academy?"

All the anger and bitterness that Natsume felt vanished when Mikan slid down to her knees, her wrists still in Natsume's hold, her head down, her body language defeated. Her sadness and anxiety was a visible wave that pulsed in the air and Natsume was at lost to what caused it. He released her hands and joined her on the floor, watched as she clenched her hands into fist at her side, her face hidden underneath her long, long hair which was weird in itself.

She wasn't the type to hide her feelings whether it was sadness or anger.

"Mikan…"

She turned her head to the side, hiding her face in the shadows. It struck him that the gesture was more him than her but he shrugged the thought away and tentatively reached for her hand. When she shifted away, the sharp pang in his heart reminded him of her words before, the words that to his disbelief, he'd forgotten at the midst of their fight. But the hurt, anger and bitterness gave way to weariness. He already went through too many fights, too many struggles that he didn't want to taint what's left of their..connection so he leaned away from her with his back against the wall.

Bone tired, he finally understood why they called it that as his weariness changed into surrender.

"If you hate me so much that being with me brings you to tears…then why don't you just go?"

"It wasn't-"

At her protest, Natsume shifted his eyes to her but again, she turned away. And that hurt more than it should have.

"It's okay for you to hate me or be afraid of me. That's normal. You don't have to feel guilty about it." He glanced away so she couldn't see how hard it was for him to maintain his expression. "I'm used to it anyway."

"That's just it." The words burst out of her as if she could no longer contain it. "That's just it, Natsume."

Her voice throbbed with emotion and, his stomached dropped, with tears. Slowly, so slowly he turned and met her big, mournful eyes.

Pain, gut wrenching sorrow and a bitter kind of helplessness was mirrored back at him.

"You're not supposed to be used to it!" She brought her clenched fist to her tear drenched eyes. "Why can't you just trust me?"

Natsume shook out of his confusion and stared at her. "What are you talking about? Of course I trust you."

Her eyes zoomed onto his face. "Oh? Then how come when I told you that I hate you and that you disgust me you didn't fight it? Why did you just accept it like that?"

Shock turned into confusion again.

"If you trust me, you wouldn't have pushed me away. If you trust me, you should've known that I was lying when I said that."

The first one, he could understand, it was the second one that got him lost. Wasn't it because he trusted her, he took her words as truth rather than a lie?

But the sheer illogical argument gave him hope. "So you don't hate me?"

"Of course not, you idiot!"

Relief, huge and overwhelming washed over him but experience made him cautious. "Then why did you say it?"

Accusing eyes met his. "Isn't that what you wanted? What you expected?"

Natsume closed his mouth, speechless.

His silence told her she was right and once again she hit his shoulder, this time with a closed fist in sheer exasperation. "Why do you always do that? How can you think that?"

"We love you. We trust you. We look up at you. Why can't you believe it?"

Hurt swirled inside of amber, brighten by tears, darkened by emotions. "We're your friends, we stayed beside you, we hurt when you hurt, we smile when you smile but you always, always doubt us, question our loyalty, our feelings."

"I never-"

"What? You never what?" She lashed out at him. "We are not stupid, Natsume. I am not stupid. Maybe I am naïve compared to you, and I am, sometimes, oblivious but I am not stupid. You think I don't see the way you look at me with careful eyes, as if I'll betray you or think the worse of you every time you come back from a mission? I try to be patient and I try to understand and I try to make it clear to you that I care. We all do."

"But you don't feel it, don't you? All the things that we do…it's not enough, isn't it?" Numbed, Natsume merely stared as a tear trickled down her cheek. Lonely, unbelievably sad.

"I'm not enough, am I?"

Heart sick, Natsume could only do one thing and it was fortunate that it was the one thing he'd wanted to do ever since he saw her in his room, alone in the dark, waiting for him.

He dragged her into his arms, held her like she was the one thing that he wanted in this whole wide world and felt something distant inside himself, unfurl and opened up. Her anguished sobs echoed around them and twisted Natsume's stomach.

He was good with words, he could use them to lie, to intimidate, to twist the truth and use it to his advantage but none of those skills are useful now because he never learn to use words to comfort, to tell little white lies or say sweet things.

He pulled her closer as if he could meld their bodies together while he willed the hurt, the pain away from her. He held her tight, pressed his cheek against her wet one, combed his fingers through her hair with broad, gentle strokes and whispered her name over and over again as if it was a prayer. And it was in a way because her whispered name carried the weight of his feelings. It weaved in and out of the letters and was filled to the brim with affection and love, more than he'd know what to do with.

There, in her name was his heart laid bare.

It said that she is not only enough.

She is more.

She is all.

She is everything.

And though Mikan didn't hear the words that he desperately wanted to be able to say, she felt it in his gentleness, she felt his love and his regret in hurting her, so she clung to him, equally desperate, and let him comfort her because she knew him well enough to know that he needed it.

She knew for them to be okay again, he needed to make it right, needed to fix what he did wrong.

So she let him hold her while she hold him back.