Of Trapdoors

Summary: Natsume never liked Shakespeare. OneShot.

Warning: Intended humor ahead

Set: Story-unrelated, future-fic

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

It's a strange routine they develop.

Natsume, who refuses to give in, still takes missions although the DA-group has long been dissolved and the Elementary Principal exchanged. He doesn't use his Alice anymore, though. The last time he did so he almost was killed – by Mikan, who arrived just in time to see him cough up blood again. But there are missions he can fulfill without the use of his ability and he takes whatever he gets. Mostly, he returns tired and exhausted – but he returns.

Mikan, too, has certain tasks. Her mission is to find children with special Alices like hers: Alices that aren't obvious, that can only be found by someone like her who has a sixth sense for something like that. Nobody knows how and when her new ability has developed: It happened sometime in between the use of Shuichi Sakurano's Alice stone and the end of the Elementary Principal. And Mikan loves her new Alice because with it she's able to make children happy. Alice Academy has changed: parents are allowed to see their children; children are allowed to visit home during their holidays. All in all, life is much better now than it has ever been, and attending the Academy isn't a burden anymore. Not even for Natsume.

In this new Academy, students can take up different missions whenever they feel like it and their grades are good enough. There are missions like Mikan's, to find children with Alices. There are missions like Hotaru's, to develop new products and help the industry in marketing and sale. There are missions like Kitsuneme's, who helps the police and the army in whatever way possible – questioning suspects and finding victims and such. Luca sometimes is hired by veterinarians or farmers or animal shop owners. Natsume, who is of no use when it comes to normal missions, still has the difficult ones to take – spying on people and such. The skills developed under Persona and honed under the Elementary Principal help a lot there and despite his age he's one of the best agents the government has, still known under the name of Black Cat. Mikan hates his job but Natsume does it because he's good in it and because, that way, he can do something.

(Mikan loves people. She wants mankind to be happy. If this is what he can do to make mankind happy and, at the same time, to make her happy, he will do it gladly.)

Their routine develops right after the Elementary Principal had been defeated. What from then on happens on many nights is what they have done since they can remember.

Whenever Natsume or Mikan return from a mission, Natsume visits Mikan in her room.

They don't talk much.

Natsume doesn't talk much. But those meetings are something neither of them wants to miss. Sometimes, they fall asleep on Mikan's bed. Sometimes, Natsume watches as Mikan studies. It doesn't matter what they do because these meetings have one reason alone: None of them is able to stay alone for a long time anymore. Mikan has learned to fear loneliness in her weeks and months as a prisoner of the Elementary Principal. Natsume always was afraid of being alone. This is his way of making sure Mikan doesn't disappear again. It's her way of healing Natsume's heart.

By day, they still fight and bicker and argue more than anyone in the Academy.

By night, when they're alone, they don't talk much. There's no need to do so.

Natsume enters through Mikan's window. He's an idiot but it's probably better that way. If Narumi-sensei (or, even worse, Shiki-sensei) would see him enter Mikan's room he'd be dead meat (killed in several different, excruciatingly gruesome and painful ways). Since elementary school, her window is always left open a crack. He sneaks in almost soundlessly but she knows he's there. She can feel his presence. It's hot and burning and tinged black at the edges where his Alice is failing him and his body is losing strength. It's one of the reasons she wishes he'd take the door – it wouldn't cost him that much energy to simply walk through it, wouldn't it? But Natsume is nothing but stubborn. And keeping it that way means their meetings aren't something they do on purpose. On the contrary. They are chance meetings: a boy climbs through a window and meets a girl.

Surprise, surprise.

It was a sunny fall evening and the sun was slowly sinking in the west. The trees were beautifully golden and red and the nights might be colder but the days still were warm and glorious. Mikan loved fall. It had the same color mandarins had, the fruit that gave her her name. She also loved it because the fiery red of the trees was almost the color of Natsume's eyes, but she'd never tell him.

She was sitting at her desk, like so often. But instead of studying she was staring at nothing, her mind wandering. It had been seven years exactly since she had been freed from the Labyrinth in which she had been held captive by the Elementary Principal. Seven years since…

She pushed back the thoughts. She should go and see Hotaru, her friend had asked her to come over. But somehow she didn't feel like it tonight. Sighing, she laid her head on her desk and stared at the door.

A sound from the window made her look up.

It swung open quietly and Natsume slipped in, almost fell over her window sill and landed on the floor unceremoniously.

"Natsume!" Mikan was next to him in an instant and regarded him worriedly. "What happened? Are you alright?"

He had used his Alice. She could see it in the way his eyes burned even brighter and his face was pale as a ghost's.

"You should close your window," he panted.

"But…"

"There was someone lurking outside."

She fell quiet. She never had been popular with the Public, like Hotaru was, and since she had started to search out children with special abilities she had been received with outright hostility. It hurt but she knew from experience a child with Alice should at least attend Elementary School in Alice Academy.

"What did you do?" She almost yelled and ran to the window. The campus beyond it was empty. She glared at Natsume and repeated her initial question. "What did you do?"

"No need to shout at me," he answered coolly and got up from the ground to slunk down on her bed. "I didn't hurt him, just threatened him a bit. Man, that guy ran!"

"I don't care about spies," she told him. "I told you not to use your Alice."

"Yeah, yeah," he answered airily. The urge to strangle him was familiar. "Man, your room is high up," he added and leaned back, his head on his arms. "I always figured Juliet had a trapdoor. This is insane."

"What are you talking about?" Mikan demanded, creasing her brow. What was he talking about now? Was the use of his Alice driving him insane, too? "Who's Juliet and why is she supposed to have a trapdoor in her room?"

"Just forget it," Natsume mumbled, grabbed her hand and dragged her down onto the bed next to him. "Shakespeare was an idiot, anyway. I never could stand him."

Mikan huffed. He sounded plain normal, so he probably was making fun of her. And now he told her to shut up, as always.

"I hate when you do that."

"Whatever."

Natsume was tired. His eyes were already closed and his breath started to even out. The pale color of his skin slowly turned back to normal as she carefully used her Alice to block the effects of his. Protection. She smiled up at the ceiling, since he wasn't able to see her. It was so easy, keeping up pretenses. Of course she knew Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare was one of Shiki-sensei's favorites and therefore she had read it. So Natsume thought climbing up to the second floor was by far too time-consuming and surely Romeo had used a shortcut to reach Juliet's room instead of climbing up the balcony so often…

She knew commenting on the fact that Natsume obviously had read the classics would be futile. She played along, pretending not to know what he talked about.

The real implications of his words only hit her minutes later, when he already was asleep:

Romeo had loved Juliet.