Ashy-note I wanted to try something different and as of now inspiration just took my brain by storm and it hasn't stopped yet, so… yeah. I don't know about you guys, but this one's weird… I know that Persona and Nobara aren't exactly a couple, but I like their pairing nonetheless. I sometimes think they're just like Natsume and Mikan, only with deliberate differences that are really just so minor.

Enjoy? Or kill me? Whichever you would like. I won't be putting any post-scripts, so I'll say it now: don't forget the all-important critique—REVIEW, please.

Please and thank you. ^_^

Oh, and sorry for any OOC-ness. First time, y'know. (:

Dedicated to Elegance.

-/-

A Lighter Shade of Black
Prose Vanity

"I love you."

He turned his eyes away, afraid to look into the stormy gray ones that pleaded before him. She shifted a little, shy as she was, and tried to stand her ground, but failed—as always.

The eerie standstill that they had come to did nothing to soothe both their raging nerves.

He sighed and for a while they just stood there, measuring each other as if in a duel, staring and watching the other's every move, studying closely. Slowly he raised his hand and removed the accursed white mask from his face then turned to look back at her. He dropped the mask to the ground and watched as the girl turned a bright shade of cherry upon sight of his real face. A small twitch formed itself in the corners of his handsome but wearied face.

"What makes you think I care if you love me or not?" said he in his stone-cold voice. He lifted a finger and brushed it across her blushing cheeks. The touch made him feel jumpy and warm, something he had never gotten over ever since.

Then he stopped and pulled away his hand, brows creased in vexation at the lousy—but somehow heart-tugging—sight.

She was crying. Fat tears oozed out of the sides of her dreary gray orbs and leaped sorrowfully over her cheeks down to her arms which held on tightly to his coat. She shook him, but frailly, weakly. He didn't even feel much at all.

She was struggling with her words when she spoke again. "I know. I know you don't care, but I thought that at least… I should let you know…"

He gave a small, cynical laugh that completely surprised her. "I was hoping you would take me more seriously," she mumbled in between hiccups and sobs.

He laughed slightly. Not his usual sardonic chuckle, but his lighter, more humane snicker.

"I'm not like Natsume, Nobara," he said pitilessly, the light of mirth deserting his eyes as quickly as it came. He stared at her dead on. "I don't ask for pity… I don't want love…"

He resumed stroking her fair cheeks… she would never know the effort it took to restrain the Alice within him that was just screaming for release, wanting to wrap her small, small body in thick, dense blackness until she all but shrivels up in Death's arms…

This is much more difficult than I used to recall, he thought softly, feeling something close to ecstasy at the feeling of her soft skin beneath his touch. He rejoiced at the sheer fact that she never did move away from his strokes. It felt nice to him that for once, someone didn't fear him the way others did—that for once, someone feared for him.

He felt his Alice give one huge throb that spiked through his heart—he'd been holding out on its desires for too long, the power within him was squirming for freedom ad the feeling of killing.

No, he thought to himself as he still fought off the feeling. You will not hurt her. You will never.

He opened his dark eyes and looked at the Princess in front of him.

Nobara…

She closed her eyes to the sensation that his touch gave her. She wanted him to understand—why couldn't he understand? Natsume understood Mikan, Rui and Hayate and Tono understood Mikan, and even Hajime knew, but him?

Persona, she thought brokenly. Rei…

She heard him sigh and his breath caressed her face as he spoke her name, a fluttery sound amidst the cold winter wind the swirled around them effortlessly… She cherished the sound and drew strength from it, the kind that never gets exhausted…

Mikan's words echoed in her head and the conversation from a long time ago replayed itself in her head. Scenes of snow, sakura petals, and a happy brunette crossed her mind's eye.

He's just like my Natsume, you know? Only older, and much, much more complicated. Then she recalled how Mikan's doe eyes looked at her with a heartwarming smile on her face, uttering words that she took to heart.

Free him, Nobara-chan. Rei-san doesn't need to be so alone. You can do it.

She cried at the memory and cradled Persona's hand to her face. He pressed harder on her skin, as if torn between wanting the feeling and yet wanting it away…

She opened her eyes and saw that snow had begun to fall. Persona's face was inches from hers, a small sad smile on his face.

She took his face in her hands and touched her forehead against his.

Why did it have to feel so right and yet so dismally wrong at the same time?

Persona all but crushed her face in his grip, but still he fought against the wanting need of his Alice to kill. It was taking all of his strength.

Can't you see? He thought sadly.

"I am no weakling, Nobara," he bit out frostily, the same demonic voice slowly making its way back to his system. He fought it off but his force was wearing out. If he fought any longer he'll break. Slowly he felt his hands twist themselves in her hair.

He breathed out to the cold surroundings and watched as his breath twisted and turned gracefully in the air. Involuntarily his hold on her silvery locks began tightening and he watched as she winced in pain. Sharply he pulled on them — she gasped in pain — and turned her head to face him.

He saw pain and loneliness in her eyes, but he never saw a tinge of regret of fear.

The monster in his chest was rising, overcoming him.

"Don't you fear me, love?" He whispered to her, his voice venomous again; he felt his Alice rise in his throat like bile, but he fought it off still. "Because you should. I'm a monster. I could kill you in an instant. Just a flick of the eye and the Ice Princess will be gone."

His strength was forcing him to bend her head back, so far back that any more and he'll snap her neck and kill her—but his heart… It was telling him something else.

It struck him as odd that he felt his heart. Hadn't he lost that part of his humanity a long time ago?

She fixed her warm gray gaze on him, defiantly and said, "I don't fear the man I love."

And it was like magic.

For a moment his hold loosened and the power that clambered out of him slowly dwindled to something small and insignificant. The beast in him lowered its head, and like a lion tamed, he felt it purring quietly in his heaving chest, benevolently, as if her words had somehow forced it back. He realized that his raging conflicts suddenly died down, and quickly he removed his hands from her hair, flexing the fingers, wondering if something had gone wrong with his muscles and bones.

A new feeling arose in his chest, this time it was warmer, much more foreign… and infinitely stronger than his Alice.

He chanced a glance at Nobara, whose face was flushed and whose eyes still retained the same indignant expression.

Without hesitation, and he had no idea how it happened either, he closed the small distance between them and held her face tenderly, almost as if he was so used to doing it, and he stared into her eyes, eyes that reflected the snow that spun jovially around both of them… It felt as if he had become such a different person, as if something had yanked him out of the black abyss he'd been to just a while ago…

And when he kissed her chastely, tasted her immaculate innocence moving between his tainted lips…

When he let his emotions take over and let his head feel all woozy…

When he abandoned all reason and sense and logic and all forms of earthly understanding, forgetting that he was much, much older and much, much darker…

When he felt her warmth, her icy kind of warmth, envelope both their bodies in a sudden instant…

When he felt her sigh against his very skin, a sound that jolted and jerked his insides, a sound that shocked his heart back into existence…

—It all clicked into place.

It was then that he realized that she understood him better than anyone else.

After all, gray was a lighter shade of black.