Author's Note: I am so, so sorry for the uber-long time this fic was suspended in nothingness. I've been incredibly busy (excuses, excuses) and didn't know what next to write. Anyway, I just wrote an extremely short chapter... but the more you review, the more eager I will be to update!

Chapter Seventeen: Crossing Bridges

“Watch where you’re going,” Yoichi said irritably as Mikan staggered into him. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

“It’s nothing,” she muttered, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all. We’ve been walking for ages.”

Yoichi shot her a disgusted look. “Well, you’re slowing the rest of us down,” he said. “I can’t believe you would even think of sleeping, what with Natsume being kidnapped and all.”

He looked unhappily down the long, winding road, wondering when they would come to that fork in the path that Hotaru was talking about. He hated to admit it, but he was so exhausted he felt like he would drop right that very moment.

But Natsume… he sucked in his cheeks, a nervous habit that was leaving them quite hollow. “Come on, let’s keep going. And anyway, there’s nowhere we can rest here, unless you guys fancy kipping out on the snow all exposed.” He kicked at the snowy ground. “Just a bit further.”

Ruka took Mikan’s arm. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, rubbing blindly at her face. “I swear that I’m fine.” She started walking again, swaying slightly and reaching a hand into her pocket. Avoiding Ruka’s concerned gaze, she turned her back to him and swallowed two more of the pills that Persona had given her.

She’d been taking them every few hours, and each time she did she would feel Ruka anxiously staring at her. Persona had told her to drink them down every time she felt that she couldn’t go on anymore.

Unfortunately, that was occurring more and more often.

They worked, at the very least. She smiled at Ruka. “Let’s go. The sooner we get to Natsume, the sooner we can go back to the Academy.” Then she stopped still in her tracks.

“What is it now?” Yoichi asked, exasperated.

“I feel as though someone’s watching us,” she said with a shiver.

“That’s what they always say in the movies, right?” Ruka joked nervously, looking through the trees. “Right before some masked guy attacks the heroes with a huge chainsaw?”

Yoichi kept going. “How would I know? I’ve never seen a movie. Is it that dark thingy with the flickering screen?”

“All right, that’s it,” Ruka said, shaking his head. “Mikan’s getting scared, you’re being a pain in the neck, and I don’t think that they’ll be selling Natsume anytime soon. If when we get there we’re too tired to use our Alices, they’d just capture us.”

The other two hesitated. “Agreed,” Yoichi said grudgingly. “And I am not being a pain in the neck.”

aaa

“Morning,” he heard a voice greeting him cheerily. Natsume groaned; bright light flooded his room as someone flicked on a light switch. “You’d better wake up, or you won’t be able to join us for training. And anyway, Saiko made strawberry waffles with whipped butter. They are not to be believed.”

Natsume felt as though every muscle was screaming in pain as he sat up. “Ungh,” he moaned, even as he tried to stifle the involuntary sound. He squinted and made out a cloud of pink curls. “Ayumi?”

She looked at him with some concern. “Uh-huh. Have a hangover, don’t you? Nothing like a little pick-me-up to solve that. And Saiko’s got some really good hangover medicine. Kazuo’s probably drinking his as we speak.” She giggled. “Saiko and I never get them, even though we get drunk more easily, I suppose.”

“Mmm,” he said noncommittally as he swung his legs onto the floor. It was icy cold, but he padded across it anyway and noticed a pile of clothes on the dresser. “Those aren’t more of Kazuo’s, are they?”

Ayumi rolled her eyes. “No, even though I still say that his clothes aren’t girly,” she complained. “Saiko was up early working on yours. They’re clean now, and I imagine that she fixed them up.”

She looked at the clothes with a critical frown. “If you thought Kazuo’s clothes were bad, what about you walking around in the Alice Academy uniform? We’ll get you new clothes when we go shopping up in town sometime.”

“You never mentioned where we were,” he realized.

“We’re at Nadeshiko village, Shizuka’s hometown,” Ayu answered. “Underground, of course. But the villagers know us—not that they know that we have Alices, of course, but… well, we’re on fairly good terms with them. Kazuo and Saiko especially.”

She made a face. “They’re the darlings of the place. Saiko I can understand, since she’s always frighteningly polite and syrupy sweet to everyone—it’s enough to make you shudder, wondering where she gets all that extra gushiness from. But I don’t get how the villagers can put up with Kazuo; he’s always lording it over them and going on and on about how inferior the clothes are up there—honestly, we spend loads of cash just getting his outfits specially tailored.”

“Really?” Natsume said absently as he started to enter the bathroom. It was too early in the a.m. to use any of the sarcastic remarks that were itching to roll off his tongue. “I guess.”

Ayumi smiled slightly. “Hurry up and get dressed. Saiko’s been waiting for you to wake up, you know.” Her lips curved up even more, and her eyes danced with mischief. “Let’s not deprive her of the chance to complain that you’re not eating her cooking and getting too thin. She does it all the time. Especially,” she added, “when she likes someone.”

Natsume stopped in the middle of splashing his face with cold water and glared at her, daring her to repeat what she’d just said. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that last bit. What was that?”

She giggled and tipped him an enormous wink before she left, calling behind her shoulder, “I said, ‘See you at breakfast’. You know the way to the common room.”

aaa

Saiko hummed to herself, hair brushing across her shoulders as she set a towering stack of waffles in front of Shizuka and Kazuo. “Juice?” she offered, placing the syrup jar in front of them. “I can make you guys some fresh orange juice or maybe apple, if you like.”

“Apple juice please. Thanks. You seem to be in a good mood,” Shizuka commented slyly. Saiko said nothing, but she knew that the older woman already knew everything. “Oh well. I don’t really blame you.”

Kazuo let out a grumpy, dismissive noise. He had come to her room last night to find her and Natsume talking, and he’d left. Saiko bit her lip and placed a glass of juice in front of him. She didn’t have to ask him; she knew that orange was his favorite.

He tossed it down, then made a face as he tasted something bitter mixed in with the orange juice but instantly felt more alert; already his splitting headache was starting to subside. “You put hangover medicine in here, didn’t you?” he said, sniffing the now-empty glass.

He felt okay mentioning his hangover in front of Shizuka because she’d probably read his mind anyway—and in any case, she wasn’t quite as strict as Reo and Yamazaki in enforcing discipline. And those two could still be handled.

“Yeah, I did,” she said briskly, whisking the glass away and now handing him another one. “That one’s all right. I didn’t put in anything with the orange juice. And,” she added, wagging a finger at him, “is my cooking so bad that you won’t eat it? You’re growing too thin.”

With a contrite little smile, he started attacking his waffles. The four-waffle stack had dwindled down to two when Ayumi came sashaying in. “Morning,” she said sweetly, kissing him on the cheek. Saiko set down another stack of waffles.

“Aren’t you going to eat with us, Saiko?” Kazuo asked.

“Mmm? Oh, in a bit,” she said.

Ayumi smirked. “Natsume’s going to follow us in a bit. He just woke up—and he was just as cranky as you were, Kazuo,” she added.

Kazuo snorted. “You’d be cranky too if you’d had to put me to bed while I was commanding you to ‘bow down to the Queen of Buckingham’. What is it with you and queens anyway? The last time you got knackered, you thought you were the Queen of Sheba, and the one before that, it was the Queen of Fairyland.”

“Maybe I’ve got royal blood,” Ayu suggested with a snicker.

“Clowns,” Saiko said succinctly as she set down two more plates. “Aren’t Reo and Yamazaki going to eat with us?”

“They left on a mission and won’t be back until the weekend,” Shizuka said. “I couldn’t very well leave the four of you unsupervised, could I? It would be one big orgy.”

Kazuo sat up straighter. “Why, is that what Saiko’s thinking right now?”

Saiko let out a mortified yelp. “I am so not!”

“Actually, it was Ayu,” Shizuka said with an evil grin. Ayumi stuck her tongue out at them.

Natsume watched them from the doorway with a lump in his throat. Family. Saiko hadn’t been lying.

As if she’d heard his thoughts, Saiko looked up at him with a radiant smile and gestured towards the last place around the table. “Hey, Natsume, aren’t you going to join us?”

Family. He walked slowly over, uncomfortably aware of Shizuka’s eyes on him. “I… yeah, thanks.”