Title: Mirror
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Rating: G
Length: 740
Content notes: none
Summary: Nyanko-sensei has a midnight snack.


If it was taking Natsume longer than usual to fall asleep, well, perhaps that wasn't overly surprising: thanks to Shigure, it had been a long night for both of them. Natsume had had his classmates to deal with; as for Madara, it had been a while since he'd bothered with forms aside from his natural one. With the seals that lingered on the maneki-neko, even a shape as familiar as Reiko's had taken an unexpected amount of power to hold.

Well worth the power spent, though, to see that the Book of Friends stayed safe in Natsume's hands - and so safely in line to come to him. Naturally.

That, too, was why he stayed wakeful, curled against Natsume's schoolbag, watching him lying still underneath his covers, breathing the quiet, too-even breaths of someone feigning sleep with the unmistakeable scent of someone thinking too hard for his own good.

Reiko had smelled like that, sometimes, too; another white stone to add to the board. Alike and different, he thought, rolling over on his back to look at Natsume that way. But the change in perspective only gave him a tickle in his nose, so he flipped upright again and rested his chin on his paws to wait.

Finally, with a tiny rustle of sheets as his body relaxed, Natsume dropped off to sleep. Madara stayed a few minutes longer to make sure he wouldn't fall straight into nightmare; if he did, he would probably do some idiotic thing like waking up and wandering off with the Book and without him.

But the boy's sleep was peaceful, his heartbeat calm and steady, and Madara eased out of the room on quiet cat's feet. If he wasn't mistaken, he'd seen a bottle of sake in the kitchen earlier...



So fortified (there had been a package of frozen mochi, too) he wound his way back upstairs an hour or so later, pausing as a flash of moonlight caught on a hanging mirror and danced across the floor of the hallway in front of him. From the angle of it, the sun would rise soon; another day come, another day closer to the inevitability of the Book being his.

The thought was like something stuck uncomfortably to his fur; he shuddered, flicking the stub of his tail, but it didn't help. The hall was too small for him to stretch out properly, so he sniffed, drew himself up on two legs, and looked into the mirror with Reiko's height instead.

They did look similar, his two humans, his two Natsumes, although there was something in Reiko's face that was not yet in Takashi's. He touched her cheek, watching his reflection, and traced a line up to her glinting, sly, fox-set eyes. She had known the world and known who she was when she had first met him, though; his new one was still working on that, as slowly and steadily as he was working through the names his grandmother had collected.

Madara knew him already, of course, by sight and scent and soul and all the subtle human differences that so many other youkai missed: he tossed Reiko's long hair, shortened it just so, sent a cast of innocence to his eyes, a breadth to his shoulders that she had never had. The impression was almost good enough to fool himself - but not quite.

The clothes were wrong, now; he tugged at the skirt with Natsume's bigger hands, adjusting it for hips that were no longer there, smoothed the blouse down flat over a too-skinny chest, inspected himself in the mirror again. To his mind, they suited him as much as they had suited her, but that meant little enough. He never had bothered with robes or jewelry or masks: all the trappings of lesser youkai... or, to be fair, humans - greater and lesser. Shrugging, he let Reiko's uniform shiver away, melting into school-issue shirt and pants instead.

That did help a little, but not much, not enough. He scowled at the not-Natsume in the mirror even as the increasing drag on his strength sent him collapsing back into the maneki-neko and stalking down the hall to the boy's room to resume his interrupted nap. There was something about the boy he was missing - something important - something he couldn't quite put a paw on, and it was terribly annoying.

So he couldn't possibly eat Natsume until he figured out exactly what it was.

Of course not.