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That day Natalie was waiting outside his room.  He managed to stay composed as he gave her a death glare (and believe you me, a composed death glare is a difficult accomplishment) and strode into the classroom.  "Is there are reason that you're here waiting for me, Natalia?" he asked peevishly.

She ignored his tone and walked in behind him.  "Now that I know that you're no more wicked or powerful than any other teacher, I can interrogate you," she responded chipperly, seating herself in the desk opposite his.

He dropped his bag at his desk and seated himself behind it.  "Lovely.  Now there's another morning person in my life..." he muttered to himself, surveying Natalie over steepled fingers.  With a heavy sigh, he got to work.  "What can I do to help you with this morning?" he asked, his voice calm and showing no trace of the exhaustion he felt.

Natalie frowned at him.  "You seem less smooth this morning.  Did something happen?" she asked after she'd watched him for a few moments.

Adon pursed his lips, debating whether to actually tell her of his personal life or not.  On one hand, she was the one person he should be close to, but on the other, she knew so very little about him and the situation in general.  Which was technically his fault...but really.  He'd always been a solitary person, and he'd grown very accustomed to being silent over the years.  Finally, he settled on a very noncommittal answer.  "I had trouble sleeping," he told her shortly.

She nodded.  "And then?"

He frowned, but continued.  "Then a self-declared friend of mine decided to make the situation easier for me by annoying me over breakfast."

Natalie paused.  "And then me?"

He nodded in return.

She glossed over the fact that she was making his day that much worse by barreling on, "Well, let's get to the bottom of this.  Why did you have trouble sleeping?  Not sleepy?  Cat kept you up?  Or was it...nightmares?"

Adon felt himself stiffen at the last word.  Nightmares.  That was one word for it.  He preferred 'nightmares' over 'memories'...it made them that more surreal.

Noting this, Natalie grinned.  "Right, nightmares it is.  What would a guy like you have nightmares about, anyway?  Lack of fanclub?  A bad hair day?" she asked.

"Topics more serious than that, I can assure you!  That is too personal, Natalie," he snapped, the words dropping out of his mouth before he could fully process them.

She blinked at him, slightly taken aback.  "Natalie, huh?  Must be really bad, then, if it's made you that pissy..." she murmured, leaning back in her seat.

Adon frowned, then let his eyes fall from her face to his desk.  "You could say that..." he finally allowed.

Natalie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, not liking at all the silence that had descending over the two of them.  "Um...who is this self-declared friend that you mentioned?" she asked feebly, trying to regain some sort of conversation.  Somehow when she talked to him, received information and ideas from him, that little part of her that felt uneasy around him was pacified just a bit.  However, the silences made the feeling that much worse.

Reminding himself again and again that this girl, if not justified in her questioning, was at least persistent and would not go quietly, he made an effort to answer.  "Her name is Maia.  She's very...ah...effervescent, I think is a good word.  She seems intent on creating a social life for me, and will drag me into a relationship kicking and screaming someday, I fear..." he said, surprised to find himself smiling faintly as he described her.

Natalie shifted again, crossing her legs and leaning forward onto the desk.  "So she's not one of your many fangirls?" she asked curiously.

Adon shook his head.  "No.  Oddly enough, she's always tried to make me take a girlfriend, but she's never tried to fill that role herself," he said, "And I'm intensely grateful for that."

Natalie shrugged.  "Maybe she knew that you needed a friend before a girlfriend at that point.  Seems kind of obvious to me, anyway.  You seem lonely, Adon.  I know that if you got a girlfriend, you'd just look down on her and manipulate her emotions--the two of you would get nowhere.  A friend, though, someone you could trust to just listen...well, everyone needs one of those," she said, as if this was common knowledge.

He looked at her for a moment.  "You're extremely perceptive for a fourteen-year-old..." he said slowly, having an inkling as to why.

She blinked.  "Not really.  That's Naomi.  You're just easy to read," she insisted.

Adon raised one slim eyebrow to look at her in disbelief.  "No one, ever, in the history of my existence has found me easy to read, Natalia.  That's just you, my dove," he said simply, giving absolutely no reasons for this.

Natalie opened her mouth to reply, then let it snap shut.  "Wait...what did you just call me?" she asked, wondering if she'd misheard.

He stared at her for a moment, trying to see where the abrupt change in subject had come from.  "Natalia?"

She shook her head.  "No, after that," she pressed.

His brow creased in confusion.  "My dove?"

She nodded.  "Yes.  That.  Why did you call me that?" she asked, her voice going very quiet.

"I use terms of endearment quite often, Natalia.  A habit I picked up from Maia, I'm afraid," he explained, wondering what exactly had caught her attention.

"But why that one?  'My dove' is something that only my family calls me, and not often.  Sam, my brother, and Naomi don't even use it anymore.  Mom and Dad do it every once in awhile, when they're feeling nostalgic--but why you?" she asked.  "With all the other kids, I've heard you use a few things like that, but never that one..."

Adon kicked himself internally for lapsing into old habits, but betrayed nothing on his face.  "Chance, I believe.  It seemed to fit.  Your family must have had some reason to use it...I must have just hit on the same feeling," he replied blandly.

Natalie bit her lip and looked down at her desk as if it were the most interesting desk in the world, not a stained and graffitied hunk of wood.  "Adon...it's things like this that put me on edge.  It's kept me up since we first met.  Heck, feelings like this have kept me up since I was a little girl!  Why do you know little things about me?  Why do I feel like I've seen you before, like I know you better than anyone else in the world?  I mean that I know you better than I know anyone else and I know you better than anyone else does.  I know that those things can't be right.  I don't know the first thing about you, and you can't know the first thing about me.  It's just not possible.  Well, not unless you're some kind of stalker or something...  At any rate, I need to know the truth on this..." she said, looking up to give him a slightly pleading look.  Then she paused, her eyes darted to the side, then back up.  "Okay, I'm paranoid, but you're not a stalker, right?" she asked tentatively.

Adon just looked at her expression, which was ranging on desperate, and didn't say a word.

"Adon...why aren't you saying anything?  You can at least deny my stupid theories, but you're not..." she said, fixing him with her gaze.

He frowned to himself, then very slowly and deliberately said, "That would be because I'm trying to think up a lie you'll believe."  'They do say the truth will set you free...'

She stared at him, shock written out on her features at how blatantly he'd presented his plans.  Then she seemed to remember her quest and shook herself briefly.  "The truth, Adon!  I'll believe the truth!" she exclaimed, rising from her seat and moving to plant both palms on his desk in front of him.

He looked down at the hands splayed out on his desk, then traced his way up to her eyes, which were looking very confused and betrayed at the moment.  "Natalia, if there's one thing you won't believe, it's the truth," he said quietly, and with as much conviction as she'd ever heard from him.

She could feel tears threatening at her eyes, but that definitely wouldn't help matters any.  That would only make things worse.  Could only make things worse.  So that's when she was so surprised to find them running down her face anyway.  "I hate this and I hate you!  You're just spinning me around again, aren't you!  You can help me out whenever you want, and you don't want to!  You just--"

"Natalie!"

Natalie blinked in the middle of her tirade, forcing more tears from her eyes, and looked at the open door, the source of the voice.  Naomi stood there, looking from Adon, who looked truly apologetic and yet so frustratingly calm at the same time, to her best friend, who appeared to be having a breakdown.  Without another thought, she fluttered into the room, and pulled Natalie away from the desk and into a tight hug.

"I came here as soon as I got to our meeting place and found you gone...  You never get there after me, so I figured that you weren't waiting for me today, but I didn't think that...  God, how badly is this affecting you, Nat?" she asked, her voice quick and urgent, losing all traces of shyness in her concern for her friend.  Natalie just sniffled a little and leaned into her friend.  "Mr. Smith...what's going on?" Naomi asked in bewilderment, looking over her friend's shoulder at the older man.

Adon merely looked past both of them to the hallway where students were beginning to mill about.  "School's starting, I believe.  Please be seated, girls," he said in a perfectly casual voice, as if there wasn't a crying girl in front of his desk.

Naomi gaped at him, but steered Natalie to the back of the class, getting them both seated as the rest of their class arrived.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adon taught on autopilot that class, his gaze and thoughts coming back to rest on Natalie at the end of almost every sentence.  It was truly a miraculous thing that he'd had to watch her without people knowing for so long, because it helped him over time to learn how to hide his emotions toward her.  Still, he could not shake the deep feeling of wrongness he felt every time he looked at her red eyes.  Once again his fault, he knew.  It could not be helped, though...

"And so Philip II was succeeded by Alexander..." he droned.  He could tell that the children were fading, and to some degree, his was bored by his own lecture.  Almost every kid in that room was praying for a distraction, any distraction.

Their prayers were answered.

Midway through his sentence, the door flew open with such force that the handle was embedded into the wall that it had banged into.  In walked a girl.  Walked?  Stalked.  Prowled.  Raced.  Some verb attributed to an animal, for that was what she resembled, what with her dark, shaggy hair and flashing eyes.  Those golden eyes were set into very tan skin, and they were trained on Adon, who she immediately flounced her way over to.  And as soon as she reached him (displaying to the children their extreme height difference--he towered over her by at least a foot), she let in.

"ADON, YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT!"

If their teacher was pale before, he was chalk white now.  "K-Kirandin..." he murmured to her in greeting.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU?"

Adon shot a look towards his stupefied class.  "Kirandin..." he started warningly.

"JUST UP AND LEAVING!  NO NOTE, NO EXPLANATIONS!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE'S SAYING YOU DID?"

Adon sighed and put himself in between her and the class.  "Kirandin..."

She simply wheeled around so she was still facing him.  "AND THE WORST PART IS--"

"KIRA!" he yelled, his smooth voice somehow enveloping hers.

She simply reached up in between them to stroke a lone lock of hair.  "--You cut your hair," she finished softly.

He stared at her for a second, then bodily grabbed her arm and dragged her over to the wall, where he left her.  "In case you hadn't noticed, Kira, I'm in the middle of a class," he hissed, moving back to his position in the front of the classroom.

Kirandin merely leaned against the wall in what was an obvious pout and said not a word.

Then, as if nothing had happened, everything went quiet in the class.  Normalcy reigned, and he continued his lecture.  Finally, the odd, almost stagnant peace was broken by a girl in the front row who raised her hand.

"Yes, Linda?" he asked pleasantly.

She squirmed nervously in her seat.  "Just how long was  your hair?" she asked, fighting giggles the whole way.

Adon paused, then simply let his head drop into his hand.  "It was past my waist.  Now, moving on to history," he growled, sending a glare towards Kirandin, who ignored him.  If she'd had a tail, it would be twitching.

Amidst the twittering of the girls in his class over this new information, Adon sighed.  Today was shaping up to be a really bad day.

Description
That day Natalie was waiting outside his room.  He managed to stay composed as he gave her a death glare (and believe you me, a composed death glare is a difficult accomplishment) and strode into the classroom.  "Is there are reason that you're here waiting for me, Natalia?" he asked peevishly.

She ignored his tone and walked in behind him.  "Now that I know that you're no more wicked or powerful than any other teacher, I can interrogate you," she responded chipperly, seating herself in the desk opposite his.

He dropped his bag at his desk and seated himself behind it.  "Lovely.  Now there's another morning person in my life..." he muttered to himself, surveying Natalie over steepled fingers.  With a heavy sigh, he got to work.  "What can I do to help you with this morning?" he asked, his voice calm and showing no trace of the exhaustion he felt.

Natalie frowned at him.  "You seem less smooth this morning.  Did something happen?" she asked after she'd watched him for a few moments.

Adon pursed his lips, debating whether to actually tell her of his personal life or not.  On one hand, she was the one person he should be close to, but on the other, she knew so very little about him and the situation in general.  Which was technically his fault...but really.  He'd always been a solitary person, and he'd grown very accustomed to being silent over the years.  Finally, he settled on a very noncommittal answer.  "I had trouble sleeping," he told her shortly.

She nodded.  "And then?"

He frowned, but continued.  "Then a self-declared friend of mine decided to make the situation easier for me by annoying me over breakfast."

Natalie paused.  "And then me?"

He nodded in return.

She glossed over the fact that she was making his day that much worse by barreling on, "Well, let's get to the bottom of this.  Why did you have trouble sleeping?  Not sleepy?  Cat kept you up?  Or was it...nightmares?"

Adon felt himself stiffen at the last word.  Nightmares.  That was one word for it.  He preferred 'nightmares' over 'memories'...it made them that more surreal.

Noting this, Natalie grinned.  "Right, nightmares it is.  What would a guy like you have nightmares about, anyway?  Lack of fanclub?  A bad hair day?" she asked.

"Topics more serious than that, I can assure you!  That is too personal, Natalie," he snapped, the words dropping out of his mouth before he could fully process them.

She blinked at him, slightly taken aback.  "Natalie, huh?  Must be really bad, then, if it's made you that pissy..." she murmured, leaning back in her seat.

Adon frowned, then let his eyes fall from her face to his desk.  "You could say that..." he finally allowed.

Natalie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, not liking at all the silence that had descending over the two of them.  "Um...who is this self-declared friend that you mentioned?" she asked feebly, trying to regain some sort of conversation.  Somehow when she talked to him, received information and ideas from him, that little part of her that felt uneasy around him was pacified just a bit.  However, the silences made the feeling that much worse.

Reminding himself again and again that this girl, if not justified in her questioning, was at least persistent and would not go quietly, he made an effort to answer.  "Her name is Maia.  She's very...ah...effervescent, I think is a good word.  She seems intent on creating a social life for me, and will drag me into a relationship kicking and screaming someday, I fear..." he said, surprised to find himself smiling faintly as he described her.

Natalie shifted again, crossing her legs and leaning forward onto the desk.  "So she's not one of your many fangirls?" she asked curiously.

Adon shook his head.  "No.  Oddly enough, she's always tried to make me take a girlfriend, but she's never tried to fill that role herself," he said, "And I'm intensely grateful for that."

Natalie shrugged.  "Maybe she knew that you needed a friend before a girlfriend at that point.  Seems kind of obvious to me, anyway.  You seem lonely, Adon.  I know that if you got a girlfriend, you'd just look down on her and manipulate her emotions--the two of you would get nowhere.  A friend, though, someone you could trust to just listen...well, everyone needs one of those," she said, as if this was common knowledge.

He looked at her for a moment.  "You're extremely perceptive for a fourteen-year-old..." he said slowly, having an inkling as to why.

She blinked.  "Not really.  That's Naomi.  You're just easy to read," she insisted.

Adon raised one slim eyebrow to look at her in disbelief.  "No one, ever, in the history of my existence has found me easy to read, Natalia.  That's just you, my dove," he said simply, giving absolutely no reasons for this.

Natalie opened her mouth to reply, then let it snap shut.  "Wait...what did you just call me?" she asked, wondering if she'd misheard.

He stared at her for a moment, trying to see where the abrupt change in subject had come from.  "Natalia?"

She shook her head.  "No, after that," she pressed.

His brow creased in confusion.  "My dove?"

She nodded.  "Yes.  That.  Why did you call me that?" she asked, her voice going very quiet.

"I use terms of endearment quite often, Natalia.  A habit I picked up from Maia, I'm afraid," he explained, wondering what exactly had caught her attention.

"But why that one?  'My dove' is something that only my family calls me, and not often.  Sam, my brother, and Naomi don't even use it anymore.  Mom and Dad do it every once in awhile, when they're feeling nostalgic--but why you?" she asked.  "With all the other kids, I've heard you use a few things like that, but never that one..."

Adon kicked himself internally for lapsing into old habits, but betrayed nothing on his face.  "Chance, I believe.  It seemed to fit.  Your family must have had some reason to use it...I must have just hit on the same feeling," he replied blandly.

Natalie bit her lip and looked down at her desk as if it were the most interesting desk in the world, not a stained and graffitied hunk of wood.  "Adon...it's things like this that put me on edge.  It's kept me up since we first met.  Heck, feelings like this have kept me up since I was a little girl!  Why do you know little things about me?  Why do I feel like I've seen you before, like I know you better than anyone else in the world?  I mean that I know you better than I know anyone else and I know you better than anyone else does.  I know that those things can't be right.  I don't know the first thing about you, and you can't know the first thing about me.  It's just not possible.  Well, not unless you're some kind of stalker or something...  At any rate, I need to know the truth on this..." she said, looking up to give him a slightly pleading look.  Then she paused, her eyes darted to the side, then back up.  "Okay, I'm paranoid, but you're not a stalker, right?" she asked tentatively.

Adon just looked at her expression, which was ranging on desperate, and didn't say a word.

"Adon...why aren't you saying anything?  You can at least deny my stupid theories, but you're not..." she said, fixing him with her gaze.

He frowned to himself, then very slowly and deliberately said, "That would be because I'm trying to think up a lie you'll believe."  'They do say the truth will set you free...'

She stared at him, shock written out on her features at how blatantly he'd presented his plans.  Then she seemed to remember her quest and shook herself briefly.  "The truth, Adon!  I'll believe the truth!" she exclaimed, rising from her seat and moving to plant both palms on his desk in front of him.

He looked down at the hands splayed out on his desk, then traced his way up to her eyes, which were looking very confused and betrayed at the moment.  "Natalia, if there's one thing you won't believe, it's the truth," he said quietly, and with as much conviction as she'd ever heard from him.

She could feel tears threatening at her eyes, but that definitely wouldn't help matters any.  That would only make things worse.  Could only make things worse.  So that's when she was so surprised to find them running down her face anyway.  "I hate this and I hate you!  You're just spinning me around again, aren't you!  You can help me out whenever you want, and you don't want to!  You just--"

"Natalie!"

Natalie blinked in the middle of her tirade, forcing more tears from her eyes, and looked at the open door, the source of the voice.  Naomi stood there, looking from Adon, who looked truly apologetic and yet so frustratingly calm at the same time, to her best friend, who appeared to be having a breakdown.  Without another thought, she fluttered into the room, and pulled Natalie away from the desk and into a tight hug.

"I came here as soon as I got to our meeting place and found you gone...  You never get there after me, so I figured that you weren't waiting for me today, but I didn't think that...  God, how badly is this affecting you, Nat?" she asked, her voice quick and urgent, losing all traces of shyness in her concern for her friend.  Natalie just sniffled a little and leaned into her friend.  "Mr. Smith...what's going on?" Naomi asked in bewilderment, looking over her friend's shoulder at the older man.

Adon merely looked past both of them to the hallway where students were beginning to mill about.  "School's starting, I believe.  Please be seated, girls," he said in a perfectly casual voice, as if there wasn't a crying girl in front of his desk.

Naomi gaped at him, but steered Natalie to the back of the class, getting them both seated as the rest of their class arrived.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adon taught on autopilot that class, his gaze and thoughts coming back to rest on Natalie at the end of almost every sentence.  It was truly a miraculous thing that he'd had to watch her without people knowing for so long, because it helped him over time to learn how to hide his emotions toward her.  Still, he could not shake the deep feeling of wrongness he felt every time he looked at her red eyes.  Once again his fault, he knew.  It could not be helped, though...

"And so Philip II was succeeded by Alexander..." he droned.  He could tell that the children were fading, and to some degree, his was bored by his own lecture.  Almost every kid in that room was praying for a distraction, any distraction.

Their prayers were answered.

Midway through his sentence, the door flew open with such force that the handle was embedded into the wall that it had banged into.  In walked a girl.  Walked?  Stalked.  Prowled.  Raced.  Some verb attributed to an animal, for that was what she resembled, what with her dark, shaggy hair and flashing eyes.  Those golden eyes were set into very tan skin, and they were trained on Adon, who she immediately flounced her way over to.  And as soon as she reached him (displaying to the children their extreme height difference--he towered over her by at least a foot), she let in.

"ADON, YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT!"

If their teacher was pale before, he was chalk white now.  "K-Kirandin..." he murmured to her in greeting.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU?"

Adon shot a look towards his stupefied class.  "Kirandin..." he started warningly.

"JUST UP AND LEAVING!  NO NOTE, NO EXPLANATIONS!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE'S SAYING YOU DID?"

Adon sighed and put himself in between her and the class.  "Kirandin..."

She simply wheeled around so she was still facing him.  "AND THE WORST PART IS--"

"KIRA!" he yelled, his smooth voice somehow enveloping hers.

She simply reached up in between them to stroke a lone lock of hair.  "--You cut your hair," she finished softly.

He stared at her for a second, then bodily grabbed her arm and dragged her over to the wall, where he left her.  "In case you hadn't noticed, Kira, I'm in the middle of a class," he hissed, moving back to his position in the front of the classroom.

Kirandin merely leaned against the wall in what was an obvious pout and said not a word.

Then, as if nothing had happened, everything went quiet in the class.  Normalcy reigned, and he continued his lecture.  Finally, the odd, almost stagnant peace was broken by a girl in the front row who raised her hand.

"Yes, Linda?" he asked pleasantly.

She squirmed nervously in her seat.  "Just how long was  your hair?" she asked, fighting giggles the whole way.

Adon paused, then simply let his head drop into his hand.  "It was past my waist.  Now, moving on to history," he growled, sending a glare towards Kirandin, who ignored him.  If she'd had a tail, it would be twitching.

Amidst the twittering of the girls in his class over this new information, Adon sighed.  Today was shaping up to be a really bad day.