Ashy-note Words cannot express my love for this man and his woman. Sweet, not short, but revolves around the sole concept of his life. Canon-ish, set at the age of twenty-seven.
-/-
Welcome Home
It was no wonder he was able to conquer the world. With his looks, brains, and the impossibly-too-good-to-be-true bonus that was his Alice, he was the man. The closest to a Greek god the world had ever known. The modern Adonis, perfection in human form.
Okay, that might have been too much but it was just… true, in a way.
No woman was able to resist his charms; no man could deny him what he wanted. He was just the thing to the world. He was everything every one else wanted to be. Everyone knew everything about him.
Or so they think. Because they never really understood him.
No, not really.
He could have snagged for him a beautiful supermodel, could have lived in a tropical paradise or in the lavish streets of Paris or New York or Milan, could have slept on the softest, largest bed ever, could have bought the love and freedom and obedience of all men (and still have enough change for the Martians).
He could have settled for no less than the world itself in his hands…
But no.
The world never really understood him, after all.
They never really got the reason why Natsume Hyuuga opted for an early retirement after only five years of soaring impact, and they probably never will.
"We're ready when you are, Mister Hyuuga."
Ruffling his messy black hair and flicking his eyes appreciatively at his secretary whose head was popped in the doorway, he sighed and tossed the photographs inside his suitcase. "I'll follow, Sui. I'll just get a few things done."
The woman left the room, looking slightly flattered at the casual way the man addressed her. The door closed with a light snap and again he was left to his own devices, his thoughts, and unconsciously he picked up the one photograph that was all that was left for him to pack.
Inside an ornate but age-weathered frame was the photo of two five-year-olds: a boy who looked like a younger him beside a radiant girl with big eyes and long, flowing chocolate hair. She was holding a finger to both sides of his mouth, forcing him into a smile while she herself glowed with the warmth of her own broad grin. The boy beside her looked bored and just plain silly with an upturned mouth that was supposed to be a smile that was rightfully contradicted by the look of boredom and annoyance in his eyes. It was a spring day, evident in their elementary school uniforms, and all around them were swirling pink sakura petals that seemed alive, even just through a photograph.
His finger brushed through the face of the girl in the photograph after having admired the boy's good looks. That face… that ridiculous smile.
Wonder if she still wears polka-dotted underwear.
He smiled a small, longing smile, then quite unceremoniously he threw the photo into the suitcase as well.
Impatience was swallowing his every thought.
"Take care, Sir. Don't forget your meds, they're in your inner jacket's pocket, and your schedules have all been revoked, and don't worry about me, I'll yell at them to stop nagging you if I must, so rest assured you'll be safe and sound and at peace when you get home. And there's an anti-sea sickness pill inside your suitcase, I put it there as a precaution, because I don't know if you have to ride a boat back to Japan and there's also this matter with your—"
He put a finger to the girl's lips, a small smile on his face.
"You are just like your other boss," he told her in a quiet voice. The chauffeur was loading his luggage into the trunk of the car. "Don't worry about me."
Sui looked like she had tears in her eyes. He chuckled and ruffled her hair, and in an instant her eyebrows scrunched up and she looked disgruntled.
He had to give it to the sadistic Blackmailer, because once she realized her Alice had maxed out she created the first thing she has wanted to invent all along.
He looked at his secretary's face once again and saw that there were tears on her face already. He looked her firmly in her hazel eyes and kissed her forehead, murmuring a low "Thank you" as he stroked her fine, brown hair.
"Always, Natsume-san," she whispered back. "Say hello to her for me. Tell her I miss her."
He nodded and smiled at her again, fixing his red eyes firmly on hers.
Before he left, he spared one last look at what he deemed was Hotaru Imai's greatest invention, the one thing that kept him going through the five years of solitude. She's more than just metal frames... she's a part of Mikan herself.
His parting words included her real name.
"Imai did a good job on you, Amanatsu."
The journey took all of five years. Five years of business transactions, five years of meetings and agreements and contract-signings, five years of non-stop travels from one place to another, stuck only with his secretary and his fellowship of photographs that kept him company for times when he felt lonely and homesick.
To some, five years were really just too short. It passes by in a blur of time, and before you know it, it's over. To him, it wasn't as simple as that.
Not when everyday he had to suppress himself all the while he held in his heart a desire to see and talk with the friends who destroyed his life for the good. Not when everyday he finds himself itching to get on a plane and ride home to Japan where she was awaiting his return patiently, as she had done throughout all those seventeen years that they've known each other.
Because to him, five years was a long, long time. It was too long, too long even for his harboring patience, his maddeningly diligent air. It was away from everything he knew, and that's what drove him crazy, but he had to do it. It was for the greater good.
So it was perfectly understandable that he, cold and indifferent as he was and as he seemed to the world, was bursting with excitement in his plane seat that it took almost all of his self-control to not jump up and down in his business-class seat. He felt like a child curious about the world he left behind, even though he was well-updated with everything that was happening.
He'd heard a lot about them through all the five years that he's been away, they were making names themselves. Their Alices were one thing that assured them of their success, but most of their paths weren't influenced by the presence of Alices.
Yuu was a renowned cellist, as an unbelievable shift in destinies led him to his true passion for music. Anna was running her own small-town big-shot restaurant. Seemed his stalwartness rubbed off her, as she refused every single offer to franchise her restaurant, saying "If you want to taste my food then you'd have to come down here, not ask for it just like that." (That made him a little proud.) Nonoko was head of the research group of a company searching for cures for the incurable, and she had just triumphantly ripped cancer and AIDS of its blood thirst and right to kill, because less than a month ago she had formulated the perfect medicine against it. Koko was a criminologist and a forensics expert, his Mind Reading Alice helpful in criminal interrogations. Sumire was a runway model and the pioneer of the world's youngest leading fashion house. Imai was, as was expected, the CEO of the greatest innovations company in the world. Ruka was a well-renowned vet whose good looks charmed most of the animals and even more of the women.
Wondrous thoughts and questions flooded his brain in the entire eighteen-hour flight, like where is she? What's he doing? Are they married? Is he dead?
But for the meantime, only one thought stayed in his head amidst all the other things that occupied the larger part of his grey matter.
Of course, to a man like him, only one thing mattered most.
In less than five hours, he'll see them—her—again.
What was five hours compared to five long years?
He fell asleep just as they were flying over India.
He was so, so close.
The car came to a swift halt and the driver just looked at the man staring past the windows of the passenger's seat, wondering and awed by the fact that the boy, powerful and rich as he was, was so humble, refusing ever since their first meet to sit at the back of the car. There was a look of anticipation in his rider's eyes, one which the years have given him knowledge of. He knew that look well because he's felt it countless of times before.
His voice shook with age, but his firm words made the creature in Natsume's chest purr softly, longingly… "This is it, Mister Hyuuga. You're home."
For a moment, just looking out his dark-tinted car windows, Natsume was unable to speak as his breath caught at Yuko's words.
Home.
Beside him, on the driver's seat, Yuko took initiative and rolled down the windows, taking him by surprise.
"Don't you want to get out there, Natsume-sama?"
Natsume flicked his eyes to the man, who just looked back at him innocently, an understanding smile on his face. The old man, just like Sui, had been his only companion for the past years.
Nodding, he gave the old man a one-armed hug and a grateful smile. "Go home to yours, Yuko-san. Thanks for everything."
"My pleasure, young man, my pleasure. Now, get going. She'll be taken by surprise, and I know you can't hold it in yourself for long, either."
The man gave him a huge smile and a salute with his hat, then left him to a dirt path that made its way past the trees, into the heart of the forest. Slowly he put one foot ahead of the other, wondering how he would react when he finally saw them.
The dirt path was dried up and covered with orange and brown, and the autumn breeze was comforting to him and his thoughts which were raging inside him, urging him to run.
Run, for he was tired and he missed those that lay beyond the path ahead of him.
Run, for his family was waiting for him beyond those trees.
His family.
The word resonated in his head and in a burst of speed, with the agility and strength that he'd carefully maintained since the precious age of ten, he ran, dragging his luggage along with him, until he found himself in front of the place he'd been dreaming of since he left.
His heart stopped beating and his breath, already shortened by the exercise, became labored at the sight in front of him.
The twins. His son, his daughter, the very image of his love for her, smiling with huge surprised eyes.
The kids in the photograph, alive and moving and real, in front of his eyes.
"Papa!"
The twins ran wobbly towards him in a streak of black and brown. A huge smile made its way to his lips and he opened his arms as he received them and their cries of glee echoed in his ears. Never mind that his little girl took to her mother's high-pitched voice, never mind that his little boy was yelping bloody murder in his ears with joy, never mind that both were looking for presents and that he had to hit himself a little for having forgotten about the homecoming gifts…
He embraced his children as tightly as he could, having missed them.
"You're both so big already," he said to them, scarlet eyes ablaze with the fire of love and devotion to the fruits of an incandescent love.
The little girl smiled at him, the grin crinkling her eyes and hiding for a moment her blood-red irises. "I missed you, Papa! Hana always gets into trouble and I've been trying hard to stop him!"
The little boy fixed his sister a hard glare. "I haven't! You're just too noisy! Papa, don't listen to Suki, she's just making it up because she's jealous because I got an A in Math and she didn't!"
"Did not!"
"Did to!"
"Did not!"
"Did to!"
"Did not!"
"Did not!"
"Did to!"
Mischievous red eyes sparkled with glee towards him, as he listened to the argument, feeling a sort of deja vu. They'd done that before, haven't they?
"See, Papa? She admitted it!"
"No- wait! No fair! Papaaaa!"
He listened with happiness as his children kept bickering and heard every word exchanged, heard as the conversation became a game of tag, but his senses, ever so sharp, heard something more like a whisper of a name that sounded like a prayer to the owner of the fluttery voice that just spoke.
"Natsume…"
His head raised themselves up and searched for the source of the voice and he felt warmth flooding his body when he saw her.
Because right there, standing in front of the doorway of his small fairy-tale-like cottage home, was the one reason he chose and loved this life, more than the life he left behind, more than all the fame, the fortune, and the glory. Right there, with a hand on her chest and brown eyes wide and teary, was the very core of his existence, the very first reason why he chose to live and love and not give up hope. Standing before him, in her dress and apron, was the explanation, the answer, to all the prayers he'd uttered in his life.
His eyes took in every single thing he's missed about the girl, feeling drunk from just basking in the invisible light she shed upon him, just like back then, when they were little and he was acquainted with the beginnings of what soon became the truest, most ardent love.
Her long, brown hair, the hair he missed sleeping next to each and every night…
Her lips, the only lips he's ever kissed, the only lips he'd ever want to kiss…
Her eyes, the only eyes which he got lost in, the eyes of that shone with all kinds of emotion, the windows to the soul that hauled him out of the darkness which he, so long ago, believed he belonged to and was eternally sentenced to stay in…
She, in her full magnificence, robbed him of the little breath he had left.
Her name slipped from his lips, as chaste as it was rare. It spoke of all the love and affection he had to contain within himself through all the times he had to spend away from her and her warmth, spoke of the loneliness and the joy and all the mixed emotions that tumbled and rolled inside of him like a roller coaster.
It spoke of everything that he was, because in her name his entire self was laid out for all to see, hear, feel…
Everything unsaid came pouring out whenever he uttered her name.
Dreamlike he moved closer to where she stood, gaping at him, leaving his bickering children to run around the yard in a game of tag (which involved countless bouts of fire appearing and disappearing). He could see the flurry her heart was making through the rush of blood that reddened her face and the heaving of her chest, could practically hear its sudden frantic racing beat…
His eyes met hers and his thoughts, a while ago so heavy and vague and assorted, cleared up in an instant.
There she was.
His wife.
His queen.
His life.
His all.
They always said "where your heart is, there will your home be also." He finally understands that now as he stood in front of her, just drowning himself in her presence. In half a second she was in his arms, and he breathed in the familiar scent of home.
It never felt as good as it did that moment, and all longing dissolved into the familiar love that seemed impossibly magnified over the length of time that passed by without seeing its cause, its source.
She gripped his back tightly and held him close, and in a wispy voice marred by the bliss that she could not contain, whispered the words she'd been yearning to say ever since the day he left out the same door and kissed her goodbye.
"Welcome home, Natsume."
I don't know if it was a well-written piece, but I do know my heart poured itself out during the moments when he actually met his family again.
Anyways, do you want a prequel or a sequel or what? I have plans, but that's about it. It's your call, guys.
I hope this made you love Natsume and Mikan even more.
~Ash.