What you need to know:
1. Disclaimer on my profile.
2. When I wrote this piece I forgot that Haru and Kyoko don't even know ten years later what's happening in mafia-sumo /haha/ business. Well, it doesn't matter. In the future after the future they went to visit—or something like that …—they know since they know in the presence that is definitely changed by the future they visited.
3. Doesn't this sound really weird? xD
4. English is not my first language, therefore critique on grammar and so on would be totally great.
5. Reviews are unicorns/rainbows/Haru & Yamamoto being canon/great things :D
Seize The Day
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(drop, drop, drop)
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Rain should be soothing, tranquillising but it is only in the rarest of cases—after all water can mend to every possible form: a refreshing summer rain, gruesome, hurting icicles—and of course soft, wet spring meadow in which one can get stuck with three-and-a-halve-inches high heels.
"Hahi! Yamamoto-kun, wait up!"
He turns around, surprised. Once, two years and some ago, he heard how Tsuna and the kid talked about Haru having the Rain flame and how she'd never be a first-class fighter though she knows surprisingly well how to handle her flame. It could be a reason as to why he wonders every time when he glances at her: Is she really here?
And yes, she is; Here in Italy, two steps behind him, with wondering eyes and slightly opened mouth.
At least it could be a reason if he weren't a first-class hitman in the feared Vongola Famiglia.
"Yamamoto-kun! That's no fun, you know? You could've said me that we have to trek ten hours through a forest to reach Tsuna-san's estate, couldn't you? And you could wait as well! I'm a lady, you know? Yamamoto-kun, speak to me!" When Haru babbles like that he doesn't see any difference to the fifteen-year-old Miura-san she was before. It makes for a nice change when all he ever gets to see these days are black-suited, ever-alert men.
"Sorry, Haru." Yamamoto ignores her giant exaggeration about 'ten hours in a forest'. "We only have to walk a little more through the park. Five minutes, tops." He points to the big house that can be seen through the tree tops. "There's Vongola's HQ."
"Wow," Haru admires and her enthusiasm is shown in the glittering of her eyes. "It's pretty … like a fairy talecastle …"
He can't stop grinning at her.
"Yamamoto-kun!" she says with a sharp glare and a playful tone in her voice. "I've never stopped communicating with the Vongola Famiglia. I know everything there is to know about Poison Cooking and I have a black belt in Judo! I can fabricate a gown for a fashion show within three hours and twenty-four minutes with an old sheet. Also, I can do the perfect tiramisu! Yamamoto-kun should watch out who he laughs at, okay?"
The remain silent for a moment.
Then: Haru snorts. Shortly after Yamamoto joins and their loud laughter reverberates in the park.
"Became dangerous, huh?" Yamamoto says while he wipes off a tear out of the corner of his eye, still chuckling softly.
Haru pauses and looks at him, long and with an unfamiliar—unwanted—sternness before she answers: "You are the one who's become dangerous, Yamamoto-kun."
Briefly, very briefly (as long as a rain drop needs from heaven to earth) he looks at her surprised—panicked? Irritated?—but then he folds his hands behind his head, laughing in an imitation of the boy he once was. "Hahaha! Me? Dangerous? Doesn't Haru remember the Varia? They are dangerous! Haha!"
But he can tell by looking that she does not believe him.
She looks at him like through a rain-wetted window pane.
"Do you remember, half a year before the lot of you moved to Italy, in our first year at high school? Gokudera-kun went to dates with me all the time, right? The first few weeks I didn't quite understand and, well, it wasn't like Gokudera-kun behaved differently. He was his usual Juudaime-adoring, ignorant self who had to fight with me all the time." Her smile tastes sour, like biting into a lemon. She seems so strangely grown-up in this moment. "Somewhen we had a fight, you know, in the middle of this amusement park, in the middle of Disney Land, where I wanted to have my wedding party! And … and I knew that Gokudera-kun only went out with me to do Tsuna-san a favour. So that he and Kyoko-chan could have some couple-time." Haru looks at him. "Do you remember?"
He takes her hand while she speaks and pulls her forward, the wet grass making soft noises under their shoes. "Yeah."
"And, oh, I was so stupid! I cried terribly and I wanted Tsuna-san to find me, to pity me, to ask for forgiveness—because, damn, he should fall in love with me!" She squeezes Yamamoto's Hand lightly. "And who had to come by? Of course not Tsuna-san or Bianchi-san or Tsuna-san's o-kaa-san—no, it must be the baseball-nut!" Haru laughs. "I was so crestfallen. But then you sat down next to me, in the grass that was as wet as this one—only that I didn't wear pumps back then."
Haru brings him to a stop and looks up to him: "Does Yamamoto-kun remember what he said to Haru that time?"
He looks into her big, dark brown eyes, in her open, cheerful face that still has some traces of the fifteen-year-old—the maturity and intelligence of the woman she became, however, as well. He looks at her and notices that he remembers the situation but not that what he said to her anymore.
"Takeshi-kun." It's the first time he hears her calling him like that and he wonders why it sounds so right. "Carpe diem, you said back then. Seize the day, enjoy every moment of your life, you said. Don't give up the things that are important to you. Fight. You cheered me up. Perhaps, without your advice, I'd still be in love with Tsuna-san." She glances contemplatively at his face. "I worried a lot about Tsuna, you know? I thought that for him it would be the worst, being in the mafia and all. I knew for the rest of you it'd be hard as well and I wondered a lot if Chrome-chan was doing fine—but I didn't really worry about you. Well, I suppose I thought you of all people wouldn't change drastically or something. And then you meet me at the aiport—and you look good, even better than before, grown-up. But when I look you in the eye—you know? … You've lost your love for rain."
He turns away from her—his hand still holding hers—and moves on. "I'm sorry."
She is silent while they walk and she never once complains about the muddy ground anymore. Then, shortly before they arrive at the main entrance, Haru stops—this time, she doesn't have to wait for him to stop as well.
(Like water adapting to whatever form—Yamamoto can adapt to Haru.)
"In the end rain is rain, ne? No matter how mephitic or cruel it can be—life needs rain." She smiles at him. "No matter how much the rain changes—when it falls on a spring meadow it's water."
"Haru …"
"I will not wait until the rain cleanses itself from the blood and is like before, you know, Yamamoto-kun?" She grins confidently. "No matter what happens in the mafia business—I can't accept this new, wrong smile of yours. I will bring your old smile back with everything I've got. Yamamoto-kun should better surrender now peacefully."
Yamamoto smiles crookedly, a little resignation in his voice. "You don't know with what you're getting involved with, Haru."
"Haru's going to be a mafia man's wife!" She says that so self-confident as if she'd never said something else, as if she didn't change her trade mark phrase.
She is changeable as water, this Haru.
Yamamoto smiles—he wonders why, but then again, does it really matter?—and says: "Fine."
Haru reddens like a tomato as he puts his left arm over her shoulder and takes with the other the suitcase from her hand.
Then she's caught herself again: "Yamamoto-kun, I already said that I can carry my suitcase myself! I'm totally capable of doing that, thank you very much! Yamomoto-kun!"
Without paying much attention to her cheerful babbling he cuts her off: "Takeshi."
"Hahi?"
"My name's Takeshi. You called me that a few minutes ago too."
"H-hahi?"
Yamamoto chuckles softly and opens the great entrance to the main estate of the Vongola in Milano.
"Cogli l'attimo," he says lowly before he takes his arm from her slim shoulder and she stands in the commotion that is the Vongola Decimo's Family.
Lambo-chan and Gokudera-kun beat the crap out of each other in one corner of the foyer for an pastel-pink—pink?—wrapped packet. Bianchi-san and Reborn-chan sit in the great dining hall that she can see through the window front. And then there is Tsuna-san with Kyoko-chan, pretty as ever. He looks older and more experienced—then she recognizes the sparkle of nervousness to see her again and the slight shame for the chaos though and she realizes that nothing has changed, really. Nothing that truly matters.
She turns to Yamamoto with her radiant smile and says triumphantly: "As you know, I'm above average when it comes to brains, Takeshi-kun." The name comes from her lips so easily that for a moment his heart stops beating. "I wasn't for nothing always top in my year."
"Hm?" He looks at her questioningly.
"I mean, dear Takeshi-kun, that you have a horrible accent," she rebukes him playfully. She then says without a hint of an accent: "Cogli l'attimo. Seize the day. Profite du your. Genieße den Tag. Carpe diem."
Then Reborn-chan and Bianchi-san notice her arrival and come to greet her and Lambo-chan snivels and Gokudera-kun throws her the packet which is practically tattered because of their previous wrangling with his usual I-don't-do-that-'cause-we're-friends-but-'cause-Juudaime-wants-me-to-do-it-glare .
She catches it, looks at all the friends that are gathered, smiles and shouts out a "Hahi!"
… and really, there's nothing more to say, is there?
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(drop, drop, drop)
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« Wo es Liebe regnet, wünscht sich keiner einen Schirm.»
Or: "Where love rains no one needs an umbrella."
The different translations of "carpe diem" are from an online dictionary. Apart from English, German and Latin I'm not quite sure whether they're correct or not. So if anyone knows better, tell me! ^^
Reviews are appreciated :D
When I wrote this piece I forgot that Haru and Kyoko don't even know ten years later what's happening in mafia/sumo (lol) business. Well, it doesn't matter. In the future after the future they went to visit—or something like that …—they know since they know in the presence that is definitely changed by the future they visited (that sounds way too stupid).