A/N: This was inspired by strangely enough, "Love and Memories" by OAR. I guess it has to do with the whole remembering the past and stuff (you'll see when you read it).

Standard disclaimers apply.

046: Homecoming

Kaoru had never felt her heart beating this hard in her entire life. She was standing alone in the train station with two suitcases in hand. Never in the past six years would she have believed she would be back where she started. Looking left and right down the platform, she noticed a payphone and wondered briefly whether she should call them. They did say to call when she decided to come home.

The offers and years flew by and lonely nights holding the phone in hand were wasted when she stepped on the Stonebrook station platform. In that strange moment, Kaoru realized how fast times were and how alive she truly felt being back home.

She waited outside for the cab she called to pick her up on the corner of Post Avenue and Willow Street, where she held plenty of memories. Kaoru wondered what her friends were doing with their lives. Were they living their dreams or were they left here in the streets of Stonebrook?

The one person who Kaoru was trying to brush from her thoughts ended up coming to her mind like a spark in the night. She wondered how he was. If he was still the dreamer he was in high school. A painful lob formed in her throat at the thought of his bright eyes being dulled by the true horror and pain of the real world.

But that was the reason why she wanted to leave the small town of Stonebrook: to go out and see what the real world truly was. She had her share of pleasure and pain and came to the conclusion that there wasn't a lot she was missing besides the excitement of true city life. Somehow, she just wanted to be in the calm and quiet of suburbia, right back where she started.

Her cab eventually came and she almost told the driver to take her as far away from this town as he could. She suddenly didn't like the confinements of her small home town and wanted to be free. But she knew that she had six years of being free and it was time to set things straight.

She told him to stop at the beginning of the street instead of the front of her house at the end of the road. She wanted to delay the inevitable for a little while longer. After paying the driver his money, she began her march down the street.

No matter how much Kaoru hated Stonebrook, she still loved her street. Especially during this time of day when the sun was setting and the vivid green trees were glowing orange from the light. Walking down the all-too familiar sidewalks made Kaoru think of the days when she and Kenshin would walk to school until they were able to drive.

Kenshin…

She hoped he was home as well, yet at the same time dreaded the idea. Even though she e-mailed her parents about her life in the city and told them to share it with Kenshin, she felt horribly guilty that she left him without a proper goodbye. Some days it was a dull ache and other times it was a flaring pain that brought tears of nostalgia in her eyes.

Number seventeen Wickamore Drive. Home.

Taking a deep breath, she walked through the gravel driveway and slab stone path to the front door. When she stood on the welcome mat she felt her nose sting and her throat close. Closing her eyes, she took deep breaths and tried to focus on balancing herself. Eventually she rang the doorbell and waited patiently for her mother or father to answer the door.

Her mother opened the door and greeted Kaoru with a loud scream and a huge hug. Kaoru squeezed her mother tightly; she missed her hugs too much.

"What's all the yelling?" A male voice asked coming to the door. He froze and stared at his only daughter before grinning broadly. Kaoru let go of her mother and put herself in the arms of her father.

"Welcome home, Kaoru." He said, holding her tightly. Kaoru pulled away and smiled. She noticed her father had a lot more gray hairs and more fine lines on his face. Both her parents did. She wondered how much older she looked too.

"We should celebrate. Where do you want to go? Maeda still has great Japanese."

"I kind of just want to stay home." Kaoru said, heading toward the stairs to her room.

"By the way, some of your friends are back in town too. You should give them a call." Her mother called out from the bottom of the staircase.

"Oh? Like who?" Kaoru asked as she pulled out her clothes and put them in her empty drawers. She remembered perfectly when she took her clothes out of the very same drawers years ago.

"Well, Misao, but she's leaving in two days, Kamatari, Soujiro…and Kenshin." Kaoru in took a sharp breath.

"Is he?" She asked casually.

"Look on your bed and see what he's been doing." She heard her mother yell. Kaoru obliged and looked on her bed and saw two books, all bearing the name Kenshin Himura as the author.

"He actually did it." She whispered, picking up one book gingerly. She looked in the cover and saw it was published a few months ago. Looking on the back she saw a few critics proclaiming that his writing was outstanding and his imagination was endless. She brushed away a stray tear.

Kaoru wasn't a huge reader and she surprised herself by sitting cross-legged on the bed and reading for the rest of the day. In high school, besides the texts given in English, she would only read works written by Kenshin. Even though she wasn't an avid reader, she always new he was talented.

When her mother called her down for dinner, she realized she had been reading for over two hours. She couldn't help but be caught up in the world he created and the characters he built.

Dinner was filled with a comfortable silence. Her mother had made all of Kaoru's favorites including Caesar salad and tortellini with a dessert of double chocolate chip brownies.

"How is Kenshin?" Kaoru blurted, ending the silence. Kaoru's mother hid a smile by eating another forkful of tortellini.

"He's good. He's making a nice amount of money from those two books. I take it you were reading them?" Kaoru's father answered.

"I started This Moment. You know how I'm not a reader, right? Well, I don't know this book is just incredible. I can't believe he thought of all that in his head. It's really incredible." Her father smiled at her.

"You should take a look at the other one. It's just a compilation of short stories and poems. Some of them I think you'll be able to identify with." He said slyly. She didn't know what he meant so she decided to read some later.

After dinner, Kaoru talked about her life in the city and her new friends such as Megumi, who was an apprentice under a doctor in the city that performed delicate surgeries of the heart. After an hour, she managed to leave them by saying she was tired from traveling and just wanted to go to sleep.

When she got in her room, she immediately opened the second book Kenshin wrote. She searched through the table of contents and the chapter "Her" grabbed her attention. She went to page fifty-six and read:

Gone.

It left me breathless, angry, confused, sad.

I couldn't understand.

Everything managed to collapse in one moment.

It only takes one.

I thought about you again.

I violated every memory I had of you in my mind.

There were too many.

They got the best of me,

As the world got the best of you.

The sun shines through the window.

My world is blank,

The world you helped color and design.

I'm standing alone, the sun behind me.

How did you break me?

Smashed, took, and ran into the sun.

I should let go,

Her memory burns amber.

Kaoru nearly threw the book at the mirror that showed her reflection in despair. Instead, she burst out of her room and quickly slipped on an old pair of Converse before running out the door without saying a word to her parents.

She knew what she left behind when she stepped onto the train for the first time. She knew he loved her and she knew where their closeness was heading. She just didn't know whether she was prepared for it – not before she had a chance to the see the world.

As she pumped her arms and ran down the streets lighted by the homes, all the feelings she had with Kenshin released from her brain and into her bloodstream, causing tears to roll down her face and laughter to stick in her throat. When she arrived in front of Kenshin's front door she choked. What if he refused to talk to her? What if he stared at her with hate in his eyes?

Kaoru turned around and sat on the stoop, burying her head in her arms. She didn't know what she was thinking. She had run half a mile to Kenshin's house and here she was, too scared to ring the doorbell and sitting on his stoop, pretending she was invisible.

She lifted her head and wiped her face, trying to clear her head of doubts and push herself to ring the doorbell. But six years was so long…

"Kaoru?" She gasped in fright, looking up wide eyed to be face-to-face with Kenshin. She nearly cried seeing him with a slightly taller, more built figure – especially when she realized his eyes were exactly the same as she remembered.

But eventually the tears fell down her cheeks when she looked away from him. In one moment, however, she grasped exactly what she was doing was pathetic – it wasn't something she would've done as a child and she certainly wasn't going to do it now.

She immediately stopped crying and looked at him straight in the eye. Without much thought involved, she stood up, marched over to him, and kissed him fully on the lips.

Within an instant their lips touched, the kiss turned fervent and full of pent-up longing. Kaoru buried her hands through his long red hair while Kenshin put his hand on the back of her neck, pulling her closer.

When they broke apart, Kaoru blushed a deep red when she fully ingested what had happened.

"I'm so stupid." Kaoru whispered, looking at her shoes. She hadn't worn Converse in a long time.

"You're not stupid…" Kenshin assured, bringing her into a hug. "Although, I am rather pissed off that you didn't keep in touch with me directly." She hid her face in the crook of his neck.

"You should be. I'm sorry." She said with her voice muffled. He pulled her away and held her chin gently in his hands.

"Welcome home." He said softly, looking into her eyes. She hugged him tightly.

"It's good to be home."

A/N: FYI – I wrote that poem myself! It's exactly 100 words heh :)

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Miss Goalie