A/N: Thanks for reading!
WE TOO, WILL BE STORIES IN THE END
Two months. That was what Natsume had promised Madara, and he intended to keep his word. It all felt so unreal, like a dream. But it wasn't, because maybe it was his imagination, but he could somehow feel it in himself, that he was changing, and not only mentally. It scared him, more than any yokai had ever scared him. So his sensei was his lifeline right now, and like he had told him, he would trust him with all he had. But having said that, leaving was not going to be easy. Not after having found such kind and doting relatives like Touko-san and Shigeru-san. Not after finding people like Natori-san, like Tanuma and Taki. Not after finding precious friends like Kitamoto and Nishimura.
He thought about what to bring with him and what to leave behind. He didn't have many possessions in the first place. After moving around constantly as he was growing up, he learned to have a minimalist lifestyle. An open bag sat in the corner of his room, slowly filling with things he was sure that he couldn't leave behind. The yuujinchou was a given. The photo of his parents: the only thing that he could imagine them with. His inheritance money. One set of spare clothes and other things like that. A water bottle. Emergency rations consisting of packeted sweets that he hoped sensei wouldn't find out about until necessary. And the last thing he had made him blush with embarrassment: the Nyanko-sensei shaped rock that he had had searched for the next morning after throwing it out the window. He felt oddly attached to it and had kept it secretly safe ever since.
He had just slipped it in the zipped pocket of his bag when Madara entered through the window. He looked at the small bag and then up at Natsume.
'You're being strangely practical about this, Natsume.'
Natsume just shrugged and looked up at the wind chime ringing at the open window.
'Well, things like a wind chime are going to be no use when traveling, not matter what sentimental value they have. It would probably just get damaged on the road; a wind chime belongs in a house like his one.'
Madara hummed, sitting down next to Natsume.
'Ne, Natsume?'
'Yes, sensei?'
'I'm sorry. I failed you. After everything, when you needed me, I wasn't there.'
'Sensei...' Natsume breathed in shock. Madara's voice was so humbly sorrowful, and sincere. It was so much of a genuine apology that it hurt just to hear it. It was the first time he had heard such words fall from his sensei's mouth, but the worlds felt so wrong as they fell. The fact itself that he felt bad enough about it to actually directly apologise was enough in itself to make Natsume gasp in shock. Natsume decided then and there that apologies didn't suit Madara at all.
'I know that I don't deserve forgiveness. I had only been there quicker, if I had acted a little faster, I cou-'
'Sensei, stop.' It wasn't an order, but a request effective in silencing Madara.
Natsume took the the neko-form into his arms and onto his lap, like always. Eyes closed he stroked Nyanko sensei's fur coat, he spoke:
'Don't say such things. And never apologise to me, ever. You are my sensei, after all.'