Well, this is finally here, I'm sorry for leaving a cliffhanger for so long. Real life turned up.

Enjoy the chapter! Thanks to EVERYONE who voted for me in GARC, this story polled third place in best romance! WOO! Go me!

"What?" Mikan asked, pushing for her mother to finish the sentence she'd broken off right in the middle of. Ditz.

"Oh! Well, have you thought about dropping out this year?" Yuka said.

"But... mom!" Mikan cried, finding it hard to believe she was hearing these words. "I need to go to university! You never had the chance, and you regretted it all your life; if I don't go, I'll be letting you down, and I'll be letting myself down, and I'll be throwing it all away for something I've no certainly on."

"Charming," Natsume snapped from the sidelines.

"No offence," she said apologetically. "I just don't know, do I? What am I supposed to do if I drop out? Work? I want to finish my education and I don't want to be a housewife before I'm even..."

"Mikan, slow down," Yuka chided. "You're babbling. I was saying, have you ever thought about dropping out this year and applying next year? Many students take a gap year before going to university." Mikan was silent, as she tried to process the information... surely, they'd thought about that option before?

"So, if you dropped out," Natsume started to speak, obviously recounting area covered with Yuka in Mikan's absence. "You could come back to Tokyo and apply there next year."

"Work for a year," Yuka said. "It's not permanent, but it can be helpful: you can save up money so that you don't have to work long hours when you're at university."

"Tokyo is so expensive though," Mikan said. "And... you're going to sell the house, aren't you? That was the plan."

"Don't you want to come back!" Natsume snapped suddenly; anger flaring up in his eyes. "Why do you keep picking holes in this?!" he snarled.

"I'm not!" she yelled back at him. "I'm just pointing out the problems!"

"There are no problems," he hissed. "You can drop out here, come back to Tokyo with me, and I'll help you get into a better university, I promise you." It was true that Mikan was not going to a particularly good university in Hokkaido, but she had done better than she'd thought she would once Natsume and Hotaru teamed up to tutor her. If they had a whole year then the possibilities were endless.

"If you took a year out, you could find something you really want to do," Yuka added. It was true that Mikan was unsure about whether she really wanted to do the course she'd picked, and she'd confessed as much to her mother. She felt like she just chose it because she wanted to do something, and didn't really have a passion for what she was doing. "We could sell the house, and use the money to buy a smaller place, or to fund your accommodation costs. Darling," Yuka said, "it could work. I'm not saying I want to be parted from you again, but it was you who told me to follow my heart here." Mikan felt herself trembling, and wondered when her mother had changed – with Tsubasa she had tried to hamper them at every turn and actively disliked him, and here she barely knew Natsume, but she was going the whole nine yards to try to keep them together.

"Perhaps you should listen to your own good advice and follow yours back to Tokyo. I love you; you're my baby and you always will be, but you've barely been yourself since you came up here. Mothers can always tell, you know, when their children are suffering from broken hearts."

"Mikan, please do this," Natsume said. "You're leaving so much behind."

"You mean I'm leaving you behind," she said darkly, but he met her look.

"Yes. But you are also leaving your friends." He placed a hand over one of the bandages on his arm, and her eyes followed him on instinct. "I'm not going to try to blackmail you into coming back by saying I'm going to deliberately hurt myself, but I will hurt myself – even if it was the last thing I want to do – if you don't give this a shot. If it fucks up, you can come back here and go through the whole process again; shit, I'll even help you apply to a university here next year, so long as you give Tokyo a shot." He gave her a pleading look. "Please. I don't want to go home without you."

Mikan was quiet for a few seconds, and then suddenly screamed and hit her fist against the table.

"What am I supposed to say?!" she screamed in frustration. "I want to say yes, but how am I supposed to..."

"Then say yes," Natsume said.

"You want to," Yuka added. "So just do it, Mikan."

"Uh... yes," she hissed; face in her hands. "You've got me." She hung her head. It wasn't that she was mad at being forced into something she didn't want to do – she did want to do it – but she was painfully aware that she was giving up a lot, giving a whole year of her life, to him. It was a frightening thought, even though Natsume had always demanded a lot, and she simply had no assurance that it wouldn't all crash and burn. She was scared, in short.

Then he leaned over the table, his hand on top of hers, and kissed her, and then she remembered why it would be okay.

"Can we go home, Mikan?" he said softly, and without thinking she followed his lips as they retreated and recaptured them. He twisted away and his mouth came to a stop by her ear. "I love you," he whispered, and she felt his needs in the pause that followed.

"I... love you too," she said back to him; she meant it, dear god she'd meant it for a long time, but to actually confess it had never been part of her plan. "Yes, I want to go home."

Home – they both knew what this was, but they were both aware that it wasn't going to be easy by any standards. There was still his parents to deal with, leaving Yuka and Haruki again, finding jobs, restarting applications, actually starting university in his case and so much more.

But they could do it. They could do anything together. Together they were normal, and not fucked-up misfits from a bad school with no destination in life. They had love.

True to his words, Natsume found a way. He continued to stay with Yuka and Haruki for a few days, helping Mikan pack all her things back again, and negotiating some sort of complicated loan-come-rent-finance deal from Haruki. As far as she could work out, they were going to sell the house in Tokyo as planned, and then use the money from that to rent a small apartment – the rent would be repayed in full, but it would be on some sort of spread out and subsidised level.

Basically it meant that they would be getting an appartment.

Meaning Mikan and Natsume.

Meaning they were going to live together. Quickly, yes, and with every likelihood of backfiring, but it was prettymuch the only reasonable option, as they both knew what would happen when they returned to Tokyo, and Natsume reappeared on the map.

His parents would, and did, flip out. That said, he didn't really deal with it for that long, because he only went back to his house to collect a few things. Living with Mikan was going to be effective immediately, even before the house sold. His parents didn't like it, but there wasn't anything they could do about it in the end (they would eventually accept Mikan, even if it took nearly a year), and within the month they were living happily – if a little argumentatively – under the same roof.

Natsume easily found part-time work, while Mikan worked part-time evenings and a full-time job once term started and Natsume began his freshman year at university. Ironically enough, she ended up working in a police station of all places (they agreed to let her work there as she had a clean record for the past year). Natsume wasn't entirely impressed at first, but Mikan found that she enjoyed it a lot, and in the end it was criminal psychology that she applied for: 'real criminals', she always insisted, not the pumped up charges that were flung against Alices unfairly.

Naturally this mean Natsume learnt criminal psychology as well, as he had promised to help Mikan pass her exams, so as well as his economics degree he studied half the night to tutor her, and then studied the rest passing the information on.

It was perhaps the busiest year of their lives; that first year. In between jobs, school, tutoring and occasionally going out to see their friends, they barely had time to have sex (although they always managed somehow), and they had almost no time at all to argue. They were too exhausted with the rest of their lives to do anything more than collapse on each other at the end of the day and take comfort. Sometimes they might have taken things out on the other one, but it never lasted very long (meaning until one of them got the horn).

A year sped by faster than the first few months of their relationship ever felt – the Academy, probably – and on the date of their first anniversary something rather special happened.

"Aoi called me today," Natsume said as he dumped his bag outside their door and wandered into the appartment – he knew Mikan was in because he could smell the food. Looking back now, he couldn't imagine any other place being home now. This was his home; sure it was small, cluttered, and Mikan left her knickers, makeup and socks everywhere, and people gave him strange looks for being one of the only freshmen not to be living in the halls, but to leave this place would be to leave his sanity.

"Yeah?" Mikan called from the bathroom; she was looking for a nail varnish, but while she left things chaotically all around, and Natsume was constantly tidying up their bedroom, he was an absolute demon in a bathroom. His life was in his bathroom, and their was small enough without his explosion of mess and things packing every shelf and surface.

"It's our anniversary," he replied, and he heard her stop moving.

"Is it?" she said.

"Well, that's what she says. She said 'what have you got Mi-chan for your first anniversary?' so I assumed it must be our anniversary."

"Oh," Mikan said. She couldn't really say anything else; neither of them could actually remember when they started going out, or when they'd classify as the 'start' of their relationship. "I didn't remember."

"Me neither," he said, and started undoing his shirt. He liked the fact that living alone with a girlfriend made it completely okay to start undressing anywhere and to any degree. In the summer they often lay around completely naked on afternoons off; not that they had many of them.

He went to the fridge and took out a beer, cracking it open and taking a sip he slumped down in a chair and waited for her to come out.

"Hey," she drawled sweetly, "babe." Natsume took another sip of beer and just winked at her. "Are we gonna do something special for this day then?" she said suggestively, and although Natsume verymuch liked the route that tone in her voice was taking, he had better ideas.

"Yes," he said succinctly, and then, staring straight at her, without any hesitation, he said, "let's get married."

"What?!" Mikan had taken his beer out of his hand and had a sip, but when he said this she spat it straight back out; onto his shirt.

"Oh fucking charming, Mikan," he snapped. "I propose to you and you spit on me."

"I was surprised!" she screamed. "You can't be serious."

"I'm serious," he echoed, although she already knew that. He didn't joke about shit like this.

"But..."

"I don't want to love anyone else except you," he said patiently. "We live together, it's been a year and we're still together, my parents are apparently using your name when relatives ask about me, and I love you." He reached for one of her hands and kissed it. "So marry me. What are we waiting for?"

Mikan considered all of these points; especially the one about his parents. True to expectations his parents had thrown fits when he moved out, and people were always surprised to find out that Hyuuga Natsume had moved out of his home, cleaned up his act, and was living with a girl. Her family all liked him well enough, and she loved Aoi like her own sister, so if his parents would just accept her then...

"Oh my god... yes, of course I'll marry you," she squealed suddenly, and threw herself over him. Even if he had spit-up beer on his shirt and she was going out to work, she'd still do it. She loved him.

"Hey, hey, wait," he said as he laughed, and fumbled for something in the pocket of his pants. "It's nothing special, but I reckon we could make it official, right?" He pulled a tiny ring out of his pocket, with a fire-red jewel embedded in the centre. Something cheap and cheerful; it didn't cost much, but they were used to budgeting, and it wasn't the cost that counted.

"What the...!" she gasped, snatching it from his hand and staring at the ring in marvel. "When did you..."

"On the way home," he chuckled. "It's stupid, but I thought you might be annoyed if I didn't have a ring." She kissed him.

"I love it," she said with a massive smile. "I love you." She kissed him again, slipping the ring onto her ring finger, and they both became aware that she was straddling his lap. Something stirred, and the once-romantic kiss became heated very quickly.

They were young, and stupid, and people would be even more surprised when Hyuga Natsume would go to class in a month's time with a gold ring on his left hand, instead of the silver ones he usually sported somewhere else. They would be even more surprised to learn that he had married his girlfriend in a small registrar's office with their best friends, Imai Hotaru and Nogi Ruka present as witnesses (that was the first time those two finally met, but it would not be the last).

But the criticisers did not know Natsume and Mikan Hyuuga before they met each other; they did not know the two people who had changed from being very deeply flawed and potentially doomed individuals to happy, loving, caring people. No matter what happened, or how tough things got, they always kept going. Because they had each other. Because they had love.

And that was all anyone ever needed, really.

Armor Ultio Est...

Love is Vengance.

The End.

Yes, this is the end. Sorry, the fic dropped and I'd rather end it properly than let it die. So here it is.

Bit sweet and sugary, but they're the best endings ;)

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