Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin is not mine…

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- Chapter One -

Running

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"We must play our lives like soldiers in the field,
But life is short, I'm running faster all the time."

- Killing Joke - A Love Like Blood

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She was running.

Left, right, duck left again. There were tears in her eyes, blood in her mouth and her whole body shook as she hurled it forward, jumping over tree roots, crashing through brambles. Wind whipped her hair and the sky rumbled ominously, dark clouds gathering above the leaf cover; she'd have to leave the forest soon, she could only hope the coming rain would hide her tracks.

A particularly vicious thorn snagged her ankle and she stumbled, crashing into a trunk and clinging to it, breathing ragged. Her arms came up to circle the tree, breathing in the soft smell of dry moss and bark, trying to clear her head and stem the flow of tears. She gasped out a single sob, body crumpling into the bark but the sound of thrashing leaves and breaking branches behind her forced her upright, had her running on through the wood.

Under branches, over rocks, through a stream, ankle deep but frigid. She stumbled on, each step growing more mechanical, gaining speed as her body slipped into autopilot, focussing on running rather than everything she'd just seen.

They're here! They've found him!"

She choked, palms smashing into hard earth as the memory shook her. She staggered to her feet, glancing behind before hurtling on. She couldn't stop. Grieving could wait. Anger could wait. All she needed was the fear that fuelled her.

Fighting had never been an option.

Just keep running and you might make it out alive.

It was lost. Everything they'd trialled for, everything they worked so hard to gain, so hard to keep safe. If she were any braver she thought she'd look back and bear witness to the scene below. She thought she'd see columns of black smoke marching to oblivion from the rows of burning thatch. She thought she'd see corpse fires littering fields and hear the dull marching of hobnail boots on blood-wet ground.

But she was not any braver. And she did not look around. All she saw was parched bracken and low branches, roots to be leapt over and potholes to be dodged. She knew only the heavy sound of her breathing and thought only of her escape.

In some dark recess of her mind something was screaming but she did not heed it and, feet pounding over hard ground, she reached out for the edge of the forest and whatever lay beyond.

-

The city of Accorrolin was bustling, much in the same way it always had done. Merchants stood and yelled themselves hoarse on market stalls full of gaudy tack, everyday essentials and priceless heirlooms and men and women yelled back, brandishing light money pouches aggressively while street children threw themselves from roofs and under carts with pockets full of pilfered goods. Soldiers milled around with an air of importance and from the stocks roars of delight outweighed the background clatter and chatter that enthusiastically assaulted the ears.

Kenshin eyed the scene in resigned silence; he wasn't a fan of cities.

It had been ten years since he'd last been here, and if he had a choice in the matter he wouldn't be staying long. He had a job to do, he appreciated that, but he'd rather be doing it somewhere else. Anywhere else, truth be told. The war may be over, but the memories weren't likely to leave him anytime soon. Aoshi had called for his help and he'd give it, and then he'd leave.

With a sigh he hitched his pack a little higher, lightly sidestepping an old woman begging for money he didn't have and continuing on his way.

The inn he was headed for was a colourful place, hidden carefully within the rough, slum-ridden fringes of the docks. He wandered past criminals of every kind to get there, pickpockets, con-artists, assassins, general thugs, but no mages. Times were changing, he noted grimly, picking up his pace.

He was given no trouble, the strange looking sword on his hip combined with the hood hiding his face were enough to deter anyone with any sense; he reached the Aoiya unhindered.

Casting a furtive look around, he lay his hand lightly over the lock and mumbled something too low for anyone to hear, gently tugging the door open as something within it clicked. With a sigh he stepped into the dimly lit room, pushing back his hood; after the bright midday sunshine of the street it took his eyes a fraction of a second to adjust. He blinked the darkness back and violet eyes widened at the sight of an entire room staring at him.

The uncomfortably stiff silence held for a matter of seconds, until a sudden ripple of whispers broke out.

"Battousai-"

"I heard he'd died-"

"The scar, there's no mistaking the scar-"

"Shadow-"

"Killer-"

"Back in Accorrolin? After all this time-"

"It's the Battousai-"

He smiled tightly. That was one this he couldn't forgive this city for: it had an unwavering memory.

-

It had been months and endless days of travelling. From the forested mountains in which she'd lived her entire life she found herself descending through clouds into a flat expanse of farmland, trailing off into the distance as far as the eye could see. She'd survived in the mountains through the skills she'd known forever, hunting with bow and arrows she'd been forced to make herself, but on entering the plain there was nothing more for her to kill without incurring the wrath of a farmer.

She passed through, observing the drought that blighted her own valley's farms doing similar damage here. Harvest would begin within the month and the crops were dry and few. It would not last the winter.

She walked north and north, not knowing where to, just that she had to keep moving. She slept in hay barns, in cattle sheds, even under hedgerows, but eventually she could survive no longer on stolen fruit and meat and with the harvest beginning she saw it best to find herself paid work.

The farm she came to was old and patchy, so like home with its thrice-mended doorframes and creaking hayloft. She slept in the barn and woke each morning more tired than she'd been the night before. The work was hard but no more than she'd have handled in her family's farm and the comparisons ate at her until she thought herself mad.

Nightmares wracked her sleeping mind – the screams and the blood and her own face in the old cracked mirror. Footsteps less like footsteps and more like the thunder of mechanical hooves –a regimented clatter and people who weren't quite people behind armour and visors. There would be fire and she'd wake to smell smoke, smoke and she'd wake to the smell of burning flesh, drifting up through the trees and the memories until she wondered again (and again and again) if they were what she smelt. Her family. Her sisters. Piled like lepers for cremation.

The bitter taste of shame reduced her to sobs in the darkness and she knew she should have stayed and fought. She would have died but not alone; she would have been with her father, she would have made him proud with the swordsmanship he'd taught her (she was the son he'd never had).

Harvest came and went and she took her pay, a meagre cut of a meagre crop; it should barely have been enough to survive on for a week, but she was getting better at conserving her supplies. The old farmer didn't ask her where she was going, just told her to be safe. She'd made no promises.

The winds of autumn picked up; blowing from the north with an icy chill she'd rarely felt in her mountainous home. She found herself shivering at night, wishing not for the first time that she'd thought to steal a horse when she'd first run. It was getting late in the year and people kept their beasts indoors; if she wanted to steal one now it was going to be hard work, and buying harder still. With harvest so low people would need those beasts to sell for food when the weather got too harsh.

She saw fewer people on the roads now, the odd merchant, perhaps a pilgrim. She avoided soldiers at all costs and found herself shrinking away from the one mage she saw, he was young and tall and she couldn't help but wonder if he'd known Katsu. She didn't think she could face telling that story yet.

The further north the road took her the colder it became. Before long she found herself wearing her sleeping blanket as a cloak during the day, practically burying herself in leaves at night in an attempt to stay warm. Her food supply was running out, she knew she had only a few days worth left, but she kept walking; if she stopped on the road she had a feeling she'd never get up again.

She saw that mage again, the young, tall one. He offered her something that smelled strongly of alcohol and she turned it down. He was going to the city too. She wanted to ask why, given that the Prince was known to be killing off mages, but her teeth were chattering so she settled for thanking him for the heavy fur he draped over her shoulders.

That night he shared his campfire with her, there was no point them both travelling north alone, he'd said.

The following morning he'd woken her up at dawn.

"Rise and shine, Missy," he'd grinned, passing her what looked like a baked potato, wrapped in cloth. "Careful, it's been in the fire all night, should be nice and hot."

It was a potato and it was hot. "This is wonderful," she said quietly, chewing and swallowing and wondering if she was going to cry, it was so delicious; the first hot meal she'd had since she'd left the farm after harvest.

He just grinned and went back to his own potato. "I'm Sano," he said.

"Kaoru," she offered in return.

In the pleasant silence she hugged the animal fur he'd given her closer.

It wasn't until many hours later that she voiced her thoughts.

"Why are you going to the city?"

His head shot up abruptly but his smile was easy, "I have business there. Owe a friend a favour."

She frowned slightly, "Are they worth the risk?"

He blinked at her, "I'm sorry?"

"You're a mage," she said simply, "and the Prince is killing mages."

He seemed surprised, shaking his head in confusion, "He's a very old friend, well worth the risk, but I'm not sure how you know about Shishio."

She frowned, "He's the reason I'm on the road."

He caught her eye sharply but she didn't elaborate and he didn't ask her to.

Each village had a mage, master of both the healing arts and magical protection for the community he resided within. Healer Gensei had been her village's mage, but he was old and without any male descendants. Magic was only expressed in males; females were just carriers of the gene. Healer Gensei was Kaoru's grandfather on her mother's side and as a result she had the blood without the magic.

When Katsu had appeared one night out of the mountains, shivering cold and wet to the bone the council of Elders agreed to grant him sanctuary to continue his work if he agreed that on the event of Gensei's passing he would step into the role of village mage. He agreed to the terms, desperately grateful for the chance for safety he was being given.

That act of kindness eventually led to their downfall. They had all known of Katsu's experiments, of the fire magicks he was planning out. He said it was the future, and she was not alone when she believed him. His experiments were incredible, she saw entire chunks of mountain hewn off in a ball of flame, saw water turned to ash in the wake of his explosions. When the drought set in he moved further off to continue his experiments somewhere where they posed less of a danger to the village, but when it got really bad he returned, abandoning his post to help them work for food. Many times people wished they'd been sent a water mage, rather than Katsu's fire; while he was stronger than Gensei any weather magic from him would only have made their situation worse.

In those few months Katsu overcame any boundaries there might have been between him and the villagers, he worked in the fields as hard as any other man, earning respect even from those originally wary of his presence. It was only then that he chose to tell them that he was being hunted.

Kaoru's village bothered little with the king. His palace was far in the north and the rule of one royal to the next changed little in their home so remote in the southern mountains. What little they knew of the ruler in Accorrolin came from the merchants that came only once a year, not long after harvest (Kaoru tried not to picture what the travellers might find in their next visit).

Katsu told them more about the king and his government than they had ever wished to know. He said the king was very old, rarely leaving his palace, and by default his command of the armies had passed to his son, Crown Prince Shishio. He said that Shishio was mortally afraid of mages and their magic, something to do with a childhood encounter, an encounter that was rumoured to have led to his current physical state, covered head to foot in burns. In light of that it was not too difficult to imagine why he drove Katsu out of the city; it was said that he was rounding up mages and burning them. It seemed absurd that he would even try it; the power of mages was the power of nature itself, enhanced and focussed by a human vessel; to fight them was usually to die. And yet now that he had control of the army he picked off the village mages one by one, struggling to find the remains of the band of sorcerers Katsu had once travelled with.

He'd been so well hidden, but eventually they found him. Whether by chance or by tracking they found Katsu in her village and they burnt it to the ground. She had seen the mage die, watched the mage scar on his forearm flicker gold in the fire light, his eyes wide and unseeing. They'd never find his experiments. She remembered him tell that to her weeks before, when they traipsed in from the fields, tired and in search of dinner. He told her that they could burn the entire mountain range and not find any trace of his stash. And now she so dearly hoped that he was right, because the thought of those faceless monsters with the power Katsu had shown her to was too terrible to even imagine.

-

With a shuddering sigh Kenshin came out of his trance.

He blinked and found a young girl with a long black braid staring back at him guiltily.

"I bought your food-" she blurted out. "I'm sorry! I promised Grandpa I wouldn't disturb you."

"Not disturbed," he mumbled, gratefully picking up the bread and cheese she'd left beside him. "I'd have woken anyway."

She paused, looking ready to ask something else, but he was too exhausted to encourage her and she scampered from the room.

The door clicked shut behind her and Kenshin closed his eyes again. He hadn't lied, it wasn't her that woke him. He glanced towards the window, the sky was tinted orange with dusk; he'd been in meditation for at least six hours.

Aching with fatigue he dragged himself to his feet. Use of such magicks always took a lot out of him. He picked up the plate and went to slump on the bed below the window, watching a great raven sweep down to rest on the ledge past the lead-paned glass. Its strange amber eyes watched him coldly before it took wing again. He sighed once more.

It was several months since he'd first entered the Aoiya and the past few days had taken almost all the energy he'd built up in his stay in the inn. The owner's granddaughter Misao was the only person he'd seen on a regular basis now for over a week and all she did was drop off his food and come again to take away the empty tray. He'd been living in that trance, wandering the middle-world in search of the answer they so badly needed, and almost two days ago now he'd found it. Another soul. Living this time, which had surprised him. It had danced out his range several times but today he might just have caught it.

He placed the plate back on the floor and rested his head on the pillow.

All the summoning magic at his disposal had been sent after that one soul, he only hoped the fates would be kind and grant his request. There was going to be another war, and the last thing they wanted was to march without the Weapon.

The wind rattled the pane above his head.

He'd tell Aoshi in the morning.

-

There were fires burning on the horizon. They sparkled like little stars, bright chinks of light that only caught her eye because of the blanket darkness everywhere else in to the east.

She felt Sano come to stand beside her.

"Soldiers."

She just nodded and he walked away, wandering back to their makeshift camp.

They were nearing the city. He'd told her over dinner that it was only a day's walk away.

She didn't know what was going to happen now. She'd been travelling for months with only a vague shadow of a plan, and that was keep moving north. Then she found Sano and discovered that north meant the city and she'd allowed herself to dwell briefly on the idea of revenge, but that notion passed soon enough; she had nothing that could threaten Shishio. But now, now her destination loomed and practicality was forced to kick in. She'd need a job, but what jobs would a young woman find in the city? She'd lived all her life on a farm, working the fields or hunting with the boys; she didn't imagine that would help her at all here. All she knew of city girls were the stories merchant women would tell her of princesses and their palaces, and she knew for sure she wasn't one of them.

With a sigh she turned away from the distant glow the what was undoubtedly burning villages and headed back to where Sano was stacking the logs they'd need to keep warm through the night.

Sano had become a good friend over the past few weeks of travelling. He was an earth mage, she'd discovered; the only explanation she'd come up with for his uncanny ability to find dry fire wood wherever they were and pull up potatoes whenever they were in need of food. His mage scar was traced along the ridge of his knuckles on both hands, the shiny pink tissue sparking with bright bronze almost constantly.

All grown mages sported mage scars; they played a part in their initiation ceremonies when they were boys. She didn't know the details, not being a mage herself, but as far as she was aware the wound forced the magic to awaken within them and after the ceremony it would glow bright in the presence of its own element.

She remembered the first time she'd seen Healer Gensei's scar burn. She'd only been young; she and her mother were helping the old mage collect herbs on the mountainside and a heavy gust of wind had almost blown her down. Gensei had grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet and across his wrist she'd seen a silver flash of light. She'd refused to drop his hand and demanded to know what it was, and with patience and a smile he'd told her.

After that, whenever it was particularly windy she'd run to drag the old man out of his house, just so she could see his magic light up under the skin.

Sano spent most of the time with his hands bandaged up, hiding the scars; they attracted unnecessary attention, he said. She'd only seen them once, one night when he told her fragments of his story and in turn she told him fragments of her own. He knew what had happened in her village, but not the name Katsu, nor even that the mage the soldiers punished them for was anything more than an ordinary village guardian.

"What're you gonna do when you get there?" he asked suddenly.

She looked up and found brown gazing at her intently.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, where you gonna to go, what you gonna to do when you get to the city? Have you got people to stay with? Can you get work?"

"I hadn't really thought…" she answered truthfully, and he looked back into the fire, expression pensive.

She'd presumed the conversation closed, but he spoke again.

"Well, you can tag along with me for the first day or two if you like. I'm staying with old friends, they'll put you up happily until you get on your feet."

She was shocked by the offer. Admittedly he'd been kind from the first moment they'd met, but she had never expected the charity to extend past the end of their journey.

"They're mages like me," he continued, "And some of them are like you, you know, girls who can see magic and stuff. I used to think only guys could see the truth behind it, but some of them, if they don't have some kind of sight I don't know how they do the things they do."

He had a different look on his face now. It caught her attention, the slight softness to the tense lines, the slight tilt of the mouth. He was going home. She envied him that.

-

"You're the water mage. It's your job to read people."

"Couldn't you have placed some form of tag on them?"

"Aoshi, I barely had the strength to summon them. It's advanced magic, and the middle-world is exhausting. I've cut months off the hunt already. You can't ask more."

Aoshi nodded his head wearily, getting to his feet. "Our mole in the palace is dead."

With a start Kenshin spun on the spot, "What?"

"I don't know how it happened, only that it did. I don't think she's told him anything."

"But you have no way to be sure."

"No. And your talents are best used elsewhere."

Kenshin gave him a measured look.

"Sano is returning today."

Accepting the change of subject Kenshin followed Aoshi into the hall, "Really? He's taken his time."

"Says he found something along the way."

Kenshin laughed, "It's usually Misao's job to bring in the waifs and strays."

"Indeed," said Aoshi, looking pained. "Hopefully this newcomer will keep her otherwise occupied."

They'd entered the dingy bar area and Kenshin raked his eyes through the crowd while Aoshi leant across the bar to say something to Sae. The customers were mostly low power mages, taking refuge in one of the few places they were free from the spies of the Prince. Admittedly, the majority of them were too weak to even register on Shishio's radar, but it comforted them and bought in custom, so the Oniwaban did not object.

There was a loud bang.

"Well, Missy, welcome to the Aoiya!"

The door slammed back on its hinges and every head looked up.

"Sano," greeted Sae with a smile.

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