Town
or Three times Kenshin turned away, and once he did not
but this is shorter.
Sunnepho
Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin and all characters and settings are the property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Viz Media in North America. No profit is being made from the writing of this fanfiction.
Ms. Zeal informed me this morning that Terry McElrath, the author of the Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction Kyuushutsu, had passed away last year. Although I never had the opportunity to speak with Terry, I know that her story, which I'd read quite a few times, had a tremendous impact on my writing. I was offered a chance to contribute a story to a memorial community, and I am honoured to accept.
This story is dedicated to Terry McElrath, and I sincerely apologize for any shortcomings because I have never written for Rurouni Kenshin before. Or any other anime, for that matter. So please be patient with me.
I also despise fangirl Japanese, so I've attempted to avoid all use of it unless I found that there was no English equivalent, or that the translation did not provide the connotations I'd intended. I tried to ensure that all uses of Japanese terms were situated in contexts that made their meaning clear enough.
My thoughts are with Terry and her friends and family.
He cannot open his eyes.
His eyelids squeeze over the bulge of their covered balls, sealed together with rough crust lining their edges and clutching at his skin with brittle barbs.
The rain sounds like the hiss of grain sliding through a sieve. It rattles the leaves of the tree above his head. Scattered drops bounce from their surfaces, too small and light to be felt through the thick fabric of his gi. He knows they strike only through the hints of whispers as they fly through the air.
The night air is heavy with moisture under the tree. It slips through his nostrils and coats his tongue, where it does not press fat and thick against his palate.
It tastes of blood.
Overhead, water overturns a leaf unable to hold its accumulating weight, and a rivulet pours down, thumps against the weave of his hat, and sloughs off the brim. A gust of wind slaps a few drops against the back of his neck, where they run together, tracing paths that siphon away heat.
His hands are tucked in the folds of his clothes. The damp burrows through the gaps, and though he feels every bump and ridge of cloth against the pads of his fingertips, he cannot tell where his knuckles end and the chill begins. Patches of the cloth are smooth with ground-in mud.
His legs are pulled up and his arms wrapped around, creating a small pocket of warmth between.
He dips his chin into the warmth, and he opens his mouth, where he can breathe.
It is nearing dawn when the footsteps approach. There is no path nearby, only clusters of grass huddled in gravel, and the sound is sharp.
It grows loud. He hears the swish of cloth under the crunch of dirt. It is heavy, a traveller's hakama.
His fingers twist in their nests among his clothes, attempting to reach and grasp for the weight that does not rest against his shoulder. It is not there, his daishō. He left it behind, there on the battlefield. It is not there, no sharp scent of metal twisted with sinuous smell of oils, no smooth sheath pressing against his collar, no familiar heft at his side, nothing but empty hands that cannot stop shaking.
The traveller's presence brushes against the sphere of his awareness. A swordsman. He feels the strength.
He feels the eyes that turn to him, and he keeps his head down. The wide brim of his hat brushes his knees.
The traveller walks on.
Pinprick by pinprick, he feels the tension crumble from his shoulders. He wonders if they are searching for him, the man who sat always by the door. He wonders if they will send someone after him. Someone like him, who knows too much.
The footsteps fade.
He wonders if Katsura-san is looking for him.
The rain had stopped during the night. The tree smells damp, still, but now birds sit overhead, screaming their challenges. In the shade, the sunlight is bright enough to pierce pinkly through his closed eyes.
He concentrates on the sting of the brightness to ignore the grating voices.
"—so who d'you think you are, huh?"
There are three of them. He has only heard two speak.
"Pathetic rōnin!" spits one.
"Hey. Hey, wait." It is the third man. His voice is quiet.
"—think you're so proud when you can't even—"
"Tetsu!" the quiet one interrupts sharply. "Look at him!"
"What?"
"Look at that scar!"
There is silence.
"Hitokiri Battōsai..."
The words are mumbled, interwoven with the sour stench of fear.
They are long gone when he tilts his head back and presses his spine into the ridges of bark behind him. His eyes are scratched and raw when he forces the lids open.
It is bright, and he snaps them shut again.
He cracks them open, increment by increment, blinking rapidly and hard. He cannot even see the men running anymore.
He braces an arm against the tree. His knees shake and lock when he puts weight on them, and he sags backward, but he does not let himself fall. The first step makes his joints groan like waterlogged wood. The second makes white points of brightness dance about his vision.
His feet shuffling slowly against the dirt, Kenshin steps out into the morning light.
When he first pushes the cloth underwater, the stream billows black with accumulated dirt. He scrubs the fabric against the pebbles again, and this time, there is a hint of red.
Kenshin's hands stop, clench. Tendrils of red squeeze from the cracks between his fingers.
When he does his washing at night, the water gleams oily and dark. It does not mist red.
It is fresh, this red. Nothing like the rust dark that he remembers, crackling and flaking on his skin, on his hands, and where it had smeared when he wiped his face.
He watches the twists of colour, and he does not move.
He sees a little crayfish, speckled grey against grey stones. It raises its claws, snapping slowly at the heavy mound of fabric. It is too thick, and the claws cannot close over the folds. They slide off as they attempt to shut.
Kenshin flattens his hands in the water, pushing a swell towards the creature. It tips and waves its legs as it rights itself, and he watches it scuttle away.
There is a damp patch down the front of his clothes.
He has tried to wring out his gi as dry as he could, but it has still dripped in his arms.
Tomoe would have been mortified.
Kenshin pauses in his gait, and he lifts a hand. He drops it again, before his fingers touch his cheek, and he adjusts the bundle in his arms. It is still wet.
The road curves, and he hears the voices before he sees the confrontation.
"—you will apologize to your lord!"
It is a Satsuma accent.
Kenshin walks, and he sees the hunched back of the peasant, bent forward as far as he can.
"You will bow down your head to the ground, and you will apologize!" the samurai bellows, his face red. Behind him, his lord stands with two more retainers. Kenshin cannot see the lord's face.
The peasant murmurs something Kenshin cannot hear, and his knees thump down into the dust.
They ignore him as he passes, wet clothes crumpled in his arms, slow steps quiet against the ground.
This is the new era.
Kenshin rests the sheath against his legs, and he taps loose the blade again.
It is bizarre, no matter how many times he eyes it. He presses the pad of his thumb where the edge should be, and the dull metal indents his skin. He still does not understand why Arai-san gave it to him.
But the hilt slips into his palm with a sensation like coming home—if he has a home that he has not yet destroyed—and his fingers curl reflexively over the grip, and it is as if he has broken the surface of the water and there is finally air in his lungs once more.
Kenshin draws the katana, watching the gleam of the wrong edge slide free of its sheath, and he takes his stance.
He exhales, feels the strange-natural weight in his hands, and he steps. He slashes.
Air hums as it is cut, but it does not produce the familiar whine of edge against wind.
Kenshin lets his feet move the natural path, thoughts slithering away to pool unheeded on the ground behind him as he shifts from stance to stance. The solid steel under his fingers. The gentle clinks of metal—
The splinter of bone under blade. The slide of parting flesh. The thickness of splattering entrails—
His breaths choke in his throat, and Kenshin stumbles to a halt as he lowers the sakabatō.
There is a small village in the valley, past the terraced pools that sit calmly, smelling of rice.
In the distance, Kenshin can only see bright spots of colour. One must be a merchant, arranging his wares. Another is a girl, paused as she inspects something in her hands.
Kenshin pulls his lip in between his teeth, echoing the gnawing in his stomach. His supplies are running low.
He sees another merchant on the other side of the field. It is a traveller, medicine box tilting at his side as he leans back in the shade of a tree with his hat pulled down over his face.
Kenshin turns away from the village and goes to rouse the traveller.
This time, when he sees a group of samurai shout in a man's face, he intervenes.
He is not sure why. Not when the hostile stares turn to him.
"Who are you, rōnin, to stick your face in another's business?" one is demanding.
In the corner of his eye, Kenshin sees the peasant slowly shuffling away from him. The thin face glistens with sweat.
"State your name!"
Kenshin glances over the samurai. One is reaching for a hidden weapon. He sees it in the shift of the man's eyes.
"I—" he says, stops.
One of men has dropped his gaze to Kenshin's cheek, and his brow furrows, the grooves deepening rapidly.
Kenshin dips his head down, tilting the brim of his hat until it casts a deep shadow over his face. He bows to hide the motion. Too deep.
Too late.
"This one meant no disrespect," he says softly.
It is quiet for a moment, and then the man who had asked for his name clicks his tongue and begins walking.
"Weakling."
He hears the sneer in the voice, and he feels his teeth tighten.
Another man clips his shoulder as he pushes by. The samurai continue down the path, and in his periphery, he sees the plumes of dust they kick up as they walk. They settle gently.
Kenshin stands still, even as he sees the peasant take a few tentative steps away. When he sees that Kenshin does not respond, the man walks faster, his back hunched and tense as he passes by.
The reversed blade slows his draw, Kenshin realizes.
The dull edge catches against the sheath, forcing him to lift the blade in an awkward manner or risk scraping the metal. The movement slows his draw enough that the brigand was able to hurl himself backward and collapse to the ground, avoiding the blow.
The fight had been quick to start, and as quick to finish. He had tried speaking first, but when the man had spun with dagger in hand and lunged, he had simply reacted.
He had struck to kill, Kenshin realizes. If the man had not thrown himself out of the path of the katana, even the dull edge would have crushed his throat. He had struck to kill, and only the reversed blade had prevented the man's death.
Arai-san had given him the katana after he had spoken of his vow.
Arai-san had known, when he hadn't thought—
Kenshin is cold.
"Who the hell are you?"
There is blank terror in the man's eyes, his voice.
It is a familiar sound, and some part of him relishes it. Black, thick heat stirs in his belly, humming at the power that soaks into its core, and bile rises in his mouth.
"What are you?"
The family he had been defending stands by tentatively once the brigand flees.
"Samurai-san," the woman says. She offers to bring him to their home. She eyes the ragged hem of his hakama, and she smiles at him.
"Samurai-san," she says, as if it means anything anymore.
Kenshin bows, slightly, properly. He tells himself that it is because she expects it.
"No, thank you."
He does not know what compels him when he stops at the stand and buys a stick of dango. It is frivolous. He knows this because his master had no tolerance for frivolity.
He knows this, and yet he still stops.
The vendor directs him to a bench and asks him to wait. He offers a cup of tea, loudly proclaiming the quality of the leaves, hand-picked from the freshest trees across the ocean. He asks Kenshin where he travels from, where he travels to, what he has seen during his travels, and Kenshin must interrupt to remind him of his purchase.
Later, when steam curls from the thick cup and brushes damply over the tip of his nose, and the sticky sweet taste of the mitarashi sauce clings to his tongue, something stings his eyes, fingers of pain jabbing into his shoulders and his chest. Kenshin stares down into the cup, blinking rapidly. His mouth twists tightly.
It is irrational, this guilt.
He knows this.
But while he will experience these moments of peace, this bitter taste of the tea flooding his mouth over the lingering sweetness of the snack, this friendly man who thinks he is just a wanderer, this bench baked warm by sunlight, she will not.
He knows this.
Yet still, she smiled at him, the scent of white plum blossoms clinging to her wrist as she raised her hand to his cheek.
Kenshin pulls his hat from his head, and he leans back, the heat of the sun on his face.
This town is big. There is a festival being held. He can hear the shouts of the shrine-bearers from where he stands.
There is a grizzled old man at the gate. He grunts, scowls.
"Who are you, then?"
Kenshin smiles, his hands tucked into his sleeves. "Merely a wanderer," he says.
He passes through the gate.