Disclaimer: Guess what! I don't own Rurouni Kenshin! I've got most of the manga, most of the anime, a Sano plushie, and several questionable thoughts, but the rights aren't mine.

A Brief Author's Note: Here, we have the first fic in the LJ 10_prompts community's Table and the start of a new series of Baby Grands. If you haven't read my Repo! The Genetic Opera, Sanctuary, Alice In Wonderland 2010, or Sailor Moon fics of these titles, let me explain. A thousand is sometimes colloquially referred to as a "grand". The "baby" bit comes from the term "ficlet," which just brings to mind the image of baby fanfics.

1 - Hope

"Be back soon, Misao-chan!" called Omasu. "It's getting dark earlier these days!"

"I know, I know!" She waved and took off, carefully juggling the cloth bag's contents. "I will!"

Aoshi had been at the temple every day, almost all day, for over a year now. Everyone understood and mostly left him alone. But every evening, Misao took two bento boxes out to the temple – one for her, and one for her Aoshi-sama. It never happened, but she hoped that one day, he would come out of the temple's sanctuary and eat his bento with her. For the past year, she had eaten her dinner alone, sitting on the hard stone steps. Every evening, instead of diminishing, her hope grew.

Maybe he'll be better tonight, she thought, dodging people in the Kyoto streets.

It never occurred to her that, realistically, Aoshi-sama never got better. If she wanted to maintain her optimism but keep to reality, she could think that at least he never got worse… But he never addressed her, usually didn't make eye contact, and he simply ate his bento in mechanical silence. In her sorrier moments, she wondered if he could even taste food anymore. His expression never changed from that same cold stare.

No, wait, she told herself – something had changed! She remembered what it was like, watching the three of them come dragging themselves back. Aoshi-sama, Kenshin-san, and Sanosuke-no-baka… they had all survived Mount Hiei and Kenshin-san had kept his promise. Looking back, it probably wasn't the best choice to flying-tackle him after an experience like that, but he hadn't protested, had he? It never occurred to her that he might have simply been too tired, too out of it to do much. But the fact that he came home at all gave her hope. He could just have easily have left the wreckage and disappeared once again into the countryside of Japan.

But he didn't.

She could see the temple in the not-so-far distance. Shouldn't be long now, not with the crowds of Kyoto starting to thin out. A young fellow in hakama and a Western shirt came out and began to light the few-and-far-between gas lamps, a newsboy cap obscuring his face. Misao smiled brightly at him and waved her free hand, which he returned. The gas lamp flickered once, twice, and then blinked merrily to life. A breeze started up, carrying the scent of mid-fall to her nose. Maybe she should've grabbed a jacket before she headed out…

Her braid needed a good toss to go back over her shoulder after the breeze picked up into a light wind. Misao held the bag with the two bento boxes in it closer to her chest. The dinners inside were still warm and she'd be damned if they weren't that way when she arrived at the temple. Combined scents of miso-rolled shrimp tempura and hot soba with wakame, shoyu, and ginger tickled her nose. Aoshi-sama had loved chewing on a small slice of raw ginger back a long time ago. Ever since, she had associated the smell of ginger, raw or otherwise, with him.

"Oh come on!" she growled under her breath. "Excuse me obaa-san!"

There was a little old lady in front of her, walking as slowly as it might have been humanly possible to go without going backwards! On the left was a guy packing up his sushi stand for the night and the right sidewalk had clogged with a sudden out-flushing of people from the restaurants. Misao found herself stuck… and she hated being stuck.

"Obaa-san?" she asked again, contemplating just poking the old lady. "Excuse me, please, obaa-san?"

The lady seemed not only to be slow, but deaf.

"Come on, lady!" Misao grumbled as quietly as she could.

Finally, an eternity later, the lady veered off to putter down a side street.

"Finally!" Misao yelled without being able to stop herself, but she remained oblivious of stares from passerby as she picked up her stride and continued down the street. "Don't worry, Aoshi-sama, I promise I'll be there soon!"

Yes, she talked to herself out loud. Traveling alone through the countryside tended to do that to a young lady's mind. If anyone paid her any attention, she didn't care. The wind picked up a little bit and she wished a bit more that she had taken a jacket. Bare arms were fine during the day, but now that it was almost totally dark, she felt uncomfortably chilled. But in a few minutes, during which she almost picked up to a run, she found herself on the temple's gray stone steps.

This time, she didn't want to eat outside – too cold. The shrine master didn't mind Aoshi eating inside, so he shouldn't mind her either, she decided. So she found a bench and plunked down. Nobody ever bothered loose articles in the temple, so she set down the dinners and hurried off to find Aoshi. He might wonder what had taken her so long… she hoped.

She found him, still sitting in the sanctuary and staring at the shrine in front of him with an empty look on his face.

"Aoshi-sama?" she prompted like she did every night, for some reason reluctant to look at him – she always felt intrusive when it came to this part. "Aoshi-sama, I brought you dinner!"

"Konbanwa, Misao-chan," he replied.

Misao's ankle turned and she fell, un-ninja-like, on her backside.

"What?"

"I could smell the ginger," he told her, seeming not to notice her sudden tumble. "It's… been a while."

Misao looked up at him with a strange smile – one halfway between disbelief and ever-present hope.

"Yeah… Okina's taken up gardening now that he's really getting better! Says the last time he pulled ginger out of the ground, he was handsomer than you are!"

She stopped laughing and schooled her features – Aoshi had actually turned his head to look at her!

"Really…" he stated more than asked. "I would have liked to see that."

Misao stared in hope.