Usual disclaimer: All characters belong to the rightful owner Nobuhiro Watsuki. FF is non-profit, meant for entertainment only and can be archived anywhere, just let me know where.
This is my first one-shot as you all know. And I wanted to try something different, angsty of course but from a different perspective, hopefully worthy for all those people so patiently waiting for me to update my other works. It's one sided of course, showing the darker, more sensual side of a Battousai/ Kaoru relationship.
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Gossamer
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She followed him. And now, it isn't his fault, she shivers against the cold, wet and angry and tearful, as he'd left her. But he had left. He'd warned her, did he not—came close enough to smell her as he leaned in close, eyes like dull blades as they'd begun to change with her scent.
"I am going to leave."
And it had been a shock, the way her face had paled and her eyes grown deeper and deeper until they turned darker than any blue.
"Don't follow me." He'd warned, for once actually hoping she would listen. "You know what will happen if you do."
He was a killer. Surely, she wouldn't think to follow him. She should know better, He had hoped she had known better, at least before, when he was at the edges of change and still able to think of others before himself—before reverting.
"Kenshin . . ."
She was going to regret this probably, maybe even try to run away from him at some point in the distance future. But it isn't like he didn't warn her. It isn't like he didn't try for her to stay away.
"I warned you." Was all he said before taking her out of the cold, brining her out of the rain and into the cool shelter of his temporary home. Grip firm on her arm as he led her further and further into the house. Brining her into a darkened room, with a forced gentleness, he was hard pressed to mind.
"Take off your clothes."
"Kenshin . . ." There was fear and trepidation, a hard pause and so much hesitation in her tone, in the whisper of his name as if she didn't understand. Not the warning, or the meaning or even the reasons why he'd left—but it was all too late now. She'd had her chance. She could have stayed away. Kami only knew he would have stayed away. He would have.
"Take off your clothes." He repeated, putting a hand on the knot of her obi, and tugging it so she understood. "I don't want to repeat myself." Not for anyone, except maybe her. And that might be a problem too, might become an extremely impudent move for him to allow her to get this close to him. She knew him, in ways he didn't want to be known. She was a weakness he could ill afford. But it was too late now for anything remotely like regret to wash away this feeling, this need he had tried not to let himself become hindered by but she had come and there was little he could to control himself now.
"You're going to get sick," he reasoned, sounding almost every bit as concerned as he ought to be.
"Oh—" Clear disappoint, as she began to undo the obi, forgetting for a moment he was there or the fact that she ought to fear him for much different reasons, than the rest of the world at bay.
"Aren't you going to leave?" And if she wanted him too, she really shouldn't have made it sound anything like a question.
"No," he murmured, cupping her face suddenly with barely tempered strength. "No," he repeated because he felt he had already done enough. Denied himself enough just by leaving her, by wanting to protect even from himself before the change—before his ideas were veiled by something other than darkness.
"I warned you." He murmured, before taking her mouth to his and devouring her, making her tremble in his arm as she tried to twist away, before making her yield to him with tender mindlessness, possessing her body and soul with a distant flurry of movement and kisses, hot against her face, marking her as his own as she cried out for him, and him alone.
She would come to regret this. She might even come to hate him for it. But even if that came to be the case, and he prepared himself for that to be, he would not let her go. The world at large was not a big enough a place for her to hide from him and in time, when the image of the other faded, he would stand alone, prominent in the vastness of death he would leave in his wake if she dared not come back to him on her own.
"I warned you," he whispered, as she slept on his chest, curling keenly into his warmth and smell of his body. "I warned you to stay away." he whispered, before closing his eyes and wavering in his decision to let her stay.
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He wished sometimes that she had listened. That he could have avoided, the shock he had caused her, when he'd split a man in two for touching her. But the time for warning had been over long ago. Repeated long and often enough for her to hear and understood.
She should have run away then. Despite what he said, it might not been too late. He would have tired of looking for her eventually or so he likes to think. When he reminisces, he likes to think that eventually he would have gone back to something else. To his work and the under grown where the warmth of day could pass him by unhindered and untouched, when it would have been safe for her to have gone.
But she had stayed. Watched him everyday with ever darkening eyes as he set his sword aside and took her into his embrace, the gossamer threading of her bindings, from all those years ago, hidden well within the folds of his clothes. Forever pressed against his heart the way, the way her love for him had grown.
Time had brought her beauty in wealth he could not have known when they first met all those years ago. It had set her eyes dark and mouth full, body carefully concealed beneath mountains of cloth, he pushed on her everyday, before she left their room.
She was keen and sharp the way, he sometimes wished she had never grown to be. It marked her. The way fate often marked people with greatness, they could never miss. And he was afraid, he would admit, that she had hidden something of herself when they'd first kissed. That she had bid her time and waited, for him to get comfortable before running away where he might never have the chance to find her.
However wrong she might be. However wrong he might be. The unavoidable truth, could not be ignored when she looked at him, when his eyes shown gold and he killed someone who had been staring at her too long. He was a monster. Cold and calculating and dangerous to anyone that wasn't her because he would do anything to keep her.
It wasn't his fault she hadn't understood. Or seen how want had turned to need or that fondness had turned to love. To undeterred possessiveness she had encouraged when she'd kissed him back. When she'd first glimpsed the gossamer of all those night ago and done nothing but smile and kissed his face before leaving him to dress.
"Kenshin . . ."
If she ran away now . . . He would set the world on fire.
"I warned you." He whispered, watching her turn with child in hand as he set his blade aside and crossed the room.
"I know," she smiled, looking down at the child in hand. "But I didn't think they'd all have red hair." She mused, kissing him hello as she handed him the babe and searched for something in her truck.
And even after years, it surprised him to realize that the way he saw the world, might not be the same as Kaoru interpreted it. That maybe his suspicions were ill founded and Kaoru really loved him.
"You're not going to run away, are you?"
"I think if I haven't yet you're safe . . ." she said turning around with the baby's dress in hand. A smile on her face that reassured him that despite his shortcomings, his heart, how ever monstrous and dark and damaged it might seem to him, was carefully treasured by the women he loved.
"Koishii . . ."
"Hmm . . ."
"Don't ever run away." He murmured. Eyes fastened to the baby's head of hair as she paused besides him. "The world couldn't bare it."
"It won't," she assured, eyes understanding of the warnings he shrouded his declarations of love in. "It won't ever have to." She promised, kissing him slowly before taking the baby into her arms, laying him gently in his bed as she surrounded him by a big gossamer curtain to keep mosquitoes away.
"One of these days," she whispered turning back into his arms, "I am going to convince you."
He hoped she would. Kami only knew ten years hadn't done it. But maybe in another ten when he made her repeat it, maybe then he'd admit he knew; that he had understood, there was no turning back for either of them, that there had never been a chance for either to turn away. Because he had done well on his claim, taking her body and soul and so much into him, she could never get away, would never want to get away. Binding her to him, the way she'd so carelessly done when she sighed his name, when Battousai was nothing still but just a name and not who he'd been everyday since.
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I hope you guys liked it. I know a lot of you are waiting for an update for Blood Orchid and maybe even hinting I go back to Obscuring Shadows, which I will eventually get around to. I just ask for patients and hope this small crumbs can hold you till.
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Thanks again for reading. Please, don't forget to review.