This has no affiliation with Rurouni Kenshin.

Probably a sequel to 'The Game' from 'Gentle boys who go to war' fic.

Careless Men

When Shinta was a tiny little peasant boy, his mother strapped him to her back, taking him out into the hot midday sun to work on the fields. She hummed a tune for him, light and repetitive, and young Shinta felt it through her back as he leaned into it. He would never learn the words, and would forget the very tune later, but Shinta had once been fond of that song that was so full of tenderness.

When Shinta was nine years old, he saw armoured men massacre everyone in and around a rickety, wooden slave carriage, and without hesitation, picked up a sword. Akane and Kasumi ran themselves down into rusty machetes, screaming all the time please leave the boy. As they were mowed down, Sakura pulled Shinta aside, covering him with her body, and told him breathlessly to live.

When Shinta finished burying the disembowelled bodies of both slavers and bandits and women alike, the tall, dark-haired man that told Shinta he was lucky he happened by, that he should be grateful he'd already taken care of revenge for him, and that the dead would never come back to life, stood quietly by him as they admired the headstones his skinny hands had lovingly placed.

"I couldn't find any flowers," Shinta had said.

Shinta had heard him in the dark talking to the bandits, remarking that giving one's name to someone who was about to die was meaningless drivel. Then he told him his name was Hiko Seijuro, and that Shinta was too soft a name for a swordsman.

Too soft.

That was the thing about Hiko Seijuro — he was never satisfied. Kenshin was still too soft, too malleable, too easy to be taken advantage of, too stupid to comprehend anything true. The truth was that living was ugly.

"Learn the name of your master," Hiko Seijuro said, pressing a gentle hand to his back. "I will teach you all I have to give."

Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth was cold and cynical, and he wanted so much to make Kenshin see that the world was cold and cynical and not worth saving — not really.

When Kenshin jumped up to perform Ryusuisen, Hiko jumped higher to beat him down. When Kenshin spun to show him Ryukansen, Hiko said too slow and spun to hit him first. It was never enough. Kenshin never jumped high enough, never spun fast enough, and never hit Hiko Seijuro. And sometimes, Kenshin thought, lying awake on the futon staring out the door to his Shishou drinking alone on a log, that that infuriated the man.

Beneath the waterfall, the white waters got up to Kenshin's thighs, restricting him with flowing pressure, and cutting his speed down more than half.

"Come and get me," Hiko would say, taunting him with a sheathed sword, the water only getting up to his calves. "Come, and don't forget to count."

One of those days when he was out there alone, Kenshin missed his step and fell into a sudden rip, pulling him down the river.

There was a look Hiko gave him, whenever he didn't make a mark or forgot the numbers or fell flat on his face. His eyes narrowed meagrely, his lips pulling slightly back. An almost grin-like thing, a look of disgust. All Kenshin ever wanted, when he was nine, ten and eleven, was to never earn himself that look.

Kenshin woke up dry, dressed in gargantuan, oversized clothes with three blankets pulled nearly over his head. Hiko was outside on the log, his long, creased cloak completely water-logged, hugging to his body. Kenshin counted the sake cups lining up the log next to him as far as he could see, five, six, seven, eight, nine…one after the other.

When Kenshin was thirteen, he fought with Hiko Seijuro almost every day.

"You don't care!" he screamed on the overhanging ledge near the waterfall, backing Hiko onto the narrow cliff. "You don't care about the village, you don't care about the country, you don't care about anything! Anyone!" Kenshin gasped, sharpening his ki against Hiko's gargantuan spilling powers.

"What of the village concerns me, what of the country?! What has anything or anyone ever done for me?!" Hiko screamed back, hands pulling at his cloak, pressing angry creases in it. "No, baka, I do not care about this stupid, diseased world. There is no cure for this rotting wreck! An entire race vaults mindlessly into destruction, and not even a man of colossal power would be able to prevent the inevitable — not I, and certainly, not you."

Hiko backed away, clenching his jaw and teeth so hard Kenshin could see the tension weighing him down. "It's all the same. Do you not see it? The same war fought by different people, by the next generation, by their children and their children and theirs. It's unending."

He gave him that look. That grin-like thing, disgust.

Kenshin looked him in his eyes, seeing how they were already made up and would never compromise, full of distaste.

"Why should I expect you to care about the world. You don't even care about me."

Kenshin ran deep into the woods, far away where he could be alone. Out there, isolated from an outside world Hiko would never let him touch, he spent his time mutilating trees. He took the anger out from his body, wreathed it over his clean, untainted sword, and began counting.

One. Little boy who knew nothing but half-truths, idealistic notions for idealistic men, men who cared too much — he wanted everything, wanted to save everyone, he screamed and put all his body into slicing his sword into the thick tree trunk.

"Shishou!" Kenshin cried, running into the little wooden house without shoes on at ten, pulled on Hiko's hair to get his attention.

Two. He kept screaming and yelling feigned battlecries until he was well-practiced in them and turned his sword around into a back-hand hold, slitting bark.

"Gaargh?!" Hiko whipped around, snagging Kenshin by the shoulder and pushing him into some cabinets. Or, that was what he had instantly reacted to do, but Kenshin ducked and managed to get away with only a slight shove. "Look at this, Shishou," he said with unwarranted triumph, and tried his hardest to disappear, going faster than what the eye could see.

Three. He imagined doing what his master had trained him to do, no pretty words to mask murder. He imagined a man. He sliced from left to right, the simplest form in the world. The tree fell apart.

Swordsmen who could match godspeed could always follow it with their eyes. It wasn't a congratulatory feat at all. But Hiko followed him with his eyes as he zipped around indoors, toppling things off shelves and disturbing the dust. Hiko turned his head to where Kenshin would land before he did it and nodded. "Good. Fast. We should drink to celebrate."

"…I'm a youth, Shishou."

"Man would murder another for a single coin in his pocket, and you're worried about being allowed to drink?"

Why wouldn't he let him use Hiten Mitsurugi ryu for its purpose? How could he turn his back on these people?

"—Fine. You'll be a lightweight, anyway, and I'm loathe to waste this good quality sake on something like you."

There were people who were dying, who needed them, who needed their skills, and this was what Kenshin had trained for, this was what Hiko had renamed him for.

And no matter how many cups Hiko downed, no matter how Kenshin tried to keep up pouring, Hiko just sat on the log with a leg over the other, unaffected.

When he was fourteen, Hiko stalked after him through the woods, following the trail of shredded trees while shouting threats into the open. Kenshin didn't answer him.

"You think learning a few sword strikes makes you a man?!" he screamed. "Makes you mature?! You're — soft. I thought I taught you not to be soft — not to leave yourself open like a gaping wound!" His voice boomed into the dark.

After Kenshin had been carried downstream, far away from the mountain, he nearly drowned trying to crawl up a wet bank. When he next opened his eyes he was back home at the cottage, smelling sake and campfire smoke in the air. Hiko was on the log, drinking.

Kenshin got up dressed in Hiko's oversized clothes, starting to go to him outside. The smell of sake was just garish enough to be above the smell of smoke. He was on the threshold of the house and the clearing when he stopped to stare. Hiko's breathing was harsh and laboured.

Hilo had once told him, the thing about wounds was that people could press on those wounds, and oftentimes it would hurt more than receiving those wounds in the first place ever could.

"Oh, you're up."

The light flickered on Hiko's damp cloak, shedding light on the faded blue gi he wore underneath. He didn't even need to turn around to know that Kenshin was coming near him, but Kenshin knew that this was slow for him. This was incredibly slow, and careless, for Kenshin to be at his back and Hiko having not noticed until now.

"How…you're…"

"Shishou?" Kenshin murmured.

Kenshin crossed the threshold, going into the light of the fire. He sat next to Hiko on the log, on the wet cloak. It was then that Kenshin noticed the broken shards of porcelain at his feet. Hiko scoffed at him, plunging the sake gourd into Kenshin's stomach. It knocked the wind out of Kenshin, though Kenshin knew he didn't mean it this time.

Kenshin picked up one of the cleaner cups in the line, and poured Hiko another.

It was hard to see his eyes with his dark hair slicked to his face. "Even when I wield my sword according to the teachings of Hiten Mitsurugi ryu, too many times I can't save a soul," Hiko slurred. "I kill and kill, and still the villains, like maggots, spring from the corpse of a Japan decomposing," he said, and it didn't really sound like him — not him in this moment. It sounded like he was repeating something he'd said or heard before, low and robotic.

"There is something wrong with your Shishou," Hiko said, peering down at Kenshin. "The sake…"

Kenshin stared up at him, holding his drunken gaze. His eyes were so startlingly unfocussed it scared Kenshin. Just a bit. Hiko grinned at him, but it was not disgust, and took a sip from the cup.

"It tastes bad, deshi."

Kenshin did not know what Hiko expected him to do about that.

It was winter and it was snowing and Kenshin was now fourteen and Hiko was twenty eight. They fought again — they always did.

"I will not allow you to leave!" Hiko gritted his teeth, steeling himself not to explode.

On his face, his lips twisted into that look again.

In the wild, grinning was a sign of fear.

"Shishou!" Kenshin said, desperate, wanting so much for Hiko to understand him — to care about something, "The innocent are dying there, day after day! The teachings of Hiten Mitsurugi are useless unless they're used to protect those who can't defend themselves!"

Hiko's mouth split open into a large smile, and he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, like a drowning man, like a man who had just vacated of everything left to lose, the air in his lungs escaping into mist. "And how do you plan on defending those people with your limited brains? Will you choose the less loathsome of two evil factions and do its bidding?" He huffed again, breathing in cold air, his face reddening. "I did not bestow the Hiten Mitsurugi ryu on you so you can become the pawn of careless men."

Careless men, who carelessly fought, and carelessly died; and careless men who carelessly plucked orphans from the side of the road, telling them never to be soft, because that was the only thing acceptable in this torn-apart world, and then raised them to kill or be killed.

He warned him, Hiko who softly spoke a eulogy for peasant slaves on an early autumn morning, who softly held Shinta's hand as he lead him to his home saying all he had was his as well; who worked at night in the makeshift kiln to forge a second blade as beautiful as his own; who ran around in the damp, muddy woods asking Buddha to do something, to help; who jumped into the river after his only deshi and carried him on his back all the way back home. Softly, he poured Kenshin a drink, so he, too, could deal with being alive.

There were careless men, who dragged all they had out of their own chest and then trusted enough to put in a young boy's careless hands.

And there were careless men, who grew out of their deathly naivety, who ran towards war, who ran from war, who carelessly kept running, on and on and on.

Then Kenshin was twenty eight, at Tomoe's grave, when Hiko walked quietly up to him where he was on his knees, and shaded him with his umbrella.

"You found flowers," Hiko said.

For the longest time, Kenshin had thought he was a disappointment, an embarrassment to his proud Shishou and his excellent skills. All his life, he thought Hiko had wanted to quash the softness out of him because it was weakness — because Hiko Seijuro was a cold and cynical and demanding man, caring of nothing but strength and pride. That every time he missed a step, didn't jump high enough, didn't run fast enough, miscounted, was unable to measure up to impossible standards, it infuriated Hiko Seijuro because it disgraced him.

"You know…" Hiko said on that log when Kenshin was ten, surrounded by the empty sake cups near the fire. "All your life…all you've ever known is war, baka-deshi."

He was right.

Kenshin was born into war and unrest, and Hiko Seijuro was so unflinchingly, unwaveringly aware of that at every waking moment.

"Your Shishou is hard on you," Hiko went on, slurring, "because that is what will make you survive."

Kenshin remembered being ready to beg after finally returning to his childhood home, over a decade after he ran away to join the war. After he'd finally stopped running. Hiko agreed to give him the succession technique with little trouble.

At the same time Hiko did everything and gave everything he had to teach Kenshin his life had worth, that he deserved to demand more than what fate dealt him, deserved to be soft — as Hiko tirelessly helped his baka-deshi regain his will to live, Hiko had already quietly conceded to his own death.

Everything he worked for, everything he'd ever asked from Kenshin, was for Kenshin to turn out as the victor of that clash — not Hiko.

A few things struck Kenshin as similar in his life:

Shinta, you just think about living on. You're so little, so you couldn't choose your way of life like we did. So at least until you can choose to live your own life, you must stay alive, Sakura said, her tears wetting Kenshin's face.

The tune his mother hummed, that sounded full of love, and tenderness, welled up within him in stark moments when Kenshin was on the other side of the revolutionary sword.

The pain of a dagger digging deep into his cheek, crossing over the first scar and relinquishing him from a debt he owed in blood, being finally forgiven; pain that was proof he was still alive.

"Live on, Kenshin," Hiko said, his voice strained, cracking like he wanted to break into laughter, or into something else, "…then you can use Amakakeru ryu no Hirameki as you please, and never lose to the manslayer of your past."

They were the same — they were soft people who cared so much it suffocated, hurt to breathe sometimes, and they'd never trade it for the world, even if they wanted to. It was the softness in Kenshin that made him need to bury lifeless people, and run from his master to save the world; and it was the softness in Hiko that made him want to shield a boy from the hopeless era he was born into. They were the same: his cholera-ridden mother humming that happy, sunny tune, Sakura holding Shinta with a bloodless grip, Tomoe carving a scar with her dagger calling him anata, Hiko screaming into the woods trying by Buddha to be heard—

"Don't worry. This is the fate between a master and disciple of the Mitsurugi ryu," Hiko Seijuro said, consoling his deshi for his own death.

Kenshin thought, when he saw his Shishou slashed across the chest lying face down on the ground, all of a sudden, like the light had just uncovered everything at once, like the dust had all settled — it all just sounded outrageously unfair, and stupid, and careless.

Kenshin trekked up the mountain once more, a half-jug of sake in tow, his wife and child in an inn below the mountain with friends for company. Kenshin knocked on the moss-eaten door of a hut he once called home, and Hiko answered by throwing something at the door to get him to let himself in.

"Shishou?"

"What is it? Is Kyoto on fire? Are you dying of some godforsaken unknown disease? Did your wife finally make you brush your hair? What is it, please enlighten me, honoured deshi."

Kenshin made a face. Grin like. A look of utter betrayed disgust. "If you call me that again this one will pour your sake down the river, that he will."

Hiko finally looked in his direction away from the pot he was in the middle of shaping. "So you prefer baka-deshi? Well, that's very sincere of you." He wiped his hands on a rag before gesturing for Kenshin to sit down on the mat he'd laid out. "Wait...you brought one jug. Barely half a jug of Tokyo sake?"

"...This one believes you should drink less, Shishou. You know it's not good for you. Instead, Kaoru-dono helped me pick this," Kenshin said, pulling out some artisan tea leaves with a smile.

"...Get the hell out of my hut."

But Kenshin politely refused. He took two beautifully made sake cups from the shelf and poured the first for Hiko, then for himself. They raised their cups to one another and drank.

"Kenshin," Hiko said. "Tell me how it's supposed to taste."

Kenshin blinked twice and sighed. He hadn't thought very hard about the taste of his sake in years. "It's very good, that it is. It is strong, slightly sweet in aroma, and warms one's body." Kenshin refilled their cups. "How is it for Shishou?"

Hiko looked down into his cup, as if it were a particularly troubling puzzle he couldn't figure out. "Tastes better than it has in years."

Kenshin looked away, looked at anywhere but Hiko. "Then. There's nothing wrong with you."

He could see Hiko startle from the corner of his eye. But he said nothing. Carefully, soberly, he removed the sake and began making them a pot of tea.

Notes.

The one absolutely twisted headcanon I have is that Hiko Seijuro knows he's a harsh, uncompromising master. He is fully aware, most of the time anyway, and he wants it that way. Because he is absolutely committed to giving Kenshin everything he has - his skills, his style, his mantle, his name, his life. From the day he took Kenshin in he made him his heir.

And he knows he will let Kenshin kill him. That's why he doesn't want to be a kind master, a loving master. Because he wants Kenshin to be free of the guilt of killing him.

But then it backfires spectacularly, because Hiko's hardcore training and hardline approach to raising this little traumatised kid drives them apart, drives Kenshin to go to war, drives him to never return 'home' out of shame for ten whole years! Kenshin thought Hiko trained him to be a soldier, but Hiko trained him with only the hope that he could be a survivor.

Because. In the end. And it doesn't excuse his dumbass child rearing skills. And it doesn't excuse the poor, prideful choices he made. But he loved Kenshin many more times than his own miserable life. And he was longing to die by Kenshin's sword to make up for all the ways he screwed up the only person alive that ever mattered to him.

.

(And then he even screws that up! He fails to die! So then Hiko goes, cough cough, 'This apprenticeship is over. I'm not ur master, ur not my deshi. I release u from all filial obligation to me, from ever having to think about me again. Byes~) (And then. Get this. He screws THAT up too, and before long he's fighting gigantic swordsmen for Kenshin, receiving scented handwritten letters from Kenshin, posing for wedding pics with Kenshin and his wife, buying baby toys for Kenshin's baby, babysitting Kenshin's baby, crying in secret about being named Kenshin's baby's honorary grandfather, teaching Hiten Mitsurugi to Kenshin's baby, it never ends. He has to actually live out the rest of his miserable life. Loving Kenshin. And being a somewhat descent Shishou.)

Edit: The most illuminating thing I learned about this whole ordeal is that when Hiko took Kenshin in he was...around 22 or 23 years old. Oh my gosh.