SUMMARY: Missing moment from Fire Requiem.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin (I'm just a big fangirl) and I'm not making any money on this.
When the hour is upon us And when the day has all but ended
And our beauty surely gone
No you will not be forgotten
No you will not be alone
And our echo starts to fade
No you will not be alone then
And you will not be afraid
No you will not be afraid
Rob Thomas, "Now Comes the Night"
He had taken the vow so many years ago, over Tomoe's still form. I know what I took away from you. I know what kind of pain I made you endure. I will never take another human life. He knew that new life could never be born from death. He had taken the reverse-blade sword and never fought with anything else.
Yet there were other things than swords that could kill. Time. Years. Or minutes. Fifteen minutes, beyond which Makoto Shishio could not fight and survive. Flames had burned Shishio from the inside more painfully than any sword could.
He had seen the event once. He relived it a thousand times in his fever dreams. A part of him was coherent enough to recognize that these were dreams. Shishio was dead. He was alive. He had chosen the will to live as his strongest weapon, and he would live. For the sake of the woman who also wandered the paths of his dreams chasing away the nightmares with a cold cloth and a soothing voice. And for something deeper. For the dream of a world where such people could live, and create life, and through that creation find purpose and peace. He breathed that dream, and each time he took a breath, his body healed a little more.
But he had taken Shishio's life. He had killed. He had robbed one man of that dream. Period. His fever was a penance. He wandered through his dreams looking for the man. Not the corpse that haunted his vision, nor the dying man who screamed in his mind. The man, Makoto Shishio. Where was he?
"You're looking in the wrong places," came a soft voice.
"Kaoru-dono?" He didn't see her with his eyes, but with every sense that he used to take in the dreamscape all around him. Her presence always meant cool water, and soft words, and refuge.
"This way."
He wandered now through a wasteland. Sometimes he felt as if he was walking with his body and holding a small hand. It was cool, and smelled of the kind of soap that he used for the dojo laundry. Sometimes he felt as if he was the wasteland, and he was moving as noiselessly and taking up as much room as the wind. It was at one of those latter times when he finally saw the man he had killed...the man he had caused to die. Shishio stood overlooking a land of skulls, Yumi on his arm, claiming that there were only wicked people there to be ruled.
He had seen enough.
The journey back took last time. She walked with him all the way, then sat down beside him and handed him some water. Reality and dream merged together.
"He's not alone," she said. "And neither are you."
He sipped the water without speaking, and held her eyes firmly in his gaze, as if he could keep her there for the entire rest of the course of the fever.