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Megumi was not a romantic woman. A practical woman? Yes. An ambitious woman? Yes, in the sense that she worked for one thing- her independence. But, the easiest way to gain what freedom she wanted most was to borrow it from people who had privilege.
Megumi may have not been a romantic but she had few qualms with giving her body to men who could offer something in return. Some were powerful and could protect her with their civic influence alone. She slept with some who were wealthy and could clothe, feed, and house her until she inevitably moved on. Fewer still were the handsome men she went with to fill the emptiness in her arms and the ache between her legs.
No one paid her for her body- she was no whore- but a mistress, a lover, a vixen. She gave herself willingly, choosing her benefactors with care before turning on the charm and loosening her obi a bit.
Some men she felt pity for- the one who nearly left his wife for her, not knowing she only wanted him for his considerable wealth. Other men were the pigs who drove the romantic out of the woman. A little too much sake and they treated her like any common brothel woman, forcing her to her knees and fucking her mouth until she couldn't breathe then carelessly leaving her, clothes disheveled, on the floor when they were finished. She endured them only in the name of her goal.
It was a game of pros and cons, Megumi weighing the deception and use of her body against the possible gains towards her independence. She was a logical thinker, a doctor at heart. If all they saw her as was a pair of breasts and shapely legs, then she'd use them to get ahead while she could. Someday she'd show them by becoming a reputable female doctor.
Then came the trouble with opium and her first meeting with Himura Kenshin and the rooster-headed man. They saved her life and asked nothing in return. She was interested- they had in fact freed her form a very nasty predicament. They were strong and obviously capable of helping her. What she hadn't anticipated was their evident disregard for her physical beauty.
Megumi thought of them fondly as her only failed and final conquests. Her game of seduce and manipulate ended quietly as her dream came true. A fulfilled and independent woman, she worked hard to prove herself as a doctor. There was no time for satisfying a man. She fell asleep, exhausted and alone every night.
She didn't miss her old life. Megumi hadn't known what it was like to have friends for a very long time. Dr. Gensai treated her like a daughter, beating off the hypochondriacs who came to the clinic just to flirt. Kenshin put up with her well-meaning teasing and never had a single harsh word. Kaoru, though rather manly and quick tempered, had a pure heart and innocence Megumi envied (honestly, the poor swordswoman was head over heels for Kenshin and so was he for her). Sanosuke Sagara was a moocher and a gambler and he never had anything nice to say but Megumi learned to like him after the umpteenth time she'd saved his worthless life.
Despite him spending one week out of every four unconscious at the clinic, Megumi couldn't help being attracted to him. Sometimes she wondered what he'd be like as a lover. Would he be lazy and make her do all the work? Or would he be rough and impatient and barely get his trousers off before taking her against whatever surface was closest? Megumi would blush and stop herself before letting her mind wander any further. She had everything she wanted and the last place she wanted to go was back to the old games.
Megumi was not a romantic woman. She had nothing to gain from sleeping with Sanosuke and no incentive to do so. She pushed her appreciation for his defined musculature and wry mouth to the back of her mind. He was her friend, not another bureaucrat to be used and discarded.
For his entire life, women had been the least of Sanosuke's problems.
His adolescent years were filled with the army, surrounded by men. He'd been something like pure back then; he believed in something with all his heart.
Sano's childhood ended when the ideals he lived for were ripped apart. The ugly face of the treacherous, selfish hateful world tore through any innocence he had left. Needless to say, he didn't remember much of the period between the death of Sagara and his reemergence as Zanza.
This section of puberty, usually reserved for trying to get laid, was instead overtaken by rage, hatred, and overwhelming disillusionment. He wasn't sure how long he remained so totally out of control, boiling over, destroying incoherently. All he knew was when the fog finally cleared, he was older and wiser. The world was neither the bright place of his childhood nor the hell of his brief insanity. It was merely cold and grey, filled with the oppressors and the wronged.
The first woman who ever invited Zanza (that was the only name he went by in those days) to her bed was one of the latter. She'd seen him slay the man who'd killed her husband, a samurai of the old regime and fixed him supper to thank him. He asked her how she could stand it, knowing the people who'd taken her land and livelihood away still liked. She just smiled sadly and looked away from his dead eyes and told him that the loneliness was worse.
After the kerosene lamp was turned off and her kimono was lying, carefully folded, on the floor and her slim fingers were sliding his jacket off, Zanza understood what she was talking about. He mumbled something quietly about his inexperience but she just took his hand and laced their fingers together as she pressed their bodies together to kiss him. Later, when se was so lost that she could no longer gently whisper to him what to do and her arms were holding onto him so tight he thought she'd come apart, he felt his heart breaking a little.
Even though he was deep inside her and his hips were thrusting faster and faster as she urged, his heart hurt. He knew that he was just a substitute for who she really needed and she was just a woman, ten years his senior, who he felt achingly sorry for.
He was so innocent he didn't even know how to tell if she'd enjoyed it. In the morning, he was gone.
After that first encounter that threw Sanosuke into emotional turmoil, he tried his damndest to push the hormones that periodically surged out of control, out of his mind.
Unlike some, Zanza succeeded. He had enough anger and enough lust for revenge to nearly totally suppress his libido.
He wasn't creepy enough to get off on fist fighting however. When the need was too great, Zanza turned to what any self-respecting paid fighter did: the red light district. It was always a last resort measure- Sanosuke was afraid of seeing the lonely samurai's wife or worse, his sister, among the painted faces in the crowd. If the prostitutes hated him for buying their services, they hid it well, most likely out of fear. He never seemed like the usual patron of the pleasure quarters. Neither sake nor women could be used to make him merry. He drank silently, brooding despite whatever woman hung on his arm. As he walked home in the wee hours of the morning, his skin flushed and his lust sated, all he could think of was getting the sickly sweet to come off. The sake-sweet, the prostitutes' perfume-sweet. Even his very skin was tainted with the empty sweetness of false dignity. It shamed him to feel weak, submissive to his own body. What was honorable about pleasing baser instincts before achieving nobler goals?
He lived this way until he lost his fight with Himura Kenshin and got his real name back.
Sano never really paid much attention to the fox-like doctor until the first time she cried over his damned broken body. He could hear her tears falling quietly onto her lap. At that moment, despite his crippling weakness, he wanted nothing more than to comfort her.
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