Teahouse
Title: Loss
Setting: Bakumatsu, manga and OVA blend
Characters: Kenshin, Katsura, Tomoe
Type: One-shot
Genre: Drama, angst
Word Count: 226
Katsura asked Kenshin: "Have you killed with the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu? Can you?"
And Kenshin replied that he could: "If, when I lay down my bloodstained blade, there is truly an era of peace…"
There was no discussion of the implication of his words. No acknowledgement that there was still the question of whether Kenshin would still be alive to be able to lay down his sword at the end of it all. Perhaps Katsura only heard the answer to his question in the response, and not the words in between. Certainly Kenshin did not realize his words were naïve, the words of a thirteen-year-old who might understand death, but who has not fully acknowledged his own mortality.
He didn't know when it changed. When he lost the innocence clouding his mind. He just remembered Tomoe asking if he wanted something more, more than sleeping upright with a sword clasped to him. He remembered responding: "This is what has been given to me. Besides, I will not live long."
Somewhere between the slashes of his sword, somewhere in the oceans of blood he had spilt, he had realized that the world after the revolution… the world he was trying to help come to be with every life bled into the blade of his sword… would have no place for him.
He almost looked forward to it.