Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Watsuki.
Author's Note: This story just popped into my head and I decided to go with it. Please Read and Review but no Flames. Thanks!
Remembering You
The warm spring wind pulled teasingly at Kenshin's gi as he bent over the laundry tub, briskly rubbing a stain out of a shirt.
He had not always been happy and peaceful like he was know but one woman had saved him from himself.
Her name was Tomoe, and though she was dead now, Kenshin had never stopped thanking her for the life she had shown him.
He could say he had found her first but in truth she had rescued him. She had found the spark of an innocent boy that was still alive but hidden under the Battousai that he had been but through her gentle and quiet love she fanned that spark into a fire.
She had shown him the kinder things in the world, things he had never seen before.
Under her care he had learned to rejoice, not in bloodshed, but in life. In watching plants take seed and grow or watching fireflies dance through a field. Through her example he came to appreciate the things he had always taken for granted. The sun, birds singing in a tree or just watching a stream flow along it's coarse.
He thought of her gift to him every day but especially in the spring when he watched the snow disappear and the sun began to become warm again. She had died in the winter, sacrificing herself for him.
With a small shudder he recalled the day. The long walk through the snow, the battles he had to fight to reach her and finally the last battle. He was weakened, exhausted in fact and she could see that. She could see he was going to die and instead she offered herself in his place.
Through her death, she truly saved him.
It had taken him years to forgive himself, but he could finally think of her with love instead of guilt.
Kenshin took a deep breath, relishing in the scent of the flowers that filled the yard and whispered, "Thank you Tomoe for giving me this life."
Fin.