This will be short. I just need to expel it from my brain because it's eating at me. It's born of "how else could Enishi and Kaoru end up on an island together?". Probably this prologue and one more long chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin. If I did the K/K shippers would not have liked my ending. Ho ho ho.
Kaoru was sure she was dead, but then she changed her mind.
Death couldn't possibly hurt this much.
As the water forced its way out of her lungs and stomach simultaneously, she was blinded by the sudden sun in her eyes as they shot open. The dark figure that had been giving her the breath of metaphorical and in her case quite literal life fell back to the sand and stifled a groan.
Not a cloud in the sky, Kaoru thought over her burning everything. And at first as she tilted her head to the side she thought that it was her vision that was whitewashed, only to find that as her eyes adjusted to the brightness that in fact the sand she was laying on was pristine. She never thought she would get to experience something like this without paying extra for a local to paddle her out somewhere practically untouched by the other tourists. But then she remembered that her short little trip to paradise had ended hours ago when she stepped on that plane. A honeymoon for one hadn't been that fun, as it turned out.
She should have stayed the week, like she originally planned. It wasn't like Aoshi hadn't paid for it all already. She could have gotten a massage. Ordered some more drinks.
But then it was a whole night of ordering drinks and a rather maudlin phone call to Misao at do you know what time it is in the morning that had inspired her to go home early rather than drink and cry her way through the week. Then again, drinking and crying was looking damn good about now.
Kaoru's savior poked her and she flopped her head the other way in the sand before her body convulsed and more briny sea water ejected itself from her stomach and lungs. It was simultaneously a relief and torture. A possibly old man if the white hair was an indicator sat there looking at her—squinting—and the grim line of his mouth seemed to imply that while he might have been internally glad she was alive he wasn't about to whoop with joy over his act of goodwill.
Sprawled out on the sand in a charcoal three-piece suit that was missing an arm off the jacket, he looked poorly outfitted for paradise. With his white shirt plastered to his obviously cultivated arm muscles, Kaoru wondered if maybe she was dreaming him when he poked her again none too gently. She blinked hard and groaned, no vomiting water this time even if her stomach was still cramping as if it wanted to force more out.
"Once you can move, I need your help with something." His tone suited his look, and Kaoru was sure whoever his executive assistant was dreaded that look he was giving her now.
"What?" She just managed to croak between split and stinging lips. No trace of that fruity lip balm she had applied while waiting to board in the weirdly humid airport, just salt and blood.
In response, he turned his back to her and Kaoru saw with mounting horror the huge scrap of metal sticking out of his upper back. All around it was a dark wet patch, but it was the pink halo that was slowly spreading where his jacket ended and the white shirt sleeve began that let her know how freely he was bleeding. It had to hurt like hell. He was lucky it hadn't pierced a lung or something else vital. But what did she know, Aoshi was the doctor.
Slowly sitting up resulted in immediate vertigo and somehow yet more water ejecting from her body. The change in position probably accounted for that, but now that she was upright she was noticing a lot more of her surroundings. The white sand beach that stretched out in either direction, the gently lapping waves so clear she could probably never guess how deep it was a few feet out, and behind them a line of lush jungle. All those stupid conversations she had had with friends about what book they would bring to a desert island flitted through her mind. Kaoru suddenly wished she had watched more survival shows. Misao always complained how Soujiro was obsessed with them, and they would laugh as he would explain that one just never knew when you'd be in a life or death situation. Next time I get lost in a city park I'll keep that in mind, Kaoru had laughed. If she ever saw Soujiro again she'd be eating quite a lot of crow.
"Do you have any internal injuries? A concussion perhaps?" The smooth tenor was so conversational you'd think they were sitting down to a meeting in a boardroom rather than both of them sprawled on a beach.
Kaoru surveyed her body, weakly pulling down her sodden and torn sundress back over her thighs. There were shallow bloody scratches down her arms and legs but she was so numb from either the ocean or shock that they didn't even register. Despite the body aches, the burning lungs, and her cramping stomach she actually felt reasonably ok. That should not have been true, she should have been a bloated corpse at the bottom of the ocean with who knew how many other unfortunates from their ill-omened flight. A sob threatened to close her throat and she pushed the thought of other people far away to the back of her mind.
"I don't think so," she ground out finally as he waited with patience for her answer. Bloodshot aqua eyes concentrated on her with intensity she wasn't used to regardless of circumstance. She worked reception at a big pharma company and she was more used to people not seeing her at all.
"Then hurry up, if we're going to find shelter before dark I have to be conscious and functional, and I need this object out of me."
The whole situation was surreal. Maybe she was dead after all? "I don't think you're supposed to take stuff like that out until you're in a hospital…"
"If it were deep enough to need emergency surgery I'd already be dead. Pull it out quickly then we'll tie my shirt around it. I've seen enough knife wounds to know I'm not dying from this, but I also can't remove it myself."
He'd seen more than one knife wound? "I feel sick."
"And I'm sure you'll feel even worse when the shock kicks in fully, so you need to move fast right now."
Kaoru half crawled over to the man, ripping the now deflated flotation device from around her neck and tossing it to the side. Now that she was closer to him she saw his skin wasn't wrinkled, even if he had the start of some crow's feet between his eyes. Not a smiler, this one. Maybe he wasn't so old as she first thought, either.
"What do I do?" she asked, seeing the jagged metal piece extending from his back.
"I would brace a hand against my back and then pull it out in as close to one smooth motion as possible." He turned his back to her once more and Kaoru felt bile rise in her throat unrelated to the salt water she had just expelled as she tentatively touched the spot next to the metal piece that was wet and sticky with blood. The man took a deep breath.
Kaoru had a feeling her pruny wet hand would just tear to pieces if she tried to pull the metal thing out without protection so she removed her hand from gently touching his back and instead pulled her sodden sundress off and used it as a wrap. She was remembering her last performance assessment with her boss, suddenly: keeps a cool head in a crisis, but needs to work on holding her temper in check more successfully. Once more she touched the man's back to signal to him she was going to make an attempt.
Taking her own deep breath in lungs that immediately punished her for it, Kaoru gave as strong a yank as she could given how cold and shaky her body suddenly felt. The man groaned loudly through what sounded like gritted teeth. It hadn't fully come out but it had shifted significantly. One more pull should do it.
"I'm so sorry, I just need to do it one more time and then I think—"
"Stop talking and do it!" The man snapped.
Well, she couldn't blame him for being testy, but getting scolded brought a flush of welcome anger that provided the energy she needed to give one more vicious yank that took her tumbling backwards despite only being on her knees to begin with. The man slumped over and for a second Kaoru thought she had killed him. Bloody metal clutched in hand, she watched the man strip off his ripped suit jacket and vest, leaving a shirt with a radiating red and pink spot on his back. Once the shirt was off as well he paused.
"How does it look?" He turned his head towards her at last and Kaoru saw a dark eyebrow arch which reminded her she had done nothing but watch him undress for the past couple minutes. She was sitting there in a rather impractical pair of sea foam green panties and matching bra. Six more identical sets in different colors had been in the luggage that was no doubt at the bottom of the ocean at this moment. Kaoru had packed for this trip ages ago, she had been so excited for it, and she hadn't bothered to repack even when there wasn't going to be anyone to see all that cute underwear she had bought.
Use your words, Kaoru. "It looks like a hole in your back the size of four quarters."
"Most of that is probably the blood surrounding it. You're going to need to take my shirt and make sure you wrap it tightly around my torso and over the wound."
"Hold on, let me just…" Kaoru unwrapped her wet dress from the metal piece and then shook it out and pulled it back on with some difficulty. The man watched her dispassionately until she finished and approached him once more. His hand was steady as a rock as he gave her the stained shirt, and Kaoru wondered how he was able to be so calm when her body was starting to shake in earnest despite the day not being cold.
Silently, with only Kaoru's occasional hmms as she tried to tie the shirt around his broad torso and the man's hisses of pain when she had to move it around, the deed was done. As soon as she had finished her job, the man picked up his suit vest and put it back on, even if he couldn't button it all the way up with the shirt sleeve knot in the way near his pectorals. He had slowed down a bit, probably struggling against the pain, and Kaoru stared out at the ocean with her shivering body reminding her this was all terribly real.
An only slightly damp jacket was dropped around her shoulders, probably bespoke judging from the quality of it as she ran her fingers over the fine wool of the one sleeve. The man was blocking the sun, standing tall above her, his white hair illuminated at the edges by the backlighting. Unreadable, he extended a hand to help her up. In his other hand he held the long, jagged metal piece that had formerly been in his body as if it were a sort of short sword. It was probably the closest thing they had to a tool between them.
"You're in shock. Take the jacket and stay warm. We need to get out of the sun and move to the tree line. Getting sun stroke won't do us any favors."
Kaoru accepted his hand to stand on unsteady bare feet and felt a few callouses, but they were not workman's hands. Who was this businessman who seemed to be made of steel and willpower while she was slowly melting down inside her own mind? She used his confidence as her true north and followed him to towards the jungle.
"My name is Kaoru." Her teeth chattered as she spoke before she thought to add. "Kaoru Sh—Kamiya. Kaoru Kamiya." She said more solidly hoping he hadn't caught her slip of the tongue. After practicing saying the other for months she had almost messed up her own name. Anger heated her, smoothing out her shivers for a moment before they returned in force and she tried to gather the suit jacket more closely to her body. It smelled like the sea and the man's sweat.
"Enishi Yukishiro." His voice was terse. "Stay close to me, my glasses were lost in the crash and if you're more than twenty feet away you might as well not exist."
Eyeing the dense foreign vegetation and the unknown miles of probably uninhabited island, Kaoru didn't think staying close was going to be much of a problem.