Deeper Than Shadows
By Gray Nymph
He stared, unbelieving. He barely felt his sword slip from his fingers to land with a muffled clang on the ground. His knees went out from underneath him as Enishi's voice echoed through his mind, taunting him, angering him.
"Be sad! Yell! Mourn! And then weep until you die!"
Kenshin felt the cold hard earth underneath his palms as grief threatened to overtake him. No, it had already overtaken him. He could feel its harsh piercing pain shooting through his chest. He closed his eyes, trying to erase that image from his eyes, but he could not. He could still see her in the darkness behind his eyes.
Her head was tilted slightly to one side, eyes blank. His imaginary gaze paused there as the shock and horror pierced him again. The dark eyes he loved were now glazed over in death, staring at him, mocking him in their lifelessness. It was as if he were looking at a doll. And he could almost believe that she was a doll until his gaze shifted to the cross-shaped scar on her cheek, the thin trail of blood tracing a path from one corner of her mouth to the ground below. Then, as he traced that trickle of blood to the ground, he saw the sword.
Enishi's sword.
That pain shot through him again as he saw more blood, her blood, spattered on her chest, on the wall behind her. Her arms hung at her side, slender fingers gently brushing against the ground as if trying to gather life from the dirt beneath her, but instead her life fell from her fingers to the unforgiving earth below. It was almost as if red had completely filled his vision when he opened his eyes.
It was real. This was no nightmare, no horrific dream that he would wake up from as he had so many nights before. For scenes like this often plagued him in his dreams. Scenes of Kaoru dying or dead because of him, because of his sins. He had taken a small amount of comfort that they had been only dreams, that Kaoru slept peacefully, her dreams clean of death and decay.
He wanted to go to her now, hold her, touch her, but something held him back as he stared at Kaoru's form. This was not the Kaoru he knew. His Kaoru was full of life, full of love, full of innocence. Not this mockery of her. She would never smile for him again, her face forever etched with that look of pain and sorrow, beautiful even as it angered him to see such a look on her face. It was a look he had tried to keep her from wearing, but he felt that he had never succeeded. And now it was the look she would wear to the grave.
"Smile for me, Kaoru," he whispered, bowing his head again. He sensed slight movements behind him but took no notice of them. Something inside him realized the irony of his words. Enishi had destroyed him so that Tomoe would smile for him. Did Tomoe smile at Enishi now while he asked his Kaoru to smile for him?
"Kenshin," Megumi's voice said softly.
His name. Kenshin. Megumi rarely addressed him as Kenshin. Usually, he was "Ken-san." Megumi's way of saying his name was different from Kaoru's. Kaoru had always said his name with a sort of breathless expectancy, sometimes questioningly, sometimes sorrowfully, sometimes happily, but always with that slight lilt that made his heart leap for a millisecond of time.
"Leave… me… alone," he whispered again, his breath coming in ragged gasps that threatened to tear him apart. If she said his name again, he would break.
"Kenshin… please…"
Kenshin jerked a hand to his fallen sakabatou, swept it up clenched in a hard fist, stood to his feet, and turned around. He saw Megumi step back from him; she had been walking toward him, hand held out to him. He glared at her. He saw that she wasn't really looking at him, that her gaze went past his shoulder, to the girl sitting against the wall, her heart broken by a sword, her cheek scarred, all because of his past, his wrongs, him.
Then, her gaze flicked back to him. "I…I…"
Kenshin pushed past her before she could finish, ignoring the outstretched hand. There was only one person he wanted to touch and she was gone. He would never touch her again. He thought of all the times he had had the chance to show her how much he loved her, and had not. Regret and guilt replaced the anger within him. He could count on one hand the number of times he had held her in his arms. He could see the disappointment in her eyes when he had stepped away from her other times, distancing himself from her love, afraid that his return of her love would poison her, corrupt her.
But he had loved her. In spite of his careful avoidances, he had fallen in love with Kaoru, and he had been helpless to stop himself from doing so.
He found himself remembering the happy times they had had together. The teasing, the fights, the romantic moments that had been few and far between. The time he had held her hand in the rain, the time he had said goodbye to her before going to Kyoto, holding her for the first time in his arms as he had wanted, the time they had sat together on a rooftop after the battle with Shishio, the time Jin'eh had kidnapped her. He found himself going back to the beginning, the memories beginning to pass through his mind's eye faster and faster.
When she had attacked him in a Tokyo market. Her courageous yet stupid attack of a much more powerful Gohei. Her smile as she said that he was a better cook than she was. Her sudden acceptance of the rurouni into her home. Her tears as he came so close to reverting back to Battousai during and after the battle with Saitoh.
Her face at each of those moments burned into his mind, but over all of them was the one he had just seen of her staring sightlessly at him from the depths of his nightmares.
He stopped walking, he had been walking for an hour, and found himself in front of a sad old town called Rakinmura. He felt numb now, his sifting of his memories acting as some sort of emotional anesthetic. He glanced down at his sword; it still limply from his hand. A chain. He would ask for a chain and then go on, but he knew that he would stay. He no longer felt the strength to wander. He could not go back to the Kamiya dojo. He bit back a sob. Her funeral. He could not attend her funeral no matter how strong he was. And he was far from strong now. He felt as if his heart had been broken as much by Enishi's sword as Kaoru's had. He scanned the inside of the town, seeing the listless souls wandering about aimlessly. Yes, he would stay here and rest. No thirst for revenge welled up in him, only the urgent desire to rest, to lose himself in his memories, to be left alone. He could do that here. As he entered the town, he felt himself slipping into a darkness deeper than shadows.
Author's note: Boy, was that hard to write. I didn't know I was going to write something like this until an hour ago. I'm sorry if it's incredibly sentimental, too graphic, or overly dramatic. I needed to write this though. I may have mixed up a few things here and there so please forgive my ignorance when it comes to the Kyoto and Jinchuu Arc. I have yet to watch or read them. And yes, I'm also sorry that it's so sad. At least we know that there is hope for our favorite RK couple.