"Yahiko!"
He turns, shinai on his shoulder, at Kenshin's call. The older swordsman is improving slowly, day by day, in the aftermath of Enishi's Jinchuu; it is only recently that Megumi has given him license to be out of bed, but the autumn weather is fine and Kenshin is strong, so Yahiko doesn't worry.
"Where are you going?" Kenshin asks, falling in beside him.
"Maekawa-sesei's dojo," Yahiko says. "I'm sparring with the senior class today."
Kenshin smiles, and it is less the clueless rurouni grin that he and Kaoru have secretly agreed they actually hate and more an expression of genuine pride and pleasure. "Do you have a moment?"
For Kenshin? Of course. "Yeah," Yahiko says. "Is something wrong?"
"No," Kenshin says, leaning against the gatepost. "This one simply wanted to thank you."
"Thank me? For what?" Yahiko has been picking up some of the slack with the chores while Kenshin is ill, true, but that hardly requires this sort of serious conversation.
"When we thought Kaoru-dono was gone," –Yahiko does not miss the avoidance of the word dead—"You were the only one who didn't give up."
Yahiko thinks of the dark days after his father died, when his home and his clothes and even his puppy were taken to pay debts, and the even darker, hungry days when his mother would send him to bed early; she would be crying soundlessly the next morning when he woke up. He remembers keeping vigil over her cooling body (too thin, already a skeleton even before her death, animated only by twin prods duty and desperation) because he is samurai and he will not allow his mother this last dishonor. He remembers survival on the streets, and with the yakuza, days when only hope held body and spirit together.
"I've had practice," he says simply.