A/N: My first and, most likely, last foray into the Kenshin fanfiction. Apologies for any OOC, this was a one-time thing.
Left Behind
"Lord Aoshi!" Misao reached up to grab the screen door and pulled with all the strength of her body. It wouldn't budge. "Lord Aoshi! That's not fair!"
No reply.
Misao raised her fists and slid back a few paces. She took in a deep breath, ran, and launched into the screen with the new kick Han'nya had taught her. It buckled and folded halfway down the center. There was just enough space between the ruined door and the wall for the child to squeeze through. It was not what she had been hoping for, but the door was made of oak, after all.
"Lord Aoshi!" She dashed down the hallway, slid into a crouch at the corner, and leapt forward. She shoved her weight off the balls of her foot, just like Han'nya told her to do. He would have been so proud if he could see her. She spotted Aoshi attempting to close the front door, looking as guilty as Hyottoko when he was caught pigging out on deserts.
"Gotcha!" She slid through the remaining space and seized his arm. "Lord Aoshi, take me!"
He shook himself free of her grip. "You are not to get involved. Go back inside."
"I can do this! It's just a little spying, and the lord is fat and stupid, anyways! His guards wouldn't notice an intruder if you licked them, they—"
"You are not to get involved." Aoshi leaned down to grab the girl's shoulders—they barely passed his waist—and turned her back to the house. "Go inside." He pushed her through the doorway.
She wrenched herself out of her grip. "Lord Aoshi, why?!"
The man looked up at the sky, sighed, and squatted so that his eyes were somewhere nearer to Misao's level. "You're ten years old. You—"
"That's no excuse! You guys raised me, I can fight better than those guards put together."
"Stay here, Misao. That's an order from your Commander."
Aoshi slid the door shut.
Misao poked the dying embers of the fire. She spat into the pit to wash the taste of the memory out of her mouth.
"Is anything troubling you, Lady Misao?"
She glanced up at the swordsman. His eyes caught hers and she immediately looked back down. "Nothing." She said. Her face flushed—the lie was obvious in her eyes, she knew that.
"Am I that weak, Himura?"
"Hmm?" He leaned back against the trunk. "This one doesn't understand you."
She watched the fires play against her hands. "I just always…" She clenched her hands into form three, best for offense, then relaxed. "I always hoped that I would be able to go with Lord Aoshi on his adventures." Into form two. "I always hoped that someday I would really get to fight alongside him, for life or death, you know?" The position to grab a kunai. Clench. Unclench. "Maybe even save him, if he was ever in trouble."
Himura shifted a little on the ground. "Those desires are not weak, that they aren't."
"They—the Oniwabanshu—took me on little things, sure. But whenever there was anything really dangerous, something that Lord Aoshi and Gramps would talk about in whispers when they thought I couldn't hear, they'd leave me behind. I thought that if I got stronger, I could go, too."
The embers sparked and floated up out of Misao's line of sight. She stared at her hands for a long time.
"But Lord Aoshi left me!" She slammed her fists against her knees and lowered her head. "He just abandoned me in Kyoto without a word for years to be raised by a smelly old man cleaning out pots like some sniveling little waitress! A waitress, Himura! And you said that—that he wanted to protect me, but—am I that pathetic? That I need to be kept away from any trouble and pampered and—"
"Lady Misao." The swordsman said. Something about his tone made the teenager catch her breath and look up at him. "Such self-pity is not a healthy thing, that it isn't."
"It's not—"
His look silenced her long before he continued speaking. "Aoshi cared about you deeply, that he did. If anything happened to you, it would have been death to him."
She swallowed.
Misao's train of thought derailed in those moments, but recovered quickly. "Am I that pathetic that he thought that I needed to be sheltered, then?"
The wanderer closed his eyes. "Lady Misao, in your youth you are certainly much more vulnerable than any of the other Oniwabanshu."
She clenched her eyes shut.
"But that does not mean that you are weak or pathetic, that it does not."
"Eh?"
He smiled at her. His eyes were full and even large upside-down crescents from the grin. "Little saplings grow large and strong over time, do they not?"
Misao nodded.
"But not if somebody cuts them down early, isn't that so?"
She nodded again.
"There." Himura closed his eyes and leaned back against the trunk.
The teenager's breath caught in her throat and she waited for his next words.
The swordsman started to snore.
"Himura!" She leapt to her feet and rummaged in her pockets for her sharpest kunai. "That's not an answer!"
He opened one eye and gave her an amused stare. "You should rest now, that you should."
"I'll show you rest, you pansy. Take that!"
"Oro!"
Misao's story runs similar to my own, thus this dabble. Hope you enjoyed it.