Author's Note: Greetings. It's been a while, yes? When last I wrote in the Ruroken fandom, it was 2009. A lot has happened since then. I graduated college, got married, and started grad school. Wow. Still... My love for Rurouni Kenshin had persisted, and this particular story has lingered at the back of my mind. This is a rewrite of my first Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction, which is still up on my profile as 'The Last Messenger'. I have thought about revisiting the tale for years, and now I finally am. I hope that this version is an improvement and is as enjoyable as the original. Please review and tell me what you think.
For King and Country
The boy liked helping his mother with the chores, because when he did, she hugged him and thanked him in her gentle voice and stroked her fingers through his hair. He liked the warmth of her arms around him, and the smell of the indigo plants that lingered on her skin and clothes, but most of all he loved that when she said "You're a good boy, Shinta. Thank you." she looked a little less tired.
So he helped to tend and harvest the plants, and to carry the baskets of leaves to the dyers in the village down the mountain. When his mother used the money they got from selling the leaves to buy rice and tofu and salt, he helped carry the bundles back up the mountain, and always she smiled at him, soft with love.
Chapter One
She froze when she came out of the trees and was faced abruptly with a vast plain scattered with the remains of a battle long past. The setting sun dyed the scene a garish red, lending the grass a startlingly blood-like hue, edging the broken piles of bones and decaying armor with fire. The woman's jaw tightened.
It was less of a battlefield and more of a graveyard; many warriors had died on the field, spilt blood and offal, and it seemed as if not one of them had been buried. No sane person would set foot on that ground, so obviously un-cleansed and shadowed with death. But the woman standing at the edge of the killing field darted a glance behind her, squared her shoulders, and walked forward.
The dying sunlight washed across her dark clothes, illuminating the stains and rips and tears in them. They had been fine, once, made of a sturdy fabric suitable for hard travel but finely stitched. Her face above the dirty collar was fine, too, smooth-cheeked with large blue eyes. But like the clothes, it too was marred, drawn and smudged with exhaustion.
Her step was slow and deliberate, as if each footfall had to be planned out and anticipated, and her eyes roamed restlessly across the field. The skin around them was tight with worry and fatigue. She threw several wary looks back they way she'd come, venturing further afield, picking her way through the sun-bleached bones and half-rotten armor toward the hillock that rose from the center of the plain. As she drew closer, the number of the dead seemed to increase, as if the knoll had lain at the heart and heat of the battle.
Cresting the hill, she paused and cast a slow, critical gaze upon the surrounding field. From her vantage point, each corner of the long-ago battlefield was visible, and this seemed to please her, for she gave a decisive nod and settled herself on the ground. Her breath hitched as she did so, movements stiff with either injury or fatigue, but she folded her legs under her and drew her tattered haori around her with the air of one preparing for a long night's vigil.
The sun set and the quarter moon rose, silent witness to her struggle to remain awake. She shivered when the wind slipped icy fingers through the rends in her clothes, but she welcomed the chill's assistance in keeping her awake, turning her face into the wind. It, and her stubbornness, were hard pressed to keep her exhaustion at bay, as time and again her head nodded forward and jerked back as she caught herself. Twice she remained bowed, sleep making its demands upon her, but each time she jolted awake within seconds, muscles tensing and her eyes frantically scanning the field for anything that might have crept upon her in those moments of inattention.
But nothing stirred in that forgotten place; it remained empty of all living things aside from the huddled woman on the knoll. Until midnight.
At midnight, a sudden fierce wind sent her hands flying up to grasp her collar as her clothes flapped against her. Her long tail of black hair streamed out like a banner, and some of the smaller bits of detritus on the field swirled in strange patterns, tumbling across the ground, catching on this bit of armor or that shattered bone.
Her eyes followed a bit of faded cloth as it fluttered through the air and came to rest at the feet of the man standing before her. She started, having not heard nor seen him approach. She stared up at him with shocked blue eyes, and from the shadows obscuring his face, he stared back.
"Well?" he said, his voice low and curiously flat. "Aren't you going to beg for your life?"
The woman blinked, her chapped lips parting. She asked, slowly: "Is there a reason why I should?"
There was a long pause as she peered up into his face, trying to see through the shadows. But nothing was visible except for the seemingly youthful curve of one cheek.
"Do you not know the legend of this place?" he asked finally, still with that quiet, oddly emotionless tone. She shook her head, shivering a bit as a sudden chill swept her body. The man shifted, the moonlight outlining the folds in his clothes. "Many years ago, a Necromancer rose, and wished to make this country his own. He created an army of twisted creatures to serve him, and marched against the rightful King. The King had many loyal men to stand beside him, but the Necromancer was powerful and might have won the war if not for a swordsman of unusual skill, the King's right hand. All opponents the Necromancer set against him, he defeated, and the Necromancer began to hate this enemy. The two faced each other at last in the middle of a great battle. The swordsman mortally wounded the Necromancer, but before he died, the Necromancer stole the swordsman's heart and set a geas upon him. The spirit of the swordsman was bound to the battlefield upon which they fought, cursed to kill any who set foot upon it after sunset."
He fell silent. The woman's head dipped, her fingers clasped together. She said, quietly, wearily: "If you are cursed to this, then simple words can't stop you. I am unarmed and I have no magicks to help me, but tattered as I am I still have my pride. If I am to die, then I will do so with dignity. I will not beg."
The spirit inclined his head. "There is one way for you to avoid this fate."
The woman watched him warily, the moonlight shining on her face accentuating the dark smudges under her eyes, turning her face cadaverous. The swordsman turned away. "I will release you if you can return my heart to me."
"What?" she said, brow furrowing. "But…"
She stopped and frowned, thinking. "You are bound to this place, so… your heart must be nearby… but…"
He told her: "If you can find my heart by sunrise, I will spare your life."
Then he vanished.
"W-wait!" the woman said, half-reaching for him. But he was already gone. She lowered her hand, and worried her lip, brow drawn in thought. "His heart…"
She gazed around speculatively and stood.
)0(
The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east when the wind rose again, bringing with it the spirit swordsman. He stood motionless as the wind died and his clothing and hair settled. The woman lifted her head to look at him from where she sat on the slope of the hill.
For a moment, there was silence, and neither of them moved. Then the swordsman asked, voice impassive: "Have you failed then, like the others before you?"
She didn't answer right away, unfolding herself slowly and standing. She tossed an object to his feet with a smooth movement.
"There," she said, her voice a tired croak. The swordsman gazed down at the katana, but didn't move.
"Pick it up," he ordered. The woman's eyes narrowed.
"Why?" she asked. The edges of the swordsman's form wavered, as if he were an image of smoke and a breeze had just blown through him.
"Because I cannot." His voice was soft and indistinct, most of his attention on the battered blade just inches from him.
She moved forward and bent to pick it up, keeping a wary eye on the shadowed spirit. In the growing light, she fancied she could make out the color of his hair and clothes. The long—red?—bangs that hung in front of his face still obscured his features, however.
"Is this not your heart?" she asked, holding the katana between them, tipping the blade so that a bead of watery morning sunlight rolled up its length to the hilt. It was a well-made weapon, the blade still sound and free of rust even after countless years lying exposed on the battlefield. It just needed a new hilt, and a bit of a polish…
She was unprepared for what happened next. The swordsman moved in a flash, so quickly that she had no time to think, only to react. And she reacted in the way that had been drilled into her as a disciple of kendo; she leveled the blade in her hands and braced herself. Her stance was defensive, the sword extended in front of her, tip pointing to him; a stance designed to dissuade enemies from drawing closer, it was supposed to keep them at swords-length.
But the spirit swordsman didn't stop, and all thought and breath was driven from her body as he threw himself forward onto the katana, driving himself down its length until he lost his momentum. He slumped forward toward her, folded over the blade. The tip gleamed wetly from his back, just left of center. She stared wide-eyed, frozen by the action, the sword steady in her hands even as her mind started to babble. Distantly, she noted the blood that ran down the blade, coating her hands and dripping to the ground.
'B-blood? But he's… a spirit…'
His hands rose slowly from his sides, slowly, shakily, and she watched numbly as they closed over her own hands, which still gripped the hilt of the katana. They were warm, and slick with blood. 'He's…able to touch me…'
Head bowed over the hilt and their clasped hands, the swordsman dragged himself further onto the blade. It was then that she was able to shake her paralysis, and her hands began to tremble under the impossibly solid fingers of the spirit.
"Oh," she whispered, and that was all she could say for a while. "Oh. Oh, no…"
She released the hilt, and suddenly her hands were fluttering over his chest, lightly touching the blood-soaked cloth and the cold steel buried in his flesh. She pressed her hands to the wound, as if she could staunch the flow of blood from it. His head rose, hair (she could see now that it really was red) falling away from his face, and his eyes met hers in the strengthening light of dawn.
She froze again, caught by the bright yellow of his irises. They seemed almost to glow in the pale diffuse sunlight.
Still clutching the hilt in his hands, the golden-eyed swordsman took a step back… and another… And he fell to one knee, turning his head to the side and coughing blood onto the ground. He panted, each breath ragged with pain. He shuddered once, taking in a great gulp of breath…
In a sudden, swift motion, he ripped the katana from his chest. The deep breath he'd taken in was torn from his lungs in an agonized grunt. He fell forward, propping himself up with one fist. The katana was stuck point-first into the ground, and he leaned heavily on it.
For her part, the woman merely stared, hands bloody and trembling, still outstretched from when he pulled himself and the sword from her grasp. Her lips moved soundlessly and then she sat down, hard, on the slope, gaping at the man crouched not far from her.
The first full rays of sunlight spilled over the field and hill, perversely casting the nightmare into the day-lit world.
Silence reigned on the hill for a time, and then there was a soft clack as the swordsman levered himself up with the help of the katana. He looked down at the ragged figure of the one who had been able to break the geas that had been set upon him.
"Woman," he said. "Who are you?"
She gulped and, after a few false starts, managed to say: "I am Kamiya Kaoru, King's Messenger."
The swordsman turned his head to look at the sunrise, the bright light highlighting his red hair, golden eyes, and the cross-shaped scar on his left cheek. When he spoke it was little more than a whisper, in a tone of almost wonder.
"I am… Himura Kenshin…"