One Thousand Times

by Espiritus

He was a man of honor, a man who loved his country, and he was hers until honor stole him from her side, but she would never forget him, her Battousai. No character death. One shot.

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin.

I know I still have to update Love, Seduction, and Counseling as well as Language of Silence, but for the past few months they have seemed to hate me. In LSAC, Kenshin always turns out OOC or just plain weird. As for LOS, I cannot make the story flow. I know where I want it to go, but my writing is holding me back. Sorry for the long waits.

He was a man of honor, a man who loved his country, and he had been hers until honor stole him from her side. Yet, she would never forget him, her Battousai. No character death.

One Thousand Times
Espiritus

He was a man of honor, a man who loved his country and all it stood for. His clan was formed from generations upon generations of samurai warriors; decades upon decades of blood and war and cold steel. And like a true warrior when his country needed him in the years of the second Great War he left her without explanation.

Without a goodbye.

Men of honor had no need for love he used tell her when they were both younger, he being a rash, strong young man who wanted a life that his father's father lived. Back then she smiled at him and held his hand close to her heart saying soothing words that were but lies to her soul and mind, but she said them because they filled him with hope. She could never deny him anything we he gave her his ever so rare smile.

He promised to be strong for her, to make her proud, and she never could muster the strength to tell him that she didn't care about those noble aspects. She wanted him as the man, as plain Himura Kenshin. She wanted his love, not his accolades, but she was a woman; a lower creature in the eyes of men and her words would hold no sway over his rashly beautiful heart.

He left her without a goodbye, an action and path she knew he would take, but it didn't stop the bitterness from tearing her apart. She wanted him to love her before country and honor, and as selfish as the thought may have been she wished for it more than anything.

Yet her red-haired love was a like a butterfly to her, an entity so beautiful with pure ambition that she knew she couldn't hold him forever, and so with a heavy heart she let him go.

Besides the air raids and rations, life continued as normal in the city of Tokyo. Everyday she visited the temple. Everyday she tried to learn how to cook. Everyday she practiced her kenjutsu, but those things only made forgetting him harder. She loved him, and a love like hers was never easy to fade, because it was a true and pure love. It was a love that surpassed all honor, a love that reached the highest glory.

In the newspapers, she read about his triumphs. He became famous in Japan, a true warrior, an honor to his family name. They called him Battousai, likened to the European Red Baron of the first Great War. At night, Kaoru cried for him. He was a pure soul - how much he must have been hurting to murder for a future that everyday became more and more uncertain.

Honor and pride could blind a man to a useless cause. Kaoru was afraid for him, for her dear Kenshin. The letters she wrote him were rarely, if ever, replied to with his words. When his letters did come, when she could hear his voice through the ink characters, she knew that he was a different boy, no, man than before and cried again.

He changed. She was not surprised. War took many things away, destroyed many things, and created many things.

Never once did he speak of love. Never once did he write that he cared, and his words, spoken so long ago, that an honor bound man needed no such thing as love entered her mind again. She stopped writing him two years after he left thinking it best to try and forget the boy of her past, a boy she still loved.

She dreamt of him at night.

She dreamed of a red haired youth with a smile on his face, laughter in his eyes, and words that only children could understand. Then she dreamed of them as teenagers and that awkward time when he first admitted he liked her, the first time he held her hand before he became ambitious for honor and glory. She dreamed of him as a young adult, protective of her but no longer showing the tenderness he once gave her. And lastly, she dreamed of the day when he left. It rained that day and Kaoru thanked the gods for making the sky cry instead of her. She wanted to know what he looked like as he left, she wanted to know what he thought, but she could never dream up those events.

Because he left without a goodbye, they would forever remain a mystery to her.

Then one day it happened. Hiroshima, the city where her brother Yahiko was station, was annihilated. August 6 of the year 1945 would forever be burned in her mind as the day she lost her last relative. August 6 of the year 1945 was when she knew what she had to do, and without thinking further she left Tokyo and joined the numerous people who went to offer any type of help they could. She did so for the memory of her brother, a young boy just in the beginning of his life; a boy-man who left behind his only sister and a young love, Tsubame - a waitress at a restaurant near their dojo.

She left and never looked back. Her journey began on the day when she truly felt she lost everything.

Since that day, many events took her life in a tidal wave of time and sorrow. Kaoru watched people die, watched people rot away, people cry black blood. She was trained as nurse by a doctor that went by the name of Genzai, and when the war ended he introduced her to her husband - a man well known in Japan's naval unit, Seta Soujiro. He listened to her with a calm, understanding heart. He told her many things, taught her many aspects of life, and even admitted that he was well acquainted with Himura Kenshin the Battousai.

One day, one year after the war, he asked for her hand in marriage.

Kaoru admitted that she could never fully love him for Kenshin was still there, but he only smiled and said that he could love enough for the both of them. He only wanted her in his life. Four months later, she agreed and she finally smiled a smile that she forgot she had, and it was he who made her find her smile again. She would forever be in Soujiro's debt, because he brought colors into her life where before there had only been shades of grey.

Kaoru never heard from Kenshin until seven years after the second Great War when Soujiro was away on business.

He knocked on the gate and she opened it only to see a man that was but a dream to her. The look in both childhood friends' eyes were the same; shock, sorrow, and love. With that one look Kaoru knew he finally understood her. After all those years of pain and suffering, of love, he finally understood that love was greater than any honor; it was the highest of all honors, higher and greater than any of his accolades.

But Kaoru couldn't bring herself to feel sorrow for her actions, for marrying the man who loved and understood her more than she thought anyone could. The man before her was different from the boy she had once known, but yet he was the same and she loved him still. Kaoru feared she would always love him and that a piece of her heart would always yearn for him, but that's what war did. It gave and took many things, allowed for people to grow and understand themselves and others. For most though it came too late.

She was married and there was nothing either of them could do, and Kaoru would never leave Soujiro. She would never dare hurt him in such a way - she had honor, she had love.

Kaoru could see the misery in Kenshin's eyes, calmer than they ever had been before, but deep inside, if she looked hard enough, she could still see the chaos of his soul, the blood on his hands. She reached out and touched him pulling him towards herself as she would a lost child. This was the only touch she was allowed, and if Soujiro had been there he would have understood. He always understood, always smiled.

With that touch, a touch both longed for, everything was complete. Their story ended there and both knew that they would never see the other for the rest of their lives. Maybe the afterlife would be good to them, let them be together. Maybe one day they would find each other again and be able to live and love one another, because in this life they could never be. Each had chosen their own path by their actions and so they had to live their lives guided by those laws of destiny and fate.

And when he spoke to her for the last time, she knew he finally loved her. Knew he finally learned that he had been mistaken in his words so long ago by war's harsh hand.

"Forgive me," he whispered into the crook of her neck.

Brushing his red hair she smiled, "One thousand times."

A/N: I tried to say away from major and minor facts as much as I could, because my story wasn't really on WWII but the love and relationship between two people.

Thank you for reading,
Espiritus