A/N. Bearings, bearings: May 12, 1878. The day after the strange request of Okubo Toshimichi, and the totally sugoi, ten-years-delayed battle between Saitou and Battousai. Life never cuts from one exciting event to the next; always we've got to deal with the fallout, in the dreary, unexciting in-between times. And Battousai unleashed is definitely making for some major fallout.
(Okay, I do believe this summary has reached unprecedented depths of crumminess. Very very sorry. @.@ Anyway, please don't be too discouraged, and go on to the story itself. ^.^)
glossary:
hanten = informal jacket
bokken = solid wooden sword used for teaching kendo
iya = "no," more forceful/slangy than "iie"
rurouni = obviously, a wanderer / vagabond... ^.^ (although Watsuki-sama does say he just invented that word.)
kiai = the shout that martial artists give whenever they do a move, to embody & express their spirit
mou = all-purpose frustrated/dismayed interjection, often used by Kaoru ^.^
yukata = light, informal cotton robe worn around the house and, in warm weather, outside as well.
-dono = Kenshin uses this to refer to Kaoru and most other girls. Superpolite, super-humble, rather archaic way to address someone, like saying "Lady Kaoru."
Maa, maa = a common placating interjection of Kenshin's ^.^;
sessha = lit. "this unworthy/humble/lowly one." Kenshin the rurouni's first-person pronoun of choice. (When he goes Battousai, he uses "ore." You sexy bishie you... ^.^)
de gozaru = Kenshin's superpolite, rather archaic sentence-ender. Usually translated in the official English dubs as "that it is" or "that I do."
de gozaru yo = more emphatic than just "de gozaru"
Sumanai = "sorry," a bit formal
Dame = don't! Stop!
Daijoubu ka? = Are you all right?
Ne? = Okay? All right? (only one of many various uses for this handy-dandy particle.)
Gomen nasai = "sorry," a bit less formal; usually used by girls and children
Arigatou = Thank you.
Morning Afterby Mirune Keishiko
Kaoru started awake.
Outside, the motionless black of night was gone. Intermittent birdsong broke the hushed gray dawn. Clutching her pillow tensely, Kaoru strained to hear past the twittering, but heard nothing.
The Kamiya dojo seemed quiet as ever.
Sighing, she turned over onto her side and burrowed deeper into her blanket. Just a silly dream, maybe. She shut her eyes resolutely, determined to go back to sleep.
But after several minutes of battling the uneasy whisper in her head, she finally threw off her covers, put on her hanten against the early morning chill, and slipped out of her room, pausing only to catch up the bokken she always kept by her bed.
It struck her—as she crept about the house, scanning the grounds and listening intently, bokken at the ready—that she had not done this in some time. Kenshin, she thought. Yes, before Kenshin had come along, the nights she had spent alone in the sprawling dojo had been broken, restless affairs. Constantly imagining prowlers and robbers defiling her precious heritage, Kaoru had often whiled away the hours stalking about the rooms and halls. She had caught her dwindling students whispering about the gray circles under her eyes and the sometimes listless way she swung her bokken.
But then Kenshin had come, and those too foolish or skeptical to fear the former Hitokiri Battousai under her roof had learned the meaning of "private property" quickly enough. She had had nothing but sweet, restful nights after her rurouni had come along—
Kaoru caught herself. In the heavy shadows of the kitchen, she felt her cheeks flame.
Iya, she thought somberly. Not my rurouni. But a rurouni nonetheless...
As she tiptoed down the silent corridor, the events of the previous evening passed vividly before her mind's eye. The shadows in the training hall pierced by golden, gleaming eyes. Two figures streaking through twilight gray, superhuman speed marked by the cold flash of naked steel. Blood spurting through the air. Battle cries echoing hollowly off the walls of the training hall. Harsh breathing perfectly timed, exquisitely even.
She had been so afraid, so terribly afraid...
She had comforted herself with the shift of gold back to amethyst, the way his voice had returned from low-pitched deadly menace to a more familiar gentleness. She had absorbed herself in the injuries she had helped Megumi tend, and then in the news and the challenge that had been laid before them. One week, only one week to make his decision. Thus trying to distract herself, she had refused to heed the uneasy fear that wormed in her gut.
But as soon as she had lain in bed, the fear had returned in the stagnant stillness of night. In the darkness she saw the golden eyes gleam once again, the moment's glimmer of a blade swung in a flawless silver arc.
Even now, hiding in the shadows by a wall, she shook her head to dispel the images. It wasn't that she was afraid of him, even though she had seen for herself at last the skill and single-minded purpose that had established him as a demon of the Bakumatsu; and she knew now that the legends had not entirely exaggerated.
No, she feared for him. So this was what he worked so hard to leave behind, this was whom he tried with such determination to obliterate forever—who was then roused with such apparent ease by one of his deadliest enemies. Her relief and joy when hitokiri became rurouni once again only echoed his momentary triumph over himself. Her dread at the memory of violet eyes turned gold merely shared in his own inner turmoil. And her fear was for a man caught between two sides of himself he could not reconcile, who, without such a resolution, would remain lost and adrift from all who would care about him.
Kaoru was near the training hall now, and she discovered at last what had broken her rest.
Soft yet steady came odd scratching sounds from the hall, a kind of measured, rhythmic scraping of something rough against wood. It blended not unpleasantly with the birdsong that was rising with the sun; occasionally the rhythm speeded up for several moments, before slowing again to its former pace. It was so quiet, so discreet, Kaoru wondered how it had penetrated her sleep.
The sounds continued placidly as Kaoru crept nearer. Whoever was making them seemed not to notice her approach. As she flitted from shadow to shadow and pressed her back against the outer wall, the scratching sounds continued, and she frowned.
Curiosity was fast replacing suspicion. This didn't sound like a break-in. Yahiko might have risen early to practice by himself, but that was hardly imaginable, and at any rate she had overheard the boy snoring as she'd tiptoed past his room. Had some sort of animal managed to sneak in? But Kenshin was just too obsessive-compulsive to leave doors open at night...
And besides... she knew that sound. It was familiar, but she couldn't quite name it. It had been some time since she'd last heard it... Somehow she remembered her father, supervising his students in a frenetically busy dojo, the spring sun outside blazing brightly...
Brows deeply knit, Kaoru padded silently toward the hall doors.
Maybe Sanosuke had gotten drunk again and been unable to find his way home from the gambling halls, then had decided to crash at the dojo. It was a crazy idea, one that hardly fit the sounds she was hearing; but if it proved true Kaoru was determined to give him what-for, not least for defiling the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu training hall with a drunken stupor.
As she laid her free hand on the door, gripping her bokken with the other hand, the sounds ceased.
Kaoru stopped short, mechanically securing her grasp on her weapon. Despite herself, a drop of nervous sweat trickled down her temple.
Had she been discovered? What if these were dangerous intruders after all...?
She sensed more than heard the light footsteps approaching the door. Grimly she braced herself for an attack. She'd show them the sword that protected life protected private property too...
The door was abruptly opened.
With a shrill kiai, Kaoru gonged Kenshin with her bokken.
"Kenshin! Kenshin! Mou—what have I done...?"
Gradually Kenshin's swirling eyes settled back into their customary deep purple, although the slightly disoriented look lingered for a few more moments before finally fading—to be replaced by one of deep embarrassment. Only then did Kaoru realize she was cradling his much-abused head to her chest, which was rather scantily covered by her yukata. Her cheeks instantly reached boiling temperatures and she hastily scampered away—dropping Kenshin's head with a loud thump onto the floor.
"Oroooo..." muttered Kenshin, rubbing his second bruise. "Kaoru-dono, this unworthy one is very sorry for having worried you de gozaru..."
"You're very sorry because I hit you on the head," sniffled Kaoru, kneeling penitently before him, having first wrapped her yukata more snugly around herself.
Kenshin smiled innocently. "Well, you really do have a very powerful sword-arm."
He barely dodged her impulsive punch. "Yes, I do know I'm not much of a lady," she growled.
"Maa, maa. That was the last thing on sessha's mind." He gave her another placating smile. "Instead I must apologize for waking you up with the noise I was causing."
Remembering then what had brought her there in the first place, Kaoru glanced around the training hall. Nights' shadows were only faintly relieved by gray half-light filtering in through the windows. In a circle of warm lamplight in the middle of the hall, sat a bucket and a scrubbing brush.
"What on earth were you doing, Kenshin, scrubbing floors at this unholy hour?" Kaoru stood and padded over to the brush, which, she now saw, lay in the middle of a water-darkened area of wood. "I know you usually get up early to do your chores, but this is ridiculous—"
She trailed off. Water had indeed darkened the polished wood, but within the moistened area was a smaller splotch of something much darker. Kenshin had been using hot water, and it had lifted into the stagnant air of the enclosed training hall a faint, unmistakable metallic odor.
Kaoru caught her breath, glanced back at him. He had risen to his feet and stood quietly with his head bowed, long bangs shading his eyes from hers.
"Kenshin," she said, then stopped. She didn't know what to say.
"Sumanai de gozaru yo." The impeccable gentleness in his voice pierced her with an almost physical pain. Silently he walked past her, returning to his work. "I was hoping not to wake you or the boy."
He knelt on the floor, picked up the brush, and began to scrub again at the stained floor.
"Dame!" Kaoru blurted out.
Obediently he stopped, raising dark eyes to hers. Kaoru felt the tears rising within her at the look in those huge violet eyes—deliberate distance almost successfully masking an infinite, shuttered sorrow. It reminded her of the first time they had met, when, after dispatching Gohei and his gang in the training hall, he had insisted on leaving.
You can finally clear away the disgrace from your school. If the real Battousai stays here, you'll lose everything...
His eyes—so far away, so irretrievably lost in a world of sadness she could hardly hope to touch.
And yet—with the previous evening's battle, the remembered gleam of his feral golden eyes, the dark blood staining the wooden floor of her otherwise immaculate training hall...
...did she dare believe she had come these few steps closer to the painful world he so carefully kept from everyone else?
"I'm sorry to worry you, Kaoru-dono," he repeated, breaking the awkward pause and Kaoru's thoughts. He smiled at her with his usual guileless cheer. "I'll finish soon with this, and then I will definitely make your favorite breakfast."
Kaoru stared at him, at his silly smile, until it dissolved in her suddenly misty vision.
Kenshin... Her hands fisted within her sleeves. Dame...
She stepped closer. When his eyes widened in puzzlement, she had to smile, even as tears overflowed silently down her cheeks.
Don't shut me out like this.
"Daijoubu ka, Kaoru-dono?"
She nodded automatically, dashing away her traitorous tears with an impatient swipe of her sleeve. "I just..." She trailed off, realizing she didn't quite yet know how to finish her sentence.
He watched her in obvious concern as she knelt beside him, strove for a breathless moment to contain herself. She wasn't as good as he was at hiding emotions...
"I just want to help, Kenshin," she said quietly. For some reason she couldn't yet meet his gaze, but instead stared fixedly at the handle of the bucket as she fidgeted with it. It was only after another moment's inner struggle that she managed to finally meet his eyes—unfailingly kind and patient purple depths. "Please. Will you let me help?"
He glanced down, at the stains on the floor.
"Kaoru-dono—there's no need to—"
"Please?" She cut him off before he could wound her further. But now she found that he, too, was in pain; the mirrors of his kind eyes shattered in a slivered instant, and she saw through to that familiar shadow-steeped inner world of grief and regret. The tears were coming again, spilling hot and fast down her cheeks. "You're still injured. You mustn't pull the stitches. Let's take care of this together..."
She was babbling and she knew it. He was closing himself off from her again—averting his gaze, shaking his hair forward so that it covered his face, straightening so that he was a fraction farther away from her. Mustering her courage, she brushed her fingertips across the back of his hand.
At her light touch, he froze. But he did not look up at her.
"Ne, Kenshin?"
Please. Don't be a rurouni again just yet...
"If we must, Kaoru-dono." The words left his mouth in the rush of a breath, sounding uncertain, tired, still unhappy. Kaoru shrank instinctively from him—had she displeased him, as she had not intended to? She could not tell because he still kept his eyes from her unabashedly pleading gaze, even as he slowly pushed the scrubbing brush across the warm, wet wood until it was just in front of her.
She stared down at it—hard-won prize of a seemingly empty victory. Glancing back up at him, she found him looking more openly exhausted than she remembered ever having seen him. He seemed paler than usual, stray strands of his hair blazing all the more brightly against his ashen cheek, and suddenly she was acutely conscious of every one of his twenty-eight years, the full weight of an eventful lifetime she had yet to fully learn about him.
"Gomen nasai," she whispered.
He shook his head immediately, still looking away. "It doesn't matter."
"You're mad at me." Her tone was faintly accusing, faintly despairing.
"Sessha is not mad at Kaoru-dono de gozaru." After a brief, visibly tortured moment, Kenshin smiled. One part of Kaoru sagged in relief; the other part recoiled from the mask that was back in place, the distance he had so deftly re-established.
But then—she had won, and she had lost. She would take what he could give her and hope that he would entrust to her more, if it had to come piece by painstakingly yielded piece.
For now... she would start with this brush, and this bucket, and these stains of his blood.
She smiled at him.
"Arigatou, Kenshin."
He smiled back at her. "Sessha should be the one to say that de gozaru yo."
He helped her tie back her sleeves. At her bidding, he poured out the last of the hot water from the bucket and she fell to scrubbing with a wordless vengeance, sweating in the rising steam. Slowly but surely, the blood was lifted out of the dark age-worn wood.
She steeled herself against the sight of the flecks of crusted crimson drifting slowly in the puddling water. Instead, she glanced up at the somber almost-smile on his face, watched the gradually brightening rays slanting in through the windows.
From what she could see through the high-set wooden bars, the sky was a clear, pure blue. Birdsong floated on a gust of breeze.
It was going to be a beautiful summer day.
~ owari ~
A/N, again. Before "Yoake Mae no Yami ni" it had been about three years since I last dabbled in RK fanfiction. This oneshot is kind of for re-orienting myself back into RuroKen-kai. I was watching the Saitou-Battousai duel episode again and suddenly thought, Hey wait a minute, who's going to clean up all that blood?
Incidentally, the quote "If the real Battousai stays here..." is from Maigo-chan's priceless manga translations at www(dot)maigo-chan(dot)org. First issue of course, when Kenshin first whups Gohei's @$$. ^.^
This is still not as shipshape as I'd like, and it's way too wordy... but why don't you spare a few moments tell me so yourself, ne? ^.^ Go on, give a frazzled college girl a smile for the day and Submit a Review!
Thanks for reading!