Note: Another sidestory for my "Tomoe survived" AU. (I know you were waiting for this one ^_^) Miyoko is born, and both her parents take the event a bit...specially.
Oh, and an indication (so that you won´t be too confused). My next publication will be two next chapters for "Quiet Life I". Then, I will publish a new chapter for "Quiet Life II".
Disclaimer: Kenshin and Tomoe belong to Watsuki Nobuhiro. Thanks to Margit for beta.
The Other Chance (1868)
It´s over. Over, at last. The pain has dwindled by now, and my whole body has become numb, but I have a smile on my lips that will not fade. I have triumphed. I emerged victorious.
The kind village women who offered to serve as midwives have consented at last to giving me my child, and now they´re sitting at the opposite side of the room, whispering things to each other. I know some of the things they are saying, for they´re not difficult to guess, and the sake they´re pouring for themselves right now is not helping to restrain their voices so that I can´t hear some isolated words. "The second time she´ll have the boy," is one of them, but my smile is still on my lips. Oh, no, it will not fade.
The anguished cries reached again the frightened girl´s ears. They were becoming more frequent, higher, with a desperate tinge that scratched her very soul.
"Miyoko-san, hold on! It´s almost there! Push, push harder…No! Don´t give up!"
As the blood had started to come, she hadn´t been allowed to see more. Someone had shoved her outside and closed the shoji, and there she sat on her knees in a corner, closing her eyes to shut herself away from reality. She didn´t want to know more. She wanted to fall asleep, but the 'screams didn´t allow her to.
"Miyoko-san…no!"
You are wrong about the second time, my good women. I have already held another baby in my arms before. He was mine, and yet he wasn´t, a son for the frightened nine year old child that I was back then. Trembling still, she took him and fed him, and covered for his mother´s desertion by becoming her for as long as she could. Oh, that you should have seen the serious wide-eyed girl pretending to be the mother of her brother and the wife of her father…! but alas, this, as everything else in the end, was nothing more than a failure.
Until today, the day when I have triumphed.
"Well, she´s truly a healthy baby," I hear from the distance, the voice of the woman who has yelled the most while helping in the delivery.
"And just like her father," another chimes in, compliantly.
"Besides, what´s the problem with having a girl, anyway?" a third protests with ardour. "They´re prettier and more helpful."
But it´s the voice of the first woman again, with a patient and somewhat petulant tone, what clears her naïve and kind-hearted mistake.
"For you. Look at them." she explains. "They come from a samurai family, and samurai families need boys to carry the lineage."
"Maybe she didn´t wish for it enough?"
This makes me think, I have to confess. Yes…now that she says it I must admit that she´s right, maybe I didn´t wish it enough. I wanted a daughter. I wanted a new chance, not a reminder of my failures; a child who would always be at my side, without ever killing or getting killed, and untouched by the rain of blood that fell upon my life. Even more, above all, and maybe in a whole different, deeper but superior level that I wouldn´t ever acknowledge to others, I wanted to be born again, and be myself this time, not any serious wide-eyed girl living in her dead mother´s shadow. And I´ve triumphed… unlike her.
Call me selfish.
The shoji is slid open in this precise moment, to let Kenshin enter the room. As he walks in, interrupting my train of thoughts, I feel almost irrationally tempted to apologize to him, but on thinking twice I don´t, of course. He would probably be just surprised, and ask me why. So I watch him in silence as he has to stop to greet and thank the women who sit in their corner, and I press the baby´s soft body against my breast in a half unconscious move. She´s so tiny. So beautiful…
How could he not admire her?
"Tomoe…" he calls at last, coming towards me. There is love and care in his eyes, if instinctively restrained by his warrior training, and when I stretch my aching limbs painfully to uncover my daughter and present her to him it´s still there.
"Are you all right?" he asks, first things first. I nod, and offer the bundle to him, belatedly noticing that my hands are trembling. Kenshin takes her hesitantly, and not for the first time I think that I would give whatever I possess just to know what does truly cross his mind as he does so.
"So... what do you say?" I ask. My voice comes as a shattered and hoarse whimper, after the strain to which I had submitted it shortly before. I am so ashamed of it that I decide to be silent, but mere moments later, when no word reaches my ears, I find myself talking again.
"She... has got your eyes. You´ll see it when she wakes up."
As if she has taken my cue, or maybe just frightened for having been taken out of her warm hiding place to be exposed to the harsh coldness of the world, two violet eyes snap open in that moment, and a heartfelt wail pierces the quietness of the room. Kenshin looks dazed for a second, and then, instead of giving her back to me, he begins to calm her himself.
"It´s true," he says quietly, still as calm and composed when he has coaxed her again into peaceful silence. I am so astonished that I don´t even react when he kneels at my side and lays her in my lap, the movement eliciting a tiny outraged whimper from her mouth. "She has my eyes."
For a while, both of us stay there, our glances fixed on her small form. The women are whispering to each other again, but I can´t even hear them anymore, lost as I am in the warm sensation of bliss. Though no samurai, he has fought and lived like one, and there are many things that he will never be able to share with a girl. But he is… happy.
Very happy.
"She will be a healer like you," I say nevertheless, to soothe his soul. He only smiles, overlooking the fact that we both know that I will teach her to walk, to talk, to cook, to write and to live. Somehow, in his face I can see that he is fine with the arrangement. Maybe… I know he still blames himself in silence for having bereft me of my happiness in my past, so why would he begrudge me what I have just brought to life?
Is this what he thinks..?
"She´ll be a nice and quiet girl," he mutters softly. "Just like you."
"But she has your eyes…" I smile, in insistence. "Gentle, violet eyes."
He nods several times, lost in his thoughts and as if he hadn´t even heard me. Oh, I assure you I feel so happy inside that I think I could burst. But, at the same time… I cannot help feeling still curious.
So curious…
"Are you…" my mouth opens again to ask against my will, while another part of me, ashamed, lies back unable to fight it after the stress of the delivery. "Are you happy with her being a girl?"
Surprised, Kenshin lifts his head and searches for my eyes. I give a sharp intake of breath as they find them, and when they widen in tardy recognition of my question, I find myself unable to look into them anymore.
"Tomoe…" he starts, but interrupts himself after some moments of hesitation. He tries several more times, and always seems to discard his thoughts, until I start to become worried. What…?
"You…"
"She won´t ever hold a sword, Tomoe," he blurts out in the end, in a soft but strange tone that I have never heard from him. "Never feel the duty to protect others."
And then, suddenly… I understand.
"Excuse me…" Yumiko-san, the first of the three women who have helped me, now nears us a bit awkwardly, trying to be as polite as she feels we require. "We think…well, we feel that, according to her previous efforts and her actual state, she should rest a bit. Okay?"
This makes us both snap away from our musings, and suppress a smile at her clumsy attempts. Kenshin apologizes and gets up, caressing the child´s head and throwing a last lingering glance at her and at me. My eyes are full of pity and understanding as they meet his, and, above all, of joy because I know now. I needed to be reborn.
He wouldn´t have stood it.
"Wait…" I call for him in a weak tone. He turns back at my request, and I see the woman roll her eyes in a surely involuntary reaction.
"Yes?"
"Her name," I ask. "How are you going to… call her?'"
"Name? Oh…right," he remembers, for a second looking truly lost. Then, however, he looks at me, and this clueless glance gives way for a very intent, though smiling, stare. "Tell me, Tomoe… what was your mother´s name?"
"Miyoko," I answer in a soft voice, lowering my eyes. "Yukishiro Miyoko".
* * * * *
I am resting now in the middle of the darkness, left alone by all of them. Everybody has gone to let me recover forces, except Miyoko, who is sleeping at my side. They left her in her own bundle of blankets, of course, but, in spite of the pain that each movement means for me, I took her again and tucked her into my own bed.
Miyoko…
My dear, my little one, my beloved… You don´t know what you have done for me, do you? You made me triumph over myself, over her, and released me from her failure and mine. Your birth healed long swallowed, not long healed wounds that I didn´t even remember that were there …but that were there. And now, my love, because of you, I can truly smile for the first time. For you came to me, Miyoko…
You came to me, thanks to him.
A tingle of remorse that I thought was gone creeps into my heart once more, as I caress the baby´s little palm. He gave her to me with a smile, but he´s still frightened to see his soul reflected in a son´s eyes. What could I do about that?
What could we do about that, Miyoko-chan?
I´ll teach you to understand him. I decide in the end, curiously feeling comforted when I repeat the words in a whisper to her and she does not move. If that´s the only thing I can do.
Miyoko-chan, you and I we will heal him…
(The end)