I haven't been breathing.

All this time, I was drowning and I didn't realize it. But now I can breathe. One smile and I'm no longer drowning.

How does it get to this? To the point that one person's existence is necessary for breath? That your world crashes down when they are gone?

I'd been living. Living to get to this, but until this moment I wasn't breathing.

Failure is a hard thing for anyone to contemplate. But for someone like me…to fail at something like that. To fail for the second time to protect the person most precious to me. And to fail for one moment to control myself.

I have killed before. I have taken lives that meant nothing to me. Lives I was ordered to take, lives I had to take to keep my own. And I swore never to take another. No matter what happened.

But finding Kaoru with that cross engraved into her cheek, the sword through her heart and all the life drained from her eyes. All that I wanted was to take Enishi's life. All I could think about was how to make him suffer. This was not the battousai, this was me, Himura Kenshin, consumed by the hatred I'd fought. The nature that I have spent so long growing strong enough control.

I failed. I couldn't even save her. I spent days, unable to do anything but dwell on how utterly and completely I had failed to overcome my past, to be the person who was worthy of her love. How I had made the same mistake twice— but this time with someone infinitely more precious to me. For a second time, I had failed to tell the person I cared most about how I felt. I wasn't living, I wasn't breathing.

When Tomoe's spirit visited me, she gave me back life.

And now, seeing her smile, I can breathe again.

Knowing and seeing are two different things. I knew she wasn't dead, they told me, Tomoe told me. But seeing—seeing her alive makes it real. And she reaches out with her smile and pulls me from under the water I've been struggling against.

This time I will not fail. No matter what the cost I must protect her. I cannot fail. I must fix my mistake.

Even if it costs me my life, I will tell how much I love her.


Yeah, I've added Rurouni Kenshin to my list of obsessions. This actually is the prologue to a little story that I'm writing up. Sorry to my Amuto people...Kenshin and Kaoru are the ones talking to me right now, so they're the ones I'm writing about.

Please R&R