Foreword
Hello, and thanks for reading! Please feel free to skip this paragraph and jump right to the story as I merely try to share the origins and history behind this story. This is an idea I first had about 10 years ago, back in the days when I first watched RK's OVA featuring Tomoe as a runny-nosed runt. I thought their relationship was so tragic and yet so beautiful, in how they were able to find their precious happiness in the mundane days spent in a rural farm, away from the turmoil of that blood-stained era. Fair warning to you, I'm a sucker both for romance and tragedy. As such, I wrote the first chapter of a fanfic on my writing journal with Kenshin's second great love of his life, after Tomoe and before Kaoru. Recently I found said journal while rummaging around in boxes of old stuff while moving away. This brought back to me this beautiful story which I did not at the moment have enough courage and commitment to share with others and see through. I sincerely hope you enjoy this story, which warmed my own heart while I thought of it and put it down in writing, both 10 years ago and now (yes, even now as an older dude). Depending on whether you find it interesting, I'd be delighted to share further chapters. I'd share a more detailed summary of the story, but I'd hate to spoil it for you!

Genre: Romance / Drama / Angst / Supernatural (A little)

Kinder Fates

Chapter 1

Memories

October 23, Year 1880

Memories, they are such fragile constructs of the human mind - brittle pieces of a shattered yesterday. A day, a moment, an instant: nothing but ashes, abandoned vestiges from another life. Another person. Yet, Kenshin wondered, why must they cut so sharply still? Wondered and winced. So frail, and yet so compelling. Dead many years since, the man to whom these memories belong, for he was no longer the legendary manslayer, the Hitokiri Battousai, and yet still they haunted him, impossibly vivid in his mind's eye where his soul breathed life into them. Nightmares that stalked his every dream, even his most lifelike ones.

This WAS a dream, wasn't it?

"Kenshin?"

The voice pierced through the haze he'd been drowning in like a blazing beam of golden sunlight through a misty labyrinth of mirrors and shades that pursued him relentlessly. The shades had names and faces. The faces, invariably streaked with blood, or tears, or both, they always hurt the most..

"Kenshin?"

Real concern entered the voice now, and he stood frozen in surprise as he focused his eyes to find himself gazing deeply into twin orbs of spun midnight blue glass.

"K, Kaoru-dono?" His voice echoed his own puzzlement. Why was she staring at him, close enough for him to breathe in her fresh scent of herbal soap? "Wh.. what's wrong?" If he stammered a little, it surely wasn't his fault.

After all, he had merely been rinsing away the last batch of soiled clothes. As usual, the simple, monotonous task of scrubbing away at the dirt and shaking the suds loose was somehow deeply soothing and even therapeutic to some extent, especially as he listened to Kaoru's spirited kiais in the background as she practiced her sword strokes using her shinai. In these clear-cast autumn afternoons, he almost felt as if the cool breeze that swept away the gentle clouds above might also wash away his sins.

Even though it was all my fault.

"Kenshin?" Her renewed query, filled with genuine concern and accompanied by the slightest of tremors, was enough to jolt him out of his guilt-ridden past and back to staring at his reflection gazing back at him from within Kaoru's impossibly crystal clear eyes, only they were now shadowed slightly with worry. She really was pure and virtuous to a fault, and her gaze attested to this. So easy to read, even now, that he unwittingly recalled - not for the first time - the doubts Aoshi had confided to him that perhaps she would never make a truly fearsome fighter. After all, you could see her whole life unraveling within her eyes, shifting from one shade of dazzling blue to another, changing as swiftly as her mercurial spirit. Admirable, even captivating as it was, when perched upon the razor-sharp divide between victory and defeat, the ability to read your opponent – or in this case, to be read - could easily swing the outcome to either side.

Then again, perhaps this purity of character was the true essence of her strength. Kaoru as she indulgently helped the sisters, Ayame-chan and Suzume-chan tie their hair back, Kaoru as she scolded Sano or berated Yahiko, or even now, as she unreservedly gave herself into her concern for him, she was always true to herself. This translated into the incredible resilience and fortitude of spirit that had first led her attempt to capture him, the infamous Hitokiri Battousai, back when they had first met. Who would have thought in time they would stand like this, scant inches apart, feeling the cadence of each other's breath fluttering lightly against their skin?

Her reaction only added to his surprise. Instead of hastily pulling back, flushing in that endearing shade of pink of hers and stammering a few bumbling excuses, or abruptly pulling her gaze down and shoving him away with a strength that belied her petite body, she just stood there, letting him soak in the sheer earthiness of her. As though she were connected in some mysterious fashion to the land, and the trees, and the world around her, and thus in turn knew some deep secret that might earn him redemption, and ultimately, forgiveness, here she stood before him, potently and vibrantly alive.

Suddenly, his heart hammered against his chest and his pulse beat wildly in his ears. He felt awash in emotions so strong he felt a fresh wave of fear course tingling through his veins - an unidentifiable sense of foreboding, of desperate need and desire, not of the flesh – well, not exclusively so – but rather of the spirit. He felt connected to her, as though she were the gentle sun and him the last frost of winter aching for the first kiss of spring. She was so precious, so impossibly, heart-achingly beautiful: Her lavender eyes, ever so clear, and yet so mysterious, so unfathomably deep that he could fall endlessly into them. Her smile, the way her rosy lips gently curved without showing her teeth, with just the slightest dimples in her flawless alabaster cheeks. The few strands of hair that somehow always escaped her intricate hairpins and invited his touch, even the single lock of snow-white hair that fell across her face just so, awaiting for his hand to brush it back and caress her skin.

It crushed the breath out of him, this moment. That serene smile seemed to drain strength from his limbs even as it imbued him with life. No, not just life. Something far more precious, something a murderer like him should never even have aspired to. Had not even dared to.

Hope.

It was the perfect moment, hanging in time and space, floating in a sanctuary of light that would never be snuffed out, even in the midst of the storm of their lives in this blood-soaked era. His sole solace, the singular bloom in the bleak winter of his existence, this was her.

Please, please let her never be taken from my side. Stay with me, forever.

Unable to contain himself any longer, he found the words to gave wings to his prayer and breathed, "Naomi.."

"Kens-" Her voice was cut off so abruptly, so swiftly, and so painfully, it startled him out of his reverie. Within her eyes, those ever-so-clear windows to her soul, her pupils slowly widened by the second as mild concern was instantly replaced by surprise, then slowly unbearable sorrow came crashing down like a wave and inexorably drowned it all out. She didn't even have time to blink away the tears.

Rather, she probably didn't even notice when they slipped past her eyes, and silently rolled down her cheeks.

What is going on? Why is she crying? What's wrong? Something.. something is not right. Somehow..

"Naomi?" He called out again, suddenly desperate, like a man who slowly awakens and lurches forward, chasing after a fading dream, "Naomi, what's wrong? Why are you cr..?"

Shock almost drove Kenshin to his knees. Kaoru stood staring blindly ahead, tears streaming freely down her face, unnoticed. Kaoru, not.. not Naomi. That was why Kaoru was crying. There was no Naomi, no lavender eyes, no snow-white lock of hair either. But.. then what was this ache deep within his heart, as if he'd just lost something very precious, very dear to him? What, no, who was Naomi?

Fading away on the gossamer wings of a dream within a dream, a gentle whisper reached his ears, in which only four words remained, indelibly etched in his mind and branded across his heart.

Naomi..

Stay with me..