Kaeru means to return or to come home in Japanese so I thought it was fitting as a title for this piece.
Authors notes: This one shot was written for the Meiji tales May challenge. It is linked to another fic of mine, (Snowfall) although it is set much later near the end of the Kyoto arc in fact. You don't need to read Snowfall to understand this piece as it's been written as a stand alone one shot.
The usual disclaimers apply. I don't own RK which is probably just as well really.
The wounded are bandaged and resting, and still even as the light fades there's no sign of the baka at all. The light filters out of the sky in streams of colour interspersed with torn up ribbons of cloud. The moon appears a pale disc in a pale pink sky and there's still no sign of him. The police try to round everyone up and move them on to somewhere safer, but it's futile. Until the baka returns, no one will stir a step. I look at the two young women sitting bandaged and draped in borrowed blankets, only a year in age between them but a life time in other ways. The younger one fidgets, pausing in her silent fidgeting now and then to talk to Kaoru or yell at the boy. The boy in his turn sits quietly due to pain and exhaustion but is unable to resist the urge to bait the dark haired ninja girl now and then. I can't say I blame him she reacts so violently. Her eyes blaze with indignation and she leaps from her seat in a far from lady like way.
Kaoru sits between them smiling faintly, her very blue eyes on the road, her slim fingers curled around a cup of hot tea. In the chatter and laughter that follows the sibling like bickering of the other two, she is quiet and still. Outwardly composed but inwardly she is undoubtedly worried, but then so am I. I look at her the deep blue eyes and long black hair at her small slim frame, to look at her you wouldn't think she'd have the metal to follow Kenshin all the way from Tokyo. But she did. I glance up the road doing my best to radiate a quiet calm, while inside a nervous uncertainty gnaws away at me with all the persistence of a mouse though cheese. If he doesn't come back this small brave determined young woman will be very unhappy indeed, I told him as much the baka.
The light keeps fading, the shadows lengthen, time slows to a crawl. The moon slides a little higher, the sun a little lower and still we watch the road. The chatter stills, the young ones fall silent only the broken building around us creaks in the breeze. 'Come on you baka.' It seems as if the whole world is centred upon that road. It gets darker still and the breeze slaps my cloak, the cloak that by rights should be Kenshin's around my boots. Kaoru peers down into her now cold tea little lines of anxiety appearing at the corner of her eyes. I suppress a smile she isn't devastatingly beautiful, pretty but not beautiful in the way his wife was. Yet her spirit is vital and strong, lovely and open. She loves the baka so, if only he'd stop punishing himself he could be more than happy. I look up at the sky. The stars have started to twinkle distant pin points of light in a dark silk sky and I wish most reverently that I had a bottle of sake. How many nights have I spent under the stars, sake in hand my mood swinging between morose and philosophical? Then I become aware of them, and so does she.
"Kenshin!"
They rush forward, surging like rapids over the road engulfing the trio in a rising tide of relief and delight. I hang back standing beside the old man, something cold griping my insides.
"Kenshin!" Her voice has lost its wonderful lightness, fear is creeping in and her tone is so soft. Everyone jostles forward in response. A tsunami of concern.
"Everyone just stop!" They back off a little and I push forward striding towards the three men and the clearly frightened girl.
"Kenshin." Softer still, pleading.
"It's useless Jou chan." The young man supporting the baka looks at her kindly his voice soft with a combination of kindness and weariness. He backs up a step and jerks his body up defensively at my approach. The baka drags against him limp as over cooked rice, covered in blood and completely unconscious. I reach out to take him and the boy shuffles back a few steps his eyes alight though he hasn't the strength left to stop me. The other one, the tall silent man I recognise as the famous prodigy of the Oniwabanshuu, regards me coldly, his body language radiating a cold defensive threat. One he has no strength left to carry out. They're both too hurt, too spent to pose me any threat but they're loyalty and spirits remain undaunted. Do you know you baka how much people love and respect you? Do you realise that they would use the last remnants of their strength to protect you? Yet you only see your unworthiness, baka denshi that you are.
"It's all right he's Himura's Shishou!"
The tension slips away, though they both regard me cautiously. I take my baka denshi out of the boy's hands. He's heavy despite his size, all bone and muscle but very cold. I pull the tattered remains of his ridiculous pink kimono around him. It was old before but I think it's finally reached the end of its useful life. I try not to look at him too closely or I might see the broken exhausted child from all those years ago. Slim fingers brush against him anxiously. I look down at his face he's almost 30 yet some how he still looks as if he's barely reached adulthood. A man with a child's face, and an old man's eyes.
"Where's Kenshin's sakabatou?"
"His new one? He hasn't lost it already?"
"Kaoru?"
"I don't know. I can't find it." She sounds as disinterested as I feel. I just want to get him out of here, out of here to someplace safe and warm. Even after that fight on the mountains all those years ago, he didn't look quite as bad as this.
"I have it." It's the first thing Shinomori has said and it's said so quietly that it takes a moment or two for the boy and the ninja girl to register it. They swing round to look at him and I make my escape striding off with Kenshin's limp body in my arms. I snatch up a blanket as I walk past the bench where the two girls and the boy were sitting only minutes ago and pull it around Kenshin's cold body. Some how an arm slips free from the blanket it swings against my leg a limp dead weight. The boy scurries up to me and peers at Kenshin his face pale in the strengthening moonlight.
"He'll be useless for days." No one says anything but a grim tension settles over the remains of the Aoiya. We're all thinking the same thing 'days, more like weeks if he survives at all' but the words remain unsaid long after we've left the Aoiya, long after the moon has set. They hang in the air unspoken, but weighing on our minds.
(2005)