A/N: Rurouni Kenshin does not belong to me, and neither does the twenty truths format (even though I have 26...). Manga-as-canon. Please read and review!

Twenty Six Truths about Monsters and Demons

One

Truth: Himura Kenshin was set on the path of the Hitokiri when he was six years old. This was not when he was the sole survivor of a massacre, but almost two years earlier—when his baby sister starved to death because his mother's breast ran dry, his grandfather collapsed in the fields and never woke up, and he made a game of feeling the bumps of his own ribs—and then he overheard a neighbor tell his father that the Bafuku was raising taxes again.

Two

Truth: He didn't understand what the neighbor was talking about or who this 'Bafuku' was, but when his father started crying, Shinta swore that he would hate them forever.

Three

Truth: The massacre didn't help.

Four

Truth: When Hiko went back to bury the body of the boy he had saved, it never even crossed his mind that the child might still be alive. The only reason he even bothered—he wasn't going to bury anyone else after all—was because it played to his sense of poetic irony.

Five

Truth: He has never seen anything wrong with this.

Six

Truth: When Hiko saw what tiny little Shinta had done—buried over thirty grown men and women with his bare hands—he decided to train him. This was not because he admired his dedication to the human spirit, as Kenshin believed in later years, but only because it proved he had adequate muscle and the sheer pig-headed stubbornness Hiko thought all the best swordsmen should have.

Seven

Truth: The real reason Hiko let Kenshin go was because he didn't think he had the right to stop his deshi from following a path that Hiko had chosen also. Like most Mitsurugi masters, he had also once been an idealistic youth who wanted to change the world—even if he had never been as blindly naive about what it would mean.

Eight

Truth: Hiko never earned a name as a hitokiri. This is only because he was twice as efficient and half as noticeable as his redheaded apprentice.

Nine

Truth: At the very top levels of the Meiji government, there are still people searching for the man who had once been the Bafuku's best weapon. The only reason they haven't found him yet is that he was smart enough not to give his superiors the name of his sword style. The fact that Kenshin did is the real reason Hiko will always think of him as a baka deshi.

Ten

Truth: Kenshin was never too kind to be a hitokiri. In fact, he was just kind enough. The only reason he agreed to kill was because he loved people so freely and so fiercely. Even so, he almost punched Katsura in the face after his first assignment.

Eleven

Truth: The common soldiers of the Bakumatsu—even of the Ishin shishi—knew the teenager Himura Kenshin as the Demon of Kyoto long before he ever earned the name Battousai. It actually started as a teasing nickname that the older men gave the little boy with the red hair—before they knew what it was he actually did for Katsura.

Twelve

Truth: Half of those men really believed he was a kitsune. Once they saw him in battle, they thought him a dragon. They weren't far off.

Thirteen

Truth: Tomoe changed her mind about killing Kenshin—but not until they had been married for nearly four months.

Fourteen

Truth: She knew Kenshin deserved to live within three days of meeting him. This didn't change anything.

Fifteen

Truth: She fell in love with him the first time she realized he was serious about why he had joined the war, long before they were married. This didn't change anything either.

Sixteen

Truth: The reason Tomoe smiled as she died wasn't because she thought it would make Kenshin feel better. She was just glad she had been fast enough to protect him.

Seventeen

Truth: Enishi, though he will never, ever admit it, has always known that the guilt for his sister's death lay at his feet far more than it ever touched his brother-in-law. After all, if the man could wantonly kill his own wife, why would his hell be to lose his woman?

Eighteen

Truth: Enishi delivered the fake ransom note to the couple's small house in Otsu, and watched with gleeful anticipation as Kenshin hurried to her rescue. That moment has haunted him ever since.

Nineteen

Truth: Enishi was always going to hate Kenshin. The death of his sister was just an excuse—he was always going to despise the man that took his sister away from him.

Twenty

Truth: Enishi was prepared to hate Akira just as much. He has and will never be so happy as the day he heard about Tomoe's fiancé's death.

Twenty One

Truth: He didn't get to the scene in time to watch Tomoe jump in front of the blade, but he still heard Kenshin scream Tomoe's name like a lost child crying for his mother.

Twenty Two

Truth: He didn't blame Kenshin because he was the one who held the sword. He just needed someone beside himself to blame for his beloved sister's death—or he would have gone even crazier than he already was.

Twenty Three

Truth: Enishi was never evil. He was a terrified, lonely little boy who lost the only person he ever loved, and his heart never moved from that place.

Twenty Four

Truth: Even so, he was still too much of a coward to approach his dying sister's bloodstained form. He didn't want that to be the way he remembered her.

Twenty Five

Truth: If he had run, he would have made it to her side in time. He would have gotten one last smile.

Twenty Six

Truth: Love makes monsters of us all.