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Our Aoshis.
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He was the first opponent we deemed worthy of Our Kenshins. We forgot about the Jin'ehs and the Himura Goheis that had made their way into our life, we forgot about the gang members who had terrorised Our Yahikos. They did not have the potential he did.
He shut the world out, and that invited us in. We did not know it, and neither did he. But it was his unreadable expression, his unshakable calm, that drove us to delve deeper. And we did, because we were the only ones who could.
He came into our lives with no past, and no future. It was up to us to give him what we wanted him to have. We gave him a home, a family. We gave him friends, we gave him adorers. And we saw them ripped away by forces even we could not change. But oh, we tried our best. We changed the world, we changed dimensions and universes. But deep down inside, we knew what was real. And we never forgot it.
Neither did he.
We followed him through his journey, fuelling his thirst for revenge when it suited us, helping on his way to salvation when it took our fancy. We thought it was his journey, his voyage of self-discovery, which we controlled with our minds and our pens and our thoughts. But we were wrong. It was ours as well.
We broke down his barriers so that we could see what he was like inside, but we were never satisfied. We always dug deeper, further and further into the recesses of his soul … not knowing that we digging into our own. We found in him emotions that overjoyed us, thoughts that disheartened us, feelings that surprised us. We let him meditate until even he was tired of it, but never did we feel that his self-discovery was complete.
So we threw a certain weasel girl into his path, hoping to lure out the feelings that we could not. We let him take the jokes and the pranks, the laughter and the tears, not knowing that we were showing him what we ourselves felt. We let her bring him back from the darkness inside him, knowing that it was our way of fighting the darkness we found inside us.
We let Our Sanosukes and Our Yahikos and Our Misaos tease him, too. We called him names, just to see how he would react. We should have known he would not. We let him be jealous, knowing that he would not show it, and revelling in our power to make him. We let him outsmart a certain police officer that nobody else could. We let his rage consume him, rage that was more ice than fire. And we delighted in our ability to bring him back from the brink.
We saw how he suffered, how he wept inside, and we wept with him. We felt for every blow he received, every wound that was inflicted on him. We cheered for every hit he landed, every injury he caused. We applauded every swing and slash of his kodachi.
He confused us, daring us to attempt to unravel the mysteries of his being. And we rose to the challenge. He brought us joy, in a hidden, subtle way that only we could understand. He was our hope, our work, our creativity. He was ours, and yet he was not. He was himself, and we realised that whatever we did, we could not change that. And that pleased us all the more. We envied him his strength, his ability to cope, and even the weaknesses he tried to hide.
He was not the strongest. But for us, he was.
We knew the madness that could overcome him, and we fought it off for him. We fought it off with him. We cried for him when he could not, we smiled with him when he did. He took us with him on his journey to self-discovery, and finally, we did discover the truth.
They called him a demon, but they were wrong. He was human, just like us.
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Disclaimer: That's a tough ask. I've just completely convinced myself that everything belongs to us, and now I'm supposed to say it doesn't? Okay … the idea of RK was not ours. The story is, though. We've twisted it and mutilated it until seriously speaking most of us don't even accept the original. But … I disclaim it anyway.
Author Notes: All credit to dementedchris and her wonderful tribute fic 'Our Kenshins.' I cannot compare. All thanks and praise and whatnot to her for letting me do this, as well.