Here is a new one-shot! Shinta's work and thoughts between when Hiko leaves him at the massacre site and when he returns.
Shinta brushed a leaf off of the almost-round stone he had found. It would be the last of three he needed to mark the graves of Akane, Kasumi, and Sakura, the girls who had protected him to their last breaths. Dozens of crosses dotted the freshly-turned earth marking the final resting places of the slavers Shinta had been traveling with, as well as the bandits who had killed them and been killed themselves. 'Why did that man have to leave me alive?' Shinta wondered quietly, a tear falling onto the stone.
'Akane-san...Kasumi-san...Sakura-san...'
-Shinta, you are just a child. You have not chosen your life, as we have been able to.-
'I wanted to protect you...'
-You cannot die now. You must live. Live a full life for the sake of those who died here tonight.-
'Why did you have to die?'
-Shinta, please live... Live, Shinta... Live... For me...-
He didn't want to go on living. Everyone he knew - the only people he loved - were gone. His parents. The surprisingly kind slave traders. The three girls he'd only known a day... Shinta let the stone fall as he began to cry. Now that the initial shock was gone, his fear and grief flooded out unchecked. 'How can anyone live on like this?,' he asked nobody in particular - maybe God, maybe himself. Yet despite the myriad of tools and weapons owned by slavers and bandits alike, Shinta could not bring himself to commit suicide and die with them.
Those weapons were now in the ground with those who had wielded them so mercilessly, hopefully to never see combat or death again. Shinta had seen enough of that - as first an orphan, then a slave, and now... What was he? Who was he? Could such a boy ever be someone? Shinta wept until the tears no longer came, and the dirt and blood on his hands dripped slowly away.
The last stone stood firm and straight in the third and last of the graves before Shinta. He knelt as if in prayer, making his peace with the sacrifice of the girls who had cared for him among the slavers, and died to protect him. He didn't understand why he had been chosen, or why they had been so willing to hide him when his survival was such a slim chance, but he saw that his life had been precious to them.
A boy with no parents, no title, no riches - he had been precious to someone. Someone who had only known him a single day.
He could see clearly now. A resolve formed in the young boy's mind - he would live on for those girls. To prove that their death was not in vain, not worthless.
Given the chance, Himura Shinta would change the world.
The words between hyphens are direct quotes from a subbed version of the Trust & Betrayal OVA.