31/PRAYER

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This Katsuhiro is indeed RK Katsuhiro, Sanosuke's friend the artist/newspaper editor/arsonist.

The one major conversion error I made over this whole fic is that his nickname should have been Katsu but I shorted it to Hiro, and when I noticed I had gotten it wrong I was already a couple of chapters ahead and it was too late to fix it.

Mirine - the same Mirine from chapter 2 - is an original character. She's not really based on anyone. She's sensible and self-contained. Unlike most RK characters, she's fairly nondescript. She's very businesslike - if she sees something that needs to happen she doesn't fuss but just gets the job done.

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I didn't really want to dwell a lot on the shrine community - I was ready to move ahead to the climax rather than dragging the story out too much longer. ...It's kind of a shame, because this is actually one of the more interesting plot setups - the mismatched band of refugees learning to live together, all the conflicting relationships.

But you do get this chapter, and one thing that's kind of unusual in RK in that Shinta actually sees the men around him as possible rivals for Kaoru's affection. He's usually on such firm footing with her - both in canon and in fanfic - that his own rampant jealous streak is kept at bay.

He's pretty secure in this story, too, but not so much that he doesn't sometimes worry. If there hadn't been the whole snow woman issue knocking her out for most of the winter and binding the two of them together... there might have been some real conflict here.

Because in canon, Kaoru falls in love with Kenshin, the kind, wise, and self-confident man - including the parts of him that are frightened and violent and insecure. But if she had met him when he was predominantly the latter, I just don't think it would have been such a sure thing.

[So I wrote Gaman - what Shinta worries about here and is mistaken about might be something that is a real current in RK but is something that Kenshin dismisses.]

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I had to scramble to invent some kind of economy for this shrine. I figured that the farther away you get from the parasitic nobility the more food people would be able to hold onto, and you could actually support this sort of peasant shrine. With a group of refugees of this size, they'd have to supplement their upkeep with their own food - which they have, from Megumi. I suspect that in the following summer the group will split up even further - probably Mirine and Hiro will lead a few to go join a village somewhere, because they have strength and skills to offer, while the old woman and probably another adult and a child will stay to tend the shrine.

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The situation with Kaoru and Tomoe is still very surreal. Being physically present at her own shrine as winter approaches, Tomoe responds - resonates, really - as people call to her - similar to Megumi speaking to her in Kaoru's body, but much stronger. It's like Kaoru shouting at the bear god at his own lair: here Tomoe can't help but respond.

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32/SNOW

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Shinta connects the snow woman with the women of the battlefield. Actually the two have nothing to do with each other and Tomoe couldn't care less how many people Shinta/Kenshin has killed (like she could talk) - but it's significant for Shinta, significant that he feels he has done wrong.

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This scene deliberately echoes the opening scene. And it's also - though I didn't write it - a foretaste of the closing scene.

Someday the snow woman will be through with Kaoru, and it will end just like this: the cold and the whirlwind and the aching loneliness.

I guess I just thought that was too sad to actually write...

[Now an obsolete statement.]

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The snow woman speaks: This is the equivalent of the big reveal in Kwaidan. I tried to make it similarly chilling, though the situation is different. Less climactic here, but still a fright that the snow woman is there where he least expects her.

I had originally planned to follow Kwaidan much more closely, but once Kaoru headed toward the snow woman's shrine I knew this moment had to take place here.

Although actually... As I mentioned back in the commentary for chapter 2, the very setup of this story meant that this reveal had to be significantly different from Kwaidan. Kaoru is not a disguise for the snow woman - she is possessed by her (actually that's the only reason she's alive). And so instead of being terrified by the appearance of the snow woman as Shinta was in the first chapter - as the wood cutter was in Kwaidan - here the story demands that he fight through his fear to claim his woman.

(Don't get me wrong, the Kwaidan story is poignant in its own way - but it's a different story, and it's more about the fact that they have children. Speaking of which...)

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Tomoe's motivation, by the way, is that she's a romantic - or rather, she's curious about romance, curious about human emotion. What she first glimpsed with Akira is something that Shinta and Kaoru are now swimming in, so she'll stick around to enjoy it... at least for a while.

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33/SOLSTICE

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Sanosuke is getting the hell out of this story, and I don't blame him.

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"At night her body lay cool and still, and he lay still beside her, waiting... Every night expecting the cold touch, the endless darkness, an icy kiss."

This winter is a big turning point for Shinta and Kaoru. It teaches them - not with words, but physically, it teaches them - at least gives them an idea - of what's going on and how they can cope with it.

Shinta never sees Kaoru and the snow woman as the same person. For both of them, it's more like Kaoru suffers from an illness. Shinta being Shinta, he sees it as something like a punishment against himself. He even expects the snow woman to eventually kill him, but he isn't afraid. Without the vow to stop killing and make amends, part of Shinta will always be expecting and dreading and hoping for divine punishment.

Instead, for now, he gets a reprieve. Much more difficult than dying.

Kaoru forces him to live - really live, not just wait for death. She insists on it.

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34/KITSUNE

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This chapter was actually what I originally had in mind for an epilogue - and I return to it in the epilogue - but I figured Kenshin and Kaoru were passing that way anyway, it made more sense to just show it through their experiences.

Megumi's vengeance. No other clan will be able to hold this land while the curse still holds - the kitsune eviscerates enemy soldiers, and if she needs reinforcements she has the ghosts of the daimyo, the prince, and a few other Kiyosato. Behind them, a thread of obligation from the snow goddess, should she happen to take notice.

Megumi's insight was that, since the Kiyosato are all dead, it means that no armed nobility will be able to tax and wound this land at all. The people will actually be able to breathe and recover for a few generations, at least. So her vicious loyalty to the Kiyosato is actually a way to fight for the people.

But anyway that was her plan, and then as a demon, she's kind of crazy, and she can afford to be playful the way she couldn't as the power behind the throne.

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A bit incongruous, Shinta's nonchalance - a taste of what the Meiji era is to RK Kenshin after Bakumatsu - subtle changes, but so profound it almost makes him delirious with happiness - such a small taste of happiness, Kaoru is alive and recovering. People aren't cowering away from him anymore.

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35/COMING HOME

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And this is really... I didn't plan this, this sudden terror that Shinta would have, once he thinks that everything might be all right - the sense that he doesn't have a place in a peaceful world.

It's when things start to normalize for Kaoru - her interactions with the monks - the glimpse of the notion that she belongs here and she can get on perfectly fine without him.

Shinta has to make a choice. This probably could have been its own arc, but I don't even leave him hanging for a single chapter, because in the very next section, Yahiko confronts him.

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And that's it: he chooses. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, whether he deserves her or not, he's going to stay with Kaoru.

And this is when you really start to get the happy ending.

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