Unmei no Haguruma: Jiten

(Wheel of Fate: Rotation)

Part VII: Mediation

~The rain was so cold. A coppery tang, the cloying scent of blood, overpowered even its cleansing aroma. The blade was heavy in his small hands. There was only one source of heat: the tears burning their way down his face, disguised by the rain.~

Semmai Soushi shot awake, crying out a soft protest.

"I'm here, Soushikun," a soft voice reassured him. His eyes locked on the doctor's lean form, the calm eyes, the gentle expression that was not a smile. Slowly the nightmare cold receded, and Soushi realized he was in a safe place.

"To-Toshisensei." As reality began to penetrate, Soushi dropped his eyes, no longer able to look at his mentor. "I… I failed."

"Failed?" Genuine concern mixed with the confusion in the doctor's voice.

"I lost control. I've killed again. I swore I would only heal, and instead I killed again." He could barely speak above a whisper. "I'm not worthy of your path."

Toshi sighed. "Soushikun, I won't lie. What happened is very bad all around, but I'm more worried about you."

"Worried about me?"

"You've been in shock, and barely conscious. It's been three days."

Soushi's dismay might have been comical in other circumstances. "Three days!? How – how is…" He choked on her name. ~How could she not despise me? I'm no better than they thought.~ "How is your sister?"

Toshi studied Soushi's face intently. ~Well. That's definitely not a good sign.~ "Megumi is fine. It was hardly more than a scratch. I put in one stitch because I was nervous about the nick to the vein. I am her big brother, after all."

"I'm glad," the youth choked out.

"Then why do you look so miserable?"

"I truly am glad she's all right."

Toshi waited, saying nothing. The silence began to grow heavy on his shoulders. Still, he waited.

"I have to leave, though."

It took a moment for Toshi to absorb that. "Oh?"

"Yes," Soushi whispered. "I can't stay here. I don't belong here. This is a home, a place of healing. Not a den of killers."

Toshi snorted softly; praying his approach would work. "And how do you think healers learn their arts, more often than not? We don't dissect live patients, that's for sure!"

"But you don't kill them, either."

"Usually not on purpose, anyway." The doctor's expression was wry but not unforgiving.

Soushi blinked, startled into looking up again. "What?"

The elder Takani's expression shifted again, becoming almost harsh. "Soushi, no one is perfect, no one is infallible. Dwelling on what happened isn't the way to fix it."

That was when Soushi shook his head. "It can't be fixed. Sensei, it's been years. Seven years since I last wielded a blade like that. Seven years ought to have been enough time to stop killing whenever it seemed like the thing to do at the time!"

"It still sometimes seems like the thing to do at the time," said a new voice from the doorway. "Only my boss won't let me have any fun."

Toshi looked up at the newcomer. ~So this is the man they meant.~ Framed in the doorway, leaning cockily against one wall with a lopsided grin and eyes to match, was a tall blond.

"Chousan?" Soushi's mouth formed the name, but no sound came out. He tried again.

"Yeah, it's me. In the flesh. Surprised?"

Soushi could only nod.

"Yeah. Me too. They said something happened and you needed help." Chou shook his head. "I don't know what they think I'm supposed to do."

"There's nothing you can do, Chousan." Soushi slumped back into himself.

"Hey, it's been seven years!" Chou affected an injured expression. "And this is how you greet an old friend?"

The sound Soushi made was expressive. "We were hardly ever friends, Chousan."

Chou cocked his head thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's true. You were a creepy little brat."

"You're one to talk?" riposted the other.

Toshi sat quietly, watching the byplay with mild amusement. Inwardly, though, he was absorbing every word. Soushi's attitude had not changed, though the mere fact that he was responding gave Toshi some slight hope. ~If this guy can coax him back to himself even a little bit…~

"I was never as scrawny a brat as you were," Chou scoffed.

"No, you were just a big creep. I've never met anyone as obsessed with something as you are with swords."

"Yeah," Chou said, his smile indeed creepy at that moment. "So. Wanna tell me what happened, kid?"

Immediately, all the vitality drained out of Soushi. "Starting from when?"

"Well, it's been seven years and never a word. Suddenly you turn up here? Even I don't believe that much in coincidence."

Soushi sighed. "Perhaps not," he said softly. "It is possible that everything that occurred has done so for a reason."

"Whoa, what's with the sudden shift? A minute ago, you sounded like your old self, and now you sound like an old guy! Specifically, a very annoying old guy I know." He snorted his disgust.

"A lot has happened in the last seven years, Chousan." Soushi looked up at his old acquaintance. "You were already out of harm's way when Himurasan fought Shishiosan. After I fought Himurasan, everything changed for me. The wall I'd spent ten years building shattered. Suddenly I was an eight year old kid again, overwhelmed by feelings I didn't really like or understand. Everything I'd known until that point had suddenly become meaningless. I know you wouldn't understand, Chousan. You live too much in the moment."

Toshi noted the flicker of emotion on Chou's features even if Soushi did not; nonetheless, the blond remained silent.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing. I was like that, too; everything was as it came, and I just didn't care too much about anything except getting better at what I did. Whether it was following Shishiosan's plan, or kenjutsu, I just wanted it to go well. I didn't want to care about anything. I didn't want to feel the way I did when I was a kid. I didn't want to have to lie anymore… But then I came up against Himurasan, and he forced me into the realization that I had been lying all along."

"To yourself?"

Soushi looked up in mild surprise at Chou.

"What? I can't come up with something insightful once in a while?"

"Heh. Once in a while is okay, I guess," Soushi quipped weakly. Chou snorted indignantly. "But yeah, to myself. Turns out no one can deny their emotions forever…"

"Yeah, who'd imagine?" Chou's tone was dry but not entirely unsympathetic. Toshi did his best to remain invisible. He listened as Soushi told Chou how he'd been found at the end of his resources by Nobuo and brought to the clinic. He told Chou of his medical studies and his decision, encouraged by his mentor, to keep his hand in should his skills ever be needed to defend the clinic. He left out how he'd walked in on Megumi in the bath the day she'd returned after his arrival, but admitted brokenly that he'd slowly been developing a relationship with her.

Chou interjected a few comments, not bothering to hide his surprise that "such a hot number would notice a scrawny kid like you."

Toshi was not quite able to restrain himself. "That 'hot number' happens to be my sister." He glared.

Chou shrugged nonchalantly. "Sorry, doc," he said, in such a tone that said he clearly wasn't. Toshi continued to hide his smile. "So what happened?"

"I broke again. There was a robbery, and the apothecary was killed. Megumisan was there, and she was injured. It wasn't anything serious, but she was in shock… She was so pale. I was afraid she was dying, and I couldn't… I couldn't let them get away with hurting her. I couldn't live without her. I couldn't be the person she's made me want to be."

Chou expressed his opinion of that statement in no uncertain terms. "Do you honestly believe that your entire personality hinges on one person? Just because Shishiosan screwed you up in the head so bad you were seeing your own eyeballs doesn't mean that one person should have that much power over you." Soushi blinked at that; so did Toshi. Chou was far from finished. "Kid, lemme tell you something. No one can make you be anything. Your problem was you never had time to find yourself by yourself. That's why you went wandering, right? Then along comes a hot babe, and suddenly you're finding out that you're the kind of person you think she wants you to be. Okay, fine. But did it ever occur to you that maybe she's incidental?"

Toshi flinched inwardly; he doubted that his sister would take well to being called incidental! Still, the blond's words were dead on, and he had tried several times over the last two years (though far more delicately) to try to tell his protégé very much the same thing.

"Maybe this is who you really are, but how are you supposed to know that? You shoulda stuck to wandering," Chou spat with disgust again. "At least I'm doin' something useful with my life."

"You still work for the police only because you never did manage to get out from under Saitousan's thumb," Soujirou said darkly.

Chou shrugged. "I work for that bamboo-curtain-head because it's interesting, after all. And I still get to play with my swords."

Soujirou snorted. "You and your swords." He slumped again as he remembered his situation. "I hate swords. I wish I'd never touched one!"

"If you hadn't, you'd be dead by now." Chou's tone was casual, his expression unconcerned.

"I don't care!"

"Don't you?" Toshi found his voice. "I know of a few people whose lives would be much lonelier without you, and much harder."

"And much longer."

"You can't know that." Toshi sighed. "With this one exception, have you ever made the deliberate choice to take a life of your own volition, and not on someone's orders, or acting out of desperation?"

Soushi was silent. Toshi and Chou exchanged glances as the moment stretched.

"And if you think about it," Chou said at last, "it wasn't like you just decided to kill them. You were acting to protect someone."

"That doesn't make it right."

"No," Toshi agreed, "it doesn't make it right, but it makes it understandable. The problem, I think, isn't so much that you killed, but that you killed blindly. The solution, then, would most likely require finding a way to harness those instincts and direct them differently."

"You say that like it's easy."

"You managed for seven years."

Soushi made a derisive sound.

"Surely in the last seven years since your fight with Himurasan, something has happened to push you past the limits of your tolerance. You can't tell me you stayed completely out of trouble for seven years."

"Well… No," Soushi admitted. "But nothing's ever pushed me that far. There was never anyone who needed –" he faltered. "Who needed me."

"You were going to say 'protection', weren't you," Toshi asked dryly.

"That's part of it… But really, I'm the one who needs her. I feel a need to protect her, even though I know she doesn't need that kind of protection. I want to shield her from all the evil in the world. And yet, here I am, one of the greatest evils there is." There was a rising undertone of hysteria in his voice; his eyes, which had been dull with despair, shifted rapidly as though he sought for an escape.

"You are not evil," Toshihiro began vehemently, but Chou's snort cut him off.

"Evil? You? Not hardly. Once, I might've agreed with you. Now? You're as soft in the head as that redhead. Get over yourself, kid, and think about what your stupid attitude is puttin' her through."

Toshi, not normally a spontaneous sort of person, had to quell the urge to embrace the blond stranger. ~Thank you,~ he thought as hard as he could in Chou's direction. ~Thank you for saying what needed to be said, by someone to whom he just might listen…~

But Soushi was shaking his head. "She's better off without me."

Chou shrugged. "Probably, but I bet she doesn't think so."

Soushi didn't answer.

"Look. You've been out of it for three days. Try talking to her."

The youth's expression darkened. "She hates me. She has to."

"Why?"

He gestured wildly around the room. "She's not here, is she?"

"You are the one who cringed every time her name was mentioned around you, or you heard her voice," Toshi pointed out as gently as he could. "She's stayed away since, because she didn't want to make it worse." He decided not to mention that Megumi had all but moved into the clinic and was immersing herself in practice; even her guests barely saw her unless they went to see her.

"Talk to her." Chou glared at his former colleague. "Hiding from her is only gonna make it worse for both of you."

"I…"

Toshi cut off the half formed protest by rising. "I'll go get her. Chousan, why don't you go say hello to Himurasan or something?"

The blond grumbled but did as the doctor recommended – inasmuch as he left the room. He ensconced himself in the room next door, however, planting himself with every intention of eavesdropping.

He was hardly alone, as Sanosuke and Yahiko were already there.

Yahiko nodded a greeting. "Kenshin and Kaoru are on the other side," he said unrepentantly.

"What a bunch of busybodies," Chou said without shame.

Moments later, they all heard Megumi's hesitant step in the hall.

[AN] Yay! Chousan is back! Sorry. I just adore him for no fathomable reason. I think it goes back to the end of the Kyoto arc, where he said what he had to in order to keep Kamatari from succumbing to despair… Ever since I did the (anime-based) story wherein he and Megumi nearly had A Thing, I've sought excuses to bring him back one way or another. They're hard to find… [/AN]