Author's notes -- this chapter is probably not safe for work.

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Soujiro was trying to retrieve a voice mail from his cel phone, with little success because he was not good with technology, when someone knocked at his hotel room door and a buzz washed across them at almost the same time. He glanced at his wife -- who was out cold on the bed, having finally fallen asleep. She mumbled under her breath but didn't stir.

He rose and hurried to the door, katana in hand. Likely it was one of his -- well, friends was too strong a term, but allies. But no sense taking chances. He had far more enemies than allies.

In the hall he found the short Japanese Immortal Chiyoko ... to his astonished delight and utter relief, and his daughter. Carrie had few bruises on her face, but she also had a stubbornly proud set to her jaw. He stared at her for a long, long moment. "Carrie ...?"

"Souji, what is it?" his wife asked, sleepily, from behind him, in Japanese.

"It's Carrie."

"News on her?"

"No, her." He wasn't exactly fond of demonstrative gestures of affection, but he reached out and hugged her, and Carrie responded with a small but sharp sound and a hug back.

Carrie. Alive. Safe.

And in his arms, where he could protect her.

A surge of utter relief made him weak at his knees; he leaned against the door jamb so she wouldn't know just how stunned he was to have her so unexpectedly back and didn't let go even when she wordlessly tried to wriggle free.

Alive. Safe. He could die today and be happy.

"CARRIE!" Atsuko nearly tackled both of them in a ferocious hug. "Carrie, you're alive! Alive! I love you so much and I was so scared and ..."

"I'm fine!" Carrie sounded almost embarrassed, Souji thought. Spurred into motion by Akane's display of joy, he ushered them both into the hotel room. Chiyoko followed, standing diffidently back.

Soujiro stepped back and regarded his daughter critically. "Did he hurt you?"

"No, father. A few bruises," she gestured at her face, she had a blooming shiner. "But you've given me worse training. It's nothing."

"Did he ..." He didn't know how to ask, yet he had to know. Had he done the unimaginable to his daughter?

She screwed her face up. With extreme disgust, and with total frankness, she said, "That was one very slimy man. He tried to talk me into sex with him. I told him that would be statutory rape and he could go to jail for a really long time. He didn't like that much."

Soujiro barked a laugh -- not exactly a surprised laugh, because this was his daughter, but an amused one. He nodded at Chiyoko, who was standing behind Carrie. "Did you get the slimy man's head, Chiyoko?"

"No, Kenshin did." Chiyoko didn't sound happy about this.

Soujiro took a moment to contemplate that. Kenshin had killed. He'd always suspected the Battousai still had it in him. While he was still figuring out what to think about that, Akane said, "You have to admit, he was a bit provoked. Kenshin takes his oath to protect us very seriously."

"Marshall was evil, Soujiro-san, Aunt Akane. He was really and truly evil and Kenshin has taken that evil into himself." Chiyoko sighed heavily. "I'm glad Carrie's fine. I'm worried about Kenshin."

"Do you think ...?" Akane trailed off, dismay that Soujiro shared visble on her face. He really didn't want to face Kenshin in a fight where Kenshin was out for his head. It'd be one hell of a Quickening if he won, but he stood a more than equal chance of losing.

And, while he'd taken his share of bad guys down, he didn't especially want to take in that sort of evil. Because he knew from bitter experience just what it could do to a man.

"Judging by his expression, he was not doing good emotionally, but he's not evil. The day that Kenshin goes over to the dark side is the day pigs fly." Chiyoko touched Carrie's shoulder, drawing her attention. "Carrie, you're a smart kid to see through that asshole so quickly. It took me almost a century."

Carrie snorted. "I didn't like him from the moment I saw him. It's like I told you before, Chiyoko: Marshall was just one of those people you know are evil. It was like I'd already seen him being evil and nothing he did or said surprised me. Not even when he started making passes at me."

She grinned, suddenly, at a memory. "I told him he needed a sheep. That's when he gave me this, yesterday." She gestured at her cheek, which was also bruised.

Chiyoko barked a surprised laugh, from behind her. "I would have paid money to be a fly on the wall when you said that, kiddo. He had to have blown a gasket."

Akane burst out crying. "Carrie, honey, I'm so sorry ..."

She hugged Carrie again. Carrie said, sounding embarrassed, "I'm okay, Mom. Really."

Soujiro, cynically, thought that there was no way that Carrie was 'okay'. She was a tough kid, but not this tough. The reaction would come later. He knew it. Likely, knowing his daughter, it wasn't going to be a pleasant reaction.

"It's not okay!" Akane wailed. "They took you away and they hurt you and it's okay to be upset and ..."

"I'm fine!" Carrie insisted. "That Frank Kerral guy, he got me 'cause he surprised me, and he tied me up ..."

"Kerral's dead. One of MacLeod's friends killed him," Chiyoko explained casually.

Carrie blinked. "He is?"

"He attacked Richie," Soujiro added, because he knew this was important to Akane even if he failed to see the distinction of killing a bad man in self defense or just killing him: both resulted in the same desirable end. "So, it was in self defense."

"Oh. Richie's an Immortal?" Carrie said, then shook her head. "The man was a loose cannon, so it doesn't surprise me or nothing ..."

"... anything ..." Soujiro corrected, absently, out of long and established habit.

"Nothing," Carrie insisted and glared up at him quite rudely, also a long and established habit. She irritated him; English was her first language and yet she still managed to mangle it with regular indifference. Also, she lacked the respect she should have towards her father, and no amount of rebukes and chastisements on his part had ever dampened that fighting spirit.

She'd do well, as an Immortal, he thought. If he didn't personally kill her himself. She would need that stubborn attitude to survive in a world with people who would kill her simply for her head.

"Soujiro, don't nag on her." Akane swatted him in the back of the head.

"It's okay, Mom. It ... it's okay. He can nag." Carrie smiled bravely now, but he saw her chin quiver. Yes, there would be a reaction later.

Chiyoko spoke up, "I'll be going, then. -- Carrie-chan, I'll send you the postcards I promised. Okay, kiddo?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

Chiyoko let herself out of the hotel room. Carrie gazed after the door and said after a moment, "Dad, is that what I'd be like if Marshall had killed me? 'Cause that's what he wanted to do. Kill me so I wouldn't ever get older and so I'd always be his. He said so."

Soujiro's gut clenched in anger at the man. "Bet he got a shock that you weren't a submissive kid. He didn't hurt you?"

"No. He said he wasn't gonna force me. That I'd want him willingly. Pervert." Carrie folded her arms. She was angry, and not the least bit embarrassed. Soujiro's heart swelled with pride at her attitude. "Arrogant son of a bitch."

"Language," he said, mildly.

"Soujiro!" Akane smacked him again. "Let her swear. She's earned it."

"Yeah, dad, lemme fucking swear." Carrie glared at him.

He really didn't like to touch people, and showing affection was incredibly difficult, even to his own daughter. Still, he hugged her again, folding her against his chest. "Carrie, I was terrified he had killed you."

"I'm fine Dad, really."

She wasn't. He knew it. But at least she was alive, and safe.

------------------

Several hours later, MacLeod was nursing both a cup of strong coffee and the beginnings of a bad hangover -- he wasn't sober enough yet to be really hung over -- when his landline phone rang. He lurched to his feet, feeling rather clumsy and all sorts of miserable, and picked the receiver up off the wall. "Yeh."

"Mr. MacLeod?" A woman's voice said -- he identified a very interesting accent that seemed to be a combination of Japanese and British. It was a rich smoker's voice, roughened by years of age from what he remembered more than a decade ago, but he didn't have much trouble guessing who this was. "This is Akane Himura."

"Gnnnh." He responded, and realized that was incoherent, and added, "Good morning."

"Oh dear, did I wake you up?" She sounded truly dismayed. "I didn't check the local time -- I just got off a plane."

"Ngg. Gotta open the dojo in fifteen minutes. What's up?" Opening the dojo was going to consist of unlocking the doors and going back to bed.

He hoped Kenshin hadn't done anything spectacularly stupid from the time he'd last seen the little Immortal, around two AM, and now, only four hours and fifteen minutes later.

He was not looking forward to opening the dojo doors to his customers. He'd had less than four hours of sleep. And they'd drank enough that he was still most certainly feeling it, and he was hoping his customers wouldn't notice before he could beat a retreat to his room.

Sometime today he'd have to retrieve his car from the hotel garage. Maybe he could bribe Richie to do it. Amanda, he didn't trust not to joy ride in it.

Akane said, "I was just hoping you could tell me where Kenshin's staying. I wanted to surprise him."

"Uh, he talk to you?" He contemplated telling her everything that happened to her.

"I haven't spoken to him in several days. I was traveling, and my cell phone battery's dead and I haven't had a chance to recharge it and I figured I'd see him soon enough anyway."

Ditz, he diagnosed. "He's worried about you. He's been trying to reach you." He gave her the location of the hotel and the room number. And he decided to let Kenshin tell his own stories.

"Thank you, Mr. Macleod!" She said, sounding cheerfully irrepressible.

---------------

Kenshin was staying in a nondescript chain hotel in a working class neighborhood; Atsuko towed a borrowed luggage cart down a hall that smelled vaguely of mildew and dirty carpet and found room 703. It was two doors down from the elevator, so her walk was not far. She was not surprised that Kenshin had gotten a room on the top floor, or that his room was close to both the elevator and the stairs.

The room was both defensible, and escapable.

He'd lived through so many wars, battles, fights, and various assassination attempts over a century and a half of life that protection was second-nature for Kenshin.

She knocked, surprised he hadn't opened the door when he approached. Kenshin was almost impossible to catch off guard. He had some sort of weird empathic ability to recognize people as they approached -- she distinctly remembered playing hide and seek with him, and the other children, when she herself had been a child. It had been largely an exercise in frustration. He was very good at hiding, and downright spooky at finding.

The door opened, after a minute.

"Atsuko," he breathed, in a tone of voice that indicated that he was very surprised and very happy to see her.

He also sounded more than a bit drunk, and she smelled sour wine on his breath. His eyes had dark shadows lurking in them, and he was dressed only in a pair of boxers -- she was amazed he'd opened the door that way. But then, he would have known it was her as soon as he'd woken and would also have known that no one else was in sight.

But still, he was usually so very modest that she was able to make him furiously blush simply by holding his hand in front of others. It shocked her now to see him practically naked, in the doorway.

"Kenshin?"

"Gods, I am very glad to see you." He was speaking in Japanese, not English. "Gods, Atsuko."

She stepped inside, towing her luggage after her, and as soon as the door was shut he had his arms around her and his face buried in her shoulder. He clung to her, wordlessly holding on to her, as if he had been drowning.

"Kenshin, what's wrong?"

Did someone die? she wondered, a little desperately. She knew he'd tried to reach her but she hadn't called him back because she wanted this to be a pleasant surprise.

"Gods, Atsuko ..." he repeated, strong arms clutching her close to his chest. "I've needed you so much."

That was an admission that was as out-of-character as the boxer shorts. While Kenshin lived to be needed by others, he rarely admitted to his own feelings when they involved wanting comfort from others. She tightened her grip on him. "Koi, what's wrong? Has someone passed away?"

He made a muffled noise that almost sounded like a sob and wrenched out of her arms. She watched, dismayed, as he walked to the window -- he was definitely not sober, she could tell by his somewhat clumsy gait -- and stared out the window. She hoped the glazing on the windows was reflective from the outside, otherwise, Kenshin was giving the whole world a seventh-story view of his magenta boxer shorts.

"Kenshin, you're scaring me. What is wrong?"

He stood with his back to her, fingers clenched into fists, back as ramrod straight as his inebriated state would allow. Kenshin was generally a cheerful drunk -- he got silly and playful and told funny stories with some sake or a few beers into him. Get him drunker and he might sing as well, which was scary -- Kenshin was many things, but musically gifted wasn't one of them.

Kenshin singing karaoke was a sight to behold. And film. Among her cherished possessions was a tape of Kenshin, pleasantly buzzed at a family gathering, singing with all his heart, 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' ... very off key.

It would have been an useful tape for blackmail if it wasn't so much fun to show it to people.

In all the decades she'd known him, she'd never seen him be an angry, morose, needy drunk before. Which seemed to be his mood at the moment. Something bad had happened, that was absolutely certain.

"Somebody's dead," he confirmed, then quickly, before she could more than just begin to run through a mental inventory of friends and family, he added, "I killed him."

Oh.

"Provoked, I take it?" Her eyes were drawn to the sword that lay on the bed, next to the tangled covers where he'd obviously been sleeping before she arried.

"Very." His words were slurred by drink and, she suspected, exhaustion. She was willing to bet by the way his hair was flattened on one side of his head that he'd been asleep for awhile when she had arrived. She wondered just how drunk he'd gotten the night before to still be a few sheets to the wind. "Very, very, very. Provoked. Not sure if I'm more upset that I broke my oath, or because I didn't do it a century ago when I had the chance."

"Another Immortal?"

"Marshall. An asshole from my past." He used the English word for asshole. She heard pain and grief in his words, despite the uncharacteristic harshness.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" She wrapped her arms around him from behind and pulled him back against her. Kenshin would have objected strongly to that sort of an embrace had she ever tried it in public -- at least partly because she was a good six inches taller than he was and it looked unmanly -- but right now, he simply leaned back against her, wordlessly sagging into her grip.

One of the most surprising things that she had learned about Kenshin when he had chosen to admit he needed, and loved, her was how much of his wise, cheerful, strong persona was an act. Oh -- he was wise, sure. And he had a core of inner strength unlike anyone she'd ever known before in her life. And his cheerfulness was honest, much of the time. He was naturally good-natured and sunny in outlook.

But sometimes -- more often than most people suspected -- he was just putting on an act for the benefit of his friends and family. And sometimes, the masks slipped away. And sometimes, there was a very different Kenshin lurking underneath.

Family legend said he'd nearly starved himself to death once, in grief, thinking Kaoru dead.

She believed the legends.

There was a part of Kenshin that he kept carefully hidden away from nearly everyone -- only after they had been married for a few years had he become comfortable enough with her to totally let his guard down and show his inner self. That trust had come very gradually over the years -- no great epiphany, just small steps as he learned he could rely upon her completely.

"Kenshin," she said, "Koishii. Do you want to talk about it?"

He twisted around in her arms and clung to her. "Not really." His voice was a low, miserable whisper. "There's not much to be said, Atsuko."

"Hey."

He looked up at her, amethyst eyes deep and dark with grief. She kissed him deeply, then, giving what comfort she could this way.

In the beginning, between them, it had been weird to be with a man so much shorter than she was -- at five seven, she was tall for a Japanese woman. Legacy, Kenshin teased her, of a great-grandfather who'd been a veritable giant at well over six feet tall, a century before.

She had not thought the height difference between them would bother her, but it had, a bit. He had to reach up to put his arms around her neck to kiss her, and she had to bend over, just a bit. She'd long gotten used to this -- and anyway, Kenshin's confidence and personality made it easy to forget how small he was.

But somehow, he seemed smaller this morning.

She guided him towards the bed, and managed to shed her clothes as she went. He pushed her down, sudden urgency and need in his movements. "Atsuko," he murmured, "Gods, I've needed this."

Atsuko had been far from chaste before she'd met Kenshin; she liked men quite a lot. But after Kenshin ... she'd had no desire for anyone else. He was the best lover she'd ever had, both because she loved him so very much and because he was incredible in bed. So, she as a little surprised by the desperation in his movements ... normally, he'd have her crying out for him, ready and eager.

She was far from ready when he shoved her down and entered her, roughly, and she cried out in annoyed pain. It hurt. "Kenshin! Idiot! Hey!"

He stopped, freezing in place, hands propped on either side of her, wine breath puffing over her face.

"Damnit, what's wrong with you?" She shoved at his chest. She was shocked because he was always the most considerate of lovers.

His expression was stricken. She'd never seen him look so lost and her anger turned to real concern in a flash. He stammered, sounding horrified, "I'm sorry. Atsuko, I'm sorry ... I ..." To her utter shock, tears welled in his eyes. "I hurt you ..."

"Kenshin," she reached up and wrapped her arms around him, and pulled him down to her chest. "It's okay. It's okay."

He sobbed, miserably, and tried to pull away when she said it was okay. Kenshin didn't ever cry; her heart was breaking for him. She wouldn't let him go -- and he was still inside her, and still hard. She twitched her hips upward, and murmured, "C'mon, finish what you started. Or I'll really be mad."

Crying, he started to thrust. It hurt again, at first, before her body adjusted, but she was careful to not let him know. His tears spattered hot against her shoulder and he finished quickly with none of his usually phenomenal self control.

When he was done, he started to pull away -- she knew if she let him go he'd dress and leave in humiliation. So she continued to hold onto him. "Shh. Shh, Koishii. It's okay. It really is okay."

He buried his face in her shoulder, then, and whispered, "I love you so much ..." and sobbed brokenly.

"Shh."

He was so drunk -- she wanted to smack him for getting this drunk, because some of his misery was the booze talking, she thought. Getting to the bottom of his upset would probably be useless until he was sober. She held him close instead and just let him cry his grief out.

Eventually, he fell asleep in her arms, sprawled across her, head tucked under her chin. And she slept too, an arm around him, holding him close and tight to her.

Her last thought was that she was very glad she'd decided to meet with him here; he wouldn't have to face whatever his problems were alone. The thought of him dealing with this alone threatened to break her heart.