(PTERODACTYL SCREECH)

I apologize if this chapter is choppy and makes no sense. I also apologize for being a completely incompetent butt-face when it comes to updating in a timely fashion.

Disclaimer: I do not own RuroKen, nor do I own "The Funeral" by Band of Horses. What I do own, however, is a terrible migraine and a dwindling patience for real-world responsibilities.

"Really too late to call,

So we wait for morning

To wake you is all we got

To know me as hardly golden

Is to know me all wrong, they warn."

Coming Up Only- Mid-Late September, 1878

The first few weeks after they return home he awakens at night in a cold sweat with the raw beginnings of a scream clawing up his throat. He lays on his futon staring at the ceiling with wild eyes because his wounds won't allow him to sit upright in proper terror, bangs drenched and hair matted to his scalp. Kenshin gulps down early autumn air like a drowning man, willing his heart to calm from its frenzied stampede in his chest. But rest never comes easy after this, and so he spends the remaining hours of darkness focusing on the subtle pulse of ki in the room farther down the hall.

It's the hardest for the first couple of days when he is unable to stand or seek her out. Kenshin fears that he is asking too much of Kaoru to come and sit and simply be, and so each day he waits with gnawing impatience in his stomach, expecting the worst until the shoji slides open and she's standing there in her familiar maize kimono with her hair tied up neatly in the indigo ribbon that she had once entrusted to his unworthy care. She's all smiles and gentle touches and warmth when he feels his blood has been replaced with ice, and Kenshin finds relief enough in the gentle smell of jasmine to sleep.

The first time he falls asleep in her presence and awakens without it, he cannot help the panicked call of her name. As quick as a summer rainstorm she's by his side and smoothing his bangs and assuring him with quiet coos that he's alright, that they're home, that she's safe. Kenshin grabs her sleeve in a knee-jerk act of desperation when she turns away to wring a cloth in a nearby basin for him, and guilt burns hot and blistering in his gut when he sees the terrible anxiety in her eyes. The next time it happens, he does not make the mistake again.

Nights are the worst, Kenshin thinks. Not for the nightmares, but for the postponed relief of her presence. Even when awakening in horror, Kenshin will bite his lip until he tastes copper on his tongue before he lets a single whimper escape. Kaoru has been through too much already because of him to further bother her with petty things like trauma and night terrors. So he lays in his futon counting the ins and outs of his breath with a white-knuckled grip on his blankets to keep from stumbling down the hall and reassuring his self that it's truly her that's slumbering there. At least one of them deserves to sleep, he figures, and so he waits with terrible uncertainty for the sound of her footsteps in the hall.

The moment he is able to move about Kenshin is up and pushing his luck with Megumi's orders in order to stay close to Kaoru's side. Waiting to see her is torturous, and he finds that he'd much prefer straining his stitches cooking breakfast if only to see her a few minutes sooner in the morning. Kaoru is insistent that he's pushing himself and she's right, his stitches burn and his scabs are cracking and scarring, but Kenshin waves her off with his good arm and a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. She'll watch him all the while, and Kenshin pretends that he can't feel her gaze on his back while he pretends that everything is normal and that he doesn't await her voice every waking moment with bated breath.

At first Kenshin craves her presence like a blind man craves the blue of the sky, but guilt twines in his throat and deep in the pit of his stomach when he is shameless enough to seek it out. For the first week that he's able to he keeps her in his sight as if Kaoru will somehow suddenly vanish, trailing after her to the market like a child clinging to his mother's skirts and sitting in on her personal training sessions. He'll sit on the cushion beside her at mealtimes several inches closer than necessary, and he'll use any excuse to brush her hand or twirl a lock of her hair. He needs to feel her warmth with his own hands, smell the jasmine perfume of her hair with his own nose, to hear her sweet voice with his own ears. It's despicable, he thinks, how sneaky he is about how badly he wants to be with her, to hold her, to make sure that she's actually there and alive and safe.

The second week, Kaoru's presence is adverse. Nighttime has bled into daylight, and he can't look her in the eye without seeing the lifeless, glassy stare of Enishi's doll. It mortifies him to think of how the doll's vacant stare could ever trick him into mistaking it for the vibrant burst of Kaoru's blue irises, but then again Kenshin supposes that Enishi was successful in his intent. It makes him physically ill to imagine her eyes as lifeless as that doll's were, to think of her flushed cheeks as pallor and waxy, to think of the life that thrums in her veins to be suddenly and violently snuffed out. So when he crosses her in the yard or meets her by chance in the kitchen, Kenshin politely and quietly excuses himself before he inevitably cracks.

It worries her, this neediness and sudden rejection, worries her and hurts her and he hates himself for it. But Kenshin fears the inevitable, fears the facts that one day Kaoru will die and he will die with her. He fears that he'll awaken one night to Megumi's mournful sobs and Sanosuke's pained swearing and Yahiko's incoherent shouting. He fears more than anything having to live that first morning again, the one where the sun had risen without Kaoru to greet it. He had left part of himself in Raikuninmura that day, and he fears that he'll never be quite right because of it. Kaoru deserves so much more than a man who's been broken in body and mind. Definitely one who can look her in the eye without fearing that she'll suddenly start coughing up blood.

By the middle of the third week he stops avoiding Kaoru as much, if more for her sake than his own. She's started to question and it sends him into a panic because she can't know, she can't ever know just why he watches her with weary, disbelieving eyes. So he stops feigning the desire for rest to escape her (although his exhaustion is very real and very unpleasant,) and returns to her side for meals and for tea. He comes to the market but is careful to keep at a distance, always a few steps behind so as to walk together, but not together. Kenshin even ventures to let her help him with laundry, because he needs to focus on something else besides the furrow of her brow or the concerned tilt of her lips and she seems more at ease when he's receptive to her. But when their hands unintentionally meet in the basin, Kenshin flinches away and try as she might to shrug it off with a straining smile, there is no mistaking the hurt in Kaoru's eyes.

It's in the middle of one night not long after the laundry incident that Kaoru appears at his door, tearful and repentant for hurting him so deeply. She confronts him with the ugly, hideous truth as to Enishi's Jinchuu, and the even more hideous idea that she could blame herself. Kenshin is caught off guard and can't deny her questions if he tried, can't deny her embrace or her tears or her pain; he can merely crumble before her under the weight of his own demons. It comes pouring out in teary admittances of weakness, admittances of failure and fears and the quiet divulgence that gods above, I thought I lost you.

And that fear remains, deep and sinister and aching in his heart that he'll awaken one day to a life without her. He admits it to her quietly as she's sleeping on his shoulder later that night that he's terrified of it. He admits that he didn't attend her funeral out of shame and denial and the cowardice of knowing that if he had, had to witness them bury her that they would have ended up burying him as well. He whispers softly into her hair about how he's never known a pain that fathomless, how he still can't comprehend just how meaningless the rest of the world became without her in it. With no small amount of shame, he admits that not even after Tomoe's death had he ever felt such raw, unbearable agony.

And when he is sure that she will not awaken, he apologizes for his foolishness, for making her worry, and for being selfish enough to still want to stay by her side. As flawed as he is, he's only ever wanted her happiness. But Shishou has insisted that he deserves happiness too, and Megumi and Sano and Yahiko as well. Even Kaoru herself had agreed that he deserves a joyful life. Could he be allowed, as cowardly and greedy as he is, to have his happiness be with her? Kenshin quietly pleads to her slumbering form to allow it to be so, for if any clarity has come to him from Kaoru's tearful plea it is that life without her is a wretched life, if a life at all.

So in the morning he studies her sleeping face in the first rays of sunlight, golden and gentle and breathtaking, and hopes that as undeserving as he is that she will accept him. She smiles and offers a small "ohayou," and Kenshin softly tightens the blanket around her shoulders to save her from a chill. A little breathlessly he asks her to come to Kyoto with him, and at first her sapphire gaze is softened with sleep, but quickly brightens in quiet surprise. When asked as to what prompted his sudden desire to travel, Kenshin explains with a squeeze of his hand that he's starting to come to terms with the fact that he can never truly prepare for death, but he can always try and prepare for life.

"At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral

At every occasion, once more, it's called the funeral

At every occasion, oh, I'm ready for the funeral

Every occasion, oh, one billion day funeral"

Japanese Vocabulary:

-"Ohayou"- "Good morning"