-1Happily Ever

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"Beloved," Kaoru said, coming up behind Kenshin and wrapping her arms around him from behind. She nuzzled his neck, "Are you going to the market today?"

"Aa." Kenshin leaned back into her embrace. With a smile, he said, "Maybe later, now."

She giggled, "You know, we could send Kenji after the vegetables for dinner." She then murmured a few suggestions into his ear about just how the time could be spent while Kenji was fetching the dinner's ingredients.

"Oroooo, Kaoru!" He laughed.

"Kenji likes running errands, I think. We should really send him out more often ..." Kaoru nibbled at his ear lobe.

"Aa, that we should. I thinklike Kenji running errands too!" Kenji, at ten, wasn't nearly as independent as some ten year olds Kenshin could have named -- but going to the market and buying produce was well within his grasp. That would conveniently give them at least an hour -- maybe more -- by themselves, since Kenji was a rather well-loved child and he wouldn't be able to go through the market without being hailed by at least a dozen friends, young and old.

With a bit of a giggle, and one last nibble, Kaoru let go of him and walked to the kitchen door. "Kenji-kun!"

"Yes, Mommy?" The boy appeared promptly. Five years had seen the boy grow tall, and Yahiko's frequent predictions of, Boy's gonna be a giant when he's grown looked to be coming true -- he was already as tall as Kenshin. It was a leggy, gangly type of height; Kenji was all hands and feet and elbows and knees, skinny, with freckles and red hair that refused to be tamed. And he had glasses which always managed to be crooked on his angular face, but were very necessary; the kid was half blind with them and lost without them.

Kenshin noted his fingers were stained with ink. He'd been drawing, then. Katsu had been giving him lessons -- Kenji showed some promise as an artist.

And for this old samurai, the thought of a son who is an artist and nothing more is truly a glorious one.

Kaoru was teaching him to fight, of course, and he was passably good at it -- and his height meant he normally sparred with the older boys, or with Kaoru herself rather than the children his own age. He would never be brilliant with a sword -- not like his father, or like Yahiko (who was following in Kenshin's footsteps, much to Kenshin's pleasure)

"I want you to run into town and get some peas and radishes. But turn around ..." Kaoru made a spinning gesture with her hand.

"Aw, Mommmy ..." Kenji protested not the errand but her attention on his hair. It was curly, thick, and absolutely untamable despite Kaoru's best efforts -- it was currently loose, framing his hair in a halo of frizzy red curls.

"You look like a little wild man." Kaoru snorted. She pulled a comb out of the sleeve of her kimono and raked it as gently as she could through that thick mass of tangles. Having forced it into something resembling submission, she pulled it back into a pony-tail that poofed out and bounced more than flowed when he moved.

"Mooommmmy ..." He protested, when she wasn't fast enough for his preferences.

"Want me to braid it?"

"No!" He said, escaping from her grasp.

Kenshin, lips twitching with suppressed laughter, watched the boy go out the gate. Kenji's hair was something of a long-running dojo joke; Kaoru was constantly trying to control it, Kenji was persistent in resisting her best efforts, and the rest of the Kenshin-gumi seemed to find their minor battles hysterically funny including, at times, Kenshin himself. Mostly because it was a case of 'unstoppable force' -- Kaoru in mommy-mode -- versus 'immovable object' -- Kenji at his stubborn worst.

Once he was out of earshot, Kenshin commented, "It would be easiest if he cut that hair short, would it not?"

"He wants hair like his father, which means long." Kaoru sighed, aggravated that her son was going out in public with hair that rather resembled the picture of a western clown she'd seen once.

"But ..." Kenshin sighed. Inspiration struck. "Maybe if I cut mine off ...?"

"Absolutely not!" Kaoru swung around on him so quickly she startled him. Hands on her hips, sounding absolutely outraged, she declaed, "Himura Kenshin, if you cut your hair short, I'll kill you myself!"

"You might have to cut this one's head off to do it." Kenshin joked, holding his hands up in mock-warding gestures.

Kaoru sobered, suddenly and frowned at him.

"What is it?"

"Sometimes ... sometimes I wonder if the madman was right. You're almost forty, Kenshin."

He sobered. Connor MacLeod -- the madman -- had been a family joke for years. But Kaoru was right. He was almost forty.

And he still looked like a youth.

Because he had no answer to that, he simply reached for her, and pulled her into his arms, and did his best to thoroughly distract her for the next hour.