Disclaimer: In no way, shape, or form do I own Rurouni Kenshin (except...for the mangas in my room...) or do I claim ownership of their stories (except...for the one you're reading right now...) This is a non-profit endeavor.
AN – YAY! Its March! March is my absolute favorite month! My birthday is March 30th , so I'm totally psyched! So you guys will get a chapter two days after I turn another entire year older! Woot!
Okay, so, this chapter is one that I was so confident about. And then you guys trashed the last chapter that I tried to put a lot of emotion into (hintmaletearshint). And now, I'm not so confident. In this one I tried to pour so much into. I lost my father at age eleven, and I really tried to reveal how I feel about his death through Kaoru and her feelings for her father. So...hopefully you don't hate it...
Shameless Plug: My TDK story, "Big Smile Please". Its a bunch of loosely connected shorts dealing with the relationship of Heath Ledger's Joker and what might be his last victim. They are sporadically written though, and there isn't a true plot. Yet. All the same, I'd really like you all to review and tell me what you think. Thanks!
Dedicated to my made-of-awesome beta-reader, the Kiyomi half of Banana Rum, and to my wonderful English teacher, Mrs. T., for caring so much about this lonely student of hers.
.:These.Dreams:.
.:Chapter.Ten.Revelation:.
Song(s) to Listen to While Reading:
"Remember Me" by Josh Groban
"Losing Me (Perdido en Ti)" - Diego
"Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size…"
-Mark Twain.
Kaoru's shocked gasp was the only sound in Ad alta to reply to Loki's statement. The wind, so baleful and moaning before, cut short its screams for a moment to let her sound pass to the ears of the others. Kenshin, Megumi, Sano, Aoshi, Misao, Yahiko. Their faces all reflected the shock that Kaoru experienced. Megumi and Aoshi's eyes widened in horror, while Sano and Misao, though less comprehending of how this destroyed Kenshin, looked completely disgusted by this turn of events. Yahiko, who knew even less than the previous two, based the intensity of his emotions on how the others reacted.
Beneath Kaoru's hands Kenshin's muscles grew tense and stiff as bone, and the scar on his face stood out in even starker relief against his suddenly pale skin. He began to shake with rage, the little, yet encompassing movements jumping up to Kaoru's fingers and body to wake her from her shock. "Liar!" Kenshin bellowed. He lunged forward into Loki's face, furious, but still he kept one hand entwined with Kaoru's. He was not going to let go of her.
The wind in the iced trees and the flailing of the frozen fish stopped. The whole of Ad alta became silent throughout, while the echoes of the cries of the wind sounded more and more like that of the fallen. There were no movements in Ad alta as Loki drew himself up. "This is no lie!" the god roared back, extremely insulted at the taint that put on his "integrity".
Somehow, Kenshin managed to sound even louder. "No! Lies! If this were true you would have claimed me two days ago! You cannot take me from her now!" His grip was getting painful in his protectiveness.
Loki seemed to settle himself then, drawing all his energy into his corporeal form. And although he seemed less angry, he was all the more frightening. His eyes had a hard edged quality, containing the sharpness and the dangerous allure of diamonds. One hand waved about in a controlled but seemingly careless display. "Ah, yes, I can. And I will. I was foolish and neglected to collect you Battousai. Perhaps I thought that my loyal vassal would return on his own...But that is the only reason you have had this time with your woman."
Kenshin's hair and skin seemed to grow brighter as the force of his anger built upon itself and grew and grew. "You forgot to 'collect me'?"
The god placed his hands on Kenshin's straining shoulders, his face livid. "I created you Battousai," he growled, spitting out the nickname. "Do not overestimate your power here."
For one moment forever to be clear in Kaoru's mind, Battousai sagged and his eyes closed like the dead. Then Kenshin jerked back and stumbled into Kaoru. He was suddenly gasping for breath, like Loki had physically drained him of energy and life. He leaned on Kaoru for support; his whole body was trembling still, but this time it was from a combination of fury and exhaustion. "No…" he gasped out.
"Like it or not, there is nothing you can do." Loki flashed his teeth in what should have been a smile, but came across like a wolf baring his teeth. His eyes followed the lines of the muscles in Kenshin's body and then those of the curves of Kaoru's. How she clung to him and yet supported him. How the great manslayer let her do this. He noticed how her eyes flashed with the need to defend her mate. How she drew comfort from the simple proximity of his flesh.
Loki observed all this, noted it painstakingly in his mind, and pieced something, some conclusion together. His riffle through her mind produced more fodder for his machinations. "You can do nothing." He murmured, and then louder. "But there is you something you, woman, can do."
Kaoru swung her gaze to meet Loki's for the first time. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion at the glummer of trickery in the god's face. Kenshin's attention was also caught, and like a fish on a hook he struggled to break free of what was holding him still and in place.
"What would you require of me?" Kaoru asked slowly, as desperate as Kenshin to free them all of the trap.
Loki shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but one could tell it was in his eyes. "I would show you some images, add depth to your perception. Then I would ask you a question, and you would answer it."
"And then what?" Sano questioned forcefully. His face was furrowed in a frown as he walked up to stand by Kaoru. "What happens after she answers?"
"That depends on her answer." The god smirked, a perfect display of his corruption.
Yahiko bounded forward and like a wave, the others followed to back Kenshin and Kaoru. "That's not fair! You can't do that!" he exclaimed, eyeing the shaking Battousai.
Loki smiled, much like a snake baring its fangs. "That, little boy, depends on her answer at this moment."
"You can't expect us to go w-"
Loki silenced Misao's outburst with a glare that was unperturbed when Aoshi moved in front of his wife and placed his hand on his kodachis. When Aoshi was the first to look away, Loki turned his attentions back to Kaoru. "Do you agree mortal?"
Kaour breathed in deeply and squeezed Kenshin's shoulders. His eyes were a golden ocean of fury and distrust. "You don't need to do this koishii. There is always another way." He told her, brushing his lips over hers.
Kaoru smiled at him, conveying her affections and love, her worry for him and the future. "This is the only way." She turned away from him with a steadying sigh. "I'm ready." She told Loki.
The god nodded gravely. "Your bravery is inspiring mortal. Now instruct your companions to stand away from you." When the two couples, Kenshin, and Yahiko hesitated to do so, Loki's eyes narrowed. "Move! Now!"
When Kaoru finally stood alone before him, Loki crooked a finger at empty space across from them. "Come mortal, they will show you where you are to stand."
Summoned from their dusty halls, the immortals from Ad infinitum slowly appeared in their garish, ruined finery. A choked sound came from Megumi as she watched those desperate friends come closer. Every single one of them that had lined the edge of that corridor stood together, united, in front of Loki. Tiny spiders scurried from their little hiding places as the people moved, sending waves of arachnids across the frozen water. There in the front stood the man who had spoken to her, the place where she had touched still clear in the white powder covering him.
They led her over without a touch to the edge of the frozen pond she'd knelt at earlier. When she glanced down the little fish was where she'd left it. But this time there was something different about it. The brightly shinning scales were taking on a deadly silver gray taint. It appeared to Kaoru that mercury had slipped into its veins and was draining the vibrancy of its color. Its flexible body hardly twitched as its mouth gaped open.
It was dying…
Loki startled her out of her trance with his words. "Walk across the pond, mortal, and stand before the wave."
Kaoru took a step onto the ice and felt the frigidity of it seep into her feet. She looked back at her family, back on the granite like ground, and felt very much like the fish. She padded across the ice to the huge wave, frozen solid and glittering, and prayed to escape her own cage of ice.
The surface of the wave seemed polished and glassy, instead of rough and natural as something left out in the wind and rain would be. The tiny grains of sand in the ice glittered, slightly abrading her dead fingers as the ice melted under the force of her minimal body heat.
She stared into the ice and saw her own image. Her face looked back, an overflowing plain, a map upon which a story had been acted out. It was all there, everything and nothing had escaped the great storyteller named destiny from scrawling it on her face. And then her visage twisted and became distorted, not her own and eerie, and the images it became absorbed her, drew her in, enveloped her. Even Ad alta faded away as she was drawn into the vision world.
She emerged into a forest with murky, half sunlight that signaled the early twilight. Kaoru pushed through several bushes, ignoring the scratches they left on her legs, to stand by an old sage of a tree.
A pathway ran through the forest in front of her, rough with scattered stones but firm and hard from years of use. She drew behind the tree when she heard someone pad down the path, a woman. Kaoru was startled to recognize the woman as Megumi. Megumi! Kaoru's stomach sank with the weight of her dread. She knew what was going to happen.
There was a brief flash of icy cold in her body, reminiscent of Ad alta, when someone walked through her. Badly cropped, dark red hair. Amber eyes not quite how she remembered them. A taught body straining with muscles. The first Kenshin. Not yet Battousai, but close.
The memory of Megumi frowned and halted momentarily. She tried to move around Kenshin but he blocked her. Her mouth opened and moved, the words she spoke lost to her own ears. Kenshin responded to Megumi with words just as soundless, and a hard edged baring of teeth. Even though the forest, vast and all encompassing, volunteered sounds of a usual nature, the two spectral people were completely silent.
Kaoru shrieked when Kenshin lunged at Megumi, but no birds were startled from the tall, watchful trees. They went down in a tangle of limbs, but Kenshin soon gained dominance. Megumi was pushed on her back with her head pressed against a stone in the dirt. Her body was thrashing and she was obviously screaming terribly. Her fingers and nails raked over Kenshin's arms viciously, from shoulder to wrist. He snarled and slapped her.
He placed his hands around Megumi's neck and Kaoru thought, for just one moment, that she saw a flash of anguish in his eyes. But it was ruthlessly killed before it could truly manifest. The silence was deafening as Kaoru began to step toward the two. Kenshin was beginning to bash Megumi's head into the stone. The woman's face was turning purple from lack of air and she was grasping at the fingers on her throat.
Not able to stop herself, Kaoru stepped onto the path and almost reached out to stop the murder. The silence banged on her ears with the force of what she was witnessing. It was unnatural, what should have been filled with screams cut off on a final note was entirely empty. Faces drifted up before her glazed eyes as she watched, disassociated from their bodies. Faces and faces that broke in two of burst apart in her mind's eye. Victims, victims, victims! All silenced by two glowing amber eyes behind.
Kaoru desperately did not want to see Kenshin kill. She didn't want to see the gushing blood from Megumi's head. She didn't want to hear the silence of imagine the screams. The adrenaline burned through her as she watched and itched to help. Blood pounded through her ears like the rapid flow of a river called out to by the sea, made her head ache. She didn't want it!
Unable to take it, Kaoru clapped her hands over her ears, shut her eyes, and screamed…
…Kaoru opened her eyes again when she realized that she could no longer feel the rough dirt beneath her feet. She looked down at the grass now tickling her ankles with trepidation. She jumped when a body appeared at her feet and the blood soaked the grass and her feet.
A scream rose up in her throat again, but she clapped her hands over her mouth and tamped down on it. Kaoru backed away in horror as the head lolled away from the body in a macabre greeting. The flames that burned half of the town before her cast the body in shadows and shot the moon with a painfully intense orange.
Grateful for the cloaking shadows on the body, Kaoru inched around it, grimacing at the feel of drying blood between her toes. In the distance she could clearly see flames licking the buildings of Kyoto and was startled to realize that she hadn't noticed its light and warmth till that moment. The fire was rampant with power and fuel, and it silhouetted the warriors that fought for the city. Out where she was standing there were wide swaths of clear space, but the closer one got to the fire and the buildings, the thicker the violence got.
Kaoru began to withdraw back into the forest behind her, disgusted by the violence and confused as to why the god was showing her this. She stumbled through the brush and weaved through the tall, thin bamboos stalks, searching for her purpose in this past. She slipped through two trees and into the edge of a small clearing. The open space was much smaller than what was the prelude to the forest. Here the grass was thick and tall from less frequent traffic. But it was a pale, pale green from lack of sun and nutrients. Here she was so close to the opponents facing each other before her that she could clearly identify the combatants.
Her Battousai, Kenshin, and her father, Kamiya Koshijiro.
She staggered and clutched her middle in the shock of seeing her dead father standing. Koshijiro was panting hard and his skin was glistening with sweat. Overcome with the desire to touch him, hug him, know him, she started to walk toward him. Every few steps she stopped, afraid to touch him all the same and find him real, and know that the past few years of her life had been wrong.
He was so close to her that she could almost remember how it had felt to hug him, and that sensation itched and festered under her skin. He pulled his katana up in a fighting stance, and Kaoru felt tears tremble upon the edge of falling as she remembered preparing the sword for his departure. He was so close…
Kaoru looked over at Kenshin, the Battousai, her mate. Or at least, the man who would become her mate. He seemed unruffled and calm. His hair, so vibrant and bright, was bound up in a high ponytail. His clothes were dark and pulled closer to his body than the ones she'd seen him wear.
His stance was a battoujutsu, and Kaoru felt a sinking feeling yet again. She knew what would happen in this place too. Kaoru lunged forward as Kenshin and her father charged each other. She went for the blade, all instincts screaming to save her family.
Her flesh, not being corporeal in that reality, went straight through the metal and Battousai's arm without effect. Kenshin jerked back a fraction when he felt a freezing cold envelope his arm for a fleeting second; instead of cleaving his opponent in two, his blade cut open a large gash in the other man's stomach.
Kaoru watched in horror as her father collapsed to the ground, his hands tight over her mouth. A grainy photograph fell from Koshijiro's gi and floated to the ground. Battousai, his eyes narrowed in suspicious, advanced on the man, sword held at the ready. Kaoru could see the eerie quality of Battousai's gait as her father had said in his letter.
Battousai knelt down and picked up the picture, shaking a bit of dust off of it. He straightened, and his hand shook from the force of his emotions. A bit of wind that carried the scent of fire and debris and destruction picked at the end of his red ponytail as his eyes changed. The pupils downsized and the irises clouded to a vibrant and dangerous dark purple.
He leaned in to whisper words into her father's ear, and Kaoru's stomach clenched in anticipation at the sight of him, knowing what he was saying. This was the beginning of it all!
Kaoru's terror and sorrow returned in full force as Battousai vanished into the tree behind her. All that she was left to look at was her father, groaning. Clutching his stomach. Bleeding and dying before her eyes. 'This is a nightmare! This is a punishment! This…this…I…' Her throat swelled shut with untold anguish when her own thoughts could not convey truthfully the depth of her pain, when she realized that her father's prolonged death was her doing.
If only she hadn't run forward and passed through Battousai… He wouldn't have pulled back at the last second. Koshijiro would have been cleaved in two, his death instant and painless and would not be long enough to allow him time to ponder his own death. Instead, she had charged him to linger with his mortal coil, destroyed as it was.
Tears dripped from her eyes and gave the vision of the past around her a reality that did not exist in the real world. The knowledge that she had caused this even when she hadn't physically been there in the Bakumatsu and was only seeing it through the god made her head spin and the tears come faster. If only she hadn't still been a stupid, stupid little girl who thought she could save her dead father…
The pages of destiny twisted around her as she sunk to the ground. Her legs trembled beneath her even as they rested on the earth. Her heart broke in twain, shattered, was ground to anguished dust, the state of one who had died, but not yet left.
The earth of the vision gaped open beneath her, swallowing what was left of her and her father's moan into a great yawning hole…
AN – (winces) So how was it? Alert! Next month will be the LAST chapter, unless fate intervenes and a whole new subplot suddenly appears on my computer screen...
LAST MONTH'S POLL: What is the weather like?
- (Texas) 70's, Spring like atmosphere
- Warm one day, snowing the next
- Mid 40s and freezing, snow storms expected.
- 30s (Unusually warm? That's freezing for me!)
- "hella cold in the mornings and nights and hot in the afternoons"
- Very cold
- cold with warm breezes
- (Florida) 30s at night, sunny or not so sunny in the daytime
- cold rainy/snowy
- sunny and warm
- (Oregon) cold with mixed rain and snow
Over here, the week after I posted that chapter it got pretty rainy and cold for awhile, like fate was biting me in the butt. I live in California, specifically the Bay Area, one of the coolest places to live in the world!
And finally, to my readers: bbzachariah (Ad Infinitum is like Ad alta, except you can never, ever leave it. The people in the hallway of Kaoru's dream in Chapter Four are in Ad Infinitum.), smfan, kokoronagomu, miniwoo, Reignashii, Dreatra, Cosmic-lover, mallory, Kao-Misao1728 (Cheap?! My chapter was cheap?!?!?!?!?!), Otaku's Moon, Ryouya-Kyuuketsuki, and chippyshero. Also to BnK , whose question I am about to answer.
Q: "Just curious but will you have another story after this, or are you going to take a break from writing for awhile?"
A: Yes, I do have another Rurouni Kenshin story in the works. Woot! HOWEVER, it is in it's rudimentary stages and there isn't much written. On the other hand, I WILL be posting the first chapter of my Dark Knight, Joker/OFC story next month. The chapters generally aren't as long as these are, and the style is different from what I usually do, as the narrative is in First Person. But hopefully, a lot of you will be able to transfer over to that story and read and review that one too.
This is the synopsis: Jack Napier and his wife Ellie love each other very much. They live a normal life. Until....one day, Jack gets in too deep with the sharks, and he changes. And Ellie, well, she leaves. In his rage and pain, Jack turned into something...else. And now, two years later, he wants her back.
So....read it!
THIS MONTH'S POLL: For those of you who have read Anne Bishop's Blood Jewels Trilogy (Daughter of the Blood, etc....), who do you think is sexier: Daemon, Lucivar, Saetan, Andulvar, Prothvar, or Mephis?