Kenshin.
Yuriko grabbed her brakes so hard they squealed for a moment, then let them go and mashed down on the pedals. She'd come around a curve in the road above the embankment and seen him, a small figure sitting on the grassy riverbank below, the afternoon sun blazing off his long red hair. For a moment she hadn't believed her eyes.
Kenshin!
She sprinted the last fifty yards, ignoring the protest of her tired knees and quadriceps, ignoring the ache in her handlebar-battered hands. She glanced quickly over her right shoulder for traffic and then veered across the road, screeching to a halt on the riverward edge. She grabbed her bike by the crossbar and practically threw it over the corrugated steel crash barrier, dumping it down onto its side in the weeds and vaulting over after it. Her heart was racing, and not just from the final burst of pedaling.
"Kenshin!"
She hurled herself forward, sprinting down the steep embankment, yanking down on the indigo ribbon across her chest to keep the bokken from bashing against the back of her thigh. She skidded and slid on the tufty unmowed grass, her run turning into a series of downward leaps until she reached the level ground. She stumbled, recovered, raced forward again. He was sitting half way between the bottom of the embankment and the water's edge, sitting unmoving with his head bowed.
She slowed as she approached him, concern joining the mix of emotions roiling inside her. He still hadn't looked up, still hadn't given any indication that he'd heard her.
She stopped an arm's-length away, heart pounding in her ears, somehow reluctant to touch him. He still hadn't moved. Was he asleep?
"Kenshin?"
o-o-o
The sound seeped sluggishly into Kenshin's awareness. It was a word, a name, his own name.
Kenshin?
For a moment he could have been sitting on the engawa of the Kamiya house, leaning comfortably against one of the support posts, dozing in the summer breeze. For a moment the voice could have been hers, come to wake him, come to tell him about something Kenji had done or to ask him about starting dinner. But even though the ki blazing beside him was so familiar as to break his heart, the voice had not been Kaoru's.
There'd been a tremor in it, as if of fear.
Kenshin's eyes sprang open. He was sitting on the riverbank -- yes, still on the riverbank where he'd sat down at the end of the night, unable to walk any further until he'd thought things through. He'd meant to get up, meant to go wandering again; in a little while he would have done it, but it kept coming back to him that she was alive in this world and now the sunlight was so heavy he could barely move and his head hurt like hell and she was standing right beside him.
She was standing right beside him.
"Yuriko-dono!" he yelped, and leapt to his feet.
He staggered immediately, his joints protesting painfully -- how long had he been sitting here? Kaoru would have been furious -- and caught himself on the hilt of his sakabatou to keep from falling. It was her. She was here. She absolutely should not have been here.
I'm not her--
He couldn't help looking at her, couldn't help staring into her blue, blue eyes. Because they were Kaoru's eyes. Kaoru's eyes should not be so full of unhappiness.
This was his fault. He tore his gaze away and threw himself down onto his knees on the grass in front of her, bowing his head low.
o-o-o
Yuriko's first thought had been that she'd startled him, but that was before he'd said her name.
Yuriko-dono.
The honorific hit her like a kick to the stomach and suddenly it was as if the chasm from her dream were right there in the grass between them, she on one side, Kenshin on the other. He had called her Kaoru-dono for so long, keeping her at arm's length, keeping her on a pedestal above him. To bridge that gap, to break down that barrier, it had taken--
No; there was no time for that now. She had to do something, say something, do whatever it was that she'd been going to do to make it all right again. Because he'd looked awful, pallid and exhausted and coated in a layer of dust and dried sweat and now he was kneeling in front of her and she couldn't see his eyes.
"Yuriko-dono," he was saying again. "For everything that I have done to you, I offer you my most sincere apology, that I do. If there is any way to make amends-- please-- allow me to do so."
Yuriko opened her mouth to say something, anything, but there were no words in her mind and her throat was too tight anyway. She stared at him, willing him to look up, willing him to smile at her and tell her it was all right. But she couldn't see his eyes; all she could see was his lanky red hair and one sunburned forearm propping him up on the grass.
Why couldn't she say anything? Why couldn't she move? Finding him was supposed to have been the hard part, and it was she who should be making amends, not Kenshin. And now he was kneeling before her like a fairytale knight offering her his fealty-- or offering her his life.
This wasn't real. This couldn't be real; this was far too magical to be real, and magic didn't happen in the real world. In the real world she was Maekawa Yuriko with the boring life and the boring administrative job, singing karaoke with friends she didn't really know and going to marriage meetings with men she had no interest in.
She had to do something. She had to say something, but her mouth was dry and her mind blank, butterflies fluttering in her stomach like a schoolgirl with a secret crush.
She'd never had a boyfriend. She'd never even asked anyone out.
Oh, god, she was going to lose him. If she didn't do something now she was going to lose him again. She would go back to her safe, stable life and he would go on wandering, as if none of this had ever happened.
Terror welled up inside her, terror and the old aching loneliness. It was she who had thrown him away. And now... now she couldn't even...
She saw him flinch before she even realized she'd taken a step backward.
"I'm sorry," he went on, softly. His voice seemed hoarse. "You deserve your own life. I shouldn't have tried to..."
Tried to...? Yuriko clenched her teeth against the rising panic. Tried to do what? To bring Kaoru back? Her heart was racing, her mind tumbling. She still couldn't move. She still couldn't say anything.
She couldn't handle this. She wanted to close her eyes, to make it all disappear. To make it all end. But if she did that--
"...to make you be her," Kenshin breathed, so softly that Yuriko almost didn't hear.
To be her. To be Kaoru.
-- I'm not her --
But she was. She was Kaoru, and Kaoru was her, a part of her.
Kaoru would be able to handle this.
Yuriko was suddenly intensely aware of the curve of the bokken across her back.
-- If you want Ken-san to keep coming home, from now on you'll have to be much stronger --
Kaoru was stronger. Certainly strong enough for this.
Yuriko reached up above her right shoulder and touched the hilt of the bokken, tentatively, feeling its new-cut roughness.
Kenshin made this--
Impulsively, before she could change her mind, she grasped the wood in one hand and the ribbon in the other, pulling it quickly over her head and gripping the center of its gently curving length tight in both hands. Then she closed her eyes, letting the memories come, letting the warmth and the heartache and the years of joy and pain wash through her, letting Kaoru fill up her mind.
When she opened her eyes they were wet, but she was no longer afraid.
"Kenshin," she said calmly. "A long time ago I told you that I wanted to stay with you forever."
She saw the shock go through him. Her heart was fluttering, a part of her still swinging between panic and awe in the background, but she knew now exactly where she was going. She took a deep breath and knelt down on the grass, directly in front of him, settling the bokken beside her.
"Well, forever isn't over yet." She reached out and lifted his chin with her fingertips, gently, until she could see his eyes at last. They were as wide as saucers. "Come home with me, Kenshin love."
He stared at her for a long moment, frozen, panic and awe mixed in his own eyes.
"Kaoru...?" he whispered.
"Yes," she said firmly.
He blinked, tensed, moistening his lips with the tip of his tongue and seeming to draw in on himself. His eyes had gotten even bigger.
"What about Yuriko-dono?" he breathed.
"What--?" she started, confused. Why should his eyes be tinged now with horror? Why should he look like he wanted to die from guilt? Why, unless he thought--
You deserve your own life.
"Oh, Kenshin," she said gently, shaking her head. "This is me. This is my own life. This has always been me." She tilted her head to one side, looking at him with a kind of pity. "I just remember it all now, that's all."
She saw the wall come down behind his eyes, the emotion evaporating from his face as if it had never been there. When he spoke, his voice was carefully flat.
"Yuriko-dono should not give up her self for my sake, that she should not."
Yuriko stared at him. Hadn't she made it clear? Didn't he know her well enough to understand that she would never harm herself for his sake, because he'd only blame himself and be miserable?
She could explain this gently. She could try to persuade him that she wasn't sacrificing herself for him, that this was really what she wanted, that this was no sacrifice at all. But there was another approach, a much more straightforward approach.
"Idiot!" she yelled, and shoved him. Hard.
"Oro-!" he exclaimed, the surprise on his face as he sprawled over onto his side almost enough to make her laugh.
"This is what I want! This is me! Kaoru and Yuriko!" She reached out and hauled him up into a sitting position again. "I remember now, and I'm not going back. I'm still the same person, Kenshin." Her voice had softened, had become more gentle. "I'm still Yuriko, the only difference is I can see now."
She leaned in towards him, touching his cheek gently with her right hand. "Kenshin. All my life--" This was confusing; grammar wasn't made to talk about things like this. "All-- all Yuriko's life, I felt like I was waiting for something. Looking for something, and not knowing what it was. Because you weren't there. I'm not going back to that, Kenshin. I made my decision already."
"Kaoru..." he started again, staring at her, just staring at her as if he had no idea what to say.
"Marry me?" she added. "Again, I mean."
Kenshin's eyes went wide. Very wide. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and blushed scarlet.
Yuriko laughed and shoved him again, gently. "It's a new era, silly," she said. "Women are allowed to ask now. And considering how long it took you the last time..."
"K-Kaoru..."
"Well? Answer me."
He smiled at her, finally, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Then he reached out and gently touched her cheek.
"It seems there was a reason why I couldn't go wandering again."