A/N: So, it was pretty much unanimous (save for about two of you): this is a sequel to the sequel. I hope you enjoy it!

Standard disclaimers apply.


082: If

"What would happen if I killed myself?" Kaoru inquires lightly, staring at her ceiling from her bed.

"Don't do that," Kenshin tells her softly, floating at the foot of her bed. "Your life is priceless."

"What's the point of it? Of life? I met you, but I can't be with you unless I die."

"But we are together."

"No, I don't mean just like that." She raises herself on her elbows to look at him. She's pretty sure that if he were alive, he would be blushing. "I want to be able to kiss you. Touch you. Not necessarily in the perverted way."

He stares at her, his gaze intense, making her gasp. "Remarkable," he mutters, a twisted smile on his face. "I haven't felt anything distinctly human in decades…and then I meet you…and it's suddenly like I'm alive again."

She lies back down. "Then what are we going to do? What if when I go to college, my dad sells the house? You'll be stuck here."

He smirks. "I'm sure you'll find a way to break in."

She smiles and shakes his head. Sighing, she says, "I think about it sometimes. Dying. If I were to just end my life…we could be together. Forever. That's not so bad."

"But who knows you would even be with me if you were to end your life," he points out. "I could still be here and you could…move on. Then we'd never see each other again."

Her heart clenches with pain. "What if there is nothing after life? What if there's no heaven?" she whispers.

He smiles sadly. "I would hold you right now if I could."

She sighs again, trying to prevent herself from crying. "I've been reading up on death. Like, how different religions explain it."

"Did you find anything you liked?"

She shrugs. "A few things sounded nice. Christianity being the most appealing. Hanging out in heaven with everyone after you die. But I just don't buy the existence of God."

He smiles a little. "It's interesting how this generation is so mixed with religion. In my day –"

"Please don't use that expression. It makes you sound old, and that makes me feel gross."

"Technically, you should feel gross, harboring attraction to a dead man. An interesting form of necrophilia, if you will."

She groans. "Ugh. I try not to think about it like that."

He chuckles.

"Did you believe in God?"

He sighs. "Well, I was raised to believe in Him. I think at a time I did. But now…" He shrugs. "Who knows." He pauses. "Interesting how you asked me that in the past tense."

"Well, I mean if I were a ghost for almost two-hundred years, I would question His existence."

He nods. "Fair enough."

After a minute of silence, she says, "I actually found one thing that I really liked. And I think I believe it."

"What?"

"I was reading a bit of the Bhagavad Gita in school. It's an old Hindu scripture. And part of it says, 'All that lives, lives forever. Only the shell, the perishable passes away. The spirit is without end. Eternal. Deathless.'"

He closes his eyes, humming to himself in thought. For the millionth time today, she wishes he were flesh and bone, instead of the transparent being with the pallor of a faded photograph.

"It is quite beautiful," he says.

"And if our spirits are eternal…then I'm sure we'd find each other after my death. We'll have plenty of time."

"When you die, I may move on from this world," he adds hopefully.

She smiles.

"But that's years from now," he points out after a period of silence. "And until then…I want you to live your life. Meet someone else whom you could be happy with."

"You've got to be kidding me. You're really going to go down that self-sacrificing road?"

He rolls his eyes. "Believe me, I wouldn't do it if I had any other option. I'm not normally this sappy."

She laughs. "Right." After a minute, the smile on her face fades. "I wish you weren't bound to the house. How come my mom wasn't…isn't?"

He shrugs. "She's tied to you, and you move constantly, right?"

"Is there a reason why you're tied here?" she inquires.

"Not really. I was the last of my family to own the house, and I was supposed to marry and bear children…but I got sick that winter. I suppose I had deep-seated regrets about not keeping the house within the family." He shrugs again. "I don't know why I even gave a shit, but…"

"It is a beautiful house."

"My father was certainly more proud of it than of me," Kenshin points out lightly.

"Well, he was an idiot."

He grins bitterly. "That he was."

After a minute of silence, she says, "This is nice."

"What, us not fighting every other sentence?"

"We haven't participated in any witty bantering in ages. I'm almost beginning to miss it."

"I don't. It just makes me want to kiss you more," he states. "Makes it harder."

She flushes. "Yeah, I know what you mean," she mutters.

He smirks. "I know. I'm just too irresistible, despite being a ghost. If anything, it adds to my charm."

She rolls her eyes. "When I die, and we're in the afterlife together, remind me to smack you upside the head a million times."

"As long as you kiss me just as many times, I don't care," he tells her seriously.

She tries to smile. "That was sappy," she whispers.

"It's your fault," he accuses her.

"Let's stop talking about this," she tells him rather than suggests.

"Fine. But you're not getting out of the millionth discussion about going to school on that aboriginal island."

She snorts. "Hawaii. It's a state. And it's not just one island."

"It wasn't a state when I was alive, and it shouldn't be now. It's all volcanic rock, anyway."

"Well, too bad, it's a state," she retorts childishly. "That's not going to change."

"You never know – scientists have demoted Pluto," Kenshin points out with a smug smile on his face.

"They're not going to demote Hawaii! The government gets revenue from there. I don't know why you're trying to compare Pluto and Hawaii, but it doesn't work."

"Tell that to poor Pluto, floating out there without the grand status of 'planet of the Solar System.'"

She groans exasperatingly.

Kaoru Kamiya has a ghost in her bedroom, and said ghost is a very irritating one, but she's accepted this (rather begrudgingly). But if she does say so herself, she's rather glad he's in her life, even if he is a two-hundred-year-old ghost with a heart-stopping smirk and an annoyingly clever brain.

She's going to be stuck with him for a very, very long time. It should bother her, but…

"I think I like you," she tells him casually.

He smirks. "Yeah, I kind of feel the same way."

But it just doesn't.


A/N: Has anyone noticed how weird Previous/Next buttons have become? Agh. Horrible. They were cute for about five seconds, like a "ha ha, it's like turning the pages of a book, I get it"…now I just want them back the way they were!

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MissGoalie