Prologue

Their beginning, Sanosuke remembered, was cold and comfortless.

Kenshin could never be persuaded to talk about those early days. Perhaps they were worse than even Sano recalled, best forgotten except for skills gained, lessons learned. And perhaps a few good, unstained days, good memories of bold sunlight and color that reached them from far away, on the wings of a wandering butterfly or a fleeting rainbow.

Or maybe they weren't so unstained after all, since it was hard to disconnect the good memories from the foul recollections of seeing the colorful wings torn apart by the savage hands of the older boys, or sunk to his hands and knees in the churned mud of the fields, too busy to look up at the rainbow.

But far more difficult than this was the way that every time they tried to speak of childhood, their jaws grew tighter and their tongues curled upon themselves. The old conditioning would come back to them. Then there was always the familiar silence, thick and solid and enveloping like an old cloak that would not be cast away.

It was not magic or any sort of enchantment—Sano tried not to believe such things, at times unsuccessfully—but instead just something so drilled, so beaten and starved and ground into them that it was almost impossible to let go.

Almost impossible. Both Sanosuke and Kenshin had strong, insurmountable wills. Through those memories that held them fast, they were hard and unmovable, like stones. Especially Kenshin. Kenshin couldn't be bent or broken, couldn't be corrupted.

Not even in death.

The tomb was cold, comfortless, like the past. And now, perhaps, like the future. Perhaps being there, in the frozen home of the dead, was why Sano's thoughts wandered into the past. Or maybe it was simply the way the end brought to mind the beginning.

He had brought a lantern with him into the tomb. It burned its oil, strong and steady. He could see the shadows swaying where Kenshin lay atop stone. He was dressed in black and white, and Sano found it absolutely ridiculous that only at his death Kenshin was clothed in garments that were actually tailored to fit him. No too-big sleeves or overlong pants to trip him up. Now, when it didn't matter. When it didn't do him any good.

Just another mark on Sano's heart, he knew. Fate hated him. It always did. Otherwise something, anything in his life might have actually been fair. From birth until this very moment. Something. Anything.

An attendant came, appearing as merely a silhouette at the entrance to the tomb. It was midwinter. Snow was thick on the ground, but it was also a shockingly sunny day. Sunlight glinted blindingly off the white of the ground outside, the snow broken only by the tracks made by the attendant. Sano had been in the tomb since before the last snow; he had no tracks to show where he had come from.

"Sanosuke-sama? Yukishiro Tomoe-sama is here."

Jaw clenching at the sound of Tomoe's name, Sanosuke ignored the attendant for the moment. He took Kenshin's hand. It was cold as ice and the joints were no longer supple. It took effort to intertwine Kenshin's fingers with his own.

Sano closed his eyes, and found his very first memory just behind his eyelids.

He was two years old. Kenshin was eleven. Sano held on to Kenshin's hand, looking down at his tiny, bare feet as Kenshin helped him across a stream, hopping the slippery stepping stones…

On his knees, in the present, Sano pressed his forehead against Kenshin's temple and remained there a moment, while the attendant waited in silence a respectful distance away. Sano gave Kenshin's hand one last squeeze, knowing it would be the last time he would be able to do it. Then he stood, his own body mostly frozen with cold, and followed the attendant out.

There was a lot of responsibility in the palace not far from the graveyard that Sanosuke did not want. A position of power that Kenshin had won, but had also not wanted. In an instant, Sano might have turned on his heel and walked away from it all, but there was still a mission. Still something Kenshin had been trying to do. If he could, Sano would try to see it through…

Tomoe was waiting inside.

She was a beautiful woman to even the most disimpassioned observer. Her hair was long and bound in a pretty style, but also with a simplicity that suggested it was tied back simply to be kept out of her way. Her eyes were dark, large. Features set in constant solemnity. Her clothes were simple of style, but fine in material.

Sanosuke despised her.

He had not hated her before this moment. Not really. He had been angry and had mildly disliked her for other reasons in the recent past, but had not thought of her enough to consider her part in Kenshin's death in the here and now. He closed his eyes again and remembered the heat of Kenshin's blood, soaking into his clothes, the sharp expression of betrayal in his wide violet eyes as he held onto Sano for just another moment—the last moment—of being on his feet, and able to look on this woman, Tomoe, and the man she clung to, with a sword held between them all that dripped with Kenshin's blood.

Sano thought he should have hated Kiyosato more…and found that he didn't. Perhaps it was because Kiyosato would—in one way or another—pay for what he had done, and Tomoe probably would not. Not in the way she deserved.

Crude sayings came to mind. The urge to curse her was strong. Sanosuke's self-control was only stronger than this urge because of a promise. A promise to his big brother, his only family. A promise to Kenshin.

Still, he could not bring himself to think he was being polite or lenient because he thought she deserved it. "I hate you," he said bluntly. "Down to your frosty guts and that chunk of ice you use as a heart."

She accepted the comment, lips softening slightly. Sano couldn't have considered it then, but later he would suppose that she didn't blame him for the way he felt.

"This was not my intention," she said.

Sanosuke waited several heartbeats, but she said nothing else.

"Is that all?" His words were meant to be sharp, but they came out like rolling thunder. "That's it? You just came here to tell me you didn't mean for it to happen?"

She remained silent. If Sano noticed that her eyes seemed just a little sadder, he rejected the notion.

"You're not sorry at all," he stated, not caring in the least how his voice began to grow unsteady.

"I never intended—"

"Yeah, I heard you the first time. And I remember something Kenshin always used to tell me: intentions don't mean anything. It's what you do that matters, what you do that affects things, you cold—"

"I never wanted him to die."

"Shut up!"

She fell to silence, though probably more because she had nothing else prepared to say than because of Sano's anger. His temper threatened to overwhelm him and he shut his eyes tightly.

Tree roots, came Kenshin's words. Not his voice, but words drawn into the air with his hands, softer and more childlike in a memory from a long time ago. Imagine you are a tree with roots. Your strength can't be carried by your anger to places you'll regret if your strength is like a great oak tree, holding to the inside of the earth.

He opened his eyes again, no better off than before. The memory brought him no peace or comfort, only the grim realization that he had somehow become much more obedient to his brother now that he was dead.

He looked at Tomoe. "He loved you," he said, voice hoarse. "He wouldn't have forced you to do anything you didn't want to."

"You're too young to understand."

Sanosuke was nineteen, twelve full years younger than the woman standing before him. Of all the things he had to face in this wretched moment in time, being called a child by her was not one he was prepared to deal with.

"You're the one who doesn't understand. You didn't know anything about him at all."

"I know he killed my brother."

Silence engulfed Sano, more childhood memory gripping him in a stranglehold. His tongue betrayed itself, his hands coming up of their own accord to draw in the air his native language, all that his frozen mind could muster. Then he stopped, with one hand pointing at her, and the other pointing at himself. How little she understood. How very, very little.

There had been a time that what Kenshin knew that Tomoe didn't had endeared her to him.

And with that thought, Sano felt his heart break all over again.