CHIBI GLOSSARY-CHAN
Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building
Bozu : term of endearment for little boys
Andon lantern: box lantern with paper sides and a wooden frame
Tattsuke-hakama : hakama that are bound at the legs (Soujiro wore them in his final match with Kenshin)
Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood
Tabi: split-toe socks worn with zori
Meiji 3
a moment later
The rainclouds roiled overhead in the dark sky, shedding a heavy downpour and occasionally flashing with hidden lightning and prolonged rumbles of thunder. Hiko stood waiting in the center of the clearing, the rain sheeting off of his cloak, dripping from the ends of his hair. The hard-packed earth was quickly becoming sodden, turning into mud in which large puddles were rapidly forming.
Kenshin appeared on the engawa, his clothing as black as the clouds that hung threateningly overhead. He had donned his old leather bracers as well, the very same ones he had worn into a war that had taken up so many years of his life.
His expression was not nearly as dark though, anxiety hovering around the corners of his eyes.
Tomoe followed behind him, a similar expression on her pale face. She clutched an umbrella, which she quickly passed to Kenichi, who had done as he was told and stood on the engawa with watchful eyes.
Kenshin stepped off the engawa and into the rain.
"It's been over a year." Hiko's voice was deep and steady. "I have used that time well." He arched an eyebrow at Kenshin. "It's time to see if you've done so too."
A flicker of - was it apprehension? trepidation? - crossed Kenshin's face. "I don't know how to answer that." He cut across the clearing so that his back was no longer facing the engawa. "I don't even know if I can answer that."
"You will." Hiko's eyes narrowed into a swordsman's battle gaze, his spirit focused, seeing everything.
Unhurriedly, he drew his sword.
A split second later, he lunged forward, aiming a single sweeping blow at Kenshin's head. Kenshin leapt straight upward with a speed and agility that satisfied Hiko, and the slash passed harmlessly beneath his feet. In midair, Kenshin held his sakabatou in a two-handed grip above his head and plummeted downward with his old favorite, the Ryutsuisen, and Hiko leapt upward to counter with the Ryushousen. The two blades clashed with a high, ringing note.
The pair of them landed, silently and near-simultaneously, on their feet.
Hiko circled forward and to his left, his sword held loosely in one hand. Kenshin matched his movement, a wary look in his eyes and his sword in a two-handed guard position.
Hiko frowned. The first blows had been traded perfectly. Where was his idiot apprentice's resolve?
He struck a sweeping two-handed blow at the ground. His blade gouged a deep furrow in the earth and hurled a massive wave of mud in Kenshin's direction - mud filled with pebbles and debris from the sodden ground. Against anyone possessed of even the smallest amount of skill, the Doryuusen could not be used as an attack. It was only useful as a feint, and Hiko knew that Kenshin would react to it in only a limited number of ways.
Instead of leaping high to clear the wave, or taking a defensive posture to guard against it, Kenshin did the smartest thing he could have done: he sprang forward and plunged straight through it. The force of his own blow got him past the force of the wave, and he was in perfect position to parry the stroke Hiko aimed at him.
Their blades locked, and Hiko had a moment to look his apprentice in the eyes. Again, he was disappointed to see the lack of conviction in Kenshin's gaze.
Pushing forward, making use of his sheer size and weight, Hiko shoved Kenshin backward to break their clinch and immediately used his momentum to launch into the corkscrewing Ryukansen Tsumuji. There was no room for Kenshin to dodge, but he was able to block every single strike - even though the force of the repeated blows staggered him backward and rendered him incapable of following up with a counterstrike.
Hiko leapt forward again, this time with an overhand stroke. He expected Kenshin to dodge left - toward his back, where it would be more difficult to counterattack with a sword stroke - and he was not disappointed.
He leapt backward and smashed Kenshin across the chest with his massively muscled shoulder. The counterattack Kenshin had intended would not work at such close range, and Hiko pressed his advantage with a hard boot to Kenshin's stomach.
He hissed and staggered back a few steps, but that wasn't nearly enough to knock him off his feet.
"I'm impressed." Hiko cocked a sardonic eyebrow. "You managed to keep your face out of the mud."
Kenshin glowered at him. "Did you expect that I wouldn't?"
"You generally don't." Hiko drove forward with a flurry of slashes, forcing Kenshin to leap nimbly backwards. "And I couldn't help but notice you've gotten much sloppier than you used to be."
"The Akabeko," Kenshin said through gritted teeth. "You didn't like what happened in front of the Akabeko."
He aimed a fast upward slash at Hiko's blade, aiming to knock it either out of the way or out of Hiko's grasp. Hiko, however, twisted his sword around and redirected Kenshin's blade away to the side.
"You didn't say anything though," Kenshin continued. "So it couldn't have been completely beneath your standards."
"I said several things," Hiko growled. "Just not to you."
"Somehow I doubt my impromptu performance was beneath my father-in-law's standards."
Kenshin darted sideways, circling around to Hiko's right and trying for a fast downward strike, but Hiko brought up his own blade in one hand to block the blow.
With the other hand, he jammed the end of his wooden sheath into the pit of Kenshin's stomach, wrenching a gasp out of him and forcing him to leap backward and out of the way to catch his breath.
"His standards aren't the ones you should be concerned with," Hiko said flatly. "Mine are."
"It's been years…" Kenshin heaved out the words, then seemed to change tack and shook his head. "I was involved in the war for years-"
"And you've been back for nearly two." Hiko's brows knit in a glower, and he drove forward with the unrelenting Ryusousen Garami - a flurry of blows aimed at Kenshin from all directions. "You keep looking for excuses instead of taking the opportunity to improve yourself, and I'm tired of it."
"I've been trying," Kenshin said breathlessly. "You just - you don't like-" He was driven back a step, then another, until he could do nothing but maintain defense. "What is it that you're looking for?"
The endless rain of blows staggered Kenshin, and when the inevitable opening came, Hiko struck instantly. His single, perfectly timed blow was no less effective for having used the flat of the blade.
"If I told you," he said darkly as his idiot apprentice crumpled to the muddy ground, "it wouldn't matter."
"Jiji, no!" Kenichi was off the engawa and into the rain in a flash, and as Hiko turned to his grandson, the boy swung the umbrella back and struck him in the knee. "Don't hit Touchan!"
Hiko looked down at his grandson with an expression somewhere in between a laugh and a scowl. On the one hand, he understood the little boy's fear at seeing his father bested in a fight - and by his grandfather, no less. But on the other, his idiot apprentice needed to learn.
"Kenichi." Kenshin hauled himself to his knees, bracing his sword against the ground. He looked at his son through a curtain of mud-spattered hair. "Touchan is fine."
"No!" Kenichi stamped his foot, then glowered up at Hiko with angry eyes that looked so much like his father's, Hiko felt his heart clench.
He sheathed his sword.
The boy gripped the umbrella with two hands, prepared to strike again if necessary. "Don't hit Touchan!"
Tomoe seemed frozen in place on the engawa, eyes wide, as if uncertain whether or not she should intervene.
Kenshin climbed to his feet, flicked the mud from his blade, and sheathed his sword. "Kenichi." He held out his hands, and Kenichi ran to him, tucking his face into Kenshin's hakama, heedless of the mud and the rain. "Touchan is fine."
…
...
Kenshin was soaking wet, covered in mud, and frustrated in a way he couldn't fully explain - not to himself, and not to his wife, whose brow had wrinkled in clear concern - but the most important thing in that moment was his son.
His son, who had buried his face in Kenshin's mud-spattered hakama.
"Kenichi," he repeated, keeping his voice and breathing carefully steady. "Come with me."
He led the boy to the engawa - exchanging a look with his shishou that he couldn't really parse right then - and sat down cross-legged, sword at his side. Kenichi immediately clambered onto his lap.
Tomoe knelt down wordlessly next to them.
Hiko followed a few steps behind, sat down on the engawa on the other side of them, and pushed wet hair from his face. "I think we need to explain a few things to you, bozu."
"I didn't like that." Kenichi gripped the front of Kenshin's filthy kimono with tiny hands. "I didn't like that, Touchan."
"I didn't like it much either," Kenshin muttered, and pointedly ignored the dark look his shishou aimed his way. He stroked his son's damp hair. "But you've seen your uncle train, haven't you? You've even been to the Kamiya Dojo a few times."
Kenichi shook his head. "It's different with Nishi-jichan. Different with Kaoru-chan."
Hiko snorted. "Neither of them would be able to stand up under that kind of training for five seconds."
Tomoe looked at him.
"Well, it's true." He shrugged, scoffing. "I held back so much when I was training your brother that I'm surprised he progressed as far as he did."
Tomoe sighed. "Well, don't tell him that."
"It's just kenjutsu." Kenshin continued to run his fingers through Kenichi's hair. "Just a different level of kenjutsu."
An uncomfortable feeling roiled in his stomach. Not from the two hits he had taken earlier - in the broader scheme of his overall training, that had been nothing - but he pushed past it to focus on the conversation.
His son needed to understand… what, exactly?
"I've been practicing kenjutsu for a long time," he murmured. "Or, at least it feels like a long time now."
If one could call his years involved in the war 'practicing', but he quickly swatted that thought aside. It wasn't helpful to anyone right then.
"I'm in a different place than Enishi-ojichan or Kaoru-chan. That's all."
"And he needs to be in a different place than that, even." Hiko ran a hand over his dripping face. "It's my job to help him with that." He offered Kenshin a look that he didn't want to try to interpret right then. "It always has been."
Kenichi lifted his head from Kenshin's chest and peered at Hiko. "What kind of different place?"
Hiko gave Kenichi a tight smile. "The kind where he's good enough to defeat me."
Kenichi's eyes widened at that, and Kenshin suppressed a sigh. "Why, Jiji? Why does Touchan need to do that?"
"Because if he can defeat me, he can defeat anyone." Hiko's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as he shifted his gaze to Kenshin. "Including himself."
If Kenshin wasn't prepared to even attempt to unpack all of the significant looks and statements his shishou had thrown at him just that morning, he certainly wasn't going to touch that one right then.
Abruptly he stood up, Kenichi wrapped tightly around him. "Well, we're done for the morning. Come, let's get cleaned up."
…
Thankfully, they seemed to be done for the day.
The rain didn't let up, and they spent the rest of the day alternating between entertaining Kenichi and playing shogi with each other. Tomoe was still by far the best player in the house, but Kenshin could at least say that he had honestly improved after playing against her - and her extremely formidable father - for years.
He still hadn't won a match against either of them, but he had gotten better, and he and Hiko were at least on par with each other in that respect.
Kenichi fell asleep shortly after dinner, and Kenshin lit the fire for the bath. The rain brought with it a pervasive, damp chill, and a good, long soak in a hot bath was the perfect remedy, Hiko announced on his way to the bathhouse.
Kenshin sat on the engawa in his sleeping yukata, hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea, Tomoe leaned comfortably against him. He could have easily stayed like that for hours.
"I hope your training works," Tomoe said suddenly, without prompting. "I hope you'll become as strong as Hiko-san says you'll be."
Kenshin sighed and set the cup down. "You're concerned." It wasn't a question.
"I know you." She shifted against him, burrowing closer as she liked to do. "I know your dreams wake you at night, I know your heart is heavy from the war, and I know how hard it is for you to find peace inside yourself."
He slid an arm around her waist and pressed a kiss to her temple. "I'm at peace here with you."
She made a small noise of contentment and nestled her head into him, and for a moment, Kenshin thought it unfortunate that his shishou had returned home already. He and Tomoe had enjoyed having the house to themselves.
Especially at night.
The door to the bathhouse slid open, and Hiko emerged, clad in his sleeping yukata, hair damp and loose about his shoulders. He held open an umbrella to stave off the endless drumbeat of rain, which he folded and passed to Tomoe once he reached the engawa.
Kenshin didn't like the look on his face at all. It bore all the signs of someone who thought he knew far too much and was about to let everyone know it.
Tomoe did not stick around to find out what he knew, disappearing into the bathhouse a moment later.
"Tomorrow is another day," Hiko said, with the kind of penetrating expression that immediately set Kenshin on edge. "More time for improvement and reflection."
"All right," Kenshin said in what he thought was a very neutral tone. He picked up his teacup and took a sip. "I'll reflect."
Hiko stood for a long moment looking at him with that disquieting gaze before snorting quietly. "Your son is exactly like you."
Kenshin blinked. He had not expected that at all, but felt a warm rush of pride all the same.
"Rushing to protect the people he loves," Hiko continued, something between amusement and - was it wistfulness? - in his eyes. "Without regard for himself or what he may be getting himself into." Again that single snort. "And he hits surprisingly hard for a little boy with an umbrella. I may have to begin his training earlier than I expected."
The warm rush of pride was abruptly cut short.
"He's almost five," Kenshin said slowly, though just saying the words aloud had the power to startle him. Somehow, he and Tomoe had a nearly five-year-old child.
Hiko waved that protest off with a dismissive gesture. "If you'd been five years old when I'd found you, I would have begun your training then." He continued in a voice which suggested he was talking to himself and that anyone who happened to overhear him was better off for having done so. "It's never too early to begin. And it's never too late to resume."
Kenshin looked at him for a long moment and took another sip of tea.
Best not to pursue the point. It wasn't as if Kenichi would begin any sort of training tomorrow. After all, Tomoe hadn't even made him his first hakama yet. (Though, now that he had seen nearly five summers, it was just about time.)
"And speaking of which," Hiko continued with a definite hint of displeasure in his voice. "It wasn't a moment too late to recommence your own training. What was the matter with you this morning?"
"Nothing," Kenshin said flatly.
He really didn't want to argue, and yet he could sense an unavoidable argument on the horizon all the same. The thought of it made him scowl into his cup, and a large swig of tea did nothing to chase away the feeling.
"Oh?" Hiko raised a challenging eyebrow, and Kenshin bit back a frustrated sigh. "You can find the conviction to fight with bandits in the village and with troublemakers in Yoshiwara, but not to train with me like you mean it? And you expect me to believe that nothing's wrong?"
There had to be a safe way to approach the topic, though Kenshin couldn't yet see where it might be. He thought of several replies, discarded them all as far too inflammatory, and ended up leaning his head back against the wall and staring out at the rain.
Finally he said, "I don't know how to answer you."
If his shishou's expression was anything to judge by, that was either entirely the wrong thing to say or else the only correct answer.
Damn it.
"Not yet, maybe." Hiko peered at him critically. "But soon."
"I told you." Kenshin said the words very quietly. "I don't think I'm ready."
"And I told you," his shishou replied infuriatingly, "I think you are."
For the briefest of moments, Kenshin considered pointing out that since it was his training they were discussing, it really ought to be up to him to decide if he were ready or not. However, despite his shishou's frequent assertions, he was not an idiot, and that kind of retort would seen him thrown into the mud so fast, he wouldn't even have time to grab his sword.
He settled for a glower that mostly reduced him to feeling like a petulant twelve-year-old all over again.
…
…
The following morning, Hiko found himself filled with the sort of energy he couldn't remember having had in years. He had something purposeful to do, and he was eager to do it. He rose, dressed, and picked up his sword before the sun had begun to lighten the sky in the east, and toed Kenshin in the ribs until he groaned.
"Wake up," he growled. "It's time to get started."
Kenshin scrunched deeper into his futon, much the same as he had done as a child. "It's still dark out," he muttered. "And it's still raining."
"Those excuses didn't work when you were ten," Hiko snorted, giving his idiot apprentice another dig in the side with his toe. "What makes you think I want to hear them now?"
"Light the lantern, please," Tomoe murmured sleepily, and that simple request was what got Kenshin out of his futon.
Kenichi sat up in his own futon (at some point while Hiko had been away, the boy had started sleeping in Enishi's old futon), instantly alert and peering at Hiko with wide eyes through the soft light of the andon lantern.
"Is Touchan going to defeat you today, Jiji?"
Hiko chuckled. "No, bozu. He's going to need a great deal more training before he can accomplish that miracle." He knelt down beside his grandson. "Are you going to watch your father train today?" He snorted. "If so, I'll have to be careful of your umbrella."
Kenichi frowned thoughtfully. "Are you going to hit Touchan today?"
"Probably." Kenshin appeared beside the both of them, dressed in another dark outfit that matched his petulant expression.
"Definitely." Hiko reached for his cloak and his boots, and Kenshin (and Kenichi) followed him out the door a moment later.
The rain was not as bad as it had been the previous day, but it still fell steadily. The ground was muddy, visibility was poor, and their hair hung dripping in their faces after only a few minutes.
They traded blows for a bit longer than they had during the previous session, but Hiko still scored the first hit after only a short time. He'd used the somersaulting Ryukansen Arashi, but while Kenshin had parried his overhand sword strike, he'd failed to see the second blow Hiko had aimed at him with the sheath.
"You'd have been better off dodging it," he said with a deep frown as Kenshin struggled back to his feet. "Where's your head?"
"Still on my shoulders," Kenshin snapped. "So I guess I'm doing all right."
"Don't tempt me," Hiko growled, holding both the sword and sheath ready in his hands.
The next time he scored a hit on his idiot apprentice, it was worse. Kenshin had dodged to the side and tried a backhanded blow at close range. Hiko had stepped in close, too close for either sword to be of any use, and simply smashed his forehead against the crown of his apprentice's skull, dropping him dazed to his knees.
"Control your range, or your adversary will do it for you." Hiko folded his arms and waited for Kenshin to shake the cobwebs loose from his head. "And have something planned for close-quarters combat, or worse will happen to you next time."
"I know this." Kenshin pressed a muddy hand against his head and didn't get up. "I know all of this." He spoke through gritted teeth. "This is nothing new to me."
"Then there's no reason for you to have gotten this sloppy." Hiko brought the dull edge of his sword up under Kenshin's chin and tipped his idiot apprentice's head up to look into his eyes. "Are you just too used to fighting men who don't know enough to be able to fight back effectively? Or are you fighting yourself harder than you're fighting me?"
"I'm not- what are you even-" Kenshin wrenched himself away from the reach of Hiko's blade and sprang to his feet.
"Defeat Jiji today, Touchan!" Kenichi called encouragingly from the engawa.
"Your son has spirit." Hiko smirked at his idiot apprentice, then frowned. "More than you do. What happened to your will?"
Kenshin glowered at him. "I willingly gave years of my life to a war and a cause that I believed in. What more can I give?"
"It's not about what you can give." Hiko shook his head and scoffed. "It's about what you believe, what you have, and what you want."
"I told you what I want." Kenshin shook the damp hair out of his eyes and readied himself for another exchange of blows. "You don't seem to believe me."
"Oh, I believe you," Hiko spat. He felt his patience beginning to fray. "It's just that you want the wrong things."
"Oh?" Such a simple word, but there was real anger marring the edges of it.
"You want to hide from what you did in the war instead of coming to terms with it." Hiko brought his blade up in a single-handed position, ready to strike or parry in the blink of an eye, and circled around to Kenshin's left.
"To flee from your apprenticeship rather than complete it." He darted forward with a lightning-quick stab.
Kenshin dodged it, but Hiko pulled in his own blade and pivoted a fast quarter-turn to strike at Kenshin with the whiplike Ryukansen Kogarashi. Kenshin was forced to leap backwards - too far back to counter with a blow of his own.
"To let yourself deteriorate -" Hiko pressed his advantage and stepped forward with a kick. "- because you're afraid -"
In blocking it, Kenshin backpedaled further, his sword held in a defensive posture.
"- of your own strength!" Hiko leapt high to bring the flat of his blade smashing down on his apprentice's shoulder, sending him crashing to the muddy ground face first - defeating him with his own favorite move, the Ryutsuisen.
He straightened and raised an eyebrow. "Does that sound familiar?"
Kenshin didn't reply to that. He rolled onto his side, breathing heavily, free hand pressed against his shoulder.
"I told you," he said after a moment. "I told you I wasn't ready. That I needed more time."
"Ready to defeat me?" Hiko sighed and shook his head, letting his sword hang loosely from his fingers. "Of course you're not. But ready to learn? Ready to continue, to pick up where you left off, to actually complete the apprenticeship you've been following since you were a child?" He nodded once, slowly. "You're ready for that."
He looked down at Kenshin and, for the first time in his life, felt tempted to reach out a hand to help his idiot apprentice to his feet. But before it came to that, he would reach out with his words.
"The time you need is time to train." He gazed intensely at his fallen apprentice, willing him to get his feet underneath him and stand up to face his destiny. "And I will give you that time, along with every bit of my expertise."
Slowly, Kenshin dragged himself back onto his feet, his gaze flicking over to the engawa, where Kenichi stood watching them with perfect attention. He sheathed his sword with the same practical efficiency he had long since perfected, but with none of the determination or grit he had shown since he was a child.
"What if I don't want it anymore?" He said the words very quietly. "What if I've already learned enough?"
Hiko's eyes narrowed. His teeth clenched, and his stomach did the same. Of course he ought to have expected that it wouldn't be nearly so simple. His idiot apprentice had always been his own worst enemy, and that was the case now more than it had ever been.
"That's precisely the problem," he growled. "As I said. You want the wrong things. And the things you don't want are the things you need more than you can possibly know."
Again, Kenshin's gaze flickered to Kenichi. "I don't think I want the wrong things at all."
He beckoned - just the slightest twitch of his fingers - and Kenichi hopped off the engawa, heedless of the rain, and splashed through the mud puddles until he was clinging to Kenshin's hakama and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.
"Touchan, you didn't defeat Jiji at all." He beamed up at him with the sort of childish happiness only afforded to the very young. "You didn't even hit him, not even one time."
"He's become too used to fighting bandits and drunken ruffians," Hiko snorted as he sheathed his sword. "People who aren't capable of fighting someone on his level."
Kenshin threw him a very dirty look at that, which Hiko chose to magnanimously ignore.
He chuckled at his grandson. "He's got quite a ways to go before he'll be able to land a hit on me again."
Kenichi tugged on his father's hakama. "Touchan, did you ever?"
"I don't…" Kenshin rubbed at his forehead, which only served to spread the mud across his face. "I don't know. It's been a long time since we've trained together."
Five years, Hiko realized with a horrible jolt.
Over three years at war, and nearly two years since the end of it. How had he ever allowed his responsibilities to lapse so badly? How had he managed to let Kenshin grow so far apart from him that the mainstay of their relationship had gone untouched for half a decade?
"It won't ever be that long again," he said with conviction.
…
…
Kenshin upended another bucket of water over his head. Muddy rivulets ran from his hair and down his body to drip through the slats of the bathhouse floor, and for a strange moment, the color seemed wrong.
Off, somehow.
He expected it to be red. Nearly two years away from the war, and he still expected to wash the blood from his hair, from his skin, from the stains he couldn't get out of his clothing, which was why he had continued to favor dark colors throughout his time with the Ishin Shishi.
Why he continued to favor those colors now, even though he would never take another life, would never spill another man's blood, would never-
He would never-
Breathe.
He dipped the bucket back into the basin, dumped it over his head, and tried to scrub the dirt and mud out. He was caked in the stuff. It had gotten into his scalp, under his fingernails, and when Tomoe had taken his muddy clothing away for washing, she had remarked that if the rain didn't stop soon, he would be out of clothing to train in.
Wash.
Somewhere in the sundries shed, he likely had a few old training gi and tattsuke-hakama, and he doubted he had grown so tall as to not fit into them anymore. He could dig them out, dust them off, try not to feel like a petulant child - instead of a husband, a father, a veteran of a war that had taken so many years of his life, a hitokiri - once he tied the last knot in his hakama and went to face down his shishou again.
His hands shook.
He set down the bucket and leaned his head against the basin, eyes closed and breathing unsteady. Tentative fingers curled into his hair, and he tried to scrub the mud out, and it wasn't the same at all as washing blood away. It felt nothing like that. It smelled nothing like that.
Hitokiri.
Nearly two years away from the war, and he could never, ever live that down.
…
The rain didn't stop.
Hiko was the one who dug out Kenshin's old training gi and tattsuke-hakama, throwing them at Kenshin's head one morning and telling him to get out of his futon before the sun had even seen fit to color the sky.
"If you'd spend less time lost in your own head and more time focusing on the opponent in front of you, you might also spend less time on your face in the mud," Hiko groused at him after knocking him down yet again. "This is becoming monotonous."
Kenshin pushed himself back onto his feet. "You're free to pick your shibori back up any time you like."
"But Jiji's shibori isn't very good." Kenichi sat on one of the stumps in the clearing, umbrella open in one hand, kicking his feet back and forth. His son had taken to watching them train every day.
"Jiji's shibori is his hobby," Hiko growled. "Training your father is his job."
The rain didn't stop.
"I wonder sometimes whether you actually hear the things I tell you," Hiko grumbled as Kenshin lay on the ground yet again. "You're not going to win through stubbornness alone. Not against me, and not against yourself either."
Kenshin lay flat on his back, eyes closed against the steady drumbeat of rain that fell unrelentingly from the sky.
"Stop saying that." He couldn't seem to steady his breath.
"Saying what?" Hiko tapped his blade against his own shoulder with an air of supreme impatience. "That you're an idiot who doesn't listen? Or that your greatest enemy lives inside your own thick skull?"
The rain didn't stop.
Kenshin feigned a Ryutsuisen, but sheathed his sword in midair to perform a lightning-fast battoujutsu strike as he descended. His shishou blocked it at the last instant, though, and forced him backwards with his superior size and weight until Kenshin felt the rough bark of a tree against his back.
"Your weakness isn't your technique," Hiko said in a voice that betrayed no exertion. "I would've thought you'd have realized that by now."
"You said I had gotten sloppy."
Kenshin ground the words out and dropped to his knees, angling his sword backward so that Hiko's blade slid off it and against the tree trunk. The razor-sharp edge of the sakabatou came uncomfortably close to slicing into Kenshin's own shoulder, but then the pressure was off and he was scrambling to the side.
"You have." Hiko dug the toe of his boot into the mud and kicked a spray of it into Kenshin's face. Kenshin instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, and in that instant, Hiko struck.
"But the sloppiness is in your thinking." Kenshin doubled over as his shishou buried the heel of his other boot in his stomach. "You're so focused on the past that you see the present only through its filter."
"That's not-" Kenshin sucked in his breath. "That's not true."
The rain didn't stop.
Hiko leapt high into the air. Kenshin sprang up after him, intent on meeting him in midair with a Ryushousen. His shishou, though, landed with both boots on the underside of a tree branch and used it as a springboard to leap a second time in midair, propelling himself towards the ground with unearthly velocity.
When he came barreling down with the somersaulting Ryukansen Arashi, the force of the impact of his blade against Kenshin's was powerful enough to knock Kenshin down to the ground and buckle his knees.
"You're holding yourself back," Hiko admonished. "There's no earthly reason you shouldn't be able to do the same thing. The only reason you don't is because you will yourself not to."
"I'm not -" Kenshin braced his sword against the ground to keep his feet under him. He could do that much. "Why do you keep saying that?"
"Why do you keep saying that, Jiji?" Kenichi echoed, from where he stood with his umbrella.
"Because your father hasn't done anything about it yet, bozu." The rain sluiced off of Hiko's cloak, dripped off the ends of his hair, ran rivulets down the edge of his blade.
Clear. Clean.
Not red.
The rain didn't stop.
"At this point, I'm beginning to believe you're actually trying not to improve." Irritation positively saturated Hiko's voice as Kenshin reeled from blocking a savagely powerful slash.
Kenshin gave way under a barrage of increasingly mighty blows. And with every backward step he was forced to take, Hiko's interfering words thundered in his ears.
"Which means you're forcing me to force the issue."
His sword was swatted aside, and then before he could block, bring his sword back up, do anything, he was knocked backward off his feet, his shishou's blade pointed down toward his face.
On the streets of Kyoto, he would have been a dead man.
"How do you expect to protect others if you stagnate?"
On the streets of Kyoto, no one would have gotten that close to him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, willed himself to steady his breathing. His heart slammed maddeningly in his ears, but that question seemed to reverberate louder in his mind.
"I have been…" he panted. "I've managed to… for nearly two years…"
"Yes, I've seen." Hiko's eyes narrowed, and the tip of his blade came up underneath Kenshin's chin. He could feel the cold steel caress his skin, feel the rivulets of water run down the blade and trickle down his neck into his collar.
"It should have taken you half the time to dispatch those men outside the Akabeko," his shishou said in a low voice. "Less. Even using a fraction of your full strength, you could have had them all on the ground in less time than it would take to slip on a pair of zori."
The sword lifted fractionally, its dull edge pressing against the pulse in Kenshin's throat. "So why didn't you?"
Kenshin breathed in shakily, but otherwise didn't move. Muddy water soaked into his tabi, into the hem of his training gi, certainly into the strands of hair spread out beneath him.
"No one was seriously injured," he said quietly. "That's what is most important. That's all I want."
The words felt heavy on his tongue.
His shishou stared down at him, his eyes set in that unblinking stare which seemed to pierce him to the core of his being.
"No," Hiko said slowly. "That isn't all you want."
The blade trailed slowly down Kenshin's throat, the point touching his skin without cutting it, until it rested over his heart.
"What you want is to hide from what you did in the war."
Kenshin inhaled sharply, his heart continuing to pound loudly against his chest and in his ears, but not loudly enough to block out his shishou's words.
"To hide away your strength, so that your vow will be safe. To hide away the mindset you shielded yourself with, so that you will never have to see the world as a hitokiri again."
The blade rested against Kenshin's chest, its razor edge separated from his flesh only by the fabric of his training gi. Every breath he took caused him to feel the weight of it, to imagine its icy sharpness as his chest rose involuntarily to meet it.
Hiko stared unblinkingly down at him, water droplets beading up and dripping from the ends of his hair, his face stern.
"And to hide away the memories of what it feels like to kill, so that you never have to fear tainting your new world."
Kenshin's eyes widened. His breath hitched and the blood roared deafeningly in his ears, but it was mud he was laying in in, it was all mud, it was mud, it was-
"I…" His throat felt very dry suddenly. He licked his lips, swallowed, but it didn't help. "I never said that."
He could barely hear the words over the blood screaming in his ears.
Hiko scowled down at him. "Whether or not you give voice to something has no bearing whatsoever on its truth."
The blade withdrew a hair, then Hiko slowly returned it to its sheath.
"You need to acknowledge the questions before you can find the answer." And then, turning on his heel, he strode away through the rain and mud, back toward the house.
NOTE THE FIRST
I kinda wanted to title this "HOLY FUCK, IT'S CHAPTER 40, BITCHES!" But because I'm a classy mothafucka, I didn't. But just know that the SPIRIT of the idea is there. Also know that the spirit of my working through my entire inbox is also there, and that it's a work in progress. Just like this story.
NOTE THE SECOND
OMG KENSHIN'S GOTTEN SLOPPY, YOU SAY? Yeah, but like... sloppy according to uber-perfectionist-there's-no-such-thing-as-good-enough Hiko Seijuro, not sloppy according to literally any other swordsman in all of feudal fucking Japan. Kamiya Koshijirou even called Hiko out on that during the Akabeko fight scene, but like... lol... Kamiya ain't Kenshin's shishou, so Kenshin's just going to have to deal with that level of UNRELENTING PERFECTIONISM.
NOTE THE THIRD
I have no cultural notes today. These are probably the shortest notes I've written in a while, so I'll take this time to name drop my newest costume drama obsession, Hulu's The Great. It's a wig and frock series, but it's also really fucking funny and clever and well-acted, and since I know pretty much fuck-all about Russian history, I'm not at all bothered by the (numerous) inaccuracies. Yay, something I can just ENJOY!
I'll also be watching Netflix's live action Cowboy Bebop this week, and I'm prepared to love it, so it'd better not disappoint me.
ANYWAY, that's all I got. Hit me with your best commentary, because you know I drink that stuff up like a really cold Diet Pepsi on a really hot day.