"Do you ever wish that we had left you in Shanghai?"
Kaoru stops rereading the latest letter from Enishi and turns toward Kenshin. He's standing a few paces away, up on the highest point of the arched bridge; his hair is backlit by the sunrise. What Kenshin is really asking her is, Do you ever wish that we left you in Shanghai - with him?
"No." It's the truth, even though it hurts. "My happiness there wasn't real. Once I began remembering things -" She breaks off and looks past Kenshin's shoulder, down at the boats on the river.
Kenshin nods and walks toward her, then reaches for her hand. "It will never be simple," he says quietly. "But I'm so glad you're back."
She looks down at the messy, familiar brush strokes on the paper. Come home to me, it says, along with the name of some Kyoto business that is almost certainly a front for his illegal triad activities.
She squeezes Kenshin's fingers and gazes into his calm, sad eyes. "I'm moving forward. With you." Then she releases the letter and watches it float down into the dark water.
The ship's brig is just as dark and dank as Kaoru expected. Sano begged her not to go; Yahiko threatened to lock her in her cabin if she tried; it was only through Kenshin's intervention with the rest of her friends that Kaoru now stands on the narrow, swaying staircase.
Kaoru hangs the lantern on a hook made for that purpose. Through the bars, she sees Enishi's mop of greasy silver hair. His head lifts, and he jerks forward before he reaches the short limit of his restraints.
"I'm not sorry for what I did to him," Enishi rasps, his eyes as defiant as ever. The chains at his arms and legs scrape against the metal floor as he shifts his weight. "I don't regret a single thing. If they throw me in some Tokyo prison, I'll just escape and find you again."
"I won't go with you," Kaoru spits, rejoicing at the clear pain that sweeps across Enishi's face at her words. "And if you try to kidnap me again, I'll run away. Again." But even as she glares down at him, despising him, she feels the traitorous urge to steal the keys and release him. He'd embrace her, press his lips to hers, take her home to Shanghai -
Tokyo is home. Your real friends rebuilt the dojo that Enishi destroyed, and they traveled all the way to the continent to bring you back -
- Kaoru could forget everything again, and just be with Enishi like before, and - and -
Kaoru falls to her knees. "You ruined everything," she says miserably.
"Come out, Enishi." Kaoru's furious shout echoes through the compound's ornate great hall. Yahiko and Sano flank her with matching grimaces on their bruised, bloody faces. Kenshin follows her, as much for moral support as for personal protection. "I remember everything now," she says, her voice catching on the last word.
About ten meters ahead, Enishi steps out of the shadows, his eyes dead, his white clothes stark against the hall's rich red wallpaper and carpet. His massive watou rests on his muscular shoulder. "If you remember, why did you come back?"
"Don't talk to her, you lying sack of shit," Sano curses, and he makes a fist, but Kaoru grabs him by the arm and pulls him back.
"I almost didn't return," Kaoru answers. "But I knew that you'd come after us. This will never be over until you face Kenshin, and we all know it."
"My jinchuu against that fool succeeded long ago," Enishi replies with a sick smile. He's looking past her, straight at Kenshin. "I have no need to fight him any longer. Not if you choose me over him."
"That's not happening." Kaoru swallows the lump in her throat.
"We're in love -"
"I don't love you!" Her lie comes out in Mandarin.
Enishi grins triumphantly. His voice dips low as he says, also in Mandarin, "Break free from whatever spell he's got you under. It's only a matter of time before he tries to kill you again, just like Tomoe -"
"He never tried to kill Tomoe, and he never tried to kill me, either."
"I protected you -"
"He was trying to protect me! From you!" Kaoru wipes the tears from her cheeks with the back of her silk sleeve. As she opens her mouth to yell more invectives at Enishi, Kenshin places his warm hand on her shoulder.
"Please, Kaoru," Kenshin says, so quietly so that only she can hear. "You've suffered so much. Let me take care of you, now."
"Would you like shrimp again tonight, Miss Kamiya?" Enishi's cook Chenguang asks with her thick country accent, talking loudly over the squawking chickens in cages on the side of the walkway.
"No thank you," Kaoru replies, stepping around a kid selling cigarettes. "I loved it, but Enishi complained about the little pieces getting stuck in his teeth. What about pork?"
"Good choice. I'll get some quail eggs from Zhang Wei, too," Chenguang says, pointing to the market stall across the narrow walkway.
Kaoru glances in the direction that the cook is pointing. Her heart thuds in her chest.
Yahiko. The name leaps to Kaoru's tongue as easily as if she has been saying it aloud every day for the past two years, as if she hadn't forgotten him altogether until this very moment. He's older and stronger than in the memories that come crashing over her; he wears a Chinese jacket and pants, and there's a real sword sheathed at his side, but it's unmistakably her - adopted - orphan - brother -
He meets her eyes and jerks his chin slightly. Don't reveal me yet.
Kaoru freezes, then blinks. She tilts her head in the direction of the secret bodyguard in the crowd who follows her everywhere she goes, who Enishi thinks she doesn't know about.
Yahiko pulls on his ear, a signal she taught him once - in Tokyo - and -
The battle at the dojo. It was Enishi who attacked that night, not the man with the violet eyes and a scar-crossed cheek. Not -
"Kenshin!" Yahiko shouts, pointing at the bodyguard. "Now!"
"Don't think about that man," Enishi begs Kaoru as he stares up at her, his jaw clenched, his eyes shining in the moonlight that streams through the window. He sinks his fingers into the flesh of her hips and starts thrusting harder. "Think about me."
Kaoru doesn't bother to deny the way she has been distracted by these shards of memory in recent months, especially those of the mysterious cross-scarred man, just as Enishi has long since stopped pretending that he's been concealing what he knows about her forgotten past. "I still love you," she says instead, grinding down onto him, and hopefully he knows it to be true.
"I've always loved you," he growls in Mandarin, and then he comes.
The training hall is across the courtyard from the quarters that Kaoru shares with Enishi, and most mornings she hears him grunting and slamming stuff around while she's still fumbling with the tiny knotted loops on the silk jackets and narrow-legged pants that the servants brought her to wear when she first arrived in the city. Today, the grunting and slamming is the same as usual, but the clothes just seem too fussy to deal with. Or, perhaps she remains troubled by the disjointed memories that are finally coming back to her, the ones about which she suspects Enishi knows more than he wants to admit. She reaches deep into the wardrobe and pulls out the soft, plain kimono she wore during the boat trip from the island to the port of Shanghai, over a year ago.
She walks past the straw-and-sackcloth figures set up in the yard and through the open doors.
"I haven't seen you here in a while," Enishi says with a smile, shifting out of an attack stance and waving off his sparring partners.
"I woke up early," she shrugs, glancing at the way his thin sleeveless shirt clings to his torso. "Thought I'd watch you."
He appears pleased as he pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. Then he gestures to his men, who come at him simultaneously.
Kaoru flattens herself against the wall, beside the floor-to-ceiling rack of wooden practice swords.
At first, it's exciting. Enishi is so strong and fast, and his reach is ridiculously long; it seems as though no one can match him. And his stamina is such that his partners must keep tagging out from exhaustion.
During a lull when the men are adjusting the straps on their padded armor and Enishi is gulping water from a jug in the corner, Kaoru glances back at the wooden practice swords. Most of the weapons are as long as she is tall, but a few shorter ones are down toward the bottom. Impulsively, she reaches down and grasps the hilt of the shortest.
It's the most natural feeling in the world.
She looks over to Enishi, who is squinting as he fiddles with the hinges of his spectacles.
There's no reason to ask for permission, she reminds herself. She carries the wooden sword out to the yard and stands before one of the straw figures.
Kaoru has no recollection to aid her, but her body seems to know what to do. She takes a single swing at the figure and sends it flying at least twenty meters, where it slams into a stone post and falls apart.
Her mouth hangs open in shocked joy. She turns her head toward the training hall, ready to call Enishi over and show him the unexpected feat, but he's already standing in the doorway. "Most of my men can't do that," he says quietly. "What made you decide to try?"
She looks down at the sword, then back at Enishi. "It wasn't because of some returned memory, if that's what you're thinking. I just suddenly felt like doing it." She adjusts the grip of the weapon in her hands. "I guess I was good at this, before."
"Clearly." Enishi smiles, but it's obvious from the way his eyebrow twitches that he's troubled about something.
Maybe he doesn't want me to remember. Kaoru quashes the traitorous thought, the one that's been cropping up more and more often. She walks over to another straw man and swings the sword again. The figure flies forward into another stone post, which breaks into three pieces on contact. "Apparently I'm still good at it."
Enishi clears his throat, and she glances back at him. He's not smiling anymore.
The gold thread in the tiger pattern brocade is scratchy against Kaoru's bare back as Enishi presses her down onto the bedspread. "I love you," he murmurs in Mandarin. He never says it in Japanese.
"I love you too," Kaoru sighs, also in Mandarin. It's the first phrase Enishi taught her after they arrived in Shanghai a few months earlier. "Take off those clothes. You smell like gunpowder," she adds, switching back to the language of the home she can't remember.
He grins as he sloughs the jacket from his shoulders, then yanks his undershirt over his head. "I want to taste you. Part your legs."
She does, gratefully.
Within minutes Kaoru is writhing, panting, whispering Enishi's name. She swears she can feel him smirking against her thigh as she gets close. And then -
Violet eyes and a scar-crossed cheek. Smoke and blood amidst shattered buildings.
Kaoru gasps, which Enishi misinterprets at first, but then she squirms away from him and draws her knees up to her chest.
He scrambles across the bed and pulls her into his lap. "What is it?" he asks after her panicked breathing finally subsides.
"That man." Kaoru nuzzles Enishi's neck. He still smells a little like the sulfur from the armory, but also the palm oil soap from Borneo, and - well, her. Familiar and comforting. "That place."
"You're safe here with me," Enishi assures her, tightening his embrace. "He'll never hurt you again. And I'll never take you back there."
She tilts her chin up and kisses him quickly. "I know." She swallows and looks into his eyes. "I know you and the doctors are doing everything you can to help me remember who he was and why he tried to kill me. But it's frustrating to recall little snippets and not understand how they fit together."
Enishi's expression hardens, and his whole body tenses. His voice comes out ragged as he says, "I hate how that man still haunts you."
"Stop it," Kaoru growls. Sometimes Enishi takes the strangest things personally. "I'm not saying that you've failed me somehow. I'd be dead if you hadn't saved me."
He blinks away the anger, but he doesn't release her. "I just want you to find contentment with me, the way I have with you," he says, back in Mandarin again.
"I am content," she replies, but she trips over the words. "You take care of me. But I'm not going to lie about why this is so difficult for me."
"I don't want you to lie." Enishi kisses the top of her head and exhales into her scalp. He holds her in silence, and eventually she finds herself relaxing in his embrace. After what feels like a long time, he finally asks, "Do you want to go to sleep?"
She looks up into his eyes, then down at his naked body. "We were in the middle of something before," she says quietly. "I'd like to finish that."
"Well, in that case," he says, his eyes half closed as he once again eases her onto the mattress. "Let me take care of you."
"We dock in China tomorrow," Enishi reports, placing one large hand on the deck rail as he stares out at the green sea.
Kaoru studies his face. He is a very strange man. Also handsome, strong, and difficult to talk to. But he saved her from certain death in Tokyo, and he took care of her through weeks of dry heaves and splitting headaches; she recalls every damp cloth he placed over her forehead, every sip of salted broth he encouraged her to take. She considers the way he stares at her when he seems to think that she's not paying attention.
She doesn't know who or what she lost back in Tokyo, but she knows what she has here, now.
She hooks her arm in the crook of his elbow.
"Are you feeling weak?" he asks. "Should I walk you back to the cabin?"
She leans against him. "No . . ."
He's looking down at her mouth. "What then?"
She reaches up and presses her palm to his cheek. Then she stands on her tiptoes and kisses him.
"Do you feel well enough to go out to the balcony?" Enishi asks after about three weeks, when it is clear that just laying around isn't going to bring Kaoru's memories back.
She wants to feel well enough. She's tired of being stuck in bed, tired of choking down vile potions that leach the remnants of poison from her organs, tired of waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and unable to recall her dreams.
She nods.
He helps her out of bed and leads her down the hall and out through the double doors. Mostly, he holds her by the elbow, but when she stumbles, he grabs her around the waist.
She looks up and shields her eyes from the bright sun. The ocean stretches out beyond the bay. "Wow," Kaoru says.
"It's even more beautiful in Shanghai," Enishi says, looking down at her. "Want to come?"
She awakens in a room full of shadows with her head swimming and her stomach convulsing. She instinctively rolls over and vomits, and the bile hits the floor with a splash. She throws up again and again; in the bed, on the sheets. In her hair.
She's wiping the back of her mouth with the stained sleeve of the robe she is wearing when a man enters through the open door. He's tall and muscular, dressed in a robe that matches hers. He claps his hand over his mouth and nose. "What in the hell -"
"Help me." She thinks she says the words aloud, but maybe she just pukes instead.
"Just - wait." He stomps out, and her heart sinks as the bile rises in her throat again.
He comes back in a few minutes later, dragging a hooded, masked man behind him.
"What happened?!" he growls. "Answer carefully, Gein. Your life is on the line."
The man named Gein man rises to his feet and approaches her. He bends over her prone form. "A head injury, probably, considering the size of munitions that were being lobbed around." Lifting up his mask to reveal a wrinkly, age spotted chin and nose, he sniffs quickly, then recoils and the cloth drops over his visage again. "Also, far too much concentrated ether. No wonder she's in such a state."
The younger man spits out a stream of reproachful sounding syllables in a language that she doesn't understand. "Will she live?"
"Oh, yes, of course. If it were going to kill her, she would be dead by now. But there's sometimes an - an odd side effect from the chemical. Besides the dramatic vomiting, I mean." Gein turns toward her. "My dear, what do you remember?"
She swallows and tries to focus on Gein's weird glittery eyes beyond the holes in his mask. "I - woke up and started puking." As she says it, her stomach cramps again, and she shakes with a fit of dry heaves. When it subsides, she asks, "Who are you? What am I doing here?"
"Hnn." Gein's hood shifts. "So you don't remember Enishi here?"
Enishi. She squints at the taller, younger man standing nearby. "Should I?"
Enishi looks at her closely. "You were in the middle of a violent battle. I took you away from there," he says, his voice flat. "Do you recall any of that?"
She tries to think back to - anything. There's a fuzzy recollection of playing with young children; of hearing an adult - a teacher, maybe? - call her name, Kaoru Kamiya; of snow falling in a stream. And absolutely nothing else. The dry heaves begin again.
Gein starts laughing.
"I fail to see what's so funny," Enishi growls. Kaoru agrees silently.
Gein says some words in the language that Kaoru doesn't understand, and Enishi answers him. They converse like that for some time. Eventually they fall silent as they both look at her.
"I have my orders, then," Gein says. "Miss Kamiya, I take my leave of you." He turns and seems to float from the room.
Enishi walks over to a table against the wall and pours a cup of water from a ceramic pitcher. "Drink slowly," he warns, offering the cup to Kaoru as he sits down on the only corner of the mattress that remains clean. He runs his hands across his silver hair and pushes up his spectacles. "You really don't remember anything?"
Kaoru shakes her head and tries to breathe through the panic rising in her breast, then lifts the cup to her chapped lips. After a few sips, she says, "Tell me what happened. Maybe it will help me remember."
Enishi stares at her baldly. "Later. See if anything comes back to you while you recover."
A terrible thought suddenly seizes her. "What if - what if that man comes back to kill me?"
"He can't get to you here." Enishi pulls a cloth from his pocket and reaches out to dab at her lip. "Just rest."
Kaoru nods. She's not sure if she can trust Enishi, but she doesn't have much of a choice. "Thank you," she says weakly. "I hope I can repay you for your kindness, eventually."
"Don't worry about that." There's a strange look on his face. "Let me take care of you."
Kaoru shivers.
[the end]