When the morning came, she greeted it with a groan of annoyance and a toss of her pillow at the wall. She didn't want to go out there... she wanted to sleep some more. Sleep. And wake up later.
But it wouldn't be fair to Kenshin, who made their breakfast every morning, who tried so hard to keep her and Yahiko happy and worked so hard for them... Cooking and cleaning and being so good to them...
Kaoru sighed and dragged herself out of her rumpled futon, flinging her bare feet onto the cool, wooden floor. She stared blearily at her toes for a little while, then sighed heavily. It was only fair that she get up too... she owned the dojo, after all, so it wasn't fair to make everyone else do all the work.
Or, to let Kenshin do all the work and let Yahiko freeload.
She padded over the floor, got dressed in a sleepy haze, managed to get the right arms through the right sleeves for once, and then wandered out her door, socks catching on a loose nail sticking out of the floor and ripping. She didn't notice, so much... It was far too early to really care about her socks. It was never the right time to worry about her socks, as far as she was concerned.
The dojo was eerily quiet, the early morning chill clinging to her limbs and slight wind lifting her still-tangled hair from her back and shoulders. Kaoru closed her eyes, feet taking her along the well-worn path to the kitchen, enjoying the silence... Silence, for once, no yelling, no pots clanging, no...
No sound at all.
Kaoru stopped dead in the hallway, eyes slitting open. No sound at all...? Kenshin was a good cook, but even he had to make some noise when he was cooking.
Unless... he hadn't come back...
Kaoru froze, a hand flying to her suddenly-trembling lips. He'd said he might be late... But Kenshin was never late! Kenshin was always back, making their breakfast, smiling cheerily and reassuring her it was all right, that he was fine, that he had won again and wasn't going to leave her, that everything was just fine, Kaoru-dono, everything was just fine...
Her socked feet pounded down the wooden hallway, the kitchen door that was held shut in the mornings to keep it warm still shut, no sounds of clanging pans or scent of cooking breakfast coming forth, no sounds of Kenshin's melodic humming, no sound but her heart pounding in her ears and her feet sliding frantically over the surface beneath them...
Kaoru's scrabbling fingers ripped open the door, slamming it against the far wall, only to find inside what she had feared the most.
Nothing.
Kenshin...
Kaoru slid down the wall, hand clenching at the wrinkled folds of her kimono, staring bleakly into the dark, empty room, wanting to cry but knowing it would give her nothing but a headache. Crying had never brought Kenshin back. Crying hadn't brought him back with Jin'ei... Crying hadn't brought him back at Kyoto... It wouldn't bring him back to her now. Crying never brought anyone back. She couldn't count the nights she'd cried for tou-san, so afraid he would be killed someday, like when Gohei had pulled that sword on him, when she was just a little girl... and it had never ended, even after he died. She cried and cried, missing him, missing okaa-san, so lonely... and then, Kenshin had appeared that day, and she hadn't been lonely anymore. But... just like before... nothing brought him back but luck. Just like tou-san. Just like so long ago...
But she cried anyway. She always did. She had never been strong enough not to cry.
I'm sorry... she whimpered aloud, eyes stinging as falling tears spotted her kimono. I'm still not strong, tou-san... and I'm still not a lady, okaa-san... I'm not anything, and he's gone, and- and- Without him, no one'll ever want me... No one-!
Kenshin was so gentle, so accepting of her and her strange tendencies, so understanding!... No one had ever accepted her before, not like that, not both sides of her, not all of her, and still stayed... Everyone else had left her, because... she wasn't enough for them... she just wasn't what she was supposed to be, but he had stayed, and he had understood, and... and... If Kenshin wouldn't want her, then who would?...
Who would, ever...?
She rose, numb, fingers cold, cheeks wet, forehead already beginning to pound. It didn't make any sense to agonize over it. If Kenshin wanted her, then her life would be worth something. If he didn't, then she would die alone, and that really wouldn't be any surprise. To anyone, least of all her.
Because... she would have no chance with anyone but him.
No other man could ever want her.
She'd tried so hard to be a boy, growing up. It had felt right to play those games, running around in the mud with the boys instead of playing the pretend-adult games with the other girls. She liked swordsmanship, and hating sewing. She couldn't cook, but she could beat up almost any man in the neighborhood. And it had been fine, for so long... Until she had begun to feel...
So desperately lonely...
And Kenshin, with his big crystal eyes and delicate hands, his long soft hair that he let her brush and braid when she wanted, his sweet husky voice that could sing in a higher pitch than her own, his gentle and nurturing manner... Everything she wasn't, everything she never could be...
And yet, there were times when even Kenshin felt strange to her, when he was no longer so caring and gentle, when the angelic smile of the rurouni faded into the harsh, glinting eyes that had to have been the ones Battousai had gazed through... When he no longer seemed so secure, when the emotions conflicted behind his clear eyes, when he came home with blood on his sakabatou and refused to explain why...
He was in a different world than her.
He always would be. Megumi-san was right... she would never truly understand him... And none of them really could, except... maybe a warrior like Sanosuke was. And maybe that was why Kenshin came back so much happier after their nights out. Maybe that was why that turmoil went away when the other man was around.
Or maybe she was imagining everything.
She had always been so good at imagining things... seeing things that weren't really there. Maybe she was completely wrong about Kenshin. Maybe she was completely wrong about everything. Maybe she was just a poor idiot that everyone catered to rather than hurt her feelings.
Kaoru wiped her eyes, sniffling painfully. Everyone always tried to spare her, lying, softening the truth, not telling her of danger until it was over, bolstering her courage whenever it would fail... Was she such a little girl that no one trusted her to be able to take any pain at all?
It might as well be the truth. She dissolved whenever there was the slightest threat to those things she held dear... after all, they had been taken away so many times that she couldn't help but grow a little paranoid... If Kenshin died like her father had died, if she lost him just like tou-san, it would be the end... It would simply be the end.
She had been so sure she would lose him to Kyoto.
Tae-san had tried, along with Tsubame... even Yahiko had shown concern for her. They had coddled her just as they always did, telling her everything would be okay, that Kenshin would come back to her safely, that she wasn't gonna be alone anymore...
But Megumi-san...
She still remembered the stinging pain as that white hand had cracked over her cheek, those onyx eyes flashing with such anger. Megumi-san never coddled her. Megumi-san had been so cruel that day... so rough, so unyielding, and yet...
It had been because of her that she'd gone to Kyoto.
Kaoru winced, remembering the simpering twit she had turned into, such a weak little breakable doll, just like the girls she had refused to play with as a girl, just like them! It wasn't her to fall apart like that, for so long, to refuse to do anything about her problems. All the times before, she'd gone after Kenshin and hit him with a broom. She'd taken charge. She'd been strong and refused to back down until she had gotten what she had wanted. That was the way she was!
And Megumi-san had gotten her there again.
It had been... only... the way Kenshin had spoken to her that night... He'd never spoken to her like that before, and he never had since. He'd spoken to her like a man did to a woman, like he would to someone who should be subservient to his wishes, and yet someone he respected with the distance and aloofness of a husband to wife.
And she had been sickened.
Kenshin had never spoken to her like that. And... she didn't like it, not at all...! It hadn't been like him to treat her like that. He never had, and it had felt as wrong as anything ever really could. And she'd seen it in his eyes that night, the pain, the loathing, that he hated what he was doing as much as she did...
And she didn't know what it meant.
It... it hadn't been the Kenshin she knew.
Kaoru walked slowly over the cool floorboards, heart fluttering in her throat, stomach twisted slightly in remembered nausea. It hadn't been right. And she'd felt so much more at ease when he had returned to normal with her. After Kyoto. Though he'd seemed distracted lately, he was more like himself than he had been for months.
She sighed, rubbing her eyes, then glanced up at the gate, the walls silhouetted by the rising sun. She expected to see nothing but the empty road, maybe a stray dog sniffing around for food, and yet... and yet-!

The cry died in her throat, her eyes focusing on the redheaded figure standing in the dirt of the road. Her joy at seeing him safe was choked almost immediately by the unshakeable fact that he...
He wasn't alone...
The slim figure of Himura Kenshin was holding fast to someone she knew so agonizingly well, their lips locked in a passionate, yet oddly clumsy kiss. Kenshin's eyes were squeezed shut, shimmering lightly in the weak sunlight as though tears trailed down his pale cheeks, thin fingers entwined in dark hair, lovingly caressing a long, craned neck, as though they were the only people in the world...