A/N: This is an edited repost; I had posted this sometime last year and have decided to give it another shot. (Actually, I was hoping to get a few more reviews. Yes, I am evil… :} ) Comments, constructive criticism and flames are very much welcome. Please (please, please, PUH-LEEEZE?!?!) tell me what you think. I'm a glutton for punishment. ^_^

My other fic, "Between Rage and Rapture" is going through a major, MAJOR overhaul; it may be some time (another five months, perhaps?) before I update it. A title-change might even be in the works. Sorry it's taking so long! Bows ten times before slinking off into the darkness from whence she came

Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin belongs to Watsuki-sama The Almighty; I am but a worthless mortal who hates Algebra. J

Massashiro
(Nice and White)


Blood. It invades my dreams, seeping into the deepest recesses of my subconscious. Crimson rivers and the salty-metallic sweetness of its rage flood my every sensation.

The sky was blue once. But that was before. That was long, long ago. Before her blood soaked my hands. Before the scarlet stain of a hundred lives lost and destroyed made themselves known.

I open my eyes; the final flickering of a dying flame half-blinds me for a split-second, and I curse myself for forgetting to turn off the lamp that sputters desperately in the dimness. With a tired grunt, I douse the dying fire. And I am drowned in liquid blackness. Thick. Viscous. Like blood. I choke back tears of self-loathing as I feel my left cheek begin to throb. I finger the scars in the darkness, feeling them the way a blind man feels his way through a steep and narrow staircase.

The wounds had stopped bleeding a long time ago, but Kami-sama only knows how much they still hurt.

When I think of her, when I feel my katana make contact with living, pulsating flesh; I relive the sensation of steel and snow against my face. Freezing. Searing. Bitter. Sweet. And her last touch. Her last smile. *Tomoe.* At that moment, everything and nothing had made sense. The eternal contradiction of human existence had made itself known; disappearing like the fluttering of a burning moth that had flown too close to the flames before I could truly grasp its meaning.

I bite the inside of my lip to keep my mind away from the ache. To me, physical pain is practically nothing. I had been trained to overcome it; to defeat it as though it were some invisible, inaudible foe.

It's the emotional pain that eats at me; I never really was very good at dealing with feelings. I tend to push them down; bury them in a mound of ideologies, numbness and righteous rage. And when they refuse to remain still, I am conquered.

They say that Hitokiri Battousai is unbeatable; the angel of death with the yellow eyes and flame-red hair of the demons of Jigoku. Hah. I am a man. Less than a man. I was an angry boy with a sword and an excuse to kill, and now I am a broken murderer; a destroyer of lives, unworthy of redemption, but needing it, yearning for it just the same.

I killed to live. I lived to kill. For the impossible thrill of my blade penetrating human flesh. It was simple, sweet. I remember the power I used to feel when my sword connected, parting me from a fragment of my soul forever. I tried not to enjoy it, arguing that those deaths served a purpose and nothing more; but part of me never actually believed that lie. It was that part of me that reveled in the rush of death, in the taste of blood as it splashed against my lips.

It still clamors within me, that piece of insanity inside of me, like the amber-eyed monster it is. But I have chosen to reject it. I want no part in its chosen trade of doom. Political assassination, they call it. For a cause. For an ideal. Peace. Prosperity. Bullshit.

I curl up into a fetal position, grasping my katana tightly to my chest and between my legs. In the gloom, I know that my knuckles are white from clutching my sword. I feel like a lost child. I want to scream, to weep, to gnash my teeth and curse the universe and all of existence.

But it is late. The couple who were kind enough to let me spend the night in their home were asleep. I don't even know their names. I had promised to do their laundry for them tomorrow as repayment for their generosity.

I will wash their clothes until they are nice and white. And not a speck of blood will mar their cloth.


~ Owari ~