See 1st chapter for disclaimer
Side Story 1a: The Mind of A Murderer: Ranma's Heart
I lay awake in the dojo, listening to the sound of the rain beating upon the roof in a furry as if it's angry at not being able to make me change back into a girl. As the lighting flashes in the window I readjust my blanket and position on the futon that Kaoru gave me to sleep on to get more comfortable then sigh.
Off in the corner I can hear Yahiko snoring, and on another side of the room Kenshin's immobile silhouette is leaned up against the back wall. I don't think he's asleep, I don't think that guy ever really sleeps. It's scary how much we're alike, both physical and mental. I wonder, does he have the same problem as I? Deep within his soul does his manslayer's heart still beat with the blood of his victims like mine?
No, it's best not to think about that anymore. I am no longer Sakura, she died in China.
I sigh softly then try to move onto other thoughts.
With as much energy as I've used up today I should be sound asleep, but that adrenaline rush from earlier tonight is still in its high. Damn teenage emotions, even after having them for over a decade I still haven't gotten used to them. I'm still as easily excited or as quick to anger as ever since…before my arrival here.
It's hard for me to think of myself as a stranger here now. I mean, in this world I seem to fit in better than I ever did in Nerima; Martial arts are commonplace, and the cities have a much more pleasing rural atmosphere than my version of Tokyo. Then there is the greatest reason why this time feels like my home: Tomoe.
If anyone had told me that I would be raising a little girl by myself fifteen years ago I would have fallen down laughing, and so would everyone that I had known at the time. The first time I saw that child…no, I don't what to think about that; even now I'm disgusted with myself for what I did. But, as much as it sickens me, if I actually had the chance to I'd do it over again, I would…just to have her.
Tomoe, her namesake saved my sanity during the revolution, and the girl herself saved my soul from being crushed by a frozen glacier of ice that was my own making.
Every time I would think about fighting I would think back to her. Remembering those big pink eyes that always seemed to be locked on me during that trip back to Japan from China gave even my manslayer's heart pause. An assassin who was considered like the very wrath of god; who no sword, gun, or Shinsen Gumi member could bring down, was stopped cold by a baby in a wicker basket. But she didn't stop there, the warmth and brightness of her smile, the sound of her laugh, the way she looked at me after waking up from a nape or when I held her in my arms, they shattered the frozen chrysalis that I had wrapped my heart in over the years into a million pieces.
Then as the years past, I found myself being able to smile and laugh again. Who wouldn't be able to with a child such as Tomoe? Seeing her walk for the first time, hearing her first words, her laughter; all these things and more gave my life a whole new meaning.
I was no longer a brash martial artist with a cocky attitude who fought everything with two fists that looked at him the wrong way, or a deadly hitokiri who killed anything that got in her way simply because they were there, I was Ranma Saotome: mother and father to Tomoe Saotome, and that title gave me more pride and happiness than Ranma Saotome: heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes, or Sakura of the Choshu: Master of the Senken, ever did.
As the years passed by, for once I was glad that the Meiji Revolution had taken place, and finally understood what Katsura talked so feverishly about all those years ago. Without the equality brought by this new era I doubt that I would have been able to stay in Japan with little Tomoe; not that she still doesn't face problems today, but ten years ago it would have been a hundred times worse.
That, I realize is why I'm here tonight. Helping Saito with his 'evaluation' of the Battousai. Not because of some weird sense of justice like Saito, or need to protect everyone like Himura, I am here for just one person: my daughter. I am here to help keep these peaceful times going for her sake, and only hers, not for the nameless masses.
I would kill for her, I would die for her, and I will do everything in my power to make sure she has a future to look forward to. I only hope it is enough.
With weariness settling in I close my eyes, and dream of happy days to come.
Side Story 1b: The Mind of a Murderer: Kenshin's Soul
I lay with my back up against the wall and sword propped up against my shoulder, it's an old habit, but those are the hardest to break.
Outside the rain is coming down hard. I hate the rain, not as much as I hate the snow but I hate it all the same, it reminds me of when I met her. It was outside a bar, she was slightly drunk, and I had just finished killing a man right in front of her. She had seen me kill; every part of my logical mind had told me that I should strike her down.
I am glad that I didn't.
Afterwards, just being around her seemed to take a great weight off my shoulders. For a short time after I met her, I stopped being the Hitokiri Battousai, and became Kenshin Himura again, a kind fifteen year old boy who didn't know what he was getting into when he joined with Katsura.
I believe that was quite possibly the happiest time of my life, even with all the chaos and death surrounding me, I was happy.
But as all things it was not forever. I learned from her journal of how she was the fiancée of the only man to leave a mark upon me; the mark that now accompanies her own and makes me so recognizable. Of how she yearned for revenge thanks to my actions, and her self loathing for persuading her childhood love to go Kyoto and make a name for himself in the shogunate's eyes.
Yet…even with all that I had done to her, she still fell in love with me. ME, Kenshin Himura, not Battousai the Manslayer. In a way, she did get her revenge by doing what no other man had ever done, what no other person could do, she killed the Battousai, by forcing Kenshin to live again.
It was as if she forced the winter that had frozen my heart away, and replaced it with the warm and gentle spring.
But then the seasons changed once again, and with her kidnapping the seasons of my heart became as summer, full of hot rage and a burning hatred for the shogunate. That day when I followed them through the mountain trail, even though it was snowing I was covered in fiery beads of sweat; intent on saving my beloved from the treacherous bastards who had toyed with her emotions to weaken me.
Then, that day on the ice-cold mountain, the seasons changed once again. She died, sliced in half by my own blade when she threw away her life to save my own. That day I became as the fall; broken, detached from the tree of life.
Yet I did not join her in death, I could not, she would not have wanted that. She wanted me to live my life to its fullest, to be happy, and I could not do that in the land of the dead.
So, I became as the winter again: cold, hard, and dispassionate. I killed anything and anyone who dared stand against me and my quest to make the new order a reality.
I never was able to take my revenge upon Iizuka. It was strange to think that he was the real traitor. A goofy man with droopy eyes who delivered the envelopes of death to me from Katsura. He was supposedly killed by the Phantom; strange, it was the only time that Katsura even acknowledged that manslayer's existence.
After I was finished with the war the spring came again. With the oath I gave to my beloved on her deathbed I cling to the joy and warmth of spring. It has been that way for over ten years now.
But…even as I lie here in the dojo in the midst of my new friends, I can feel the winter closing in. Jinei may have right, a manslayer is a manslayer until the day he dies. I can only pray that he was mistaken; and hope that Miss Kaoru and the others can help me prove him wrong as Tomoe did so long ago.
With weariness settling in I close my eyes, and dream of happier days that were.