Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin, and I never will. Also, I am dirt poor.
River
Cold, seeping into him from the thin fingers he dangled into the river, caused shivers to wrack his seemingly frail body as he kneeled beside the water. His blood red hair hung about his face, tickling the pale skin, hiding his deep violet eyes. The sakabatou laid beside him, taunting him with the hypocrisy of his life, the very hypocrisy of the weapon itself.
He let his eyes wander to his own reflection, which was skewed and distorted by the rushing river. Like a broken picture… like a broken life. He let his eyes wander back to the sakabatou beside him. With a deep sigh, he lifted his eyes to the sky to soak in the empty blue of it all.
Hitokiri…
The river whispered it to him, and he ripped his fingers from the river's calling waters. Falling back into the grass, he played with blades of grass in his fingers, relishing in the moments when the cotton clouds challenged the sun and gave him shade. Green blades of grass… red blades of the Bakamatsu. Innocence ran only so deep, he decided, letting another deep sigh ripple through his aging body. Especially when layered over so much blood.
He lifted his hand to inspect it, half expecting to be dripping with the red liquid that flowed within all human beings. His hand, callused from all the swords he had held and killed with, was clean- but only to the untrained eye. He saw the blood; he saw the pain it had caused.
Hitokiri…
The river called to him again, and he sat up, determined to face the waters that mocked him so. The carefully built wall of atonement he had built was being shattered by a river, such a foolish thing. Looking down into his reflection, he faced his violet eyes with tight-lipped resolve, to set this river straight.
"I'm not a hitokiri anymore," he said calmly, bringing his hands to the edge of the river. As he slid them slowly into the churning waters, chills crawled up his spine, and he bit back a gasp. His eyes watched red seep from his fingers, flowing down the river with the blue depths.
He saw tears, falling onto a young woman's cheek as she laid in his arms, raising a dagger to his face to cross the scar left by her late fiancé. He saw another young woman, crying out to make him stop from killing a gray-haired man, a ghost of his past. He felt this young woman's lips on his, whispering to him her acceptance of all of him, feeling his nightmares fade as he held her in his arms.
Well, the last part was a dream, he thought with a smile. But maybe someday…
"Kenshin! Oh, Kenshin, there you are! Come on, we're going home," a voice called out cheerfully from the bridge, and the young woman that haunted his heart waved her arms at him.
He stood, rubbing his ice cold hands together. Wind blew suddenly from the west, blowing blades of grass about him, chilling the rest of his limbs. As he walked home, the young woman chattering about her day in the market, he felt, for just a moment, the pain of his past begin to lift. I'll always live with my sins, he thought, nodding at the woman's dinner request, but that doesn't mean I can't be happy. As they entered the dojo that he had claimed as his home, the wind blew once more and whispered to him.
Redemption…
The End
Author's notes: I hope you liked it! I just decided to write it, trying to imagine what it'd be like to be Kenshin. Sorry if you think I got it all wrong, I may have. I'd love to get a review! I'd like to say that Sarah McLachlan's "Fallen" (Disclaimer: I don't own that either) was part of my inspiration.