FROST I
Battousai no Kokoro
(first of two)
by Keishiko


You sit at the window, watching the snowflakes swirl outside. It is freezing in the cottage, but you do not seem to shiver. Your eyes are soft and lost far away. There is a haunting look in them, one of loneliness and sorrow that emanates from the very bone. It troubles me.

My Tomoe, Tomoe, Tomoe...

My beloved wife. It is somehow selfish, but it pains me to see you as you are -- sad, pensive, wistful. Cannot I, your husband, take away those tears in your eyes, and replace them with light and merriment? Am I not enough? Tomoe, can you not understand that I would gladly die, would gladly suffer a thousand poisoned cuts in my flesh to see you happy?

What makes you so sad, my beloved? What makes you sit at the window and weep? Is it the snow, drifting like teardrops of ice? Perhaps you, like I myself, remember blood running red across whitened plains, unequaled death and destruction amid the still serenity of the frost. Is it the weather, heavy and stifling, freezing one's breath within his lungs and numbing the skin? Is it the bare, stark nakedness of the trees like burnt fingers, groping toward the blank sky?

Tomoe. Your feathery brows are low, you bite your lip. I watch from the shadows, unnoticed, vigilant, keen, like the assassin I am. Part of me can bear no more to watch; it longs to rush to you and hold you close until the faintest nuance of mirth can be gleaned from your lips. But a greater part keeps it in stern check. I wish to remain as I am, unsuspected, unseen, until I discover the secrets that glimmer in your tragic eyes. I know you love me, and I love you with a love much like the blade I wield - delicate and beautiful - strong and sure. But still, you are a mystery.

My Tomoe, Tomoe, Tomoe. After years of dealing in men's fragility I know time for us is not unlimited. The future is no certainty. Yet you tease me, stay beyond my grasp as I try to understand you, to define and control and please you. I want to kiss away the bitterness of your sorrow, to bring a smile to those cherry blossom lips, while I still can. Time is swift and short, our lives more so.

But I wonder -- in a face such as yours whose sweet and pearl-like beauty could never be totally eclipsed by troubled shadow -- do you, perhaps, know this too?


* tsuzuku *

Hm. Please do remember that this is Hitokiri Battousai talking, not Himura Kenshin. Is it terribly OOC? ^.^x There's a second installment in this mini-series for Tomoe, entitled "Frost II: Tomoe no Kokoro."