A/N.  Traditionally, when someone dies in Japan, it's part of the funeral customs for the (usually Buddhist) priest to give him a "death name," different from his name in life, to be inscribed on the ihai or memorial tablet.  The ihai is placed on the death shrine inside the person's family's house.  (I hope I got those traditions right, that I do.  Kindly correct me if I'm mistaken. ^.^)

glossary:

'hisashiburi = casually short for "o-hisashiburi," something like "Long time no see."

aa = yeah...

baka deshi = "stupid student"; Hiko's name for Kenshin

 -basan = suffix for an aunt

chikushou = "damn."  Another Sano swear word ^.^

eeto = like "anou": um, er...

engawa = the porch area looking out on the yard

hitokiri = assassin, literally "man killer"

ihai = memorial tablet, usually wood, for a deceased person

iie = no

Jou-chan = Sano's name for Kaoru

Okaasan = mother

oneesan = older sister

Otousan = father

otouto = younger brother

sagegami = ponytail

sakabatou = Kenshin's reversed-edge sword

sake = Japanese liquor made from fermented rice

saya = sword sheath

shinai = bamboo sword for training in kendo

Shishi = the Ishin Shishi, who led the movement to restore the Meiji emperor to real power and thus end the Tokugawa regime

shishou = master, teacher

sumimasen = "I'm sorry", formal

sutra = Buddhist prayer/text chanted during religious ceremonies

yukata = light cotton kimono, usually with no or little design, for the house and bathroom

Yoake Mae no Yami ni

by Mirune Keishiko

Five:  Nisei

Fifteen years away from his friends with no more than a single letter between them left much to be done now that he was back.  His luggage awaited unpacking at the Akabeko; in his bags and trunks, gifts outnumbered his own belongings.  He'd heard Tsukioka Katsuhiro was still in Tokyo, still living a modest life despite the success of his underground newspaper.  His old buddies—now many years married with children underfoot—had invited him for a drink and a long chat.  And damn, he had to admit that he missed good old Japanese sake.

But for all that, Sanosuke remained standing in the hall of the dojo, feet rooted to the floor.  Try as he might to tear his gaze away, it was riveted to the shrine before him bathed in the afternoon sunlight from the courtyard.

The shrine to Himura Kenshin.

 "'Hisashiburi," Sano muttered.  He shuffled his feet and thrust his hands even deeper into his pockets, cursing the awkwardness he felt.  What did one say in front of a good friend's death shrine?

He plunked himself down on the floor before the altar, determined to stay there until he thought of something more appropriate to say.  For a moment he idly watched the smoke curling lazily from the incense burning by the ihai.

Yahiko had shown him around the dojo after his class of the morning had been dismissed.  The dojo had been rebuilt to an austere dignity it wore well, and as Yahiko proudly pointed out additions and renovations Sano had tried to look interested for his sake.  Considerable changes had been made to the buildings to accommodate more students and more residents, especially after Tsubame and Yahiko had moved in with their young family.

But the older man's mind had wandered, singling out spots on the porch where he and his friends had often gathered many years before; particular rooms, including one where a wall cracked by a sakabatou had been completely mended; the kitchen and dining hall, sites of many bruised heads once insults were aired about the cooking of the lady of the house.

And as Sano paused now before Kenshin's shrine, lips pursing as if around a fishbone, he wondered whether the sunlight from the courtyard had been intended.  Certainly, as he stared out the open shoji into the yard, images leapt easily to mind.  A well-remembered, high-pitched laugh rang as Megumi's fox ears flirtatiously perked in Kenshin's direction.  Kaoru nagged Yahiko to sweep up the leaves, buy tofu, or do some other chore while Genzai's two little girls glomped onto Sano's long legs.

But different voices now echoed from the courtyard, younger voices, and the talk was childlike and carefree—none of stained pasts or old enemies.  In the days of the so-called Kenshingumi, it had been only the few of them shaking up the old dojo with their noise and bustle.  Now, with Yutarou's dozen students practicing thunderously in the training hall, Yahiko's three children squabbling in the yard over some toy or other, and a flock of student boarders under Tsubame's supervision constantly trooping back and forth on various chores, Sano had to laugh at his own sneaking feeling that the place was under siege.

His round-cheeked otouto who once simply cowered in his oneesan Uki's arms was now a man strong enough to help break up smuggling rings as he traveled the country.  And when Genzai had died several years ago, little Suzume and Ayame had moved away to Kanagawa.  A certain redheaded cook-slash-houseboy-slash-bodyguard no longer scrubbed yukata at the well, and Kaoru...

I've been gone too long, thought Sanosuke for the hundredth time that day.

 "Excuse me, Sagara-san."

Sano looked up through long bangs at Kenji, who stood composed before him, blue-violet eyes grave.  His long auburn hair was tied in a high sagegami; his left hand rested on the hilt of the sakabatou.  Kuso, thought Sano good-naturedly, the way Kenshin's boy looks, time could be goin' backward, not forward.

 "I hope you don't mind if I sit with you, sir."  Though the words were perfectly polite, Sano felt his eyebrows rising as if of their own accord at the boy's frosty, distant tone.  But the older man nodded acquiescence, and Kenji gracefully folded his long legs into a sitting position before his father's altar, laying the sakabatou across his knees.

The boy did not pray, as Sanosuke had half expected him to do.  Instead, he stared at the shrine before him as though lost in thought.  Sano made a mental shrug and went back to his reverie.

Once again he was roused from it, however, by Kenji's impeccably polite, perfectly measured voice.

 "I thank you, Sagara-san, for helping find my father and sending him back home.  My mother told me you took care of him while he was in China."

 "'Was nothin', kid—eeto, Kenji...kun."  Sano winced at the way he'd stumbled over the name.  On the one hand, he knew little about this boy except that he unsettled Sano as few other people could; on the other hand, Kenji was indeed the son of one of his truest friends.  "Kenshin kinda counted on me that time.  So."

 "If I may ask, were you with him in the war?"  The boy's voice and manner were still distant, but the slender fingers restlessly traced the carved kanji on the saya in his lap again and again.

 "Nope.  I didn't even know Kenshin'd been travelin' around 'til I got Jou-chan's message to look for him.  I thought all the time he was just back home in Japan."

 "Iie, Sagara-san.  He left."

Sanosuke glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.  For all of Kenji's skill in concealing his emotions, the anger edging the boy's bland tones was too vicious to be completely hidden.

 "He first left when I was about five," said Kenji matter-of-factly—a son dutifully filling in his father's friend on news he had missed while traveling abroad, nothing more.  "He was pretty often gone from home after that."

 "Oh yeah?"  Sano kept his own voice light with no more than friendly curiosity.  "Che, the stuff I've been missin'.  Where'd he go?"

 "Everywhere.  Anywhere.  I don't really know."  Kenji sat up against the wall and leaned his sakabatou against his shoulder.  Sano squelched a smile at the unconscious imitation of a very familiar pose.  "Somebody else's war.  Some rebellion or other.  Everywhere but here, anyhow."

There was an awkward pause.  Kenji's eyes were focused keenly on the ihai, as though studying the inscribed characters for the first time in his life.  Sano followed the boy's gaze.  He lingered on the name for a few moments before dismissing it as totally alien, utterly irrelevant to his memories of the man to whom the name had been given.

 "Bet he never even brought back a souvenir for ya, huh?"

Kenji smiled humorlessly.  "They always said he was out there because he was fighting to protect other people.  Those of this country, or the weak and oppressed of another.  They said that was what he'd been doing all his life."

 "Well, whoever 'they' were, 'they' were pretty much right."  Sano lay down to sprawl comfortably on the floor.  With his foot he nudged the shoji to the courtyard a little farther apart.  A few brown, brittle leaves skated across the porch into the room on a gust of wind.

"Do you think so, Sagara-san?"  Though the boy's face remained inert, there was a sudden weariness in his voice.  Sanosuke glanced at him through long bangs.  Kenji's eyes were shut, fingers lightly splayed across the hilt of his sword.

Sano wondered how good he was with it.  "I was there for just about eight months of it, but yeah, I kinda got the gist of things.  Kenshin had a lot of things happen in his crazy life, but he never did stop fighting for what he believed was his truth."

 "His truth.  Protecting others' happiness."

Sanosuke hesitated.  Was that a simple question, or was he being baited?  "Aa.  Kenshin went through a lot to make sure of that."

 "Because he'd been Battousai.  He wanted to atone for his sins as a hitokiri."

Sanosuke arched an eyebrow at the child's bluntness.  "You could say that.  But even before he ever got involved with the Shishi, he knew that was what he wanted t'do.  How'd you find all this out?"

Kenji shrugged.  Sano thought he glimpsed Kenshin in the way the child so quickly and deftly shuttered his emotions from others' view, but the difference from his father—bitterness instead of gentleness, a cooled, hardened anger instead of kind consideration—was striking.

 "Yahiko-sensei has told me about my father.  So have Yutarou-sensei, Megumi-sensei, Misao-basan.  Hiko-sensei also told me a little about his 'baka deshi.'  Okaasan has been less forthcoming, but I have been able to piece some of the stories together."

 "Didja ever ask Kenshin himself?  Stories have their own lives, kid.  You should always get to the source."

Kenji frowned.  "Otousan would not have understood."

Sanosuke grunted, his tone somewhere along the lines of "Ya think?"

 "Otousan was afraid of  letting the truth be known, even to his own son."  Kenji's voice was clipped and dark with contempt.  "He was always afraid, about all kinds of shadows and stupid things he would never tell me about.  I was always too young, too much of a child in his eyes.  He wanted to keep me like that.  He wouldn't even let sensei talk about him while he was around.  Then, when I started finding out anyway, he started avoiding this house.  That's why he was always away—always trying to escape me and the stories I heard—"

His voice died in a rasp as Sano's heel dug very lightly into his windpipe, the foot poised at his throat with unerring control.

 "Be careful, kid."  His tone was calm, but Sano's eyes were narrowed at the way Kenji's hand had tightened reflexively around his sword hilt.  "No son has a right to speak evil of his father, especially not you and not yours.  I don't know your story yet, but if that's all you can say about Kenshin, then I do pity you, 'cause you don't seem to know him that well."

A second, two seconds ticked by.  Kenji said nothing, but the cold stare he gave Sanosuke spoke volumes enough; the narrowed eyes alight with gold and the lowered brows caused tendrils of frost to wrap around the older man's heart.  Still Sano stared back, his foot never wavering where it could choke the boy in a moment.

He could see in Kenji's deadly gaze the battle in his head—humility in accepting Sano's chastisement warring with injured pride.  Kenji was young and very strong, this Sanosuke could see from a single glance at his finely taut muscles, the sitting position from which he could easily uncoil for a lethal strike at godlike speed.  This was indeed the child of Kaoru and Kenshin Himura, taught by Kenshin's shishou himself.

This boy's itching for a fight.  I can only hope that Hiko taught him better than that.

A sudden breeze caused the chime outside to ring wildly.  Out in the courtyard, a child was crying, Yahiko's youngest boy from the sound of it; his two siblings could be heard frantically trying to placate him before Tsubame heard.  Slowly, never lowering his gaze from Kenji's, Sano lowered his foot.  The boy wordlessly averted his blue-violet eyes, rubbed at his throat.

 "Sumimasen," Kenji muttered at last.  "You are right, Sagara-san"—he smiled bitterly—"there are many things I do not yet understand about my father."

Sanosuke nodded.  For now, it seemed, humility had won out.  "He wasn't the one who gave you that sword?"

Kenji shook his head.  "It was Yahiko-sensei.  He came to get me in Kyoto when Otousan came home the last time."

 "Well.  Your dad was pretty hard to figure out even before you were born."  Sano, settling in for a nap, clasped his hands behind his head and stared out at the clear blue autumn sky.  "I think sometimes even he couldn't figure himself out.  So don't be all mad about not understandin' him yet, and don't go beatin' people up for the answers, either.  That's what I used to do," he said with a snort.  "You, kid, may just have to do it the hard way like I did:  Figure 'em out for yourself."  He chuckled.  "'Course, that could take years."

Chikushou, scoffed Sanosuke at himself.  I sound like a monk, the way I talk.  Just lemme chant some sutras...  He had almost nodded off when Kenji spoke again, sounding much lighter, more curious.

 "Yahiko-sensei said you fought with Otousan through a lot of battles even sensei didn't get to see.  A long time ago.  Maybe you could tell me about some of them?"

Rousing, Sanosuke grinned, feeling the frost between them melt slightly.  I think I'm startin' to figure you out now, Himura Kenji.  "That's a hell of a lot of stories, kid.  Too many to tell with a dry throat."

He was surprised at the short laugh that escaped Kenji's lips; the boy himself looked startled, though not displeased.  "Sekihara-san has been badgering Yahiko-sensei for a party to welcome you back," he said, smiling down at the sword whose leather-wrapped hilt he kept absent-mindedly caressing.

Sano laughed.  "Aa, I heard.  The little girl should be coming right over soon with the invitation..."

 "Little girl, Sagara-san?"

Sanosuke caught himself and grinned again, shaking his head at the wonder of fifteen years' passage.  Small wonder Kenji was puzzled—the Tsubame the boy knew was twenty-seven, not twelve, and a Sanjou no longer.  Old habits were hard to break.  Sano shook his head ruefully.

 "I meant Tsubame-san, of course."  Sano privately vowed never to get used to the formal name.  I'll call her "little girl" in front of her grandkids, so help me.

Kenji grinned and shook his head.  "Fifteen years is a long time to be gone from anywhere, ne, Sagara-san?"

 "Aa."  It was meant to be a laugh, but for some reason it came out a sigh instead.  Sano frowned.  "That it is, kid."

 "And far too long to go without tasting Akabeko cuisine."  Smiling, Kenji stood up and slid the sword into his belt.  "If you'll excuse me, Sagara-san, I shall see that the arrangements are made for tonight." 

Sano chuckled.  Maybe Kenji was still Kenshin's child after all.  "And then we'll see if Hiko managed to pass on the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu godlike alcohol tolerance to its newest student."

Kenji's soft laugh lingered in his wake as he left, padding down the hall on light soundless feet.  Grinning broadly, Sanosuke stood up and, with a last backward glance at the shrine, stepped out to the engawa facing the courtyard.

The two spiky-haired Myoujin boys, quarrel forgotten, were sparring with shinai:  Shin-ya, seven, was calmly fending off four-year-old Heishiro's increasingly frustrated attacks.  The younger Myoujin finally crawled up his brother and began gnawing on his head in a distinctly familiar manner that soon had Sano's stomach aching with suppressed laughter.  Some distance away, their six-year-old sister demurely took tea with Megumi; the girl glanced constantly at the doctor, making sure to imitate her every move.  Megumi, for her part, was conversing with Akiko with great dignity about patterns for doll clothes.

Perhaps it was age, or maybe even the weather in Aizu, but for some reason Megumi's hair was no longer as straight as Sano remembered it to have been.  It flowed into waves around her shoulders and, as she tipped back her head for a sip of tea, curled black and sensuous around her pale neck.

Sano's grin softened.  Sake would definitely quench a fifteen-year-old thirst, but for the moment, tea would do just as well.

~ tsuzuku ~

A/N.  This is, again, a revised chapter.  (See Chapter 2 and author's note therein.)  I shoulda done my math right from the beginning of this story.  There's something to be said for writing in the heat of the moment, but really, I should improve my reality checks. ^.^;  Gomen nasai for the inaccuracies.  If I have not corrected them enough, please just point me to what needs fixin'.

Watsuki-sama said his vague plans for Himura Kenji would be to eventually pit him against Myoujin Shin-ya for the sakabatou and for the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu.  I hate to break with the Man Himself on this, but the Seisou Hen does kinda throw a wrench into canon... @.@  After all, in the OAV Yahiko spars with Kenji for the latter's genpuku (coming-of-age)... so now he does have the sakabatou already, right?  Rrrr...annoying OAV people... _  And then Shin-ya is way, wayy younger than Kenji, so a fight between them would probably not be very even.  Especially since Kenji is, well, Kenji.

Had a heckuvatime writing this chapter.  There's just so much to find out about Kenji, so much to delve into him for... and yet I fear it's also so very easy to fail to do justice to his character.  @.@  Anyway, I hope my characterization for now was good.  If it wasn't... just let me know in the review (subtle hint) and I will do my best to try to improve things.  By the way, Maria Cline, it's funny...you seem to have read my mind about Kenji and Sano having a little tete-a-tete.  Sorry I didn't go too much into the anger bit, that would be terribly juicy stuff, wouldn't it?  But it is, after all, only the first time they've ever met...

Fourth point:  I hope I didn't offend anyone by the chapter title.  I was just bouncing title ideas around in my head and I remembered that "nisei" means "second generation," and I thought it just fit.  If any WWII connotations prove too strong and too negative for readers to shake off, please just let me know and I'll change the title.  I think it's a really cool term though, taken on its own. ^.^

As always, arigatou for reading!  Hope you all had a very happy Christmas, and hope you'll have a happy New Year too. ^.^