glossary:

kaiseki = formal Japanese dinner consisting of about seven to ten different courses, all very elaborately prepared and served. ^.^

maa, maa = something reassuring like "there, there."  More identified with that darling rurouni. ^.^

kikanaize = "(You're) not listening."  very informal form

che, kuso = all-around swear words ^.^;

kogitsune = literally, fox children, or baby foxes...  (doumo arigatou to kind Nadoka-san of the KFFDISCML!!)

Miburo = term for the Shinsengumi, and in this case, Saitou.  Literally (accdg to Maigo-chan's priceless manga translations), "wolf of Mibu," because Mibu was the first town in which the group that would evolve into the Shinsengumi was stationed.

aku soku zan = literally, "evil instantly kill."  Saitou's guiding principle in life.

aku ichimonji = literally, "one-word evil."  Sano's own code following the tragedy of the Sekihoutai.

shikashi, demo = but, however

Shirobeko = [just in case it's been that long…] the Akabeko-like inn in Kyoto run by Tae's twin sister Sae, where the Kenshingumi stayed to recuperate after the Juppongatana trashed the Aoiya.

Yoake Mae no Yami ni

by Mirune Keishiko

Fifteen:  Soshite Asa to Sekai wa Hajimaru

 And with the morning begins the world.

"You and Yahiko will catch your deaths of cold," came the cool, crisp doctor's voice as Megumi approached.

"Is that your prognosis?"  Eager to make that his excuse to leave, Sanosuke stood up—but Megumi was already draping the heavy fur cloak over his shoulders.

 "You shan't escape me now," she said calmly.  "Sit down and help me finish all the tea I made.  It's too much for one person."

 "So I'm just food disposal now, ne?  Wouldn't mind if it were kaiseki instead."  But taking the proffered cup, Sanosuke resumed his seat, leaning back so that his face sank into shadow.

He watched her from beneath lowered eyelids.  Despite her earlier show of spirit, Megumi's eyes were downcast and her shoulders sagged beneath her thick winter robes.  He was reminded of the night Kaoru had refused treatment, when he and Kenji had talked beneath the stars of strength and ambition, and Megumi had struggled in silent solitude between her two roles of doctor and friend.

He wondered if he should do now what he had denied himself then: reach out to her, seek to comfort her with his meager presence, remind her that one other was always willing to share her suffering.  His fingers twitched yearningly on the cup.  He had already done that, after all, this evening when they had dared at last to find shelter in each other's arms—what was holding him back now?

But even as he asked this of himself, he knew the answer.  A near palpable wall stood between them now, one of tension, doubt, uncertainty, and only at her word could it be removed.  The night before, he had fondly imagined that it had disappeared at last; but now it had apparently returned, and he wondered if it were for good.  Clenching his fingers more tightly around his cup as he took his first sips, he thought wryly that the bitter taste suited him just fine.

Then he raised his eyebrows and sniffed.  An airy note floated above the earthy brown taste of the tea, a scrap of fragrance and dry, delicate flavor that had almost escaped his notice.  Brow furrowing, he took another sip and this time let the hot, clear liquid linger over his tongue before he finally swallowed.

 "Wild rose and lavender."  Megumi turned to smile tiredly.  "Speeds up circulation and clears the mind.  Good for cold nights like this one."

Cold nights?  Sanosuke shook his head, grinning to himself.  Pride, Yahiko-chan?  Kuso, you just might be right.  Before he could think any further, he held out his arm, the enormous fur dragging the floor from him like a cape.  "I know another way for speedin' up circulation.  Not much for clearin' the mind, though."

After a moment's hesitation, she surprised him by wordlessly nestling into his arm.  As she tucked her head below his chin, the small scent of her hair drifted by his nose and redoubled his heartbeat, which was already racing with the luxury of her nearness.

Aa, he sighed to himself, placing his hand on her shoulder and drawing the fur closely around them both, speeds up circulation all right.

They said nothing for several long moments.  Sano lightly rested his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes, wishing that he could take this for a "yes" at last, that it wouldn't turn out just an island of comfort in a sea of lifelong loneliness, that he didn't dimly know that sorrow was crouched at the edges of his heart, waiting patiently for the parting that seemed inevitable.

 "Toriatama?"

He sighed.  Here it comes.  "Hn?" he mumbled, not moving.

 "You're not just doing this for me, are you?"

 "What're you talkin' about, kitsune?"  Sano bit down on his embarrassment.  He preferred to act out how he felt, not talk about it.  "'Course this is for you."

 "What I meant was..."  She looked up at him directly.  "Not just for me, but for yourself too?"

 "Che."  Sano knew from the heat in his face that he was blushing; he would have hated it, except that it seemed to give Megumi inordinate pleasure.  "You know my answer to that."

She looked away and seemed disappointed.  Sano sighed.  "Aa, it's for myself too.  If you really want to know, kitsune"—now if this ain't strength I don't know what is, havin' to look into her eyes when she looks at me like that—"I think I'll be relivin' this night every day for the rest o' my life, just to keep me goin'."

Now it was her turn to flush and drop her gaze, and Sano realized he, too, found that the warm color in her pale face lent him a glow of satisfaction.  "This isn't pity, Megitsune, if that's what you're afraid of."  A faint smile curved her lips at that, and he knew he had hit home.  "It's whatever you want it to be."

 "Is it, now?"  She sat up, clutching the fur warmly about her, and leveled at him a somber cinnamon gaze.  "Sanosuke, can you honestly say that you won't go?  You won't get into trouble again that will force you into hiding?  You won't get bored with a quiet life in a provincial town, or dissatisfied with a wife who isn't a steady, domestic little housekeeper, but who stays at work till late and can get called away at any hour of the day or night, who's too tired sometimes to make a proper dinner even just for herself, who might spend more time in a week at the hospital than at home?  Who might not be able to bear children anymore, who's old and impatient and stubborn and selfish and... and too weak to know how she'll be able to keep going now that Ken-san and Kaoru-chan are both gone, everyone else so far away, and... and..."

And Megumi looked away hurriedly to try to hide the hot tears stinging her cheeks.  But Sanosuke stroked her hair and gently turned her face back to his; he tried to pull her back to himself, but she went rigid at his touch and fought his pressure on her shoulders.  He sighed, dabbing at her wet cheeks with the hem of his jacket.

 "Maa, maa."  He startled even himself with the softness and gentleness in his voice; Megumi lifted watery eyes to him in her surprise and let slip a tiny sob.  This time she did not resist as he enfolded her in his arms, pressed her wet cheek against his shirt.  "Sumanu, kitsune."

She stilled for a moment.  "For all my stupid mistakes," he quietly said in answer to her unspoken question.  "For taking so long now to make up my mind, when we coulda been makin' dozens of babies already, so that you wouldn't be worryin' by now."

The slap that reddened his cheek was as halfhearted as it was harmless, and Sano chuckled.  Megumi was cute but disturbing when she cried; he preferred her usual coy and insulting, if occasionally abusive, ways.  He held her quietly, idly noting that the sky was beginning to lighten, until her crying faded to an occasional sniffle.

 "I don't know how I'll convince you with just words," he murmured.  "They always seem so stupid and slippery to me, compared to actions.  Maybe that's why I never really wrote you guys, but saved everything up for when I got back.  But I'll do what I can.  This'll take some time, though, 'cause I guess I gotta start from the start, so you might fall asleep."

She shook her head mutely.  He ran his fingers through her long hair, relishing the crispness of the fine strands against his calloused palm.

 "Ne, Megitsune, before I left, I wanted to ask you the same kind of questions too.  Would you want a lazy, jobless moocher of a gambler and drunkard to be yours?  Would you lower yourself to marrying a farmer's boy who spent ten years beating up people for a living?  Who knew nothing but fighting and womanizing?"  At the muffled half-laugh that gusted against his shirt, he grinned ruefully.  "I never asked, 'cause I always knew what you'd say, and I wanted to save myself the humiliation of the truth.  So this bonehead finally decided to go away and think for a while, and maybe see if he could still be someone half worthy of a lady like you."

He smiled to himself.  "It took me a while to see it, but I really depended on Kenshin.  I was an idiot who needed something right there all the time to remind him of what he really wanted out of life, that it wasn't just sake and dice and"—he scratched his head sheepishly—"low-level chicks.  That was why, when Kenshin left for Kyoto, I wasn't about to let even Saitou hold me back; and when he went to Rakuninmura for a while, I just snapped.  I realized, later on, that that was the same thing that happened when I lost Sagara-taichou.  And when Kenshin hooked up finally with Jou-chan, I knew I couldn't ask him to define the world for me anymore—he had to define a whole new world then for the two of 'em, and I had to take off and be my own man for a change.  It was somethin' I'd been avoidin' for a long time, and it was time to face it down, if I had to wander ten more years to figure it out."

Megumi shut her burning eyes to listen more intently; his low, thoughtful tones vibrated pleasantly in his chest against her cheek.

 "Well, ten years turned into fifteen, and I saw you in New York an' all, and I was wonderin' if I could still go back, with—well, I thought you were married already, an' I wasn't sure if I could take it.  Then I went someway out west, tryin' to take my mind off things, and I helped out the natives for a while—the white government was movin' in and takin' away their land, wipin' them out just 'cause they didn't have as many guns.  That was damn good fun for a while."  Sano grinned darkly with the memory.  "I saw their government could be just as crooked as ours, and that fired me up.  I struck up a funny kind of friendship with this squaw—I didn't wanna see it for the longest time, but she really reminded me of you:  a real wildcat sometimes, but when she took back her claws she was... well, never mind," he said abruptly, remembering to whom he was speaking.

Megumi flicked away a sudden, disturbing thought.  "So I'm a wildcat, am I?" she purred instead in mock menace.  Sano grinned down at her glinting eyes.

 "Iya.  Kikanaize.  She was a wildcat, you're a fox.  There's a difference."

 "Hmph.  And you are a birdbrain.  Now go on about this squaw of yours.  Does she have a name?"

 "Hai, hai."  Sano meekly rubbed his sore ear.  "So, anyway..."  He paused, gathering his memories, his voice growing soft again with remembrance.  "She was called Fire Eagle, but I just called her Steam Engine, 'cause her kick felt like a train at full speed.  We had a lot of fun playin' crazy tricks on the whites.  I told her all about Taichou and Kenshin and Jou-chan and you and even Saitou.  Then... she got hit once while we were escapin' from a bad job.  She was pretty bad for a while, and we thought she'd never get better.  She healed finally, but she couldn't go back to how she used to be.

 "She talked to me once, asked me if I wasn't goin' back.  I told her I... didn't really know if I had anything to go back to.  I told her I wanted to stay with her and... everyone else.  But she told me to leave.

 "'This isn't what you're meant for,' she said, so kind I forgot to be mad at her for makin' my decisions for me.  'You're a great help, but really, Eastern Storm'—they call me Storm from the East over there—'this isn't your fight.  You're only running away, and you know it.'  Che, if she hadn't been so torn up after that shot, I woulda given her hell for what she said.  'Cause it was true, though I hadn't wanted to say so.

 "I took off a bit after that to think about it, and when I came back she knew I'd made up my mind to go.  She was right.  I wasn't meant to help out a different people while my own suffered at home.  Running away betrayed the Sekihoutai and the Kenshingumi, and I didn't wanna let those go, when they've been the only things I can mold myself to and be proud of even while everything else is changin'.  And if I had to face you with a house fulla screamin' kogitsune"—she raised her head to glare up at him—"well, it was my loss and your gain.  She gave me Fuuko—it was her own mount, but 'cause of that bullet, she'd never ride again.  I didn't wanna take him at first, but she wouldn't let me go unless I did.

 "So I wandered back to these parts.  I knew now what I wanted to do and where I wanted to do it, but I wasn't real sure yet just how, an' I didn't want to go stumblin' around again when I got home—I wanted somethin' to show for all that time away.  So I spent some time back in China, and got the news from Katsu that Saitou'd been mysteriously 'lost' on one of his assignments."

 "Hai," said Megumi softly.  "I only heard it from Kaoru-chan myself.  I heard from Kaoru, though," she chuckled, "that Ken-san never quite believed that old Miburo was so mortal."

 "I doubt it myself."  Sano grinned.  "But, well... it got me thinkin', somehow.  I'm not as wily as that wolf, and we work from totally different angles.  I don't think I can be in the secret police like he was.  Katsu's the one who's good at that stuff.  But even though I'm not as strong as Saitou, my strength can still count for somethin'.  And 'aku soku zan' ain't so far from 'aku ichimonji'."

Realization pierced the fog of weariness in Megumi's mind; startled with the sudden thought, she looked up.  He smiled down at her, waiting for her to speak.

 "Please don't tell me," she muttered in disbelief, "you'll be a… cop?"

He deflated a little under her frank astonishment.  "I still think the government's fulla liars and weaklings, and it's been wafflin' on the gaijin issues... anou... shikashi..."

Megumi burst out into a merry laugh—the first real, fresh laughter Sano had heard from her since his return.  Too bad she's havin' it at my expense, he thought irritably, then sighed.  Better this than sorrow and exhaustion.

 "Gomen, gomen!"  She had apparently taken his sigh for one of frustration.  Holding out her hands, she smiled up at him pleadingly.  "That sounded much worse than I intended.  You took me by surprise, that's all.  I never in my wildest dreams had you figured for a police officer, Sagara Sanosuke," she teased.  "I thought you'd had enough of them chasing you, locking you up, and calling you 'ahou.'"

 "Kuso, kitsune, you really know where to hit a guy," growled Sano, his annoyance more feigned than real.

 "Gomen ne.  But honestly, this has to be one of the best surprises of the new era.  I can hear Ken-san going 'oro' from here."  Megumi chuckled behind her sleeve as he glowered at her.

 "I know it's crazy, all right?  I talked about it with Katsu when I got back.  He looked like he was gonna rip my head off."  Sanosuke sighed.  "I got lousy taste in friends."

 "And you got this one entirely by chance, too."  She tweaked his other ear.  "Did he do anything else?"

 "Well, after about ten minutes o' rantin', he finally did, seein' as how I was serious.  He said he'd snoop around the offices for me; he doesn't hate the government any less after fifteen years, but they owed him for some tipoffs in the past.  Yesterday he and I talked; there's this one clean guy in Internal Affairs he actually respects.  I just have to show up at his office for formality soon's I'm free, but I've pretty much got the job."

Megumi had to smile at the note of earnest satisfaction in his voice—she had been hearing it often in the past few weeks, but it hadn't been there before he'd left, and it was still quite new to her.

 "Congratulations, toriatama," she said solemnly.

 "Arigatou—kitsune."  He smiled back.

 "Demo…"  She looked away, watched in fascination the gradual fade of slate gray sky to pale, sunless blue.

 "Megitsune?" he prompted quietly when she said nothing more.

She lowered her gaze to the long-forgotten teapot, its contents now hopelessly cold.  "If he hires you here in Tokyo… I don't suppose there's much chance of you getting assigned anywhere else."  A beat.  "Like Aizu."

He stared at her.

Her cheeks were bright pink, her head bowed so that her eyes were hidden.

 "Megumi…"

Her smile was faint.   "Like you, I didn't know how much I was relying on the strength of others.  Unlike you, I'm only beginning to see it now.  I've tried not to get too close to people all these years, because I've always been the one left behind by myself, and I've been trapped in the fear that I can't take any more.  Demo."  She lifted shiny cinnamon eyes to him at last.  "If you'll lend me your strength until I find my own again, the way Kaoru-chan found hers... I'll ask you to forgive my silly stubbornness and remember what you said you felt for me—if you still can."

 "Megitsune..."

With a light fingertip, he chased a tear down her cheek; then, impulsively, he hugged her, as she laughed and sniffled and held him just as tightly.

 "Megumi, it wouldn't matter to me whether we lived on top of the Shirobeko with a dozen kids or in Hokkaido with just a coupla cows.  And Kami-sama knows I've lived long enough by myself to not really care about fancy dinners.  I'm gonna miss my kitsune all the time she'll be too busy for me, but that's how she is, and I wouldn't have her any other way.  Just plain havin' her'll be good enough to keep me goin' for everything I ever learned from everyone I ever met."

Subsiding at last during this final speech of his, she listened quietly with her head on his shoulder, stroking his soft untamed hair, remembering how they had held each other only the other night.

 "There's still so much of you that I have yet to understand," she whispered.  "So much that's changed, that I didn't see in you before.  And yet—so much that's still oddly the same.  It's fascinated me, and troubled me, for so long."  She smiled wistfully.  "I wonder if I shall ever really know you again, toriatama.  If I'll ever gain back fifteen years of us apart."

He raised her hand to his lips, brushed a kiss across the pale, smooth skin.  "I think we've still got plenty of time."

Sitting together in the slowly lifting stillness, neither felt like moving, not even to retire to a more comfortable bed.  Sanosuke started awake just as morning burst upon them in a rare moment of winter sunshine.  Carefully cradling Megumi in his arms, he carried her back to her room and slipped into her ready embrace in the warmth of her blankets, as the rest of the dojo came to life.

~ tsuzuku ~

A/N.  Can you say "heavy"?  T.T  But at least that's finally settled.... wai!!

Stumped again for a chapter title, I finally found salvation in Chobits...  The title has been shamelessly ripped off the title of a shamelessly cute OST track.  I hardly expected the title of such a quiet, cheerful song to fit the theme of this particular installment, but hey, it ain't so bad, is it? ^.^  The cows in Hokkaido are also my tiny little tribute to Hideki (fight! ^.^) in that totally kakkoi series which is also, sadly, very short.

redbandana asked about a "long chapter" on Sano and Megumi, so... this is about as long as it gets. ^.^  As always, I hope this pleased—no OOCness or bases I forgot to cover.  And oh yes, Saitou is dead... or is he? ^.^

The allusion to the American Indians is, erm, not as well-researched as it ought to be... gomen gomen! (sweatdropping heavily) I do know the Montana Indians were still fighting for their lands in the 1870s... Is it so impossible that there was still such conflicts into the 1890s? (Here's hoping it isn't.)  It just seemed like the kind of thing Sano would go for.  Please pardon this pimply college student who has her hands quite full already with her own country's history this semester... ^.^;

And then of course... Sanosuke the cop? Hrm. @.@  Since this authoress stubbornly refuses to admit the impossibility of Sano holding down a decent job (not conducive to a truly happy ending!), she'll have him follow in Saitou's footsteps now.  Who cares if he's 34 and kinda, maybe, just a teeny bit, past the recruitment/training age?  He can beat up a whole mountain of yakuza anyday.