Note to (possible) readers: This story is an AU. It was born from my musings about how could Kenshin and Tomoe have lived if she hadn´t died that day, fueled by many discussions about the matter that I´ve read in several forums. About how things could have changed for him, and for her, and in their relationship. But, please, do me the favour of not comparing it with the events in Seissou Hen, and especially do not compare Tomoe with Kaoru. (Read more at the end of the page )
Thanks to aaerdan for commenting and correcting several things, and to Margit for beta.
Tomoe stirred the pot once more, and lifted her head to clear her eyes from the smoke. As she felt her body shake with the first shiver of the fast approaching evening, her arms tightened around the shawl she was wearing, until her knuckles were almost white. She still could hear the peaceful cracking of the flames next to where she stood… but, behind them, the long and deep breath of the cold wind of the mountains was starting to rise in intensity.
"Miyoko-chan." she called. Almost at the same moment, she felt something soft colliding with her right leg, and a giggle followed. Shaking her head, she picked the ball from the floor, and turned back to face her daughter with an inquiring expression.
"Sorry." the child said, before starting to giggle again. Tomoe arched an eyebrow; Miyoko giggled further.
"Don´t you think it´s too cold to prance around without warmer clothes?" she asked at last, tossing the ball back and opening the box where she kept the garments. Behind her, she could distinctly hear a matter-of-fact "no", but she paid no heed to it.
"It wasn´t a question." she just clarified moments later, as she wrapped a small green shawl around her daughter. A mild scowl appeared on the child´s little brow for a second, as if she was pondering what she had just said, though when she made her first step with her new clothes she seemed to forget about this in favour of a new topic.
"Big." she stated emphatically, and then started to giggle again.
True enough, Tomoe had to admit with a sigh. Last year, she had made it thinking on future winters to come, and imagining she would grow quickly, but the truth was that, if she had changed thoroughly in the last months, her height hadn´t been much affected by it. Even if her husband kept on saying that she wasn´t short, she was short. And it was funny that she had sometimes wondered how much shorter would Kenshin be if he had been born a woman; now it looked as if she was going to know in spite of all.
Children do not grow significantly when they´re still that young. he had said. For her age, she´s even tall.
Bah, she thought, shaking her head. What did he know?
"All right, let me see…" she whispered. Kneeling at her side, she began to fold the robe above her daughter´s obi until it was more or less adjusted to her size. "Better?"
"Better." Miyoko nodded with adult seriousness, and turned back to continue playing with her ball. Just as Tomoe got up and started to walk towards the fire where she was cooking, though, she felt something soft colliding with her leg again.
"Miyoko-chan…"
The child stared back at her with wide, innocent, violet eyes, and pointed at the shoji of the house as if to blame somebody else that wasn´t there. Tomoe followed the direction of her finger almost involuntarily, and, as she did so, it was suddenly slid open in a swirl of icy wind.
"Tadaima." Kenshin muttered, stepping inside his home and leaving the haori and the box of medicines on the wooden floor.
It had been very hard during the last years. Tomoe remembered everything as if it had been yesterday: the pain, the numbness, the feeling of being already dead…and then, after the catastrophe that had shook their lives, the slowly regained trust, and the blossoming love that had begun to take root in the barren wasteland of her soul. It had been a great shock and a turning point for her whole life, when she had found that she was able, no, willing to forgive, and that she could not find it in her heart to fuel her grudge anymore. It had been terrible. Frustrating.
And yet, it had been liberating.
Many times, as she was musing while her hands were busy with housework, she had wondered if it had been just what she had thought that would be her absolute death, the loss of her hate, what had been the beginning of her new life. It sounded too ironic even for her, but she always came to the conclusion that there should have been a significant amount of truth hidden in that irony, for she had to admit that, while she was fueling the hate inside her, she was preventing herself from living. She did not want to live…even when she began to love him in spite of all, in spite of her unability to forgive him even. She loved him enough to save his life, to die for him, but never to live for him. And she couldn´t stand to see him die, but she was ready to save him risking her own life even with the knowledge that he would spend in grief as many days as she had spent in grief because of him, for he loved her too.
Another irony of her life had happened that day, though, and had altered the whole pattern: in the end, both had survived. They had emerged alive from that gelid scenario of betrayal and carnage, and, not only that; it had been him who had had to forgive her. And he had done so. It had been easier for him than what it had been for her, and this had tortured her for days. Could it be true that he loved her more than…than what she had thought she loved him?
It had been after that, and only after that, when she had started to feel inside her for the first time the will to live for him.
"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, sorry." she apologized, turning back to check the pot once more. "Did your day go well?"
"Well enough." Kenshin answered as he took Miyoko in his arms. The little girl stretched her hands immediately to reach for his nose, as was her somewhat strange custom, but when he threw her in the air and caught her back with practiced ease she forgot about it and gave a thrilled squeal. "There are plenty of people getting ill with colds and such in this part of the year. Fortunately, none of them is grave. I don´t have too much practice yet…"
"You´re the best this isolated mountain region has seen in quite a while." Tomoe muttered thoughtfully. In a very long while, she added then to herself, for this certanly was no Otsu. Kenshin had decided to move there short after the battle of Toba Fushimi, since, though his intentions had been initially to help people with his sword, he had realized soon enough that he wouldn´t be able to lead that kind of life with Tomoe and then Miyoko depending on him. If he got involved in sword fighting, the worst wasn´t the immediate danger, but the enormous risk of being recognized as the legendary hitokiri Battousai, which would glue old enemies, or worse, old friends, to his heels at once. The best option was to start a living in an isolated place, as little affected by the war as could be, and resign himself to help people in other ways. Becoming the medicine man of that frozen region, as he had been medicine seller in Otsu with Tomoe before, had seemed a good option for him; and even if his wife was cursed with the knowledge that he used to hide in the woods alone, desperately practicing his moves over and over and freeing his ki as he could, there was nothing she could do about that. She had given him a daughter, a reason to do whatever in the world to leave his past behind and start a new life, but his whole soul had been bent into swordsmanship long enough as to make those struggles inevitable. Sometimes, she even wondered if he would ever be able to adapt wholly to the very same life he had fought for.
It does not matter. she chided herself for the hundredth time, turning to see her daughter failing to cach the ball that Kenshin had thrown to her. It does not matter at all. I can wait until he does.
He will!
"Was it cold outside?" she asked after a while. At the same time, she went to fetch the bowls to serve the rice, which looked cooked enough to her trained eye.
"No."
Tomoe sighed, and suppressed a chuckle.
"What´s the matter?" Kenshin asked, puzzled. His wife shrugged her shoulders, and motioned him to sit at the table.
"Nothing… You just reminded me of your daughter all of a sudden. Oh, never mind."
Seeing that the red haired young man´s look of puzzlement slowly melted into another of amused realization, a hesitant, true smile appeared in Tomoe´s features for the first time. Kenshin noticed it, and his lips were instantly curved to form another.
How he loved to see her smile…
"I hungry!"
Tomoe sighed once more, and shook her head in annoyance. As she had learned long before, moments like those were never too long when Miyoko was around.
"I fed you already, Himura Miyoko. And you didn´t even want to finish your plate!"
"Rice!" the child answered in a defiant voice, mimicking her stare.
"Give her some more." Kenshin intervened then in her favour. "Maybe it was too early before for her to be hungry."
Oh, of course. You always find an explanation for everything, don´t you? Tomoe thought sourly, going to the rice pot again and serving herself some more to share with Miyoko. Or well…on second thoughts, maybe it wasn´t that bad that she was starting to resent having to eat apart from them. The child was three years old now, born the same year of the Toba-Fushimi battle. She remembered only too well how astonished Kenshin had been when she discovered she was pregnant just after he had left the Ishin Shishi…how he had insisted on the fact having some kind of deep symbolical meaning. Though to this date she still had somewhat different ideas herself about the matter –after all, during those three years they had seldom been able to afford the luxury of being together- , she hadn´t even had the heart to argue about it until the present day, seeing how comforted he could feel at the notion. He had to suffer so much at each moment of his life, with all those memories of the people he had killed, that no help was ever superfluous.
Maybe she should believe it too…
Sometimes, she had to admit that she really envied his efforts for being always optimistical, in spite of everything, and even in spite of his many failures.
"Warm food does good to the stomach in this time of the year." he suddenly interrupted her thoughts, finishing his bowl and putting it aside. "The rice was very good… what did you put in it today?"
Tomoe smiled apologetically.
"There was nothing I could put in it." she confessed. "We don´t have anything else left."
Kenshin stared at the distance for some moments; then smiled once again with that smile that always managed to surprise her so much. It was so sad, but so warm at the same time… She wished she could achieve such warmness one day, past the regret, past the ice that had swept away her soul one day.
"Then, maybe it was your magic." he ventured.
"Could be." she nodded, a faint blush painting her snow white cheeks. "Yes… maybe."
After dinner, the whole family gathered around the hearth, and Miyoko soon fell asleep with her thumb inside her mouth and her dark locks spread over Tomoe´s white kimono. As the adoring mother watched her while she moved a bit to rest her head on Kenshin´s shoulder, she could distinctly hear the fierce whisper of the wind outside their home, and the sound of the tree branches cracking under the powerful pressure.
"I don´t know how she´s able to sleep so peacefully." Kenshin muttered after a while, taking his eyes away from the dancing of the flames to gaze at her too. Tomoe breathed deeply, and clasped her hands in a known gesture.
"Worries of the heart are noisier than any real sound." she said. "And she has none."
Something in the way in which she had spoken didn´t seem to pass unnoticed to Kenshin, who gave her a concerned look.
"Have you been worried of late?"
"No." she lied, evading his glance.
"Is it…" Here, his voice hesitated, before he gathered the courage to ask again ignoring her negative. "your family?"
"My..? "Tomoe recovered soon enough from her surprise, and her first reaction was to shake her head vehemently. The old pain was there still, she couldn´t deny it. But…"Kami-sama, no! We have talked about this before. We wanted to be together for always… and for that, I had to leave my family behind and you the path of the sword. It was hard for both, but weren´t we graced with new things to replace the old?" Half involuntarily, both pairs of eyes looked down at the sleeping Miyoko, who stirred a bit in her sleep as if aware that she was being watched. "Besides…" Tomoe ended her speech with a more determined smile. "I left my family behind before I met you."
"And I the path of my sword school when I became a hitokiri." Kenshin retorted regretfully. "We´re even."
"So we are." she nodded with a sad chuckle.
"Then… what were you worried about?"
You clever one…Tomoe thought in mild irritation before the inevitable surrender. And yet, it was in herself too, she had to admit it… since those horrible times, there was nothing she feared more than to find herself hiding things again, like a secret hoard without a key neither for the others to open it nor for itself to be freed of its oppressive content. No more diary. Never…anymore.
"Miyoko-chan." she answered slowly.
Kenshin´s eyes widened a bit in realization.
"Because of…yesterday?"
Tomoe nodded, not too surprised. It seemed that both had the incident still engraved in their minds, even if for any other person it wouldn´t have seemed much more than a triviality. The other day, when Tomoe had crushed a spider with her sandal, and her daughter had started to cry because it didn´t move anymore, she had easily imagined that the look in his eyes would mirror hers.
"We´re so soiled…" she sighed. " Our past lives… How could a child of peace…ever understand?"
Kenshin said nothing, violet expressionless eyes fixed on the fire. Tomoe gave a sharp intake of breath, but continued.
"If she´d soiled too in this peaceful era I wouldn´t stand it. And yet, if I teach her to be the way we would want her to be, will she ever forgive us?"
For a long while, that looked like an eternity for Tomoe, her husband kept that same position he had adopted when she had first started to speak. Finally, just as a half consumed log fell on the centre of the hearth sending sparks flying around, his eyes turned towards her, and she had to gasp at the sudden depth of those orbs.
He had changed…
"Teach her compassion." he said, brushing the dark locks of the child with a light hand. "Beyond right and wrong, there´s no other thing that can really keep you from soiling yourself."
Later, with Miyoko already tucked into bed with all the spare blankets and the fire duly extinguished, Kenshin and Tomoe went together to bed. It had been their custom since Kenshin left the Ishin Shishi, and Tomoe had discovered that there wasn´t any other way to cure him of his old habits of sleeping with the katana anxiously clutched in his hands than to take, beyond that initial role of sheath, the role of the sword itself. This way, she could help him with his frequent nightmares as well, and, in cold winter nights like this one, their embrace could give each other a much needed comfort and warmth. Tomoe was used to fall asleep as soon as she felt his arms around her body, clasping her as if she was going to fade or leave him as she had done on that morning that she did not want to remember.
However, this night it was different. Instead of falling asleep, she could not even manage to close her eyes, and long after she had begun to feel his regular breath against her back, she was still awake, pondering his words inside her mind.
Teach her compassion…
He had grown so much in those last years! She still could remember him when they had met; that boy hitokiri who believed that he knew everything, who knew where evil and good lay, who had the right to kill whoever was chosen and then claim it had been the choice of Heaven. And his pride, oh, that insufferable pride! He always had withdrawn to a dark recess of his mind whenever she had tried to make him feel, be aware of the true worth of the lives he took away, and had made her feel distinctly as if there wasn´t anyone listening…that this had actually been because her words rang only too familiar to his mind and awoke in him unpleasant memories, she could not have guessed until later. He had been completely lost, a cold shell condemned to madness when she had met him…but now, after the hard experiences that they had been through together, he had grown much more than she. Even after their first months together, in Otsu, it had been easier for him to forgive than for her. He had been the first of both of them to see hope and the end of the nightmare, even while they still lay far ahead. He had undertaken great efforts to relentlessly put his whole past under his eyes and repent of one deed after the other, after the knowledge of the worth of the people he had killed had struck him in the hard way on a snowy morning… and he had tried to atone for them, oh, how he had tried, to help people and give her back her happiness, while himself changing day by day and slowly getting farther from the hitokiri Battousai and nearer to the person he should have been one day before the frenzy of youth and profoundly misguided good intentions had turned him into such a being. He was doing all this alone, just with her help and Miyoko´s… and in spite of the knowledge that the road he still had to tread was long and difficult, she could not help but feel deeply and sincerely proud of him.
Sleep well, she muttered under her breath, turning her head slightly and pushing a strand of fiery red hair away from his forehead. There wasn´t any trace of sweat on it this time, and his features weren´t creased with the effects of a mysterious nightmare that he wouldn´t consent on telling her about later. She could not even see the veiled sadness that was ever present in them whenever he was awake; for once in months, to her utmost joy and content, she was granted the opportunity of seeing him in peace. Sleep well, my love.
(The End)
() I know how difficult it is for many people to restrain from comparing, but the situation is so different that the comparation really can´t be properly done. I´m not trying to imply at all that he gave more importance to his atonement than to Kaoru, but less than to Tomoe. Circumstances –and Kenshin himself- were very different, that´s all. I think that a simple read can give an idea about that, but I state it nevertheless.
As for their daughter. The real child Kenshin had, Kenji, was a son. This is an AU about the child he could have had, so, considering that there are 50% of possibilities of being born male or female, I decided that the statistically more correct option was to gift him with a daughter. (Kidding, of course.)
As for Kenshin´s ideas about atonement…The conscience of his crimes had sprung from two main factors; Tomoe´s death and his sudden realization that he had killed Kiyosato Akira. The second is still there, plus Tomoe´s influence as a living person…so I assume strongly that he had similar feelings. Less confused, of course, for I believe that the knowledge that he had killed the woman he loved overwhelmed him too much and did not allow him to focus clearly during the ten years that he spent wandering.
Last but not least, you´ll ask me that why didn´t Tomoe die in this version. I assume that she thought a bit and grabbed Tatsumi´s knife without getting in the middle. So simple.
And: As for why did Kenshin have a cross-shaped scar: in the OVA Kenshin gets the second part from Tomoe as a closure for the first; signifying that he is forgiven. Since she puts the second over the first, it ceases bleeding as a wound and turns into a scar. Because of that dynamic, I can´t imagine how the wound Kyosato made could close into a scar without Tomoe drawing the second part here. She did it consciously in the OVA version (which I follow in the greatest number of details), so why wouldn´t she do it consciously here?