Note: All right, I convinced myself at last to continue publishing the True Story of Quiet Life I. Many thanks to Margit for everything…not only beta, but also for inspiring me, giving me ideas, listening to all my complaints and encouraging me not to leave it since the first chapter.
Disclamer: Some characters (coughcough) belong to Watsuki Nobuhiro. Other don´t. ;)
Quiet Life I: Winter Storm
Chapter One: A Knock On The Door
Get him!
Get the hitokiri…!
He could hear screams behind him, warning him of imminent danger, shocking him into immediate actions. A sword was unsheathed with a shrill noise, where had it come from? Anguish crept inside him, gripping his heart with a frozen hand.
As always, that was the moment when he woke up.
Well, at least now I can wake up, the red-haired man scolded himself, as he stretched his stiffened limbs on the futon and received the first caress of the sun on his face. In a way, to wake up each morning after having such horrible nightmares helped him to remember what his life had been, and how it had changed in those last years. It made him receive something people took so much for granted as the simple fact of waking up in a poor cottage with your wife sleeping at your side with humble gratefulness and relief, and, somehow, he could say he cherished them for that. Even if they were… well, horrible.
If you came each night to haunt us in our dreams for all our lives until we died, people would probably live in peace for a long time, he thought, ruefully shaking his head and resting back his body on his elbow.
Tomoe would be proud of him this time, he mused then with an absent smile on his lips. He had controlled his urges to get out of bed and do something at once, something that had made him be at the end of her reproachful glance countless times, when she had woken up to see him pacing restlessly around the house like a caged animal. It was precisely that what he loved and admired the most of her, that she refused to dismiss him as a lost case since the beginning. Even if in lots of ways he was a lost case…
Giving a sigh that covered all those musings, the man stretched one of his arms, and began to caress her dark plaits fondly until her hazel eyes snapped open.
"Good morning, Tomoe," he whispered to her when they widened in pleasant recognition.
"Good… good morning," she answered in a sleepy tone, snuggling closer to him. Oh, yes, he remembered, it was winter. The cold. That cold which had affected so many people…
"Put this on," he reacted at once, and unfolded her shawl to lay it over her shoulders. "And don´t get up before I've lighted the fire."
Tomoe smiled, as he got up and gave her a last lingering caress on her hair. While he began to fumble with the cinders and sticks on the hearth, she stayed alone in bed to put her shawl on, and Kenshin could have sworn that she had shaken her head.
* * * * *
As it was frequent enough with her, and unlike her mother, Miyoko did not take very well to be awoken and told to get out her warm bed in such an unpleasant morning. From where he was, Kenshin could hear her whimpers, and Tomoe´s patient voice coaxing her into leaving her covers for the shawl she was extending in front of her. Poor child, he thought with some pity… he would lie if he said that he never had delivered similar scenes, back when he was the youngest of his family.
"Don´t you want to have breakfast?" his wife´s voice was asking, as quietly as ever.
"No! I want bed!" Miyoko cried in a fit of stubbornness. Instants later, though, she took breath again, and her voice sounded filled with new hope at a discovery. "Breakfast in bed," she proposed.
"No, you can´t do that, Miyoko-chan. "Tomoe sighed. "You will make it dirty."
"I won´t!"
Kenshin closed his eyes, strangely wishing that the exchange would bring him more memories than what it did. How had his mother coaxed him to get out of bed in winter? Truth was, he couldn´t even remember her voice, as if the whole memory of her had been brutally erased from his mind. Had she…?
But a strong knock shook the door in that moment, snapping him out of his musings.
"Himura-san! Himura-san, are you here?"
Only in a few seconds, he did not even know how, Tomoe took a struggling Miyoko out of her bed, tucked her inside her shawl, and ran with her behind the screen among protests of all kinds. Kenshin needed more time to react, ironically, but when he did the first thing for him was to get up and walk towards the door.
"Coming!" he told the waiting man, chief Hata-san´s youngest son according to his voice. What new urgency…?
"Good morning, Akinori-kun." he greeted the adolescent newcomer with a serious nod, as he slid the shoji open. "To what do I owe your visit? Any accident?"
"No. I…" The boy had to stop as soon as he had started, striving to regain his breath. Kenshin made a calming gesture towards him, and advised him to take it easy, but his own worries had increased a bit. Why had he come running?
"It´s nothing you have to care of as a healer. I´ve come to ask you," Akinori managed at last, "to go and see my father at once."
"Your father? Not as a ...healer?"
At once…
You have been lying…
Aren´t you him?
Get him!
Get the hitokiri…!
No! What madness….?
"Wait a minute, please," he replied, regaining his composure once more. "I have to get dressed, but do come in if you want and warm yourself next to the fire..."
"I´m warm enough already," the young man declined with a shake of his head. "Besides, well…," Kenshin could see his cheeks reddening considerably. "Your wife… Oh, never mind, but please, be quick!"
Just after he had got in once more, and closed the shoji behind his back, two faces darted out from behind the screen to look at him in worry.
"What did he want?" Tomoe asked, noticing his concern as if his countenance was an open book she could read. Miyoko leaned towards her mother while she finished tying her obi, and whispered something in her ear to which Tomoe answered patting her shoulder.
"The chief wants to talk with me, that´s all," Kenshin announced with a calmness he was somewhat far from feeling in truth. "Have breakfast prepared when I return."
* * * * *
In spite of the voice of reason telling him over and over that the wild thoughts darting through his mind were totally impossible, Kenshin was not able to calm himself during all the way to his destination. For once, it was stronger than him… just the mere possibility of someone discovering his identity and shattering his new life and Tomoe´s put him into a state of near-frenzy. Especially for her, for she did not deserve anything except the utmost happiness and peace, and if he knew he had been the cause of her misfortune…
But no, he thought, he would do whatever was possible to suffer the consequences alone. Alone, as he had been when he decided to join the Choshuu Ishin Shishi.
Only that… could he, this time?
Why else should he have been summoned so quickly, without medicine box or anything, or even any prospect of an accident or a sudden illness?
All those things tortured Kenshin´s mind as he walked, more often than not forgetting that Akinori was walking behind him until he had to wait for him impatiently moments later.
"Hey, Himura-san, and you really haven't had breakfast?" the lad cried in a ragged breath. Ashamed once more, the red-haired man stopped.
"Sorry," he muttered, falling in a slower pace as Akinori caught up with him. It was useless to think and wonder so much now. What would be would be, but at present there was nothing he could do except respecting the most basic rules of politeness with a poor boy who was completely innocent in any case.
Innocent…That very word brought shame to his heart sometimes.
"Himura-san!"
"Uh?"
Akinori turned his bright red face towards him, and made a sign with his hand.
"We´re here."
"Oh…yes," he said, feeling completely stupid for not having even noticed. He gave a sharp intake of breath to pull all his wits together, and forced himself to follow the boy inside with a perfectly calm mask. Behind the shoji it was all darkness at first, but after a while he was able to see the glow of a hearth, in front of which the silhouette of a woman in a blue kimono was toiling. Closer to the door, an old man was sitting in front of a low table, with swollen eyes filled with worry.
Could it be even worse than what he had imagined?
"Father, Himura-san is here!" Akinori yelled, as he stepped aside so that Kenshin had free entrance to the depressing scenario. That house did not bring him connotations of happy, family life now, but rather of the sordid shacks where he had got his assignments. Or maybe it was all in his mind, after all…
"You sent for me" he ventured, getting closer but remaining at a respectful distance. He had repeated that same ritual so many times that he had actually forgotten that there were any others, any places where maybe the man who summoned him did not expect him to stay four steps away, with the foul smell he carried everywhere no matter how many times he scrubbed…
Not now, his mind was quick in admonishing him once more.
"Himura," Hata-san laid the chopsticks on the table. Before he continued talking in his raspy and somewhat hoarse voice, he drank a long sip of his tea, and then fixed a pair of reddish eyes on him in which Kenshin should see a lingering shadow of authority. "Sit down and have breakfast with me, please."
Of having food I was thinking now…he thought ruefully, but steeled himself to accept nevertheless. If he had allowed anything to affect his capacity to eat, he would have died of malnutrition long ago.
"Thank you very much," he bowed, sitting down on the opposite side of the table while Hata-san made a gesture to his wife to prepare some more rice for him. Akinori bowed from the threshold, and pulled the shoji open to go out once more.
"You weren´t here at the end of the Bakumatsu…" the old man started abruptly when his son was gone. "Were you, Himura?"
"Uh…? No, I arrived months after the war ended," Kenshin answered with care, his eyes fixed on the table. It was as if battle had begun; from now on any thoughts about the what or the why of the things he was asked or told would better be left for later. Not even suspicions about the Bakumatsu and himself mentioned in the same sentence.
Emotions not only betrayed the swordsman.
"But you know how we managed to stay safe, don´t you? I´m sure someone has told you before."
"Yes," The red-haired man nodded, both in assent of the question and in acknowledgement for the cup of green tea that the old woman had just put in front of him. "Thank you, Chiaki-san. I have been told that you… made the choice of giving the Imperial Army unconditional support as soon as its influence reached these places."
"Oh, yes. What else could we have done? The chief of the villages of these mountains decided to do that, and my honourable friend was proved right. Nobody did us any harm, …and the Meiji restoration won." Hata-san´s voice sounded defensive, so much that it surprised Kenshin. "We don´t have a single life on our conscience."
"Which is the most important of all," he answered, with a sudden earnestness that was not born from the wish to please the man who was sitting in front of him. As he took a sip from his own cup of tea, however, he was able to spot a contented spark in his eyes.
"I´m glad that you, a samurai, think like this."
Kenshin nodded absentmindedly, not even bothering to correct him and say that he was actually no samurai. Maybe he was, now, he mused to himself. To be a peasant he would first need to feel like one more among peasants, and he had not been able to feel like one more anywhere yet.
And besides, that was not the matter now.
"I suppose you´re wondering whether I have called you so early in the morning just to share old stories," Hata-san interrupted the brief silence. Kenshin shook his head politely, but did not say anything. If he had, he thought, maybe he would have betrayed himself, either giving away his worry through troubled violet eyes or bringing chills and suspicions down the spine of the village chief with cold, emotionless steel blue ones. Himura Kenshin was not a man of middle ways.
Especially when something he cherished was in danger.
But instead of the incommodating pause he was expecting, to his surprise, Hata-san actually started to laugh.
"You´re so polite…," he exclaimed, holding his side and doing an effort to quench the raspy sounds that came from his throat. From the corner of his eyes, Kenshin could see his wife sending him a glance full of annoyance.
"Now, where were we? Oh, yes, yes, the important issue… We´re getting to it right now," the man finally promised, taking breath. "This very morning, a messenger from my honourable friend the chief of the villages of these mountains arrived to this village. He´s having a rest in my room," he added, when he saw that Kenshin had the instinctive impulse of scanning the place with his eyes. Damned custom, the ex-hitokiri cursed to himself.
"Sorry," he apologised, impatient nevertheless to hear the rest of the story.
"You don't have to be. The samurai are always searching for enemies…" Hata-san smiled. Then, in a blink of an eye, he was dead serious again, and coughed. "But this time, even if there are no enemies, there is a danger for our village. A very, very ugly danger."
"Danger?" Kenshin asked, though the obvious question hidden behind that one would surely be "And why me?" His interest in the matter was quite impossible to hide by now, and he was barely able to stay calm.
"I´ve told you about the treaty with the Imperial Army we made" the chief explained. "What you do not know is the best, yet. The other day, my honourable friend got a message saying that the government was to reclaim in brief the heavy fine we had to pay for our involvement with Tokugawa."
"Fine?" Kenshin´s eyes widened, first in relief and then in worry. So it had nothing to do with him after all, but… "Well, this is surely an error," he tried to calm him. "Nothing that can´t be solved."
"Yes, maybe it is," Hata-san nodded. "But the truth is that the people who have already heard about it at the Ebei village are very nervous. We can´t pay that and we don´t have to. If the government doesn´t change their mind soon , people would be ready to die rather than starve this winter, and this is what they call rebellion. A real disaster, as you no doubt will realise, having been in wars yourself. No, you don´t have to say anything to this," he added, when Kenshin began his clumsy attempts to reply something. "I´m in debt with you and I do not mind your past in the least as long as you´re useful in the present. Oh... I suppose this did not sound terribly nice either."
"Thank you nevertheless," Kenshin replied, unable to avoid a smile even in the middle of such a grave situation. Villagers… "But, tell me, how can I be useful for you in this? I will do whatever thing, for this is my village too, and I have my family living here."
"In other words," the chief summed up, "you´d be as screwed as we would be and you can do more than what we could do. The perfect help, aren´t you?"
"Well, I suppose so…," Kenshin admitted with effort, while a part of him couldn´t help but feel offended. Of all the ways to put something forth…
"When we signed that treaty, we were left with one of the copies, left in my honourable friend´s keeping. With it, I´m sure we could prove the error to the government officials that will come to the Ebei village in two days. But the small problem of all this is that the document isn´t anymore within my honourable friend´s keeping. For several reasons, it is here, with me, and I would ask you to bring it to him."
"You don´t trust the messenger?" Kenshin asked, nodding once more as Hata-san´s wife put the bowl of rice in front of him. He would have preferred Tomoe´s rice, he thought, especially as he was starting to have the suspicion that soon enough he wouldn´t be in the village or with his wife anymore.
"Of course I trust the messenger!" Hata-san cried out. "Any person that my honourable friend trusts has to be trusted by me. I trust him perfectly to go though all the way with the paper without stealing or destroying it, but who assures me that it couldn´t be stolen from him? There is snow in the pass right now, and it´s not the season for travels. Nothing happened to him when he came here, except that he has caught a cold and a fever… no, you don´t have to examine him, he will get well and you´re needed elsewhere. But this does not mean that nothing is going to happen to him when he returns with the paper. Think, wolves, bandits, all that! My honourable friend had no one else to spare for obvious reasons, but he asked me to bring the paper back with someone I trusted enough to hand it over safely to him. You´re the only samurai living here, and I suppose you held a sword once. What you did in the wolf-hunt…well, I think you would run after them and not the other way round."
For a while, the room stayed in silence again, only broken by the noise of Chiaki-san washing the pots.
"And you trust me?" Kenshin asked at last, his voice soft and eerie in the middle of his shock.
For once, Hata-san did not have an immediate answer.
"Well…," he fidgeted, a bit uneasy. "I didn´t quite imagine that this would be your reaction! Why shouldn´t I? You saved my wife´s life, after all, and you´ve been living here with your wife and child for three years now. You have taken care of many people who were ill or had accidents, and though you like to be alone, you have helped us in many ways."
Somehow, those words managed to distress Kenshin more than anything else had. Unable to find something appropriate to say, he lowered his head, and closed his eyes for a while.
Oh, that he was so obviously unworthy of that trust. He had done nothing but lie to them since he had arrived, even while he had helped them and atoned for the hideous crimes of his past. And still, he was trapped in his own schemes… there was nothing he could do but to accept that trust that was given freely to him and help his village with its problems.
"Just tell me how good you are with the sword, and I promise I won´t tell anybody if you don´t want to. You trust me, I trust you, and things go all right."
Well, he rectified, maybe not so freely. But nonetheless….
"I must confess, I have issues against trusting people easily, Hata-san," he said carefully, putting his bowl aside and folding his hands in his lap. "But I´m not questioning your judgement, and in fact have no reasons to do such a thing. I will bring the paper safe to Ebei, and nothing will prevent me from doing so."
As he searched for the emotions in Hata-san´s glance, he could see that, once more, the old man believed him. All demonstrations, all tests, were there in his adamant eyes, and the village chief apparently had the ability of seeing them.
"Of course you will," he smiled, with a petulant expression. "I called you for a reason."
* * * * *
The sun had broken again the thick mantle of clouds when he went out from the old chief´s house, pondering the situation over and over in his head as he walked at a brisk pace. He would be gone in a couple of hours, having already used part of his remaining time to examine that poor messenger in spite of all. The paper was already in his power, safely tucked in the sleeve of his haori, and with it maybe the lives of many people. Deserving or not, he had them in his hands once more, but this time he wouldn´t kill them with his sword, rather save them with it if it was necessary.
By the way, how strange, Hata-san hadn´t talked about a sword in any moment. During all the conversation, it had been implied that he would need one, but he hadn´t offered any to him. Maybe because he didn´t have any. Or else…well, he could imagine he had one.
Don´t underestimate people, Himura. he chided himself with a shake of his head, even if they´re not swordsmen. Your attempts at fooling people are really poorly thought up.
And, speaking about fooling….
Kami-sama.
Stopping for an instant in the middle of his way, Kenshin felt some of the anguish come back again, this time at the thought of being at Ebei when the government officers came in. Just the sole possibility of them recognising him was painful even to think about.
And stop at once thinking you´re that famous, he grumbled, in an attempt to calm himself over that issue too. He would go to the village because he had to. Paranoid fears would come later, if there was an occasion.
"Tadaima," he muttered, pushing the shoji of his house aside. As always, Miyoko was waiting for him, and in spite of all the problems he had in his mind at the moment he could not help but feel pleasantly warmed by her presence. He scooped her up in his arms, and heard her giggles of delight.
"You´re back," Tomoe said, a subdued relief written on her face.
"Yes, I am,"he answered. "Sorry…I had breakfast already. They made me."
His wife shrugged her shoulders.
"Don´t worry, it will be good for lunch too. Did it all go well?"
"Mainly, yes," he ventured, a bit reluctantly. As he could notice almost at once with an inner sigh, this brought concern to her face once more. "No, nothing grave. I have to leave on my trip to Ebei sooner than expected, that´s all. In two hours, in fact."
Tomoe blinked in wordless astonishment.
"You leaving?" Miyoko asked with a pout, trying meanwhile to reach his nose while he was distracted. "Sick people?"
"Yes, Miyoko-chan," her father said as he took her hand away from his face, ignoring her mother´s query in favour of her more innocent one. "Many sick people. I have to bring my medicines there, like every year," He put her back on the floor, and patted her head. "Go back to play now, right?"
The girl scowled.
"I was helping Mother," she informed him proudly. This brought a smile to both her parents, even if just moments later they were looking at each other seriously again.
"What…?" Tomoe began, but interrupted herself as soon as she had started. "Uh…well, I´ll prepare the food and the other things you´re going to take with you, and you can tell me meanwhile, right? Miyoko-chan, bring me the bag in the corner."
"Thank you," Kenshin nodded, truly grateful. "But, as I told you, there´s nothing to be worried of. Just Hata-san wanting to give me something for his friend, Ebei´s chief, and as I was going to travel there nevertheless…"
In spite of those words, though, nothing changed in Tomoe´s face. Like Kenshin thought ruefully then, that was what happened when one spent his whole life telling his wife that nothing was the matter…
"I´m still worried. Please, don´t leave me like that," she deadpanned, politely of course but the message still there. Her husband sighed, and followed her quick steps as she rushed towards the kitchen pot and then towards the clothes box, to prepare food and clothes for him.
"All right, Tomoe," he surrendered in the end. What else could he do? He knew very well that she considered sharing everything with him as some kind of atonement, and that she took it as seriously as he took his own, even if he didn´t think they were comparable. She had been forgiven by both parties long ago, or so he believed, something he could not say about the thousand parties he had wronged. But if there was a thing he had learned, it was that, if not as guilty, she was as stubborn as he was.
And, of course, he´d better confess it was pleasant to unburden himself sometimes…
"Look at this," he instructed her, using a moment in which her hands were empty to shove the rugged document into her hands. Surprised, the woman stopped in her task of searching for clothes in the box, and knelt on the floor to inspect it.
"This is…" she muttered, as still as if she had turned into a marble statue.
"The only document in our power which proves that these villages chose to support the Meiji Restoration," he explained, kneeling at her side. "Which I have to bring to the Ebei village in two days to ask the government officials to change their decision of making us pay an outrageous fine." For some reason, he thought, he felt for the first time a certain tinge of pride in his voice at saying "us" where before he had always said "they". Belatedly, he wondered if Tomoe was able to perceive it too. "Hata-san entrusted it to me."
"Entrusted?" The woman folded the paper again with care, and handled it to him slowly. Grain by grain, spark by spark, recognition began to come to her eyes. " I see… But, won´t it be dangerous?"
"I´m used to go through that pass every winter," he reassured her. "Bandits and wolves are nothing to me. And besides, you know that if I´m always prudent; now I will be more than ever."
"I was not speaking about the pass." she intervened, putting a blue kimono on the bag. Kenshin immediately understood what she meant, and put an arm around her shoulder.
"No one will recognise me. I will cover my scar and I won´t show my skills in public."
"I believe you," she said with a tiny smile. "But sometimes we just can´t predict in which circumstances we can get involved."
"And sometimes we can," he answered firmly. For a moment, he was even surprised at his tone, and at the passion he felt in his heart pushing him to answer as he did. "When I have a life, and a child, and a wife, and our peace to protect, I won´t break any promise. Do you believe me, Tomoe?"
The woman lowered her eyes in silence. Kenshin could see her small smile beginning to widen, until it turned into a full, warm one.
"Yes, I do. Of course I do."
"Mother!" they both suddenly heard, a shout coming from the kitchen hearth. A scent of smoke started to reach suspiciously their nostrils, and as the woman got up in a rush and ran towards Miyoko, she saw the child staring wistfully at the cooking pot.
"Burn." she announced, shrugging her nose in disgust.
* * * * *
"I hope you will be a good girl, and that you will do what your mother says."
"I´m good girl. Always." Miyoko corrected him, stretching her neck and tiptoeing so that her father could kiss her goodbye in the forehead. After all problems had been solved, Kenshin was at last at the door, his bag in his hand and the medicine box on his back, and both sword and paper well-hidden under his haori. He never could help feeling astounded about how well did Miyoko take his departures, even such a sudden one.
Surely she must be already thinking about how fun it will be to have her mother all to herself, he mused, for a moment feeling a brief tinge of jealousy come to his heart. He could still think childish sometimes, fortunately for him. And he could bet, above all, that if people knew the things that he considered blessings he would be imprisoned for deep madness.
"Have a nice journey. And, come back soon," Tomoe told him as he raised his gaze and locked it into hers. She was surprisingly calm, nothing in her reminding him of the worry she had felt before. He had never known how far did some people trust him until today, and this made him as happy as it preoccupied him.
"Have a nice journey," Miyoko repeated with a grin.
Kenshin smiled to them, a last smile of farewell, and turned back to start his long way towards his destination.
(to be continued)