Note: I´m aware you will feel a bit out of your depths at first. Sorry…give it a chance. Me and experimentation…;) I can try to calm you saying that someone has already given her approval to the shift of perspective, but I´m aware of how tastes vary…
Certain answers:
Supernaturalove: I´m aware of your criticism and I had already received it from other sources…The problem isn´t the distribution of the stories and chapters, but the order in which I wrote and published them. Still, while waiting for summer to write Quiet Life IV, the really big one, I will put a date in the title of each Quiet Life part, so that people can know how old the characters were at each moment and how many years had passed between story and story. (I try to say Miyoko´s age somehow in each one, though)
Wistful-Eyes: The number or gender of Kenshin´s siblings isn´t known. –or at least it´s not "canonical".
Well, now, one more to go! Thanks to Margit for beta and comments, of course.
Quiet Life I: Winter Storm
Epilogue I: The Warmth of the Sun.
"Open your mouth."
Kenshin could not help but give a brief smile as he noticed the quickness and enthusiasm with which the boy obeyed his request. With a practiced eye, he inspected the throat and then drew back to give a small nod.
"You can close it now," he had to add moments later, amused.
The child, who had kept his position bravely - and exaggeratedly - even after finding himself alone, blushed now somewhat, and closed his lips tightly. Kenshin wouldn't have been able to say whether he found his anxious state and almost transcendental looks funny or moving. He felt like a judge passing sentence, and even if the worst case wouldn't be too severe, by looking at the child anyone could have sworn that it was a matter of life and death.
Probably, for him it was.
"Eichi-kun," he smiled, feeling his patient's forehead one last time before making his decision. Or passing his sentence, whatever. "You have been a good boy who has done everything that his parents and I told him. I think you're already well healed, so you can go out if you want."
"Really??" The boy jumped at once, pure happiness written over his glowing face. If there was any doubt about his diagnosis, the red-haired man thought with a smile, this certainly proved its accuracy more than anything else.
"He said I can go out!" His parents tried to follow the little cyclone with puzzled glances, but their overjoyed son overwhelmed them with his almost godlike-speed movements towards the door. "He said I can go out! I'm going to play in the snow with…!"
"Wait!" A red blur flashed through the air in his direction, and grabbed his kimono. "I'm not finished yet!"
The boy´s eyes widened in shocked surprise.
"Bu…but, didn´t you…say….?" he asked feebly, sending sidelong glances to his parents. Yori crossed her arms over her breasts, and shook her head in reprobation.
"Listen to Himura-san, Eichi-kun."
"Of course I said you could go out," Kenshin was quick in reassuring him before his worry could increase and turn into a pout. "But not just like that. You will go out only after your mother has put on you a good more deal of clothing. And only when the sun is out, understood?"
"Yes!" the boy nodded, his enthusiasm refound as he pushed Yori inside the other room of the house.
"Poor boy," Kenshin remarked to his father, absently staring at the spot where they had been before disappearing. "So many days caged inside must have been a true torture."
"Torture? Hah!" Eizo grumbled. "Torture for us! Those last four days after he had got up from bed have been madness at home, believe me. I wouldn't wish them to my worst enemy!"
"I'm sorry for that. There wasn't any other option," the red-haired healer apologised. Those sincere, but careful words worked like a rebuke, and Kenshin could see the man suddenly looking elsewhere with an awkward expression. In the brief silence that arose after that, both could clearly hear Eichi talking excitedly between his mother's soft advertences.
"No…it´s me who is sorry, Himura-san," he said at last. "You have done so much… Somehow I keep forgetting it, maybe because I'm not able to believe it yet."
Now, it was Kenshin the one who felt awkward. Giving a long sigh, he took some steps forward, then knelt next to the table once more.
"I just had a part on the negotiations, that´s all," he tried to explain for the hundredth time. As he thought ruefully, though, the hopes he had put in convincing people of that had been much more considerable the first time he had tried. "Eguchi-san invited me."
"Don't put yourself down!" Eizo scolded him in good-natured anger. "Everybody knows that those people were behaving like arrogant sons-of-a- bitch before you went in, and that they didn't seem convinced of what Eguchi-san told them at all. But then, you made your big entrance that left everybody speechless, and they left in five minutes."
"Fifteen," Kenshin argued lamely. Oh, why couldn't they just be happy and forget, like so many other people he had known?
"I thought that the samurai were all cowards that only looked brave in front of peasants, who do not have swords or power," the man continued in a confidential tone, as if he hadn't even heard him. "Sorry if I'm insulting you, but that's what everybody thinks around here, more or less…" he clarified with - in Kenshin´s opinion - a completely unexpected sense of delicacy.
"But what you did made us change of opinion a bit. I…well, you know, I was a bit nervous those days. Thank you. Thank you… with all my heart."
In that moment, fortunately for Kenshin, the awkward scene was interrupted by the merry boy and his mother, who emerged from the inner part of the house. Eichi was now wearing about two haoris that were too long for him, but, judging by his movements, he still felt as light as a feather.
"Goodbye, Father, Mother! Goodbye, Himura-san!" he cried out, sliding the shoji open with effort.
"Eichi-kun! Say thank you to Himura-san!" Eizo chided him. The boy turned back immediately, and attempted a clumsy bow.
"Thank you, Himura-san," he recited, before scampering off to his long-denied freedom.
"Well… I´m afraid I should be leaving now." Kenshin got up with determination, and grabbed his medicine box. There went one reason to stay here any longer, a part of him thought, though the other knew only too well that he couldn't leave until all the problem ended in truth. The envoys, not to speak about their superior, hadn't given a closure to the affair fulminantly, as most people of the village believed, and the second stage had not yet begun. But if he had to admit one thing, it would be that he was finding it increasingly difficult to live being constantly thanked for something he wanted everybody to forget as soon as possible, that wasn't still a sure thing in the very least, and that, above all, had been achieved solely through the weight of a name of horror and execration. Worse still, each time some villager spoke with him about that event, he remembered the situation, their faces, and the guilty pleasure he had felt at his sudden transformation in a figure of terror for those viper-like minions of that corrupt despot whose life he had saved long ago. Oh, yes… he felt less than comfortable with those memories.
"You're leaving already?" Eizo san looked flabbergasted. "I was expecting to invite you to have lunch with us…"
"Thank you very much for your kindness, but I'm afraid I still have to see other sick people," he explained, walking towards the shoji. "And I already told Eguchi-san I would eat with him today; so it would be a greatly impolite thing to tell him I'm not going when they already have things prepared."
"Then… can you come tomorrow?" the man insisted. "I haven't even paid you anything yet for healing my son, so we could arrange that affair during the meal!"
Kenshin stared fixedly at the floor under his feet, and repressed a sigh. Once more, he was trapped. And he supposed it was fair: the man who had even thought about dying ten days ago had now returned to life, and the person he considered to be his saviour was him. For that man, there were no considerations about how far did an assassin's hand reach in times of peace, he only knew that his problems had been unexpectedly, almost miraculously solved by his intervention.
"So what, Himura-san? Is it decided?"
The red-haired man lifted his glance, and smiled.
"Thank you very much, Eizo-san. I… accept your invitation with pleasure."
How I wish I could have you here at my side, Tomoe, he thought once more, mournfully, as he stepped out and closed the wooden shoji behind his back.
While Kenshin was walking through the village, children's shouts and shrieks gracing his ears from the distance, he was assaulted by a very much breathless errand-boy.
"Himura…san…" he tried to speak among ragged intakes. Kenshin silenced him with a gesture, and set to wait for the message as patiently as he could.
"Eguchi-san has… received a message," the boy finally managed to blurt out.
"A message?" the red-haired man repeated dumbly. "A message from whom?"
"The prefect."
Hearing his own heart give a leap inside his chest, the man turned back, and headed at once towards the old chief's house leaving the stunned errand boy behind.
Kenshin could feel the surprised eyes of the passers-by following his trail while he walked at a frightful speed towards Eguchi-san's house. Murmurations were lost in a blur, though, and questions and greetings went unanswered… he had no time to care for that.
He was prepared to deal with threats. He would even face the inevitable revelation of his identity that by a twist of things had been preserved the last time. Having already gone that far, he knew that he would have to deal with anything, and, more than that, he knew he could. Even if the ways to be used went completely against his principles and the rules of his quiet life, he had decided to help those people.
As those thoughts crowded his mind, the young man began to fall in a slower pace inadvertently, until he definitely stopped in front of Eguchi-san's house. From inside he could hear the animated voices of several people floating in the air, and, as he listened carefully to them, the first thing he realised was that they weren't lifted in anger, but in merriment. Surprised, he stayed still, delaying his entrance for a moment.
"Are you joking?" It was the voice of the chief of another of the nearby villages, the young Tankoshitsu.
"Not at all!" Atasuke, of course, Kenshin sighed. "It happened in this very place!"
"Ssssh." As always, Eguchi-san´s intervention was a conciliating one. "Not so loud."
"As we were there arguing with those bastards, the shoji was slid open, and he entered." Atasuke continued, barely following his reconvention. "But who do you think that entered, the little healer? Oh, noo… He had totally changed, and looked like one of those samurai of the past, without sword and all. His voice had turned so cold it sent shivers down my spine, and his eyes had changed colour!"
"Changed colour? Now, if you expect me to believe that…!"
"Well, Atasuke-san, I do believe this is subjective," the old chief's prudent voice let itself be heard once more. "I think it was an effect provoked by the disposition of the lights. He was facing the candle."
"Forgive me, Eguchi-san, but I think they really turned yellow," Atasuke insisted.
"Well…" Tankoshitsu was evidently starting to get impatient with the side discussion. "And then what?"
"Then, the room went silent, and one of the bastards asked who he was and what he was doing there…as if the village and Eguchi-san´s house were theirs, brief. He said that now he knew that the prefect guy was the corrupt one, go figure! …and in such a tone… As if he was a very important person and had discovered them doing something unlawful."
"They were doing something unlawful." Suddenly compelled to enter and start to put order in the sea of gossip about him, Kenshin slid the shoji open and bowed. "Greetings, Eguchi-san, Tankoshitsu-san, Atasuke-san."
"Oh… greetings, Himura-san." The latter looked somewhat flustered, and invited him to sit down with a nervous gesture. "I… we were discussing the latest events with our newly-arrived friend."
As he knelt next to Atasuke, Kenshin felt at once the incommodating weight of Tankoshitsu´s inquiring glance set on him, sizing him up with a very new appreciation. That man had been always friendly enough to him… friendly to the point of teasing him somewhat about his height. Now, he was obviously thinking twice about him for the first time in his life and the object of his scrutiny couldn't help but wish once more that things returned to normal once more and everybody forgot about that affair.
"I see," he replied, kneeling in front of the table. "Those were… uhm, quite interesting negotiations."
"Interesting seems to me a quite mild word to describe them, Himura-san." Eguchi-san chuckled from his sitting position next to the fireside.
"So you are a retired samurai, they tell me…" the younger chief commented, arching his eyebrows. "Aren't you a mite young for that?"
"I was eighteen when the Boshin war started," Kenshin answered with his most charming smile. Oh, as if there wasn't anything he hated more than to be in the middle of a talk about himself…
"And what do you think they did?" Atasuke continued then, as if there hadn't been any pause in-between. "At first, they looked at each other in astonishment, just as we were doing. They whispered things to each other that we couldn't hear, and looked worried… And when he told them," at this point, his imitation of Kenshin´s Battousai mode almost made the imitated party wince, "that of Were you told these papers were illegal, or weren't you told about their existence at all?, they…"
Enough! Kenshin´s mind screamed in anguish. He had to stop that tale, somehow…
"You sent for me, didn't you, Eguchi-san?" he asked, as respectful as he could. "I came quickly because I heard you had received a message from the prefect this morning…"
"Uh? Oh, yes… I sent that lad about ten minutes ago." To the red-haired swordsman's surprise, the old chief grinned. "You arrived just in time."
"Just in… time?" Kenshin repeated, feeling that rather nasty sensation that people felt when they started to spot the existence of a conspiracy around them. "Just in time for what?"
"To grace our narration with your presence, of course!" Atasuke smiled in triumph. "Now, will you tell Tankoshitsu-san what was the face of that… how was he called, Akari..?
"Araki," Kenshin corrected mechanically. He was trapped, indeed.
"Well, tell him how he did react when you asked him those things. And then, the other things that you asked him!"
"I asked him what you have mentioned, and some other questions regarding the orders that he had received," he surrendered at last. Better to be the one who informed the rest about his own doings… "I have lived in cities, have been involved in the Boshin war at the side of the Ishin Shishi, and there I learned some things. It's a common trick trying to look like someone who knows better, and I've seen it played hundreds of times in front of my eyes."
"But… are they that stupid?" Tankoshitsu shrugged his nose, still a bit sceptical. "I mean, if they're in those high posts, it must be because they are at least clever, isn't it?"
"Or because they do convincingly pretend that they are," Eguchi came unexpectedly to Kenshin´s defence. "I saw it clearly that morning. There was a moment when I, too, had to appear as someone without doubts, without worries or fears, and they had a moment of hesitation. Himura-san only did it far better than me. I wouldn't ever have gone that far as to pretend that I knew things they didn't!"
"And the prefect?"
"The prefect?" Suddenly interested, Kenshin jerked his head up. "Has he said something?"
"Indeed he has," The younger chief pointed to his elder in an informative gesture. "He received the courier this morning, and there was a letter from the prefect, saying that he was sorry for the administrative error."
Administrative…error?
For a moment, the red haired man was unable to speak, so great was the feeling of gratitude to the heavens for having listened to all his prayers. He even forgot where he was sitting, the interrogation and taxation he was being subjected to, and even Atasuke's singing of his feats.
So…was it true? Had the name of Battousai done something good, for once?
Oh, he could imagine so well Tuyunoki's face when his envoys told him that the legendary hitokiri was casually around the village he had wanted to plunder, and had asked them so many interesting questions about his activities…
"That Aka… Ara…whatever his name is, who had started so cocky, ended up answering in monosyllables to all his questions," Atasuke continued. "During the interrogation, we began to snap away from the surprise, and as we looked at each other we could see ourselves starting to smile at the show."
"It was funny, I have to admit it," Eguchi nodded. "And, better still, it was working. "
"Oh, yes. I could definitely check this when the youngest among them, an arrogant-looking little creature, got up from the table and started storming some nonsense about "who-are-you-to-speak-to-us-in-that-way". Remember? The man who was sitting next to him paled, and grabbed his arm violently."
Once more, Kenshin felt pierced by glances, and had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes in resignation.
"And how could you manage to inspire in them that degree of respect, Himura-san?" Tankushitsu inquired.
"Dear lad!" As it was becoming usual, Eguchi-san came to Kenshin´s rescue. "It was their superior who could be left in evidence …and he is an important man. Any slip of their tongues could later be used by the prefect to blame them for the whole thing and get away with it. They were walking on burning coals and they knew it."
"But, once again," Tankoshitsu asked. "What about the prefect's letter?"
Now it was Kenshin who replied, before Eguchi could even think of a response.
"Those powerful people play dirty, but they only do it with people who live far away from the centres of power, and that aren't used to how things work in them. The moment that there's a suspicion that they might know, that they have kept copies of a treaty, that they might manage to leave the other side in evidence somehow, they retreat. There are people above them, who don't need any more disturbances in this country. They came thinking they would fool us, but they found the whole village ready to start a rebellion, a chief who had kept different copies of a treaty signed years ago, the meaning of which he knew perfectly, and a samurai who knew something about how those things work. Brief; their only option was to start a small war here, of which many people would come to hear. We're four villages, and on friendly terms with many more."
"If people heard about this, an alarm would ring in many places, and there would be important doubts about the trustworthiness and loyalty of the government in power," Tankoshitsu added, apparently more convinced. "I see…The government is so new and the end of war is so recent that there are constant dangers of new uprisings."
"And the person above that guy might not be amused with this," Atasuke finished. "Oh, if you had only seen the faces of those envoys when they took their leave! Himura-san told us to escort them and him until the end of the village."
Kenshin folded his arms over his knees.
"If your people got too enthusiastic, I feared for their lives," he explained. "Besides, we didn't know how this would end, either."
"It ended fantastically," Atasuke grinned. "The best thing happened precisely when they were going to leave and we were saying our farewells. They were trying to gather what little dignity they had left, and told us that they would communicate all we had said to the Honourable and Glorious Prefect, or whatever. And then, as they got to Himura-san…"
"Oh, again?" Kenshin mumbled, trying to hide his incommodity. Most unfortunately, he was very aware of what would come next… yet another time. "Isn't this old enough already?"
But, as the red-haired man had already been able to check in the past days, the person who thought he could stop a villager when he was just about to make a joke in front of an audience, however reduced it might be, had another thing coming.
"They bade him farewell calling him Himura-dono!" the chief's right hand man informed everyone with a flourish. "Himura-dono! I hadn't heard that in my whole life!"
"Some people here," and with this, Eguchi set an intent glance on the one who had just spoken, "were calling him "Himura-dono" for days. Poor fellow."
"Oh, on the contrary," Kenshin was quite good at gritting his teeth while presenting the rest of the world with a beatific smile. "I did not mind it at all… though I'm, eh, acutely aware of how inappropriate it is."
"I see...", Tankoshitsu was starting to regain his mischievous grin, as things fell into a logical place inside his mind once more. "Well, Himura-dono… would your Highness agree to travel with me tomorrow back to my village to see to the sick there? Our healer is a bit... indisposed, and he has asked for help."
Kenshin sighed, suppressing a quick - and tempting- sally.
"Tomorrow I have to honour a compromise, and there are still people who need my assistance… but if you wish to wait until the day after tomorrow, I will gladly go with you."
"You honour me," the young chief grinned again, getting up and arranging his clothes. "Well…if you will excuse me, Eguchi-san, I have to visit my relatives now. Something, by the way, tells me that I'm going to hear a lot more of versions about the tale today."
"Don't pay much attention to gossip," the high chief warned him as he made a gesture of dismissal. "People come with a new story each day."
"I'll take it into account, thanks." Tankoshitsu walked towards the door, and opened the shoji. "Are you coming with me, Atasuke-san?"
"Of course," The addressed one threw a quick look towards Kenshin and Eguchi-san, and then bowed. "If you excuse me…"
"Of course you're excused," the old man smiled. As soon as they had seen them disappear, though, his face acquired a more serious expression. "Uh, well… I'm sorry for the inconveniences, Himura-san."
Kenshin promptly waved the remark off.
"Oh, don't worry, Eguchi-san. It's normal that they would react that way," he answered. "By the way… can I see that letter?"
"Here you are." The old chief took the folded paper and threw it to him. Kenshin caught it promptly in the air, and opened it with one hand. "It's a most funny reading. He notifies us of an "administration error", that, of course, happened because they are "trying to put order into a sea of chaos that the previous regime left", and that "he is sorry in the name of all who abnegatedly work with him to achieve that glorious task." The hypocrites!"
"Well, at least they put things right." Kenshin replied, folding the paper again. "That's all that matters, isn't it? Maybe the blunder will make him consider some things that he hadn't considered before."
"May Heaven hear you. But, changing a bit of subject… is it true then that you're leaving in two days?"
"Yes. I'm heading for the other two villages now, to take care of the sick as I do every winter."
"Then, I hope you won't leave me here in the whole ignorance of some questions I wished to ask you," the old man retorted with a sly smile. As Kenshin noticed it, he could not help feeling very alarmed again. His heart sank in his chest. "But I have being dreadfully impolite from beginning to end. Tea?"
"No, thanks," To say the truth, Kenshin didn't wish to have anything at the moment. "What do you… want to ask me?"
Of course, that one would be on a whole different level. Not the person to swallow that trash about simple cocky attitudes scaring the people in power.
Should have known since the beginning, shouldn't he?
"I must confess I was rather… surprised that day," Eguchi-san started, in the most suspiciously sweet tone Kenshin had ever heard from him. "But it's now when I'm decidedly astonished, after having read that letter, and above all after having read the message that was adjoined to it."
"Adjoined message?" The red-haired man saw black for an instant, but managed somehow to keep his composure. "What… adjoined message?"
"The prefect asks me, confidentially of course, if I know who you are… and to this question, I've decided that I can only give a very partial answer. That's why I wanted to ask you."
Kenshin closed his eyes for a while, trying to concentrate as he could and think with his own mind. He shouldn't be surprised. He had taken the risk, hadn't he? It would have been a real miracle that no one ended up by knowing who he was, so he had considered it as a price to pay since the very first moment. Besides… that man deserved to know. Unlike the Meiji authorities, he was the true authority of the place he lived in. He was understanding.
And maybe, just maybe, he could…keep his secret.
But, what if he didn't? What if he shunned him, like the rest? What would Tomoe do?
But... why not? He had always trusted him, had he not?
And, after all, he owed him a favour, too, didn't he?
"I…" he started at last, inhaling deeply. "I took part in the Boshin war, and in the Bakumatsu since an early stage. I was in Kyoto for long… among the Ishin Shishi factionaries. As someone important, to tell the truth, but not exactly in the good sense."
Eguchi-san nodded, apparently not surprised. Somehow, Kenshin did not know exactly why, he felt comforted by that gesture, but he did not continue for a while.
It was so hard…
"Am I wrong if I say that you're fleeing from your past, and that this is why you decided to live here with your family, in this isolated place?"
The ex-hitokiri lifted his violet eyes towards the man, and fixed them in his comprehensive, sharp gray ones. Though he knew that this was not possible, in that moment he couldn't help but wonder if maybe the man didn't know already.
"Not exactly fleeing," he answered with firm pride. "I am returning to it each day, in order to atone for it. It's... in a way, it is what makes me wake up every morning."
"I see." Unexpectedly, Eguchi-san got up from his sitting place with a strong dismissive gesture, and walked towards the door, breaking the tense situation that had been created between the two. "Well, I'm aware that there are people with secrets. Most of us have them, in fact." He leaned on the inner shoji, and, slowly, a smile started to give shape to his features. "But you and your secrets saved my village, and I won't ever forget this. Now, can you wait here for a moment? I'm going to ask my wife about the meal. Rice with herbs, herbs with rice… very original, huh?"
For instants, that seemed as long as ages, Kenshin felt too overwhelmed to say a word. All he could do was stare at his hands, carelessly folded in his lap, to Eguchi-san and then back at his hands. The weight of everything he bore on his shoulders came upon him in one swift and terrible moment, the blood he had shed, the people who had cried, and the terror in his name. He saw Tomoe crying for the man he had murdered in a dark street, the assassin trying to comfort her, Tomoe leaning on him, and Miyoko reaching towards his nose - and his scar, that was so close to it in his open red horror - with an innocent smile. He saw the terror-stricken faces of the envoys of the prefect, having met the legendary hitokiri Battousai face to face, and then Yori-san's eyes when she saw that her husband was back.
He saw the pale and unhealthy, but always mischievous smile of his sister, getting more and more blurred in the distance as she disappeared in a red haze treading over the snow.
"Thank you, Eguchi-san," he said in a hoarse voice, bowing his head. "I won't ever forget this either."
(to be continued)