Note: In this chapter, Hiko will have a major role. But he isn´t manga Hiko…as you will see, he is purely Seissou Hen Hiko, withall the issues and mindset he had in his old age. Seissou Hen Hiko is OOC if seen synchronically to manga Hiko, but the perspective one has to adopt is a diachronical one…or doesn´t Seissou Hen happen many years after the manga?

As for how Kenshin got the disease…in "To Look Into Her Eyes", another story of mine, I more or less imply that through contact with open wounds of syphilitics in their last phase. But of course, we might never know…;)

Thanks to all who reviewed and to Margit for beta.

Eclipse: Chapter Two

Dusk

(Kyoto)

The young swordsman got into a careful, calculated battle stance. In a sequence of practiced movements, his sword went up and down fluidly, and the steel glistened in the air of the crimson dusk. A powerful yell broke the quiet last songs of the birds filling the branches of the nearby trees as he came down, crashing on a target, and reduced it to several pieces that fell scattered around his feet.

With an airy turn of the head, a pair of violet eyes fell upon him. In spite of the graceful pose he had adopted for landing, they looked fierce, menacing, as if they had just experienced a violent joy. Red strands of hair floated at the disorderly whim of the breeze, and he could not help but swallow at the sudden, deep resemblance.

Idiot.

Almost in an impulse, he lifted the sake jar and took a long gulp. He could feel the eyes of the boy still fixed on him, but ignored them ostensibly… until, as he had foreseen, the exasperated voice reached his ears.

"Shishou!"

The old man took another long gulp, and only after that he deigned to turn his head towards him.

"What?" he grumbled.

Kenji sheathed his sword in a rather brusque movement.

"I thought you were looking at what you told me to do."

"There's a long difference between a sure grip and wasting all your arm strength in simply holding the sword. Your attack was about four times slower than what you would need in a true battle, and, of course, this would mean that your legs would give way in that sloppy landing pose if you chanced to do it correctly," he answered mechanically. "Not to speak about that ridiculous stance with your legs sprawled open. Are you training swordsmanship or sexual positioning?"

"Shishou!" Now, Kenji was red to the top of his ears. Just like his father, he couldn't help but think for a brief moment. "I'm trying! And the leg couldn't be wrongly positioned in more than two centimetres, anyway!"

"If you don't want to hear my opinion," Hiko cut him, "why do you ask me?"

The boy repressed a sigh of frustration at this, and the elder leaned back, though without allowing himself a smirk. Most of the times, he acted as if he couldn't see what Kenji wanted, annoying him immensely in the process, but the fact was that he knew. His decision about the whole issue had been taken long ago, and it wasn't going to change,

"Did I do it like him?" Kenji tried again, his previous irritability now reduced to a slightly insecure tone. Suddenly, Hiko felt tired of the whole game, of the same being repeated day after day, and of the damage that this foolish son of a fool was doing to himself at every moment. Sometimes it could be especially trying.

"Of course not," he said. "And you won't ever do it like him."

The boy's eyes widened in shock.

"What?" Under his tired glance, surprise turned to anger and this to barely concealed fear once more. "Why… do you say this?"

The thirteenth successor of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu got up and grabbed his sake jar. His white mantle flopped with the evening breeze, just at the exact moment that the last ray of sun chose to disappear behind the immense blackness of the mountain peak.

"Because, idiot as he was, he wanted to learn swordsmanship for himself," he said, walking past a stunned Kenji in the direction of the river. "I want dinner in an hour."

As he had expected, he got no answer.

Hiko shook his head at the new remembrances, and took yet another gulp of sake. The riverside was starting to become his favourite dwelling place… and well, yes, he had to admit it, drinking sake was starting to become his favourite pastime. It might come with age, or with memories.

"It's not my disease anymore, it's the disease of the whole world. Against that, no sword can do anything, except making the wound deeper. The Hiten Mitsurugi is dead."

He still felt a deep melancholy in his soul whenever he remembered those ominous words, written by a person whose eyes had seen more horror, change and degradation than what he would ever see himself. Whose shoulder had already felt the frozen grip of death, even, calling for him, and who had smelt the scent of his own decay while writing those very lines. It was so sad to see how his stupid pupil had got that wise at the end of his life! In his previous idiocy, he had been a busy little redhead trying to prove that his Shishou´s pessimistic thoughts about the world and the new times were wrong in spite of all, and, not that he had ever given a grain of credibility to those attempts, but… it had been different. Now, it seemed to Hiko as if the only thing that remained to him was to witness the end of their world in calm apathy, and take care of the wrecks even if no one had really asked him to.

No, Kenshin had been careful not to mention a single word about Kenji to him before he had left. He knew that his master had currently a closer relationship with him than he himself, and to give him recommendations as to how he should deal with him was out of place. The only words he had heard from his lips regarding Kenji had been uttered years ago, and they had been a solemn plea that he never would teach the ougi to the boy… as always in his stupid pupil until maybe in the last months, all words that came without saying. The next month, as if he had needed yet more evidence, Kenji had arrived himself for the umpteenth time and started his ridiculous angry display, confirming him still more in his decision. Whenever he remembered the scene…well, he usually drank some more sake.

"But why?"

Kenji was very angry. His slight thirteen-year-old frame had somehow stretched to look bigger and taller, and in his eyes there were sparks of fury dancing. He was out of himself, unable to think the words he was going to utter before putting them in his mouth.

"You must have known. Oh, yes, you should have known! But…but…but you taught it to him, and now he's dying!"

"The disease your father has isn't exactly transmitted through swordsmanship." Hiko pointed out. He had to bring some sense back to the conversation before doing anything else, even cruelly. "Unless in a very loose sense of the term."

Now, the boy looked about to explode. If it had been any other situation, Hiko would have amused himself wondering whether the shrimp would try to attack him, the strongest, quickest and most skilled warrior walking the face of Earth in spite of his good fifty-eight years…but the truth was that he was feeling the issue piercing his innards in a way that the stupid boy wouldn't ever be able to imagine.

Maybe it was good that he didn't.

"He contracted that disease because he was weak! Because his body was broken and he couldn't help people with his sword anymore, and had to help them in other ways! Because he learned the Ama Kakeru Ryu no Hirameki!"

"Ignorant fool."

Kenji´s face glowered in outrage.

"What?"

"My duty was to put that power at his disposition. It was he, as an adult, who had to make his own decisions and choose whether to use it correctly or not. Don't you understand?" His voice was slightly lifted, but not much. After all, he had already got used to his life being some kind of succession of red-haired crybabies ungratefully misunderstanding everything he did or said. "And, be sure of one thing: if I hadn't taught him that, you would never have been born!"

"Why, really? And is this so much better?"

"Oh, I don't know." Hiko shrugged his shoulders, and gave a last look full of seriousness to the seething boy. "That´s for you to prove, in any case."

It was not that he disliked the boy. In fact, he had liked him since the first time that he had seen him, a baby that amused him and drove his parents mad with his habitude of climbing up the dojo roof. Later, when he grow up, the boy's natural talent, skills and brightness had led to his decision to teach him some things, if as an occupation for his body and mind rather than as formal training to become a warrior –just by watching a "training session" for five minutes, his older pupil would have understood clearly that Hiko's plans on the boy were much different, though Kenji had remarkably failed to understand this. When Kenshin had left for China, he had appeared once more in the mountain, determined not to go down again until he had become a Mitsurugi master; and, while a part of him only wished to send him back because both fools amply deserved each other, in the end he took pity on them and allowed him to stay. Maybe Kenshin had behaved like an idiot during all his life, but even Hiko had to admit that he had tried his utmost to stand consequently, in his own very weird way, by his teachings… and now, because of this, he was in a state where it simply wasn't honourable to refuse him any kind of direct or indirect help. As for the impatient, loud voiced brat, at least part of his rage towards his father and the whole situation did not fail to have a point, and Hiko had thought that a bit of hard thinking could only do him good; not to speak about the fact that he was starting to be a bit too old to handle red-haired misguided walking threats as to help create one more.

Oh, would he ever get a bit of rest from that tiresome family?

"Hiko-shishou…"

Irritated at the interruption, the old man turned his head. His new pupil was standing in the darkness, his eyes fixed at the reflections of the stars in the calm water. There was nothing of his earlier arrogance left in him anymore, and Hiko guessed that it was some kind of time for conversation.

"I thought I had made myself clear when I told you I didn't want you disrupting my peace here," he growled.

"Sorry, Shishou," Kenji answered, without even budging. The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu´s last sucessor repressed a sigh of resignation.

"Sit down then," he said, pointing at a rock beside his. Kenji took his cue quickly, but then stayed looking at the reflections in silence for a long while.

"And…?" Hiko asked about five minutes later.

The boy swallowed with a slight noise.

"Well..."he started. "I… I was wondering about what you said earlier. About my… him, and our swordsmanship."

"Aha," the old man nodded. He wouldn't make it even a little bit easier for him, that went without saying.

"I… would wish to know what did you mean with that of learning swordsmanship for himself. What am I doing, then? I'm trying my hardest, Shishou …"

"You don't have to whine to me," he cut him brusquely. "I know. But I know also why you're doing so, and it isn't because you like, want or need the swordsmanship."

"But of c…!" Halfway of starting a whiny quarrel again, the boy seemed to think the better of it, and closed his mouth. Maybe he was maturing, after all… "Then why would I do what I'm doing? That's absurd!"

"You're doing what you're doing because you're stupid." Hiko answered. Kenji´s scowl deepened, but, like his father, he was already used to being insulted at each hour of the day. "In other words; you're striving to follow the most grievous and hard path of life just because your father doesn't care for you. That's childish."

"What?" The boy got up fulminantly, trying to form words that choked in rage inside his throat. Hiko could sense hurt and aggression coming in loads from his ki, almost at the same level as that other day years ago.

"As I told you. Your whole training has no purpose except constant comparison with the training of your father. You do not dare to confront him directly, so you try to do it through something you both shared; and, in the end, you know you can't even use it to fight him, for he can't hold a sword anymore. Unless you're stupid enough as to believe that to know you're better than him will frustrate him, only an option occurs to me, and it's that you simply need his approval. Am I wrong?"

"O….of course you are!" Kenji seethed. "I … I don't need anything from him. That's what I want to prove! I can do everything that… he did."

Noticing the slip of his tongue in the last moment, the young swordsman tried to lower his voice at the end of the sentence, and his last words came as a nearly inaudible whisper.

Too late.

"It was a rhetoric question," Hiko explained coolly. "You really don't need to shout your support for my theory. Whatever you do, whatever you learn, whatever you achieve, you only see your father. Sheesh. When I met him and started to train him he was only eight, but he was already much more of an adult than what you are. That's why I agreed to train him in the first place. "

"An adult?" Somewhat recovered from his fit, Kenji let a hollow laugh escape his mouth. "Leaving his home and country at forty-four, deathly ill, to try putting peace in an international conflict entirely of his own?"

"When I met him, he had buried dozens of corpses alone, with his own hands. That was what he saw when he learned kenjutsu." The words came from Hiko´s lips in such a strange and unusual tone that Kenji could not help but gasp. "And that was also what he saw when he left for China last year."

Silence fell over both with a heavy, almost unbearable weight. A group of clouds pushed by the breeze veiled the crescent moon, and both their glances were unconsciously directed at its dwindling reflection in the river waters.

"Well…," Hiko said at last, getting up and dusting up his mantle. "You have made supper, haven't you?"

"Yes," Kenji answered in a gloomy voice, as he followed his example. Hiko could hear his steps following him in the dark of the night. "But, Hiko-shishou…"

"Yes?"

The boy´s difficulty at pronouncing the next words was evident.

"Are you… going to let me stay?"

The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu´s thirteenth successor swallowed, and did a great effort to hide his gloomy mood behind one of his usual sarcastic smirks. He definitely did not feel like it now, but it was to him that the last word of that conversation belonged.

"If you really want to go, the road to Kyoto is in that direction."

After all, the next day, he supposed as he continued his way towards his cottage, they wouldn't talk about this anymore. Kenji would spend a terrible night, that was granted, but it wasn't as if he didn't deserve it, anyway.

The Hiten Mitsurugi is dead.

For a moment of special pessimism, Hiko could not help but wonder if Kenshin´s words would cease haunting him one day.

(Tokyo)

Kaoru gave a deep breath, and crossed the threshold of her bedroom to join Yahiko and Tsubame. As she brushed her eyes, pretending she was brushing her forehead, the smile appeared on her features once more as if by the effect of magic.

"He's asleep," she announced with a gentle whisper. The couple looked into each other's eyes with some sadness, and Yahiko nodded back. In a furtive peer through the half-open shoji, Tsubame could distinguish Kenshin lying in his bed, his frail body curled in a ball as if trying to protect himself instinctively against some vague threat that floated in the air, and felt her soul sinking again to her feet.

"Poor Ken….I mean, Shinta-san," she whispered back. "So tired from the journey, the fever, and then… the bandages. I hope he takes a good rest now."

"He will be far better tomorrow," Kaoru shrugged her shoulders hopefully. "Maybe, who knows? we could go celebrate his arrival then."

"That would be a good idea," Yahiko nodded. "Well, Tsubame... I think we should be going now, shouldn't we? It's almost dark by now."

The young woman did not acquiesce immediately, but threw a significant glance in Kaoru's direction.

"Do you… well, do you mind, Kaoru-san?"

"Of course not!" the adressed one smiled. "I'm not alone anymore, Tsubame-chan. I'm… feeling better."

"You don't know how glad I am, then," the young woman answered, still not so sure. Bowing deeply, she walked in a hesitating step until he was side to side with Yahiko at the door of the courtyard. "I'll come tomorrow evening; I have to work for the rest of the day. I am sorry."

"Oh! I was forgetting," As they were already stepping outside, Yahiko turned back once more. "fter these four days of holidays, I'll take care of the lessons for a while. Whatever you say."

For a moment, Tsubame thought she was able to see some of the woman's sorrow surfacing in the glow of her eyes. Slowly, she bowed back, and sent Yahiko a grateful glance.

"Thank you, Yahiko," she muttered in a subdued, soft voice. "Thank you very much."

"Yahiko…," Tsubame's voice rose again, in worry, as soon as they had left the lights of the house and the exhausted couple behind. "Do you think…?"

"They will be alright," he interrupted her with his usual determination. Still, Tsubame was able to notice, his voice lacked the enthusiasm he had displayed only this morning. It was as if… it failed him, somehow. "At least for a while."

"But, it was terrible," she insisted. "When we were taking those… those bandages away…"

Tsubame was sure she would have nightmares about that in the days to come. After bathing Kenshin in hot water for a while, they had had to start peeling the wrappings off those horrible open wounds, and she did not think she had ever witnessed anything so gut-wrenching. Whenever she remembered his ghostly pallor, trying to suppress the cries…

"Poor Shinta-san," she said, as if it was a litany that drove her bad remembrances away. "By the way, Yahiko… do you know why Kaoru calls him like this now?"

"I heard from her that it had been his name as a child. It's strange… I had never imagined him as a peasant child who could have such a name. I always saw him as a warrior… But, Tsubame," Husband and wife entered a fairly crowded street, and the far away music and chants of the people who were still at the main avenues reached their ears from the distance. The woman looked in his direction; he was pensive, maybe brooding over something.

"Yes?"

"Can you write a letter to Megumi tomorrow?"

"Megumi-san?" The woman's eyes widened in surprise at first, though slowly she began to understand. "I see… He needs a doctor that can arrive sooner, but Megumi… she needs to be here. I will write to her this same night, and send it tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you. As for Kenji…"

Yahiko's voice faded off in mid-sentence, as if he was thinking deeply before he continued it. Tsubame could not help but agree with him in that subject; Kenji was a great problem indeed. He had left Tokyo to live with Hiko more or less at the time of Kenshin's departure, and they hadn't got any news about him yet. He was enraged at his father, and did not want to have anything to do with him since he had left, that was all they knew… but now, they also knew that Kenshin had already asked five times about his whereabouts during a single day. Each time had been more painful than the previous, especially for Kaoru, who didn't want to lie to him or tell him the truth and had given different evasive answers. Kenji might have his reasons, Tsubame thought, but he definitely should be aware of what he was putting his mother through. As well as of the anguish in his father's eyes whenever he looked around and inquired where he was.

"He should come here as soon as possible," she exclaimed, with an unusual strength in her tone. "His temper tantrum has lasted more than enough. Should I write to him too?"

"No." The young samurai shook his head, and stretched an arm to touch her shoulder. "You don't need to. I will go to Kyoto myself."

When Kaoru woke up the next morning, the first thing she felt was a soft, intermittent tugging at her arm. Slowly returning to consciousness, she opened her eyes, and her heart almost gave a leap when she saw the figure that was lying in front of her.

"Ken… Shinta…," she muttered, half asleep. There were so many things she would have to get used to…

The flower essence she had used the previous night on him to palliate his stench was now mingled again with the scent of the blood that had seeped through the bandages during the night, but fortunately it was still a fresh, somewhat acrid smell. He looked feverish, though much better after having been able to rest in good conditions.

His hands were holding her right arm, and his face contorted in an expression of the deepest pain.

"Shinta? Is something the ma…oh!"

Kaoru suppressed a gasp as she saw him staring at the rashes on her arm´s skin, and, seized by a sudden incomprehensible feeling of shame, she retired it and hid it behind her back. Even ill, nothing escaped his prying glance.

"Do…do you remember?" she tried to explain. Her heart started to beat quickly, and her face got warm and red. "The last night we spent together, a year ago… I… I begged of you to let me share your burden. You accepted, and we… slept together that night. Do you remember now?"

"I…" The skin in his forehead was furrowed even more as he thought hard, and Kaoru could not help feeling a surge of compassion.

"But why?" he asked, in a miserable voice. "Why would you..? Why? It's… horrible. You don't know…"

Why?

Only a year ago, she thought then, he had seemed to have understood her motivations enough. But… she realised it once more as she gazed at the decaying, pale and wrinkled form of the once strong swordsman she had married, and especially at the veil of impotent oblivion in his feverish eyes, things had changed too much. How could she have told him now, let him know that she had done it because she could not stand that once she had reached behind the eyes of the ex-hitokiri he had set yet another unsurmontable barrier between her and him? That she suffered knowing that he had stepped into a different world of understandings, perceptions and sensations where she couldn't follow him, and that she was condemned once more to stay aside oblivious of everything, the eternal little girl who couldn't and shouldn't understand?

That she had destroyed herself because she could not bear anymore not to be able to look into his eyes?

"Shinta…," She crawled on the bed towards him, and kissed his forehead with a smile. "Shinta, you idiot! I want to be next to you and take good care of you. How could I if I had to be afraid of you? Rest… I'm in care now. You're no longer in China, but at home with your wife."

"China…" The sick man pronounced that word with deliberate slowness, and repressed a wince, as if trying to throw away bad reminiscences. Having read his last letters, Kaoru was able to imagine what was coming to his mind, and she had to take a frustrated intake of breath. How could she ever achieve to be one with him, if whatever she did he always had lived terrible experiences she could not share?

"You're back," she insisted, caressing his cheek. "You did what you could, with your utmost forces. Now, you don't have to do anything else anymore. Leave the world alone with its troubles…you're free now. You have atoned…"

"No."

The woman's mouth and hands froze in astonishment, and she had to look several times at him to confirm that it had really been him who had spoken. At her mention of atonement, it was as if the haze in his mind had settled in a second, and his eyes had regained their sharp glance. Above all, his voice… it had sounded as firm and clear as it had been years ago.

"Shinta?"

"I haven't."

Instinctively, her eyes turned then towards the spot she had been caressing with her right hand; which happened to be his left cheek. In the pale and spoiled skin there was the mark of an old wound, almost faded away at the edges but strangely brilliant in the middle. It was still there, as the shadow of an ominous ghost giving a warning.

Cross-shaped.

"But how?" she wondered, her outrage at the incomprehensible injustice of the spirits causing her to lift her voice. "How can it be?"

Kenshin lowered his eyes, and sighed. For a moment, he seemed about to answer her something, but soon his glance was clouded again.

So much suffering…

"Can you… can you ask Kenji to come?" he asked, weakly. "I can't get up…"

(to be continued)