Notes: (Some more at the end of the chapter). Well, at last I could update. I had the draft of this chapter ready since long ago, but, as I was feeling extremely well and proud of myself after just finishing my second year of Classic Philology I didn´t want to get depressed again SO soon. In the end, it seems it wasn´t THAT bad…though, then again, maybe I was just half asleep on the two nights I spent correcting it. I´m half dead after partying all weekend like a stupid eighteen-year-old. (Oh, surprise…if that´s exactly what I am!)

After this chapter, we´re exactly at three from the end. I thank all my reviewers very much for following it to this point! ;)

Eclipse

Chapter Seven: The Fall of the Petals, I

She had suddenly found herself alone, walking aimlessly through a deserted plain. A faint, rosy glow announcing the dawn was beginning to filter through the branches of the trees, but no human voice, no animal, not even the song of birds welcomed its arrival. Silence was heavy and absolute, as if the world had died that night, and for a moment she thought that she could feel the ghastly scent of its putrefaction mingled with the humid smell of the plants she left in her wake.

Kaoru crossed a group of trees that projected misshapen shadows on the ground at her feet, and stopped dead in place with a shiver. In front of her, a strange wooden symbol rose over the sterile earth, and she could feel an unknown threat in its shape. It was made of two beams, crossed like, like…

...His scar…

Snapping into some kind of alert at this thought, Kaoru resumed her walk at a brisk pace, almost running in her efforts to get away from the place. Still, as soon as she had started she felt a sudden explosion of pain in her legs, and fell next to a cross that looked exactly like the one she had seen before. Her urgency became almost terror now, and she struggled to get to her feet once more, but the only thing that she saw when she tried to lift her head were similar crosses springing from everywhere, surrounding her menacingly. (1) She tried to shout, but her voice was died in her mouth.

She was in a field of graves.

It would be impossible for her to remember afterwards how many times she had stumbled, how many times she had got up again in her mad run among the symbols of the dead. The field seemed interminable, infinite, and her mind was about to drown in horrible images of an interminable massacre. At last, unable to stand it anymore, hearing the shouts of the victims ringing in her ears and seeing their blood spilled on the ground, she fell to her knees and stayed there motionless, as one more corpse without a grave.

Who could have buried all those people? Whoever had done that should have gone mad afterwards, she thought as she let some dust run through the crevices of her fingers. The wood was just as new in all the crosses she had encountered, so it was evident that they had all died at the same time. A sudden death for countless people…

Almost inadvertently, the earlier images of the massacre began to slide inside her brain again, more vivid than ever. She could see their faces, distorted by fear, the mad run towards safety quenched in a river of blood, a group of women slaughtered while protecting a child…

But then, while she was immersed in those crazy hallucinations, a strange sound reached her ears, and snapped her awake from the sick lethargy. It was a real sound, not like the screams that pounded against her skull from within, and it had come from somewhere near her. Kaoru mustered her forces, to get up and have a look at the place again.

What…? she muttered to herself, puzzled. Some metres away from where she was, there were three white stones lined besides each other over three more mounds of earth. Behind them, there were three crosses, and then, still behind them, nothing more. It was the end of the field, apparently... and the sound that she had heard seemed to come from there. Now that she could examine it more carefully, she realised that it was some kind of convulsive, irregular but soft noise, as if someone was…

…crying?

Kaoru started to walk in that direction, now heedless to the sights that had almost driven her mad before. There was just one purpose inside her mind now, and it was discovering the person who was uttering those sounds. Once she had had managed to pass the site of the three stones, however, she had to stop dead in her tracks, and she suppressed a gasp of surprise at the spectacle offered in front of her eyes.

Whatever she had expected to find moments ago, somehow, had not been quite that, she had to confess to herself. It was a boy… nothing more than a very young, small and skinny boy dressed in dirty - bloodied?- clothes. He was lying on the ground with his back to her, and, though in silence, his shoulders were convulsing periodically in a strange kind of eerie noiseless sobs in which he seemed to be rather swallowing his grief than throwing it out. Kaoru saw him let go of a handful of earth that he had wrung from the ground, and realised that he had left it painted in blood.

The hands…

He had… buried all those people?

The first sunray crossed the thin mist of the morning softly, and got caught in the long and brilliant red locks of the little mourner. Shaken to the core, the woman fell to her knees in front of him, and extended both her arms in his direction. Her emotions were running loose now, threatening to suffocate her with the struggles raging inside her soul. Comfort him, heal him, help him, have him…

…Keep him next to her, before he could…

Was he slipping away?

"Shinta..." she muttered, pulling him into an embrace. The boy's body remained unresponsive, but he lifted a pair of teary yet serene violet eyes towards her. In them, she could see a deep, already mastered grief, and also a profound and quiet inner peace that had never been in them before.

"It all started here, many years ago," (2) a soft voice murmured in her ear. "But now, at last… it will end definitely"

Seized by a sudden, instinctive fit of terror, Kaoru intensified her embrace, and opened her mouth to scream with all her forces.

"SHINTA!"

The first thing that she was able to feel when she woke up from her tumultuous dream was the familiar smell of decay and blood filling her nostrils. Then, as soon as her eyes snapped open in fear, she saw another pair of eyes terrifiedly searching for focus, and felt a struggle under the sheets of her bed. She returned to reality immediately, just in time to pull her upset husband in a calming embrace.

It had been a dream. Only a dream.

"Shinta..." she whispered in his ear. The man had obviously been awakened by her shout, and, realising in his clouded mind that she was in some sort of danger, he had tried to gather himself and help her. His inability to do so, like all the other times before, was what had left him in such a state of helplessness and despair. "I'm all right. You don't have to worry... Please."

"K… Kaoru… Kaoru…!" he cried, unable to stop. The woman kissed his shaking head, and caressed his stiffened back until she felt an almost imperceptible relaxation in his limbs, and then she buried her face on his chest. The smell was horrible, but she didn't mind. He was here. He was here, and that was all what mattered….

All that…

"Kaoru…," he muttered, leaning against the warmth of her body with a smile of relief. For a moment, his eyes fluttered open, but in their newfound tranquillity she discovered that she could nowhere find the same look of inner peace that had unchained her irrational terror, back in her dreams. She only saw the usual weariness, and a deep, deep exhaustion in their violet orbs.

Selfish.

Kaoru rested her head against the pillow, and cried her heart out while softly rocking her husband back to sleep.

Well, it really looked as if someone was intending Kenji's birthday to be some grand thing that wouldn't be forgotten in ages, Yahiko thought grumpily as he and Tsubame were walking down an avenue towards the riverside. That night had been one of the most awful nights in his life. Then, at dawn, to make things even better, Yutaro had sent them a message saying that he had gladly accepted the invitation in his name and in the name of his fiancée, who had gracefully postponed the visit to her cousin that she had arranged long ago. He shuddered just to imagine how could things turn out with THAT woman in the middle… and to think that it had been him who had invited her was just too much.

"Tsubame," he called. The woman who was walking at his side seemed to jump out of a distracted musing at his voice, and turned towards him with an inquiring glance.

"Yes?"

"Are you feeling better now?"

"Uh? Oh… yes," she reassured him with a somewhat tired smile. Her eyes still bore the marks of lack of sleep, and she looked a bit pale, but he hoped it would pass once she received an adequate dose of morning air, food and laughter with their friends. Last night she had given him a real fright, vomiting so much that he ended up by believing she would miscarry again. Nightmares, nausea… three months and a half of pregnancy, and her belly was swollen as if it had been five or six. Though Megumi had denied it, he was still worried that she could have a problem.

"Don't worry," she added, a faint blush colouring her cheeks. An old woman dressed in a yellow kimono with a basket passed them by at that moment, and they stopped briefly to answer her cheerful greeting with a bow. "I feel… it's all normal again. The baby is safe."

Yahiko nodded, doing an effort to give her an encouraging smile.

"I know. "

Now, if he only could be as sure…

In the last month, he thought, Tsubame had definitely surprised him with her behaviour. Of course, he had always known that she had some strength deep inside, but women were strange creatures… they hid it so well, almost as if they were ashamed of it, and then endured the most hard things as if it was their routine. She, a woman for which child-bearing presented plenty of additional problems, had got pregnant in the most terrible period of their lives, and he not heard her yet complain even once about her situation or fear for her life. It was he who had been afraid, who was afraid of losing everyone he loved, the powerful warrior who had wanted to be strong and was failing miserably in every aspect. Right next to him, the people who were for him the father he had never met and the older sister he had never had, were inexorably deteriorating, and it was she who had been able to make him see that his resignation was nothing more than concealed rage, and that he hadn't been able to cease blaming them for it. She had helped him come to terms with it, and comforted him whether he had wanted it or not whenever she thought (and damn her, she always got it right!) that he needed it. And, meanwhile, she was suffering herself, and risking death on her own, but accepting it as calmly as any other eventuality of life! Yahiko was still astonished to see her so unscarred and unscathed by everything that was happening around them and to them, and more than slightly frustrated with himself at the same time. Who would have thought that he, a samurai warrior, would need…?

"And, do you know what, Yahiko? I… I feel it growing."

"What?" Widening his eyes, the young man turned towards his wife. "Growing? You can… feel such a thing?"

Tsubame chuckled at his surprise, and made a timid move to hold his hand.

"Yes," she whispered. "I can." Her laugh was then subdued into a quiet smile, and she lost her eyes in the distance. A soft wind was beginning to blow over the cherry tree flowers, whispering songs among fallen petals. "Everything will go well, you see. I've never been surer of anything in my life."

"Is this some parody of that time when I said that no one would die?" he joked with a wry gesture.

"You were right back then," she smiled. "Weren't you?"

"Uh? Well, I…"

Before he could ever finish his sentence, however, a deafening clatter of hooves started to increase its intensity at a great speed behind them. Tsubame's face turned pale again in the sudden realisation of the danger she was in, and Yahiko, taking her by the arm, hurried instinctively towards the other side of the road.

"Hey!" he shouted angrily to the rider, ready to gift his ears with some choice words. As the man stopped and turned back towards him, though, and the woman who sat behind him did the same, the insults died in the samurai's mouth for a whole second of surprise.

"Damn you, Yutaro!" he growled, as soon as he had recovered his voice. "Do you know you were about to trample over a pregnant woman, MY pregnant woman at that, you jackass? You and your fucking…"

"Oh, my God!" a heavily accented voice thundered, overwhelming all he was saying or going to say for a long time. "You almost ran her down, you idiot! You scared her and frightened her baby, you animal! When people don't know how to ride correctly they keep their horse at home, at least in my country!"

Tsubame and Yahiko stayed frozen in place, while Franziska von Ossum-Bösinghoven stepped down the horse with a jump and walked towards them, followed by a very red and troubled Yutaro trying to give her explanations in her language. Slowly, a pair of smiles started to fight their way in their faces, and by when their friends had approached them they were almost unable to hold back their urge to laugh.

"Poor, poor girl!" the Prussian woman exclaimed, pulling Tsubame into a hug. "Are you feeling all right? Is the baby well?"

"Y… yes," the other woman could utter at last. "I'm fine. Re… really!"

Yahiko could not keep himself from sending a mocking glance to Yutaro behind the women's backs, to which his friend answered with a furious gesture.

"In serious trouble, huh?" he teased. "You really should learn to ride one of these days…"

"Shut up!" Yutaro almost shouted. "Franziska, dear…"

The tall blonde woman turned back in a brusque motion, and started to say something in her language. Though he could not understand a single word, Yahiko decided by her tone that she was giving her fiancé an indication, if not an order. With a last chuckle, he ran to retrieve his wife, and passed an arm around her shoulder.

"Fran… uh… I've thought that it could be good if Tsubame came with me on the horse to the appointed place. She could be tired, and…."

No! Yahiko thought instinctively, before the blonde samurai could even finish his sentence. Never!

"I am feeling well," the woman declined in a shy tone. Her husband sighed in authentic relief at those words. He didn't mind that Tsubame got on a horse with Yutaro , but to walk all the way with the gaijin woman would have been a horrible death. "Besides, aren't we at almost a hundred metres from the place?"

"She has a point, you know," Yutaro agreed. "We can… well, we can walk the last metres together, can't we?"

Franziska looked dubious. "Are you sure, Tsubame?" she asked first, her blue eyes travelling across each of the others. When the woman nodded, she shrugged her shoulders with a sigh.

"Let's go then, dear," she decided, and immediately took her by the hand to pull her in front. "But if you're feeling bad, just tell me, right?"

"Stop laughing, you idiot!" the blond samurai threatened Yahiko behind them. "She has her own customs and her own ways, okay?"

"How does it feel?" his friend asked, raising his eyebrow. Yutaro looked at him suspiciously, and rolled the reins of the horse in his hand.

"Feel what?"

"To be whipped," Yahiko clarified, crouching to dodge a punch out of instinct. The reversed blade that he had sheathed and attached to his back gave a sharp twang at his brusque movement. Yutaro's horse neighed in surprise, but fortunately it did not move.

"Oh, don't be ashamed," Franziska reassured Tsubame as both turned back to witness the two men's exploits. "In my country, there are people like that, too."

"Should I call the police?" an innocent voice asked behind them.

"Mind your… Uh…? Outa, damn you (3)!" Yahiko cried, stopping in mid-strike as soon as he recognised Sanosuke's brother. "You are already here!"

"Just in time. Want me to join?" the young man inquired smugly. He had grown very tall in the last years, and now he looked thinner than ever, but both Yahiko and Yutaro knew very well how strong he was behind that appearance. After a brilliant kendo career, though, he had decided that it did not suit him, and continued his insatiable search for new experiences until this day. An amazing mind hungry and thirsty of life, there was no place in Tokyo where Higashidani Outa hadn't been to, and no person he hadn't met yet. Yahiko knew it was only a matter of time before he would flee the country like his brother, and felt sympathy for the poor foreigners the day that this should happen. Though good-natured himself, he seemed to attract trouble wherever he went. Maybe this was partly the fault of his weird behaviour, for he could perfectly pass as a total village blockhead at one minute and at the next behave like the craziest genius in the world. He could have fun in a brawl as well as writing, or (or so Yahiko thought sometimes) falling from a rooftop as well. In other words… he was totally and absolutely cracked.

"Writing a serenade to the beautiful cherry petals?" Yutaro jested. Outa shrugged his nose.

"No, thanks," he grumbled. "Look at all those people doing exactly that."

Yahiko looked right and left, and his friends did the same, but all they could to see was the riverside full of cherry trees in bloom, and some groups of people sitting while they ate, unpacked their food or talked among themselves. Not a single one was writing anything.

"Excuse me," Yutaro started, "but I don't…"

"Everybody goes to see the cherry petals falling. Why don't we go somewhere else?" Outa insisted. "I'm developing a phobia of cherry petals falling."

"We come here for little Kenji's birthday. He's the one who decides," the incombustible Franziska von Ossum-Bössinghoven explained. "And, besides, cherry trees are very beautiful!"

"And besides, let's take a seat now or we will lose all the best places," Yahiko sighed, pulling Tsubame with him. Definitely, he thought again, that party would hardly lack anything at all.

Except maybe a place for cover.

"He arrived ill?" Aoshi arched an eyebrow. Kenji gave a deep breath, and leaned against the closed shoji of their bedroom.

"Yes. His condition has improved tremendously in this month and a half. Maybe because… well, I suppose that here, he's surrounded by people who take care of him, and it's very different from China overall." His eyes took a serious expression. "He didn't have good experiences there."

"He's just too stubborn for his own good," a lively, mildly irritated voice interrupted them from inside the room. "He could have stayed here, being nursed as he should. We all told him that, but nooo, he just had to get into a mess that was too big for him in a foreign continent where nobody could care less about whether he was sick or healthy. Bravo, Himura!"

"Are you ready, Misao?" Aoshi asked, cutting the awkward silence that had arisen after his wife's words.

"Not yet! You guys are too hasty, and I want to do it well this time!" she answered. Kenji could not help rolling his eyes at that, and, for a second, he allowed a brief smile to cross his face. In spite of marrying and having two children, the little ninja had always struck him as the most unwomanly woman he had met, much more than even his mother. He was having serious difficulties imagining her with a fancy dress… and, above all, "too hasty" was a word that he had never thought he would hear from her lips at any moment.

"She's right, I told him not to go," a deep, thoughtful voice interrupted his musings. Surprised, the young man turned back his head towards the Okashira of the Oniwabanshuu… and not for the first time he thought that there was definitely something weird in him that day.

It was not that the man had experienced strong shifts of mood or anything, something which could not actually be said about his wife (last evening she had passed from talkative and cheerful to strangely silent, and this morning, to Kenji's surprise, she was talkative again). But since he had seen Kenshin for the first time, last evening upon his arrival, he seemed to lack at least part of his usual stoicity. It seemed as if he was in doubt or pondering something whenever he spoke, if he spoke at all… and there was also a somewhat gloomy air about him that was bothering Kenji.

"But he didn't listen," the young man nodded, shrugging his shoulders. "That's what everybody more or less says. I wasn't there, you know, so I suppose it's true."

A pair of inquisitive ice blue eyes met his, filled with a sudden appreciation.

"You have changed," Aoshi stated. The young man shifted his weight from a leg to another, attacked by a sudden feeling of uneasiness,

"Well…everybody tells me that too," he whispered at last. Frantically, his mind began to search for words that could explain his issue as little embarrassingly as possible, but, to his relief, Aoshi did not press the issue. Still, the bad feeling did not leave Kenji's mind wholly, and for a while he cocked his head with a frown. Sometimes, he couldn't help but wonder…

Was he supposed to feelashamed?

"Right now, I'm only…glad that he's so much better," he finished in the end, with an hesitant smile. "And that he has fulfilled his promise of being home for my birthday. He looks happy, and I suppose that this is all that matters."

"Happy…"

The word came in a strange tone, detached but still full of something that to the young man sounded like an unknown sort of emotion. Curious, Kenji turned his head towards the ninja again, and this time he was able to catch a full-fledged absent look in his eyes by surprise. It was not frequent that anybody could say that he had seen Aoshi lowering his guard, and it felt somewhat… awkward.

After all, he considered him to be "the strongest warrior", and for a while even wished to be killed by him, he mused with a frown. I wonder what he does think now…

But who could ever know what Shinomori Aoshi was thinking?

"Attention, you two! I'm coming out!" a voice in the bedroom announced. Kenji dropped his sombre thoughts in order to smile, and took his weight away from the shoji just in time before it was slid open in a brusque movement.

"Surprise!" Misao exclaimed with a self-satisfied grin, showing her new outfit proudly. She was certainly… looking different, the young man thought in the middle of a small gasp. A long, sky-blue Western robe wrapped her slender body displaying its charms as Kenji had never seen them before, and its long skirts decorated with green flowers were so long - or were too long for her, he rectified with a grin - that they covered her feet. She wore no hat, as Franziska von Ossum-Bösinghoven did, but her dark hair was tied in a braid with a blue ribbon and two white flowers.

"My, that you look… funny, Misao-san!" he exclaimed, unable to keep back for a moment longer a chuckle at the absolutely uncanny spectacle of the little, tomboyish woman dressed like the tall and languid foreign women that he could see walking the streets of Tokyo. It gave him the distinct and disturbing impression that she was trying to disguise herself as one of them, but failed no matter what since her face, and the womanly elegance of her movements (or rather lack of) were purely… Misao, and there was nothing she could do about this. "Are you really going to the party like that?"

"Misao, you will spoil the dress if you sit on the humid grass," Aoshi added with his usual reflexive touch in a quiet voice. The woman's face began to get redder and redder.

"So that's all you two have to say? Something nice would be beyond your manly capabilities, wouldn't it?" she thundered. "I was saving this dress for a very special occasion, and that was your birthday, Kenji!"

"Calm down, dear." Her husband gave her a conciliating glance. "We didn't imply that we didn't like it."

"It's very nice, very nice, really," Kenji nodded, before a punch or a kick could send him to the other side of the room. Once again, he thought that Nature had been wise for not making most women strong; they were truly unpredictable. Pity that the exceptions seemed to surround him… "I'm very honoured of your choice of... uh, wearing it on my party first."

Misao suppressed a grumble, and walked in a stormy stride towards the shoji of the kitchen.

"I'm going to show it to the women, and get some appreciation," she announced as she disappeared behind it.

"She's …uh, she's in a funny mood today, isn't she?" Kenji muttered to Aoshi, wiping some drops of sweat from his forehead. The older man bit his lower lip, and shook his head.

"She's not feeling well," he said, before leaving him alone to go after his wife.

"Surprise!"

Kaoru and Megumi, who were finishing the packing of the food in the kitchen, were just about to drop everything they were holding at the sight suddenly displayed in front of their eyes.

"So, what do you say?" Misao asked with a smile. "Like it or not?"

Megumi, the first who was able to react, swallowed deeply, and curved her lips into a smile.

"How elegant!" she whistled. "Did you buy it in Kyoto?"

"Y… yes. You're not usually seen with such things, are you, Misao-chan?" Kaoru added with emphasis, as she returned to the world of the living after the great shock. "It was a …surprise."

"That's what I intended," the younger woman said with a wink. "Can I help?"

"When a lady is in her best clothes, there are plenty of things that she cannot do anymore," Megumi grinned. "Besides, we were almost finished, anyway."

"Oh, well…" Misao shrugged her nose, and turned back to look at Aoshi, who had just entered. "We go outside and wait?"

"We're out in an instant," Kaoru informed. "But tell Kenji to come in a couple of minutes and help. Is Hiko-san still out?"

Aoshi nodded.

"He's with Himura."

A short silence rose spontaneously among the people who crowded the kitchen. For a moment, Kaoru could not help but wonder if they were thinking the same about the old master, and the unusual trip he had made just to see someone who was changing at a vertiginous pace in front of their eyes.

At least he's lucky to have found him as he's now, and not as he was a month ago, she thought, maybe just to encourage herself.

"Let's go, then," Aoshi decided, sliding the shoji open. Misao followed him after sending a last furtive glance to the other two women's direction.

"Sheesh," Megumi sighed, as she returned to her initial task. "Who would have thought that we would be so many people at that party?"

"The more, the merrier," Kaoru answered, hurrying to help her.

"The little weasel is really the best to cheer up things at the moment," the other woman continued. "Don't you think?"

Kaoru's eyes were lost in the distance, pensively.

"Well, yes. But I think that… she's not well, herself."

"Uh? What do you mean?" Megumi gave her a curious glance, and stopped for a moment. "Do you think she's feigning her good mood?"

"Not exactly," The younger woman shrugged her shoulders, lowering her voice almost imperceptibly. "I have known her for very long, and I've remarked some things about her. When something happens that affects people around her… Oh, but this is really preposterous of me! I can't believe I'm trying to read people who are not even present." Ashamed, Kaoru shook her head with vehemence, and redoubled her efforts to get a very big bag inside a basket. After some minutes of diligent work, however, she stopped again, and fixed a strangely intent pair of eyes in the doctor. "Megumi-san… Kenshin is in a really good state today, isn't he?"

"What?" The older woman could barely hide her surprise at the sudden change of topic. "Yes... I'd say that mentally, he's at his best since he came back from the continent. Why?"

"He looks happy and full of energy, as if he had a renewed wish to live, doesn't he? He talks to me, to you, to Yahiko, to Kenji, and now he's in a conversation with Hiko-san. I have heard him laugh and talk from inside…"

Megumi frowned, shaking her head in reprobation. That had definitely sounded as if Kaoru hadn't even heard her.

"Kaoru…" she started. "He's in a phase where his brain is… well, receiving all the blood that doesn't…"Her voice trailed off, as she felt a deep, subit dulling pain seizing her heart at the sight of the feverish hope in the other woman's eyes.

Was she… hiding something from her?

"If he's feeling well," she said at last, in a more determined tone, "you should be happy for it. So get going." Taking a couple of baskets in both of her hands, she walked towards the open door, but as she closed it behind her she had enough time to leave them on the floor, and wipe away a tear that was sliding down her cheek.

"This is killing me," she muttered to herself, kneeling to lift her burden before Kenji could find her in that undignified state.

"Kenji?" Hiko took another gulp of his sake, this time without even bothering to offer it to Kenshin first. "Definitely the second most stubborn fool I've trained in my life. You know who's the first… right?"

The red-haired man nodded slowly to that question that Hiko would never have asked in normal circumstances. If it had been because he had understood, or simply because he wanted him to continue, the old master could not know.

"He did not listen. Yes, I can't deny he had aptitudes…" Scanning his surroundings, Hiko's voice shrunk to a somewhat lower tone. "More aptitudes than what you ever had, in fact. And this is not so bad."

This, on the contrary, seemed to be clearly understood by Kenshin, whose lips curved into a smile. His eyes got lost in the distance for about a minute, and then he stared back at Hiko.

"Thank you for… keeping him safe," he whispered with a more serious expression. "I feared… well, I thought... you know…"

"I know, yes." The older man winced, and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder before he could start piling complicated thoughts and getting confused. Though he would never have dreamt of confessing it, their conversation was starting to affect him.

"Well," he tried to change the subject again instead, "as now you have at last returned from China, you can…"

Surprisingly enough, those words seemed to cause a complete emotional change in the sick man. Where before there had been slowness and confusion, now Hiko saw an urgent, feverish gleam, and a slight tremor of his hands.

"The letter," he muttered in a low tone. "Did you receive the letter?"

Knowing that a serious reassurance was all what Kenshin needed right now, the old man nodded first, and then let himself be lost for a while in his thoughts. It was surprising, how the events there had marked his former student that much that even now, in his peaceful house and surrounded by friends and family, he could still react as if he was still tangled in the middle of some international mess.

"And where…?"

"Just calm a bit, all right?" Hiko grumbled. Kenshin obeyed as if out of instinct, and laid back immediately. His old master smirked. "I gave it to your son. Kenji has it now."

"Kenji…," Kenshin muttered, in renewed worry. "But…"

"But nothing. He has the right to know you. You're always withdrawing yourself from your family, you idiot, and they're the kind of people who don't take that well!"

Now, his stupid pupil had an absolutely guilty look on his face. Bravo, Hiko thought, so much for talking trivial subjects! When he had arrived, he had come decided not to mention anything about the information Kenshin had promised him while he was in China, or about Kenji's problems, or anything capable of breaking the shallow but comforting bubble of peace which was the only treasure that remained to him right now. His only intention had been to see him one last time, and put an end to the cycle that he had decided to start so many years ago after the massacre of a slave caravan. But he guessed that he was getting old, and that that was why things suddenly did not look so easy to do.

Old…

Hiko muttered a curse under his breath, not his first and most surely not his last regarding that delicate subject. He was not supposed to get old, ever! In the long years after the anything but orthodox passing of the succession technique, as he had coped with it in the quiet solitude of his mountain, he had often thought that dying young was a great part of what made a Hiten Mitsurugi master be what he was. Anyone could feel like a god, never being subject to the humiliation of being secretly unable to perform the most stressful techniques anymore… almost all techniques, in fact…, feeling the weight of his mantle over his shoulders augmenting each morning when he woke up, having to see the next successor, who once had been able to master the Ama Kakeru Ryu no Hirameki because of his triumphant will of living, fumbling to search for words with glassy eyes, wanting to die…

On the other hand, he realised, it was also true that all the previous Hiten Mitsurugi masters had lacked something in their perception of life. Something that, in a way, could make even this pitiful situation look like a twisted sublimation of the Hiten Mitsurugi generations, just at the abrupt end of the line.

He haslived and felt more than all the rest of us put together, he could not help but think, staring at the blue sky without clouds that loomed above their heads. Nah… was he feeling sad?

"Well, well, Kenshin..." he exclaimed, as he drank yet some more sake. His pupil stared at him in alert, but shook his head.

"Shinta," he corrected. Suddenly, he didn't even know why, Hiko felt the irrational need of having a good laugh.

"I never denied it was pretty," he chuckled. "So what, Shinta, are you ready for the party? We're leaving in some minutes, or so your wife said."

"I am ready."

Three words, so simple but pronounced with such a sudden, eerie determination made Hiko freeze for a second. Kenshin seemed to notice for once, and attempted a calming smile.

"I…" he started, as if to explain something. Then, however, his eyes widened suddenly, and before Hiko could even react he was doubling over himself, clutching his chest with a strange glance as he gasped for air.

"Kenshin!" In fractions of a second, the old swordsman knelt over him and laid his stiffened back over the wooden floor, holding him to wait until the attack passed. Little by little, the pale, wrinkled face started to relax once more, and the bandaged chest turned to heave up and down at a still quick but increasingly normal pace.

"Are you alright, Kenshin?" Hiko asked in concern. That glance…

"Thank you, thank… you," Kenshin gasped. His violet eyes were lifted again to search for his master's, filled with an indescribable feeling that Hiko did not know how to read.

"I was… suffocating." he explained. "No air… no breath… horrible. But…"

"But?"

The red-haired man joined his fingers, and pressed them against each other. His voice was lowered almost to a whisper, but in that moment it sounded as sure and direct as when he had been in full possession of his mental faculties.

"I didn't feel pain anymore."

Hiko turned back abruptly, shaking his head as he got up. Shinomori and the weasel, dressed in a strange outfit, were coming towards them from the other side of the yard, and he could hear Kaoru's loud voice behind the shoji shouting to Kenji that they could go out now. He turned back towards Kenshin, and dusted his mantle.

"Come, you idiot student," he said. "I will… carry you."

And for the first time in all his life, Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth's voice failed him a bit.

(to be continued)

(1)Disclaimer: I have no idea on what did graves with crosses have to do in that scene, but I put it here because Watsuki drew them. Maybe he did it to connect with the Western audience, maybe he knows things that I do not know about rural customs of the Tokugawa era (Well, I mean, I´m SURE he does, but…), or maybe Kenshin is a closet Christian, after all. (Although let me doubt it). If some reader has an answer or a suggestion, I´d be glad to hear it.

(2)I know this wasn´t the beginning of Kenshin´s misfortunes, but it was of his life as a swordsman.

(3)Higashidani Outa isn´t an original character, he IS Sano´s brother in the manga. Only that I, uh, well…developed him a bit in weird directions. That´s what happens when you´re uninspired and begin to accept the random suggestions of your friends.