Author's Notes: Ah... another chapter. I first off want to say thank to a reviewer (I'm not able to check for names right now) who corrected me on my usage of 'geisha'. I wasn't really sure as to what it meant, so thank you for clearing that up and I will correct that when I can! I am VERY proud of how this story is turning out so far. I know it's slow but I cannot help it! Unlike my other stories this cannot be a rushed story. You'll see why the farther into it I get. I still don't know exactly all that's going to happen or how long it's going to be (it's already 110 slides on Powerpoint...) so we'll just have to see! That and I have started ANOTHER story (I swear I'm gonna regret starting so many stories)! ON WITH THE STORY!
Breaking Through
Chapter 5- Morbid Visions
"Sano!" Kaoru screamed. "Listen to me!"
"Be quiet! He'll kill you!" Sanosuke warned, holding her down protectively behind him. "Battousai! Why are you terrorizing this young woman?"
"Why are you, Zanza? She appears more afraid of you than she is of me."
"Don't change the subject."
"Sano!" Kaoru begged. "I need to explain this all to you!"
"No! He came to hurt you."
"Sano! He saved my life!" she screamed. "He was bringing me dinner! Is that a crime?"
Sano looked from the woman behind him to the deadly assassin sitting at the table with chopsticks in his hands. The aura he gave off was strong yet oddly not as hostile as it had been upon his entrance into the room. He shook his head. The Battousai was strange but he still didn't trust him around someone he considered his little sister.
Sano gave him a weary look. "I don't trust you or any other imperialist. I'd suggest you leave."
Kaoru didn't know what to do, so she reached over for the closest thingwhich happened to be a plateand whacked Sano over the head with it roughly.
"Listen to me!" she cried. "I was rescued by him, I've talked to him and he is not leaving until I get some more answers! And neither are you, tori atama! Now I'd suggest you both sit down and eat in peace already before I give you both a piece of my mind! And that won't be pretty!"
Both men sat down, both oddly disturbed by the commanding tone in her voice. She handed Sano a plate and then sat in her seat across from Battousai and began to eat with her wounded arm. They all ate in silence for a moment or two.
"What happened to your hands?" Sano finally mustered up enough courage to ask him.
Battousai looked up from his food and over at the man he knew as Zanza. "That fiery young woman over there did it." he responded, pointing at Kaoru with a chopstick. "And it hurt."
Sano looked over at her, amazed that she had been able to hurt him at all, and then bewildered that she was still alive afterward. In his mind he could have never envisioned Jou-chan attacking Battousai. It was all too weird to him. Shaking his head he focused his attentions back to his food.
"If you hadn't of gone digging my things..." Kaoru shot back at Battousai.
"If you didn't leave me in your room..."
"If you knew was privacy was..."
"If you had realized before inviting me in..."
"If you had been halfway decent..."
Now Sano was thoroughly confused. Now she was mouthing back at the Battousai, and she was still breathing air? And he was even taking the time to humor her and make his own snide comments back? He shook his head.
"I know you have this thing for finding the best in people, but I think you've bitten off more than you can chew with him, Jou-chan."
"Who said I was making him act like this? It wasn't me who begged him to help me against Gohei Hiruma. He did that out of his own free will." She responded to Sano before pushing her plate away. "I'm done. Now. Battousai... you and Sano have a lot of explaining to do for me."
Kenshin's head shot up to face her quickly, eyes searching her features for a way out of this hole he was digging himself. He saw that with her he wasn't getting around that easy. He could always kill her, he reminded himself. But he had already discovered that the scent of blood and jasmine did not entice his senses the way plain jasmine did.
"Hai, so we do." he stated, his voice emotionless.
Sano gulped. "What do we need to explain?"
"Well, for starters, how do you know each other so familiarly?"
"Your friend Zanza here has challenged me once or twice in a drunk state." Battousai answered coolly.
"You meet hitokiris around when you're a gangster." Sano explained to her. "I've met a few on either side of the war, but keep my distance from them all when I can. Anything I do when I'm drunk is not my fault."
Kaoru sweat dropped at his comment. "Now tell me, Battousai, why didn't you tell me you were Battousai before when I asked?"
His eyes widened in shock without his consent, exposing emotions that he did not feel were safe to expose around Zanza. "I told you I was a hitokiri, I figured you could have made the connection."
"You still let him in after you knew he was a hitokiri? Are you going mad, Jou-chan?" Sanosuke exploded.
"I did not wish to scare you more than you were. Besides, if you had known who I was, that gave you free will to give a description to the police or Shisengumi. I did not want to have to kill someone I had just saved for a change," he told her. "Besides, you intrigued me that day in the field. No one has ever snuck up on me like that before."
"What? You've met him before this?" Sano cried.
"Yes." Kaoru responded dryly. "Momentarily. But today he saved me from Gohei. I have yet to figure out why for sure. But he did it most selflessly. Which reminds me Sano, could you help me fix the dojo's floors? I dislocated my shoulder in the fight."
"How bad are they?" Sano questioned, almost in a squeak.
Battousai grinned. "I used a special attack and hammered him into the floor."
Sano gulped. "I fear I'll have to pass on that, Jou-chan."
"Why?" she cried.
"I'm busy for a while. Plans." he lied through his teeth.
"You're the biggest freeloader I know." she stated in exasperation.
Battousai inwardly grinned. 'Another excuse to come and see her again...having to fix the dojo floors' he thought.
"I told you I would fix the floors and I that is what I will do. I made the hole, therefore I should be the one to fix it." Battousai stated simply.
"Yes! You should!" Sano shouted without realizing what he had said. "Oh... Oops."
Kaoru glanced over at Battousai. "He won't kill you Sano. I know he won't."
"What makes you so sure?" Sano questioned.
"Because he doesn't want to. Battousai, you only kill when you are told to, don't you? Or when your assistance is needed? The sword for the innocent. You kill to protect the innocent, not to feel the rush of a bloodlust."
Battousai bowed his head momentarily but nodded.
Sano stood suddenly and held his hand out to Battousai. "Thank you, ya know, for saving Jou-chan."
Kenshin stared at his hand for a moment before he took it and shook it roughly. Standing he pulled his katana with him, and headed toward the door. His eyes fell upon a flower as it floated by in the wind.
"I will now take my leave. I will show up soon to fix the floors Kaoru-san. Ja ne." he told them before stepping out into the night air.
He twisted his way through the vines that hung low against the trees as he traveled to get back to the Inn. The patterns of shadows the trees cast along the ground were intricate and complicated, but at the same time he welcomed their sight. Most things were never this beautiful to him, and for reasons he couldn't explain why everything was lovely on that trip back.
Shaking his head and reminding himself that the shadows were the spirits of those he had slain, his thoughts turned dark yet again. The constant torture he pushed himself through was not ending anytime soon, he told himself. Especially now when he needed his self-control the most, if he wanted to protect that woman named Kaoru from himself, from the monster he was.
It didn't help him much that he had to come back again to fix the dojo floors. Ultimately he knew that they would speak to each other again, they'd understand each other more. He'd wish to protect her more, and the will to stay away would be harder for him.
How had his mask slipped so easily? How had been tricked into feeling for this young woman? He could be cold to anyone around him, he had been able to hide his emotions from the people he had been with for thirteen years, yet when this woman came he lost his mask within the first time he had come in contact with her.
And the scent of jasmines assaulted him every time he thought of her.
Why did he continually refer to jasmine when he thought of her? Was he that smitten with her already to feel a withdrawal from her scent until it haunted him?
He couldn't help the images that flew through his head. He had never been one to stop and smell the flowers, but somehow the word jasmine just stuck in his mind, and he couldn't erase it. He could stare all he wanted toward the looming trees that seemed to resemble hoards of men trying to attack him, and his thoughts would still wander to the word jasmine, to the scent and it would assault him all over again, even when it wasn't near him.
Battousai shook his head. No, he told himself, there was no reason to be thinking about her. He needed to forget her if he was ever going to be able to protect her from himself.
Part of him wanted to head back to that dojo and stay there all night, just to be sure that she was going to be safe. But his other side tore him farther away with each unaccounted step toward the Inn.
Forcing his thoughts away from the young and vivacious woman, he set his gaze upon the crescent shaped, orange moon that gave him the slight light that lead his path. He could walk without the light of the moon, but it was welcoming to him. He continued on his walk, eyes downcast toward the moss covered dirt path he was traveling.
Slowly and hypnotically he fell into a trance, not really realizing he was moving. Slowly, he halted for a moment, his eyes never leaving the dirt of the road.
If his eyes were deceiving him, Kenshin could have sworn that the brown of the dirt began to seep with a coppery red tinge that snaked around obstacles yet allowed some of the natural gravel color beam through it as it began to slowly pool near his feet. His eyes crinkled in concentration and anticipation of what sights he would see upon lifting his head.
Slowly, almost remorsefully, he lifted his suddenly weighed head, with his eyes clamped shut. He opened them even slower than the speed with which he had mustered to lift his skull. They were normal for a moment, and then shot wide.
Coppery scents tinged his senses and the red that the reflected the orange moon like waters made itself apparent to him. His gaze grew more concerned as he followed the rosy liquid toward its source with his ever- attentive eyes. Amber met the sight of dull blue, surrounded by snow white and distinct, deep brick shaded red. Raven black and more red. Amber and violet.
Violet?
Kenshin stepped back suddenly, tripping gracelessly over a root. His vision went blurry momentarily before he focused again. The sight was still there, not different in the slightest.
There in a sleek black and blue kimono lay Kaoru, her eyes open but lacking the luster of life. Her skin was pale and glass like, reminding him of the purity of snow as she lay there. She was surrounded with red, her hair floating in what looked like a pool of cherry sauce, if it wasn't for the fact that it was too thin to be that. And standing above her, in bloody rain soaked Ishin Shishi colors was him, staring down with bright violet eyes in dismay.
He had killed her.
Kenshin shut his eyes and rubbed them quickly, trying to see if he was imagining things. Upon opening them he saw nothing, everything was the same. Kaoru wasn't lying dead on the gravel, he was standing above her in utter shock and there was no blood.
Everything was back to the dark of the nightly forest, clean and crisp in every way.
Standing up, he stared to wonder if he was hallucinating things. That had to be it. There was no way he was losing his mind, was there? He dusted his clothing off, but his hand hit a wet spot. Looking down he saw blood soaking, slowly, the part of his gi that covered his wrists. He pulled them up quickly but found no wound, no were for the blood to be seeping form his body and into his clothing.
"All this bloodshed is starting to get to me." He thought to himself as he began on his trek to the Inn again.
He tentatively passed the area that he scene he was now certain he had made up in his mind had taken place, and sighed when nothing popped up. He continued walking slowly, but something glistening caught his eyes.
Red tinged the thing, and he lifted it slowly. It was his swordhis katana, drenched in blood.
Author's Notes: Ah... a new chapter. Sorry it took a while to get this out. My muses have beem dying on me and I'm really stressed out lately from stories, homework, and my latest battle with 'cramps' for a 'female' problem. That was 2 weeks ago and I've been drained ever since. I think my writing in my stories may reflect this. Sorry if it does but I'm too dedicated to getting stuff out for you guys to stop and rest myself. I feel bad if I don't. This is always a stressful time of year for me anyway. Too much is going on. Teachers pack homework on me because it's the end of the markign period, lots of birthdays I have to worry about getting money for, friend's problems start to mount so I'm working har don trying to take on their problems and help them solve them, and so on and so forth. So I'm sorry if my writign is gettign worse. Gomen. Sessha is not worthy of writing for you.
Luv,
Crystal Renee