Jaa, here ya go. And man, thanks for the reviews. They were so appreciated, escpecially when writing two different chapters of two different fics at the same time, AND with all this school crap piling up... etc. etc.
P.S. This is a revised repost. The next chappie is half-written, but that was 'cause the laptop crashed and I only just got that info back... $800 later. Ugh.
Jaa, have fun! And review if ya do!
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
CHAPTER 2
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The first thing she was aware of was the voices. Then the smoke.
Then the fire.
Kaoru yanked her head off of the muddy ground and whipped it toward the screams coming from the orange glow of flaming houses in the distance. It was night. The surroundings were unfamiliar, but that only contributed to the sheer horror of it all.
Men were fighting, she could see flashing swords and hear battle cries mingling with the screams of the fallen, and there seemed to be a sort of nest of writhing, shrieking, dying soldiers.
Only when she glanced down did she realize that the mud underneath her prone form was not from rain.
It was blood, running in little streams off of the hillside from the village.
Kaoru's eyes widened in horror as she realized that her hands had sunk elbow-deep into it when she'd propped herself up to see. Her face was stained, her gi was stained, nothing was left untouched. Suddenly, as she scrambled to escape the liquid, it began to throb and pulse, and her vision began to grow dim. The mud was sucking her down into itself, yanking her arms and legs into the bottomless pit.
Kaoru opened her mouth to scream but a wave of muddy gore washed into her mouth as it pulled her down into its depths. There was no air! No air!
'Oh no, oh Kami, no,' was all she could think. 'I'm drowning!'
Her vision had just gone black when a voice screamed her name and a strong pair of arms reached into the muck to pull her back out. She choked and retched, coughing out all the disgusting fluid from her mouth and lungs while Sanosuke propped her head up. "Jou-chan, you okay?" he asked, concern thickening his tone. She nodded, coughing and shivering violently.
'I was two milliseconds away from dying...but...'
After a few minutes of recovery and steady breathing, she found herself with the same question as before.
"Sano--where are we?"
They both looked up with fearful fascination at the fiery inferno of screaming men, women and-- children? Were those children there? The houses had begun to collapse under the heat, and the flames rose higher, almost twenty feet into the air. No matter how hard you looked, it seemed impossible; there was no sky, no stars; just darkness, fire, and death.
Explosions sounded in the distance and the people kept forming a sort of bloody, seething ball around one particular entrance to a house. Their faces were that of the dead, bone and rotting skin showing under their angry, sorrowing, panic-stricken expressions, and suddenly Kaoru had a horrible vision of how Kenshin had been right before they were taken here. She shivered unconsciously; the girl had never seen such horrors, even in her nightmares.
"S-Sano..." she stammered quietly. "Is...is this--"
"Kaoru-san!" Megumi appeared, waving. She ran towards them as fast as she could, her hair in disarray, her face smudged with mud and dirt and blood. She was shortly accompanied by Yahiko, who was in the same shape except that the shoulder of his gi was torn open, and he kept his eyes on the soldiers. The boy was staring at the writhing demons of battle as if his eyes were going to pop out of his head.
"Kaoru-san, daijoubu?" Megumi panted. "Where are we?"
"It--it's hell," Yahiko managed.
"It's the Revolution," Sano said darkly.
The three beside the street fighter stared at the him astonishedly. "What?"
"I remember this," he sighed. "It was just like this, except...well, the people were normal. And the children were already dead."
"Sano...You...lived through this?" Kaoru said sternly, touching his arm.
"I was eight," Sanosuke began slowly. "I had already left my home... Captain Sagara took me in, said I could help them fight, help them end the time of opression. He died shortly after this battle. We were only passing through at the time... But what I'd like to know is how the hell did we get here?" The man broke his reverie and slammed his fist against the dead tree that sheltered them. "All I remember is seeing Kenshin fall and then there was a white light. And now we're...we're back...here."
"The Bakumatsu? But...but..." The more Kaoru took in their surroundings the more believable it became. Soldiers, fire... There, the Shogunate crest. But it was impossible...
"Kenshin," Kaoru said suddenly, remembering. "He was-- where is he?" A new, horrible thought occured to her. "Is he in there somewhere?!"
"Right," Yahiko said, snapping his fingers. "We're all here, aren't we? So where is Kenshin?"
"I don't know, but things are beginning to heat up over there," Sanosuke said grimly. "If we're gonna find him it'd better be soon." He was right. The Kenshin-gumi found themselves paralyzed as they looked on at the throng seething and writhing before them.
Several men were engaged in decapitating a pair of Shogunate soldiers, while countless others seemed to be involved in what looked like wrestling with swords. It was a disturbed anthill, countless soldiers losing themselves in the struggle.
Suddenly a cry was taken up by the crowd. It was the voice of insanity.
"Hitokiri!"
"The manslayer is here!"
"Hitokiri Battousai is here!"
"Nooo!"
"Victory is ours!"
"Shogunate dogs!"
No.
Kaoru and the others looked on in silent horror as the group of men suddenly dissolved into skeletons with nothing but armor and badannas in a burst of ki and flame, flags burning in the wind. Over the cries of the dying men a single, high, horrible scream was heard over the din.
The doors to the largest house where the bodies were swarming burst open and out stepped a soldier dressed in black. His hair was streaming out behind him as he stood in the melee, and in the firelight it almost looked--
Red.
"Kenshin!" Kaoru screamed.
"Kenshin," Yahiko breathed, staring.
"Oh man."
"Ken-san--"
He was almost normal again. His hair was tied high, and his face was clean and full of color. Well, at least it wasn't as deathly pale as before. His clothes were gray and dark, shabby, lifeless. And there was a pair of weapons at his waist. His expression was agony as he drew his sword.
'Oh Kenshin, no,' Kaoru thought.
The manslayer took one look at the adversaries surrounding him and looked deeply into each face, as though he couldn't stop himself. The throng gazed back through gaping sockets, then in a sudden burst of the man's ki, fell like puppets with cut strings. They writhed, twisting and turning on the ground, screams and cries erupting like lava.
They were begging to be spared.
Kenshin's face was paling, and his eyes shut tight. A single tear escaped from his left.
'No--don't--don't make me do it again-- I can't! I can't! Please, no! No! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!'
With a heart-rending scream, the manslayer stepped forward--and began to massacre the already dead. The reaction from the Kenshin-gumi was instantaneous.
"Kenshin, no!"
"Kenshin--"
Kaoru couldn't believe it. She just couldn't. She had never seen Kenshin this way. He was screaming and slashing away at the fallen bodies of the soldiers like a madman, blood splashing his clothes. The men were already doomed, and they pleaded for life, staring him in the face as he murdered them, and pleaded for someone to stop him. He was killing them and he couldn't control himself.
Kaoru shouted for him and began moving toward the burning village, but someone stepped in front of her. She looked up at him, questioning desperately. "Sano, what--"
"Shhhh, Jou-chan. Look," he said, pointing to where Kenshin was destroying the corpses. "There. Listen to him. He's crying," he told her. " Can you hear him? Kenshin is screaming at those bodies, but look. His mouth isn't moving." Sanosuke looked at her seriously. "Kaoru, we're hearing his thoughts."
"Wh-what?" Yahiko sputtered. "You mean--"
"Guys, I think...I think we're inside Kenshin's head."
"You-you mean...this is in Kenshin?" Yahiko gasped.
Sano seemed to be the most in-the-know of them all, folding his arms and leaning against the dead tree. "Is it really that surprising? You heard the stuff Hiko mentioned. And Jou-chan," he said, turning towards her. "Your room is next to his just like mine. Don't tell me you haven't heard his nightmares."
Megumi and Yahiko stared at Kaoru's tight-lipped, silent acknowledgement. "How could I not?" she said bitterly. "He won't tell anyone anything, it happens every night! I knew something was wrong with him last night, but-- He just can't let anyone get close to him."
"But Jou-chan, don't you think this is why?" Sano swept a hand across the gory scene. "He didn't want us to see this. He loves us too much. He loves you too much." He cocked his head to the side, watching her. Kaoru looked at the ground, a troubled expression etched onto her face.
'Ka--Kaoru...?'
The girl looked up at the sound of her name.
Kenshin was kneeling at the base of the hill, totally immobile. He was staring at the group under the tree, wonder, surprise, confusion, and fear written endlessly on his features.
He was also endlessly covered with blood.
Kaoru realized that this, this stained, disgusting, unworthy creature, was how he saw himself. And when she realized that, she couldn't take it anymore. Kenshin thought he was so dirty, so sinful, so bloodstained, that he stayed away to keep her safe, and he looked at himself as that lowly demon every minute of every day. For almost twelve years, maybe for his entire life.
Kaoru broke down crying into Sano's chest, and he reached to hold her up.
Kenshin watched in numb silence as she cried in Sano's arms, kneeling helplessly, alone, in the pool of blood that he had made. His worst fear had finally come true.
She knew.
She knew exactly what he was, and she couldn't face him. She couldn't look at him for what he really was. It was over. His salvation; lost. She could never love him, he knew it was true. His angel had been tainted simply by his being.
How could he have ever hoped for happiness?
He didn't deserve it.
With a sob, Kenshin buried his head in his arms, and cried. A sudden scream resounded off of- what was it? Was it walls? An echo came from somewhere deep in his consciousness, and the Kenshin-gumi was knocked backward as the blindingly bright light flashed once again.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Happy Halloween.
P.S. This is a revised repost. The next chappie is half-written, but that was 'cause the laptop crashed and I only just got that info back... $800 later. Ugh.
Jaa, have fun! And review if ya do!
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
CHAPTER 2
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The first thing she was aware of was the voices. Then the smoke.
Then the fire.
Kaoru yanked her head off of the muddy ground and whipped it toward the screams coming from the orange glow of flaming houses in the distance. It was night. The surroundings were unfamiliar, but that only contributed to the sheer horror of it all.
Men were fighting, she could see flashing swords and hear battle cries mingling with the screams of the fallen, and there seemed to be a sort of nest of writhing, shrieking, dying soldiers.
Only when she glanced down did she realize that the mud underneath her prone form was not from rain.
It was blood, running in little streams off of the hillside from the village.
Kaoru's eyes widened in horror as she realized that her hands had sunk elbow-deep into it when she'd propped herself up to see. Her face was stained, her gi was stained, nothing was left untouched. Suddenly, as she scrambled to escape the liquid, it began to throb and pulse, and her vision began to grow dim. The mud was sucking her down into itself, yanking her arms and legs into the bottomless pit.
Kaoru opened her mouth to scream but a wave of muddy gore washed into her mouth as it pulled her down into its depths. There was no air! No air!
'Oh no, oh Kami, no,' was all she could think. 'I'm drowning!'
Her vision had just gone black when a voice screamed her name and a strong pair of arms reached into the muck to pull her back out. She choked and retched, coughing out all the disgusting fluid from her mouth and lungs while Sanosuke propped her head up. "Jou-chan, you okay?" he asked, concern thickening his tone. She nodded, coughing and shivering violently.
'I was two milliseconds away from dying...but...'
After a few minutes of recovery and steady breathing, she found herself with the same question as before.
"Sano--where are we?"
They both looked up with fearful fascination at the fiery inferno of screaming men, women and-- children? Were those children there? The houses had begun to collapse under the heat, and the flames rose higher, almost twenty feet into the air. No matter how hard you looked, it seemed impossible; there was no sky, no stars; just darkness, fire, and death.
Explosions sounded in the distance and the people kept forming a sort of bloody, seething ball around one particular entrance to a house. Their faces were that of the dead, bone and rotting skin showing under their angry, sorrowing, panic-stricken expressions, and suddenly Kaoru had a horrible vision of how Kenshin had been right before they were taken here. She shivered unconsciously; the girl had never seen such horrors, even in her nightmares.
"S-Sano..." she stammered quietly. "Is...is this--"
"Kaoru-san!" Megumi appeared, waving. She ran towards them as fast as she could, her hair in disarray, her face smudged with mud and dirt and blood. She was shortly accompanied by Yahiko, who was in the same shape except that the shoulder of his gi was torn open, and he kept his eyes on the soldiers. The boy was staring at the writhing demons of battle as if his eyes were going to pop out of his head.
"Kaoru-san, daijoubu?" Megumi panted. "Where are we?"
"It--it's hell," Yahiko managed.
"It's the Revolution," Sano said darkly.
The three beside the street fighter stared at the him astonishedly. "What?"
"I remember this," he sighed. "It was just like this, except...well, the people were normal. And the children were already dead."
"Sano...You...lived through this?" Kaoru said sternly, touching his arm.
"I was eight," Sanosuke began slowly. "I had already left my home... Captain Sagara took me in, said I could help them fight, help them end the time of opression. He died shortly after this battle. We were only passing through at the time... But what I'd like to know is how the hell did we get here?" The man broke his reverie and slammed his fist against the dead tree that sheltered them. "All I remember is seeing Kenshin fall and then there was a white light. And now we're...we're back...here."
"The Bakumatsu? But...but..." The more Kaoru took in their surroundings the more believable it became. Soldiers, fire... There, the Shogunate crest. But it was impossible...
"Kenshin," Kaoru said suddenly, remembering. "He was-- where is he?" A new, horrible thought occured to her. "Is he in there somewhere?!"
"Right," Yahiko said, snapping his fingers. "We're all here, aren't we? So where is Kenshin?"
"I don't know, but things are beginning to heat up over there," Sanosuke said grimly. "If we're gonna find him it'd better be soon." He was right. The Kenshin-gumi found themselves paralyzed as they looked on at the throng seething and writhing before them.
Several men were engaged in decapitating a pair of Shogunate soldiers, while countless others seemed to be involved in what looked like wrestling with swords. It was a disturbed anthill, countless soldiers losing themselves in the struggle.
Suddenly a cry was taken up by the crowd. It was the voice of insanity.
"Hitokiri!"
"The manslayer is here!"
"Hitokiri Battousai is here!"
"Nooo!"
"Victory is ours!"
"Shogunate dogs!"
No.
Kaoru and the others looked on in silent horror as the group of men suddenly dissolved into skeletons with nothing but armor and badannas in a burst of ki and flame, flags burning in the wind. Over the cries of the dying men a single, high, horrible scream was heard over the din.
The doors to the largest house where the bodies were swarming burst open and out stepped a soldier dressed in black. His hair was streaming out behind him as he stood in the melee, and in the firelight it almost looked--
Red.
"Kenshin!" Kaoru screamed.
"Kenshin," Yahiko breathed, staring.
"Oh man."
"Ken-san--"
He was almost normal again. His hair was tied high, and his face was clean and full of color. Well, at least it wasn't as deathly pale as before. His clothes were gray and dark, shabby, lifeless. And there was a pair of weapons at his waist. His expression was agony as he drew his sword.
'Oh Kenshin, no,' Kaoru thought.
The manslayer took one look at the adversaries surrounding him and looked deeply into each face, as though he couldn't stop himself. The throng gazed back through gaping sockets, then in a sudden burst of the man's ki, fell like puppets with cut strings. They writhed, twisting and turning on the ground, screams and cries erupting like lava.
They were begging to be spared.
Kenshin's face was paling, and his eyes shut tight. A single tear escaped from his left.
'No--don't--don't make me do it again-- I can't! I can't! Please, no! No! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!'
With a heart-rending scream, the manslayer stepped forward--and began to massacre the already dead. The reaction from the Kenshin-gumi was instantaneous.
"Kenshin, no!"
"Kenshin--"
Kaoru couldn't believe it. She just couldn't. She had never seen Kenshin this way. He was screaming and slashing away at the fallen bodies of the soldiers like a madman, blood splashing his clothes. The men were already doomed, and they pleaded for life, staring him in the face as he murdered them, and pleaded for someone to stop him. He was killing them and he couldn't control himself.
Kaoru shouted for him and began moving toward the burning village, but someone stepped in front of her. She looked up at him, questioning desperately. "Sano, what--"
"Shhhh, Jou-chan. Look," he said, pointing to where Kenshin was destroying the corpses. "There. Listen to him. He's crying," he told her. " Can you hear him? Kenshin is screaming at those bodies, but look. His mouth isn't moving." Sanosuke looked at her seriously. "Kaoru, we're hearing his thoughts."
"Wh-what?" Yahiko sputtered. "You mean--"
"Guys, I think...I think we're inside Kenshin's head."
"You-you mean...this is in Kenshin?" Yahiko gasped.
Sano seemed to be the most in-the-know of them all, folding his arms and leaning against the dead tree. "Is it really that surprising? You heard the stuff Hiko mentioned. And Jou-chan," he said, turning towards her. "Your room is next to his just like mine. Don't tell me you haven't heard his nightmares."
Megumi and Yahiko stared at Kaoru's tight-lipped, silent acknowledgement. "How could I not?" she said bitterly. "He won't tell anyone anything, it happens every night! I knew something was wrong with him last night, but-- He just can't let anyone get close to him."
"But Jou-chan, don't you think this is why?" Sano swept a hand across the gory scene. "He didn't want us to see this. He loves us too much. He loves you too much." He cocked his head to the side, watching her. Kaoru looked at the ground, a troubled expression etched onto her face.
'Ka--Kaoru...?'
The girl looked up at the sound of her name.
Kenshin was kneeling at the base of the hill, totally immobile. He was staring at the group under the tree, wonder, surprise, confusion, and fear written endlessly on his features.
He was also endlessly covered with blood.
Kaoru realized that this, this stained, disgusting, unworthy creature, was how he saw himself. And when she realized that, she couldn't take it anymore. Kenshin thought he was so dirty, so sinful, so bloodstained, that he stayed away to keep her safe, and he looked at himself as that lowly demon every minute of every day. For almost twelve years, maybe for his entire life.
Kaoru broke down crying into Sano's chest, and he reached to hold her up.
Kenshin watched in numb silence as she cried in Sano's arms, kneeling helplessly, alone, in the pool of blood that he had made. His worst fear had finally come true.
She knew.
She knew exactly what he was, and she couldn't face him. She couldn't look at him for what he really was. It was over. His salvation; lost. She could never love him, he knew it was true. His angel had been tainted simply by his being.
How could he have ever hoped for happiness?
He didn't deserve it.
With a sob, Kenshin buried his head in his arms, and cried. A sudden scream resounded off of- what was it? Was it walls? An echo came from somewhere deep in his consciousness, and the Kenshin-gumi was knocked backward as the blindingly bright light flashed once again.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Happy Halloween.