Chapter one: Nightmare
"Is there anything else you require of me tonight Kaoru?" Kenshin Himura asked quietly.
Kaoru looked up from her sewing, "Um…no I don't think so Kenshin."
He smiled, "Well then I think I'll go to bed, if you don't mind."
She smiled back at him, "No of course not. You worked really hard today. Good night Kenshin, sleep well."
"Thank you Miss. Kaoru," he used the honorific without thinking, "And you as well," he lingered a moment longer, staring at the girl he had come to love.
"What is it Kenshin? What's wrong?"
He opened his mouth, but then closed it and shook his head, his red hair shifting slightly with the motion, "Nothing Kaoru, it's nothing," then he went to his room in the Kamiya dojo.
He had wanted to ask her tonight. Ask her what he had been meaning to for some time; ask her to marry him, but he just couldn't find the moment. He dug in his kimono sleeve and pulled out a small wooden box and opened it to study the ring that he had bought her, with a sigh he put it back.
"I am a fool, that I am," he lay down his futon and blankets, and put the sakabató against the wall. He had begun to sleep laying on the floor again, it had been so long…
He stripped down and changed in to his sleeping robe and hoped that this night's sleep would be free of nightmares, but this was not to be for the former Battó sai. The truth was he was just getting over a severe cold, and when he was sick the nightmares only became worse. Sleep came the moment he closed his haunted violet eyes.
"Kaoru? Where are you?" He called into the darkness, "Yahiko? Sanosuke?"
There was no answer to his call, a sudden pale light illuminated what was apparently the Kamiya dojo. Some thing was wrong, a tangy smell hung in the air.
"Blood?" Kenshin gasped, "Miss. Kaoru!"
He ran to her room and slammed open the sliding door, and he let out a gasp, his heart in his throat. Sano lay in the middle of the disheveled room, a knife in his chest, "SANO!"
He lay his friend's head on his lap, "Sano what happened?"
The golden eyes fluttered open, "Kenshin," his voice was ragged and wet, choking on the blood in his mouth, "Kenshin?"
A tear graced Kenshin's pale face, "I'm here Sano. What happened, where's Yahiko and Kaoru?"
Sano coughed up blood, "Why did you do it Kenshin? I thought you loved her. Let me go, you're an imperialist bastard." He moved his head off the swordsman's lap.
"Sano I don't understand."
The open eyes of Sanosuke did not blink again and Kenshin closed them with a shaking hand.
"Kenshin…" he heard his name from out in the courtyard.
His eyes widened as he recognized the voice, "Tomo…It can't be."
He struggled out toward the courtyard, but tripped over something laying on the ground. Kenshin turned and gasped as he realized it was a body.
A small body.
A small body with spiky black hair.
"Yahiko, no," he crouched to study his small friend and began to cry, "He's dead."
The boy had been beaten horribly, his right arm was horribly mangled and broken, and he had been pierced through the stomach, his blood lay spilled on a layer of newly fallen snow, it was a slow and cruel death for one so young.
The red haired man hugged the body close to him, "Why? Ouch!" He put a hand to his left cheek and it came away sticky with blood. His scars were bleeding.
"Kenshin…"
"Kaoru!" He set Yahiko's body down and ran into the courtyard. Tomo lay dead in the snow and next to her, close enough to touch her hand, lay Kaoru, blood running down her face and her shoulder cut open much like Tomo.
"NO! KAORU!" He rushed to her side, "Kaoru, wake up, please."
Her purple eyes opened slowly, "Kenshin? Why did you kill them? You said you gave up being Battosai. You said you loved me, were they all lies?"
Kenshin's heart tightened painfully in his chest, "I did this? Miss. Kaoru I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on."
"I thought, after all we'd been through together that we could trust you to protect us from them…from yourself. I did love you Kenshin…I really and truly did…"
Her eyes went half-lidded and she went limp in his arms.
"NO!"
"Kenshin…"
"KAORU!"