"Tell me once more what I mean to you
Let me know how much I make your world glow
Sometimes I feel like just an empty shell
Until your smile lifts up my heart"
- Avalonian Witch
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Rurouni Kenshin
AN: A quickie-one-shot
Shell
The Battousai never needed anyone. Even Tomoe had been a liability that the Battousai had been anxious to be rid of. Emotions were weaknesses, and weaknesses could be exposed. The Battousai had no need for weaknesses, no time for love or emotions or anything that might distract him from his purpose in life.
The Rurouni felt differently. Maybe it was because a Rurouni is a wanderer, someone with no home that he longed so much for her. Her smile, her touch, just her presence was enough to make him feel complete. Make him feel like the man that the Battousai had worked so hard to bury deep into the back of his mind.
If anyone were to know how much she meant to him than they would think him insane for leaving. They would say he was insane for walking away from the one thing in his life that made him whole. Her scent was still around him from when he held her. The spots on his haori there where her tears had landed only served to heighten his memory.
The path to Kyoto would be a lonely one, he knew. He realized it the moment he started walking away from her. But it was necessary, to close the chapter of his life that the Battousai had ruled…it was necessary to go back there and face his demons. In order to begin the chapter of his life that the Rurouni longed for so…
He could image life with her, warm content happy. Those three things that had been denied to him as the Battousai were now offered so openly to him the Rurouni. But he couldn't do it just yet. Not until the darkness of his past was cast out…not until he felt himself worthy enough to return to her…
After all…
He was just a shell without her.