It's just AWFUL what happened to Chiki. I am taking it personally. If not for her major encouragement and support for Seven Days and Nine Months, I would not be where I am now in my fanfic writing. To that person who erased her existence in : someday, you WILL be caught. Shame on you.
Hello everybody, and thank you for waiting. Introduced concepts here are just from my crazy head. Sorry if this chapter got long.
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Deciding was one thing, conquering was another.
Soon after Kaoru had settled herself back to bed near him, the horrors began again.
He was in an old shack, at the stable. He was covered in an old horse's blanket, shivering in the cold. The winter silence was pierced by a shrill cry. "You little devil, why are you still here? Out, OUT!"
He pleaded desperately with the lady. "Please, it's so cold.........just tonight........I have nowhere to go........."
"Not a chance, brat! I won't have evil in any form staying on my property. Now get out, you devil child!" She even took a stone at her feet and threw it at him.
The stone hit the side of his forehead and made a little scratch. But he got the picture. He sighed, took up his little packet of belongings, and trudged out of the stable.
Devil child. Since his mother died, he was called that. Only the devil could have cursed him with such fiery red hair. No one knew who his father was; he barely knew himself. Some foreigner that came with the large boats, that was all he knew. That was how he turned out this way: red hair, light skin, but scrawny build and almond eyes. However, no one else knew that, and he was too young to be listened to, should he explain. Thus, the rumor stayed. His mother fell in love with the devil, and created a devil child.
It was cold, really cold, outside. And he only had thin clothes on. He blew on his hands, and began to walk. And walk and walk and walk. Two little tears fell to his dirty little cheeks. It was nights like this, when he missed his mother most.
He rubbed his eyes for a moment. Suddenly the woods around him disappeared, and they were replaced by dusty road and two rows of wooden houses. Tokyo? Kyoto? Where was he again? Tokyo........that was right.........Tokyo! It was more or less past midnight, and it was really cold.
Why was he outside? It was weird, really weird. He was outside with mismatched sandals, thin sleeping robe, and untied hair. And he did not know how he got there.
Worse, he no longer knew exactly where he was. He did not know how to get home.
If he did have a home.
"Home? Home?! You don't have a home anymore, you little brat! We need to save all the food we can!" the matron of the house shouted at him. "We tolerated you as your mother's son, that's all! Now she's gone. You better be gone, too."
"Why can't I stay?" he had asked innocently.
He got the same answer. He was a devil child, and a curse on the house. His clothes and his favorite top were bundled into a little package, and he was escorted – no, thrust – out the door.
He began again to walk, and walk, and walk. He walked aimlessly for about an hour, and found himself at a deserted side street.
Whispered voices surrounded him, from behind doors and windows.
"It's him. The devil incarnate."
"Red hair. Violet eyes. Cross-scar. It IS him."
"Get out of the way!"
"He can kill 10 men in one swing of his sword!"
"He strikes so quickly, the murdered never know until they are dead!"
"What kind of man IS he?!"
"He's not a man, he's a demon!"
"Run, run!"
He was now surrounded by cobblestones, tightly packed houses, and the smell of blood. Kyoto. Screams of panic filled his ears, as people took one look at him and ran for their lives. Those who were not afraid of his existence were either dead or in hiding.
When the roads eventually became deserted, he wearily searched for a place to eat and drink. But by then, all the food stalls had closed down, all the restaurants were closing. Soon the sun would rise, and he would still be hungry and dejected.
He managed to stumble onto a restaurant, already closed but with lights still open, while people cleaned. The smell of soup wafted from the kitchen, out the door, and to his nose. He just stood at the door, and remembered his wife of a few months, standing in front of a pot and stirring.
Suddenly a woman inside screamed. "A ghost!"
Yet another one was heard from inside. "Red hair..........It's him..........It's the ghost of that devil of a killer!"
He was too hungry and too dazed to do anything.
"You're all crazy!" A gruff voice bellowed. The door curtains were parted, and a muscular man stood in front of him. "It's just a stupid old beggar!" He then addressed him. "We don't serve beggars here. Go on, we've nothing here for you!"
"And we don't serve killers!" a woman squeaked from inside.
He was a killer. Even if he decided to stop, it would not change the facts. He was a killer. He will always be one, in the eyes of men. Maybe it was true after all. He was the child of the devil, and the devil gave him the power to kill.
"Don't just stand there, go on!" the man pushed him. He fell to the dusty road. The man then gave him a heavy kick to the side. "Move!"
He mustered enough strength to crawl farther away, to hide at a corner.
He did not know if he fell asleep or lost consciousness soon after that. But the sun was hot and people filled the main street when he looked. He would have been out of it for much longer, lying on the ground, had not some storekeeper thrown a bucket of dirty water over him. The storekeeper never noticed he was there.
Tokyo, Tokyo, he was in Tokyo.........somewhere in Tokyo. He was hungry and dirty. He had to get home.........get home.........home to............home to.................
He looked up, and saw a 10-year-old version of the little girl from before. Her cheerful yet concerned voice was just a few inches above him. She still had a wooden sword slung behind her, and she still wore her innocent smile. "You're hurt, o-nii-chan!" she said. "Can I get you anything? Bandages, ointment, something?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"That's no problem. My dad told me to help anyone who really needs it, and you look like you really need it," she said.
He chuckled. "Didn't your father tell you not to talk to strangers?"
"Only when they're scary," she grinned.
"And if I said I am the Hitokiri Battousai?" he asked.
She took out her wooden sword. "If I see Battousai, I'll give him a whack, whack, whack! I'll tell him he can't kill me!"
"You misunderstand, my little friend," he said, and looked her in the eye. "I AM Hitokiri Battousai. What will you do now?"
It took a while to sink in, and it took even longer to wait while she thought of an answer. Finally she decided on one, and stood tall. "If you promise not to kill me or my daddy, or any of my aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors, I promise that you can get bandages at my house, and you can go on your way. Besides," she smiled, "you can't hurt me if you're so beaten up right now."
"You're one brave girl," he patted her head before he fainted.
The sun had fully set when he came to. She was still there beside him.
"Come on, o-nii-chan, you better go home with me, and get a change of clothes and some bandages. My dad won't mind so much, don't worry."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
She nodded. "By the way, what's your name?"
Shinta? Himura? What name would he give? He had already been wandering for 3 years. It was safer for him now. "Kenshin," he decided.
"Pleased to meet ya, Ken-nii-chan," she smiled, then tugged. "Come on. I'm late for dinner." She helped him stand up, then ran ahead for a few feet. She stopped, turned around and waved at him. "I'm Kaoru. Hurry up!"
Kaoru.
Yes, he had to go back. He had to get back home, back to the Kamiya dojo, back to Kaoru.
But the streets now all looked the same.
He walked one road, turned the corner, turned again, and find himself back at the little restaurant from last night. He tried the other direction, turned the corner, turned again, and he was back where he started. Always he returned to the street where he began.
He curled up into a little ball. He did not know where he was, he did not know where to go.
He was a killer, a devil child. Nobody wanted him. Nobody cared.
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Kaoru woke up an hour past midnight to get some water, and check on her wanderer. But he was not in bed. Thinking he had just gone out for some water as well, she went to the kitchen. He was not there either.
Her heart began to pound. How in the world could the little man just disappear during the night, in his condition? She looked around the entire property, and he was nowhere. That could only mean that he had left the complex and walked on his own.......but to where? At 2 o'clock in the morning?
She returned to the bedroom and conducted an inventory of his belongings. Everything was still there, even the sakabatou. She did not know whether to sigh in relief or continue to be afraid. He did not leave, never to return. But if everything was still there, what did he have on? And where WAS he?!
She told herself over and over that he was fine, that he would be back, that she should get back to bed and give her cold some much-needed rest. But try as she might to sleep again, she just tossed and turned, and kept worrying.
She was still awake when Yahiko came in that morning.
"Has Kenshin come back?" she asked him.
"He's been out? I didn't know," he answered. "I'll go check." And he ran off.
He returned a minute later. "Well, he's not in any room, and I've just been to the kitchen and he's not there."
He was still not home. Something was terribly wrong. But the sniffles and the pounding headache kept her from leaving her futon.
"Yahiko, be a good boy, and try looking for him, will you?" she instructed.
She must have had a look of great fear and anxiety, because Yahiko did not complain or grumble. "I'll try."
She tried to sleep and nurse her cold, but she had nightmares of every possible thing that could happen to him.
Yahiko's head appeared behind her screen door late that afternoon. "Nobody in town has seen him, Kaoru."
She stared at the boy and his concerned face.
"Want me to call the police?" Yahiko asked.
Something told her that he was rather close, but did not know it. "Not yet. I'll give it a try. You stay here, just in case he comes home."
"But, Kaoru, you have a cold!"
She sneezed. "I'll wrap up well. But we have to find him." She walked to the tool shack and retrieved the lantern.
She just walked, in a direction she did not know how she knew. She checked all the dark alleys and corners, constantly praying he was still alive and safe. She knew there were particular streets he frequently used on his way to market, and there were certain streets he used to get to specific places. She could only pray he used those streets on instinct.
Her hunch was fortunately right. She checked the alleys of the street to the precinct, and found a man slumped with his back to one of the walls of a little noodle shop.
It was just the meeting of kindred spirits that told her it was he. Otherwise, she could not possibly have recognized him. The tangled red hair was covered in dust and mud, the flimsy yukata was torn and dirty. He stared blankly at the night sky. She shook her head sadly at him. She knew this would happen. He got disoriented, and got lost. Once again, he had tried too hard.
She tapped him on the shoulder, but he suddenly withdrew from her and inched away a few feet. He looked at her with something close to fear. "Easy, Kenshin, easy," she slowly stepped a little closer. "It's just Kaoru."
"Don't hurt me..........don't hurt me.........." He sounded like a little boy. "I am not a devil's child.......I'm just another boy......"
Devil's child? Oh, maybe because of the red hair. She truly felt sad for him then. "I won't hurt you," she reassured him. "I've come to take you home."
He shook his head. "I have no home anymore.........father and mother are both dead now.......I have nowhere to go."
She had to snap him out of this current dream state if she wanted him to go home with her. She held him firmly by his shoulders, while he squirmed and she hushed him. Finally, he grew a bit calmer. She placed both hands just under his face, and made him look up at her.
"Kenshin, it's me, Kaoru. Let's go home."
"Kaoru-dono?" He looked up at her in confusion, then looked around. "Where are we?"
"It doesn't matter anymore," she said. "Let's go home."
"Home?"
"Yes, home."
He suddenly looked fully sober, fully serious. "But that is your home, not mine."
"Nonsense, my rurouni."
She took him by the hand and led him back to familiar territory. But his eyes told her he was seeing something else, yet again. That his brain was lost again in another dream.
The effects of the withdrawal were now at their peak. It was causing more havoc than he or she knew how to handle. She cursed unknown men and unknown chemicals under her breath as she glanced back at his glassy eyes. She prayed to whoever might be there to answer, for an end to the madness.
It was then that he coughed hard and bowled over. From the way he looked, she knew that he had not eaten all day. Otherwise, he had surely vomited. He continued to cough and grip his stomach tightly.
She took his hand, and made him run with her, as quickly as possible, to the doctor's clinic.
She pounded on the door until someone appeared, someone who was not the current doctor. This new one took a long look at the heavily panting, pale and disorganized man behind her, and understood. "So this is him." He positioned himself beside the redhaired man and hurried him inside. "We have no time to lose," he told Kaoru, as he placed him on a bed, muddy hair and tattered clothes notwithstanding.
"But.....but.........how do you know about him?" Kaoru stammered.
"Inspector Fujita. He talked to me," the new doctor explained while he checked pulse and breathing. "He had suspicions from a while back, I understand."
"But how come..........."
"Kamiya-san, right? It seems that you are not the only one with complaints against my colleague. Someone with more power than either of us got him transferred elsewhere. So here I am." He spoke evenly as he laid out new clothes and sheets. "Your friend? He's not the only one with this problem, but he's the worst case I've seen so far." He then looked at Kaoru squarely. "When was the last time he took the pills? And how many?"
"Two days ago. Last that I know, he was taking one tablet every five hours during the day, and two at night every four hours."
The doctor stopped what he was doing for several seconds, and just stared at his new patient. "Incredible," he told her. "And he's still alive."
He made Kaoru tell him what happened, starting from the beginning. As she retold the story, he quickly approached a medicine cabinet, retrieved a bottle, and took out two pills. He ground these. He then took out a small teapot, poured out a cup of green tea, and mixed in the ground medicine. He returned to the man on the bed, raised him to a sitting position, and made him drink the concoction.
Within a few minutes, the panting began to slow until peaceful breathing was heard. Soon the redhead looked much the same way he did, when Kaoru found him that very first terrible day. Locked in deep, dark slumber.
"WHAT did you just do?!" Kaoru demanded in panic.
"I let him sleep, my dear," the doctor answered. "It's better than letting him continue to suffer."
"If you just killed Kenshin, I swear-----"
"That is why I asked you how much he used to take. I just gave him that much, and not more. He is safe."
"You gave him those white pills?!" She was ready to grab for the doctor's neck. "Are you crazy?! Why are you feeding the habit?"
"No, I am not feeding the habit, but if I don't give him a dose of those sleeping pills, he would be worse off. I will actually ask you to keep giving him small doses, until he is cleared."
The doctor handed her a bottle. It was full of the dangerous white pills. She gave him a menacing look.
"Do not get me wrong, young lady. Only YOU should hold it, not him. You control how much of it he gets."
"I don't understand."
"Withdrawing from this drug is like stopping from drinking alcohol, but much harder. You can't just choose to stop blankly, have a few miserable nights, and be fine in another few days. His body has gotten so used to the drug, it goes haywire when it suddenly loses its supply. That's what's happening to him now. If it goes on like this, he could die, either as a result of the hallucinations or as a result of the body reactions."
She gulped.
"To minimize the reactions, and to gradually take him out of it, you have to give some of it in very controlled amounts. He doesn't need to know. Mix it in tea or something. Then we lessen it just a bit every day, until he's cleared."
"But, you underestimate how smart he is," Kaoru replied. "He would know."
"You have to do it, my dear," the doctor said. "There is no other way. He will keep getting worse if you don't do it."
"I can't, I can't!" she protested. "You didn't see what I saw! You don't know how I lost him slowly.........."
"Listen, young lady. When it comes to this kind of thing, 60 of the fight comes from the person himself, but another 40 comes from people around him. No matter how dedicated he is in fighting it, he needs help from outside himself for it to succeed."
She took a deep breath, and nodded.
She had not kept her promise to try and help him. She promised just last night. She had already failed him. She would not fail again.
She replayed in her mind, not his grand rescues, not his profound words of devotion. She only thought of his smile, the one full of simple joy in life. The smile she saw when they talked of everything and nothing on clear summer evenings. The smile she saw while he cooked dinner. The smile she saw whenever he held her hand. She had not seen that smile for at least two months.
She looked down at the new bottle in her hands, her kimono stained with tears.
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Some explanation. I noticed in the early parts of the Kyoto arc anime how pale-skinned my favorite redhead is. Apart from the shock of red hair, it really made me think of his foreign roots. The result is this chapter. Also, the process given here is more or less the way addiction to the sedative-hypnotics are treated.
A little Gackt nonsense, if you don't mind. I finally got to see The Sixth Day and Seventh Night concert. That guy can absolutely, absolutely sing! The deep notes are rich, the high notes are clear. And he can totally rock a concert. He was all over the place in the fast songs, and he was very powerful (in a good way) in the slow songs. That nurse's outfit he wore will haunt my dreams for a while, I was laughing so hard. I hope he doesn't work TOO hard, it's painful to see him panting and forcing his way through the concert, while giving everybody such a memorable time.
I highly, highly recommend getting acquainted with Gackt and his music! Before it's too late, with the way he's punishing himself in those concert things. If you like slow stuff, download "Tsuki no Uta" or "Last Song". Slow but heavy, try "Secret Garden" or "Oasis". You like hard rock, try "Lu:Na". If you like the quirky, try "UK" or "Vanilla". He has them all, and more.
samuraiduck27 – Thanks much. Maeko-Nohara – You're 13? Sorry! This thing will be shorter than the Enishi stories, sorry again. JML – I understand now about the Last Samurai thing. Thanks for liking it. Nekotsuki – Thanks for liking. junyortrakr – Yup, one thing at a time is good. Brittanie Love – Thank you so much. Pnaixrose – I never thought people would find it so very interesting, so, thanks so very much!