A/N: I apologize for the confusion with the last chapter's change in point of views. I have attempted different symbols to mark the change but not many seem to work. Once I find ones that do work, I'll repost the chapter. Once again, sorry.

-PLEASE DO NOT NAG ME- about this chapter taking a while, if those are your intentions. As I mentioned in the author's note of last chapter, this will be on the backburner due to school and original writing I am doing on fictionpress (under the penname Ranting Akumas).

Disclaimer (which I seemed to forgotten last chapter): Don't own Rurouni Kenshin or the song lyrics below. I do, however, own this plot.

As I walk this land of broken dreams

I have visions of many things

Happiness is just an illusion

Filled with sadness and confusion

-Joan Osborne and the Funk Brothers (Jimmy Ruffin originally), What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

The Tale Not Worth Hearing:

Chapter 2

Even among the sounds of panic and death that surrounded us, a silence thicker than anything I had known settled about me and the girl.

My hand twitched around the hilt of my sword and the muscles in my right arm tightened, but I could not bring myself to kill her. It would only need one movement, swifter than the blink of an eye, and then it would be done.

So why wasn't she finished?

She continued staring at me obstinately, her blue eyes flickering with anger. Tears gathered on the corner of her eyes and fell as more pushed at them, teetering on the edge of her lower lid. A droplet fled on its sinuous course down her cheek, trailing down the edge of her jaw-line for a brief moment before landing on my hand.

Suddenly, my hand began to tremble as the drop of liquid slid down its side.

"Shinta..."

Two arms enclosed me, tucking me closer to warmth, blocking the smell of death and blood.

"Shinta..."

Her voice was soft, desperate, heavy with the knowledge that the life that had amounted to nothing, the life that she had built for herself, would be destroyed.

"Shinta, you must live...!"

Liquid fell steadily on my face, dripping down as she sobbed as quietly as she could, pulling me closer. Over her arm I could see a flash of light – metal moving through the half darkness, the blood red sunset splattering the normally blue sky – and liquid shooting outwards from a shadowed figure I had grown to cherish.

A droplet dripped down from her cheek and landed on my hand as I twisted in horror, my eyes growing wide.

That day Shinta died and Kenshin was born...but he too would die, eventually...

I felt the breath stop in my throat and I stared at the tear that had stopped at where my thumb met my hand before my gaze flickered to the girl. For a moment, I saw the other slave who had held me and I faltered.

"Battousai!"

Stiffening, I did not turn to greet the new voice and I carefully covered my brief moment of vulnerability. I knocked the wooden sword – what a foolish, idiotic thing it was, I thought – out of her hand and kicked it across the room.

Disarmed as she was, I knew there would be little chance of her being able to harm me and I withdrew my sword, but still I did not move to face the newcomer.

"What a fitting scene for a monster such as you, manslayer!" the voice called, a man's and sounding young.

Untouched by life, I thought. Just like the girl, whose eyes shone with a fire that I had never known. The light in my eyes was cold and unwelcoming, I knew.

"Attacking this woman, no remorse as you hold your tainted blade to her skin!"

What a fool.

I was careful to make no eye contact with the girl, staring just above her head, seeing from the corner of my eye that she was frozen, unaware of what I was going to do and unsure of what to do herself.

"Turn and fight, coward who slays women, monster that destroys life!"

"Your babbling is beginning to annoy me," I interrupted, a strange feeling of annoyance welling up within me.

Was it from what he was rambling about or simply that he would not stop?

Raising my sword, I wheeled about to face the moron, blade raised and poised for the kill. I barely saw him – his eyes were an innocent brown, yet glared at me hatefully from behind his wispy black bangs. As I dashed forward, I knew that he had no chance, his eyes darting left and right. He could not even see me.

With no wish to let this annoying idiot live any longer, I spun and brought my sword with me, using my momentum to make it more powerful.

My sword met flesh once again.

I jumped over his body and landed before it hit the ground with a deathly thud, his head rolling from his neck. Blood covered my blade and I, and I did not bother to wipe it from my face.

A choked gasp floated to my ears and I turned to face the girl. She was staring at the decapitated head, mouth slightly open and eyes wide, black strands of hair framing her terrified, pale face.

Snorting, I flicked the blood off my blade and it splattered over the walls of her house.

Horror crept into her eyes and for a second, just a brief second that clenched my heart and made me freeze, I truly felt like a monster, standing above the carnage that it had created, splattered with blood. My sword gleamed in the corner of my eye and I looked at my reflection briefly in it. My lip curled back in a sneer.

Why was the mere horror of this foolish girl, no older than 19, affecting me so?

A voice I had thought I'd long killed appeared within the confines of my head.

You killed him...

Mommy, I'm scared

He died

Dead...dead...

Dead. Dead.

Deaddeaddead...Mommyi'mscaredhavethebadmengoneawayyetsaveme

A growl leapt from my throat and I closed my eyes, knowing the hard, unrelenting amber and coldness was slipping.

He's dead...dead...How could youdeaddead...!

You...

Shinta.

I had thought...I had thought that Shinta had died...

You monster...

My head reeled and I fell to the ground, clapping my hands over my ears. With a clatter, the blade stained with blood – no, no, I had cleaned it, it was clean, clean – clattered to the ground.

The voice did not lesson its assaults.

(Change in POV)

I lost track of how many minutes we stood, staring at each other. Confusion entered into my mind, floating in and overtaking it as if fog.

Why had he not killed me?

I could see the muscles on his forearm tense and I knew his hand was tightening, but he made no move to kill me. The metal of his blade pressed into my skin just slightly harder, but no blood was drawn.

In his eyes I saw anger and frustration – at himself?

It was then I realized that I had been crying, and that I still was. How weak of me, weeping pathetically in front of this man!

The tears slowed but one snuck its way out despite my efforts, trailing down my face and falling off. I could hear it drop onto the man's hand, so intense was the silence between us amidst the carnage. His eyes flickered to an ice blue, before they returned to gold.

Was I imagining things?

A cry came from the door broke our tensed silence, the name of "Battousai!" ringing through the air so desperate for noise.

Sudden fear overtook me.

Battousai?

They shared the same features the famous manslayer was rumored to have, yes, but he was so...so...small and thin! He could easily have been mistaken for a girl if he had worn his gi tight around his body!

I froze, the murmur of the man's voice quiet among the raging of my mind, the young man's face and features blurred in the periphery of my eye. Once he had finished, I stared at this man – Battousai, I corrected myself – as I wondered what he would do, wary.

"Your babbling is beginning to annoy me," was his curt response as he interrupted whatever the man had been saying, his gaze fixed over my head.

A cold fear washed over me, dread tingling down to my toes and paralyzing me.

He turned around and raised his blade, my feet frozen in place. I could not move as if the fear slipped out through my toes and rooted me in the floor where I stood.

My knees were unable to support my weight, as if the dread that had passed through them had taken their strength with it. I fell to the ground as Battousai seemed to disappear from view, the young man with light, innocent brown eyes searching desperately for him.

Suddenly the red-haired slaughterer appeared, body twisting as gracefully as a cat's, and, in one swift movement of the wrist, he sliced the man's head off.

I felt my eyes widen in horror, drying their tears abruptly as a state of shock overcame me.

My hands reached up to my face, trembling violently and I saw his eye twitch very subtly, as the head rolled near his feet.

Horror erased all of my senses and I stared up at him, mouth gaping as I tried to form words which would not come out of my mouth. His eye twitched again and for a moment, he looked almost...ashamed...standing behind the disgusting corpse – how I wanted to vomit, the site of another's life ripped away hurt me so! The dark gi he wore was soaked with blood, his face sprinkled with it as well, matching his hair.

An insane thought enters my head, wondering if his hair had been dyed by others' blood, before I shook it away.

Carefully, I watched him, unsure of what he would do with me now that I had seen the abrupt death of a human who had done nothing – hadn't he deserved to live?

What gave Battousai the right to kill him?

Angry I might have been if I was not terrified, nearly planted in the hard, wooden floor my father had built-

Father. Oh God, Father...

He was dead. Never coming back. I could feel it, and sitting there, watching the strange icy blue creep in upon the amber, the enormity of the situation hit me.

My train of morbid, depressing thoughts – but real thoughts they were, I knew – was interrupted by the sound of metal striking against the wood. A sword falling to the ground?

I looked to Battousai and saw him kneeling in the pool of blood he had created with his dirtied hands, the same dirty hands clapped over his ears.

And, huddled there on the floor, ears blocking out some sound he did not want to hear – what was it? – he suddenly looked like a lost child.

What an incredible simile, I thought to myself. A man who slays others for who knows what reasons, killing everyone who got in his path, this man who appears to have no honor, looking like something as innocent as a child?

What madness!

Despite how mad it sounded, however, I knew it was true as he gave a scared whimpered and began muttering things.

Strangely enough, my legs unrooted themselves and I began crawling forward, aware of what I was doing and my mind screamed to stop, stop, but I continued moving forward.

My training hakama trailed through blood and became soaked through with it, my hands wading through the liquid form of another's life.

And as I drew nearer, my hand reached out – entirely of its own accord, I assure you, for I had no intention of even nearing this dangerous man whom I barely knew – and soon enough my entire arm followed.

I embraced him, bloody and deathly.

"No! No, make it stop...Master...Make it stop!

"I can't, I can't...take it...

"It's...disgusting, Master, but I can't stop it. I am unsure if anyone can..."

A/N: ...Well. Odd. Yes, I know Kaoru doesn't seem like the sweet, I-love-everybody-no-matter-what Kaoru we see in the series, but keep in mind she had met Kenshin in the series after he stopped killing. She just saw him kill someone in cold blood. XP I don't think I'd be too fond of him either.

Well, there is that thing I ended with. O.O that surprised even myself.

Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed (in case you couldn't tell, I will be telling more from Battousai/Kenshin's point of view mostly, as he will have the most character development)!