"Don't Say it With Flowers"

By Starhopper

Disclaimer: Don't own a darn thing. All of characters belong to Nobuhiro Watsuki and his legions of lawyers just looking for a copyright infringement. Happy now?

:: - denotes memory (that's a key element in this so-notta-chapter)

'' - thoughts

Chapter 15: A Glimpse into the Past

:: Run ::

As she ran through the marketplace, Megumi couldn't help but fall through the cracks of memory spreading like tree branches along the glassy surface of now.

:: Go ::

With each step, she was racing for her life, running until her lungs burned for fresh oxygen, escaping from a life she didn't deserve, had never deserved.

:: Freedom at last ::

If she could only escape the gnawing sense of guilt icing her veins. Then she would see the goodness life had finally bestowed upon her and accept that good things come to those who wait. Until then, the memories were tearing her mind apart, unfairly settling for a sadistic replay of the most gruesome of all characters from her past.

::Megumi bit down hard on her tongue, praying so loud in her head that she was convinced he could hear her, "No, please . . ."

That was a mistake. To openly deny him in front of his guards was the greatest mistake she could've ever made. With every defiant glance, she pushed another pin into his ego. She jabbed one hell of a nail as she pulled the shreds of her kimono around her in the name of modesty. Though it didn't really matter; Kanryuu had stripped her before, both in public and in private.

The silence dissipated with a hiss as he whirled on his heel, wheeling on her with an open palm marked for her cheek. "Now Takani, I've warned you once before," he growled, shaking his hand as if it stung more than her already bruised cheek. "Behave,"

Wriggling between her teeth, her tongue fought to hurl the slap back at him with the full force of a hundred battering rams. She knew she had the power to knock that pompous bastard flat on his back if she launched into a tirade or two. But he would return the favor tenfold once he had literally dragged her up the stairs to the tower and taught her to obey his commands.

No, she had to keep silent. Even as she struggled to maintain her dignity as half-naked and trembling as she was, he crouched to her level, the look in his eyes burning with promises of what the night had in store regardless of how she answered his questions. "Do you even understand?"

Megumi bit at the insides of her cheeks to keep from spitting a few insults at him as he reached out with a hand and pinched her chin between his fingers, jerking her head to the side to meet his lips so sharply, she later wondered how her neck hadn't snapped. Instinctively recoiling at the feel of his mouth moving lustily over hers, the sour flavor of his tongue as it hungrily stormed the barrier of her tight lips, she managed to twist out of his hold, but didn't count on the hands that held her to him. One was digging into her left shoulder, while the other slowly moved down to palm the breast carefully covered by the collar of her newly shredded kimono.

He had always been rough, and it was no better with this kiss that demanded her to bow to him. Spitting out the foul saliva floating at the back of her throat over his shoulder, enraging him to shove her flat on the ground, one hand pulling her bound wrists high above her head, he used the other to tear at the material that had managed to stay wrapped around her despite his previous attempts to rip it off. With her legs now bare, he straddled her hips and motioned to one of his guards to hold her hands down.

"Don't you ever, EVER disobey me again Megumi," he practically barked, and the sound of her own name terrified her. He had never called her by her real name; even during the first time he had punished her for refusing to make another order of opium twice in one week. That had been the first time the slaps had turned to gropes, and the close proximity of their faces had led him to exercise the only power that he had with her hands free to scratch out his eyes; that of the physical nature punctuated with frenzied lust over her mouth and breasts. But he had never dared to push it any farther.

Now that her name, the name she had been called to dinner with as a child in Aizu, had slipped past his lips, she knew that this time would be different.

Before his entire force of castle guards and officers, standing to the sides of the ballroom with the exception of that poor soul who was forced to stand not two feet away from her head as she screamed out an unreachable agony, he did the one thing she never thought he had the balls to do.

Raising himself off of her, Kanryuu drew back an arm and cuffed her squarely on her already bruised chin. He then watched with a perverted satisfaction as the tears that she so stoically held back finally trickled down the sides of her porcelain face.

"I hope this teaches you a lesson Megumi," he grinned as she shuddered with the raspy yearning he laced her name with. "Don't ever try to run," straightening his suit, the rich man nodded over to the distinct figures of the Oniwabanshuu standing in the shadows. "Or you know what will happen."

Sniffing through the tears, Megumi struggled to get herself up, but doubled over in the ache he had caused between her thighs with his posing and thrusting.

"Next time you won't be able to walk,"

"Next time you won't be able to stand," she gritted out over the pain, "I swear that,"

"If I wasn't so tired, I'd try for a second time Takani," he retorted flippantly. "Keep THAT in mind the next time you open that mouth of yours."

Megumi braced herself against the stone floor of her tower room. Casting eyes back up to Beshimi, she growled, "I can lie down by myself,"

The ninja shrugged and turning out of the room, threw a packet in her direction. "Kanryuu wishes for three orders of opium of this potency by next week." He muttered over his shoulder as the door banged shut.

Crawling over to the drug, Megumi scowled at the packet and all its contents. She finally snatched it up and gripped it hard in an iron-crushing fist and glared at it with a searing gaze of reddened chestnut. "If not for this, he'd still be living,"

'If not for this, I'd be free.'

The moonlight streaming in from the window behind her illuminated the mirror on the other side of the room. For the first time she could see the damage he'd done in this one night. With another glance down to her fisted hand, Megumi ground out a scream and tossed the packet into the deepest shadows of the room. She tried to stand, but with a whimper fell back to her knees and pounded the floor in agony. "Damn him," through the curtain of her bangs, Megumi could make out the image of a woman she used to know.

But could not possibly recognize as herself.

Her hair was ragged and framed a face puffy and shadowed with bruises. Her arms and legs fared no better from being shoved against walls and into the arms of clients. Fingering one particularly dark one, she grinned. This was for kneeing Kanryuu in the back, putting him out for a week and a half. Of course she had been beaten for it, but looking back on the contorted facial features of his and the utterly helpless amoeba that he had become for those few days it had been worth the pain. And he had never tried to stroke the back of her thigh since.

Her fingers slipped to that attacked thigh and she quickly set about to disinfecting herself. She had been trained under a doctor; she knew exactly what needed to be done to take out the stinging sensation. Shuffling on her knees, she moved over to her makeshift bed and pulled her doctor's case out from under the folded futon, clicked open the box and took out the sanitized cotton pads.

As she worked, Megumi began to hum. It was a song her mother had taught her in Aizu, a lilting harmony that described the woes and worries of a princess trapped in a tower through the weaving melodies. Despite its melancholy story, (never mind the fact how close the fairytale resembled her own life at the moment) it also picked up her spirits. This was a song from her mother, from another life . . . from a better one at that. It served as a reminder that the proud girl from a prestigious family had not always lived like a slave, answered to a master, and succumbed to his hands. No, she once had a choice, once had a fire's freedom. Before Kanryuu swooped down and plucked her from the paradise she had ran through with a child's innocence. To think the world would come to a happily ever after, and she would ride away through the golden fields in the arms of her prince charming.

The hum gradually came to crescendo into a song that flowed from her lips and moved her body as the princess was rescued by just such a figure. Then the woman hit a particularly tender area, and sucked in a breath, thus ending her flight into a merry fantasy.

"Little did the princess know that her prince would be gutted by a rich bastard," Megumi seethed over her injury, the sunlight of the song rapidly fading into the moonlight of her tower room. "And find herself in an underworld," she let her voice drop along with her head. "Alone."

Again, as so many times before when she was cleaning her wounds, she found herself casting baleful eyes over the scalpel taunting her from its convenient position in the medical case.

She dropped the cloth and grasped the silver handle, watching with fascination as the moonlight bounced off the blade. Megumi caught the reflection of the moon dripping over the cutting edge. It was hanging outside of her room, now it was sitting on the blade, almost in her hands. How dare it mock her with its fickle ways. If it wanted to be free, it would never have come inside her tower and bring light to the darkness.

Ah, but there was one way she could control its actions, and that was by coating the moon in blood.

Flinging the scalpel into the corner, Megumi let out a blood-thinning scream and hurled herself to the floor. There was no way she could kill herself. She didn't deserve to die . . . he did. ::

And he did die, and she would have too thinking that her life was hell and not even fiery afterlife could be better. Yes, she would have died, if not for –

A/N: This was originally part of a "Trapped within Edo Castle" story about Megumi's 4 some years spent working (and being forced) under Kanryuu. But after I decided to work the idea into DSIWF for a startling turn in events, I abandoned the plot and worked to fit it in. it's a little abrupt, I know, and you probably want to know WHO saved her life (as if any rk fan doesn't know) so I won't continue blabbing on into infinity. READ and REVIEW and ye shall find out where I'm going with this!