Author Notes: For those of you who have been waiting a very long time for a certain event to take place in this fic … well, I have my reasons. First and foremost, I don't see Aoshi as the kind of man who'd kiss and run. If he's going to give in, he's going to make a decision first. The guy's got a lot of self-control, you know? I think he has moments of internal weakness aplenty (we've all seen that), but he wouldn't give in to those thoughts until he was sure. And he's got to get over himself before he can be sure – and sometimes, it's not that easy to get over yourself.
And sometimes, the process can be catalysed. Watch.

I said I love you and I swear I still do.

Sun in her eyes, red warmth behind her eyelids. Hand on her shoulder. Voice, murmuring, soft, insistent. She stirred, her thoughts slow in her sleep-dulled brain. Polyester upholstery marking her face. Crick in her neck. Uncomfortable tingling in her fingers.

"Misao?"

Voice again, pitched low, pleasant. She cracked open an eye, squinting against the glare of the light streaming in from the open window. "Aoshi-sama?"

Aoshi took a step back once she opened her eyes; she looked up at him, confused. He was dressed, and not in yesterday's clothes, but she was quite sure she was still in his room … she took a quick glance around to get her bearings, looked down at herself and her position in the armchair, and said, "What the hell?"

He seemed amused. "You went to sleep here," he said, as if that explained everything.

It didn't. "Uh, so? You should've woken me up and sent me packing." She sat up, wincing as her back made a snapping sound in protest. "Now my neck's broken."

He blinked. "You refused to go."

"Huh?"

"Last night," he said. "I tried to wake you up, but you refused."

"Oh." She could understand that. It was known to happen – Jiya had always hated that about her sleeping habits. "Well … sorry about that."

He was looking at her, and his gaze wasn't warm or amused or even cold, he was just – looking. It made her uncomfortable, so she said, narrowing her eyes, "Where did you sleep?" The implications of him having shared the room with her hit her as soon as the words left her mouth, and she felt the blush rising in her cheeks.

"Rodney has the room next door done up as well. It wasn't a problem." He didn't seem perturbed; girls forced him to sleep in different rooms everyday, it seemed. She could vaguely remember having a similar thought before, but her brain wasn't working too quick just now, she couldn't remember exactly when.

"Oh," she said stupidly. "That's good then."

There was a beat of silence, and then he said, "It's almost noon. Breakfast's been cleared up, but I can arrange for an early lunch for you."

She processed that. "You can arrange?" she said eventually.

"I can ask Rodney to ask the woman to come in and get you lunch," he said, crinkles around his eyes.

"Bah. I thought it'd be more impressive than that."

He had a comeback to that, she could see it in his eyes, but he kept it to himself. One day he wouldn't, she swore to herself, one day if he had something sarcastic or annoying or even funny to say, he would say it. To her.

She hoped.

She thought he would leave, now that he'd woken her up and told her how to get her meal, but instead he just stood there, looking down at her, and she was acutely aware of the sleep sticking her eyelids together, of the mark of the armchair's upholstery branded across her cheek. She looked back at him, because she was fully capable of giving as good as she got – looked at the hair falling across his eyes and the slightly crooked collar of the trenchcoat. She wished she could reach out and straighten it, just because – she wished she was allowed that much.

She didn't think that she would be the one to break the silence, so that when the words came from her she was surprised: "Don't you have work today?"

He took a step back, and she cursed herself for opening her mouth. "I do, but it's just decoding. I can do that here."

"Hey, you haven't done any decoding for a while," she said.

Something changed in his eyes. "How would you know?"

She shrugged. "You're always up and out these days – when you used to do code-breaking, you always sat in a corner somewhere."

The wary look disappeared, leaving behind his typical neutral stare. "Yes." He headed over to the coffee table in the corner of the room, seating himself in the straight-backed chair next to it. That seemed more like his usual self – telling her to get out without a word.

She grinned and got up, stretching. He ignored her. "See ya later, Aoshi-sama," she said, heading towards the door, catching his nod out of the corner of her eye. "Thanks for lending me your armchair."

She could swear that she only imagined the sarcastic, "Don't mention it," she heard in reply.

It was the kind of pretty day that rarely ever came to England, the kind where the rain left everything washed and clean, where the leaves glowed green and the sky was an endless blue, where the grass was soft and springy, where even the uniform brick houses of Kingston looked inviting and comfortable.

She couldn't bear the idea of staying inside, so she'd grabbed a cloak and stuffed an extra pair of socks into her satchel and decided to trek to the end of the road – which was only a five-minute walk, but considering it was London and Aoshi had given her a long lecture on how girls were not supposed to wander around unaccompanied, it seemed like a great adventure.

She was quite aware of how pathetic life in Britain was making her, but she took what excitement she could get.

There were very few people on the street, especially in light of the loveliness of the weather; there was an elderly couple strolling down the sidewalk a few feet ahead of her, and two men at the far corner, where the houses stopped having tiny patches of greenery in front of them and were replaced by proper gardens, extensive and well-kept. She looked at the gardens wistfully, remembering the expanse of greenery surrounding Misselthwaite.

It was the closest she'd ever come to homesickness for the manor. It made her wonder if it was finally home after all. If she was finally a part of it.

If she missed it, she had to be, didn't she?

She reached the end of the street, and was sorely tempted to turn left and explore the locale a little more; it seemed a safe, quiet sort of place, she had no clue what Aoshi had been so worried about. It wasn't like she was rushing into seedy bars and whorehouses. She tucked the cloak closely around herself – it was best to hide as much skin as possible when venturing into unfamiliar territory (shorts or no shorts, she knew this) – and stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street, when a man approached her, hat in hand.

Another thing she knew was to avoid strangers, but the man simply smiled at her and walked on, and she smiled back out of politeness. She turned the corner, and someone else brushed past her, forcing her to take a step to the left – right against the wall surrounding one of the larger houses.

And just as suddenly there were hands clamping around her upper arms, her foot was swinging out to catch whoever it was in the shins, there was a muffled yelp – but she was still being dragged through a door in the wall – the sky, so very blue, spun dizzily above her as she thrashed her arms and legs, screaming, fighting to get free, wishing she had some weapons, wishing she'd kept up with her ninja training after her arrival here – pretty grass, pretty garden – so green –

"Sh't'up!" hissed a voice in her ear, as she yelled for help.

"Let go!" she screamed in response, landing another kick – somewhere soft, possibly a stomach, she wasn't sure. The man did let her go, only to have his accomplice grab her from the other side. His fingers were rough on her arms, her shoulders – she remembered Aoshi shaking her awake, touch feather-soft, and shuddered with something like fear.

"Who the hell are you?" she said, wincing as the man's grip tightened.

They didn't look like low-class ruffians, but neither did they seem to be the overly-educated gentlemen they were dressed as (hats and canes and all). Were they random thugs, were they connected to Aoshi, was she supposed to tell them who she was so that they'd let her go, or keep shut so that they'd let her go? What the hell were they going to do with her?

They ignored her, looked over her head at one another. She kicked out with her legs again – her hands were immobilized – but the other man grabbed her ankles, and they held her between them like a sack. Her shoulders were screaming in pain, the awkward position from her night in the armchair combined with the man's hands attempting to cut off her blood circulation.

"So?" said the one holding her feet.

"We stash her," said the other, but he didn't sound very sure.

"How's that goin' ta help?"

"General says he'll slip up."

"She's out here, he's already slipped, man."

The General. Oh God. These were Aoshi's spies, these were the people she was supposed to be kept safe from – shit, she should've told him she was going out for a walk, she shouldn't have come, she should have –

He's already slipped, man.

Shit.

She struggled again, whipped and tugged and pulled and screamed for all she was worth. Fear for the mess she was making of Aoshi's hard work, fear for him, fear for herself, fear of helplessness – it drove her, she was desperate, she got her legs free, got the man behind her in the groin and made a dash across the expanse of lawn –

She made it two steps, perhaps, before one of the men tackled her. She hit the ground with a thud, the man's weight atop her, and now she actually couldn't move. He didn't get up; she could feel every inch of him pressing into her, she felt dirty, unclean, she could hear every sordid story Omasu and Okon had ever told her, she could feel fear, coursing through her veins, thick as blood, pounding, pounding –

He released her, eventually, but the feeling of helplessness remained. The realization that it didn't matter how strong she thought herself, how much defiance she showed – she was still a woman, and a small one. They could outdo her in sheer physical size.

"Gotta tie her up," said one of them. She lay face down in the grass, wondering if it was worth getting up and running again. She knew she wouldn't get far … but was it worth the attempt? She didn't want the man falling on her again, not like that …

"Fainted, has she?" said the other. "Most of 'em would have, by now."

A shoe prodded her side. "Nah. C'mon, get her up, let's take her in."

She stood up immediately. Maybe she could try this the civilized way. "Look, I'm sure there's been a mistake – " she began unconvincingly.

"There ain't no mistake," said the one who'd held her feet. Blondish hair and a split lip. "Your eyes give you away, Chink."

And racist to boot. This wasn't going to be pretty. "God, you could at least do your research, I'm Japanese – "

The second man made a grab for her arms; she twisted away, and the first one caught her wrists, crossing her arms across the front of her chest. Tight. It hurt. "You just keep yer mouth shut, understand?"

"If you think – "

Then there was blackness. For a disoriented second she thought maybe she was unconscious, but she could feel her eyes blinking and the pain wrenching her shoulders apart, and the soft sensation of cloth on her hair … and she realized they must have put some kind of bag over her head. She felt her breath shortening in panic, and tried to level it out, tried to suppress the questions in her head. Shh. One step at a time. Find out who they are. Where they're going.

How to get to Aoshi.

No panic.

Breathing. Breathing was good.

She tried to listen to what the men were saying, but they were keeping their voices down, and the bag was muffling what little she could hear. She caught disconnected words like "him" and "never" and "Kingston", all of which were useless to her.

One of the men picked her up. She didn't struggle; she was saving a good kick for when they put her down. He carried her heroine-style, one arm beneath her shoulders and the other hooked under her legs, and she felt inexplicably violated – as if some cliché that she should get to live out was being taken away from her. His hands were hard, unfeeling; she hoped he didn't stink – she couldn't tell herself because her nostrils could only smell something vaguely vegetable-like from the bag over her head.

It occurred to her, inanely, that this was the most a man had ever touched her, and she thought she might vomit. She remembered her first kiss, almost an experiment, back when she was fourteen, when she'd dared her neighbour Soujirou into pecking her on the lips and he'd taken her up on it – and they'd both been so shocked that he'd done it –

She wanted to cry, suddenly.

The first thing she tried to do, as soon as she was completely inside the room, was climb out the skylight. The only problem was that it was a good five feet above her head, and the room was bare except for a couple of collapsed cardboard boxes in one corner – nothing to give her the extra height she needed.

The door had been locked behind her; she'd heard one of the men slide the bolt home as well. She slammed her shoulder against it anyway, pulled out the twine that tied her hair and attempted to pick the lock – not that it mattered if she got it open, because the bolt would still be there – but nothing happened.

So she took a deep breath, seated herself in a corner, and decided to think. She decided to wait. She decided to be hopeful and optimistic and shit-scared. Because there was nothing else she could do.

Dark room, cold draft from under the door, from the crack in the skylight. Damp floor, puddle of water from a leaky pipe in the ceiling, suspicious wetness just under the door. Dankness. She was cold, cold to the depths of her being, her bones, her flesh, the inside of her eyelids. Everything was cold. She'd lost her cloak at some point in the past day and a half, and her dress was too flimsy to be much protection against the current of air coming in through the skylight.

She was tired. Hungry. Afraid.

Bored.

She just wished something would happen. She wished they would tell her that Aoshi wasn't coming. She wished they would tell her that he was. She wished they would come to this room and drag her down the stairs and force her to tell them all that she knew about Aoshi's work. She wished they would tell her that she should prepare to die a horrible death, that the only thing that awaited her was rape and slavery.

She wanted to know. She wanted to be able to prepare herself. She had spent a day and a night and a whole other day inside her head, and she was tired of guilt and what-ifs and – all of it. She wanted to know. She wanted to get over with it.

There was something monotonous about being afraid for so long. Something dull and slow and bone-tying. She felt as if someone had done her up in knots and picking them apart was too boring a job to attempt. Better to leave it that way.

She didn't feel like herself. She supposed hunger did that to you.

She wondered what would happen if he didn't come. But the thought didn't scare her like it had twelve hours ago. The gnawing in her stomach was more important, and the crack in the skylight. If she was only tall enough to close it – if she could only get warm –

There was a man in the doorway.

She supposed he might have been there for a while; she didn't understand why she hadn't noticed. There was something almost painful in her chest as she tried to make out his outline – but he was too broad to be Aoshi, the collar of his coat too straight. Something approximating a sob rose in her throat, but she pushed it down. Didn't know where it came from.

"So you're the ward," said the man, and his voice was – familiar.

Her mind flashed to days of learning how to hold a knife and fork, of warm dinners in Aoshi's room, preparing for a – showdown. Remembered the polite man, the 'General'. "What?" she croaked, and she didn't know why she was playing dumb. Maybe because she was?

"I'd thought you might just be a ploy. But it's real." There was some kind of smile in the man's voice. She felt dazed. "I suppose family catches up to the best of us."

"I'm not family," she said, because that was the only part she understood.

The man took a step forward, and ended up stepping in the puddle on the floor. He grimaced. "You're his ward, girl. That's close enough."

She wasn't really close enough. Not to him. No one ever was. Didn't this man know anything? She snorted, and it was an odd, choked sound. "You know me," she said. "Why're you acting like you don't?"

She heard him say, "Real," in a low voice before he turned and left, shutting the door behind him. She heard, as if from a great distance, the lock turning, the bolts sliding home.

Perhaps she could think this through, perhaps she could figure out this conversation, this whole plot, if they would give her a warm blanket and a bowl of soup. That was all she needed. She just wanted her brain to work. She wanted to snap out of these disconnected half-thoughts that pervaded her brain, these snippets of memory – Aoshi and Japan and Jiya and cholera and Misselthwaite and – food and love and blue eyes and sunlight in the mornings and frilly duvets at night – dark and light and Tanabata –

At some point, she fell asleep. But she never noticed, because her dreams followed the same disjointed pattern as her thoughts.

A/N: We're very close, now.