Rurouni Kenshin – Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story

"The Day After the Storm A Fight for the Future "

Diary 4 – The Light Shining in the Rain

by drTomoe123

Kenshin Himura and Keisha Seta have finally made it to their destination. Keisha can see his home through his own eyes. Kenshin can see Keisha's happiness in his actions. Now, with only feet to travel before Keisha makes it to his family, what will become of Kenshin?

"I'm home! I'm finally home!" Keisha yelled as he began to jump up and down.

Kenshin began to think to himself, "Seeing him this happy, I wonder if I could have ever been this happy with you, Tomoe. Having a son, you, and some seeds to plant…I guess I truly would be happy. Then, I must also consider the future of my son. I guess that each of us is here for a reason, and I am here to kill."

"Come on, Kenshin!" Keisha screamed as he began to run down the hill towards his home.

Kenshin looked to the moon again, entangled in his thoughts of Tomoe and the future that could have been, "I'll be there in a moment, Keisha."

Clouds were starting to gather.

Keisha looked at Kenshin and nodded.

Meanwhile, inside the small hut, a beautiful young woman and an old man were talking at a table, and a small boy who looked to be about four years old was sitting in a chair looking out of the window.

There were numerous candles around the entire area, giving the home a bright, sweet feel to it, even though it was a rundown hut. There were simple toys on the ground, and one of them happened to be a small doll that looked like Keisha.

"You know, Yamato, I am so grateful that you decided to come and watch over us until Keisha comes back home from his trip," the woman said to the man across the table.

"Don't worry about it, Ayaka, any work that needs to be done for my rice business can be done by my children, that's all they ever seem to care about these days," the man, Yamato, laughed.

"Mama! Where's daddy?" the little boy yelled with a concerned look on his face.

Ayaka looked over at her child.

"Oh Sou-chan, he'll be home any minute!" she laughed as she walked towards her son and patted him on the head.

Yamato glanced at Sou-chan then started to speak to Ayaka again.

"Ayaka, I just want you to know, if something ever does happen to you all, I'll be happy to take Sou-chan for you and take care of him. Even though I am reaching the end myself, I'm sure I could find someway that my son and other members of my family could look after him. Even though they are quite self-centered, I'm sure that bright smile of his could melt through their hearts," he laughed as he poured himself some tea into a little mug that Sou-chan made.

"I thank you very much for that, Yamato. I just hope that it doesn't end up coming to that. I hope for a great future for Sou-chan, Keisha, and I," she said as she walked over to Sou-chan and poured him a smaller dose of tea.

"Mama! Mama! I see daddy! I see daddy!" Sou-chan screamed as he began to jump up and down, just like his father did.

"Huh?" Ayaka asked as she turned around, "Where is he?"

Ayaka walked over to the window and picked Sou-chan up and looked outside. The moon was behind a cloud now, and she couldn't see anything.

Ayaka let out a sigh and turned around towards Sou-chan.

"Sou-chan, you must be getting sleepy! It's time for you to go to bed, honey," she laughed as she began to take Sou-chan to his bed.

"I saw him, though! I promise!" Sou-chan yelled as he struggled to get out of his mother's arms.

Yamato looked at him and laughed, "Don't worry boy, I'll wake you up as soon as your father gets home!"

Sou-chan smiled.

Outside, Kenshin was finally ready to catch up with Keisha. He began to look around for him, and then he saw the small hut and remembered that he had run down towards it.

"I need to get down there, I'm interested in meeting this family of his," Kenshin said as he released a small laugh, an uncommon sound ever since he had become a hitokiri.

"Keisha! Where are you?" he yelled as he expected Keisha's cheerful voice to call back to him with his family.

There was nothing. Only the cold, pale glow of the moon was with Kenshin. Keisha was nowhere to be seen.

"No, I must just be getting a bit nervous. Nothing could have happened to him this close to home!" Kenshin started to think to himself as his heartbeat began to start moving faster and faster.

Kenshin began to run down the hill that Keisha had also run down only minutes before. Sweat was dripping from Kenshin's face, and his hakama was very dirty from being covered in the blood from the various opponents crossed along the way here.

Kenshin didn't want to scare his family just incase Keisha was playing a joke, so he kept his voice quiet as he began to run down the hill.

"Keisha! Where did you run to?"

The sky started to rumble as thunder ripped the sky apart. Rain started to fall onto the farmland.

Kenshin's nose started to twitch as he smelled a familiar stench on this calm countryside.

"…no…it's…blood. Not dried blood either," Kenshin quietly said as the rain started brushing his face.

Then, out of nowhere, Kenshin looked into the rain ahead of him and saw Keisha.

"Keisha! There you are!" Kenshin began to stutter as he started stepping back slowly. It was raining even harder now.

A man was standing behind Keisha. The man had his hair pulled back and had cold, destructive eyes. He had a sword placed close to Keisha's neck, Keisha's arms and legs were tied up, and his mouth was covered up.

The man started to laugh and yelled, "The legendary Hitokiri Battousai, I hear from this man that you have lost the ecstasy that you get when you kill."

The rain was hitting Kenshin even harder. The wind was blowing and the thunder was roaring. Even if Kenshin screamed out, no one other than Keisha and this man could hear him.

Kenshin suddenly went into his battoujutsu stance and yelled out to the man, "I have no idea who you are, but I will not allow you to kill this man!"

The man's facial expression changed from a smirk to a genuine grin, "If you wish to save this man, you'll have to kill me first." The man then threw Keisha onto the ground and went into some weird stance. "If you wish to kill me, do it now, Battousai!"

Kenshin lunged towards the unknown man as he unsheathed his sword and tried to slash him horizontally. The man parried Kenshin's attack and sliced back. Kenshin started turning his body and hit the man with his sheath. Kenshin had used double-battoujutsu.

Kenshin jumped back as he was catching his breath. The unknown man was laughing, though some of it was muffled out by the rain.

"You're strong," Kenshin yelled out.

"I can see why they call you Hitokiri Battousai. You truly are a master of battoujutsu!" the unknown man yelled out as he pointed to his sword.

Kenshin took this time to think to himself for a moment, "I'll use the Ryu Tsui Sen to take him down in one shot. If I predict his movements correctly, he'll try to block me from the bottom, and hopefully I'll have enough strength to cut right through him."

The man could tell Kenshin was planning something and he began to scream out, "Hitokiri Battousai! What happened to this godly strength I heard of? What happened to this 'master of murder'?"

The man began to move to the side, nothing else but Kenshin and the man were able to be seen in the rain, and Kenshin thought, "Alright, it is time! I'll protect you Keisha!"

Kenshin jumped up into the night sky, with rain pounding down on his entire body. "In the name of this new future! In order to protect Keisha! I shall defeat you!" He began to fall back towards the ground with his sword held above him. The man lifted his sword to block.

"RYU TSUI SEN!" he screamed as gravity pulled him down towards the earth.

No one spoke. The only noise was from the thunder and the rain. Kenshin looked up.

"You missed me, Battousai," the man laughed. He had jumped out of the way before Kenshin struck. He was fast, that was for sure. "But, Battousai, you did strike something!" the man laughed.

Kenshin stood up. There was a rain of blood. Once again, Kenshin was being soaked in a rain of blood that he had caused. Unfortunately, this blood wasn't the unknown man's, nor was it Kenshin's.

Kenshin turned around and looked at what he had struck.

It was Keisha's.

Kenshin was frozen. The rain kept pounding relentlessly as the farmer's body was sliced into two parts. The man started walking away from the farmer's body and Kenshin.

"Hitokiri Battousai! I have taught you a lesson today! The lesson that nature teaches us all, that the strong are here to kill the weak! The strong should receive strength from killing the weak and I hope you learn from this that following this path is the only way for you to live!" screamed out the mysterious man as he walked away from the area. He was laughing. It was a crazy, maniacal, and evil laugh.

Kenshin was still frozen. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't move. He couldn't see anything anymore, but he could still see Keisha's body, along with the image of his smiling face.

"How could this happen? How could I do this again?" he began to say, his voice cracking. He began to pick up his hand and thrust it into his hair.

"This is the second time, the second time I've promised to protect someone, and ended up slaying them with my own hands," he began to say as he fell to his knees, his clothes becoming covered in mud.

"First it was you, my dearest Tomoe! I vowed to protect you because you were the one who I loved! Now I have betrayed Keisha's trust! After promising to protect him, I ended up killing him! Why couldn't I have died instead? I have nothing to live for, Keisha had his family, and he had his son!" Kenshin cried into the night.

Kenshin's body was breaking down as he thrust his face into the ground, his eyes becoming drenched with tears.

"No matter how hard I try, I can never keep my promise. Just because of my selfishness to remember Tomoe, I allowed you to travel into the night alone!" he screamed, but it was cancelled out by the roaring thunder and lightning.

Kenshin was able to move again as he swiftly moved his hand to his sword and unsheathed it, "Why don't I just end my life now? If I kill myself, I'll end up saving more people than I would if I lived! By dying I save the people of the world…"

As the rain poured, Kenshin began to thrust his sword into his own chest. A bolt of lightning struck the ground.

"Kenshin…stop…"

Right before the sword pierced his body, Kenshin heard this voice and looked ahead of him. The figure he saw was glowing, it was beautiful, and it reached out its hand towards his head and began to comfort him.

"Tomoe? Tomoe. Tomoe…" he sighed as he began to let the figure embrace him.

"Kenshin, you can't let it end here. This man does not blame you for what happened. You were trying to protect him. You both believed in the same thing, to fight for a bright new future. Just like you and I did. If you give up now, you'll be giving in," Tomoe gently said as she started to rub Kenshin's head.

Kenshin looked up at Tomoe.

"Tomoe…but wouldn't dying now just save more people?" Kenshin asked with a very whiny tone in his voice.

"Kenshin, by fighting for this new era, you are helping more people. Because you cut his life in two, you must now live your life with Keisha's goals in mind. The most you can do now is fight to make his dreams come true." Tomoe sternly reassured Kenshin.

Tomoe began to caress Kenshin's scar.

"Kenshin, live on, and do not forget that I'll always be here, watching over you. This is another memory that will be placed into this scar, but please do not look at it with sadness, look at it with hope," Tomoe smiled as she began to drift away from Kenshin.

Kenshin finally started to stand up and he saw Keisha's corpse. He spent the rest of the night burying Keisha's body, and carved a small haiku into the stone that he placed on Keisha's unnamed grave, near the entrance to the woods.

The rain began to subdue as Kenshin finally looked up towards the horizon. The sun was finally starting to rise from behind the horizon and the clouds.

"Tomoe, Keisha, thank you again," he said to himself as he began to disappear into the woods, but then he began to look back at the family that had been left behind.

"Keisha, although I was not able to protect you now, I vow that I will protect the new era that you were wishing for. By doing this, I hope to keep alive the wish that you had for your son," Kenshin sighed as he looked to the hut.

The sun started to cause the woods to glow orange. Kenshin had to cover his eyes because it was so bright.

"This is one in a series of hundreds of deaths that have occurred because of my own hands, but in the name of all of the lives I have slain, I shall build this new era. After this war is over, I shall spend my life repenting for these deeds, but until then, I shall never forget you, Keisha Seta, for one main reason," Kenshin added as he took a deep breath.

The sunlight was covering the land now, and you weren't able to tell that there was any storm whatsoever the night before. Kenshin was still looking at the hut, and then he began to run in the opposite direction.

"You taught me that no matter how bad the storm was the night before, the sun will always rise again, and I can begin my life anew. You taught me that I should put my past behind me, and keep fighting for that new future every one of us has dreamed of."

Kenshin disappeared into the woods that day, and he was never seen in this area again, but after a few weeks, Sou-chan found the grave that had no name and a single flower, and after finding his mother, he began to read the haiku that was carved into the stone.

"The wise man helped save

A killer who lost his way

A family weeps"

Diary 4: END

End of Chapter Notes:

This chapter felt awfully rushed, and I'm sorry about that. ;; This chapter went from four pages to five pages to seven pages. Heheh.

Any fan of Rurouni Kenshin should know who Sou-chan is, and I hoped my idea of how he ended up with "them" was good enough for you all. Heheh. I always thought it was interesting how in their fight, Soujiro brought up the fact "WHY DIDN'T YOU PROTECT ME BACK THEN?" Sure, Soujiro was just trying to sort things out in his mind, but I thought about how maybe they might have been connected closer than they originally thought.

The entire meeting with the "unknown man" was redone several times. The first draft had Keisha killed by the time Kenshin met the man. The second draft had Kenshin kill both the man and Keisha, but that felt too Tsuiokuhen-esque and the "unknown man" is supposed to be a character that meets Kenshin later on in the series. wink wink The final draft came out the way I wanted it to. The fight wasn't too long, and just one wrong move ended it all.

I sort of felt it was all resolved too quickly, but I really can't stand a very long resolution, so I guess Tomoe just has that kind of effect on Kenshin. Heheh. The fact that Kenshin buried Keisha was also added after thinking about the "improper" burials of Kasumi, Sakura, Akane, and Tomoe. Just once, I wanted Kenshin to be able to have a nice stone and flowers to place on the grave.

Anyway, this was my first Rurouni Kenshin fanfic, and I hoped I did not bore you all with my story and my "okay" ending. Heheh.

See you all soon.

drtomoe123