WARNING: Spoilers! If you don't know who Kenji is, please read at your own risk!
WITH DUE CREDIT: This fic was loosely spun off from two fics - "Over the Sting" by sasori and "Chronicles of a Rurouni", one of my earlier fics.
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Yesterday's Shadow is Tomorrow's Twilight
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Chapter 8: In His Shadows
Enishi was very quiet.
Kenji sneaked a quick glance at the man as he half-dragged, half-carried the prone Soujirou up the stairs of the shrine. Somewhere during their trip down into the tunnels the heavens had opened up and it was now raining cats and dogs outside, so the choice of leaving the temple for somewhere else was eliminated in an instance, seeing how Soujirou was not quite ready to travel in the rain. Sitting in some corner of the first storey would render them sitting ducks since there may be other of the Yuugure skulking around the region. Thus their only other choice was to vanish into the darkness upstairs and hope very hard that no one, should there be any, paid extra heed to the unassuming chamber.
So that was how they ended up on the second storey. And Enishi remained very quiet.
To his credit, Enishi had always been quiet. He didn't usually speak his mind, except when trying to jibe or offer some probing suggestions or questions, and generally preferred to smirk and act callous - not that Kenji didn't appreciate why.
Everybody had issues they'd prefer not to let surface, hadn't they?
But this time, the redhead was unable to bear the painful quietness of it all. Without asking for any help, the white-haired man leaned Soujirou against a corner wall as gently as he could, then proceeded to examine the wound. Much of Soujirou's bloodied gi had been torn by sheer impact and his wounded flesh was in plain view. The small, squarish windows above in the walls shed moonlight into the room - not quite a lot, but enough for Enishi to come to a conclusion about the severity of Soujirou's injuries.
He loosened the blue shawl on his shoulders and folded it quickly into a stripe of makeshift bandage. Kenji could only watch wordlessly as Enishi proceeded to carelessly attempt to wrap the younger wanderer's wounds up. Raising an eyebrow at the haphazard way he was doing it, his questioning aura did not escape Enishi's notice. "I'm just stopping the blood first," he quietly stated, making Kenji jump slightly. He had not expected Enishi to speak at all. The white-haired man then turned so that Kenji could not read his countenance. "We can think of the more elegant ways of solving this after we get out of the hot zone."
Kenji was literally awed at how Enishi monotonously said what he just said as if he had been reporting yesterday's weather. "You just don't like humans in generally, do you?" The boy could not resist asking. Although his words may have sounded like a jest, his tone was in all sombriety. It evoked a strange look from Enishi for reaction. But the man said nothing, his strange quietude finally beginning to irk the boy. "Let me help," Kenji blurted, half afraid that Enishi was going to smirk and make fun of him at the desperation in his tone, "I'm sure I can do something."
"..." Enishi, however, did not immediately respond, choosing to dust at a certain portion of floor. "If you really want to do something so badly," he began, not looking at the young boy in his eyes, "then get out of here and back to Tokyo and tell that evil crabhead what happened."
In the following moments it was Kenji who seemingly inherited the strange silence from Enishi. While the older person worked to gently lay the suffering Soujirou across the area he had just dusted, Kenji's train of thought entered bullet speed. He had just offered to help. Enishi had just told him what to do. Of course, Enishi had to point him down the path of a /police officer/. A police officer who KNEW who he was and would probably have no qualms about sending him back home trussed up like a turkey if he even said anything that sounded minutely displeasing to him. He didn't want to do this. He didn't have to do it at all.
"What," Enishi's normal tone of evil mischief began to slowly creep back into his speech, "are you afraid of that crabhead?"
The boy stiffened, glaring with all his worth at the back of Enishi. The latter had descended into a kneel and currently held a hand over Soujirou's forehead, the other hand on his own. With Enishi's back against him, Kenji found him hard to read. Not that Enishi had been very readable to begin with. When his attention shifted from Enishi's cold form to Soujirou's limp body, however, a new flush of motivation set in.
He rose from his seated position on the ground and stood, hovering over his two other companions momentarily. Eventually he turned. "I'll be back soon," he muttered softly. A few more footsteps later, the young Kenji was descending the stairs, on his way to fulfill his mission - leaving the upper chamber of the desolate shrine once again in blissful silence.
The downpour continued, a few brave droplets diving as hard as they could against the window sill of the shrine, giving the rain a comfortable melody as it dribbled on from the heavens.
After what seemed like a long, tedious pause, Enishi breathed audibly.
"You," he began, tone even, "blithering moron."
The room was too dark for him to observe what Soujirou's countenance reflected.
"Don't think I don't know you're awake," Enishi probed further, a growl in tow. The strange silence continued until he could hear Soujirou's chuckle through the limp night air.
"Looks like I can't fool you," Soujirou made an effort to sit up, bearing with the excruciating pain on his side. Halfway to fully sitting erect, however, he was pinned by a glare from Enishi.
"Stay down," the white-haired man commanded fiercely, "I'm not done with you yet."
Soujirou meekly obeyed.
The rhythmic beating of the rain began to slowly wedge Soujirou's consciousness away. He sighed and closed his eyes, wondering what Enishi was going to do now that he seemed really mad. What he hadn't expect, however, was to feel a warm piece of fabric being thrown over his upper body. Instinctively clutching it, Soujirou opened his eyes to find Enishi's orange jacket settled over himself. He blinked. "Yukishiro-san?" The younger person turned to stare questioningly at the other, who had by then propped himself against a wall. The stern glare Soujirou got in response, however, told him that if he wanted to die quick and painlessly, then he had better keep all questions to himself. "Thank you!" He squeaked miserably, feeling much the same way.
After another bout of uncomfortable silence, Soujirou quipped, "You let him run off with your sword."
In answer, Enishi grunted something inaudible from where he sat. Eventually he said in a louder voice, "It's just a sword."
"But what if someone finds us?"
Enishi lazily waved a fist. "I don't just know swordsplay."
As he half giggled, Soujirou decided that even the moonlight was proving far too glaring and threw an arm over his eyes, sighing. The pain made him groggy. He marveled at how he could still carry out some semblance of an intelligent conversation with Enishi in his current state of mind. "It doesn't hurt as much now, Yukishiro-san," he mumbled, "thank you."
There was the sound of shuffling from Enishi's general direction. "You told me to leave everything to you," the white-haired man monotonously regurgitated facts, "'Don't worry about it Yukishiro-san,' he says, 'I'll be all right,' he says, 'Wait for us at the entrance!,' he says. And then what happens? I had to go back down to drag both your sorry behinds out." Soujirou could hear the plain anger leaking through his partner's self-restraint, and was glad he had a hand over his eyes so he didn't have to look into Enishi's. There was just one small thing about men who were generally quiet. When something eventually manages to grate on their nerves, it literally grates all the gears out. Showing no sign of stopping anytime soon, Enishi continued, "Tell me the Battousai's alive - it would've been more believable. Tell me that crabhead's decided to quit smoking - I would have more reason to trust in it. Tell me the sea's evaporated! Hell /that/ would have been easier to swallow-" the man stopped short suddenly and took a huge breath, realizing that his voice was raising.
The silence had settled over once again before Enishi's serious question punctured the atmosphere. "Why did you do that for?"
For a brief moment, Soujirou pondered the possibilites of playing dumb with Enishi and getting away with it. He knew distinctly that Enishi would not believe whatever story or excuse he had ready in the back of his mind. He himself knew that escaping from a wakizashi strike - even at point blank - was no big deal for him. Yet he was not entirely in the mood to discuss the pros and cons of being a human shield right at that point in time. The sword hadn't run through any vital spots, but it still hurt like crazy, and he wanted to rest.
So he settled for the simple truth.
"I just..."
Nothing could be easier than the truth, couldn't it?
"... just wanted to see...
"I wanted to see how he felt... about life... the value of existence..."
Enishi stared.
"... wanted to see how you felt..."
The last sentence being whispered in an undertone like Soujirou had been talking to himself, Enishi chose to ignore it. For now. "So you'd jump in front of someone and get all sliced up just to see where his morals laid?" The ex-mafia boss was pointed in his query.
Soujirou smiled ambiguously.
"The next time you pull something like this," the venomous anger in Enishi's voice returned, causing the younger man to jump slightly, even from his position on the floor, "I'm going to bandage you in ribbons."
"......."
"Pink, frilly ones at that."
"Yukishiro-san..."
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Kenji only realized that something must be very wrong with him when a few late-night
drunkards took one look at him and screamed into the night. He blinked at their
fleeing figures, snapping into awareness for the first time since he departed
from the shrine. Shifting slightly, a heavy weight to his right caught his attention.
He glanced down.
Ah yes. Enishi's sword. Unsheathed.
"No wonder," Kenji muttered to himself. Idly he considered hiding it in an alleyway so he could continue his sojourn to the station in peace, but the sheer possibility of the sword getting lost - relative to the sheer impossibility of him being able to buy a new one similarly modified to replace it for Enishi - bowled him over and he sullenly continued his journey with the blade. It didn't help that it was still raining, and after a while Kenji decided that he was really pissed.
You would too, if everybody who saw you did double takes and ran away.
"I'm not going to kill them or anything..." The boy sighed, noticing the beam of light stretching forth from the slightly opened doors of the police station just up front. Dulling wondering to himself how he hadn't even realized he had arrived at his destination, he trudged his way through the wet soil.
As he approached the building, he could hear voices from within. The room itself sounded empty enough, so he assumed that there were only a scanty amount of officers left in the station. Putting a hand on the ajar door to carefully push it open, the first thing he became consciously aware of was how hideously bad the tobacco smelled where he stood. The next thing was that the stupid door squeaked, thereby ruining his attempt of an inconspicuous entrance. As soon as his view became unblocked by the door, however, he breathed an internal sigh of relief to note that only the man he had earlier heard Soujirou refer to as Saitou, and another man with an assortment of swords strapped across all parts of his body, were in the spacious room.
There was something not quite right, however, about the way they stared at him.
Kenji waited until he saw, distinctly, Saitou's cigarette butt burn right to where the latter's gloved fingers kept it clamped. The resulting ash descended onto the floor quickly, and that was the end of the cigarette. Silently cheering that he would not have to face the insidious smell of tobacco now, Kenji glided easily through the messy array of wooden desks and scattered papers.
Coming to the front of the desk where Saitou was seated - in a rather unassuming corner of the room, no less - Kenji blinked. They were still staring at him strangely.
Saitou glanced unhappily at his burnt out cigarette. "Who did you kill before coming here?" He broke the silence by asking.
Kenji looked vaguely surprised at the question.
Not to be deterred, Saitou pointed at the boy's left hakama. There, instead of the white cloth he last remembered, Kenji was horrified to see that it had developed a rather large scarlet stain which traversed the distance of the cloth on his knees upwards to half the length of his dark blue gi. Even if the blood wasn't as readily visible as it was on the gi as it was on the hakama, Kenji suddenly understood why everybody had fled when they saw the sight that was himself, before them. And to complete the picture, the rain had spread whatever there was to spread of the blood into a pretty pink gradient down from the original stain.
"Well, you should try asking something else," Kenji mumbled, slightly annoyed. He gently leaned the long sword in his hand against the desk, exercising his shoulders a little to soothe the stiffness, "this is actually Soujirou's blood."
"You MANAGED to slash him??!" The broomhead next to the desk gasped incredulously. Somehow, the fact that he was more surprised at how Kenji had /managed/ to slash Soujirou as opposed to the fact that Soujirou had been /slashed/, disturbed the boy.
"No," the irritated Kenji snapped, turning to glare at the broomhead, causing him to take an involuntary step backwards, "what would I do that for?" Quickly, before anybody could counter his words, the redhead produced a folded map from nowhere and slammed it hard against the table.
Chou jumped. But Saitou remained impassive.
And Kenji explained.
It took all but a few massive paragraphs of summarized events to cover the duration of the evening in the ancient shrine - with some choice editing of contents by the one and only Himura Kenji himself. By then Saitou had lit yet another cigarette he had not quite managed to touch, and Chou now leaned resplendently against the wall near the desk.
Saitou frowned at his unsmoked cigarette and promptly squashed it against the nearest pile of paper, ignoring Chou's aghast gape. Drawing his gloved hands together he propped his chin against them and stared right into Kenji's eyes. "Your idiocy is causing much disruptions to our operations." He declared.
The boy winced. He was so going to be sent back home.
"But Saitou," Chou eyed the police officer thoughtfully, "that was the Yuugure's Tokyo headquarters that we've been looking for, for months!"
"Well you've found it now, haven't you?" Kenji shrugged.
"Yes, and you've ruined our entrance," Saitou leaned against his chair and tapped his desk impatiently. "It seems like they were ready to ship quite a bit of things tonight. If we'd got to them first we could have gotten more information about the deal..." he broke off slightly from his dialogue to glare at Kenji, "no thanks to you three morons."
Kenji looked away, his arms akimbo. He was dying to get out of here. "That's all from me," he stated tersely, "good night and good bye."
"Wait."
A bundle of something hit Kenji lightly against the back of his head. He turned around and glanced questioningly, first at Saitou, then at the bundle.
"You'll need that," the wolf did not elaborate, "and tell those two outlaws they're not needed around here anymore." At this point of time he and Chou exchanged a knowing glance between each other. "So they should get the hell out of here as soon as possible, if they value their freedom." He reached for another cigarette and quickly lit it, much to Kenji's chagrin.
"Does this mean we'll not be seeing you again for a long, long time?" Kenji raised an eyebrow in query, suspecting something Saitou was not letting him in on.
Saitou exhaled, a wolvish grin on his face. "You'll never be rid of my shadow, boy.
"Just like how you can never be rid of /his/."
Lightning flashed overhead and lit the station up. Kenji felt his entire body go cold. He wanted, suddenly, to know how much this man in front of him knew about himself.
Or for that matter, how much he knew, about his father.
... to be continued
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16/8/03
xd@tougenkyou.net
A/N
Ooh, this chapter just wrote itself.
Re: Kenji, a torch, and a room of gunpowder (Espi)
Now that you mention it, yeah... *_*x oh dear. I have slighted Kenji's intelligence!!
*looks away and whistles innocently*
Re: NOOO!!! SOUJIROU!!!! (Shahrezad1, April-san, Silver Nightingale)
Of course he's not fatally hurt. *_*x I would sooner kill myself!! Not forgetting
how many Soujirou fans will be after my life if I should do that... o_Ox
Re: Soujirou's height (Shahrezadl)
I think he has a cute height. :3 I mean, look at the number! 163cm. So cute!!
He's just 2cm shorter than me, too. XD
Re: Enishi, you jerk! *BONK* (April-san)
But Enishi is cute too! XDDD And he has a pretty good reason for not being there...
at least I hope he does. o_Ox;;; Aww, if you hit Enishi any further, Soujirou's
gonna cry. XD
Re: EK
I'm happy you like the fic!
Re: Tanya
I'm afraid I'm not qualified enough to help anybody with any form of writing.
*_*x How about you ask some of the columnists on ff:net? :D I'm sure they're
the pros! XD
And, I so agree that Saitou is only cutting their allowance because Soujirou's been slipping things out of the office. XD April-san, YOU'RE the genius! *_*x