matcha = the green tea used in tea ceremonies; though it also comes in milder-tasting variants, it's usually quite full-flavored. A refreshing kick to the senses, really.
Mune no Monogatari
by Mirune Keishiko
Twelve: Hope and Despair
Misao awoke blearily to the clink of ceramic.
The air closed around her, hot and stagnant. Weakly she kicked off the blankets that had twisted around her legs. Rolling over onto her back, she realized dimly that her eyes and skin no longer burned, pain no longer pulsated at her throat, a runny, sticky fluid no longer caught at every breath. A strange, woodsy aroma drifted to her senses that had only lately been stifled by illness—something like dried mushrooms and earth, making her wrinkle her nose.
Running the tip of her tongue over chapped lips, she cracked sleep-crusted eyes open to find Aoshi kneeling to place a tray of soup and tea by her futon.
She caught her breath in wonder, her cheeks suddenly aflame, and not with sickness. "Aoshi-sama..."
"So you're awake at last." He glanced at her through his bangs. "As expected. Your fever broke this morning."
He might have been speaking to a stranger.
"Megumi-san has ordered for you complete bed rest and a liquid diet for at least another week." With a precise, impeccable grace, Aoshi poured a cup of pale green-gold tea. "Your healing has begun, as has Kaoru-san's. We decided to move you to a guest room."
For a moment Misao could only stare at him, his cold, distant voice echoing in her mind.
Then she looked away, to hide the tears gathering in her eyes.
"You must finish this," said Aoshi—cool, impersonal, indifferent. He uncovered the large bowl on the tray to reveal a murky brown soup; the dark outlines of sliced roots, chicken bones, and other, less recognizable objects flickered in and out of sight beneath the surface. "And the tea as well."
She tried to pick up the bowl, but it slipped in her unsteady grip; she would have dropped it, but Aoshi caught it, his strong, calloused hands firmly covering hers.
Another time, perhaps, under different circumstances, she would have blushed with happiness, been thrilled at this warm, unflinching touch—
—but she removed her hands quickly from beneath his, and her blush was one of shame.
"I—I can feed myself, thank you," she faltered, looking everywhere but at him. Idly she noticed that it was night, and the dense hum of crickets filled the humid air. Outside, thick, low clouds blotted out the stars.
"You must not overexert yourself. You have been in and out of consciousness for over forty-eight hours, and you have been bedridden for far longer." As calmly as though he had been spoonfeeding invalids all his life, Aoshi picked up a spoon and dipped it delicately into the soup. Mud-colored liquid swirled insidiously against white ceramic. "Megumi-san has enough on her hands without one of her patients suffering a relapse."
The subtle, frost-rimed reproof would not have cut quite so deep or stung so painfully without the pang of truth.
Slowly Misao lifted a trembling hand to her heart. Feeble, fevered recollections of the past few days came rushing back. Her own bizarre, shapeshifting dreams... Kaoru's whimpers of pain... Megumi's quiet tones, hardened by an imperturbable authority, softened by an infinite tenderness...
...and the long, wailing, gurgling cries of an infant in agony.
"Kenji-chan!" she gasped, clutching at Aoshi, forcing him to look at her.
He eyed her coldly. "He has not done well."
Misao went hot and then cold as the words ran chill through her mind.
His gaze idly averted, Aoshi lifted the spoon to her lips. But she flinched and shrank away from him. And when his icy eyes fixed on her once again, she was trembling, the tears burning, coursing down her face.
"Aoshi-sama... I..."
"You have made your apologies."
Her fingers clenched pale-knuckled on the blankets. If he had shouted at her, if he had hit her or thrown her across the room, she would have understood, would have accepted, would have simply hung her head and taken her punishment—but his voice was utterly controlled as always; it froze her with its sorrow and its dark, seething, finely contained anger.
"There is no more for you to say. A child lies dying. In the meantime, you have your orders—finish this food."
Stunned, she let him prize open her mouth with a sure, deliberate strength that would not suffer argument. As he poured the soup inside, she barely noticed the distinctly unpleasant taste or the heat that scalded her tongue.
She had had her orders once before. And she had utterly disregarded them.
For long moments, neither spoke. Only the quiet, measured rhythm of spoon from bowl to mouth and back again, the subdued chime of ceramic on lacquered wood broke the agonized pause.
And then a shrill, plaintive, tiny cry came echoing from the other room.
Hurried footsteps came pounding along the corridor, hushed voices rose in tightly reined alarm.
Misao could bear it no longer.
Aoshi set down the bowl of soup just in time as she flung her arms around his neck and began sobbing against his chest. Shrill and pleading, desperate, tormented, just like the sobs of an infant in distress.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I wish I could die instead of him! Don't you understand, Aoshi-sama? I pray to the gods that I'd die instead of him!"
And after a moment of consternation he gathered her close, wrapped his arms tightly around her, pressed her sweat-damp head against his shoulder, felt her bitter tears seep into his shirt. And far stronger, far purer, far clearer than any anger or contempt surged within him a limitless sorrow, a limitless peace.
He held her, soothed her by rubbing her back softly to and fro as he had so many years ago, when she had been a child and he should have still been one. He held her until her sobs quieted and she lay limp and trembling in his arms, sniffling miserably.
No more was said between them for the rest of the evening. She finished the soup and then the tea without complaint, inhaling the clean fragrance of mint and eucalyptus with obvious pleasure, though her heavy-lidded eyes drooped over the cup he raised to her lips. She fell easily asleep, curled into a small, remorseful ball under the sheets he tucked securely around her, as he had not done in many years.
Perhaps the bright, fresh smell of the herbal tea had, conversely, refreshed his energy. Suddenly restless, he found he could not keep still, but instead wandered the silent halls of the dojo, noting idly that the crickets had ceased their chorus at last. Daybreak was near. And with it—he glanced out at the cloud-filled sky—what looked to be the first of the summer rains at last.
He remembered then a small wooden box he kept among his things and went to fetch it, stopping by the kitchen to put water on to boil.
Some time later, laden with a tray, he quietly entered the sickroom to find Kaoru protectively cradling a fitful Kenji even in her sleep, and Kenshin sitting dark-eyed and silent beside them both. A wordless meeting of gazes was enough greeting between the two warriors. Leaving a steaming cup of matcha by Kenshin's side, Aoshi left, shutting the door behind him with a sibilant rasp of wood on wood.
Megumi was on the engawa, despite the summer evening's warmth clutching a worn gi of Kaoru's around her shoulders. She glanced up at him as he approached, smiled briefly, wearily before turning back to gaze at the shadowed courtyard.
"Staying the night?" He sat down beside her and poured two cups of tea.
"So it appears." She sighed.
"The child seemed to be asleep when I looked in."
"I gave him something for the insomnia. It isn't always advisable, but he needs to sleep. I gave him something for the infection in his throat, too, of course. And for the pain. And for his fever, and for the congestion, and for the risk of a coma, and of damage to his heart and his lymph nodes and his kidneys..."
Her voice was dull, leaden. Shutting her eyes, she leaned her head against the post and sighed.
"And how is Misao-chan?"
He paused a moment, startled and then impressed by the doctor that refused to succumb to weariness. Leaning close to her he placed a full cup of tea in her hands; she glanced at him in surprise, instinctively tightening her hold on the cup before truly focusing on it. It was part of the obori soma set she had given him in Aizu—a lifetime ago, it seemed. She gave him a small smile.
"She is recovering, as you said." He sipped from his own cup. "She is wretched over her fears of having brought the sickness to the dojo."
Megumi sighed again and did not reply, merely drank her tea.
"And I thought I was the unresponsive one," observed Aoshi.
She blinked and turned around to arch an eyebrow at him. "Are you actually making a joke, Tsurara-san?"
"No." Serenely, he took another sip. It surprised him as much as it apparently did her to feel little reaction to the deliberate name-calling, other than a mild amusement. "To be precise, a facetious remark. I apologize for the inappropriateness of my attempt at humor."
She stared at him for another moment, and then broke into a merry peal of laughter. He closed his eyes and savored the musical, lilting sound as he would the ephemeral note of shakuyaku floating delicately over a mouthful of bitter tea.
Her laugh faded into a chuckle, then ended in a sigh.
"To be honest, when I learned of it—" She shook her head. "I was so angry. I wanted to slap her silly. If she hadn't already been sick, I might have." She drew a deep breath of the tea's smoky, bitter scent, as if the anger had arisen again at the mere memory of it, and she needed to calm herself once more. "It was an accident, of course, a sheer coincidence she can't be faulted for having misunderstood. And truly, it might have been the students instead—we'll never really know." She closed her eyes again, bowed her head for a moment over her cup of tea. "But just the same... it hasn't been an easy three days for anyone. I can see how this is torturing Ken-san, especially, minute by minute. And she makes an easy target for my frustration."
In an odd, breathless moment of sympathy his gaze slowly traced the curve of fatigue across her slumped shoulders.
How long had it been since he had last seen her like this? Had Takeda only been two years ago? Her normally fierce, unyielding spirit made that dark time seem much, much farther away.
"You have not slept for over two days." He berated himself inwardly for not having realized this sooner.
She shrugged. "It's nothing new. It gets this way sometimes at the hospital." She glanced at him out the corner of her cinnamon eyes. "But the tea helps. Thank you." As if to emphasize her point, she sipped her tea, lingering over the steaming cup with a slight smile.
A thought flashed through his mind, and he permitted it to pass his lips—and he thought then that maybe he was getting soft in his old age.
"Sorrow does not become you, Takani Megumi."
Getting soft indeed... Strangely enough, he found he held no rancor for the idea.
She shot him another look—this time more wary, almost suspicious. "And where did you get that insight, Aoshi-san?" she asked, her tone dangerously sweet.
He held her gaze evenly. "I vowed to protect you and your happiness. It does not seem now"—he let a wry note creep into his words—"as though I am doing a good job, and I never tolerate failure."
After another moment of staring back at him, she looked away with a sigh and drained her cup, keeping its remnant warmth nestled in her palms. She fidgeted with the gi she held together loosely at her throat.
"Failure..." Shaking her head, she let out a soft, bitter chuckle. "If you never tolerate failure, Aoshi-san, and if Kenji"—her voice wavered for a split second before she regained her tight control—"does not live to see the sun this day... you may consider your oath nullified."
He set aside his own empty cup. "Do you seriously consider that possibility?"
Her mouth flattened into a grim, set line. "I'm afraid so."
He said nothing.
"I've treated extremely contagious diseases like scarlet fever before, the kind susceptible to many terrible complications." Her voice was low and pensive, as though she were speaking only to herself. "But I must admit that I've never treated a patient as young as Kenji-chan, not by myself. It's different when you're studying a disease and actually treating it in person.
"I didn't tell Ken-san all of it—he has enough to worry about, and I know he doesn't need the details to understand what it all means. But everything I've ever learned is tormenting me now. And what it all points to is—" She grimaced, her fingers clenched on her teacup.
"He could die at any minute, Aoshi-san. Or become disabled for life."
Aoshi thought of Kenshin, keeping wordless vigil over his suffering son. He wondered if he had really seen the flash of amber in the shadowed depths of his eyes.
It came to all warriors, he knew; it spared no man or woman, no matter how powerful or how strong—at some point or another, one would be challenged by the timeless, matchless force of disease that needed no clean, palpable steel to undo life, one drop of blood, one helpless tear after another. And the outcome of such an encounter—victory or defeat—lay not always within one's battle-hardened hands.
"You have done everything possible, Megumi-san. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves, the power over life and death is not always given to us fighters—or healers."
Even he had to look twice to see that Megumi was silently weeping. Without thinking he reached for her, wanting to take her in his arms—
"Megumi-dono."
A faint, fluttered heartbeat as Megumi's eyes met Kenshin's from the open doorway. The gi drifted, forgotten, to the floor.
And then she was pushing past him into the room, waking a confused Kaoru as she fell to her knees by Kenji's bed, feeling his forehead, pressing her stethoscope to the little narrow chest, holding her breath, waiting, listening, praying.
Moving to stand in the doorway beside an unreadable Kenshin, Aoshi watched as Megumi silently bowed her head. Praying for the dead?
Slowly, quietly, she folded away the stethoscope, pressed a brief kiss to the cheek half hidden by unruly auburn hair, and embraced Kaoru, who dared not speak the question they all longed to ask, though her blue eyes already shimmered with grief.
"Tell me, please." Kenshin's voice was pure gentleness.
Through her soundless tears, Megumi smiled up at him.
"He's perfectly fine."
And perhaps exhaustion had dulled Kenshin's reflexes, but Aoshi was first at her side, catching her as she fainted, frowning, as he did, at the unnatural heat that radiated from her skin.
With a low murmur of thunder, the rain began to fall.
~ tsuzuku ~
A/N. Okay, kids, our lessons for the day: "Remnant" is a noun, not an adjective. And that little thing called "artistic license" is used and abused wayyyy too often. ^.^;
For the record—I hardly ever feel so satisfied with a chapter as to declare it no longer in need of rereading and rewriting. But—as in anything, I guess, as best as we can make things out—this unworthy one has done the best she can. And boy, this horrible chapter sure was a heartache to write. T.T Please do forgive me if I hope you kind readers found that this chapter was also a heartache to read—because then I think I shall have managed to meet my objectives for this particular part of the story.
(Har har. If I'm going to go angsty, and they're going to go angsty... well so will you! Bwahahahahahahaa!)
*sweatdrop*
To give a little bit of myself away: Some might find the half-half construction of this chapter strange or downright wrong or ugly. But I wanted to do some contrasts. So, did it work? ^.^
Along the same lines, it's a singularly frustrating affliction common to writers (I wouldn't dare to say all writers) that we tend to be biased when we evaluate our work. So if you sharp-eyed readers find anything in here that's OOC or overdone or underdone or not done at all, please do this unworthy one a favor and hit that review button. ^.^
eriesalia-sama's input has, as always, been invaluable not only for this particular installment, but for the overall development (past, present, and planned) of this humble story. Hats off to you! akisakura: I'm happy you're enjoying it. This fic practically writes itself, actually. I'm just the one procrastinating and being neurotic about it. ^.^; ChiisaiLammy, I hope the interactions in this installment meet your exacting standards as well. It is an honor to write for readers like you. Seriously. ^.^ And really, I don't hate Misao... the torture is just a bit of a plot device, I'm sorry to say. ^.~ Cherie Dee: Yep, Megumi is a strong lady, ain't she? We just love her for it forever! Rissi-Sama: Sorry, sorry, sorry! Yes, I know, I'm being a bit cruel here. But please understand that every bit of pain they're going through, I'm feeling too. No joke! @.@ mij-sama: Hmm, did I explain her anger right in this chapter? I know I'd be plenty peeved too if I were in her position. ^.^; Thanks for the Misao characterization critique. Is she still herself in this one? I'd hate to just reduce her to a caricature!
As always—my heartfelt thanks, minna-sama. Please continue to follow this unworthy one's fic.