Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin.
A/N: I am an idiot. (hits head on the wooden computer desk repeatedly) I couldn't get this chapter typed up no matter how hard I tried. I have nothing to blame but my own stupidity. I'm sorry, everyone.
-Nothing-
The woman slowly walked around her large house and sat equally slowly under a large tree in her backyard. She watched the increasingly powerful rain hit the leaves and gradually fall towards the ground.
With a slender hand, she brushed her dampened hair behind her left ear.
The woman continued staring at the sodden mud growing around her before sleep overtook her, and brought with it the blissfulness of the subconcious.
--
Megumi stared at the back of the tall man a few steps in front of her, lost in her own thoughts.
"I don't understand what's going on!" her mind screamed at her, "Saitoh's trying to kill everybody, but why? He always wanted to kill Kenshin and now he's gone. Why doesn't he leave us here alone in our grief? Can't he let us mourn in peace and stop reminding everyone of what we have lost?" Something about those wordsjogged the woman's mind and a memorycame to mind...:
"Megumi-kun, take the patients some water will you? They'll all get dehydrated in this heat if somebody doesn't do so," said the small girl's mother as she worked on making lunch for both her family and their clients, "There is already a bucket filled with water outside that has been boiled and cooled so there are no remnants of possible contagious diseases. You can use that."
"Alright, mommy," the child replied before skipping outside, grabbing the side of the bucket, and lugging the large wooden contraption inside the enormous building. Megumi went to the first room and slid the shoji open slightly. "Hideaki-san, are you awake yet?" she whispered, her eyes watching the figure in the futon for any kind of movement, "I've brought some water for you if you're thirsty."
"I'll have some," replied a gruff male voice that was slightly strained. The girl smiled brightly as she pushed the shoji door fully open and dragged thefilled bucket to the sick man's bedside. She spied his metal cup on the other side of his futon and happily skipped around him to get it before skipping back and dunking the mug into the water to fill it up. The metal cup was then placed by the man's head.
"There you go!" Megumi said quite proudly because she didn't spill anything, "Do you need anything else?"
"I'll be fine," was the only reply. The girl just nodded and dragged her bucket off to another room.
When the water was almost gone, Megumi reached the last door. "Amaya-san, I have some water for you!" the girl almost sang as she pushed the shoji open wide. She blinked twice before realizing that the person standing at the window, smiling, was the woman named Amaya.
It wasn't the fact that she was standing or looking out the window that was odd, most of the patients at Megumi's family's hosiptal did that. It was that the woman was smiling. For as long as she could remember, which was four months, Megumi had never seen the woman smile. There was normally either a pained or faraway look on her face with her mouth drawnin a taut line. The small child had always thought it was only the fact that the woman was sick with some sort of dreadful disease, that was, until she heard her elder sisters talking about poor Amaya. They said that shesuffered from something called a 'broken heart'.
"That made no sense!" Megumi had thought at the time, 'No one could have their heart break and still be alive if what daddy says is true!"
Amaya unhurriedly turned away from the window to place her gaze on the young child, tearing her from her thoughts.
"I saw Kazuko today..." the woman said so softly and so slowly that Megumi barely understood her.
"But isn't Kazuko-san your husband? I thought he was dead!" the girl questioned without thinking.
Amaya nodded as slow as the rest of her movements, not fazed by what most widows would burst into tears at hearing, before saying, "But he was here, I saw him. He came to visit me...he said I'll be able to be with him soon."
Megumi vaguely remembered thenext morning, whenher mother told her that Amaya had left the clinic, and had gone somewhere far, far away, and she would meet her again someday. She also said that that someday would hopefully be far, far away as well.
She knew now that Amaya had passed away in her sleep that night, but that brought about unpleasant thoughts about what might happen to Kaoru if she never stopped grieving for Kenshin. "I better keep a closer eye on that girl," muttered Megumi as she continued walking behind Sanosuke, "There's no telling what she might do."
Chika watched as Kenshin drifted through what most probably was a door way before turning to his right and disappearing, something that the girl recognized as what happened when a ghost was on the other side of a wall. She decided after a minute that he wasn't going to come back soon so she got down on her hands and knees and searched for a cushion that might be in this room. Most people had their table in the kitchen and she had realized earlier that she was in Kamiya Kaoru's kitchen after hearing all the cooking utensils banging together. Chika let out a squeal of delight as her hand touched a piece of cloth that felt like one of the cushions she was trying to find to rest on.
Yet a moment later she gasped. Instead of finding a cushion, she had found a shoe.
A small prick on the back of her neck and all her thoughts went to nothing.
Saitoh looked down upon the unconcious blind girl with disgust. "She truely is a worthless creature," he thought, "The Battosai must have truely gone soft to actually consider keeping a thing like her alive." The man reached down and picked the child up by the back collar of her wet kimono and swiftly leaving the dojo.
There wasn't a single thing there that showed that a killer had entered the building, despite the fact that there was one less 'worthless' occupant occupying it.
A/N: Please review. I don't care if all you do is yell at me at my extreamelyslow updating.