Fanciful Wishes
Kenshin and Sanosuke, as most common people, were sometimes susceptible to be lost in certain fantasies.
Kenshin sometimes liked to console himself, going back, and pretending that he still had a family; that his mother had never died, holding his hand and dryly gasping for air while her eyes turned to misted glass, and his father the same way in the next room, as the undertaker came, and they pried the desperately clinging child's hands from their unshaking grip to his deceased mother. He would fancy that he'd never seen those girls being skewered on a bandit's sword; that they lived nearby his family and called him 'little brother' and played with him, and he would dream sweet dreams of things normal children would; Not be plagued by nightmares of being drenched in a familiar one's blood.
Sanosuke would sometimes fancy that perhaps there hadn't been any revolution in which he blindly devoted himself at such a young age. He'd imagine that he and Katsu were born brothers who fought, but still loved eachother deep down, and perhaps Souzo was their wise, protective older brother, who kept silent watch over them with his knowing and accepting smile. If his mind had choice of changed paths in some way, there never was a certain tumble off a cliff, or haunting echo of bullets, or macabre display of barbarism as he beheld the one he admired most being mutilated for public warning.
They both loved to fancy that they were just normal quiet people, with their normal quiet families, and they would often lose themselves in wishful thinking.
But in the end, it was all only a fantasy, and daydreamers are always inevitably broken from their reverie by painful reality. And when they came to, they would realize that there was no perfect family, but instead indelible scars from the past, and the solace of knowing they still had each other to lean on.
And sometimes that solace was just enough to keep them going.