AN- I'm not going to apologize for my long absence. I did leave on my bio information that I would be really busy this summer. All I would like to say is thank you to all of you who waited patiently for me update and to let all of you know, my conflicts I had before are over. I really want to finish the fourteen stories I have. If you have not read any of them, please feel free to read any one of them. Thanks, and please do leave reviews. They encourage me to write more. However, I don't take flames.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin series. I wish I did but I don't. : (

Misdeeds

Chapter Thirteen

Just standing there in the middle of nowhere, she went on, just looking down at her hands. Her sapphire eyes wandered down the slender of her form, wondering if it really was her or someone else. For some reason she did not feel like herself. She felt more like a stranger dwelling in a body that was supposed to be hers. Was everything all right?

Just remembering back to the scene where the incident happened, to where something should have never happened, plagued her mind over and over again. Her heat swelled from the pain of betrayal. How can she promise her heart to one person, but give herself to another? It just did not seem right.

Moving toward the main river, which she used to travel a lot to, the place in which became known as Sanctuary, she visited. Somehow she could not bring herself to face him as yet… Battousai.

"Oh Battousai," she whispered in despair. "How can I fail you? How could I just betray you? I'm not worth your love. I was never meant to love. A gypsy girl like me was meant to bewitch those around her and herself."

One tear after another, slipped from her wide precious eyes, falling down to the running river. This scene seemed to sadden her more, because the stream reminded her of her parent's departure. Her body felt heavier then usual, as though the burden weighed her down, until she could no longer stand on her two legs.

"If only there was a way I could have prevented that moment just from happening. If only I could stop myself from kissing him back."

With such despair placed on her shoulders, with such utter remorse that could not be opened freely, Kaoru walked slowly back to the dojo where she will wait for the moment of dejection to face her. After all that was what her life was all about.

Flashback

Little Kaoru swayed happily after seeing her mother arrive with her new present, one in which her father sent for her from his destination far away. Little Kaoru could not remember anything ever brightening her up as this day. Her father meant the world to her; he was her idle, the man and the only man who'll ever have her heart. If she were to ever love like her mother spoke to her about, she would like to fall in love with a man very much like her father.

Receiving her present, Kaoru skipped happily away to her room to open her new present. With such haste Kaoru reached her room, where she sat happily on the floor, and began opening up her present. She never did realize that she left her sliding door open. It didn't bother her until she heard her mother shrieked from the distance.

"Anjana!" Her mother squealed from down the hall. Then she quieted her voice so her daughter would not hear her. Quickly glancing down the hall, she found the hallway to be vacant. Not a sound crept into where she was.

"Anjana, are you telling me the truth?" she asked once again, unsure on what to tell her.

"I'm telling you the truth!" cried the other woman. Her disheveled state caused a stir to Kaoru's mother. Anjana was a close friend, a slave who came from India. It was said that she had pure gypsy blood, one that gave her all her misfortunes.

"Please start from the beginning."

"How can I? I don't want to remember the past, not one sect of it at all!"

"But you must face it, because sooner or later, you will have to face it. Just please tell me the story from the beginning," Kaoru's mother said with a light tone. Lightly she placed a hand on the young woman's shoulder and gestured her to kneel on the floor before her. Only when the young woman kneeled, she sat at the other end to make the woman comfortable.

The woman looked so alienated from the real world. Her lovely dark brown eyes had shadows, one that caused vivid memories to accost her with such unpleasantness. It was uncanny to the appearance Kaoru's mother was used to seeing her. It was her dishevel state, the bizarre acting, that gave away her true shade.

"I… I… don't know where to start." Those words came out as a muffle. They could have been scarcely heard from anyone close to her. But there were tears in her throat, which spoke of remorse, which spoke of her ill doing. She sounded so forlorn, looked so gloomy. The image became too unbearable to stand.

"I love my husband! I love my husband!" the woman screamed, causing the disturbance of silence in the room. "I love him so much that if he asked me to take my life, I will take it so freely! I would give him everything of me! You know that?"

Kaoru's mother nodded her head with assurance and then waited patiently for the woman to continue speaking.

"Just one night my husband left me. Just one night and that same night I had to finish the chores my Master left for me to do. If I didn't, I would have to spent the whole night doing them and my Master would whip me to death." The woman brought up her legs and hugged them close to her and she dumbly started rocking back and forth. Terror filled her eyes, as tears streamed down her face. Her shoulders sank as she heaved heavy breaths.

"Just that one night I stayed. That was when my Master left me with a stranger who came to visit for a night. I did not know why he was there. It was none of my business to know, so I carried on doing my own chores." Her voice grew heavier with tears each moment as she told her story, her eyes filled with pain as her body trembled violently.

"I betrayed my husband! I let this man, this complete stranger touch me, do all kinds of forbidden things to me without knowing a thing about him. I will never forget the way that my blood boiled, or how my body responded to his endless torture. Never! I wanted him!"

The woman cried out with such anguish, that Kaoru's mother was afraid she might die at that very moment. Without further questioning, Kaoru's mother got up from her rightful place across the hall and made her way to the woman she had once known named Anjana. The woman she now faced was not her same friend, but a complete stranger.

Reaching up close to her, she hugged and whispered incoherent words to soothed her down. Once the sobs subsided she spoke words that were once spoken to her. "A woman's position in this society of men are one of many. She has many jobs, many obligations, yet she is poisoned with responsibilities and such cruel punishments. The duty of a woman in love, are to honor, to cherish, and obey. A woman gives her all to her husband, her heart, her soul, and her mind. However, the mind could betray the body and the heart. The body could betray the mind and the heart. The heart could betray the mind and the body. No matter what, the need of certain aspects in a woman grows stronger, as more burdens are weighed on her shoulders. Your love is great, but your body language, your lust was even greater, because you had to break from the chains that bind you to burdens. In general meaning a woman can love a man, but she can also have a pure attraction for another, because though love may complete everything, it does not."

The woman pushed back from Kaoru's mother's arms and looked at her with disbelief. She could not say anything, for there was nothing to say.

"Just do well to remember that in the future, and that this incident that happened is not your fault, for if a man did it, it would not be claimed his fault either. The baby you carry is a gift, one that is so precious. The next thing I don't want to hear is that you took not only your life, but a life of an innocent as well."

Kaoru's mother left the woman sitting alone to think everything through. From the distance within the shadows, little Kaoru watched everything. Her sapphire eyes were wide with fear and interest. The words her mother spoke were from true wisdom, one that Kaoru hoped to seek full comprehension one day. She turned around and walked straight to her room. A week later, Kaoru's mother received notice of Anjana's death. Only though, little Kaoru knew Anjana never took her life. She would never do that. Instead her own Master murdered her. Justice never did prevail.

Present

Heading towards her home, Kaoru passed the sites of many different graves, ones that haunted with no mercy. Among them were both her mother and father. Though her father was never found, the people in the community still made a burial ground for him, showing their respects for him. Her mother on the other hand was a different story.

Peering down at both hands, both hands that felt the drips of her mother's blood, Kaoru tried her best not to flinch at such a horrid memory. She practically dragged her mother's corpse from the dojo and brought it here. With her mother's blood drenching her hands and the rain flooding her already ragged sobs, Kaoru dug her mother's hole besides her father, where she could be buried in peace. With only the rainfall to wash her mother's dead form clean, she dragged the body into the hole, where she restlessly threw dirt in it.

"Forgive me mother, for I am not as wise as you are. Forgive me for you gave birth to a weak daughter. I do not know how I can live with the sins I have created." How could she still breathe after all that has happened to her? How?

Weakly she slumped her small frame to the ground. Her raven hair tossed out from her original high ponytail, and fell hopelessly to the dirt. Her breathing grew ragged as every second became more like an eternity to her. The vision before her, became slurred and ill proper. And once again she cried her pain to the world before her mother's grave. She damned herself for carrying gypsy blood, for causing misdeeds to all. That was all she was, a misdeed for all.

"Here I am showing you my weakness. Here I am bowing before your grave, doing the very thing I regret doing. The man, the people who said that took your life and father's life, lives in my home, lives in our home. Instead of killing him, instead of taking revenge, I let him live. I fell in love with a man, the very thing I promised not to do."

Tears slid down her dismayed sapphire eyes as she poured her feelings to her long dead mother.

"He dwells in our home, as well as he lives within my heart. If he asked me to draw a sword from it's sheathe to slay myself before all, I would do it. I do not deserve his love, for a man like him, I believed he can never love."

The sky became dark as the clouds drifted one over the other. From a distance, a high, deafening sound could be heard, while the lights of broad daylight seeped away. The remaining remnants became a storm and bowing in the middle of the storm was Kaoru. Her mere whispers became shouts so that not only would her dead mother hear the forlorn in her voice, but Kami-sama could hear everything as well. Maybe the whole world could hear her voice.

"Yet with every breath I take, I do it for him, with every beat of my heart, I do it so I could live for him. With every lingering thought, it is nothing but of him. Should I take revenge, should I kill the very person who has taken the whole of me and left with nothing? Should I have the right to love a man and forsake my family? Where's the justice? Where's Anjana's justice as well as mine?"

It was like the storm was responding to Kaoru's raging emotions. With each shout, the storm grew louder. The heavens itself was trying to find a way to bear Kaoru's grief into the world. All the years of loneliness and suffering with pain and never crying out about it, just came right out. All those years her pain came out too late.

"A young boy goes missing. For heaven's sake he's innocent! The people who come near me suffers more than I do, they disappear from my life to never be seen again! And it's all because of this vermin blood I carry, all because I have to suffer innocently for what others have done! To love from me, is like asking death! I should love no more!"

Finally the raging storm stilled and all that was left within its wake was a placid look. Kaoru's clothes stuck to her body like a second skin. Every single contour of her body had shown through the thinness of her clothes. Overhead the water drops from the leaves, dripped almost silently. A translucent light imaged from the precious drops as Kaoru's diamond tears did, but it only shattered as it hit the now muddy ground.

"I only ask of you to forgive me mother. I ask all others to forgive me as well. Especially the one who has stolen my heart, for I have betrayed his allegiance to another man."

With so much faltering steps, Kaoru wearily got to her feet. Her body swayed from one side to the next. Her body drained from all the energy she released before. All that was left was misery and pain, pain that would live in her always.

Then all of sudden Kaoru stopped dead in her tracks. Her body panicked and then stilled. Her fists clenched and then unclenched. Standing sloppily, she let her sapphire eyes catch the amber eyes that bore into hers, searching her soul to only smash to smithereens for the truths revealed, her misdeeds. The man who now stood before her was none other then her beloved Battousai.

"Who was this man you betrayed me for?" asked Battousai, his voice promising nothing but death.