Past and Future By Hitokiri-san

Disclaimers: Yes, if I own RK will I have to go to the stupid school now? I'll be rich beyond measure, and enjoying a holiday in Kawaii.

A/N: Gomen, minna, school is really killing me off! I notice that once school starts, submissions almost came to a stop...all curses for the time- killing energy-taking school life! As Watsuki-san has said, when time and energy is low, imagination dies...now I fully agree with this statement. Am I genius or what? 13 days to update a chapter ~Anyway, please read on!

And another thing to say, I DON'T ACCEPT FLAMES!!! Healthy critiques are absolutely welcome but insults are simply unacceptable. Any flames noted will be deleted and because I've been flamed by an anonymous reviewer I'm not accepting anonymous reviews anymore. I apologize for that.

Ch 11 Readapting Reality

Through the corridor, count to the third shoji, slide open the shoji and go in...everything was automatic now, firmly embedded in Battousai's memory. His attention was nowhere focused on walking - instead, his attention was devoted to sort out the knotty list of problems residing in his head.

That was why he completely missed the person perching on his usual position at the windowsill, looking behind him with an unreadable expression.

"Shh! Close the door, and quick, de gozaru." The rurouni's voice startled Battousai out of his nightmarish reverie. Though utterly surprised, Battousai only glanced at him briefly before closing the shoji with an audible snap.

The alarm carried in the rurouni's voice was not lost on the boy. Forcing questions back into his stomach he turned over, facing his older counterpart properly.

Battousai now knew why the rurouni was able to wait for him in the room without fear of anyone barging in. The rurouni had changed into a spare navy uniform of the Ishin, arranged his hair into a topknot, and deftly arranged his bangs so that the cross scar could be partially hidden. Anyone entering would think he was Battousai.

Still, there was a chance that somebody would see the two of them at once...

The rurouni beckoned the boy forward, whispering as quietly as possible. "You're being followed."

Battousai tensed up, laying a hand on his katana. Losing his sixth sense was a real pain-in-the-ass, frank to be said - it was making him extra- jumpy. He didn't enjoy the prospect of being followed; that amateur taking advantage of his temporary insensitivity was going to pay with his life.

The rurouni laid a hand on his shoulder, refraining him from barging out of the room. The hitokiri boy glared at him with a what-the-hell-is-wrong look, annoyed. Nonetheless he obeyed the unspoken command, though moving to the side of the shouji lest the enemy decided on a surprise attack.

The moments stretched on, consisting only of the two warriors' even breathing. Battousai strained his ears for a signal - a wooden tile creaking, or else the masked sound of footfall - but to no avail; the enemy obviously knew better than blundering into a hitokiri's den. The hitokiri boy cursed under his breath at a sudden thought.

// Zenei? // he questioned the rurouni with his eyes.

The rurouni met his gaze and looked away, apparently unsure of the answer. The boy raised his brows, pondering the possibility. Just how many people could intrude the Ishin headquarters without sounding off an alarm, anyway?

//Well, that's it. What are we going to do now? // Kenshin mused, knowing his younger self's thoughts without asking. He originally intended to sort things out with Battousai before coming to a two-sided agreement about the Time issue; the whole change of circumstances was nothing to be expected. Zenei appearing at the moment was probably the last thing he could wish for.

Or is that so? A sneering voice in his mind nagged. You'd *love* to stay here, yeah right. Staying with Battousai and your nightmares and your mistakes...

Kenshin flinched. Okay, that had gone too far for his liking.

In the corner of his eyes he saw Battousai mouthing the word "concentrate". Apparently he had been momentarily distracted by the morbid thought he had, forgetting whatever tasks he had at hand.

Fairly embarrassed the wanderer extended his ki power beyond the walls, trying to keep track of the intruder...

...Only to lose the sense of his presence.

// Shinmatte!// the rurouni thought, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. He couldn't have gone so quickly, I was only thinking for a fraction of a second...

Both redheads froze for a millisecond, hearts thudding painfully against their chests. Without a warning, the wanderer leapt out of the window, twisting to land soundlessly on the roof. Battousai followed suit, bracing himself for the worst.

"What...." the younger samurai found his counterpart facing nothing but the darkness of night.

The rurouni frowned slightly, a look of pure puzzlement on his face. "Whoever it was.is fast. Very fast indeed." Bending down on the fragile roof with catlike grace Kenshin moved to retrieve something tucked securely under a piece of tile.

An envelope.

With his hitokiri instincts on alert Battousai batted his hand away. "Don't. You never know if it's...you know." Pushing the rurouni backwards, he hooked the envelope on the tip of his katana and gave it a little shake. When it didn't explode or do anything a normal envelope should not, the hitokiri boy scrutinized it closely. It bore only one word, addressed in the middle and nicely written.

"Battousai."

"Let's get down first." Battousai furrowed his brows, uncomfortable to be exposed on a rooftop with an "unidentified sibling" at his side.

"Okay."

"What is this all about?" The hitokiri was slicing the seal off with a careful yet steady stroke, severing the bindings with suspicion.

"..." the rurouni crossed his arms, still alert. "Sessha has a bad feeling about this."

"So do I." Battousai admitted tightly, now hooking a folded paper out of the envelope while pinning the said envelope to the floor with his tabi.

The paper was laid out eventually, and it was a moment before both Himuras could register what it meant.

" Beware. Traitors deserve tenchu." The kanji were written in a bold, firm style; nonetheless carrying a sense of foreboding.

"Traitors deserve tenchu?" Battousai repeated blankly, arching a brow. " What the hell is it trying to tell us." He looked from the paper to his literal sibling, unable to comprehend the terse wordings of the so-called "warning letter".

"Tenchu...." the rurouni muttered, preoccupied. Perking his had upwards, he informed Battousai calmly, "the person is Ishinshishi. Only we use the term tenchu." Battousai nodded in agreement, but a troubled looked came over his eyes at this.

The rurouni glanced at the younger Himura, sobering. "Is there anyone you met, or anything you did after sessha's departure?"

The hitokiri cocked his head. "I...I met Katsura-san." He heard a whispered "oh" coming from the wanderer.

"Did he happen to see...sessha?"

"Heck, how should I know? My ki sensing ability is somehow dulled by all this time traveling. I don't know why." The hitokiri boy rebutted, his temper already fraying by the long list of questions.

"Nani?" the violet eyes widened briefly before narrowing in concentration. " It will come back in time, de gozaru. Demo...if there's a possibility that Katsura-san could have seen us, or worse hear our conversation...."

Battousai understood the severity of this. "What would it look to him? A midnight meeting in such a secluded place with a sibling that had never been known to exist?" Thus the meaning of the simple sentence was now made clear.

Both paled.

"Don't tell me Katsura-san is having suspicion on me." Battousai clasped a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes in anguish.

"You can't blame him. It *does* look suspicious, de gozaru." The rurouni replied consolingly, propping his chin up with his hand.

Battousai glared at him, looking like a child about to throw a tantrum. " The heck of this is suspicious! How on earth are we going to smooth this out?"

A blank stare.

The manslayer cursed under his breath about some pea-brained rurouni before stopping in mid-sentence.

"Wait."

"Huh?" the rurouni inquired, rather taken aback at his abrupt stop.

"This.doesn't look right."

The rurouni inclined his head to one side, waiting for Battousai to elaborate his point.

Battousai tapped a finger on the wooden floor, appearing thoughtful as if he was wondering how to put it in words. "Don't you think it's a bit of a....giveaway to use the word tenchu, when this is evidently a warning letter? It's as if he's telling us 'I am Ishin, and I'm branding you as traitor.' "

It took a moment for the rurouni to get that. Finally he nodded agreeably, a dazed look crossing his features. " Yeah, and in addition, the traditional way of getting rid of a traitor is to tear him apart immediately, not drop a letter telling him to turn over a new leaf." He smirked a bit at the deadly humor.

" Which means..."

"Yes, that's it, de gozaru." The wanderer caught the wide-eyed look of realization and approved it.

*~*

The words couldn't make their way into his brain.

Yes, his eyes did well to register them, but the brain was way too occupied to take in any particle of them.

It was just a mess of dotted black on a white background, and....

... ..a blinding daze of anger...

Katsura snatched up the paper he was supposed to be reading and threw it away as far as possible, his brows arching skywards in unveiled murderous anger.

Liar.

Anyone catching a look of him at the moment would be terrified senseless. The soft-spoken, smiling Katsura Kogoro reduced to venting his anger on an innocent piece of paper... and then, of course, Katsura wouldn't have anyone seeing him this way. A leader was supposed to be calm, cool, amiable yet firm in his commands. That, was why Katsura always reserved a space for this mask of unwavering confidence.

Wasn't it the same with Himura? A cold, emotionless mask reserved for the strongest of hitokiris - that was one reason why Katsura rarely felt intimidated by that look.

Speaking of Himura....

The Choshu Lord resisted the powerful inclination to knock the entirety of leather-bound books from his private bookshelf. Himura had lied to him. *Lied*. It was frustrating, maddening, anything...

He didn't know whether to trust him again. Or maybe he should.eliminate him?

A humorless smile. Okay, that was too extreme. Still -

Wasn't it the best treatment for traitors? No matter what Takehashi had said, Katsura was starting to have doubts about the boy. All previous impressions he had of Himura- innocent, naïve, pure.were swept into the background as burning rage fueled his mind.

The only one free of any chance of betrayal.....

But, frank to be said, betrayal *was* a popular game in the Bakumatsu. No matter how one strived to clear the clan of spies, they existed like rats; killing one off served nothing to stem the swarming flow of another horde of them.

Chikusho...

"My lord?" a timid, feminine voice managed to rid Katsura of the scathing hatred for one single second.

Kogoro willed his breathing to become even, plastering the aforementioned mask on his face. "Come in, Ilkumatsu."

The shouji was pushed open gently. A dainty pair of feet stepped in, then stopping hesitantly at one look on the Lord's face.

"My lord." Ilkumatsu repeated delicately, looking at him with a hint of concern in her voice. "Is something bothering you?"

Katsura blinked, the feigned pleasantness fading into surprise. "Am I transparent or what?"

Ilkumatsu's lips curved into a small smile, though the worried look returned within a millisecond. "What is it?"

Resigning with a sigh, Katsura told her the entire story - his worries, his views, even his hurt of being betrayed, mingled in his words and hardly detectable - except for the perceptive ears of his lover.

He was, to say, completely flustered when Ilkumatsu responded with nothing but a accepting smile on her face. She didn't look remotely ruffled, or angered as any sensible man...ah, and woman, of course...would.

"What do you have to say about this, anata?"

"I am a woman, and know nothing of spies and traitors. Why don't we wait for Takehashi-san to tell us what *he* sees in earnest?" her eyes glittered with a mysterious knowingness that Katsura, with his practical mode, could not do so much as decipher.

There was an old saying - " those in the labyrinth got misled by it, but those out of it stays somber." Deprived of an analytical side that is the trademark of the male, Ilkumatsu had made up with, somehow, the strange sense of "knowing without reason" that we had come to call "the sixth sense of womankind."

The young lord sighed and complied, knowing he could never guess what a woman thinks, Choshu Lord or no.

"Takehashi." A knock on the side window brought Katsura's attention to the spy he had sent against Himura.

"Katsura-san. Ilkumatsu-san." The reply was prompt as the slim figure slid down from the high windowsill. He removed a headband from his forehead, letting down a stream of ink-black bangs. The hazel eyes hidden behind the cover of his bangs were dampened with mental exhaustion. Brushing at a dangling tendril in front of his face he bowed; waiting for information to be extracted from him.

"Takehashi. Tell me, *what* is Himura up to?"

"Sir, Himura-san is indeed meeting someone at his room." He riveted his gaze outside for a mere moment, an unreadable expression crossing his face.

Katsura scowled under his pleasant mask, tensing. "And the person will be?"

Takehashi frowned, tapping his pointed chin with a finger. "It's weird, actually."

The Ishin leader raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

" In a sense, Himura-san was perfectly unaware of my presence, which worked out fine, but.his ki....felt...almost inhuman."

"Hm?"

"I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was as if something vital is missing from his person."

Katsura glimpsed at Ilkumatsu, then back at Takehashi again.

"I do not understand."

"Neither does I, sir. But that is irrelevant to the current situation." Takehashi concluded, holding a rather faraway look in his eyes that suggested otherwise. Luckily, Katsura was too absorbed to notice that look.

Ilkumatsu, however, spotted it and pursed her lips for a little.

"I agree. Go on." The Choshu leader prodded.

"Hai." The young spy rejoined mildly, "however, I seemed to have underestimated the ki sensibility of both Battousai and his companion. Himura seemly was totally unable to notice my presence, which, as I now think, might have been an act."

"And the other one?"

"That is the strange part. Unlike Himura he sensed me right away, so I retreated over the rooftop." Takehashi continued fluently. And placed a note there for them, he added mentally. He really hoped Himura-san and his companion had the minimum intelligence to understand the hidden message behind the threatening words. He could have written it plainer; but part of him yearned to test if the notorious Himura Battousai lived up to his reputation.

So he made the whole thing a lot more complex than necessary. The letter - its sole purpose was to warn the Battousai, to tell him it was really stupid and suspicious to have another unidentified person around; and even more stupid and dangerous to lie to Katsura Kogoro. A little piece of suspicion might as well end up in brutal murder, especially for that particular post - which required full loyalty to the master.

Himura, he decided, was more naïve than he looked. Put it in other words - he was being a thickskulled idiot. Takehashi had known, at first look, that Himura was nowhere near to being a spy. It would take a lot more than those sputtering and influent lying to become a spy; Takehashi himself had known that well. But it was far more difficult to convince the Ishin Lord, as Himura really *had* a foreigner in his room.

If he didn't help Himura, he wasn't sure what Katsura would do to the idiot, eventually.

Takehashi was so caught in his own worries he nearly missed the approving little wink directed to him by Ilkumatsu. He tried to keep an amused smile rising up to his lips. Heck, that would look like he was flirting with the lady.

// Impressive, // the spy thought, a little awestruck. // She knew exactly what I have been doing behind Katsura-san. Trust it to a woman to see through the back of your head. //

Katsura was looking down on the tatami mat, thinking quietly to himself. The story didn't exactly make sense, but he could trust it was the truth. After all, Takehashi was the only other person he trusted beside Himura, Katasugi and Katagai.

Talk about trusting Himura....

"So you haven't got a good look at the secret guest Himura is having?"

"No, it would have risked blowing my cover." The young spy answered seriously, still feeling a little amused.

Katsura agreed, though feeling fairly disappointed. "If that is the case, you can go now."

"Do I need to follow him further?" Takehashi inquired, knowing full well what the answer would be.

"No,'' Katsura said, "if he can sense you it would look highly suspicious that an unknown person is able to barge into the Ishin headquarters every two days or so. We will discuss this later."

"I agree, sir." Takehashi said, relieved. If he continued stalking Himura this way he knew the young hitokiri would skewer him sooner or later.

The young spy bowed and turned to leave, rebinding the headband onto his head as he did so.

He didn't miss the sly gleam in Ilkumatsu's eyes as he passed her by.

*~*

A/U: Well, so that's it. Unimaginative, huh? Believe me, I'm slowly dying off from all those teacher droning in my ears = ^ . ^ = I'm sorry, but from now on I will only reply to reviewers last chapter. It is mainly due to lack of time, and I hope minna can forgive me! De gozaru! And I'll accumulate the reviews to next chapter...too domn lazy...