Notes: Hello, people, I´m back! This story is a bit different from what I´m used to do. It´s an AU (thought minor: with certain changes in the timeline and storyline but the same historical period and the same characters) that will be much more intrigue and action-packed than the rest of my stories, while at the same time I try to explore the relationships between certain people in a what-if scenario. I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: The characters belong to Watsuki Nobuhiro.

Thanks to Margit Ritzka for betaing this.

Doll House

Chapter One

I (November, 1876 ):

The woman took a long breath, and fixed her eyes on the sordid ceiling above her head for the last time. Her hand was gripping the dagger strongly, as if to brace herself for the determination she needed while, in the adjoining room, the thumps and shouts were beginning to subside.

You dishonoured your family. Dishonoured their profession.

It held a strange irony in her eyes, to think that she had spent her childhood and her adolescence trying to make them proud of her. With only that thought in her mind, she had got tangled in her shame and her ruin, and in the end she was killed by the knowledge that they never could forgive her. No matter what she did, it was too late.

You have ruined hundreds of people.

Megumi watched, almost in fascination, how the blade reflected the dying light of the candle. Before she ever could notice, her eyes were full of tears that blurred her vision and made it hazy. The scars in her soul were bleeding, all of them at the same time.

But why? Was it fair? She had been innocent when they had tricked her into making that special opium, and when she realised it, it had already been too late. They had kept her imprisoned, had she ever had any other choice?

Yes, an inner voice did not fail to answer. You had it. You had the same choice that you have now, but before it would have saved all those people that have died because of you. Oh, if only she hadn't been a coward, a hypocrite, afraid to die and giving justifications…

But well, she smiled grimly to herself, better late than never. She would do it now, and rid both herself of that inhuman torture and the world of her presence. The only thing she regretted about her decision was that the red-haired swordsman's efforts would be in vain, after he had risked his life to save her, but he would understand in time that it was necessary. He had delivered her from that hell, and made her feel loved and even understood for once in all those years, so how could he fail to respect her will now?

One… The hands that were gripping the blade were already white from the effort. This time it was the definitive, no second thoughts.

Would it… hurt too much?

Coward. It would be nothing but a dark, merciful oblivion. It would make her cease seeing those scenes in her mind. And…

Two.

Megumi drew a long breath, and began pulling the blade downwards. No, not like this. Such lack of determination…It had to be quick, immediate, exact.

Now!

The sudden noise of the door crashing behind her back interrupted her endeavours abruptly, and caused the dagger to fall to the floor with a clang. The woman smothered a curse, feeling as if she had been forcefully pulled back into a world to which she had already ceased to belong.

"Megumi-dono!"

Her dazed eyes wandered over the figure of the newcomer, and, without knowing well why, shame started to invade her gut. He had several wounds, some of them deep, and his clothes were torn. His expression was one of exhaustion, even as he rushed in with his reversed blade unsheathed in his right hand.

He had done all this for her. Would she, now…?

But, what else? It was the only way.

"What are you trying to do?"

The woman's lips slowly curved into an eerie smile.

"Justice."

"Justice?" The swordsman stopped in his tracks, shaking his head with an expression of deep censure. Megumi used that moment to kneel down and pick up her weapon again. "Justice towards whom?"

"Towards the people who died because of my cowardice," she explained, her voice a tiny note smothered from the surprise at the question. Little by little, she started to get defensive. "I'm guilty of their deaths."

The man approached her, and when he was side by side with her he suddenly extended his hand to yank the dagger away from her. In disbelieving surprise, she saw it collide with the wall and fall to the floor with a sharp noise.

"Yes, you are," he said. It was the first time she heard him speak in such a dead serious tone, and she found herself unable to utter any answer or protest. "But who will do justice to all the people who will die for your cowardice now?

"What?"

"Your death will bring no satisfaction to anyone," he explained." You won't have any opportunity to redress anything, or do justice, or recover anybody's respect as a doctor. But if you lived, you could do justice towards those people by saving many more, and recover your family's honour! You're a doctor, and your knowledge in medicine is precious to save people's lives, now that you're free and the band who used you has dispersed."

"Bu…but do you think…?" The woman opened her mouth uneasily, then closed it again and stared at her fingers. Those words were having the strange and unexpected virtue of shaking her to the core, of giving her an irrational hope. Could there be a way to be forgiven, to… make them proud of her again?

"It's too late," she muttered weakly, as she realised once more the impossibility of her dreams. "I have done too much. Who could ever believe it could be possible to redress wrongs as… horrible as mine? This variety of opium caused the ruin of hundreds of people, and I made it all myself! It's surprising, how few words one needs to say it, and the strength of the impact of the truth. The ruin of hundreds of people…"

The red-haired man didn't look too impressed by this.

"How many people do you think that the hitokiri Batotusai killed with his own hands?" he asked. Megumi lifted her head in surprise.

"Some say hundreds. Others say thousands. Some say he was just a legend that the Ishin Shishi invented to terrorise their enemies. But what…?"

"He did far worse deeds than you, but he chose not to give up. He took a non-killing sword, and has wandered through Japan since the war ended, trying to atone for his crimes by helping as many people as he could." His eyes twinkled with some unknown emotion when he peered deeply inside hers. "And though he knows that maybe he will never be forgiven, he keeps trying, to honour the lives of the people who died by his sword and of the people who risked or gave theirs so he could have that opportunity."

The woman's expression underwent an abrupt change upon hearing this. Making a step backwards, she extended a hand to point at him, her face as pale as a paper leaf.

"Y…you?" she muttered in disbelief. "The hitokiri…?"

"Yes," he nodded, without a flinch. Megumi looked at him closer; he was not lying. His eyes did not evade hers, and he wasn't trying to hide his guilt, but something in his glance effectively spoke to her about his pledge for life that admitted no drawbacks.

Justice…

He had understood her, saved her from the horror of her life, and now he was trying to keep her from doing something terrible. If he had killed himself back then… wouldn't she be now in the same place where she had been for these last three years, trapped in the nightmare and causing the ruin of many? And by helping her…

By helping her, he had done justice to someone else.

Overwhelmed, Megumi buried her face in her hands.

"You're…right." Her voice sounded smothered under the weight of her realisation. "Nobody will benefit from my death. But if I work hard and become a doctor…" She lifted her face slowly, and wiped her tears in a nervous movement. "I might find a measure of peace."

The man -the hitokiri!- nodded and gave her a warm smile in which she could read, now at last, his approval and deep understanding of her determination. After having fallen in the abyss of self-destruction only moments before, now she felt comforted and encouraged by that gesture, almost tempted to smile at her previous despair. She wasn't alone. The world wasn't so cruel, even to people like them.

It gave her enough to carry on.

"And you will honour the Takani family."

"Yes," she nodded, more as a promise than as a simple affirmation. And then, in a whispered undertone, she added to herself. "And I will honour you."

II (January, 1865)

She slid the shoji open some centimetres, then closed it again with care not to make any noise that could stir the wounded man inside. Her intuition had proved her right; the blizzard had subsided already. Outside their small house, the forest had turned into a peaceful immensity of white fallen snow without boundaries.

Now or never, she told herself, pressing a bleeding piece of cloth against the still open wound at her left shoulder and arm. Almost involuntarily, she darted a glance at the unconscious figure lying on the futon, and she felt a shiver shake her body with violence

Traitor, traitor, traitor…

Would you ever… forgive…?

He hadn't ever looked more like a child to her eyes than now, betrayed and broken. For a second, her mind was flooded with tantalizing images of his hopeful, happy look while he tended to the daikon in their field, of his gentle smile when he promised her that he would make her happy and stop killing, of his passion when they were in bed that last night…

Tomoe fell to her knees and gasped heavily while trying to prevent herself from tearing her eyes out, in an irrational desire to stop seeing that accusing face full of silent desperation. This had been her revenge. And yet no, not even this she had been able to do as she should have… she had broken his spirit, but she had done all she could to save him from his fate. She had been fooled, and she had got in the middle, betraying Kiyosato again. Now they would both haunt her until she died, for her cowardice and for her determination, for her kindness and her cruelty, even for the very fact of having allowed herself to be torn in two.

She was slowly going crazy. Oh, yes, she knew. Whenever she felt the need to get close to him and take care of him, comfort him or caress his forehead, she felt Kiyosato's ghost seething behind her, and had to draw back in pain and shame. He had left because of her, because he loved her, and he had died for her, as Tatsumi-san had said. But whenever she wanted to lift her dagger and end it once and for all, her eyes met Kenshin's slight frame, and she let it fall to the floor while her body was wrecked in sobs. She had black circles under her eyes, and she could not stop the trembling of her hands. Her wound throbbed in her left side; maybe already infected, and yet she did not deserve to die any more than she deserved to live. Suffering was all that she deserved.

Would it ever end?

Step by step, she approached the futon once more, and knelt at one of its sides. Her husband was starting to get a bit restless, something which announced that he probably would wake up soon enough. As she saw him turn and toss in his bed, she felt a surge of love and compassion tearing her entrails.

"Kenshin…" she whispered in a trembling voice. Ignoring Kiyosato's ghost, she extended a hesitant hand, and passed it over his hair to quieten him a bit. The adolescent leaned towards it, groaning and whimpering.

"Tomoe…" he muttered in a distressed tone. "Tomoe…why you? Why…?"

The woman's hand froze, just in time before a horrible sensation started to make prey of her limbs and insides. It was like a dull throbbing that increased and increased until she could feel everything within her crumbling down. She was hot, and then she was cold. She was paralysed, and then she felt an overpowering need to run.

And she was unable to utter a word.

Allowing tears to roll down her cheeks freely for the first time in so many years, Tomoe lowered her face, and kissed her husband's forehead. This action seemed to stir him out of his coma, and a pair of unfocused violet eyes snapped wide open to begin a frantic search for something in their surroundings. Full of an instinctive horror, she got up to slide the shoji open, and began a mad run through the snow.

Forgive me… Please… forgive me… Survive… and forget…

Forget that I existed…

III (March, 1878):

Kamiya Kaoru

"All right! Now try again!"

The young kendo master watched attentively how the boy performed the movement, and cocked her head in mild disaproval.

"No. You're giving it too much impulse again. You did it better the previous time, why don't you stick to that?"

"But I don't remember how I did it back then anymore!" the student shouted in frustration, as if about to throw a fit. Kaoru tried to relax for both, and scolded herself mentally. After having made him repeat the same thing over a hundred times, could she still expect that he was able to coordinate well?

Blame it all on her mood these last days.

"This is the correct movement," she said, grasping her wooden sword and placing herself in position. "Look."

The strike came out fluidly and precisely, and the other two boys could not help but turn back and look at it with open eyes. Kaoru gave a satisfied grin.

"Now, try to do it once more!"

This time, the student showed not only more determination, but also even somewhat more accuracy. It would be greediness to ask anything more from the day, she decided with a tired gesture.

"Tomorrow we will continue practicing this during the first half an hour. I would suggest that you did exercises with your arms. You too," she added to the other two in a warning tone.

"We? But we can do it already…" the tallest of them started to complain. Then, however, he averted his glance, and his voice turned a bit less confident. "Besides… well, I don't know if I'll be able to come tomorrow."

Kaoru put her hands on her hips.

"And why not?"

"I… have things to do," he muttered, not very sure. Even from where she was, the young woman could easily guess that he was lying.

"And the truth?"

"It's true." For some instants he stayed there, facing the ground, but he snapped out of it with a brusque movement. "I have to to go. Good afternoon, Kamiya-sensei!"

"He… hey, wait!" Kaoru realised that she was shouting to an already disappeared student, and leaned back in annoyance. "Oh, wonderful! Could any of you tell me what's the matter with him and his attitude?"

The other two boys were already following their companion's footsteps, chatting among themselves and pretending they hadn't heard her. But that was definitely too much for Kaoru. She wasn't going to tolerate such behaviour… and, above all, she wasn't going to wait until tomorrow to get an answer.

"I have asked you a question!" In quick motion, she got to the door, and stood menacingly in the middle of their way. The boys stopped in their tracks with a jump, and instinctively turned to look at each other's face.

"What… do we know?" the one who had had problems getting the movement right asked in an innocent voice. "I don't know what's happening inside his house or inside his head, for the matter!"

"It's because of that impostor, isn't it?"

Unfortunately enough, the question seemed to hit the target with accuracy, causing a visible effect in both students.

"Well…"

"Yoshimatsu-kun isn't going to come back, right?"

Silence felt sickening in the dojo for a long while. Little by little, the boy who hadn't yet spoken managed to recover his capacity of speech, and drew a sharp intake of breath.

"The other day a man was murdered by Battousai," he said. "People are talking because he says that he studied in this dojo…"

"It's a lie!" Kaoru exploded. "A sick lie! You know that the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu is a non-killing technique!"

"We know," the other boy nodded, maybe a bit… intimidated. "But I've already got into two arguments with my family to remain here. And Yoshi-kun… I think they've already made him leave."

"I try to leave my house only when my mother is minding her own business, of late," the first chimed in again. "Nothing better than starting to exercise in front of them and bring the question back!"

Kaoru's knuckles went white around the handle of her sword. She was unable to utter a sound, during a long instant in which she searched for the adequate words to put in her mouth, but finally she had to shrug propriety aside. She was boiling.

"Know that I'm going to hunt for that criminal by every single Tokyo street!" she shouted, kicking the shoji wide open in fury. "If you feel brave enough, come with me… if not, I'll go alone!"

Her two remaining students avoided her glance, and crossed her side at a quick pace.

After she had bolted the door of the dojo, Kaoru returned to her home in a quick, stormy stride. This was just too much. To keep the dojo going after her father's death, accepting boarders in her house to earn money, and while half of the students had left because of the bad reputation of a kendo school where an assistant master, a woman for more details, was the only person to give the lessons had been bad enough, but this… Who would have told her that she would lose the other half of her students to a filthy killer who usurped the name of her school to commit his crimes?

Battousai…she thought, in smouldering anger. I may be only one woman, and an assistant master, and you might be a legend from the Bakumatsu, but I swear I'll hunt you down! There's nothing so base and cowardly as killing people and deflecting the blame to a dojo that teaches a technique which does not kill, and that was created with the sole purpose of…

The young woman let a long breath escape her lips, and put her kendo gear on the ground to lean on the wall. It was not the moment to get sentimental; a threat was menacing her dojo and she needed to be in full form to clean its reputation. It was not the moment, but…

Oh, why did Fate have to prosecute her father that way? Idealist to the core, he had been the first to create a technique whose sole purpose was to defeat an opponent without killing him and protect life, but as he was already seeing it grow and his dream was coming true, he had been forced to fight in the Seinan war and he had got killed. Now, the school he had worked so hard to establish, the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, was being accused of the most gruesome murders. A tear glistened down his daughter's cheek, and she brushed it away almost hysterically. It wouldn't be like that. Oh, no, she wouldn't allow it.

She would die if it was necessary, to protect her father's dream.

Feeling considerably comforted after making her determination, Kaoru lifted the bag over her shoulders, and walked at last towards the door of her house. It smelled very good, which meant that Tomoe-san had probably made lunch already. Megumi-san would be just about to arrive, and the girl imagined that she would eat quickly as she always did, throw her some sarcastic darts and rush out again to the clinic, where she would stay until night. That suited her perfectly, since she knew that the doctor wouldn't ever approve and probably even allow her night patrols. To be a boarder, in fact, even a paying one, Kaoru found sometimes that she was a little too… overbearing.

"I'm home!" she shouted, sliding the shoji open. As she had imagined, the food-trays were already set on the floor, filled with cooked food and exhaling a dim, delicious-smelling smoke. Next to them, a beautiful and grave woman cocked her head to the side and nodded in welcome.

"Good day, Tomoe-san. Thank you," Kaoru recited, before rushing to her room to get rid of her things. Her boarder nodded again, and watched her leave with a somewhat dazed glance.

Tomoe was the oldest of the women who lived in the house; a sad, dark-haired lady in her thirties with a heartshaking glance in her deep brown eyes. She had come months ago, knocking at the door at night, and looking as nothing short of an eerie figure directly projected from a distant time. Kaoru had soon realised that her voice had been quenched permanently for some unknown reason, but her writing was graceful and perfect, and she used it every day to write in a secret diary that she kept always with her. Since the day she had arrived, she hadn't set a single foot in the street, but instead she stayed around the house, and sometimes sat in the yard feeding the cats which came to rest their heads in her lap. She seemed to live in her own world, and paid little attention to the two younger women's bickering or jokes. To Kaoru it gave the impression that she just… existed.

There's such pain in her eyes, always… Megumi, who for some reason spent a lot of time with the woman, had told her once in an absent whisper. Kaoru had been thinking about this for a while, though finally she had given up, aware that the woman's secrets were sealed too deeply for anybody to discover or maybe understand. Still, she felt a strange affinity towards her, and an irrational urge to do for her whatever she could. For example, she had never told her that the money she gave her was by far less than enough, since, if she had done so, she knew that the proud woman would have just packed her things and left to starve in the streets. She was obviously a samurai woman, and her manners were as old-fashioned as Kaoru's mother had been. Sometimes, in fact, the girl couldn't help but think about her mother when Tomoe was around, both of them women who lived and died hiding their sorrow…

Ouch.

"I'm home!" she heard another vibrant voice coming from the doorstep. That was the doctor, she muttered to herself with a grumble as she splashed her face a couple of times. She definitely wasn't in the mood for hearing her say that she was sweaty now.

"Welcome home, Megumi-san," she said, appearing at the doorstep of the dining room. The newcomer looked a bit worn out, but she smiled airily in return and sat down in front of her dinner tray.

"Already here?" she chuckled. Tomoe poured some water in the clay cups, and both she and Kaoru took their places as well. The earlier part of the meal took place in silence, until Kaoru felt in the duty of breaking it the first

"I'm so envious, Tomoe-san…" she commented, devouring the last remains of the first course. "How can you cook so well?"

"Skill, practice and patience," Megumi answered for her. Tomoe nodded and curved the edge of her lips almost imperceptibly.

"Well, excuse me for not having the time!" the younger girl exclaimed, a bit outraged. "I have things to do, like taking care of a dojo!"

"This is no excuse," Megumi grinned in her usual provocative fashion. For a moment, Kaoru felt tempted to imagine fox ears popping from her head. "Even if I'm working all day, I always had time left to learn how to prepare good and edible dishes!"

Kaoru growled in warning, as the chopstick broke with a sharp twang under her fingers. Fortunately enough, before the thing could go further the three women could hear the distinct sound of a knock at the door, and the owner of the house jumped to her feet.

Could it be…that her students had decided to help her that night, after all?

"Coming!" she sang, rushing again towards the shoji and sliding it open. To her surprise, though, her eyes did not meet anyone at the other side as she had expected. There was a folded paper in front of the entrance, but whoever had knocked had vanished as if by magical arts.

Uh?

Kaoru knelt down to pick it up and felt a shiver shaking her body while she tried to guess who could have done that and why. People who didn't want to be seen didn't leave good news at one's doorstep, this was rather obvious.

"What's the matter? Was it a prank?" Megumi asked from inside. When Kaoru did not answer she began to feel worried, and got up to walk towards her.

"It's… it's nothing." Trying to suppress her sudden pallor, the girl folded the note abruptly and fumbled to hide it somewhere. "A prank."

"You are unable to tell even a simple lie," the doctor grumbled. The girl blushed.

"All right," she sighed, handing the paper to her with a guilty expression. As Megumi took it, a mask of angry determination began to build over the girl's features. "I'm sorry… I was planning to finish this as soon as possible."

The older woman was now giving proof of a definitely uncommon uneasiness. Without losing any time, she let her eyes scan across the written text, and her face was drained of all colour when she recognised the characters which composed it.

"We will tear the Kamiya dojo to pieces."

(To be continued)

Megumi´s incident with Kenshin has been set two years earlier.