Interlude: Scars

The seasons were oddly out of sync from back home. It had been spring when I'd been struck by that lightning, and I'd woken up into the beginning of fall.

Shino, I found, liked autumn. It was her favorite season. Kenshin, he liked the spring.

In all the similarities and differences between those two, I think this was one of the ones that disturbed me the most…

I think…I think this might have bothered me a little because it helped me see the sharpest difference between the two. My friend Kenshin was a slayer of men. The strong, vigorous rebirth of life in the spring was more soothing to him than it was to Shino, who could innocently enjoy the inadvertent beauty of the season when things died.

There had been a few times when I wished there was a way the two could have met, but later I would think…

Well… Would it have caused Kenshin pain, knowing Shino? Vise-versa?

…I'm reminded of a memory… This one spring day, one warm day in a spring of very warm days, and as a treat for the kids, we were dragged out of our daily routines to take a lunch and eat it out on a walk.

Jou-chan, Yahiko, Kenshin, Megumi, and me, with Ayame and Susume running circles around us as we went. The lunch was made by Megumi, so it was a good one. The little girls were tearing everywhere, and we older ones sat nearby talking about things that didn't matter.

We didn't notice the girls had wandered just out of sight until we heard their voice calling for someone to come. Kenshin, as always, got up and went, an indulgent little smile on his face. We didn't pay him much mind since he wasn't in too deep in our conversation of nothing anyway, until we heard him calling for Megumi a few moments later.

We found the three of them a little distance away. Kenshin had lifted little Ayame onto a rock and was holding his hands over her foot to stop its bleeding. The kid had fallen while running around and gotten a rock lodged in the junction of where her toe and the curve of her foot met, where a small vein was to be.

When the stone bad been removed, the wound bled a lot, but she wasn't in any real pain, just a little shaken. Megumi took over from there, and the others cheered the little girl for bravery.

I left them fawning on the kid, back to where the remains of our lunch was, wondering if I could snag what was left of the rice balls before Kaoru got back. I noticed Kenshin before I got there, standing a good distance away, his back to all of us. His head was down.

Something was wrong…

I moved to him quickly, wondering what the trouble was. He didn't seem to noticed me, his eyes fixed on his hands, streaked with Ayame's blood. And I knew what was wrong. He'd just been trying to staunch the flow, but…

"Kenshin…?"

He looked at me, quickly putting a smile over his blank expression. "Ayame-chan is very brave, isn't she?" he said brightly. Too brightly. "Not one tear shed…"

"Yeah," I agreed, not really listening to him. I was looking at his eyes. His pupils were shrunken to pinpricks, and his hands were still held, palms up, in front of him. The fingers of his left hand twitched, just once.

"Kenshin," I said, getting a very firm grip on his sleeve. "Kenshin, come on."

He walked a little stiffly as I pulled him back to our picnic. It was for the same reason I kept such a grip on him. He didn't want to be near the others right now. If I let him go, he would have drifted away again.

So I held on, even when I stooped down and grabbed a jug of water. I spared only a glance at the others; they were still busy with the girls. All the better.

I turned the jug over and poured the water over Kenshin's hands, letting go of his sleeves to help wash away the blood with my free hand until there wasn't a trace of it.

"It's off," I said, dropping the empty jug. "See, Kenshin? It's off."

He stared at his hands another moment, stunned, before looking up at me. His face was very pale, but his eyes were back to normal. It was a better face, stark and honest next to that fake smile he had given me when I had first walked up on him.

"Thank you, Sano," he said softly, his voice high with meaning.

"Yeah," was all I said.

By the time the others came back, Yahiko balancing Ayame on his hip, Kenshin seemed to be okay again.

I didn't miss the looks of gratitude he gave me for days after. He would have been all right without any help from me at all, I guess. Maybe when he managed to fight his way out of the nightmares brought on by the sight of little Ayame's blood on his own hands, he'd have found the presence of mind to just clean it off and go on. Then again, maybe it would have taken him more time to come back from that state of mind if I hadn't been there to help him out. As well as him feeling guilty for worrying the others if they'd noticed his distress before I did. I think he was grateful to me for helping him avoid that that more than anything else.

I don't know… Back then…back then I could shrug things like that off with no problem. Back then my guts hadn't corroded into the almost introverted sort of schmaltziness that left me feeling the pangs of loneliness in every nerve of my body if I wasn't dulling it all with rough, tumble, and noise. Back then, I thought there was nothing that between all of us, we couldn't handle.

I wish I had paid more attention to that day, though… Not long down the road, I would look down on Kenshin, slumped in a spot in Rakuninmura and realized what I should have understood on that day, when Kenshin was so bothered about the blood on his hands. He could buckle emotionally. He could be lost. He could be hollowed out and left empty.

I don't think it might have changed things much, had I understood then what I understand now, but maybe I could have done something to save us all a lot of pain…for Kenshin and…and so much later for his twin, Shino.

But…some lessons are learned just too late. Especially by me. Perhaps Saito and Rei-baba, the two biggest doubters of my intelligence, were right in some ways. If Kenshin had been spirited away instead maybe he would have seen what was coming…and how couldn't he? Things follow suit, Rei-baba said. Kenshin would have been watching for it, or would have had sense enough to find out if it had already happened. The biggest key point in his life, a link that made him who he was when we knew him.

If only I had considered…I should have known. Shino would have her equivalent as well, their most haunting similarity, their most injurious connection. Even if I really was an idiot, I should have seen it coming.

It was, after all, literally carved on both of their faces.

Author's note:

Since I started this tale, it's felt more to me like I wasn't so much writing this story, as it was that Old Sano was telling the story to me as my fingers moved over the keyboard. It's not the first time I've experienced this when writing, but somehow it's kind of surprising for it to happen again with Sanosuke.

I argued for way too long with myself about this chapter, but in the end I will always write by feeling and instinct over design. This felt right, he wanted to say it, and so here it is, though some might find it odd. Especially my baka itoko. (Stop whining, Fil. I know what I'm doing). ;)