Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin is property of Watsuki Nobuhiro. If I did own it, it would be set in space and nobody would read it.

Once a Thief?

By Quadhelix

Chapter 4: The Conclusion (AN: About #$& time!)

As Kenshin and Sanosuke headed back toward the clinic, both took time to silently mourn Tsubame's death. Although they had tried their best to recover a sample of the poison used against Tsubame, they had failed and now she had paid the price. Megumi had said that she had needed the sample within two hours. That had been the previous evening. However, Kenshin and Sanosuke had searched for the assassin Takumi until morning before heading to the clinic.

What truly confused the duo were Yahiko's strange actions at the end of the fight. He had literally run off in fear after having body-slammed Takumi:

Dropping his shinai and tearing the needle from his knee, Yahiko charged Takumi for a body slam. As they both tumbled to the ground, Takumi rammed a needle into Yahiko's right shoulder paralyzing the arm attached. Yahiko's eyes grew wide and he began to crawl away shouting, "Please don't kill me!" over and over before getting up and running off down the street.

Neither Kenshin nor Sanosuke could figure out what had come over Yahiko. Such behavior was completely abnormal for Yahiko, who prided himself on his courage. Then, again, it had been an extremely stressful situation and the possibility that Takumi's needles contained a poison that affected the mind in unusual ways could not be ignored. Kenshin had seen men go mad from prolonged fighting during The War. While some, like Shishio, had turned into bloodthirsty monsters, others had simply become quivering masses of fear. The true motives behind Yahiko's actions never occurred to either Kenshin or Sanosuke. Or, for that matter, Takumi.

Kaoru woke up. That surprised her immensely. The last thing that she remembered was a sword cutting through her back, rendering her unconscious. Theoretically, at least, her unconsciousness should have left her at the mercy of the attackers who had been trying to burn down Megumi's clinic. Thus, her survival posed a logical paradox that would have sent Einstein diving for his notebook.

Violations of the laws of probability aside, Kaoru was also worried about everyone else at the clinic. She had been the only real fighter there, so if she had been unconscious, it was quite possible that the attackers had won and that the clinic had been destroyed along with its occupants.

Taking stock of her location, Kaoru ruled that out. She was in a room at the clinic, so it obviously had not been destroyed. The clinic's continued existence posed the same problem as her own survival: How?

Kaoru's lucubration was interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Come in!" In response, a mildly bruised Megumi entered the room.

"Megumi! What happened to you?"

"One of Akio's grenades. He dropped it while in the middle of a throw and some of the pieces hit me." This, naturally, caused Kaoru some concern.

"Is he alright?"

"Oh, he's fine, nothing that a few weeks of rest won't heal."

"That's good," Kaoru hesitated before continuing, "How is Tsubame?"

They were interrupted by a knock at the clinic's front entrance

Kenshin and Sanosuke knocked on the door to the clinic and waited. They were slightly concerned by the burn marks on the street in front of the clinic, and therefore were in a slight hurry to see if everyone was okay. They also wanted to try to find Yahiko, and felt that they would have a better chance of finding him if they had more people searching.

They heard somebody run up to the door. It opened and Megumi greeted them in harsh whisper:

"Would you two be quiet, my patients need their rest!" Sanosuke was the first to respond:

"What patients?"

Megumi's answer was once again cut short by Yahiko's shout:

"Hey, would you guys keep quiet out there; we're all trying to sleep back here!"

As Kenshin and Sanosuke wrote off their plans of trying to find Yahiko, Megumi simply pondered the irony of screaming to get quiet.

When Kenshin walked into Yahiko's room, he nearly had a small heart attack; the room contained three futons. One contained a sleeping Akio; another contained Yahiko, lying down but completely awake. However, it was the third futon's contents that nearly sent Kenshin to an early grave. Lying there, pale as a ghost and wheezing like an asthmatic smoker, was Tsubame. Kenshin nearly screamed as his eyes rolled back in his head.

"Sano!"

Fortunately, Sanosuke caught Kenshin's unconscious body before it hit the floor.

Kenshin awoke to find himself in a futon across the room from Kaoru's. She was sitting up in her futon, reading a tattered copy of The Tales of Genji. When he tried to sit up, Kaoru looked over at him and smiled.

"So, Kenshin, feeling any better?"

"I am not sure, Kaoru-dono, that I am not. I think that I saw a ghost"

"If you mean Tsubame-chan, she isn't a ghost."

"That is good, that it is. How did she survive?"

"Well, from what they told me while you were recovering…"

As soon as Kaoru's body hit the ground, the two remaining bandits prepared to finish her off. However, they were interrupted by a grunt from their comrade who was attempting to burn down the clinic. They turned toward him to find Yahiko standing over the third bandit's prone form. Yahiko was holding a fencepost like a shinai, facing the last two bandits. In their surprise, the attackers barely realized what hit them.

"That is a very interesting to know Kaoru-dono, but how did Tsubame survive?"

"Yahiko got a sample of the poison."

"Oro?"

"Well, from what Sanosuke told me…"

Yahiko looked at the needle in his knee. He recognized Takumi's color-coding and realized that the needle was coated with a slow-release poison. More accurately, the needle was coated with a strong poison and the poison was coated with a low-solubility salt to protect against accidental exposure. Such a precaution was necessary because the poison most likely did not have an antidote. If Yahiko could time his counter-attack just right, Takumi would be facing a handful of his own poison. When he felt that the salt was almost completely dissolved, he yanked the needle out of his leg, tensing the knee to force out any poisoned fluid. Then, he waited a fraction of a second for any remaining salt to dissolve. Once he was ready, Yahiko charged. Yahiko rammed Takumi but also, secretly, cut Takumi with the needle.

"So Takumi is dead?"

"Probably not, Kenshin. According to Yahiko, not enough of the needle went in to apply all of the poison. However, Yahiko is fairly sure that Takumi is not going to recover for quite some time."

"How long?"

"Let's just say that Yahiko may well be teaching Kamiya Kasshin Ryu to his children before Takumi gets back full use of his limbs."

"So Yahiko has removed the threat of revenge on the part of Takumi, that he has. That still does not explain how he got a sample of the poison."

"Apparently, while Yahiko cut Takumi with one hand, he picked Takumi's pocket with the other."

"And his sudden and uncharacteristic begging and pleading?"

"Well, Kenshin, according to Megumi, Yahiko says that it really wasn't an act. He really was scared out of his mind. However, he says that he didn't feel any different than he did during his fight against the Juppongatana at the Aoiya. The only difference is that here, Yahiko did not channel his fear into winning the fight but instead into acting afraid and getting away."

"I understand, that I do. Yahiko felt that winning the fight was unimportant; he had to get the sample back so that Megumi-dono could find a cure."

"Exactly, and Takumi would be much less of a problem if he thought that Yahiko had been defeated."

In the other room, Yahiko quietly listened as Tsubame slept. Her breathing had improved noticeably and she seemed to be asleep. Akio, whom he had always seen as something of a younger brother, was asleep and was finally going to have a real home with him at the dojo. Both Tsubame and Akio were recovering from their injuries quite nicely and Yahiko couldn't feel prouder of them than he already did.

The expression, "Once a thief, always a thief" had been used to condemn Yahiko many times. However, just this once, the truth in that expression saved his family from death.

The End