Authors note: Needless to say, I have some strange theories about Hiko, but I don't think our much loved red head is that much different from his master. Just a little more modest….and not much more modest at that. It's mentioned in the manga and the anime that Hiko knew what Kenshin had been up to during the revolution, so we can safely assume he kept tabs on Kenshin one way or another. There's also that grave scene at the end of the Kyoto arc. Keep in mind however that this is just one of numerous possibilities.

Oh and yes, I know I swore to myself blue and blind that Snowfall was a one shot, then a double one shot but I've been foiled again. Part of me hopes this is the last of it because I have other things I'd like to work on, but in the end, I guess that's not up to me. I guess if worse comes to worse I can always gag him can't I?

My thanks to Maigo-chan without her RK manga translations a lot of us would have no access to the manga at all. Please read and review.

The wind rattled the shoji. It drove a fine dusting of white through the cracks and left a shining veil to melt into the tatami. The cold air tugged at the tall man's black ponytail. The snow fell just short of his back. He paid it no heed. He was too intent on the state of the idiot's wounds to notice something so unimportant. The lamp flicked sending distorted shadows across the walls. In the half light looking down at the boy who'd been his pupil, Hiko Seijurou ceased to question the wisdom of charming his way in. His calloused palm pressed again the young man's forehead. It wasn't too bad, he supposed. A little cold if anything. He sat next to the futon looking nothing like the master swordsman he was. The mask he perpetually wore had slipped. The boy looked every bit as small and vulnerable as he had at ten, though better fed he had to admit. Even though he'd grown, Kenshin was still small and slight. Wiry really and his red hair and fair skin only emphasised it. At this moment, that bright red hair made him look even paler than he already was. As pale and grey as the snow that lay banked up outside. Still, his chest rose and fell in a steady comforting way.

Since that day on the mountain, Hiko had been keeping tabs on Kenshin. He couldn't help himself. He had known that being the master of the Hiten Mitsurugi style meant a life without a family. He hadn't cared really, he'd been too young to realise what he was giving up. Yet Kenshin had some how become more than just a student. That small, thin little boy with his large troubled eyes, who never stopped trying, had left a deep impression on him. Looking down at the deep wounds he couldn't help but feel pity. A pity mixed with no small measure of guilt. If he hadn't taught Kenshin how to wield a sword, he certainly wouldn't have ended up in this predicament. Inwardly he sighed. What Kenshin had needed most was a mother's love and a father's guidance, what he'd got was endless lectures and insults care of the biggest ego in Japan. Hiko closed his eyes. Back then he hadn't realised how hard raising a child was. Any idiot could teach swordsmanship, any idiot could learn which wasn't to say they should. Being a parent, well that was another matter entirely. He remembered the sunset, the warm gold light that spilled over the graveyard. The graveyard Kenshin had made with his own tiny hands. 'But even bandits and slavers are only bodies when they die . . . so I made them graves.' Perhaps that was it, that oddly adult voice that had left him feeling so strangely immature.

Beneath his yukata, the deep gouges on Kenshin's back were by far the most serious of his injuries. The tuffs of blue thread and jagged edges showed that his clothing had become imbedded and cemented to his wounds. These kind people had, by removing his clothing, only made the wounds worse. He squeezed out the cloth and rinsed over the deep, torn wounds. Was it was madness that made him come? Or guilt, or something else he couldn't name. It didn't matter so long as Kenshin never knew. Slowly the bowl of water grew darker. Slowly the wounds grew clear. Soon now, he'd need to disappear. He'd need to disappear, but at least Kenshin had a chance, which was more than he could say for the beautiful girl he'd married. He could see the two of them, in his mind, the tall slim girl with a cascade of dark hair, who left the faint fragrance of white plum in her wake. A beautiful girl, with a well bred polite air. Yes, Kenshin had got that much right at least.

Hiko disappeared without a backward glance, leaving a few things for Kenshin's wounds and knowing that for Kenshin the worst was still to come. For now, he slept, but not forever. Soon enough his dream would dissolve into a nightmare.

In the darkness, the cherry blossom danced and sometimes he heard her voice. That longed for voice that drew him ever deeper into the velveteen darkness. In the darkness, it was safe, safe from the agonising truth, safe from a world without her. A world without her dark, rather sad, searching eyes, without her soft polite voice a world in which he was alone once more. Here at least he could still hear her, though she never called him by name. After all, she never had. He thought that it was Hiko perhaps who had last called him Kenshin. In this life, he was Himura, or Battousai or you, rarely anything else.

In this darkness too, he was free from the pain. A physical pain unlike anything he had ever had to endure before. Here in this world of darkness and cherry blossom he was safe. Sometimes through the darkness he could hear a voice, familiar but strangely distant. Hiko he thought, but he sounded so far away and the pull of Tomoe's soft voice was stronger. So he sank ever deeper into the darkness the cherry blossom guiding him on.

Then some how it seemed the cherry blossom became a blizzard. He lost his senses, he merely staggered on. Then in the darkness he found himself knee deep in a river of blood.

Blood seeped from under his bandaged shoulder. Shino's mother regarded him quietly, as she wiped the cold sweat from his face and the blood from his chest, noting that the pallor of his skin wasn't quite so marked, that his hands weren't quite so cold. After seeing his wounds, it seemed impossible that he was still alive at all. This thin, exhausted, scrap of a boy who suddenly looked no older than her own son. He barely looked old enough to be away from his parents, never mind married. Except, that he wasn't, not any more. She sighed and wrung out the cloth. When she had seen them, returning from the village, his beautiful wife always half a step behind him. He had seemed so adult. Seeing him on the mountain half frozen, more dead than alive, she'd suddenly realised how young he was. Just a boy. A small broken child, covered in more blood than she'd ever seen. Her husband had carried him back and laid him down on a futon, his face uncharacteristically grim. They'd gone back for his wife, her father and her husband. Even now, she was packed in a shroud in the snow, until someone came to take charge of the whole tragic mess.

The wound on his face kept oozing. She bathed the bloody residue away and caught his hand gently as it reached out, a reflex response to the pain. Maybe he wasn't going to die after all. When she'd bathed him and seen the depth and severity of his wounds, then she had thought he wouldn't be long in following his wife to that other world. Yet for all that, he was tenacious and strong, and it half frightened her for what would happen to that tenacity when he woke and found himself alone. She smoothed the hair out of his face. He moaned a little calling his wife's name in a hoarse, crackling whisper. The first sound he'd made in four days, her hand paused and her heart filled with pity. 'Poor, poor boy.' She stroked his hair and murmured to him, willing him to slip back into the sweet unconsciousness again. Far better for him if he died. Far better than the grief, that awaited him and yet…. She remembered her son and his friends. Brimming over with stories full of references to the quiet young man with the gentle smile.

The soft scuffle of bare feet on the tatami made her glance up. Shino leant against the door frame, his face still a little pale, his eyes still rather wide. He stared past her at Kenshin. Who was, thankfully silent again. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other uncertainly.

"Kaasan, that man's here again."

She glanced down at the small body. This quiet gentle young man, how the village children loved him. She stood up quietly laying the damp cloth to one side. She put her arm around her son squeezing him in a warm side on embrace. Her finger tips rested briefly on his head.

"It'll be alright don't worry."

"But Kaasan."

She tapped his head lightly and walked out the door.

He wasn't a tall man, but quiet. He bowed to her respectfully as he always did and asked about Kenshin in the same polite fashion. She answered as she always did. Trying not to think too much about the two swords, samurai swords that stood propped in the corner of her bedroom. Trying not to remember her husbands words, 'our medicine seller's a swordsman be careful what you say to people' lest they show on her face. He had shown her the katana gleaming with use and constant care beneath the fresh blood. The blade covered in a multitude of old nicks and scratches. The balance of it, despite its weight in her unschooled hands, made her shiver. 'And someone' she remembered her husband's words 'someone tried to kill him'. The whispers around the village, that the quiet young man with bright red hair was not all he seemed had proven true. But she knew her husband hadn't said anything about what he'd found up on the mountain, not even to her. The man before her had sharp darting eyes that put her on her guard. The rustle of blankets hit her ears and she felt her own eyes slide back to the door of Kenshin's room at the sound.

The blood frightened him, and her voice just got further and further away. He looked around him wildly but all he could see was black and red, darkness and blood. He felt oddly revolted and very alone. The blood covered his hands and dripped down his katana, into a never ending river. He looked around for her, his heart beating rapidly in his chest, his long ponytail flicking about him as red as the blood he stood in. He called her, startled at the strange rustiness and desperation in his voice.

The pain ran through his body like a wave, bearing him up towards consciousness. Towards the light. He was filled with a deep pit of pain that he didn't understand; more than anything, he wanted her. Her voice, her touch, her quiet composed face. Her hands oddly cool against his skin, making his blood race in that odd heating way. At that moment between the reality and the dark, he would have given anything to feel her touch, real and tangible against his skin, even if it meant losing everything. He moaned and his voice as if somehow separate from the rest of him uttered her name in an endless agonised whisper. Then above him, the rough timber beams came into view and his world was pain.

The physical pain which was beyond anything he'd ever felt before, paled away against the icy cold emptiness that filled his insides so completely. With the memory, the awareness her name died on his lips.

He had loved her that much he understood, that strange quiet happiness he'd never felt before. That almost rabid protectiveness, so different from his normal detached self. More than all that was the shattering grief, which left him with an odd sense of understanding. Now he was alone, again. Yet this time it was some how more painful, more frightening, because this time he understood. He'd destroyed it himself. He rolled on to his side and closed his eyes half burying his face under the covers. Something soft twisted in his closed fist. He opened his eyes and peered at the pale blue silk, he held it against his face barely aware of the tears that slipped down his cheeks. 'It's all right. So please, don't cry . . .' but how could it be and he whispered her name again and again on his dry cracked lips.

(2005)

Further notes: My apologies for putting chapter 3 up and pulling it down so rapidly (and for forgetting tochange the blurb oops!)Lolo popoki kindly pointed out something that just had to be fixed. I'm still not sure that I've fixed the problem but thank you for pointing it out to me.

Thank you everyone for the wonderful reviews.