Author's Note: Here's another chapter. I hope you enjoy it! Excuse any mistakes. I've kinda pieced this chapter together for the first version of the story and added some new stuff, and I've tried to find everything, but it is most likely something slipped through the cracks. Please forgive me.

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Disclaimer: I do not own Kenshin, Kaoru, or any of the other characters. I also do not own JL Conrad, or her poem August. I do own the idea to this story though, and I do hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've liked writing it.

:---:

Chapter 9: Fading Lights

I knew I would remember
a scrape of gravel

like the words I could not say
the car's taillights

:---:

He would die trying if he had too. Yahiko thought as he stared at the large machine puppet. That's all it was, a large round puppet machine. He had to get to the controls. He had to keep Kaoru and the dojo safe. With all my heart and soul I will keep them safe. I will come back to them. I have a future to live. Like Kenshin, he had someone to live for, whether she knew it or not.

The man in the balloon was laughing at their plights.

'You know you will not come out of this alive! I am too strong! Stronger than all of you! You will not survive!' The man with white hair yelled down from where he was in the hot air balloon.

'I will not stop until I have!'

Kaoru trembled, thinking of the rage and the derangement of the man floating above them. She trembled with fear for her friends, her family, their futures, but mostly for their pasts. 'It will all be better. We will beat him. If it takes us years, we will prevail.' She thought, now trembling with joy and pride over her friends who were so strong.

:---:

"What's wrong Kaoru?" Megumi asked from where she stood a few feet away.

"You've gone awfully pale suddenly, Kaoru." Tsubame said, a worried look on her face.

"Nothing. Nothing that I shouldn't be used to, it was just another vision." Kaoru said, absent mindedly. Her thoughts were still on what she had seen in her vision.

"What did you see?" Yahiko asked, crouching on the ground, catching his breath. Kenshin had trounced him in the end, but he had held his own, and Kenshin was just breathing just as heavily.

"What was so different about this one?" Kenshin asked right as Yahiko spoke.

"Enishi." Karou said quietly.

"Kaoru?" Misao asked questionably

"He was in a hot air balloon. Enishi was, that is. He had followers, machines, puppets that were fighting for him. Yahiko was there, fighting, along with you Kenshin, and Sano." Kaoru said. "I remember thinking that if it took us years, we would prevail above this new evil that had come after the group.

:---:

The group was quiet, standing, thinking of what had happened to them in the past. The past that had brought them together, brought them to where they were now.

"Just one more clue in the puzzle, I suppose." Sano said, walking to where he had placed his shirt and book bag while they were practicing. Yahiko had followed him.

"What exactly is the puzzle we're trying to figure out?" He asked Sano.

"Kenshin and Kaoru's past." Megumi answered next to him. "Along with our own."

"What are you thinking Megs?" Kaoru asked.

"There is a reason that all of this is happening to you. The reason you met. The reason Katsura-san needs both of you in his employee for that past as well."

"When do you have to answer Katsura-san?" Yahiko asked.

"Tonight."

"Only two days?" Sano asked.

"What have you decided?" Yahiko asked.

"I'm still not sure."

"Kaoru?" Tsubame asked.

"There are times when I believe it would be a good job, but another part of me warns myself that the decision to work for Katsura-san would not be wised." Kaoru answered.

"Well, enough of the dismal stuff in life. Let's go back and eat!" Sano said, starting back towards the apartment.

"Is that all you ever think about Sano?" Misao asked.

"No."

"Sure seems like it." She said, shaking her head.

The group was walking back up the hill towards the road that led back to campus. They weren't paying much attention to the people around them as they chatted, teased and laughed. Kenshin and Kaoru were a bit behind them, laughing along with the group. Kenshin and Kaoru had picked Iizuka out in the crowd earlier, but they had no idea that there was another set of eyes following

them through the park either.

:---:

"Himura!"

"Yes?" Kenshin said, turning around to see a white haired teenager with small square sunglasses approaching them. "May I help you?"

"Don't you remember me?" Enishi asked.

"Yukishiro Enishi." Kaoru said.

"But of course Kamiya-san." A sneer on his face. "I have important matters to discuss with you. She may stay." Enishi said, looking down at Kaoru with disgust. As much as he wanted her to go, she was a part of what is happening, and would be told anyways by Kenshin later. Might as well hear what her boyfriend truly is.

"What is it you would like to speak with me about Yukishiro-san?" Himura asked him politely.

"Don't pretend not to know who I am." Enishi answered him.

"I'm sorry, but I do not know who you are, only that you are employed by Katsura-san."

"Yukishiro Tomoe. Does the name sound familiar?"

"Kenshin…Tomoe, from the journal." Kaoru whispered to Kenshin, grabbing his arm.

"Are they your ancestors then?" Kenshin asked.

"You would like to think so, but no. Like you, I had a reason to come back, and life has finally given me that second chance, had given my sister a second chance at life as well, but unfortunately, it was once again taken from her prematurely. Do tell me you remember?"

"Remember what?" Kenshin asked. "I have no connection to a Tomoe, any Tomoe." Kenshin answered the young man. Kenshin had noticed the change in his eyes, the reason, possibly that he wore the glasses, the sunny spring day not the true reason. There was hatred in the eyes, set deep into the mind of the boy, a grief so matured that the centuries that had passed didn't make it go away. A hatred that would scare anyone.

"The accident. I believe you were a junior in high school when your friends and you were involved with an accident that killed a girl a few years older than yourselves? She was with her fiancé."

"How do you know about that?" Kenshin asked. Standing beside him, Kaoru felt Kenshin's body tense, his muscles going rigid, and the coldness of his voice when he spoke, made shivers go down her spine. He had never spoken to her of an accident; killing the girl, from his posture, she was sure it was something that he would rather forget.

"So you do remember killing her. That girl was my sister. Yukishiro Tomoe, her fiancé, Uchiha Itachi. Like me, he is still wracked with grief over my sister's death. It was once before that another fiancé of hers killed her. Do you remember that as well? Or do you only remember it because of reading it in your little girlfriend's diary?" Enishi snarled.

"Yes, I read it in Kaoru's diary. The diary she wrote when you kidnapped her. Are you going to do that again? Or attempt to?" Kenshin said, pulling Kaoru behind him as he did.

"No. Do you remember killing her? Did you have any pain, any sorrow!"

"Of course not. It wasn't I who loved Tomoe. It was Kenshin. Enishi, I am not the same man that Himura Kenshin was. And after your sister's death, as you should have learned, neither was he. He turned from destroying people, to help them after that. You know this. He told you this." Kenshin said.

"You were in the car that killed my sister! I'm not in the Meiji anymore Himura! What about today! Do you regret being connected to her death now?" Enishi yelled the hatred and fear and defeat making his widening eyes seem like they were glowing.

"It was an accident. I have often thought of the people in the other car, wondering what their story had been, wondering how it would have been different. I was not the one driving; I do not have the guilt that is the same that Kenshin had with Tomoe going in front of his sword. He was never the same after that. That event changed his life. I suppose in a way the accident changed mine as well. It caused me to pause and think about life. What I wanted to do with it. At that point, I didn't know. None of us in that car that night did. It was a freak accident Enishi, grieve your sister, but we, we had no purpose in killing her. Please understand that." Kenshin said, trying to make the young man see what he was saying.

"You were still the cause of her death. I will never be able to forgive you for that. Remember that." Enishi said, walking away, out of the park.

:- - -:

The group had stopped a few yards ahead of them, wondering what was going on when they saw Kenshin and Kaoru speaking with Yukishiro.

"I remember that night." Aoshi said.

"Man, remember how smashed the passenger side was? I was surprised the driver didn't die as well." Sano said.

"You were all there?" Misao asked.

"Yes. The three of us and our friend Iruka was with us. He was driving."

"Why didn't you tell me about the accident?" Kaoru asked a few minutes later.

"It was something that happened before I met you, I just never thought to, and I wanted to forget that it happened, had forgotten." Kenshin said quietly. The group had moved to sit under a tree not far from where they had stood. The sound of cars covered the sound of their voices, hid the volume of their words, but not the emotion running through them.

"Hm, I thought so. You often try to do that." Kaoru said, looking up at him from where her head laid in his lap. "What happened that night, Kenshin?" She asked quietly after a few minutes.

"Sano, Aoshi, and I had a friend in high school, his name was Iruka. He wasn't as close to us as the three of us were to each other, we ate lunch together, had classes together, went out on Friday nights sometimes." Kenshin explained to Kaoru, he was, as his habit was, stroking her soft raven hair; she found it soothing, and as Kenshin told her the story, found that he needed to let go of the memories of that night, needed the action, as much as she did.

Sano and Aoshi were holding on to Megumi and Misao in much of the same way, trying to ease the memories of the accident and what happened afterwards."It was in March when the accident happened. The four of us had been at a concert in Kyoto. It was late when we were coming back, and rain had started to fall at some point during the trip back, getting worse as we reached Tokyo." Kenshin stopped stroking her hair, Kaoru looking up at him.

"What happened?" Kaoru said, taking his other hand and holding it over her heart.

Kenshin resumed after looking out at the creek for a few minutes, almost as if he had to think of what had happened.

"Sano and I were going to stay the night at Hiko's with Kenshin, as we usually did on Friday nights. Neither of us really had a home. Sano, he grew up at Sagara's, and I lived with Okina. Sano loved Mr. Sagara, but the little kids that stayed at the orphanage were a pain sometimes." Aoshi said when Kenshin hadn't spoken up after a few moments.

"Iruka was taking us back to Hiko's when the accident happened. He didn't live far from me; we were all so close to home. Iruka didn't see Uchiha coming down the side street. He didn't really stop either. It was such a little, used street normally, and then at two in the morning, it never had traffic on it. Uchiha and Tomoe, I never knew the girl's name, or I had repressed it in my memory, not wanting to remember, were coming home from a party with some of their college friends celebrating their engagement. They had only been engaged for about a month or so. Uchiha didn't see Iruka either, the rain was coming down so hard, and they couldn't see the headlights of either car. Iruka ran straight into the passenger side of the car, Tomoe, even though she had her seatbelt on, died not long after impact. Uchiha was in such a state, it was hard to watch him. I saw them take her body out of the wreck while I was giving my statement. Sano, Aoshi, Iruka and I only had a few scrapes and bruises." Kenshin said, finishing.

"Do you know what happened to Uchiha?" Misao asked quietly after a few minutes.

"No. We all had a hard time after the accident, especially Uchiha and Iruka. Iruka was so hard on himself. He didn't come back to school for weeks, locked himself in his room. He couldn't sleep, kept seeing the accident or how it could have turned out differently. Uchiha, I don't know what happened to him. I didn't go to the funeral, Sano and Aoshi did. I couldn't bring myself to look at her family. Those two went for all of us. Iruka, I think at some point went to apologize to the family, sometime that summer. By the next year, he was better, but still not the same, I remember his saying 'killing someone, even if by accident changes you forever, you'll never be able to forget'. Sano said.

"Even in your next life, that guilt and regret is still with you." Kenshin said quietly, leaning back against the tree and closing his eyes to rest.

:---:

The group sat quietly for a few minutes, thinking of the story that the boys had shared.

After a few moments, Megumi quietly got up and said, "Hey, let's go home. It's getting dark out here anyways."

They nodded their heads and quietly stood, grabbed the bags, Bokkens and swords lying on the ground and left the park.

Kenshin and Kaoru were thinking of the meeting later that night and the decision, and how this new twist might change that decision. Without knowing it, Enishi had just helped the people he wished to hurt the most.