HIKO
It had been a long night. After the conversation with Kenshin, there was no way Hiko had been able to sleep. He tried watching a movie on TV, some black and white flick involving betrayal and revenge, but found himself just staring at the screen, thinking about what his idiot had told him. When his mind finally wound back to the present moment, he wasn't sure how long it had been since the movie ended and the television station had signed off for the night.
Restlessly, he turned off the TV and tossed the remote into the recently-vacated chair. Stripping out of his work clothes and changing into a pair of comfortable draw-string pants, he collected Wado from her stand, and went downstairs, not even bothering to turn on the lights in the studio. One look at the wheels sitting quietly in the dirty, orange light from the street lamps filtering in through the windows, and Hiko bypassed his studio entirely, heading through the doorway that led into the small warehouse space that took up the entire back half of the building's ground floor. There wouldn't be any throwing tonight. Kata, however…
Several hours later, Hiko's mind was calmer, but he was still filled with a restless energy that was getting on his nerves. And he was hungry. He headed upstairs, dug out an old t-shirt, thought about how cold it was outside and tugged an ancient hoodie over the screen printed design of a turtle in a top hat. He didn't even remember where the t-shirt had come from. Probably something Kenshin had been dying to do, that resulted in a ridiculous addition to his wardrobe.
When he headed out the door, a pale sun had already cleared the horizon and was peeking between the buildings, fingers of light stretching across sidewalks that were already showing signs of life.
There was a diner a few miles from the studio. The food there was terrible, and that was just how Hiko liked it. The worse the food, the less likely it was to draw a crowd. A jog would cut down on the walking time, and he could kill two birds with one stone-burn off the excess energy, and get breakfast.
Hiko was preparing to continue his jog across the street when the light changed. There was enough traffic now that even he didn't want to try to dart across. Instead, he waited with a small herd of people on their way to early shifts, and idly looked across the intersection at the matching herd on the other side. One face in particular stood out. Well, she stood out for myriad reasons, not the least of which being a blanket and a distressing lack of shoes.
She was- She should have been older, Hiko thought, as he stared hard at the young woman, eyes narrowed. Instead, she barely looked any older than when they'd first met, all those years ago. The only time they'd met. But an evening like that, a moment of unguarded conversation, dancing, simply living and having fun, becomes a cherished treasure, a memory carefully tucked away when it's the last bright spot before a dark stretch of time.
Hiko continued to stare, uncertain if his mind was playing tricks on him, and uncaring if he looked like some kind of stalker. Was he finally going crazy? Did the drugs he'd taken finally get the better of him? He thought stopping all that would save his sanity. He'd worked too hard to put all that behind him. But after making contact with Kenshin, what else could this be, but a ghost from his past? He should have stayed home and done more kata.
The light changed, and Hiko was already pulling off his hoodie as he started across the intersection. Even if she wasn't the same person- but how could she not be, his mind interrupted- she still needed something more than a blanket. As he drew closer, it became harder to deny it. He was going crazy. Because there was no way that wasn't Takani Megumi. Holy gods around them.
Gripping the hoodie tightly in one fist, with a surreal feeling that bordered on lightheadedness, Hiko called out, "Megumi?"
MEGUMI
Megumi kept her head down and the blanket clutched tightly around her shoulders as she waited for what seemed like an eternity for the traffic light to change from one color to the next.
Not sure where to look and dreading the embarrassment of eye contact, she stared fixedly at the storm drain that ran along the length of the cold sidewalk. Melted snow, no longer cold or clean, was running downhill, catching any dust and garbage that was in the ditch, and carrying it towards her. Megumi watched as a cast aside food wrapper was caught up by the little deluge, the yellow and pink tissue paper lifting and turning on miniature muddy eddies, turning clockwise like a brightly colored dervish.
The metropolitan flotsam and jetsam moved along till, still twirling, the wrapper came to teeter for a few seconds on the lip of the storm drain as if it knew and was fighting against its inevitable fall. Fate won out and it tumbled down into darkness, moving out of sight and out of mind to everyone save a bare foot woman who had much preferred its company over the strangers she was forced to stand beside.
"Momma, look, over there," A child was tugging on his mother's winter wrap and pointing, still too young to realize that he was overtly pointing out what others had already covertly noticed and commented on. "She's not wearing any shoes and has a blanket instead of a coat. How come?"
The mother put her hand around her child's shoulder and turned the boy forward, "Hush, it's not polite to stare," she chided softly, glancing out of the corner of her eyes at the younger woman's raw, exposed toes.
"But," the boy craned his neck back, curious as to the reason he had to wear shoes and socks and the dark haired woman didn't, "isn't she cold?" There was worry in his voice mixed with the natural curiosity that came part and parcel with being five. To his surprise the strange lady looked at him, just for a second, and smiled a little. Her lips were pale, nearly the color of the light blue-grey blanket she was wearing. He liked blue, but somehow knew that someone's mouth and feet should not be that color.
Megumi watched as the boy's mother bent down and whispered something in her child's ear. His open expression changed a little, become wary and guarded and she couldn't help but wonder what he'd been told. Reaching for his mother's hand, the child looked away from where she was standing, but not without a quick and furtive glance in the general direction.
Glancing to the right, Megumi was discomforted to see that someone else was starting at her, a wizened old woman, who even from two meters away, stank of mentholated camphor and arthritic crème. The woman frowned and took a step closer, eyes narrowing with concentration, as they peered, vulture-like from behind thick, yellowing bifocals.
"I'm telling you, Haru, I've seen that girl before," the woman announced to an old man standing beside her, her tone sour and accusatory.
"Yes, Dear," the old man muttered, a case study in what Megumi suspected was spousal long-suffering.
Megumi blushed and looked across the wide city street at the light, counting down the seconds until the "DO NOT WALK" signal changed its mind.
Megumi?
She startled when a man's deep voice called out her name and looked around nervously, biting down on her bottom lip as she tried to figure out who among the surging crowd of commuters knew who she was.
The light changed and people began to move.
Caught up in the urban migration, Megumi was carried along, stepping down from the sidewalk onto the crosswalk. Someone stepped on the hem of the blanket, causing her to nearly stumble. Righting herself, she took a step forward, and then froze in place as she finally identified who had spoken.
What little color remained in her face bled out, leaving her as pale as a ghost. Her mouth opened, a name was uttered as she stared, eyes wide at the tall man standing just across the street from her. His hair was much longer, tied back in a ponytail, his clothing far more informal (was that a turtle with a top hat on his t-shirt?) than the crisp military uniform, resplendent with the trappings of a successful, charming solider.
His eyes however were the same, as was his commanding presence.
She glanced down at his hands. One was clenched; the other was holding a hooded sweatshirt. What was he doing here?
(Did Kenshin send you to find me?) She wondered, recalling the photo stickers of a laughing red haired child and an almost smiling enigma. (Am I going crazy?) She had to be. Good looking blasts from the past (and this man epitomized that particular category) just didn't show up in the middle of an intersection during rush hour.
Megumi took a hesitant step towards him, summoning up what little remained of her courage and opened her mouth again to say hello.
A man, rushing to make it across the street before the light changed again, while texting on his mobile, didn't watch where he was going and collided with her, nearly knocking her over. Righting herself, Megumi staggered to her feet, but in the process her blanket fell from her shoulders, revealing her ruined, blood stained scrubs.
"See!" The old woman, half way across the street, pointed, "I told you it was her - the one from the news conference!"
"No, Dear, I don't think so. That poor woman died - don't you remember?"
Horrified, Megumi pulled her blanket up around her and began backing up away from the arguing old couple. Other people were beginning to pay attention to the old woman's rambling outburst, so was the man she'd known for only one evening, but had never forgotten.
She looked at him,her eyes beseeching.
"I know what I saw and who I'm seeing!" The elderly battle ax apparently had a bit of an ax to grind.
The light turned yellow.
"They said that the assassin took the body with him and she's covered in blood. Who else could she be?"
The old woman pointed, but there was no one remaining.
Megumi began to run.
HIKO
It was her, and judging by her expression, she knew who he was, too. Caught up in the herd crossing the street, it was difficult to move through the flow. Hiko migrated along, but lunged forward as Megumi was nearly bowled over by a careless businessman. He growled, his hand tightening around the hoodie in a crushing grip. What a useless fool, so busy pursuing his money, he wasn't even paying attention to the world around him. There was no way he was going to make it to her in time, but she righted herself anyway, and for that he was relieved.
His relief quickly melted into horror as he took in the bloody clothes and some old woman began screeching about news conferences. Again, he tried to push through the crowd, and felt a little like a salmon swimming upstream. He met Megumi's pleading eyes, and unceremoniously pushed a rather slow-moving, utterly preoccupied couple out of the way, ignoring the irritated, "Hey!" that came from the man.
He sent a glare over his shoulder at the man, who quickly looked away, and continued across as the light changed to yellow.
As the already slow-moving migration came to a near stand-still of gawking and curiosity.
As that old bag pointed to the spot where Megumi had been.
Hiko stood frozen, and watched the woman he hadn't seen in twenty years bolt from the intersection. The foot-traffic quickly dispersed, sensing there was no longer a show to see, and the old woman continued on, her suspicions confirmed by Megumi's hasty retreat. A car honked; the light had changed.
The horn snapped Hiko from his trance, and he sprinted across the intersection, following the direction Megumi had gone. But all traces of her had vanished, melted away into the crowd flowing along the sidewalk, not even the flap of a blanket around a corner to give him a clue as to where she'd headed.
It was like she'd never been there at all. Hiko might have imagined it, like some withdrawal-induced hallucination. But that was years ago, and this was real. Megumi looked at him, they made eye contact and he saw recognition there. He kept walking, looking into alleys, noting the faces around him. A blur. Just a blur of unfamiliarity and he knew walking the streets wasn't going to do him a lick of good.
As he walked, he thought of what the old woman had said. A news conference. A body. Admittedly, Hiko had been holed up in his studio, working for the last couple of days. What had that woman been on about? There were murders every day. Why had that old bat pointed out Megumi? Hiko pulled the hoodie back on and crossed the street to weave his way back home. His gut told him Megumi was long gone. There was nothing he could do for her at present, but he could at least find out what was going on.
MEGUMI
Unable to resist (though against what she couldn't imagine) Megumi looked back over her shoulder for a moment, caught somewhere between terror and hope that she was being followed by the one person who had any idea who she really was. There was no sign of him. (It's probably for the best, as any sort of explanation I could provide Hiko-san would be both unbelievable and unredeemable).
The further she ran, the darker the alley became. The ground became dirty, littered first with the causal pollution of the middle class; half eaten food, thrown away magazines, plastic bags and mostly in-tact beer bottles.
Megumi gasped as she randomly turned down a smaller alley, black hair flying behind her, fear-based adrenaline giving her mostly healed body the extra speed she needed to put some distance between herself and the damn intersection a few blocks back. While whatever genetic manipulation her father had inflicted on her allowed for unnatural regeneration, rapid and unrelenting, she was no super solider, lacking any special strength or speed that would set her further apart from humanity than she already was. She was good for only one thing. One thing only. How utterly ironic or perhaps karmic that the one thing she wanted to experience was the one thing that her bastardized birthright denied her.
(I must have been an early member of the lab rat brigade) she thought abstractly as she tried to think of something else than the burning in her legs and thighs, analytical muscle memory kicking in out of habit and necessity.
(I wonder if my father experimented on me while I was in utero or shortly thereafter). A wild, keening sort of cackle may have escaped her open mouth at that moment. It was the sound that a witch might make, or perhaps, more fittingly, a monster. It didn't matter. Not now.
She had learned more about her father in the last 24 hours than she'd ever thought possible, learned things that made her stomach lurch, mind recoil and whatever remaining sense of hope she'd held for redemption, crumble and crunch like the discarded garbage being flattened beneath feet. I wish for death, while so many others who were subject to experimentation wished only for life and were willing to fight for it.
She thought of Capatain Sagara and his men.
She thought of Ken-san.
She thought of Rin.
An unexpected, nearly hysterical sob caught in her throat, chocking her breath completely as she thought of the journal Ken-san had shared with her, of the cipher girl Rin, faceless but no longer completely forgotten or nameless. (You wanted to experience life so badly, to have the normal experiences that any young person would hope for) Her eyes burned and coughing, trying to breathe again and match the meter of inhalations and exhalations with her footfalls, she stumbled, her bare feet sliding against some unknown (and probably unsanitary and of biological origin) wetness on the ground.
She tried to right her balance, but failed and fell awkwardly, skidding into an overflowing waste bin, the impact sending garbage everywhere and making an unholy din, the reverberations seeming endless to her frightened ears. Scrambling up, she looked up and around at the narrow alley, her wild eyes searching for and finding no signs of someone prying.
"Ow!" Megumi hissed as she tried to begin running again. The fall had left her with a twisted ankle, though, not a broken one, she decided as she the gingerly rotated the injured limb. Muttering something that well brought up ladies were not support to mutter, she sat down, hiding her body as best she was able behind the garbage bin and waited for her ankle to heal well enough to let her continue on her mad dash to God knows where.
Still panting, she tried to make as little noise as possible as she shrank back further, pressing her back up against the alley well. Hoping for and finding no radiant warmth from the bricks, she tried to ignore the pungent smell of spoilt food emanating from the bin and the rising sense of despair that was chasing her and nipping at her heels faster than a certain soldier could ever have, even if it had been two decades since she's last laid eyes on him.
Bringing her knees up close to her chest in an attempt to stay warm, she mentally recited Rin's last journal entry. It was becoming a mantra for her, a reminder of what had been lost and what she had promised to try and accomplish on behalf of a dead girl who likely was discarded ashes and would never know that her journal and with it her hopes and dreams had been found and now, after all these years mattered.
My name is Rin.
I am fourteen years old.
I have never, ever done anything worth writing about, but tonight I will make a list of the things I wanted to do. Perhaps if there is a next life, if I am meant for more than ashes, I will remember this list. I hope so, because it is a good one.
I have never, ever kissed a boy. I have never, ever gone all the way with a boy.
I have never, ever been to college. I have never, ever been married. I have never, ever been a mother.
I have never, ever seen the ocean, or the mountains. I have never, ever been to an opera or a ballet or a play.
I have never, ever painted with oil paints, or seen Paris, or eaten a croissant.
I have never, ever gone swimming at a swimming pool with a bikini on.
I have never, ever heard a boy tell me he loves me. I have never, ever told a boy I love him back.
I have never, ever really lived at all.
Mantra uttered, Megumi bowed her head against her knees and tried to tally what she had done in her life that would check of a box in Rin's list of hopes and dreams.
Hmmm…
College – well, that was a check and then some. Megumi had graduated from Tokyo Medical University with honors and had completed her residence before all bloody hell broke loose.
She also mentally checked off seeing the mountains and the ocean. Her family (not that "family" was the right word by any token based on recent and very unwelcome revelations) had been wealthy and a young girl, she was able to pull hazy but not entirely unwelcome memories of running along a sandy shoreline, darting forward when the waves moved out to sea and then squealing with delight and running back further into shore when they returned.
The memories of the mountains were less friendly, since that is where the military installation had been. She'd found them confining and suffocating, an imposing physical reminder of the fact she was trapped, surrounded. (That won't do then…I'll have to see some mountains again for Rin, and this time they shall be of my own choosing.)
Megumi blushed despite herself as the went through Rin's list again.
Like the girl gone before her, she'd never gone all the way with a man, though she could now say she'd shared a futon with one, two nights in a row, in fact! (How scandalous to have slept with a man, two nights in a row!)
"Oh-ho-ho!"
She involuntarily tittered at the thought and then wondered where in the hell the titter came from. (First cackling, then tittering, I must be going losing my mind after all). She considered whether the chaste peck she'd planted on Ken-san's check counted as a proper kiss. She wasn't sure since he'd never returned the impulsive gesture, and with her circumstances as they were, she was unlikely to find out any time soon.
If getting or giving a proper smooch seemed a bit daunting, the idea of marriage and motherhood was beyond impossible. (I don't know if I can even have children) She realized suddenly, trying to understand how a body that refused not to heal would handle the rigors and inherent changes that came with bearing and birthing a child. (Probably not…and probably for the best) she decided. She'd have to do something else for Rin, since those goals were, for all intensive purposes, impossible on multiple levels.
Painting with oil could and would be worked on, when and if things stabilized and she was able to have access to years of untouched wages. Considering the means by which the wages were earned, Megumi would have preferred to let the account rot and never touch the money that was soaked in suffering.
(It can't be helped…) Megumi thought,(there are so many things can't be helped at this point in my life…) Suddenly she registered movement and froze, ready to scream like a ninny or run like one depending on what the origination source of the sound happened to be.
"Mew,"
Megumi's cinnamon hued eyes went wide as a black alley cat suddenly appeared a few garbage cans down on the other side of the alley. It was a mangy looking thing (like attracts like, after all) with a hungry, flea bitten looking demeanor but to her surprise and subsequent delight, it didn't hiss at her or run away. Rather, it just watched her as warily as she watched it.
Remembering that she had rations, though she wasn't sure how a cat would feel about snacking on a protein bar, she reached into the crinkly plastic bag she'd been carrying and pulled out a bar and a bottled water that she'd taken with her from Ken-san's hiding place. Deliberately, not wanting to startle the alley cat, she ripped the protein bar wrapper and bit off a section holding it out towards the unexpected but surprisingly not unwelcome interloper.
"Here," she motioned, clueless as what do to when trying to ply a cat with protein so it would get closer to her. "I'm sure you're hungry." The alley cat stayed put, so to prove that she wasn't trying to poison it, Megumi bit off a small chunk of the bar and chewed it, forcing a bright smile on her face as she ground the nearly tasteless bar into swallow-able bits.
"See? It's good food."
That may have been a bit of an overstatement on the taste value of said protein bar, but the lump was nutritionally sound and certainly a cat could appreciate that, right? To her disappointment, the cat didn't move an inch, but it didn't run away either, so she figured that with time (and honestly where was she going to go?) she might win the feral beast over to her side.
"Let's see…where was I?" Megumi mused aloud. As for going swimming in a bikini, she knew the answer was no. Her father had been extremely strict about modesty and her staying out of sight and remaining as unforgettable as possible, so it had been one piece bathing suits for her.
"I did visit Paris right after I graduated from University and I did have a croissant though." Megumi gave a rather UN-lady-like snort. She'd gladly go without donning a bikini for the rest of her long, strange life, if she would have but one more bite of a French pastry. Her mouth watered at both the memory of seeing the City of Lights for the few days of freedom between undergraduate studies and entering medical school and the remembered taste of buttery flakes of golden, nearly translucent roll that filled her mouth with a micro-burst of butter, yeast and what had to be some sort of culinary magic.
Speaking of magic…)
Megumi's cheeks blossomed with a hint of color as the realized that she'd completed two more items on Rin's list, and had things gone differently, perhaps a few more checks could have been added to the list of life goals experienced.
After dutifully returning to Tokyo and while in her first year of medical school, for some unexplained reason, her father informed her one day that she would be joining him at a social function for the university, some sort of fund-raiser with a branch of the military. The soiree (yes, that had been the word her normally unflappable father had used) would be held at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, rebuilt and beautiful and as part of the evening's festivities, she would sit at her father's side and take in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera-ballet Mlada.
What an evening that was!)
Megumi closed her eyes and leaned her tired head against the dirty alley wall, willing everything dirty and cold around her except the cat of course) to melt from the heat and happiness of the memory.