Shifting the Balance complete

by draxal

The completed version of Shifting the Balance, originally posted under P.L. Nunn. Kenshin's world is rocked when his family is brutally kidnapped by a nefarious Englishman with ties to Kenshin's past. A gravely wounded Kenshin is joined by Sano in a pursuit that takes them on an epic chase that spans the ocean. Yaoi and non-con warning. Ken x Sano. Ken x Kaouri.

2. Chapter 2

Chapter Five

In the fall of 1880 Sagara Sanosuke had taken a slow boat to China, via Korea and meandered his way up through Manchuria and eventually into the Mongolian highlands. He hadn't particularly had a destination in mind, it was simply a matter of going wherever his feet happened to lead. He'd gotten honest work a few times as a caravan guard and those efforts had put coin in his pocket and put him on paths that he might otherwise have blindly stumbled past. Sagara Sanosuke's sense of direction had a tendency to fail him on alarmingly regular basis, so following in the footsteps of age-old trading routes led him to interesting and exciting places. It introduced him to strange customs and stranger people and gave him the chance to taste new and exotic foods.

Chinese, Mongolian, Korean - - even the exotic Indo-Chinese cooking of the far south - - none of them really compared to a good old Japanese beef pot. Sometimes Sano missed the familiar flavor of Japanese cooking more than he missed the familiar faces.

Sometimes.

Sometimes he didn't think about home at all, so swept up in foreign culture and adventure had he become. He'd met a man in Nanchang who'd taught him the rudiments of a particularly devastating Chinese martial art. He'd pestered the master for days until the unassuming, quiet and generally patient man had given in to frustration and attempted to cease Sano's badgering the only way he thought Sano would truly appreciate - - by soundly kicking his ass.

Of course, it took a lot of ass kicking to beat Sagara Sanosuke down and his durability had impressed the man. Sano had learned a great deal about the finer techniques of fighting that he'd never even imagined existed during his years as a brawler and a street fighter. In the six months that he studied under Chan he came to the realization that he'd been little more than a bumbling clown. Sure he'd had a few good moves - - no one in their right mind could discount the Futae no Kiwami, but compared to Chan, or that bastard Saitou - - or Kenshin - - it was a wonder they didn't laugh and poke fun at him behind his back

Damned embarrassing to contemplate. It made him flush hot every time he thought about it. Made him wish he could take back some of the things he'd said. Some of the things he'd done.

But he'd come a long way. His hand had healed so that he only felt the pangs of old injuries on particularly rainy days. He figured the ghost of those breaks would always be with him. A reminder of stupidity. Good sense had never been a strong point with him - - he could just admit the fault a bit more easily after walking over a good portion of central Asia. Kenshin had had something - - with the whole wonderer thing. It gave a body time to think - - time to learn things about the state of one's soul - - yeah, that was a good enough word - - time to make sense of the drama of one's past life and make decisions about the direction of the future. And there was the food and the fights and the hair-raising escapes from situations even a fearless man might have second thoughts about stepping into.

Truth to tell, Sano thought about those latter things a great deal more strenuously than he thought about the sate of his soul - - but sometimes even he could bask in introspection.

He'd had lost track of Chan in Hong Kong in the mid-part of 1883. They'd just sort of agreed to separate ways and it had been no great blow. Chan never had enjoyed gambling or brawling and he'd look down his stubby nose at Sano each and every time he'd come back smelling of beer and blood. And in the six months they'd journeyed together, Sano had learned most of what he wanted to know. He was a fast learner. He was, for the most part, an impatient one.

It was in the bustling port city of Hong Kong that he started to get homesick. Well, not so much for the little shack he'd had in Tokyo - - as for Japan in general and familiar faces in particular. He'd never had a lot of close friends, growing up in the early years of the Meiji rule. Oh, he had drinking buddies and gambling cronies, all of who'd have abandoned him like a hot rock at the first sign of real trouble - - but no real friends. He'd spent a lot of years with a king-sized chip on his shoulder - - angry at the world - - angry at the Imperialist's who'd betrayed the only people he had called friends. Making new ones seemed to be just asking for trouble. Friends either betrayed you or they died and a body would just as well avoid the pain of either. So he gambled and he fought for a living and he'd made due well enough in his solitary life.

He didn't realize how lonesome an existence that was until Kenshin came along and kicked his ass. Kicked his ass and saved it in a way, all in the one act. Damned slippery rurouni with his ass-backward sword and his sweet smile and his quiet, sensible words. And Sano had been hooked. Drawn like a moth to flame - - and not quite knowing why or how. Only knowing that the damned red-haired swordsman, whose head barely reached his nose had earned his earnest respect. And Sagara Sanosuke hadn't respected anybody in a very, very long time.

So whether Kenshin had been looking for a friend or not - - well he got Sano. And Sano got all the baggage that Kenshin had managed to attract to himself during his time in Tokyo. Meaning Kaoru and her horrible cooking and her rundown dojo and loudmouthed Yahiko, and fox-faced Megumi, with a tongue sharper and slyer than Kenshin's sword - - and the doc and his nieces and the girls at the Akabeko and even that brat in Kyoto and her freaky Oniwaban family - - Damnit, he missed all the familiar faces, and wondering around the mainland for three years was just getting - - old.

So he started thinking about maybe just meandering his way back to Japan and seeing what was what with the land of his birth. He didn't necessarily have to head straight back to Tokyo. It wasn't like he was mooning over the lack of Kenshin's company or the taste of Kaoru's lumpy rice. It wasn't like he was almost afraid to see how smoothly life there was running without him. How nobody even much remembered his name, much less missed his presence. It wasn't like he was a little - - just a little, mind you - - worried about what sort of changes had gone on since he'd left.

If Kaoru had had her way - - probably a great many. She probably had Kenshin on a short leash by now and Kenshin - - enigma that he was - - probably had that idyllic smile on his face over the whole situation. Probably was right happy jumping at Kaoru's whim. He'd been leaning that way with ever increasing latitude those last few months Sano had been in Tokyo anyway - - even more so after the scare of thinking her dead and once that scare had been banished - - well, it had been pretty clear that Kenshin had been damned and determined not to let it happen again. It had been a mixture of love and honor and a sincere desire to protect an innocent - - to protect in order to make up for all the past ill-deeds done - - that firmly planted Kenshin in Kaoru's camp, Sano was certain of that.

Sano had decided they needed to sort out all the upcoming domestic bliss without his presence. Sano had decided that he had better things to do than hang around and get in the way. Kaoru had been irritating enough when she'd only been mooning over Kenshin. Gods help anybody whose stomach was easily turned, now that she was getting a return on those feelings. He couldn't have dealt with it.

Not to mention the little problem with the law - - which maybe, after a few years had melted away to obscurity. One could hope.

So Sano started thinking about going home - - which required enough money in his pocket to get a ride on a ship. Which presented a problem, since money and Sano never stayed united for long. It took bumming around Hong Kong for two months, gambling and doing the odd job here and there to get enough funds for passage and even then it was on a creaky old merchant vessel, teaming with rats, that was headed for Japan, by way of half the Chinese ports up the coast on the way.

It had been a slow boat over and it took a slower one to get back. But eventually he ended up in the port of Niigata on the western coast of Japan.

It shouldn't have been that overwhelming a trip from western Niigata to eastern Tokyo - - it took longer to get to Kyoto from Tokyo and he'd made that trip before. But he got side tracked in a little village south of Niigata and spent a week trying to win back the few measly coins he'd had left to him after the passage from Hong Kong. He got lost on the nefarious mountain roads after that, and ended up heading west again before a priest took pity on him at a Shinto shrine and pointed out the error of his way.

By then it had started raining on the northern side of the mountains and the paths became miserable and muddy and the days overcast and gray and he thought that central China hadn't been so bad after all. The weather moved with him southward across the mountains. There was even the hint of snow lingering above the heights in the distance and Sano wondered if winter was coming early this year and hoped vehemently that he wasn't caught in the mountains if it did. He'd had enough snow in Mongolia to last him a lifetime. He preferred the more temperate climate of Tokyo.

He was sloshing through mud and misting rain one morning, after spending a thoroughly miserable night under a thick trio of trees, when the sound of a youthful voice raised in alarm echoed down the trail at him. Shortly thereafter a boy of perhaps sixteen came pelting down the trail with what appeared to be officials of the law on his heels.

Sano having very little love for the law himself, and a good deal of sympathy for those about to get their throats ripped out by it - - stepped off the side of the trail and waited for the boy running down it to pass him by, then reached out a long arm and yanked the startled young man abruptly off the track, smothering his protest with a long hand over his mouth and a hissed warning to be quiet. He then shoved the boy into a thicket and stepped back onto the path as the police rounded the bend, raising their batons in threat as they saw him. He was very obviously not the young man they had been chasing. He was about a head taller for one, and the sharp lines of his face spoke of a different breeding altogether than the flat, round face of the frightened boy. He smiled, adjusting the sack over his shoulder and stuffing his free hand in the pocket of his jacket.

"Whoa. Whoa. Don't point those things at me."

The police hesitated, staring down the trail past him suspiciously.

"Have you seen a boy?" one demanded. "He would have just run down the trail."

Sano blinked. "Yeah, I saw a kid. Looked like bad spirits were on his heels he ran past me so fast." He jerked his head over his shoulder and shrugged. "Still running, probably."

The men exchanged determined glances and pushed past him, stomping down the muddy trail in search of a boy they'd never catch. At least not today. When they were well and truly disappeared down the path, the bramble rustled and the boy stepped out to the trail, a delighted grin showing yellowed teeth. He had short, bristly hair and a faint scar above one eyebrow. Part of the lobe of one ear was missing. The kid had obviously led no easy life.

"Oh, man, thanks a lot. You saved my hide. If they'd caught me, I'd have hanged for sure."

Sano lifted a brow. "Why? You a murderer or something?"

The boy shrugged, looking a bit defensive. "Maybe I am. I'm no sissy-boy."

"Didn't imply that you were. Just looked a little young to be a murderer, is all."

"I'm not a murderer. I'm a bandit." The boy clarified for him, almost daring him to have a problem with that profession.

Sano shrugged. "Whatever. Say, you got any food on you?" His stomach had been growling for the last day. He hadn't eaten since the Shinto shrine he passed yesterday and he figured if he went another day, he'd die of starvation.

The boy looked him up and down, a calculating look in his eyes. "You look pretty shifty yourself. You sure you're not a bandit, too?"

"Will it get me a meal?"

The boy laughed, clapping a hand on Sano's shoulder in camaraderie. "Well, I owe you. There's a village up the mountain where I have an aunt. She's a good cook. My name's Bokkai."

Bokkai was true to his word. A good hike up a narrow forest path a poor little village perched on the side of the mountain. It was a pitiful collection of shanty shacks and struggling garden plots. Bokkai said the men in the village did a lot of hunting, but a good portion of what the people of the village managed to produce went in tribute to the mountain bandits who made this particular portion of the mountain their domain. Bokkai seemed proud of this extortion. Bokkai's uncle was the leader of the bandits. Bokkai's mother, it seemed had been a rape victim, and had died in childbirth, leaving Bokkai to be raised by her sister. When he'd been old enough, he'd sought out his father among the bandits, only to learn that he'd been killed some years back. But, his uncle, Chojiro, having lost his only blood kin in his brother, had been glad to take the boy under his dubious wing.

Bokkai as a result, had the morals of a viper - - but he seemed a cheerful kid regardless, and who was Sano to complain when he was getting a meal out of it.

Bokkai's aunt regarded Sano when he showed up on her doorstep with her nephew, with narrow, tired eyes. The eyes of a woman who'd fought all her life against strong odds and finally just given up to inevitability. Her husband was small and mostly crippled, having badly broken his leg some years ago in a hunting accident. She had three other children hanging at her skirts and Sano felt bad enough bumming a meal off of her, that he offered to go out and cut the pile of wood sitting at the side of the house.

"Do widow Hatayama's, too." Bokkai's aunt was a shrewd opportunist and pointed at the adjoining pile of wood next to the shanty shack beside hers.

Sano sighed and did it, figuring he'd done nastier jobs in the last few years. Chopping a bit of wood was no particular hardship. As he moved to the small pile belonging to the widow next store, a skinny child hovered at the door to that shack, staring out at him warily. A woman moved up behind her, looking almost afraid to come out and see what he was doing with her meager store of firewood.

Sano jerked a thumb towards Bokkai's aunt's house. "She told me to chop your wood. In payment for a meal."

The woman, a skinny, used up looking thing, nodded nervously at him and bowed. Then backed away into the shadow of her house.

By the time he'd finished the rain had started in earnest. He sat down, wet and chill under the uncomfortable gazes of husband and wife. Bokkai chattered easily. The children were solemn and quiet, watchful of him and - - and he thought, somewhat awed of their older cousin. Maybe they thought he'd made something of himself, joining the bandits. Maybe they dreamed of achieving so great a goal for themselves one day. Who knew.

The rice was passable and the stew wasn't bad. It had a few chunks of meat mixed in with the vegetables, though it lacked the spices it needed to make it truly good. He really couldn't wait to get to the Akabeko and sit down to one of Tae's beef pots. He'd have one all to himself. Maybe he'd even go there before he found his way to Kamiya dojo and Kenshin. Well, Kenshin and Kaoru and hopefully Yahiko. There were a lot of folks he wanted to see.

It was getting on into evening by the time he'd finished and the rain made the afternoon all the darker. He hinted around that a nice dry place to stay would be much appreciated and Bokkai's aunt hinted that she'd rather have snakes staying in her house in the dark of night, over stray strangers her bandit nephew had dragged home. Bokkai complained loudly and that started a shouting match between what seemed the whole of the family. Sano promptly gathered up his sack and escaped into the welcoming rain.

It only stayed welcoming the brief amount of time it took to thoroughly soak his clothes again. He stood there, hair dripping water into his eyes, shoes filled with mud and water and wondered what sort of chance he had of finding his way down the obscure mountain path Bokkai had led him up, and back to the road. With his luck, he thought sourly, he'd end up traveling back up the trail towards Niigata.

He sighed, reshouldered the pack and figured he might as well start before the evening sucked all the light from the sky.

"Ex -excuse me - -?" A thin voice wavered at him through the rain. The little girl from the shack next door stood in the shelter of her doorway, staring at him. "We heard them yelling. The walls are thin." The child explained and Sano tilted his head, wondering what she was getting at.

"You can stay here for the night. In payment for chopping the wood."

"Oh. And that's okay with your mother?"

The child nodded. Sano shrugged, never one to pass up opportunity when it came calling. He stepped into the shelter of the one room house. They were dirt poor, but what they had was neatly arranged. The woman, he thought, was a weaver. There was a loom with a partially finished square of cloth and a few pots of dye in a corner. The widow Hatayama cast a skittish glance at him, and busied herself with heating water. From the smell of it, they'd already finished their own evening meal.

"Thanks for the place to stay. It's pretty nasty out there." He broke the awkward silence. The child bowed. The mother did.

"Um - - where should I - -?"

"There." The widow Hatayama pointed to a corner where there was already a neatly folded, well used mat. Someone else used to sleep here. Her husband, he figured. He didn't ask how long he'd been dead. Didn't ask much of anything, because he could see he made them nervous and the widow had that bruised look in her eyes that hinted she'd had bad experiences with men in the past. It had taken courage to invite him in.

"Listen, I'm harmless - - really. Just passing by on my way to Tokyo. I sort of helped that kid Bokkai on the road and he invited me back to his place for supper.

"Bokkai," the little girl said. "He's a bandit now."

"Yeah, so he says. What's your name?"

The girl looked to her mother questioningly and the mother hesitated, then nodded.

"Minako."

"Hey," he grinned at her. "I'm Sano."

She drew back from him a bit at the smile, like the only time people had ever smiled at her was when they were up to no good. He chewed on his lip over that for a bit, then pulled his pack over and dug around until he found one of the fancy little cloth dolls he'd picked up in a market in Mongolia in thoughts of Ayame and Suzume. He figured this kid needed one more.

"Do you know where I got this?" He held it out and Minako looked at it with round, awed eyes. She shook her head solemnly. "I got this in a little village on the Huangh river which is just inside Mongolia. Have you heard of Mongolia?"

She shook her head again.

"Well, it's in China and it's so big that it makes all of Japan look tiny."

She blinked, trying to comprehend that.

"I got it for a little girl I know in Tokyo - - but, well, I picked up some other things I think she'll like just as well, so you can have it."

Minako looked to her mother. The Widow Hatayama knelt before her tea pot, wringing her hands. Finally she nodded and something almost akin to a look of gratitude crossed her narrow face. She had a fresh bruise under one eye and since she didn't have a husband, Sano wondered who'd hit her.

Minako took the doll reverently, cradling it in small hands. "What's her name?" She asked.

Sano shrugged. "I dunno. That's up to you."

"Suzuko. I'll call her Suzuko."

"Sounds good to me. I knew a girl named Suzuko once. She made pretty beads in Tokyo."

"Tea?" The widow Hatayama asked shyly.

"Sure," Sano agreed. Warm tea would do his damp self good. He got up and ambled over to the mat near the fire. Sat down in a collapse of long limbs and took the ceramic cup the widow placed in his hands. She poured the steeped tea for him, then a small cup for herself and for Minako.

"Thanks. I really appreciate this," he said, when he'd downed the tea. "Say, do you know how far it is to Tokyo? I've gotten turned around a few times already and I'd just like to know I'm on the right track?"

"I've only been once," the widow said softly, not meeting his eyes. "I think it is only a few days travel - - in good weather.'

"Really?" he said, pleased. "That's great."

"Watch out for the bandits. They hurt mama." Minako leaned towards him to whisper and her mother's eyes widened and she shushed the girl with a nervous flutter of her hand.

"Don't listen," the woman said. "Bandits hurt everyone."

Sano glanced from the girl to her mother. The way the woman sat - - it was the way a body held itself when every breath ached.

"They do that to you?" he asked, indicating her bruised face with a jerk of his jaw. "The bandits?"

"No," the widow said, avoiding his eyes. "I fell."

"No, mama - -" Minako protested and got shushed again with a sharp gesture of the widow's bony hand.

"And you live next to one of them - -" Sano glanced meaningfully through the wall to the house next door.

"Bokkai doesn't live there," Minako said. "He only comes home when he's hungry or hurt - - but they let him because they don't have to pay tribute if they do - - and Chojiro owes a blood debt because of Bokkai's mother."

"You talk too much, child," the widow Hatayama said softly, but her voice was tired. Too tired to argue the facts. But obviously she didn't want to talk about it, so Sano scooted back to his corner and his folded sleeping mat and sat there listening to the rain while the widow and the girl set the house to order.

Sano fell asleep on the mat, with his face to the wall and a threadbare blanket over his shoulders and woke to the sound of the loom. The widow had probably been up with the dawn, diligently working, while he'd slept the morning away. Minako was already outside, in a day that boasted only a fine mist, checking the state of the garden plot out back. Sano grumbled and groaned and pushed himself up. His stomach protested its empty state almost as loudly as his bladder protested its fullness. He smiled weakly at the widow, who only briefly met his eyes before her own were downcast once more - - and shuffled outside to answer the call of nature. The chance for breakfast, he figured, had already been missed. They'd probably not had enough to share anyway.

Bokkai was out there, talking with a man at the side of his aunt's house. He grinned at Sano when he saw him, beckoning him over even as the man gave Sano a shifty glance and walked away.

"There you are," Bokkai said jovially. "I wondered where you'd gone."

"The widow next door let me in," Sano shrugged.

Bokkai grinned. "Don't let Chojiro hear of it. He's got a thing for her. Don't know why, skinny thing that she is."

"Yeah, well, I won't be staying long."

"Long enough for fresh brewed beer? My uncle just finished a batch."

One could hardly turn down beer and the possibility of breakfast with it. There was beer and rice and Bokkai's aunt had no problem sharing it with Sano. She even did it with a smile this morning.

"She's in a good mood." Sano observed to the boy and Bokkai grinned. "Yeah, we made out well and I gave her a portion of my cut."

"Oh, rob a wealthy merchant or something?"

"No. City yakuza. They paid well for our help."

Sano sniffed. He had very little respect for the yakuza. "What'da they care about mountain bandits?"

Bokkai's narrow chest swelled up. "They care that we know the mountain routes better than anyone. They care that nobody comes through these passes without our knowing. Somebody came through they were looking for and we found him." Bokkai's grin grew wicked and he leaned in close to whisper. "He found us really, so Bunzo the eight fingered says. Says uncle Chojiro and a few men were in the midst of a little - - fun - - when this guy come up out of nowhere and beat them off with a stick. All six of 'em and just one of him and I believe Bunzo cause I saw the bumps and bruises. Uncle Chojiro was madder than anything - - even though the yakuza had paid good money to keep an eye out for him."

Sano picked the last grains of rice from his bowl, wondering if he could beg another portion from Bokkai's aunt. Yakuza intrigues were the last thing he cared about. The recounting of bandit atrocities would only make him mad and right now he was counting on Bokkai's good will for a little more breakfast before he got back on the road. So, he might as well tweak the boy's ego.

"Oh, you guys must be pretty famous for the yakuza to come to you for help. Who was this guy, some rich merchant or some politician they wanted in their pockets?"

"They said he was some old samurai or something from the revolution but I don't believe that 'cause I saw him and he wasn't much older than me - - or you at least - - and there ain't no samurai any longer what with the new government and all. But he was good with a sword - - before the foreigner shot him, that is. Those yakuza left limping worse than uncle Chojiro and his men. But he'll get his, 'cause the yakuza left him for uncle to deal with and uncle was pretty pissed off."

Sano sat there and sipped his beer thinking about displaced samurai and young seeming revolutionaries. It struck a chord. Made his right hand itch. He balled it in a fist, then flexed the fingers listening to the joint's pop.

"You might not remember it, but the revolution was only about fifteen years ago - - there are a lot of samurai still about. Hell, I was in the revolution towards the end - -but I was a hell of lot younger than you are now."

Bokkai shrugged. "Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Doesn't matter. He's probably dead now anyway, after uncle being at him for - - what, almost two days now. He stopped uncle from having the widow Hatayama, but Bunzo Eight Fingers said he was prettier than her anyway and that uncle'd just as well finished what he'd started with him as with her."

"You in on this?" Sano asked, muscle twitching in his jaw. He thought he'd knock the kid's head against the table if he grinned and said yes.

"Nah. They wouldn't let me. Said I was too young and to go and watch the road. That's when you helped me out."

"How many of you guys did this samurai kill?" He had to wonder if retribution was justified. Had to wonder if there weren't bodies lined up somewhere if some honest to goodness pre-Meiji swordsman had cut through them. Those sorts of men generally left a trail of blood in their wake.

"None," Bokkai said. "Not a one. Lot of broken bones - - lot of aching heads - - but he didn't kill a one."

Sano knew an ex-samurai, ex-assassin who could sweep through a room full of men with a sword faster than the eye could follow and not kill a single one. A young-seeming, girl-pretty one, who you'd never think had prowled the revolution by looking at him.

"What'd he look like?" Sano asked. He thought he'd crush the ceramic mug he held if he didn't untense his fingers.

"I dunno. It was raining a lot. Like I said. Young. Not much bigger than me - - had a scar on his face." The boy made two diagonal swipes in the air with his finger."

Sano almost laughed. He sat the mug down with a thump, leaning forward to try and control the knotted breath that caught in his throat. To try and control the sudden impulse to smash Bokkai's face until it was bloody.

"Where's he at?" he managed to choke that out without faltering. Without yelling it into the boy's face. Without just jumping up and breaking things - - heads included.

"Back at our camp."

"You take me there?"

"I can't. You're a stranger. Besides, uncle Chojiro told me to stay away for a few days.'

"You owe me. I saved your life. Besides, are you a boy or a man, for them to shield your delicate sensibilities?"

"I'm not a boy!"

Sano snorted, head still lowered between hunched shoulders. "They treat you like one. I wouldn't let them treat me like that. I'll back you, if you want."

If it was one thing Sano knew how to do, it was tweak a teenaged boy's fragile ego. He'd had enough practice tormenting Yahiko. This one was no different. Not as sharp as Yahiko. Easier to work.

Okay, Bokkai, agreed, needing to prove a point. Okay, Bokkai, said, but you deal with Chojiro when he goes off. Sano could do that. Sano was more than willing to do that.

He didn't want to think about what he'd find. Didn't want to really contemplate whether that all too accurate description belonged to something he knew. Easier to walk and not scowl and not clench his fists if he convinced himself that it wasn't what the nausea in his gut insisted it was.

It was an hour's walk up the mountain, following what looked like a game trail for a ways and then through simple, dense forest. He tried to remember the way. Tried to pick out an odd shaped tree here a jutting rock there, just in case he had to come back on his own. All he needed was to be lost in the wilderness with bandits in the woods. If he could find that village again, he could find the main mountain pass. He didn't know if he could find it from here.

It was a rocky place where the bandits had their hideaway. A few crumbling walls hinted that it had once been more forever ago. He couldn't tell if it had been a temple or something else. The weather and time had eaten all the ornamentation, only leaving the occasional walls from which shanty shelters had been erected. Not many of those. Just a handful of run down structures. One had a trickle of smoke coming from a vent hole. The main fire pit in the center of a much traveled clearing was wet and dead from the rains. There were two rough beams buried in the earth and a cross beam lashed to the top ends of them. The wood was stained with more than rain. The smell of blood was too strong to miss, even diluted by the rain, as they passed.

"They took him down," Bokkai observed, emotionless.

"Huh?"

The boy jerked his head at the scaffold. Sano looked closer and saw pits and ruts where spikes had been driven in time and again. Saw the darker stains about those indention's and shivered thinking what had been nailed up there.

There was a man asleep in one of the open faced shelters, sprawled like he'd passed out from too much drink. His snores were a soft disturbance of the silence. There was another in the shadows beyond him sitting hunched over a ceramic jug of what might have been beer, half awake, simply staring at the dirt in a drunken haze.

There were a few more in the other shelters, mostly passed out.

"That's my uncle." Bokkai indicated one of the shelters where a rumbling snore emanated from under a lumpy blanket.

There was a space next to Chijiro's hut, where an old wall had fallen, making sort of a natural enclave. It was still open to the rain, but there was a wall on two sides and a relatively flat surface of stone beneath.

There was a body there, that looked dead, all limp limbs and pallid skin. Naked. The signs of abuse were - - gut wrenching. The hair was wet, making the color indistinguishable, but it was hardly more than shoulder length, so it couldn't be Kenshin.

Even the rain couldn't wash away the blood. He couldn't see the face, because the man's profile was pressed into his arm. They'd gone to the trouble to bind his narrow wrists to a ring in the stone. Why restrain a corpse? Why restrain anything that looked like it had gone through as much hell as this? From his position, bare bloody back to the sky, Sano thought maybe they had used him like the woman he'd let get away from them.

Of course it wasn't Kenshin. Kenshin would have never let himself - - Sano narrowed his eyes, staring past the diluted blood and the new gashes on the skin of that slim back and saw the line of an old scar, running diagonally from shoulder to side. His breath caught in his throat and the bile rose up. How long ago had Kenshin gotten that scar? He ought to know, he'd been there - - but his mind wasn't working.

Sano took a staggering step into the alcove, skidded to one knee on the stone and with a shaking hand pushed wet hair back from a pale profile. The delicate line of one high cheekbone was partially obscured by swelling. Blood crusted the nostril and a split lip was still slowly seeping red. His skin was so cold that Sano pulled his hand back in shock, but he'd felt no beat of life when he'd touched it. He sat there, on his knees, utterly bereft of action for a moment. Staring. Horrified.

"Is he dead?" Bokkai asked, snickering.

Sano blinked. Sano got up, slowly, staring at the few droplets of rain that spattered the stone at his feet. Took one step - - two towards the boy, then lashed out in an artless, backhanded blow that sent Bokkai crashing into the stone wall. The boy's head hit with a crack and he crumpled. There was a knife in the boys belt and Sano snatched it up, turning back to Kenshin's body. He severed the rope from the ring. Slid the blade between the rain swollen bonds around his wrists freed them. He held the mangled hands gently in his own. Cold hands with bloody wounds through the center of each. He pulled him up into his arms and Kenshin's head flopped bonelessly. There was no resistance in him, his limbs were loose and heavy, his skin so, so cold.

"Fuck," Sano said, pressing his face into Kenshin's wet hair. "Fucking idiot! Why'd you let this happen? I was just coming to see you."

"Who the fuck are you?" A gruff voice snarled at him. A shadow fell over him. "What are you doing?"

Sano sniffed. Laid Kenshin back down and turned to look over his shoulder. A big man stood there. His height almost, but much, much thicker. There was gleaming dagger in the man's meaty fist and growing fury in his eyes as he took in Bokkai's crumpled form.

"You Chojiro?" Sano asked, climbing to his feet.

The man grunted. "Did that brat bring you here?"

"You do this?" Sano asked, voice beginning to shake.

"What of it?" The man shifted, a sneer crossing his lips. A few of his comrades were stumbling out of the shelters. "You want a taste of it, boy?"

Sano's lip twitched.

"You know him?" Chojiro asked, passing the dagger to his other hand. "He didn't scream as much as a woman - - but he felt as good as one."

"Wrong - - thing - - to say." The anger swelled up inside of him, but it was a cold, controlled thing that he focused in its entirety into the clenched fist at his side. He lunged, faster than Chojiro could bring up the knife and his fist, backed by the power of the futae no kiwami, smashed into the bandit's broad face. Bone and flesh and muscle had no defense against an attack that could pulverize stone. The bandit's head shattered and bone and blood flew.

It wasn't pretty. The only regret, was that it had been quick. Too damned quick a death by far. The other bandits saw it and gaped and Sano snarled and yelled things at them that he didn't remember later. They were no great fighters. They were simple mountain bandits that preyed on the weak and the wounded and they were no match for Sano in his fury. The one's he didn't take down, ran stumbling for the woods, leaving him with the dead and the unconscious. He wished he'd killed them all. He did not share Kenshin's opinions about such matters. Some people deserved death.

Others - - did not. He turned around then, bereft of enemies, with nothing else to do but go back and decide what to do with Kenshin. He picked him up off the stone and carried him to one of the abandoned shelters out of the rain. Laid him down on dirty blankets and looked around for something decent to wrap him in. Ah, there, in the floor, a bloody indigo gi that had once been of a finer quality than anything these bandits might possess. He pressed it to his face and inhaled. It smelled of Kenshin. His then.

He pulled Kenshin up against him, pulling the gi around him, careful with his hands even though it hardly mattered anymore. Laid him back down with that folded about him, a more modest corpse to be sure and went dully back out into the rain to search the other shelters for the sakabatou, for surely it was about somewhere if Kenshin was.

He didn't find it. But he did find the rest of Kenshin's clothing and brought that back, figuring if he took Kenshin home, it might as well be in a dignified manner. No one ever had to know about what he'd suffered.

The bile rose up in Sano's throat again as he sat there, narrow eyed over Kenshin's body. He ground his teeth fighting against the ungainliness of tears.

Why? There was no one there to see and didn't a friend deserve as much? He grasped Kenshin by the arms and pulled him up, crushing him close, fingers biting into the flesh of his shoulders in his grief. There was a spasmodic twitch of the body in his embrace as his hands dug into the right shoulder. A reflexive jerk of muscles and Sano's fingers pressed into a wound that leaked fresh blood through the material of the gi.

Sano's mouth popped open. Dead people didn't still bleed, did they? They didn't jerk and twitch out of the blue. But he was so damned cold. But not stiff. There was nothing of rigor mortis about him.

Sano shifted Kenshin in his arms, pressing his cheek close to his mouth, searching for the feel of warm breath.

There. Almost imperceptible. A wheezing little trickle of breath against his cheek. Not much, but it was something. It was a sign that life still lingered somewhere beneath the cold and the blood. So much blood on the outside that he doubted Kenshin had much left inside his body.

"You in there, Kenshin?" Sano balanced Kenshin in one arm, using the other to brush back the lattice work of wet hair from his face.

Nothing. No smallest flutter of soot-dark lashes against ghost-pale skin. A little blood trickled from the split of a swollen bottom lip, which brought to mind the places where even more blood was seeping out. Sano hissed and looked about for something clean enough to bind wounds with. Finally settled on ripping bands from the bottom of the hakama rather than use the flea infested blankets the bandits nested within. Wound the strips carefully around Kenshin's hands, around his shoulder, with thick pads of cloth pressed to either side to compress the bullet wounds, and around the seeping holes in his thigh where the bullet had passed shallowly through flesh and muscles and exited diagonally through the other side. Not as bad a wound as the shoulder or the hands, but it had bled enough to carry its weight.

Bokkai had said two days. Two days he'd had these wounds untended and he'd yet to expire of them. He wasn't big enough to have that much blood in his body, but then again, he'd survived things that would have killed most men twice over and come out still fighting.

Sano sat there afterwards, cursing himself for not paying more attention when Megumi was treating patients - - when she was treating him, for that matter. He didn't know what to do other than stop the bleeding. He didn't know how to combat so much lost blood, so many grievous holes in Kenshin's flesh - - the utter listlessness of his limbs. He couldn't carry him the two or more days walk back to Tokyo like this. Kenshin would never make it. Kenshin looked as if he were on death's door now.

The only place Sano could think of to take him was back to the mountain village and hope the widow Hatayama would take pity. He didn't know anyone else that might show a grain of it.

It was still a matter of getting him there. Sano found the cleanest of the blankets and wrapped Kenshin within it; picked him up like fragile porcelain with an arm under his knees and one under his shoulders, not certain what other things were broken inside him and hesitant to toss him over a shoulder if there were broken ribs.

Either Kenshin had shed weight, or Sano had gained strength in his travels, because his burden was negligible. Or maybe it was simple adrenaline fed fear that made it so. Maybe his muscles would scream protest in the morning after hours of trudging about the woods with Kenshin's dead weight in his arms.

Of course it took longer to get back than it had to leave. He couldn't find the game trail. He couldn't find the distinctive rock or the twisted tree. He cursed his bad luck and he cursed the malicious forest spirits who were likely setting him astray. But finally he stumbled upon it, found a little stone trail marker that led to the village.

Of course it was raining heavily again by the time he trudged up that muddy trail. The rain made Kenshin and his blankets seem the weightier. But it served a purpose, Sano supposed sourly. It kept the villagers inside their meager homes, so no prying eyes saw him stagger to the widow Hatayama's door and softly beg for admittance.

The girl, Minako slid it open on warped tracks. Her small, wary face peered up at him, her eyes widening as she recognized him. He might have been carrying a corpse for the silent expression of horror that crossed her face. He heard her mother's soft cry from within, and the widow Hatayama rose from her loom and rushed towards them, shaking her head in dismay.

"No," she cried softly. "Not here. You can't bring him here. Go away."

"Why the fuck not?" Sano was out of patience and out of what small bit of tact he possessed. He was tired, he was scared and he wanted Kenshin out of the rain and someplace warm and dry and non-hostile. "He saved your life, woman. Don't you recognize him? You'd turn him away when he didn't turn away from helping you?"

The woman shied back, a hand to her mouth, tears of - - what, fear maybe in her eyes? Or shame?

"You don't understand," she sobbed, still at no more than a hoarse whisper. "Chojiro wouldn't have killed me - - what he did - - what this one did - - he only made it worse. Chojiro will punish me for it - - and maybe Minako this time as well. You can't bring him here - -"

"Chojiro's dead," Sano said flatly. "He won't be punishing anybody."

She blinked at him, disbelieving. "How - -?"

Sano just stared at her. His arms were starting to tremble from the strain. He hadn't felt it until he'd stopped moving.

"It doesn't matter if - - if Chojiro is dead. There will be another to take his place - - there will always be another and we have no protection against them. They'll come seeking him - - if you stole him from them."

"Please - -" he ground out between clenched teeth. If he went down to one knee now, which his legs were threatening, he didn't think he could get back up again. Not with Kenshin's weight in his arms. "- - help me."

Minako looked up at her mother, her small lips trembling. She laid a hand on the widow's arm. "Please. Papa would have helped."

The widow Hatamaya sobbed and stepped back, clearing the way for Sano to pass, flinging an arm towards the mats closest to the fire where she and the girl slept. Sano heard her slide the door shut behind him. Heard the sound of their feet as they followed him. He laid Kenshin down and flung the sodden blanket from him. Looked up pleadingly to the woman, hoping against hope that she knew a smattering about tending wounds. A mountain woman might, with no one else to tend injuries within a day or more journey.

He'd never wished more for Megumi's presence than he did now. The woman had the tongue of a shrew but she could work healing miracles with her hands - - and he thought very much, that they needed a miracle now.

Chapter Six

Sano sat against the wall with his hands clenched between his knees to keep them from shaking, because he was in their way. Even the little girl was more adept than him when it came to cleaning bits of wood and debris out of bloody wounds. He listened to the rain patter on the roof, listened to the soft sound of clothing shifting as the widow and her daughter moved, of their whispered conversation - - of his own harsh breath - - and preyed it wasn't all for nothing.

Preyed to any damned thing that wanted to listen for those wounds on Kenshin not to be as horrible as they looked. For him to open those amethyst eyes of his and murmur that he was okay, even though he wasn't. Kenshin was like that. He didn't like to worry people. He'd go out of his way to avoid it. Too damned considerate by far.

But Kenshin didn't. Kenshin didn't move at all. Just lay there in the flickering light of the fire, with a clean blanket laid modestly over his hips and the rest of him bruised and broken and bloody, while a used up, battered village widow tried to stem the bleeding and pack the wounds with mountain herbal remedies and bind his hands and his shoulder and his thigh and the various other cuts and slices and abrasions, with clean strips of soft cloth that she'd no doubt woven herself.

They cleaned him up as best they could, and wrapped him in what were probably the best of their blankets. The widow sat there afterwards, wringing her stained hands, staring down at Kenshin as if he were some evil mountain spirit come to visit her house.

"They'll look for him and for you," she whispered, eyes lowered, head bowed. "Chojiro - - he had a use for me - - with him gone - - they'll kill us."

"They come here - - I'll make them sorry," Sano promised grimly.

"And the ones that come after them?" she asked. "The one's that come when you're gone? Who will make them sorry?"

He didn't have an answer for that. He couldn't think beyond Kenshin's welfare at the moment.

"He'll likely die anyway," she said sadly.

"He won't!" Sano snapped. "He's been through - - worse." He wasn't sure of that, really. The wounds were one thing - - and gods, his hands - - his hands - - but two days of exposure and blood loss - - that was another matter altogether. He wanted to go out and find every bandit in the region and smash them into pulp - - but the widow was right. There would always be more to take their places. Bokkai had said it was city yakuza who'd come asking for their help, though. City yakuza who'd wanted Kenshin dead. And a foreigner. When he got back to Tokyo he'd make some late night visits. He'd had enough shady dealings in his past to know who had connections here and who owed allegiances there. He ticked off on his fingers who he'd visit - - of who's blood would tarnish his knuckles first.

There was the sound of men's voices raised in the night. Sano's head snapped up. He was on his feet, fists clenched before the widow could cry out softly in alarm.

"No. No, Please," she whispered, gesturing to her daughter help her with the mat upon wooden platform on which they ate. "You cannot. You cannot be here. Neither can he."

"So - - what?' Sano asked, staring at the two of them as they rolled the mat aside. There was a weathered trap door under it.

"Here," the widow pleaded. "Take him down here."

"What the fuck is down there?" He was not at all fond of small, dark places.

"My - - my husband made it - - for me and Minako - - when the bandits first started coming. They took so many women - - I send Minako here still - - when Chojiro - -" she trailed off, shuddering and Sano could only imagine what the little girl had had to huddle listening to while her mother unwillingly entertained the bandit chieftain.

"Please. They'll see you're not here and they'll go."

Sano cursed and gathered up Kenshin, blankets and all. He had to half drape him over a shoulder to maneuver down the wooden foot holds that led down into the pit. And it wasn't much more than a pit. Kenshin would have had to duck his head in it. It was maybe four feet wide and six foot long and one side of it was filled with stacks of supplies, tools, root vegetables in sacks, rice and various other things. There was a folded mat and blanket, testament that Minako had spent more than one night hiding here.

The widow tossed the mat Sano had used last night down for him to pad the first one with, advised him to silence and shut the door. He almost yelped as the darkness descended. A flat, impenetrable blackness that made him blink in momentary shock at the complete loss of sight.

He got the mats down by feel alone. Situated Kenshin and threw the extra blanket over him, sitting by his head thereafter, wondering what might be down here in the dark with them. He tensed when he heard the sound of voices demanding entrance. When he heard the widow's startled response and the sound of rapid talking. There was the sound of what might have been a scuffle, but there were no screams - - something crashed and broke and he hoped the trap door hadn't a latch, if he had to break his way out of this pit. He hoped very much she hadn't locked them down here.

Eventually the commotion stopped and after that, a long stretch of silence. Sano cracked a knuckle nervously. He hated the inactivity. He hated not doing anything.

A voice came, whispering through the layer of wood. "They have gone, but they may be back. Please stay there tonight.'

Shit.

"Fine," he hissed, capitulating to her fear. They retreated, leaving him in pitch silence. There was only Kenshin for company and he was poor companionship at best this night. Sano reached a hand out blindly and touched his hair. Dry now. Thick and soft and so damned short. Tragic, the loss of that hair - - he ran shoulder length strands through his fingers, then caught himself and pulled his hand back, berating himself for bemoaning the loss of a man's hair. It wasn't seemly. It wasn't like Kenshin was a girl he'd been courting.

But - - well, he had liked the hair, Damnit. Had appreciated the way it swayed when Kenshin walked - - like a luxurious, auburn tail. A man could admire such aesthetic things, couldn't he - - without seeming peculiar?

He returned his hand to it out of stubbornness and the feel of it calmed him somewhat. Made the dark a little less oppressive. It was chilly here though, encased in earth. Like a grave, he thought, with a shiver. It would do Kenshin no good, cold as he already was.

Sano slid his hand down to Kenshin's face, pressing his knuckles to his cheek. Still cool. Maybe it was the loss of so much blood. Maybe it was all the time spent in cold mountain rain. Sano didn't know the particulars of such things.

He stretched his legs out next to Kenshin, covering them with the outer blanket, and sat there with his arms crossed over his chest, holding the thin weave of his jacket closed over his chest. He was damned cold and he hadn't even lost blood. Damned uncomfortable place to spend the night, with his back to a rough plank wall and the smell of earth so strong he couldn't get images of graves out of his mind. He wondered what earth demons might be lurking about in the dark, attracted by the scent of Kenshin's blood and Kenshin's nearness to death. He didn't know if he could fight off evil spirits, though he'd try.

"Idiot," he whispered into the darkness again, still stung by the amazement that Kenshin had let himself be so thoroughly fucked-up. The foundation of a great many of his beliefs and ideals throughout the last few years of his life had been based upon Himura Kenshin's infallibility. It was like waking up one morning and having the sky be green instead of blue. Some things just didn't happen. Some things weren't supposed to happen. Kenshin overwhelmed by a ragtag bunch of mountain bandits was one of those things.

Sano shuddered and sneezed. He wiped a hand under his nose and cast a nasty glare upwards where the widow and her daughter were probably snuggled up warmly by the fire. He scooted down under the blanket, with the widow's winter food stock pressed against one shoulder and Kenshin's head at the other. Damned little space for a man to get comfortable. He shifted to his side and that didn't work either, not without jamming Kenshin with his knee and with no proper place to put his arms.

Kenshin didn't complain of his shifting about though, so Sano sighed and shoved an arm behind his head and wormed his torso close enough to achieve some small bit of comfort. Like he would sleep with a woman, his bigger body curled around a smaller one. It was okay, if Kenshin slept through it. It was okay to press his cheek against Kenshin's hair and snake his arm across his stomach if nobody ever saw. Besides which, it was a generous sharing of his body heat, which Kenshin needed. And it felt - - nice. It just felt good to cradle Kenshin in his arms when he was battered and bruised and needed Sano for a change.

Sano had hardly realized he'd slept when the intrusion of gray light pierced the thin veil of his lids. He was warm and he was snug and he never had taken well to rising early in the morn. He blinked grit out of his eyes and glared up at the square of hazy light above. Two faces peered down.

"What?" he said, testy.

"How - - is he?" the widow asked hesitantly.

Sano blinked and realized he was wound rather intimately about another male body. His initial embarrassed reflex of jerking away was hampered by the sacks at his back and the sluggish realization that doing so might do Kenshin more harm than good.

"I don't know," he snapped, wondering if they'd expected him to stay awake all night with a hand on Kenshin's pulse. But, he had a hand on his stomach, under the blanket, resting on very smooth, soft skin that was warm to the touch. Very warm.

If he'd started out the night sharing his heat with Kenshin, then Kenshin had turned the tables on him during the early hours of morning, going from alarmingly cool flesh to alarmingly warm.

"Damn - - he's hot." Sano pushed himself up and pressed a hand to Kenshin's face.

"Fever," the widow said it like it had been as inevitable as the monsoons.

"Can I bring him up?"

"No," she said quickly. "They're still in the village."

"Well, we're not staying in this damned pit." One night was enough.

"Better not to move him."

"Its damned cold down here." And dark. "And I've gotta take a leak."

He climbed out of the pit and stretched. Took his leak in a jug in the corner, which the girl took outside and disposed of. Cold rice for breakfast and warm tea.

"Here. He'll be warmer with this." The widow gave him Kenshin's gi, all clean and neatly folded. It still bore ragged holes in the cloth and the weakened stains of blood which were damned hard to get out.

"Wake him if you can," she said. "And make him take this." She had a ceramic pot of what smelled like herbal tea.

"It's too cramped down there."

"Move things up here." The widow Hatayama had an answer for everything. She was desperate, he thought, to preserve the questionable safety of herself and her daughter. So Sano grumbled and bitched and spent an hour shifting things carefully out of the pit to a corner of the house and ended up with slightly more room than he'd had before. They all froze in the midst of this process at the sound of yelling outside. It sounded as if drunken men were raising a ruckus. It probably was.

"They hang around the village a lot?" Sano asked softly, his eye to a crack in the door.

"Many of them have blood relations here," the widow said fearfully. "Like Bokkai - - "

Blood relations through rape, then. It was a wonder the widow Hatayama had escaped the same fate. Bearing some get of Chojiro. Maybe a smart mountain woman knew ways to avoid such a thing.

"Please - - go back down," she pleaded and he reluctantly returned to the pit, with a bowl of rice, a jug of warm tea and a lantern which he sat on a wooden stool he'd left in the corner. They shut him in, but he had the lamp this time and more room to move. It didn't feel as much like a grave.

He sat down cross-legged next to Kenshin and put a hand to his forehead. His skin was dry and warm, not the sweaty sort of fever that Sano was used to. It was like his body was so hot, that it ate up the moisture before it could gather.

"Wake up, Kenshin," he said softly, brushing hair aside, running a thumb around the edges of a swollen cut running from temple to hairline. "I really need for you to wake up and take some tea."

He got an arm under Kenshin's shoulders and gently levered him up. Got himself against the wall with Kenshin's in the crook of his arm. Kenshin's head lolled. Sano pressed his hand against Kenshin's forehead and tilted it back.

"If you don't wake up, I'm gonna have to pour it down your throat. It'd be nicer if you took it on your own - - but she said you needed it - - so you're gonna get it one way or another, hear me?"

Kenshin obviously didn't take his threats seriously. Sano sighed and reached for the gi, slid the blankets off Kenshin's shoulders and tentatively picked up his bandaged hand to slip through the arm. One through and he gingerly lifted the other one. The bandages of Kenshin's left hand were stained with blood and his fingers hot and a little swollen. A man could lose a limb from such infection. Frightening, frightening thought - - Kenshin crippled in such a manner.

Kenshin jerked as Sano turned the hand. His whole body convulsed and he lunged weakly back against Sano's chest. A reflexive, defensive gesture that he hadn't the strength to back up.

"Whoa, whoa - - it's me, Kenshin. Calm down, calm down." He wrapped his arms Kenshin's slim torso to keep him from twisting away and was surprised at the ease of his success. The struggles ceased, but Sano thought it was more from sheer exhaustion than recognition of his voice.

But then, Kenshin could still surprise him.

"S- -Sano?" A hoarse whisper. A disoriented whisper. His body was quaking ever so slightly.

"Hey - - you didn't forget me after all." Sano leaned over so Kenshin could see him. Kenshin blinked, long and slow with that glazed look of the deathly ill.

"I - - thought you were - - dead. You didn't come back - - and you promised - - you'd come back." The clear amethyst of his eyes was almost indistinct against the black of dilated pupils. There was nothing coherent in his gaze.

"Yeah - - well - - I figured you were busy - -"

"It's cold." Kenshin's lashes fluttered shut and Sano shook him a little to keep him awake. "No you don't. You need to drink some tea."

He got the luke warm tea and sloshed some of it into a cup and got even less of that into Kenshin's mouth. He made a terrible nursemaid. He figured half a cup would have to do for the time being - - and he was lucky Kenshin stayed conscious for that much. He got the widow down in the pit to look at the swollen hand and she washed out the wound, pressing yellow puss from the torn flesh and repacking it with herbs. They checked the other major wounds while they were at it, but none of the others seemed as bad as Kenshin's left hand.

Kenshin slept through it all. Trembling occasionally, jerking a little when they messed with his hands. Slept until Sano had to shake him awake again to make him take more herbal tea and a weak broth.

"Kaoru - -" Kenshin said softy, in the midst of that. "I'm late - - I'm sorry - - I am - - but there was a fair on the Nihonbashi Bridge - -"

"What? You had to stop and people watch?" Sano knew Kenshin well enough to be familiar with his eccentricities. He was an avid observer of humanity, even if he held himself apart from it on most occasions.

Kenshin babbled more things, off and on, in and out of consciousness. Sano answered back for the most part. He slept that night with the small lantern flickering, his body wrapped around a fevered Kenshin.

Woke up the next morning to an elbow in the face and a panicked, not quite sane Kenshin trying to claw his way out of the tight space they shared. It was hard enough getting one's wits back when woken normally out of a sound, pleasant sleep, much less when one had a desperate samurai on one's hands. Sano tasted blood in his mouth. He lost the air in his lungs from Kenshin's knee in his side and only got the upper hand - - despite Kenshin's weakness - - when Kenshin aimed a blow at his face and was lucky enough to connect.

Sano figured it hurt Kenshin a lot more than it hurt him. Kenshin cried out, going boneless of a sudden, curled around his damaged hand in the midst of tangled blankets. Sano spit blood against the far wall and laid a hesitant hand on Kenshin's shoulder. Kenshin flinched in reaction, curling tighter, cradling his hand. Not anyplace close to being in his right mind.

"It's me. Sano. Remember?" he tried touching again. Didn't get the cringing this time, so boldly pulled the smaller man up against his chest. Kenshin was stiff and unresponsive against him. Lips pressed tight, lashes fluttering on his cheeks. His skin was warm through the gi, hot where Sano's hand touched bare flesh.

"Its okay. Its okay." Sano felt the bumbling fool. He didn't know how to give the necessary assurances. Didn't know what was going through Kenshin's fevered mind. What pain he was feeling. What horrors he was reliving. He tightened his arms and rested his chin on the top of Kenshin's head.

"Sano?"

"Hey. Yeah."

Kenshin pressed his face into Sano's neck and shuddered; clutched weakly at the back of Sano's jacket, but his fingers failed him and he made a helpless, choked sound.

"Its okay." Back to that same mantra, which might be a blatant lie, but Sano didn't know what else to say.

"Sano - - I have - - have to - -" He trailed off, losing the train of thought.

Sano thought about all the things Kenshin might have to do and figured what would be at the top of his list right about now.

"You need to take a leak?"

A long pause and he figured Kenshin had drifted off on him. Then a small inclination of the head on his shoulder. Okay. The widow had provided a container for that, though Sano hadn't figured he'd have to help in the operation. But Kenshin's hands weren't much good to him at the moment. He wasn't much good for anything, that short burst of desperate energy having used up everything he'd had. So Sano blushed like a virgin on her marriage night and took care of things, and hoped to hell Kenshin was too out of it to ever remember.

There was blood in his urine, which made a man cringe, thinking of the things that had likely caused that. Handling Kenshin's private parts made him recall the state he'd found him in, bound and naked and bloody and he started wondering what the bandits had done to him other than the obvious wounds they had treated. Made him sit there and grind his teeth and clench his fists so hard the joints cracked, while he thought about things he'd tried not to think about before now. Bad enough to think about Kenshin tortured - - but raped . . .

Bokkai had said as much. It wasn't inconceivable - - Kenshin looked young enough to fool a body into thinking he was little more than a boy fresh into adult-hood. He was damned sure pretty enough to make a man look twice at him - - to make an honest man consider things that an honest man might not normally consider about another man - - let alone what some stinking mountain bandit might find suitable to quench his primal needs.

Bastards. He stood up so fast, in a fit of righteous anger, that he slammed the top of his head against the low ceiling. Sat back down of a sudden with stars dancing before his eyes, rubbing the growing lump on his head. He needed to take his frustration out of someone. Needed a body to pound. Needed vengeance, because nobody hurt those few rare people that Sagara Sanosuke loved and got away with it.

"Sano?" Kenshin half rolled to his side and stared with heavy lidded eyes at Sano, sitting in his ungraceful heap. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing stars."

Kenshin blinked slowly at him. He licked his dry lips and said worriedly. "Is it dawn? We should move before daylight - - they'll be on our trail otherwise."

"Who. Who'll be on our trail?"

"The army. We took Arato's head - - they'll want retaliation."

Arato's head? Arato? Arato. Hadn't there been some Tokugawa warlord or something named Arato? A warlord killed late in the revolution - - or assassinated maybe? It had been a great blow to the moral of the Tokugawa forces, he thought.

"We?" he asked wryly.

Kenshin shut his eyes, letting his head fall to the mat. "Orders. They want it - - for the army to see."

"Oh."

Kenshin was silent for a long time, face hidden by the loose fall of his hair.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, long after Sano thought he'd fallen asleep. "He was an old man - - he didn't - - have a chance - -"

Sano sighed, rubbing his head one more time before shifting over to plant his butt on the mat near Kenshin. He arranged disarrayed blankets, absently smoothed strands of hair back behind Kenshin's ear, revealing the pale slash of old scars on his cheek. Kenshin's long lashes trembled against his skin, his teeth worried anxiously at his bottom lip.

"Doesn't matter. It's all over now."

"I should get home - -" Kenshin murmured, "Kaoru will be upset - -"

"She'll get over it," Sano predicted.

"Unnhhn." Kenshin was drifting again. Sano could tell from the way his face relaxed. Sano let him go, it being easier to sit there and stew with vengeful thoughts while Kenshin was silent and still.

He went up to the house after a while, and his face must have been terrible to behold for the Widow Hatamaya put a hand to her mouth and pattered over to him like she needed to prevent him from charging out the door and taking on every bandit in the province.

"I can't take this," he growled. "I can't take them carousing out there and us stuck in here like frightened rabbits. It's not right."

"Don't cause us trouble," The Widow Hatamaya begged and thrust a bowl of rice in his hands to distract him. Not just rice this morning, but rice with wild mushrooms and diced vegetables, which was a nice change.

"I made soup for him. See what he will take." She was very much trying to deter him from the violence he so dearly wished to perpetrate. He finished the last of his rice and licked his fingers, canting her a look that said he knew what she was doing - - and he submitted to it - - for the time being.

"All right. You come down and check his wounds?"

She nodded.

Minako watched the little path outside the house through a slit in the door while her mother climbed down into the pit with Sano. Kenshin woke up once, while she was pressing infection out of his left hand, not quite crying out, but definitely distressed. Sano put hands on his shoulders to keep him down, earnestly apologizing for the pain they were causing. Fever glazed plum eyes stared up at him, uncomprehending, maybe not even recognizing him.

"Hiko - -" he murmured. " - - did I take a hit?"

"Yeah, a couple," Sano said.

"I'm sorry - - I'll do better - - next time." Kenshin closed his eyes.

The widow tied the bandage off and looked up at Sano, frowning. "He shouldn't have tried to - - help me. It was no business of his. It's his own fault - - this." She wrung her hands so desperately that her short nails left red scratches on her skin.

"Not everybody turns their back on folk in trouble. Not everybody lets people like Chojiro walk all over them."

She shook her head, not able or willing to argue with him. She rose and shifted past him, climbing out of the pit, but leaving the trap door open to the shadowed light of the hut.

Nothing mattered. Everything did. The world was awash in blood. His own. Kaoru's. Kenji's.

Sano's.

He saw Tomae's dead eyes staring up at him and couldn't shake the image from his mind. Over and over and over the light of life went out and they were simply dead, brown orbs. Sometimes they turned into Kaoru's eyes. Sometimes they were his own and he was drifting above, staring down at his twisted corpse - - amazed at how fragile he looked - - how breakable.

He was cold. It ate at his bones and frosted over his skin until he couldn't move for the frozen ice that had encased his limbs. He couldn't think for it. Hiko bitched at him - - from a distance - - berating his lack of ingenuity - - his lack of simple common sense. He didn't know what exactly he'd done to deserve the censure - - but then Hiko didn't really need a reason - -

- - He was running through the woods. The mountains outside of Kyoto, he thought. There was blood on his hands that he didn't recall the cause of. He had been overtaken by a group of enemy samurai on the road and had killed them to man. Eight bodies littering the ground. Yet he hadn't taken a wound. He was sure he hadn't taken a wound.

His hands ached. It hurt to grip the sword, so he paused in the dappled shadow and slid it back into its sheath.

The blade was backwards.

He furrowed his brow in confusion - - bewildered that this blade could steal so many lives. It wasn't supposed to. But he'd seen the blood and the sliced flesh and the gasping last breaths of men he didn't even know.

He hadn't the time to wonder, though. There was a battle over the ridge where he was supposed to be.

Only it wasn't a field of death, littered with the bodies of men and horses - - it was a small mountain house, with its small garden plot that reeked of familiarity. Tomae came to the open door, dark, straight hair loose about her face. She didn't quite smile at him. She never really smiled. But she welcomed him, he thought.

There was a vivid red stain on the front of her kimono. His sword dripped with blood. He dropped it, fingers numb - - aghast.

What are you doing? Kaoru asked. Why isn't the gate fixed? I asked you this morning and you keep getting distracted. What's wrong, Kenshin?

He was sorry, truly he was. But Sano had come by and talked him into walking into town with him and they'd ended up playing at dice and then trying to talk Sano out of the debt he owed because of it. And Sano had scratched his head afterwards, looking sheepish and apologized for the trouble, though Kenshin doubted he really was sorry, and explained that it had just been a spot of bad luck and he'd win it back the next time.

It's okay. But maybe next time you ought not wager what you don't have, that you shouldn't. Kenshin sat on a low stone wall by the road and rubbed his hands, trying to work the ache out. Sano snorted and sat next to him, close enough to touch shoulders.

It'll be okay. Just take this. Sano handed him a cup of tea and he blinked at it. Take it, Kenshin.

He really didn't want it. He furrowed his brow and turned away, and Sano wrapped an arm around him and pulled him back, holding him against his chest with one long arm while he raised the cup with the other. Like he might with a child who couldn't be trusted to hold it on their own. He couldn't raise his hands to fend off the indignity and arguing any point with Sano could be exhausting if Sano had his mind set. So he relented and opened his lips to accept what Sano gave to him, and warmth flowed in and around him with the tea.

It fended off the snow. But not for long.

He looked down and found himself calf deep in white. The snow was spattered with blood. It mostly hid the bodies that had fallen into it. Yahiko was propped against the snow covered trunk of a tree, holding his guts in by hands pressed tightly over the gaping slash in his belly. The sakabatou quivered, tip first in the tree trunk next to him.

The boy gazed up at Kenshin accusingly.

Look what happened. It's your fault. You gave me this and never taught me Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, to truly use it.

I couldn't. Frozen tears ran down his cheeks. He tried to ball his fists and couldn't. Kamiya Kasshin Ryu is good enough. No one will come after you if that's what you use. No one will hunt you down - - I can't do that to you - - or to anyone - - you didn't need to know - -

You're such an idealistic fool. Hiko stood over him. When had he fallen into the snow? You won't pass it on. You won't use it. What did I give it to you for, then? My health? Fool! Insipid, little fool. You can't escape what you are - - don't you know that?

Kenshin - - Kaoru called, wanting him for something. Something mundane and pleasant, like going into town for tofu, or fixing the broken track under a door - - or keeping Kenji out of trouble while she taught a class - - it was so nice not to have to watch his back or sleep with his sword. It was nice to wrap his arms around Kaoru and pretend that he was something he was not and might never truly be capable of being.

Kenshin - - she sounded distressed. He could hear her voice, but couldn't find her person. The call became fainter and he more frantic in his searching of the dojo. There was something wrong. There was blood on the sakabatou. It seeped from the leather of the hilt where he held it. It hurt, but he tightened his grip anyway, padding through the rooms on silent, bare feet.

She was gone. It was like she'd never been there. The dojo was cold and empty. Frozen. His panic became palpable, lodging in his throat like a chunk of unchewed food.

Kaoru! He called her name. The rooms were endless. His foot slid on frozen blood and he went down to one knee, one hand pressed against the cold floor. He cried out as the pain flared, reeling.

She was gone and he had to find her. He knew the trail to follow - - it was only a matter of getting out of this place. Out of the cold - -

He called her name again and weight pressed down against him. A large hand clamped down over his mouth, a body pinned him down.

Darkness. Utter, hopeless darkness.

Kenshin blinked sightlessly into the void, Kaoru's name a shrill cry in his throat, muffled by the hand over his mouth. He struggled under the oppressive weight, but his limbs were tangled in clothing or blankets and the body was larger than his by a good amount - - and he had no strength. It bled out of him even as he strove to throw his captor off.

"Shush. Shush. It's me." A quiet whisper against his ear. Lips pressed so close to him that he could feel the warm rush of breath against his neck. He didn't register the me. But he couldn't argue against the strength that held him immobile. He tried to take account of himself and the situation he found himself in, but his thoughts kept drifting aimlessly. It took more focus than he presently had to keep them firmly on track. He thought he heard the faint sound of voices drifting down from above. Voices raised in argument - - in anger. The sound of breaking pottery. A woman's cry.

A soft curse next to his ear. An involuntary tightening of the hand on his mouth, a tensing of the body draped over his own.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." More whisper soft curses and the Me melted into images of Sanosuke. Only he couldn't tell Sano that he understood and to ease up because the hand wouldn't leave his mouth. So one had very little choice, but to lay there and endure, with a head spinning from lack of breath and a body beginning to protest from individual aches that made themselves known one by one by one. He was cold, even with the entangling blankets and Sano's warmth atop him. Cold down to his bones.

Eventually the noise from above faded and there was only the faint sound of soft sobbing. The Sano form released him of a sudden and pushed itself away, taking its warmth with it. There was the sound of scuffling in the dark and then a square of dim light crossed briefly by the blackness of a moving body. He heard Sano's lowered angry voice and the answering tones of a distraught woman.

Distressed women made him recall Kaoru and his own priorities. Hard to remember all the details, but he knew he had to make himself move - - had to go north to find her.

A pale, round eyed foreign face flashed across his mind's eye. A name came with it and he hissed. More images that made him shudder - - and he tried to push those away to some harmless place where they wouldn't interfere with calm rational.

With effort he kicked the blankets off. It was cold without them. His legs were bare. The soft material of his gi hung from his shoulders, gaping open so that cool air kissed his chest and stomach. He tried to pull it closed and his fingers wouldn't work right. They were hot and swollen and filled with pain. He opened his mouth - - shut it - - staring helplessly into the darkness at the damaged things at the end of his arms.

How - -? He half recalled the shuddering thump of a mallet driving a spike through flesh. Half recalled himself shrieking from the impact. He could recall very little else beyond that. Very little directly proceeding it, for that matter.

He got to his knees, hands pressed against his chest, eyes slowly adjusting to the faint light coming through the square in the ceiling. It was not that far up. No further than his own height - - but at the moment even that scant distance seemed impossible. He'd try it though, for he had to get up and out and find Kaoru. He thought he was late, very, very late, in his pursuit of her. The notion of that tardiness made his heart thud in his chest. The beat of it was painful almost - - Everything was painful.

Ignore it. Concentrate past it. Reach out the right hand, which didn't throb so horrendously and force his fingers to curl around the rung of wood at the top of the square of light. It hurt, but a body could focus past the pain. And if he got his arm up to support his weight, he wouldn't have to rely on the hand. The dizziness was harder to ignore. It made his head feel half its normal weight. Made his vision spin and threw his equilibrium off. Take a breath and let it pass - - only it refused to go away.

It was dark at the top, nighttime, he thought. There were still the sounds of low voices arguing, when he pulled himself to the floor. It was the floor of a small house. There were figures against the low light of a fire. Two big ones - - one small one huddled in a corner who stared at him with wide, shadowed eyes.

That littlest form betrayed him. Lifted a sleight arm and pointed and the biggest figure whirled and babbled things in a Sano voice and rushed over to get in his way as he was trying to get off his knees and to his feet.

"No no no no." Sano voice was saying and big hands grasped his shoulders and kept him kneeling on the floor.

"Let go," he murmured, indignant at the restraint. A woman hovered at the outskirts of his vision. Thin and battered. There was blood on her mouth, but he knew Sano hadn't done it. Sano didn't hit women.

"No way," Sano said firmly. "You're not going anywhere just yet."

He blinked past Sano to the child - - a little girl. A skinny, hopeless looking little girl. She clutched a small cloth doll in her hands. The sort of child that needed protection from the ravages of the world and so seldom got it.

"My sword - -" he murmured. "Where's my sword?"

"Dunno," Sano said. "All I found was you."

His sword. His sword. He needed it. He felt naked and helpless without it. How horribly careless of him to lose it. Oh, but maybe he hadn't. Maybe he'd - - given it to Yahiko.

He shuddered, pressing his lip between teeth - - thinking himself the proper idiot.

"Hey," Sano got an arm around him. "You're gonna freeze. Come by the fire."

"No," the woman whispered. "What if they come back."

"Then I kick their asses. I'm not shoving him back down there when he's gone to all the trouble to come up."

"I need to go - -" Kenshin insisted, single minded in that goal. "Kaoru - -"

"Will be fine. You're the problem, idiot." Sano levered him up and his legs refused to hold his weight and his vision spun precariously, so Sano ended up half carrying him to the mat by the fire. The room spun off kilter and he had no center, no balance and the lack frightened him.

"Where you gonna go when you can't even walk? You have any of that tea left?"

Sano held a cup up to him, insistent - - like the Sano he'd seen in the dream - - had it been a dream? One hoped so. One fervently hoped so, considering the other things he'd seen there.

"Sano - -" he tried to push the cup away, needing to impress upon Sano the importance of why he had to leave. "- - He took them - - I thought this way - - but he lied. I have to find them."

"Who's he and who did he take and where?"

Too many questions. They made Kenshin's head pound. He lifted a hand to press against his face, but the movement send blades of pain up through his fingers. He picked clumsily at the bandages, distracted and Sano caught his wrists and held them apart.

"Kenshin!" Sano said, a little sharp. A little worried sounding.

Kenshin blinked up at him.

"Who? Who do you have to find?"

The memory came flooding back. The fear. He had forgotten for a moment what he needed to do. Where he needed to go. To Sendai after Winter. Because that's where Winter said he would meet up with the ship carrying Kaoru and Kenji. But he was far off track and he had no notion of how much time he'd lost.

"Kaoru," he said softly. "Kenji."

"Who's Kenji?" Kenshin heard Sano ask, before he slumped forwards, into Sano's arms and the world went away.

Chapter Seven

You knew Kenshin was fucked up when Kaoru was in danger and he couldn't stay awake long enough to spill all the grim details - - much less rush off to save the twit.

So, he'd married her after all. Well, he hadn't said as much in his feverish ramblings, but he'd managed to explain that Kenji was his son and he was too damned honorable by far to have a son by a woman he hadn't taken vows to. Hell, he probably hadn't slept with her until he'd married her.

Perfect. Proved right yet again. Sano thought he might make a damn fine mystic, as adept as he was at telling the future. His current prediction was that he probably wouldn't even get a straight story out of Kenshin until tomorrow, if then. Kenshin still had that high, dry fever which the widow said wasn't good. He'd made a couple of his wounds bleed again when he'd climbed up top. His right hand and his shoulder were seeping red. The widow tore more strips of cloth, soaked them in herbal water and rebandaged all the wounds.

Sano refused to go back down in the pit. And the widow, with her recently battered face, bowed her head and agreed. They had come to her in the night, drunk and grieving, wanting her to pay her respects to Chojiro. She had declined and they'd hurt her for it. They hadn't asked if she'd seen Sano - -much less Kenshin. Maybe they figured they were long gone. Fools should have know better considering the condition they'd left Kenshin in.

So they left him on the mat by the fire, and the widow and her daughter bedded down together against the wall. Sano sat with his side to the warmth, awake and wary, just in case any bandits decided to try the widow's house again before the night was out.

He nodded off, despite his best intentions, before dawn, and woke to Minako moving gingerly around him to put water on to boil. She smiled down at him and he blinked and managed to grin up at her.

"I'm glad he didn't die," she said softly. And Sano blinked again, realizing he was curled around Kenshin's upper body. He disentangled himself carefully, running long fingers through his ruffled hair.

"Your mother outside?"

"Yes. She went to trade some cloth to the old man at the end of the street. He collects herbs and things from the forest - - even has some from the city - - she thought she could get something for his fever and for the infection."

"Oh. Well, that's really nice of her."

"You shamed her - - when you first came back with him."

"Oh - - well - - I didn't really - -"

"She understands that she owes a debt."

Minako had a very solemn look on her face. She was either small for her age, or a very somber, very unchildlike ten year old.

"Yeah. She does," Sano agreed, not willing to argue against anything that would end up helping Kenshin.

They got Kenshin up to take tea and a little rice. He'd drifted out of the moment of almost clarity he'd had last night. He lay limp and only half conscious in Sano's arms while the Widow tried to make him swallow the mashed rice. He was shivering off and on, from the spiking fever and the widow sent Minako for fresh water, which they soaked soft cloth in and pressed against his pale face.

The fever didn't break until the next evening. It was well past dusk when Kenshin woke in a sweat, insisting that he had to go and go now. He was easy enough to dissuade, simply by pressing him back down to the blankets and telling him that they'd go soon enough - - that he just needed to rest a little more.

Just a little more - -

It was dark and Kenshin was hot. He couldn't recall being hot for a very long while. He lay for a while, letting his eyes adjust to the scant light from the embers of a dying fire. His thoughts were difficult to collect, but not impossible.

The sounds of very early morning stirred beyond thin walls. Bird song, the mating call of insects - - the very light patter of rain on the roof. He lay snug against another body, which was part of the reason for the warmth and in the shadows he saw that it was Sanosuke, who had an arm across his chest and a knee over his thigh and his face pressed mostly into his hair.

It was not an uncomfortable place to be, when one let one's self luxuriate in the sheer physical repose of it. It was nice to lie there, drowsing against another redolent body. It was nice to feel the soft, slow tickle of Sano's breath against his hair - - He let his lashes flutter down, almost falling into sleep again - - almost, before other thoughts intruded.

Kaoru. Remiss of him to succumb to the comfort of lazy sleep when Kaoru and Kenji had been taken away from him. He gingerly attempted to extract himself from the tangle of Sano's long limbs. Sano was a heavy sleeper and Kenshin could tread soundlessly over dry leaves in the fall when he put his mind to it. Of course, it was not so easy when one lay in the embrace of the person of whom one wished to avoid notice. Nor when one's hands were dull, aching encumbrances at the end of one's arms. His shoulder complained and his thigh screamed in protest when he rolled to his knees, finally successful in escaping Sano's grasp.

He seemed to recall the echoing thunder of gunfire. The surprisingly painless entry of the bullet through his leg - - the body rocking impact of the one that had gone through his shoulder and taken the world away with it. There were only feverish flashes of imagery of what they'd done afterwards. Only vague recollection of how his hands had come to be like this. Only sibilant whispers of the things Winter had said to him before he had melted out of the nightmare and left only less eloquent, brutish figures in his place.

Sendai. That was where Winter had been going. That was where he'd said Kaoru would be. But for how long? He'd said he'd needed her for other purposes - - but he'd not said where. What if they were gone already? If the trail grew too cold, he'd never pick it up. He couldn't track a body over the sea.

Kenshin shuddered involuntarily, shutting his eyes at a wave of dizziness. He was weak. He felt it in the heaviness of his limbs. He could ignore the pain - - but the weakness presented a problem. He climbed carefully to his feet - - stood there a moment swaying, while the light headedness passed. He looked about the small house warily and drew back a moment in shock at the sight of two other sleeping forms by the wall. The presence of other people had escaped him. He half recalled a woman who Sano had argued with. A woman who had pressed poultices into his wounds and bound them.

He saw what looked to be his hakama on a rustic clothes rack. He limped quietly towards it, realized how badly he was favoring the leg and tried to correct the gait. It would do him no good if the leg healed weak due to his own squeamishness. Best to ignore the pain and let it do its share of the work so muscles did not weaken any more than they already had.

It was - - painful - - belting the hakama over the gi. The fingers of his left hand wouldn't curl and the right was only slightly more mobile.

Thud.

The sound - - feel - image - - of a stake driven through his palm made him jerk in response. He curled his hands close to his chest, bowing his head for a moment, willing the memories away. Willing everything away but the determination to be after his lost family. He looked for the sword - - and recalled that he'd never had it to begin with. Shook his head to clear it of lingering confusion and searched for his sandals. He didn't see any of a size. Only small ones fit for a woman and a child and the soft leather shoes that Sano wore. It wasn't winter - - lack of sandals wouldn't kill him.

"Where are you going?"

He blinked and turned to look at Sano, who'd sat up on the mat by the fire and was staring at him through the shadows.

"Sendai."

"Don't be stupid, Kenshin - -" Sano pushed himself up and Kenshin narrowed his eyes, wary of his approach.

"I have to go."

"You almost died."

He had no time for Sano or his arguments. "Do you know where my sandals are?"

"Who the hell knows. In the woods. In the bandit camp. On the feet of one of the bandits that kicked your ass."

Ah, he'd been right about talking to Sano. He turned his back on him and walked for the door, concentrating on not limping. He felt Sano chase him down. Turned to glare over his shoulder before the hand could fall on his shoulder - -

"Don't try to stop me, Sanosuke."

"Try to stop you? You're gonna fall flat on your face twenty minutes down the road. Why should I try and stop you, dumbass?"

He inclined his head, willing to ignore the insult in favor of Sano not attempting determent. He reached for the door and Sano cursed and laid a hand on him anyway.

"Just wait a damned minute, Kenshin."

"Let go, Sano." Kenshin stood there, tense and angry and waited for Sano to remove his hand.

"The bandits are out there, you know. They're gonna raise all sorts of shit if they see you."

Kenshin lifted a disdainful brow and Sano leaned down and smiled humorlessly.

"Don't be so hasty. They almost killed you, understand? You know what sort of shape you were in when I found you? You feel it, Kenshin? How're your hands? You think you're gonna hold a sword anytime soon?"

He flinched at that - - that voicing of the incessant, treacherous little fear that even a reasonable, rational man didn't want to dwell upon.

"Take your hand off of me, Sanosuke. I won't ask again." He said that very softly and Sano tilted his head, gauging him, then slowly retracted his hand and straightened.

"Fine. Go and get killed. What do I care?"

"How long have I been here?' he needed to know that. Needed to know how much of a headstart Winter had on him.

Sano shrugged, an infuriatingly nonchalant look in his dark eyes. Dealing with Sano when he was like this made his head ache.

"You're not up to this," Sano said. "And you're too damned stubborn to realize it. All you're gonna do is get yourself killed the rest of the way and then who's gonna help Kaoru and the kid?"

That made him pause. That made him turn towards Sano and glare at him like he was an enemy.

"What do you know of it?"

"Just what you told me."

"What did I - -?" He couldn't remember telling Sano anything. He couldn't recall why Sano was here at all when he'd been conspicuously absent for the past four years.

"Not enough. I can put two and two together, though. What? Was somebody after you and they got in the way, isn't that the way it usually goes?"

"No - -" Not this time. He'd hoped never again. Sano was baiting him, he knew that. He just didn't know why.

"Leave me alone, Sano."

Sano laughed. Sano's lip curled and he jammed an arm out of a sudden, slamming a palm hard into Kenshin's shoulder. Either he'd gotten considerably faster over the last few years - - or the wound's were affecting Kenshin's senses. He went down, sprawling in the floor, knocking over a small table laden with spools of yarn. There were soft female cries and he realized that the woman and the little girl had been awake for some time, listening to them.

It hurt. It hurt bad enough to make his vision blacken around the edges, but he still shouldn't have gone down under it. He still should have been able to keep his balance and save himself that indignity.

Sano moved to stand over him, tall and shadowed in the dark house. Angry, maybe. At odds with him now.

"You can't even stand up under a little love tap like that, what're you gonna do when somebody really wants to cave your skull in?"

Kenshin stared at the floor, at Sano's ankles, hair a mask that hid the furious glitter of his eyes. He kicked out with his good leg and smashed his foot into the back of Sano's knee. Sano yelped in surprise and crashed down.

"I don't need you telling me how to fight."

"Yeah?" Sano glared at him from a like vantage, elbows propping himself up off the floor. "Wanna take bets on who can stand up first?"

"Quiet. Quiet." The woman was hovering at the edges, frightened, wide eyed. "They can hear next door."

Kenshin didn't care. Kenshin pushed himself painfully to his feet. His left hand was bleeding. The wetness stained his fingers. He staggered a step, his center so terribly off - - his legs shaking. Sano glared sullenly at him from the floor, not bothering to rise.

"Idiot," Sano murmured when Kenshin slid the door open.

Dawn stained the sky, but it was muted by the mist. There was a narrow, muddy little street outside this house and trees beyond that. There was nothing familiar here. From the rising sun, he knew in which direction north lay, but there seemed no easy path leading that way. How far off the main road he was, he had no slightest notion.

"Hey there, what's going on?" A voice from the house next door. A woman's annoyed tones. A man came out with a lantern and a woman followed, standing just under a thatch awning and out of the rain. A boy followed, fixed his eyes upon Kenshin and let out a shrill cry.

Sano started cursing behind him. The woman and the girl whimpered - - the woman muttering either prayers or curses to her gods. It occurred to him, that in his haste, he might have caused this woman and her daughter trouble.

There were the startled sounds of men awakened by the boy's cries and the boy himself yelling in righteous fury and pelting towards him with a hoe that he'd grabbed from the side of the house. He looked to be about Yahiko's age - - maybe a little younger. He had that same fearless look about him - - that same determination. Kenshin half remembered the Yahiko of the fever dream and lost himself for a moment trying to separate dream from reality, from truth - -

The hoe came down, sharp end first and his reflexes refused to cooperate. He saw it coming - - was painfully aware of the downward arc - - and couldn't make his body move to block it or even avoid it.

Sano's hand shot out past Kenshin's ear and caught the shaft of the tool and promptly smacked the pole back in the boy's face. The kid cried out and crumpled, clutching his bleeding mouth and nose.

"See?" Sano pushed him aside to get past and Kenshin's wounded shoulder hit the door frame painfully. He leaned there, panting while Sano stalked into the misty rain and yelled out into the morning.

"C'mon! C'mon you son's of bitches, I'm waiting for you!"

Kenshin wasn't good for anything at the moment. That was painfully clear. In a little bout of vindictiveness Sano hoped it had hurt like hell when he'd hit the floor - - but him proving a point to a pig headed Kenshin did not include Kenshin getting his skull smashed by any other interested party.

Oh, and there were interested parties lurking about. Bokkai's cry had roused the predators. They must have been in and about the village, sleeping off last night's drink - - harassing the villagers into paying respects to a man that deserved none. A few of them slunk out from the woods. A few from houses that they'd probably intimidated their way into. There were maybe seven of them, not counting Bokkai's bleeding self and Sano grinned with absolute delight at their approach. He'd been dormant too damned long and his skin fairly twitched in anticipation of perpetrating a bit of richly deserved damage.

The first one rushed at him like a lumbering bear. No finesse, no fighting style, just a big man with a rough staff. Sano planted his foot in the big man's balls and watched him go down with a choked cry and a reddening face. These men were little more than common brawlers when you got down to it. Less by far than he'd been when he'd first started fighting in the streets of Tokyo as a kid. He could have taken them then, when all he knew were the crude elements of hit and take a hit and if you didn't go down under it, give another blow of your own.

He laughed grimly while he kicked their asses, because he had a score to settle. His knuckles were bloody, but he didn't feel it. He took a hit in the side from somebody's club and that knocked the wind out of him, but a body learned not to let that stop him or he'd end up dead.

He rubbed bruised ribs afterwards, and glanced back with a triumphant grin to the widow's house. The woman and the girl were hovering in the doorway behind Kenshin, looking terrified - - just ashen faced and scared and that took some of the bluster out of Sano's victory. He hadn't killed these guys and even if he had, there would be more and word would get around that she'd harbored their enemies and she'd pay.

"Fuck," he hissed and stalked back to the house, yanking up Bokkai by the scruff of the neck and shaking the boy out of his bubbling whimpers. "You tell them - - all of them - - that if they start coming back here and harassing these people, that I'm gonna come back and kick all their asses for them. You tell them that."

"You shit head!' Bokkai wheezed at him through a broken nose. "We're not scared of you."

"No? No?" He tossed the kid into the street, jerked him up when he sprawled and herded him towards the trees on the other side. Found the biggest, thickest tree of the lot and focused his chi - - focused his everything into a point at the end of his fist - - and used the futae no kiwami that a renegade Buddhist monk had taught him to shatter it. Not just shatter it, but to pulverize it to the point that fine particles of wood dust exploded outwards and a section of some three foot of trunk just ceased to be. The tree toppled backwards, creating a ripple that spread through the trees behind it. The boy held his hands up to shield his face, wide eyed and suddenly frightened out of his bravado.

Sano turned around and walked back to the widow's house.

"You've killed us," the woman said hollowly. Minako clung to her side. "No matter what you say - - when you go, they will come and take their revenge."

"Then you need to leave." He knew when he said it, how ridiculous a statement that was. If she'd had the means of leaving, she wouldn't have stayed here and endured the hell that she had.

"Go to Tokyo," Kenshin said softly, face lowered, so that all a body could really see of him was nose and mouth. "Find the Kamiya dojo - - there's a garden to tend - - and a cat - - you can stay there. Tell anyone who asks what happened."

She blinked at him owlishly, terrified as much at this suggestion of change as she was of the bandits. "We have everything here - -"

"You have nothing here." Kenshin looked up and his eyes were narrow and angry. "They'll tread over you till they destroy you. Take what you can carry and go to Tokyo. It's not that far a walk. A few days."

She sobbed and clutched her child and nodded helplessly. "Who shall I ask for - -?"

"No one. There's no one there. Tell the students - - if they come - - that Kaoru is away. That she'll be back. Anyone that asks, tell them that I told you to tend the dojo."

"Who are you?"

He laughed softly, humorlessly. "Kenshin. Himura Kenshin."

She nodded and hustled the child inside to dress and gather what they could. Kenshin leaned against the doorframe, not making an effort to move, not looking at Sano.

"Will you see them to Tokyo?" he asked softly. "There are likely more bandits on the road."

"No." Sano stuffed his scuffed hands into his pockets. Kenshin looked up at him, a little surprised at that refusal. "They've dealt with mountain bandits for longer and better than most. I'll see them to the main road. But I'm going with you."

Kenshin drew breath and Sano held up a finger.

"If you even open your mouth and something stupid comes out - - like 'I don't need your help, Sano.' Or, 'It's not your business, Sano.' I swear I'm gonna knock you on your ass again."

Kenshin didn't say it. Kenshin stared out at the collection of battered figures Sano had left in the mud. He hadn't been out in the rain, but his hair was damp, strands of it clinging to his face and neck. Still fevered and flushed, still trembling a little now and then, but trying to hide it.

"You've improved."

Sano shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. "Yeah. Picked up some new techniques here and there."

Kenshin looked over his shoulder at the woman and the child, who were frantically deciding what part of their life to take and what part to leave behind. "You should not have brought me here."

Sano wasn't about to argue that point. He changed to subject.

"I never did find the sakabatou - - you want I should ask some of these guys what happened to it?"

Kenshin sighed. "I didn't have it. I gave it to Yahiko."

Sano gaped at him, aghast. "Oh for crying out loud, can't I leave you alone for a second? Why'd you do a thing like that? What's the shrimp gonna do with it?"

Kenshin didn't answer. He went back inside and slid down against the wall, with his bandaged hands propped on his knees and waited for the widow to pack her belongings. Sano stomped around in the rain, frustrated and hyped. He urged each bandit that regained consciousness to make a hasty retreat from the little village. Kicked the ones that were slow to rouse and ushered them on their way as well.

The widow was finally ready, with a tiny cart piled high with things stuffed in and around the frame of her broken down loom. Smart woman. She had a trade and had no intention of leaving it behind. Sano thought that with a little luck, she and Minako might do all right in Tokyo.

They walked them down the long winding trail to the main road. The widow lead the way, knowing the route better than Sano who'd only traveled it once and Kenshin, who'd never traveled it at all. It was a slow trip down, Sano pulling the cart and the widow and Minako following behind. A body pretended at more care with the cart over ruts and inclines than a body would have normally taken, setting a slower pace than he'd have chosen for himself or maybe even for the woman and the child. Kenshin was the problem here, even though he'd never admit to it and would kill himself trying to pretend he was in full working order. Kenshin was sweating from fever and limping when he didn't have his mind on covering it. He was holding the arm with the shoulder wound tight to his body inside the lapel of his gi. His eyes were on the ground before his feet and not at all on the surrounding wood, which was a dangerous thing for a man with enemies.

It was a damned good thing he had Sano. And it was a damned good thing Sano was such a charitable soul, because Kenshin's appreciation of his presence had so far been somewhat disappointing.

They parted ways with the widow at the main mountain pass, cautioning her not to dally in the trip south. They had the whole of the day to get themselves out of the bandit's territory and into more generous climates. Sano doubted any of the bandits would attempt to chase them down today. Maybe not ever, if they thought the widow had not taken the road to Tokyo alone. He wasn't sure they'd come after them at all, what with their leader dead and their ranks battered. They'd done their duty to the yakuza - - gotten their money - - so what gain to risk another beating for the mere sake of vengeance?

"I think they'll be okay," Sano commented, looking back up the trail one last time at the dwindling forms of Minako and her mother.

Kenshin offered no opinion, walking very carefully and very steadily northward. Sano shifted his pack and lengthened his stride to catch up. He could outdistance Kenshin on a good day, with his longer legs. Today he had to continuously hold himself back.

"So you gonna tell me more about what the hell is going on? Or am I gonna have to guess?"

Kenshin walked a while longer in silence, and finally, when Sano was beginning to growl a little in frustration, he slanted him a weary look.

"It's my fault. I brought him home. I felt there was something - - odd - - about him, but I ignored the feeling."

"Well, your instincts are usually pretty good - - he was a foreigner?"

A nod. "An Englishman - - "

So Sano got the tale. In slow, careful bits and pieces, as if Kenshin were considering each bit as he related it. Reexamining the details as if he might have missed some important clue while he was living it.

Kenshin had to rest an hour down the road, though it galled him. They drained the water jug the widow had given them and Sano refilled it from a mountain spring off from the road. They had packages of supplies from the widow's stock, which Sano figured would make quite a few good meals along the road. He had a rolled blanket in his pack that he hadn't had before and a metal pan for cooking. Kenshin had a pair of oversize sandals that had belonged to her late husband. She'd been generous with her things. Just as well that the bandits didn't get what she'd left behind, or the family next door.

"You know, it's not a crime for you to admit to being a little weak," Sano complained of Kenshin when the smaller man stumbled on the road. Kenshin glared at him, and pretended he hadn't heard.

"You got holes in your body," Sano said. "They fucked you over but good, Kenshin - - a little rest is only gonna do you good."

"I can't."

"Oh. Right. I forgot. You're too stubborn to take care for yourself. You'd rather ignore - -"

"Shut up, Sano. You make my head ache." Very quietly said. Very polite tone, words not withstanding.

"No, that's the fever, idiot."

How Kenshin did it was beyond Sano. How he walked that road only a few scant days after lingering at death's door.

They stopped with the full onset of night and Sano got out the supplies for supper. Kenshin sat down against a tree and was asleep practically as soon as he stretched his legs out.

"Idiot," Sano muttered and threw the blanket over him. He found relatively dry tender and managed a small fire. Wrapped sweet potatoes in leaves and set them at the outskirts of the flames to roast and boiled water for tea. The widow had given them herbs for Kenshin's wounds. Herbs for fever to put in the tea. Fresh bandages and directions on what to do for infection. He thought he remembered well enough. Kenshin would know, now that he was himself again.

It was getting damned cold and Sano sat close to the fire, feeding it sticks now and again, poking at the potatoes and wishing he were better at soup. He'd give it a try tomorrow. Throw a bit of dried fish in and some bits of dried vegetable. He could only muck it up so badly. He prodded Kenshin when the potatoes were soft and harassed him into eating his portion. Kenshin's appetite was dirt poor. He got down a measly half of his potato and Sano finished the rest. He drank all of the tea though and finished off what was in the pan. Then sat there clutching the blanket around him, shivering a little.

"She said to check your wounds. Said they'd have to be cleaned and repacked if there was infection."

Kenshin shrugged, not arguing the necessity. He let Sano take his hands and clumsily unwrap the stained bandages.

The right one was healing well, but Kenshin still winced and went a little pale seeing the damage. He tried to close his fingers involuntarily and could only bend them about half way before he made a pained sound and stopped. He looked about as stricken as Sano had ever seen him with that failure. Shocked and frightened by the shadow of being maimed.

"Just don't fuck around with the wounds," Sano said. "You don't give them time to heal right - - then you will be sorry. Believe me, I know. It took my hand twice as long to heal 'cause I wouldn't let it rest."

"Sano - - I had dreams - - nightmares of them doing - - this - - but it wasn't real. My hands - -"

"What else do you remember?" Sano asked it cautiously, carefully. Kenshin shook his head and held his hand close. Sano couldn't see his eyes to see what he was thinking - - whether there was pain there, or horror or simple confusion. He really preferred the latter. He'd really rather Kenshin didn't remember the other crimes they'd committed against him.

"It's okay. Never mind. Let me see the other one."

They sat there, shoulder to shoulder afterwards, with their feet out towards the fire and the shared warmth of the blanket.

"We should set watch," Kenshin said. "There are still bandits all along these mountain roads."

"Sure," Sano agreed. "I'll take first. I'll wake you when it's your turn."

Kenshin slanted him a look, disbelieving. "You'll go to sleep."

"No I won't. You think I survived traveling through half of China without keeping an eye out at night?"

"You traveled half of China?" Kenshin blinked at him with tired amazement.

"Yeah. Told you I was gonna see the world. Let me tell you about the winter's in Mongolia - - you think you've seen snow here in Japan - -"

Kenshin nodded off somewhere in the midst of the retelling of Sano's first winter on the mainland, but that was okay, Sano figured. They had all the way to Sendai for him to recount his adventures. What good were adventures after all, if you couldn't share them with friends.

Sano was asleep. Kenshin woke to the soft sound of his snoring and warm, dappled sunlight on his face. They had slid down next to the tree during the night, with himself lying close against Sano's side, his face pressed against Sano's shoulder and Sano's arm curled under his neck. He was stiff and sore and moving seemed a daunting prospect. The fact that it was dry and sunny beyond the canopy of leaves made it harder still. His hands were dull aches at the end of his arms. The bullet wounds were nothing - - things he could ignore. Things that would heal and he'd be no worse for wear - - but his hands - - the thought of being crippled in such a way terrified him. He might have given Yahiko the sword - - but he'd never, ever imagined himself not being able to take it up again if he needed. That had not been part of the plan. He pressed his forehead into Sano's warmth and tried to quell the trembling.

"Sano," he murmured, trying to find another train of thought. Trying to focus on Kaoru and Kenji and the path that led to them. "Sano, wake up."

Sano snorted and blinked, yawning mightily.

"Wha' time is it?"

"Morning," Kenshin told him. "You fell asleep."

"No, I didn't." Sano blinked again, and Kenshin could see the befuddlement of sleep chased away by the clarity of awareness.

"Shit. I did. Hey - -" Sano shifted a little and dragged his arm out from under Kenshin, blushing pink and distancing himself just a bit. "Uh - sorry. Didn't mean to crowd."

Kenshin shrugged, sharing heat with Sano was no embarrassment. Sano was - - well, Sano, and a body just didn't feel inclined to self-consciousness with him. And when a body was sick and cold with fever chills - - he was comfortable.

Sano insisted on breakfast. Kenshin would have foregone it, but Sano looked aghast at the prospect of ignoring perfectly good food since they had it. They compromised and made it quick. Warm tea felt good going down and it was a luxury of the road that Kenshin wasn't used to.

So they took to the road that snaked down the north side of the particular mountain they'd been crossing on full bellies. Sano was happy. Sano talked about the things he'd done on the mainland. He pulled a few things out of his pack that he'd picked up along the way. The conversation lulled when it began raining, and they walked huddled and miserable through the downpour. The cold damp made Kenshin's hands ache horribly, made his muscles groan in protest and his legs leaden and weak. Sano suggested stopping and waiting the weather out, but he refused, and Sano bitched and complained as he stomped through the mud next to him.

They came to a swaying wooden bridge spanning a deep chasm. Kenshin looked down once and a vertigo that he'd never experienced hit him so hard it made the world reel. Sano put a hand on his shoulder and asked if he were okay and he nodded, gluing his eyes forward for the rest of the way. The dizziness persisted though, even back on solid ground. Sano's speech became a distant drone - - not quite comprehensible.

He knew he was in trouble when he saw the ghostly shapes of armed horsemen cross the road, swords and imported American guns in their hands. There was no sound. No stirring of crusted mud in the road and no disturbance of the trees and brush at the side of the trail into which they rode. Sano never blinked an eye.

There was blood on the path further up - - he couldn't recall how many strides from the place where the troop had passed. Blood leaking from the woods - -

"Sano - -" Kenshin said softly. His voice was distant, overpowered by the pounding of blood in his ears. He wasn't sure if Sano had heard.

A man came careening out of the woods, mouth open in a soundless scream, running straight at them as if he meant them harm. Kenshin grabbed for a sword that wasn't there - - miscalculated in the placement of his feet from that lack - - from the shock of pain from clenched fingers - - and staggered into Sano. He thought, as he fell, that the man's throat had been neatly sliced and that the blood that coated the road had run from that wound. But he wasn't sure, for the figure faded as quickly as it had appeared.

Kenshin's sight went with it.