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.

3. Chapter 3

Chapter Eight

Of course Kenshin would chose the most miserable portion of the day for his strength to give out. It had been sunny most of the morning, though cool and only started raining again for the last few miles of road. One moment they were walking, Sano reining in his strides to let Kenshin keep up - - and the next Kenshin was reeling into his shoulder, rebounding and going down to his knees in the mud. He didn't even put a hand out to stop his fall, just sort of toppled onto the road and lay there with wet hair streaming over his face and lashes a dark, fluttering slash over his cheeks.

"Fuck. Kenshin, wake up." Sano turned him over and wiped hair out of his face. Cool air and cooler rain not withstanding, Kenshin was warm to the touch, which meant the damned fever, which had been ever present since they'd left the Widow's house, had come back with a vengeance to bite him on the ass.

Idiot.

He slapped him not ungently, irritated and no small bit scared. He was not equipped to deal with a serious relapse. Kenshin lifted a hand, murmured something apologetic and tried to fend off a second blow.

"Well, okay," Sano said, relieved, but Kenshin's head lolled again, maybe not quite unconscious, but not functional either. He was trembling.

"Okay. Okay." Getting out of the middle of the road was essential. Sano figured that was as good a start as any. He got an arm under Kenshin's shoulder and heaved him up; took a moment to get a grip on the sack of supplies and Kenshin's unhelpful self before staggering down the road. That was ungainly at best. A body only had two hands. Easier, though less dignified, to haul Kenshin's not considerable weight over a shoulder, which would only take one hand to steady.

Kenshin protested that blearily, head down and ass up over Sano's shoulder, but he was too limp for more than incoherent vocal complaints.

"Sorry, it was either you or the food the other way - - and I'm getting hungry, so the food probably would have won out."

He was figuring on finding the shelter of some big tree or a rock ledge to wait out the rain and let Kenshin catch his breath. But the gusting wind had blown a clump of bramble away from a stone marker indicating an otherwise mostly hidden trail leading off the road. The markings indicated a Buddhist temple and Sano figured his luck was looking up.

He trudged up the trail, shaking dripping hair out of his eyes that he couldn't reach with his occupied hands. At the end of the path was a set of steps leading up to a crumbled stone arch and beyond that the wooden facade of a temple. It was overgrown to a great degree, exhibiting none of the fastidious natural landscaping prominent of most temples and shrines. There was a feeling of not so much serenity about the place as - - emptiness. It might very well have been abandoned years ago, what with the Meiji dictates against Buddhism.

Sano moved in under the drooping front stoop, just beyond a set of listing wooden doors and called. "Hello. Anybody here?"

His voice whistled away on the wind, unanswered.

"Well, I guess it's just you and me," he muttered aloud and kicked in one of the doors. It rocked off its hinges, wood brittle from age or termites. He winced, not meaning to destroy it, just wanting in out of the rain.

He stepped inside to dank shadows and stale air. For a moment almost he thought he saw the remnants of destruction - - of a battle waged here in this most peaceful of places - - then the shadows rearranged themselves into simple disuse and decay. It was an abandoned temple.

"You are not welcome here."

Sano almost yelped in shock at the voice that whispered out at him from the dark, his mind imagining any manner of ghostly yurei, Oni or mountain demons taken up residence here. He dropped his sack and almost spilled Kenshin, whirling about to stare wide eyed into the shadows.

It wasn't a ghost. It was a monk. A frowning, unhappy seeming monk who stood at the entrance to the inner sanctum.

"Scare a body to death, will you?" Sano snapped.

"You're not welcome here."

Sano ran a free hand through his hair, wiping wet strands away from his eyes. In his experience - - with a very few limited exceptions - - Buddhist monks were not usually so sour faced and uncharitable.

"It's raining out there and my friend is sick - - wounded. We need a little shelter."

"Find it elsewhere."

Sano felt the pressure inside his head built. He narrowed his eyes and glared. "The hell - - What kind of monk are you?"

"Calm. You are welcome here." Another voice came from the shadows and a second monk moved into the antechamber. This one was kind of face and smiling sadly as he walked towards Sano.

"Brother Hideki speaks rashly. He means it not. Let us help you."

Sano eyed him warily, not quite certain he trusted this new monk any more than he did the discourteous first one. He wasn't sure he wanted to hand Kenshin down when the man reached for him. But he couldn't very well stand there all day with him slung over his shoulder - - and he did need help. "Okay - -"

"This way - -" the monk said, after taking a cursory look at Kenshin's flushed face and the dirty stained bandages on his hands. He led Sano down a painfully narrow dark hall to a small cell with bare wooden floors, bare wooden walls and only one small squat table against the wall. The monk unrolled a weathered tatami mat and gestured for Sano to put Kenshin down upon it. The monk then brought a pair of ragged, musty smelling old robes and urged Sano to rid himself and Kenshin of the rain soaked clothing they were wearing.

Kenshin came awake in the midst of that and batted Sano away, glaring indignantly at the attempt to rid him of his gi.

"You're wet." Sano sat back on his heels, the monk's robe scratchy on his skin and stretched tight across his broad shoulders. Kenshin blinked at him and Sano saw the thought processes as they registered behind his eyes. Recognition, understanding of the situation. Wary acceptance as he attempted to pull the gi off himself and couldn't quite get his stiff fingers to accomplish the task.

"Let me," Sano suggested and got a testy glare for that mercy as well. A sick Kenshin on a mission was not, he was finding out, a generally agreeable one.

"I can do it. Why are we here?"

"Because you fell down, idiot."

Sano let Kenshin struggle out of the gi and tossed the wet thing in the corner with the hakama that Sano had already taken from him. He handed him the robe and watched him fight with it.

"I'm wasting time," Kenshin murmured, finally victorious over the robe, but it was an exhausting victory and he collapsed back onto the threadbare mat afterwards, breathing hard, staring sightlessly at the dim ceiling.

"You're pushing it and your body's not up to it." It felt so nice to be the voice of reason. Sano so seldom took that role. "Listen, it's raining hard, it's late. Just let it go for tonight. Tomorrow we'll see about getting back on the road again."

The monk came back before Kenshin could gather the energy to argue that point. He had a tray with a pot of steaming water, a crock of powdered green tea and a pair of cups. He folded to his knees as gracefully as any geisha and poured water, then spooned exact amounts of the powdered tea into the cups.

"Good for the soul and the body." He smiled softly. A soft man, with a soft face and a soft demeanor.

Sano helped Kenshin up to sit against the wall, and handed him a warm cup. Kenshin held it awkwardly between both injured hands, and still the liquid trembled from the tremors in his arms. Sano sipped his own tea, shutting his eyes at the influx of warmth.

"This place is in bad shape," he commented. "You two the only ones here?"

"No. There are Kanbe and Jotaro, Masakado and Noboru and Tadahisa. We are all here."

"And you're - - ?"

The monk smiled again, still soft and sad. "I am Tokaji."

"You guys have some bad luck when the Meiji came down on the following of Buddha?"

"Luck is a thing we make for ourselves. It is an illusion."

Sano rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever. You'd just think with what - - seven of you, that this place would be in a little better shape, is all. But I guess you're all too busy contemplating shit to do a little housekeeping."

Tokaji smiled and refilled Sano's cup with water and tea. He offered more to Kenshin, but Kenshin refused, looking like he was about to slide down the wall into a heap on the mat at any minute. The monk carefully took Kenshin's cup from him, sitting on the floor by the head of the mat.

"You should sleep. Rest is the best thing for the ills that ail you."

Kenshin stared at the monk, as if seeing him for the first time. He looked to Sano, wary question in his eyes.

"Just go to sleep. We're in a Buddhist temple, its not like they're gonna poison our tea."

Kenshin's eyes widened a little and he glanced down to the dregs of tea left in his own cup by the mat. Sano sighed, frustrated and tired.

"I'll be right here. And I even promise to stay awake this time, ' kay?"

"You never stay awake," Kenshin said softly.

Sano sniffed and waved towards the mat. "Just sleep."

Sano would have fallen asleep if he hadn't forced himself up and out of the quiet peace of the musty little cube. Kenshin was out, curled on his side on the thin tatami mat, bandaged hands drawn up to his chest. Lying down next to him was just a little too tempting for Sano's peace of mind. A body could get dangerously used to such a simple thing as warm flesh and soft hair and having something to press against at night - - a body could feel guilty over the itch between his legs in the early mornings, pressed against said warm flesh and said soft hair - - not that the itch didn't come on a regular basis and was subsequently quenched - - it was just - - well he ought to be thinking of breasts and curving hips and womanly things while he was about it. Ought to be remembering that girl in Nanking who could do the most amazing things with her mouth. Or the little half Indian, half Chinese whore whom he'd helped out with a certain problem in Hong Kong and who had repaid him with admirable gusto afterwards. A very nice girl, who he'd dreamed about for long lonely nights after.

They were appropriate material for his dreams to explore in those moments just before fully wakening - - Kenshin was not. Kenshin was most adamantly not! And though he blushed thinking about it, damned if he hadn't waken the past few mornings with red hair fluttering about his subconscious instead of shiny black. A body could get irritated with Kenshin for that sibilant invasion.

So Sano stalked out into the run down temple in his borrowed robe, two sizes too small. There wasn't a whole lot to it, the shrine out front where the public could come and meditate. A series of cubicles off to the back where the monk's stayed. A covered garden walkway that led through over grown grounds. It hadn't been a rich temple to begin with - - it was falling down now. He figured that somebody had to come up here occasionally to warrant seven monks. Or maybe they were die hard Buddhists who thrived on the isolation and wanted nothing more than time and space to contemplate the meaning of - - everything. Of whatever it was that they believed the states of their souls depended upon. Sano never had been much for meditation. Never had reflected much on the simple essence of nature. It was. He was. End of story.

He stood under the leaking roof of the walk, staring at the gray afternoon, at the sodden forest flanking the temple, at a rain that didn't seem to want to stop once it had started. It had been a dry summer, he'd been told. He'd seen the evidence in stunted crops on the way from Niigata. With the advent of fall the weather seemed determined to make up for the lack. He saw the whispering movement of a figure in the rain. Sloped shoulders and bald head of a monk, gliding through the rain with silent steps. Almost he called out, but really, what did he have to say to a monk? He looked down at his hands, at knuckles scarred from too many impacts and figured that the most talkative monk he'd ever met was Anji and that wasn't saying much. Of course, Anji hadn't been a monk anymore when Sano had met him - - he'd been on a mission of vengeance - - or retribution against the Meiji government who'd taken everything away from him. Sano figured he was still paying penance for that in the prison they'd put him in.

He looked back up and the monk he'd seen walking the garden path was gone. Just vanished into the rain or the forest. He sighed and walked back into the temple, back to the main shrine where he'd dropped his pack. Tokaji had provided tea, but not food and a body had to figure with this place looking as it did, that they had damned little to spare.

"Hey!" he called out to a fleeting figure, but the monk melted into the shadows of the back hall. Sano ground his teeth and stalked into the meditation chamber, looking for his sack, figuring there'd be trouble if it had mysteriously disappeared. One didn't generally equate monks with thieves - -but, these particular monks were damned eerie with their broken down temple and their ghostly movements. But the pack was where he'd dropped it and fully intact. It was only a matter of finding a place to prepare the food.

"Hey - - Tokaji. You around here?" he called out. His voice echoed off the walls.

Tokaji didn't answer. Sano huffed in annoyance, shouldered the damp pack and padded towards the back hall towards the cell where he'd left Kenshin. A simple fire to boil a handful of rice wasn't such a horrible thing to ask. It wasn't like he wanted to prepare a feast. Damned unsociable monks.

Sano's stomach growled ominously. He counted the hours since breakfast and groused over the fact that it had been so sparse, Kenshin being in the damned irrational hurry that he was in. It was one thing to want to follow after Kaoru as fast as possible and quite another to deprive a body of vital food in the process. He paused in his mental reproach, attention caught by a flash of movement behind him.

He spun, hairs on the back of his neck standing up, staring into the shadows, wishing one of the damn monks that lurked about this place would think to light lanterns. He'd thought - - he'd damned well thought - - he'd seen the glitter of a blade. But when he squinted into the shadows at the mouth of the shrine there was nothing. He walked back that way, warily, not distrusting his senses so much to shrug it off. There was no one in the shrine and no noise of anyone hastily leaving it. He'd have heard as loudly as the floor complained under his own passing. No one and nothing save the dust and the cobwebs and the accumulated leaves and debris gathered in the corners and around the base of the wooden statue of Buddha that sat nestled within its niche at the back of the main shrine.

Sano cursed, uneasy now. He put a hand on the wall by the hall and it came away wet with rainwater leaking down from the roof. He looked at it, and for a moment, with his nerves razor thin as they were, the water seemed dark as blood, staining his hand. He widened his eyes, looking at the wall, but all he could see was a darker stain of dampness in the shadows. No color pierced the veil. He wiped his hand on the pale brown of the borrowed robe and the cloth absorbed the wetness with no sign of stain.

Water then. Simple water and he was loosing his mind. Fine. He disliked this place. He disliked its inhabitants. Storm or no, he wished Kenshin were in a state to walk, for he'd just as well quit this temple and find a nice place off the road to shelter.

Kenshin came awake, blinking grit from his eyes, sensing movement in the shadows surrounding him. He rolled to his side, disoriented, muscles aching bad enough to make him groan, and whispered Sano's name. Sano didn't answer. Sano wasn't here, unless Sano was asleep in the corner - - which was possible, but no - -there was no sound of soft snoring, no sense of Sano presence close by.

He shook hair out of his eyes and peered into the shadows, vision slowly adjusting to the dark. There was a little grated window far up on the wall that let in a few weak rays of gray light. Not enough, though, to penetrate the darkness. He thought there was a figure there, standing in the deepest shadow. Silent. Staring. Not even betraying itself by the scant sound of breath.

Who are you? What do you want? Where is this? The questions hovered on his lips, unasked.

"There's blood on your hands." A low voice drifted out of the shadows. A bitter voice. Kenshin almost looked down at his hands to see - - but survival instinct warned against taking his eyes from the man in the shadows.

"It's stains on the bandages," he said softly, getting an elbow under him. It was hard. His head was pounding and thick, his limbs unstable.

"You're steeped in it." Accusation.

Kenshin drew breath, wide eyed, wishing Sano hadn't left him, because he wasn't certain it was a man's shape at all in the corner and if it were fever that gave him such a hallucination, it would have been nice to ask a saner head what they saw.

"Who are - -?"

"Leave this place. You disturb the peace."

"Son of a bitch - -" That came from down the hall outside, along with the creaking of the floorboards under heavy footfalls, echoing up the corridor and overpowering the soft condemnation from within the small room. Kenshin's gaze swung to the gaping door, back again to the corner where the shadows still lurked. Sano stalked in, dropping his drawstring sack on the floor, looking disgruntled and disturbed.

"Damned monks are starting to piss me off." Sano declared, seeing him awake.

"Sano," Kenshin asked softly. "Is there someone in the corner?"

Sano's eyes widened and he whirled, staring hard at each corner in turn. He frowned and looked back to Kenshin skeptically, one dark brow arched in question.

"Why?"

"I thought - - perhaps I was dreaming." He had to have been, for no person, no matter how deft of foot, could have slipped through that door past his notice.

"Maybe it's hunger," Sano suggested, flopping down on the mat next to him. He dragged the sack over and dug through its contents.

"Sano, where is this?"

"Old Buddhist temple off the road. Place is about to fall apart. Monks are about as friendly as snakes. Well, 'cept for the one. But, anyway, you hungry?"

He was, a little. But it was a hollow sort of hungry and he didn't think he could stomach much food.

"Where?" He could not recall how far up the road they'd gotten. He could remember very little of the walk after the bridge. He wondered if Sano had gotten them off track, for he didn't know of any Buddhist temples in operation along the portion of road he thought they ought to have been traveling. Shrines yes. A few small, untended ones. More Shinto ones than Buddhist, by far.

Sano shrugged, finding something edible within the sack and taking a bite out of it. "I dunno. Up a path. Trees, rocks, same old, same old."

Thunder rumbled outside and the walls trembled. Sano hunched his shoulders a little, looking sullen and no little bit wary.

"What's wrong?" Kenshin didn't remember him being spooked by the sound of thunder.

"Nothing. Why are you awake? I told you to go to sleep."

Kenshin lifted a brow at that bit of bossiness, but took no offense. Sano was curt when he was nervous and he was clearly strung taught now.

"I thought I heard something - - "

"Really?" Sano turned interested eyes his way.

"It was nothing. There was no one. My - - imagination." He hesitated saying that because he'd never been prone to fever dreams before. Never been prone to anything but the cold, hard reality that his senses shared with him.

"What'd you think you heard?"

"A voice. It said to leave this place. That I disturbed the peace here."

"Hunn. Sounds like that snitty monk Hideki. Said the same to me when we first got here."

Kenshin curled the fingers of his right hand, felt the ache in his palm, the stretching of a scab trying to form. Imagined the hole driven through from one side to the other and for a moment lost himself in that spiraling pit of horror that was born of the fear of being permanently maimed.

"Kenshin," Sano was crouched over him, his long fingers wrapped around Kenshin's wrists, holding his hands between them. "Don't pick at the bandages - - okay?"

He hadn't realized he had. Had missed entirely Sano moving to stop him. Maybe he was having hallucinations. Distressful that not only was his body betraying him, but his senses as well.

Sano offered him food, but it was stale and unappealing so he declined. Sano shrugged and consumed the remainder, not so picky.

There was a monk in the doorway that had made no sound coming down the creaking hall. Kenshin almost recalled his face. He recalled the pouring of tea. He blinked, wide eyed at the monk, and Sano, alerted by his gaze, turned and surveyed the visitor.

"I was just looking for one of you guys," Sano complained. "You have a kitchen around here? And that Hideki guy was in here bothering my friend."

Sano's curtness could be often appalling. Kenshin shook his head, trying to soothe over offense. "No. Perhaps not. I was dreaming - - and only thought I heard a voice. Your hospitality is generous, and we do not wish to abuse it."

He gave Sano a sidelong look, which Sano ignored. The monk smiled and glided into the room. "We have little enough to offer in the way of hospitality. We are a poor temple. But there is a hearth in the back, where you may light a fire and prepare food, if you wish. We have none to offer. I'm sorry."

Sano shrugged, gathering up his sack, very much interested in food and having very little care over abandoning Kenshin. Kenshin, woozy of head, with the heat in his body making his limbs trembly and weak, would have preferred Sano's company - - if only to chase away discomforting hallucinations, but there was little arguing with Sano's rumbling stomach. It often ruled Sano's good sense.

"You gonna be okay?" Sano thought to ask over his shoulder in the process of leaving.

"Probably," Kenshin sighed and lay down, wishing the monk would take himself off as well, for the utter quiet of his presence was unsettling. Even the rustle of his robes was muted.

"I will tend these, if you'd like." The monk's fingers ghosted out and touched the back of one bandaged hand. Kenshin pulled the hand a little closer to his body, almost refusing, but good sense told him that dirty wounds would soon be infected ones. He nodded, shutting his eyes for a moment to settle the swimming of his vision.

Perhaps it was longer by far than a moment, for when he opened them next, at the sensation of cool, gentle hands lifting his wrist, the monk had a tray next to him with a basin of warm water and strips of clean cloth. He unwound Sano's clumsy wrapping and furrowed his brows at the crusted scabs, the red edges of inflammation and the blaring discoloration of bruising that seeped half way up Kenshin's fingers and down into the fleshy part of his palm. Kenshin turned his own eyes away after a brief glance, stomach fluttering nauseatingly. The monk dipped his hand in the basin and let the water wash away the old poultice and the dirt.

It was a silent tending, and Kenshin flinched more than once as puss was pressed out of inflamed spots and herbal remedy packed in. The monk moved to the other hand and performed the same ritual, then he unerringly found the gunshots wounds and cleaned and changed their dressings. He'd been there, Kenshin thought, hazily, when Sano had tried to help him with the removal of cold, wet clothing.

"They must be painful, these wounds." The monk finally broke his silence. Kenshin had almost forgotten he was there, comfortable in the aftermath of the monk's tender care.

"Humh," he agreed, slitting his eyes open.

"Yet you travel with them, to the point of exhaustion."

"Pain can be ignored. Exhaustion - -" he shrugged, half smiling. " - - that is not so easy to avoid."

"Flesh will knit if you let it. You have a great reservoir of will that sustains you - - " the monk smiled sagely and laid fingertips to Kenshin's chest. "- - You radiate with it. Such strength requires great discipline."

Kenshin watched the monk warily. The monk turned his head and looked away, gazing blindly into the shadows, silent as monks tended to be.

"What temple is this?" Kenshin was not uncomfortable with long silences, he preferred them, truth be told, over aimless chatter, but something about the quiet in this place disturbed him. So he asked the question he'd asked Sano and hoped for a better answer.

"An old one."

Hardly more informative than Sano.

"Ahhh," he said slowly. "What township or village is closest?"

"Kuroiso is a day's walk to the north."

Kenshin tried to wrap his sluggish mind around that. To put that distance in perspective to where they might be on the road. He'd walked this road before, he ought to recall a temple.

"People would come from Kuroiso and Otawara and even Yaita province to this temple. We had powerful benefactors - -"

"And then the revolution and the new Meiji government, who had little tolerance for Zen Buddhism when they wanted Shinto as the new state religion." Kenshin finished for him when the monk trailed off.

The monk's mouth twitched a little in a smile. "Little tolerance at all.

Kenshin chewed at his lip, half remembering tales of a Buddhist temple that had blithely ignored the warning of a fledgling Meiji government, its monks serene in their isolation from worldly things, confident in their state of nirvana - -

- - those first few years after the revolution had been violent and ripe with strife with the changing of the Tokugawa to the Meiji.

"Not long after the Tokugawa had fallen, there was a temple," Kenshin said softly. "That gave safe harbor to the family of a Tokugawa lord."

"I remember the story," the monk said softly.

"They were betrayed by a monk of their own order to the Meiji forces and retribution was sought."

"Yes. That too."

"Is this that temple?"

The monk inclined his bald head.

Kenshin felt a little dash of cold unease whisper through him. A little stab of malice that bled in from the very air. The monk looked up, frowning, as if he too felt the same thing.

"You came here - - to this temple - - afterwards?" One had to hope such was the case. He was not prone to believing in old wives tales and ghost stories. He was not Sano - -

Sano found the kitchen on his own. It wasn't much of a kitchen, but what did a body really expect of a bunch of monks who didn't eat most of the decent foods in the world because they were afraid they'd pollute their flesh or because if the food tasted too good, then they were being indulgent and you couldn't damn well have that.

Sano liked indulgence. He loved good food. He had no problem wallowing in earthly pleasures. He'd give a great deal for a good bottle of sake right about now. A nice long drunk would be nice. Maybe he could even get Kenshin hammered and get him to let up on his frantic chase after Kaoru for a little bit. Not that Sano wanted him to loose the trail - - well what trail there was after so many days - - and it wasn't like it was just Kaoru involved, there was a kid - - but hated to see Kenshin run himself into the ground in the process. Kaoru, twit that she was, wasn't incapable of taking care for herself. It was just that the enemies they'd usually had to deal with back before Kenshin had gone all domestic, had been the Battousai's enemies and a normal girl - - even a girl who was a master of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu - - well, it was hard to stand up to those sorts of men. Sano was rightly worried for her, he was worried for a kid he'd never met, but mostly he was worried that Kenshin would kill himself before he had the chance to do anything about it.

Sano got the fire started in a hearth that looked as cold as death and used his own pot to boil rice. He sucked at it, of course. It stuck to the bottom of the pan and scorched, and what was edible on top had that smoky flavor and was gooey to boot. He put a portion in a little wooden bowl to take to Kenshin and ate the rest of what was edible himself, sitting cross legged by the hearth, staring out the open doorway at the rain. It was well into evening now and the rain showed itself as the occasional silver streak in the darkness. He found an old lantern, its sides long since torn out by time or rodents, but the wick still there and a little bit of wax. The light guided him back through the shadowy temple with his offering of burnt, soggy rice. Kenshin was half asleep when he reached the little room. He'd put himself in a corner, with his back to the wall, his head resting on arms crossed atop updrawn knees. He was dressed in his own clothing, which couldn't have been completely dry after only a handful of hours here. He stirred when Sano walked in with the flickering light.

"We should leave here," he said softly, as soon as Sano crossed the thresh hold.

"What? It's the middle of the night." Sano was not so quiet in his reply. Kenshin winced, eyes shadowed in the dark.

"Why?" Sano demanded, when Kenshin didn't answer immediately.

"We shouldn't be here."

"What'd the monks tell you that?" Sano clenched his fists, damned and determined to hunt that bastard Hideki down and teach him some manners.

"Not - - in so many words." Kenshin looked stricken, a little wide eyed when he lifted his head to look up at Sano. "Its just a feeling. There's no rest in this place. Not for us."

"Well that's just fucking great. You wanna tromp back out in the rain because you've got a bad feeling? In a Buddhist temple?" He really did have the urge to grab hold of Kenshin's gi and shake sense into him.

"Sano - - can't you feel it?" It was an earnest question. Sano narrowed his eyes at it suspiciously.

"Feel what?"

"Cold. The air is cold and it goes beyond mountain air."

"Yeah, well - - fall's coming early."

"There were deaths here Sano. Wrongful deaths - - they don't want us here."

Sano stood there, blinking - - quite suddenly feeling the cool air on his skin. Quite suddenly imagining a presence behind him that was unseen and unheard. Kenshin's talk of unjust deaths and ill-will made the hair on the back of his arms stand up.

"Oh for shit's sake, what are you saying? You saying this place is haunted? You saying the monks here are living with the ghosts of the murdered?"

"No." Kenshin pushed himself up with a soft grunt and stood there with his back against the wall, looking serious and no little bit hesitant.

"Then what?" Sano yelled, flinging his arms out. The flame flickered, the rice went tumbling out of the bowl.

"Sano, you have blood on your robe."

Sano looked down and gaped at the smear on the front of the borrowed robe. It wasn't old blood, it was new and he recalled with vivid clarity wiping his hand on the spot to rid it of seeping rainwater.

"Fuck," he cried and fumbled with the belt, wanting out of the thing and back into his own clothes, damp or not.

Kenshin averted his eyes a little at Sano's nudity, not that anything impressive was showing, what with the cold that he now acutely felt and the apprehension that Kenshin had begun. He tied his belt around his loose pants and shrugged on his jacket.

"There's blood on the wall there, as well." Kenshin pointed out, and Sano saw well enough a very old, browned splatter of blood against the wall.

He felt himself pale. Felt the blood drain from his face. He had a healthy belief in ghosts and ghostly things. And the ghosts of murdered spirits were the worst of all. He recalled the flash of the sword that he'd seen from the corner of his eye - - what he'd thought might have been a trick of the light or a bit of reflected lightening - - perhaps it wasn't after all. Perhaps it had been the reincarnation of a murder.

"You're saying this place is haunted?" He demanded, loud in his upset over the possibility.

"I didn't say that - - exactly." Kenshin tried to worm his way out of the fact that he'd proposed just that. "I just said that there was bad karma here and we ought to go."

"Nonononono, that is not what you were getting at. Don't even try and tell me that is not what you were getting at. The walls were bleeding. Do you understand? And I saw this monk in the rain and it was like he was floating and I swear I could see the forest through him - - " He was certain that he had, now that he thought about it.

"Sano, please calm down." Kenshin had his hands up, trying to placate.

Sano shook a finger at him. "You calm down!"

"I am calm, Sano."

Sano glared.

Kenshin sighed, gently brushing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. "I just think that something very bad happened here and that it is no good place to spend the night. Places can be - - ominous - - without being haunted."

"You're lying." Sano could hear it in his voice. That patient attempt to alleviate Sano's fears. "You suck at lying."

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are. You think there are ghosts and you're just not saying because you think I'll get upset. Do you think I'm a girl or something to jump at bumps in the night?"

"No - -"

"Do you think I'm scared of ghosts?"

"Sano - - you're shouting."

"All right. All right." Sano swept up his sack and waved a hand at the door, inviting Kenshin to use it before him. "You wanted to go out into the rain. That's fine. I'll go. But not because I'm scared of ghosts. Understand?"

Kenshin pushed himself off from the wall, stood there a moment, breathing, trying to get his balance or his strength. He inclined his head, not willing to argue over what Sano was afraid of and what he was not.

"Where'd that one monk - - Tokaji, go?"

"He left."

"Yeah? What'd he say about ghosts?"

"He - - said nothing on the subject."

"You didn't ask?"

"I'd asked other things."

"What things?"

Kenshin paused, one hand gingerly on the wall, and looked up at Sano with that narrow, serious look he sometimes got. "There was a massacre here, not long after the revolution. I heard stories. The monks hid the family of a Tokugawa lord and were betrayed in their efforts. When the government forces came - - there was little mercy shown. It was a bad time. There was little leniency shown for those that did not bend to the new government. It should not have happened. They were only monks and women and children."

"Aghhh - - murdered monks and children. And women. Women make the worst ghosts. They're vengeful by nature anyway."

Kenshin lifted a dubious brow, opened his mouth to disabuse Sano of such a notion - - then tensed, gaze swinging ahead of them into the shadow by the mouth of the hall leading to the main shrine. There was a figure there. A robed, bald figure that melded with the dark. There was a stain of red that coated the side of his head, that seeped down into his robes. The monk stared at them for a heartbeat and then moved away - - well glided away at any rate and in no mortal direction but right into the wooden wall, passing through it like smoke through netting.

Sano let out a startled yelp. A very undignified yelp that he couldn't rightly help.

"Sano," Kenshin said, sounding strained. "You're hurting me."

A body had to blush. A body had to pry his fingers off Kenshin's shoulders and pretend he had not grabbed a wounded man and placed him quite squarely before himself and the bloody ghost of a murdered monk. It was embarrassing.

"Go go go." He shoved Kenshin, not ungently, to get him moving, wanting out of this place so bad now he could taste the urgency.

"Sano - -" Kenshin swung around, hauling Sano off his balance, yanking him back as the dim glimmer of a sword flashed before them. But not at them. All he saw through the shadow was the shade of a faceless figure bringing a sword down in quick, precise movements, the blade biting into the soft stomach of an unarmed monk. Blood spattered. The monk fell and faded into obscurity. The attacker was gone before he was.

Sano swore, seeing flickering echoes of other atrocities in the darkness of the shrine. Seeing the destruction that he'd thought he'd glimpsed when he'd first come here out of the rain.

You promised. You promised to spare us. The monk Hideki moaned from the floor, staring up through eyes black as pitch at some unseen entity. His scream echoed off the walls, even as thunder rattled the walls and made the floor shake. Sano half screamed with him, startled beyond his ability to stop it by the thunder and the sudden white flash of lightening outside the hanging door.

He caught Kenshin's arm and practically hurled them through that portal and out into rain that was a damned welcome change from the musty unease of the temple.

They huddled under a thick tree afterwards, after a hectic race down the unkempt path from the temple, Sano trying to get his nerves under control, pretending he'd not been utterly terrified by the goings on up at the temple. It was one thing to face a flesh and blood enemy, no matter how insurmountable that enemy might seem and quite, quite another to stand face to face with a ghostly one. Sano shivered and tried to stop it, for shoulder to shoulder as they were, Kenshin was sure to feel it and it was important not to seem the coward or the fool in front of him.

"It wasn't just me - -" he had to ask, sniffling as water dripped off the point of his nose. "Was it? You saw too, right?"

"I saw," Kenshin said after a moment, very quiet, very subdued, not much showing of his face but hair and mouth and chin.

"You okay?" Sano canted his head to get a better look at Kenshin's face in the dark. Kenshin looked up, a weary smile on his lips, his eyes echoing that, large and regretful almost.

"I'm okay, Sano."

"You don't think that guy Tokaji was a ghost, do you? I mean I touched him. He felt real. I drank tea he made." Chilling thought, that. Consuming a thing made by ghostly hands.

"I don't know. There was no malice in him either way."

Sano pulled his knees up close to his chest, cold and wet and trying not to shake in the after effects of fear.

"Either way? Either way? Oh, that's just perfect. Just fucking perfect - -"

Chapter Nine

They didn't talk about the incident at the temple all during the miserable walk to Kuroiso. Sano was too agitated about the whole thing, casting wary looks over his shoulder now and then as if he expected vengeful ghosts to come wailing down the road at them - - and Kenshin was just too tired to exert the energy. Too tired to do anything but place one foot doggedly in front of the other, his arms wrapped about his ribs inside the relative soggy warmth of the gi, his thigh aching like someone had stuffed hot coals into the wound and his head throbbing from what he was sure was a dangerously high fever.

He had to ignore such things. As long as he could walk - - he would walk. As long as he could keep the goal in mind, he had to focus on it. It worried him when his thoughts drifted. When he'd come back to himself in a completely different section of the road and have no notion of how they'd come to be there, or how long it had taken to get there. He'd come back to awareness sometimes with Sano's hand on his arm and Sano's strength shoring him up as he staggered. Sano would grouse about his stubbornness sometimes, calling him unflattering names - -saying rightly that Kaoru would hardly appreciate being rescued if it killed Kenshin the process - - and sometimes he wouldn't say a thing. He'd just stare down from under drooping wet hair, his dark eyes worried, his long mouth set in grim lines.

They had to stop when the rain became torrential. They found shelter in the forest in the form of an old woodcutters lean to that leaked rain horribly, but provided three sides of buffer against the wind driven water. How Sano had found it in the dark was beyond Kenshin, but he was grateful for it. More grateful than he would have liked to admit to sit down against the wall and just shut his eyes and shiver from cold and wet and illness.

"Kenshin?"

He didn't lift his head to acknowledge Sano's dripping presence.

"We don't have anything left to eat." Sano said that like it was a pronouncement of death.

"We'll reach Kuroiso tonight," he murmured.

"No," Sano disagreed. "We'll reach it tomorrow. You're done for the evening."

Kenshin tightened his lips, not prepared to waste his breath in argument.

"Don't give me that look," Sano complained, settling down next to him. "And people used to say I had no sense of self-preservation."

He sat there a moment, cracking his knuckles in nervousness, silently staring out at the rain drenched night.

"You think - - we're cursed?" he asked finally. "For staying in that place?"

Kenshin sighed and drew his knees up closer to his chest, leaning forward in abject misery. "I don't know, Sano. I don't think the dead have any power to curse the living. I hope not," he finished softly and Sano swung his gaze about to stare at him.

"Yeah, " Sano finally said. "I guess that'd suck for you, huh?"

Kenshin didn't answer. A body didn't like to dwell on the possibility of the ghosts of murdered people lingering near the place of their demise, much less coming back to haunt the one who'd killed them. Not a comforting thought at all, which was perhaps why he'd never held much to superstition in the past. Easier to deny the possibility than worry over the prospect.

"It's going to be a bad winter," Kenshin predicted softly. Were his teeth chattering? He clenched his jaw to prevent them.

"Yeah," Sano agreed. He leaned closer, a hand hovering on Kenshin's back - - pulled away a little, then sighed and wrapped a long arm about Kenshin and pulled him close to his warmth.

"If I pull the blanket out, it's just gonna get soaked and then we'll have wet blanket over wet clothes over wet - - um, skin," he murmured, embarrassed at his act of charity.

Kenshin pressed his face against the damp heat of Sano's shoulder and nodded mutely. Sano wrapped his other arm around and shifted a little to accommodate Kenshin's weight against him. It was easy enough to lean there and let Sano situate them.

"I'm gonna get it anyway," Sano said softly, and withdrew one warm arm and dug in the sack for the blanket, got it draped over them in their pitiful little corner of the lean-to. It was almost pleasant, in a drowsy, dream-like sort of way, with the blanket tented over him and encased against Sano's body heat, with Sano's chin on his head and the weight of Sano's arms about his torso. He forgot to tell Sano not to sleep unless he woke him first, but then thought that it hardly mattered, for no bandit with a grain of sense would be out prowling in this weather.

He drifted out and back in again. It was gray instead of black, and the rain had reduced itself to a fine mist. Sano was snoring. Kenshin could feel the quiet rumble of it, his face pressed against the warm, smooth skin of Sano's chest. He'd ended up between Sano's knees at some point, draped against the length of Sano's body. Sano must have been having - - ah, interesting - - dreams for the rigid proof of such pressed into Kenshin's hip rather insistently. Disconcerted, he began to disentangle himself, but Sano's arms tightened around him and Sano's mouth twitched up in a smile and he mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like - - it'll be okay, just put your hand on it - - He shifted his hips a little and pressed himself more firmly against Kenshin's hip.

Kenshin blushed. There was no easy way to extricate himself from this without embarrassment.

"Sano," he hissed softly. "Wake up."

"Hummmm," Sano smiled lazily and slitted his eyes. Looked down at Kenshin and sighed, before shutting his eyes again. "It's too early. Go back to sleep."

"Sano!" Kenshin got an elbow between them and used it to lever himself up. Kenshin's weight centered about that bony protrusion in the middle of his chest, got Sano's conscious attention. He grunted and blinked up, annoyed.

"What are you doing, Damnit?" That came out as a growl, not nearly so pleasant as a half-asleep Sano.

"Trying to get up, Sano," Kenshin answered politely. He was still in intimate contact with Sano's morning erection and propriety dictated that he put a bit of distance between it and himself.

Sano blinked some more, took account of himself and his condition and how firmly he was trying to press said condition into Kenshin. Sano hissed through his teeth and shoved Kenshin backwards. Hard. Kenshin hit the ground, bad shoulder first and lay there blinking stars out of his vision. One would never think rain soaked ground could be so hard.

Finally a hand inserted itself into his line of vision and above that a disgruntled Sano. Kenshin warily lifted one of his own, thinking that if Sano gripped his injured hand with the same thoughtless force he'd used in disentangling them - - then he was very likely going to have to break down and scream. But to ignore the gesture of apology - - for that was most certainly what it was, put forth in Sano's own particular manner - - was unthinkable.

Sano reached past his hand to grasp his forearm and hauled him up. Steadied him on his feet thereafter and looked him critically in the eye.

"Sometimes I get testy if you wake me up too fast," he explained, a very faint stain of blush on his cheeks.

"Is that what you call it?" Kenshin bit the corner of his lip to keep from smiling.

"Shut up." Sano went to shake out the blanket and stuff it back into his sack. "We have nothing for breakfast, you know? Maybe we can catch something - -"

"I don't think I'm up to catching anything, Sano. And if I remember correctly - - ah, you were never that good at woodcraft."

He wished he hadn't said that the moment Sano's eyes got round and his chest swelled as if he'd been dealt a mortal insult.

"What do you mean by that? No good at woodcraft? I'm perfectly good at it. How do you think I survived all those years in the mainland? You think I'm inept."

Kenshin rather thought that Sano had spent a great deal of time carousing and gambling and drifting from village to village to beg, borrow or steal his meals rather than hunting them down in untamed wilderness. But one could hardly say that, and not expect physical retaliation and physical retaliation at the moment would only end up with him in more discomfort than he already was.

"I didn't mean it that way, Sano."

"What way did you mean it, then?"

"Ah, it's probably not that long a walk to Kuroiso. They've teahouses and taverns and vendors of all sorts that will sell food. Perhaps even a beef pot restaurant."

"Beefpot?" Sano's attention was snared in a direction other than injured pride. "A beefpot would be really, really good. You know, I half came back to Japan because I missed an honest to goodness beefpot. No decent Japanese cooking on the mainland."

And so went the conversation, guided by the rumbling of Sano's empty stomach. It was past mid-day when they reached the outskirts of the town. Even in the rain, farmers were out in their fields. The closer they got to the town, which was a fair sized community, if Kenshin remembered correctly from the last time - - oh years ago - - that he'd passed through it, the more small farmhouses cropped up.

Kuroiso itself was bustling with activity. There seemed an inordinate amount of people in the muddy streets. An unusual number of carts laden with goods left at a standstill in the light rain.

"What's going on?" Sano put a hand on a man hurrying past. "Why so many people hanging around town?"

"The rain's flooded the bridge," the man said. "The road north is blocked until the waters go down."

"Well, how long will that be?" Sano demanded, glaring at the little man as if it were fault of his. The man flinched, looking from Sano's bristling self to Kenshin's drooping one.

"A day or two if the weather doesn't get worse. It usually floods off and on this time of year." The man backed a step away, and when Sano barked no more questions at him, turned and continued on the way he'd been heading.

Sano turned questioning eyes to Kenshin, who stood there, mud spattered and soaked to the bone, exhausted and hurting and silently cursing the weather that prevented him from continuing on along that road despite all that.

"So what do you want to do?" Sano asked.

"The choices are limited. There are bridges down river - - but they're as likely flooded or washed out as this one. We'd waste less time, I think, waiting here for the waters to drop. And - - and perhaps a day of rest would do me good." He hated saying it. It felt like betrayal, the decision to dally here - - the decision not to keep moving, even if it were futile, on the trail of Kaoru and Kenji. It was his body's weakness that was letting them down as much as anything. His own stupidity in underestimating Winter's duplicity. He'd allowed himself to grow soft, body and mind and now look where it had gotten them all.

"Kenshin?"

"Humm?" He blinked up at Sano.

"We need something to eat.'

"I don't have any money, Sano."

Sano shrugged, not particularly dismayed, craning his long neck to scope out what he could of the town. There was a speculative sparkle in his dark eyes, a slight twitching of his mouth.

"And a place to stay," Sano added, distracted.

"I don't have any money," Kenshin repeated. He had, before the bandits. Not much, but Kaoru had a stash at the dojo that he'd raided before setting out. It was in some bandit's pocket now.

"Let's go and find an inn." Sano started off down the narrow street and Kenshin had very little choice, other than standing in the center of said street, but to follow.

There were perhaps, five inns in Kuroiso, and the majority were full from people stranded by the river. The last one, a quaint ryokan, had a room recently vacated by a merchant who'd decided to sell his goods in Kuroiso rather than take them further north. Kenshin leaned against the wall by the door and let Sano bargain with the hostess over the price of a room. How Sano managed to talk her into letting them the room without payment in advance was beyond Kenshin. Maybe Sano had gotten wilier in the years he'd been gone. Maybe the hostess merely liked the way he smiled at her, with that cocky, self-assured grin of his and his off-handed attempts at flirtation. Whatever he did, he had her blushing and giggling a little, casting him speculative looks from under her lashes.

They placed their muddy sandals among a row of others and followed her down a long, dimly lit passageway. It was an old inn, everything made of wood, straw and paper. The floors creaked under their weight. She led them to a small room, the only furniture being a low table bearing an empty tear pot and a tin of tea. There were folded futons against the wall and worn tatami mats on the floor.

"Baths?" she asked and Kenshin thought that after falling desperately into deep sleep, that a bath would be a most wonderful thing. But, he supposed it would only be proper to wash the mud and dirt of the road off, before lying down on the inn's clean sleeping mats.

"Please." He inclined his head, expecting Sano to do the same.

"Just a second," Sano smiled at the hostess once more, before catching Kenshin's arm and pulling him aside.

"Listen, you go and do the bath thing, I'm gonna go out for a little while and see if I can't make this grow." He dug in his pocket and held up a lonely little coin.

"You have money."

"Well, not a lot and you don't have to say it like that. Like it's a miracle or something."

Kenshin glanced back at the hostess, who waited patiently by the sliding door. "Is that all you have? It's not enough for the room."

"I know that. I'm gonna go find a game - - dice maybe."

"Sano - - you've little enough. Will you squander it?"

"I said, I was going to make it grow," Sano growled, offended.

"And when you lose the first roll, then you'll have nothing."

"You harp like a woman - -"

Kenshin sighed. "We ought not separate. I'll go."

"Oh no. Hell no."

Kenshin blinked at him.

"I don't want you anywhere near me when I'm gambling. You're this magnet for bad luck right now. It's like bad spirits are dogging your heels. You'll jinx me."

One had to be offended by that. But Sano was oblivious and Sano was eager to be on his way to squander his meager reserves. He could hardly be stopped if he was set on the goal. So Kenshin let him go without further argument - - he did not, nor had he ever harped like a woman - - and followed the hostess down stairs to the steaming baths.

It was a very nice bath and he was alone there and he sat drowsing in the hot water after he'd rinsed himself of mud and dirt and let his mind drift as it might. He lamented the unknown. Not knowing where Kaoru and Kenji were. Not knowing if they were hurt. Sano said Kaoru could take care for herself better than Kenshin gave her credit for and he supposed that was true. He supposed she was no submissive prisoner and wished Winter the full extent of her temper. He wished he'd listened better when Winter had taunted him in the bandit's camp. Wished he could recall all the things the man had said, instead of only an uncertain few. Very little had been clear after they'd tied him to the beams and driven the stakes through his hands.

Winter had said, he thought, that he wouldn't hurt them. Had said there was no reason for him to. Why believe that when everything else from the man's mouth had been a blatant lie? Perhaps because at the time he'd said it, he'd had no reason to alleviate Kenshin's fears. No reason to lie anymore once he'd had what he wanted, which was Kaoru in his power and Kenshin at his mercy.

Why? Why bother? The man had killed a woman that he'd needed. A woman who knew a smattering of English. So he'd taken Kaoru to use in her stead. Why? Trade? Something about trade rights? Something about a past bargain that he placed the failure of at Kenshin's feet. A sunken ship, a dead business partner. Kenshin recalled bits and pieces of that accusation, but they were interspersed with bright slashes of pain and of the feel of Winter's hands on his body.

He shuddered, the ghosting echo of other hands on his flesh making his breath catch in his throat - - but those memories were all dark shrouded and uncertain. Just as well push them away and lock the door on them.

The floorboards outside the bath creaked with someone's approach and he took a breath, lifting a bandaged hand to wipe damp hair out of his eyes. It was only one of the inn's boys, who came with towels and a soft, clean robe and asked if there were anything else he needed.

"Bandages?" Kenshin asked and the boy looked at his hands and shoulder with curious eyes before nodding. Time to get out anyway, before he drifted asleep in the water and drowned. He dried himself and slipped on the house robe, gathered his filthy clothes and went back to the room. The hostess met him outside the door with a roll of clean cloth bandages and a small jar of some sort of herbal ointment.

"I'll have these cleaned for you." She reached for his clothing and he almost didn't give it to her, guilty that they hadn't the money to pay for the room, much less other services. But she didn't wait for his assent, merely exchanged the bandages for his gi and hakama and gracefully disappeared down the hall.

In the privacy of the small room, he divested himself of water soaked bandages, and sat on the unrolled futon and examined what he could of his wounds. His thigh was healing nicely, the flesh a healthy color. He dabbed a bit of ointment around both entry and exit wounds and wound clean bandages around his leg. His shoulder was harder to rebandage, so he decided to leave it be for the time being and let Sano help with it when he got back. He'd put off looking too closely at his hands, but finally sighed and rested them on his knees, turning them over to access the healing wounds. The flesh was knitting. It itched horribly and his fingers felt tight and graceless. But there seemed no loss of feeling, and they all moved, albeit with stiffness and pain, when he needed them to. Forming a fist was an impossibility. He hoped as they healed he'd regain dexterity. He hoped that he'd be able to grip a sword. He'd seen men with palms pierced by sword blades or arrows that had regained full use of their hands. Not quickly, but eventually. One had to be optimistic.

He wrapped his hands, and had to tuck the bandages in under themselves, not being able to tie them off by himself. One more thing for Sano to do when he returned. Despite minor irritations, one had to appreciate Sano's presence. Though Kenshin had walked many a hard road alone, and truth be told, preferred solitude when the road was dangerous and filled with pitfalls - - he had very seldom walked those paths as sorely injured and unarmed as he was now. Sano was - - a comfort. Sano was strength when his own was failing him - - and that was an unfamiliar feeling at best. An uneasy one, that reliance on another person.

He settled down, adjusting the small, bean filled pillow and the blankets that he'd unfolded with the futon and lay there in the dim light of a single flickering candle, letting the weariness seep back over him, letting his body relax muscle by muscle, ache by ache until even the candle became indistinct. Knowing he was stranded here at least for the night, made it easier to relent to the demands of his body. Made it easier to shut his eyes and let much needed sleep fall over him.

Sano had said Kenshin was bad luck. That ill-omen's dogged his footsteps - - well, maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe he was good luck after all. Maybe that luck just wasn't so much interested in Kenshin's well-being as the well-being of those around him.

Sano had won at dice. Repeatedly. He hadn't had such a string of good fortune for - - oh, years. Years and years. Maybe it was the fact that most of the men gathered in the back rooms of inns and taverns gaming were hayseed farmers or pot bellied merchants with nothing better to do, stuck here as Sano and Kenshin were stuck here, but to while away their time losing money at games of chance. None of them, most surely, were the seasoned gamblers that Sano liked to consider himself.

Oh, and he'd taken their money. He had a full pouch of it now in his pocket and a belly full of sake and beer consumed during an evening roaming from one tavern to the next looking for a new game. Damn, but the spirits must have been smiling at him - - must have been sorry for landing him in the midst of a pit of ghosts and were making it up in the best possible way. He cackled his delight out loud in the middle of the street, and passerby looked at him oddly, like he was a madman staggering through their midst. He hardly cared, so delighted was he.

He got to the inn and smiled beatifically at the hostess, asking if she wouldn't mind having supper prepared. A great deal of supper. He ticked off his wants one finger at a time, and her eyes got wider as his list grew. He paid her for it in advance, plus extra coins for the room. Might as well get it out of the way in case his luck did decide to run out and he lost what he'd gained. He was not unrealistic and was well aware of how fickle fate could be, despite Kenshin alluding that he was the worst sort of fool. Squander the money indeed. He'd show Kenshin what he knew.

Of course, Kenshin wasn't awake so he could gloat when Sano reached the room, despite the floors creaking like the inn was about to fall down. A damned heavy sleeper for a man who'd lived the life Kenshin had - - but a body had to suppose it was more fever and injury that made him sleep the sleep of the dead rather than simple lassitude. He'd probably dropped off not long after Sano had left - - though from the look of him, he'd taken the time to use the bathes the hostess had offered. Clean hair, clean bandages, clean house robe.

"Hey?" Sano whispered, feeling remiss in disturbing Kenshin from much needed sleep. But he supposed decent food was a good enough excuse. A body needed to eat as much as sleep if it ever wanted to regain full strength. Kenshin didn't stir from his soft query though, so Sano sank down with his knees on the edge of Kenshin's futon and reached out to touch his shoulder. He hesitated, the gap in the robe revealing a breadth of pale skin and the bruised edges of the unbandaged bullet wound in Kenshin's shoulder. The bandage on the one visible hand atop the light blanket was coming unraveled.

That bothered Sano, the sloppily wound bandage. Made his palms itch a little in annoyance for some reason he couldn't name. Made him want to pound a few heads for causing the wound that caused Kenshin to have to fumble with a dressing that he couldn't properly tie off on his own. Somebody needed to pay.

On impulse - - maybe to see if the fever was still there, maybe - - maybe because the candle light cast the fading bruise on Kenshin's cheek in a strange color - - he reached out and touched the side of his face. Grazed a thumb over the bruise in question like he might hesitantly and unwillingly touch an offered infant. Light as a feather and afraid he'd break it.

Only Kenshin turned his face into the touch and sighed, warm skin against Sano's palm, lips murmuring a name. Not Kaoru's name - - but Sano's, and for a moment, Sano thought he'd woken up and caught him, and froze in the act - - but Kenshin's long lashes remained fixed over his pale cheeks.

He should have pulled his hand away. Should have had the sense to back off because a man just didn't sit there, stunned by the fact that another man had murmured his name in sleep - - or by the feel of another man's skin under his palm, or the silky brush of another man's hair against the back of his hand. Of course Kenshin called his name - - they were traveling together, after all. Natural. Nothing to it at all. Nothing to make his thoughts stall or his muscles freeze. Nothing to make a sudden wellspring of guilt rush up within him. But it did and he couldn't pin point why, other than the fact that he ought to be pulling back and he wasn't. That he damn sure ought not be letting his thumb drift over to graze the contour of Kenshin's bottom lip.

Kenshin shifted again, and the lashes trembled this time. Sano jerked his hand back as Kenshin's eyes opened, a little hazy, a little befuddled, not evidencing much of those cat-like reflexes he exhibited when he was in somewhat better form.

"What's wrong?" The violet eyes narrowed and the brows drew down and Sano figured he must have looked appalled, sitting there with his hand clutching at his chest like he'd just been scalded.

Damned if he'd admit what he'd been about, so he forced a smug smile and reached for his full purse and jingled it.

"Nothing's wrong. I won big time, is what. You owe me an apology."

Kenshin blinked, staring beyond Sano as if he expected something to spring up in the shadows, then back and down to the little leather drawstring pouch in his hand.

"You won?"

"Don't say it like it's never happened before," Sano said dryly. "You just have no faith, is all. C'mon, get up, I've got supper being fixed."

Kenshin sighed, lifting a hand to brush hair out of his face and hesitating at the unwinding bandages. An almost apologetic smile crossed his lips. "I couldn't tie it off very well."

"Yeah." Sano agreed and thought, he needs your help, so don't just sit there like a lump, but damned if he could work up the nerve to touch Kenshin again when the first time had just been - - wrong. He didn't even want to think about what had been going through his mind.

"Sano?"

"Huh?"

"Will you fix this for me?" Kenshin asked very patiently, like he was talking to a child or a drunk. Well, maybe Sano was a little drunk. Maybe all that beer and sake was to blame for any eccentricity. It was a good excuse. It was a comfortable one.

"Sure." He reached for Kenshin's hand, straightened the wrappings on first the one, then the other and tied them off. Nice and snug and clean. He got Kenshin up and stood there gawking like a fool at the loose way the borrowed house robe hung open, until Kenshin straightened it up, pulled it properly closed and tightened the sash. If Kenshin noticed, he didn't make an issue of it, he just catfooted across the tatami mats and out into the hall, not making a fraction of the sound that Sano did.

"How long were you gone?"

Sano calculated in his head. "I dunno. Five or six hours. Its full dark out there now."

The inn had a pleasantly proficient cook. It was a good meal and Sano left it stuffed and happy and blissfully hazy over his earlier discomfort. He was sure it was the alcohol. Absolutely certain. Kenshin would probably even laugh about it and agree if he admitted it to him.

If - - if pigs flew and Buddha showed up dressed like a geisha and offered varied acts of sexual depravity.

So Sano shut his mouth about it and finished off the rest of the sake he'd bought with dinner and let the buzz accompany him to sleep.

He woke up very late the next day, alone in the room, all tangled in blankets and clothing, head a pounding swollen thing at the end of his neck.

Why, oh why did he ever drink? He moaned about that for a while, nauseous and miserable and not particularly concerned with anything else. If Kenshin was up and about on his own, that was great - - Sano couldn't care less at the moment where he was or what he was up to.

Kenshin crept back in not long after, a soft rustle of clothes and the barely perceptible pad of bare feet on tatami mats. Sano didn't bother to remove his arm from his eyes.

"Sano?" Kenshin finally had to break the silence that Sano was perfectly happy with.

He didn't answer right away, so Kenshin shifted a little closer and laid fingertips to Sano's arm, urging it away from his no doubt blood-shot eyes. Sano blinked up unhappily. Kenshin looked awake and relatively well, with his hair caught at the back of his neck and his gi and hakama clean and wrinkle free.

"How much money do you have left, Sano?"

"Why?" Sano asked suspiciously.

"There is a railroad station in the next town. If we had enough for tickets, the train could take us to Sendai in a day. It would take many days on foot."

"Trains - -" Sano moaned and moved his arm back over his face. Ships he could take, even steam ships - - trains he had never held much fondness for. Still - - - "I dunno. Enough probably. Is the bridge clear, yet?"

Kenshin sighed, picking at the edge of his sleeve absently, looking distinctly unhappy. "Almost. They think part of it was washed out. We may have to go downstream after all."

"We gonna wait and see - - or head out?" He silently wished for the former, moved his arm of his own violation after a moment of silence and peered up at Kenshin.

Kenshin shrugged, and murmured unwillingly. "Wait and see - - for a little while. This evening - - the water should be low enough to tell for sure."

"Okay. Fine. Maybe I can win some more money by then."

"Sano - -" Kenshin frowned, distressed and wary. "- -please don't lose the money we'll need for the train."

"What makes you think I would?" Sano barked and regretted it as the sound of his own voice reverberated inside his head. He winced and curled onto his side. "Argghhh. Remind me not to mix sake and beer again, will you?"

"I'll remind you, but you'll do it anyway."

By the time Sano's hangover had faded and he was ready to get up and search out food, Kenshin had dosed off again. Sano contemplated rousing him to accompany him, but decided against it. Kenshin needed every minute of sleep he could get.

Sano picked up lunch from a street vendor and wondered down to the river to see how bad the bridge was. There were a fair number of other curious folks as well, and there were constables keeping people away from it.

"You'll know when we know." Was the practiced reply as frustrated travelers were sent on their way, though it looked to Sano as if the center portion of the stone bridge had been washed away.

Great. He made his way back into town, thinking about finding a game of dice to pass the time - - then feeling the sting of guilt over the prospect of not winning and losing the money he had and having to go back and tell Kenshin. He sighed miserably, and stalked back to the inn, a victim of his own conscience.

He took advantage of the bathes that he'd foregone yesterday and flirted with the pretty hostess afterwards, just to make himself feel better after the awkward thoughts he'd been entertaining about Kenshin. She eventually had to return to her duties, which left Sano bereft of purpose. He could have gone out looking for - - well a body hesitated to say 'trouble' - - but it fit well enough considering his mood and the boredom that the afternoon had brought with it, but getting in a tavern brawl here might get him thrown into jail, which would irritate the hell out of Kenshin and throw them seriously off schedule.

Nothing to do but slouch back to the room and lay down on the futon with his hands behind his head and contemplate how completely bizarre this trip home had turned out to be. And he'd thought what he'd get was a nice welcome from old friends, a string of long nights where he got to share all his tales of the mainland, his adventures, his close-calls, his overall conquest over the exotic and the foreign. He hadn't even had his beefpot yet.

All he'd gotten was a half-dead Kenshin on a mission. A damned and determined Kenshin who only periodically delved into moments of reason and rational over this pursuit of Kaoru and her child. Their child. Funny, thinking of Kenshin as a father. Not that he wasn't disgustingly good with kids - - kids loved him. It was just - - well, it was Kenshin. It was liking contemplating himself with a kid on his coattails. Scary thought. Sobering one.

Sano rolled onto his side and stared across the arm's length of distance between them at Kenshin's profile. Straight, fine nose, long, dark lashes resting upon high, delicate cheeks. Slender jaw and sharp chin - - generous lips, that could pull you in with that smile of his, or just as soon thin out in dead earnestness and make a body take a step backwards in consideration of self-preservation.

Damn, but he was pretty and the worst thing about this nice, clean dry room, was that two bodies didn't have to press together in the night for warmth. Sano sighed miserably in admitting it. Hated himself for admitting it. It wasn't bad enough that it was a man he was having such thoughts about, it was a married man with a kid.

Ah, but he was the worst sort of lecher. And the only thing worse than a lecher was a bored lecher, who had nothing better to do than lay there imagining things in his mind, now that he'd admitted the worst and cursing himself for each twisted image. He wondered if Kenshin might have been open to - - certain things, back before he'd decided to fixate himself on Kaoru - - back when things had been simpler and he'd just been a temporary guest at Kamiya dojo instead of a permanent fixture. There had been times - - now that Sano thought about it - - that it might have seemed that way. It made a man wonder about Kenshin - - pretty as he was - - and what alliances he might have made in those long years after the revolution. It made a man wonder what advances men might have made towards a sixteen year old Kenshin, freshly split from Hiko Seijuurou, and new to the cause.

It managed to piss him off, all those considerations. It was irritating enough - - yes, damned irritating, that Kaoru had managed to drag him into matrimony, much less any number of faceless lovers from the past. He tightened his fists and ground his teeth and thought maybe going out and initiating a good bar brawl might be just the thing he needed.

"What are you scowling at, Sano?"

Kenshin was blinking at him, eye's heavy lidded and still clouded with sleep.

"Nothing. Shut up. It's your fault."

Kenshin blinked again, baffled. "Sano, have you been drinking again?"

"Shut up!" Sano pushed himself up, angry and flustered and - - oh, damn damn damn - - aroused enough that his erection made a right impressive tent out of his pants. He brought his leg up and glared down at the traitorous thing, thankful that it was dim enough in the room that Kenshin might not have noticed.

"Sano - - did you lose the money." Kenshin pushed himself up.

"No, I didn't lose the fucking money!"

"Then what - -" Kenshin's eyes lost some of that large, half asleep bewilderment. "- - is the matter with you?" Sano supposed Kenshin could only take being yelled, cursed and bitched at so much before he got pissed off himself.

"You wanna make something of it?" Sano snarled and wished, oh just wished Kenshin would, because wouldn't it be nice to get rid of his frustrations upon the person who'd caused them?

Kenshin stared. Opened his mouth and shut it, then shook his head.

"No."

Sano sagged. Diffused. Just like that. Soft voice. No anger. Nothing to get his back up even more than it already was.

"Forget it," he said. "I was drinking and I'm just a damned mess, is all."

"Its okay," Kenshin assured him, getting his legs under him and rising.

"You think?" Sano canted him a look, a little more collected now that the throbbing in his pants had gone down.

Kenshin didn't have an answer to that. Kenshin was a little wary of Sano's psychosis, but he smiled anyway and suggested they walk down to the river.

"I think part of its washed away," Sano said, anything to get his mind back on track.

"Humm. We'll see I suppose. Its about a day's walk down stream to the next village with a bridge."

Sano figured he might as well stuff his belongings into the sack, just in case Kenshin decided he wanted to make that walk now, before darkness fully hit. Down to the river then, and through the people and carts parked about the mouth of the bridge. The two constables guarding it were bickering with a merchant and his wife and their cart laden with bags of produce. The wife's shrill voice was enough to make a man wince. The constables were sufficiently distracted as a result.

The river was still dangerously high, its water choppy and brown with debris washed down from upstream. But the bridge was no longer submerged. It was wet and littered with bits of rubbish, but whole, for the first forty yards. Then there was nothing but a span of empty space over the swift moving current. A section of bridge, some twenty feet in width had been washed away. There was nothing left but the two stone pylons on which it had been supported.

"Well, I guess we walk downriver." Sano sighed, shifting the sack on his shoulder.

Kenshin stood there, staring across the water. "Its not that far."

"What, the next bridge?"

"To the other side of this one."

Sano laughed, then realized that Kenshin wasn't kidding. "Are you out of your mind? This is not a happy river. Fall in and it won't let you back up."

"It's not that far. There's the pylon half way."

"Oh, for fuck's sake - - Kenshin - - you serious?"

Kenshin slanted a look up at him. "A full day to the bridge A day back to the main road - - that's two day's worth of travel. I can make it across. Can you?"

"Does it matter?" Sano snapped sourly.

Kenshin winced a little at that. "Yes."

There were shouts of a sudden from the mouth of the bridge. The constables had taken notice of them and were yelling for them to get off the bridge.

"Sano, can you?"

Sano swore and swung the sack off his shoulder. "If you can do it with that leg - - then I sure as hell can."

Kenshin didn't even nod agreement to that boast, just turned, took one deceptively simple step and launched himself off the jagged edge of the bridge. He landed like a cat on the pylon ten foot out in the midst of the choppy river, and leapt from that with hardly a pause, making reaching the other side seem painfully simple.

If I drown, Sano thought sourly, I'm gonna come back and haunt you, Kenshin. He tossed the sack with a mighty swing, not waiting to see if it reached the other side, backed up a half dozen paces and ran at the edge, hurling himself off and into the air. Reached the mid-point with room to spare, and jumped for the other side before he could think about breaching a similar distance without room to build up speed. He almost didn't make the other side. One toe hit the edge of the bridge and the other one floundered in water. He wind milled his arms, losing balance and Kenshin clutched at his jacket yanking him forward. He scraped his shin on the rough edge badly, but it was better than falling into the river, and lay in a tangle of limbs atop of Kenshin afterwards, breathing hard, counting his blessings and thanking whatever good spirits were watching over him.

"Sano - - your elbow - -" Kenshin shoved at him to get him to roll over. He did with a gusty sigh, bending his knee and drawing up his leg to see his shin.

"You get my pack?"

"I got it."

"Good. Look, I'm bleeding."

"I'm sorry." Kenshin peered at his leg, then across the bridge at the constables who were shaking helpless, frustrated fists at them. "I think we ruined their day."

"Yeah, they look pissed. But, I'm seriously doubting anybody else is gonna take this route."

"Probably not." Kenshin got up first, rubbing the side of his hand over the wound in his thigh. "We can walk until its full dark, then reach Shirokawa tomorrow. I'm told trains stop there every day, so we should be able to get a ride and maybe even reach Sendai by the day after."

"Yeah, sounds like a plan." He didn't ask what they were going to do once they reached Sendai. Didn't inquire what path Kenshin planned to take if his quarry was long gone with Kaoru in tow.

Hope and determination had kept Kenshin going so far. No reason to dash it now. Hell, Kenshin was probably already prepared for the worst. Kenshin was enough of a realist - - had seen enough of the brutal side of life - - to realize that the odds of them catching this Englishman, were not in his favor.

Sano got up, dusted his hands off on the sides of his pants and held out a hand, indicating the trail forward.

"All right then, if we're almost there, then lets get started."

Chapter Ten

The weather held all the long walk to Shirakawa. It was a luxury one hesitated to voice thanks for in fear that the fates would notice their laxness and send the dark clouds again and the rain and the cold winds. It might have been a peaceful walk, Sano lost in his own thoughts and broodingly silent because of it. The road was well maintained and easy to navigate, the land green and bountiful after so much rain, all of nature getting in one last burst of vitality before winter sucked the color and the life from the world.

They saw the railroad tracks before they saw the town, cutting in from the west. Even with no train in sight, Kenshin could still smell the faint clinging odor of smoke and grease and machine oils. It was painfully apparent that a beast of no natural origin prowled this strip of land.

It didn't bother him so much. He didn't take to the onrush of technology as eagerly as Kaoru, but he realized it was nothing to be feared. He realized with a certain fatalism that the empire had purposefully kept itself separate from the advances of the rest of the world for too many years, and now that the barriers had been breached that there was no stopping the change. A man would be a fool to fight against it. It was inevitable. Like the tides. Like the rains and the change of seasons - - like death.

He frowned, not knowing why he'd thought that last. Why his musings had suddenly turned dark and dismal when he'd been content with the morning before. Perhaps it was the ache in his shoulder and the constant itch under the bandages around his hands. Or maybe Sano's mood was catching - - and Sano's dark silences and dark sometimes glances in Kenshin's direction. Foolish to ask what was bothering him. Sano was generally quite vocal about his aggravations - - but when he wasn't, when he kept his lips pressed tight and his hands stuffed into his pockets and his eyes on the road - - well the annoyance went deeper. You didn't ask, then. You didn't pry and you didn't try to offer help, because more than likely you'd get your fingers bitten off for the charity.

Maybe - - maybe Sano wasn't so different from himself, in that respect, Kenshin thought. At least that's what he'd been told. It was hard to see yourself during such times, the way others saw you.

When they reached Shirakawa, Sano's mood improved. There was food to be had and people to bicker with. Kenshin went to the railway station to inquire about tickets to Sendai while Sano roamed the bustling market. Kenshin found him shoveling noodles into his mouth at a soup maker's stall.

"You get the tickets?" Sano sucked a long dangling noodle through his lips.

"Yes. The train gets into Shirakawa in a few hours and leaves an hour after that. We should be in Sendai by tonight."

"Great. We'll have time to look around a while, then."

That was a daunting prospect. Dogging Sano's heels while he roamed a strange town could be exhausting at the best of times. Perhaps, he might bribe Sano into inactivity with the suggestion of finding a restaurant and sitting down to a proper lunch. A very long, drawn out proper lunch, in which he could take the weight off his leg and sit down and let hot green tea soothe the very slight roughness in the back of his throat.

Sano was convinced. Sano was never one to turn down the prospect of food and they found a nice restaurant and settled down in a walled off booth with a very young, very pretty waitress who made eyes at the both of them and giggled behind her hand when Sano flirted back more vocally. Sano was obviously pleased with the meal and the girl, for his mood improved drastically and he slid closer to Kenshin, leaning shoulder to shoulder to remark, once the girl had gone, that she reminded him of a little working girl he'd met in Chungking on the mainland. Went even further, after his fourth or fifth glass of sake, to admit to having left quite a string of adoring females behind in his travels. Funny, Kenshin thought, that the number of them he'd had here before he'd left on his pilgrimage, had been drastically less. As handsome as he was - - and Sano was attractive with his lanky frame and his angular face and his sharp, dark eyes - - he'd tended to irritate women more than attract them in Kenshin's opinion. He fought verbal battles with the bold ones and scared the timid ones with very few exceptions in between. One had to assume that either Sano had changed a great deal in the last four years, or that the women on the mainland were of an entirely different breed than the one's here, or that Sano was making entirely too much use of his imagination.

Kenshin did not remark on his suppositions. He was not stupid and Sano had that vaguely brash look in his eyes that was just waiting for something to light the fuse that would launch him into mayhem. Kenshin was in no mood to get caught up in a brawl, so coddling Sano seemed the best path for safely getting the both of them on the train when it arrived, instead of the alternative of the two of them ending up in a jail cell for destruction of property and person. So one agreed to Sano's outrageous claims and asked for the appropriate details when it was seemly and sounded politely awed when Sano seemed to need recognition of his deeds. It was very much like dealing with Kenji on a particularly sulky day. He doubted Sano would appreciate the comparison, but his lips twitched contemplating the reaction regardless.

They heard the whistle of the approaching train from the restaurant and Kenshin urged Sano to pay the bill from his dwindling supply of coin so that they could go to the station and meet it.

Sano was agreeable enough, after a large lunch and a good deal of sake. He draped an arm over Kenshin's shoulder when they emerged into sunlight and grinned up in appreciation over the fair weather.

"What a day. Doesn't it just figure that as soon as we decide not to walk - - the sun comes out and stays?"

"It fits with my luck of late," Kenshin agreed wryly.

They walked to the station, which was bustling with activity now that the train had pulled in to a stop. The great metal beast sat there, huffing in agitation, steam and smoke seeping from the engine, while the creatures that rode within its belly passed to and fro, loading luggage and freight and people. The passenger car was filled to overflowing, with not just human beings, but crates of chickens, a few goats, a handful of pigs on rope leashes and a barking dog or two held in rein by children. Kenshin had bought the cheapest tickets available, which put them in the common car, squeezed in amongst the farmers and their produce; the poor families and their worldly belongings; the workers on their way to or from some other town along the railway. There were close set wooden benches upon which people and animals crowded. Above those were wooden platforms on which children perched amidst luggage and crates of livestock bound for some northern market.

Sano found an empty niche and claimed it, then bullied his way a few more inches across the bench, forcing the other occupants to cram up against each other in order to make room for Kenshin by the window. Sano got curses and complaints, which he ignored - - Kenshin got pressed between him and the window, which he supposed, was better than standing, holding on to the rope hand rails hanging from the roof of the box car.

Soon the whistle blew again and the cars jerked into motion as the engine began clattering down the track. Between crowded humans and animals, the smell was overwhelming, even with the windows down. It was a blessing to sit in a window seat where a body could lean his head close to the fresh air. The motion and the heat and the smell made Kenshin wish he'd not partaken of such a large lunch.

He dozed fitfully, but it was an unrestful, queasy sort of sleep. Came to once with a goat's nose in his crotch and glared unappreciatively at Sano for laughing at him. The old man across the aisle, from whom the goat had escaped, ambled over and reclaimed the curious animal.

He looked out the window for a while after that, at the fast passing landscape. At neat fields, lush and green from the rains, at growths of forest and lush patches of bamboo. He drifted off again and this time it was a deeper sleep which the noises in the box car and the constant clatter of the train did not penetrate.

It was only the shrill call of the whistle that made him stir. He'd sagged against Sano, one of Sano's long arms draped over his shoulder, Sano's head dropping to his chest, half resting against the top of Kenshin's. It was dark outside, the afternoon having slipped away while he slept. He leaned across Sano and inquired of the peasant woman sitting next to him what stop they were approaching.

"Sendai," she said and he blinked, amazed that he'd slept through the stops in-between.

He nudged Sano awake and Sano yawned and stretched his long arms out over his head, remarking how empty his stomach was. No great surprise there. Sano's stomach was always empty and it protested most vehemently directly after Sano woke from slumber.

People were up and about even before the train shuddered to a stop, eager to escape the confines of the common car. Sano and Kenshin stepped off the train and into Sendai station amidst the crowd of animals, luggage and people. It was a clear night. The air was cool and smelled faintly of sea air if you could get past the stink of the train. Sano declared an immediate need to empty his bladder and they found a public facility within the railway station to elevate the need.

"So - - can we go find something to eat first?" Sano asked and Kenshin shook his head, refusing to deviate from his goal now that he'd gotten so close. Everything was narrowed down to tracking Winter and finding Kaoru and Kenji. Winter had said he was on his way to meet a ship. To find ships, one had to go to the docks. He'd only been in Sendai once, many years past, but he knew the direction in which the ocean lay.

One had only to walk east.

It wasn't hard to find the shipyards. Once they'd walked a few dozen blocks, the smell led the way. Though Sendai was a thriving trade port, it was also had huge fishing industry and the odor was pungent and strong on the westerly wind.

Sano picked up a few smoked fish from a vendor to eat as they walked. Past the neat rows of houses and shops of the inner city, and the structures became more eclectic - - warehouses hastily erected, shops and business fronts that hinted at western influences to cater to the growing western clientele that passed through this city as ships stopped at port. There were a good many foreign faces on the dock streets. A good many sailors from foreign ships that roamed the portside, frequenting taverns that sold western foods and drinks and catered to western tastes.

"So what are we looking for?" Sano asked, tossing away the remains of his impromptu dinner and stuffing one hand in his pocket. Even after dark the docks were bustling. The tides dictated life here at port and ships were coming and going with them both day and night.

Kenshin had been mostly silent on the walk from the train station, his eyes narrowed in concentration, his mouth set in a tight, serious line. With that look on his face - - well, a wise man wouldn't give him any grief.

"Information." Kenshin finally gave him an answer, his eyes flickering down this pier and the next, looking for likely informants.

They stopped a few honest Japanese dockworkers and asked about what English ships were been in dock recently - - what one's had been here and gone recently. They got varying answers. Got directed to this dock or that, to this man or another to ask for more details. They spent an hour gathering rumors from their countrymen, before they began venturing onto the piers where foreign ships were moored. Some of the foreign sailors knew Japanese, some not. Most knew very little of any ship but the one they'd sailed in on.

Sano began to get frustrated by the second hour. It was a huge port and the amount of help they were getting was minimal at best. Men were reluctant to talk to strangers approaching them on the dock. The foreigners were either suspicious or insulting. Sano wanted to smash his fist into smart mouthed, foreign faces more than once. Kenshin stopped him with a look, with a slight motion of his hand, with a warning 'Sano', not wanting to antagonize the people who might have a clue regarding the ship they were looking for.

"So what do you need to know about good English ships for?" one burly, aggressive dockhand demanded, when they walked down the cargo laden pier beside a gently rocking English frigate. They were unloading goods, and perhaps a half dozen sweaty, dirty English ship hands worked on the pier. The majority of them paused in their work as Sano and Kenshin poised their question to the one that professed to speak Japanese.

"A man named Quinton Winter left Tokyo with something that wasn't his. He was to meet a ship here. He was English, like you."

"What, you think he was a thief just because he wasn't a dirty Japanese?"

Sano blinked, gaping at the sweaty, dirt smeared sailor that dared to utter those words. The joints of his knuckles cracked he clenched them so hard and Kenshin subtly slid in front of him, putting a shoulder between him and the obnoxious sailor.

"No. I think nothing he did not admit himself," Kenshin said calmly, smoothly. "I would just like to know if you have heard of such a man, - - he claims to have been a merchant for many years - -"

The sailor snorted, glancing back to his cronies. "Even if I had, you think I'd tell you - -?" As if thieving, kidnapping Englishmen had to stick together. Sano ground his teeth together, having taken about as much dismissal, rudeness and disappointment as he could for one night.

"You know something you damn well better tell us!" he stepped around Kenshin, wrapping a fist in the shirt of the offending seaman. "It was a damned simple question."

"You better get your hands off me, monkey-boy," the man growled. He was about a four inches taller than Sano and had a good twenty-five pounds on him. He could have cared less.

"You answer the question, you dirty, round eyed pig."

"Sano! Back off." Kenshin had the sharp tone of command to his voice. His fingers on Sano's arm were surprisingly painful, considering the wound in his hand.

"Yeah," the sailor laughed. "Listen to your girlfriend, slant-eyed puke."

"Why you - -"

Kenshin's fingers on his arm tightened. "No, Sanosuke. That's not what we're here for."

"The hell - -"

"Bosses you about like a little wife would." The sailor laughed and the few of his comrades that understood enough Japanese to catch the gist of the exchange chortled as well. "Bet he goes down on you like a girl would, too, huh?" He said more offensive things. More blatantly insulting things in blatantly crude detail that made Sano see red around the edges of his vision. Kenshin might have removed his fingers - - or not. It hardly mattered anymore whether Kenshin wanted him to behave and take the insult or not. He threw the first punch. There was so much rage behind it that it lacked a great deal in finesse, but nothing in power. The sailor slammed backwards, blood gysering from his nose, crashing into a stack of crates and scattering his fellows. They rushed forward, crying out things in their unintelligible tongue and Sano lunged forward to meet them.

It felt good, breaking the skin of his knuckles against their faces. They were big, but lumbering and graceless, relying more on brute strength than finesse - - very much like he'd used to be - - like he still might have been if circumstance and ego hadn't urged him to better himself. It wasn't hard to avoid their attacks, and the ones that were unavoidable, he had learned ways to block that didn't involve cracked ribs, bloody noses or loosened teeth.

He didn't know what Kenshin was doing, hadn't the time or wherewithal to pay him much heed, honestly, but certainly he wasn't engaging in this melee. A body could hope he wasn't, at least, considering his too recent wounds, but a body had to make assumptions when the boat hook flashing at his head and the meaty arm swinging it suddenly went down for no apparent reason - - at least not one Sano noted upon his brief glance that way. A body had to pay more heed to the business at hand.

The big one he'd first knocked down came back at him, bloody mouthed and with a wicked, fish-gutting knife in hand - - breathing hard and promising a nasty death with his beady, round-eyes.

He swung the blade and Sano jumped back, almost getting a slice across the arm. The man swung again and wildly and Sano rushed in, catching the man's elbow, forcing it up and driving a hard punch into the man's ribs with his other hand. The breath left his opponent in a heady rush and he caught the wrist with the knife, bending the hand backwards, twisting the thumb so hard that the man cried out, loosing his grip on the hilt of the knife. He sank to his knees, having little choice in the matter, with the angle Sano had his hand turned - - his curses were imaginative and foul. Sano's grin was humorless and wide as he glared down.

There was a thump from behind him and he glanced over his shoulder, to see the last of them falling on his face, a narrow box blade clattering from limp fingers. Kenshin stood behind him, scowling - - and the glare was all for Sano - - pissed then and not fairly, considering who had started this. It wasn't Sano who'd begun flinging insults and innuendo - - it wasn't Sano who'd born the brunt of those innuendoes. Kenshin ought to be damned pleased that Sano had bloodied the bastard's nasty mouth.

"What?" Sano snapped, offended, increasing pressure on the sailor's hand in irritation. The man yelped, wrist bones threatening to give. There was the sound of commotion from the ship. Faces gathering at the railing to see what mayhem was going on below.

"He asked you a question," Sano growled at the sailor. "Answer it."

"I don't fucking know - -" the man gasped. "Give me the name of a ship - - maybe I could tell you something - -"

"We don't know the name of the ship. That's what we want to find out, idiot?"

"Whad'ya want me to say, then? I don't know any Englishman named Winter."

Sano snarled and gave the man's wrist a final wrench before releasing him and stepping quickly back. There were seamen coming down the gangplank to the aid of their fellows.

"We need to go," Kenshin said.

No argument there.

They melted into the night dark docks, amidst flickering lantern light and shuffling late shift workers. There was the distant whistle of police whistles and one could only assume they'd been summoned by the brawl. Sano had no wish to spend time in a Sendai jail cell and he had the notion that the more foreign sailors they harassed, there was more likely hood of that condition happening. But he was game if Kenshin was. Despite the blood trickling down his knuckles and the ache in his hip where he'd staggered back into the sharp edge of a crate - - he was hyped and ready for more. Kenshin wasn't talking though. Kenshin was padding down the docks, simmering and narrow eyed and it pissed Sano off to no ends thinking it was directed at him.

"It wasn't my fault," he snapped, catching Kenshin's arm.

"I didn't say it was."

"Yeah - - well, what're you so pissed off about, then?"

Kenshin extracted his arm from Sano's grip and stood there in the middle of a worn, pitted street, with a raucous tavern on one side of them and the stench of a moored fishing vessel on the other.

"He didn't come here blaring his arrival for all to see and hear. He came here silently and no matter how much we ask - - we won't hear rumor of him from the people on these docks."

Sano took a breath, staring over Kenshin's head at the bristly silhouettes of a dozen tall ships, all spindly masts and spider-web rigging and furled sails against the night sky. "So what do you want to do, then?"

"He came in the company of yakuza. He came in partnership with them. They'll know the things I need to know."

"Sooooo - - you want to hunt down the yakuza in Sendai?"

A nod. A damned serious, dangerous nod. Like Kenshin was up to tackling the no doubt thriving, no doubt wide-spread Sendai crime syndicate. Finding a few Tokyo yakuza in the midst of the Sendai bunch wouldn't be easy. Unless, the Sendai yakuza heads were in on it too. Unless the yakuza from Tokyo had done the proper thing and checked in with their Sendai brethren when they'd come - - just to avoid offense.

"Well - - if we're gonna do this - - start looking for yakuza hangouts - - and yakuza bosses - - then we need to do a little gambling."

"Sano - - we don't have time - -" Exasperation won out over the anger. That and a weary, shuddering sigh, and a half trembling hand that Kenshin ran through his hair.

"Wait, wait, wait. Don't even give me that look - - you think the yakuza doesn't have its hands elbow deep in the gambling houses? You think there's a better place to scout out information than a room full of drunken, hard-core gamblers? You gonna just walk around asking where to find the local bad asses?"

Kenshin thought about that, chewed his lip solemnly while he mulled over the limited range of his possibilities. He might have been a damned efficient hitokiri, but he'd never used the underworld to go about it. Never played with the criminal elements. Hadn't had to, when his masters were the highborn lords who were backing the revolution. Sano had lived on the other side of that gulf. Sano had trafficked with the dark side.

"Trust me, Kenshin. We'll find the guys we're looking for this way."

"Okay." A short inclination of Kenshin's head. A capitulation that Sano grinned at and clamped a hand on Kenshin's shoulder for in good cheer. He had enough money left in his purse to buy into a few games. As long as his luck held, it might be able to last the night - - and well into the morning. The places he planned to go never closed - - and were always ready and willing to separate a man from his money.

It was well into dawn when they finished their last hand of dice, drank their last watered down beer and staggered out of the last den of chance in a series of such places that rumor and suggestion had taken them to throughout the course of the night and early morning.

Well, Sano staggered. Kenshin, who'd nursed only a handful of beers throughout the evening and then only not to seem out of place, had to get a shoulder under one of Sano's arms to keep him from weaving about the street like - - well, like very much what he was - - the worst sort of drunkard. The deluded sort, who hadn't a clue he was as far gone as he was, and was perfectly willing to go back for yet one more round. Of dice and drinks.

Kenshin had had enough. They had money left, thanks to him emptying half Sano's purse mid-way through the night when the drink had started to tell and Sano had begun to lose what little sense of self-preservation he'd had to begin with. The luck had been fickle. A few good rolls and then a few disastrous ones. Kenshin thought they'd left with a little less than what they'd come with.

Money-wise. Information-wise - - they'd come out considerably better off than what they'd started. They knew the location of several yakuza run operations. They knew that the yakuza in Sendai were very big into black market imports and exports. They knew the names of a few men rumored to head the Sendai syndicate and hints of where those men reined their underworld empire. He doubted Sano would remember much of it in the morning, but he had to admit, Sano did have a way - - a way that got mysteriously better the drunker he got - - of mixing socially with miscreants. He'd gotten men to talk and Kenshin had been there, quietly unobtrusive in the background to pick up every word.

Tomorrow he'd visit some of those rumored locations, but tonight - - tonight? - - today he'd had all he could take. Sano's weight on his good shoulder was almost enough to pull him down. He was close - - so close to finding out vital information - - and on the one hand, stopping for even a brief bit of rest would put him further behind Winter - - and on the other, better a few hours sleep than a few days if he plummeted back into relapse.

With the rising sun, came a misting rain. The dry spell was ended and he and Sano were half soaked by the time he found a dirt cheap inn with space to spare. Not much space. But what could be expected for the meager price they charged? A cube not much larger than the hole he'd woken up in in the widow Hatayama's cottage. A warped shelf on the wall for belongings and a tattered, thin futon rolled up against the wall. Sano sat slumped against the sliding door outside while Kenshin unrolled the mat. Kenshin had to shake him awake to get him out of the hall and into the sleeping space.

"Where are we?" Sano wanted to know, a little wild eyed at the rude awakening.

"We're at an inn, Sano." Kenshin patiently urged him to crawl inside and slid the door shut after him. There was a lantern down the hall that cast strange shadows through the paper panes in the door.

"At an inn - -? Where?"

"In Sendai."

". . . . . . . oh. Oh, yeah. I was right, wasn't I?"

"You were right."

Sano sighed and flopped down. "Told you. You never believe me. You think I'm this idiot, I know."

"I don't!" Kenshin insisted, aghast that Sano would think such a thing. He leaned over, staring down at the shadows where Sano's eyes ought to be, very much wanting to dispel that notion. "I never did."

Sano's hand shot up, surprisingly fast considering his state, and caught at a loose lock of Kenshin's hair that had escaped the band at his nape.

"You cut your hair. Why'd you cut your hair? It was so - - nice. Let it grow back, okay?"

A man had to blink at that. At Sano's fingers sliding behind his ear, through his hair and touching his scalp. He really had no more notion of how to deal with that than he might oxen flying out of the sky at him.

"S-Sano - -" Nothing came to mind to say.

"C'mere." Sano pulled him down, fingers caught in the hair where it was gathered above the band. "Is it raining again? Its cold and you're wet."

"Ummm - - yes. Yes, it's raining," he whispered it, lying very still on his back next to Sano.

Sano sighed, content with the both of them reclined on the mat. More content when he rolled to his side and pressed his chin against Kenshin's shoulder and his arm around his waist. His breathing turned soft and even then, the whisper of his breath warm against Kenshin's neck. He smelled of beer and smoke and some other, more unique scent that was solely Sanosuke.

The smell of it was - - pleasing. And it occurred to him that the fact that it was - - the fact that he noticed it at all - - made this uncomfortable little niche, all the more disquieting. Worse still, he hadn't even the room to distance himself. To move out from under Sano's long arm, and Sano's warm breath. It made no sense that after days and day and days of close sleeping quarters, he'd find issue with it now. Other than the fact that he could still feel the imprint of Sano's fingers on his skull and still feel the ghost of the chill bumps that had risen on his skin as a result.

It was silly. It was Sano after all and no threat to him.

A silly thing, born of exhaustion and discouragement and he didn't need the distraction. Most certainly he did not. What he needed was sleep, so that he could focus a few hours from now when he'd need his wits about him.

It became second nature to force sleep when the dangers of the road dictated that only a few precious hours of it might be granted at a time and then long stretches without. He shut his eyes, imagining calm and peace and still; slowing his breathing, decreasing his racing heart, relaxing against the warmth next to him, instead of tensing from irrational alarm.

It was just Sano after all. Sano didn't mean anything - -

The Oyabun's weekday 'office', so to speak, if the rumors they had heard were to be believed, occupied the floor above a brothel three streets inland from the ocean. The Sendai Oyabun, the father of the Sendai Yakuza was reportedly the son and heir of the very old, very respected, very feared former Oyabun. There were no rumors where his home where, which one expected, was how the Oyabun preferred it. Kenshin favored visiting him at the office, never having had a taste for invading a man's home with unpleasant business.

Sano, once the bulk of the hangover had seeped away, after what sounded like a painful emptying of his stomach into the ally behind the inn and two cups of herbal tea that an old vendor promised would relieve the most horrendous 'morning after head', had all sorts of crafty notions of how to go about infiltrating the headquarters of the Sendai Yakuza. One felt bad vocalizing to Sano, who was trying very hard, that stealth had never been his strong suit. If stealth had been what Kenshin was after, he'd have extracted himself from Sano's dead to the world embrace and gone alone.

As it was he listened to Sano's advice all the walk to the Oyabun's business office and then simply stopped on the street outside it and announced that 'no, the front door seemed the best way in.'

Sano gaped, all his notions of craftily passing the Oyabun's no doubt numerous guardians disassembled.

"Hello." Kenshin smiled without particular good nature at the painted face of the woman who greeted them at the door. It was not the most elite of brothels. The smell of opium drifted from the back rooms. The hostess was pretty enough but old before her time. "We're looking for the Oyabun. Mazawa Sozui, I believe."

The hostess blinked at him, not comprehending or shocked into speechlessness at the bluntness of his request.

"I can't believe you just asked it like that," Sano muttered behind him.

"There is no Mazawa Sozui here." The woman finally got her voice back, peering around the both of them to see if anyone else were lingering outside the door.

"Ah - - strange, considering we heard from several sources that his offices were on the top floor of this very building.

"You want a girl?" she asked. "We have girls who'll do whatever you want."

"We don't want girls," Sano snapped. "We want to talk with the Oyabun, Damnit!"

Sano was loud. The woman winced and stepped back a little. Sano moved around Kenshin, filling the room with his presence. "We'll look for ourselves."

"No." The woman put her hands out, not quite touching. "We don't want your business. Leave now!"

"You heard her." A man stepped out from behind a sliding door. A very large man, with a pock marked face and arms bigger around than Kenshin's thighs.

Sano grinned, finding something he could sink his teeth into. He stepped right up to a man that probably outweighed him half again and repeated Kenshin's demand.

"We came to see the Oyabun. We're not going away until we do."

The big man had a knife under his shirt and very likely another one strapped to his leg, from the way he carried himself. Sano could deal with a few simple knives. The ones behind the partially opened sliding door were another matter. There were two or three of them waiting there, and the smell of sake and smoke drifted out to mix with the heavy perfume of the hostess and the scent of opium smoke coming from the back of the brothel.

He slid around the center of conflict that had become Sano and the big man. Saw where the stairs led up at the end of a shadowed, door lined hall. The woman saw him and started, not having noted him moving at all, but she kept her silence, willing to let the Oyabun's guards deal with them.

Of course with Sano, it had to come to violence. The big man shoved first and Sano staggered back a step, then let loose with one of his own no-nonsense punches. He was quicker by far than he'd used to be and the blow landed solidly making the big man reel.

There was a rustling of movement from the room behind the sliding door. The faint smell of gunpowder, which meant one or more of the hidden one's had a gun. Kenshin disliked guns intensely. A man sidled through the crack in the door, a pistol in his hand. Kenshin shoved the sliding door panel closed with enough force to shatter the wood. The man and his gun went sprawling, the latter clattering to the floor boards, the former squawking and holding both hands to a broken nose and split lips.

The others cried out in anger and clamored over the broken door, spying Sano right away and mistakenly assuming him the only threat. The first one went down, tripping over Kenshin's foot, the second one to an elbow in the throat. The one he'd tripped, got a well placed kick to the side of the head which ended his threat. Sano finished his in short order and stood there looking for more, somewhat surprised at the collection of Kenshin's conquests.

"I thought you were supposed to be wounded?"

"I think the stairs are this way." Kenshin inclined his head to the hostess and padded down the hallway, past occupied rooms, some of which the sounds of grunts and moans issued forth from, some which the occupants had half opened the doors to, curious at the ruckus outside.

There were more bodies upstairs. He could hear them moving, More dangerous bodies than the ones in those rooms partaking of women and drugs. If they had too much time to prepare, they would be trouble. If they had more guns - - this would be messy and he truly hadn't wanted messy. He truly did not want Sano in the line of gunfire. Sano was quick, but he wasn't that quick. Ha - - he hardly knew if he was that quick anymore. Between four years of a generally sedentary life and the wounds he'd taken when that life had been interrupted - - he was most disastrously off his game.

It wasn't a man with a gun at the top of the stairs, but a pair of men with swords. They had the higher ground certainly, but they were in the dark as to what sort of threat they faced. Kenshin's foot touched the first step and he launched himself up, before they could fully realize what he was doing or just how quick he was doing it. Two bounds and he was just below their line of vision. He felt the strain of it in his leg. Felt it quite adamantly in his hand and he slammed his palm up under the closest one's guard and into his chin. Teeth clamped shut quite abruptly and blood spattered as the tongue was caught in the crushing impact. Kenshin caught his arm, even as the man started howling, and slammed the hilt of his sword into the other man's Adam's apple. He bashed the first one's head against the wall to quiet his noise and caught the sword as limp fingers dropped it. He didn't want it, this killing blade. It was too much of a risk to wield it and not take a life, accidentally or not. But the howls of the man who'd bitten through his tongue had roused others and Sano was pounding up the stairs in his wake and the Oyabun was sure to have the best of his guard on the upper level with him.

He made the choice, and snatched the sheath out of the unconscious man's belt, sliding the blade home within it. A sheathed sword could be a dangerous weapon in its own right, even if his grip was weak and it hurt to clench his fingers too tightly about the hilt.

"If they have guns - - stay down," he hissed at Sano.

"Me? What about you?" Sano complained, but Kenshin didn't answer, he swept down the narrow hall, cutting a swath through the men that came from the various rooms along the side. He used speed to take them down before they had the chance to rally - - before he had to exert physical energy and prowess that he was sorely lacking in at the moment. He left the dregs of them for Sano to clean up behind him, working his way towards the big room at the end of the hall. The door slid open before he reached it and slim, dark man stood there, a sheathed sword at his side, face expressionless. Not a hired thug. Not even a trained yakuza assassin. Better than that. A man who knew how to hold that sword and had quite likely used it professionally years past when the carrying of such a weapon was not frowned upon. Kenshin knew a swordsman when he saw one - - and this was most certainly a man that knew the art.

Not a good man to encounter when his own hands were screaming bloody murder at him and wetness was trickling down his wrist from the bandage of his right one, making the hilt of the sword slick under his fingers. He transferred the sword to his left hand, holding it lightly by the sheath. Held out his right hand to stop Sano from charging right past him and inclined his head respectfully at the swordsman at the door.

"We've come to speak to the Oyabun, if you please."

"Do you have an appointment?" the man asked, deadpan.

"An appointment?!" Sano cried and Kenshin wondered how much face he'd lose by turning around and kicking him to get him to shut up.

"No. It was an impromptu visit. I would like to see him all the same."

The swordsman looked beyond them, at the wreckage of the hall, at strewn bodies and shattered doors.

"Assassin's generally come through the back door."

"We're not assassins."

"Doi, let them pass." A voice from within instructed.

The swordsman, Doi frowned, but stepped aside regardless, gesturing for them to approach. The office, compared to the rest of the building was very tastefully decorated. A large room with a western style desk and a western style couch along one wall. The rest was traditional, from the fine tapestries on the wall, to the lovely geisha kneeling on a mat beside the desk, a tea service at her side. There were two men in the room besides the swordsman, Doi. One looked to be a secretary, who had a small desk of his own, and the other was a middle aged man in deceptively simple, silk clothing. He had a pair of western spectacles perched on his nose.

"Is there a reason you invade my office?" He asked smoothly.

"I find it more honorable than invading a man's home." Kenshin answered, just as smoothly. "And it was only an invasion because your men forced it to be so. We asked nicely."

"Ah. Your politeness is steeped in disregard."

Kenshin shrugged, silently willing Sano to have the sense to keep his mouth shut and let Kenshin deal with this. Sano seemed content with that course for the moment, standing just behind him to the left, his eyes on the swordsman still at the door.

"The Yakuza have given me little reason for regard. But, I've not dealt with an Oyabun, so perhaps I've gotten the wrong impression."

"Perhaps. Perhaps you confuse the Yakuza with the yakuza - - the organization with the outcast strays of society. We are businessmen. We are not thugs and common criminals."

"Common criminals - - no."

The Oyabun stared at him, at his bandaged hands and the sheathed sword they held. "What do you want?"

"Information."

"Information? You come here and destroy my property and kill my men and you want a favor."

"No man of yours is dead."

A brow arched, speculatively. This was not a generous man, Kenshin thought. Not a merciful one. This was a man who would crush weakness the moment it reared its head. Better not to show it.

"Killing your men would prove no point. Not when I wish a favor."

"What information?"

"An Englishman named Winter came to Sendai from Tokyo in the company of Yakuza, on business in which Yakuza had a hand. He was to meet a ship here. I need to know what ship and if it has already left port and if so - - its destination. I would speak with these Yakuza from Tokyo if you do not know - - for I'm sure they will."

"And what makes you think that I would give up those given my protection? The protection of the Oyabun is no small thing."

"No," Kenshin agreed. "I have no grudge against the Yakuza - - only the Englishman."

"And if this Englishman - - whoever he is - - is in alliance with the Yakuza?"

Kenshin lowered his lashes, hiding the glint of anger, hiding the flash of memory of Winter's face just before he'd pulled the trigger and put a bullet through Kenshin's shoulder, of those sibilant, hateful words half recalled through a haze of pain and desperation. Of Kaoru and Kenji in this man's grasp. He had no time for this. He had no patience. He looked up and let the cold, controlled force of his anger take life in his gaze.

"Then the Yakuza and I would be at odds, Oyabun."

Chapter Eleven

Sano didn't even see it coming. One moment Kenshin was verbally dancing with the Sendai Yakuza boss and the next, the swordsman by the door, the guy the Oyabun had called Doi, was springing towards Kenshin's back, his sword out of its sheath so fast Sano missed the draw entirely. It was the sort of speed only the really good swordsmen exhibited. The type Kenshin would use and surprise the hell out of you when you weren't expecting it. Maybe the Oyabun had given a signal - - maybe the guy was just fed up with Kenshin sparring with his master.

Whatever the cause, the stroke was a killing one and if it had come at Sano - - he'd have probably been bleeding his guts out on the floor before he even realized he'd been sliced open.

Kenshin spun and blocked it with the sheathed blade. Shoved backwards hard with both hands when the naked blade lodged in the wood of the sheath and forced the Doi guy back a few steps before the man yanked his sword free of Kenshin's sheath.

Thud, thud - - thump. Three successive swipes - - all blocked and the end of the sheath shattered, leaving the last foot of the blade naked. Kenshin hissed and flung the arm holding the blade out and the sheath went sailing like a missile towards Doi. It was unexpected enough to take the guy by surprise. The sheath hit him in the gut and hard. He gasped, staggering a step - - that cold professionalism on his face replaced by indignant anger. Like he thought tossing the sheath had been a dirty move or something - - like he hadn't come at Kenshin's back first.

Doi swept forward and naked steel met naked steel. Kenshin didn't have much a choice - - all his moral righteousness be damned when a man was trying to slice him up with a good sharp blade. The woman screamed and scrambled backwards, the little secretary did, the both of them huddling behind the Oyabun's desk while the Oyabun himself sat impassive - - waiting for the outcome.

Clang - - clang - - swoosh. Doi's sword met empty air as Kenshin leapt over the swing - - launched himself off the edge of the Oyabun's desk and into the air over Doi's head, coming down with the hilt of his sword against Doi's neck on the way down. The man staggered forward, almost turned in time bring his sword around and make a swipe at Kenshin before Kenshin's foot slammed into the small of his back and smashed him forward into the edge of the desk.

Then Kenshin stood there, with the tip of his blade poised at the back of Doi's neck, the steel just resting lightly upon the flesh, but not quite breaking it. He stared over the man's head and into the Oyabun's eyes.

"Have you given him your protection? Shall I finish this and see how much this protection of yours is truly worth?"

"You - - you do not know who you toy with. The Yakuza has a reach longer than you know."

"I know. I asked a simple favor. You brought this upon yourself."

"Who are you?"

"It makes no difference."

"I know who you are - - I saw you - - in the revolution - -" Doi whispered, leaning against his master's desk. "They said you were dead - - years ago."

Kenshin tightened his lips, not willing to confirm this man's assumptions. But maybe threat of Battousai the manslayer was needed more now than the threat of a simple, unknown swordsman.

"Well, they were wrong," Sano said.

"Tell him," Doi said softly. "Tell him and get him out of here."

The Oyabun frowned, but it did appear he had some regard for his bodyguard.

"I know this Winter. The ship he left on is called the Blue Lady and it left this port two days past. To where I do not know. The Yakuza he came with may or may not still be in Sendai. You might try looking for them at the Terakado inn. If you kill them while they are under my protection or disrupt my business, I will hunt you both down and make you pay. If you linger in this city, I may do so regardless. Do we understand each other?"

Kenshin pulled the blade back and inclined his head. "We understand each other, Oyabun."

He didn't say more. Just spun on his heel and strode past Sano and down the hall past the few insensible bodies that still lay on the floor. Past the conscious ones who glared daggers at their passage and downstairs through the brothel to the fresh air of outside.

A block down the road and he pushed his way through the crowded street to the wall of a building, thrusting the sword he'd held concealed close to his body into Sano's hands, haunching his shoulders and drawing his own hands up close to his chest. The hilt of the sword was wet with blood. The bandages on Kenshin's right hand were soaked through with red. There were pain tears in his eyes that he could hold back no longer.

"Shit.," Sano said, dropping the sword and kicking it close to the wall in order to better see Kenshin's hand. "You idiot. Look what you did."

Kenshin was shaking - - the whole of his body was quivering, his knees threatening to spill him down the wall. Sano got an arm around him to shore him up, close against the wall in the shadow of a narrow alley, hoping like hell that the Oyabun hadn't sent men to pursue them.

He wanted them out of the street and far enough away from the brothel to put them out of easy striking range.

"Do you want to keep the sword?"

It took Kenshin a moment to answer. He shook his head. "No."

"Okay. C'mon, then."

Kenshin clutched at Sano's jacket, pressing his forehead hard against Sano's shoulder. "Two days - - two days - -"

As if they hadn't expected it. As if Kenshin thought this Englishman would hang around waiting for him - - but Kenshin had had hope, even though he'd known better and that was dashed now.

"Come on, now!" Sano got a grip on Kenshin's arm and got him back onto the street, whether he was ready to go or not. Kenshin let himself be bullied into moving. Let Sano haul him along, paying little heed to where Sano was going.

Sano had plans. Definite plans. First off back to the crappy little inn they'd spent the morning in to get his sack and take care of Kenshin's hand. The repeated impact of sword against sword had done a damn good job of breaking open the scabs of a wound that had just begun to heal without the angry red of infection. He was amazed that Kenshin had been able to keep his grip at all. That Doi guy had been no inept swordsman.

Second, scope out this Terakado inn and see if it was some sort of set-up before they blundered in. Sniff around a little bit and test the weather - - Sano didn't trust the Yakuza much at all and impassive faced Yakuza bosses none at all. The Oyabun would have had the both of them murdered on the spot if he'd have been able to get away with it.

"Where are we going?" Kenshin asked finally, pulling his arm out of Sano's grasp.

"Back to the inn."

"No." Kenshin stopped dead in the street. "We don't have time."

"Your hand is bleeding again."

"They'll get word to them and they'll run," Kenshin said.

"What? The Yakuza from Tokyo? If they're where this guy said at all?"

Kenshin ignored him, gaze sweeping the street and fixing on a vendor in his stand along the side. "Do you know the Terakado inn?"

The man gave him a dubious look, as if he thought he were out of his head for asking, but he told him regardless and Sano stood there softly cursing all the while.

"You're disabusing me of the notion that you have any common sense whatsoever!" Sano complained when Kenshin started off again. "I'm supposed to be the hotheaded one!"

Kenshin wasn't paying him any attention. Sano ground his teeth and grabbed his arm again - - hard, jerking him to an abrupt halt. Kenshin came close to striking back - - Sano could see it in his eyes - - could feel the frustration and the panic and the rage in that shriveling plum glare.

"You walked out of that brothel by the grace of luck alone - - understand? You weren't up to that and you did it anyway and if you think you're gonna get lucky enough to do it again - - well, your luck hasn't been running that good and you know it."

"Sano - - don't - -"

"Don't what? Try and talk sense? You put on a good show, but that guy took everything you had - - you're bleeding! They're already two days ahead of us - - a few hours isn't going to make any difference."

"It is! Do you think the Oyabun will just sit there and forget about our visit? Do you think he'll not send word to those men and warn them we're coming?"

"No. I don't think that. But I think they'll be ready and willing to finish what they started back in the mountains and I think the Oyabun probably sent a runner out the moment we stepped out of his office and I think no matter how soon we get there they're gonna be expecting us - - so you damned well better be in better shape than you are now."

"Let go, Sano."

Sano swore and released him, swallowing the urge to smack him up against the side of the head for his stubbornness. "Fine. We'll go then. And if you fuck up and I get killed because of it - - well, you can damn sure expect my ghost to haunt you for the rest of your days."

Kenshin stopped, a half dozen paces ahead of him, shoulders stiff and angry. His expression must have been abysmal, for people in the street took one look and veered wide around him. Maybe that last had gotten through to him. Kenshin had always had the tendency to hold firm to guilts and responsibilities, misplaced or not. He took very serious issue of protecting the people around him whether they needed protecting or not. Whether he was capable of it or not.

Or maybe it wasn't that at all. Maybe those last few steps had driven home how much that little skirmish in the Oyabun's office had cost him. Maybe he was feeling the blood running down his fingers or the tearing of no where near healed bullet wounds. Maybe the hurt was getting though for a change - - maybe that and the devastation of actually knowing - - knowing for a fact that Kaoru had slipped beyond his present grasp - - had driven the stubborn refusal to acknowledge his own mortality out of him.

It didn't really matter. Sano got capitulation. He got a reluctant nod and very soft. "All right. We'll go and get your pack, first."

Sano tried not to revel in the small victory. Tried not to say any inflammatory thing such as 'now you're showing good sense.' Or ' It's about time you started listening to me.' Though he thought them with fierce intensity. It was enough that Kenshin had agreed.

It was enough that he sat still long enough to Sano to unwind the blood soaked bandages around his right hand and rewrap it. Sano had become rather adept at bandaging in the last few weeks. Kenshin had split the scab that had formed over the wound in his palm and the blood staining the new bandages was a bright red.

"It hurt?" Sano asked, tying off the cloth. Kenshin gave him a narrow eyed look, not in the mood for trivial talk.

"I just ask," Sano said irritably. "Because your hand is shaking so bad. See?"

He released the hand in question and without his own big fingers to anchor it, there was a visible trembling. Kenshin's gaze grew darker and he curled his fingers, pulling the member close to his body.

"It's time to go now."

Sano sighed, figuring he'd gotten all the repose out of Kenshin that he was likely to. He got up, slinging the pack over his shoulder and waited for Kenshin to follow suit, figuring that once Kenshin was down, it wouldn't be so easy to get back up. But Kenshin surprised him, rising gracefully to his feet with hardly a grimace.

They followed the directions the vendor had given Kenshin in brooding silence. The part of town this inn was supposedly located in was not a nicer part of Sendai. They were as likely, Sano thought grimly, to be attacked by the restless, predatory youth lingering in groups at this alleyway or the doorway of that dilapidated structure as they were by Yakuza.

The brothels here made the one the Oyabun held his offices over seem like the most esteemed geisha house. There were women on the streets outside the houses beckoning men towards their dens. There were groups of men gambling on the sides of the street, or the sound of men cheering on fighting cocks within the depths of an alley. A woman screamed from somewhere down one of those dark alleys and both he and Kenshin tensed, but her shrill laughter followed and one could only assume it was a whore entertaining her patron. There were no westerners here, as had been evident in other parts of the city. They'd probably not last a handful of minutes before they had their throats slit by the angry denizens of the Sendai slums.

The Terakado inn apparently doubled as a gambling den as well as a brothel. It was a seedy, ill-repaired building with a peeling, hand painted sign next to its main entrance. The sound of raucous laughter could be heard from within and a great many bodies traversed in and out of its doors. A popular place then. A dangerous one. Sano had seen its like. Had frequented its like, but only when he'd been in the mood for a bit of risk. He'd have been damned watchful of his back if he'd have walked into such a place without the possibility of an ambush - - as it was - - well, he wished Kenshin had kept the sword. The threat of the Battousai - - whether he was presently declawed or not - - might have been a good thing to have on their side.

"Oh, this is just great," Sano complained as they lingered across the street from the inn. "Looks like half the thugs in Sendai make this place their hangout."

Kenshin stood in the shadow of a drooping overhang, frowning. "It does seem a popular place."

Sano snorted. "So you want me to maybe go in and take a look around. I don't stand out as much as you."

"No. I think maybe we'll watch from here for a while. See who comes and goes."

Ah, sanity. Sano planted his back against the wall, wishing he'd picked up something to eat on the way, not trusting the digestibility of the food prepared on this particular street.

The shadows lengthened. A few women of ill-repute wondered by with interesting propositions. A man slithered up inquiring in they wanted herbal entertainment. Kenshin's black glare chased him away. Out of all the comings and goings to and from that inn, Sano wondered if Kenshin recognized a face. Whether he'd gotten a good enough look at any of those Yakuza that he'd chased from Tokyo to recall features. Whether any of them had participated in what the bandits had done to him - - or whether they'd left before it had come down to rape. If they had, then Kenshin wouldn't have to worry about his precious vow not to kill - - because Sano would take care of it.

It was almost dusk before Kenshin decided to move. Sano had wondered down the street and back in that time, all within eyeshot of the inn. Conversed with the women on the street and a few of the loitering youth who took him for nothing more than a slightly older version of themselves. He knew very well how to exude the aura of the ruffian when it suited him.

Then back to Kenshin and his silent, patient surveillance of the inn. When Kenshin did see a face that struck a chord, he never tensed. Didn't say a word to acknowledge it until the man was safely inside the inn and Sano's attention had wondered. Then it was merely a quiet. It's time to go now, Sano. And he pushed himself off the wall and walked down the street past the inn and towards the alley that flanked it.

"What, we going in the back way?" Sano wanted to know.

"Yes," Kenshin said, stepping over a passed out drunk in the shadows. Kenshin's gaze went up to the row of windows lining the second floor and Sano figured he was contemplating an even less obvious entry than the back door. There wasn't much in the way of handhold to get up there and Sano wasn't sure if he could make that dubious climb. Which meant if Kenshin went up, he might have no choice but to go in through the door. There were a lot of crates out here, containers of trash and rotted food. The urine and vomit smell overpowered even that.

"I don't know if I can make it up that way," Sano hissed and Kenshin frowned. "Let's just go through the damned kitchen."

As he said it the door opened and someone staggered out, drunk and oblivious, and weaving his way down to the end of the alley to purge his stomach. Sano made a face and gestured at the door. "It doesn't look like they particularly care who comes and goes this way. If its a set-up, then we're gonna walk into it one way or another anyway."

It irked Kenshin, who still had the instincts of a hitokiri if not the values - - to just waltz in the public way when there were so many other unpublic one's available. Sano, who'd never had the impulses to skulk about like a thief in the night, didn't give him the chance to argue the point, striding for the door and entering the horribly unappetizing kitchen. There were a few men and women working inside, who only barely paused in their work to take note of Sano's appearance and Kenshin's more circumspect one behind him. The smell of seafood gone bad killed even Sano's appetite. There was a door at the end of the cluttered kitchen area which undoubtedly lead to the main room, where a great clamor of noise issued.

He turned to see how Kenshin wanted to play this game - - when out of the shadows of the box and crates on the inside of the kitchen door a fist shot out and slammed unerringly into the side of his head. He staggered into the embrace of a large form that stepped out of the darkness from the other side of the door, vision spinning and only half aware of the sudden startlement of the kitchen workers. Only half aware as his senses cleared and anger set it, that the blow that had sent him staggering into the kitchen had merely been to get him out of the way so that his attacker could get his hands on Kenshin. Not an easy task at the worst of times, Kenshin being slippery and tricky even when he was impaired and especially when he was on a mission. But as Sano got his wits about him and grappled with the big man that was trying to haul him backwards towards the door to the alley, he saw that Kenshin's attacker had an arm around his neck and one about his waist and had hauled him off his feet and was half way through the door with him and out into the shadows of dusk. Sano stopped playing nice then. He changed the force of his struggles quite suddenly, wanting out that door to where Kenshin had been taken and wanting it quick. The big man, who'd been trying to get him that direction anyway was suddenly taken off his balance, and Sano pushed him headlong through the door and sent the both of them crashing into the trash outside it.

Sano ended up on top, with a knee in his attacker's groin and a fist raised to smash into his broad, flat face.

"Sano - - wait." A hiss from Kenshin and he jerked his head up to search him out. There in the shadows, pressed against the wall with a tall, narrow figure in common workman's clothing, blocking him in.

"What the fuck - -?" Sano demanded and the man blocking Kenshin in shifted to look over his shoulder at Sano, dark, narrow eyes cold and business like and just damned deadly.

"Don't make more of a scene that you already have, Sagara."

"What? What!?" Sano cried, squinting his eyes to peer through the shadows, the darkness hiding a great deal of the features but nothing of the hatefully smug, unfortunately familiar voice. He knew this man. It was not a man whom he'd particularly wanted to encounter again.

"Saitou - -" he hissed, scrambling off the man he'd knocked through the door, rightfully thinking Saitou Hajime the more dangerous opponent.

"What the fuck do you want?"

"I'm afraid I can't allow the two of you to go inside."

"What!? Why the hell not?"

"What business is it of yours?" Kenshin asked, softer, calmer, though his eyes were narrowed to almond shaped slits.

"It would disturb a delicate balance and you two have already stirred the waters in Sendai with your presence enough already. There is nothing in this inn that you need."

"Where do you get off telling us what to do?"

"Sano - -" Kenshin gave Sano a warning look and slid under Saitou's arm and out from against the wall where the taller man had pushed him. "Why?"

The last question had been directed at Saitou and the man whom the Meiji police force utilized as one of their top undercover agents - - the man who had once been a leader of the Shinsengumi - the man who still held the ghostly acronym ' the wolf of Miburo' cast his smile that was never truly a real smile at Kenshin, and inquired dryly.

"Doesn't Sagara have a price on his head? I think that warrant still stands - -"

Sano went a little pale. He clenched his fists having the very strong urge to break and run. Well, maybe take a swipe or two at Saitou before fleeing the long arm of the law.

"Saitou, don't change the subject," Kenshin warned. "There's a man or two in there that I need information from."

"That may be. But you're still not going in there."

"Why do you care?"

"Because if you do you'll be interfering with an operation that the police have been working at for months - - I would prefer if all that hard work not be scattered to the four winds just because you and this idiot want to bust a few heads."

"Idiot!?"

"Shut up, Sano," Kenshin snapped. Oh, Kenshin was not happy. Kenshin had come very close to something vitally important to him and Saitou appearing out of nowhere telling him he couldn't have it was not being taken well.

"You tell me why or I go in there anyway, whether you want it or not."

"Will you? Are you sure you're up to going through me, Himura?"

Kenshin's lip curled in a snarl. He glanced at Saitou's big lackey, at the open kitchen door - - at Sano, who nodded, affirming that he was up for anything Kenshin wished to try.

"Not here," Saitou said, abruptly digging in his pocket and coming out with a cigarette between his long fingers. "Come with me."

He struck a match against the wall and held the flickering flame to the end of the cigarette, then shook out the stick and tossed it into the alley along with the rest of the debris.

Kenshin looked back at the doors, reluctantly.

"Don't be a fool. You're not going in there and you're in no shape to press the issue with me." When he shifted, Sano could see the dark silhouette of a sword at his hip, under the loose workman's jacket he wore. He was right. The condition Kenshin was in and swordless to boot - - Saitou would pound him into the ground.

If he could get past Sano to do it. Sano stepped forward, close up to Kenshin's side and glared defiantly into Saitou's eyes. They were almost of a height. Saitou had a few inches on him if you discounted Sano's unruly hair.

"I still have a score to settle with you."

Saitou lifted a brow, not impressed. Infuriating man. Sano ground his teeth, thinking about how hard he'd trained during those years on the mainland and how much of it was due to proving something to this smug bastard here.

Saitou turned his back on them and started walking up the alley towards the street, leaving his hulking lackey to stand between them and the back door. Kenshin stood there, shoulders haunched a little, head down, fingers curled into fists, even though it had to hurt.

"To hell with him - -" Sano hissed softly, mostly for Kenshin's ears - - but not particularly caring if Saitou heard.

"No - -" Kenshin said. "I can't fight him and them. We'll hear what he has to say, Sano."

Sano cast a black look back at Saitou's man, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled after Kenshin.

It was just them and Saitou in a very secluded booth in an almost empty teahouse a good half dozen blocks from the slums where the Terakado inn had been. Saitou waved the hostess away after ordering a simple round of tea and Sano called her back, wanting food to fill his empty stomach. Saitou gave him a look like he was the biggest lout in the world for thinking of food when more serious things were afoot. Kenshin didn't look at him at all, his solemn, unnervingly serious gaze never leaving Saitou.

"What do you know about why I'm here?" Kenshin asked softly.

Killing soft. Like if Saitou gave the wrong answer there was going to be blood shed between them. Kenshin was damned scary when he got that look - - when everything soft and familiar about him just evaporated and what was left was a stone cold killer. Only Kenshin wasn't that. Even when he was pressed hard with his back to the wall - - he wasn't that - - so a body had to get past that dangerous look and all the things known about Kenshin's dubious past and break into the silence that Saitou let stretch out.

Saitou. Kenshin might not be a cold killer - - but Saitou was. Had been in the revolution and still was. He had a certain brand of honor though, a body had to admit that, even though a body might hate him with a passion. He didn't kill the innocent. If you were on the other side of that line though - - beware.

"Don't just sit there smoking, you asshole. Answer him!"

Saitou's lips twitched a little, and he inclined his head graciously as the waitress brought back the tea and made to pour for them. He let the two of them stew while she filled their cups, then waited until she had padded off before taking a sip of his.

"What do you know about an English merchant named Winter?" Saitou countered.

"You know him?" Sano asked.

Saitou cast him a look, then turned his gaze back to Kenshin. "Do you let him do your talking for you now?"

"Oh shut the fuck up - -" Sano snapped. "You're the one that asked us here."

"I asked him," Saitou clarified.

"Yeah - - well - -"

"Would you two please stop," Kenshin said softly. "I know Winter and you know I do, if you stopped me from going into that inn and questioning those Yakuza. The question I have is why and how?"

"Why? Because the man has been a thorn in Japan's side for the last decade or more. He's a blackmarketeer, a gunrunner, a murderer, a conspirator with at least a half dozen corrupt government officials and at the moment he's in cohorts with the Yakuza in efforts to corner the trade coming into at least four major ports, Tokyo bay being the most notable. We've had a very great interest in this westerner for some time now. As to how - - well, let's just say I've a fly on the wall and I don't need you going in and swatting him."

Kenshin sat there a moment in silence, one knuckle pressed lightly against his bottom lip - -

"What do you mean - - fly on the wall?" Sano demanded when Kenshin didn't.

Saitou gave him another of those looks.

"He means," Kenshin said. "That he's got a man inside the Yakuza. All the way from Tokyo?"

He asked it quietly and Saitou shrugged. "It takes a great deal of effort to infiltrate such a close knit organization. I don't want my man compromised."

"Wait a minute." Sano held up a finger, a sudden angry thought hammering to get out of his head. "Just wait a damn minute. You're saying one of your men came from Tokyo with this damned English bastard and he stood there and watched while they did this to Kenshin." He made a swipe at Kenshin's hand, catching his wrist and holding the bandaged member up for Saitou to get a good look at.

"Sano - -" Kenshin tugged for him to release him.

"Your cop just stood there while they crucified him? While they - - while - - he almost died!"

"Sano - - let go," Kenshin repeated and Sano realized he had hauled him half way across the short table in efforts to get the bandaged hand close to Saitou. He let go and Kenshin pushed himself back, righting a tea cup that had spilled its contents across the table as he did.

"When a man is this deep undercover - - and when the mission is so important - - certain sacrifices must be made. He got word to me that there were rumors that the Battousai might have been involved. If that were the case - - well, one would trust Himura to be capable of extracting himself from such a situation."

"Well, he didn't," Sano snapped, wondering if Saitou's man had been there while they were raping Kenshin - - wondering if he'd passed that bit of information along to his smug superior. He looked to Kenshin, but he wasn't showing anything, his face impassive, not letting a scrap of emotion escape.

"I don't really care what he did - - or is doing - - or is conspiring to do - -" Kenshin finally said. "All that matters to me is that he took my wife and my son and that he's had two - - three days now - - head start on me and if your man knows where he's going then you find out for me, or I find out for myself, cover or no cover."

Saitou steepled his fingers, staring speculatively at Kenshin. "Why did he do it? Why take them?"

"Because he needed a replacement for a girl he killed. I don't know why? That wasn't one of the things he told me."

"What other things did he tell you, Kenshin?" Saitou leaned forward like a snake about to strike. Sano almost wanted to put an arm between them in case Saitou spewed out some sort of venom.

"He helped fund Shishio."

"Humm. Yes. We'd suspected Shishio had western backers and later after the threat was eliminated, Winter's name came up."

Kenshin took a breath, opened his mouth and shut it as the waitress came back with Sano's food. Sometime in the interim, Sano had surprisingly enough lost his appitite. Maybe it was the nauseating knowledge that a man that was supposed to be one of the good guys hadn't lifted a finger to stop Kaoru's kidnapping and Kenshin's torture.

"What the hell does any of that matter. All we need to know is where he's taken Kaoru." Sano slammed a fist down on the tabletop so hard the cups jumped, spilling more yet more tea.

"I don't know where he was going." Saitou stubbed out the remnants of his cigarette and fished in his pocket for another one.

"You don't know," Kenshin repeated slowly. "Or you won't tell?"

"Yeah, you seem to know everything else," Sano complained.

Saitou drew in a long drag of smoke, his eyes dark, narrow slits in the dim light of the restaurant. "This man did not confide the whole of his schemes to even the Yakuza he is aligned with. He already has them in a partnership. We feel he has been looking for more legitimate backing - - perhaps because his own backers in the west need the confidence that they are dealing with men of honor as opposed to a syndicate of organized criminals."

Saitou tapped ash into an empty tea cup, mouth twitching thoughtfully as he turned information over in his head. "What did he say about this woman? The one you say he killed?"

"Very little - -" Kenshin said. "That she knew a bit of English - - that he had a use for her - - but that she turned against him - - perhaps - - I was distracted at the time. She had bodyguards that he murdered as well - - so she must have been a woman of some consequence."

"The daughter of a man of consequence," Saitou surmised and Kenshin lifted a brow in question.

Saitou's lips turned up in a thin smile, genuinely pleased. "The Yakuza don't know where he was going - - only that it was to cement an alliance with an English shipping conglomerate. A legitimate alliance with a man who controls a good deal of the import/export trade in Tokyo bay. A former Shogunate who - - made out rather better than a good many of his peers after the revolution."

"This man - - he sent his daughter - - to do what? Negotiate a contract? Sign a treaty? Because he wouldn't travel out of Japan himself?" Kenshin asked.

"Most likely. Such a man might not accept the onslaught of the west well - - but he'll accept the wealth and the power relations with them might bring."

"If he sent his daughter he would know where and who she was meeting with." Kenshin's eyes got a little wider, a little more emotion showing through with the sudden burst of hope.

"Probably." Saitou blew a smoke ring lazily over the table.

"If you were so hot to get to Winter, why not have this guy under surveillance?" Sano demanded. "Why not question him?"

"Because - - this guy - - as you so simply put it - - has very high contacts in the Meiji Government. He has a great deal of legitimate political power and taking him into police custody to question like any common thug would have repercussions I'd rather not have to deal with."

"Okay, so we go and ask him, then. I mean, if Winter killed his daughter then he's not gonna be that loyal to the bastard, is he?"

"Very likely not. How amazingly astute of you, Sagara." As if Saitou thought it was the first bright idea that Sano had ever had.

Sano scowled, on the verge of snapping back when Kenshin spoke up.

"The Shogunate were stripped of land and power. Why does this man still hold his?"

"Ah - - did I forget to mention his alliance with the Meiji forces during the last years of the revolution? He betrayed the Towkogawa and the Meiji Government rewarded him for it by leaving him his wealth and his lands if not all of his honor."

"A traitor!" Sano spat. "It figures a traitor would be in cahoots with this English bastard."

"Don't be so harsh, Sagara - - a man will do a great many things to protect his children. The Meiji were desperate for the strategic lands and information he held so they sent a very clear message. They had his son and heir assassinated in his own home and sent his head and the heads of his personal guard to his father. Quite a few heads if I recall. How many were there, Himura? Seven - - Ten?"

Kenshin's fists knotted, his eyes barely visible slits under the fall of his hair. "Nine. There were nine."

"You - -?" Sano blinked.

Kenshin flashed him a look and not a happy one. There was desperation and guilt and a plea for understanding all in that one split second when their eyes met, then it was gone, replaced by hard chips of amethyst and tight line of mouth.

"When his second son was threatened," Saitou said. "The old man chose to preserve his family line - - I'm sure if Himura showed up on his doorstep asking for assistance, he'd be less than willing to grant it - - murdered daughter or no."

"Okay. Okay, So Kenshin doesn't have to be there. But I'll damn well ask."

"Yeessss. Of the pair of you, you are the diplomatic one," Saitou drawled.

Sano growled at the dripping sarcasm. He half rose, lifting a threatening fist that Saitou ignored with a completeness that was infuriating.

Kenshin's light fingers on his arm kept him from lunging across the table.

"Erizawa - - that was his name wasn't it? The old Shogunate? Where does he live, Saitou?" Kenshin asked.

"You're a fool," Saitou remarked.

"Very often of late. Where does he live?"

"Outside of Tokyo." Saitou shrugged. "Will you send this buffoon in to tell him of his daughter's murder and expect Erizawa to spill all he knows?"

"Buffoon?"

"No. I'll go myself."

"Fool."

Kenshin rose. Sano stared. They'd just traveled over half the distance from Tokyo to get here. Now Kenshin wanted to trudge back down the same damned wet, miserable, ghost ridden, bandit-infested path.

"Where's that damned silly sword of yours, Himura?"

Kenshin gave Saitou a dark look, very much, a body assumed, not wishing to admit certain weaknesses before him.

"He gave it away," Sano answered, just disgusted enough with the stupidity of the act to blurt it out.

Saitou made a face. "You're hopeless, Himura. It's a wonder you made it this far. Why don't you go home and tend your garden and your dojo and wait for me to do my own job."

"Rot in hell, Saitou." Kenshin hissed and Saitou's mouth quirked up in a half smile.

"If you were doing your job this wouldn't have happened and we wouldn't have to be trying to do it for you," Sano accused.

"Oh, shut up, Sagara. Tokyo is little more than a day's travel by rail. If you're set on going - - then there are trains leaving this very night."

Chapter Twelve

The trip from home to Sendai had seemed to take forever, filled with pain, disappointment, danger and horrible weather. It had drained mind and body and left spirits dull with the frustration of knowing that he was too far behind Winter to ever catch up - - too far to take back what was his - - but he'd hoped. He'd held on to that scrap of optimism that somehow he'd beat the odds and catch up to the Englishman before he had the chance to sweep Kaoru and Kenji out of his reach.

An optimism that was swiftly fading, replaced by a dark tide of disillusionment. Kenshin couldn't help it. It pulled him down, those hours sitting on the train with Sano on his left and Saitou - - Saitou who had blithely inserted himself into their company - - across from him, in the comfortable passenger car that Saitou had arranged for them to travel in. They were away from the bleating of goats, the squawking of chickens, the yammering of too many bodies pressed too close together in too small a space, that they had experienced in the ride from Shirakawa to Sendai. He didn't want Saitou here. He didn't want his innuendos and his snide remarks and his callous assessment of the situation. He didn't want to know how many cold-blooded plots Winter had been at the core of in his many years in Japan. He didn't want to know just how deadly the man was that held his wife and son. He didn't want to have to rely on the help of a man who had little reason to hold Kenshin any good will to find them.

Erizawa. He remembered Erizawa, or the heir at any rate. He remembered his shocked face those few precious seconds before the young man had died - - at his blade. With a house full of murdered bodyguards leading the way to him. He'd come in the night and left no witnesses in his wake. The minions of his lord had come after and done the gruesome deed of separating heads from bodies and delivering the ultimatums. He'd had no part in that - - having more than fulfilled his task. They'd never wasted him on such trivial things. He'd never questioned his assignments - - because he'd trusted the men that had given them to him. He'd held allegiance to those lords and it had not been his place to question, only to obey. It was the way of the samurai.

Perhaps that particular bloody task had held merit. The assistance of Erizawa had given the Meiji forces an advantage they hadn't had before. Perhaps those deaths had meant something. He liked to think so. He liked not to think about it at all, truth be told. He liked to immerse himself in the here and now and forget about the past - - but sometimes the past wouldn't stand still and let itself be forgotten.

His right hand ached. It felt hot and it hadn't felt that way for a few days now. Not the fevered sort of hot that came with infection. Sano had bitched and cursed at him for abusing it so - - but he'd had little choice with a man coming at his back with a naked blade. The both of them would have ended up bloodless corpses dumped into the sea if he'd not parried those blows.

Saitou had been correct. There was no way he could have gotten past him, if he'd chosen to press the issue at the Terakado inn. Even with a sword he'd have been sorely disadvantaged. And he had Sano to think about - - he had that warrant that Sano chose to ignore coming back here - - and that he had little doubt that Saitou would use to his advantage if Sano - - or Kenshin - - foiled his carefully planned operation too badly. He didn't doubt that Saitou might have had a thing or two to do with that particular warrant - - issued years ago - - that had chased Sano out of Japan in the first place. Saitou tended to hold grudges and Sano had gotten under his skin. Sano had that particular talent in excess - - the ability to grate on certain nerves.

He'd talk privately to Saitou later, when his ego and spirit were not feeling so bruised and ask if he might surreptitiously have the complaint against Sano swept under the mat. Saitou owed him, after all. Owed him a great deal.

"You okay?" Sano asked him once and he blinked wondering if Sano had been talking to him and for how long he'd been sitting there, engrossed in his own dour musings, oblivious to the world.

"What?" Kenshin blinked owlishly, floundering out of the mire of his own making. Saitou stared at him, flicked ash out the open window, a faint conceited, twitching of his thin lips. It was a look he'd give Sano, more often than not, and Kenshin disliked being on the receiving end of it.

"I asked if you were okay?" Sano jerked his head towards Kenshin's lap, where he was vigorously worrying the bandages of the one hand with the other.

Kenshin stopped the action with an effort, gazing out the window away from both Saitou's contemptuous stare and Sano's concerned one. He did not need either.

"When we do this - -" Sano said - - maybe repeating something he'd said before that Kenshin hadn't caught. " - - you don't have to tell this Erizawa guy who you are. He doesn't have to know."

Saitou snorted softly and the hand with the cigarette gestured towards Kenshin. "Oh, yes, Himura is so nondescript - - a man with an interest would certainly never connect the hair and the scar and the pretty face to the legendary Battousai."

Sano glared. "Well, what do you suggest?"

"I suggest he go home and stay out of it."

"Not fucking likely." Sano leaned forward, ripe for trouble that didn't need to be contended with confined in the passenger car of a train.

"I'm going," Kenshin stated flatly, still staring out the window at the fast passing landscape. "It is my wife and son that Winter has. It was me who found the body of Erizawa's daughter. It is me who'll find him and make him pay."

"Oh? You'll kill him? Doesn't that go against your silly values?" Saitou inquired. One could very much understand Sano wanting to jump over and strangle Saitou.

"I didn't say that," he said softly, but, oh, he'd wanted to. Very badly wanted to, both at the dojo and later in the mountains. If he had had a sword in his hands when Winter had teased him with the prospect of giving Kaoru over to one of his confidants as a mistress - - his vow to never take another life would have ended in failure, then and there. And he wouldn't have cared.

"Then what a waste of time this is." Saitou flicked his butt out the window.

"If he can't - - I won't have a problem with it," Sano promised, sounding grim and serious.

Kenshin cast him a look, disturbed by the vehemence in Sano's tone. Disturbed by the way Sano clenched his fists so hard the joints cracked alarmingly. Sano had never been a killer. He didn't want him to start for his sake - - but telling him that, in Saitou's smug presence was impossible. Later. He'd talk to him later about it.

"At least one of you lives in the real world," Saitou remarked, fishing for another cigarette.

"Nobody asked you," Sano snarled.

Kenshin thought that if they started bickering again, he'd have to get up and flee to the end of the car to outdistance it, but Saitou merely smiled that unwholesome smile of his and turned his head to watch the landscape flash by.

Tokyo. Back again. This time in the midst of sunshine and fair weather. Sano stepped off the train and breathed the air like it had a different flavor from the air in the rest of Japan. Maybe for him it did, having spent most of his life here. To Kenshin it just felt oppressive. Stagnant, even, with the gut deep knowledge that the things that held meaning for him here were gone.

He wasn't sure he wanted to go to the dojo - - to the familiar haunts that held strong reminiscences of Kaoru. Silly. Tremendously silly of him - - and superstitious, he supposed, and here he'd declared himself not superstitious. It wasn't as if she were dead - - - oh, and wasn't that a gut wrenching notion. He tried to banish the whole train of thought. Tried to concentrate on the clean streets of Tokyo and Saitou walking purposefully in front of him, and Sano striding lazily at his side, hands stuffed into pockets and making comments here and there how this had changed since he'd been gone, yet that remained the same.

"It's only been four years. It's not like you've been gone a life time - -"

Sano shrugged, slanting him a look, relaxed for some strange reason now they were off the train and heading towards a daunting destination.

"Sometimes it seemed that way."

Saitou procured a carriage, impatient to be about this business. Walking all the way to the Nikko Kaido road in the far eastern boarder of Tokyo would have taken more time than Saitou apparently wanted to spend. All the wealthiest families had their manors in those manicured suburbs that rested between Tokyo proper and Somei.

The Erizawa manor was an old one, set far off the main road and protected by tall gates and large, ornamental gardens. Saitou had asked in no uncertain terms to let him do the talking.

"Just keep your mouth shut and look subservient and maybe he'll take you for one of my underlings and we can avoid him trying to kill the lot of us."

That had been offensive. Of course Saitou had meant it as such. He took perverse pleasure in offending Kenshin, though he hardly ever showed the satisfaction on his face. All a man could do, caught in the act of glowering unappreciatively up at Saitou at the gates of a former shogun, was lower his head so that hair covered the anger when the servants answered the bell at the gates and asked what their business was.

Saitou was an official in the police department and had information vital to Lord Erizawa. It was critical that he see him post haste. Saitou had the credentials and the demeanor to impress the gate staff and they ushered him and Sano and Kenshin through the ornate gardens and to the manor, where they shed their shoes and waited in a small elegantly appointed room for the appearance of the manor lord.

Erizawa did not appear. A sleight serving man did, declaring that his lord was occupied in the maintenance of his garden and that he would see them there if they wished, and if they did not, an appointment would be arranged. So they redoned their shoes and followed the servant around the manor to the back where the gardens were even more splendid than those fronting the estate. Someone had put decades of love and dedication into the crafting of this garden, for the trees were large and twisted artfully with age and the touch of a patient hand, and the plants rich and thick and still full with bloom even this late into the year.

There was an old man in a plain kimono on his knees by a potted bonsai, carefully pruning errant growth. He had a neatly trimmed gray beard and a face rich with lines. His eyes were shrewd when he glanced up and took notice of their approach. There was very little of jovial good cheer about him, very little true peace - - but on his knees in the dirt beside the tree he had no doubt been training for years - - he came as close to it as a man of his past - - a man who dabbled in questionable politics in his present - - might.

"After so long a drought - - the rains have brought the gardens new life." The old lord said, polite enough to greet his visitors with trivial pleasantries. His eyes flickered from Saitou, to Sano, to Kenshin, then back to Saitou, who was unformed and armed and thus demanded more respect - - or at least more direct attention.

Saitou had never been much on pleasantries and had no tolerance for triviality at all. "We've come to inquire about a business partner of yours, lord Erizawa. An Englishman named Winter."

Erizawa never flinched. He was that cool, but then a former shogun would be. There was very little that would phase such a man - - other than the death of a child perhaps.

"An Englishman? I'm afraid you've wasted a trip then. I have no dealings with the English."

"Ah, my sources tell me otherwise - - but, if they are mistaken, how fortunate for you - - for it would mean your daughter was alive and well and not murdered at the hands of this Englishman."

Again, Erizawa didn't flinch, though Kenshin did, appalled at Saitou's utter lack of diplomacy.

"You are mistaken - - detective - -?"

"Captain. Saitou Hijime." Saitou corrected.

"My daughter is on holiday."

"In the west?" Saitou asked and the old man's eyes narrowed.

"You have proved yourselves unpalatable guests. I tire of this conversation. Goro, show them out!"

One of the servants appeared at the old man's bark.

"She was young and probably beautiful. She had two bodyguards with her that put up a fight to defend her, but he killed the both of them. He stabbed her once up through the ribs and into her heart. She died quickly," Kenshin said softly as Sano was growling at the servant. "He dumped all of their bodies into one of the canals in the city. This was many weeks ago, before the rains came to break the drought. He killed her because she discovered he was dealing with the Yakuza as well as with you."

The old lord stared at him and for the first time there was naked emotion on his face. "You - - lie. This is some trick to - - to - - you will leave this house now!"

"It is not a lie. I can have the police report sent to you, though the bodies are long since disposed of - - unnamed and unclaimed," Saitou said. "I'll also have sent to you a list of the crimes this Englishman has committed against the stability of our nation - - if you doubt his motives or his nature."

"Get out!" the old man said and Saitou shrugged and turned to do just that. "I'll have those reports sent round and I will be in touch."

"We're just leaving?" Sano gaped. Kenshin took his arm and steered him back down the garden path. "He didn't tell us anything."

"Sano. Give it time. He knows she's dead. That was clear in his face. Let him grieve a little and he'll tell us what we want to know."

"My thoughts exactly," Saitou concurred.

"You might have broken it more gently," Kenshin complained and Saitou gave him a disdainful look and sniffed. "Over tea, perhaps? Should I have held his hand? You've turned into a woman."

"Oh - - shut up," Kenshin growled under his breath, finding himself once more in the street outside Erizawa's estate.

Saitou gave him a level stare and a frown. "We're lucky he didn't recognize you. I told you to let me do the talking."

Kenshin chewed the inside of his lip, thinking that Erizawa was not a man to ignore the little details. He might not have put two and two together at the moment of their visit with the news of the possibility of his daughter's murder fresh on his mind - - but that didn't mean he wouldn't after he'd had time to think.

With Tokyo to the west down the Nikko Kaido road there was very little else to do but contemplate a trip home.

Home. The dojo. The place he'd stayed for the most part of almost six years now - - he didn't particularly want to go back now, empty handed as he was. But Sano was yammering about seeing the place and finding out whether the widow and her daughter had made it there all right. And the neighbors would know whether any foul deed had befallen Dr. Genzai and the girls - - and there were other folks who were bound to be wondering what had happened to empty the halls of Kamiya Dojo in the span of a night. And there was the cat. He worried that the cat might have abandoned the dojo without anyone to bribe her with bits of fish.

So Saitou dropped them off at the gates of the Kamiya dojo and took the carriage back to the police station, telling them he'd send someone round if he got word from Erizawa or if he needed something from them. Kenshin asked him out of Sano's hearing, if he wouldn't please ignore any grudges against Sano and forget the matter of the warrant.

Saitou had lifted a thin brow and not commented one way or another. He was never a man to give away advantages when he had them - - over his enemies or his allies. So they parted ways with Kenshin uneasy over the prospect of police showing up on his doorstep in search of Sanosuke and Sano apparently not uneasy over the subject at all if one took his ramblings about beefpots and cherished local gaming dens to heart.

The gates to Kamiya dojo were closed, but not locked when they tried them. The front yard was very orderly as they stepped inside, the ground raked clean and no unsightly weeds in evidence. It did not appear like a place that had been abandoned weeks before.

"Well, okay," Sano said, striding forward when Kenshin would have hesitated at the threshold of the gateway. "Isn't this a familiar sight. Hasn't changed much at all since I left. Anybody here?" he bellowed out the last and Kenshin flinched at the reverberating echoes.

If a place could draw breath in shock at such an alarming and loud demand, Kenshin thought the dojo might have. Or maybe that was merely him - - startled out of his hesitation by the sheer strength of Sano's lungs. The neighbors three houses down could have heard that inquiry.

There was movement from around the corner of the main building, from the path leading around back where the garden was and the kitchen. A small, slim figure that poked its head around the corner hesitantly. Big eyes. Skinny. Fearful. Kenshin didn't recognize the child, but Sano apparently did, for he grinned and walked forward.

"Hey, Minako - - see you made it here. Your mom around?"

She nodded, her face relaxing a little, her mouth almost threatening a slight smile.

Kenshin followed slowly, staring at the closed doors of the dojo proper having an unsettling flash of memory of wet floor and intruders lurking in the shadows of his home. Of Winter walking freely about it - - a viper in their midst. He shook his head to chase the disquieting reminiscences away.

The widow Hatayama had set up her loom on the porch overlooking the garden and the well. She had just risen, it seemed at Sano's call, from weeding in the garden. The knees of her peasant trousers were brown with fresh turned dirt, her hands stained with it. She bowed deeply to Sano and to Kenshin who drifted into the yard behind him, hardly raising her eyes to look either of them in the face. Perhaps she thought he'd changed his mind about inviting her here - - that she might be punished for the intrusion. She had probably been punished for lesser things in the mountain village she'd fled.

"You've taken good care for the house," Kenshin said. "You have my gratitude."

Her eyes flickered up briefly to fix on his face - - gauging the validity of his words. He smiled softly and found it took an effort to do it. He did not wish to be here. He truly did not.

"The garden seems to be thriving even this late in the season."

"I've harvested the summer vegetables and put up what I could - - and planted fall crops. I found the seeds in your storage - -" she almost sounded guilty over that bit of common sense.

"Thank you."

"We've eaten very little - -"

"I invited you here - - take what you need - - it will only go to waste otherwise. Have you seen a cat?"

"A cat?" the little girl spoke for the first time. "There's a cat that lives here. She comes for supper."

"Ah - - that sounds like her. She likes fish. Do you know where the river is? There's a fishing pole in the shed."

The child's eyes lit at the prospect.

"Speaking of fish and gardens and things," Sano said. "Is there any food around?"

"Has anyone come round asking for me or - - my wife?" Kenshin ignored Sano's plea for substance.

"Yes," the widow said - -

"Kenshin? - - where have you been? It's about time you came home?" An upset female voice proceeded the tall, willowy figure of a narrow eyed female. Megumi stormed around the corner into the backyard, long hair sweeping behind her, mouth open for further complaint - - and just suddenly stopped when she saw Sano and stood there for a uncharacteristically speechless moment before she got her wits back about her.

"Sanosuke? You're back?"

Sano shrugged and grinned, looking a just a little wary as Megumi stormed up to him, looking him up and down critically as if to assure herself that it was indeed the Sagara Sanosuke who'd abandoned Tokyo some four or more years ago.

"Hey, Megumi, long time no see, huh?"

"Where have you been?" She demanded, then glanced to Kenshin and repeated the question in a shriller tone, then adding. "Where are Kaoru and Kenji? You send Dr. Genzai to me in the dark of the night with assassins supposedly on his heels and you don't even tell him everything that's going on? Are you insane? Do you know how worried we've been?"

"I'm sorry - -"

"What kind of trouble did you get into this time? Was it really the Yakuza who sent men after Dr. Genzai and the girls - - because of something you did?"

"No - -"

"And where are Kaoru and Kenji? Are they inside?"

"Megumi San - -'

"What happened to your hands? Those bandages are filthy."

"Will you shut up, woman, and let him get a word in edgewise?" Sano snapped, frustrated.

Megumi pressed her lips tight and took a breath. She was not usually a woman who babbled, or who spoke rashly without thought. But Kenshin supposed she'd had enough reason to worry and unrelieved worry could make even a reasonable person brash.

"Are Dr. Genzai and the girls all right?" he asked, to avoid the subject of Kaoru and Kenji and his failure there.

"They're fine. They're still at my house because you told them not to come back to the city until you said it was safe. Is it safe?"

He opened his mouth. Shut it. He had no idea. Less now than when he'd left. He hadn't offended a Yakuza boss then, only ruffed up a few Yakuza thugs. "I don't know. I'll talk to Saitou - -"

"Saitou? Saitou Hajime? Oh, he'll be of great help." Megumi sniffed, her opinion of Saitou only slightly higher than Sano's. "Where are Kaoru and Kenji?"

"Listen, can we talk about this over a beefpot?" Sano interceded himself between Kenshin and Megumi's demanding eyes. He made a very good shield. It would have been nice to melt away while Sano covered his retreat, but Megumi needed to be told or she'd hound him to death and he supposed going to the Akabeko and sating Sano's need for a decent beefpot was as good a place as any. There were people there that would want to know what had happened to Kaoru and Kenji and well. He didn't think he had it in him to tell the tale more than once, so best to get it out of the way in the presence of as many interested parties as possible.

Sano ended up telling a great deal of it. Kenshin obviously was reluctant to talk about it. Kenshin kept getting this far away, distressed look in his eyes that made Sano want to shoo Megumi and the girls away from him so that it would go away. Tae and Tsubame weren't nearly so bad as Megumi, who always had been pushy, in Sano's opinion - - but they were hovering at the edge of the booth, staring wide-eyed as Kenshin tried to get the story out. The widow and her daughter, sat very quietly, almost frightened looking, on the opposite side of the short table.

Megumi was fussing with the bandages of one of Kenshin's hands, aghast at the wounds they hid. She got pissed off then, and the story got off track while she ranted a little and blamed Sano for not taking better care for the bandages and Kenshin for being a fool and not looking out for himself and cursed the mountain bandits that had done it to him in the first place. She was all ready to whisk him back to the dojo to take a proper look at the wounds, but the beefpot had just recently appeared at the table and Sano declared that Kenshin had gone this long without her poking and prodding him, and that she could wait until the beefpot was properly finished before she started.

The story eventually was told and Tsubame - - who'd grown up considerably since the last time Sano had seen her - - She'd been a pip-squeak kid working at the Akabeko when he'd left - - was openly crying and wringing her hands.

"Oh, poor Kaoru. Poor Kenji." She was crying and Kenshin was getting a bleaker and bleaker look on his face because of it.

"Say, Tsubame, could you go get me some sake?" Sano asked, just to give her something to do other than make Kenshin miserable and she scuttled of, wiping her face. Tae lingered a little bit, somber and uncertain.

"So where's Yahiko?" Sano asked between mouthfuls.

"Looking for him," Megumi said, indicating Kenshin with a jut of her jaw. "When Dr. Genzai told me what had happened - - or what little he knew of what had happened - -well, I came right to Tokyo and found the Kamiya Dojo deserted. I didn't know what to do, really. I went to the police, but they were of absolutely no help. Two days later, when I was about at the end of my wits - - Yahiko showed up. He'd been in Nagoya I think - - don't ask me why - - and he'd just gotten back and knew even less than I did. He started hunting down Yakuza trying to find out what was going on - - but didn't get anywhere."

"He didn't," Kenshin said, aghast.

"He did," Megumi said dryly. "You'd think he'd have outgrown that impetuous, foolish behavior - - but apparently males never do." She gave both Sano and Kenshin pointedly accusing looks. "And then Hatayama Chiyo and her daughter showed up at the dojo saying that you'd sent them there down from the mountains - - that you'd been hurt and that you were with him - -" she gave Sano a dubious look. "- - no great comfort that, let me tell you."

"What do you mean by that?" Sano demanded, waving food laden chopsticks. "If it wasn't for me, he'd be dead. Tell her, Kenshin!"

"Very likely, Megumi san," Kenshin sighed, pushing food around his dish listlessly. "Did Yahiko follow me north?"

"Yes, after Chiyo told us what she knew of what had happened. The two of you are not very informative, I'll have you know. You make the poor woman abandon her home and don't even tell her a scrap of what's going on." Megumi cast the widow a sympathetic look.

"Knowledge is not always a healthy thing," Kenshin said and Megumi sniffed, disbelieving that bit of wisdom.

Eventually, when the last bit of food had been consumed, Megumi bullied Kenshin back to the dojo to see the state of his wounds for herself. The widow Hatayama and her daughter went with them. Sano declined, not willing to listen to Megumi's cutting complaints when there was a city to reacquaint himself with. So he abandoned Kenshin and got a look for it from under the fall of Kenshin's hair that suspiciously looked liked a man betrayed. But, as intimidating as Megumi could be when she put her mind to it, he managed to walk away without a shred of guilt.

He returned to the dojo much later, a little drunk, without a coin to his name and happy nonetheless. He'd found a few old friends, discovered a few more moved on to other places - - made a few new ones in the span of an afternoon walking about the city - - stopping in this tavern or that, playing a hand of dice here a game of chance there - - only barely avoiding a fight and then only because the other party had backed down. It had been a good afternoon. He hadn't realized until he was back in her arms, how much he missed Tokyo. It felt good walking down streets as familiar as the back of his hand - - familiar smells, familiar faces, familiar places. Distant lands and exotic places were all fine and good, but a man needed an anchor. A man needed something familiar to keep him from drifting. A man needed home once and a while.

It was dark when he slipped past the dojo's gates. Someone had lit a few paper lanterns, which cast the front yard in a dim light. There were more around back. The back was where they had always gathered. By the kitchen and the well, and the small garden with its goldfish pond. It was a very poor garden indeed compared to old man Erizawa's.

He wondered if Erizawa had had a change of heart yet. Wondered if Saitou, sneaky bastard that he was, would even let them know if the old man did contact him. Kenshin would lose his mind if he didn't. He'd been damned disappointed after that interview and trying not to let it show. Sano figured he was wondering if this trip back to Tokyo had been wasted time. Maybe it had. Who the hell knew.

Around to the back and he was greeted by the rhythmic sound of the loom, the soft chirp of crickets the occasional plop of a fish hitting the surface of the water, after some unlucky bug that had landed on the surface of the pool.

Megumi was sitting on the porch, carefully grinding dried herbs in a ceramic bowl and portioning them out in small packets. Her bulky medicine box sat open beside her. The little girl was sitting quietly on the grass next to the porch, playing some pretend game with the doll Sano had given her in the mountains, while her mother patiently worked the loom.

"Where's Kenshin?"

Megumi shrugged. "About somewhere. He's restless."

She almost smiled at him. The corner of her mouth twitched a little, but she forced it down. "He ought to be resting. He's still weak from those wounds. It takes time to heal that sort of thing and inactivity. He's not allowing for either one, which doesn't surprise me, mind you."

"Yeah, well - - you can't tell him anything when he's got his mind set."

"You didn't do a half bad job taking care for him, considering."

"Yeah - - considering what?" He asked warily.

"Considering that you have less sense than he does when it comes to self preservation."

She did sort of smile then, which diffused his initial instinct to take offense. So he shrugged and ambled over to sprawl on the porch, staring into the shadows of the yard. Nice to do this to. To laze away the evening here until Kaoru chased him away so she could lock up the dojo for the night or until he fell asleep on the porch and slept the night away under her roof, only to be woken in the morning at an unhealthy hour by her or Yahiko stirring. Kenshin was an early riser, but generally not that early unless he had an agenda to attend to.

Reminiscing made him think about Yahiko and wonder how much a twelve year old had changed in years that he'd been gone. Mature enough for Kenshin to consider giving him the reverse blade. He tried to imagine a mostly grown Yahiko and couldn't get past the scrawny kid he'd known when he'd left.

"So what were you doing, all this time?" Megumi broke the silence softly and Sano blinked, almost surprised to have her ask it. He lay back, hands behind his head and told her a few of his milder adventures. He told her things he thought she might find interest in and avoided the things that would earn him censure. Gods knew there were enough of those things.

"And you?" he asked finally when he'd run out of steam and the silence had taken over again. "You a famous doctor now?"

". . . . just a doctor."

"You're not married again by now. Not somebody's wife?"

Her brows drew down and she frowned. "Not that it's any of your concern, but I don't need a man to support and protect me. I can take care for myself."

"I didn't say that you couldn't - -"

"- - But, there is a man I've met in my home village - - he doesn't mind so much - - about my past - - or that I'm a woman doctor - - who knows what might happen."

"Ha. Good for you." Sano grinned at her. She half smiled back.

The widow stopped her work and quietly ushered Minako off to bed. Megumi began to put her own supplies away and prepare for the same herself. "The widow and Minako are staying in the extra room. I'm sleeping in Kenji's room, though I can sleep with them, if you want - -" she offered.

"No. It's a pretty warm night, I'll stay on the porch. It's not like I haven't slept out here before - -"

"All right." She got up, hefting the weight of her medicine box. "Go find Kenshin and make him go to sleep. He ought to get as much rest as he can - - before the lot of you set out to do whatever it is that needs doing to find Kaoru and the child."

Good enough. He got up, stretched and padded down the porch and around the yard without the benefit of a lantern. If Kenshin wasn't already in his room, then he figured he'd find him in the main Dojo. The very faint flickering light of a low candle flame proved him right. You couldn't see it at all through the closed door panels at the front of the building, but when he quietly slid one of the doors open, the weak light seeped out.

Kenshin was up at the front of the big room, sitting very still and very quiet before the little shrine where Kaoru's father's swords were. He had one of those swords across his knees, sheathed, his cleanly bandaged hands resting lightly on hilt and sheath.

Sano walked slowly across the floor, trying to recall if he'd ever seen Kenshin touch Kaoru's father's sword before.

"Is it foolish, Sano - -" Kenshin asked softly, without turning. "Not to take up a sword to defend my family?"

"No," Sano said and he believed it. "You defend them however you can. That's just what you do for the people you love. Doesn't mean you have to turn your back on all your ideals."

Kenshin lifted the sword, thumbing the sword from the sheath so that a mere inch of gleaming metal showed. "Ideals? I was ready to kill Winter - - twice. Without a second thought - - without hesitation - - without remorse - - the only reason I didn't was because he threatened me with Kaoru and Kenji. If I kill for them - - will they hate me for it, do you think?"

"Will you hate yourself?" Sano sank down cross-legged on the floor next to Kenshin. "That's really more important, don't you think?"

Kenshin flashed him a look. "I'm no stranger to that. It doesn't matter. Kaoru matters. Kenji does.'

Sano sniffed, disgusted. "If you killed somebody protecting her and she held it against you - - then she either gets over it - - or - - or the hell with her! That's what I think. I'd damn well kill a man that was threatening somebody I loved if that's what it took."

"Did you?"

"What?" Sano blinked, off guard.

"The widow - - while Megumi was looking at me - - she said bandits would have killed her and Minako out of revenge mostly because the bandit chieftain had been killed. That you had done that when you found me. Did you?"

Sano swallowed, remembering that black, mindless rage that had come over him. And the grief. He hated the memory of the utter, soul-eating grief more than the violence and the rage.

"Yeah. I did. I thought you were dead - -" Dead and raped and tortured. "I'd never - - used the futae no kiwami to kill anybody before - - not flat out like that. I wasn't much thinking at the moment. He caught me off guard - - came up on me when I'd just found you - - " Lifeless, cold and bloody. "He - - he said some stuff and I just lost it. I don't regret it. He was a murdering, raping bastard and he deserved to die."

Kenshin frowned and Sano regretted spitting out that last. Regretted bringing up something that Kenshin had either blocked out or didn't remember at all. Or maybe Kenshin was just frowning at his cold-blooded admittance of murder.

"There are a lot of men that do - - deserve death." Kenshin said softly. "But, I don't ever want to play the part of executioner again. It eats too much of the soul, Sano. It takes things you can never get back away from you."

"It didn't take anything away from me. And no matter what you think - - everything you've done - - you came away from it a better man."

"So philosophical." Kenshin slid the sword back tight into the sheath and rested it on his knees again. "You surprise me."

Which was Kenshin's way of wanting out of this particular subject. Sano had disturbed him and he was fleeing the discomfort.

"So, should I take up the sword again to find them - - it hardly matters, since I've already taken it up - - how many times since this started? I forget."

Kenshin hadn't forgotten and Sano knew it. "Three times, but you didn't kill anybody, remember?"

"It would be apropos to take her father's blade, don't you think?"

Sano opened his mouth. Shut it. Then opened it again. "Put it back and sleep on it, Kenshin. Megumi says you need your sleep."

Kenshin didn't move to follow that advice. So Sano reached across him and wrapped his big fingers around the lacquered, ornamental sheath, lifting the blade off Kenshin's lap and placing back in its proper place on the rack.

Kenshin didn't protest it. He pressed his lips tight and clenched his fingers, staring straight ahead. Sightless. Distraught or pissed off. Sano wasn't exactly certain which.

"Kenshin - -" he didn't know what to say of a sudden, leaning so close that his chest touched Kenshin's rigid shoulder. He'd had a mouthful of things to say before and now it just dried up. He wanted to help - - he wanted to alleviate this pain, but Kenshin's struggle was as much internal as external and there was damned little a man could do to chase another man's demons away. He dropped his forehead to Kenshin's shoulder for a second, sighing, tired himself and struggling no little bit with his own demons and most of those dancing around the aching desire for Kenshin that he couldn't drive away, no matter how hard he tried.

"Just go to bed, okay. If we have to deal with Saitou tomorrow and the old man - - you'll need your wits about you."

"Okay." Kenshin said softly, not shifting until Sano lifted his head and scooted back. Not getting up until Sano did and padding silently across the floor, slipping his feet into his sandals outside then shuffling down the path towards the back.

Sano lagged behind, not particularly eager to sleep anywhere near Kenshin. Not here. Not with the notions he'd had in his head of late. It was damned unsettling to begin with, but here - -with the ghost of Kaoru and a kid Sano had never met hovering about the place - - it was downright sacrilegious. Better to hang back and let the cool night air kill any amorous thoughts his body might insist on entertaining come morning. A smart man, a truly smart man wouldn't have followed Kenshin to the doors of his chamber. A smart man would have taken himself far enough away to be safe - - far enough away where the spirits that looked after this place couldn't sense what was going on inside his head. What his intentions were.

Kenshin got to the door of the chamber he'd shared with Kaoru for the last four years and froze. His hand hovered near the door panel and his fingers shook.

"What's wrong?" Sano asked, edging forward despite his better judgment. Close enough in the darkness to hear the ragged intake of Kenshin's breath.

"I - - can't."

"Can't?"

Kenshin backed up a step and into Sano, who damned well should have moved to give him space instead of standing there like a pervert desperate to cop a feel. Of course Kenshin should have stepped away, too, but Kenshin's common sense was debatable these days and Kenshin was distraught and desperate and gods knew what else other than trusting an obviously untrustworthy friend.

"Its not right. I don't know why - -but it doesn't feel right. Sleeping in there when she's - -" he trailed off and Sano figured out the rest. When she was kidnapped and maybe dead. When Kenshin had been gullible enough to let it happen. When Kenshin had been inept enough to let himself get fucked up so he couldn't follow and nip the trouble in the bud. Oh, so many reasons that guilt wouldn't let him comfortably go into that room and unroll their sleeping mat and lay down where they had lain together and not come out of that room tomorrow hollow eyed and exhausted from the nightmares that would haunt him. If he slept at all.

Sano could understand. Sano could for the moment, say to hell with what whatever guardian spirits looked over this place thought, and slide his hands onto Kenshin's shoulders in a comraderdly motion of comfort. If there had been a modicum of space between them, it would have been a decent, honest gesture. I didn't feel honest. It felt like he was taking advantage. It felt like he was a lecher of the worst sort, standing there with his skin tingling over the warmth of Kenshin's back and Kenshin's buttocks up against his body. He forced himself away then, blushing and grateful for the night to cover it. He rubbed vigorously at the back of his neck, a nervous gesture, and indicated the covered porch.

"I'm sleeping on the porch. A couple of blankets and it'll be better than most places we've slept for a while, huh?"

Kenshin looked at him, at the porch, then let his eyes drift back to the closed door. "I'm being stupid." He finally said, a soft, wry admittance.

"Maybe, maybe not." Sano said. "I'm not one to judge. I've been waking up most every night since that damned Bhuddist temple, thinking ghosts are hovering over me."

Kenshin's mouth twitched a little. "Is that why?"

Sano ran a hand through his hair, feeling silly admitting such a thing even though it was plain truth. "Yeah. Nightmares, I guess. I always believed in ghosts and spirits and whatnot - - but never that I'd actually run into one. Now I'm seeing them behind rocks and in shadows and - - and don't fucking laugh at me or I'll knock you on your ass."

Kenshin killed the smile with an effort, his eyes all large and solemn in the darkness. He put out a hand and the distance Sano had put between them melted with just the touch of Kenshin's fingers on his arm.

"Thank you, Sano. It is a nice night, I think. The porch will make a fine place to sleep."