Author's notes: This is the first thing I've posted in awhile indeed it's been sitting waiting to be uploaded for some time due to all sorts of things. It's not perfect heaven knows but I hope you enjoy it. Please read and review you know how we fanfic authors are with reviews!
Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin and am only borrowing the characters for some not for profit amusement.
The naked candle flame flickers in my eyes. Cold air from the open windows blows the collar of my cape against my face. The air in the room around me is mobile with the tension that surrounds both Kenshin and Aoshi.
I don't react, the worries of those around me are no concern of mine. All my attention is on the lump that is my baka deshi. He lays on a futon before me buried under a mound of old quilts. He is breathing, but in a slow, faintly wheezing way, that somehow provides precious little comfort. The Kyoto police have done their best, opening up an old barrack house for us. The air is musty, heavy, and thick from years of disuse. Even after a brisk and thorough clean, you can not quite banish the scent of cobwebs and dust that accompany such things. I long for my mountain, and the cold, sharp air. For my hut, my fire and the saucer of sake that accompanies my thoughts as I gaze into the flaring red flames. Yet oddly, as restless as I am I cannot bring myself to leave. I can feel him grappling with death with every wheezing breath.
The police have tried. Laying down old tatami mats and futons on the raised timber seating area and putting braziers in the walk ways, but it doesn't quite banish the cold and the baka at my feet is as pale and washed out as over done rice. His skin is very cold to the touch and his hair against the whiteness of his skin blazes like the fire in my kiln. The deep red glow from the braziers only intensifies the contrast. I can barely tear my eyes away from it, and somewhere deep within my disquiet grows.
Every noise seems louder and sharper in the silence. Slowly in rhythm with Kenshin's breathing, there is the hiss of bare fingers against tatami. The young woman from Tokyo sits opposite me as she did when I bathed his wounds. Her face is grave and her finger tips graze the rough, worn tatami in a slow repetitive sweep. I regard her silently, watching the red light glow in her eyes and aching for a saucer of sake though I know it will taste of nothing but bitter anxiety. The shadows thrown up on the walls by the naked candle flames and braziers dance in slow formation to the rafters. The cold air whispers through the windows sweeping the stale musty air out as it passed. It makes the fine black hair around her face dance against her cheeks. I hate to admit it but I am tired.
Kenshin is like that, a most exhausting deshi if ever there was one. His very earnestness alone is tiring, but deep down I am warm with relief in a way no sake can bring. He frustrates me and irritates me no end this baka deshi of mine, but he makes me feel just a little off balance at the best of times. That brutal honesty and quiet unflinching resolve, leaves me feeling so odd. I much prefer his fits of burning, fire spitting, outrage. He hasn't the faintest idea of course and that's how I prefer to keep it. My finger tips press into the groove above my elbows. Where is this doctor they promised? Some two hours have lapsed and in that time, Kaoru and I have cleansed the baka's wounds as if it were some strange and ancient ritual.
The two bowls of hot water, the two cloths, the thin piece of hollow bamboo and the fair maiden. Oh, and did I mention the handsome warrior.
Surrounded by the scent of incense I bathed those wounds, as I did before. In semi darkness and silence and as before he barely stirred. Are you even aware of us Kenshin, in that dark distant world? Are you still dreaming of her you baka or is it Kaoru you see? In that dark place so far from our reach.
It was a slow silent dance between Kaoru and I. In the deep red glow from the braziers, I took one steaming damp cloth and wiped the wound. Then we traded cloths my dirty bloodied one for her hot, clean one. Over and over, while the darkness closed in, the silence pressed close, and the gaze of a hundred intent eyes burnt into our skin. Then the herbal water steaming in the bamboo pipe. The baka should have screamed. When I poured it into the raw open wounds making them stream with his own hot life blood, but he was strangely, disquietingly still. The gore came away laden with burnt flesh and dirt, and tiny fragments of steel, all a poison waiting to seep into his blood. I know not if it all came away before the surge of hot herbal water. I can only hope.
His wounds are so many and varied and strange. A savage bite upon his shoulder, where the scar tissue is white and thin, deep lacerations with uneven burnt edges sweeping across his body like sword wounds, but looking nothing like them. What a strange and difficult battle he fought. The baka, surely no one else could possibly get into these messy situations the way he does.
I look at him watching the light play over his face. I listen intently to his breathing half expecting it to pause or cease. My warrior's instinct prickles in the darkness, I am aware of their eyes, watching my every move. Waiting and observing me, as if to read some silent message in my movements. Such eyes, warriors eyes that burn out of the darkness. I do not like being the centre of such intense scrutiny but I hold my emotions tight.
That baka, I could have left him with them I suppose. I know he would come to no harm and if I had, I would now be sitting comfortably before my fire, sake in hand. Though he realises it not at all there is a wall of protection, built out of love and respect surrounding him. Baka that he is, he never notices these things. I wonder sometimes at his total inability to see what is right in front of his face. He moans a little and I stiffen. I think just for a moment that it's more than a moan but perhaps I'm just tired. Everyone snaps to alertness. Hoping, but he slides back into silence. Silent but for that horrid wheezing.
(2008)