Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin, but the Seasonal Mages are all mine, Precioussss! gurgle, gurgle
"...and I think the Dean may be planning some sort of attack near the border. I'm sorry I can't give you any more information, Aoshi-sama, but that man's security has to be at least equal to their government's. Of course, that sets off red flags about what he may be planning, but I can't give you any more details," Misao reported with a brisk efficiency that belied her years and appearance. Her lithe form was still wrapped in the deep green dress she had purchased on the road, but it was travel-stained and the heavy cloth and cut of it did not flatter the fine lines of her body.
But for all of that, you can still tell she's grown... Aoshi thought. He shoved the thought away as soon as it flitted through his mind. Misao would always be his student and his fosterling. She had shown up near one of their camps, a mewling ball of an infant, and since it was common enough for the local people of this area to give up their children to the forest's whims if they showed any sign of mage-power, they had taken her in. A few years later, when she was just reaching seven, their investment paid off—she started to show the powers of a Spring-mage. It had started out with small things; toys gone missing from the other children, treats disappearing from well-guarded trays in the kitchens, and little Misao running around with berry-pie all over her face even though she had been nowhere near the kitchens. Though it wasn't a common set of skills for a Spring-mage to have, they were always unpredictable, and if they could train her properly, she would be quite useful. Though they had all been part of a larger group then, with other Spring-mages around to teach her, but somehow the responsibility had fallen to Aoshi. It might have been because he was the spy-master, and her abilities were particularity suited for espionage, or it could have been that from a very young age, Misao had both attached herself to and idolized him.
He had listened to her report with a Stoic expression, but now he suddenly stood, his long coat swirling around his long legs.
"We're going to spar. I want to see how much ground we've lost while you were away. Gods know you didn't learn anything at that Academy..." He strode out of the house, trusting her to follow in his wake. There was a small courtyard behind the house, but even if there hadn't been, they would still have been in no danger of breaking their cover. Aoshi had taken the time to set up wards of silence and sightlessness on the house as soon as they had arrive; they could do whatever magery they wished and the most conservative of their neighbors would not have been tempted to turn them into the agents of the Orthodoxy.
Aoshi reached the courtyard a few heartbeats ahead of his pupil, and, leaning against one of the walls, seemed as relaxed as he ever got, but the sparse grass growing in the few square feet of earth that made up the courtyard seemed chilled by the passing of a mid-Winter wind. The wind curled around him, caressing his face and ruffling his sable hair in its passing. As his consciousness descended into the workings of the wind, he was aware of everything in the courtyard and its smallest movement. Though his eyes were closed and he remained stone-still as his young pupil joined him in the courtyard, he felt her through his mage-senses as he had never felt anything else. To him, she burned bright as flame, and was as compelling and attractive as if he was a hapless moth. She took a guarded stance at the far end of the yard, only a few feet away, and Aoshi felt almost as if he were a part of her, his awareness was so close to hers. He waited, letting the tension in both of them build as they prepared to once again resume the teaching and learning that they had both missed terribly during her long schooling and undercover work.
His eyes snapped open suddenly, windows into a blizzard, and the wind answered to his command, spinning around her, dragging her long limbs down and attempting to lift her off of the ground. She retaliated immediately, pulling at his hair and jerking his arms with her Fetching gift. If this were a real battle, and her powers augmented with the strength of desperation and fear, Aoshi had no doubt that she could have pulled his arms from their sockets—if he let her, that is. The tall man struck back, freezing the moisture in the air around her so that it surrounded her in a thick, confining cast. She was quick to escape, however, blinking out and reappearing a few feet away. She continued to ghost around the confined space, never remaining in one place for more than a few seconds, while she looked for the best place to insert her next attack.
She's been keeping up with her practice. . . Aoshi thought appreciatively, arctic winds whipping around him as he circled to keep his apprentice in sight. And she hasn't stopped innovating. She must have practiced in thought when she couldn't in reality.
Just when Aoshi was ready to finish the spar and test how her endurance had grown, she disappeared from sight. This was new—usually her ghosting brought her from one spot to the next immediately, and with his consciousness extended, Aoshi could always tell where she would surface next. This was something different, though. Not only was she nowhere to be seen, the spy-master could not detect her presence anywhere nearby. He quickly reviewed every skill he had known a Spring-mage to possess (and he knew quite a bit about Spring-mages). This sudden, untraceable disappearance was nowhere on the list. His heart clenched painfully. If he had lost her, so soon after she had come back…He shuddered. It couldn't be, it just couldn't. He dove into a deeper trance, the winds around him rushing faster and faster until he resembled the eye of a hurricane. Nothing. There was no trace of her. Oh, gods. . .let it not be true. . .
Misao 'popped' back into existence exactly one meter over her Master's head, glowing with pride over her new trick. As she fell back to earth, she tensed her muscles and squared her hips so that her legs would be driven straight into the tall man's shoulders.
She had fallen half a foot before he recognized her presence, but instead of blocking her, throwing her or attacking outright, his long, strong arms had reached out and caught her as she fell through the air. Too stunned to even move, Misao's azure eyes stared up in wonderment at her teacher, who crushed her small form against his chest. This had. . .never happened before. . .but she would be lying if she had said she hadn't dreamed of it.
"Aoshi-sama. . ."
"Please," he whispered into her hair, "Warn me next time. . ." He held her for a moment more, as if memorizing the feel of her body against his, and then, slowly and gently, set her down on the ground.
And the thrice-damned, frustrating man just walked away, without a look back or a word for the girl whose world he had just changed. In fact, he had perfected his icy, stoic façade to near-perfection. Only someone that had known him for years would have noticed the set of his shoulders and the tension of his neck that betrayed the anguish and doubt he was feeling.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaoru stayed in her grove—and it was hers. She hadn't noticed at first, but now she realized that she knew it like she knew the bumps and the ridges of her favorite pen, that it fit her like a second skin. It was easier to think here, too. Somehow that unreasonable, angry part of her wasn't here, and for the fist time in what felt like ages, she could hear herself think. It was a huge relief. A cold pit she hadn't noticed in her stomach was warmed, and a headache so constant she had forgotten about it was gone. For the first time in what must have been years, she felt comfortable in her own skin. It was blissful. She would have liked to simply relax and enjoy it, but the words that that golden-eyed bas—No. That Kenshin had said was still running circles in her head. She needed to sort it out.
Okay, first and foremost, what was most important to her: had the Academy really put a compulsion on her? She knew it was possible—she had seen the reeducation techniques used on the most stubborn of heretics, and they were fairly gruesome. Was…was that angry voice inside her head the compulsion? Kenshin had said it wouldn't work here, and I'm alone in here for once, so…She was drawing disturbing conclusions.
She found herself becoming angry. It wasn't the unthinking, unseeing anger she had felt under the compulsion, and it most certainly wasn't directed at the Seasonal Mages who had told her about it. No, she was angry with her teachers and Doctrine-leaders, at the Academy. She had trusted them! She had put her faith in what they told her, and they had lied and manipulated her to deepen that belief. She felt violated and sickened…and she wanted it off. Everything else would have to wait until she got the dammed compulsion off. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, concentrated, and found herself back in the Mage's library. Kenshin stood by the chair, stretching after being in a cramped position for so long. The sight of him woke the compulsion inside of her. It whispered insidious things about him, and her own purity as well. But now she knew it for what it was, and suddenly it didn't sound all that threatening. She shoved the tinny threats away from her mind, feeling better and better.
"Kenshin?" she said, savoring the unfamiliar word on her tongue and the act of defiance it was to say it. "I…" her throat closed. She couldn't say it! She couldn't turn her back on the faith of her childhood and throw her lot in with strangers! She felt hysteria building inside of her, her eyes growing wide and her breath shallow.
She recognized the voice and shoved it away. So it wasn't going to be as easy as she had thought…But she was going to beat it. It was, after all, only more evidence of just why she needed to leave the Orthodoxy behind. "I need you to take this…c-compulsion…off of me. Please…I feel dirty, and it's getting harder to drown this bloody voice out," The old rage and fear were threatening to take control of her again, and she imposed a block of her own on her hard-won Deltographic skills. If she lost control, she didn't want to have that weapon with her. He reached out to touch her, to comfort her in a motion that seemed as natural as breathing. She was sure it would have worked, normally, but the moment he touched her, the compulsion started screaming and pain shot through her temples. Kenshin seemed to be saying something to her, but she couldn't hear through the rising haze of pain and the roaring in her ears. His face competed with ugly blots across her vision. Everything…hurt, and the voice in her head wasn't remotely human anymore, but damn it, she wasn't going to back down. They had lied to her! They had tricked her and hurt her and she wasn't going to let them do that to her anymore!
She thought she heard herself screaming, but she wasn't sure. The pain was blinding; it wouldn't stop until she gave in, and even with the resolve her anger gave her, she could feel herself crumbling under the pressure on her skull. Cool, strong hands gripped her head; the pain fled from them as if afraid.
"Look at me, Kaoru," a baritone voice pleaded. She obeyed, too shell-shocked to resist. His eyes were at war with themselves, purple and gold vying for her attention. They were quite fascinating, and as she left the pain further and further behind her, she fell into them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So this was his new student. He had no doubts that she would join them, after that last cowardly attack from the Orthodoxy. He was seized with a sudden desire to muster his forces and ride out now to wage war on them, just for hurting the girl, but he shook himself free of the suicidal urges. He wasn't going to get involved in the Orthodoxy, there was simply nothing he could do against so powerful an enemy. Better to face the enemies he could win against.
The girl…He looked down at her face, pale and drawn with pain, but recovering. She would be a fine student. The determination was definitely there, and her power was obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. And she was beautiful…He shoved the thought away. He needed to concentrate now. The parasite that was riding in her mind was…disgusting, and he despised the Orthodoxy even more for it. He turned his attention to removing it from her mind. It wasn't easy work for him; mental control wasn't his discipline, nor something he usually enjoyed doing. Most people's minds were muddied, sordid places without focus or drive. Kaoru's was a definite exception. Focus was there in abundance, and something about the clean, supple lines of her thoughts was intensely pleasing to him. There was the filth there, of course, ugly as sin and stinking to his magical consciousness. It wriggled and twisted away from his every attempt to destroy it, even once trying to strike out at him with the same fear and hatred that had controlled his new student for so long. It was hopeless, of course, but it still disgusted him. The kind of unwilling control that these sort of compulsions had over their victims was against everything he stood for, everything that was in him…but then again, Aoshi would have been disgusted by this too.
Finally, her mind was clean. Kenshin paused at the threshold of her mind, gazing back wistfully. He would like to spend more time there, it was true, but that would be wrong. Besides, he was tired and hungry, and sure his body was getting a cramp from staying in one place so long. Hopefully he could return here someday…but that was all in the future; he needed to help her in the now. The young warlord-mage sighed and left the summer glade behind, leaving only a cold breeze to remind her of him. She needed to sleep off the mental anguish she had just been through. They would talk when she felt better.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: Hello again! I have a really good excuse for why this was so late: I was in Turkey. For more information on the trip I'm currently taking (and rambling discussions of why I want to go home,) see my livejournal (link on my author page). There's not much more to say about this chapter, I guess, except that I really love Aoshi. Yup, that's about it…