Chapter 2

The woman continued on her way out the door. When the moonlight hit her skin, Kenshin noticed that her entire body was covered in thin, finely carved, white scars. They covered her face, neck, hands, feet, and probably everywhere else. It was strange- who would give themselves such strange, beautiful scars? Yes, as strange as it may seem, they were beautiful. Each was embossed on her skin in delicate patterns that moved with the shadows. Though, the scars on her face were less attractive, despite her apparent beauty. They were thicker, less precise. They weren't works of art like the others were. These overlapped the lovely patterns with thick, jagged lines; one ran the length of her right cheekbone, another down her left eyebrow and over her eye- there was even one on the right side of her soft, plush lips. Kenshin had seen many scars, even carried one himself on his left cheek in the shape of a cross- a painful reminder of his tainted past- but never had he seen scars like hers. Who was she?

Just as he was thinking this, the drunken men had worked up a temper and followed her outside, shouting furiously. "Get out here you witch!"

"Don't you know how to respect your men?"

"C'mon, sweetheart, you ruined our fun!"

They laughed sickly and made a circle around her. She stood perfectly still, not showing the slightest sign of agitation. In fact, her face was the epitome of apathy. Her hands stayed relaxed at her side, neither moving away from her many weapons or straying too close.

"Aww, are you scared of us now, love?"

"I've no reason to be afraid," even in peril her voice imitated the sound of a gently flowing river. "But you do."

"And why's that my dear?"

"Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn."

They simply laughed at her. Kenshin didn't think it was going to end well for them. Sano asked tentatively, "Do you think we should help her?"

"Sessha thinks it is the men who are in need of assistance, Sano."

The Kenshingumi's feet had unkowingly brought them to the front of the Akabeko where a crowd had gathered to see the ensuing fight. Some of the men in the back were making bets- so far, the odds were in favor of the dark woman.

The drunk men laughed and pulled out crude, jagged-edged daggers and pocketknives, ready to lunge at the woman who had spoiled their fun. Still, the woman didn't move. Only her hair swayed just the slightest bit from the cool evening breeze. Two of the five men lunged for her. It was laughable, really- she only stepped aside. They crashed into their companions, now fuming. This time they all took a shot at her at the same time, reforming their circle. The woman was ready.

She fell to her knees, below knife-point and lunged upward on one man, grabbing his knife with her right hand and breaking his nose with her left. Now she was to the men's backsides. She threw the knife to the ground and landed a kick to the back of two of the men's knees, simultaneously grabbing the left elbow of the fourth and pushing him down as well. By this time the last man had turned around, knife at the ready. Giving a shout of frustration he lunged for her. She advanced towards him, took his wrist and twisted it so he dropped his weapon, clutched his neck and shoved him to the ground, knocking him out. The two men she had earlier sent to the ground were on their feet again, seeking revenge. She spun around to meet them, took hold of the arm of the man to her right and dug her knee into the gut of the man to her left. She jerked her the man to her right as she spun around, once again knocking his knees out from under him, and took his knife, all in one fluid motion. She landed a high kick to the other man's head, which, of course, knocked him out. But her other foot slipped on some loose gravel, and she was sent down onto a knife that the man on the ground was holding, courtesy of his fallen comrade who was on the ground with him. She wasn't shocked by the iciness of the dagger in her back. She rolled over and gave the man a good knock to his left temple, sending him deep to his dreams.

All five were on the ground either knocked out or in pain. The entire thing had only taken a matter of seconds. The strange woman stood from the ground, slowly, and began walking away towards the woods, reaching around to pull the knife from her back in the process. It hadn't pierced anything critical, but it left a steady trail of blood behind her. Kenshin shouted for her to stop, that there was a clinic only a few blocks away. But she quickened her pace and kept walking. By the time Kenshin caught up to her bloody trail, she was nowhere to be seen.

Kaoru, Sano, and Yahiko ran to him. "Who do you think she was, Kenshin?" asked Kaoru. "With all those scars, she must've fought in the Bakumatsu."

"Sessha has never laid eyes on such a fearsome presence, Kaoru-dono. This one does not know her, but she certainly knows how to fight, that she does."

"That's one tough chick, to have gotten all those weird scars, though, huh, Kenshin?" said Yahiko. His eyes sparked excitedly, wondering what sort of style fighting the strange woman had mastered with all those weapons she carried. Kenshin nodded in agreement.

"Sessha thinks you should all head back to the dojo- this one will look for the strange woman. Surely she will need help bandaging that wound," said Kenshin. Kaoru nodded in agreement.

As Kenshin followed the blood trail into the woods he could hear the distant shout of Miss Tae, telling Sano he hadn't paid yet. He was almost out of ear-shot when he heard Sano shouting back that he'd left his money-purse at the table anyhow. The rurouni smiled and continued on.

It had been a good twenty or thirty minutes before he was able to track down the woman. She was sitting by the river without anything covering the upper half of her body, washing out the wound. Kenshin made sure he stayed to her backside. The rurouni was certain she would decapitate him if she suspected he had even glanced at her. The stab wound had a steady blood flow, but it wasn't as bad as it appeared to be. He noticed that her scars did indeed cover her entire body. But there was one that stood out. It was rough and dark, stretching from the lower right point of her back to the very tip of her left shoulder. It had left her pale skin deformed and uneven.

Making sure his eyes stayed trained to the ground and that he was at least a good twenty feet away, Kenshin called to her. "Excuse me, but this one was wondering if you needed a doctor for your wound?" He bowed slightly, hoping she didn't think he was here to intrude on her privacy, but only to help her.

She turned her head (and only her head) towards the unfamiliar voice behind her. She folded her arms protectively over her chest and turned a little farther so she could see who had spoken. He was in a humbling bow, his hands resting on his thighs, his eyes averted from her figure. It was the crimson-haired samurai from the Akabeko. Immediately she frowned.

"I thank you for your concern, Master, but I have suffered many injuries in my life- I have no need for a doctor. My wound is not that serious."

"This one is sorry to have intruded. This one was only concerned."

"And I thank you, Master."

She set to bandaging herself, fully aware that the samurai hadn't yet left. "This one wonders why you call him 'Master'?"

She continued bandaging, making sure it was tight and orderly. "I call you 'Master' because I know you, though you may not remember me. I call you 'Master' because I owe you a great deal- my life, in fact. I call you 'Master', because I no longer know your name. The brother I had many years ago had a name that I have forgotten, as I have forgotten my own. The only thing I remember is that he had crimson hair and that we were separated. I call you 'Master' because thirteen years ago, during the Bakumatsu, a crimson-haired man killed my owners. That man, I knew, was Hitokiri Battousai. He looked right at me and did not recognize me, though I knew it was him. I call you 'Master' because I have forgotten your name, because you are no longer Battousai, and because I do not know your name now."

Kenshin froze exactly where he was, remembering that day thirteen years ago when he had an assignment to kill the owners of a notorious group of anti-imperialist bandits disguised as traders. They had been working with several other anti-imperialist groups in Kyoto. They were a great threat to the new government and had to be terminated. There was supposed to be a meeting between the leaders of each group, it was Battousai's job to assassinate them. All eight of them were there the night of his assignment. Only there was an unexpected guest. A young girl of about eleven with dark green eyes- a slave. They had been toying with her throughout their meeting. Kenshin had seen them while waiting to make his move. He remembered he had killed the men with the same ease and perfection as he had slain the many before them. He was drenched in blood. The girl had been standing near the back of the room in a place she could be called from at any moment, entirely subject to her owner's commands. Battaousai looked at her from the corner of his eye, afraid to look her in the face. He knew who she was, but he didn't want her living with the knowledge of him, of his tainted soul. He had left her there to fend for herself, not speaking a word. It was no wonder her eyes had stirred a certain familiarity within him- she was his sister. Younger than him by four years.

After making sure the bandaging was secure, she pulled on her black gi, from which she had scrubbed off the blood, thought he hole in the back still remained. She stood from her spot on the riverbank and turned to face him, her brother. He had stopped bowing now and stood with his face in an expression of both shock and guilt. She secured her kodachi to her back after securing her gi while she waited for him to speak again.

"Sessha is truly sorry that he did not recognize his sister. Sessha is sorry that he did not make it known to his sister that he recognized her that day, thirteen years ago. He did not want his sister to live knowing that her brother was a murderer," said Kenshin, head bowed, voice trembling.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Master. I've been hoping to find you somewhere in my journey across Japan. I had hoped that I would find you alive, happy, even," she said softly. He didn't move. "Will you tell me your name?" she asked, her voice barely overcoming the noise of the rustling leaves.

"Himura Kenshin."

"Kenshin..." she whispered.

"What do they call you, Sister?" asked Kenshin. He still would not look directly at her, but he could see the deeply set frown on her face.

"I have many names, my brother, but I think the one you would like most is Amaya."

Kenshin sounded it out on his lips. Amaya... it was a beautiful name, meaning 'Night Rain'. He understood why someone would call her that but he had to wonder who was bold enough to do so in her presence.

"Please, Amaya, come with this one to the Kamiya dojo and stay. Sessha does not want to lose his sister again," Kenshin said, this time actually looking at her, though he was still in a state of shock. But strangely, she wasn't. She seemed to be perfectly calm. She walked towards him, a signal for him to lead the way.

He turned and she followed. After several uncomfortable minutes of silence, Kenshin brought himself to ask the question that had been burning on his lips since he first saw her. "Amaya?"

"Yes, brother?"

"Why do you have so many scars?" He half-expected her to slap him for being so forward. But he supposed he was her brother and he had the right to know.

"The first five years of my freedom after you had disposed of my owners were spent working in a geisha house; cleaning, serving, attending to every need of every geisha. I usually accompanied them to the tea-houses should they have been in need of something. For those five years, hitokiri visited the teahouses and I had come to know each face and name. One of them was Onatara Kane, the man I fell in love with. Did you know him?" She looked at her brother expectantly.

"Yes, Sessha knew Onatara-san. He was three years older than Sessha," he gave her a disapproving look, "and worked in the southern hitokiri sect of Kyoto." Amaya nodded.

"He held love for me in return, and it did not go unnoticed. We had risked too many meetings outside the teahouse, late at night, hoping no one would see us. Of course someone did, someone very close to Kane-anata." Her pace slowed by mere fractions of a second as she thought of her dear Kane, her eyes mournful- it was the first hint of emotion Kenshin had seen on his sister's face. He bristled a bit, though, at the thought of his little sister having a lover at such a young age and with man older than even himself.

Sensing her brother's disapproval she continued, "He and I were not lovers- we had a chaste relationship." The tension in the rurouni's shoulders relaxed only slightly. "Kane-anata's friend, Burutsan Kyamatsu also harbored feelings for me. He became jealous of mine and Kane-anata's relationship and that jealousy evolved into obsession. He never left me alone. Over the next year after he discovered us, he continually made it harder for Kane-anata and I to meet. Eventually he kidnapped me- this was long before I learned how to fight- and kept me with him, threatening to kill my beloved should I try to escape. For many months he tortured me, running his knife all over my body to remind me that he had control. He placed the characters of ownership in various places on my skin," she said, holding up her right hand for Kenshin to see. On her palm was the character for 'mine'. Amber pigment began to seep into the rurouni's violet eyes. Amaya dropped her hand. "Finally Kane-anata found me. But in his relief to see me alive and to protect me, he died at the hands of Burutsan."

They walked in silence once more, Kenshin fuming at the injustice he let his sister suffer through for so long. Amaya was merely reflective of her words, remembering how Kane's blood had washed over her entire body as she held him close to her as he died.

"I became unbearably angry with Burutsan. I didn't care what he did to me- I'd suffered torture before under my owners- but he had the audacity to hurt my beloved, my Kane." Several moments passed. Kenshin sensed Amaya's ki changing from a reflective state to that of a blood-thirsty warrior. Amaya's voice was flat as she said, "I killed him with Kane-anata's katana, the very katana I carry with me now."

Kenshin felt his heart sink. How could he have not taken her with him the day he murdered the bandit leaders? Didn't it occur to him that life for her would be hard and perilous? Of course not, in those days, he had been selfish...

Again sensing her brother's feelings Amaya continued, "Please, brother, nothing in my life has been your fault. Kane-anata knew we shouldn't love each other, but love cannot be helped. I knew it would be dangerous and I would probably die, but that was an easier reality to live with than living until old age without him."

This, Kenshin understood. Still grieving for his sister's awful past, he told her of how he became the thirteenth apprentice of the Hiten Mitsyruge Ryu-sen; of his days as Battousai; of Tomoe; of his vow. It was now Amaya's turn to grieve, wishing she could take away her brother's guilt. But knowing that it was something she could never do, she settled for walking closely next to him.

After a few minutes, Kenshin sneaked another look at his sister. Her neck was at just the right angle so that the silver moonlight that cascaded through the treetops illuminated another character of ownership just below her left ear, and his blood boiled at the sight of it. But he did not have long to think of it- it had washed away with the moonlight as they moved forward under the treetops.