Changes, Chances
by waterways
Chapter 4

For the second time that day, Sano found himself giving in to the whims of the moment. A lamp was alight in Megumi's tatami room, and Sano couldn't say how delighted it made him that she was still awake. He had wanted a drink earlier. He got it. Now he wanted to see his Fox, and damn everything if that wasn't going to happen.

"Hey Fox!"

A few moments later, the gate opened to reveal Megumi in her night yukata, a white gi hastily draped over her shoulders.

"Rooster," she said simply, one hand rested on the gate frame.

"Couldn't help but notice you were still up," he said, casually leaning on the other gate panel in front of her.

Megumi shifted a bit and pulled the gi closer to herself. "And since when has stalking me become your pastime, pray tell?"

"—Since I wandered aimlessly and my traitorous feet brought me here. If I was any smarter, I'da been outta here when I realized. But we both know you'll say I'm not," he laughed, and despite his lightheadedness, was surprised to find a bitter tone lining his words. He changed the subject. "So what are you up to?"

"Reading. And tea," she stated impassively.

"Don't you do anything else?"

"Reading happens to serve a purpose for civilized people—not that you would know," Megumi chided.

He gave an exaggerated sigh. "That mouth, Fox, it's gonna get you in trouble one o' these days,"

"Actually, I'm wondering if it hasn't already. I'm standing at my gates talking to a drunk Rooster in the middle of the night, after all," she said.

Sano slapped a hand to his chest. "Ow," and then he smiled. "Would ya let me in, then, if I asked?"

Megumi narrowed her eyes in mock-suspicion. She knew Sano was the least dangerous man she'd ever have to deal with, at least when it came to her. But she found herself genuinely curious. "Why would you even?"

"Uh," he began, searching his mind for a viable answer. "I was going ta get my stuff… "

Megumi gave him another impassive stare. "And get my hand checked—it's been throbbin' lately," he half-lied.

"And I brought drinks," he added with a big smile, raising the sake jars he had brought, by way of explanation.

Megumi paused to consider Sanosuke, taking as long a time to make him as uncomfortable as possible waiting, vaguely hoping that he might backtrack on his words. In the end, Sanosuke standing on her doorstep, patiently smiling like a dazed fool was more pitiful than it was actually irksome, so she yielded, stepping aside to let him through.

"You do know what time it is?"

"Nobody saw us, if that's what you're worried 'bout," he said, crossing the short distance from the gate to the porch and setting the sake jars down by the closest column. "I can sneak out when we're done too, if you want," he added, turning to wink at her suggestively. He offered her his bandaged hand.

"Isn't that romantic?" she quipped, half-smiling despite herself, kneeling beside him and unwrapping the bandages.

"Yep, I tend to be sweeter than I look, they say."

Megumi ignored him completely, instead focusing on examining his hand for irregularly set bones, broken ones, or the signs of damage it usually carried.

"Seems like you've learned to listen to me, after all, Rooster. This hand looks much better than it did when you left—although that really isn't saying much," she teased, half-smiling at the surprisingly recovered hand. "Some bones have set awkwardly, but if it doesn't give you much pain, then there isn't anything to worry about. You don't even need to keep the bandages on anymore; you only let them get filthy anyway."

She looked up when no reply came from his end, and found him staring at their hands, seemingly deep in thought. She glanced down to see if anything was amiss. There wasn't, except that his hand looked obscenely overlarge and calloused nestled in between her smaller ones. Hers looked strikingly fragile, she noted, and it felt strange to be thinking so.

Megumi moved to draw her hands back as casually as she could to let him know that the examination was over, but with a slight turn of his wrist, his fingers gently caught one of her hands in his, just holding it gingerly, allowing her to pull it back if she wanted to. He continued to look at it, as if puzzled and awed at once.

"I've forgotten how soft your hands were," he muttered under his breath, but in the stillness of the night, Megumi had heard him. She involuntarily tensed, unused to the tenderness in his voice and the softness of the touch, although it wasn't unpleasant. Sanosuke seemed to have noticed her discomfort and snapped out of his reverie, letting her hand go.

He was quick to turn aside and stand, half-heartedly mumbling his intent to fetch his travel bag from the spare bedroom. Megumi let him go, as she attempted to collect herself from the strangeness of the encounter. While Sanosuke had clearly had something to drink, if her previous memories of his drunkenness were any standard to judge by, he didn't seem drunk enough to produce such a rash action. Although, she mused, rash actions had certainly always been his thing.

In an attempt to diffuse the embarrassment she guessed Sanosuke was bound to be feeling (guessing by the length of time he was taking "fetching his bag" from a room that was easily three strides away from the porch), Megumi headed to the kitchen to fetch them sake cups. She needed a drink, and she wasn't going to do it uncouthly as he was wont to do, drinking straight from the jar. Even in privacy, she had certain standards.

When she came back, he was leaning by the porch column again, a big grin on his scruffy-looking face, and for all she knew, he'd already completely forgotten what just happened a few minutes ago. His satchel lay open on the floor beside him, and when Megumi shot it a questioning look, he said, "I'd totally forgotten about these."

He took out a parcel wrapped in nondescript brown paper and handed it to her. "'For you," he explained, his smile taking on a cheeky appearance.

Curious, Megumi unwrapped the unceremonious-looking parcel, and appraised the contents with a raised eyebrow. "A pair of sake dishes? Are you sure this isn't for you, Rooster?" she asked, incredulity replacing her former concerns. Among the wrapping were two sakazuki dishes made of fine porcelain, each decorated with a single delicate-looking lily on one side. It was simple and tasteful, to be sure—much more tasteful in both design and quality than what she was willing to believe the old Sanosuke was capable of picking.

"I got ya a couple o' other stuff before I got that; took me a while to guess what ya would've liked, so I kept gettin' some new thing every time I thought I'd seen something you'da like, and it just sorta piled up," he motioned to the satchel bulging with what Megumi guessed were other similarly bizarre items.

Despite herself, she felt very flattered. "Thanks, Sano, you know you really didn't have to—"

Sanosuke brushed off her comment, with a quick, "Don't worry about it, Fox," plopping down on the floor, his long limbs perched on the edge of the engawa.

"In case you're wonderin', the story's that I gotcha that one when I was in Hong Kong workin' for the big guy that brought me here. 'Cause I always thought you could use a drink, the way you always work yourself to the ground," he chuckled, reaching for the sake jars he had left on the opposite side of the column. "So what about it, Megumi—let's put that to good use—join me for a nightcap?"

Megumi paused to consider the wisdom in that invitation, although she was initially already inclined to acquiesce. Never mind the implied slight to her personality; she could at least admit that she could have used a drink from time to time, what with all the work needed to run a clinic by herself. The constant lack of company made the idea generally unattractive, though.

Judging by the pleasantly surprised look on Sanosuke's face, he hadn't expected her to take the offer, either, but shifted to a cross-legged sit to face her when she knelt down opposite him and extended out her dish with both hands. He grinned, and poured a generous amount of sake from one of the jars, and looked at her. "First blood?"

Megumi snorted despite herself, muttering, "Uncouth Rooster," before raising the dish for a sip, slightly grimacing at the burn in her throat. She eyed his vulgar sitting and demeanor with exaggerated disdain.

"There's no one around, so you don't need to be so stiff and formal with me, Fox," he chastised, adding, "Drink up, if you like. You look like ya need it more than I do, but save some for me."

Megumi ignored him and reached for the jar, looking perplexed and saying, "Couldn't you have gotten me a tokkuri as well? It feels barbaric to be pouring from this jar."

"Didn't have enough money on me at that time to buy the whole set, so I got the sakazuki first and told the shop owner I was comin' back for the rest," he said, letting her pour the sake into his cup. "When I got the cash 'round, the shop had closed down or moved or somethin' and it just felt pointless to chase him for the matching tokkuri when all you really need to drink are the dishes," he said, and drank.

"Hmm. You have the strangest stories," she commented. "This sake isn't half bad. It's been a long while since I've had a drink," she said, contemplating the smell and taste of the liquor. It was stronger than what she would usually go for, but it was a refreshing change from her tea.

"You have my landlord to thank for that," he replied. "By the way, did ya know he's called Saitou?"

Megumi produced a sound that was half-cough, half-laugh. Sano grinned at her. "I know; I laughed too—much louder than that. I keep thinkin' 'Wolf of Mibu' and that plump old man and I just can't," he said. "I was hopin' his wife's called 'Tokio' too, but I guess that was askin' too much. You've met her last night, if you remember."

"Of course I do. She was the only one there remotely helpful," she said lightly. "The couple could have easily named their kid after her instead!"

Sano made a motion to reach for the jar to take a swig for himself, but Megumi caught it before he did, sending him a glare under her fringes. "If you're drinking with me in my home, we'll do it like civilized people, Rooster," she said, handing him the sake dish and expectantly looking at him to hold it up for her. He complied, and Megumi knelt beside him to pour properly, gingerly, as graceful as geisha, her sleeves pushed back to reveal the pale insides of her wrists. Sano sat up a bit straighter.

"You never bothered to do this for me before, just always for Kenshin, and making Jou-chan fume," he said.

"And you were nothing more than a noisy kid back then. Kids don't deserve a true woman's attentions," she teased, making no attempt to hide the laughter in her coy voice. A spark that reminded her of her own youth burst to life in her, and she found a guilty delight in playing up her power as a beautiful woman once more, a feast for anyone's eyes, as perfect a woman as could be. It had been a long time since she had last felt the glory of preening for anyone, if even just for show or a passing joke between two old friends.

"Hah. If only I'd known back then that aging up was the only thing I'd had to do, I wouldn'a tried so hard," he barked out a laugh, a nostalgic look behind his eyes. He didn't appear the least bit embarrassed or apologetic for mocking his younger self. "Boy, I was a big idiot," he concluded between a laugh and a smile, and gulped the sake offered to him.

Megumi didn't have to ask to have a good guess at what he was talking about, but ignored the comment with a quick and non-committal laugh, because answering it would require venturing into a territory she wasn't really prepared to discuss now. Besides, she still had some reconciling to do with her image of a nineteen-and-then-twenty-six-year-old Sanosuke, and at the moment, he felt a bit foreign to her, exactly like an old friend she had known once but didn't anymore. She briefly thought about Yahiko's letter and wondered if he'd seen the same differences.

Instead, she corrected her almost-flirtatious proximity to him, and after he had poured her a cup in return, she no longer poured for him with the studied grace that the Japanese custom intended specifically for alluring men with in the first place. Alluring Sano was in no way advantageous to anything at the moment.

By the time the first jar had emptied (which was quicker than could be called "casual"; Sanosuke was surprised to learn how quickly Megumi could go through a cup when the topic was light and humor-filled), a comfortable silence had settled between them. Sanosuke had turned to singing a Chinese-sounding yodeling song which made Megumi laugh, and encouraged, he continued, louder and with more theatric flair.

He had a nice voice, Megumi admitted to herself, the kind that was deep in all the right places and husky and jagged like the rest of him, a man's voice, to be sure, and strangely soothing. It was a voice made for loud talking, for unhindered laughter, battle cries, and oddly, if there were indeed a specific voice for it: rebellion, and secrets. She wondered how he would sound if he tried to whisper, if he needed to tell her something that required him to lower his face next to her ear, and-she stopped that train of thought, pretending to herself that she had been distracted by him explaining where he'd picked up that Chinese operatic song. She vaguely nodded at nothing in particular, even though there was nothing to nod about in what he'd been saying.

Sano noticed and paused in his story to consider the strangeness of having caught her off-guard, and grinned. "Drink getting to your head, Kitsune?" he teased.

"Not quite. But I think I'd like to get there," she conceded, surprising even herself. She laughed.

Sano's grin grew wider with his surprise. "Easy, woman, I don't plan to be blamed for tomorrow's headache," he said, and grabbed the second jar and handed it to her. "At least let me catch up, will ya?" he held up his sake dish expectantly.

Sometime in the comfortable talk of their drinking, they had shifted to move slightly apart, Sano lounging against the wall with one leg stretched out in front of him, and Megumi barely just half-sitting on one of her ankles, a shoulder against a column, her hands rested on her legs in a more comfortable position than the rigid kneeling position she had started the night with. She rolled her eyes when Sano pointedly raised and looked at his empty dish and her, as if it was taking her forever to realize that he'd been waiting.

She knelt up and, thinking it too much effort to stand up just to take the two steps required to reach him, gingerly crawled to him, hoping it looked as dignified as a crawl-no, a shuffling-on-knees-can be. Sano laughed again. Megumi ignored him, picking up the jar. It felt heavier than the last, or perhaps it was the drink making her clumsier, but it seemed to take entirely too much effort to bend her wrist in the perfect sideways-angle to pour the precise amount into the dish, so some had spilled on the porch. She cursed. Sano made no attempt to disguise that he was openly laughing at her now, and set his cup down to take the jar from her.

"Pointless, didn't I tell ya—" he began, and grinned ruefully at the frustrated expression on her face. He took a direct swig from the jar, set it down, and made an exaggerated sound to suggest he had been parched and the only thing to quench his thirst was that drink. He looked at her insolently, as if challenging her.

"Pig," she said, but took the jar from him and brought it to her lips to take a sip to prove some vague point, except it was heavier than her slightly-uncoordinated mind could have foreseen and the sip turned to a gulp. She winced at the bite of the alcohol. When she recovered herself, she saw him staring at her, and they laughed.

What a stupid thing to be laughing about, she thought. Whatever was funny seemed funny enough for the both of them, however, and she relaxed into the sound of his much louder laughter. She moved the jar aside and nestled her back comfortably on the same wall he was leaning on, the puddle of sake she had spilled on the floorboards marking the only distance between them.

She wondered why she hadn't just stayed in this position from the beginning. It was better not to have to look at the Rooster all the time, anyway, and their position on the engawa provided them with a good view of her gardens at night, and the drink was within reach between the both of them. It was really just more practical, she reasoned.

Megumi idly smoothed her skirt. Perhaps it was because it was getting colder with the dawning of autumn that she could feel a soft, contrasting warmth radiating from Sanosuke.

"I didn't think you were even capable of thinking of doing that," he was saying.

Distracted by her musings, she didn't catch what he'd been talking about. "What?"

He'd meant her drinking straight from the jar, which he lifted and gestured to as if it would explain everything, and he took another long swig. For a moment, he imagined he had tasted her lipstick on the mouth of the jar she had been drinking from a while ago, and set it down so he wouldn't think about her lips at all.

"If I'd known you were always this eager to get sloshed, Fox, I would've invited you for a drink more often." He pushed the jar towards her in a vague offer if she needed another sip.

Megumi flipped her hair with a flick of her wrist, an involuntary habit she had when she didn't want to appear ruffled. "That's neither here nor there, is it, Rooster? I'm not as boring as you seem to think I am," she retorted, feeling a bit miffed and defensive. "As a matter of fact, I have several kinds of liquor in this house, most of them gifts from suitors. I just never—well, it's no use drinking by myself, and I'd hardly pine for any of those suitors' company, mind you.

"But I wasn't always this boring," she repeated.

Sano thought she looked like she was trying to convince herself. He couldn't think of saying anything without it sounding like he was humoring her, so he didn't disagree nor agree. Instead, he raised his hands so his head could rest on them, looked straight ahead. "I guess I have your personality to thank for even being here right now, having a drink at this clinic at all with a fox like you," his tone was light, like he was speaking an afterthought.

Megumi raised an eyebrow, even though he couldn't see her face, both being faced in the same direction.

"If you'd been any other woman, you'da been married to one of those suitors by now, have a kid or two on the side, and I wouldn't be sitting here." He closed his eyes, entirely too relaxed for the quickly sobering Megumi.

Megumi was sure there was something to be flattered about in there, but as it were, age and family was a familiar enough conduit for her misgivings. She'd repeated the excuses to herself enough times that an answer was readily at the tip of her tongue, but maybe...

"I could have." Maybe alcohol was a passable excuse for more honest answers.

She felt Sano stiffen beside her, perhaps taken aback at her lack of a more heated response. "Why didn't ya?"

"Last year, it was a rich foreigner who'd tried. He was a Dutch trader, and we met in Yokohama for a convention I was attending. We spent three weeks together, before he asked me to marry him," she said, a smile threatening to appear on her lips.

He released a breath he didn't notice he'd been holding. "Of course, you didn't," Sano replied. Megumi would never have been the elopement-kind, much less a three-week woman.

"I came back to Aizu, naturally, with just another story to tell. Only there wasn't anyone to tell it to, not really. Yahiko brought in Ayame a week later even though she wasn't due back for another month, and to hear him give me a good, long lecture me on marriage is still one of the strangest things to have ever happened to me," she laughed. Sano grinned.

"Usually he never brings any of the sort up. He's become tactful enough, unlike some people," she sent a look his way, and then, "I suppose he gets it from having lived with Ken-san and Kaoru to know how these things work. He's a good man, Yahiko. He's had hard work and discipline instilled in him from a young age, and a sound respect for women despite how you might remember him. He's diligent—no, dutiful, to his family, his passions, and his friends. I think I may have more in common with him than any of the rest of our group, to be honest," she added.

Sano said nothing. He felt a little like an intruder on years of private memories and moments from a past he should have been a part of, but wasn't. He ground his clenched fist on the floorboard beside him quietly, and kept his eyes ahead.

Megumi took the sake jar and poured herself a cup, this time succeeding, and sipped gingerly. She kept the jar on top of her lap, stroking the neck of the jar absently, debating the merits of her honesty, wondering if any of it even mattered at all, anymore.

But finding that she wanted to go on was a bit of a pleasant surprise, and she continued. "Two years before that happened, there was another man—a local official of Aizu who'd known our family from before."

"Sounds perfect," Sano commented through gritted teeth, more agitated than he knew he had a right to be.

"He was helping me find my brother. Or at least, we were at first. He has a beautiful wife and three children now, a child for each year since then," she said, the memory of his face swimming in her mind's eye. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Sano, and he had brown eyes, made for smiling. He had been kind and caring to her, a source of strength to draw upon when she had been coping with the deaths of Kaoru and Kenshin a year prior. There could have been a good reason not to have married him, she supposed. She just wasn't sure what that was, or why it didn't hurt as much as it probably should have when she'd left him.

Megumi spoke with a clinical flatness in her voice, as if recalling facts more than memories. "Six years ago, I was with another doctor for about two years," she said. He waited for her to explain why she hadn't married him, but she kept silent. Sano found his fist clenching, a bitter taste beginning to settle at the back of his mouth.

"He was this town's doctor, then, and I'd worked with him before opening up a clinic of my own. We were a good team; he respected my abilities for what they were, understood what it was I was fighting for," she removed her back from the wall, and busied herself with pouring sake. Sano looked at her, at the fumbling nature of her actions, and shifted so he could sit cross-legged as she watched her. He took the dish from her, and held it.

She looked at him then, as if measuring him. "We were planning to marry, before—" she tore his gaze from him and settled her eyes on her garden once more. "—Before I had to come to Tokyo to attend to Ken-san..." she trailed off, not needing to continue.

Shame washed over Sanosuke in a quick cascade, followed by regret, before finally scrambling to settle on his studied acceptance. He'd wanted to come home when he found out. He should have. But that he didn't was no longer worth lingering over, now. He wanted to reach out to Megumi, to touch her, or offer comfort, but at the moment, the inner battle that seemed to be raging inside her was a private one, in a time and place so distant from him that any action on his part would surely be met with resistance.

Crying was no longer an option; it hadn't been for years. She could talk about Kenshin and Kaoru and that turbulent time as if reciting the medicinal properties of aloe, at least to most people. Many times, Yahiko and her would spend moments talking about them, remembering them, and it had been all right. But right now she was forcibly reminded of why that marriage hadn't materialized in the first place, a reason she hadn't been able to explain to herself or to the people who cared about her, until they just learned to leave it alone. She looked at Sanosuke again, and stared at him as if he could give her an answer as to if it had even been worth it.

She didn't marry that time because Kenshin and Kaoru's passing had awakened a desperate hope in her, and nothing between her and her fiancé was alright anymore, after that. She was stalling, waiting for something that was vaguely and specifically a six-foot ex-gangster who'd once been part of their lives. For what purpose, she didn't know. Maybe to share in their grief? To offer his boundless enthusiasm, to change the way humorless days rolled by and turned a bit of her to stone with every passing day that she felt more alone than ever.

It wasn't that she stayed that way forever-in fact, she had changed enough to have allowed other people into her heart after that. But nothing ever culminated the way everyone was expecting it to, and she was still hard-pressed to define what she'd been hoping for if Sano did return.

And he was here, now, wasn't he? She harbored no fantasies of waiting for him to marry her; fantasies were a waste of time, and for other people. She wasn't even ever seriously interested in him, and the distance hadn't romanticized her memory of him in any way. It was just that, she thought, maybe him coming home would set things in motion once again, would click something into place, anything. It hadn't, and now she wasn't sure if closing herself off for seven years had anything wise about it.

Sano's return didn't hold as many answers as she'd have liked, or any answers at all. It was time to make peace with that.

"Cheers," she smiled, holding the jar to her lips and taking her biggest gulp yet. Sano matched her. "Your liquor is good for something," she added, and rose to her feet, excusing herself 'to fetch some snacks for them'.

Sano stood up abruptly and crossed the distance between them in one stride. Megumi whirled around in surprise.

He placed a hand on her shoulder, his gentle squeeze making her more curious than uncomfortable. There was something unreadable in his eyes, a heavy determination and some characteristic fire that often figured in her mind when she thought about him, sometimes.

"I'm sorry," he said, his hand making its way to cup the side of her jaw. "You'll be alright, Fox, you always are."

Megumi leaned in to the touch despite her misgivings, but opened her mouth to try and make a joke out of the situation. Sano continued, "And I'll make sure you are, so… You've got more than that brat and his brood now. I'll stay. If you'll have me."

The corners of her lips turned up in a grin. "You don't have to pretend that you were going to go elsewhere, Sano." She took his hand and drew it gently away from her face, not unkindly. Her grin turned into a coy smile, and she waited until he returned the smile before she turned around towards the house.

We both know we're the only ones left.