Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or events taking place in "Rurouni Kenshin" by Nobuhiro Watsuki. Please don't sue me. I receive no money from this fanwork, only a writer's creative satisfaction. Also, reviews are always welcomed, read and cherished, but never necessary.

Title: Kaerigake: On the Way Home

Chapter 4: It is difficult to deviate from a worn path.

Word Count: 3,392

[Total Word Count: 9,642]

Fandom: Rurouni Kenshin

Character(s): Those souls who were once Himura Kenshin, Sagara Sanosuke, Saitou Hajime, Kamiya Kaoru and Takani Megumi. Also, Yukishiro Tomoe and Himura Kenshin.

Warning(s): Character death and reincarnation, bloody memories, nightmares, melancholy, violence, adult same-sex kissing, references to major spoilers for the Jinchuu arc of the manga

Author: Kita Kitsune (Call me Fox!)

Post date: Sunday, September 14, 2014・平成二十六年九月十四日・日曜日

: : : : : : :

Tomoe was dead.

The hitokiri dragged his feet through the snow, carrying her body close to him. He didn't know how long he had sat there, cradling her and crying; every inch the fifteen-year-old man he was. Her death hadn't been instantaneous, but it had been quick – too quick for a proper goodbye. The chorus of 'why's in his head was deafening, even as his hearing returned. The forest was still and silent as ever, as he passed the various 'barriers' graves.

Swordsman's sense, hearing, sight, touch. They had all been stolen from him as he raced through the forest to find her. One shadow assassin after another, just like that night the bloody rain fell. And the hitokiri had thought he would be able to protect her happiness. Tomoe had died smiling, when she so rarely did – perhaps it had been his own happiness he was trying to protect. Tomoe's smile was a thing of beauty. It had made him happy when he saw it the first time, and now the second time was seared painfully into his memories; every time he thought of her smile he would think of her death.

As his senses came back to him, he wished they hadn't. His swordsman's sense returned once he exited the forest. Through the deep snow, the hitokiri slowly became aware of the sound the two of them made as they pushed through it. On the road, there was no one to witness the hitokiri carrying the corpse of his wife – he knew this, because he could see. His fingers were numb as they held her to him, the cold of the mountain granting him some respite from the now razor-sharp awareness he had of how truly dead she was in his arms. He had slain enough men to know, and no would-be-comforting hallucinations would allow him to forget that fact. The hitokiri dismissed them, as they were not the truth.

Once inside the house – their house – he gently laid her down, and cleaned the blood off. It was a scent he knew all too well, and it felt rank in the close air of their peaceful home. A scent that should have never come here, was not welcome here, and yet it had insidiously traipsed in, bathing the rooms in the chaos of Kyoto. There would be no escape. Barely thinking, he methodically undressed her and threw away the bloodstained kimono. Reverently, he redressed her in her clean, white sleeping one. He gently dotted her wrists and behind her ears with her perfume, then pulled up the futon they had shared – only one night – and folded her purple shawl neatly atop her chest, exactly as she had left it on the pillow beside him in lieu of herself, as she set out on her trek to the cabin.

A rain of blood, she had said. He had really made it rain blood.

The scent of white plum blossoms, and blood.

: : :

Kennan started awake into a sitting position, his heart racing. The scent of white plum blossoms lingered in his mind, giving him unpleasant reminders of the clarity of the dream he'd just had. Usually he just had flashes of understanding, scenes that played out fuzzily in his mind, but this one had been different. There was a woman, one he had loved, and he had cut through her and killed the man beyond. He hadn't seen her, and when he had, it had been too late. She lay dying in the snow, bleeding out from the fatal wound, painting the snow pink. Kennan bent over his knees and held the back of his head with his hands, eyes squeezed shut as he tried to get the scene out of his mind.

It wouldn't go away. He had killed her. Killed her. Just like so many men before –

His head exploded in agony and Kennan shuddered, falling on his side on the bed. In the back of his mind, he heard voices. They were muffled and he wasn't completely sure if they were hallucinations, or not. He was aware of the door opening, and glanced up despite his double vision. He saw a tall Japanese man, spiky brown hair held back by a red bandana across his forehead. Kennan didn't recognize him, but he knew him.

Sano. The name appeared, unbidden, and Kennan shook his head to try and get rid of the pain, but only succeeded in making it worse. The room tilted, and abruptly a pair of strong hands steadied his shoulders. He heard a sharp bark of a rebuke, fingers pressing into him with palpable worry. A low, calm tone responded and then Kennan was being hoisted up, a familiar voice hissing in his ear.

"Don't worry, I'll get you out of this freak's place, Kennan. Just work with me, here, a'ight?" He didn't understand half the words, but noted the urgency, and nodded vaguely as Sancho – not Sano, Sano wasn't a real person, it was just an image in his head – pulled one of his arms over his shoulders and helped him up. Kennan was struck by a sense of familiarity as he took the first step – hadn't they done this before? With…

"Shishio." He mumbled, mouth clumsy around the foreign word, but Sancho seemed to take it as nonsense and kept encouraging him to take another step. A curt, dismissive tone sliced through the air coolly.

"Shishio Makoto. Your predecessor, Battousai." Kennan flinched at he was called the name that was not his, curling slightly into Sancho's shoulder as his friend bristled.

"What's that, Chinese?" Kennan heard a scoff, but Sancho plowed on. "Listen, pal, I don't know what you did to him, but I'm takin' him back to his house. You didn't drug him, did you?"

"It's Japanese." Just an edge of impatience, in that neutral, bored tone. "He merely collapsed in my school, and I thought it wise to contact one of his friends as I do not know where he lives." Kennan felt Sancho grind his back teeth together, before spitting out a response.

"Your school? That hole-in-the-wall downstairs is yours? And since when does Kennan the pacifist study any kind of karate?" Kennan could tell Sancho wanted to go on, but he was cut calmly short.

"It is. And I would not expect a common butcher to understand anything more complex than chopping up meat. Kendo is quite beyond you." Sancho's hand tightened on Kennan's back, and he could tell his friend was trying to hold back his temper.

"Well, lucky for you we don't live in a warzone, so I guess I'll have to make due punching the daylights out of the beef carcasses for what you just said." He said, tightly.

"How you have all changed." It was a thinly-veiled insult, delivered in that same infuriating tone. Kennan couldn't bring himself to care past his headache, just slumped against his friend in silent entreaty. Sancho seemed to get the message, and readjusted him, stalking out. Kennan made his feet follow as best he could. There were no other words exchanged, and Sancho took him home in silence, helping Kennan into bed before going to crash on his couch and raid his refrigerator.

When Kennan woke up, it was two in the morning and Sancho was sprawled across his couch, covered in chips and a melting quart of ice cream sitting on the coffee table, TV playing some infomercial. Despite the long day he'd had, he smiled tiredly and began to pick up after his best friend, ending with a blanket tossed over the sleeping man in gratitude for looking after him and just generally being around if Kennan had had need of him.

It was not a common thing, to find friends that he could depend on.

And Sancho was always very dependable.

: : :

When he returned to work, Kama immediately fluttered over and began chastising him for his carelessness. Tani also poked her nose in, suggesting various herbal remedies they kept in stock. Being a pharmacist, she could only fill what prescriptions doctors had ordered, but that hadn't stopped her from researching natural medicines. It was a way she could use her knowledge to help those she cared about, without endangering the great amount of trust people put in her to do her job. Kennan waved them off, insisting it was nothing, and tried to ignore Makena and Jinn's questions as they stocked the shelves. But two instances of fainting in two weeks had Kama's fretting at its worst, and so when she surprised him by signing up to work for him over the weekend, Kennan found she wouldn't let him refuse it. The paperwork had all been done – Morey had apparently signed off on it all – and everyone was telling him to go home and rest. Not having much choice in the matter, Kennan did.

This was a few days after the incident at the smoker's kendo school – Kennan still hadn't learned the man's name – and what was quite unwelcome as he rounded the corner to his apartment was the sight of that tall man with the piercing eyes, leaning against the wall beside his door, arms folded over his front and a cigarette in one hand. He stared at Kennan as Kennan approached warily, taking out his key to unlock the door. At this, the smoker finally spoke.

"I followed you when that idiot took you home." It was obvious, and the smoker was stating the obvious, and Kennan ignored it. He saw a thin smirk curl over the man's lips, from the corner of his eye. "Still denying your past, Battousai? I would have thought you'd gotten sick of it after that stint as a pacifistic rurouni."

Rurouni. Wanderer. Another Japanese word Kennan didn't know he knew. It was so unsettling. He turned to frown up at the taller man, key already having unlocked his door. The smoker watched him passively.

"What is your name?" Kennan settled on, at last, not looking away from their staredown. The smoker smirked down at him.

"You'll just have to remember it, Himura Battousai." His eyes glittered as he said this, but Kennan shook his head as he turned the knob and walked into his apartment, voice quiet.

"That's not my name." The smoker followed him in leisurely – it was just as well. Apparently they both had unanswered questions, so it would be best to get them over with so Kennan could move on with his life.

"Not in this life, no. But it was." The smoker surprised him by conceding even that much, and Kennan glanced up at him warily as the man passed. Their eyes didn't meet; the smoker was too occupied with looking around his apartment, just then. Kennan sighed and closed the door behind him, resigned to his unexpected guest.

"Would you like something to drink?" He asked mildly, ever a good host. He heard the smirk in the other man's voice as he answered.

"Still playing the domestic. I'll have some green tea, if you don't mind." That was strangely polite, but Kennan didn't let it put him off-guard. He returned to the living room a few minutes later with a pot of green tea and two cups. He set them on the coffee table; one in front of his guest, one for him, and the pot in the middle. Kennan leaned back in the chair perpendicular to the couch the smoker was sitting on, eying him seriously.

"What do you want from me." He stated quietly. The smoker held his tea atop his bent knees, back straight as he gazed back just as seriously.

"I want you to remember who you were." The smoker offered, eyes narrowing slightly.

"Why?" The smoker smirked thinly at him.

"Because you are not being true to yourself, like this; Hitokiri Battousai, a shelf-stocker? Your true self is an assassin. This cannot be changed with a few lives lived in idleness. Where is the man who was one of the four great Ishin Shishi swordsmen of the Bakumatsu? Where is the man who fought on equal terms with the captains of the Shinsengumi? Where is the man who – "

"He is not here." Kennan interrupted him firmly, eyes on the tea he was holding tightly between his fingers, knuckles white. Having seen so much blood in his dreams, he knew it couldn't have meant anything good, but for it to be real, for it to be memories – it was almost too preposterous to take seriously. How could this man know so much about him and yet nothing at all?

"Yes, that much is apparent." The raw disdain in that tone made Kennan startle, looking up into a pair of piercing grey eyes. "You are so much less than what you could have been." A disappointed click of the smoker's tongue, to that. "How easy would it have been to pick up a sword and remember what you always will be?" Kennan looked back down to his tea. His mouth felt dry, and he forced himself to take a sip. He remembered…

"I was born in 1986." He said, softly. "My parents weren't married. My mother left, and my father took care of me. He was in an accident at work, a few years later, and didn't survive. His brother took me in and raised me." He didn't mention that one childhood nightmare he kept having, over and over… A girl who reminded him of Kama, stabbed through the heart with a sword, pinned to a wall, Kennan's birthmark freshly carved into her left cheek. A regular sword, not a Japanese one – or at least it looked like it. He had woken up screaming from it so many times in his life, his uncle had taken to soundproofing his room.

"You remembered something, didn't you." The statement cut into his thoughts, and Kennan flinched away from that voice. It kept on. "Tell me. Was it Tomoe's death? Or the one Enishi staged?" The second name meant nothing to him, but Tomoe reminded him of that too-detailed dream he'd had, recently.

Tomoe: the woman he had killed; the woman he had loved.

"No." Kennan lied. "I don't remember anything." He heard a scoff, and the slight 'chink' of the smoker's teacup being placed on the coffee table between them.

"You always were a bad liar. It was the tanuki girl, wasn't it? And from that, you made some half-stupid conclusion to never pick up a sword. Didn't you." It wasn't a question, and Kennan was ashamed to admit he was right. The people in his dreams were always in trouble because of him; his sword had caused so much pain. Intrinsically, he had known this, and the smoker had only confirmed it with his comments about Kennan having been an assassin in that former life.

"I'm not the assassin, anymore." He said very softly, eyes on his tea. "I haven't been since then. When did you say it was? 130 years ago? That isn't me." Kennan heard a scoff, and the creak of the couch as the smoker leaned forward. He didn't resist as the man lifted his chin so their eyes could meet.

"136 years ago. After the Bakumatsu and in Meiji-Era Japan." The smoker was watching him, intently, for some sort of response, but Kennan just felt tired and sad. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

"No matter what you remember, I don't. I don't want that life. It's not mine. Mine is enough, for me. I don't need to be a famous killer." He said quietly, trying to pull out of the smoker's grip. But it only tightened, and the smoker dragged him forward by an abruptly hard hold on his jaw, hissing at him.

"You still want to run away, Battousai? I remember everything. You can't hide your past." Grey eyes stabbed at him, furious and cold. "You will not run away from me. Not this time." Kennan watched him quietly, and felt a question tugging at the back of his mind.

"Why is this so important to you?" Immediately, the smoker's face changed to something unreadable.

"It's not important to me." It was immediately dismissed, but something was off. Kennan pressed on.

"If it wasn't important, what else have you been doing for these past 136 years?" The smoker fell silent and pulled back from his lean, letting Kennan go. He took a drag of his cigarette, not looking at him, and Kennan watched him shrewdly while rubbing at the spot where the smoker's fingers had pressed into his jaw. When the silence stretched for too long, Kennan broke it, gently.

"You say you remember everything. What about these past 136 years? Haven't you lived through them? Haven't you been happy? Why fixate on a life that was nothing but misery?" Those grey eyes pinned him with unexpected vehemence and Kennan found his next words gone.

"Misery? Misery? You dare mention that to me, Battousai? Try living life after life with everyone beneath you, idiots swimming in small pools and bigger idiots in bigger pools. No one who can match you, no one who understands, who remembers. And you want to tell me you don't want to remember? You were one of the few hitokiri who could fight on equal terms with me and Okita and you don't want to remember? There was honor in those times! Men who fought and died for their beliefs, no matter the side they were on, and after a few lifetimes wallowing in the defenseless ignorance of the civilian you say you don't want to remember?"

Kennan didn't know why it had happened, but the smoker lunged at him, eyes full of murderous intent and Kennan instinctively threw himself off his chair and to the side, scrabbling to his feet as the other man rose from the ruins of the knocked-over chair Kennan had been sitting in. His eyes were sharp and dark; Kennan realized this was the wolf in his dreams of the red-walled city. Instead of shaking, his hands steadied, and he backed up, eyes a stern warning for the smoker to stay back. But the man's lip curled, and he lunged for Kennan again, left hand aiming a punch at his bruised shoulder. Kennan ducked, rolling to his desk and grabbing a pen, holding it before him like a sword. The man smirked at him, and tackled Kennan; they rolled, only stopping, breathing hard, when the smoker felt the point of Kennan's pen pressed against his neck. Still, Kennan wasn't shaking. His face was unreadable, eyes glowing with flecks of gold against the light.

"Stop this, Saitou." It was a curt demand, ripped of all formerly distant politeness, and Saitou's lip curled further in a feral smile. He cupped Kennan's jaw, staring his fill of those flecks of golden ice in Kennan's gaze before he ducked his head, never relinquishing those eyes.

"Never. I'll hunt you down no matter who or what you are." Kennan's eyes narrowed, but his response was interrupted by a forceful kiss from the man pinning him down, hand holding him in place. He made an annoyed sound against Saitou's mouth, pen tip pressing further up into his throat. Saitou chuckled softly, withdrawing only to take a hold of the wrist holding that pen, eyes sharply amused as he dragged it away, leaning back down to claim that mouth once again, grinding his hips against the ones beneath, to keep Kennan in place.

Kennan's breath caught as his body responded to the pressure, and his eyes snapped shut as he was pulled back to reality. Saitou made a disappointed grunt against his mouth, and pulled back enough to chastise him. "Gone already? But I knew I'd find you…" Kennan turned his head to the side as Saitou ducked down, again, but Saitou was undeterred, pressing a kiss and then another to the cheek he'd been given, trailing slowly down to Kennan's jaw and sucking at the underside of it. Kennan shuddered minutely, and Saitou bit at his neck before moving on to another spot. "You could never hide from me for very long." Kennan shut his eyes against that attention, trying to ignore the sense that something very important had just slid into place.

He didn't want to remember. But he did.