Author's note: I'm back in business! I have free time again, and I think my muse has returned. Optimistic prediction: several updates in the next month or so, enough to finish this story and take us home. Also, I've decided that this website really hates my formatting for some reason – every several months I lose special characters or spacing. This time I had to go in and reformat almost all of the old chapters of Yuki Onna - most vexing.
…
Harvest
.
The millet sheaths grow high all around him, and the cicadas sing a constant droning prayer as he works.
It has been an unusually long summer, full of fleeting storms that drenched the earth. Their harvest is a rich one this year.
She calls him from the porch to their house, calling him to come and eat, but he isn't ready to come in. He will work as long as there is light and even after. This season, not a single stalk will go to waste.
She calls again, and he smiles to himself. She is frustrated not to be working beside him, but he had refused to let her join him in the field. Their child might arrive any day now - she is constantly grumbling to herself from the heaviness, the changes to her body, the waiting, the heat. He alone will bring in the harvest, and as he works he prays with hope in his heart that the birth will be an easy one. It is time enough, he thinks. Tomorrow early in the morning he will fetch the old woman to stay with them until the baby comes.
"Shinta! I won't wait up for you and your supper will be cold!"
Even asleep, she will stir as soon as he joins her - she always does - and his supper will be warm enough at the end of long day's labor, in the lingering evening heat. The farmer who had been a samurai continues to smile to himself and then complacently answers, "Hai!"
.
Two years before:
.
She was alive. She was wandering freely about the manor. She was safe.
Kenshin was so surprised to see her he could not hear if she had spoken. He was holding her arms like he had forgotten how to move while she stared at him in amazement and it must have been improper, to touch her, to hold her, but he didn't care. She was alive.
She was saying something about food. Her face was flushed.
He let go of her arms, but as he did so he knew, for the first time, that she must be his. No one he cared about had ever stayed alive before. She was supernatural. She came from no earthly family. She had survived the shamans and the daimyo. She spoke to him and saw him – not a sword, not a soldier, not a killer, but him – she must be his. She must have known this before he did. She was his.
This calmed him.
Kenshin took a deep breath and realized she had stuttered and mumbled something about breakfast. It was ready for him and his fellow samurai in the hall. He took a step back and bowed his head sharply in assent.
"Hai."
But he couldn't help watching her – several heartbeats he raised his head and watched her, her bright eyes, her throat as she swallowed, the rhythm of her movements as she breathed – alive, miraculously, she was alive – before he turned to leave.
.
Grandmother arrives and Kaoru weeps in her surprise. Shinta feels a pang of guilt. He hadn't realized that she must be frightened, must have been hiding her fear.
He cannot think about what might happen. He cannot think about his own fear.
Grandmother scolds him out of their modest house, and it is with eagerness that Shinta goes to take up his work in the field.
.
During breakfast Katsura stood up and told them that the Makimachi and the Mibu were riding into the valley, that half the Koshimizu clan had already been murdered in their beds.
Kenshin felt his mind go blank, but not with his usual resignation. It was a white hot certainty that he would cut down anyone who attempted to harm her.
He knew that he would die. Everything would end.
Everything had been leading up to this: he would die.
She would live.
.
Two days later, Shinta is pulling down the last section of millet when he hears the first scream. He doesn't remember running to the house, but he is standing, panting, in the doorway and he can see Kaoru gleaming with a sheen of sweat, and her eyes are pleading with him, and the old woman is frowning at him, telling him something he doesn't want to hear, and Kenshin, for the first time in months, wants to reach for his sword.
"Shinta, go. I'll be all right. Go."
Kaoru, his wife, smiles weakly at him, and he is terrified.
"You can help your wife best by keeping busy, away from here, by bringing in the harvest to feed your family," the old woman says.
Kaoru is grimacing in pain and it is like a knife driving into his skull. She opens her eyes and pleads with him. "Please. Shinta. Kenshin. I'll be fine, but you need to go."
He opens his mouth, but the old woman is there and he has no words and anything he would have said has dried to dust in his throat.
He knows how to obey even when it kills him.
He cannot help her. He cannot protect her. He cannot fight her pain.
He cannot watch her bite her lip. He cannot stay and listen to her scream. (He could, but she doesn't want him here.)
He goes.
.
He found Kaoru in the yard around midday. He was wearing his armor. He had been cleaning his weapons and learning his orders. He had been helping to prepare.
He touched her arm and looked into her eyes and told her, "I will protect you."
He could see the fear and confusion in her eyes. "Kenshin... I'm worried about you - you and everyone else."
"No... This is a war, and people will die, but you are unlike everyone else. I will fight to protect you."
Tears were welling in her eyes. Kenshin couldn't remember the last time he had comforted or been comforted by anyone, but suddenly she was in his arms, wrapping her arms around his lacquer armor, holding him while he eased his arms around her shoulders and pressed his lips against her hair.
He couldn't feel her through his armor, but he knew that she was warm. He thought he heard thunder. Always, with her, the storms.
She pulled back and she was gazing at him and he realized he'd been wrong - he was hers; he'd been hers all along. "Kenshin, be safe," she whispered.
He didn't hear "Goodbye."
.