Thank you to my incomparable reviewers! They are: Althea M, caseyedith, Syolen, SRAS9, Mizuki1988, donhisiewen, mijin, and kokoronagomu.
I do not own Rurouni Kenshin. (Not even when he was little.)
Wend
-verb
To pursue or direct (one's way).
It has been two days. Shinta's hands are far past blistered and are now raw and bleeding, but he cannot stop. Something inside him will not rest until the bodies (not monsters, men, like Father and Uncle and Grandfather) are decently buried beneath the ground.
The work went faster, at first, as he rolled the slashed bodies into shallow graves no more than two or so feet deep. But that night as he sleeps, worn to the bone with work and tears, the animals come and dig them up again and he has to start over, deeper and better.
Shinta will not stop. They would have taken his humanity, made him a slave God only knows where, doing God only knows what (ugly leering smirks as he sits, hiding from them behind Kasumi-san's sleeve) and he will not allow them that last victory, even in death. He will behave with honor, with dignity and humanity, even to his dead enemies.
This is his way. This is the person he chooses to be.