The Faerie Chronicles of Kenshin & Kaoru: Immortality, a Rurouni Kenshin fanfic by Raberba girl

Chapter 5

"Are you all right, Kaoru-chan?" Mrs. Arai asked in concern that night at dinner. "You don't look very well."

"Oh...I'm fine...I just have a lot on my mind," Kaoru mumbled.

"Grumpy," Iori commented. Kaoru smiled wanly and reached out to ruffle his hair.

She couldn't concentrate on her homework. Thoughts of Kenshin kept swirling through her head, and what he had told her, and the things that had been happening. The issue of whether to believe them or not was becoming such a circular argument in her head that she finally decided not to think about that anymore.

Did she trust them, at least? In a weird way, yes. Their genuine concern for her spilled out through every word and gesture, so that Kaoru found it very difficult to doubt at least the sincerity of their feelings for her. In a weird way, they seemed to love her as much as Kenshin...though that was kind of an odd idea in itself.

Then again, it was only weird because she still thought of them as strangers. If she knew them well, would she be as bothered by the way their attention seemed so fixed on her? Kaoru thought about it for a while, and had to answer, no, she wouldn't. She didn't mind being the center of attention of her friends, or her own family caring for her. The people of Himura Castle acted the same; it was only the fact that they seemed to know her before she knew them that was making things seem so wrong.

'Kenshin...'

It explained a lot, if he knew her so well. The way he looked at her and spoke to her, the way he seemed to bask simply in her presence. It was uncomfortable if she kept thinking of him as some important adult, but...just how deep had their relationship been, anyway?

"He knows you best."

Had he been a relative, perhaps? ("If that's true, he still is a relative," Kaoru told herself sternly.) An uncle, perhaps, caring about her after the death of her parents. Which led to rather painful emotions about her family, and how she, apparently a Himura, had ended up an orphan and with a new family. 'I should have asked him more,' she thought unhappily, knowing that she couldn't have, that her brain had already been on overload.

Still, it would be nice to know more about this apparently important Himura family. Himura Kenshin, Himura Kensuke, Aya and Suzumi... 'And Himura Me, ugh.' Himura Kaoru. She tried the name out in her head, and was shocked at how easily it seemed to fall into place. "Kenshin," she said again out loud, slowly, savoring the way her mouth formed the name.

Maybe...they were clues. The way she felt around Kenshin, the way she cried and had those almost-memories. If she really had known those people so well, really had somehow lost her memories...well, it all made sense. "Kenshin," she said again, unhappily. Yes, that was it. She spoke the name as if she had said it a thousand times before, as if Kenshin had been a member of her own family. 'He knew my name,' she suddenly realized. 'From the scholarship application?'

She was the one who had suggested that, not him. "Argh." Kaoru smacked herself on the forehead. She had given Kenshin the perfect excuse for him knowing her name at their first (their supposedly first) meeting. She had practically put words in his mouth - even when she had stormed into his office earlier, it suddenly chilled her the way their conversation had played out. She had given him everything he had needed to tell her not enough of the truth without actually lying. As if...they knew each other so deeply, on some subconscious level, that even their speech fit together intimately, each knowing exactly how much to give the other.

"Kenshin," she murmured again in exasperation, unexpectedly pleased by the feel of his name in her mouth.

Which got her to the most uncomfortable point of the whole thing. Magic. Things absolutely unexplainable by anything else. "I know you didn't, because I soundproofed the room." A parlor trick, it had almost seemed, so small, but...she hadn't heard a single paper clip spill, even though she had watched with her own eyes. Such a small thing that she had trouble believing it was so important. Yet, 'Anyone could have turned sound on and off at will, right?' sounded ridiculous. She hadn't been watching something on a TV screen, it had been real life, playing out right before her, watching paper clips come bouncing out across a desk without a sound. 'And what about earlier, at school?'

She had been trying to avoid thinking about that. Falling through the air, so sure she was going to die, wondering wildly why it was taking so long and felt so nice, feeling her feet tap the ground without being able to believe it. 'I've...fallen before...and I didn't die.'

Kaoru clapped her hands over her face. There it was again, another memory-that-was-not-a-memory. She did not remember falling without dying before. Yet she was sure, somewhere in her body if not her mind, that it had happened. Just like she was sure she had spoken Kenshin's name often enough for it to be second nature, just like walking the halls of Himura Castle brought her to tears.

'Why a castle?'

Kaoru could feel herself starting to tremble.

"You ever watch much sci-fi?"

Surely things weren't that bad, were they? Ancient kings and castles- Surely, whatever strange things were going on, it all had to do with...today, this present time...didn't it?

"There is a reason why this one resembles the kings in those portraits."

Kenshin... Kaoru suddenly wondered, not without a shudder, if one of the portraits was of him. Not just someone who looked like him, but Kenshin himself.

"How old are you, anyway?!" He had never really answered. Kaoru let out a heavy sigh, knowing that she had to face at least the possibility that Kenshin was...old. Like some glamorous immortal out of...a sci-fi movie, or one of those romantic fantasies.

'I don't know that,' she told herself firmly, 'not for sure.' It was just a...possibility. 'That Kenshin's, what, some two hundred-year-old fairy king?' Who apparently had strong ties to her. 'Ugh.' Then a giggle came unbidden to her lips as she suddenly had an image of Kenshin as her fairy godfather. 'Now, that's an idea. That would explain a lot, too.' And was much cuter than thinking of him involved in "bad things, against our enemies," who seemed to include important government figures. 'Why am I thinking that one of these days, I'll have to bust my fairy godfather out of jail?' Because that was something straight out of a sci-fi or fantasy movie. Officer Sagara Sanosuke would be pleased.

Kaoru blinked and sat up, realizing that she had been lying on her bed, listening to music and thinking for over two full hours. 'Ugh...wonderful.' Night had very definitely fallen outside, the window looked black. Kaoru had a paper due the day after tomorrow, she couldn't afford to be wasting so much time thinking about fairy godfathers and ancient castles.

She got up, pulled the curtains over the window, then sat down at her computer to type her paper. Ten minutes later, she was on the Internet, supposedly to look up a quote, and found herself clicking around instead on the official Web site of Himura Castle.

Blah blah, Himura family, blah, "...the castle is now owned by Ken O'Neill, born in Ireland..." Ireland. He didn't have an accent...he spoke flawless Japanese. "...but having immigrated to Japan as a young child." Well, that might make sense. "Mr. O'Neill is interested in restoring" blah blah blah, "...along with the new staff of Himura Castle." New staff? As in...a whole set to replace the old ones? The Web page didn't explain further, which was a little frustrating. It seemed like an important detail.

Tiring of the official drivel, Kaoru resorted to a search engine instead, and found some interesting things. After realizing that she had spent way too much time reading through some rather shockingly muckraker blog entries from someone called "Zanza," Kaoru got out of there and continued her research. The stuff on the Himura family was boring...until she got to the earliest recorded information about that family line, which was pretty fuzzy but mentioned a lot of interesting, though obviously false stories, similar to what Kenshin had been telling her when they'd met at the museum.

Obviously false? After all...it had also been 'obviously false' that Kenshin could have spilled paper clips without making a sound.

"Magic," Kaoru groaned. "I almost forgot, Kenshin's my fairy godfather." This all seemed so ridiculous...

It was also two o'clock in the morning, and for a little while now, she had been finding it difficult to keep reading through eyes that were blurring with increased frequency. "Go to bed, Kaoru," she finally told herself wearily. There was just too much information available, it was too hard to sift through it all and decide what was true and what was made up. It was probably...even better to just stop resisting and get acquainted with the Himura Castle people herself. 'I don't...think they're dangerous.' If they were, they wouldn't have let her parents come along to visit Natsue, would they?

"Bad things. To our enemies."

Kaoru shivered and determinedly went to bed and tried to think mindless thoughts, rather than the ones she had been entertaining. After a while, she was successful, and so managed to go to sleep.

To be continued...