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

Chapter 8

"Hello? Kenshin?"

"...Kaoru-dono...are you all right?"

Kaoru blinked. "Yeah, but - you sound really depressed." She leaned back into her pillows, twirling the phone cord absently around one finger. Her parents had picked her up early from school, but dinner had been such a somber, stressful affair that Kaoru had escaped to her room as soon as she could. She found that she had been half-waiting for Kenshin to call. "...Is it about this whole assassination thing?" she ventured nervously, wondering if he was involved.

"...Yes." He really did sound like his pet dog had just died or something. "This one made a terrible, stupid, careless mistake, and now he's...now he's dead."

Kaoru blinked again. "Wait a minute - are you saying that you could have prevented the chancellor's assassination?!"

"Very likely. His safety was one of the things we were keeping an eye on, after all. The man may not have made an ideal leader, but he was the only thing keeping Shishio from full power." Kenshin's tone was slow and despondent, Kaoru could almost see him beating himself up.

"This is crazy...Kenshin, what's going to happen now?"

"..."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"Y-You could tell?!"

"I could tell what?" she challenged.

"Er...well...you see, um...you're probably not going to like this, but-"

"You know what I don't like?" she growled, suddenly angry again. "I don't like offending my own mother because I suddenly can't choke down her cooking."

"Uh - pardon?"

"It's the salt, isn't it."

"Oh. Does this, um...having anything to do with your...um...with that time you fell off the, uh, roof?"

"You mean my sparkly magic powers?" she shot back. "Apparently so. Ishida-kun said that salt was a 'bane' or something - if I'm turning into a fairy, I guess it'd make sense that I'd suddenly be allergic to salt." Kaoru groaned, flopping over onto her stomach. "This is so ridiculous... Did you know, I've been trying to experiment, and I can actually turn things into gold now? Sort of. Just the surface, like when they put fake gold surfaces on jewelry and stuff. And, like, I can't change it back - now I get glitter all over my hands every time I try to use my pencil."

"Mm. This one, and Tomoe-dono especially, would be interested in anything you can discover about your magic as it develops." There was a slight pause. "Kaoru-dono, did you say that it was Ishida who told you about the fae bane?"

"Yeah. Would you believe it, he's researching fairies now." A thought struck her. "Hey, Kenshin...those enemies you were talking about - one of them wouldn't be a fairy king or anything, right?"

"Well, it depends." It felt weird, talking so matter-of-factly about this stuff. "The true Faerie King is on our side - mostly - and so is the former Unseelie Regent, but Shishio has a claim to the throne, as well, albeit a lesser one. So part of our problem is-"

"Wait a minute, are you telling me that VICE CHANCELLOR SHISHIO is in on all this, too?! That he's a fairy?!"

"Half. His mother was human, but his father was the previous Faerie King, actually."

"You know what, just stop. I think my head is about to explode." She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. It made her smile a little to hear Kenshin waiting patiently on the other end. "I can't believe this... So, what, Vice Chancellor Shishio turned up in Ishida-kun's room or something last night to tell him that he's stalking me-?"

"W-What?!"

"This is news to you?" Kaoru inquired with great interest.

"Er...that is...we knew that the fae had made contact with Ishida last night, but Shishio - it can't have been him, he's was definitely at the capitol...and Enishi was with this one...I don't understand, that I do not."

"Well, I don't know," Kaoru amended, thinking back over what she had said and what Yamato had told her. "Ishida-kun just said that it was a fairy king with glowing eyes like Battousai's."

"...Oh."

"'Oh,' what?"

"Ah...it is clear to this one now." Kenshin sighed. "What a mess..."

"So...am I really in danger, or no?"

"You are, Kaoru-dono." He answered so quickly that Kaoru realized somehow that this was the real reason why he had called her tonight. "Kensuke and the girls are, too, as well as their families, now that Shishio is in power."

"What does Shishio care about an ordinary kid like me?" Kaoru asked, bracing herself. "What's so special about the...about the Himuras, that bad guys would be after us?"

"Well...to tell the truth, the main value you all have for him is your potential as hostages. But now that you're developing magical powers, Kaoru-dono, this one fears even more for your safety, should our enemies ever get their hands on you."

"Great." Kaoru sighed. "I guess you want to round us all up and squirrel us away in Himura Castle or something."

"...Pretty much, yes," he said sheepishly. "Not that we would force you, but...do you have any good reason to refuse?"

"I probably should, but I can't think of any at the moment." Kaoru paused. "So we'd be, like, living there? In a museum?"

"The rest of us do."

"Who's 'the rest of us'?"

He sounded a little amused as he said, "Do you want the whole list?"

"You can start it, at least. I'll tell you when to stop."

"All right. There is this one, Sano and Megumi-dono and their children, Yahiko and Tsubame-dono and their children, Tomoe-dono and Akira and their children-"

"You can skip the kids. I assume there's a lot of them."

"There is," he said happily. "It's nice to have them running around, actually...I miss my children, that I do."

"You have children?" Kaoru said in surprise. This was an interesting development.

"...Yes. Sort of." Kenshin's voice suddenly sounded heavy again. Kaoru wondered in exasperation if she would ever be able to stop triggering these mood swings of his. "I am not able to see my son very often these days, but he is strong and has made a good life for himself, that he has. This one is very proud of him."

The praise of his own family would have annoyed Kaoru if it hadn't, for some reason, triggered an answering glow of pride in her own chest. 'For crying out loud,' she thought, 'did I know Kenshin's kids, too?' She touched the rose hidden under her shirt. "You are, huh?" she said out loud.

There was a smile in his voice. "You would be, too, Kaoru-dono."

"Did I know him?" she ventured.

"...Yes. He loves you very much, that he does."

"He does?!"

Kenshin laughed. "Oh, yes - he loves you much more than he ever has this one."

"Are - are you kidding me?! Some guy I don't even remember loves me more than his own dad?!" A horrible thought struck her. "Uh...was he my boyfriend or something?"

"Your-?!" The note of shock in Kenshin's voice was reassuring. "No! Of course not. It...haha...it wasn't like that at all. He had two wives, you know. Um, neither of them were you."

"Oh, good," she said without thinking, relieved.

"He outlived them both, though." Kenshin sighed. "It was after Kairi-dono's death that he retreated to Faerie for good."

"To...Fairyland? Your son is in Fairyland?"

"Yes, as a favorite of the Queen. It is why he's still alive now, when he should have died long ago - though I'm afraid that his time is finally drawing close, that it is. This one will...will miss him terribly, when the time comes."

Kaoru gulped. "Um...what?"

Kenshin's voice was gentle as he tried to explain. "Kaoru-dono...this one's son and daughters were born a long, long time ago. The girls both married mortals, and lived relatively normal lives...they died of old age long before your own parents were ever born."

"...Oh." She paused to swallow. "You know, I've asked you this before, but you weaseled out of it somehow. ...How old are you, Kenshin?"

"...Roughly 150 years. Roughly. This one did not keep very careful track."

"Ugh...'scuse me for a minute." Kaoru put the phone down and got up to pace in agitation, pressing her palms against her skull as if trying to keep the thoughts inside. When she felt sufficiently calmed down, she went back and picked up the phone again. "Are you telling me that you've been around for a century and a half?!"

"Sort of."

"WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN?" She was starting to lose her temper, and if he knew her so well, he ought to also know that making Arai Kaoru lose her temper was a really bad idea.

He sighed, then said with a little trepidation, "What this one means is, he has been alive for about 150 years, but was born much longer ago than that."

"AND WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT-?"

"We've time traveled, you and I. So have the rest of our allies, in a different sense."

"..."

"We had to. Shishio had done it, traveling far into the future - to this present time - and the rest of us had to follow him, to prevent his evil. Yet there is no going back - only the Faerie King and Queen are able to revisit the past. For all else, there is no returning from the future. This one brought you with him, and waited for the others to join us."

"You. Brought me with you." 'What, what, it can't be true, it's ridiculous, I'm Arai Kaoru and I was born here and I'm a student at Azumano High School and I'm seventeen years old, I'm seventeen years old-'

"Yes. You were born in the days when King Kamiya ruled, the days when Shishio Makoto - the very same man who is soon to become chancellor of this country - had seized power from the Himura line...when the Battousai of legends stained the streets with blood."

"Kenshin."

He must have heard the wooden tone of her voice, the way her brain seemed to be jammed. "Forgive me."

"..."

"You did ask."

"I'm going to hang up now."

"...Good night."

"GOOD NIGHT?!" she screamed, feeling as if she had been almost physically seized by panic and terror. "When I find out I'm a billion years old and some evil fairy tyrant from a billion years ago wants to kill me?!"

"You'll be safe, Kaoru-dono."

That gave her pause. "How?" she said suspiciously, her heart still beating fast.

"Yahiko is on duty tonight, that he is. This one will send others to join him. Unless Shishio himself tries to come - and trust me, he is quite busy at the moment, in the wake of the chancellor's death - nothing will get through to harm you."

"...You have a guard on my house."

"This disturbs you?"

"It should. But you know what, having no one around would freak me out even more." Kaoru threw the phone back into its cradle and pelted downstairs.

"Kaoru-chan?" her mother exclaimed in surprise as she dashed past the living room. "What's wrong, darling?"

"Wanna check something outside, just a sec!" Kaoru jammed her feet into her shoes, clawed open the locks on the door, and flung herself outside.

Night had long fallen. The street lights and porch lights cast patches of harsh brightness on the ground, surrounded ominously by areas of pure black. "Yahiko!" Kaoru screamed, too panicked to really think about what she was doing. "Yahiko! Yahiko! Yahiko!"

The bushes separating her family's yard from the neighbors' suddenly rustled violently. Kaoru screamed again, backing away in terror until she realized that the emerging figure was vaguely familiar. "Y-Y-Yahiko?!" she stammered.

"Jooh, what is it?" the spiky-haired man said in alarm, gripping a sword in his hand and looking around wildly.

"DID YOU JUST CALL ME A QUEEN?!" she shrieked. "YOU CALLED ME A QUEEN! AAAGGGHH! AAAGHHH! AAAAAAGGGHHHHH!"

"Will you stop screaming?!" he hissed. "Someone's gonna think I'm attacking you."

"There's an evil fairy gonna kill me...!"

Yahiko seized her arm and dragged her around the house, where he pushed her into one of the plastic chairs on the back porch and patted her head extremely awkwardly. "Look, J- Uh, Kaoru...-san...whatever...did something happen? Did you get attacked?"

"How old are you?" she shrieked at him.

He looked startled. "Huh? What does that have to do with anything?"

Kaoru found herself seizing his collar and shaking him. It felt strange - she barely knew the man, yet she did not feel uncomfortable yelling at him or manhandling him. "ANSWER THE QUESTION!"

"Geez, I dunno," he complained, working himself free of her grip. "Not counting the time when we were all asleep, I guess I'm...I dunno...forty, fifty? I gave up keeping track... I've been to Faerie a lot, anyway, and that's messed me up, so it's anyone's guess by now-"

"You're FORTY?!" she screamed at him. "You look like a COLLEGE STUDENT!"

"Stop yelling!" he growled at her. "You wanna attract any spy or Unseelie within earshot?"

Kaoru shivered, and then found that she couldn't stop. "Y-Yahiko...I'm scared, I'm so scared."

"Hey." He put a hand on her shoulder, his voice having gone surprisingly gentle. "Kaoru, it's okay. It's my job to protect you, see? Look, Kenshin just texted me, he's sending backup."

Kaoru tearfully looked at the cell phone he showed her, which showed the message, 'sending reinf, told kd too much. shes upset so b careful'

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said indignantly.

Yahiko grinned. "Just in case you didn't know, you have a bad habit of getting into trouble when you're upset."

"That jerk," Kaoru wailed, though it was mostly out of the stress of the moment. "Yahiko...I don't understand, I don't understand any of this..."

"You haven't figured out the rose thing yet?" he sighed.

"...No...I've been scared to try...but now I'm scared not to..." She drew in a deep, wavering breath. "I want to go inside now."

"Okay. I'll walk you back to the front."

As she trudged along beside him, Kaoru suddenly looked over at his profile - she couldn't see much of it, but she knew that there wasn't a single wrinkle on that face. "Yahiko...uh, -san...how come you look so young, when you say that you're forty or fifty years old?"

"Ugh, drop the '-san,' will you? It's creepy."

"What should I call you, then?!"

"You've never used honorifics on me, okay?"

"Why?" she demanded. "I don't even know you."

"Ouch!" He pretended to clutch his heart in pain, then shook his head. "What a thing to say to your loyal bodyguard, busu."

"WHATDJA CALL ME?"

He grinned and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I called you ugly," he said affectionately. "It was always fun to get a rise out of you. Honestly...it's pretty great to be able to talk to you again, Jooh."

Kaoru stopped dead. "I used to be a queen," she said woodenly.

Yahiko winced. "Whoops..."

Kaoru gripped his collar and shook him again. "What is going on here?! Why did Kenshin kidnap some queen out of history books and drag her to the present?! Are Kensuke-kun and Aya-chan and Suzumi-chan all royalty, too, or something?!"

"No...well, sort of...I mean-" He shook his head in frustration. "They're your descendants, Kaoru. The only ones we could find, anyway. They were born here, in the present, but Shishio'd love to get his hands on any Himuras he can."

Kaoru shuddered. All this was so unbelievable, yet-

She lifted her hand, concentrated hard, then watched as her skin slowly began to glow with light. It looked much more impressive out here in the dark than it had earlier, when she had tried it in her room with the shades drawn.

"Whoa," Yahiko said, sounding a little awed. "So you really are fey now. Weird."

"You mean I wasn't a fairy before?" Kaoru wailed. "This is so, so stupid..."

Yahiko sighed again. "Kaoru, I know how tough this must be for you. I'm sorry. All I can do is protect you, and I swear to you that no one can get to you through me." He paused. "Except maybe Shishio himself, but, hey - that's Kenshin's job, and Kenshin's never lost a fight."

"Never lost a fight, huh?" Kaoru said dully. "Even though he's been fighting for, what, a hundred years or so?" She suddenly frowned and grabbed Yahiko's collar again. "Stop dodging my question! How come you don't look much older than me?"

Yahiko tilted his head. "Huh? I dunno... Lady Tomoe's potion, but I have no clue how it works, I just drink it every now and then and age backwards. Or something like that." He shrugged. "Kinda sucks actually, 'cause I have to keep re-training my muscles, but whatever; at least I can still fight like I did when I was at my peak. In any case, we'll get to drop the whole immortality thing once Shishio's taken care of."

"I see," Kaoru sighed, even though she didn't see at all. "I can't believe this...I just can't..."

"Make your necklace work. That's all I can tell you, busu."

Kaoru frowned and slapped him upside the head. "Hey, did I have any insulting nickname I got to call you back?"

Yahiko grinned. "Nah. You just gave me nasty assignments whenever you got really fed up with me."

"I see." Kaoru found herself grinning back, though her face felt stretched and tight from all the conflicting emotions still running through her. "Maybe this stupid queen business isn't all bad."

The front door opened, revealing Kaoru's parents peering out at them curiously. "Kaoru, who is this person?" her father asked, sounding a little suspicious.

"Uh...this is Yahiko," Kaoru stammered. "Yahiko-kun," she hastily corrected, not wanting her parents to wonder why she was on such familiar terms with the guy. "He's a...friend. He was just passing by, and I wanted to talk to him."

"Oh," her mother said uncertainly. "Well, Yahiko-san, would you...like to come in for a moment?"

"Nah, I'd better get back to work," Yahiko said, and bowed. "You all be careful." He eyed Kaoru and added in a murmur that her parents probably could not hear, "Keep the doors and windows locked and stuff - might not help much, but it can't hurt. And whatever you do, don't invite anyone in."

"Why-?"

"Just don't." Yahiko bowed again and walked away, presumably to the street, though Kaoru very much hoped that he would actually circle around and come back to guard the house. She peered through the dark, wondering if Kenshin's reinforcements would show up soon - and was startled to find a glimmer here and there, as of watching eyes. Nervously, she stared harder, and to her astonishment, she found that whatever she focused on grew a little clearer despite the dark. 'Thanks, Magic,' she thought in relieved annoyance.

There were new people...and things...hanging around now. Little bird-like creatures that were definitely not birds, because real birds should have been asleep at this hour, and a dog-like figure moving softly along the fence. She glimpsed a fair-haired, one-armed man heading soundlessly in Yahiko's direction.

"Kaoru-chan?"

Kaoru turned back to her parents and realized that they were completely oblivious to the guards. "Oh...sorry."

"Are you all right, Kaoru?" her father asked in concern.

"I'm fine, Dad." She shivered. "Let's go in now."

Once inside, she went straight to the computer and began looking up queens named 'Kaoru,' with a tight feeling in her chest as she did so.

To her surprise, there were several. "Queen Kaoru III, widowed within a year of her marriage, never remarried or had kids," she mumbled under her breath, scanning the information on the most promising-looking of the Web sites she had pulled up. "Invention of the telegraph, blah blah blah, Jubilee Celebration...dang, she's old..."

There was quite a lot of information on Kaoru III, which meant that this was probably the Queen Kaoru that she had heard about in her history classes and been teased about during junior high school because of the shared name. It took so long, reading enough for Kaoru to determine that this was not what she was looking for, that her parents started getting ready for bed and began urging her to do the same.

"Mom, it's for school," Kaoru insisted, half-truthfully. She had been assigned a history research project the week before, and to tell the truth, Kaoru had not really gotten around to starting it yet. She could very easily switch her topic to the Queen Kaoru she was looking for.

"Well...all right," Mrs. Arai said doubtfully. "Just don't stay up too late, you've got school tomorrow."

"I know. I won't."

Back to the queens. Kaoru II went back much farther, before automobiles or telegraphs or anything had been invented yet. She'd been married to a guy from the neighboring Western Japan, back when the two countries had only been newly-united and things hadn't settled down yet. The king was really cute for those days, but he had apparently ruined the country before he was forcibly ousted from the throne in favor of his much younger brother-in-law.

"Blah blah," Kaoru sighed, blinking a little to clear her vision. Most of the information was on the cute-but-idiotic husband; the queen seemed to be another of those background figures that no one heard much of. "Let's see, where's the first Kaoru, then - oh." Grandmother of Kaoru II. Princess of Western Japan, queen of the united Japan when the two countries had been brought together by her husband...

"Kenshin," Kaoru whispered. Her body seemed to go numb, and she just sat there for a very long time, staring at the computer screen without seeing it. Could it be possible? No, no, of course not, the thought was ridiculous; but...

King Kenshin. Queen Kaoru.

"Pictures." She began to search, almost frantically, and nearly sobbed in horror when she found a portrait of the two rulers. It was the Kenshin she knew, no mistake, complete with the scar and the bright red hair. The queen, though much older, had a disturbingly familiar look.

After angsting for a while, Kaoru suddenly realized that the images she found had been 'courtesy of the Himura Castle gallery.'

"Himura Freaking Castle again!" Kaoru shouted. Furiously, she began searching for more pictures.

It was frustrating - there did not seem to be a single image of the ancient Kenshin and Kaoru that did not come from the official gallery, and there were very few of them. Also, to Kaoru's mingled puzzlement and relief, there seemed to be a lot of Kenshins. That is, lots of different people who looked remarkably like him, and even several with the same name, just as there had been more than one Kaoru.

King Kenji I, son of Kenshin and Kaoru, could have been almost an exact replica of his father except for the darker hair and the mischievous twinkle in his eyes...and the fact that his scar was very tiny. "Eh?"

They all had scars, actually - all of Kenji's sons, or at least the three that she could find pictures of; Kenshin II, Kenshin III and IV way down the line, and all the Kenjis and Kensukes and such in between. Each Himura male had a cross-shaped mark on his left cheek, though the sizes differed wildly. (Each Himura male was also invariably good-looking, which Kaoru really hoped was due to the usual idealism in portraiture.) "What the heck?!"

More clicking around, highly frustrating until it occurred to her to try "cross-shaped mark" instead of "cross-shaped scar." This finally yielded an interesting bit of information.

"'One whimsical element of Himura legend,'" Kaoru read slowly, "'was the belief that all male descendants of the original king bore a distinctive cross-shaped birthmark on the left cheek. Consequently, in all official portraiture, Himura kings are portrayed with the symbolic status-mark. There has been no consensus on the origins of such a tradition. However, scholars suggest that the Himura Birthmark legend is strongly linked to the folklore traditions of the early Himura monarchs.' Uh huh." Kaoru chewed on her lower lip. "So what about Kensuke-kun? If he's supposed to be the last male Himura descendant, shouldn't he have a mark, too?"

Here she was, getting distracted again. "Kenshin," she growled softly. "I really, really hope this isn't what I think it is, because I'll..." She would what? Kaoru went back to the original portraits of the first Kenshin and Kaoru. "Kenshin," she whispered softly, touching the screen. There was just no way around it...it was him. She could tell from the expression, mostly...a strangely comforting mix of sorrow and kindness, weariness and hope. So Kenshin really was a king from the far past, who had come-

Kaoru suddenly choked as a horrible thought occurred to her. Then she began typing madly.

Shishio Makoto. King of Eastern Japan for about twenty years. At least, king of a sort - he had seized the throne in a bloody coup d'état and had ruled the nation as a tyrant until his death on a visit to the Western kingdom. Those had been the days of the original Battousai, the assassin whose very name had struck terror in the hearts of all who heard it.

Kaoru suddenly shivered, and could not seem to stop for several minutes. If Kenshin really was the real King Kenshin I, very much alive in her own world...if Vice Chancellor Shishio was, as Kenshin had claimed, the very same tyrant out of the history books...what reason was there to think that the assassin Battousai was safely dead and buried?

"It can't be...it can't be..." The real Battousai, stalking the streets of her own city, his bloody sword performing its work with no mercy once again.

Wait. If that was true, then why did Battousai always attack government targets, when he was supposed to work for Shishio in the old days? How come there had been no confirmed reports of a true death at Battousai's hands?

"It's a different Battousai," Kaoru told herself firmly. "The old one really is dead - this guy's just some crazy knockoff like everyone keeps saying. Stop getting distracted!"

There was not a lot of useful information on the historical Shishio - the few chunks of it seemed to be endlessly repeated on all the Web sites (which were a bit hard to find between all the junk about the modern Shishio Makoto). It basically boiled down to: Shishio Makoto, tyrant king of Eastern Japan, traveled to Western Japan for a marriage contract and died there, at which time the Himura heir conveniently resurfaced and took back control of Eastern Japan.

A marriage contract?

Heart pounding again, Kaoru double-checked the dates. Queen Kaoru I, still just a princess at the time when Shishio ruled, would have most likely been the bride in question. Although her father and some information about his reign was available, there was nothing on her mother except the name and a brief note about her death, and there was no mention of siblings.

Kaoru suddenly felt like she was about to throw up. Flinging herself away from the computer, she fled outside again, trying her hardest to stop thinking. "YAHIKO!"

This time he was at her side instantly, stifling the scream that nearly ripped out of her at the suddenness of his appearance. "I told you, quit yelling! None of Shishio's goons are around, but your neighbors are gonna think something's up and they'll call the police!"

"Don't say that name," Kaoru hissed violently.

"What?"

"Shish- Don't say that name!"

"Okay. Fine. As long as you shut up."

Kaoru and Yahiko stared at each other, her shaking, he looking perplexed. "Hey...Kaoru...what's going on? Why are you so upset? Is Kenshin being stupid again?"

"Don't say HIS name, either," Kaoru snarled. "Do something to distract me!"

Yahiko blinked. "What?"

"I don't want to think about anything important!"

Kaoru jerked away when she suddenly felt a feather-light touch on her shoulder. "The little girl's upset," said the creature that had landed on her.

Kaoru shuddered. "Who are you?" she said through clenched teeth.

"Heh...call me Moth."

Carefully, Kaoru nudged the thing into her hands and then stood staring at it for a while. It looked like a very dark-skinned, mostly naked little fairy, with moth-like wings and golden eyes that practically glowed. It sat comfortably on her joined palms and gazed at her - she wasn't quite sure what to make of the tiny set of bow and arrows slung around its body. "Hi," she finally said.

"Hello. Why are you making such a big fuss?"

Kaoru sat down miserably on the porch, still cradling the fairy-thing in her hands as Yahiko looked around uneasily. "I don't feel good...the more I find out, the more scared I get...I just don't want to think about all this anymore."

"Lady Tomoe tells us you can do magic now," Moth said. "Show, please?"

Kaoru drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. "All right. So far I can turn things into gold - fake gold - and I can make my skin glow a little, and apparently I can float, though I'm not about to start jumping off buildings on purpose to test it out..."

Demonstrating her new skills for the little fairy, Kaoru's fear seemed to recede somewhat into the back of her mind. She kept her concentration firmly on what she was doing, and tried not to think about how hard it would probably be to go to sleep later on.

To be continued...

Author's Notes: This fic turned out to be nothing like I'd planned. I was totally unprepared for how much exposition I'd be forced to juggle, between trying to keep everything almost solely in the amnesiac Kaoru's POV and making up for the huge time gap between The Sleeping Prince and Immortality.

The text message was a mistake - I'd forgotten that it's anachronistic; texting is not supposed to have been invented yet. However, I'll leave it in because I like Kenshin's lazy texting style. ^^;

Uhhh...also just remembered that the Internet research is a bit anachronistic, too. *headdesk* Whatever, I don't care anymore.

To clarify, Kenshin was jealous of Yamato and went to scare him into staying away from Kaoru, and because he was distracted doing that, Shishio seized his chance, so now Kenshin's beating himself up about it.

LOL, there is a very good chance I will someday come to regret impulsively shipping Kenji/Kairi, but whatever. XD (Ftr, I did that just now. The original draft from a long time ago just had "*name*" in there, so I had to come up with one before posting.)

Yahiko calling Kaoru "Jooh" was a stupid, stupid, STUPID mistake that messed up the entire rest of the fic, but I no longer have the time or energy to fix it.

I think I had some plan to have Kenshin either disguise his birthmark, or make up some story about how he adores Himura Castle so very much that he permanently cosplays as a Himura or something, but I doubt I'll ever get around to fixing that now.