Author's note: Sometimes I think Kenshin's not just being helpful when he does the laundry. Sometimes I think it's an evolution of the obsessive handwashing we see from him during the Bakumatsu.
Title: Washbasin
Setting: the wandering years
Characters: Kenshin
Type: One-shot
Genre: angst
Word Count: 270
Sometime during the ten years Kenshin had spent wandering to the far corners of Japan, he spent a winter snowed into a small town in the mountains. Kenshin didn't much like to stay too long in one place—it increased the chance of his past catching up with him—but time and the war had pushed the memories of mountain winters and deep snow out of his mind and he didn't think about it until he'd woken in the town's small inn and found the mountain pass buried under white.
He hadn't the money to pay for a room at the inn for the whole season, so he had worked out a deal with the proprietress to work for her while he stayed there. Chopping firewood, mending drafty doors, carrying heavy containers from the storehouse… He did much of the heavy work that she, a slight woman getting on in years, could not easily do herself.
Kenshin always made sure to take care of the laundry. The old woman's hands were gnarled with arthritis, the joints swollen and painful, and her back bowed and weak. Scrubbing clothes was beyond her.
He didn't mind. The laundry was a chore he enjoyed, and one that he was good at. He'd had lots of practice; he'd been washing his clothes since Shishou had found him and taken him as an apprentice. And after washing blood from his uniform nearly every night during the revolution, there wasn't a stain he couldn't get out of fabric.
And… maybe, if he washed enough clothes, he'd also finally be able to wash the bloodstains from his hands.