Disclaimer: RK characters are the property of Nobuhiro Watsuki
Beware! Not even this story of relief was saved from my untimely narratives xD
"Past Visions"
The pain hit him in the chest until it almost stole his breath. It was as if someone had suddenly stabbed him with a clean stab and refused to remove the dagger from the wound. Despite this, Kenshin refused to let go of his partner. Using his elemental power, he began to absorb the light that threatened to consume her. However, his efforts ended up being in vain.
In the midst of the fall, the air that hit them intensified in its force, and soon, the lovers were separated.
"Kaoru!" Kenshin shouted, desperate to get back to her.
But it was impossible.
The wind hit him until he was forced to close his eyes and try to protect himself from it with his arms in front of him in the shape of a cross. Suddenly the space lit up until it was swallowed up in the middle of golden ribbons. In response, the boy let go of his darkness in waves and fought with everything to avoid being consumed.
There was a loud explosion as soon as he managed to eradicate that golden glow. But as soon as he became free, he once again became a slave to the scene that his eyes saw before him. Without a physical body or will, the redhead was forced to be just a spectator - a ghost - of the end of the world.
... ... ...
The world had lost its shine.
There was a latent darkness that, although not absolute, prevented light beyond a bluish, almost gloomy illumination. The castle was in ruins, it was difficult to distinguish it as such, with clear evidence of the terrible battle that had taken place hours before. As if the world had been immersed in a cruel war for decades.
In that space, that huge destroyed room, once majestic, there were only seven people present; one of whom had lost her soul, Kaoru.
"You will be the one who gives it to me." General Himura declared with a strong, almost cruel voice.
Dark specters, remnants of his power danced around him; like smoke escaping from his very body. In his arms lay his young beloved, in the same clothes she had once worn in her prayers in the sanctuary, her pearly maiden's dress. She was the only thing that still maintained its own light in the middle of that dark cloud.
In front of them, her father was still sitting on the floor, practically on his knees, with a defeated air, his eyes full of sadness and ghosts, and resignation itself in his person. He knew he was terribly guilty.
"What does it mean?" Muttered a young man with dark skin, almost as tall as the General himself, with brown eyes and raven hair. He was standing behind Koishijiro, and his body trembled just as anguished. His question had been for no one specifically "Kaoru is..."
His words died because he could not pronounce that finality, at his side and one step ahead, Megumi was still standing, but her soul was still alive and angry.
The other two presences were those of Sanosuke and Aoshi, also standing behind their General; their image was just as affected as the others, they were hurt and looked exhausted.
"Even with a regression, we cannot match the required energy level." Aoshi spoke while holding his left arm, or what was left of it. "Are you aware of what you would have to sacrifice?" He questioned his General.
"Sacrifice?" The young man with brown eyes asked confused.
Megumi looked just as shocked.
"Father...!" She called him desperately looking for help or at least an explanation, but the man continued with a fallen face and a lost look. Seeing no response, the woman turned to the second lieutenant. "Sanosuke!"
But he looked at her sadly before denying it and then looking away, away from her.
"I can't stop him." He told her, his left eye was forever close.
And in the way he stated that he revealed what he really meant:
"I don't want to stop him"
Because after years of trying to be free, how could they accept that this was the end? She should understand it, a part of herself did, but it was about her sister and the whole world...!
The General moved towards the center of the room, right in front of where the throne had been located before.
"If I wish to turn back time," he said, "I must condemn this land to the point of irreparability. Only then the gods won't be able to refuse my request and will have to intervene."
"You are crazy!" Megumi accused him with anger "How can you condemn the world that my sister fought so hard to save?! Tell me! Doesn't she deserve to be honored by saving what she gave her life for?"
Kenshin looked closely at his lover's inert face.
She was still breathing despite lacking a soul, but precisely because of the latter, the young woman's eyes would never open again.
The General felt a fire burn his chest.
"Kaoru did not die for this world, on the contrary... It was the world that extinguished her life." Declared the General.
"Even so!" Megumi contradicted him again, even moving towards him, determined and heartbroken, with her face covered in tears. "Kaoru granted you the opportunity to stay alive. The child in her womb... will survive with my sister's lag in power; you have him! How can you give up everything?!"
The General inhaled and exhaled with difficulty, a trembling breath; his hands squeezed his companion's body until he gave the impression of taking refuge in her. His voice came out hoarse afterward, forced out from between his teeth.
"I want my son to live in a world where his mother is alive." He growled with rage. "A world in which is not forsaken. And if for that I have to destroy this world first, so be it." He declared.
The air began to swirl until it rose into strong breezes; the darkness began to take shape, growing with the black ribbons of power that came from the elemental.
"What's happening?" Exclaimed the young man with brown eyes with a trembling voice. "Megumi! Father!"
Koishijiro still did not move, looking like an old statue about to collapse.
"What gives you the certainty that this will work?" Megumi pressed again, resisting the lashes of the wind with her earth power. "Just because you rewrite the story will not ensure that the ending is different; you could even make it worse."
Silence.
"Answer me!"
Kenshin stayed in silence, his gaze remained firmly on his partner's figure, admiring her face.
Then, little by little, as his power grew, a drop of light, a pearly sphere, shone in front of the General's chest.
"That is!" Exclaimed the young man.
Megumi looked as incredulous as her brother at that earring.
"It can't be... Since when?" She questioned.
The redhead's gaze sharpened then, his eyes turned yellow, until they obtained a golden glow.
"This world has nothing to offer me anymore..." He declared.
And in the next instant, the fearsome power of his darkness devoured the entire world.
...
He remembered that power. He remembered the force with which it had shaken him, the first time it manifested itself in him. He remembered the slow, cold rise of darkness from the very center of his chest. It could be said that that energy had been born from his heart, but the truth was that he had felt as if someone or something had pierced the living organ, and in that opening, a door had been created through which the intruder had entered.
Rivers and rivers of black power spread until they grew and drowned his veins, then spilled through his muscles until they trickled down his skin. Then Kenshin was no longer himself, he had become the incarnation of the dark god, and he stood firm until everything that threatened his existence disappeared. The display had been enormous, so majestic that its dark cloud had prevented the passage of the sun for an entire month.
And in the midst of so much darkness, for him, there was only suffering.
"Ah!" He screamed in pain.
Even now he was hit from time to time by that elemental presence. Almost as if said presence was there as a reminder, as a warning, a threat...
He must not forget... The destiny of everything he had fought for until then would collapse if he were to forget the path he should follow...
"Aah!" -He was screaming, just like when he was just a child when his power exploded and tried to subdue him.
That pain would undoubtedly consume him, there was no way to give it up but it was the pain itself that decided when to release him. And yet...
"Kenshin!" Someone call him.
A singsong voice that suddenly releases him with the mere mention of his name. And the pain evaporates until it disappears, so quickly that he can no longer even remember having been suffering.
He is inside a white cloud that little by little is painted until each space is covered with the image of his sanctuary, although it is not in itself the usual secret space. No. This looks like a real storybook garden in the heart of a mystical forest. The moonlight illuminates that scene, and in the middle of such beauty, she is found.
"Kenshin!" She calls him again, and his heart recognizes her instantly.
"Kaoru...!" He calls her in relief, with a trembling voice, feeling his body suddenly lose weight at the sight of her.
The Duchess, who is no longer a girl but a young woman, looks at him with a wide smile. She seems to recognize him in the midst of oblivion and lights up with happiness when she finds him, as if she had not seen him for an unmeasured but long time. She goes towards him with her arms outstretched to hug him. He hugs her back, although visibly confused.
One of her hands caresses his face, while with the other takes his right hand and guides it towards her belly. The happiness she feels is immense.
She speaks to him, quickly, with joy, between laughs.
He can barely follow the line of her words, the surprise is such that his eyes have been opening in true astonishment.
And then...
He wakes up with a start.
"Ah!" He inhales forcefully as if he had just pulled his head out from under the water.
His chest hurts and he is forced to cough as if he had really choked; he turns to his side until he can stand on his left forearm and right hand. He breathes heavily, trying to catch his breath and calm the rapid beating of his heart.
However, he doesn't have time to admire where he is when Okami already tells him off.
"So he lives and breathes," the woman sarcastically declares, sitting in a chair next to his bed.
Only then is Kenshin aware that he has left that limbo, that he is in his room still enveloped in the darkness of the night, and that besides Okami, only Okina is present. The man is standing at the foot of the Duke's bed with a serious face.
Just a brief "How?" leaves the Duke's lips, before he remembers the context of his situation and panic takes over him.
"Kaoru!" He exclaims and tries to get up to look for her, but Okami stops him.
The woman suddenly ties him to the bed with air slats. The young man is forced to stop fighting just because he feels helpless; after all, he has displayed a great amount of power and he feels kinda empty.
"I'm afraid she didn't return." -Okina tells him, not without some regret in his words. "It is evident that her journey along the Path of the Stars is not over yet."
Kenshin stops fighting, although not completely; there is something in the back of his mind that requires him to fight to free himself.
"It's still too early." He tells them. "I have to get her back, I have to go look for her."
"Explain to me how," Okami challenges him, her posture rigid and firm. "It took you a little over a month to come back to us, why would you come back any sooner?"
Mutism.
He knows this to be true. An elemental awakening is very different from the awakening of an elemental user. While the latter is more "learned" thanks to innate ability, pure elementals develop a certain ability to contain energy, their bodies become receptors and operate similarly to how a black hole would. The weight they acquire is what gives them the strength to move the amount of elements required to create their specific kind of power. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Kenshin and Kaoru were the containers of the primordial elements of creation. The more unstable the power, the longer it took the body to readjust, to rearrange each of its particles to withstand such an amount of energy.
"She is indeed older than you were then, but her power is above yours and you know it. You made a mess by rejecting her when you were supposed to restrain her," she reproaches him, making it clear how much she is upset with him. Kenshin clenches his hands into fists, clenching his jaw as well. "Let the gods correct what you ruined." Okami declares, ready to stand up and let her lord regain his strength.
Kenshin stops her, however, his own darkness has untied the chains made by her - although with difficulty -and propelled his master to be able to reach her and stop her by her arm before she leaves.
"I understand your annoyance, but I can't leave her there to her fate," he refutes. "I know what is in that limbo, I know that you have also seen it as a pure elemental being just like us, but the step that Kaoru and I take is not as noble as yours. If I leave her there without knowing how to set her time, it will take too long for her to create her sanctuary; It is her life that would be running out."
The woman snorts, evidently in mockery, and looks at Okina who chooses to close his eyes with a solemn gesture; not even he can defend the boy.
"It will do her good to grow up a couple of years." The woman answers cynically. "Was not that what you wanted? Bridge the gap between you and her?"
The duke's expression changes to one of distress.
"Not like that. Never like this!" He refutes forcefully. "Okami, if Kaoru grows up alone within the star passage, what life would that be? What I want for her is something totally different. I want her free and the owner of her own time, to enjoy it at her own pace. I do not wish it to wither as a favor to me."
Okina clears his throat, as a kind of prayer for Okami, who ends up sighing and biting back the blasphemy that had crossed her mind and instead says:
"You are so blind that you don't realize that you are already in love with her."
Kenshin doesn't deny it. He had come along with his feelings long before Kaoru turned thirteen.
"Very good," the woman concludes. The Duke releases her, relieved to understand that he has won that dispute, and she turns to face him again. "But even if you want to go after her, in your condition, you can't do it. You released too much power by following her in the first place."
"I know" The redhead recognized. "However, a couple of hours will be enough for me."
Okina finally intervenes.
"Himura, I understand your desperation to find her but if you jump in without having fully recovered, you run the risk of failing again. And this time, it would take you much longer to try an intervention again."
Kenshin puts his hands to his face, breathing heavily; he understands his own predicament. Although he makes an effort to control himself, it is clear that he is desperate. If he had enough strength left for a tantrum he could leave on his own, but even his power coils back into him as if it also warned him of the danger he runs in such an undertaking.
"Our duchess will be fine" It is Sanosuke who speaks then.
Both the brunette and Aoshi have entered the room, the latter carrying a tray with a thick black drink that smokes as if it were hot, while Sano carries a type of scroll.
"What do they bring there?" Okami questions suspiciously.
Both lieutenants ignore her and approach from the free side, opposite where Okami is, they extend the drink to their Duke and General. He looks cautiously at the concoction.
"Will you take a chance with a potion?" Okami questions him.
Okina debates her.
"It has always worked, old lady. I'm sure it will be the same now, especially since it has an extra ingredient sent from the south, right, guys?"
Sanosuke smiled.
"Come on," his second lieutenant motivates him, "you need it if you want to reach our little duchess."
Kenshin looks at that drink again and then glances at Aoshi, he nods, and in the end, the redhead drinks the offered substance in one go until the last drop. The effect is immediate. The redhead puts one hand to his mouth and another to his chest, torn between pain and nausea.
"Hold it" Aoshi almost orders him.
And after struggling for a couple more minutes, the Duke falls unconscious.
"What was that?" Questions Okami, who has run to attend to the Duke.
To the relief of the woman - who uses her air elemental power to heal - her lord's vital signs are stable, and she can notice the rapid recovery his body is undergoing.
Aoshi then explains that Kamiya Koishijiro's letter came not only with the warning of Kaoru's awakening but with a series of secrets and concoctions made to stabilize and recover the center of a prime elemental; almost as if the man knew what was going to happen. Okami then questions if they can really trust Duke Kamiya, to which everyone - mainly Okina - agrees with her that they are being used in a bigger game.
However, for now, the important thing was to get their duchess back.
...
About half an hour later, Kenshin finally wakes up, as if he had simply taken a nap, he feels rejuvenated. Aoshi is quick to explain what happened previously without leaving aside the suspicions they have about the leader of the Kamiya clan. Okina thinks that they must begin to suspect his loyalty and possible motives for making such an arrangement so desperately and how they should send and install spies within Nippon territory. Okami and Sanosuke agree and the former already has a list of possible infiltrators, but Kenshin stops them.
"It won't be necessary," he declares bluntly, his expression not hiding how much listening to those conjectures has bothered him.
"I understand that you love your young wife, but-" Okina was silent as soon as Kenshin had looked at him, with those golden eyes that portend danger.
"I said no." He refutes with force.
Okami is the first to notice.
"What did you see?" She questions with suspicion. He swallows with difficulty and looks away. At the gesture, Okami has no doubt. "Within that space, what did you see?" She presses, and her tone of voice is a clear order, she stands in front of him as the woman who raised him and to whom he owes his life and not as the lackey who serves him.
But Kenshin avoids her gaze again, his doubt is evident. So the woman takes a different path.
"Whatever has been shown to you is what will help you bring her back." She tempts him.
And Kenshin falls into the trap. His eyes have turned to look at her with obvious concern.
"Well?" She presses again.
After debating with himself, in a silent argument in which his darkness seems to debate equally - if the dancing ribbons in the form of smoke are evidence of this - the Duke finally gives up.
"This is the second," he finally declares with a defeated air.
"The second?" Questions Sano. "The second one what?"
Okami silences him with a hand and waits.
"Time was turned back," confesses the redhead before the astonished looks of those present. "This... is our second timeline, our second life after time reversed."
Silence.
"...Why?" Okami questions with a voice in a thread.
The Duke breathes with difficulty, his hands are sweating, and his gaze avoids that of his companions.
"Because I destroyed the world in the first timeline."
The memory of that scene sneaks into his mind without invitation. He sees himself with Kaoru in his arms, in a world that is fading away.
"Why would you do something like that?" Sano questions, confused that his best friend could be capable of doing something so cruel.
Kenshin closes his eyes regretfully.
"Because..."
In his mind, he sees the smiling face of Kaoru, the Kaoru of that time, before remembering the spread of darkness over the world.
A Kaoru alive, but dead at the same time.
And even if he was not the one who experienced that, his soul remembers, and it is an immense anguish that dominates him.
"I ended Kaoru's life," he finally says.
Aphonia.
"Her soul was consumed as payment to rescue me from the Void. Kaoru... She sacrificed herself for me."
...
Kenshin opens his eyes suddenly when he feels Okami's hand on his face, the woman wipes his tears like a loving mother, while she looks at him with pity.
"Whatever you've seen," she tells him. "It is a timeless event" She declares. "You don't have the full story, my boy. And even if you had it, it is not your present now" She consoles him.
He lets himself be taken care of by her.
"You have been tormenting yourself for years for events that were not your fault" She acknowledges, then takes both his hands. "If you really want to be happy with her, stop doubting, Kenshin. Believe in yourself."
The others nod.
And it's as if a weight that he hadn't realized he was carrying was finally lifted from his shoulders and allowed him to breathe more freely.
"Thank you, mother."
Okami smiles at him. After which she is ready to get everyone in the castle moving.
Kenshin returns to his own atrium, where his ancestors used to worship a god other than the goddess of the empire; and, after performing the required ritual, he vanishes towards his sanctuary. Once in it, he advances within it to enter the limbo that is the Passage of the Stars; he carries the pearl with him, that gift that Kaoru had once given him, and with it, he dedicates himself to searching for her.
When he finally finds her, he barely recognizes her.
"Kaoru?" He calls her.
The young maiden, standing in front of what looks like a tree with foliage made of light, turns around to see who is calling her, and smiles in recognition.
"Kenshin, why did it take you so long?" She asks.
A/N: What do you think will happen? Do you have any theories about the first time line? =P