"The Road to Kyoto" A "Rurouni Kenshin" fanfic by Ysabet MacFarlane The following contains spoilers for episodes 1-4 of the first Kenshin OAV (released domestically as "Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal"). Original release date: Spring, 2003 ------- Meiji 11 (1878). May 15. The lack of sleep finally caught up with him an hour before dawn. Himura Kenshin stopped walking and looked around for a place to rest off the road, settling on the base of an ancient tree whose branches drooped low enough to obscure him from the eyes of other travelers. He had slept in far worse places; dew hadn't dampened the earth much, the weather was milder than usual for the season, and the sheltering tree would protect him from the sun. He unhooked his sword and sat down, leaning back against the trunk and curling himself around the sword, his hand wrapped loosely over the hilt. He sat still for a moment, attuning to his surroundings; part of his mind took note of the natural sounds of the area, so that even asleep he would know if someone approached. He thought of Kyoto, the one city of Japan he had thought he would never see again. The people had called him by another name when he had lived there, plying his trade as the Ishin Shishi's key assassin. His unusual fiery hair had marked the Hitokiri Battousai wherever he went even before the famous twin scars had crossed his cheek. Returning there now, he was tempted to curse the government he'd helped to set in place; curse them for choosing a man who reveled in death as his successor when he'd set his katana and wakazashi aside; a man who they themselves had proved unable to kill; a man who even now was raising equally bloodthirsty men to his banner. Kenshin grimaced to himself. Ten years later, Secretary Okubo had known that the welfare of the people was still the quickest way to make him cooperate. Sitting beneath the tree, Kenshin wished that his old friend had chosen another way to bring him back to the killer's edge than by making him defend the new family he'd chosen, and, worse, making him expose the Battousai in front of them in the process. The look that had been in Kaoru's eyes when he returned to himself was not something he would forget or forgive lightly. He had tried to suppress his anger while he considered Okubo's request, and then the man had been killed before they could speak again. The Secretary himself would probably have thought his death worthwhile for persuading the former assassin to turn back to his trade this once, but it was Kenshin whose new life had been shattered by the event. He almost envied Okubo his rest. Through the sounds of the wind and the few wakeful birds, he thought he heard the choked sob Kaoru had made of his name as he walked away at dusk, and the quiet sound of her knees hitting the ground as she doubled over in misery. "Kenshin . . . " hanging in the air behind him. He hoped that she thought he hadn't heard, that she believed he would have turned back if he had. There was no need to hurt her further by letting her know that he was trying to harden himself against the thought of her. He blocked off the echo of her voice with the memory of the feel of her in his arms, their first real embrace, just before he had turned away. Now he conjured up the memory of her sharp breath as she tried not to cry, the too-fast rhythm of her pulse, the fragile bones like a small bird's . . . He intended to hold the moment in his mind for just a minute before sleeping, but his thoughts lingered over it. He was bemused by her delicacy, a girl barely out of childhood who precisely balanced the sword-skill and pacifism she had learned from her father. And as Kenshin told her he was leaving, with her bones and her heart and her breath moving against him, whispers in his mind reminded him of ways to kill her. One quick step back and a flash of the sword, and she would never feel it. He had kept his voice steady and gentle while the killer under his skin recited a litany of arteries and vital points, and he disengaged from her as gently as he could, forced himself to walk away. There was no reason to think of killing her, or anyone else. No need to ever consider how to most effectively assassinate any of the people who had become his family. But he knew how best to do it, all the same; just as he had known how best to do away with the people he worked for and with during the civil war. The knowledge was in his bones, part of his first assessment of anyone he met. He had imagined that the endless wandering had stamped out the voice in his head. Now, under the tree, his reversed sword pressed against him closer and more comforting than any woman had been for almost thirteen years, he knew that he had only stopped listening. Kaoru thought that she understood his past, although he had given her only the most basic explanations of his role in the civil war. She knew in theory what he had done, but never seemed to quite connect his actions with the man she saw every day. She thought she loved him. He thought he loved her. But the truth he had yet to tell her flickered through his mind daily, waiting to tumble out of his mouth before he was ready. *In that period, the Hitokiri Battousai-—Himura Battousai-—was ordered to kill Himura Tomoe.* So he guarded his tongue carefully against the words that might finally enlighten her and push her away. Could Kaoru understand a man who had accepted such an order, even if he had failed to carry it out? He thrust his fingers under his clothes and dug them sharply into the wound on his side that had only just begun to heal. The stab of pain jarred his thoughts out of the memories, and he sent himself to sleep. As he went, though, he felt the killer's lips move in a quiet smile of recognition that even at that moment, blinded with pain, he could have carried on a fight. It was not pride, but trust in the weapon his body had been forged into a lifetime ago. The Hitokiri Battousai still moved under his skin, and forgetting that was perhaps the most foolish thing he had ever done. He tasted a bitterness that had nothing to do with thirst as he fell asleep. ------- He dreamed old dreams under the tree, undisturbed by any outside influence. It was the first night he had slept without someone in shouting distance since Kaoru had first permitted him to stay at her family dojo. He often moved through the building at night, listening to the soft sounds of occupancy, alert for any sign of danger. The dreams had begun to stay away from him there. But moving towards Kyoto was enough to bring them back. His sleep was full of blood. ------- It was a cloudy night, and he was walking down a street in Kyoto, a familiar street whose name escaped him. The ground underfoot was slippery, and an icy wind was whipping his hair into a frenzy around him, obscuring his vision; its cold bite irritated the old scar on his left cheek. He was alone on the street, moving cautiously along, squinting against the wind. One foot slipped into a deep puddle and caught on something under the surface. He reached up to push his hair out of his face; when he withdrew his hand it was dark with blood. His tugged his foot, trying to loose it, and saw that the puddle was of blood as well. He gasped and yanked his foot up as hard as he could; it came free suddenly, crimson to the ankle. His hand dropped instinctively to his sword and closed around empty air. Behind him, an ugly voice laughed. "Unarmed, Battousai?" He whirled to see a corpse lying on the ground, a deep gash where its throat had been. Dark eyes stared up at him above the leering mouth. "What would you need a sword for, Battousai? What would you do with it?" The thing laughed again, and he turned and ran. He turned down a side street he had often taken before, and saw a trickle of red staining the stones. It pooled under an overhanging roof, streaming down a limp arm dangling over the edge. He stared for a moment, gasped as the hand clenched and pulled back up, gripping the ledge as if a man would lean on it and come into his view. As a shadow stirred there, a voice drifted down to him, words bubbling as if the speaker's mouth was half underwater. "Have you longed to return here, Battousai? To the city of death?" One eye gleamed in the face that rose over the roof's lip; the other was closed under the long slash that began somewhere out of sight and carried on up through the neck and face. A burbling chuckle flapped the edges of the neck wound. "Welcome home." The corpse made a purposeful movement, as if it was thinking of coming down. He ran again, his mind beating in panic over the small voice at the base of his skull that kept chanting "only a dream, the old dream, a dream . . . " as he moved. Street after street revealed blood in trickles and pools and streams and spattered onto walls, and while the street names still eluded him, other memories came back at each turn. Here, a government official's bodyguard; a few feet on, the official himself; here, a boy who had tried to infiltrate them; there, several opponents who had hoped to overwhelm him with their numbers . . . On a once-busy road, the blood was ankle-deep everywhere. That road was a hub of smaller ones, and down those other roads bodies came shambling toward him. From all sides they came, unending and unclotted blood pouring from their wounds, mouths gaping with demented laughter. The small voice said that he could leap over them, but his dream body was paralyzed with cold and despair as the corpses closed in on him. The blood deepened around him, lapping at his knees, then his thighs, staining his clothes and skin indiscriminately. One twisted arm reached out to him and he fell in a panicked dodge, the thick icy liquid sloshing up around him. He tried to get back up, but found no purchase on the submerged surface. The ring of bodies stood around him, making no further moves to touch him. There was no more laughter, only the gaze of uncountable victims pressing together, staring at him while the blood continued to rise. He took a deep breath and met the eyes of the man before him, a middle-aged man who had plotted against them, who had died two streets over on a moonless night. He and the dead stared at each other, while the blood reached his chin and began to moisten his lower lip. The trickle from the scar on his own cheek flowed down and merged with it. He closed his eyes only when the blood began to fill his mouth. He supposed it would proceed down his throat and drown him, but it moved like something alive, the sensation of lips on his, small cold hands resting on his shoulders and stroking his unbound, matted hair. He cried out with horror as his body tingled with sensation despite the grotesque situation. He jerked back and opened his eyes, breathing raggedly through the gamut of emotions twisting in his brain. The staring corpses were gone, and the blood was no longer flowing around him, although his clothes and hair were still heavy with it, and the ground still slicked crimson. Instead, Tomoe was perhaps a foot away, her hand over her mouth, looking alive as the others had not. The bit of him that was aware of the dream flinched; dreams of Tomoe were always far worse than those where she stayed away. But she reached for him again, and he reached back in the confused way of dreams, as if it all made sense somehow. The tide of mixed emotions broke over him as he held her, leaving only that small voice hissing at him to stop, it wasn't real; the rest of his mind was empty as he crushed her against him-—his protection, his sanity, his wife-—felt her hands moving under his clothes and her blessedly-beating heart pounding with his, the scent of her skin covering the reek of the blood. The small voice grew quieter but more desperate as their bodies twined together on the damp redness of the road. His back arched with pleasure as her hands touched his spine, and then he stiffened in a spasm of agony as those delicate fingers ripped through flesh and muscle, opening deep gouges that made every breath a stabbing pain. The voice in his head shrieked "Fool!" at him, as he remembered where he was and looked into Tomoe's dark, hating eyes. Her old dagger was in her hand now, and he sat motionless, straining to breathe, as it flashed out and opened a wound over his eye, blinding him as the eye swelled shut. The voice reminded him that he was only dreaming, that these were old wounds, but they burned and oozed painfully. Behind that voice, now, another murmured over and over "I deserve this I deserve this I deserve this . . . ", for failing to save her; for wronging her in so many ways, all unknowing; for ever loving her at all. Her eyes held accusations that they never had in life, and under her gaze he felt himself wanting to explain. He looked at her with his one working eye and said "I was only a child", his voice quiet and unrecognizable to himself, trying to defend his actions as it would never have occurred to him to do, awake. Only a child . . . fifteen? Sixteen? He could not quite remember, but suddenly his youth when he had known her—-destroyed her, married her—-seemed desperately important. Tomoe smiled at him, her eyes colder than the blood had been. "Oh yes, you were that," she said softly, not to reassure but with the contempt that only a woman a boy loves-—worse, the first woman he makes love to-—can wield to hurt him. And her dagger flashed under his eye, crossing and matching the old scar left by her dying fiancé, which had continued to bleed in the frigid wind. And yet, even dreaming, submitting to her vengeance, he felt the gentleness with which Tomoe had really given him that second scar, as she lay dying on his lap. His vision blurred, and he rubbed at the open eye to clear it of blood. When he blinked it was Kaoru in front of him, smiling her familiar, guileless smile. She stretched out a hand to him, oblivious to the filth covering both him and the ground they sat on. He moved to take the offered hand, but froze at the dark scarlet stain on his own. She caught it in her strong, sword-callused grip, and pressed it against her cheek. When she released him he stared at her face; it was still as pale as if she had just come from the bath, and his hand was—-not clean, exactly, but no longer wet and shining. Kaoru leaned over while he was still blinking in confusion and nestled against him, warm and clean and free of the stench of death. He hesitantly closed his arms around her, and felt the expected twist of grief in his heart as he realized she had stopped breathing. Tears blurred his good eye when he looked down at the still form and found that she was Tomoe again. But she was smiling. ------- He had fallen asleep remembering Kaoru in his arms, and he woke with the memory of Tomoe's cooling body curled against him. His first thought that morning was to try to remember if he had held a woman at all in between the two embraces, and nothing came to mind. He looked at his sword, the reversed blade that had never dealt a killing blow, and forced himself to laugh as he stood. The effort made his stomach spasm, and he closed his eyes again for a moment to clear his head. When he opened them, the sight of blood struck him with the thought that he was trapped in his nightmare, that his subconscious had found a new and subtle way to turn even the sun and trees into a scene of horror. Tomoe had died under trees like these. He shivered at the thought of his imagination seizing him so; his dreams were bearable only because they were surreal enough that a corner of his mind knew they were false. To relive that day with any accuracy might be enough to destroy him, or at least paralyze him for a time. But there was a man he had to stop in Kyoto, and he had no time to lose himself in nightmares. So he took careful note of the sunlight and the spring weather, blocking out the memory of snow, and told himself firmly that the blood on his clothes was from his wound being reopened. He lifted his hand to his face and touched the crossed scars that he would always carry, gifts from Tomoe and from her first love, who had been doomed from the moment the men Kenshin had served told him his name. The older mark still ached sometimes—-before it was crossed with the other cut, it had reopened more times than he cared to count, as superstition said a wound dealt in such hatred might do. The second scar never pained him in the waking world; Tomoe had engraved it into his face like a caress, and it had healed easily. In the years after her death he had touched it often, tracing it so lightly that he could imagine it was her hand he felt. Sometimes, before he slept, he was sure he felt her near him: a silent loving warmth to take comfort from. He wondered now what she thought of Kaoru, who bubbled over with laughter and exclamations and tears, so different from Tomoe's own quiet dignity. He thought of Tomoe as he practiced the movements of his art, dancing the dance of the sword that was so beautiful and perfect when there was no one striking back or fleeing. He thought of her in the street when he had first seen her, when the blood of the man he had assassinated too close to the public road had flown far and stained her kimono. He thought of her determination to follow him on his dark path in the night, to see him kill, to try to reconcile the killer with the boy who was trying to deny the growing feelings he had for her. He thought of her eyes when he had turned back to her, two men dead at his feet, before he ran after the other men who were walking dead that night, waiting for him. *Fifteen?* He wondered again as he and his sword moved. *Or was I sixteen?* Surely no older than that. Probably younger than Kaoru was now. Kaoru would never stand still and watch him kill. But then, for ten years, he had thought nothing would make him kill again. She had tried to stop him when he moved to answer Saitoh's challenge, only seven days ago. When Saitoh had threatened her, and said that he would destroy everything Kenshin loved if he didn't fight him. Kenshin had thought then that he had come to renew their old grudge, two swordmasters on opposing sides who had never yet managed to kill each other. He felt Kaoru's hands on his back, felt her head fall forward onto his spine, trying to hold him back with her voice; later, heard her crying as Saitoh's sword plunged into his body. She was no coward, Kaoru, but she could not imagine bloodlust. And then he remembered nothing of that fight, nothing after the Hitokiri Battousai surged up in him and he and Saitoh danced as neither of them had danced since Kyoto. If Saitoh had come alone, with no one to call them back from that edge, they might easily have both died while caught up in their battle. Kenshin stopped moving for a moment, sheathed his sword, and dropped into a crouch. Saitoh and Okubo-—the last of the men who had forged the Meiji government out of the civil war that had devastated Japan so recently—-had come not to kill him, but to set Himura Kenshin aside and raise Himura Battousai in his place. The sword flew out of its sheath in a single arc that would have slipped through the throat and severed the spine of anyone standing before him, and it returned to the sheath in the same flawless movement. He could almost see the fresh blood on the grass. He finished his practice and stared at the road. Behind him, he heard Kaoru's voice again, quietly asking the only question that mattered to her: *If you go to Kyoto, will the Kenshin who comes back be the Kenshin of ten years ago?* "I don't know, Kaoru-dono", he said aloud to the trees, careful even in her absence to accord her the polite and distancing honorific. The blood was between them. *But she didn't care . . .* He smiled at the thought of her, in spite of himself, and stepped back onto the road to Kyoto.