Cruciform: adj. 1. Cross-shaped -n. 2. A cross -n. 3. A certain special scar belonging to a certain special wanderer
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't care, blah, blah, bitty blah. I made up Shiro Yukusune and Saya-steal 'em if you feel so inclined (but WHY?), but give me a yodel first. La, la-hey! What are you still doing here? Start reading already!

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I believe it had been two months since the Bakumatsu's end. Two months since the Ishin Shishi declared victory; two months since this new government, this new era, this Meji, had been established.

Two months since I had started wandering aimlessly, morosely, the last frail leaf to be caught and crushed at the war's whim.

I was lost.

Painfully, blindly lost. Aa, I had traveled before, but the turmoil leaking black weariness into my heart made each mile I trod from Kyoto, from Master, from my wife's grave, seem doubly far.

I haven't eaten for four days. My stomach growls weak complaints, feeble pleas that I should rest, I should eat, I should just lay down, rot, and bloody forget about this impossible life I've been leading. My feet make little sound, little protest, as I struggle through the autumn's rotting leaves, caked with frost and old gray snow, moist and decaying with spring's touch. The earthy smell reaches me, clogging my fogged head further with thoughts of that last forest with the blood and white plums, and I stumble.

I don't think I even threw my hands out to block my body from the hard ground as I collapsed-I just fell, my legs finally giving out from weakness, solid and exhausted. I fall on something sharp. My katana. My katana has slid its snaky way from its sheath, and now it slices painfully into my side-although, ironically, I don't feel the pain. I only smell the blood. My blood, on my katana.

What a sickening change.

I've bled twice on this katana, with its worn pommel and its kanji of my own name "Heart-Sword". Kenshin. My name, my katana, my blood.

I think I would have been sick if I had had anything in my belly to heave but air and emptiness; I swallowed, again and again, nausea gripping me and ripping me inside out. I haven't been this sickened by blood since that first time I spilled it, five years ago, a little boy with the hope of a nation and a sword of judgment.

What foolish words, my hazy mind thinks as I grope my side with one grubby hand; it is slick and if I'd had looked down, I would have seen all that shimmering blood. Maybe a lust would have come over me. Maybe I would have killed myself.

I got up.

I am wet.

I am hungry.

I am wolves' food for sure, bleeding like this.

I close my eyes and pick up the katana, sliding it into its sheath with a click. It rests heavily at my side with its brother, the wakizashi. The swords are useless to me now. I tighten my belt again over my hunger- shrunken stomach; I had always been a thin, wavery thing before, but now I am only so much dust and air.

Empty, inside and out.

I still feel no pain, though my blue gi is rapidly turning black from all this blood. That unnerves me, that I have honed my skills against pain so well, or perhaps it is that I am freezing to death? My breath clouds in vaporous white puffs before my lips, and I wonder if I will know the moment where I become so very tired that I lay down and never get up from this blanket of icy death. And yet...and yet, I do not fear such.

I want to die, in all actuality.

I want to die and join my Tomoe in the afterlife, although I believe I will be burning in hell for my crimes, and she'll be singing along with the heavenly beings. She had such a sweet, beautiful voice, I remember. So sweet, so pure, so dammed *perfect*.

I fall to my knees, retching again. I clutch my belly, a slim inward curve through my too-loose gi, and now something does come up, filling my mouth- blood.

Thick, frothy, sick blood.

I think I must have screamed.

I think that's how she heard me.

I think that's why the Kirisutokyoo-shinja tenshi, the angel, came to help me.

She heard my scream, my last plea to this earth that has hurt me so, and she descended to take me to safety.

I am not certain. I only remember the blood, and the darkness that rushed up and strangled me, choking off any prayers I would or would not have sent to a God that does or does not exist.

I wake to an interesting sensation I have not had the pleasure of feeling since Tomoe did it that first time-someone is playing with my hair, tangling the long, thick gingery strands between their fingers with what might be curiosity. I hear voices; a stifled giggle.

"But he's so *beautiful*," whispered a voice, a child's voice, a girl's voice. "Okaasan, is he really real? Or is he an angel?"

I am no angel, I think blearily, listening to this whispered banter. I want to tell this invisible child and her invisible mother this, but I am too weary for movement, let be words. I feel a hundred pounds heavier, like a man-shaped mountain spread on a futon, and I cannot open my eyes, it seems. Even my eyelashes feel weighted down, as if tied to my cheeks with bits of thread. I shiver; my chest is cold. I'm tired. Weak. Half of a man. I shiver harder.

"Okaasan, I think he moved!" screeches my voyeur-child, and if my hands would have had the mobility, I would have thrown them over my tortured ears.

"Hush, hush," says a new voice-perhaps Okaasan, the mother?-and I feel hands on my chest. "Hush now, Saya, I need to change his wraps. Ah, hands out of his hair. It's knotted enough as is."

And suddenly, my self-image was screaming at me. My hair...*KNOTTED*?

I think I needed a good cry right about then, especially since this Okaasan had decided-as she had verbalized-that my 'wrappings' needed changing. This included the swaths of bandages across my chest, where I had fallen on my katana, and my, uh, more *personal* cloths that no woman other than my wife had the right to touch.

I feel very much like a small, doted-on child getting my underclothes changed. How incredibly, horribly, awfully embarrassing. Now my self-image was positively going on strike. Oi, oi, look at me, I'm twitching, I'm awake, notice me, I can clean myself, thank you..

"You're right," says the mother, surprised. "He does seem to be waking up. And about time, too. Ah, wakai otoko, can you hear me? Here is my hand. Squeeze it if you can hear me."

She slips her work-roughened hand into mine, and, with a supreme effort, I tighten my long fingers around it. Okaasan gives a cheerful cry, and the child-Saya?-gives an identical happy shriek.

My ears officially split. Right then.

After so many weeks of disuse, I find my voice; it is raspy and thin.

"Doozo, my ears..please, don't yell.." I plead, and I'm able to open my eyes, slowly, achingly. Everything swims in my vision, aqueous, and then wavers alarmingly.

Slowly, everything resolves itself as two faces, a mother and a daughter, staring down at me with wide eyes and tight expressions. Worry? I didn't think anyone had the capacity to worry about me anymore. I cough, and try my hand at speech again.

"I thank you for bandaging me. Who are you, to have afforded me this kindness?"

The woman tilts my chin up with her cupped hand, tilts my head to the side, giving me a good look-down. I notice she had velvety brown eyes, like expensive foreign candy. She has a very full lower lip, which she is presently biting anxiously, and her hands are gentle as they touch me. It's as if I'm made of glass and she's afraid to break me.

I feel the pain, now. It is gnawing and awful, white-hot and arching through me, bone and muscle and flesh. Every breath I take is a fiery fight, and I wince against the agony of it. So this is what it feels like to taste the sword and live to tell it. I haven't hurt this badly since I was first under Shishou's training.

"My name is Shiro Yukusune, and this is my daughter, Saya." The little girl gives me a timid wave, hovering carefully at the edge of my vision. I twist my head slightly to look at Saya and she jumps; obviously, she was much more open to be friendly with me when I was completely and utterly unconscious. Saya, I see, has her mother's dark hair, but her eyes are so dark a blue that they look blind, the pupils melding together with the iris.

She watches me curiously with those blue-blind eyes.

I try to smile, but I suppose it comes out more as a twisted grimace, and she hides behind her mother. I give up.

"And what is your name, warrior?"

I look back at Yukusune, blinking slowly. I want to say Battousai. I want to inspire fear, awe, some kind of emotion that I can feed off of, making me filled and whole again. But what, inspire fear in a kind woman that's done me good by saving my life? How foolish I am. I want to say Battousai, but I am simply too weary to be a killer anymore.

I want to be a boy, not a man-slayer.

"Rurouni. Sessha is called Rurouni."

Yukusune smiles and helps me up, helps me stretch those muscles that I have forgotten I own. It's painful at first, but Yukusune is gentle and so very undemanding. I wonder how much of me she has seen-then I blush, realizing the sure answer: everything. But did she see my scars, did she understand them? Of course my cruciform mark on my left cheek is obvious enough, but does Yukusune notice the place under my throat where I slashed myself in sorrow at Tomoe's death? Does she see my white-scar-mottled left wrist, where I marked myself just to see if I was still human enough to bleed? Does she know my secret fears of being one of the demon-kin?

No, I decide. Yukusune can't possibly know all that. She presses a full bowl of rice and some kind of sweet meat into my hands, urges me to eat. Saya just stares at me from her little corner of the clean room, all big eyes and eight-year-old inquisitiveness.

I remember what I was like at her age, when Shishou adopted me as his son. I blink.

Mou, but I hope she isn't a *thing* like I was at her age.

My grin is uncharacteristically mischievous, a remembered spark of something. In my mind, I remember Shinta, my eight-year-old-self, constantly nagging and teasing at Hiko, my master, my surrogate father.

I remember learning how to build a campfire only to set Hiko-san's bed-mat smoking; I remember stealing the ever-drunk master's bottle of sake only to be chased around while he shrieked cheerfully, making it all a big game. And there was that time when I had found that frog and nestled it in Hiko's big white cape as he slept...

Oh, yes. I was a touch 'spirited' as a child.

I pity any woman who has a child by me-she'll earn herself a demon for her labors. Of course, I never imagined then that I'd meet Kaoru, who is equally spirited, and give her dear Kenji, who is an angel...at least, he's an angel when his mother is around...

Ah, but that is beyond the point.

I am sated. I am sleepy. Can I remember a time when I was this full- to-bursting, comforted in the knowledge that I do have a warm futon to sleep on tonight? No, no, I can't. Memories of food, warmth, and love seem very far away.

But not now.

Night has fallen, and Yukusune has retired to the other room; she makes no mention of a husband, and though I am too injured to do much of *anything*, she is wary around me.

Not wary enough to not trust me with her daughter, though.

Saya stares at me still-I can feel her gaze in the dark, asking me questions that I dare not answer. Maybe she is upset that I have invaded her room-although such was far beyond my control, naturally. I blink back at her, seeing her only by my sketchy ki-sight, and as such she is nothing more than a pale gleam of inner-light. She must be an owl to see me, to stare so intently and unblinkingly.

I sigh loudly, theatrically, and she jumps. I stretch languorously on the futon and warm blanket I've been given, my once-shrunken stomach now exceedingly full-thank you, Yukusune!-swollen and protesting because of it.

I had said I was full after one rice-bowl; eating only nuts, roots, small fish (when I felt compelled to wade a bit-I had no fishing pole) and other such forest scraps for numerous weeks does that to a small person such as me.

But dear Yukusune-san would have none of that. I was her patient, she said, and I needed my nourishment. She refilled my bowl (a number of times) and glared at me, daring me to refuse. Cowed, I didn't refuse, eating meekly and quietly, secretly enjoying having someone boss me, the *Battousai*, around for once.

So now I'm-dare I say-nearly fit to bust, and...and it's quite pleasant, actually. I stretch deeper, so that I can contract every sore muscle, feeling very much like a sleek house-cat as I do so.

Then I remember that comment Yukusune made about my hair. I run my fingers through my tangled red locks, black in this lack of light, and moan inwardly.

Either my hair gets cut, or I spend absolute *hours* working out the pleasant briars, knots, and snarls that have imbedded themselves in my hair. I man shouldn't worry so much about his hair, but *still*. I schedule 'griping-to-self' time for later, after I've had some sleep.

Saya's voice, quiet and intent, makes me jump now; I had thought she had surely fallen asleep. I roll over, burying my face in the straw-filled sack being used as my make-shift pillow, breathing through the coarse, musty-hay- smelling cloth. I put both my hands under my stomach, not so flat and hollow now beneath my gi, and listen to her speak to me.

"You lied to me," she whispers like a wronged lover, her owl-eyes narrowing. "Your name isn't Rurouni. It's Heart of Sword-your katana and wakazashi say so." I think that she doesn't sound like a child at all, but then she adds: "I read it all by myself, too, and Okaasan was really proud of me. Kenshin."

This girl, this child-she doesn't know that my name is hardly ever spoken aloud: it is only whispered to the shadows of those with guile and cunning, those with words as sharp and devious as their swords. Those that employed me during the Bakumatsu. Those that seek to kill me, now. Saya doesn't know, and she pronounces my name with a strength and a surety that I hardly understand.

I was meant by the gods to be broken, ne?

But this little girl and her mother seem to want to fix me.

Do they think there is a man left to fix?

Do they...do they see me as human? As real? Surely, these people would not invite a devil into their home...

"Hai," I say, rolling over so that my back faces her and my stuffed belly is released from pressure. "My name is Kenshin. That is between you and me, though, little one. It's a-it's a secret."

I wait for Saya to ask why, to wonder.

"Okay." She says simply, and rolls over as well, sighing a bit. "Are you a demon, Kenshin-niisan? I heard you saying that when you were hot and sick."

I grow cold.

Curses! All this, and, oh, and I was talking in my fevered sleep! Kami- sama!

The girl sighs again, sounding sleepy now.

"Nah. You can't be a demon. Okaasan says that all demons have goat horns and long noses."

I touch my own nose-it's rather small and pointed.

Ah, well isn't that comforting?

I grumble to myself, eventually falling into a warm, sated sleep.

It really does feel good to be in a family, again, even if it is not my own.

* Dictionary:

Okaasan: Mother

Wakai Otoko: Young man

Aa: Yes (informal)

Doozo: Please

Niisan: Brother

Ne?: Right?

Hai: Yes (formal)

Oi: Hey

Shishou: Master-Kenshin refers to his own master, Hiko, when saying this.
A/N:

Eeieeeee, I already have two RK fanfics going...bad Imbri, you're not supposed to start another!

This one won't be that long, though..just a little memory and thought for dear Ken-san. Three chapters-max.

For once in my life, I can't think of much to ramble about in this Author's Note; read my other fanfics, you'll find that me not rambling is a rarity. Ah, well, must go work on Tears of a Fallen Angel...

Ja, sayonara!

~Imbrium