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DISCLAIMER: if I owned the Kenshingumi, there would be a lot more red-headed children running around calling out “Oro!” and hitting people with shinais.
PREFACE: Set neither in mangaverse nor animeverse but somewhere in between. Featuring the Kenshingumi, with a few other guest characters.
Kenshin X Kaoru pairing. Suggestion of others, if I feel so inclined.
Multi-parter. Be warned.
Something Wicked.
Part I: The shadows in Her eyes.
No shadow passed over the moon, casting darkness on the world of weak, mortal souls.
No unearthly chill prickled up the spines of those few out late on this unseasonably cold night, only the more mundane realisation that they probably should have wrapped up warmer.
No blood had been split on hallowed ground, no demon summoned with virgin sacrifice.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Merely those late night patrons, flitting from bar house to restaurant to gambling den like moths drawn by lanterns, iridescent in the dark shadows that crowded tavern walls.
And still, the air was heavy with expectation.
The dojo glimmered, delicate crystals of ice bejewelled the tiled roof, and the fine-bladed grass glowed blue in pale, frosted moonlight.
The rich, amber light of the lanterns pooled like honey on cold, polished floor-boards.
Kenshin paused from his sewing, lips twitching at the thought that he of all people should wax lyrical.
A sudden gust caught the paper of his open shoji, causing a rattle to travel up the bamboo frame, earthing itself on the beams of the roof.
Distantly, the sound of Yahiko and Sano arguing, and the sound of Kaoru shuffling around in her tabi as she completed her traditional night-time rounds before closing the dojo, leant a warm familiarity to the night air.
No place had ever felt so much like home.
Head bent, he brought his mind back to the task at hand- the gi he was mending had been torn by a protruding nail on the local tofu stand, and the whole left sleeve dangled loosely from the threaded needle.
Metal glimmered in the light, passing through the worn blue cloth like a sword through flesh.
Easily. Permanently. Rending both bone and muscle. In and out, in and out...
Kenshin paused.
Even now, in a night so peaceful, the battousai crept into his thoughts with the surety of a tide drawing in.
Will you never cease?
For once, the other in his mind did not answer.
“Kenshin? The tea’s still warm. Do you want the last of it before you turn in?”
Startled, he turned, and met the smiling face of the last scion of the Kasshin style.
Kaoru’s eyes were unfathomable in the darkness, and the lantern in her slender hand did nothing to pierce the depths of those blue-black pools, spilt on the paleness of her face like ink on parchment.
Her hair, down loose, dark and damp and her navy yakuta only served to further blur her into the shadows of the dojo halls.
Disturbed as he was by the imagery given to him –perhaps by the battousai- unsuited to the woman he knew could outshine the sun, perhaps it was not surprising that her words did not register.
“Kenshin?”
“Sorry. Yes, this one would like the last of the tea.”
“I’ll bring you the pot.”
She was smiling, but he could not see it for the shadows. Unsure as to why it should disturb him so, he stood, laid down his sewing –needle tumbling unnoticed to the floor boards- and moved to take her lantern.
The light on her face did nothing but make her eyes darker, cavernous, inscrutable, and in the depths of them something roiled, curled, twisted.
“Kenshin?”
Her eyes, confused, reminded him that should Sano round this corner –the man’s footsteps rattling the floor boards even now- this would be hard to explain.
Not his abandoned sewing, but the tinge of fear, and he, leaning over her, lantern held aloft as if to banish some dark spirit-
“Hey, jou-chan, I’m off. The brat’s in bed-”
Sano’s voice, brash and tainted by sake, hollowed out the hall, bouncing off paper and bamboo.
This tableau should not be seen.
The lantern dropped, barely caught by Kaoru’s fingers, and Kenshin slipped back into the comfortable, innocent stance of one rurouni.
“Jou-chan, where are ya- oh, hey you two. I’m off. Come and get me if I’m not back by noon- the kitsune’ll hang me if I don’t show up for my check-up.”
Sano didn’t notice the tension, or the awkward-dangling lantern, or even the confusion in the ink dark eyes of the girl in question.
Not even the falseness in Kenshin’s rurouni smile.
“This one will make sure you are not late, Sano. Good night.”
A rustle of fabric, and he was gone, sake jug in hand.
“Good night, Kaoru-dono. This one won’t be needing that tea after all.”
And then, shoji slid shut and he could still feel her, standing bewildered outside his door.
Three breaths, and she moved on, leaving him alone with only his other for company.
The frosted grass glimmered like blades, no longer so beautiful, and Kenshin tried to forget what he had seen.
Innocence corrupted.
Kenshin stretched on the verandah, watching the dew steam on the lawn, and smiled at the panted curses of Yahiko, lapping the dojo in an attempt to escape Kaoru’s lashing tongue.
Kaoru.
The battousai stirred.
Her eyes are shadowed, and they should not be. Our little bird is hiding something.
Kenshin ignored his other and dressed, leaving to make breakfast, shoji sliding shut behind him with a click.
He did not want to think of his lack of protest at the imagery of Kaoru as a bird- small, delicate, yet with an anger enough to puff up her chest feathers and talons enough to break the skin. No, he did not want to consider the image, let alone its accuracy.
Especially not the idea of her belonging to him.
Tabi padding softly down the hall, he did not notice the needle wedged between two floorboards, upright and glistening coldly like the promise of violence.
She ignored her itching back, her aching feet, and thrust over a foot of wood into the belly of yet another shadow foe, twisting fast enough to stretch muscles half-asleep in the heat.
More sweat slid down her nose, landing on her bottom lip –thrust out with concentration- in salty droplets.
The miso soup this morning was too salty, as though Kenshin had been distracted while adding seasoning. Which is strange, because Kenshin can cook with his eyes closed.
A parry, and the click of blade on blade rang in her mind as with a deft flick, another slash sent a shadow opponent flying.
It’s not like him to be absent-minded.
His eyes had been distant too, amethyst clouded with thought.
He hadn’t looked her in the face through breakfast, not because of his rurouni shyness, but some other reason; something less pleasant than the sweet humility of a man unsure of his standing in her household.
A final swing down and she paused, balanced perfectly on toe and heel, muscles aching but mind distant from physical pain.
Why did he stare at me like that last night?
She’d gone to him, offering the last of the tea, still sweet, unlike her own brews which separated to bitter dregs when left undrunk.
His lantern was still on, and she knew he was mending clothes.
He hadn’t seemed, to her, distracted- but then his eyes, free of anything but rurouni violet, had pierced her own.
Shocked. Distracted. Confused. Afraid?
Kaoru eased herself from her final stance, and shook the sweat from her limbs.
The hot air in the dojo was still, oppressive, and beat down on her like something physical.
She needed a rinse, a splash of water cold enough to shake her mind from the thoughts unlikely which gripped it.
Kenshin? Afraid of me? Never.
“If you didn’t keep breaking bones, I would not need to mend them.”
Sano ignored this timely advice, resolutely staring out of the open window cut into the wall. The day’s heat was firmly settled in, like an unwanted visitor, and even the normally cool and composed woman whose lap his hand rested upon seemed flustered.
His eyes, unbidden, flicked back to her; noting that a droplet of moisture rolled steadily down the line of her neck, disappearing into the depths of shadowed cleavage that he knew her mint-green clothing hid.
“And stop squirming- how do you expect me to straighten these fingers if you keep moving?” he shrugged, and moved his eyes distant. Perhaps if he stared hard enough at the two men arguing about the price of tofu down the street, he would not think about the firmness of the thigh hot beneath his palm, kept from contact with his skin by only a layer of cloth.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Megumi’s hair swing forward, damp with sweat, like a curtain of black Chinese silk.
And idle thought of tangling said silk in his hand occurred to him, and his fingers twitched.
Would it feel as soft as it looks? Would it catch roughly on my palm?
He suppressed it. Most likely, he’d just get thrown out of the clinic.
“And how is Ken-san?”
“Hm? Oh, Kenshin. Bit distant. Was acting funny at breakfast this morning.”
“Funny?”
“You know, staring at jou-chan. Not full on, mind. Out of the corner of his eyes, as though he didn’t want her to see.”
A muffled pop, and one his fingers –dislocated since three nights before- crunched back into place a little roughly than was strictly necessary.
“Watch it, kitsune.” he muttered, fingers twitching again, but in urgency to flee, not to tangle themselves in the black curtain that spilled down her back, although that was a most attractive idea...
She didn’t apologise. He didn’t expect her to.
“Perhaps he thinks of wandering again?”
He shrugged again, and earned himself a wrench of painful joints for moving.
“Maybe. Don’t think so, though. I think he’s worried about the girl. Who knows why,” he added, at the questioning twist of her red mouth.
Her very red, very plump and most certainly very wet mouth. Why else would her lips, parted ever so slightly, glisten like cherry flesh?
He blinked again, as an idle thought not nearly as innocent as the others fluttered through his mind.
No more sake for you, my friend. Just a cold dunk if your thoughts keep going the way they are.
“Hmm.”
The wrench she gave to his smallest finger was most definitely more painful than necessary. Perhaps she could see what thoughts twisted in the depths of his sake-sodden mind.
That said, it didn’t stop him crying out.
“Hey, I said watch it!”
Soap sloshed across the floor in waves, bubbles soaking into the wood like water to sand.
Yahiko rocked back on his heels for a moment.
He didn’t see the point of scrubbing the dojo in this weather- the moment he got a patch clean, it was damp with his own sweat.
Annoyed, he threw the brush at the bucket, where it disappeared with a satisfying sploosh.
Even the water was lukewarm, as though all the coolness had leached from the world with the evaporation of the morning’s frost.
What he wouldn’t give for some shaved ice, flavoured with fruit juice...
He refused to think that such a thing was Tsubame’s specialty, and would certainly be accompanied by a smile warm enough to make his toes curl.
He needed less heat, not more.
He shifted again, peeling back the clothing stuck to him, which itched against his skin, already damp and clinging and it was barely the middle of the day.
Distantly, he could hear the clatter of wood as Kenshin slung clothes out to dry in the heat that rose in lazy spirals from the baked earth.
The wax was melting in its pot and utterly unusable- he’d just have to bear the lecture that was sure to come from Kaoru when she learned he neglected to wax the floorboards after cleaning them.
It was just too damn hot.
Kaoru shook loose beads of water from her hair with a careless toss of her head. Even her ribbon drooped in this heat, and her kimono was already clinging for all that it was made of light summer cloth.
Kenshin, still in typical gi and hakama, folded washing baked dry into stiff heaps of fabric, red hair dark and damp.
Fetching water from the clay jug in the kitchen –mercifully cool in the shade- she had to wonder why he did not merely strip off as the men of Tokyo were prone to do in this weather.
Even Sano, for all that he loved his embroidered jacket, would shed it in this heat, leaving bandages damp with sweat to dry and stick fast to his skin.
She had put it down to modesty at first; her wanderer was shy in all things physical, as she had realised quite ruefully. He would not even spar with her, claiming such a thing as ‘improper’, but she had seen, in those rare moments when another man peered through his eyes, the face of a man content with his own strength, with the body he pushed to its limits, with the muscle that rippled beneath skin leathering from hard sun and harsh rain.
No, whatever kept Kenshin clothed in weather such as this was most certainly not mere modesty, but something else.
She sighed, wiping away the moisture that beaded on her forehead, even in the scant coolness of the shade.
It was so cold last night, and now so warm. The weather Kami are playing tricks on us.
A large circle of sweat painted his pink –magenta, she could hear him insisting, magenta- gi crimson, and his hakama were grey and wet.
His hair snaked around him, twisted into knotted tendrils, but still awkwardly bunched at the back of his neck.
She eased herself down onto the wooden floorboards –cool as ice under her, although in reality a scant few degrees less than the sun that beat down- and watched his movements, still graceful, for all that the heat weighed him down.
“Kenshin? There’s a cup here for you as well.”
His head jerked up, startled, his eyes wide and violet. Had he been so lost in his task he hadn’t noticed her silent scrutiny?
He was burning slightly in the heat; she could see the faint pink tint to his skin, colouring his nose and cheeks.
He wasn’t blushing; when Kenshin blushed his cheeks glowed like lanterns.
“If you stay in the sun without putting any of the balm Megumi gave us on, you’ll get burnt. Here.”
She held both clay vessel and jar out to him, and was more than a little confused at his hesitation.
Those violet eyes had, for a moment, flickered; something amber and volatile rose in those purple depths, before melting like wax into flame.
He smiled, but she knew it was fake. He knew she knew, but neither dared voice this realisation. Some things were better left unsaid.
He took a breath –drawn perhaps to sharply- and gave a shaky smile before reaching for the clay vessel. His eyes were clouded, but she recognised the gesture for what it was: an apology, of sorts, for his indecision.
She accepted it, and relinquished her tight-fingered hold.
It was too hot for this strange awkwardness between them.
“Thank you, Kaoru-dono. And do not worry for this one’s health- this one is tougher than he looks.”
Kaoru blinked.
Even as he drew down water for a throat parched, his gaze –before clouded, now so clear- rested on her. His voice, normally so soft, had sounded harder, colder. Had his words been a warning, or a threat?
Silly. Why would Kenshin threaten me?
But then, even as he sighed and his eyes closed, momentary strain easing from his shoulders, even as his lashes fluttered open in embarrassed startlement as she smeared cold cream over his pink nose, a small part of her stayed wary.
She could not be sure if that voice and that warning had belonged to Kenshin or someone else.
“Look, Ken-nii! It’s a dragonfly!”
“A dwagonfly, a dwagonfly!”
Kenshin smiled, even as the girls tugged him from his cushion, pulling him into the wilting yard.
“See? It’s sitting on the lantern! Oh, no, it’s flying away!”
“Dwagonfly!”
Chittering quite happily, both Ayame and Suzume ran then, chubby hands outstretched and bright child’s clothing glowing in the warm lights of paper lanterns that strung the trees. Behind him, their grandfather laughed.
“Will you look at those two go? Ah, but they love your garden, Kaoru-chan.”
“It’s not much of a garden, I’m afraid. It’s wilting in this heat, and yet it was so cold last night.”
The faint wisp of breeze was enough to carry Kaoru’s voice on the warm air, scented heavily with dry grass and the perfumed candles in the lanterns, and he found himself searching for that sense of other he had felt in her the night previous.
Her voice was a light and as high as ever, tinted only with the laughter of an older sister as the girls tumbled over the grass, hands still reaching for the elusive dragon-insect, which landed –to his surprise and the girl’s delight- on his hair, translucent wings shimmering in the warm light.
“Oh, look ken-nii! It thinks you’re a flower!
“Ken-nii’s a flower! A flower!”
He couldn’t help but smile.
“It does, doesn’t it? Now be quiet girls and maybe we can catch it,” he whispered, lowering himself to their height.
Ayame nodded, eyes round and serious, and Suzume clapped hands sticky with fruit juice over her grinning mouth, the butterflies embroidered on their twin kimonos stilling from flurried movement.
Gently, oh so gently, his fingers brushed over his hair, feeling the flutter of wings as thin as rice paper against his rough palms. The creature was oddly still in his hands, and did not resist as he drew it from the tangle of his hair –so disobedient in this hot weather- and rested, wings stirring in the faint breeze, in his cupped palms.
Both girls stilled, silent and eyes wide. To them, no doubt, this moment was special, sacred, and they received the offering of the dragonfly with the solemn gravity of a miko receiving incense.
“Be gentle girls.”
Time had slowed, and some perfume –heavy and sweet- swirled around him as the creature was gently tipped into the waiting hands of Suzume, whose eyes flared wider then Kenshin could have expected, and whose lips trembled with the weight of hidden, excited, squeals.
“Lucky,” whispered Ayame, but her tone held no pouting bitterness, only sheer wonder.
The dragonfly’s wings beat once, twice, and then it flew, hovering briefly in the air above them, before zipping away into the night.
A beat of hushed, reverent silence feel over the girls, then passed.
“Wow! It was a dragonfly and you got to hold it Suzume!”
“Dwagonfly!”
Kenshin smiled. It was common agreement between the girls, their grandfather and Kaoru that such an amazing thing could not be beaten, and would not be for many years to come.
“And Yahiko?”
“Oh, he’s working a late shift at the Akabeko. Rather than walk home in the dark, Tae-san offered to let him stay for the night.”
“Aa.”
A pause grew out of the darkness, and was eased not at all by the faint clear light of the stars and sliver-moon.
All sound faded for Kenshin except the crunch of Kaoru’s sandals on the gravel path leading to the dojo, empty as a shell.
Behind them, the gates –locked and closed now- rattled slightly, though the earlier breeze had died down, and the sigh of Kaoru’s breath was the only movement in the otherwise still air.
Unbidden, the battousai stirred, as he was wont to do in quiet, dark moments.
She will not look at us. Why is that? Why is our little bird so afraid to meet our eyes?
This was true; Kaoru’s gaze was at her feet, the dojo ahead, the stars above- anywhere but Kenshin.
Perhaps, restless one, she is tired. Perhaps her head is simply too heavy to raise to meet our unworthy eyes, and all she thinks of is the softeness of her futon.
A warm shiver traced up Kenshin’s neck, as though the breath of his other had ghosted there.
Is that so, rurouni? I do not blame her. I think of the softeness of her futon also. Indeed, I do quite often...
“Well, goodnight Kenshin.”
Kenshin, drawn from his thoughts which were slowly easing towards the less than innocent, glanced up.
Kaoru’s face was guarded, unsure, and it hurt to see her try to hide her emotions from him. Such was ineffectual- her eyes were as glass, transparent to the thoughts and desires that swirled in the blue of her eyes- blue that was this night dark and clouded.
Another thought shivered him as she turned away, not waiting for his response.
For a thing to be transparent did not only mean to be seen through; sometimes it meant one could not see it at all.
“Sleep well, Kaoru-dono.”
The rattle of the shuttered shoji, and she was gone, leaving him to the dark of the yard, and his other’s thoughts, stilled from the burlesque by his recognition and realisation that something was indeed hidden in her eyes- something unwanted.
I wonder if our little bird even knows it is there?
Kenshin hoped not; if so, her innocence -as dear to him as the pink-cheeked, sticky faced smiles of Ayame and Suzume- had been tainted willingly, perhaps wantonly.
A moment’s anger bridled him then; Kaoru, his little bird, was as pure as snow, as rain, as the heart of a miko; if he did not deserve to stain her, no one else did.
He sighed, and as water from a mountain’s steep rocky walls flows, so too did his possessive nature roll away.
She is not ours. We should remember that, restless one.
A ghost of a sigh whispered through Kenshin ear.
So you say, rurouni. So you say. And I, chained as I am, cannot change that. Pity.
A light he hadn’t noticed winked out, leaving him with nothing but stars and moon. His steps, normally consciously loud, faded into silence as the much repeated path to his room was once more retrod.
Another light flickered out, and darkness fell on the Kamiya dojo, lit not by the milky glow of stars nor moon.
End Part I
I am slow to update, but can be tempted to work faster with bribes of beef noodles, ice cream and nachos. Not altogether at the same time, mind.
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