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Author of 16 Stories |
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: it's finished. Hopefully, all the loose ends have been tied...
Un-beta'd, but edited as best I can. This time, spell-check insisted battousai was "boathouse", so please point out any mistakes.
Something Wicked.
Part IV: Flying Us Home
Tokyo rained. The world had been quite clearly been turned upside down as oceans poured from above, enough to fill and overflow from dry rivers, flood streets and leave the sky rain-sodden, spilling out into the air, to leave that too drenched and heavy.
Shutters were drawn and the streets were bare, empty- no trouble to be found here, this night.
Temple gates were drawn and bolted, but no visitors remained to be turned away by monks with dim lanterns and grim, drawn faces.
The brightly coloured streamers that marked the entrance to that most popular of restaurants had been taken down, wooden panels forlorn and water-streaked in the gloom.
No police roamed the streets- any crime would be committed indoors and inside the minds of men tonight.
It was not quiet; rain hissed in susurration as rivers over rooftops; wind screamed through empty alleyways and stirred up wet leaves in whirling, twisting spirals.
The world flashed in black and white as lightning scorched through wet air.
The doors to the Kamiya dojo were bolted.
Time did not still, but the hearts of those inside beat slower.
There was wind, but her clothing remained unruffled- such disturbance as there was seemed more internal than anything else.
Kenshin was quiet, and though his steps were deliberately slow, there were neither twigs nor leaves to crunch beneath his feet.
Trees flicked past them. If they walked in a circle, she could not tell for the unbroken line of shadowy trunks and wraithlike branches that ran on before them, behind them, around them.
I will go home. I will go home. I must. I will not stay here.
“Kaoru-dono...? We are lost. I do not know if there is a way out of here at all...”
“There will be. If there isn’t, I’ll make one. I will not die here, Kenshin.”
Kenshin shivered, and felt that bright spark burn higher, flare brighter.
That shuddering void inside him wanted to reach out to that flame, curl himself around it and sink into its warmth.
But he would not. The nature of a samurai is control, and though he was but a wanderer, he would still master himself.
Her steps should have echoed but were silent in the dead forest.
Misao woke with a mouth that tasted of cotton and a tall man watching her. If she had not known who he was, she would have stiffened, relaxed, flipped from mussed blankets and thin futon, landed on a broken ankle and fallen but not before skewering him with no less than six, possibly seven of the twelve miniature blades buried in the sash about her waist.
“You’re still here?”
“I was concerned for you. Kamiya-san was your friend. Her death will have affected you. You cannot afford to be affected. Hence, I remain.”
Misao’s eyes did not narrow, did not scrunch close. Her gaze shifted to his clothing.
Shinobi clothes.
Obviously he wished to be prepared. In the dimness of a night-lit room, it was difficult to see him; just another shadow among shadows.
“Whatever comfort you derive from my presence should be enough to calm your nerves and to let you do what must be done.”
“You’re not the Okashira anymore. And yet, you still pull my strings,” she whispered, turning to peer through half-shuttered windows over a dark, wet courtyard. “Why is that?”
Aoshi ignored the question.
“It is not yet dawn, but the rain has stopped. I have not yet contacted the Aoi-ya. I believe the burial arrangements should be finalised before I do so- Okina will be sorrowful to hear of Kamiya-san’s death and wish to attend her funeral- and I would prefer to have a date to give him.”
“Fine. Do so. You retrieved my crutches while I slept, right? Pass them to me. I want to check on the body.”
“She is dead, Misao. You cannot change that...”
“Who said I would try? Give me my crutches.”
His eyes were inscrutable as always; transparent blue a pale shadow in the dark.
“Your wish... Okashira.”
His voice was toneless, but even without inflection, she knew he was bothered by something.
When have you ever obeyed me? was a whisper in her mind, but the crutches were in her hands and there was doubt, squirming in her heart.
She left the room. Aoshi did not follow. Eventually, there was a scream.
He did not run to her rescue. If there was fear in him, fear for what he would see, the others could not tell, and that would have to be good enough.
Misao was finding it hard to speak with fingers locked about her neck, feet dangling from limp and bruised legs, crutch broken and scattered across the floor, but she still appeared to have the upper hand. Whatever Kaoru had been in life –woman, dojo-master, hopeless romantic- was clearly absent from the corpse pinned to the wall by a half-dozen knives. The other six lay scattered across the floor, some bloodstained, some not.
“I had hoped she was dead. I did not think she would be. It would have been too simple if it ended like this.”
Aoshi flipped one slender blade between slender fingers, making it shine in the dull light of a just-lit, sputtering lantern. He could hear Sagara yelling and footsteps shaking the hallway.
“What would have been too simple?! You’re not making sense-” and then a grunt as an elbow hammered into the solar plexus of the corpse and blue-tipped fingers slipped from her neck. Misao crumpled on feet that would not support her to land on her backside on splintered, blood-spotted floorboards.
What had been Kaoru gnashed bloody teeth, but the wounds dotted over her body were only oozing, and not blood at that.
“You should get that shoulder checked out. Human bites are the worst for infection.”
“Shut up with the smart remarks and tell me what is going on!”
“She’s not exactly dead, Misao. Perhaps a better word would be... absent. Kamiya has been gone too long. If she isn’t brought back soon, she won’t come back.”
“Gone where?” whispered Misao, rubbing her own blood over her fingertips, before smearing it on the floorboards.
“Where is Hannya, little Okashira?” and there was something frightening, something unexpected in the man’s eyes.
“Where did they all go?”
Something a little like fear, and she knew that her once-idol, impossibly capable Okashira was unsure as what to do next.
But by then the others had already split open the shoji to see what was going on, and the corpse of Kamiya Kaoru had torn free of the wall.
The trees were scorching, burning, crumbling behind her. He wondered if she noticed the ashes that fell beneath her feet, which coated the ground with grey shadows.
The sky was cracked and streaked with lines against a red lacquer surface. The sun could not be seen, and there was no heat to be felt of it, but she burned.
If he stepped to close, he might roast himself in her terrible, righteous –and if any one was deserving of that word, she was- fury.
Shadows did not exactly flee before her, but she crashed through them with graceless haste, ignoring clutching, dragging branches, and her feet rang solid, determined steps.
The world behind her trembled into nothing. She was going home, and would stop for no one.
“Kenshin, keep up. I’m not leaving you behind.”
He broke into a half-jog to match her stride, and left watching the forest behind them to the spirits that clustered behind splintering, shattering rocks and mounds of earth.
“I want to be there by nightfall. I will not spend another night here.”
“Yes, Kaoru-dono.”
He smiled at her, but she did not look back to see.
You never look back, Kaoru. And I... I think that will save us.
The punch she had thrown should not have lifted him off his feet, let alone the ground; sheer height and weight should have kept him stable.
She should not have been able to thrust fingers into his gut hard enough for blood to vomit over her. No woman her size and weight could have, excepting the fact that she just did.
Megumi screamed again, and was pushed aside by a wide-eyed Battousai, hands trembling over the hilt of the sakabatou. Behind him, Yahiko stared agape, shinai thrown over sleeping robes and hair wildly disarrayed. There appeared to be dried tear tracks on his face, but no one had time to comment.
“What...?”
“Don’t just stand there, Himura, do something!” screamed Misao, launching herself onto the back of the beast, wobbling and tearing through bloody, black-stained silk with small blades. Unsteady, she shrieked in pain as a hand snatched her broken ankle, flipped her off and threw her out the wall to tumble onto to Sano’s still form.
The kunai she’d managed to dig into cold flesh quivered violently, and whatever was in Kaoru turned to face the men in the doorway.
“There’s not enough room to fight in here. The ceiling is too low, the walls too closed in. I will lure her to the dojo, you get Sagara and Misao. Takani should be alright if she’s clever enough to stay out of the way.”
“Shinomori-”
“No time to talk, you fool. Just do it!” snarled Aoshi, throwing wrists up to cast wires over the unsteadily lurching form. The corpse jerked, tangled in thin ribbons of metal, and being dragged towards the door by force alone, wailed as high-pitched as tearing silk. Something black dripped along the wires attached to Aoshi’s arms, and he grunted, falling to one knee to pull the creature closer.
“Myojin! Go and open up the dojo!”
“Uh, right!”
Battousai ran, blurring past them to somersault out the hole in the wall, land with a damp splat and scatter fragments of wood over muddy lawn.
“Sanosuke! Misao!”
Both were still, the grass beneath them glistening wetly, stained a dark red. Misao was light enough to sling over his shoulder, Sano too heavy to lift, and he was forced to drag him, wasting painful seconds and quite a lot of blood.
“Megumi! I need help!”
“Kensh- Battousai! Try to stop the bleeding!” yelled Megumi, sandals clattering over wood as she yanked the shoji open and stumbled out onto the verandah.
Slumping Misao as gently as he could to the wet grass, he fell to his knees, pressing hands over the torn flesh of Sano’s stomach. Sanosuke, unconscious, twitched a little but didn’t make a sound as his hands sunk up their wrists in pooling blood.
“Here- keep the pressure on, I’ll try bandages,” ordered Megumi, tearing the sleeves of her silken sleep robe with sharp, white teeth.
“Hold your hands steady,” she snapped as he jerked his head up to hear a shuddering roar rip through the dojo, as tiles burst upwards from the roof to clatter and smash onto the ground below.
“Kaoru-” began Battousai but never finished as Megumi yanked his hands out of the wound, stuffing wads of silk into gaping flesh.
“Shinomori is willing to die to save Kaoru, as will Sanosuke if you don’t help me!”
Battousai shuddered.
“She- I-”
“Now is not the time for a mental breakdown! Go to my room, get my bag, and get back here! Now! Go!”
Battousai, unable to do anything else, ran.
It wasn’t a good idea to do so, because no one wants to see the faces of those as lost in death as they were in life...
“Battousai said that this was a dead place.”
Kenshin’s footsteps stopped, and she turned back to see why. He was paused, crouching down, fingers trailing through burnt earth.
“There is no life in the soil. The trees are wooden shells. We have seen no animals, and there are shadows behind us. Kaoru-dono, this place is not just dead; it has never been alive.”
He stood and dusted his hands, and in the still air she could see the dust fall, slowly and in spirals to the ground.
“I think I’m dead, Kenshin.”
He closed his eyes, and somehow, she found herself in his arms. He was warm, and that surprised her; she realised that for a while, she’d thought all warmth leached from the world.
“Maa, maa, little bird. How could you be dead if I can hear your heartbeat?”, and she heard it too, an insistent thrum-thrum in her ears.
“Little bird, you are alive. Far from home, but alive. Why do you flicker now when just moments ago, you burnt so bright? I have faith, little bird, that you will fly us home.”
His hands sighed over her hair, over her shoulders and came to rest in the curve of her back.
“You will see us home, Kaoru. I know it.”
She wasn’t sure how long the stood like that, how long she spent cradled in warm arms and so distant from the shadows that clouded their footsteps, but when he did let go, when he did step back, she wasn’t afraid anymore.
Or rather, she still was, but it didn’t matter.
“I’m sorry-”
“-don’t be.”
She smiled, and it was far better than her anger, far more confident, if quietly so.
“We’ve got to keep walking.”
In reply Aoshi grunted, dragging a wriggling body that seemed far too heavy for its slender form down the hall. Red streaked down the wires that tangled his arms and cut into his flesh. Blood painted each awkward, lumbering step he took dragging the struggling, twisting thing that was once Kaoru, but he managed to get her into the dojo.
“Yahiko, get ropes or cords- anything we can use to tie-”
He stopped then, tripping over a discarded bokken, and the creature writhed in its metal net, before rearing up, curving itself into a twisted bow. Aoshi, off-balance, was pulled forward.
There was a sound, a kind of snik-snik-shink noise, and Yahiko would remember it for the rest of his life as the wire wrapped around Aoshi’s hands shuddered, went taut, and sliced through them. Blood sprayed down, along with other, slightly heavier things, pattering onto the dojo floor.
There was a pause, and Yahiko watched what had been fingers on Aoshi’s left hand wriggle across the floor. There was another piece of flesh, a long, thin piece- it looked like it’d been pared off with a filleting knife, although it wasn’t moving.
Someone was laughing, a choking, coughing kind of laugh. It took Yahiko a little while –a few seconds at most- to realise it wasn’t Aoshi.
“Stupid, stupid meat-bags. Wire and ninja tricks will not stop me...”
The wires snapped and for a moment, just seemed to float on air before crumpling to the floor. The beast stood up. Aoshi fell down. Blood wasn’t quite gushing down his arms, but there was enough to coat the floor around him with it.
“Stupid, stupid meat.” Said the creature, and moving forward quite slowly, wrapped Kaoru’s hands around Aoshi’s neck.
And picked him up. It would’ve been comical, seeing the six-foot-something Okashira dangling from the outstretched arms of a five-foot-nothing like Kaoru, if not for the glazed look in his eyes.
“Hey! Ugly! Yeah, you!” yelled Yahiko, throwing the nearest thing he had to hand, apparently his shinai at the creature. It bounced off, and whatever was in Kaoru swivelled her head to look at him.
“Uh... oh, shit.”
Never throw one’s weapon at the enemy. Oh, I am so screwed. Why do I have to be the one to save the day? I thought that was Aoshi’s job!
But Aoshi didn’t seem to be doing very well, especially after the beast threw him upwards, crunching him into the roof beams and cracking through half a dozen tiles.
Clay chunks rained down, leaving a gaping hole. Dim morning light poured over them, setting the clouds of clay dust spiralling through the dojo alight.
Aoshi retched and spat blood, swaying unsteadily upright on knees, arms limp and dripping.
“Yahiko... get out of here. Get Battousai-” and Aoshi’s eyes were on the beast, but his right hand was reaching, slowing, for the hilt that lay behind.
The beast kicked him, lifting him off the ground with Kaoru’s dainty foot, and with a meaty thump he smacked into a rack of practice gear, scattering wooden swords and mats over the blood-slick dojo floor.
“What use are swords if you cannot hold them? Her protector is useless. You are useless. Why not give me the body, Okashira? Give it to me, and I will not take you instead.”
“Hey! Did I say I was done with you?” Yahiko screamed, hurling a lump of timber to thump against the beast. Skittering across the bloody floor, his fingers closed on the hilt of his shinai, and he spun to face the thing that had been his master.
“You get out of her body! You get out of there! You leave Kaoru alone!”
And he felt scared then, so much more scared than anything- but he couldn’t just leave her!
It was a noble thought, though the creature didn’t care at all, but waved an arm in his direction. It was like being hit with a tree trunk.
Yahiko crunched against the wall, felt something inside him splinter into sharp, cutting pieces, and slid down in a slow, crumpled streak of blood.
His eyes were closed. The creature stepped on his shinai; it split with a loud crack.
Aoshi felt a moment of quiet dread. The boy was supposed to run, not try to fight! Damn fool samurai-
The creature stepped closer to Yahiko’s still from. The boy groaned, barely conscious but still aware of the clawed, bloody hands that reached for him-
“Leave the boy alone. You want to fight someone, you’ll fight me.”
“I already fought you. You’re already dead.”
Dead eyes rolled to face him, glinting with some macabre joy that promised pain. One arm lifted, hand limp, fingers loose then tightening to point at his throat-
And then he couldn’t breathe. There was blood on those ghost hands holding him, blood on the others around his neck, those grey, shimmering things which could only be seen through half-closed eyes.
Aoshi saw the beast, saw the beast and knew it was unbeatable. But by then, he was already dead.
...Misao’s going to kill me for dying like this.
“This is not Tokyo,” breathed Kenshin, hesitating before the bridge that lead to the barred and bolted walls, “this is Edo.”
Grey walls rose before them, and through cracks and gaps in chipped, crumbling masonry, dark-thatched houses could be seen. Crooked, whitewashed walls were smeared with ashes, some hand-prints of whatever occupants had lived here once.
If one could live in a place like this.
“Aren’t they the same?” whispered Kaoru, unsure why her voice quieted on its own. Perhaps because of the feeling that this whole city was one large graveyard...
“This is no city I have ever known. It’s so... different.” Murmured Kenshin, and his eyes were unsure.
“And that would be because it is not yet a city. Just a town, with a castle in the middle. Not so complicated, once you know to keep turning left.”
To say they spun on the spot would be melodramatic, but they turned, and there Aoshi was, standing behind them.
“Shinomori-san?”
None of his clothing floated in any unseen breeze, nor could they see through him. His hair moved a little when his head jerked in a brief nod, but there was no sense of the unearthly about him until he spoke.
“Kamiya-san. Himura. I’m dead.” His voice seemed disconnected from his mouth, as though someone else was speaking for him. It was a little disturbing to watch and Kaoru caught herself trying to turn away. She forced herself to face him and shivered.
“How did you-”
“It isn’t important.” His hands twitched upwards, as though reaching for his throat.
“You little dojo is dying, Kamiya-san. Sanosuke is probably dead. So is Yahiko. Takani-san is trying very hard to save their lives. Misao is dying too. I expect to see her here soon enough.” He closed his eyes at the last.
Kenshin whispered something that could’ve been a curse.
“What is happening Aoshi? Why is our dojo under attack? And from what?”
Eyes of glacial frost snapped open. “I do not know, Himura. Kamiya-san’s body has an uninvited guest, and you were cast out from yours. Perhaps it is due to those events...”
He shook his head, and this time, his fingers traced an unseen line about his throat.
“Does it matter, in the end? Your other is trying to get her body back. He’s not doing a good job of it.” He sighed then, and held his hands up. “Mind you, neither was I.”
His fingertips were streaming away like sand, pouring down his outstretched arms, dissolving into the dusty, still air.
“Go back to your dojo, Kamiya-san. Go home, and take your body back. Please.” His arms were down to elbows now, but there was nothing horrifying about the process; a simple kind of dry evaporation was taking place.
“It seems I am not as dead as I thought,” he whispered, and his voice seemed a little unsure.
“But, Aoshi, I don’t know where to-”
He closed his eyes, and a younger, thinner face flickered in his own.
“The flower seller’s stall. Turn left, go north and keep going straight. You should see the dojo there.”
Kaoru jerked a little as the sand hissed faster, and Kenshin snapped out of his dumbstruck reverie to snatch her hand.
“He was a castle guard, Kaoru! He knows where to-”
“Don’t waste time talking, Himura. And, if you could, hurry?” said Aoshi, calm and reasonable even in death, if slightly more talkative- but little more than a head now, and after a few moments passed, not even that.
“Kaoru-”
“Come on Kenshin,” she snapped, running for the gates. “We haven’t got much time, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my first apprentice die!”
She did not slow as she ran over the bridge, and the gates shuddered once before swinging open before her.
“Kenshin! Hurry up!”
“Uh, yes Kaoru-dono!” he shouted, and ran after her.
If anyone had stood on the bridge behind them and watched them leave, they would have noticed the gates swing silently closed.
“Sagara won’t die just now. He’s on too big a winning streak at the local gambling house. As far Makimachi, she won’t die till Shinomori does. You can be sure of that.”
There was a scream from the dojo, and Battousai’s head snapped up at the sound of Kaoru’s name.
He looked over at Megumi.
“Go. Go!”
He nodded, and was gone. Megumi tumbled back onto the bloody grass. In the distance she could hear police whistles, and the rattle of carriages. Nearby households were waking up and wondering what the commotion was, judging by the shouting. She could hear Genzai at the gates, shouting her name.
She wiped her bloody hands on the grass, and leant over Sano’s still form.
“You’d better wake up you great lummox,” she whispered, fingers on the pulse that beat erratically, jumping beneath her fingers, weaker than she’d hoped, but strong enough.
Her instruments, bandages and various powders lay scattered over the lawn, green and springy through the mud from last night’s rain.
Another scream from the dojo, and Misao, stretched out beside Sanosuke, twitched, breath shuddering out in one long sigh.
The dojo gate clattered open, showering wood on gravel.
“Megumi-san! Megumi-san! What is going on?”
Genzai-sensei’s voice was a worried, mournful wail, but she didn’t have to explain as the sky wheeled backwards, and she found herself falling to the grass.
Must be shock. Not surprising really, she thought, and then nothing.
He’d seen bodies do that thousands of times before.
Aoshi went still, and whatever had been holding him to the wall eased. The tall man crumpled like a paper doll, landing in a tangled heap, purple clothing glistening black with blood, some still trickling from grossly mutilated hands.
“You’ve come to play then.”
Hearing that creature’s voice tumble from the lips of his little bird wasn’t right. Something hot twisted in his gut. He turned, and seeing the beast inside her once-blue eyes sent his stomach into twisting, roiling, shuddering rage.
“So I have, beast. What do you want with her?”
“The woman? Nothing.”
“Then why kill her?”
She couldn’t be alive now, not after being gone from her body for so long. He could feel something in him teetering near despair, and other, blacker emotions- but for now the fury kept him back.
“Convenience, mostly.”
His hand twitched to the hilt of the sword on his hip. He wished for a katana, or possibly two.
The beast laughed, and the sound was a wheezing grate to him.
“Why look so startled? You have killed many because they were... inconvenient.”
The beast began to walk in circles. He countered with the same motion, the two of them pacing around the bloody space left by Aoshi. In the corner, Yahiko groaned again, tried to sit up, and slumped down to the floor, face pressed into the splintered bamboo of his broken shinai.
Battousai blinked, and that was a mistake; something unseen but felt grabbed for him, and he slid backwards to feel fingers scrape through his hair.
His scabbard clattered to the floor; he was up, up high, and brought the ringing, silvery blade down in a blow to crush bones-
---Wait! Kaoru- it could be a trap-!
What? Rurouni?
He jerked out of the move too fast to land successfully, tumbling to the floor, sakabatou spinning out of his reach.
“Why hesitate? It is inevitable. You will die. There is no gain to be made through postponement of the fact.”
But he wasn’t really listening to the creature. There had been his other’s voice, he was sure of it, and her name-
Ah. The dead world. Maybe she isn’t too far gone... but they will need time.
Slowly, he stood, found his sword and scabbard, sheathing the blade with a shiiss and click.
“So tell me, creature, do you come here for revenge? Perhaps you were one of the many men I slew as the Demon of Kyoto?”
The creature, if possible, looked confused.
“What are you talking about, human?”
Battousai laughed, and slid sideways into the stance that birthed his name.
“Oh, my other will not believe this. He has spent years running from those who would seek revenge for our crimes, and yet, the most successful of our foes does not even know who we are...”
The laughter stopped. His grip tightened, his other hand held high, fingers splayed against the light that spilled through the broken roof.
“Beast, I will show you why we were known as battousai!”
“Kenshin,” grunted Kaoru, pulling at the gates of her dojo, “we don’t have time. How do we know the others aren’t dead? Sano, Megumi-san, Misao-chan... If Aoshi was right, there is,” a heave, and the gates creaked open just a fraction, “no time,” harder this time, and the hinges shrieked in protest, “to hesitate!”
There was a BANG and she was thrown back, crashing into Kenshin, the gates swinging wide. The air in this dead space rang with noise.
“Come on!” she yelled, jumped upright, and ran up the dusty pathway. “Hurry, Kenshin! We have to get inside!”
Kenshin, stunned, sat and watched her for a few seconds –insofar as seconds passed in this place.
If she was dead, if they really weren’t alive anymore, just hungry spirits- oh, then, he could not tell.
The flames in her swelled, burst, leapt high.
“I’m coming, little bird,” he whispered, and then really did run after her when he heard a scream.
And it was true the blows were tempered to trip, to bruise, to disorient rather than to beat, to bloody, to kill; but blows rained down, and the beast stumbled, flinging out shadow-hands to stable itself.
“She was not my lover, mores the pity. My other made sure of that,” hissed Battousai, leaping of the still form of Shinomori Aoshi to deliver a snake-fast blow to unprotected feet.
The beast tripped, but something choked around his chest and squeezed. He tasted blood.
Another hand around his leg, two more to wrap about his arms, and his feet off the ground and his joints popping, cracking, burning as the creature began to pull-
Little bird, if you are coming, let it be now-
The blood was flowing in one direction, and she could feel the current around her feet, dragging her to the center of the building-
Oh. Not there. Please, not there. Not where my father lived-
But it was there, she knew, could feel it something wrong with her home as sure as her own heart beat.
“Kenshin! The dojo! Head towards the dojo!”
Something was dragging her there, hands about her wrists, pulling her forward-
“Kaoru! I can’t see you, where are you?” yelled Kenshin, somewhere in the shadows.
“The dojo!” and the words were shrieked, shoji clattering open before her, laying bare the pulsing, quivering dark.
Something hot snarled through her and she struggled out of the things that gripped her. Whatever it was, it would be gone soon enough!
Splashing forward through a deeper, thicker pool of gore, kimono soaked to the knees, she screamed with temper -“Whatever you are, get out of my body!”- and strode, head-first, into the darkling heart of it.
Hands. Dozens of them, flailing about the beast. Claws, and faces congealing out of thin air to scream about the writhing, twisting body that had once been Kaoru, lying prone on the floor-
---Whatever you are, get out of my body!
Oh, that was his little bird alright. Battousai wobbled onto his side, hand slipping in blood but finding a purchase of the slick floor, sick with agony.
“Kaoru?” he croaked, and doubted anyone could hear him over the shrill, squealing creature.
He blinked, and swore he saw himself burst through the open dojo doors.
No. Not me. Rurouni. Or his spirit, at least, for he could see through him clear enough.
“Kaoru- Battousai!” Kenshin yelled, before running to kneel before him.
“You need your body back, yes?”
Even as a spirit, his other seemed determined.
“Yes, I- I can’t do anything like this.”
“I don’t know what good it’ll do you,” he whispered, sighing, rolling over to slump back down. He could feel the heart in his chest slowing. “This body won’t last much longer...”
“Long enough-”
---get out of my body!!
The creature screamed again, body backed against a dojo wall, hands limp but still twitching through the air. Outside, someone screamed Kenshin’s name.
“HIMURA! THIS IS THE POLICE! WHAT IS GOING ON--”
“Battousai! Now!” and before he quite knew it, Kenshin felt flesh again, and forced his aching, burning hand to the sakabatou, Battousai screaming in his ears-
And then, the world slowed. Kenshin felt his head turn, of its own accord, and saw past the stunned, shocked form of the police chief, half-way in the door; past Aoshi, prone and bloodied; Yahiko starting to wake-
Kaoru, in blood stained kimono. Ghostly, and quite translucent. In her hands, a bokken, although as she turned to strike the quivering, cowering beast, before his eyes it became a katana...
“GET OUT OF ME! THIS PLACE IS MINE!”
Something like blood fountained through the air, and those hands were quite suddenly gone, Kaoru on the floor-
“Kaoru! KAORU!”
His feet moved without consulting his brain, and what the beast had been was falling, falling, dissolving through the floorboards, Kaoru-in-flesh swaying to fall-
He caught her. It was, at the moment, impossible for him not to.
“Little bird?” He whispered, and that was the ghost of Battousai in him, dead but not entirely gone, “Kaoru, little bird, speak to me-”
“Kenshin,” and her eyes were still closed, her skin so pale and bleeding in half a dozen places, “Kenshin?”
“Yes?”
“When we get this place cleaned up, you’re going to marry me. No ifs, buts, or hows.”
She sounded tired, but still very much the same she’d always been, if a little stronger now.
He smiled.
“Yes, Kaoru-dono.”
“And don’t call me that,” she whispered before, quite undramatically, falling asleep.
Kenshin sighed, and the world went dark, eyes closing to the sight of the horrified policemen crowding the dojo door.
Kenshin slept.
The dark world held no terrors for him, not this day.
“Sir, I assure that I have not lied to you-” began Kenshin, lifting himself half-up from his seat.
“Please! The both of you!” snapped Megumi, brandishing a thin-bladed scalpel like a sword, “There is no place for such arguments to be conducted here! My patients –and you yourself one of them, Ken-san- need quiet!”
Looking slightly sheepish, Kenshin bowed his head, and watched with something like a smile as the police chief was shooed out by Genzai.
“Come visit another day, sir, when Kenshin and his associates are better. You will get all the answers you seek, then, I assure you.”
“But-”
As the two disappeared outside the dojo gates, Megumi turned back to her bag, handing two large rolls of cotton to Misao, who sat propped up against a stack of cushions on the verandah, broken ankle wrapped in plaster, narrow waist swamped with bandages.
“You will need to change the dressings on his hands three times a day, every day, for at least two months. Morning, noon and night. No arguments. Aoshi-san, you are to let her. Your right hand may be mostly unharmed, merely the tip of your smallest finger missing, but you are to accord it the same caution as your left.”
Misao nodded. Aoshi, cross-legged behind her did nothing, hands flat on his knees, swathed in blood stained cotton. Three fingers gone on the left, and a good slice of flesh from his forearm. It would take some time before he would handle a kodachi again...
“No using those hands. Not until I say you can. As for you, Misao, you are to stay off your feet. No walking, not even with crutches,” she added, forestalling protests. “Not until I say you can. And mind those broken ribs!”
“But Megumi-san-”
“No buts!”
“But-”
“Misao, do as she says.” Said Aoshi quietly, lifting his arms to inspect the bandages wrapped around them.
“Not you too!”
Kenshin smiled. The oniwanbanshuu, it seemed, were a hardy lot; Misao had cried a bit when she’d seen what Aoshi had done to his hands, but seemed to have accepted it, if not happily, at least with grim determination to help them heal.
“Kenshin?”
“Kaoru-dono,” he began, turning in his seat to face her, and upon seeing the look in blue eyes, correcting himself, “Kaoru.”
Out of all of them, she was the least injured, left with only a few cuts and bruises.
“Yahiko’s awake. He seems pretty upset he missed the ‘showdown’, as he put it.”
She smoothed her kimono down, folding her legs down to knee beside him.
“And Sano?”
“Megumi-san says he’ll be out of it for a while. Later, she’s going to get me help her move him onto a cart so she can get him to the clinic.”
“Aa.”
They were quiet for a moment, listening to Megumi argue with Misao over the correct treatment for a shattered heel. Kaoru traced her fingers over the wooden wheels bolted to the chair Kenshin sat in.
“How is this thing supposed to work, again?”
“I use my arms to move the rails, which moves the wheels, which moves me. Apparently, I dislocated my hip in the fight. It’s been popped back in, but like Misao-dono, I’m not to walk for a while either. Megumi-dono is having one built for Misao so she doesn’t have to be carried about.”
“I see.”
Things between Megumi and Misao reached fever pitch, their voices rising high enough to startle the birds on the dojo fence. There was a whirrrr-clunk-clunk-clunk noise, and tow kunai and a scalpel buried themselves in scattered posts along the dojo verandah.
“You weren’t really interested in the chair, were you?”
“Um. No. Where... where did Battousai go?”
Kenshin leant back against the cushioned panel.
“It’s been three days, Kaoru. I’m surprised it took you so long to ask.”
She was silent, waiting, eyes on her feet.
“He’s still here,” said Kenshin, tapping his forehead with a finger, “somewhere. Not like he used to be, but... more part of me, I guess. Does it matter?” he grinned then, in a way that Kaoru found disturbing similar to the departed Battousai, “having second thoughts?”
“About what?” she asked, wary, and especially after Kenshin grinned again, this time deceptively harmlessly.
“About marrying me, of course. I haven’t forgotten what you said.”
Kaoru, to her horror, felt her cheeks burn. Even after wandering the dead world, conquering her fears AND saving the day from the evil monster, she was still blushing!
She smiled a little then, especially when those soft violet eyes rested on her. If she saw a flash of amber there, well, perhaps it was a good thing.
“We’ll see.”
There were no spirits come a-haunting, no demons to conquer, no fears to crease the brows of its inhabitants- just sleep.
The moon was not full, not half, not thin; no stars glittered especially bright- the night sky was the same as always.
Even so, the moonlight seemed to glow a little brighter on that familiar garden.
Fin.
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