Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Feuding Hearts ❯ In A Gust Of Wind ( Chapter 15 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Hoshiko Saitou 
How do you say goodbye to a fading love? How do you move on when there is nothing left to hold on to?
Anime/Manga: Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Angst / Suspense / Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 12.26.2003 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.3K | Visits: 268 | Status: Completed
How do you say goodbye to a fading love? How do you move on when there is nothing left to hold on to?
Anime/Manga: Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Angst / Suspense / Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 12.26.2003 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.3K | Visits: 268 | Status: Completed
'He's holding me,' Hoshiko realized as she awoke that morning in her husband’s arms. 'It hasn't been like this for so long...'
"Mother, wake up," Hawatari said rather emotionlessly, shaking her mother out of her thoughts.
"I'm awake sweetheart," the woman stated sleepily, rubbing her eyes and found them wet to the touch. She’d been crying. Hajime and Hawatari were really upset about her leaving.
"Yes, you leave tonight," Saitou stated, his eyes still closed. "Hawatari, thank you for awakening us. We'll be out in a moment."
With a somber bow the girl turned and left the room.
In silence, the two dressed as if it were any other day, Hoshiko donning a dark blue kimono with a white and blue striped obi and Saitou dressed in black pants and a white dress shirt.
"You know, for our last family portrait we were wearing these outfits," Hoshiko spoke up with a smile. "I begged Hawatari for so long to wear a kimono but she wouldn't until you told her to. Gold is such a nice color on her..."
"What are you going to do today?" Saitou asked from his place standing behind her as he rested his hand on her shoulder.
"You usually put your hand on my head. It makes me think you still see me as a child," she replied, avoiding the subject of her leaving.
"Stop it," the low voice ordered as she felt the soft brush of hand on her shoulder turn into a firm grip that made her jump a bit. "By living in denial you're only making it harder."
In a moment she was burying her face in his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist to prove she didn't want to leave. "Do you know what's going to happen to me?!"
"No," he answered, about to place his hand on top of her head. However, he remembered her words a few moments ago and hesitantly returned her embrace instead.
"I'll go back to the moment I first overloaded.”
“You first what?”
“Overloaded. When a feeling is so strong and is felt by each one of the Guardians, I begin what’s called ‘overloading.’ It’s how we got here. I'll be 16 again, with no memory of any of this. No you, no Hawatari, no LIFE. I don't want to go back to that!" she cried. There was more, so much more, but something was keeping her from saying it.
"So your scars, they're from overloading?"
A long pause and a sigh. "Yes." 'I can't believe I'm lying to him at a time like this...'
***
The four Guardians walked to the battle field of last night, tears flowing freely in streams down their cheeks. Husbands and children followed, some crying, some trying to be strong. The sun was setting on their final day.
"When the sun is gone...we will be too," Shizuka told them, staring off at the setting countdown to her final minutes with the only happiness she’d ever known.
"This...this isn't right.." Duil was muttering to himself as he sat cross-legged on the grass by his mother's feet. "It's not right!" A solid fist connected with the ground, leaving a good sized crater in its wake. "You can't tell me this is it!"
Kitai limply fell to the ground on her knees and wrapped her arms around him, crying into his shoulder. Sano cringed as he fought back the tears brimming around his eyes.
"I want you to know," Aoshi began, pulling his wife into a warm embrace. "I'll always love you, even if you're a million years away. Forever goes both way, remember?"
"I'll never forget, even if it seems like I did."
"And I'll always be ready to protect you," Soujirou added, stroking his wife's hair lightly. "I'll never find someone like you. You are my truth, and I'm glad I finally found you."
"I'm...I'm glad I found you too," she cried into his black jacket. "I wouldn't trade our life together for anything.
"Kitai," Sano, began after seeing everyone else's emotional goodbyes. "I...you..." he sighed. Emotional goodbyes were never his thing. "I never really thought you were fat."
"I never thought you were a stupid fuck," she returned, looking up at him with a smile.
Saitou ran a million things he should have said through his mind as he took a breath in to speak. However, in the moment before the words passed through his lips, Hoshiko's crying came to an abrupt stop with no rhyme or reason behind it. He walked to stand behind her and whispered the words so no one else would hear.
Hoshiko didn't understand a word of it.
"What? I can't understand you," she turned to say to him. The confused look on his face told her everything. Whatever was translating all these years had finally stopped.
Duil stood up and shook his mother's shoulders as he began calling out to her in a way she didn't understand.
"I...Soujirou, I don't..." Sukiko was trying to convey, frustration adding to her heartache as the sun dipped ominously lower into the reddening sky.
"No! I don't want to leave it like this!" Shizuka cried hysterically, wrapping an arm around her daughter and another around her husband. "I can't."
"English," Saitou realized. "You...speak...English?" he asked brokenly.
"Hai! HAI!" Hoshiko stated. For the first time in his life Hajime heard mispronunciations in Hoshiko's Japanese. "English."
Sano shouted something over to him in hopes that he could translate it. With a nod, Saitou looked down at Kitai, who still held her son in her arms.
"Sano loves you," he related.
“Hoshiko, what’s the words for that?” Kitai asked.
“Ai shiteru,” the dark-haired women answered emotionlessly.
Hawatari, who still refused to allow herself to cry, broke down for a moment to hug her mother goodbye, whispering something she hoped would get through. "Arigatou gozimasu."
Hoshiko nodded to show she understood but her eyes were blank as if the whole situation was nothing to her. “Washimasu.”
Yozakura wouldn't stand by and watch her last fleeting moments with her mother be wasted because of something as insignificant as a language barrier. She pleaded with her heart and her voice for Sukiko to just listen to her last words. "Onegai...ONEGAI. Mother, please. I just want to say goodbye!"
The Guardians all turned to face the girl who they knew had not a single English lesson in her life.
"You can understand me, right mother? You can, can't you? Before you leave I want you to know how much I love you. You've given me the world and I feel like I'll lose it when I lose you."
The part that made no sense was that all the husbands and children heard her speaking in Japanese.
Saitou desperately tried to find the English words for what he'd said to her before but he could only remember the first, small, pointless word. "I..."
But Hoshiko had last words that they would both understand. She turned to him, completely calm and collected, her voice sounding like a warning. “Ai wa nagu same no dou gu nanka ja nai n da shi.”
It was too late for goodbyes now. The sun began to dip behind the trees and the women's bodies began to turn transparent.
Soujirou clutched to the translucent form of his wife as if maybe, if he held on tight enough, she wouldn't leave him. For once in his life, couldn't happiness be real?
Evangelina cursed herself for not speaking up when she had the chance but she had to get it out, understanding or not. "Mother, I'll always hold you in my heart."
Shizuka would have said something in return but her body was so far gone she couldn't find the strength inside herself to say it.
Even Sano and Hawatari let go of their tears as their outstretched hands met intangible bodies. They were really leaving. They'd never return.
And in the blow of the wind they were no more.
***
Saitou threw on his jacket and prepared to leave his house and enter the carriage that would take him away from the painful memories of Tokyo. In Kyoto he was used to sleeping alone, used to restaurant meals and endless paperwork.
Hawatari blended in well with the shadowy corner of her heartbreakingly quiet home. For once she was voluntarily dressed in a kimono, though this one was completely black.
"You'll have to move from there someday," Saitou told her, buttoning up his coat.
"And do what, escape like you're doing?" she snapped back bitterly.
"I told you, you can come with me now. You're old enough to either accompany me or stay here on your own. You choose to stay."
Slowly Hawatari rose to her feet and walked over to face her father, her golden eyes puffy and red from crying and lack of sleep. "How can you just live on like nothing ever happened? Are you just going to forget her and hope life goes on?"
"And what do you expect me to do?" he answered, grabbing his suitcase. "Sit around like you and rot into nothing?"
"Do you have no pity at all?" It seemed this was an endless stream of questions.
"Your mother and I built a better name for the Saitou or Fujita family than a bunch of pitiful, sulking whiners who choose to not take control of their lives. Forget her? Never. Go on with my life? Always." And with that he left her behind in his carriage headed for Kyoto. She'd probably find Kenshin eventually and explain to him what had happened. His two sons were getting pretty good with the speed of the Hiten Mitsurugi Style behind the Kamiya Kashin Style their mother taught them. 'In a world like this they do not need real blades, that they do not.' That's how Kenshin had explained it to him. Hawatari could wield a katana with control when she was 13. Had he corrupted her? Before he thrust the weapon into her innocent hands she wanted nothing more than to be around her mother, wearing a kimono and helping with little tasks around the house. When did she become 16? When did she become so bitter and angry? When did Hajime Saitou, the Captain of the 3rd unit of the Shinsen Gumi, one of the most skilled assassins of the revolution, become a husband and a father?
***
"Gone?!" Misao screamed, refusing to believe what Aoshi had just told her.
"Yes," he answered, his usual emotionless voice and ninja garb back. Evangelina sat by his side, willing herself to stop the crying that had consumed her since her mother left. Nerveless small teardrops still stained the red cushion she was on.
"I see, so she was a warrior angel in disguise? Who would have known?" Misao sighed to herself. They'd just recently lost Okina and now this?
"I want Evangelina to stay with you for a while," he decided, standing up to head for the door. Both girls looked up at him in shock.
"Father, where are you going?" Evangelina called out to him, standing up from the cushion. "You can't just leave me now!"
"Okina called it chasing myself. He said my time here before I met your mother was just a rest before I'd start chasing again. After a little less than a year I got a report that someone was targeting the Aoiya to get at me, so I left to go run again. Then I met your mother. When I came back and told everyone I was getting married..." He paused for a moment as he knew Misao would wince at the memory. He remembered her reaction that night. "When I came back Okina congratulated me, saying I'd finally caught up with myself. But now...now I need to run again."
"For how long?!" his daughter cried, tears present on her flushed cheeks yet again.
"I don't know." And he was out the door.
Quickly, Misao got up to catch the fainting Evangelina. "Aoshi, I know you can never love me but please, still let me be your friend!" she pleaded. "I'm a grown women now, and the wounds on my heart have healed. You can talk to me about what's wrong!"
For the second time in his life Aoshi walked away from a pleading Misao without so much as a goodbye.
"Mother, wake up," Hawatari said rather emotionlessly, shaking her mother out of her thoughts.
"I'm awake sweetheart," the woman stated sleepily, rubbing her eyes and found them wet to the touch. She’d been crying. Hajime and Hawatari were really upset about her leaving.
"Yes, you leave tonight," Saitou stated, his eyes still closed. "Hawatari, thank you for awakening us. We'll be out in a moment."
With a somber bow the girl turned and left the room.
In silence, the two dressed as if it were any other day, Hoshiko donning a dark blue kimono with a white and blue striped obi and Saitou dressed in black pants and a white dress shirt.
"You know, for our last family portrait we were wearing these outfits," Hoshiko spoke up with a smile. "I begged Hawatari for so long to wear a kimono but she wouldn't until you told her to. Gold is such a nice color on her..."
"What are you going to do today?" Saitou asked from his place standing behind her as he rested his hand on her shoulder.
"You usually put your hand on my head. It makes me think you still see me as a child," she replied, avoiding the subject of her leaving.
"Stop it," the low voice ordered as she felt the soft brush of hand on her shoulder turn into a firm grip that made her jump a bit. "By living in denial you're only making it harder."
In a moment she was burying her face in his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist to prove she didn't want to leave. "Do you know what's going to happen to me?!"
"No," he answered, about to place his hand on top of her head. However, he remembered her words a few moments ago and hesitantly returned her embrace instead.
"I'll go back to the moment I first overloaded.”
“You first what?”
“Overloaded. When a feeling is so strong and is felt by each one of the Guardians, I begin what’s called ‘overloading.’ It’s how we got here. I'll be 16 again, with no memory of any of this. No you, no Hawatari, no LIFE. I don't want to go back to that!" she cried. There was more, so much more, but something was keeping her from saying it.
"So your scars, they're from overloading?"
A long pause and a sigh. "Yes." 'I can't believe I'm lying to him at a time like this...'
***
The four Guardians walked to the battle field of last night, tears flowing freely in streams down their cheeks. Husbands and children followed, some crying, some trying to be strong. The sun was setting on their final day.
"When the sun is gone...we will be too," Shizuka told them, staring off at the setting countdown to her final minutes with the only happiness she’d ever known.
"This...this isn't right.." Duil was muttering to himself as he sat cross-legged on the grass by his mother's feet. "It's not right!" A solid fist connected with the ground, leaving a good sized crater in its wake. "You can't tell me this is it!"
Kitai limply fell to the ground on her knees and wrapped her arms around him, crying into his shoulder. Sano cringed as he fought back the tears brimming around his eyes.
"I want you to know," Aoshi began, pulling his wife into a warm embrace. "I'll always love you, even if you're a million years away. Forever goes both way, remember?"
"I'll never forget, even if it seems like I did."
"And I'll always be ready to protect you," Soujirou added, stroking his wife's hair lightly. "I'll never find someone like you. You are my truth, and I'm glad I finally found you."
"I'm...I'm glad I found you too," she cried into his black jacket. "I wouldn't trade our life together for anything.
"Kitai," Sano, began after seeing everyone else's emotional goodbyes. "I...you..." he sighed. Emotional goodbyes were never his thing. "I never really thought you were fat."
"I never thought you were a stupid fuck," she returned, looking up at him with a smile.
Saitou ran a million things he should have said through his mind as he took a breath in to speak. However, in the moment before the words passed through his lips, Hoshiko's crying came to an abrupt stop with no rhyme or reason behind it. He walked to stand behind her and whispered the words so no one else would hear.
Hoshiko didn't understand a word of it.
"What? I can't understand you," she turned to say to him. The confused look on his face told her everything. Whatever was translating all these years had finally stopped.
Duil stood up and shook his mother's shoulders as he began calling out to her in a way she didn't understand.
"I...Soujirou, I don't..." Sukiko was trying to convey, frustration adding to her heartache as the sun dipped ominously lower into the reddening sky.
"No! I don't want to leave it like this!" Shizuka cried hysterically, wrapping an arm around her daughter and another around her husband. "I can't."
"English," Saitou realized. "You...speak...English?" he asked brokenly.
"Hai! HAI!" Hoshiko stated. For the first time in his life Hajime heard mispronunciations in Hoshiko's Japanese. "English."
Sano shouted something over to him in hopes that he could translate it. With a nod, Saitou looked down at Kitai, who still held her son in her arms.
"Sano loves you," he related.
“Hoshiko, what’s the words for that?” Kitai asked.
“Ai shiteru,” the dark-haired women answered emotionlessly.
Hawatari, who still refused to allow herself to cry, broke down for a moment to hug her mother goodbye, whispering something she hoped would get through. "Arigatou gozimasu."
Hoshiko nodded to show she understood but her eyes were blank as if the whole situation was nothing to her. “Washimasu.”
Yozakura wouldn't stand by and watch her last fleeting moments with her mother be wasted because of something as insignificant as a language barrier. She pleaded with her heart and her voice for Sukiko to just listen to her last words. "Onegai...ONEGAI. Mother, please. I just want to say goodbye!"
The Guardians all turned to face the girl who they knew had not a single English lesson in her life.
"You can understand me, right mother? You can, can't you? Before you leave I want you to know how much I love you. You've given me the world and I feel like I'll lose it when I lose you."
The part that made no sense was that all the husbands and children heard her speaking in Japanese.
Saitou desperately tried to find the English words for what he'd said to her before but he could only remember the first, small, pointless word. "I..."
But Hoshiko had last words that they would both understand. She turned to him, completely calm and collected, her voice sounding like a warning. “Ai wa nagu same no dou gu nanka ja nai n da shi.”
It was too late for goodbyes now. The sun began to dip behind the trees and the women's bodies began to turn transparent.
Soujirou clutched to the translucent form of his wife as if maybe, if he held on tight enough, she wouldn't leave him. For once in his life, couldn't happiness be real?
Evangelina cursed herself for not speaking up when she had the chance but she had to get it out, understanding or not. "Mother, I'll always hold you in my heart."
Shizuka would have said something in return but her body was so far gone she couldn't find the strength inside herself to say it.
Even Sano and Hawatari let go of their tears as their outstretched hands met intangible bodies. They were really leaving. They'd never return.
And in the blow of the wind they were no more.
***
Saitou threw on his jacket and prepared to leave his house and enter the carriage that would take him away from the painful memories of Tokyo. In Kyoto he was used to sleeping alone, used to restaurant meals and endless paperwork.
Hawatari blended in well with the shadowy corner of her heartbreakingly quiet home. For once she was voluntarily dressed in a kimono, though this one was completely black.
"You'll have to move from there someday," Saitou told her, buttoning up his coat.
"And do what, escape like you're doing?" she snapped back bitterly.
"I told you, you can come with me now. You're old enough to either accompany me or stay here on your own. You choose to stay."
Slowly Hawatari rose to her feet and walked over to face her father, her golden eyes puffy and red from crying and lack of sleep. "How can you just live on like nothing ever happened? Are you just going to forget her and hope life goes on?"
"And what do you expect me to do?" he answered, grabbing his suitcase. "Sit around like you and rot into nothing?"
"Do you have no pity at all?" It seemed this was an endless stream of questions.
"Your mother and I built a better name for the Saitou or Fujita family than a bunch of pitiful, sulking whiners who choose to not take control of their lives. Forget her? Never. Go on with my life? Always." And with that he left her behind in his carriage headed for Kyoto. She'd probably find Kenshin eventually and explain to him what had happened. His two sons were getting pretty good with the speed of the Hiten Mitsurugi Style behind the Kamiya Kashin Style their mother taught them. 'In a world like this they do not need real blades, that they do not.' That's how Kenshin had explained it to him. Hawatari could wield a katana with control when she was 13. Had he corrupted her? Before he thrust the weapon into her innocent hands she wanted nothing more than to be around her mother, wearing a kimono and helping with little tasks around the house. When did she become 16? When did she become so bitter and angry? When did Hajime Saitou, the Captain of the 3rd unit of the Shinsen Gumi, one of the most skilled assassins of the revolution, become a husband and a father?
***
"Gone?!" Misao screamed, refusing to believe what Aoshi had just told her.
"Yes," he answered, his usual emotionless voice and ninja garb back. Evangelina sat by his side, willing herself to stop the crying that had consumed her since her mother left. Nerveless small teardrops still stained the red cushion she was on.
"I see, so she was a warrior angel in disguise? Who would have known?" Misao sighed to herself. They'd just recently lost Okina and now this?
"I want Evangelina to stay with you for a while," he decided, standing up to head for the door. Both girls looked up at him in shock.
"Father, where are you going?" Evangelina called out to him, standing up from the cushion. "You can't just leave me now!"
"Okina called it chasing myself. He said my time here before I met your mother was just a rest before I'd start chasing again. After a little less than a year I got a report that someone was targeting the Aoiya to get at me, so I left to go run again. Then I met your mother. When I came back and told everyone I was getting married..." He paused for a moment as he knew Misao would wince at the memory. He remembered her reaction that night. "When I came back Okina congratulated me, saying I'd finally caught up with myself. But now...now I need to run again."
"For how long?!" his daughter cried, tears present on her flushed cheeks yet again.
"I don't know." And he was out the door.
Quickly, Misao got up to catch the fainting Evangelina. "Aoshi, I know you can never love me but please, still let me be your friend!" she pleaded. "I'm a grown women now, and the wounds on my heart have healed. You can talk to me about what's wrong!"
For the second time in his life Aoshi walked away from a pleading Misao without so much as a goodbye.