Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ October ❯ Chapter 1

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

October

Publish Date: February 2004

Written by: ChiisaiLammy (ChiisaiLammy@hotmail.com)

Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin does not belong to me, nor do I profit from writing this. I am a cheap writer who only works for reviews---and maybe beer. So if you feel like being nice to me leave a review-if you feel like being REALLY nice leave me beer and guacamole! But uh, no lawsuits please.

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Sometimes I feel like I am in the October of my youth. The air around me is changing, growing colder and denser. I am constantly in motion. I am trying to move towards a destination, or a possible future, but in this air my limbs are stiff and frozen.

I�m walking home from a short day trip. It�s a pilgrimage like the ancient Heians and like them, I seek escape. The air is doing me some good I think, because for once I�m not thinking of faces in the dark. For once, I am not haunted by the lives of those I�ve killed.

The air is so crisp today and I remember how much I liked the fall. It is something instinctual, something intrinsic and familiar to me in such a way that that I no longer bother to question it anymore.

Every year, the herons fly like clouds in the morning sky. Even as a boy I would sit on the roof of my grandmother�s house and watch them cast shadows over the earth. They were always out of touch, always beautiful, graceful and free. They glide, untethered by the demands of life. I watch them enviously because to me the sky is an infinite space. And in that space anything is possible.

But men are chained to their earth and to the gravity their decisions. We may build castles that last for thousands of years. They may pass down customs that last for hundreds of lifetimes, but we only build these things only because we cannot brush our fingertips across the sky. We all dream of impossibilities. In this castle atop a hill, we emulate flight like the great white heron. In this dream, we escape from the demands of our lives. In this life, we transcend and lift the wings of our imaginations into the heavens. But then we open our eyes and look down to see that our feet are anchored to the ground.

I was born into my life, chained and walled into a fate that demanded nothing less than greatness. Three hundred years of the Tokugawa clan�s legacy and the countless generations of blood covenants oaths of loyalty all assured my legacy. After all, I was the last Okashira of the Edo castle, a child prodigy worthy enough to list my name amongst the line of men known for their unparalleled strength.

Sometimes, though, I would see other children play in the streets. I would see the bloom of flowers and the rolling expanse of lands beyond the city walls and despite myself, I would close my eyes to dream.

What if all the walls that have been built around me since my birth fell down? What if the winds of change, pushed by the great flapping of heron�s wings, pushed down the confines of my life? What if I could finally fly?

I want to believe that now. I want to believe that men like me were allowed to dream. I want to believe that I could be a cloud or a graceful heron. I knew that all the dreaming meant nothing because my feet never really stopped touching the ground. Still, I would dream, I wished that I could somehow free myself form the demands of my life, my duty and my past. I could almost imagine myself soaring like herons upon their flight, like the castles that overlooked Kyoto, I could transcend the mundane world and all the demons that it promised.

But I am no heron. I am not a cloud. And men, even in their dreams, were not born to fly.

Walking through Kyoto is like coming home, though it was never my home to begin with. Even so, when I close my eyes, I would return to a time where things made sense. I could close my eyes and the world would once again be tethered to the ground, anchored by the stability of three hundred years of tradition and customs.

All of that fell by the blade. I learned soon enough during the Bakumatsu and well into the Meiji, that the past was like flying herons, like my boyhood dreams: elusive. The past is something that can never be touched, no matter how much we reach our arms, no matter how much we stretch. I am a man chained to the present, pulled by the weight of my own life. Everything in the past, like birds in flight, escape me. I cannot follow, even if that was all that I had wanted to do.

There is always another thing to tie you to the ground. There is always another thing to keep you on this earth.

Like my comrades: Hanya. Beshimi. Hyottoko. Shikijou. They�ve become my mantra the tie to this reality. Through them, I am reminded of who I am.

I raise my eyes to the sky. If there is a heaven which exists beyond the blue of the sky then that is where they would be found. I would imagine that it�s a place where the past and the present bleed into one another, where I am at once the dream-filled little boy on a rooftop and the young man who is haunted by his history.

I close my eyes and I wish that I could turn my head. These days, I just wish that I could look with both eyes into the future.

The sun is bright today: like the flash of guns, of bullets that bring death.

I shake my head. The ice-cold fingers of the past brush against my neck, or maybe was just the cool of the autumn wind, but I shiver all the same.

I could hear the flapping of great wings. And everything is floating. I am floating and my senses have been stripped from me. I am a man with no past, ripped from tradition that I had dedicated my entire life to follow.

Why can�t I stop shivering?

Red hair. Red blood. Scars. Rivers of scar tissues everywhere across the streets of Kyoto. All I can hear are the flapping of wings.

I pull my coat tighter around me because it�s gotten so cold here. The winds of autumn are the winds of change and they sweep the colors of spring and summer away. I wonder if the summer of my Kyoto is setting. My new home. I must have brought ghosts with me into the winding streets of this city, because I don�t know this place anymore. Maybe the winds of autumn have touched this place too, and like my past, my home is gone, swept away to make room for a new era, for a new year.

Things have ended and I�m sinking aren�t I? I�m sinking deeper and deeper into the past because there is no longer a place for men like me. This era isn�t a place for men who look with one eye to the past. The only direction is forward in the Meiji. The only direction to look is up, toward the horizon and to possibilities.

I am a relic of the past. I am something that the autumn winds neglected to sweep away. The past has left me and there are too many things that I cannot change. Time has moved beyond me without my knowledge or my permission. I�m standing in a town that was my home long ago in another life, before everything began to decay.

This is what they mean by regret, remembering all the horrible choices that were made in the past and refusing to look away.

I feel so numb. And the air has become so cold. I duck my head and keep walking. When you can�t fly, what else can you do except to walk? Battousai walked for ten years in order to learn how to look away from the past. He walked in order to look forward. Maybe it�s the distance. Maybe it is knowing that I have done something wrong. Maybe it�s accepting that there are certain things that I cannot change. I have stolen lives that cannot be returned. Chasing the shadow of death will not buy a single moment with those who has already cut their tethers to life away.

Hanya, Beshimi, Hyottoko and Shikijou. The names are like a prayer, a tether to my humanity. I cannot let go even though they are free like the herons. They�re free from their bond to me. They are free from their oath of loyalty. In the end, how can I be an Okashira with no men to lead? How could I forgive them or forgive myself for failing as a leader and as a man. I could cry, sometimes, if I allowed myself. Maybe eventually, I would learn to mourn. But for now I can�t allow it.

I must be coming upon the Aoiya because I can hear her in the distance, calling me from the future with a hope found only in the voice of youth. I can hear her clearly, like the sound of wind chimes in the summer: so full of optimism. . I could hear nothing from the past in her voice. For a moment, I could turn my head. As I cast my eyes upon the Aioya, my eyes see the future. This vision almost makes me smile.

Almost.

�Aoshi-sama!� She called from the distance. She is nothing but a pin point in the horizon but we both know each other.

I tread carefully, with the great beating of wings behind me; I leave the shadows and step slowly into the future.

In this era of possibilities and optimism, maybe it�s possible to live again.

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Questions and comments can be directed to ChiisaiLammy@hotmail.com. I hope to hear from you!