Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Reflections on Love ❯ Reflections on Love ( One-Shot )

Reflections on Love

Like everybody knew already before reading this short introduction: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin (I wish I did!). And I also want you to know that I am no native speaker, so if you find some mistakes, you may keep them. ^_^

What is love?

Love is the cross shaped wound on the cheek, it is the rain of blood and the scream that could awake the dead from their sleep. Love is the pain you still feel whenever the plum trees are in full blossom.

Seeing the light for only one time, you will never be able to endure darkness again. It is the same matter with love.

What is love?

For Megumi love is the dagger which finishes your suffering, the opium that slowly steals the breath of your life. In her eyes, love is the omnipresent memory of loss, death and deep pain.

For Misao love is the jump into the abyss, three broken rips and the wet-cried pillow. If you asked her about the nature of love, she would tell you that it means to give without ever getting something in return.

For Kaoru everything is different. She is strongly convinced that this feeling, the greatest one of all as she says, can give you entire happiness and is able to solve all your problems. I do not know if I should laugh or cry when I hear her talk like this, a hopeful glance in her light blue eyes, but in the end I always choose the laughter. After Tomoe, I lost all my tears.

Tomoe. What was love for her?

The body which is given back to the earth, and the sword that brings life to an end. In between the two a warm room in a world of winter. Yes, Kaoru-dono, sometimes love makes you happy for a short period of time, that's true. But what about the pain following your happiness? If you have to loose the only thing you ever cared for, would it not be better never to have loved at all?

Love fades away, the only thing remaining, the only thing I see around me, and the only thing I really believe in is pain. Sano, who drinks every night because he dares not to admit his feelings to Megumi, Megumi who is so helpless that she can't even give him a saving hand, Misao, who suffers more and more by every smile Aoshi does not return, Aoshi who is afraid of human warmth and you have the nerves to say that the greatest thing you ever learn is just to love, Kamiya Kaoru?! What gave love to you? What gave it to me, apart from the scar and the nightmares? How in the world can you still believe in the old fairy tale of the prince and his princess?

But strange as it seems, when I listen to you, I often think back of Tomoe, see her smile, feel her body close to mine and I ask myself how she could fall in love with me although I stole her happiness. Perhaps that she, although usually being your opposite in everything, thought a little bit like you regarding this aspect...

Tomoe, is it really possible to fall in love for a second time?

Hiko Seijirou taught me kenjutsu and the secrets of Hiten-Mitsurugi-Ryu, but he never taught me anything about love. What love is, what it can do to you, I had to learn by myself, back there in the dark tavern, where the black haired girl sat down in front of me, coverering endless pools of night with long thick lashes.

If I could turn back time, would I do everything again in the same way I did that fateful night? Would I choose all this pain for a second time? My head cries no, but your voice, which has somehow found a way to my heart, says yes.

My feelings towards Tomoe have not changed and sometimes, when I smell white plum, when I see a girl with a purple shawl and deep black eyes or simply when I cannot fall asleep, all my being screams for her to come back to me. But since I know you, Kaoru-dono, I get for the first time the impression that I am allowed to feel this way, that my pain is legitimate.

I don't understand this power of yours. People like and trust you, even people like Megumi, Yahiko or Sano, who had to lose their loved ones and their belief in goodness so early in life. Even people like me.

Tomoe knew me through and through. She knew the murderer who caused the rain to bleed night at night and she knew the man I was during the day and somehow she was able to love the human beyond these two masks. You are not able to do so, Kaoru, you only see the good side of me.

Tomoe and me were equals. People used to call us cold, heartless and sometimes cruel but this was only a small facet of a far more complicated truth. All these people did not see that we were just two frightened, helpless children, who were send to this world without ever being told how to live in it. We never had what has already been laid into your cradle, Kaoru, we never had this belief in goodness, grace or mercy, not for one short moment in our whole lifetime. We had nothing but us. Can you understand this, you, who considers love to be the most self-evident truth?

Strange as it seems, Kaoru, I would like to be the person, you believe I am, I ache to be part of your warmth because I never knew something like this before. But if I accept this warmth, this love you offer so trustfully to everyone, would I not just take advantage of you and your naivety?

It was so much easier with Tomoe. Our end was foreordained from the very first moment when we met in the bloody rain and perhaps this was why the time with her was so completely fearless. But you...you deserve someone better, better than a Hitokiri, someone who is as pure and untainted as you, somebody who still believes in the miracle of love. You deserve someone who will make you happy - and that can never be me.

But in spite of my better knowledge, I do not leave you, do not leave the peace I have found by your side. Probably life with me will destroy everything you are little by little, I don't know, but I won't leave you.

Is this love?