Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ The Samurai Wives ❯ The Setting of the Sun ( Chapter 13 )

Chapter Thirteen- The Setting of the Sun

`And she says, "Please would you find me? I've lost my way. Please could you save me now?" He wakes to find that he's out of love again, and its time for him to run. And back inside her, he feels his innocence slowly setting with the sun. And he says, "Please would you save me. I've lost my way. Please would you help me to escape?" And their answers lie in a setting sun. And the reasons why will remain unknown, `cause we life our lives until we come undone. We just have to believe.'

-Ben Jelen `The Setting of the Sun'

"Sit down!"

Her father's order stung, but Kaoru ignored it. He had cut off whatever Kenshin was about to say, and she...

She wanted to be free again.

Kaoru ignored him, even batted his arm away when he tried to force her to sit.

Katsura smiled. "Pardon the insolence, Lord, but your daughter has more fight in her than you have seen. She will not obey now."

Kaoru struggled, pulling away completely; staring Kenshin down. He stared back deadly.

"You know... I never thought a man would make me laugh."

"I'm not really a man." He stared back down at the board.

"Then what are you?"

"A monster."

The words she'd spoken echoed through her own head, reverberating within his own. There was nothing she had ever said that left more of an impact on him.

"Kenshin... you're not the monster you think you are."

"You're not a monster."

"You never were."

She couldn't think anymore, words pressing through her mouth and nose and eyes and everything. She wanted to scream them all to him; make him see that they were not just words. Wanted to make him understand what she was trying to say. What she had always been trying to say.

"Kaoru! Sit down, or I will have you removed."

Katsura was the only one who responded, and chose his words carefully. "Lord... Understand that this young man has saved your daughter's life countless times, and was her guard for many months. You would not... hold it against her, were she to have built a bond of trust with this man?"

"Of course not. But her actions are absolutely intolerable."

Katsura sighed, but nodded. "She's irrational. Will you let her have enough of herself to speak her mind to him?" A pause broke, but Katsura broke it again. "Alone?"

The emperor sent a sharp glare to Kenshin, but nodded and strode out as stately as he could, Katsura following him slowly after laying a calm hand on the warrior's shoulder.

"Don't blow it, Himura. I mean it." He said no more after the faint whisper.

The shoji snapped shut sharply, sending a reflexive jolt through Kaoru's spine.

She finally looked away from his fierce glare. "I... don't want you to leave."

"I know."

"And I don't want you to close up again."

"I know."

A tumbling feeling of falling ate away at her stomach. Kaoru felt very sick, but swallowed the acrid bile that rose in her throat. As it receded, a large, heavy knot formed in its wake. She felt near tears, stepping carefully to him. The white of her kimono added to the emptiness she felt, as to the colorless, deaf world that was his.

Kenshin could hear her words clear as day, and see the stark white as plain as the black in his heart. The winds were blowing between them.

"We can't keep up like this... Kenshin... This stupid masquerade. We can't pretend that the house didn't... burn..." She choked out the last syllable with labor.

Impulse seized his normally rational ways. "I don't want to."

"Neither do I!" She cried. "And I don't want to pretend there are no memories there... I don't want to pretend none of it ever happened, because it would just bring me back to the way I was. I was full of ignorance, and that was no better than what I hated." Soft, moonlight pale hands seized his, which were stained darkly with dried blood that had been bled from his veins.

He suppressed the urge to pull them away, to keep her from seeing them.

"I always knew I had to leave. When you told me it was so soon... of course I hated you for it, because I'd somehow grown so used to life as it was. Chaotic. Insane. Irrational." Her eyes searched his. "And I liked it."

"I... know." He murmured, a dam of emotion bursting in his chest. His eyes grew lighter, and his breathing became labored in the effort of keeping composure.

Her arms reached out and embraced him tightly. "Don't leave me alone again. I don't want to be alone like I was before."

In that precise moment, Kenshin felt himself coming alive. The world sharpened, and took on color. The sunlight had a color, and a smell, and a taste. When it touched her raven-dark hair through the painted shoji, he smelled the odd floral scent that had long faded from the silk he carried. The wind that blew outside had a gentle sound as it rattled the brilliantly green trees. Even though he was not standing where it could touch him, he could feel its gentle push. There was beauty like he'd never perceived.

His shells were stripped away, leaving behind what had always been within him, whether he knew it or not. For the very first time, Kenshin felt more human than he had ever known to feel. He breathed slowly, tasting the humid air in his mouth without the formerly haunting taste of blood mixing in. Hands, seemingly moving of their own accord, reached up to touch her face.

"Kaoru." Her name, even, held a smell when he spoke it; two syllables that slid from his lips. He memorized the curve of her heart-shaped face and closed his eyes again. "It's ending, even as it begins. We have no power of this anymore." He dropped his arms to his side, surging with new emotions.

She took in the words with the heavy air. They dragged down at her soul, tugging on her. "I want to, though."

"It doesn't matter, does it? So much adversity... So much everything..." A hand reached up to brush back a lock of hair, causing her ornaments to jingle. "I don't suppose you'll ever have need for this again... but..." He reached into his sleeve and drew out the strip of silk that had saved his floundering humanity. "I imagine that it belonged to you from the start." He pressed it into her hands and turned toward the shoji.

"Kenshin!" The choked word made him pause and let out a gentle laugh.

"You're holding on too tightly. Don't let your pain blind you to the unavoidable truth. You're royal, and I, remember, am the son of a farmer. There is an order to things, and this would be a direct violation to an age-old taboo." He smiled to himself, but did not turn to her. "Thank you for saving me from the monster I was becoming. I owe you more than this."

"Then don't go." She whispered to him, taking a difficult step forward.

He took in a long breath. "I don't mean to. Not forever, at least. I need time, Kaoru. Time that I never had before, and will now need to heal for all of this." He turned to look at her, the new, cool amethyst of his eyes meeting her sapphire. "It's not the end of all things, as you may think; just the end of this part of our lives. You have the power to take control of yourself. Use it, like you were always meant to. The strength of your soul will guide you to your fate. Is it also not that the most twisted of paths will always cross once again? And, Kaoru, is it also not true that you can think of none whose paths are as twisted as ours?"

"Kenshin..." She took another pained step forward. "It's not fair."

"I am a man, Kaoru; and you are a woman. There is no shame in either."

He opened the shoji slowly, and shut it with a gentle click behind him. The sun burned above him scornfully. There was something about his world that seemed wrong, turning Kaoru away as he had. There was a rush in his blood when he saw her. A warm shine of sunlight inside him when she spoke. Why, he asked himself, would he turn away the one thing that brought him to life so easily?

"For the sake of a tiny semblance of order in this damned chaos." He told himself, setting off into the streets.

Leaving the city slowly, Kenshin felt himself warming slowly. He glanced down at his swords, then up to the wide sky. Katsura and he had come to formally inform the emperor of the end of the revolution. All that was left was meaningless cleaning up.

Did I make a difference? He wondered, even as he pulled both katana and wakizashi from his belt and laid them in the grass on a rural hill. The grass accepted them graciously, as if telling him that he no longer had to bear their weight. Like Kaoru, it had given him absolution, and now his scarred soul could rest.

The breeze lifted his high ponytail into the sky, where he was watching carefully the thin, stretched clouds. Liquid warmth slid down his cheek, like the blood from his now sealed scar. Callous fingers touched it gently, pulling back to examine the crystal depths.

Even as the tears fell, Kenshin felt a smile floating on his face.