Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Water on a Glass House ❯ Part One ( Chapter 1 )

Water on a Glass House

By: ChiisaiLammy

March, 2004

Summary: A former spy, a beautiful prisoner and an estate built on greed. When there is no longer a sense of right or wrong, sometimes the captor finds that he is the one who is trapped.

Disclaimer: RK not mine. Don't sue, please.

A/N: Ok so I am a proud new member of the Aoshi/Meg pairing club (if there is a club). But because of the timeline, this is not quite a romance (so Sano/Meg and Aoshi/Misao fans can still read it and not blow chunks--hopefully). I just happen to think that Aoshi and Megumi are cut from the same cloth.

Oh and um...looks down sheepishly please review? I updates usually follow an enthusiastic response (that goes with all and any stories). When you're excited about a story, so am I. :D

The rain was falling in soft pitter patters on the rooftop.

Upon the hollow sound of the rainwater against the rooftiles, Shinomori Aoshi remembered his commander's lessons on meditation. Okashira Makimachi used to say that the hardest thing to do is to just be quiet. It may sound simple, but to actually be quiet, to really shut up and sit still was a task of near impossibility. Aoshi had to train himself to listen to the silence. He quickly found that it was all about control and about creating a space of absolutes. In meditation, breathing is an absolute. Within the lung, there can only be absolute emptiness and absolute fullness. For Aoshi, life fell into sets of similar binaries. Hunger and fullness. Emotion and logic. Day and night. Within these categories, there was an order and a deciperhable process of moving from one pole to the next. Because of this, Aoshi became very good at listening. He could sit for hours and follow the progression of the world around him as it swung from one pole to the next: always in perpetual motion. He was a good ninja because he learned how to listen to the sound of silence and sit in the stillness of the shadows. During his time at Edo Castle, Aoshi could pick out the sound of each individual raindrop as it fell against the ceramic tiles.

He was a very good ninja. No one could argue that fact. But when it came to the politics of the Shogonate, skills in warfare meant little. Eventually, one by one his men left him. They left him in the fair-weather and they left him in the rain. He can't really remember a time when he had felt more abandoned and more alone. He had a hard time trying to forget the present

The sound of rain was becoming unbearable against the unglazed tile of this western-style building. Aoshi squeezed the bridge of his nose and stood up, having just given up on meditation. He hadn't tried meditation in a long time. Sometimes, it was impossible to think in Kanryu's mansion. Mostly, though, he just thought about how much he hated this place.

He stood up and decided to retire to his room. He usually had a cup of tea at this time in order to calm his nerves.

He could still remember the taste of the celebratory tea on his sixteenth birthday. It had tasted so different from the ceremonial sake that he had sipped months before for his ordination as the Okashira.

Nowadays, he found the taste of alcohol revolting. Without the sweet garnish of optimism and success, his sake always tasted too bitter.

He will be twenty-six soon but that meant very little to him. At fifteen, he became a man, a protector, a successor and a warrior. At sixteen, his world ended with a politican's words.

It wasn't fair, but it didn't matter. After all, he still had his men, the four men whose loyalty went unquestioned. Their pride and loyalty to the Oniwabanshu was peerless. This devotion is all that he would needto continue. He was still the Okashira. His world did not end at sixteen. His life did not end at sixteen.

For that piece of mind, he owed them more than he could ever articulate.

He stalked down the corridors, eager to return to his room. Thus, he didn't notice when she nearly collided into him as she scurried towards her apothecary. She gasped and jumped back in an instant. Consequently the packet that was in her hands fell to the floor with a loud, dull thud. Her wary eyes fell immediately to his kodachi. She looked as if she had expected him to strike her down without warning.

He watched her for a second, surprised that she was so blatantly staring him.

He broke the gaze and flicked his eyes towards the cloth-wrapped bundle on the floor. Dirt had spilled out sprayed in a fan-like pattern across the pristine marble floor.

Nervously, she retrieved the packet. Her desperate, shaking fingers hasily returned the spilt dirt into the cracked ceramic pot. As her hands clawed quickly at the floor, she unwittingly allowed the cloth wrapping fall back to reveal a plant. Poppy.

Narrowing his eyes, Aoshi took a step back to observe the young woman as she finished cleaning up.

She looked up with a surprised gasp. Without a word, she hugged the plant close to her chest and glared at him angrily.

He couldn't resist, "Poppy?"

"It's none of your business. Just watch where you're going next time." She huffed before she turned and stalked rather quickly away.

Aoshi's gaze returned to the trail of spilt dirt on the floor. Interesting.

***

That night, he sat on his windowsill and stared blankly into the courtyard, lost in his thoughts. He didn't even remember what she looked like but as he sat at his window, the past seemed to sink down around him like the evening mist. All of a sudden, he felt as if the very air carried a perculiar sense of forboding.

Those eyes. He felt as if he was being pulled into her world of hopelessness and of a childhood shattered in a whirlwind of events. He knew that it was his world too, and for a moment he was scared of his past. All the possibilities of his life came rushing back to him. Before his eyes, he saw all different men that he could have been if his life had lead a different direction.

Is this, he wondered idly, regret?

She must have bewitched him. She must have done something to him because now he was powerless against his own confused thoughts. In her, he saw himself: the prisoner of his own circumstances. And to forget the look of devastation her eyes was like trying to fit the ocean in the palm of his hand.

He couldn't forget the castle that fell under his guard. He dug his fingernails into his palm in frustration. He wondered if the great fire of Tokyo that he would have set across the city in order to defeat the Ishin Shishin was somehow contained within his body, burning incessantly inside him feeding his need for battle.

He wanted release from the fire and from himself. He wanted release that came only from the blade.

He thought about her eyes. He wanted them to stop watching him behind his closed eyelids.

He took a few cooling breaths, trying to quell the fire which burned incessantly in his body.

He sighed. In one quick and fluid movement, he struck his kodachi into the wall. A thud. There it was. A scar. Release. He didn't care that action had left an ugly, thick, jagged indentation in the plaster. He felt his breathing slow as he relaxed. The pressure around him seemed to release a bit.

Aoshi's heavy breathing slowed to a normal pace as he sheathed his weapon. He didn't know who she was or what she was doing here, but he knew that already that he hated her.