Ruroken

Vulnerability

Not a sound, not so much as a shuffle or a hiss. Not the tapping of a finger or the clatter of a blade. Not a word from the shadows, like shadows should be.

The light didn’t shiver its stripes like a tiger rustling through fern fronds in the tiny crack between the two great doors; not a glimmer or a glint came from below them. Nor could it be said Kenshin felt a change in the temperature, the slightest fume of body heat, or caught the scent of oiled steel, sweat, or resin. There was nothing.

There wouldn’t really ever be anything to explain how he knew Shinomori Aoshi was there for him, waiting behind the doors.

Honestly, his regret was that Sanosuke would see this. He trusted (trusts) Sano with his life, but Aoshi…

What was Kenshin trying to say to himself, that Aoshi should be faced alone, that Kenshin would rather do this alone, that Aoshi deserves to have this moment alone, like the family of the deceased deserved their last moment of solitude around the dear remains?

Kenshin wished the two of them were alone for this (at least not trapped below ground in Shishio’s tortured maze) as he turned his back to the path and placed both hands, palms open, on a dead end. The Aoi-ya was burning, he knew, and Kaoru and Yahiko and Misao were fighting for their lives, and Kenshin wished he were alone with Aoshi as he opened the door to his dead end.

But as it turned out, Himura Kenshin was alone. Shinomori Aoshi wasn’t in the building.

--

In a library, underground, surrounded by books in the darkness.

Was it his fault for waiting in this horrible place, or Shishio’s fault for needing an underground fucking library?

But why did he wait for the Battousai in this darkness, seeing nothing in the walls of books? And how had it worked, like the hands of a god opened the double doors keeping him in a black library and riffled the pages to find—

Hitokiri Battousai.

How had he ended up in a dark library, he wondered, rising to his feet like he was floating, willing Hitokiri Battousai to find him, and how had he done it? Which of you rascals turned the pages of the book of fate?

--

Having been insane before, Aoshi relishes having the space to sift things through. That space is time, it is distance, it is light. To make it clear, whatever ‘it’ is, clear as black ink on a white page; lay it open and across the room. Let it rest. Observe slowly, with due caution. He sits in the sunlight now, he loves to have distance. If he can view it from some way away, like a wall scroll, like watching the sunrise, he can know if he’s ‘put’ anything in front of it. If he’s seeing ghosts on it. Misunderstanding the meaning. If he’s turned it into something it isn’t. If he’s being insane. If he can’t read the words, like a dream. 

…His mind keeps going back to that library. That damn library. Those bookshelves stacked high in the darkness. Why for heaven’s sake would anyone build a library in the dark? Sometimes he wished he had read just one of the fucking books, at least tried to remember a title. He looks back in his mind and sees black squiggles, indecipherable, like a dream. Pictures melting in his mind. The four ghosts. Making everything warp through their spectral visages. Hitokiri Battousai.

With proper distance, time, and perspective, you can not be insane anymore. It’s hard to feel like you were ever insane with the morning sun on your face, a cup of tea wafting gentle bitter green through the air.

Hitokiri Battousai wants to join him for a drink.

--

And one more thing, fuck why Shishio built it in the first place; who sits in a dark library alone waiting for someone who has no idea you’re there to find you for hours and doesn’t READ A SINGLE BOOK?

He can’t wonder if they were even real. He remembers cutting them up. The bookshelves tumbling down, spilling with a rain of thump, thump, thumps. Doesn’t look so gristly when you’re cleaving paper from spine. The books were real, so was the darkness, so is Hitokiri Battousai, who has just taken his cup of tea in his hands.

Shinomori Aoshi is sitting across from the Battousai about to have a cup of tea with him, after they failed entirely to kill each other, and had some time and space to mull all of it over. He can’t stop thinking about how the Battousai found him in a dark library, like a corpse, behind a shut set of doors, without a movement, a whisper, a tremor.

I suppose that catches us up to speed.

--

If ever the Battousai uttered the words ‘how have you been,’ it was when he was another man, a war and a lifetime ago. He can smalltalk, and will, but Aoshi hopes he will never hear it. Nor does he want high-culture poetry and tea, nor grisly mutterings of war and politics and the end of the age. He’ll be damned if he knows what he does want from him, so Battousai had better have an idea.

Fortunately, the sun is bright today, so bright that when it slides into his cup of tea it illuminates it green. The bitter scent seems to clear his head. Having been insane, he knows the value of something you can sense to ground you. A sight to fixate on, a scent, a sound, something at all to tell you you’re there.

“Misao-dono; that is, the Okashira,” Kenshin begins, to Aoshi’s relief. Yes, yes; he became Kenshin, this ‘Kenshin’ the moment he spoke. 

He praises Misao and does well to do so. Makimachi Misao being Okashira is a better idea than any Aoshi has ever had. Fantastic. He can leave her to her better devices, wash his hands of that place, who he’s been, what he’s done, wash his hands, wash his hands, wash his hands, wash his hands.

…He’s losing track of what Kenshin is saying.

As Kenshin slips in news about the Oniwabanshu between praise of the young people running the ancient organization Aoshi slips into it for a moment, this sensation, odd, circular, unsettling. The sensation of ‘Kenshin’ and ‘Aoshi.’

He still felt he couldn’t know for sure which two men spoke between the four of them, Battousai, Kenshin, Aoshi, and. Him.

Should he give him a name? Time, distance, separation; it might be worthwhile. Whomever Kenshin spoke to in the darkness of the library. The man who planned to kill them both together. Him.

Between the four of them, only two could be speaking at one time. This sensation of Kenshin and Aoshi was untested and unsettling, and he felt it was reaching as if for his hands, like the table had them too close. A little circle, less than a single step. They were already in close range, perversely, deadly close to be sitting next to either Hitokiri Battousai or. Him . Frankly, it was a dangerously close range to sit next to Kenshin or Aoshi as well, but neither of those men were likely to suddenly strike you down in a public place. They had accepted peace, and weren’t insane anymore.

“This one wonders, though,” said Kenshin, an airy softness usually reserved for the voices of women, “when Aoshi will come to see the Okashira’s progress.”

“Her progress?” asked Aoshi, somewhat numbly.

“The Okashira is a suitably frightening warrior,” said Kenshin anxiously, reaching for the back of his head. 

Aoshi can well believe that Misao gave Kenshin a few good smacks; she was how old now, stronger in form, and in spirit she hadn’t faltered at all. He is also certain that Kenshin has never fought Misao, whether or not Misao has fought him. Perhaps he’s defended himself; perhaps not. Likely, if Misao came for his throat, Kenshin would just crumple onto the ground. The smaller and sweeter the person, the more useless Kenshin was around them. He was the opposite person to the warlords Aoshi remembered so painfully; the weaker you were, the faster they ground you down.

(Aoshi would fancy himself intolerant of becoming a person that Kenshin was weak too, soft and needing a kind touch. He was disarmingly sweet now, like he had scented something in Aoshi, a bee to flower.)

(What was he supposed to do? He was absolutely numb to the will to fight him. Frightened somewhere underneath his mind he observed the sensation of being Kenshin and Aoshi again; a totally unknown dynamic of two inert materials.)

“…I should hope so,” Aoshi finally said, as proud of Misao as he was reluctant to see her in his role. Would Misao have a Her inside her some day? He couldn’t imagine it. “The defense of the Aoi-ya…” he said, and lost his taste for the sentence.

“Surely safe with the Okashira,” Kenshin replied with a gentle confidence. “How bittersweet,” he continued, “to watch the next generation take up the defense.”

Aoshi closed his eyes briefly. Just as he had been thinking. Had they taught the next generation of warriors how to avoid going insane while feeding the enormously overwhelming, sweetly irresistible call to violence, which is their job? What an insulting question.

He felt a sickly pull to look at Kenshin through his eyes, see the man who it was once life to fight and kill.

The piercing sun brightened his skin. Shut your eyes.

“Kenshin,” he said, and forgot what it was he intended to say next. A little bit of hard fear prickled at him. Had he just said ‘Kenshin’?—

Yes, Kenshin had the gentle gall to call Aoshi Aoshi all the time, but himself, he had never—

“Yes?” asked Kenshin, a light voice he can’t even quite see past the morning sunbeams, slipping across the table.

Like he had already accepted his name in Aoshi’s mouth, like this wasn’t the first time. Surely it was? He would have never called this man Kenshin in the past. What a shame it was that Aoshi couldn’t remember what it was he was going to say. “—it’s pointless.”

“Ah?”

“To ask you anything,” Aoshi told him. “I know what you’re going to respond with.”

“Is it so…” asked Kenshin quietly, unoffended, as if he was asking a third person at the table.

“You seem to never change your opinion, and your convictions are so sincere,” Aoshi informed him. He was talking to his nails on the table right now, but he meant what he said. “If I ask you any question about the future, ‘do you think these children will take up our old causes,’ ‘when do you think our work will be done,’ ‘when will we be able to die,’ I know the things you’re going to say.”

“—Aoshi intends to die again?” asked Kenshin, almost as if it was an old joke.

In some ways, it was. “Well, not today, not tomorrow,” Aoshi replied tersely, mocking the joke.

“Surely Aoshi—”

“’Has something more to live for,’ ‘should live to atone for his crimes,’ ‘will find his purpose if he waits and reflects,’ ‘will never find his happiness in violence,’ ‘wants to see Misao’s smile again,’” Aoshi informed him, rote. “Does it echo inside your head, Kenshin?”

He said it again. He looked at Kenshin’s face. Warm. A bit of a smile. Kenshin.

“This one is so predictable?—”

“Well,”

“Perhaps this one is a little set in his ways—”

“Not all of us can uncover the secrets of existence at nineteen, give the rest of us a break,” grumbled Aoshi, wondering if and how Kenshin’s easy warmth was leeching into him. Like the darkness of his words was seeping out of his speech. Losing ink. Growing pale.

“This one doesn’t—”

“Yes he does.”

“—Perhaps Aoshi just knows him so well.”

“—”

Hah. Aoshi felt angry about that statement. He felt a little angry and a little comfortable. The accusation of vulnerability, closeness, and even understanding. Such things were once deadly and still held the stench of death to him.

To know one’s enemy as Aoshi knew Kenshin was a weakness you took on yourself only in the pursuit of killing him. If you did not kill him, you came to know him, and know him well, in an unallowable way. He had stalked him around his daily life in Tokyo, learned his martial art and his ways, memorized his emotional states, beliefs, impulses and habits, his speech; how to read him in each moment through each phase, just so he could predict his foot, his arm, his eye when Kenshin finally came for him; survive his final blow and deal him onto him. To take that level of understanding of another man is to take on an absurd vulnerability to him; to carry his soul within you like a second self. It is only permissible if you intend to kill him and banish his spirit, otherwise—

You find yourself sitting across a table with a man you know like yourself but can’t talk to, and he knows you so well he can cut your words into something you don’t recognize.

(As far as Aoshi understood it, Kenshin’s strength was his impossible ability to carry around the hearts of a thousand people he had not killed. The dead are one thing. They will not change. The living? The living can do anything they want to you if you’re not strong enough to stop them.)

“—Might take responsibility for that,” Aoshi muttered, a joke that felt absolutely heavy, like it smacked into the table between their cups of tea.

“…This one doesn’t think he is ready for marriage…”

“You’re thirty-two, and I am thirty,” said Aoshi, vexed and impatient with how easily Kenshin took and continued the absurd line. “And that we are both unmarried is a testament to how unsuited we both are to it.”

“This one will not make a good wife for Aoshi.”

“How do you say all that with a straight face?” asked Aoshi, baffled. Kenshin’s sense of humor was something otherworldly, vague and completely unruffled.

“It’s because this one is a poor cook as well as a bad housekeeper, and cannot bear any children.”

Aoshi swore for patience to several deities and put his face in his hand. “Should I be in pursuit of a wife, Kenshin, I would not be in the position to concern myself with any of that.”

“Then what is necessary of Aoshi’s wife?” asked Kenshin, both amused and curious.

“She would have to be comfortable with the outlaw’s life of crime and violence, because I am a criminal outlaw who can only make my way as a hired blade,” he explained to Kenshin as if to a naive maiden. “Likely she would have to wait for me to appear from time to time, blood-soaked, and hold her tongue to questions.”

“—But she would not be required to cook or to clean or bear children?” Kenshin asked, peering up at the ceiling as if he were weighing his options. “So such a woman could mind her business and be unconcerned with Aoshi’s activities until a time when he see fit to see her again. This one can’t imagine there would be no uninterested women.”

This fucking jackass. There was nothing he couldn’t make sound good. “If you’re about to offer me an unknown sister or pin an unmarried shrew on me, spare the poor thing my company,” Aoshi threatened.

“Aoshi thinks he is unlikable.”

“…Kenshin, do you really think we’re fit for normal lives, wives, and happiness?”

“…Aoshi—”

“Dammit, I asked you a fucking question again,” Aoshi growled under his breath, keeping the heavy words quiet in this beautiful bright space. “I know, I know what you’ll say already. Anything’s possible. Everyone deserves to seek happiness. All we can do is live on, so on, so on, and on, and on. Is anything not a slog to you? Is there an end to the race? Ever? Do you really not get tired of this?

“—

“Please, don’t answer that.”

--

It would be an admirable web, if he were trying to weave it. If Aoshi were trying to do this, he might appreciate what he had done. Kenshin, I know it’s not so easy for you as you pretend. I know you feel alone in your darkness, alone in the same body as Hitokiri Battousai and his sins. I know because I see right through you. I am alone too. I think no one can understand me. I think no one could ever stay by my side.

If Aoshi were trying, he might feel proud of himself. Instead, he feels angry at his weakness and vulnerability and shame and isolation, alone.

--

What was happening, over the next few days, Aoshi could not tell at first. He knew someone was there, but he didn’t react to being tailed for a little while. Most assassins, stalkers, or informants will peel away from their target quickly. If you don’t immediately aggrieve them, they will return to their bosses or eventually spring on your in ambush, and you have a much easier time sorting the mess out then. Besides, there were only a handful of better-trained stalkers in Japan than himself, and that was one of the only areas left in which he felt confident in being confident.

It took a few days for him to finally understand that the person following him, semi-consistently, here and then gone, not quite detectable and not making a move—it had to be Kenshin. If it wasn’t Kenshin, then it was Hitokiri Battousai. But that thought is (heart-pounding) absurd. There was no reason for the Battousai to be here, suddenly.

And so, all at once he realizes it it’s so obvious, that the wafting, still, ghost-like presence is Kenshin. The signs he is trained to absorb like light in the eyes, patterns of footfalls, the slightest scent, the pressure of malice or interest or battle-instinct, he can tell a man from another by the traces their soul leaves behind. How he knows it is Kenshin he could not succinctly describe, but he can tell it is Kenshin waiting for him, behind the corner, around the wall.

Why follow him, suddenly? On the (exciting) absurd possibility that he wants to fight him… why? It’s much more likely Kenshin wants information, perhaps by order of Misao, perhaps to settle something on his own heart.

If he knows Kenshin so well, why does he not know why Kenshin is following him? It weighs on him like sickness on the gut to think of reasons why Kenshin would follow someone. Care. Concern. Maybe he thinks Aoshi is going to kill himself.

--

Would Kenshin be the first one to find him if he did?

Almost definitely at this rate, he told a cup of tea, swishing gently on top of a low table. It was one of those days where it felt like his vision kept narrowing down to points, and he couldn’t look away from whatever they pierced; right now, this teacup. He doesn’t know why this happens. It feels like there’s so much behind him.

Maybe he should put them both at peace with. This.

Make Kenshin stop following him.

--

So he sets up the scene for Kenshin. Open sky. A night without clouds. Not a boxed-in room. Nowhere to hide. Aoshi is in the wilds of the fields, where no window is lit with a candle. The calls of wild animals fill the wind with solitude from men.

Aoshi sits on the ground, completely vulnerable. Head to the dirt. He draws his blade, and he holds it in his hands again, sinfully bewitched by how the starlight glimmers on its silver sides. He doesn’t draw a blade nearly so often any more. He forgot how much attachment he felt to these tools, the glimmer that meant he might live today, the thin slip of metal that had saved his life so many times. The first thing he saw after the struggle to survive was over again, and his harsh breaths were slowing down.

It was silent and clean now, like it had fallen asleep. He found it hard to look away.

So he sat with a blade and waited for Kenshin. This would be irresistible to him, this weakness, a man who looked broken, alone in the dark.

Aoshi sat alone and reflected that he knew exactly the trap to set for Kenshin, exactly the scene that would pull on his heart and make him weak.

Kenshin’s footfalls came steady and gentle to him over the unfarmed fields and Aoshi hated his victory.

How did he find him? How did Aoshi know how to call him? How did they know each other like this? The answer is this: at this point, how could they fail each other?

It was in this mood of terrifying honesty that he told Kenshin, who was near him enough now to hear his voice over the soft hissing grass, “I’m not out here to kill myself,” and sheathed his sword. Kenshin’s footfalls continued to come near him until Aoshi continued, “I did this to call you.”

Then Kenshin stopped, silent, and Aoshi stood, still with his back turned to him. “…I knew you would come.”

Kenshin might have been imaginary, he made no sound over the wind, didn’t find anything to say to him. Yet Aoshi was dead certain it could be him and no one else. “…Just as I knew you would come for me, in a dark room in the mountain, when you had no way or cause to find me there. Kenshin… I want to know. How did you know I was there?...”

Kenshin might have sighed. Aoshi couldn’t quite tell. “…Such a shame…” he finally said, a voice that seeped into Aoshi’s soul like balm. Gods, please tell him, why did that voice feel good? Even though he was causing Kenshin pain, sadistically. “…You have asked this one a question he cannot answer.”

“What, finally?” asked Aoshi, fighting an awful bitterness. He turned around to see Kenshin in the darkness, dressed, armed, still and composed as always. “You knew the pain in my heart, dispensed my salvation, could cure madness and easily realign my foolish misunderstandings of the world, and now I have a question you can’t answer?”

“This one doesn’t know how he knew Aoshi’s presence,” Kenshin told him, both soft and blunt, like a smooth stone. “He felt a presence, which was behind a door no one should have been behind. He thought to himself on who it might be, and he realized, it is Shinomori Aoshi. If this one were to say how he knew that…” Kenshin did really seem to struggle with his words. “…This one would say… of course it was.”

“Of course it was.”

“Of course it was Aoshi behind the door.”

“Of course it was…” Aoshi whispered, feeling dizzy. Who else would it be? Why wouldn’t Kenshin be stuck with him as badly as he was stuck with himself?

“Then may this one ask…” whispered Kenshin, now taking a few careful steps through the grasses to get close enough to Aoshi to spring on him (were that his intent) “after these years, how it was that Aoshi knew this one would find him there?”

“—”

To remember that time is to remember nothing. His mind was a void that sought to obliterate thought, fill it up with blood instead.

“…I did not know you would find me,” Aoshi said, with dreadful certainty. “I was insane. In my madness, bent around revenge, I accepted as truth that I was meant to kill you. I was only waiting for the inevitability of death, as every man does.”

“Powerful madness,” Kenshin told him. “This one could not ignore you though he knew it might be wise.”

“Kenshin—”

“And he had promised, both you and Misao,” Kenshin continued, and the waver in his voice was so slight it might be nothing but a ripple or air, “that the business between Aoshi and this one would not go unfinished, and that this one would not prevail over Aoshi.”

“What do you mean?”

“That Aoshi would not die, or be killed by himself,” Kenshin continued, “that is what was promised to Misao. And this one was sure he had already failed when he saw Aoshi, and knew he was no longer in control of himself.

“So how did this one find Aoshi? He doesn’t know,” Kenshin admitted, his arms crossed uncomfortably, looking to the side, sincerely searching the night for an answer. “Aoshi was not even there. This one simply…” for once, Kenshin faltered at his own words. “…This one felt it must be so.”

With a mounting fear of the wind and fields and great black sky around him, forces greater than humans, gods and spirits, Aoshi sensed the hand of greater powers than the two of them could channel, quitter, and stranger forces that dictated that this would happen, or would not. The sense that something was fully out of control, indecipherable, uncannily inhuman as it acted out humanity through the two of them.

Having been insane, Aoshi knew this was superstition if not paranoia. But what was it that seized both of them, Aoshi and Kenshin, and made it so that they would become unmistakable and unignorable to each other? How had this fate been wrought?

“What is happening, between you and me?” asked Aoshi, numbly.

Kenshin looked like Aoshi was saying something insane. He hoped he wasn’t. The night suddenly felt so clear and sharp. “Has Himura Kenshin been in my life so long? When did you get here?”

Kenshin was again wordless, tracing Aoshi’s face; not his hands or his feet, still not expecting an attack. Why would he? Aoshi was all but powerless to lift a sword now. “…It is like you were suddenly everywhere.”

“…What does Aoshi mean?” asked Kenshin, a small voice.

“Now you’re asking me questions again,” replied Aoshi, helplessly. “How would I know?”

Kenshin’s eyes lowered to the ground, points of white in a great black night. Aoshi was in awe of his pose, how gentle it was; his own too. Both of them wouldn’t be able to defend an attack if it came hollering and blazing right at them. Kenshin looked in this moment like he wouldn’t even know how to draw the sword at his side, feet flat on the ground, shoulders loose, head hung. The most absurd thing about the disaster happening around them is that there was no way it would come to blows.

It was like a new man. It was a new man. So was he.

“If Aoshi feels unsettled about the past…” began Kenshin, mulling on his words as he spoke them, “and he would like to settle…”

“Things are settled,” said Aoshi, feeling sadder than he should.

“If he—”

“I’m not out in a field because I’m so in despair about losing to you. I lost, and I deserved to. I would lose again. I’ve thought about our fight a thousand times and each time come to the conclusion I deserved to lose, and all is well in the world. You cut madness out of me and put me back together straight.” He felt like he had been hit by lightning in this field, and the sky was still cloudless. “I want to know how you found me.”

“…”

“And you don’t know.”

“…”

“A library in the darkness…” Aoshi felt ire and sadness rising in him, like it was tapping and scratching him from inside. “Who builds an underground library?”

“Ah…”

“Did Shishio strike you as much of a reader? Honestly,” snapped Aoshi, looking up at the sky as if he thought Shishio Makoto would be up there. Not a chance.  

“Perhaps it belonged to some other of his comrades. Houji struck this one as well-read.”

“The number of books—how much money did they spend on that? Kenshin, I cannot stand thinking about that library. And I didn’t read a single book. Not a one. I don’t have a clue what was down there. I could have been surrounded by cookbooks.”

Kenshin snickered at him. It made Aoshi ashamed of how light it made him feel. “Surely Aoshi shouldn’t find such meaning in his choice of rooms.”

“Surely he shouldn’t. But he’s been. I’ve not always. Been in control—” Aoshi cut himself off.

“This one…”Kenshin’s vocal tone shifted soft.

“No, Kenshin,” said Aoshi, face turned down again. “No.”

“…”

“Whatever you’re intending to say…”

“Always, Aoshi silences this one.”

“Because I know what you’re going to say.”

Another silence followed the others, amorphous, like a fight coming to a stalemate. Aoshi could hardly even tell what was being fought over, or what was at stake.

It took some time for Kenshin to take the conversation back.

“…Does Aoshi have a residence in Tokyo?” asked Kenshin softly.

Not in so many words. “I’m paying for my stay,” he said succinctly.

“At an inn?”

Also not exactly. “Employer, more like. Short term.”

Kenshin nods, shifting darkness with his face. “Let this one return Aoshi there.”

Ha. What, would some shifty bandit attack if little Kenshin wasn’t at his side? “Shall I give you my arm as well?” he said, in a way that probably would have sounded more teasing if he hadn’t been dripping with misery-exhaustion inside.

True to form, Kenshin held out his arm anyway, prim face exactly unreadable.

“…No, Kenshin,” said Aoshi again, (though it was indeed so dark now that he couldn’t prove it was still Kenshin. He had no way of knowing and, having no way of knowing, he preferred to think of him as such.)

“Ah, Aoshi doesn’t need led?” a glimmer of humor.

“You don’t know where we’re going,” Aoshi told him, with an implied ‘dumbass.’

Kenshin, who didn’t like to reveal unpleasant truths unprovoked, did not say anything. This told Aoshi that Kenshin did know exactly where they were going, and had pretended not to, to pretend he hadn’t been following him.

But it had been Kenshin behind him, and it had been all along. Through the narrow loud streets of Tokyo, with some invisible agenda on his mind.

--

The distant countryside becomes more beautiful when you are trying to ignore someone, or racing to think of what to say to them; was the darkness making cuts down the layers of grasses always so dear?

He remembers feeling held and kept secret by darkness as Kenshin’s footfalls oddly echo his own, remembers feeling totally empty, and at peace. Perhaps it didn’t feel much like peace at the time, that crumbling hole that took him up. But how can you not envy a man who lives for one thing and one thing alone? His choices are so simple, and his path is righteous.

It was in silence that Kenshin took Aoshi back to his home, neither one obviously following the rest, unmistakably together all the same. There was a loveliness about the silence, uncomfortable as it was, a loveliness that Aoshi was in no way used to. Things were incomprehensible, and he did not know where Kenshin stood or what was on his mind exactly; because of that, he knew things were not the way they once were.

--

The rambling way through Tokyo eventually took them to a back door, behind the house of his temporary employer. It was barred with a heavy plank; Aoshi figured that anyone who could lift it and burst in deserved their fair shot. Of course Kenshin did not make any assumptions and waited for Aoshi to lift it himself.

And so Aoshi hefted up the bar with his forearms and shoulder, placed it with a clatter on the cobblestone ground, pulled open the rickety double doors that hid his small room from the rambling streets outside, and turned around in the shadow of the threshold to look at Kenshin.

With the scattered lights of the city (late night candle vigils, early morning cooks and caretakers with lanterns lit, sleepless loners and lovers beside the coals) Aoshi could see him now, a dim lunar glow against the greyness of the street. His cratered face was still unreadable, like he had lost a little feeling since they departed the field, and now stood still, waiting for it to come back.

 Kenshin stood in front of him, Aoshi stood in the doorway, wondering what was happening as the time to have said something passed. He placed a hand on the doorjamb while a strange anxiety bloomed in him, like a fungus on his stomach.

“This is it,” said Aoshi, meaning his residence.

“So it is,” said Kenshin, replying without meaning. His eyes didn’t stray to the house behind Aoshi.

Something about this felt very off . He felt himself bracing, a tiny seizure in his shoulders, despite the fact that there had been no threat of a fight. Not in Kenshin’s aura, nor through his pose.

Kenshin’s eyes closed and stayed closed, deliberately. Aoshi saw the fingers of his right hand curl slightly and the world slowed down immediately, hollowed out for blood and adrenaline. By the time Kenshin was lifting his hand in the air, reaching out only halfway to Aoshi’s body, his mind was blank and his arms were tight and ready to slash. And for a second he was sick with wanting to lunge at Battousai, trembling like the violence was about to burst out of him.

It wasn’t Kenshin’s godspeed that enabled him to act before Aoshi could react.

Kenshin laid his hand on Aoshi’s cheek, palm to skin, and had to tilt his head up to reach him. He was such a small man, and as time weighed on him, he was even slighter than he once was.

Kenshin kissed him in the quiet of the street, where there was no one but the two of them, nothing else in the darkness. Aoshi was hard as ice as Kenshin leaned onto his toes to reach him, and with a push-pull on Aoshi’s face, moved the two of them together.

He was gentle, Kenshin was, and absolutely firm, a hand curled around his ear to brace Aoshi where he intended him to be, whether Aoshi balked or not. That was the physical language they both had—declaration of intent, staked and reinforced. It would have been hard to move from this grip. And he was gentle, those firm fingers placed precisely where they wouldn’t have to dig in to the soft skin behind his ear to keep him in his place.

Kenshin’s lips were on his own, soft and dry, not so well-used.

Neither were his own. They resisted a little when Kenshin backed away, the very slightest, strangest sting. It seemed to sink into his skin as Kenshin settled back onto his feet.

Aoshi felt like his eyes were being suffused fully with the man he was looking at and it was as if he had never seen him before; a cracked-scarred face, lines of worry on his brow, a tiny, tired frame, which was never tall, never large, never imposing. In fact it had been a mistake (if not a delusion) to see him as intimidating all along; not because he wasn’t powerful and skilled, but because it was a disservice to the man inside.

“If—” said Kenshin, a voice that was so carefully controlled it was miserable.

“Why would you—” said Aoshi and cut himself off. He realized he sounded angry. For a moment overwhelmed, he ducked further into his room, his face turned away, but his hand not taken from the doorjamb. 

Having been insane before. In these situations Aoshi had learned to keep yourself stuck to what you can sense. (The old molded wood of the door. Chittering of late-night insects, calling for mates. The slightest sliver of light that slid past the doorframe into the darkened mat of rushes. The low hollowness of Kenshin’s sigh.)

“Good night,” said Kenshin, surrendering in a single turn. He turned to walk away, and though he was slow Aoshi barely moved in time to snatch at his retreating form. He gripped Kenshin’s arm and stopped him as he stood.

Kenshin didn’t yet turn to him, but in his profile Aoshi could see the controlled sadness that had compelled him to act out in the first place. That resignation—“Where do you think you’re going?”

Now Kenshin turned to him, wary, a quiet echo of the sharp calculation Aoshi had once earned from him as a warrior. “If Shinomori wishes to make his displeasure known—”

“No,” Aoshi snapped, more at the use of his last name and formal speech than at what Kenshin had actually said. He braced Kenshin firmly, disallowing him to move one way or the other, his hand clenched around his forearm. Not nearly so gracefully as Kenshin had held his face. But he didn’t have that deep graciousness in him.

Kenshin regarded him very carefully; they were close enough now for Aoshi to see that there was a pink flush on his cheeks, and it made him react, a flush of quicker blood in his core. It was strange, like he had been woken up from a dream with a snap. “I told you I’m not going to fight you, Kenshin,” he hissed, somewhat stupidly, by his own admission. He only felt himself wanting to snatch the wariness out of Kenshin’s face. He didn’t want to be him , not the man who snapped and snarled at affection, not the man fighting Battousai, and he didn’t want to be looking at Battousai. He didn’t want either of them to disappear again.

Kenshin nodded, not less confused but Aoshi could see the nervousness start dripping from his face. His questioning eyes relaxed and Aoshi could see the soft skin that made those wrinkles, the pale flush that colored his cheeks, the nervous purse of his lips relaxing. And he felt.

Aoshi returned his kiss, worse, harsher, less gracefully. He knew it was bad, but it was what he had. He had tilted Kenshin’s head farther, pushed him a little farther back; in consequence, when he pressed his lips to Kenshin’s he parted them slightly and could feel the blunt teeth underneath.

He was mortifyingly relieved that it felt like kissing. It didn’t feel sharp, dirty, horrifying, to have Kenshin’s lips pressed against his; he didn’t feel his spirit shrinking, his masculinity recoiling in disgust. It felt like kissing, warm skin, the twitch of the shock on his face felt through the sensitive pressure of his lips. It was sour and felt sweet, and it was unpleasant to stop.

It was both because of his shocked and respectful silence at the feeling of passion in his own breast—unexpected, unlooked for, and beneficent—and because of the complexity of Kenshin’s expression that he said nothing when they parted again. Aoshi backed himself off, his hand looser, weaker on Kenshin’s arm; Kenshin stood in slight unbalance, not pulled away from Aoshi, not standing quite on his own two feet.

Time passed whisking by; Kenshin’s eyes dropped from Aoshi’s lips to the ground, fluttered closed and back open.

“Aoshi breaks this one’s heart.”

It settled on Aoshi’s heart like a heavy quilt. “I…” he stuttered, halfway between ‘I know’ and ‘I’m sorry.’

“Aoshi’s loneliness, and his suffering, his bitterness,” Kenshin clarified, quietly, not meeting his eyes, “they break this one’s heart. This one was so sad in his heart for you… when…”

Kenshin’s usual clarity failed him. Yet it was like Aoshi could feel it pulsing from his skin, feel it in the warm breath that ghosted on his neck and made his skin prickle. He could feel the compassion that made Kenshin’s heart twist and torture him; how it must have been suffering through Aoshi’s rage.

For years.

“I…” Aoshi couldn’t express it either. He grabbed another kiss like he was stealing it, splitting Kenshin’s lips for a moment. He startled himself, felt how strong a warmth washed over his face. 

How long had Himura Kenshin been under his skin like this? When had he gotten inside him? Had he simply not noticed?

But not at all, he realized, as he saw something almost tight pinch Kenshin’s face as he realized he had been shut up with a kiss, cute and slight. He had in no way been oblivious to his fixation on Kenshin, how horribly, totally he had come to know him in his passion to murder him. And he had been so terribly lost to have that passion on his hands, unable to get rid of it, nothing to be done with it.

Could this be happening? Could things be settled just like this?

It felt insane.

(The barest moonlight that reflected cleanly on Kenshin’s face. The heartbeat inside of his ears, sharp and demanding. The warm air to his back, the last light of coals he had left in the hearth. Things he can feel. Here. Now.)

Standing in the darkness of his open doorway, half dissolved into it, grasping Kenshin’s arm, Aoshi asked him, “will you come inside?”

Kenshin, facing down Aoshi alone, behind the double doors; what did he do, do you think?

Unfinished Sequel

He was still routinely, silently turning Misao down (aware the day may be coming when he ceased to refuse her) when he began wondering if he loved Kenshin.

Without a working definition of ‘love’ he struggled to separate it from an obsession, which Kenshin had always been for him. He knew love when he saw it. Misao had it. Mrs. Kaoru radiated it. From Okina it had almost shattered him, it had rested a sickly warmth on Yumi of the Night, he had seen it glistening on Kenshin himself. Aoshi could detect love. He wasn’t sure how to feel it. Or if he might be feeling it already.

He couldn’t even claim that it was how he felt for someone indispensable to him. He was indispensable to himself, and did he love that? And Kenshin had been irreplaceable from the moment Aoshi intended to kill him and lay his name on Hannya’s grave.

He knew Kenshin was on his mind.

How weak he felt when he remembered the night he and Kenshin spent in an embrace. Like his knees, his neck, the palms of his hands were still feeling an uncanny warmth, a ghost in the air.

How Kenshin had suddenly felt not so small at all with his arms wound around his neck, or falling down his back. How fever-hot his little room grew when the two of them kept each other awake. The sight like spring blossoms of Kenshin’s darkened neck. How strong he was, but how his hair slid back like a hiss when Aoshi suggested with a silent hand that he might lie back for him.

…And that was what could make him dizzy in the street, remembering Kenshin surrendering for him. Kenshin putting his back on the ground. Kenshin rolling his shoulder back and letting Aoshi settle on to his body.

It was as dizzying then as it was now. Overwhelmed by a night that cracked him like thunder from cloud to cloud, he hadn’t—he hadn’t been able to handle it for long, Kenshin’s warm body open underneath him. He remembered pulling back to breathe, watching Kenshin’s skin speckle with his breath, feeling inexcusably faint. Kenshin giving his shoulder, the crook of his neck the gentlest kisses. How they stayed drifting around each other in softness, a tryst like a prince and princess, idyll beyond belief.

All because he had been so overwhelmed—well, by the whole day, but tipped over the edge past sense by Kenshin surrendering to him. He certainly didn’t want to have been as incensed by that as he was. But he had been, and was now, so much that it could turn him into coils and nerves recalling it in the night. Kenshin underneath him.

…It would be comfortable to excuse it as lust, honestly. A bodily craving. Like he had tasted honey on his tongue during a long fast. But he had learned he was mistaken to think of Kenshin simply. Though Kenshin was a simple man, in some ways, what was between them was a mystery and a maze.

What was going on him that he was beginning to grow soft to Misao’s gentle and unassuming advances as well, he did not know. It would be easy to put the blame on Misao’s adulthood, the strength her voice had assumed in womanhood, the surety of poise she was earning as a seasoned warrior. Yes, he could tell himself, her growth into fullness was causing him to turn to her.

But at the same time he found himself throbbing for Kenshin, restless and raw?

Something else was happening, a larger, stranger drift.

--

Mrs. Himura Kaoru of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu was expecting her first.

The only reason Aoshi knew at all was because he saw it, and the only reason he saw it was because the happy couple (may those who came before him grant him strength) showed up beaming at the Aoi-ya with Kaoru in her second term.

 Aoshi heard himself make a noise. Normally, one would have had to throw something sharp at him at a high speed to elicit so thunderous a reaction—and could he be sure that between the two sharp warriors, neither had? It felt as if his cheeks were stinging, at any rate, as the dojo mistress’s grin grew at his shock and Kenshin beamed consistently.

He found himself saying nothing, calculating quantities of tea and rice in his head. Should he serve breakfast now, or wait? Would they be hungry? Did they travel through the night? Why?

“You’ll need a room,” he said, because this was an inn.

“Well, if you don’t mind!” said Kaoru, somewhat amused, somewhat smug. The mythical ‘glow’ suffused her—she and her bulging middle drifted into the Aoi-ya like a butterfly.

“Aoshi,” said Kenshin, who had followed in behind his wife. Aoshi heard his name like he would hear a man pull his hard breath to unleash a blow behind him. Inescapable.

“Does your wife have her room already picked out, or should I do the honor of finding one for her?” he asked, the absurdity of the situation drifting around the words.

Kenshin looked around Aoshi’s shoulder (as that was as high up as his head reached) as his cheerful wife poked her head around the unopened frontroom of his inn. “Surely Aoshi has much work to do to get ready for the day?—Kaoru can handle her own room.”

“Do please pick one that doesn’t already have people in it,” Aoshi said, flat, facing Kaoru but knowing she wouldn’t hear him. “How long?—”

“Kaoru must be about halfway through,” Kenshin mused. “She stays in remarkable health, considering.”

Aoshi observed her with more scrutiny; her straight pose, her brisk steps, her bright eyes. “Were you and I tasked with carrying a child as fit young fighters in our early twenties,” Aoshi decided, “we might have taken it with good form as well.”

Kenshin considered the suggestion, as if judging himself against his wife. “—Still, Kaoru is certainly the right one for the task.”

Why Kenshin concluded that all was well that his wife was carrying their child and he wasn’t, Aoshi wasn’t interested in knowing. He allowed Kenshin a laborious sigh of his own consternation, then pinned him with a glare. “You didn’t bring her to nest here? You have a home.”

Kenshin confounded him with a warm smile, almost shy. “Kaoru and I wanted to visit our friends to tell them the news; especially those we had not seen in some time.”

Their friends. Of course. The persistent social graces Edo’s power couple preformed belied their individual natural strangeness. It was some kind of power they gained combined. Likely they were touring Japan to make the birth announcement on foot.

Still.

“Misao likely will be home to the Aoi-ya in the evening,” Aoshi summarized. “You might prepare for her enthusiasm before then.”

“This one anticipates it,” said Kenshin warmly. The affection Kenshin felt for Misao seemed to be that of a father to a rambunctious daughter. It bore a bit of age difference into stark relief; more than that, a bit of maturity difference. And Kenshin was regarding Aoshi evenly, with a kind of confident content he couldn’t understand. 

“So there shall be a wife and a child after all,” said Aoshi, softly. “Does she cook and clean as well?”

The underlids of Kenshin’s eyes twitched and lowered; recognition, but its ensuing emotion unclear. “…Sometimes, and badly,” he said, softly, with love.

Aoshi huffed and looked off. “…I need to get ready to open,” he interrupted his own conversation, feeling odd, wanting to move.

“What has Aoshi to do?”

Aoshi knew better than to try to refuse Kenshin’s help. “Got the breakfast going and stables cleaned. Need to scrub the front room and put tea on before I open the doors. Problem patron upstairs that might need cleaning up after.”

With that he rolled his sleeved back up, turning his back to the man. And even having him out of his sights cooled his cheeks and made him ashamed of his beating heart.

There was a short silence before Kenshin said, “…Though Aoshi has settled into a housekeeper’s role well.”

Mocking. Teasing? That was teasing. He was being teased. Aoshi froze too long, half looked over his shoulder, and glanced off Kenshin’s warm expression like a ricocheting bullet. He growled (he admitted he had no better word for it) and turned to stalk on, assuming Kenshin would follow to assist.

The old, gloomy beast. His cheeks were hot. He had such trouble keeping steady around Kenshin.

And Kenshin did clean the front room for him, on his hands and knees, and then settled his wife into residence upstairs.

--

As the day went on a prickling anxiousness kept simmering in Aoshi’s shoulderblades. Not because he had noticed anything suspiciously amiss in the bearing of either of his guests but, honestly, in spite of it. He had learned that Himura Kenshin and Himura Kaoru were not enemies and he would not be beset with a surprise attack at any moment. It seemed that there was something just under his skin, however, that hadn’t accepted that yet.

And yet it wasn’t, and never was, the inherent danger Kenshin did or did not pose that put him at disease. It was the bit of terror that had latched quiet and stubborn in the back of his mind which had associated Kenshin’s swift blade with his life being ripped open as his subordinates were all murdered and his sword was broken. There was a psychological fear Kenshin posed to him. That he would break and reform him again. Something deep in him sighed, I’m tired of it.

But when you’ve made mistakes like killing innocent people, you don’t get to be tired of self-examination.

Perhaps he only grew tense because the day initially went by without him seeing the couple much. He had work to do, Kaoru surely needed time to rest. Guests came and went; he had errands, there were banks and creditors. He was slowly building a collection of places where he was not recognized and was not feared, where clerks and shopgirls were unafraid to treat him without deference. Being dismissed as no one special had calmed him just as it always had.

Misao would be back for dinner; if she was in the area, she always was. And these days she paid for her meal with helping around the inn in the evening. She had never been one to not pay her own way, and with time, she was only becoming more responsible and considerate.

The girl had become a strong woman.

Aoshi tried to put his thoughts aside as he directed his few hires (Misao’s girls, all of them) through a dinner large enough for all of his guests. They didn’t need his direction so much as his hand on a chef’s knife to get the mass amount of preparatory work done.

He did swear to never cut down a man again in anything but defense. But if he wanted to count on being able to do that, it was good to keep sharp. And if one kept sharp on daikon, then so be it.

He needn’t have worried about getting rusty; he finally opened the door to the dining room (which had already been mostly vacated by fed, wined, and soothed guests by the time he considered his work done) to find Misao already sat half on her haunches and half leaned forward over the table as she enthusiastically tried to cajole her friends into something. He knew, because she was reaching for Kenshin’s hand to grasp it, and he kept expertly slipping it away. Kaoru was herself watching for a hawk for Misao’s next grip.

Aoshi can’t recall ever reprimanding Misao, honestly, and he wasn’t going to start now. He approached the table without comment or reproach, and was presently noticed. A place was made for him without a word.

At it so happened, Misao had sat next to Kenshin in order to be looking directly at Kaoru. The girls considered themselves to be close friends, despite the rarity of getting to meet with one another; Misao had told him that she was a firm believer in getting eye contact, sitting across from the person you wanted to get to know better, not next to them. Kenshin, who had once been her travelling partner, had actually been given the subordinate seat—not that he would mind even if he knew. So it was that Aoshi sat next to a beaming, finger-tapping Misao, who slid close to him the second he was in place, with a soft-smiling Kaoru on his other side, and Kenshin’s gaze across from him.

Kenshin smiled almost overmuch as he poured Aoshi his own glass of watery, third brewing green tea, just as Misao took hold of his upper arm.

He felt his stomach twist around. Embarrassing. He took the cup of tea.

“Aoshi, this will be as important to you as to me,” Misao insisted off the bat.

“Surely,” Aoshi agreed on principle.

“You know, she might hook him with this one,” said Kaoru with slight concern, an arched eyebrow at her husband.

“Is that so,” said Kenshin absolutely noncommittally.

Aoshi took a deep dreg of the bitter-hot tea as Misao began to explain immediately. It was the estimation, it seemed, of Kaoru as Dojo Master that Kenshin’s skills were leaving him rapidly. Not as fast as they feared, but degeneration in his joints and tendons were leading to a collapse in his bodily power as well as agility. He wouldn’t be waiting for his sixties to fall apart—thirties would do him in. Aoshi took this without comment, because he knew that already. The day was coming fast that the Dojo Master was the defender of Kenshin’s dubious reputation, not the other way around—a fact that made Aoshi wonder if this was why they decided to hurry up and have a child now. Misao, however, was absolutely peaking—a fact as evident as Kenshin’s decline—and she was direly concerned that she would never feel the true power of his sword arm.

“…You wish to spar with Kenshin,” Aoshi summarized, not certain he had it quite correct.

“Of course,” Misao continued, like it was the most logical thing. “Aoshi, you fought the Hiten Mitsurugi-ryuu several times. At his absolute peak, even. And we all know Ken is the last practitioner of the art—probably the last one there will ever be.”

Kenshin and Aoshi, who had accidentally caught each other’s glace for a second, both let each other go. The demise of their respective arts was what they both hoped for.

“Aoshi, I’m one of Ken’s best friends and I’ve never actually fought him. I saw the Mitsurugi-ryuu like, twice, from afar, and couldn’t track him. I’m really good at Kempo now. Like. Really good. I need to know if I can take him.”

No laid bitter on Aoshi’s tongue. Even if you surpassed me now by twice what I was then, you wouldn’t surpass Kenshin.

But he put his assumptions aside and weighed it. If Kenshin was really so degenerated in his health, could she win such a match? He had indulged Misao in what felt like a lot of sparring. She was good. She was agile as hell, she was fast, and she had focus like nothing he had fucking seen (at least, not in someone so birdbrained). But could she bet on it being a fair match, with Kenshin both so fond of her and so hard to get a fight out of in the first place?

“If you need to beat up on an old man again, you can just ask me,” he told her, secretly waiting for her expression of annoyance. Which came on cue, making him briefly smile on the rim of his cup.

“For heaven’s sake, you’re not old,” she griped at him. “Neither is Ken, he’s just falling apart.”

Kenshin made a noise of bemused appreciation. Kaoru briefly covered her eyes. Not that either of them should expect anything else from her. “And you want to fight a man whose body is… falling apart, because?” Aoshi asked.

She looked at him like he was the dumbest fucking thing, and explained again about how Kenshin was the last master of his art and he was about to lose it, and she wanted to see it.

Aoshi listened through her explanation a second time, then set down his cup. “Her explanation is solid,” he said, lifting his gaze to Kenshin again. “It’s up to you.”

“Oh, come on,” Kaoru snarled, in her manner. “Aoshi, we can’t count on you to back us up here?”

“…Did… you think that you could?”

Kenshin laughed, almost silently, and hid it behind a hand. By the glimmer in Kaoru’s eyes, it was because he knew what would happen if he got caught snickering at her antics.

“You’re against the idea,” Aoshi asked Kaoru, admittedly goading her a little.

“Almost as much as I’d be against you taking a blade against him for fun!” She countered, forward as always. “Aoshi, I love sword arts as much as the two of you do! But Kenshin is delicate,” she said, with a little light mockery, patting a palm on her husband’s shoulder. “He can’t take the violence. It offends his sensibilities.”

“…Yes, I recall.”

“Not that that ever stopped you,” Kaoru admitted, a gentle pat tapping out of her hand as Kenshin’s gaze grew fond.

“I remember quite a few sensibilities being offended,” said Aoshi, kind of offended at himself for saying that. It sounded a bit more risqué than he really liked; if only Kenshin weren’t sitting across the table, not five feet from him. To make matters worse, Misao found it funny, and when Misao giggled, he had a hard time feeling very bad, even though he typically would.

“Boys,” said Kaoru, though she was trying to keep down a quirking smile too.

“You’re only mad because you can’t take me on,” Misao goaded her, her cheeks flushed with a smile.

“Oh?” asked Kaoru, wheeling back. “I see, my pregnancy is a boundary for you, when Kenshin’s condition isn’t? Well, how rude—but I won’t be pregnant forever, Okashira.”

“Oh, I’d love to see how you convince a flying Kunai to take a gentle turn to avoid hitting you!” Misao gloated, full of bravado, but aware somewhere of the incredibly power of Kaoru’s redirection techniques. “You’re so ready to make this brat an orphan?”

“Ladies, please,” said Aoshi flatly. “You don’t need to defend our honor.”

“Please, don’t fight for my sake,” sighed Kenshin, an absurdly, perfectly spot-on imitation of a young lady, even pinching the corner of Kaoru’s kimono.

Her mouth wobbled. Bending slightly over the table, she wheezed, trying to keep laughter back. In sum, it didn’t work.

As always, despite everything, Misao had her way before long—there was going to be some friendly, low-stakes demonstrating (in Kaoru’s case) and sparring (for Kenshin) the next day. No word was spoken about Aoshi participating himself. It was assumed he would not draw a blade.

And of course he wouldn’t. He knew that even now.

Yes, he would play war with his friends, with his family here in the Aoi-ya. Even if he came too forcefully at Misao (which had happened a time or two when he was swept up in her energy) he didn’t feel too terribly, because there was never a threat, never the foreboding sense that this swinging sword was turning the wheel of fate again.

But Kenshin; he was never going to fight Kenshin again. Not as a demonstration, not friendly-like, in no manner whatsoever.

Imagining it like he was weak to do in this second, his eyes fixed on Kenshin’s hands, which were perched softly on the table around an empty teacup, made it feel like an old fissure in his head was cracking open. He felt he would lose the years and the pain and the memories if his hand curled around the comfortable hilt of his sword and he could meet Kenshin’s eyes across the way. And Aoshi’s life was not one that you would want to go backward into. The further back he got the more layers of humanity were stripped away, ones he had carefully, thoroughly placed over a throbbing red heart of madness and obsession. The thirst to kill and be killed which had drove him like a phantom of the grave, which would live starved deep, deep inside… forever.

He woke up fewer nights with the feeling like he was nerves and hunger and hate wrapped up badly in a human shell, a floating scream. Fewer and fewer as time went on. But whenever they came back, it was like they had never fucking gone, time had never passed, and years of patient breaths at the Aoi-ya, layers and layers of mundanity, were a cheap paper trick.

He got lost, there. A little. Everyone else at the table could tell. He had gone silent.

It didn’t happen so often anymore. It was fine. This didn’t have to mean anything. I didn’t mean he had to have a bad night. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t… wasn’t the human he felt like he was in the daylight. It certainly didn’t mean Misao had to cling to his arm like this, though he pushed down the irrational anger at her acknowledging his slip.

But he kept himself from looking seriously at Kenshin for now, and bade him farewell until tomorrow a little early. Just in case.