Title: Three
Author: JC Sun
Rating: PG-13

Summary: Treize and Kenshin have been swapping notes on how to feel excruciatingly guilty about people you've killed.

*

A picnic to celebrate the first sunny day of spring. Little rabbit rice-balls, and Megumi's cakes, takeout from the Akebeko, courtesy of a temporarily financially solvent Sanosuke, who claims from an 'uncle who died and left him some money'--nobody believes him, and he's purple with outrage. Kaoru's beating him on the head when she's not chasing Yahiko around, and Megumi just looks absolutely delighted at the whole spectacle and gives up no chance to make smart remarks or flirt with Kenshin, thus enraging Kaoru even more and thus rendering Sanosuke and Yahiko's life even more miserable.

At least, that should be what's happening.

Instead, Kenshin's alone. The road stretches before him and behind him, and his only companions are the falling cherry petals drifting down to meet him. They are the only company he will have all day, and at night, he will settle down amidst the roots and have a small dinner of stale bread and salted fish. Maybe a drink from his canteen because the salted fish made him thirsty, and then, he'll lean against the tree and fall into a deep, haunted sleep.

He sleeps, and thus sleeping, dreams.

*

One:

She had been an oiran, and truly, she had been truly lovely and precious, all dark eyes set in a perfectly, a tiny little cherry of a mouth, pure skin, languid grace, a sweet voice and a strange, tentative innocence that, undoubtedly, factored into her asking price.

Had been.

It had been one of his earliest, and he had caught the target while he was dallying with his whore.

The assassination itself was no problem: the man had screamed once before dying, and even though it had been one of the earliest, the blood wasn't a problem. A quick slice across the chest, and the target had fallen face-first into his own blood.

She had seemed to take it fairly well. She sat there, examining him with those wide, perfect eyes, face so perfectly serene that he didn't foresee her attack. It was with a tiny dagger, only slightly more deadly than a chopstick, and so, he'd just flicked his sword down her face, left a long, thin scar from cheek to jaw.

She had stumbled back and clapped her hand to her face; blood welled out between her fingers and trailed vivid lines across her perfect flesh.

"Ah." she says, a sound breathed more than uttered, a sound echoed in the line of her body.

Those dark eyes fix him once again, and then, with exquisite courtesy, shows him out the door in proper form.

Later, the Hitokiri learns that Mitanoru had been her lover, that she had run away from her owner to marry him, and that with her face scarred, she dared not go back, and without her owner--

Without her owner and without her perfect beauty, at the very most, she could have been a geisha, and that was bitter indeed for a woman who had been one of the most expensive oirans in Kyoto.

She hung herself before the sun came up.

*

Two:

A Kyoto alleyway carved sharp. This was black. This was white.

She stood astride the division, the line running down her face, frost-rimmed moonlight on one side and the shadows on the other, but the glaive blades glowed with an unholy purity, the gleam of moonlight on the finest steel.

She was a little girl in her mother's weaponry, really, and that smooth face seemed barely into her teens.

But then, he reminded himself that he was not yet fifteen and that she moved with the slow, languid grace of the best, and the last batch of swordsmen the Ishin Shishi sent against her had ended up carved into thin strips of meat.

The glaives gleamed at him. "They say you have the godspeed, Hitokiri."

In those days, he had not yet earned the name of Battousai.

"Perhaps I do."

She smiled and twitched her blades, the chain clinked, caught and broke the moonlight. "Shall we find out?"

And then, she sprang at him, with the ease and power of years of practice, snapping the glaves out with a flick of her wrist, the steel blurring into a line of silver light, and she came fast, fast, faster than any he he'd ever seen, moving with a power--

But not as fast as godspeed, not as fast as the battoujutsu.

She had given him a slash from shoulder to hip--shallow, but if his parry hadn't connected and weakened the downstroke, she would have disemboweled him. Instead, she sighed as the blade slid into her chest and jerked as he pulled it free, and a clot of blood welled up from her lips, gleaming smooth and silky in the night and trickling down her throat to meet the hole in her chest.

"Godspeed." she whispered, falling heavily upon her knees. "So you do have it."

"I do."

Silence.

And she came at him again, wrenching her body up from the ground in a last, desperate stroke, quicker than even before, so to finish her, he slashed her throat wide open. No special technique, no battle cry, just a simple flick of the wrist resulting in a liquid springing up across her stained throat and her stumbling, collapsing onto the ground amidst a spreading pool of dark stuff. She choked once and dropped her glaive in order to use her hands to try and pull the separate chunks of her throat together, but the blood gushed out over her hands, and she fell forward, dead. The blood continued to flow for a bit more, but she lay still and the night wind stroked her hair and closed her eyes.

The Hitokiri Battousai bent his head in respect and in doing so, saw himself reflected in the cooling blood.

*

Three:

He wasn't going to think of it, he never meant to think of her, but somehow, she sprung up unbidden behind his eyelids. For years, afterwards, when the plums blossomed, he'd have nightmares that left him sweating and terrified in the soft night, screaming her name and in the first few years, he didn't sleep. Wandered through Japan looking like a ghost, feeling as hollow as one inside: at least ghosts had their jinchuu to hang on to. All he had was an ethic that seemed a bit shaky at the best of times and downright useless at the worst of times, and during those years, those uncertain, frightened early years, there were many worst times.

But he never stopped travelling, that his past would catch up with him, and sooner or later, he'd be tempted to reverse his blade. . .

At times, in the broad of daylight, when he was alone in the daylight and the season of the plums was past, he'd mock himself for running from his fears, for running away from a past that was as dead as the Shisengumi he had fought, for running away from her.

Perhaps he was. In those early years, he was running from her as much as he was running from his past as Hitokiri.

Imagine that.

A boy who'd killed more men than days he'd been alive, and he had dreams about one woman, dreams that terrified him more than any fight. Every slim dark-haired woman, every quiet-voiced woman made him look twice, and once or twice, he even called out her name to a familiar-seeming back, and there had been one time, the woman had turned around. Her name was Tomoe, too, but she was not his Tomoe.

So he went on until he found someone somewhat like his Tomoe. Similar enough to resurrect the old sweetness, but different enough to keep the ghosts in the graves.

And then he left her too.

*

end

*

For those who recognized her, yes, number two was based on Makie from 'Blade of the Immortal. At first, I intended to bend time and make her Makie, but I changed course at the last minute in favor of another child killer. I think something that tends to be glossed over is that Kenshin was fourteen when he left Hiko--that at *fourteen*, he became the Hitokiri Battousai. Perhaps Makie and Anotsu's child?

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