FicWad

Disclaimer: Watsuki-sensei is the king. Sony, Shueisha, Media Blasters, ADV, Fuji TV and Viz are the nobles. I'm just a little pion. I thank Watsuki-sensei for this opportunity. I write for the love, not for the money.

November 15, 1878
Kamiya Dojo

Two months had passed since Kenshin, Kaoru and the others had defeated Enishi and returned from the Island. Kenshin had been badly injured in the fight, but thanks to Megumi's immaculate care, he had healed nicely. It had been very hard on Kaoru to see Kenshin injured so badly after the fight with Shishio and then again only two months later against Enishi.

Three weeks spent in the company of the vengeance-driven man who took pleasure in making Kenshin suffer hadn't helped her either. For the first time in her life, Kaoru was being plagued by nightmares. Normally, the dreams would run their course and she'd sleep on. Tonight was different...

Kaoru looked at the deathly pale body of her beloved rurouni lying on the futon, swathed from head to toe in bandages. His breathing had been rapid and shallow since he'd returned from Mt. Hiei, all but carried by Sano. He hadn't moved or spoken since then. All Kaoru could do was watch and wait. The waiting was the hardest. Every minute seemed like an hour, every hour like an eternity.

Suddenly, the rurouni inhaled deeply and sharply, violet eyes flying open. Kaoru was at his side in an instant, hoping he was waking up. His eyes rolled back in his head as he let out a shaky death rattle and went still.

Kaoru stared at him in shock for a second before her brain started to function again.

"MEGUMI-SAN! IT'S KENSHIN!!!" she screamed.

Megumi was in the room in an instant, checking Kenshin's eyes, pulse and heart rate. She looked up from Kenshin's body with tears in her eyes and shook her head. She covered Kenshin's face with the blanket, marking him deceased. Kaoru felt her strength drain from her as she went down on her hands and knees.

"No, no! Kenshin! Please no...!" she sobbed as she pounded the floor in grief. "Please Kenshin... no... don't go..."

Kaoru's blue eyes snapped open, her breathing and heart rate accelerated. She looked and saw Kenshin on the futon next to hers, chest rising and falling as he slept peacefully. He was alive and healthy. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him till he "orod". Instead she stood up, donned a haori and stepped out into the night air.

The stars were out in their full glory, looking like the proverbial diamonds in the sky. A full moon cast its pale light to earth, dimly illuminating Kaoru's surroundings. The trees were in the middle of shedding their multicolored leaves. With a sigh, Kaoru sat on the engawa and stared up at the moon, which stared silently back at her.

'I wish these nightmares would stop. All that was months ago, but I can't get these images of him suffering and dying out of my mind,' Kaoru thought with a shiver, pulling the haori around her for warmth.

---
Though asleep, Kenshin's mind became dimly aware of a sense of loss. Something vitally important was missing. As he moved toward wakefulness, he became aware that Kaoru's bright ki wasn't in the room as it should have been. Opening his violet eyes, Kenshin saw that her futon was unoccupied and the door to the outside was open.

Forcing himself to stay composed, Kenshin cast out his ki to seek Kaoru's. Ah, there she was! Kenshin let out a small sigh of relief. However, something in her ki troubled him, a lingering sense of unease. Kenshin rose and donned his yukata and haori, then went out to join his woman in the night air.

Kaoru looked up when she heard the door slide open and saw Kenshin standing there looking at her, the moonlight giving his auburn hair a bewitching appearance. Kaoru continued to stare as Kenshin approached her and sat down beside her. For a moment, neither spoke.

"I'm sorry if I woke you up," said Kaoru, uncertainty in her voice.

"Your absence woke me up," Kenshin replied, as he sat next to her.

"Oh..." said Kaoru, not certain what to say.

"Please tell me," Kenshin said softly.

"I had a nightmare about Kyoto," she confessed hesitantly. "After your fight with Shishio you were so badly injured and in so much pain. I kept watching over you but... Kenshin... you still died."

Kenshin let out a sigh, blaming himself as usual.

"I first had that dream after you and the others returned from Mt. Hiei. I've been having it sometimes since then, but usually I just get through it," said Kaoru.

"I wish you would've told me," Kenshin scolded gently. "Dreams are the heart's way of telling the mind what your true desires and fears are. You should never ignore them."

"My fears...?" said Kaoru to herself. Kenshin slipped his hand over hers, causing her to turn to him.

"Tell me," he whispered.

"Being weak, being unable to fight for myself, disgracing my father's legacy by being unable to live up to his ideals," whispered Kaoru, looking down at the callused hand over hers. "But those aren't the worst...

"Kenshin, my very worst fears... involve you."

Feeling Kenshin tense, Kaoru looked up into a pair of stricken violet eyes. He looked as if she'd just slapped him across the face. Kaoru quickly realized that Kenshin thought she meant fear of him hurting her, or worse.

"Oh Kenshin, no no! I don't mean fear of you. I mean fear about you and for you," she said soothingly, reaching up to stroke his hair. Kenshin relaxed immediately.

"Please tell me."

"Only if you promise not to feel guilty and blame yourself. You can't help what my fears are," said Kaoru firmly.

"I'll try not to," said Kenshin with a smile.

"Okay... I'm afraid of losing you," she finally admitted. "I used to have nightmares of you just leaving the dojo to wander again. After you left for Kyoto, I relived your departure over and over again in my dreams. I was so helpless. I couldn't stop you from leaving to fight. All I did for two days after was lie in bed and cry. It took Megumi almost slapping me to bring me back to my senses. Ever since then, I've been afraid that one day I'll wake up to find you gone again."

"Kaoru, my wandering days were over the moment I said it was good to be home. My place is with you," said Kenshin, sorrow flashing in his eyes. He felt guilty for causing his beloved such pain.

"I know. They're just silly nightmares and fears. But they're so real," sighed Kaoru. "Now I have these nightmares of you suffering, dying. I couldn't do anything for you when you were at death's door after fighting Shishio. I hated seeing you injured and feverish. You don't deserve to hurt, even if you think you do. You've suffered for others, for me. I can never do anything but stand there and watch. Sometimes... I feel so weak and useless."

Kenshin cupped Kaoru's chin in his free hand and forced her to look him in the eye.

"Don't you ever say that again," he said in a dropped voice. "Kaoru is not weak or useless. Kaoru is a great fighter and a strong woman. Kaoru helped take out the Juppongatana while Sanosuke and I were on Mt. Hiei and Kaoru stayed by my side for two weeks when I was near death after fighting Shishio."

Kaoru gave a startled gasp at this last sentence.

"How did you know?" she said.

"I knew," Kenshin said softly. "Though I couldn't open my eyes, I knew you were there. Beyond that, I cannot explain."

Kenshin paused a moment, then continued. He wanted Kaoru to know what her presence in his life had come to mean to him.

"The pain was terrible. So terrible that I sometimes wished for the release of death... But when you touched me, the pain faded. It became something less, something I could live through. I could always sense you at my bedside."

"I didn't want you to wake up alone in a strange place," whispered Kaoru, glancing up at his face.

Kenshin's eyes softened and he fixed her with a warm smile, taking both her hands in his.

"Your voice was the only thing that reached through my nightmares, my only connection to the real world," murmured Kenshin. "When you sang to me, all the demons fled and I saw you, standing in light, calling me back from beyond."

"Kaoru... koishi... I too have something to confess... the reason it took us three weeks to come for you..."

Kenshin stopped and took a shaky breath, trying to collect himself for the mental assault he was about to put himself through.

"Kaoru... you have the right to know about Enishi's... true Jinchuu."

"This time I will take away the one you love the most, casting you down into a living hell."

He lowered his gaze and tried to compose himself as the memory of Kaoru's open lifeless eyes haunted him again. Choking back emotion, Kenshin told her about Gein's specialty of creating detailed, lifelike dolls that were so realistic, they could fool a doctor.

"When I came into the dojo after fighting Enishi I found you... pinned to the wall... with Enishi's watou thrust through your heart... and a cruciform scar carved into your cheek."

Kaoru felt warm tears splash on her fingers as Kenshin wept silently. Sickened by what she'd just heard, she clasped the swordsman's hands more tightly in her own. Kenshin kept his gaze on the engawa for a few minutes before he was composed enough to continue.

"When I saw you... it... everything stopped. I... couldn't move. I couldn't think," he said slowly, never looking up. "For two weeks, I lived as though dead in Rakuninmura."

"The Outcast Village?" said Kaoru in disbelief. Kenshin nodded, still without looking up.

"It was Tsubame-dono who helped. Kujirinami escaped from jail so Yahiko fought him. But he was badly injured, so Tsubame-dono came into Rakuninmura and called to me, asked for my help. It was her voice that woke me up."

"Oh Kenshin... I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. I love you."

Kenshin's whole body went rigid when he heard those words. Kaoru loved him. How should he respond to her? What should he say? 'I love you', those words were inadequate for him. How could 'I love you' describe a need so profound that he'd suffered a nervous breakdown when he thought her dead? How could they describe her being the center of his world and his very reason for drawing breath?

Kaoru ran her fingers slowly up Kenshin's arms to his shoulders, gently pulling him toward her. Kenshin relaxed into her embrace. They sat in silence for a long time, Kenshin with his head resting against Kaoru's chest, listening to the sound of her heart beating, drawing comfort from the warmth of her embrace. At last he found a release for the pain he'd carried inside him for the past few months. Kaoru stroked his fiery hair, digesting the story he'd just told her. Now she understood why he'd woken up screaming from that nightmare on their first night back in the dojo, why he'd clung to her as if afraid he'd lose her at any moment.

"Aren't we a funny pair?" she said at length. "I lost my will to live when you left for Kyoto and you lost yours when you thought I was dead. Neither of us can live without the other, it seems. I think we were definitely made for each other, wouldn't you say?"

Kaoru meant it partly as a joke to lighten the mood. Kenshin, in no frame of mind for jokes, raised his head and looked at her solemnly with those heartbreaking violet eyes.

"For 14 years after I lost Tomoe, I wandered through the world alone, never allowing myself to get close to anyone," he proceeded to say. "I thought this was right. I believed myself so stained with bloodguilt that anyone I got close to would be tainted by it. My duty was only to protect people, but never to allow them to love me, or even protect me if need be. When I learned the secret of Hiten Mitsurugi from Shishou, I nearly died because of that mistaken belief. When I saw Shishou charging me down with the Kuzu Ryu Sen, my mind was flooded by memories of the people who had become close to me and the final one was of you, crying out for me.

Suddenly, I realized that I had been living my life very much in the wrong for the past decade. I found a strength I never knew I could possess, much greater than the willingness to die for those I would protect: the willingness, the need to live.

On Mt. Hiei, after Shishio Makoto's sword pierced my side, I lay on the ground, my life blood seeping out of the wound. I saw the shadow of death over me. I was ready to surrender, ready to move into the next world. But just at that moment, I remembered the promise I'd made to you.

'Let's all go back to Tokyo together...'

It was the memory of that promise and the renewed will to live from it that gave me the strength to get up and fight on. If you hadn't come after me, I never would have gained the will to live and the true strength needed to fight Shishio. I would have died an empty shell with only the coldness of the Hitokiri in my heart and the stench of blood in my nostrils.

You are my will to live, Kaoru. Live on with me as my wife and complete my soul," Kenshin finished, fixing her with a hopeful gaze.

"Kenshin, I wouldn't have it any other way."

Joy broke out over Kenshin's features like a thousand suns.

They leaned forward and kissed each other deeply, their bodies silhouetted by the arc of the large moon, now setting in the western horizon. The couple turned and watched as the moon continued to sink in the horizon, the first pinkish light of the rising sun just starting to creep into the eastern sky.

~~Owari~~