Kenshin? What are you writing?” Kaoru tried to peek over his shoulder, but he had already folded the letter into the envelope and was addressing it in careful, plain characters. Gorou Fujita. “Gorou Fujita? You're writing to Saitou? Kennshiiiinnn…” She loomed over him menacingly, veins standing out on her forehead and her eyes slitting dangerously. In another moment she would reach for a shinai and…
“I have to do this, Kaoru-dono,” he explained sadly. “You heard what Megumi-dono said. I’m losing my ability to perform Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu. Anything that is still to be settled between us has to be settled now, while I still can.”
“Do you have to?” she asked in a small voice. Her arm dropped to her side and tears welled up in her beautiful sapphire eyes. “Do you have to settle everything?”
He rose and cupped her face in one slender hand, his thumb brushing away the sparkling drops. “Yes I do,” he told her with a feather-kiss on her forehead. “For all his help, I owe him that much.”
She clung to him. “I’m so scared… when you fought him before, he almost killed you… and you couldn’t stand against him without turning into… into…”
“Into the hitokiri?”
She nodded. “I’m so scared you won’t come back… or if you do, you won’t be you any more.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders, leaned his forehead against hers. “I’m stronger than I was then. For a little while, I’m still stronger. I faced Shishio, I faced Enishi, and I came back. So… can you believe in me one last time?”
“I… I guess so. I keep having this horrible feeling that something’s going to take you away from me!”
He kissed her eyes, the tip of her nose, her lips. “I’ll come back to you. I promise. And I’ll never go looking for trouble again.”
“Then… take care.” She took a step backwards; her hands slid along his arms as though to touch him as long as possible.
“I will.”
Chou looked at the envelope. “From Battousai? Has he come to hand you a thank-you letter from this case?”
“Want to read it?” Saitou asked.
“H…m. What? What? A… an-san, this…!”
“Feh,” the sardonic officer snorted. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t something to joke about,” Chou wondered. “At last, it’s finally… you going?”
“Mm. Alone.” Saitou took a long drag on his cigarette, and thought about the first time he had seen the young hitokiri…
The trap had been perfect, they'd cornered a whole nest of the rats who called themselves men of high purpose. They had burst in, cut down several – but then it all went wrong, the wounded leaders were escaping out the back, and their way was blocked by…
He looked as young as Okita, but the slash down his cheek belied youth’s innocence. His clothes were midnight and shadow, and his hair bright as the flames that lit the alley. Golden as flames too were his eyes, but there was none of the fire’s warmth in them, they were amber ice. His sword was sheathed, his right hand poised to draw. His whole posture said you shall not pass. His men yelled and charged. In an eyeblink they were bleeding corpses, and Saitou knew the opponent was the new one, the shadow assassin whom no one had seen and lived, whose name was only a whisper of unbelievable speed and strength, the one they called the Sword-drawing Master.
Battousai!
And even as he moved to face the newcomer and extended his senses to feel the shape and texture and heat of his ki, he tightened with desire and wondered what it would be like to burn in the flame of the younger man’s spirit, if he could find the same pure passion in that beautiful, delicate, steel-strong body that he found in fighting…
Battousai was sitting on a rock next to the river, his sword propped loosely against his shoulder, staring at the sky. The late afternoon sun made him look like he was crowned with flames. I always think of him in fire…
“So you came after all.” Battousai’s face was hidden by shadow, his eyes obscured by the touseled mane. He stood up and pushed his saya through the ties of his tattered hakama.
“Let's settle this.” Saitou drew his sword, faced his enemy in Gatotsu stance. “Once and for all, Battousai. Iku zo!”
He sprang forward, almost too fast for an untrained eye. Kenshin was already high over his head, blade flashing from its saya to descend on Saitou’s head as he dropped. Ryuu Tsui Sen. Saitou knew the attack well, though, and raised his blade to deflect it; Kenshin twisted aside and narrowly escaped skewering. He landed and resheathed his sword, glaring pale orchid at Saitou. The older man took up the Gatotsu stance again. In a blur of speed, he stabbed forward. Kenshin sidestepped, pivoted and drew in one motion. Again Saitou anticipated the move, bringing his blade up to block the rising sword – but a sharp blow from the saya caught him on the forearm. The Wolf bared his teeth; the blow had missed the nerve-point by only a few sun. Had it struck there, his arm would have been useless.
And it went on…
Kenshin’s kimono hung in tatters, his chest burned, his sakabatou felt heavy and unresponsive in his hand. Saitou had managed to block his ougi twice. Mibu’s Wolf didn’t look like he was in any better shape; he had doffed his uniform jacket and his shirt was slashed in several places; a bloodstain was slowly spreading over his sleeve. The hair that tumbled over his forehead dripped with sweat.
“Let’s finish this,” Saitou growled.
Kenshin nodded once, and sheathed his blade.
Two men moved, blurs of flame and darkness. Steel met steel with a ringing clash and the slide of metal on metal.
Saitou stepped forward, inside Kenshin’s stroke. He dropped his own blade, seized Kenshin’s ponytail, and brought his mouth down hard on the rurouni’s in a brutally thorough kiss.
Kenshin froze, for an instant too startled to respond. His reading of the other man’s fighting ki hadn’t anticipated that move. And after so many years, he had forgotten the feel and taste of a man. Oh, as a green boy newly arrived in Kyoto he had wondered… but then he’d discovered women… and as the killings went on and he felt his spirit stained with blood he’d begun to draw away from intimacy altogether. After Tomoe’s death he’d had no heart for other joinings, until…
I’ll come back to you. I promise.
Saitou’s greater weight bore him to the ground; the sakabatou fell from suddenly limp fingers as the older man’s hands tore at his clothing, searing lips moved down his throat, hard heat pressed against his groin…
Kaoru-dono…
He could feel himself hardening, rising heat overwhelming him, Saitou smelled of sweat and tobacco and wool and blood and he was drowning in it, the calluses on the older man’s hands rasping his sensitive skin…
Kaoru-dono!
He twisted away, tensed and flung the former Shinsengumi captain away from him. Saitou rolled with the impact and came up to see Battousai on his feet, his chest bare and his hair loose around his shoulders, glaring at him with those icy golden eyes, his face twisted into an expression of absolute hatred and revulsion.
“For your help in saving Kaoru-dono,” he growled, “I’ll let you live this time. But if you ever touch me again you’re a dead man, Hajime Saitou.”
So beautiful… but not for me. I hope the tanuki-girl appreciates what she’s got – as much as a woman can. “Naruhodo,” he said aloud. His face settled back into its customary closed non-expression. He snapped his blade sharply downward in an empty gesture of chiburi, and resheathed it, picked up his discarded uniform jacket, and began to walk away. At the edge of the field he paused and looked back. “Battousai.”
“Oro?” Kenshin turned innocent violet eyes toward Saitou.
“Would you have? In the old days?”
Then? Before Tomoe… before…? He thought back to his first weeks in Kyoto, at first so excited to be in the capital, to be one of the men of high purpose who were changing the era. He had a last name, and daisho, and the samurai around him accepted him as one of themselves, and sometimes he had looked at them and wondered if any of them wanted to touch him as Shishou had. But none of them had Shishou’s strength, none had his tenderness, and eventually his loneliness had found relief not in one of his comrades, but in Tomoe. Saitou? He had never given an instant’s thought to sharing himself with one of the Shinsengumi – they had been the enemy!
And yet… and yet… that strength… that mastery… his body’s unbidden response… building in him again as he remembered the older man’s lips on his… Mibu’s Wolf had none of Shishou’s tenderness, but… he was so drawn to that strength…
Amber flickered in his eyes again. “I would have killed you.” The words tore from his soul, leaving raw wounds, only half truth. Only if I cut you down before you kissed me. The boy he had been would have burned up in that kiss like paper in fire, even though it would have meant certain death for both of them.
“Naruhodo. And this will be the last time.”
“Oro?”
“I’m transferring to Yokohama. It’s a promotion, I’ll be able to have my family there and spend more time with my boys.”
Kenshin blinked. He’d known Saitou had a wife – he still thought putting up with the Wolf would qualify any woman for a seat in paradise – but children too? “Is Eiji-dono still with you?” he asked.
“Aa. He’s coming along well. Yours isn’t bad either. Of course neither of them would last a minute against what we were at their age.”
“They have no need in the Meiji era.”
“Still naïve. Oh well, you'll never change… and neither will I. Sayonara, Battousai.” He walked away, the tall figure growing gradually smaller until it was swallowed by the shadows of the darkening streets.
Saitou… Kenshin picked up his sakabatou. The stars were coming out over the city; the breeze off the river chilled him through his slashed garments. He hurried home. Suddenly he wanted very badly to be surrounded by light, and warmth, and Kaoru…
Kenshin no baka! Kaoru slammed the cleaver down again and again. Slicing daikon was doing nothing to relieve her frustration. He’s so selfish, going off to fight Saitou and making me worry! Just like a stupid man, you'd think he didn’t have any better sense than – than Sanosuke! Chop! Chop! Chop! “Mattaku!” She swept the pieces of daikon into the cookpot.
Without any warning, there were steel-strong arms around her waist, and a warm body pressed against her back, and lips brushing the side of her neck. “Tadaima,” Kenshin murmured, so close to her ear that his breath sent shivers of delight down her spine.
“O… okaeri.” He smelled of sweat and grass and dirt… a little of tobacco smoke… not so much of blood. Yokatta… “Daijoubu?”
“Aa.” He buried his face in her hair, breathing in its clean scent. Her body molded itself to his, yielding as a willow, with the flexible strength of a fine blade. “Only tired, and dirty. If dinner can wait, I’d like a bath first.”
“Hai, I thought you’d want one so I lit the fire right after you left.”
“The food will be all right… oro?” Little brown things were bobbing on top of the seething water in the cookpot. The scored surface of the cutting board told the rest of the story. “Kaoru-dono, did I make you that angry?”
“Huh? Oh no!” she cried as she saw the wood chips. “I was so worried… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
“Maa, maa, daijoubu. They float, so you can take them out. See?” Still holding her with his left arm, Kenshin skimmed the offending bits out with a flat dish. “All gone.” He moved the pot to one side so the vegetables would cook more slowly. “I never mean to make you worry,” he murmured, and claimed her lips in a lingering kiss. No struggle for dominance here, she melted in his embrace and he let himself sink into her fragrant peace. This was real, this was true, this was something he could build his life on…
Not to mention that Kaoru tasted a lot better.
“So did you and Saitou settle things between you?” Kaoru snuggled against him in the bath and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Not really.”
“Mou! After all that…?”
He put his arm around her, gathered her close, and leaned his scarred cheek against her hair. “Yare yare. It’s been too late to settle things for a long time. But it doesn’t matter any more.”
“He won’t come after you again?”
“No.”
And that in itself was a resolution. Time and changing circumstances had chosen his path, as much as any conscious decision he had ever made. The rest of his future lay with this woman. And if some buried part of him still craved rougher fare, well, that part of him could die with the hitokiri.
He cuddled Kaoru against him and let the water’s heat soak everything else away.
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
One otherwise fine Saturday morning last fall, I woke up with my head full of Saitou passionately kissing Kenshin. I decided that my subconscious was nuts. Then I started wondering, just what has the Wolf wanted from Battousai all these years? The idea wouldn’t leave me alone, so I started writing it. Right away the story started degenerating into a fight over who got to be seme, and I thought it was going to fizzle. Then I hit on Kenshin promising Kaoru he would come back… and the whole thing developed into an alternative to what Kenshin and Saitou’s last meeting actually was in the manga. The scene with Chou is a more or less direct quote; from there the story goes in its own direction.
Mimi Zhou’s “Ukiyoe: Five Scenes” has haunted me ever since I first read it; it’s just about the only fic I’ve ever seen that puts Kenshin in a yaoi pairing I can believe in. So for purposes of this story, something like it happened – and left young Kenshin with an impossible standard for judging prospective partners.
I got men of high purpose out of Ryotaro Shiba’s The Last Shogun. For some reason the English translation of Ishin Shishi seemed to fit better here.
Kaoru’s cooking: yes I did steal this from a Ranma OAV. I don’t usually write Kaoru as Akane-in-a-kimono, but she gets so mad when she worries…