Ohayô minna san!
Wow... thank you so much for your reviews!! You made my day- I'm so happy people liked my story ^_^ ... hopefully it will stay that way.
I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for this update. I have an excuse though ;o). I'm applying for a scholarship to go to Japan for one year, and all the papers had to be ready on October first... And then my best friend, who lives a few hundred kilometres away from me, came to visit. But I fear that the next update won't be any sooner... I'm not a very fast writer (I always delete half of what I wrote the next day...). And I need to be in the mood to write, so I can't promise any regular updates- especially since my next university term is going to start in 2 weeks. I'll try not to keep you waiting any longer than necessary though :o).
Also thanks for pointing out some of my mistakes (Feel free to do so again with this chappy)! I'm going to correct them one of these days when I find the time!
Disclaimer: I'd never dare to want to own Kenshin. (I only want the right to dream of him ;o)
On with....
Chapter 2:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The night was quite dark, with thick clouds obscuring the quarter moon and a light, misty rain hanging in the autumn air. The forest around him rustled with the sounds of the night and out of the corner of his eye he could make out an owl, flying low beneath the branches of the trees.
Stopping in his silent run he stared up into the sky. Even if the moon seemed to be hiding from the world tonight some stars could be seen blinking down onto the troubled world.
Kenshin closed his eyes for a second. Someday this would be over. Someday.
Jumping high he landed on the branch of a nearby tree and went absolutely still. He could feel them coming before actually hearing them. Six men made their way through the night as stealthily as possible. When they finally came into his field of vision he quickly measured them and concluded that this was not going to be a hard job. From the way they moved he judged that only two of them were professional sword fighters. They were going to go down first.
Crouching on his branch until the group had almost reached him he took one last look upon the stars and then suddenly and without so much as the trace of a sound jumped down to stand before them.
It was quick. As he had anticipated only two of the group seemed to know what exactly to do with the swords they were carrying.
Nevertheless the blood seemed to be everywhere. And the smell... It assaulted his nostrils. How he hated the smell. It was all around. And as much as he tried he never seemed to be able to get rid of it completely.
He could close his eyes, but there just wasn't a way to escape the smell...
No stars, just the smell of what covered the grass, spotted the trunks of the trees around him and stained his hands and his soul.
No escape...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kaoru woke with a start. Everything was dark around her and only the sound of ragged breathing could be heard coming from somewhere in front of her.
Where was she? Did she fall off her futon?
Then it hit her. She was in Kenshin's room; sitting up against the wall, wrapped up in a blanket.
'Kenshin!'
Scrambling over to his futon as fast as she could without falling over the tangled up blanket she sat beside him and stared into his sweaty, sleeping face. He was breathing violently, his eyes moving madly under his closed eyelids.
Obviously he was being haunted by a nightmare.
She could feel her heart clench at seeing him like this. Surely the dream had something to do with the bakumatsu...
Again she felt this terrible need to take him into her arms. Biting her lip she reached forward tentatively and touched him gently at his shoulder to get him to wake up.
But before she could even make out any movement on his part at all, she suddenly felt a very tight grip on her wrist. Kenshin sat upright, staring into her face, a confused and somehow violent gleam in his eyes.
Then she saw recognition wash over him as if someone had just emptied a bucket of ice cold water over his head. Pulling back his hand so fast, one could have gotten the impression her skin had burned him he took a deep breath.
"Kaoru-dono"
"..." Kaoru couldn't answer. She had rarely seen him like this before. His hair was messy, with large strands hanging out of his ponytail, sweat pearls were shining on his reddened skin and his eyes were showing a glimpse of something that normally lay carefully guarded in the back of Kenshin's mind.
'Say something for heaven's sake. Don't just stare at him!'
But before she was able to form any coherent sentence in her mind Kenshin broke the silence.
"Please forgive me Kaoru-dono. Did Sessha hurt you?"
"No! No... Don't worry about it Kenshin! I'm sorry for startling you like this, but I just, well... I wanted..."
Kaoru broke off in mid-sentence and stared at the floor. She could feel her face turning red. What was she supposed to say? That she wanted to rescue him from his nightmare? Somehow it felt like a very private thing to say. And as much as she wanted to be there for him she was scared as to how Kenshin would take her unasked intrusion.
His inner demons were nothing he liked to share with anybody. Especially her. She knew that. But why did he have to be so stubborn about it in the first place? And of course she had somehow managed to give him yet another opportunity to feel guilty about something.
Clenching her fists together in frustration, still staring at the tatami mats, she suddenly felt a light touch on her shoulder and looked up.
Kenshin smiled at her. A true smile. And something in his eyes, in these powerful, deep pools, made Kaoru unconsciously hold her breath.
"Thank you Kaoru-dono. For waking me up."
Smiling Kaoru could feel her heart start to flutter in her chest at the look he gave her. Her eyes slowly wandered downward from his eyes to rest at his lips.
Suddenly a memory of earlier this day came back to her and her heartbeat sped at another few beats. Quickly she directed her gaze at something less dangerous to her puls.
'Great! My face must be as red as Kenshin's gi!'
But as hard as she tried, she just couldn't get rid of the tingling sensation she felt all over her body. Their lips had almost touched...! And he had been so close... she had been able to feel his muscular chest pressed on top of her...
'NO! No no no... stop it Kaoru!'
Shaking her head she pressed a hand to either side of her temples in an attempt to get a hold of her thoughts again.
"Kaoru-dono?? What is wrong?"
Startled Kaoru looked up at Kenshin again. He seemed to be at a loss.
"Are you alright? You're not feeling sick, are you?"
Sick...? Wait a moment. She wasn't sick. And suddenly she remembered what had brought about their sudden closeness this morning in the first place. Fantastic! There just couldn't be a single, more inattentive person on earth than herself! Here she was, sleeping in his room to make sure Kenshin would be all right and she hadn't even asked him how he felt yet!
"How is your fever?"
With that she once more placed her hand on his forehead.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kenshin stared at Kaoru.
She was sitting on her knees, one hand on the floor to support her weight as she leaned forward, the other hand he couldn't see. But he felt her cooling touch on his forehead, and once again goose bumps slowly made their way down his back.
Shivering he closed his eyes to get a grip of himself. It didn't work very well though... without consulting him first his mind was displaying rather colourful images of himself lying on top of Kaoru this morning. He still couldn't understand how that had happened. Luckily the futon had been there to break their fall... he didn't even want to think about how he could have hurt her if she had hit the floor.
The worst thing however was that his guilt seemed to be overpowered by something else... God- she had been so close!
He felt disgusted with himself for thinking about her in such a way... but the feeling of her petite form underneath him seemed to be etched into his mind.
"Kenshin??"
Opening his eyes he looked into Kaoru's anxious face. He vaguely noticed that the nice feeling on his forehead had vanished.
"Kenshin, did you hear what I said? You need to lie back down! Your fever doesn't seem to have gone down at all!"
With that she began straightening the tangled blankets on his futon.
He stared at her again. For the first time he noticed that she didn't wear her sleeping yukata but was still dressed in her training clothes. Hadn't she gone to bed? His eyes fell onto the blanket that she had dropped in front of his futon.
'Well, that would explain why I woke up staring into her face.'
He could clearly feel his headache coming back and his throat going dry at the thought of her sleeping in his room.
"Come on Kenshin. You look dead tired, lie back down and try to go back to sleep, ok?"
Almost like in slow-motion Kenshin saw her hand coming closer to him. Her touch at his shoulder was barely strong enough for him to notice, but all of a sudden he felt like a leaden weight was pulling him back down onto his pillow.
Why did he feel so terribly tired?
Kaoru had her back turned on him once more while she was working on something that he couldn't see, since it was hidden behind her.
Looking at her he found the thought that she had stayed here with him surprisingly comforting. Smiling a little he thought how people would react to the fact that having a woman watch over his sleep comforted the feared manslayer Battousai.
Closing his eyes the smile on his lips died as he berated himself for his selfish thoughts. Miss Kaoru shouldn't even be here! She should be on her futon, sleeping soundly as she deserved. Instead she was up in the middle of the night, worrying about him - and he of all people was actually having the nerve to just lie back down and go to sleep!
Sitting back up he felt a strange sort of joy as his whole body protested to his movements and the pain in his forehead increased as on command.
'Just what you deserve, Himura!'
"Kaoru- dono, Sessha has to apologize for his rudeness"
Kaoru turned around with a surprised look on her face.
He saw that the thing she had been working on was the little oven that normally belonged into the sitting room.
Staring at it he felt even worse than before.
"What are you talking about Kenshin? Didn't I tell you to lie back down?"
Meeting her gaze he answered: "Kaoru-dono, you shouldn't be doing this. Sessha will be just fine. Please don't trouble yourself like this, you should be sleeping."
Kaoru frowned at him. "And the next thing you're going to tell me is that you will have breakfast ready when I wake up, hm?"
Kenshin opened his mouth to say something, but found he didn't know what answer to give her. Looking away from her face his eyes fell onto the little oven once more. He wondered who had brought it over here. And how on earth could he have slept through something like that?
Sensing Kaoru move towards him he felt the urge to get up and take the oven back to where it belonged immediately.
"Kenshin..."
He felt her hand cup his cheek.
"Kenshin, look at me."
Unable to resist the request, Kenshin turned his gaze back to her face.
"I know what you are thinking... I've known you long enough! And I won't hear any of this crap right now. I'm going to be here for you if you like it or not!"
Before he knew what had happened he found himself back on his futon, both of her hands on his shoulders.
He didn't know why, but looking into her stern face he had to smile.
At least for tonight maybe there wouldn't be any more nightmares...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Aaah... gomen, gomen!
I apologize to everybody who anticipated a kiss *grin*. Don't worry, if you stay with me long enough you will get one. But I'm not someone to rush things... Hopefully you don't think I simply had no idea how to continue where I left off. I could have done that, but I find it more interesting if the story is not just one straight line- so you're going to learn more about stuff that happened/s through people's memories.
Oh, and to answer animuffin's question: No, I'm not Japanese. (I study the language though... it's really fun!!) I'm from Europe, but I've lived in the US for one year (as an Au Pair). *Waves to everybody from VA* Thanks for your offer to help me! Would you (or anybody else) be interested in prereading any of my chapters?
Again: A huge thank you to everybody who took the time to read!
Wow... thank you so much for your reviews!! You made my day- I'm so happy people liked my story ^_^ ... hopefully it will stay that way.
I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for this update. I have an excuse though ;o). I'm applying for a scholarship to go to Japan for one year, and all the papers had to be ready on October first... And then my best friend, who lives a few hundred kilometres away from me, came to visit. But I fear that the next update won't be any sooner... I'm not a very fast writer (I always delete half of what I wrote the next day...). And I need to be in the mood to write, so I can't promise any regular updates- especially since my next university term is going to start in 2 weeks. I'll try not to keep you waiting any longer than necessary though :o).
Also thanks for pointing out some of my mistakes (Feel free to do so again with this chappy)! I'm going to correct them one of these days when I find the time!
Disclaimer: I'd never dare to want to own Kenshin. (I only want the right to dream of him ;o)
On with....
Chapter 2:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The night was quite dark, with thick clouds obscuring the quarter moon and a light, misty rain hanging in the autumn air. The forest around him rustled with the sounds of the night and out of the corner of his eye he could make out an owl, flying low beneath the branches of the trees.
Stopping in his silent run he stared up into the sky. Even if the moon seemed to be hiding from the world tonight some stars could be seen blinking down onto the troubled world.
Kenshin closed his eyes for a second. Someday this would be over. Someday.
Jumping high he landed on the branch of a nearby tree and went absolutely still. He could feel them coming before actually hearing them. Six men made their way through the night as stealthily as possible. When they finally came into his field of vision he quickly measured them and concluded that this was not going to be a hard job. From the way they moved he judged that only two of them were professional sword fighters. They were going to go down first.
Crouching on his branch until the group had almost reached him he took one last look upon the stars and then suddenly and without so much as the trace of a sound jumped down to stand before them.
It was quick. As he had anticipated only two of the group seemed to know what exactly to do with the swords they were carrying.
Nevertheless the blood seemed to be everywhere. And the smell... It assaulted his nostrils. How he hated the smell. It was all around. And as much as he tried he never seemed to be able to get rid of it completely.
He could close his eyes, but there just wasn't a way to escape the smell...
No stars, just the smell of what covered the grass, spotted the trunks of the trees around him and stained his hands and his soul.
No escape...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kaoru woke with a start. Everything was dark around her and only the sound of ragged breathing could be heard coming from somewhere in front of her.
Where was she? Did she fall off her futon?
Then it hit her. She was in Kenshin's room; sitting up against the wall, wrapped up in a blanket.
'Kenshin!'
Scrambling over to his futon as fast as she could without falling over the tangled up blanket she sat beside him and stared into his sweaty, sleeping face. He was breathing violently, his eyes moving madly under his closed eyelids.
Obviously he was being haunted by a nightmare.
She could feel her heart clench at seeing him like this. Surely the dream had something to do with the bakumatsu...
Again she felt this terrible need to take him into her arms. Biting her lip she reached forward tentatively and touched him gently at his shoulder to get him to wake up.
But before she could even make out any movement on his part at all, she suddenly felt a very tight grip on her wrist. Kenshin sat upright, staring into her face, a confused and somehow violent gleam in his eyes.
Then she saw recognition wash over him as if someone had just emptied a bucket of ice cold water over his head. Pulling back his hand so fast, one could have gotten the impression her skin had burned him he took a deep breath.
"Kaoru-dono"
"..." Kaoru couldn't answer. She had rarely seen him like this before. His hair was messy, with large strands hanging out of his ponytail, sweat pearls were shining on his reddened skin and his eyes were showing a glimpse of something that normally lay carefully guarded in the back of Kenshin's mind.
'Say something for heaven's sake. Don't just stare at him!'
But before she was able to form any coherent sentence in her mind Kenshin broke the silence.
"Please forgive me Kaoru-dono. Did Sessha hurt you?"
"No! No... Don't worry about it Kenshin! I'm sorry for startling you like this, but I just, well... I wanted..."
Kaoru broke off in mid-sentence and stared at the floor. She could feel her face turning red. What was she supposed to say? That she wanted to rescue him from his nightmare? Somehow it felt like a very private thing to say. And as much as she wanted to be there for him she was scared as to how Kenshin would take her unasked intrusion.
His inner demons were nothing he liked to share with anybody. Especially her. She knew that. But why did he have to be so stubborn about it in the first place? And of course she had somehow managed to give him yet another opportunity to feel guilty about something.
Clenching her fists together in frustration, still staring at the tatami mats, she suddenly felt a light touch on her shoulder and looked up.
Kenshin smiled at her. A true smile. And something in his eyes, in these powerful, deep pools, made Kaoru unconsciously hold her breath.
"Thank you Kaoru-dono. For waking me up."
Smiling Kaoru could feel her heart start to flutter in her chest at the look he gave her. Her eyes slowly wandered downward from his eyes to rest at his lips.
Suddenly a memory of earlier this day came back to her and her heartbeat sped at another few beats. Quickly she directed her gaze at something less dangerous to her puls.
'Great! My face must be as red as Kenshin's gi!'
But as hard as she tried, she just couldn't get rid of the tingling sensation she felt all over her body. Their lips had almost touched...! And he had been so close... she had been able to feel his muscular chest pressed on top of her...
'NO! No no no... stop it Kaoru!'
Shaking her head she pressed a hand to either side of her temples in an attempt to get a hold of her thoughts again.
"Kaoru-dono?? What is wrong?"
Startled Kaoru looked up at Kenshin again. He seemed to be at a loss.
"Are you alright? You're not feeling sick, are you?"
Sick...? Wait a moment. She wasn't sick. And suddenly she remembered what had brought about their sudden closeness this morning in the first place. Fantastic! There just couldn't be a single, more inattentive person on earth than herself! Here she was, sleeping in his room to make sure Kenshin would be all right and she hadn't even asked him how he felt yet!
"How is your fever?"
With that she once more placed her hand on his forehead.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kenshin stared at Kaoru.
She was sitting on her knees, one hand on the floor to support her weight as she leaned forward, the other hand he couldn't see. But he felt her cooling touch on his forehead, and once again goose bumps slowly made their way down his back.
Shivering he closed his eyes to get a grip of himself. It didn't work very well though... without consulting him first his mind was displaying rather colourful images of himself lying on top of Kaoru this morning. He still couldn't understand how that had happened. Luckily the futon had been there to break their fall... he didn't even want to think about how he could have hurt her if she had hit the floor.
The worst thing however was that his guilt seemed to be overpowered by something else... God- she had been so close!
He felt disgusted with himself for thinking about her in such a way... but the feeling of her petite form underneath him seemed to be etched into his mind.
"Kenshin??"
Opening his eyes he looked into Kaoru's anxious face. He vaguely noticed that the nice feeling on his forehead had vanished.
"Kenshin, did you hear what I said? You need to lie back down! Your fever doesn't seem to have gone down at all!"
With that she began straightening the tangled blankets on his futon.
He stared at her again. For the first time he noticed that she didn't wear her sleeping yukata but was still dressed in her training clothes. Hadn't she gone to bed? His eyes fell onto the blanket that she had dropped in front of his futon.
'Well, that would explain why I woke up staring into her face.'
He could clearly feel his headache coming back and his throat going dry at the thought of her sleeping in his room.
"Come on Kenshin. You look dead tired, lie back down and try to go back to sleep, ok?"
Almost like in slow-motion Kenshin saw her hand coming closer to him. Her touch at his shoulder was barely strong enough for him to notice, but all of a sudden he felt like a leaden weight was pulling him back down onto his pillow.
Why did he feel so terribly tired?
Kaoru had her back turned on him once more while she was working on something that he couldn't see, since it was hidden behind her.
Looking at her he found the thought that she had stayed here with him surprisingly comforting. Smiling a little he thought how people would react to the fact that having a woman watch over his sleep comforted the feared manslayer Battousai.
Closing his eyes the smile on his lips died as he berated himself for his selfish thoughts. Miss Kaoru shouldn't even be here! She should be on her futon, sleeping soundly as she deserved. Instead she was up in the middle of the night, worrying about him - and he of all people was actually having the nerve to just lie back down and go to sleep!
Sitting back up he felt a strange sort of joy as his whole body protested to his movements and the pain in his forehead increased as on command.
'Just what you deserve, Himura!'
"Kaoru- dono, Sessha has to apologize for his rudeness"
Kaoru turned around with a surprised look on her face.
He saw that the thing she had been working on was the little oven that normally belonged into the sitting room.
Staring at it he felt even worse than before.
"What are you talking about Kenshin? Didn't I tell you to lie back down?"
Meeting her gaze he answered: "Kaoru-dono, you shouldn't be doing this. Sessha will be just fine. Please don't trouble yourself like this, you should be sleeping."
Kaoru frowned at him. "And the next thing you're going to tell me is that you will have breakfast ready when I wake up, hm?"
Kenshin opened his mouth to say something, but found he didn't know what answer to give her. Looking away from her face his eyes fell onto the little oven once more. He wondered who had brought it over here. And how on earth could he have slept through something like that?
Sensing Kaoru move towards him he felt the urge to get up and take the oven back to where it belonged immediately.
"Kenshin..."
He felt her hand cup his cheek.
"Kenshin, look at me."
Unable to resist the request, Kenshin turned his gaze back to her face.
"I know what you are thinking... I've known you long enough! And I won't hear any of this crap right now. I'm going to be here for you if you like it or not!"
Before he knew what had happened he found himself back on his futon, both of her hands on his shoulders.
He didn't know why, but looking into her stern face he had to smile.
At least for tonight maybe there wouldn't be any more nightmares...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Aaah... gomen, gomen!
I apologize to everybody who anticipated a kiss *grin*. Don't worry, if you stay with me long enough you will get one. But I'm not someone to rush things... Hopefully you don't think I simply had no idea how to continue where I left off. I could have done that, but I find it more interesting if the story is not just one straight line- so you're going to learn more about stuff that happened/s through people's memories.
Oh, and to answer animuffin's question: No, I'm not Japanese. (I study the language though... it's really fun!!) I'm from Europe, but I've lived in the US for one year (as an Au Pair). *Waves to everybody from VA* Thanks for your offer to help me! Would you (or anybody else) be interested in prereading any of my chapters?
Again: A huge thank you to everybody who took the time to read!