Hard Times

three: a sigh wafted across the troubled wave

i.

"Never show your face to me again," Aoshi-sama says in a voice as perfect and painful as a knife cut in her skin.

The world grows a little taller as her knees hit the ground. She can't stand, can't move, can't speak, can barely breathe.

Does he know? The thought circles around her for a few moments, drowns out evertyhing else. Strangles her in its coils.

Aoshi-sama passes her and vanishes into the trees. He's a puff of smoke, gone into thin air, and she remembers rain against wooden shutters, days that turned into weeks and no Aoshi-sama or Hannya-san returning for her.

Jiya makes a low, hoarse sound of pain. His voice is dry and scratchy, and Misao can breathe again.

Of course Aoshi-sama doesn't know. And even if he did, that's not what's important here. Jiya's hurt and Aoshi-sama is all wrong, not the man she remembers at all.

ii.

The Aoi-ya is pretty much rubble. The topmost floor is almost completely gone, and the other floors are patchworks of presence and absence: one room's been preserved, but the one next to it has caved in.

Like her family, she thinks. Some of them are dead, and some of them are broken, and some of them are whole

The roof crushed the room Okon and Shiro shared, but left Misao's room mostly intact.

She'll never use that futon again, but the chest where she keeps her uniforms, her clothes, her mementos survived.

Misao drags it out of its corner, listening for the tell-tale creak of timber. The movement hurts her rib, makes her gasp against the pain and then stand perfectly still, trying to keep her breathing even.

The ruined uniform - completely useless, little more than a few bloodied scraps of cloth now - lies waiting for her at the very bottom of the chest.

"Burn it," Okon says from behind her.

It's the first word she's ever said about anything related to how Misao got the scar.

iii.

But Misao doesn't burn the uniform. Can't burn it just as she couldn't burn her first set of kunai, can't burn it just as she can't scrub the scar from her skin.

Because she knows: the Aoi-ya is mostly rubble, and some of the Oniwabanshuu are dead, and some broke, and some are whole. But in a few weeks, the Aoi-ya will be back. All the rooms there again, and the roof tile replaced, and there might even be a few new rooms.

Just like her family.

The ripped uniform, the scar, the broken roof: they're just symbols of things that could have broken her, could have broken her family, and didn't.

She sneaks one of the broken tiles away to her room one night. She kneels by the chest and wraps the tile up in the uniform, stows it at the bottom again.

The chest makes a soft sound as it closes. Just above that, whisper-soft, she hears a shoji door close.

Misao whirls around, but there's no one in the room. She flings herself at the door, peels it open and stumbles out.

She catches sight of blue fabric turning the corner, hears the faintest hint of bare feet on the floor.

iv.

The workmen finish the Aoi-ya's roof, and they all move back in. Aoshi-sama doesn't have much at all left from his travels. A blue yukata she's pretty sure he actually picked up after he returned, his foreign coat, his kodachi, the clothes on his back.

The first night they spend in the re-built Aoi-ya, Omasu sends her to his room loaded down with bedding for a futon. His gaze is flat, expressionless, when he opens the door for her, and she almost shivers.

That question comes back: does he know? Does it stain her? Does he see that stain, clear as the color of her eyes?

He takes the blankets and mats from her arms and she squeaks, blushes.

She turns to go, then. She can't stop wondering if he knows and all that wondering makes her remember the pure, venomous hate the man who cut her spewed.

"Misao," he says.

She stops moving, turns a little to face him. "Aoshi-sama?"

Does he know?

He doesn't say anything for a moment. He only looks at her, with eyes that are alive again. "The roof tile. Why keep it?"

She smiles. "I learned things and met people worth remembering."

He keeps looking at her for a minute. No words, but maybe they don't need words. He's wondering what she learned.

She smiles even brighter, because maybe someday she'll be able to tell him.

v.

The letter crumples in her fist and the paper makes a crinkling sound as she runs. She zips down stone streets she barely sees, finds her way through the city by landmarks: there's the teashop Jiya can't go into anymore.

That's the silk vendor who sold Okon the cloth for her latest kimono. That temple offers the best candy during festivals.

That's the bath-house where she...

Misao makes an abrupt right turn. It takes her into a cramped sequence of alleys with ramshackle little buildings huddled close together. Some of them are practically built on top of each other.

A dirt track takes her to a cemetery and she wends her way to the shrine. She stops to rinse her hands and mouth and realizes that her lungs ache. Like the quiet rumble of distant thunder, she can sense the beginnings of pain building in her rib.

Despite how much it hurts to bend over, she takes off her shoes before she enters the building.

"My name is Makimachi Misao," she says to one of the shrine's keepers, gasping for breath. "And I'm looking for the diary of Yukishiro Tomoe."

The woman stares at her a moment, opens her mouth to argue.

"Her name might have been Himura Tomoe. I need the diary. Please, her husband -"

But the shrine keeper only nods and hurries away. A door opens, closes; somebody opens a chest and closes it, and then the shrine keeper returns.

"I won't ask why you need it," she says.

Misao accepts the diary with both hands, holds it close to her chest as she returns to the Aoi-ya.

vi.

They move at a steady pace, resting once an hour or so. They only stop long enough to keep their breath and drink some water, and then they move again. They eat while moving.

She never forgot how it felt to travel with him. But this feels different. This time, they both have a purpose. This time, she speeds up to match him better, while he slows down to make things a little easier on her.

Days pass. Dawns blur into sunsets and then nights that go too quickly. Misao counts them: four days, just a little over a week to go. Seven days, they're halfway there.

She shakes for a little while at sunrise on the eigth day. They're coming on a boundary.

On the ninth, she sees the smoke of the little village. She doesn't shake, but she feels her stomach quiver.

At sundown on the tenth, they enter the town.

"We'll rest here tonight," Aoshi-sama says.

"I can keep going," she tries to tell him, but he only turns and gives her a long, silent look.

The town only has one inn. It's only ever had one inn. And with the money she's brought, they can only pay for one room. The inkeep sniffs in disdain, casts one hawkish eye on Misao and says, "Good for you, travelling with a bit more protection these days."

While Misao's too busy with the knot crawling into her throat to talk, the inkeep turns to Aoshi and smiles. The wrinkles on her tanned, leathery face don't mask the smug, faintly sadistic gleam of a cat that's found an interesting mouse.

The old woman explains to Aoshi-sama that all her living sons have gone off to Tokyo, and all her good sons died in the Bakumatsu. She rents out spare rooms by the night, since she's getting too old to farm. It's nice to see a young man who respects his female relatives, since her own are so ungrateful.

Aoshi-sama never cuts her off. He never really indicates that he's listening, either.

"My only girl wasn't quite so lucky as yours here," the old woman says as she leads them to their room. "She died three years ago. And then I met yours about a year after that. Nice child. It's always the nice ones, really."

That gets Aoshi-sama's attention. She can tell because he tilts his head, looking down at the little old woman. He doesn't say anything, but who needs him to, with that calculating expression in his eyes?

The knot in Misao's throat gets even bigger and begins to taste like bile.

"A-anyway," she says, forcing the words out past a dry mouth. "It's been kind of a long trip and we have a way to go -"

"Yes, dear, I'm sure you need your rest. And stay off the streets tonight, will you?"

Misao bristles. Stay off the streets tonight. As if she's the one who committed a crime. As if it's her fault.

But Aoshi-sama still has that calculating look in his eyes, so she just smiles and nods and says, "Of course, okami-san. Thank you so much for the room."

Misao closes the shoji door, flicks the tab to lock it without second thought. It's silly, the thought of "locking" rice paper, when somebody could just use something thin to slip the tab, or punch through the door.

But any barrier's better than no barrier.

Aoshi-sama watches her and doesn't say anything about it. He opens the window for a little light, then pulls bedding out of the cabinet and lays down mats and blankets, layering them quickly.

The whole time, just like Okon, he never says a word about it.

She can't bring herself to, either.

vii.

She wakes in the middle of the night. She's shuddering and her stomach quakes, but she's plenty warm. She's too warm, really.

The window's open and she has to repress a shudder. It's strange, how easily the memory comes back to her: the agonizing climb back up the inn with her leg aching and the pulled muscles in her shoulder barely allowing her to move. She remembers falling from the window onto the floor, remembers curling up in the futon, rolling a sheet between her legs, remembers half-heartedly settling part of a blanket over the cut on her thigh.

She remembers the wet slide of blood from the cut on her thigh, the pumping, pulsing ooze of blood from where he'd touched her.

The moonlight's always a little dimmer this time of year, caught up in the haze of summer.

Funny, she remembers the shapes the shadows made, crawling slowly along the wall. Remembers very clearly every moment until the room went gray, and then blurry, and then vanished.

She doesn't remember much after that. Fragments, really: sunlight, a gasp, the face of a doctor, the hands of a midwife.

But mostly what's stayed with her, these past two years, is the pain of that final reach for the window, is the shadows on the wall of the room as she lay down and bled, is the harsh murmur of his hateful words.

She stands up, shakes her head as if that'll clear all the memories out, and closes the shutter.

viii.

She wakes early and sees the shutter is open again, but it's nearly dawn. Aoshi-sama is still in bed, but he's not sleeping. His eyes are open, and he's looking at her.

He looks contemplative. Like he's thinking something heavy.

Once again she remembers the thought: stained, colored differently. Is it visible from the outside? Is it obvious?

It might well be, thanks to that old woman. But Misao can't bring herself to think too badly of the old innkeep. To lose a child to that filth: not just a piece of yourself, but your whole, actual child -

It must be worse. It must hurt worse. (Please, please, let there be something worse than this because it hurts so fresh, she almost prays.)

Misao just wishes the old woman hadn't treated it like... Like what? Like it wasn't secret? Like it wasn't shameful? Isn't that what she's been telling herself, that it isn't anything she should be ashamed of, that it wasn't her fault?

So why does she feel like she's been pushed to the ground and her uniform ripped open again?

Aoshi-sama sits up in bed.

She flushes. "Were you... waiting for me to wake up?"

"No," Aoshi-sama says. He casts a glance at her and she turns her back to him. She can't stop the way her pulse races, but she fights the temptation to turn her head.

Does she really want to see right now? She's not sure, but the part of her that nobody can touch is yowling at passing up a free glimpse of Aoshi-sama naked.

She closes her eyes for an instant, to help fight the temptation (and maybe to let her imagination fill in a little). But when she opens them, Aoshi-sama has stepped around her, is peeling his shirt on over his head, then shrugging into his over shirt.

All she can do is watch his skin slide under the dark fabric. She loves every bared inch of it, and then every concealed inch of it.

His hands move along his obi in quick, efficient jerks that make her wonder what he looks like undressing. Or undressing someone else.

He grabs their bags, settling the strap of his over his shoulder and wrapping the strap of hers around one wrist, then lifts his boots with his other hand. He nudges the shoji open with his foot, and then it slides closed again.

She's out of the futon and dressed in a flash, folds and stores everything as quickly as she can. When she steps out, Aoshi-sama is waiting for her.

They go downstairs together, and with him around, she finds it's easier to smile in this inn, in this town. She asks about his dreams, and laughs off a short inquiry about the shutter, saying she doesn't sleep with the shutter open at home, either.

And that's true.

She catches sight of the doctor, standing by the doorway.

"Misao-chan," Tanaka-sensei says and she feels herself stiffen.

She looks around, half out of instinct, half out of hope that this brief stay in this stupid town won't get any worse.

But it can and it does, because Tanaka-sensei's son is with him today. He's a little away from the door, talking animatedly to the innkeep's only help, a dimpled widow old enough to be his mother.

"I must say I didn't expect to see you back in this town, Misao-chan," Tanaka-sensei says, and even though he's smiling, there's something unfriendly in it.

Next to her, she feels Aoshi-sama tense, like he's sensed a threat. Or maybe like he's restraining himself from hauling off and punching somebody.

She wonders again if Aoshi-sama knows, but if he does, he's never said anything. She's never said anything. Maybe, between the two of them, it doesn't matter.

"Just passing through, Tanaka-sensei," she says.

"Well, I'm sure you must have important business. I'd hate to keep you from it."

Aoshi-sama stays between the two of them as they pass him.

She's grateful for that. If he hadn't, she might have shoved the aging doctor, might have demanded to know why he was covering up for his son. Might have forced the issue.

And that's not what's important to her right now. It's important, she wants justice so badly it's a taste in her mouth, but what if she goes chasing justice when she could have been helping Kaoru-san?

ix.

The first night in the Kamiya dojo - Kaoru-san's dojo, and that thought only makes her cry harder - she doesn't even try to sleep. Instead, she curls up and cries.

She cries a little for what was taken from her, that she's had to relive again.

She cries a little for what was taken from Okon, because she understands now, even if she didn't when she was younger.

She cries a lot for what's been taken from Yahiko. She sees how much he needed both Kaoru-san and Himura, and now they're both gone in the ways that matter.

She cries most of all simply for Kaoru-san. Kaoru-san, who loved life. Kaoru-san, who found joy in teaching, and found something to fight for in Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu, and people to live for in the Kenshin-gumi. Kaoru-san, who smiled and laughed and cried and cared -

Kaoru-san, who didn't deserve to die. Not like this. Never like this. Not in pain, not in fear, not as part of someone else's long grudge against Himura. Not as a figment of somebody else's hatred.

"You said you'd wait for me," Misao sobs.

They've both seen too much of hate.

x.

It's funny to think that it's all been settled in a matter of hours. She's lost another set of kunai, but those are easily enough replaced in a town like Tokyo.

She'll start looking for a new set tomorrow. What's important tonight is listening to the joy return to Yahiko's voice, in watching the way Himura seems so much more alive than he did, even when he was up and fighting, at home with Kaoru-san.

Megumi-san and Sagara fill another room - and this one too - with the sound of their arguing. Aoshi-sama sits quietly beside her.

She turns her head to look at him. His face is placid, but his hand twitches just an inch. She covers his fingers with her own for an instant, then leans forward and pours a little more tea into his cup.

As she watches the green liquid fill the porcelain, she realizes that it doesn't matter what he knows or doesn't know. Tanaka-sensei's son took something from her, took it and tore it up and threw a few pieces back to her.

But Enishi took Kaoru-san and Himura from Yahiko, and the Aizu war took Megumi-san's parents, and Aoshi-sama's lost what he cherished, too.

They're still here. They're still whole.

Tanaka-sensei's son took away her ownership of her body. But he only kept it a night, and if she found Aoshi-sama, she can find that again, too.

She still has a part of her that nobody can touch.

Dedicated with all love and gratitude to Leviathanmirror and Jason X, who beta-read and cheer-led and in general were my only touchstones for sanity while I wrote this.

Notes:

I wrote this piece as a response to Western Ink's "Daughter Figure." Aoshi's contemplation of Misao being "stained" struck a bad chord. The chord reverberated around in my head for days, and suddenly I was about a hairsbreadth from writing meta.

I wound up writing this instead.