Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, the setting, the time period, or even the plot that has gone before. Also, I have no money. It will be a pointless effort in malicious spite to sue me over this piece of fan fiction.

Notes: Well, though it's sort of more Ch 22b, I'm going to just call it Ch 23. It's long enough to be on its own.

Chapter 23

Sano sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. The last of summer's heat was on the way out, and the walk to the river had been accompanied by a welcome breeze. He scooped up some water in one of the buckets they'd brought, and set it on a level area nearby. Any fish they caught would get dumped in the bucket to stay fresh until dinner. He reached out to grab a hook and some of the bait they'd brought out of the second bucket, and found Kenshin holding it out to him.

"Bet I catch more than you do, Kenshin," he challenged with a grin.

Kenshin met his expression with a small smile of his own, and sat down next to him. "You most certainly will, Sano. Especially since this one does actually have to do his paperwork."

Sano rolled his eyes and tossed the baited hook out into the water. "Oh, come on. How serious could it be, anyway? It's just a bunch of spy reports or something."

A red eyebrow twitched upwards. "And you would know this because you read it, Sano?"

He hunched his shoulders defensively and kept his eyes on the water. "Not read it, exactly. But flipped through it, yeah." Sano jerked a thumb toward the stack of parchment at Kenshin's side. "Pretty pointless, if you ask me. Busy work. Let Saitou do it."

Kenshin chuckled, and lifted the stack to his lap. "Saitou has his own paperwork, Sano."

"Does he," Sano muttered. He wondered what the point was of reading all the reports. With a government as full of two-faced politicians as this one, it was useless to keep track of what seemed like a random dozen or so. Even if the two of them ran through the whole bureaucracy, the likelihood of people's shopping lists being of any value was slim.

The line in his hand twitched, and Sano twitched it back, hoping to hook a fish before it made off with the bait unharmed. No luck. He left the line out there anyway, and snuck a glance over at Kenshin. The man was frowning slightly at a line of text on the second page, his demeanor now unguardedly serious, bordering on grim.

Sano drew the line back in and inspected the hook before throwing it out over the water again. He didn't think he was wrong about this morning. Kenshin might have gotten some peace doing kata out here, but not enough to be genuinely humming in the kitchen. Not if he'd thrown that hatchet across the yard. Not if he was this serious as soon as Sano turned his attention elsewhere. He was definitely hiding something. Something that bothered him enough that he'd wanted to leave the dojo. And Kenshin pulling it all back inside, like he did before Kyoto… Sano got the impression it was deliberate, and that if he left it alone too long, the distance would be too established to get rid of again.

"Would you tell me?"

Kenshin looked up from his work, confused. "Oro?"

Sano caught his eyes and somehow managed to hold them. "If there was something wrong, or something I could help with, or something I could do... Hell, if there was something you just needed to talk about, even, would you tell me?"

He didn't get an answer immediately, and Sano was almost glad for that as he watched his friend shift his gaze to study the far shore. It meant Kenshin was really thinking about it, and that meant he'd get an honest answer. Or at least one that wasn't instinctually evasive.

"Sano, with this job…" Kenshin trailed off for a moment, then seemed to decide on a different start. "In most ways that matter, Sano, this one has become a hitokiri in the shadows again. There's a mentality that goes with that, by necessity. Things you can't be involved in. Things you can't see, or shouldn't know." He paused. "Things that would be dangerous for you."

It was hard, but Sano managed to hold his tongue when Kenshin didn't promptly follow up on the last bit. After being around Kenshin this long, he could usually tell whether the other man was mentally weighing alternatives or just stalling, and while he might want to object to being kept in the dark or clarify that he wasn't asking about the details of his assassinations, Sano knew that this time at least he'd get more in the long run if he let Kenshin plan his words uninterrupted.

"For other things," Kenshin finally continued, drawing out each word as though it was a foreign concept, "if you want me to depend on you, Sano, then I will try to do so whenever it's feasible."

Sano nodded. It was what Kenshin had agreed to do before, only he hadn't been doing it. A simple rephrasing wasn't exactly what Sano had been looking for, but it was a step in the right direction. An invitation, as it were, though he doubted Kenshin saw it that way. He jerked the line and wrestled a fish out of the water and into the bucket before re-baiting the hook and casting it. "All right, Kenshin," he said, figuring he'd let the man think enough. "Let's test that."

"What?"

Was that a hint of nervousness? Sano turned so he was facing Kenshin instead of the river. "What's been eating you today, Kenshin? You've got a wall up ten feet high and plenty thick. I want in."

"Sano…"

"Are you gonna trust me or not, Kenshin?" It sounded more like a challenge than a question, but then, that's how he meant it, so that was fine. Sometimes, one just had to apply a little pressure, and phrasing it as a trust issue was the sort of pressure Kenshin responded to best. Aside from guilt, that is. But even if guilt works, I'm not going to use it. Kenshin's got enough problems with that as it is. Sano folded his arms, bracing the fishing pole with his foot.

After a long and uncomfortable silence, Kenshin reluctantly set the papers aside. "Very well, Sano." He took a deep breath. "Do you remember in Mt Hiei, the way Yumi-dono died?"

Sano got an itchy feeling between his shoulders like somehow Kenshin had turned the tables without seeming to and now instead of being tested, Kenshin was the one doing the testing. He couldn't remember the last time Kenshin had tested him. Maybe he never had. And maybe he was wrong, and Kenshin was just telling him where the problem started. Whichever it was, Sano was feeling distinctly on edge. Maybe as on edge as Kenshin was if the set of the shorter man's shoulders was a good indication. He nodded cautiously. "Yeah. I remember."

If anything, Kenshin seemed to get more wound up by his response. "That wasn't the first time that's happened, Sano," Kenshin said softly. "Kaoru-dono did that in May. She stepped between Saitou and this one. And—"

"That wasn't the same at all, Kenshin." Sano saw where this was headed, and this time he couldn't stop himself from interrupting before Kenshin launched himself into the sort of self-deprecating bullshit the man was so fond of. "I was there. Both times. You didn't skewer Jou-chan to get to Saitou, Kenshin. And you wouldn't. Not in a million years. You're not a monster like Shishio, and you've got to stop thinking of yourself as one."

Kenshin blinked, and then plucked a blade of grass to fiddle with.

Sano frowned. "Is this about her grabbing you out in the yard that night?" He thought it might be, given the way he'd wanted Tomoe to stay back while he washed the blood off. "I'll tell her not to do it again, Kenshin. We'll find a different way to get you back on the bad nights."

"Thank you, Sano," Kenshin murmured. He stretched out on the grass, propping his chin up on his fists as he scanned the page currently at the top of the stack. "Gomen," he apologized woodenly, "but these reports really do need to be read."

Sano watched him for a moment, knowing he'd missed something but not sure what it was. He picked the fishing pole back up and stared at the water. Perhaps that had been a test. It didn't seem like he'd passed. The papers rustled as Kenshin shifted to the next page, and Sano drew in his line and recast. If it was a test and he'd failed, he wondered how. Well, Sano, he thought. Let's play a game of reasoning. Maybe he could dig deep enough between what Kenshin had actually said to figure out what Kenshin was trying to say.

Kenshin had started with Mt Hiei, with Yumi's death. Sano recreated the scene in his mind: Shishio beaten and losing, the woman running in front to protect him, Kenshin—that idiot—lowering his sword, and Shishio killing the woman protecting him just to get at the enemy. Sano could see how the whole thing would upset Kenshin. It had upset him, too. Even Saitou and Aoshi had been appalled.

And somehow, Kenshin had linked that to the fight with Saitou earlier. Kenshin had been losing at that point. It had taken a while for Saitou to wear down Kenshin's defenses to the point of losing control. But he'd just firmly moved Kaoru out of the way before launching himself at Saitou again. It wasn't at all the same as Mt Hiei. But it still bothered him, Sano thought. It bothered him that Jou-chan would be in danger. That she'd put herself in danger. That she might have gotten hurt. That… Sano felt a chill. That he might have hurt her himself.

That must have been the connection, Sano realized. And then in the yard, when confronted with "Tomoe," Kenshin had been upset, too. He'd mentioned rumors, but Sano could tell he was just trying to keep this woman, whoever she was, from being involved. From being hurt. It made sense that a kid who'd killed that many would be afraid of hurting someone he cared about. It was only natural. Hell, he thought, I was afraid, too, watching her just reach out and tackle him like that.

And now that he thought more about how Kenshin had reacted to being manhandled… he could sort of see it. Kenshin had wanted out, but he hadn't been willing to use force to get free. He'd been, perhaps, afraid of hurting this Tomoe person. It was the kind of sentiment Sano had grown to expect from Kenshin, and it was nice to see it displayed so early on. But he hadn't hurt Kaoru that night, or ever. And he wouldn't. And Sano doubted Kenshin would have hurt this Tomoe woman, either. Even after she saw him kill. He may not know all the inner workings of Kenshin's mind—or even half of those workings—but the man wasn't a monster, whatever he thought of himself. Now Sano just had to find a better way to convince Kenshin of what everyone else already knew.

Sano realized that it had been a long time since he'd heard any papers rustling, and glanced over at Kenshin. He bit back the laugh that followed on the heels of his shock. The redhead had somehow fallen fast asleep sprawled across his paperwork. Not that I blame him, Sano thought. Kenshin hadn't slept last night, and given his choice of reading material, Sano was impressed he'd made it through the first third before passing out.

He pulled in the line and slid more bait on the hook, resolving to pay more attention to the fishing for a while before returning to the deep thinking. He'd never hear the end of it if he spent the day fishing with Kenshin and they still had to stop in town to buy fish for dinner. Another hour or so increased the number of fish in the bucket to a more respectable amount.

That he could see, the biggest part of the problem, aside from Kenshin's own tendency to hoard information and not share, was that he didn't understand. This whole thing was like a huge puzzle with thousands of pieces, but Sano didn't even know what those pieces looked like, or what shape they were. How was he supposed to put this puzzle together and keep Kenshin sane through all this if Kenshin was hiding half the pieces?

It had almost gotten both him and Kaoru in trouble already. Sano remembered the concerned look Kenshin had given him and the hand against his forehead when he'd asked about Iizuka. And neither of them had expected there to be a woman at the inn. Sano rubbed a hand through his hair and dug up his memories of last night's medical interrogation. Kenshin had refused to talk about any comrades in the Ishin Shishi, despite this Iizuka person who apparently had felt comfortable enough around the Battousai to comment on a wound that kept reopening. Was it Kenshin's normal evasion, or was there something about Iizuka that warranted the silence?

Sano dragged another fish up out of the water and reset the line, pausing to stretch before settling back down to wait. If he was going to be safe around a drifting Kenshin, he had to know what sorts of comments would be dangerous to make. It was one thing for "Sano-san" to get a thing wrong occasionally, but he had to know something about the normal Ishin Shishi goings on if this was going to work. And the only source for this information was face down in the world's most boring spy report.

Sano tried to judge the time of day based on the sun. He was nowhere near as good at it as Katsu always had been, but he figured they'd been out here for a long while. Much as he hated waking someone so clearly deserving of sleep, they needed to head back soon, and Sano had to get some information on those puzzle pieces before they were walking where people could overhear them.

He reached out with his foot to give Kenshin's shoulder a little nudge, thinking it was a gentle enough way to wake him up. Gentler, anyway, than some of the ways he'd been woken up in his life. Almost before he'd finished the nudge, Sano heard the soft click of a sword being thumbed from its sheath and saw Kenshin crouched on the grass with the scattered paperwork between them.

"Gomen, Sano," Kenshin breathed, setting the sword gently to one side. "You startled me."

"Yeah, I guess." Sano made a mental note not to wake Kenshin up unless he was a good distance away. He watched Kenshin slowly shuffle the papers back into their stacks of 'read' and 'unread,' and tried to control his own breathing while his friend sorted. In all likelihood, he deserved the scare for waking Kenshin up like that. This realization didn't make his heart slow down, though.

Time to try again, he thought. Any pieces are better than none. "I was thinking, Kenshin."

Kenshin looked up from his work, giving him room to talk.

Sano took a deep breath and resolved that this would be a more successful attempt than his earlier one today. "I need to know some stuff. I've talked with you when you come back thinking it's Kyoto all over again. It's hard to carry on a conversation with you like that, you know?" He paused, giving Kenshin a chance to reply. All he got was a blink.

He decided to interpret the blink as an invitation to continue. "I'm not going to be able to fake it for long. I need to know what kinds of things were routine back then. What did you come home to? Did you report in, or just wash the blood off and go to bed? How did people react around you? And for that matter, who were the people around you? Like Iizuka. Who's Iizuka?"

Kenshin's face twisted into a scowl, and he went back to straightening the papers at his feet for a moment before looking back up at Sano with a lack of expression that was almost an expression in itself. "Iizuka was this one's field inspector, Sano."

Despite the tone and newly blank demeanor that clearly signaled Kenshin's desire to end the conversation right then and there, Sano nodded and pressed on. "Okay. 'Field inspector.' What's that mean?" After all, Kenshin had point blank refused to talk about where he learned to fold medicine packets, but he'd at least answered this question about Iizuka. That was opening enough, in Sano's mind.

Kenshin sighed, apparently resigned to the follow-up questions. "It means he followed after this one and put a tenchuu flyer on the corpses."

Sano motioned for Kenshin to sit back down and was a touch surprised when the man obeyed. "Why?"

"That was what passed for cleaning up my messes," Kenshin muttered.

"Huh." Well that sounded like a suitably gruesome job. Sano'd seen enough just watching Kenshin come home. He'd rather not have to see the victims in the street, let alone decorate them. "Guess they wanted to make sure the message wasn't misinterpreted." Sano held the fishing pole out to Kenshin, thinking this would go a lot easier if Kenshin had something to do while fielding questions. It took a minute, but eventually Kenshin got the hint and accepted the offering.

"You know, Kenshin," Sano started again, "it's sort of odd. When you first brought him up, you didn't seem to care about him one way or another. But I'm getting the feeling now that you don't like him." And wasn't that an understatement? Sano hadn't seen Kenshin react to a name like that in a long while. "Was it the flyers, or did you resent having a field inspector that much?"

Kenshin stared out at the water where the line disappeared. "He was also a Bakufu spy," he said softly, his eyes not wavering in the slightest.

Sano thought for a minute that he'd heard wrong. Then he started to hope he'd heard wrong. By the time Kenshin had recast the line so it fell only a few feet from the riverbank, Sano reluctantly acknowledged that he'd heard right. The implications of a traitor so close to the heart of the Ishin Shishi that he had knowledge of Kenshin's every assignment… Clearly, the man had been discovered at some point. And Sano knew as well as anyone what would happen to such a spy.

"Then I guess you were ordered to—"

Kenshin shook his head sharply, cutting him off. "He was Shishio's first assignment. Katsura-san thought it would be kinder if I never learned the details. What next?"

Kinder? Sano let out a breath. If Katsura thought he needed to protect Kenshin from the details of this guy's death, then whatever betrayal had happened, it had struck close to home. Great. Kenshin always was good at collecting personal enemies where other people found casual opponents. And the terseness of his words clearly said the conversation was over. Except… Sano ran the last bit through his mind again. "Wait. 'What next?' Seriously?" Was Kenshin actually willing to talk to him?

"Sano, you said you wanted to know enough to interact with this one." Kenshin turned to look at him briefly before returning his attention to the river. "Fine. It will keep you safer, that it will. What do you want to know?"

"What are you willing to tell me?"

Kenshin smiled bitterly. "This one would rather not tell you anything. He'd like it if his life began when he walked into Tokyo a year ago. But you have a point. And," he trailed off for a moment. When he continued, he sounded almost confused, as though he was searching for answers as much as Sano. "And if this one is to have an anchor, then wouldn't the anchor need to be attached somehow?"

"I don't know anything about anchors or boats or stuff, Kenshin. I just want to be able to fake the Bakumatsu well enough to drag you back into the Meiji era when you get home." And I don't want to ruin this by asking about something that'll make you clam up again. Sano searched around for a safe topic. "Let's say it's Kyoto still and you come home from an assignment, and everything went the way it was supposed to. From what I've seen, you sneak in, wash up, and generally try to drive people away." He leaned back on his arms. "How accurate is that?"

"There was no sneaking, Sano." Kenshin almost smiled. "This one tried it several times, and it never worked. Okami-san was always awake when you didn't want her to be."

"You just waltzed in all bloody?"

He shook his head and snapped his wrists up, bringing a fish clear out of the water and onto the grass with the upswing. "Not waltzed. Just…" Kenshin shrugged and handed the fish to Sano. "Walked in. And scrubbed my hands raw. Okami-san kept bento in the kitchen for men who were out late. She was almost never up at night, unless you had something you wanted to hide from her."

Sano watched Kenshin slide bait onto the hook and toss the line back out, close to the shore like the last time. He wondered at a woman who could catch Kenshin sneaking. She must have been ninja-trained. I got spooked out of my mind while keeping my eyes peeled for the man. "How many guys were there, anyway? I thought it was a bit more hush-hush than that." Hopefully, Kenshin's answer would give him some insight into the day to day goings on, or at least lead up to it.

Kenshin thought for a moment, and then shrugged again. "A dozen or so, on rotation. Mostly samurai from Choshu-han."

Sano nodded and tried to gauge whether the shorter sentences were a sign that Kenshin was getting ready to end the talk. He already had an idea about the sort of interactions, or lack of them, Kenshin had been used to, but he needed something a bit more concrete. Iizuka had felt comfortable enough to talk to him, sure, but if the traitor was the only one, then friendly 'Sano-san' wouldn't be safe for very long.

"Okay," Sano said. He still needed to find out what the other Ishin Shishi had been like in that inn. He tried again. "I bet no one bugged you at night. How about the rest of the time? What was the inn like during the day? What were the men like?"

"The inn was quiet. This one slept late, didn't interact with the others if it could be avoided."

Sano eyed a passing cloud and tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. "All right. I'm asking the wrong questions, I think." He cleared his mind and focused on the one piece of information he needed the most. "Let's try this. Kenshin, I want you to tell me how Sano-san is supposed to act. What he's supposed to know. I need to know what 'normal' is. I need to know how to play along, how to seem like I fit. Wasn't there anyone who'd talk to you at night? Someone who didn't also talk to the Shogunate?"

"What should 'Sano-san' know?" Kenshin thought for a moment, the serious expression ghosting back over his face. "Don't volunteer specific information. Asking about people might be a bad idea, too. Stick to the personal, Sano. If you run into trouble, use Katsura-san or Kategai-san as an excuse."

"An excuse?" Sano scratched his head. "You mean play like I'm following orders or something?" He saw Kenshin's nod and waited a moment for the rest. When the rest didn't come, he prompted for it. "And the other?"

Kenshin looked over at him. "You mean who really talked to this one?" He shrugged. "Only 'Sano-san,' and Katsura-san once or twice. Just be yourself," he suggested, twirling the bamboo pole in his palms and turning back toward the water. "The men were all afraid of me. On some level that hurt, but I encouraged it. It was safer to keep them at a distance. But…" he trailed off.

"Be myself, huh?" Sano guessed that would work in a way. "There wasn't anyone else? Really?" He saw Kenshin's head shake out of the corner of his eye and wanted to thump whoever had been stationed at that inn with a hurting teenager and done nothing about it. And Katsura, who not only allowed it, but started it all. That kind of neglect would never have been tolerated in the Sekihotai. At least not his unit.

Sano brushed those thoughts aside and sat up straight holding a finger in the air. "Well, there's one thing, at least." He lowered his finger to jab it at Kenshin. "You're going to start taking that medicine Megumi left for you."

Kenshin frowned at him, ignoring the finger entirely. "This one has no intentions of—"

"Listen," Sano interrupted. "That was a mistake. It was some kind of drug for doing surgery or something. This new stuff won't do that to you," he reasoned. "It's what she meant to give you in the first place."

Kenshin shook his head. "No more medicine. This one shouldn't have taken the other, even."

"You can't keep going like this," Sano insisted. There was no way a guy as smart as Kenshin couldn't see the problem with working mornings, afternoons, and evenings, and then staring at a wall all night because of nightmares. This was just plain mulishness. "You need to sleep."

"This one does sleep, Sano."

"No." He folded his arms over his chest and glared. "You don't. You do laundry. You make breakfast and chop firewood. You clean the yard. You don't make much noise in the mornings, but no one's fooled."

Kenshin returned the glare with a somewhat petulant one of his own. "Sano, I don't like taking medicine."

"Tough. I don't like eating Jou-chan's cooking, but I've been doing it almost every night since you started this job last week. The least you can do to make it up to me is take this medicine." Sano met Kenshin's silence with all the stubborn authority he could muster. He'd stood his ground about Kyoto and Shishio, and he'd stand his ground here, too.

"I'm not asking," he growled. "You need some real sleep, and you aren't getting any. You're sabotaging yourself here, Kenshin. Megumi's right. If you get enough sleep we might not even have to worry about what things were like in Kyoto."

At Kenshin's continued silence, Sano tried again, dropping the challenge for an honest plea. "Kenshin, you're tearing yourself apart, and this is one of the only ways I can actively help keep you together. Please. Let me help."

And that seemed to do it. Kenshin nodded, letting his shoulders drop as he conceded. "One week, Sano."

"Good." A week wasn't much, but if there were positive results—and he was sure there would be—Kenshin might be convinced to continue. "I'll take what I can get. And you're taking the medicine. Starting tonight."

Kenshin held up a hand. "And on one condition."

Sano was suddenly wary. He could think of a dozen conditions Kenshin might be interested in that he'd rather not grant. "What's the condition?" he asked.

His attention now completely on Sano, Kenshin paused before speaking. "You are planning to speak with Yahiko about what happened this morning. Don't."

"Kenshin, if this is more of your—"

"You wish to help," Kenshin interrupted. "Then help this one protect Yahiko. He is right, Sano. It is wrong to murder people, even if the goal is a good one. Even the lowest of the yakuza deserve a chance at life, that they do. Yet this one has become a hitokiri again, despite that." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Sano, I do not want that boy's idealism to be corrupted by what this one does. Yahiko looks up to this one, and to see a role model trying to bring a world of peace and equality through murder…"

Kenshin set the fishing pole on the grass gently, as though it was too fragile to be held. "If Yahiko were to believe that this one finds murder to somehow be the right way to solve a problem, the best way," he trailed off yet again, obviously frustrated. "He is in many ways more perceptive than I was at that age, but he's still young, Sano. His idealism burns brightly, and that is both good and dangerous to him."

Kenshin met Sano's eyes with an honest plea of his own to match Sano's earlier one. "Help me keep him from being destroyed as this one was. Let this morning's conversation go, Sano. Don't try to convince him that this one's actions are right. They aren't. I'm far from perfect."

Sano nodded mutely, surprised to have gotten so much out of Kenshin with such a small question, when all his calculated attempts had failed earlier. He reached for the fishing pole and wrapped the line around it, slipping the hook under one of the wraps to keep it in place. He really hadn't thought that telling Yahiko to lay off the backtalk would potentially have the sort of effect Kenshin was worried about. But he could see it now, a little. Sano wondered briefly what Kenshin had been like before Kyoto and the Bakumatsu.

"You really do think this is wrong, what you're doing at night." It had to be asked. Sano knew the answer, but he wanted to hear Kenshin say it, wanted to hear his defense of a decision he knew to be the wrong one. He'd support Kenshin regardless, in whatever ways he could, but he had to hear it.

Kenshin nodded firmly, his mouth set in a line. "Yes, Sano. Just as it was wrong in Kyoto. But… there's so much death on the streets, Sano. So many innocents are suffering, and this is Meiji!" His clenched fists matched the pained betrayal Sano heard in his voice. "It wasn't supposed to be like this, Sano. This one killed almost every night for years, and it might as well be worth nothing."

"Not 'nothing,' Kenshin. Just maybe not all you'd hoped for." Sano wondered how Captain Sagara would have felt looking on the current times. However much he might hate the imperialists, Sano had to admit there were some improvements. "And you said it yourself, anyway. That it's not over yet. That there's still work to be done."

"Sano," Kenshin muttered, "this 'fresh start' feels as sour as the old era under Tokugawa. None of this is right." He shook his head, stared down at the grass. "And I don't know how to fix it. If the only way this one can protect the innocent is to murder the wicked in the streets… I don't know, Sano, that I don't."

"Well, what are your ideas, then?" He'd said at breakfast he couldn't see the right answer, and now that he didn't know. But Sano knew Kenshin well enough to know the man was tossing ideas around left and right underneath all that red hair. And who knows? he thought. If Kenshin's finally decided to take me up on my offer and actually lean on me, maybe I can help.

Kenshin sighed, and rolled his head back to stare at the clouds. "Saitou says, 'embrace the killing.' I can't do that," he breathed.

"Good." Embrace the killing? Sano mentally repeated, cursing the wolf for even suggesting it. What kind of advice is that, you freak? At least Kenshin knew better.

"I can't embrace it, Sano. But I can't turn back, either."

Notes again: Whew! Now that we've finally got all the introspective reaction shots out of the way, we can move the plot forward a bit. Stuff will actually happen next time!