Story Summary: Passing through the four seasons, here is a short story telling Kenshin and Kaoru's marriage, her pregnancy, the birth of Kenji and possibly life after that.

Seasons
By Ombre Rose

Prologue

- Autumn -

A month shy of a year since the encounter with Enishi and his Jinchu, and there was that sense of definite serenity almost permanently brooding over the "Kenshin Gumi", as they once called themselves. When once there had been the constant threat of revenge and evil plots, the mornings that came now droned along peacefully. In this present day, the group was at long last living in harmony and leading their own lives.

Starting from her sudden departure from Tokyo to Aizu, Megumi opened her own medical clinic and have been diligently saving lives just as she promised she would. At times it seemed as though she never left, for she wrote often and visited whenever her schedule permitted it.

Sanosake, who have made it his life's journey to travel the world, have only just begun exploring South East Asia. Keeping track of his whereabouts, however, was a tad tricky for the letters he sent were far and few.

Back in the city of Tokyo, Yahiko was living up to being a true son of a Tokyo Samurai, fast becoming one of the town's finest and youngest aspiring swordsmen the townsfolk have not known in the Meiji era.

Kaoru got married to the man she loved. With the swing of her bokken and the teachings of her father's swordsmanship, she continued to see through life by the Utopian ideology that the sword was meant to protect.

As for Kenshin, he has finally found a place to call home .

But such quietude and happiness have certainly not come easy. Before such a time came upon them, there have been many wounds that were opened and reopened, blood that was spilled and hearts that were shattered.

People say time heals all wounds, but contrary to popular belief, that is not entirely true. It is true, however, that with time the mind and heart learns to protect its sanity, something which Himura Kenshin has done throughout his entire existence. Even with the scars of rancour and remorse, the hurt ebbed away, albeit slowly. But it is the wounding of the heart he remembers. The feelings of grief, emptiness and defeat. Those that never completely heal can only be mourned by him alone.

Yet, he needed only to see past the loneliness, the weight of his burden to find one Kamiya Kaoru always smiling for him.

The many days he had spent with her had changed all that was cold and dark in his life, flooding it with a soft golden light and sweeping it away like crumbling ashes. She was the innocence to his guilt, the hope to his repentance. The luke-warm assurance of her love had sung straight to his heart, as if to exorcise the demon that he believed was in him. Of all the world's unsolved mysteries, how she could love a malefactor of human life such as he would be the biggest. And he loved her in return.

Fate had played its cruel trick on him, and had he not found his life's purpose from the vindictiveness of Enishi's Jinchu, he would have continued to submerge himself over and over in the paroxysms of grief and regret. But somehow by the work of some sort of divine intervention he was given a second chance at happiness. A chance to express just how truly precious Kamiya Kaoru was to him, more than he ever dared to admit.

So then came one beautiful autumn's day when the leaves on the trees fell thick and there was lustre in the sky. Right here in the comfort of the home they lived in together, Kenshin had asked her permission to join her family name with his in marriage. And with all the magic of love and joy of life in her large luminous eyes that beheld everything about them, she had answered yes.

It was then that true happiness began.