This is an older story of mine that I thought I'd brush off and
send out for some C&C. Its been up on my webpage for a while, but its
never been quite up to my standards, so I thought I'd send it out and
see what everyone else has to say. All comments, crticisms, etc can be
sent to weeksdo1@pilot.msu.edu.
Words between * * are supposed to be italicized.
If you're unfamilar with the Revenge arc in the tv series, or the
Rurouni Kenshin manga, then there are some pretty signifignat spoilers
in here, so watch out.
*Shameless self-plug* Check out my webpage at w3.to/WonderCentral.
The Illusions That We Hold
There was no one else in the yard as Kenshin drew his sakaba-to
and took up a stance. A shift of his hand and the form became
dragon-strokes-his-beard. He shifted his weight to his back foot and
let the sword drop, the form becoming river-flows-down-the-mountain. A
fly circled his head but his eyes remained focused directly in front of
him.
Tiger-in-the-grass. The blade cut upwards, just behind the
fly. Crane-in-the-sun; the sword flashed between beats of it's wings.
Falling-hawk; the sword parted the air in front of the fly's eyes.
They all thought that they knew him; that they understood the
man who walked among them. The softhearted rurouni, who washed the
laundry, made the meals, Ayame and Suzame's beloved elder "brother."
Wall-of-paper; the fly bounced off of the metal barrier that suddenly
blocked its path.
Jin-e, Saitoh, Shishio; they thought that they knew who he
was. Even they had believed that in his heart he was the rurouni, the
gentle wandering samurai. They thought that the hitokiri battousai was
buried deep, where only the most extraordinary of circumstances could
draw it forth.
Pouncing-tiger. Crane-in-the-sun. Cat-on-the-fence.
Gecko-on-a-hot-rock. The fly was thrown back and forth, trapped in a
flickering box of steel.
Once you had let yourself become something like the hitokiri
battousai it was impossible to completely divorce yourself of it, ever.
When you became something like that there were only two ways that you
could live with it. Shishio had embraced the hitokiri with all of his
being, letting it saturate his heart and soul until the killer was all
that flowed beneath his skin.
He himself had walked that path; balancing the razor's edge
between soulless assassin and conscientious killer. There was very
little difference between the two and he'd slipped down and walked on
both sides of the division. At times he'd reveled in the killing, in
the sensation of his blade cutting into flesh; other times he was quick,
one stroke, gone before the echo of his victim's final heartbeat had
faded from their chest.
In the end he had starting falling more and more towards the
side that thrilled in the blood and the death. He who feared no blade
began to fear his own reflection in the mirror. In desperation he
indulged himself in the traits that he identified most human. He gave
himself to women and lied when he said he loved them. He drank with
other men, clapped them on their backs, and lied when he called them
friends.
As he'd drifted further and further across the line he thrust
himself into the actions that he thought of as human with energy born of
desperation. He'd vacillated between the two states: walking
incarnation of death, and he who would give all to be a man. The
farther he drifted the more he fought to keep his humanity. He poured
more and more energy into maintaining the equilibrium he saw within his
soul, and less to keeping his skills honed.
The budo that he'd lived by then had seemed simple. He would
not kill indiscriminately or merely for the sake of bloodshed. He would
only fight those loyal to the shogunate. He would never kill an unarmed
person. Those whom he called comrades thought that it was a strict code
to live by. To him, it was not. Even within the boundaries of those
guidelines, he could bathe his sword in blood as often as he desired.
Fifteen years old and he found pleasure in the murder of his fellow
man. Fifteen years old and he tried to scrub the blood from his hands
with the kisses of women who believed the words of love that tripped off
of his lips, words that he himself wanted to believe were true. He
tried to wash the fear from his soul with the alcohol and laughter of
men who believed him when he called them friend, when he himself held no
faith in his own words.
Even now with more than ten years behind him, in his mind, he
still called it The Mistake. He sometimes imagined that the scar still
ached, that his cheek still throbbed with pain. He knew it was only an
illusion but is was an illusion that helped him keep the hitokiri
battousai in check. The illusionary pain was a reminder that the first
slash along his face had set him on the road that had nearly led to his
dissipation into the hitokiri battousai.
Like the scar itself, Kenshin doubted that the memory of *that*
night would ever fade. The assassin had attacked him first, sliding
from the shadows, blades bright in the moonlight. There had been no
need for restraint. To show it would have been to accept death and as
he let himself slip into the cold, obdurate persona of his other self,
he knew that his role was not to embrace Death, but to become it. The
battle's span could have been counted in heartbeats; the would-be killer
had fallen in of arc of blood that had coated both himself and *her*.
The hitokiri battousai was in command then, but she carried no
weapon, was not of the shogunate, so the hitokiri calmly sheathed his
sword and allowed the other part of him, the part that indulged in
women, to admire her.
Even he had seen that at that moment, he stood before a
crossroad. He had known with absolute conviction that the next action
would set him irrevocably down one of those roads, even though he was
ignorant of where either would lead.
The hitokiri battousai was still in command but he could not harm her;
she violated none of his constraints, but nor could he leave her, for
his anonymity was sacrosanct. As his other side unabashedly admired her
beauty, obvious even through a coating of blood, the hitokiri battousai
relinquished the decision.
It took him but a second to step through the crossroads. He
took her with him, demanding her vow of silence in exchange for her
safety. She gave more than her word, remaining at his side from then on
to show that she would keep it. He'd tried to refuse the second vow,
but her beauty, her mere presence was a balm to his imperiled humanity
and so he relented. From that night on his lips did not touch those of
any woman, not even hers. He'd passed another crossroad, but this time
without his knowledge.
In his mind it was summer. The disastrous campaign in Kyoto
had forced the Ishinshishi into retreat. It members were scattering to
the four winds to recover from their wounds and regain their strength;
she went with him. *A young married couple won't be as suspicious as a
young single male living alone.* Kogoro had spoken the words as if it
had been the most natural of plans. Even then, Kenshin had suspected
that Kogoro had sensed the love growing between the girl and the boy who
was the hitokiri battousai. Ishinshishi's leader didn't know if his
cause would survive the year and probably thought he was doing them a
mercy by sending them to a secluded farmhouse, where they could live out
their lives away from the growing troubles.
He remembered a bridge on a summer's evening, the setting sun
as bloody as the streets of Kyoto. He was fifteen. She was eighteen.
He did not let that stop him from turning to her. *Given the
circumstances, I do not know to what extent our relationship will
become, pretending to live as a married couple. I do not wish it to be
a cover up. I would rather have it as...just the two of us.*
She had looked out into the sunset for a long while before
finally turning to him. *For how long?*
His hand had left the hilt of his sword then and as it took
hers, for the first time he felt the hitokiri battousai subside and the
ebbing spark of his humanity burned brightly.
The world in front of his eye wavered as unexpected tears
filled them. Paw-of-the-lazy-tiger went high, missing the fly, the
passage of his sword buffeting it, but opening an avenue of escape.
Rage at the unexpected loss of control flooded his mind and his
hold upon the hitokiri battousai wavered as it surged within him,
attempting to break free of its bondage. He shut his eyes, flushing the
tears down his cheeks. He could hear the beat of the fly's wings and
his form slide into sparrow-on-the-breeze. He heard a tiny *teng!* as
the insect struck the blade and bounced off.
As fast as it had slipped, he regained control, forcing the
hitokiri battousai back down into the darkness.
They'd spent five months in that farmhouse, away from Kyoto and
the bloodshed that surrounded it. If Kogoro had had his way then the
two of them probably would have remained there their whole lives,
maintaining the facade that they were herbalists who never had any
connection with the Ishinshishi, until it would no longer be a cover up,
but the truth. As he thought back, he decided that he might have even
been content to live out his years like that.
If a lie is repeated often enough then eventually even the
teller will grow to believe it. Over the course of those five months he
repeated the lie that he had *not* enjoyed killing, that he had *not*
been comfortable with the role of the hitokiri battousai. When Iidzuka
had come and told him that it was time to return to Kyoto, he had told
him that he was content to live as a herbalist and that he had *never*
enjoyed killing. He believed the lie so completely himself that even
Iidzuka was convinced that his words were truth and left the two of them
in peace.
If Kogoro had had his way, then that would have been the last
time the Ishinshishi and Kenshin would have crossed paths. But Kogoro
had disappeared in the five months since the Ishinshishi had abandoned
Kyoto and whatever wishes he may have held no longer bore any weight
upon the world.
Kenshin wondered if he'd passed another crossroad the day he
sent Iidzuka away, as wolf-at-the-gate again foiled the fly's escape.
Had he ever had a choice or had fate forced his path,
compelling him to follow its own inevitable designs, blocking off any
means of escape as surely as he blocked the fly's? He wasn't sure if he
would ever know that question's answer. He wasn't sure which one, if
any, of the events of those seven months held the title of the Mistake,
but he knew that it was one of them. If he'd turned aside at any one of
those crossroads, if he'd recognized each time that he'd even been at a
crossroads, then it all might have unfolded differently. But he
continued blithely onward and when the lie had gained so much strength
that he believed the hitokiri battousai was forever buried, he'd pledged
his heart to her.
Maybe he'd committed the real Mistake all those years ago, when
he'd buried both the slavers who'd owned him and the bandits that had
slain them. Maybe he should not have lain carefully selected stones
above the mounds where Akane, Sakura, and Kasumi lay. Maybe the Mistake
had been in giving Hiko cause to believe that he should teach the
strange young boy the way of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.
*No,* he admitted to himself as he once again cut off the fly's
escape. *The Mistake was in thinking that the hitokiri battousai could
ever be contained beneath a veneer of humanity.*
Sometimes he imagined that the scar still ached that the cut of
the dagger was still fresh across his cold-numbed cheek. When one's
skill was near peerless, even when one neglects it for half a year, even
when one spends that half a year lying to oneself, trying to convince
oneself that such knowledge was no longer necessary, even then, one's
skill was still so formidable as to be almost beyond compare.
Iidzuka had betrayed him, betrayed the Ishinshishi, and when
the Shogun's men came for him he'd been gone, so they took her instead;
used her to bait him. He'd recognized the crossroads that time but had
charged blindly through regardless. All that it had taken was a second,
a second to admit the lie: that he had liked the killing, that he had
enjoyed the bloodshed. All that it took was that one second and the
hitokiri battousai tore through the paper man that he had spent seven
months building.
Because the hitokiri battousai's edge had dulled by half a year
of denial, he'd been wounded; he was deafened, blinded, frozen. But
because he was the hitokiri battousai, he was not to be stopped. He
made his enemies pay for their gains with their lives. Because he was
the hitokiri battousai, he gained the second scar that crossed the first
and made an X upon his cheek. Because he was the hitokiri battousai, he
could not be stopped. Because he was the hitokiri battousai, he made
the Mistake. Because he was the hitokiri battousai, she died.
He was ready for the tears that time and the fly gained no
escape through his distraction. She was the only one to have ever
touched his scar, her fingers tracing the X that her dagger had made as
it had flown from her hands, as he held her in his arms and cried her
name. As she grew cold in his arms he was reminded of the first time he
had seen her, her features again coated with a layer of blood that
failed to hide the beauty underneath. He was sixteen. She was
nineteen.
He returned to Kyoto with a new oath: he would again become the
hitokiri battousai, but when the new era had begun he would never kill
again. He embraced that lie with all of his strength, even as he bathed
himself in the blood of all those who pledged themselves to the shogun.
So strongly did he hold the lie that when the Tokugawa Shogunate fell,
he dropped his sword, discarded his title of hitokiri battousai, and
walked away from Kyoto.
Kaoru, Sanosuke, Yahiko, Megumi, Saitoh, Jin-e, Shishio, even
Hiko believed that the hitokiri battousai was buried deep within him,
only rising when the ruthlessness of the blood drenched assassin of old
was truly needed. So strong was the lie that even those whom he held as
family, those who would be his enemies, even the one man he would call
'master;' they all believed the lie without question, calling him
rurouni, entrusting him with their kin, firm in their belief that the
hitokiri battousai was far away and deeply buried.
Only once had he returned to Kyoto, to a cemetery where lay the
memorial stone with her name on it. He'd lain flowers against it, lit
incense in her memory, and had vowed to return in a year's time, but he
doubted that he'd keep that vow. As the scented smoke had mixed with
the tears forming in his eyes, the hitokiri battousai had raged,
demanding release, tearing at the restraints he'd bound it with. It
wanted to drench itself in the blood as a surcease to his pain. He'd
come close to surrendering, closer than he'd ever come before and closer
than he ever hoped to again. He knew that he could lose himself, lose
the pain in bloodshed and slaughter. He could even keep his vows of old
and still never want for blood. Again the scars had seemed to throb and
the memories that came with the illusionary pain drove the hitokiri
battousai back and bound it in chains twice as thick. The incense
hadn't completely burned down when he'd bowed respectfully to the stone
then turned and left the cemetery without a backwards glance.
So well did he tell the lie that all of his friends, all of his
allies, all of his enemies believed the hitokiri battousai to be a
distant threat. The only one who had ever seen the lie for what it
really was had been a sword maker in Kyoto. When he turned his back on
Kyoto and tried to walk away, the old man had been waiting for him on
the road, a sheathed sword on his shoulder and a cynical smile on his
lips, the sunset burning red behind him. *Where are you going without a
sword?*
He'd turned, facing the man who'd made the weapons of the
Ishinshishi, who by making the implements of death, had steeped his own
hands in the blood of their victims. *Shatku-dono, I am going to find a
way to protect people without killing,* he'd said, fully embracing the
lie.
The sword maker had seen right through his words. *Hmph. It
sounds impossible. Tell me after you found the secret. You've killed
many and more. You can't walk away from it. Life, death, and a sword.
That is your only way.* The sword maker had let the sheathed sword
slide from his shoulder and with a sudden twist of his wrist threw it to
him. *Take it, even though it is too good for you.* The sword maker
then turned his back and walked away. *Do what you want using this
sword. You'll see how unrealistic you are being. When that sword is
broken and you're dream is still the same,* then *visit me in Kyoto.*
He'd drawn the sword and seen the light glinting off of an edge
that was on the opposite side that it should have been. The sword
maker's laugh as he vanished back into the city had been cynical and
bitter. He'd obviously expected Kenshin's vows to come to naught within
the passing of a week.
As Kenshin once more battered the fly back with
crane-in-the-sun, he thought that more than once all that had kept the
hitokiri battousai at bay had been the sword maker's boast. When Jin-e
had gloated that the only thing that could save Kaoru's life was his own
death, the hitokiri battousai had been a hair's breadth away from
plunging the sakaba-to through Jin-e's heart. He would have drenched
the blade that had never tasted blood in the black essence of an evil
man, one who deserved death, but it would have been murder nonetheless.
If he surrendered control to the hitokiri battousai again,
Kenshin knew that the rurouni would be gone forever. The part of him
that reveled in blood would be the only one left, the paper man that
he'd spent eleven years building burned to ash and scattered to the
winds.
Only the sword maker had seen through the lie and knew the
truth for what it was. Only the sword maker knew that the hitokiri
battousai was not safely buried far away from the light but was just
beneath the surface, fighting Kenshin for control, awaiting the moment
when he again could control the sword's path. No one ever suspected
that all it would take is a moment's lapse of control and the killer who
had stalked Kyoto's streets eleven years ago would be back, the rurouni
that they called friend gone forever.
Wolf-at-the-gate became claw-of-the-angry-dragon and the fly's
wings kept buzzing, it's head not yet realizing that more than half its
body was on the other side of the steel blade.
"Kenshin?"
Kenshin's arm slid smoothly up, sliding into
dog-howls-for-the-moon. At the top of its arc he opened his hand, the
sakaba-to flying from his grasp, its spinning blade glinting in the
sunlight. "Oro!" he exclaimed feigning surprise. He'd heard her coming
half a minute ago.
"Kenshin, there you are! I've been looking all over the dojo
for you!"
Kenshin scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "I'm
sorry Kaoru-dono. I was practicing and lost track of the time."
*Eight.*
A look of concern suddenly crossed her face. "Kenshin, have
you been crying? You have tear tracks beneath your eyes."
"Crying? No, it's just sweat." He smiled reassuringly then
ran a hand through his hair, drops of perspiration lending credence to
his words.
"Well lunch is ready, so you'd better hurry or Yahiko and
Sanosuke will eat everything."
*Six.* "Don't worry, I'll be right in."
"And then I still need help doing laundry afterwards. Ayame
and Suzame both decided to play in the mud this morning."
*Three.* "It isn't a problem." *Two.* "I'll get started on
it right after lunch."
*One.*
"Oorrrooo!" Kenshin cried out as the hilt of his sword struck
him in the head.
"Kenshin! Are you all right?" Kaoru exclaimed.
"I'm fine," he said, clutching his head, "don't worry."
"Honestly, you're such a klutz sometimes!" Kaoru said, setting
both hands on her hips.
"Sorry, sorry," Kenshin mumbled, picking up his sword and
climbing to his feet.
Kaoru gave an exasperated sigh then turned and left the yard,
muttering under her breath.
Once she was gone, Kenshin let the hand drop from his head.
The hilt had struck him in such a way and in such a place that there was
neither pain nor injury. The whole thing had been just an act to
maintain his image as the 'the clumsy rurouni.' No doubt Kaoru was
still muttering under her breath and Sanosuke and Yahiko were be
elbowing each other in the ribs, trying to guess what the silly rurouni
had done this time.
With a quick twist of his wrist, Kenshin dug a small hole in
the ground with the point of his sword. Using his sandal, he gently
scraped the two halves of the fly's corpse into the hole and tapped a
layer of dirt down over it. It was a small murder, one of many he had
committed to satiate the ever-hungry hitokiri battousai, but every
murder, no matter how small, was to be marked and remembered, its weight
added to his conscience.
It was important to keep up illusions, to repeat the lie so
often that everyone would believe it without question.
Repeat the lie often enough so that even he believed it.
Repeat the lie until one day, it was the truth.
Thank you for your time,
-Douglass Weeks
___________________________________________________________________________
The secret of being a child is never knowing that you will one day die.
The secret of being an adult is never forgetting that you once were
immortal.
"I'm not your worldly passion! I'm a guy with issues that need
resolving!"
Generic Anime Villain: "Ha! Foolish woman! What do you think you can do
to me with that puny wooden sword?"
Bystander: "Dude, you are so cut in half!"
Sandra: Actually, the RDF command tried to conceal the Zentraedi
invasion as well.
Matt: They must have felt mighty stupid when four million-odd ships
showed up.
Sandra: They did. Briefly.