I wrote this while on the plane to Utah, edited it from there, and well, here it is. I hope it's not too over the top or anything, but the idea just hit me so I had to obey my muse. C&C are always welcome but no flames, please.

I don't own Rurouni Kenshin; Nobuhiro Watsuki does. I can dream though...

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A Story By Kat

A heavy sigh escaped his tired body as the city came into view in the light of the late afternoon sun.

Kyoto. The one place he had vowed never to return to, never to set foot in again, and here he was: standing where he was not clean enough to stand, coming back to the place where, long ago, his ensanguined history began. Purity was something gossamer that was carried with the wind, too far off to reach, yet close enough to long for.

In the past, he had dared to attempt to purge himself of the blood. It had only seeped into the bodies of those he loved and destroyed them, like a lethal poison. He was not worthy enough to reenter the gates of the city, he knew, but an unnatural force was relentlessly urging him on until he found himself wandering the busy streets. He was going to see someone. He was going to see her.

Most likely she would refuse to speak to him, to even look at him. He couldn’t blame her. After the lurid atrocities he had so mercilessly executed during the Revolution, he could hardly even stand to look himself in the eye; it would come as no surprise to him if she did exactly the same.

Even if he had a chance at redemption...

He almost laughed out right at that. Redemption. Isn’t that what he had fought so long and violently for? For his country’s redemption at freedom? They had achieved victory, yes, at the cost of thousands of soldiers’ lives and even more innocents’. But had the revolutionaries really attained their indemnity?

He had given his childhood, his innocence, his soul in exchange for a deadly sharpened katana blade and the promise that what he was about to begin would build a new era, the Meiji era, for his country: a better, peaceful era. Whether he had accomplished that or not was entirely in the hands of the people now. He had done, given, all he could. Now all he was capable of was defending what he himself had helped to create and the people that lived in it. Good or bad. Evil or angelic. Right or wrong.

It was funny, really. The one thing he had given his life to was the one thing he could not attain, nor ever hope to attain. Atonement: a fleeting dream.

To most people, especially her, what he had chosen to do that day so many years ago, when he had left his master, Hiko, was probably an ill-fated choice. Using his knowledge of Hiten Mitsuruugi Ryu to protect the innocent by slaughtering thousands was seemingly looked upon by many as heinous, or worse. However, it was all he could have done to aid the cause he so faithfully and firmly believed in. He doubted that few people, including her, could ever understand that.

If one lives in the past, constantly revisiting it, the past is all one will experience in the present, she had said.

However, no one, not even her, could tell him his past laid behind him. Everywhere he journeyed he received spiteful prejudice and glares brimming with hatred. His former life had cost him the one he had loved so dearly and nearly destroyed the newfound family he was so quickly becoming pleasantly attatched to.

No one could tell him he’d soon forget and let the dead lay in their graves. He knew much, much better. The crossed scar on his left cheek would always remind him at the gentlest brush of the breeze. There was no escaping his past, even if all he saw was the future.

Suddenly, he realized he was rapidly nearing his destination.

What would she say when she saw him? Would she understand his need to see her, his need to have her listen? If she did, she was truly an angel heavensent. The very things that had torn her away from him had become the only things he truthfully knew: war, chaos, destruction. They were all he had become familiar, frighteningly comfortable, with. In a sense, he was only truly alive, he only existed, when those elements were present. The moment they had faded away, he had faded with them, and had once again rejoined the shadows.

The darkness was the only place he knew by heart; the light was still foreign and unfamiliar to him, even after all these years of living in it. Perhaps because, where there is light, there will always be darkness. The two continually shift, blend, separate, and collaborate, making distinction between them nearly impossible at times. Perhaps that’s why he felt so out of place at times where he was living now. His life was neither dark nor light. It was gray.

Underlying it all, like an indistinguishible fetter, was the one thing he could never be free of: the guilt. Everywhere he went, every day he lived, he would always carry the screams, the pleas, the blood. Consciously, he kept them near him always, hidden away behind his infallible smiling facade. He kept those memories close to him, to remind him of what he had been and what he could become if he ever lost them, even for a minute.

Nothing is ever so terrible that it cannot be forgiven. That is where the long road to restoration must begin: absolution. He chuckled without humor.

Forgiveness. Something devine that he could never hope, nor dare to hope, for. Ever. He had done too much, and not done enough. All he could do now was pray that the families he had destroyed, the lovers he had so abruptly torn apart, could live in a measure of happiness.

Having long ago traded his deadly katana for a simple sabakotou, he pledged never again to take the breath from the soul of a living being. Instead, he used his reversed blade to protect the peace that had miraculously reinstated itself after the war, always in use but never spilling the last drop of blood from a person’s life. If he snuffed out even one flame of life, it would make her sad.*

Just then, as he continued making his way through the streets of Kyoto, something bumped his leg. Peering down, he saw a small boy, looking no older than Suzume-chan, gleefully ran past him in pursuit of a frantic, flapping chicken. The boy was giggling and laughing uncontrollably as the small animal protested against his grip and sent feathers flying everywhere. The child turned to face him and greeted him with a wide, amiable grin. “Konnichi-wa. Who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” he queried, eyes filled with childish curiosity.

“Sessha is nobody, de gozaru ga,” he replied with his classic smile.

“You talk funny about yourself,” the youth told him.

He smiled. “So many people say.”

The boy, seeming satisfied with this, nodded quickly and scampered away with a haste sayonara, rejoining his brothers and sisters at the other end of the street.

He realized it was just that, that wide-eyed inquisitiveness and innocence, he had given his life for. Maybe what he did was worth something, after all. Not much, that is, but it was a start. Yet somewhere, deep inside of him, a burning spark of hope lept forth from the glow of a dying ember.

Crimson and rust colored light began flooding the city, illuminating his skin in a reddish glow. It was fitting, it seemed, that everyone could now see the true color of his hands. And they could stay away, far away. For if they ventured too close, became too intimate with him, they would perish at the hands of his past as well. Just like so many had done before.

Blood was the one stain that could never really be removed from his clothes. He had discovered that long ago, during his Hitokiri days, when he had spent hours furiously scrubbing his hands after each mission, yet never expurging the blood that had stained them. Perhaps that’s where his laundry propensities had arisen from: from a need to be clean. But that would never be, he knew. It was asking too much, needing too much.

His punishment, his penitence, was to bear the evidence of his past deep within him, where no one else could reach it and he could never remove it. In war, innocence is a dream, death is cheap, and life is worthless. Especially his.

Igorance was anything but bliss. He had known the immediate consequences of becoming the Hitokiri Battousai even before he had accepted. But what he had not known was the exorbitant amount of grief, sorrow, and desolation he would cause as a result of that decision. Never again would he be so naive.

The pang of repulsion he would feel everytime someone looked only at the path he had walked long ago was almost unbearable. He had agreed to become a weapon of mass murder not to eradicate the people he so loathed, but because he had loved his country so much he did the only thing he knew could truly help it regain what it had lost.

But forgiveness for what he had done was not something he desired. All he wanted now was the chance to help protect the peace and show the people, by his actions and experience, that war was not the solution. He was doing this for what she believed in: a world not just free of conflict, but blooming with freedom, equality, and justice.

The only question was if he had chosen a means she would understand. If not, he was lost amidst his own confusion and bloodshed.

Finally, as the sun was cresting beyond the hills and nightfall was slowly spreading, he reached his long sought, long feared, destination. It was her.

She was standing there, silently, just as he had left her so many years before.

Suddenly, the words caught in his throat, choking him. Thoughts were flying through his head as he struggled for the words to explain his visit, to explain what he had done after he had left her. What should he say? How should he begin? Only one thing came to his mind: the words he had been holding back all these long, bloody years but never had had the chance to utter.

“Gomen nasai, Okaasan...”

A crisp, evening breeze flew swiftly passed, carrying his whispered words to the heavens above, but the headstone remained silent. Kenshin placed a single red flower on the grave, his tears falling to the cold ground below. Another breeze, warmer this time, gently brushed against his face, flowing tenderly across his scar. It surrounded him, almost crooning to him.

“Gomen nasai...”

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Gomen nasai- I'm very sorry
Okaasan- mother
de gozaru ga- Kenshin's own little ending to almost everything.Similar to Chichiri's 'no da' from Fushigi Yugi
Sessha- Kenshin's word for 'I'. Roughly translated, it means 'I, the unworthy one', or thereabouts.

*Quote from Trigun (I thought it fit nicely into this story. No plagiarism is meant! Trigun is the sole property of its owners and creators. ©Kat 2001