Subject: [KFFDISC] [Fic] The Devil and Mr. Himura's Wife Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 21:56:06 EST From: EJG87478@aol.com Reply-To: kffdisc@NABIKI.COM To: kffdisc@NABIKI.COM Greetings, minna, This has undergone some heavy revision, but I think it's for the best. Chapter 1 remains essentially the same, but Chapter 2 is completely new. Although it's still in the works, I thought to share it anyway. I've decided to marry a lot of my ideas together into one with this story. I'll also go ahead and tell you that the goal of all this is to present a unique reconcilation between Kamiya Kaoru and Yukishiro Tomoe in a way I don't think anyone's ever tried before. Please let me know what you think. Thanks. Eric THE DEVIL AND MR. HIMURA'S WIFE Disclaimer: All rights and privileges to "Rurouni Kenshin" belong to Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shuiesha, Sony Music Entertainment, and associated parties. The characters of these series are used WITHOUT permission and for entertainment purposes only. This work of fiction is not meant for sale or profit. Original portion of the fiction included here is considered the sole property of and copyrighted to the author. ------------------------------- Chapter One: Kangei-Taiyo A lone torii stood on the frozen summit of Kangei-Taiyo besotted by the blinding shadows of the cold, yellow sun rising in the pale-gray eastern sky. Rivulets of the howling North Wind danced in gleeful, wicked spirals around the entombed wooden legs. An icicle that hung from the crossbeam was suddenly torn away. In its wake was a glimpse of black wood exposed for the first time in immemorial ages. The icicle itself was violently impaled through the snow and into the ice sheet beneath. A thin crack formed, though it remained concealed under the ancient snow. Gradually, it meandered down the Western slope along the shrouded track of long-forgotten stone steps leading down into the think, forested valley below. A raven's shriek pierced the air without warning and exploded in the ears of the single girl walking up those stone steps. She was dressed in a regal white silk kimono tied at the waist by a blue obi meticulously arranged in a royally ornate knot vaguely resembling a flower. A long purple shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, its finely tapered tails trailing in the breeze with her long black tresses and the pale-sweet scent of white plum blossoms. The sun was at the level of her eyes by the time she reached the summit. She fell to her knees at the foot of the shrine as silent tears came unbidden to her eyes and froze on her pale cheeks. With annoyance, she brushed them away, dismounted a small package riding on her back, and placed it in the snow before her. She then unwrapped the package to reveal a stone tablet on which were embossed the following words in artistically flawless calligraphy: I beseech you and, through you, whatever deity for whom you speak with all my heart to grant the inconceivable mercy of entertaining the words of one, who, through the defilement wrought by her own unspeakable sins, is unworthy of the gifts of either word or petition, but in the name of your holy compassion, to give this wretched, unworthy soul a chance to right the world in a life beyond this life, be it as nothing more than the even the feces of a slug or an even lowlier form unfathomable to this impotent imagination, not for the assuagement of this wretched one's own insignificant conscience because it is eternally beyond solace, but for the peace and happiness of the beloved husband that this miserable wife has so unjustly wronged and is almost certainly about to wrong again. With grave propriety, the girl withdrew a sheathed ceremonial dagger tucked underneath obi. She pricked her finger with the naked blade, embossed the stone with her blood, and then buried her prayer with her bare hands in the snow of Kangei-Taiyo. She then rose to her feet with a joyful smile now enshrouding her beautiful features. A man's voice ambushed her in this reverent state. "You came," he said with seeming surprise. The girl nodded with happiness still bright in her eyes. "Thank you for telling me about this place when we met in town the other day. It's the only shrine I ever heard of for many ri around here," she said with a low bow. "You are most welcome," the man replied. "Few people know of this place. No one has been here for even longer than anyone can remember." "You seem like you have." The man grinned and stroked his scruffy black beard in a manner that seemed to say I AM NOT ANYONE with a profundity unmatchable by any words. The girl involuntarily turned away. Her knees were suddenly shaking. The once cold, yellow sun now alighted with fiery fury in the sky above. Hurriedly, she bowed one last time to the man and started back down the mountain to meet her fate. The black-bearded man's laughter seemed trail mockingly on the wind behind her as she disappeared back into the valley below. ------------------- Chapter Two: Untitled Telegram: October 14th, 1898. From: London, British Isles, British Empire To: Tokyo, Honshu, Empire of Japan Mama, Papa, Seijurou and Jiyuu -- Returning to Japan. R.M.S Providence to dock at Yokohama on the 24th of December. Hope to meet with you at Ueno. Miss all of you very much. See you soon. With love, Tomoe ------------------- Gray. It was trickling with the passage of time, once unfathomable, later a looming shadow of uneasy dreams, today a bittersweet reality that elicited an unconscious sigh. Himura Kaoru dropped her hand from her long, elegant tresses to her waist in a determined fist. A pretty smile alighted upon her lips. She had no regrets. She could admit that to herself now. Twenty years of marriage had not always been kind to her or her family, but love had been the constant that underlay all things from the day she had spoken her vows. The world today finally was as it was meant to be. Kenshin had been always kind and loved her and their three children completely from the bottom of his heart. Through them and the chisel of woodcraft and carpentry he had finally exorcised the demons of his eternally tormented soul. With the lone exception of Tomoe, there never had been talk between the Himuras and their children of the Hitokiri Battousai, and there never would be. Kaoru no longer had any doubts. There would never be any need. Her son Seijurou had found his happiness in literature, art, and a beautiful, enigmatic girl called Meiro. He was a student at Tokyo Imperial University and a part-time writer of fiction who published short works in some of the city's best-known journals and magazines from time to time. He had acquired somewhat of a reputation among literary circles and with the literate public. Kaoru had tried once to make sense of his intricate abstractions. In frustration, she had said to her son, "What do you think of when you write?" "Mostly Meiro," he had answered with a fond smile. "Definately Meiro and how I met her selling finger paintings on a sidewalk in University Square. She's been places." "Europe? America?" "All over. Europe. America. Some places you will never find on any map because they are places where only naked souls can go. I'm trying to follow her footsteps in my mind." "Ne, ne, Mama?" Kaoru blinked, startled out of her reverie, and found herself gazing down into Jiyuu's star-bright eyes. "Mou...!" her youngest groaned unhappily. "You're not even paying attention to me." Kaoru drew a bright smile over her face. "Gomen ne, Jiyuu-chan. I was just thinking about things." "Things, things, things, " Jiyuu muttered impatiently. "Always things. Ne, Mama, that kind of stuff is for old people. You can't be that old. I just turned fourteen!" Kaoru laughed and adoringly ran her hand through her daughter's hair. Jiyuu had cast her unique, unparalleled light into their lives from the day she was born. She was a girl who traipsed gaily through each and every day of life, tirelessly brimming with limitless energy and impelled by an amazing and unequivocal happiness that always radiated from the bottom of her heart. She had beautiful and irresistible smiles. Much like the one she gave her mother now. Kaoru's heart silently melted at the sight of it. "Ne, Mama, can you help me? I want to wear it for 'neechan." In Jiyuu's proffered hand was the wooden butterfly comb that Kenshin had carved for her recent birthday. Kaoru carefully received the object and studied it closely for the first time in the light of the setting sun. She was humbled and astounded by the intricate obsession with lifelike detail. Unconsciously, she rubbed away a tear forming in her left eye. "Mama?" Jiyuu said in concern. Her hand was warm on Kaoru's wrist. "Nothing," she answered reassuringly. "Just that today has been such a good day." "Mou! It won't be so good anymore if we keep 'neechan waiting all tired and alone with all that luggage at that station so late at night - " "Oi, 'kaachan, Uncle Yahiko and Auntie Tsubame have just arrived. 'Touchan's asking if you and Jiyuu will be ready soon. We're coming close to late," Seijurou's voice interrupted on the other side of the paper screen. "I get the point," Kaoru muttered with a sigh as she proceeded to take Jiyuu's long, thick ebony tresses in hand. ------------------- Cold, winter rain was falling by the time they arrived at Ueno Station. The platforms were barren but for no more than last two or three dozen people, who had presumably arrived on the last train of the day. In every direction loomed endless rows of parked cars silhouetted unnaturally beneath the pale glow cast by equally long rows of gas lamps waiting to be put out by a lone attendant. "Odd," Kaoru said quietly to her husband. "I've never seen Ueno so quiet and empty." "Must be this rain," Kenshin answered. "It's almost certain to turn to snow." Kaoru thought she felt a faint tremor coursing involuntarily through the arm she had looped through her own. She glanced out of the corner of her left eye at him, but the smiling face that answered was inscrutable. 'What must he be thinking?' Kaoru wondered worriedly to herself. These thoughts though were lost in Jiyuu's excited cry. "Neechan!" Kaoru looked up to see her youngest daughter running excitedly toward a woman sitting atop a small mountain of luggage. She was dressed simply in an English lady's woolen traveling suit. Her face though was hidden beneath the heavy brow of a complementary lady's hat. Kaoru felt her heart throbbing furiously in anticipation as she disengaged herself from Kenshin and began running after Jiyuu. "Tomoe-chan!" she cried out. The woman looked up and blinked. Her unearthly, purple eyes locked with Kaoru's in recognition. The rest of the world vanished around her without warning. She found herself helplessly lost traversing a distant lifetime in that haunting gaze. It had been this way too four years ago when she last stared this way into the soul of her daughter's soul trying to find a way to let herself say good-bye. "I promise you, Mama. I will find a reason for you and Papa to believe in me again," Tomoe had said on a platform that very well could have been the one on which they stood now. She had been clasping her left wrist in her right hand as she spoke those words. Kaoru had lifted her daughter's entwined hands and gently slapped away Tomoe's right arm. "You have nothing to be ashamed of as long as you commit yourself to living," she had whispered. There were tears in her eyes as she pressed her forehead against the warmth of Tomoe's own, trying desperately to engrave the image of her feelings into the album of her heart as a mother. "You are our firstborn. Your father and I have always been proud of you. "I know, Mama. I know, but I am not." Kaoru gently placed a placating finger on her daughter's lips. "I could never trade you for anything in the world, Himura Tomoe. Remember that." "Hai, Mama," Tomoe had answered. Suddenly, she was six and Kaoru twenty-six all over again just shortly after the despondency spells had broken for good. Seijurou had brought his sister home from school in tears because the teacher had beaten her for finishing an arithmetic test in under two minutes. "Tomoe knows what cheating is, Mama, and Tomoe didn't do it" she sobbed as Kaoru dressed the welt on the little girl's cheek. "Answers just keep coming into Tomoe's head. Ms. Hinjakume asked for the truth, and Tomoe told her, but she called Tomoe a 'little witch' and hit her. Tomoe didn't do anything wrong." Looking down at her daughter tearfully cuddling in her lap, Kaoru could not find it in her heart to doubt Tomoe's sincerity. "I find it hard to believe, Mrs. Himura, that a girl who could barely write her own name only a month ago could suddenly turn in completely correct arithmetic tests in less than two minutes with almost no work shown and be abiding by the best principles of academic honesty," Mrs. Hinjakume dryly rebutted. "My daughter is not stupid," Kaoru had answered tersely. "Maybe not. Maybe just a clever liar." "I am not that kind of mother, and Tomoe is not a liar!" Kaoru screamed as she leapt forward out of her seat. "Test her again. Make up some more problems. How hard is it to ask what is 10 + 2 + 3? See what she does. You're almost as annoying as a certain wolf-headed policeman I know!" Ms. Hinjakume agreed to the proposal. Kaoru brought her daughter the next day at the agreed time. Eighteen minutes passed. Tomoe submitted an unmarked sheet of paper. Kaoru could feel the anxious twitches of a grin lurking at the corners of Ms. Hinjakume's lips. The walk home was tensely silent but for the rhythmic clapping of wooden geta of mother and daughter against the newly laid cobblestone streets. As the old wooden gates to their house came in sight, Kaoru roughly released Tomoe's hand and turned her back on the surprised little girl. "Your father and I did not teach you to lie." She was answered by a renewed outbreak of quiet sobs. "Tomoe not lie," the girl said quietly. "Just because Tomoe did not answer questions does not mean Tomoe lied to Mama. Tomoe never lied to Mama." Kaoru struggled to keep the lines of her face hard. Yet, despite herself and her reason, she was powerless against the sound of her daughter's tears and the question she discovered inadvertently ringing in her own surfacing subconscious. As if reading her thoughts, Tomoe said, "Tomoe not answer questions because she has nothing to prove. Tomoe is not a liar whether or not Tomoe answers questions or even if Mama does not believe Tomoe. Answers just come into Tomoe's head like everyone and everything else without stopping to listen to Tomoe." ------------------- Tomoe was Kaoru's guilt. She had begun to suspect that this was true since that day. Then Yutarou returned from Germany shortly after completing his training as a doctor and abolished all doubts with his prognosis of Tomoe's unique condition. "I'm very worried about Tomoe, Yutarou-kun," Kaoru said one day over lunch when the children were away at school and Kenshin was at work. "I thought to ask your advice as a doctor." "Is she ill?" Yutarou asked. "Well, I'm not sure," Kaoru answered. She paused with a heavy sigh to compose herself. The tears that she dared not cry when Kenshin or the children were around suddenly burned in her eyes. "She eats very little, and her mind has started to wander again. I never see her studying or wanting to play with other kids. Sometimes, she scribbles in a notebook, but what she writes makes no sense. Lately, her eyes have been vacant again like when she had the despondency spells I told you about when she was growing up. I'm not sure if this can be called an illness, but I know that it's not right. I'm scared, Yutarou. Help me. I'm begging you." Yutarou placed down his chopsticks and received the now freely sobbing Kaoru in his arms. "Can I see the notebook?" he asked once she had spent herself. A frown knit his brow as he started scanning the pages, and then the whites of his eyes exploded without warning in their sockets. "Y...y...yutarou...?" Kaoru could not control the tremor in her voice. "I would like to meet with Tomoe-chan," he said hoarsely. "Can I wait until she returns from school?" Nervously, Kaoru nodded her consent. When the children returned, Yutarou was ready. She watched him walk down the street with her daughter. Kaoru found her hand struggling unconsciously to hold in her slowly bursting heart. It was dusk by the time they returned. Kaoru was busy folding paper cranes for Jiyuu that really weren't for her. Yutarou entered the room smiling. They waited anxiously for Kenshin and met in the dojo where Yutarou announced his fateful discovery. "Kenshin-san. Kaoru-san.... Tomoe-chan is the most intelligent person I think that I will ever meet." ------------------- Kaoru was convinced the first time she laid eyes on her own children that raising them and watching each of them grow would be, next to meeting and falling in love with Kenshin, the most beautiful experience of her entire life. This was true of Seijurou and Jiyuu, but she could not have been more wrong about her experience with Tomoe. Even the horror of the long-unexplained despondency spells left Kaoru grossly ill-prepared for the nightmare of Tomoe's hellish adolescence. The totality of every right aspect in her was simply wrong. Too often Kaoru and Kenshin would find her awake tearfully gazing up at the moon. "Mama, Papa, please make the thoughts go away. I just want to be a normal girl. That's all. Is that too much to ask for?" she often said. Kaoru could see the madness slowly congealing in those once-luminous purple eyes. Firefly eyes Yahiko, who had been twelve himself then, had called them the first time he saw Tomoe. Kaoru recalled to herself with bittersweet fondness how she had pounded Yahiko into the earth for that remark. Yahiko was wrong, Kaoru realized, but not in the way for which she had prayed. Unlike the firefly that had the merciful grace to look ugly as its light faded, Tomoe only became more beautiful through the ordeal of bearing one torturous day after the other. No, Kaoru decided, Tomoe was no firefly. She was a star burning within herself, and with this revelation came the answer to the unspoken question had long passed between Kaoru and Kenshin. "I do not regret naming her Tomoe," Kaoru said to the ceiling one night as she lay beside her husband. Kenshin had smiled sleepily and firmly entwined his fingers in hers. Somehow, until then, Kaoru had never known any greater shame. The fault was not in their daughter, but in their inadequacy as the parents of someone so special. "I don't want Seijurou and Jiyuu to ever know anything about me," Tomoe told her parents on another night. "They're normal children. I won't take that away from them." "We are a family, Tomoe-chan," Kenshin replied. "Yes," Tomoe agreed with a grave nod. "I know. That's why you can't expect me to want any less in my position. I am the eldest, even if it was just by four hours. I feel responsible for them. Besides, would it really make any difference if they knew that 'neechan was crazy and losing a war within her own mind? Please don't ask me to take away from my brother and sister the only thing I have ever wanted in my entire life." "You are not crazy," Kaoru said evenly. "You don't know anything about how I feel!" The world around them froze in silence at those words. Then it registered upon Kaoru through her own numbness that Kenshin's hand was trembling uncontrollably in her own. His face was hidden completely beneath his bangs, but Kaoru could see the paleness of his skin eerily accentuated in the moonlight. "Kenshin?" she called out to him. He did not hear her. Wordlessly, he rose and wearily made his way back toward the house as Jiyuu and Seijurou were heard coming towards them. "Ne, ne, 'neechan, Mama? Doushita no?" eight-year-old Jiyuu asked as she tugged imploringly on her sister's sleeve. She burst into tears when neither answered her and through herself at her mortified sister. Kaoru could not look up at any of them. She was vaguely aware of Tomoe standing. "Gomen nasai," she thought she heard Tomoe whisper before fading off further into the distance. Kaoru was almost able to believe that it had all been a dream. Then she felt Seijurou's reassuring hand on her shoulder. Against her will, she looked up at his kind face and allowed herself to be led back to the house. -------------------- TBC