This one was written in a total of an hour, on one of those
spur-of-the-moment ideas.  Lemme know what you think.


Leifker Presents...

Absolution

A work of Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction by Nicholas Leifker

Don't know who created RK.  My apologies to whoever did.  All rights
reserved.  I ask that you not do anything with any part of this work
without permission. 

(btw, I've only seen up to 12 of RK, so I don't know if I'm going against
continuity.)

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     I feel the sea of black in my hands, the silken strands touched with
the scent of cherry blossom.  Your skin feels so soft beneath my calloused
fingertips, the lean muscle beneath trembling at my touch.  You're cold, I
can feel it; I bring you in closer to my chest, the soft thumping of your
heartbeat echoing against my own, and pull the covers over us.  

     And nowhere, not on your hands nor in your heart, can I smell the
stench of death.  

     Even after all this time, you are still a wonder to me.  You have a
strength that I cannot fathom, one bought without the rivers of blood I
swam.  Your eyes still shine with the innocents; you've never known what it
is to kill.  

     I move my hands closer to my face, and the stench comes back.  Blood
and excrement make for poor cologne, and I wallowed in it like it was
water.  Hundreds died at my hands, whether they were innocent or not, and
it still hasn't washed off after all this time.  

     I still remember my first kill like it was yesterday.  The revolution
was just starting to flame, and my master had chosen to throw his lot
against the Shogun.  To those ends, we had been asked to kill a minor
official in the district, along with anyone defending him.  Killing the
guard had been the easiest thing in the world; three strokes of the blade
had been enough.  The hard part was watching him die.  The man looked down
at his innards for a moment with the horrible shock that they were his own,
and with the knowledge that he would never see his loved ones again.  He
then looked back at me, still a boy by most respects, with a simple 'Why?'
burned in his eyes.  

     I didn't get any sleep that night.  

     As time and bodies passed, the horror faded.  Killing became as
natural as breathing.  If the Meiji asked me to destroy, they were
destroyed.  I never wavered from my duty.  I killed anyone in my way,
regardless of age or gender.  If a child happened to walk in the room at
the time, it would mean that child's death.  There could be no witnesses,
no regrets... no soul.  I even welcomed the numb feeling that developed
inside of me; it allowed me to do my duty.  

     Things happened, people died.  I don't like to think about the end,
when those who I still held some feeling for died.  I went over the edge
then... but somehow turned back.  I spent the next years trying to wash the
blood from my hands - blood that would come back to me every night once I
closed my eyes.  

     You stir in my arms, and I move my hands back around you.  I strain my
ears, and hear Yahiko's gentle snoring.  The smell of death fades, to be
replaced by another scent, one far more pleasing.  I nuzzle my face into
your hair, to catch the scent of cherry blossoms.  

     Perhaps this is why I love you so much.  With you in my arms, I don't
smell the blood, don't hear the screams of the dead echoing in my ears.
There is reconciliation in your presence, as I find out that I am more than
death, more than some wraith sent by the Kami.  

     In your presence, I know what love is, and what I was placed on this
earth for.  With you next to me, I pass beyond death... and become life.  

     Here, now, I am complete.

************************************************************************

Nicholas Leifker
nwl9354@unix.tamu.edu
http://people.tamu.edu/~nwl9354
April 22, 1998