=^~_~^= Meow! Hello minna!
Here's part 2. Hope it's not too terrible. Comments are
always welcome. Thanks to David Eddings for writing his
fantasy series and MadamHydra for writing That Which
Lingers, which gave me a few ideas and helped me get over
my writer's block, my brother for commenting on this fic,
and my cats, whose presence on my lap saved my brother's
life after he commented on this part. Here we go...
Disclaimer: This fanfic is purely
for entertainment purposes and not for profit. Rurouni
Kenshin is not mine, it’s the property of Nobuhiro
Watsuki, Sony Entertainment, Jump Comics, and everybody
else who I can’t give credit to because I don’t
know them... Hoshi Miyumi is mine, though. Her name was
thought up by a friend who speaks Japanese (I don’t,
so forgive me if this is kinda awkward.). I think Hoshi
means star in Japanese, and Miyumi is something like
beautiful. I'm really not sure!
Part
2: Tangled Threads
Nightmares.
They haunted the young woman's sleep perpetually, never
letting her have a moment's peaceful slumber, a second's
rest. Sometimes they even seemed to grasp her with their
cruel, clawed hands, unwilling to let her go for even a
wink of an eye. Sleep for the young woman was not rest
but torment at the hands of the ghosts of her past and
the monsters of the future.
This night, in
the Kamiya dojo, it was no different, despite the
friendly surroundings. She had arrived with Megumi-san -
the lady doctor - at the dojo perhaps a half-hour later
than... Kenshin, and had been warmly welcomed by the dojo
owner, a young woman named Kaoru.
"Of
course it's all right!" Kaoru had exclaimed when
Megumi had asked if it was all right for the girl to stay
there... the clinic was so crowded. Then Kaoru's gaze had
turned to her, faint curiosity in her sapphire blue eyes.
"I'm Kamiya Kaoru. Just call me Kaoru... and you
are...?"
The girl's
voice was soft. "Hoshi Miyumi," she had
introduced herself. "Thank you for your generosity,
Kaoru-dono."
Kaoru had
smiled. "Just call me Kaoru. Come in, Megumi-san,
Miyumi-san."
Then they had
gone inside to be greeted by the fragrant smell of
teriyaki, and after supper, during which she had been
introduced to the various members of the Kenshin-gumi,
Miyumi had been shown to her room by Kaoru. "Sleep
well, Miyumi-chan," she had said before leaving.
Miyumi had
been somewhat startled, but she recovered and said,
"You too, Kaoru-chan." (It's been rare that
I've been called friend...)
Friend...
Then she had
gone to sleep... and now torments assaulted her.
The nightmare
fog swirled, revealing not nightmares but memories still
fresh in the Miyumi's mind.
"Lady
Miyumi," a dark-robed stranger had said to her
several days before, bowing.
"I... how
do you know me?" she
stammered. She took a
step backward.
"You run
fast," he told her, ignoring her bewilderment.
"We had a heck of a time looking for you. How did
you manage to avoid the assassins?" Pause, during
which Miyumi struggled to remember, terror in her
lavender eyes. "No matter." He held up his
hand, and the steel of a katana appeared in it.
"You...!" Miyumi's eyes had shrunk to lavender
slits, and slitting her violet kimono to make running
easier she had fled. (You idiot. I can run much faster
than you think.)
And she ran...
ran...
Her long, dark
hair spilled over her futon as Miyumi tossed in her
sleep.
She had been
running for days... and was so tired... so tired... that
when the assassin finally found her she could not face
him. If... Kenshin had not found her she would have died.
Died...
And as if the
thought had summoned him, his face, a hooded face with
evil, malevolent eyes, a face radiating hatred, intruded
into her sleep.
She shrieked
in her slumber. (Stop it! Stop it!)
Slowly the
nightmares faded away... but not before she heard the
face's words, words she had been hearing for all her
life...
"I will
kill you, Lady Miyumi. And then..." a deep, cruel
laugh, "and then... I will take your soul."
The girl awoke
shuddering, and for a few moments she sat up on her futon
with her head bowed. She held the diamond star in her
hands, reassuring herself with its weight and its cool
solidity - its reality.
After she had
composed herself, she looked at the clothes Kaoru had
given her the night before. She chose a simple kimono and
put it on, then looked at the diamond star in her hands
for a moment. She sighed, then clasped her dark hair with
it.
Slipping her
feet into the white sandals she had worn last night,
Miyumi made her way out of the room, the anguish and pain
fading from her face as she did.
Perhaps she
would one day be able to escape from the ghosts and the
shadows of her past. Someday.
She did not
depend on that slim possibility, however.
==
Several days
passed, in which Miyumi was fully accepted into their
'family'. Her lavender eyes grew less haunted, yet a
shadow still passed over them whenever their gaze fell
upon Kenshin. No one, however, seemed to note the strange
attitude of Miyumi towards her savior.
And the
nightmares grew less and less frequent with the
passing of time.
Save for this
night, in which all the tormenting memories of the past
and the dark shadows of the future intruded into Miyumi's
thought, torturing her heart with all that was painful
and all she had worked so hard to forget, and then
filling her with fears of the dark, malevolent
future.
And Miyumi,
caught in their grasp, screamed silently with all the
tear-dewed anguish of a lost soul.
"Miyumi-chan!" The voice was kind but
insistent. Miyumi opened her light amethyst eyes slowly,
then sighed in relief upon seeing Kaoru's face.
"Thank
you for waking me up," she whispered. She sat up,
blinking sleep from her eyes and shuddering slightly.
"Are you
okay?" Kaoru's face was concerned. "You were
crying out loud."
Miyumi shook
her head. (No...) "Just nightmares. I'm fine
now." She touched her cheek gently and felt traces
of tears. "Thanks for asking anyway,
Kaoru-chan."
"Any time
you need anything, just call me." Kaoru stood, and
walked towards the door. "I have to go and prepare
breakfast. Kenshin went to the market to buy some
tofu."
Miyumi clasped
her hair with the diamond star and drew her kimono tight
around her body, taking comfort in its silky warmth.
"Let me help," she volunteered, remembering
what Sanosuke had told her last night during supper:
Never let Jou-chan cook anything, unless you want to get
sick from food poisoning. Then Kaoru had whacked him on
the head.
She laughed at
the memory even as she walked to the kitchen. It was rare
that she was in such an atmosphere of friendly warmth and
love, a family tied together not by relation but by love
and friendship, and even more rare that she herself had
been accepted in such a circle. Accepted although
they knew nothing about her.
(If they only
knew the truth!)
But she could
not tell them, or she would doom them, bringing down on
them the curse that had hovered over her all of her life.
The curse had prevented her from truly sharing herself
with anyone, from pouring out all her sorrows and
troubles and heartaches to anyone. (... anyone except...
) The loneliness was unbearable sometimes.
"Miyumi-chan? Are you coming?" came Kaoru's
voice from the kitchen. Miyumi abruptly pushed those
thoughts from her mind and focused instead on the
present.
"Hai!" she answered. The present, in all its
clarity and warmth, intruded into her senses. (Put your
past behind), it whispered. (And the nightmares will
go... You are safe now, for the future holds not darkness
but light, and you will not be called upon to fulfill
your terrible duty.)
(Your duty...)
Miyumi closed
her eyes for a few moments, and when she opened them
again, they were filled with renewed hope. For the first
time, she saw life through the eyes of one who was glad
to be alive, not the eyes of one who was kept alive only
by one's duty. She leaned against a wall for a moment,
thinking, before proceeding to the kitchen.
Shouts rang
throughout the dojo, and Miyumi, the thread of her
thoughts broken, entered the kitchen after a few moments
and found no one there. Instead she heard Kaoru and
Yahiko fighting. She stifled a giggle.
She hummed a
light melody even as she washed some vegetables. The past
had haunted her, but for now, at least, she was at peace.
She did not
know that she had reason to be frightened.
The watcher
sneered contemptuously in his cloak of darkness. That
girl was a fool, he thought, a silly girl whose optimism
and hope would be the death of her, an idiot who
befriended ordinary mortals. A naive innocent who held
great power and refused to use it.
But that was
not why he was there.
He shifted
slightly, his mind attuned to the environment and sending
out feelers of thought into his surroundings, looking for
the sense of a particular presence. A soft cry of joy
escaped his lips when he found what he was looking for.
He!
_Both_ of them
under the same roof. What a coincidence.
This was very
fortunate.
Very fortunate
indeed. The Master would be pleased.
The Keeper
would die at last. She had been blessed with good fortune
so far, but now she would die. There was no escaping the
Wraith.
He gathered
the shadows around him and disappeared... but not without
first murmuring, "Lady Miyumi... at last!"
A tingling at
the base of her skull warned her that someone with evil
intent was watching as Miyumi raised her head. "It
can't be," she whispered. She glanced around. Kaoru
and Yahiko were still fighting in another room, Kenshin,
just arrived from the market, was trying to placate
Kaoru, and Sanosuke had gone to the Akabeko.
No one was
there. Visibly there, at least.
Her lavender
eyes narrowed. The years of running and hiding from
yet unseen evils had honed her senses to the point where
she could determine with some accuracy the location of
the hidden watcher. She concentrated for a while, her
face expressionless.
There.
She watched
the tree in the garden, standing tall several feet away,
out of the corner of her eye. And she waited.
Hearing a soft
cry emerge from the tree, she smiled faintly, her hands
still occupied with washing vegetables. The watcher did
not know he was being watched by one more skilled than
he. Miyumi risked a quick look at the watcher, eyes pale
violet slits, and shivered.
The watcher
was not human.
Then her keen
ears caught the sound of a whisper even as the sense of
being watched faded. "Lady Miyumi... at last!"
"Noooo!" she gasped. "That's
impossible!" (It's very possible, actually...) she
thought bitterly. (You idiot!)
(You fool. You
blind fool. Now what have you done? You have drawn others
into your own fate, your own destiny. Others who cannot
bear what you yourself have borne throughout your life.
Others who do not know what they have done by befriending
you. Others, unsuspecting people who cannot see the
Darkness.
You have
doomed them. Your friends.)
The girl bowed
her head, and the sound of soft weeping filled the
air for a time. Her tears were hot on her cheeks as she
wept. (No hope...)
(Truly?)
Miyumi lifted
her tearstained face as despair gradually left her. Then,
wiping her eyes, she left the kitchen on near-silent
feet.
She would NOT
surrender to the Darkness, no matter what happened.
She would die
first.
Kenshin
watched Miyumi prepare the vegetables for cooking, his
face betraying the concern he felt. She had been behaving
strangely these past few days, and the haunted expression
had returned to her eyes. He had been watching her,
unseen, almost continually since she had arrived, since
it was evident that the past weighed heavily on her and
there was no telling what she might do to herself.
Kenshin did not want a friend to experience unnecessary
pain that she inflicted on herself.
People did
desperate things to escape the past. He knew
Even now he
could see the chagrin that passed like a shadow over her
perfect face after her eyes had darted a glance at the
tree in the garden. Someone else was watching her.
A few moments
later, he heard a soft whisper that might have been the
wind, save for the words it formed.
"Lady
Miyumi... at last!"
Miyumi's
lavender eyes widened slightly, and she gasped a few
indistinct words in disbelief. Then, a heartbeat later,
she bowed her head and began to weep.
Several
thoughts formed swiftly in Kenshin's mind. Miyumi had
obviously been found by whoever was pursuing her... most
probably the same person who had sent the assassin. His
eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the memory even as
sympathy for Miyumi filled his heart. She had been forced
to bear a burden she was not prepared to carry and thrust
into a world full of danger and evil... and furthermore
she was haunted by her as yet unknown past. Miyumi must
have been very strong even as a child, to survive as long
as she had.
Then the sense
that _she_ of all people was a part of his bloody past
washed over him, and this time Kenshin did not ignore it,
but dwelt on it until he heard the soft sound of her
footsteps as she walked to her room. Withdrawing further
into shadow, he caught a glimpse of her face as she
hurried past. She wore not the hopeless expression he
expected, but one of grim determination.
And readiness
to die.
Kenshin
considered telling Kaoru about what he had just
witnessed, then decided against it. Perhaps the knowledge
would be dangerous. He could talk to Miyumi about it
later.
Then, maybe,
he could put his fears to rest and learn what this girl
whom he had met so unexpectedly had to do with his
past... the Battousai's past.
Kenshin did
not have long to wait for an answer, or the revelation of
the truth.
That night, as
Kenshin was drifting off into an uneasy, wary sleep, a
scream of pure terror shattered the stillness.
Then,
abruptly, it stopped, as if cut off by a phantom hand.