Memoirs of a Sword


Disclaimer: I'm just borrowing these characters from Nobohiro Watsuki. (*gulp* yes, without the permission of their creator!), but I'm not claiming them in any way! Please don't sue! I'm still broke! Oh, anyways, again, *gasp* I don't think there's language in this…I…er…still am not positive about it, but *IF* there is, it slipped my notice and is quite mild (I think I'd remember if I used heavy doses of cursing, which I generally don't anyhow). Author's note: Second Kenshin fan/fic, and I don't think it's as good as my previous one. This one just turned out…plain weird. Very weird. Give it a try…it *IS* incredibly short. This has to be THE SHORTEST thing I've *EVER* written. So if you hate it, the good news is that you won't be in torment for very long. ^_^


He's tried to wash me so many times before, sometimes with chaste blood, sometimes with soiled blood, sometimes with the always ineffectual water, and sometimes with love, even. I'm an extension of him, a representation of his heart. But just as he can never wipe me clean, just as the odor of carnage clings to me, his heart possesses stains nothing could ever clear away. Each drop of blood smeared upon me, each time I plunge through soft flesh no match for my relentless edge, a new wound opens in his heart. Each knick carved onto my blade, each driblet of scarlet I drink, he bears a corresponding number of slashes and has seen an equal amount of his own life fluid spill on the sullied earth. And just as the physical traces of my bruises and the vermilion patches coating me vanish under the flood of water, his gashes fade into scars. And like my trademark aroma of slaughter, the wounds of his heart never dissipate.
I have been with him from the moment he discarded Shinta and reincarnated himself body and soul into Kenshin...into the hitokiri. I know him far better than anyone - Kaoru-dono, Sanosuke, Megumi-dono, his master Hiko Seijuro, even his beloved Tomoe. It is I who accompanies him when he runs from all else. It is I who keeps vigil over him at night. When fever or madness burns his mind and he no longer recognizes anyone's face, my visage he still views in familiarity and mine alone.
I just don't know if he loves me anymore. He did love me once. He loved me once when his heart was of stone and few would even believe he knew what love was. I was his pride, his life, his link to the knowledge of his own self-worth. I was his whole world, his way of justifying his existence in the world. And he saw himself as the wielder of the Sword of Justice, the horrible Fate who sliced short anyone's life whom he felt deserved punishment and who stood between him and his paradise, a new age of peace where all would find happiness.
But divinities such as the Fates do not enjoy being personified, least of all by humans.
And thus he hates me in part now. He's long discovered those who overtake the job of the Fates for themselves, being so foolish as to snatching the power of Death into their own hands, are forever cursed by Destiny's sisters, the Furies. Self-hatred and insufferable guilt by day, and sleep gives him no solace either. Menacing nightmare haunt his slumbers as he tosses about, the crimson streams smothering him… And as he casts his glance in my direction, he despises me now, the symbol of his Battousai side…he despises me who passed through the body of his angel Tomoe and sentenced her to eternal sleep encased in the silent dirt, though it was in part her own choice. Her drops of blood torment him - and I - the most…But as much as he abhors me, he still can't cast me aside completely. After all, no matter how he loathes me or however many memories of blood and massacres I revive within him, I am still his identity. I am still a significant fragment of his soul. Besides, I am his only path for that atonement he seeks so desperately. I can save a life as easily as I can shatter it. Only, sometimes, there is a fine line between assassination and justice and an even finer one between murdering a human and shielding a life.
Furthermore, who knows him better than I? Who was his accomplice in his days as a Hitokiri? Who allowed him to become that tool, that efficient machine of deadly accuracy, ruthless, chopping down one after another, not flinching or wincing once as the pile of bones and flesh stacks high behind him who wades icily through the sea of blood he shed and drained from others? Who was with him while he wandered aimlessly, the ghosts of those he slew and the Furies hot on his trail, shredding him mind and spirit? And when his soul arose again, reeking of damnation…and when that scar formed…I was always the one with him.
I'll always be with him. I know he'll never detach me, no matter how much hate he bears for me. I am interwoven into his soul and his Destiny. He takes comfort in me, in how much I am like him.
I'm his sword - both of them. The katana of Death wielded by the Hitokiri and the sakabatou the rurouni bears, the rurouni who vows never to execute anyone again. I will hang by his side and go with him to death, a death I'm sure he will welcome. After all, Death is all that can provide comfort for him now. Death is all that can drive away shadows that bar him from all things merciful in life - even love. I will sleep by his side in the cold earth. While Death moves flits its soft fingers across his face, gently closing his eyes, his face will relax into a serenity that eluded him eternally in life. And his mouth will smile as he relinquishes his soul so it may flee into the firmament to seek that angel of silky tresses, satin robes, and fragrant scent of white plums. And the dirt of our mother planet shall do what he could not - absorb my stains and my stench of gore and cleanse me at last.

Author's Note: Well…? What did you think? I'm really nervous about these ficcies…I just don't think I'm very good at writing Kenshin fics…they're so hard…I probably spent longer on these short ficcies than some other ficcies I wrote, like, ten times their length…