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Altered Memory

Chapter 7 – Part I: Make It Clear

“Fishing for compliments, Kaoru?” Kenshin derided, yet his eyes narrowed because she sounded as if she really believed that. “You were never plain in your life! Good Lord, you must see that every time you look in your mirror. Don’t tell me there haven’t been men in plenty to tell you so.”

Her wide blue eyes searched his face for signs of mockery she knew must be there. She could find none but still shook her head in flat rejection of his assertion. Some of her male colleagues had made tentative advances during the last ten years but when the choice of female companionship was so limited, she had never been foolish to read anything into it besides friendship. Only one man had ever had the power to stir her, and he hadn’t found her attractive enough to return her feelings.

And why should he? she asked herself. If her own mother hadn’t been able to love her.

“You’re very flattering, but my attractions, real or imaginary, are neither here nor there.” She lifted her chin, looking at him levelly, and the hint of steel beneath her extreme fragility had never been more apparent. “The fact is, my life is no longer my own. I forfeited the right to pursue my own happiness when I killed that child.”

She saw shock in his face, watched it with curious detachment. “But Kaoru, that was ten years ago!” he protested. “You can’t still be punishing yourself for a few moments’ irresponsibility that happened when you were little more than a child yourself.”

She wondered at his shocked dismay, considering his own silent condemnation of her at the time and his open contempt for her since he had discovered her living in his aunt’s home. But his condemnation couldn’t be any greater than her condemnation of herself. “A few moments was all it took, and that little girl is still dead,” she said flatly. “You surely don’t think that’s something I could just walk away from… forget?”

She could see from Kenshin’s expression that was what he had thought. “Forget? Well, perhaps not, but surely after all this time, you could forgive yourself?” He sounded angry and she couldn’t imagine why. What could it possibly matter to him?

She shook her head. “You make it sound so easy, but how can you possibly know what it’s like to be responsible for the death of another human being?” She turned away from him, staring unseeingly across the garden. “Oh there have been times when I’ve almost been able to forget,” she said, thinking aloud, “when I’ve been too bone-weary to think of anything but the next job. Times of personal danger, times of sheer bloody frustration when I’ve had to watch babies die because they’ve given up, too apathetic to put up a fight. But since I’ve been back in England she’s often been on my mind, the little girl I killed. Perhaps because for the first time since it happened, I’ve had time to think. She would have been 18 now, a young woman, perhaps falling in love, looking forward to being married, having a family of her own…” Her voice broke on a sob. “So how can I ever forgive myself? And how can I ever expect to enjoy the things I depraved her of?”

His hands were unexpectedly gentle as he turned her around. “Kaoru…”

She looked at him with huge, haunted eyes. She had forgotten his presence and felt shocked at how much she had revealed, unable to forget that the last time she did so, he turned away from her, laughed at her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’ve never spoken about it to anyone before. Ironic that I should unburden myself now, to you of all people.”

His grip on her tightened as he pulled her against him. “Why do you say that? Me of all people?” There was a note in his voice that seemed like pain but she knew that she had no power to hurt him. “There was a time, Kaoru, when I was the first person you would have confided in.”

But that was a long time ago, before she discovered he was sharing the joke of her unrequited love with his current girlfriend. She stiffened and tried to pull away. “You were very patient, but I’m no longer a child. And I have no excuse for inflicting my cares on someone who could have no possible interest in them.”

“How could you say that?” He refused to let her go.

Only when an uncertain voice said, “Kenshin…?” did his hands fall, as his indrawn breath hissed in exasperation. Kaoru was dismayed to see Tomoe watching them, her face stricken.

She had no idea how long the other girl had been standing there but she knew that Tomoe was putting an entirely wrong conclusion on the scene she witnessed. Kaoru forced a smile as she moved away from Kenshin. “I’m afraid your fiancé’s cross with me. He’s been ticking me off for swimming alone in the pool.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, and if it had been downright untruth, it would have been worth it to see Tomoe’s uncertainty evaporate.

“And now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time I went to see if Yoshida’s woken yet.”

Kaoru made her escape, but it wasn’t his fiancée Kenshin’s eyes followed or whose conversation engaged his attention. Agreeing absently to her suggestion that they should swim, he brooded on his recent conversation with Kaoru.

And to think only a few days ago, he had been telling himself she’d got off lightly! Lightly! Dear god, only now he was beginning to understand what she’d gone through, what she was still suffering.

Knowing herself responsible for someone’s death would have been hard enough for any 18 year old girl to come to terms with, even with the help and support of family and friends. But thanks to her brother’s machinations, Kaoru had no support at all. She’d had to face up to her guilt entirely alone, believing what she had done to be so unforgivable that the family and friends she’d grown up with wanted nothing more to do with her. She hadn’t been able to put the tragic episode behind her.

And he had to bear some of the responsibility himself. He’d stood aside and let it happen, believing Enishi’s lies, too shattered by his own disillusion, to eaten up with jealous rage to question them.

He was appalled at his blindness, at the way he had failed her, seeing himself as the injured party. And all the time, she had seen his lack of support as proof that he, like everyone, had found what she had done unforgivable. And it couldn’t have helped that everything he’d said to her had confirmed her in that belief. When he remembered some of his accusations, he wished he could cut out his tongue.

The scars on her body had shocked him, tearing at his heart and filling him with a helpless anger. Yet the mental and emotional scars were even more terrible, and the knowledge that he had inflicted some of them himself was insupportable. There had to be a way he could reach her, convince her she didn’t have to go on paying for the rest of her life for that one tragic action.

He’d failed her once, but now fate was giving him a second chance and he meant to grasp it with both hands.

At that moment, Tomoe surfaced beside him in the water. Her face alive with laughter, she swept the wet hair out of her eyes. But as the sun glinted on the diamond he had put on her finger only a short time ago, Kenshin found it impossible to smile back.

I can hear a chorus of “Oh!” now. There, I know some of your questions have now been answered. Mostly as to why Kaoru is like… you know… her. =) I really like this chapter because finally, we’re getting somewhere with their relationship. Yay!

So what do you think will happen now? Give me your thoughts! Oh and I’ve been contemplating on this chapter and it will have 3 parts. Basically, because I want things clearer to y’all. But of course, not too clear or the suspense will be gone! wink And y’all still haven’t met this character that will have a brief but very memorable appearance here… =)