Author's Note:
Here's the last chap, folks! Enjoy! I tried to upload this yesterday but for
some reason, fanfiction's site cannot be displayed. Gah! 2nd semester has
started today. Anyway, do read my note to everyone before the review responses.
)
Disclaimer:
The smallest person can change the course of the future. (LOTR1)
Altered Memory
Chapter 10: Trust Me
Kaoru was proud of the way she got through the evening. From the
way she responded to the Himuras' rapturous welcome, talked and laughed over
old times, even telling them something of her life over the last ten years, no
one would have guessed her heart and mind were thirty miles away where perhaps
even now Kenshin and Tomoe were announcing the date of their wedding.
Misao retired to bed early suffering from jet lag, and
her mother urged Kaoru to have an early night too. But she was too restless to
sleep. With only the bedside lamp casting a soft glow, she sat in her
nightdress beside the window, wondering what she was going to do with her future
that had so many more possibilities now, except the one she really wanted.
She put Kenshin determinedly out of her mind and tried
to decide what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She admitted she
was a coward, and she knew she could no longer face the life of privation and
danger with the relief agency without the scourge of her conscience driving her
on. But neither did she think she could settle easily into the routine of
nursing in a big hospital. She discounted the idea that one day she might
forget Kenshin and settle for a lesser love that would allow her to raise her
own family.
It was then she remembered the letters from a one-time
colleague in the relief service telling her about her new job nursing in a new
mission hospital in Kenya. The small hospital was fairly primitive, Aori had
written, and they were chronically understaffed, but it was a beautiful country
and peaceful too, and there was the satisfaction of doing a worthwhile job when
some of their patients had to travel a hundred miles or more for treatment.
The headlights of a car coming up the drive attracted
her attention, and her heart began to thud heavily as her first thought was
that it was Kenshin returning. But a glance at her watch showed it was barely
midnight. He wouldn't have left Tomoe as early as this, even if her intended
coming back to Merrifields at all tonight.
But the depth of her longing for him, the power of
emotion even thinking about him could conjure up, finally decided her. She
would write to Aori offering her services to the mission hospital. Perhaps a
job far away from England and all that could remind her of Kenshin would
eventually help to blunt the pain, help her to forget.
There was a small writing desk with paper and
envelopes beside the window. She sat down at it and was halfway down the first
page when the door of her room opened.
"I'm sorry if I startled you," Kenshin said
as she jumped guiltily, overturning her chair as she shot to her feet.
"But I saw your light was still on." He strode across the room and
picked up the chair she had sent flying. "What were you doing?" He
glanced down at the half-written letter.
What was he doing here?
she wondered. He must have left the party early to have driven back by this
time, and that surely couldn't have pleased Tomoe. She dragged her mind away
from futile speculation. "I-I was writing to a friend in Kenya," she
answered. "She works in a mission hospital there and I'm sounding her out
as to the chance of me getting a job there."
"No!" The single word came with a shocking
suddenness of a whip crack, startling her with its vehemence.
She stared at him, at what looked uncommonly like
censure in his brilliant eyes. "You think I'm being disloyal to the relief
agency? But not so long ago you were urging me to give up working for
them."
"Yes – no –" For a few moments, he seemed
uncharacteristically at a loss for words, then, "I don't see any reason
for you to have any job at all," he said harshly.
"You mean my inheritance from my
stepfather?" From somewhere, she dredged up a smile. "I'm sure I'll
find a use for it, but not to live on. I'm ready to admit I'm not up to working
where there's war and strife, but Aori assures me this mission is very
peaceful. And I have to do something with the rest of my life, Kenshin."
"Of course you do," he agreed quickly.
"But I have an entirely different suggestion to make. Look, perhaps, you'd
better sit down." He took her arm and urged her into the chair he had
righted, and the heat from his touch seemed to flood her whole body.
"I don't quite know where to start." He had
remained standing, as if he were to anxious and keyed up to relax, and Kaoru
wondered at it. "You don't know it, but I think I could have been directly
responsible for everything that happened to you ten years ago, Kaoru," he
said tightly. At once, she raised her hands in a defensive gesture as she
guessed she was referring to that scene in the summerhouse.
"Kenshin, I've been through all this with
Misao," she protested. "Neither you nor she can be held responsible
for Enishi's weakness and malice."
He caught her hands and held them in a grip that
didn't take into account his superior strength. "Maybe not, but Kaoru,
when Misao told me the true story of what happened that night – God, I felt so
guilty! Because even if I'm wrong and it wasn't my action that sparked the
whole thing off, I still bear the responsibility of letting Enishi get away
with it. One word from me and Misao could have blown his lies sky high. But I
said nothing, intent on what I thought were my sister's interests when it was
you I should have been protecting."
The word 'responsibility' again, and how it could
hurt! More than the physical pain of her crushed fingers. "It was only
natural you should have put Misao first. I was nothing more to you that your
sister's friend. There was no reason why you should have considered me before
her."
"No reason!" He dropped her hands and she
surreptitiously rubbed the feeling back into her fingers. "My God, when I
think of all I let you suffer! When I think of those wasted years... It's more
than I can bear!" His eyes were filled with tormented pain.
"I don't consider them wasted," she
objected.
"Well, I do!" he argued fiercely. "And
I want to make it up to you," he went on, the fierceness dropping away.
"Kaoru, I told you I had a suggestion to make for your future. I'm asking
you to marry me." He took her hands again. Gently this time, and drew her
out of the chair. "I want to spend the rest of my life making sure nothing
ever hurts you again."
For the space of perhaps ten seconds, Kaoru felt a joy
such as she had never experienced before, the joy of every dream she had ever
dreamed come true.
Just ten seconds before the cold voice of reason told
her it was no such thing. It wasn't love that prompted Kenshin's proposal but
pity, his sense of responsibility. The sound of his shared laughter with Shura
echoed down the years and she schooled her features, hoping they hadn't already
given her away, as she withdrew her hands from his clasp. "Aren't you
forgetting something? You're already engaged to someone else."
He shook his head, smiling faintly. "No, my love,
not any more."
She drew in a shocked breath. "You didn't break
your engagement to Tomoe tonight – at her party?"
"No, a couple of weeks ago." He moved
impatiently. "The night she and her father came to dinner. That's why I
had to go chasing off to London the next day, to raise new finance for the
German project."
"Yet you still went to the party tonight."
Had that been to try to patch things up, she wondered, and was he only making
his offer to herself because he'd failed?
Color stained his cheeks. "You think I wanted to
go? She asked me to be there, to save gossip. She didn't want the break made
public until after the party."
Tomoe had asked him to be there. That put a different
complexion on the tangle. "Don't you think, rather than saving face, she
might have been having second thoughts?" she suggested carefully.
"Tomoe loves you, Kenshin."
His mouth twisted and his eyes burned with
frustration. "Maybe, but I don't return her feelings and she knows it.
Tomoe's not a girl to accept marriage on those terms."
In her own dilemma, Kaoru had enough compassion to
feel sorry for Tomoe. What was it abut Kenshin that he could inspire such love
in two women and remain untouched himself? The temptation to settle for what he
could offer was overwhelming. But it was his love she wanted, not his pity.
Her chin came up as she put temptation behind her.
"Neither am I. Which is why I can't marry you either, Kenshin."
His face whitened. "I won't accept that. There's
no one else, you admitted as much."
"No, there's no one else!" She turned away
to stare out of the window into the garden, wishing he wasn't making it so hard
for her. "Kenshin, today Misao relieved me of the burden of guilt I've
been carrying for ten years, and now you're asking me to pick up your burden.
There's only one reason why two people should marry – because they love each
other. How do you think I feel, knowing you're only asking me out of a misplace
sense of responsibility?"
"Is that what you believe? That I don't love
you?" He had moved silently to stand right behind her, his body taut, his
voice urgent.
"It's what I know," she said flatly.
He groaned. "You know nothing! Kaoru, I've loved
you since you were thirteen years old, more like a lady than a child. By the
time, you were eighteen, you were an obsession. I wanted you more than I
thought it was possible to want a woman." His hands fell on her shoulders
and she felt the tremor in his body as he drew her back against him. "I
still do. I only have to touch you to go up in flames."
She closed her eyes, feeling herself weakening at his
seductive words. Dear God, she wanted to believe him. Yet how could she, when
the memory of that long ago rejection was still so sharp?
"Why are you saying that when you know it isn't
true?" A sob rose in her throat and distress made her incautious.
"You showed me how little I meant to you ten years ago when you looked at
me as if I were a little trollop and went off to share the joke with your
girlfriend."
She felt him stiffen, heard his jaggedly indrawn
breath. He spun her around still gripping her shoulders. "I thought you
said you didn't remember anything about the night of Misao's party."
"Nothing that came after, no, but being with you
in the summerhouse? Oh, yes. It was the only thing I could remember when I woke
up to find myself in hospital." She lowered her head, staring fixedly at
the pleated front of her dress shirt. "So don't try to pretend you wanted
me, Kenshin. I was yours for the taking then, but you turned me down in favor
of Shura's more experienced charms. You even laughed at me with her!"
"No!" His strangled denial had her head jerk
up again and she saw the shattered expression on his face. "Kaoru, it
wasn't like that. I wanted you. God, how I wanted you! But I'd promised your
stepfather I'd wait. He was afraid of me tying you down too young. That's why I
kept girls like Shura around, as camouflage, so my obsession for you didn't get
out of hand. But then that night you were so lovely, responded to me to
sweetly. If I hadn't called a halt when I did, you'd have had to marry me, even
if you weren't ready for it."
"Marry you?" she said faintly.
Kenshin's arms tightened around her. "Oh my
darling, I'd known for a year or more that you were the wife I wanted. Anyway,
it seemed then that there was plenty of time to settle things between us, only
there was no time." Suddenly his voice was bleak. "I played into
Enishi's hands and I lost you."
It was as if someone had shaken a kaleidoscope,
shifting the picture she had carried with her for so long, altering it out of
all recognition. Kenshin had wanted to marry her! He had cared about her! A
glow started in her heart, a spreading warmth of happiness such as she had
never known before. She wanted to give in to it but she didn't dare. She
reminded him chokingly, "You laughed at me. I heard you laughing with
Shura."
"Not at you, Kaoru. Never at you. The last thing
I wanted was for her to know you were in the summerhouse. I can't remember what
I said to her, bit it was something about my sister sending me on a wild goose
chase. All these years and you've thought –" He groaned, his hands coming
up to cup her face, his thumbs caressing her cheeks. "Oh love... I did you
so much damage. How can I ever expect you to forgive me?"
There was such a wealth of grief in his voice, she
could no longer doubt his sincerity and quickly she put her fingers over her
lips. "Don't. Oh, don't talk like that."
"You will forgive me?" He caught her wrists
and kissed her palms with such ardent reverence it shook Kaoru to the core.
"Kaoru, I used to flatter myself once that you were beginning to love me.
Is there any hope for me now? Because I don't think I would want to go on
living if I lost you again."
She lifted her face, her eyes shining like wet
emeralds through her tears as she slipped her arms around his neck. "I
loved you then, Kenshin, and within hours of meeting you again, I knew I loved
you still," she said simply. "I supposed I always will."
I really should end this right here because i really like Kaoru's
line already... but oh well, we are at the last chapter!
With a groan of thankfulness, he gathered her to him, his lisps
taking possession of hers in a kiss that blotted out the years of anguish.
There was only the conflagration that was consuming them, the flames licking
higher and higher, and when the room tilted around her as he swept her off her
feet and carried her to the bed, it seemed only right that the passion that had
sprung up between them should be consummated here too. A passion that ran too
swiftly out of control and made the first time for Kaoru a mixture of pleasure
and pain. But even that couldn't dim the new, unaccustomed joy. She couldn't
stop trembling as she lay in his arms afterward.
"What is it, my darling?" Kenshin's forehead
creased in concern, eyes searching her face. "Did I hurt you?"
Kaoru shook her head quickly to dispel his anxiety.
"It's just that – I don't think I know how to be happy. I keep thinking
that this has to be a dream, that in a minute, I'll wake up and it'll all be
gone, and I'm afraid."
Her voice broke as he hugged her possessively.
"Oh my love... Do you think I don't feel like that too?" he tipped
her chin up until she was looking directly into his clear gray eyes.
"Tomorrow we have to do something about getting a special license, but I
make you this vow now. I love you with all my heart and body, my mind and soul,
and never, ever will I allow you to be lonely and afraid again. I shall love
you till the end of time, and you will be happy."
The tension seeped out of her to be replaced by a
growing confidence, and what began as a glimmering smile, as she felt the
strength of his arms around her, widened into glowing trust. "I believe
you."
The End (Nov. 8, 2004)
If you don't review, so help me... I'll sic Enishi on you! (Not
really a threat, is it?)
TO EVERYONE: You are probably wondering why I'm putting this here instead of after
the review responses as I normally do. I just wanted, to that's all. ) Kidding!
I just wanted to thank all of you for putting up with me these past few months.
sniff sniff But it's not goodbye yet, hopefully. gasps
What do I mean by that? Is there a sequel? NO sequel,
sorry. I can't think of a plot for a sequel, so there will be none. In my last
few updates, I've been spouting about having a new fic. I still don't have a
title for it. Anyway, I hope you will still read AND review it. There is a
SNEAK PREVIEW at the end of the review responses so please check it out. Don't
worry it WON'T be another of my one-liner sneak peeks. )
Oh, and thank you to all who reviewed... that was the
most number of reviews that I got! I hope this last chap will rake in as much,
if not more! )