A/N: Well, I hope you’re ready for more “fights”
because that’s exactly what I have here. Just a warning because this chapter is
really… give me a word when you’ve read it! So read now…
Disclaimer: Me college student. Me own
nothing. Just plot.
Altered Memory
Chapter 3 – Part II: Round Two
After putting Yoshida to bed, Kaoru
reluctantly went to Kenshin’s study. She found the study empty but she had been
told to wait for him there so she switched on the light and sat on a chair.
Twenty minutes dragged past, every one of
them seeming a lifetime as she worried over the outcome of this interview. If
only she had been completely open from the start, if she had told Yoshida she
had known the Himuras when she had first discovered who her nephew was! If only
she had greeted Kenshin as an old acquaintance instead of pretending tonight
had been their first meeting. Perhaps if she had, she wouldn’t be feeling so
guiltily vulnerable now. But it was no good wishing, it was too late to do
anything about it. She just wished he would come so she could get it over.
And yet it wasn’t just apprehension that
made her heartbeat faster when at last she heard the rattle of the door handle.
Springing to her feet, she turned tremblingly to face him.
He paused in the doorway, a strange
expression on his face, and again it felt to Kaoru as if time had whirled back
ten years, leaving her dizzy. Then, his expression hardened, his gaze impaling
her.
Closing the door with deliberate movement,
he leaned back against it. “And now, Kaoru Mishima, perhaps you’ll tell me why
you’re doing here masquerading under a false name and pretending to be a
nurse.”
She was shocked by the harshness of his
accusation. “I’m not masquerading under a false name,” she denied indignantly.
“Kamiya was the name I was born with, and I reverted to it ten years ago.”
“Ah yes, when you showed what you really
are,” he said contemptuously. “Reverted to more than your old name, didn’t you?
Reverted to type too. I suppose we should all have realized that under all that
wide-eyed innocence, you were still your mother’s daughter.”
A sick guilt rose up in her. She wasn’t
like her mother – she wasn’t! All right, maybe one night ten years ago, getting
drunk and losing all sense of responsibility… But she had never touched alcohol
since, had done her best to pay for that one dreadful aberration.
The shocked denial in her face only seemed
to anger him further. He pushed away from the door and advanced on her
menacingly. “My god, Kaoru, don’t you care that you broke Yukio Mishima’s
heart, running out on him like that? He loved you, whatever you’d done.”
Kaoru fell back a step, her eyes wide with
stunned bewilderment. “I–I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t run out on my
stepfather.”
“What else would you call it?” His
contempt lashed at her. “Refusing to see him, to go back to your home. Taking
off for America instead to your bitch of a mother, without caring what it would
do to him.”
“To my mother!” She shook her head at him
incredulously, unable to believe she was hearing right. “Whatever gave you that
idea? I’ve never been to America in my life, and you must know I’ve neither
seen nor heard from my mother since I was thirteen years old.”
But Kenshin seemed not to hear anything.
“The only decent thing she ever did to you was to give you a loving stepfather,
but you couldn’t wait to fling his love and concern back to him, couldn’t you?
Oh, I can understand you being ashamed to face him after your drunken accident,
but to turn your back on him, on everyone who cared for you to opt for the
sleazy life your mother lives – oh yes, we’ve heard all about your life there.
Your stepbrother was only too happy to spread any gossip about you.”
Why was Kenshin making such an accusation?
Surely, he didn’t believe that? The man who had once known her better than
anyone else in the world? But he seemed so sure of himself, and so utterly
condemning that he couldn’t have made it up. Unless, Kaoru blanched, that was
the story her stepfather had put out to explain her disappearance! Oh, surely
not. Enishi, she suspected, might be capable of such a thing but not Yukio. She
couldn’t bear to think he had come to hate her so much he would spread such a
story.
She wanted to shout, ‘It isn’t true, none
of it. It was Yukio Mishima who threw me out.’ But she found she couldn’t do
it. When Yukio had instructed Enishi to tell her he didn’t want to see her
again, perhaps he believed she would try to find her mother. But then Enishi
had known she had done no such thing. Wouldn’t he have told his father she had been
accepted for nursing training by a London hospital?
Kaoru was so confused. Did she really have
the right to call Yukio a liar now, even to protect herself? Hadn’t she done
enough damage to his name ten years ago?
“How could I have gone to my mother when I
had no idea where to find her? I doubt if I’d recognize her now.”
“There are ways and means of tracking
people down. And I didn’t have difficulty in recognizing you, Kaoru,” he
jeered. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?” He was standing very close now, towering
over her like some accusing, vengeful god, and she couldn’t retreat further
with the desk at her back. No one had ever looked at her with such scorn
before, and that it should be Kenshin Himura doing so now hurt her unbearably.
“So let’s stop pretending shall we?” His
hands gripped her shoulders, his fingers digging painfully into her
still-tender back. “We both know you’re not a nurse. What I don’t know is why
you’re pretending you are. Why have you turned up in England again, Kaoru? And
why here in particular? Just what are you up to?”
“I’m not pretending! I am a nurse!” Tears
of pain at his punishing grip and frustration at his unjustified suspicions
swam in her eyes, making them gleam like sapphires. “I’ve been a nurse for the
last ten years,” she insisted, her mouth trembling.
He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off that
trembling mouth, so unknowingly inviting, and for the first time, a flicker of
uncertainty crossed his face as the tension between them tightened so that
neither of them seemed unable to move.
Kaoru’s heart skipped a beat and crazily,
she wanted to touch him, to trace his face that she had never entirely
forgotten. “Kenshin…” she whispered.
Instantly, the uncertainty was gone. “A
nurse? When I know you haven’t an ounce of compassion in your body? You’ll be
claiming next that it’s pure coincidence that you turned up here.” He pushed
her away with disgust.
Her face paper-white, her head bowed, she
said dully, “I can’t make you believe me, but it’s true all the same. I’m an
experienced nurse and when I took this job I had no idea Mrs. Soseki was
related to you. If I had known, nothing would have induced me to come here.”
“As you say, you can’t make me believe
you, and I don’t. Get out of my sight, you lying bitch. Go on, get out before I
do something I might be sorry for.”
For several seconds Kaoru stared at him,
then on shaking legs, she fled from the room. Somehow, she made it to her room
and flung herself on the bed, too shocked and hurt to cry, too drained and weak
to stand.
It had been a day of shocks. Kenshin
coming home, meeting his fiancée, hearing his hurtful accusations, feeling his
hostility and contempt. And most of all, she found it unbelievable that her
stepfather made up hurtful stories about her. It was so out of character. And
yet, Yukio Mishima must have told such a story or Kenshin wouldn’t be so sure
of himself.
Lying in the darkened room, staring
blindly up at the ceiling, Kaoru told herself it shouldn’t matter what Kenshin
thought of her. But it did. It mattered very much. It was as well he had told
her to go or she might have been tempted to clear herself in his eyes. And that
was something she couldn’t do. For to do so would show the man to whom she owed
so much to be a liar.
Somehow she found the strength to stand
and begin to pack. She decided she would leave and even though that meant not
saying goodbye to Yoshida, she knew Kenshin would find some acceptable
explanation. Closing her suitcase, she slipped on her jacket, her face wet with
tears. She wiped them away and left the room, walking quietly.
She had reached the bend in the stairs
when the study door below opened. Kenshin had been wearing a formal dark suit
during dinner and the traumatic interview, but now he had taken the jacket off
and the thin cotton shirt was stretched across his powerful shoulders and
chest.
His face darkened as she hesitated. “And
where the hell do you think you’re going?”
She went all the way down to the hall.
“Does it matter?” she said tiredly. “You told me to go, so I’m going. I haven’t
said goodbye to your aunt – I didn’t want to disturb her – but I’m sure I can
leave it to you to explain why you no longer want me in the house.”
He strode across the hall, snatching the
bag from her hands. “I meant get out of the room, not out of the house. What
are you trying to do, make me out as callous as you are, turning you out at
this time of the night?”
She wanted to protest at his words but
exhaustion had her bowing her head and saying, “Very well, I’ll wait till the
morning.”
“It’s in character, I suppose,” he bit
out. “Running when the going gets tough. But you’re not getting away with it
this time.”
“I don’t understand what you want,” Kaoru
muttered.
“That makes two of us, because I’d give a
lot to know what you want, Kaoru Mishima Kamiya, but I promise you I mean to
find out before I let you leave here.” He started for the stairs and Kaoru had
no choice but to follow him.
“And there’s one thing I can promise you.
You’re wasting your time. I want nothing from you or your aunt,” she said
wearily.
“Still keeping up the fiction that you’re
just a harmless working girl? Well, maybe it’s a fiction we ought to encourage
in public, for Yoshida’s sake. It might do you good to actually have to work
instead of living off others.” His long arms reached out, his hands gripping
the tender flesh of her upper arms, pulling her close until his implacable face
was only inches away. “You contrived this situation, Kaoru, cheating your way
into this house, worming your way into my aunt’s affections. So much as I’d
like you out of this house, I’m not going to risk upsetting Yoshida. I’m not
even going to ask you how you managed to persuade Dr. Genzai to recommend you.
The damage is done now. It’ll do more harm than good to know the truth about
you. But let me tell you this, Miss Kamiya. You hurt Yoshida and you wish you’d
never been born!”
her heart was pounding thunderously and
she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Her face was dead white beneath
her black hair, her blue eyes wide as she gazed up at him with an unconscious
plea for mercy.
“God! You still look like an innocent
child… But we both know you’re not.” He thrust her away from him and back on
the bed where she fell like a rag doll. “How men have you had, Kaoru, since I
nearly gave in to temptation and took you myself? How many men have tasted the
delights of your delectable but rotten little body in the last ten years?” he
loomed over her, her throat blocked because for several moments, she was afraid
he was going to use her as the kind of woman he had accused her of being.
But then he turned and strode to the door.
“You can stop acting like a virgin facing rape,” he jeered. “I have no
intention of falling into your predatory little hands. You were hired here to
do a job and I’m going to be watching you every step of the way.”
The door closed behind him. Exhaustion
claimed Kaoru and she fell into a deep pit of unconsciousness.
--------
Bam! Do you feel like you’ve been hit by
something very hard and very big? That’s what I felt like after writing this…
So have you thought of a word yet? I think my brains are scrambled… Ugh! That’s
all for now…