NOT MINE! *huff*
None.
None.
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Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters


by Akai Kitsune

23: Onna

 

~*~

onna n. 1. a female adult human being, as opposed to MAN. 2. women collectively. 3. a female servant. 4. a) a wife, b) a sweetheart or mistress; a female lover or sexual partner. 5. a man with qualities traditionally regarded as feminine, such as timidity, weakness, tendency to gossip, etc. 6. womanly qualities or characteristics; femininity. See also WOMANHOOD, WOMANISH, WOMANIZE, WOMANLIKE, WOMAN OF THE WORLD, WOMAN SUFFRAGE, SNOW WOMAN.


"I saw you, Battousai! I saw that this is your woman!"

For days, weeks, months after her initial kidnapping by Jin'ei's hands, Kaoru agonized over that single statement. His woman. His.

'Strange... how he could say it, even when I...'

'Well, I was a little restrained at the time...'

'But still...'

'He didn't deny it, did he?'

When Kenshin finally asked her to marry him, still hesitant, still unsure, and still infuriatingly polite, she wasn't exactly sure what to say to him. She could have yelled at him, scolded him, demanding to know why on earth it had taken him so long to ask the question he must have known the answer to. She could have been angry for being so indecisive; was the love that she offered - that he felt - so insignificant and weak that he wasn't sure if it would last?

She could have been angry.

Instead, she simply accepted, a smile on her face and love in her suddenly tearful eyes.

"Hai."


Thinking back, she wondered how it must have felt for him to ask. She herself had never received the question before he came to her; indeed, she had never really known any man beyond the common crush of a neighbouring dojo student, or the son of her father's friend who had rather enjoyed her company in previous years. She had never felt more than casual friendship from any man.

Kenshin... he was different. He had known love, had felt this terribly beautiful feeling, and had gazed into the eyes of the one whose heart had stolen his, and asked her to marry him.

"As the sun set," he had described, head bowed and eyes clenched shut, "Several days following the Ikeda-ya incident, I asked Yukishiro Tomoe to be my wife. She accepted."

In the glow of the dying sun, he had asked the elegant woman of the snow to marry him, to share her life with him, tied together with the binding threads of love and tradition. Terribly romantic.

Kaoru mused over her own engagement. It had been the most wonderful moment she had felt since... since... well, there wasn't much to compare to, which said something in itself. Together, alone, in a clearing by the river, surrounded by the fireflies in the dead of the night, he had taken her hand and finally admitted his desire to wed her. Not nearly as compulsive or unthinking, but rather a planned, drawn-out affair by the man whose heart had stolen hers.

Hers. His.

Their engagement was not completed in the light of the celestial fire, spurred on by another man's suggestion the impulse of desire and ignorant youth. It was not the result of a one-sided passion, a relationship of love and hate, trust and secrecy. It was not echoed by the death of a day, the ending of of an era. It was an agreement between a man and woman who knew each other, who had in fact known each other for a long time, tiptoeing around their feelings during most of it. It was a consummation of hidden - yet thoroughly obvious - mutual feelings and, eventually, the joining of two people who had already been prodded towards each other by multiple friends, remaining in ignorance at each attempt.

'We just couldn't be rushed, I guess,' she thought to herself with a shrug. 'It had to be decided between the two of us... no one could make that choice for us, no matter what they thought.'

Even after their marriage, after Kenji's birth and their initial plunge into family life, she still thought often of those first few weeks of Kenshin's stay at the dojo, and all that had happened between the moment they had met on the street, and the moment he had slipped her hand into his and told her he loved her. Even then, even now, and even eternally, always, she had wanted to be his.

His.

~*~

Sorry about the delay! This is another one of those chapters where it consists of only the definition (same as Man/Otoko) so it took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to say, ^_^

The original chapter title was "Woman", and that is of course the translation of Onna...

This chapter was not me saying that I didn't like the way Kenshin and Tomoe got together. I think that the engagement during the Memory arc was by far the most beautiful scene. However, I do know that Tomoe wasn't completely devoted to their relationship at that point in time, if she ever really was. Thus, Kenshin and Kaoru's engagement was far more focused on the actual marriage than Kenshin and Tomoe's was. This is just my take on how it went. Things may have changed later, but a good thing doesn't always start well, ^_^
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