Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
by Akai Kitsune
23: Onna
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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.
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