Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
by Akai Kitsune
29: Kirei
~*~
"You have beautiful eyes," Kenshin often told her, gazing
at her with that look on his face; that look of utter adoration that made her
want to melt into his arms - although most times, she did just that. Almost as
often, however, she wondered to herself how he could consider her eyes - so
plain and common - to be beautiful, when his were the most amazing, exotic pair
she had ever seen.
His eyes were such an unusual colour; a bright, glowing amethyst, shining
like the sun one moment, then dimmed with the pain of memory at another. They
changed so often, full of life and death, love and hate, joy and anger.
Sometimes she just wanted to sit and stare at him, delighting in his unusual and
eternally unique appearance, thinking to herself that he was hers now, but she
knew he would notice and question her gaze. She wasn't quite prepared to answer
him without blushing madly.
Kenshin's eyes were like the sun, she gradually
began to realize. Sometimes like the dawn, coming up from the east to greet the
new day, bright and brilliantly shining with life. At other times, like the
sunset, glowing sadly with the image of death and memories, as the day faded and
ceased to exist, only to radiate with its former vitality the next morning.
Sometimes his eyes burned with the dark fires of the hottest, more unbearable
time of day, dangerous and deadly to those who dared to look into their depths
for too long, seared by the flickering anger that promised an end to all
existence if he were crossed.
She so rarely saw such violent, amber flames within his eyes, but it
frightened her. The thought that her husband, her love, could cause so much
damage with only his gaze was enough to send shivers running down her spine.
Truthfully, after their time in Kyoto, she never saw the golden demon flare
in his eyes again. Once her fears had receded, she gave herself time to consider
the truth about Battousai, as she called him - as if he were truly a different
person than Kenshin, rather than a single part of a whole entity - and she found
that he was not all she had made him out to be.
A demon, she had called him, although never to Kenshin, and never vocalized.
She found it terrifying and incomprehensible, the very idea that Kenshin,
Kenshin, would kill someone.
However, when she tugged her reluctant memories to the surface of her mind,
focusing on what she had seen, rather than what she had believed at the time,
she began to understand that his anger was not borne of flames, at all.
It was cool, like ice, burning to the touch if one's hands were warm. It
licked at the heat of the body, freezing a recipient of that cold, tactical gaze
in place, unable to move or react before it was too late. A golden, unfaltering
gaze, unique in every way.
It wasn't until their marriage that she acknowledged
Kenshin's darker counterpart as less of a deadly monster, and instead as the
same man she loved, if a little more assertive and feral than his normal
disposition allowed. At the heights of their passion, through the hazy
cognizance of self-induced bliss, she remembered looking up into his eyes and
seeing, in the depths of his heavy-lidded pupils, amber sparks of fervored
desire. But he was no less gentle, no less loving. If anything, his actions were
stronger, fiercer, less restrained and more tuned to the needs of both of them.
It was as if he was creating a new battlefield for himself, without the sword...
a fight against the harness of his softer mindset, a wrestling for control over
their experimental pleasures. A struggle for who succeeded in making her smile
at him, whatever eye colour greeted her in return.
It was for that fact alone that she found reason to frown
- internally; at the moment she was too pleased to think of it too deeply - when
Kenji opened his eyes for the first time, revealing a brilliant sapphire blue.
Kenshin was thrilled, although having a healthy child would have been enough -
was, in fact, more than enough - for him, but he had always had that
silly admiration for her eyes anyway. It was fascinating and puzzling at the
same time.
But Kenji was a child, her child, their child, and she could not dwell
on something as silly and inconsequential as his eye colour. He had not been
born with her hair, as well; that was another reason to be thankful, she thought
mildly. There were too many thoughts, wonderful, irreplaceable, delightful
thoughts at her son's birth to allow anything to spoil that joy. Anything at
all.
~*~
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