Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
by Akai Kitsune
50: Stomach
~*~
There were
three things Kaoru recalled vividly about her return from
Enishi's island: Megumi's fears over Kenshin's wounds, both old
and new, the uneasy glances each of her friends continually sent
in her direction, and how thin and pale Kenshin had become.
It had been over three weeks
since she last saw him, and, as his gi was removed to help Megumi
in her work, she noticed the startling changes. He had always
been slender - she was proud of that trait in him, how he could
be so frightfully strong with so little bulk - but it had never
been this bad. His ribs showed clearly beneath the fresh coats of
sweat and blood, as if he had sucked in his breath and forgotten
to exhale, leaving his chest high, his belly empty and wanting.
As it was, his breathing was too ragged to allow such an act.
It was terrifying.
She wondered what he had done to
himself, what Enishi could have said or done that would force him
to the level of starvation, so deep were his feelings at her
kidnapping. She wished she had fought harder against Enishi,
delayed longer, tried more to escape, to keep her rurouni from
experiencing such pain. She knew, deep down, that there was
nothing she could have done; knew, and felt worse because of it.
Afterwards,
she had to work hard to help him regain his lost weight. He
admitted to her, once, that he had eaten better since the Kamiya
dojo became a real home for him than in all his wandering years
combined, no matter who was cooking. She'd thought about that for
a long time, wondering sadly how often, how long he had been
without food, because of his status of unemployment. He had once
said humourlessly to Yahiko that, glamourous as it may seem from
distance, the job of a wanderer was hardly sought after. Better
to be samurai, dojo samurai, even though the class was
abolished and swords were banned.
"In your
heart, in your soul," he had murmured, "Once you become
a true swordsman, you will remain that was until death."
Kaoru shivered at the words,
thinking and asking silently if Kenshin knew how close his advice
was to the dying words of Jin'ei.
"A hitokiri is
only that until death..."
She noticed - though Yahiko did
not, in his excitement at receiving such rare, offered advice -
that Kenshin did not use term "samurai" when referring
to himself. She had never visualized Kenshin to be anything but
samurai; he was so strong, to regal and fierce at times, his
actions alone deserved the title.
But he was not a born samurai,
was simply given a name, a daisho, and sent to a samurai's work.
She often wondered if he had ever truly been a child.
Peasant, slave, samurai. But a
child?
Which led her to the thought
that he had always been so small, so scrawny, so thin. It
was a heartbreaking thought.
After their
marriage, she marveled at how flat and hard his stomach was, the
well-toned flesh and muscle like carved iron in the dancing
lamplight. She liked to lay her head on his chest, running her
hand across his skin, until his hand came up to intertwine his
fingers through hers, amused, but sensitive to her tickling
motion. He was also, she recalled, incredibly shy of his scars,
however unvoiced those feelings were.
Well, she didn't care about them
as much as he thought she might - enough, perhaps, to recognize
that they were part of him and could never be removed - but he
was so giving of everything else, so she couldn't begrudge him
this one thing.
Kaoru hated
being fat. It made her uncomfortable, overly sensitive, and
sometimes, a bit violent. As such, she was not a very good
pregnant lady at times. She had to admit that her pregnancy was
not as bad as many of the town ladies had boasted. She was ill,
but not constantly; stiff, but not unbearably so; tired, but
relieved of any and all workload thanks to her husband's care and
generous nature. Yet the weight of a child was much harder to
bear than she had previously anticipated.
'With the two of us
being so small, usually,' she thought crossly, gazing at her
ever-increasing berth, 'How in the world is this one so big?'
During her pregnancy, she was
terribly envious of Kenshin's unchanging waist, his cheerful,
energetic step as he moved around the dojo, in comparison to her
slow, impaired waddle. But he was the man, the father - what
changes should be expected of him? Certainly not what she
was gaining.
Gradually she began to realize
that Kenshin's increased liveliness and overjoyed attitude was
not simply to spite her own foul mood - a thought she blamed on
her unbalanced hormones - but, instead, to show the world how
immensely happy he was at the sight - indeed, the very thought -
that she was with child, his child, and he was doing what
he could to make that fact as comfortable for her as possible.
And he, while she could not say
the same for a certain skinny, teenaged pupil of hers, had never
once called her fat. Even in the final days before her son's
birth, he smiled sincerely and called her beautiful, so honestly
that she truly, deeply believed him.
Even when her stomach stuck out
a foot in front of her.
Beautiful.
~*~
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