Agh! Chapter-ific!
Right then, my spook_me fic, aside from being a day late is turning into a chapter fic.
Gasp!
I've got to get it done by next Wednesday, so I can devote my life to NaNoWriMo on Thursday, yesplz.
But here it is:
Title: empty as the sky
Fandom:: Rurouni Kenshin
Rating: Let's say...for now, T, for gore-ish stuff, and future language and stuff. I dunno yet, it's still forming in my head.
Summary: Kaoru is on earth to help people let go of the darkness within them. Kenshin is on earth despite the fact that he has come to terms with his own darkness. Together, they discover what it means to really live, and how to let go. [modern AU, KK, zombies and ghosts galore]
Chapter I: pour some tea for two
The ghost came to her for the first time as she was doing a kata in the dojo.
She felt it behind her, a breath of wind, sudden chill in the room.
Her heart stopped. She hadn't felt a ghost in a long time. Few of the dead remained attached to this earth, and few were as fluid but as grounded as the one whose mind had just brushed hers.
She dropped her bokken and whirled. "I won't hurt you," she said aloud.
Ghosts were terrified, flighty things, expecting attack at any minute.
This ghost was pale, white on white shadow, almost a mist, its features nearly indiscernible. She couldn't tell its sex, though it had long hair. It floated half an inch above the floor, in hakama, with a katana at its waist.
I'm not expecting to be hurt, it said into her mind, unafraid. Ghosts were not capable of verbalization, though none she had met had ever seemed to realize that. That instinct wore off a century ago.
It seemed a bit clearer to her now; it smiled, she could tell, and its eyes, though still colorless were now visible, large.
It was a man-an effeminate-looking one, but a man nonetheless. A little taller than her, and old. She had never met a ghost so old. She could feel it in its spirit; it flowed through the room, ki from life and heart from death. Minds were less attached within the bodies of ghosts-this man's floated around the room, curious, exploring.
"What do you want?" she asked.
You just moved here?
"A few days ago. It was, supposedly, an old family home, but…" she shrugged. "At one point, my teenaged I-don't-know-how-many-greats-grandmother got blackmailed out of it and for most of the Meiji restoration, it was a gambling hall. How do you know it?"
Not as a gambling hall-simply a place I visited a few days before my death. A dojo, then, with an orphaned fifteen-year-old assistant master, I think. I barely remember her. I returned…after Meiji's death, and it was abandoned, so I stayed here. His face was clear now; he had a large cross-shaped scar on one cheek, and color was beginning to come to his hair. Red. Odd, because he seemed so Japanese…
He smiled ruefully. I'd escaped one too many exorcisms to want to spend time around people. I haven't shown myself for nearly fifty years. If I may ask…he paused, and then took a breath, though he didn't need to. Who are you?
Red hair and violet-blue eyes, but still transparent. "Kamiya Kaoru," she told him, bowing slightly. "And you?"
Himura Kenshin.
"It's a pleasure. Why don't you sit?" she knelt in place, and he did so as well. "Now, what's keeping you here?"
He blinked. What?
His form was becoming more corporeal, more so than she'd ever seen a ghost. He was no longer transparent, and his knees were resting fully on the ground.
Kaoru sighed, a little impatiently. "I hope you're just surprised and not dense," she muttered, and then said, more loudly, "Ghosts. There are not very many on this earth, not at all. I've only met seven or eight in my life, and according to the man who told me about myself, that's more than most Undead ever meet. You're still here because you've got some sort of attachment to this earth."
Attachment? I have not been…attached to anything for a long time, that I haven't-I hadn't been attached to anything for a long time even when I was alive. I am a rurouni, a wanderer. He did a sudden double take, and Kaoru had to hold in a smile. Wait-Undead?
ooo
When she was four, she fell through one of the railings in the steps of her apartment building and plunged, flailing in that space between the stairs, arms and legs hitting metal and concrete as she tumbled, five stories to the ground, where she was found moments later by a man she didn't know, a broken, bloody body.
"You're dead," the man told her, and she blinked up at him. She wasn't in pain, could feel her limbs. A shoulder was dislocated, and she couldn't move her arm. He popped it back in the socket for her, and helped her sit up in a puddle of her own blood.
"I'm dead?" she asked him, her voice hoarse from screaming.
He nodded.
"Then why'm I…living?" she asked, confused.
He didn't explain anything then, just took her to his apartment, where he stitched up tendons and ligaments and set bones and then sewed up her skin and scrubbed her free of blood and handed her a small bottle of pills, then, thinking differently, took it away from her. He gave her one to eat. It tasted like grapes, sweet.
He took her back to her apartment. They lived on the same floor. He introduced himself as Oguni Gensai, a retired doctor. He said he'd found her lost in the alley outside the apartment. He'd offered to baby-sit her for a smaller fee than most babysitters asked. Her parents agreed willingly.
Every day she stayed with him. He was kind and old and at lunch every day she would take one of the grape pills and slowly-more slowly than it had before her fall-her skin knit itself together. He still didn't explain anything, though she asked. He needed to wait, he said, until she was old enough to understand. She begged and begged, but he was firm.
On her fifth birthday, Oguni-sensei gave her a slice of cake and the suddenly a white wisp of a figure appeared next to them, terrified.
Don't hurt me, please! she begged, once she realized they could see her.
Oguni-sensei spoke with her quietly, and then said a prayer, and the woman vanished with a smile on her face.
"What was that?" she asked.
"A ghost."
"Why could I see it?"
Oguni sighed. "Because, Kaoru-chan, sometimes people die, but they don't die. Their bodies break and bleed, but their minds are still clear. Sometimes they even stop breathing. I still breathe, and you still breathe, because it's habit. But if you stopped, you would still be there."
"Why?"
"Why does it happen? I don't know. But what it means is that you're Undead. Like a zombie."
She tried the word on her tongue. "Undead."
He didn't tell her anything else that day, or what the grape pill was. Just that.
She didn't find out anything more until she was ten, and still with him, coming to his apartment after school to learn intense first aid and to not be alone in her family's apartment.
She hated being alone.
One day they were in the kitchen and Oguni-sensei said, "Do you want to know why you're still alive, why you still grow even though you're technically dead?"
"Are you going to tell me the rest now?" she asked, excited, and he nodded.
"The Undead feed off of…" he sighed. "I'm not sure how to explain it, but they're almost like souls. People, every day, give up a bit of their soul or mind or heart, and the Undead collect them and take them. That's what the grape pill is-a little bit of a soul. It makes your body function normally. I'll show you how to recognize and collect that soul, and how to turn it into something you can consume. The soul-or mind, or whatever it is-it helps your body regenerate, though you have to be careful."
Kaoru knew that firsthand. Her blood never clotted when she scraped her knees, and when she broke her arm it took Oguni-sensi setting it from the inside, after cutting open her skin, a cast, and six months for it to heal.
"But you live longer, at least a little bit," Oguni-sensei said. "Most Undead live to a hundred twenty or so, if they don't die from stupidity first."
"Why?"
Oguni-sensei shrugged. "I don't know. But-" he looked very seriously at her. "When, for example, your friend Misao's Aoshi-sama left for college and you talked with her and hugged her and cried with her, and after that she was happier, because she had let him go (to college at least), she let a piece of her soul, a piece that was dark, go. It lightened her load. That is what keeps you alive, Kaoru-chan. Moments like that. I'll show you how to collect them, and keep them. I think, therefore, that the Undead are here to help other people let go."
"And the ghosts?"
"Ghosts are like a long sleep," Oguni-sensei said. "Because they leave that entire part of them behind, if you help them move on."
ooo
She summarized her childhood for Himura-san's-which sounded odd, so in her mind she decided to call him Kenshin-sake, and he nodded slowly. Now he was as corporeal as she was, it seemed; not even his edges were fuzzy.
All right, he said, I think, given that I have been here for over a hundred years, that I believe you, Kaoru-dono. But I have nothing I'm attached to, still, so why am I here?
"I don't know," Kaoru told him.
"Then what?" the man called Kenshin asked. He seemed perfectly unaware that he had just spoken aloud, but Kaoru gasped.
"What?"
"You-look. Ghosts can't…talk. Not like people can. Yeah, you open your mouth and you speak, but you speak into my mind-you don't verbalize anything aloud. But now…now you are verbalizing. Aloud. I can hear you, not just with my mind."
Kenshin blinked. "I don't know the difference, that I don't."
"Does this happen every time you appear? You become real?"
He shrugged. "I don't know that, either. It doesn't feel any different, that it doesn't."
She extended a hand. "Can I touch you?"
He set his hand on top of hers.
She felt rough, calloused skin, cool. Her breath caught. He settled the weight of his hand on hers and it didn't fall through.
"You're real," she said.
"Am I?" he asked.
She watched him closely. He had no pulse, of course, but unlike her, he did not breathe. She only breathed out of habit, but even Oguni-sensei, despite being nearly ninety and Undead since he was ten, still breathed. Kaoru, and all of the few Undead she knew, felt odd if they didn't breathe.
Ghosts never breathed, she noticed.
"How old are you?" Kenshin asked.
"Eighteen. I'm taking some classes at the local college-I think I'm going to open a preschool. Why? How old are you?"
"Old," he said ruefully. "I was twenty-eight when I died, in the eleventh year of the Meiji era." He smiled up at her.
Kaoru smiled back. He seemed like a nice guy, she thought.
There was an awkward pause.
"So," Kenshin said quietly. "What do you want me to do?"
There it is. The first chapter. What do you think? It's a bit rough--there are some concepts in my head that I didn't know how to put into words, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Stay tuned for the next part!
nebulia out.
Gasp!
I've got to get it done by next Wednesday, so I can devote my life to NaNoWriMo on Thursday, yesplz.
But here it is:
Title: empty as the sky
Fandom:: Rurouni Kenshin
Rating: Let's say...for now, T, for gore-ish stuff, and future language and stuff. I dunno yet, it's still forming in my head.
Summary: Kaoru is on earth to help people let go of the darkness within them. Kenshin is on earth despite the fact that he has come to terms with his own darkness. Together, they discover what it means to really live, and how to let go. [modern AU, KK, zombies and ghosts galore]
Chapter I: pour some tea for two
The ghost came to her for the first time as she was doing a kata in the dojo.
She felt it behind her, a breath of wind, sudden chill in the room.
Her heart stopped. She hadn't felt a ghost in a long time. Few of the dead remained attached to this earth, and few were as fluid but as grounded as the one whose mind had just brushed hers.
She dropped her bokken and whirled. "I won't hurt you," she said aloud.
Ghosts were terrified, flighty things, expecting attack at any minute.
This ghost was pale, white on white shadow, almost a mist, its features nearly indiscernible. She couldn't tell its sex, though it had long hair. It floated half an inch above the floor, in hakama, with a katana at its waist.
I'm not expecting to be hurt, it said into her mind, unafraid. Ghosts were not capable of verbalization, though none she had met had ever seemed to realize that. That instinct wore off a century ago.
It seemed a bit clearer to her now; it smiled, she could tell, and its eyes, though still colorless were now visible, large.
It was a man-an effeminate-looking one, but a man nonetheless. A little taller than her, and old. She had never met a ghost so old. She could feel it in its spirit; it flowed through the room, ki from life and heart from death. Minds were less attached within the bodies of ghosts-this man's floated around the room, curious, exploring.
"What do you want?" she asked.
You just moved here?
"A few days ago. It was, supposedly, an old family home, but…" she shrugged. "At one point, my teenaged I-don't-know-how-many-greats-grandmother got blackmailed out of it and for most of the Meiji restoration, it was a gambling hall. How do you know it?"
Not as a gambling hall-simply a place I visited a few days before my death. A dojo, then, with an orphaned fifteen-year-old assistant master, I think. I barely remember her. I returned…after Meiji's death, and it was abandoned, so I stayed here. His face was clear now; he had a large cross-shaped scar on one cheek, and color was beginning to come to his hair. Red. Odd, because he seemed so Japanese…
He smiled ruefully. I'd escaped one too many exorcisms to want to spend time around people. I haven't shown myself for nearly fifty years. If I may ask…he paused, and then took a breath, though he didn't need to. Who are you?
Red hair and violet-blue eyes, but still transparent. "Kamiya Kaoru," she told him, bowing slightly. "And you?"
Himura Kenshin.
"It's a pleasure. Why don't you sit?" she knelt in place, and he did so as well. "Now, what's keeping you here?"
He blinked. What?
His form was becoming more corporeal, more so than she'd ever seen a ghost. He was no longer transparent, and his knees were resting fully on the ground.
Kaoru sighed, a little impatiently. "I hope you're just surprised and not dense," she muttered, and then said, more loudly, "Ghosts. There are not very many on this earth, not at all. I've only met seven or eight in my life, and according to the man who told me about myself, that's more than most Undead ever meet. You're still here because you've got some sort of attachment to this earth."
Attachment? I have not been…attached to anything for a long time, that I haven't-I hadn't been attached to anything for a long time even when I was alive. I am a rurouni, a wanderer. He did a sudden double take, and Kaoru had to hold in a smile. Wait-Undead?
ooo
When she was four, she fell through one of the railings in the steps of her apartment building and plunged, flailing in that space between the stairs, arms and legs hitting metal and concrete as she tumbled, five stories to the ground, where she was found moments later by a man she didn't know, a broken, bloody body.
"You're dead," the man told her, and she blinked up at him. She wasn't in pain, could feel her limbs. A shoulder was dislocated, and she couldn't move her arm. He popped it back in the socket for her, and helped her sit up in a puddle of her own blood.
"I'm dead?" she asked him, her voice hoarse from screaming.
He nodded.
"Then why'm I…living?" she asked, confused.
He didn't explain anything then, just took her to his apartment, where he stitched up tendons and ligaments and set bones and then sewed up her skin and scrubbed her free of blood and handed her a small bottle of pills, then, thinking differently, took it away from her. He gave her one to eat. It tasted like grapes, sweet.
He took her back to her apartment. They lived on the same floor. He introduced himself as Oguni Gensai, a retired doctor. He said he'd found her lost in the alley outside the apartment. He'd offered to baby-sit her for a smaller fee than most babysitters asked. Her parents agreed willingly.
Every day she stayed with him. He was kind and old and at lunch every day she would take one of the grape pills and slowly-more slowly than it had before her fall-her skin knit itself together. He still didn't explain anything, though she asked. He needed to wait, he said, until she was old enough to understand. She begged and begged, but he was firm.
On her fifth birthday, Oguni-sensei gave her a slice of cake and the suddenly a white wisp of a figure appeared next to them, terrified.
Don't hurt me, please! she begged, once she realized they could see her.
Oguni-sensei spoke with her quietly, and then said a prayer, and the woman vanished with a smile on her face.
"What was that?" she asked.
"A ghost."
"Why could I see it?"
Oguni sighed. "Because, Kaoru-chan, sometimes people die, but they don't die. Their bodies break and bleed, but their minds are still clear. Sometimes they even stop breathing. I still breathe, and you still breathe, because it's habit. But if you stopped, you would still be there."
"Why?"
"Why does it happen? I don't know. But what it means is that you're Undead. Like a zombie."
She tried the word on her tongue. "Undead."
He didn't tell her anything else that day, or what the grape pill was. Just that.
She didn't find out anything more until she was ten, and still with him, coming to his apartment after school to learn intense first aid and to not be alone in her family's apartment.
She hated being alone.
One day they were in the kitchen and Oguni-sensei said, "Do you want to know why you're still alive, why you still grow even though you're technically dead?"
"Are you going to tell me the rest now?" she asked, excited, and he nodded.
"The Undead feed off of…" he sighed. "I'm not sure how to explain it, but they're almost like souls. People, every day, give up a bit of their soul or mind or heart, and the Undead collect them and take them. That's what the grape pill is-a little bit of a soul. It makes your body function normally. I'll show you how to recognize and collect that soul, and how to turn it into something you can consume. The soul-or mind, or whatever it is-it helps your body regenerate, though you have to be careful."
Kaoru knew that firsthand. Her blood never clotted when she scraped her knees, and when she broke her arm it took Oguni-sensi setting it from the inside, after cutting open her skin, a cast, and six months for it to heal.
"But you live longer, at least a little bit," Oguni-sensei said. "Most Undead live to a hundred twenty or so, if they don't die from stupidity first."
"Why?"
Oguni-sensei shrugged. "I don't know. But-" he looked very seriously at her. "When, for example, your friend Misao's Aoshi-sama left for college and you talked with her and hugged her and cried with her, and after that she was happier, because she had let him go (to college at least), she let a piece of her soul, a piece that was dark, go. It lightened her load. That is what keeps you alive, Kaoru-chan. Moments like that. I'll show you how to collect them, and keep them. I think, therefore, that the Undead are here to help other people let go."
"And the ghosts?"
"Ghosts are like a long sleep," Oguni-sensei said. "Because they leave that entire part of them behind, if you help them move on."
ooo
She summarized her childhood for Himura-san's-which sounded odd, so in her mind she decided to call him Kenshin-sake, and he nodded slowly. Now he was as corporeal as she was, it seemed; not even his edges were fuzzy.
All right, he said, I think, given that I have been here for over a hundred years, that I believe you, Kaoru-dono. But I have nothing I'm attached to, still, so why am I here?
"I don't know," Kaoru told him.
"Then what?" the man called Kenshin asked. He seemed perfectly unaware that he had just spoken aloud, but Kaoru gasped.
"What?"
"You-look. Ghosts can't…talk. Not like people can. Yeah, you open your mouth and you speak, but you speak into my mind-you don't verbalize anything aloud. But now…now you are verbalizing. Aloud. I can hear you, not just with my mind."
Kenshin blinked. "I don't know the difference, that I don't."
"Does this happen every time you appear? You become real?"
He shrugged. "I don't know that, either. It doesn't feel any different, that it doesn't."
She extended a hand. "Can I touch you?"
He set his hand on top of hers.
She felt rough, calloused skin, cool. Her breath caught. He settled the weight of his hand on hers and it didn't fall through.
"You're real," she said.
"Am I?" he asked.
She watched him closely. He had no pulse, of course, but unlike her, he did not breathe. She only breathed out of habit, but even Oguni-sensei, despite being nearly ninety and Undead since he was ten, still breathed. Kaoru, and all of the few Undead she knew, felt odd if they didn't breathe.
Ghosts never breathed, she noticed.
"How old are you?" Kenshin asked.
"Eighteen. I'm taking some classes at the local college-I think I'm going to open a preschool. Why? How old are you?"
"Old," he said ruefully. "I was twenty-eight when I died, in the eleventh year of the Meiji era." He smiled up at her.
Kaoru smiled back. He seemed like a nice guy, she thought.
There was an awkward pause.
"So," Kenshin said quietly. "What do you want me to do?"
There it is. The first chapter. What do you think? It's a bit rough--there are some concepts in my head that I didn't know how to put into words, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Stay tuned for the next part!
nebulia out.