HE BARELY FELT HER. It was uncommon for someone of his mortal caliber to be able to not sense anything that approached. But this woman had all but materialized in front of him; so bright to the point of almost blinding - no, she was blinding.
Her light, so pure, the unfathomable thoughts he could scarcely read save something akin to deep sadness made Kenshin nearly choke at the ‘how’s’ the ‘why’s’. She is ephemeral, she is beatific, she is not human.
For a man many thought more god than mortal, he finds the irony of them, of their miscalculations for is his reaction no less human than they? Is he not flesh and tired bone? The indelible war between his soul of both past and present struggling to merge into one future? For all his strength, all his will, his beating heart, he is not prepared for h e r .
An indiscernible silence follows; but perhaps she might know it, might know him. No, she must know him, she must know something of him if she would approach him without disgust or fear and cradle holy fingers behind his crown of fire.
Reach the tired skin there and press sanctified lips upon them in a gesture many knew as ‘love’ to something Kenshin felt only an instinct to retreat within himself; to lower his body and prostrate himself at her feet in forgiveness that she felt such a need to touch him . Does she not see the blood, does it not cloy to him despite the scents of the trees and sunlight, the fresh mist of morning?
❝ I . . ❞ He stumbles on his archaic speech, forgetting himself. His soul knew her, and it did not know why. He who so many revered, so many reviled.So many came to Kaoru’s door and either demanded retribution or sought his prowess…but to him, it meant so little in the face of her . He does not remember her from the pantheon, nor any teachings of the Buddha but did it even matter?
❝ I am unworthy. I am unworthy…❞
He croaks in the face of a love that went beyond the mortal scope of man. It is a love like his mother’s long ago; lost to cholera - it is the love of any person who ever tried and died for it. It is the love of someone or something that is beyond him, and Kenshin does not fool himself.
He instinctively grabs her hands with the slightest twitch in his fingers; finding them colder in comparison to her life-breathed hands, the light-soaked motes on her skin . He finds himself wanting.
Almost like desperation does the rurouni places his brow to her hands and feels the stinging of eyes in the face of a love he has/and has been denied all his life, a life he has not valued, a life he does not love! Not like he does the unconditional love he has for man. He hunches his upper body slightly to press his forehead there; uttering softly under his breath,
❝ Kami-sama …? That you would visit me, whatever you are, you blind me. I…forgive me, that I would speak, forgive me, but I know - —– I know you. This one’s heart, in its weariness, would know you blind and all the while yet not at all. ❞
Please forgive me, once more, or are my sins too great, the unspoken prayer on a broken man’s lips, as he feels himself enveloped in cosmic, unyielding, undefinable love - and allows himself to be what others failed to see, to be.
To be mortal and bleed for it.