In a hearts eyes.Event,Part three.Conclussion

KENSHIN

Lovely is fast wearing a kimono and sandals that any other time she would shy from.

A sneaker girl though and through she is.

Things I picked up on as I watched her through the years,so scared of her and would not just try to talk to her at all.
Now i have more than words with her but she does not with me.

I follow her at a distance as she walks fast through the backyard maze my dad built in his(I barely even believe it myself.)romantic days to chase my mother who clever enough to have memorized the maze always feigned to remember a turn here or there.

"Yukihana,my Lovely....what is the matter that you still hold onto so tightly...."

My voice goes unheard as she reaches her destination.

I don't even think she realizes that this was here all this time.

Where we first met was in these walls,the first time I heard the song called 'Yukihanas laugh',the moment I could not have anyone else and I knew it even as a boy.

My father called me a fool for it but I could not stop myself from running after her,getting onto the bus with her and her Uncle.

Even nearly getting pneumonia for pulling out the puppy from the water and spending every last coin I had on me(money I would not have again for sometime for just part of my punishment)to clean up Cookie and feed her for as long as I could do so then.

Just about anything to make her smile.
I watched her smile at my shadow that night,I watch her as a shadow now putting off her sandals and walking into a dojo that has seen more than a few frustrated screams,violent outbursts and tears from me,my dad and my grandfather.

If these walls could speak.

She pads the floor so gently,afraid as though to wake some ancient samurai and if things were not feeling so precarious to me now I would find this immensely adorable and be a touchy samurai of old but...

My heart can't allow that right now.

I need an answer,I have given her no lies or a lacking of affection but she withholds something from me that I can not heal because she will not let me.

"Fond memories?'

She starts,very quickly and eases only somewhat as she turns seeing me.
My hands find the deepest corner of my pockets and I lean against the door just to stare at her while she stares at my family motto.

"I had no idea that this place would begin my love of swords...my love of a flirtatious monkey wielding one too....I had no idea what would begin here."

My heart.
She turns and has a soft smile that is more than enough to have killed me and started my heart back up again but something is holding me back.

She is holding me back with her eyes.

"I am so sorry Shin,you have been a dream and I have been fighting something so hard that I didn't want you or..anyone really to know.I thought I could just power through it,cut it with Ichimonji but.
I am failing at it Kenshin.Failing so miserably I feel like a joke."

Before she gets a chance to finish I am by her side,keeping my hands in my pockets and eyes on hers without a flicker allowed to escape me.

"Are we finally talking now?Will I have you open up...for the second time?"

Yukihana looks as though a smitten enemy on a battlefield would and it wounds me but I do not make any other attempt to press a word out of her.

I want her to truly want me,TRULY be open to me.
Otherwise...
What point is there to us?

"Did your parents say to you what it felt like to them?Being in love for the first time or simply being in love in general?"

She twirls as she walks the dojo,her attention still solely on me but she moves softly around and I remain motionless.

"My mother sometimes talked to me,for her it was like a thunderstorm hit and when the clearing fully appeared so did the feeling.My father never said so much as a word except that he would not have any other woman,they all paled before her to him."
"Grandparents?"
"'A sight that held on for life even with years of fights to get to romantic delight'my Grandmother told me.I think he was as done for about her as I am for you."

Yukihana....
Oh that soft smile...that is enough to make my break my patience and take little regard to the trouble I feel within but she realizes the moment that thought appeared,like it somehow bounced around in my head loudly and she heard it so quickly that the smile went away.

"So certain and resolute.I have dreamed of such,literally.and here you are and here I am questioning it.Questioning everything over it..."
"Over what?"

Her eyes,those soft eyes that pierced me like daggers when she got my love letter when I finally got the nerve up enough to try for her.

Those eyes are so sad.

"My Dad.my Mom.They said it felt like ice,like you could not escape the intense sensation it created.Like fire,how it makes a warmth that becomes a  flame that feels so uncontrollable you will burst if not together and a fireplace when you are.Too warm for distance and too hot for decency.They said this to me because they felt I should be aware of how false the feeling of love can be...."

My heart that pumped like fire a moment ago is cooling so fast.

"They described every.Single.Feeling I have been feeling to the exact detail!I am so astonished by that!Almost scientific....."
"What are you saying?Are you saying that you think what we have is false or that I am playing you?I do not understand tell me."

She stops.
Time seems to stop.

My Lovely,she walks towards me and takes my hakama sleeves,uses them to help her as she rises on tip toes to reach my face and she kisses me.

A strange combination of 'Farewell' and 'Goodnight' and 'Can't wait for more' which is too heady for me to take without knowing which one it is.

I hope it is the last one.
I pray it is the last one.

"Let me go.Kenshin.Let me go and let me breathe.I love you,I do not hide that nor deny it.
So fast to think it or say it really but I feel it.Yet,Love, I need to breathe because you are such a wonderful thief that I fear I will suffocate myself because I am not ready for you.Not yet.
Maybe never but I can't be with you and with doubt over being with you.....You deserve better and I can't live with myself if I am somehow wrong and ruin us and maybe... kids someday."

YUKIHAN.LATE.


"Why would you do that Yuki?"

I stare down at the bowl before my eyes of dumplings filled with chicken and cabbage,spicy noodles beside them,curry bread and even a cupcake the size of  my fist.

"Because,Arata,I can not bear to be in any doubt,having the fear in the back of my mind that we will become my or his parents,that we would wreak,no..I would wreak our possible children.I can't bear that."

I am still stunned I am even here with him but he is my oldest friend.
A villain that I called out,that told me each lie and mean thing he did to me.

All of it out of pure jealous heart and pain.

Even how he lied about being the one that found Cookie.

"You are in love with him.I hate him for it but...This was a mistake that you could pay for with the rest of your life Yuki,can you live with that?"

Can I?

"Can I?"