flonnebonne | [Rurouni Kenshin] Fic: Poison & Paper Moths

Poison & Paper Moths by flonnebonne
Rurouni Kenshin, Tomoe, 701 words, PG, spoilers for the Revenge Arc

Written to fulfill

februaryfour' request for a Kenshin x Tomoe fic. Er, I didn't exactly end up writing that. And the fic is super late. -_- I am so sorry.

Poison and Paper Moths

Here, but a day’s walk from the last lantern light of Kyoto, the world is too idyllic for war.

The maple leaves are just beginning to turn colour now, yellows and oranges mixed among the greens, and the winds of autumn sigh to her a false litany of peace. She waits for the scent of war fires and the screams of horses and for honour-bound killers to ride the winds to her doorstep.

He will be home soon. Tomoe waits, for she is always the one who waits, with their dinner set out beside their humble brazier. Today she has prepared a strange yam soup and plain rice and a small plate laden with precious mountain vegetables, a gift from the old midwife who lives alone down the dirt road, in idyll.

He will be home soon.

----

Here, in this world apart from the world, he gives in to smiles too easily.

Here, in their beggar’s paradise, he makes medicine and and she makes meals; here, he plays games with children and she plays at being a dutiful wife. At night, he does not touch her; at night, she lies awake and thinks about what she will do if she is touched. In his sleep, he does not dream that she is poison; in her sleep, as elsewhere, she dreams of nothing else.

A woman is the best poison, they told her, those men with their leering grins and the dried blood under their fingernails and their tales of how a woman could take revenge without a sword. Find us his weaknesses, and we will become your swords, they told her. A pretty face is all it takes.

In her waking hours she contemplates the many ways a woman can slip poison into a man: in his medicine, in his meals, between her lips, between her legs. If he touches her, tries to take from her what belonged to her beloved Akira...but he never tries to take, of course, for he is just a boy, and she a wife who has never lain with her husband.

He smiles too easily now, she thinks. He looks nothing like Akira, but when the tilt of his mouth is just so, just so, she feels her heart stutter for a moment, as if vengeance were a moth beating papery wings against her breast, and she wonders how can he not hear it? He is losing the best and worst part of him, he is losing what makes him the man she set out to murder, and she is losing her resolve with every tadaima and okaeri and every pot of rice they share.

A woman is the best poison, they told her, but it is a treacherous weapon, her only weapon, and if she were a man with a sword she could end this folk tale with two swift strokes, one for his neck and one for her belly, clean and simple and final, without need for poisons or pretty faces or smiles, and she would not care if he struck her down midswing because in death she would not feel anything of paper moths, would not feel how fragile their beating wings could feel against her heart, and she could be with Akira instead of here preparing him this humble meal and waiting for him to taste it, because it must be true that a woman is the best poison if even he cannot taste it seeping into him, if only she can taste it seeping into her.

The meal is getting cold, she thinks, calmly. She slides the dishes closer to the brazier.

----

He is home.

He closes the door behind him, trapping the wind outside and her inside with him. He smiles, too easily, too sweetly. Tadaima, he says. The moth’s wings flutter beside her heart. Okaeri, she replies.

He lays down his sword and seats himself across from her at the table. They eat the simple meal she has prepared for him. All he tastes is yam and rice and mountain vegetables.

After, he sleeps and does not dream that she is poison. She sleeps, and dreams of nothing else.

-End-