You seem to have missed Last Shreds 2a on that list that you sent out.
Sorry, I only got it today. ^_^

Last Shreds: Part 2a
Dreamless Contemplation
A Rurouni Kenshin fan fiction
by Dr. Panda (drpanda@crosswinds.net)

first draft 5/19/99
C&C WELCOME!!

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This fan-fiction is absolutely non-profit and is meant ONLY for personal
enjoyment.
All non-original characters are copyrighted property of Nobuhiro Watsuki.
The copyright to this fanfic, its name, and all original characters is owned
by Dr. Panda  (drpanda@crosswinds.net)
For posting rights, please e-mail me
This work may not be posted without my permission
*********************************************************************
**Please note that this fanfic is supposed to occur during the manga.  All I
can tell you for the moment is that it is pre-Revenge, though there will
some ambiguous Revenge arc spoilers and MAJOR one. The main story, however,
has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Revenge-arc.  What you MUST know
before you read this is that the conclusion, coming in some later part,
depending, will be a fairly major Kyoto spoiler if you don't know what
"baka-deshi" refers to.
Enjoy the fic!
***********************************************************************

	Droplets of rain pattered softly upon the wooden tiles of the dojo's roof.
Water, slowly but continuously, dripped off the end, hitting and soaking
into the cold, cold ground with a patter of its own, sounding like legions
of tiny soldiers mournfully marching to a dirge.  A funeral dirge.
	The hooded one sighed, a soundless exhalation of breath.  He hadn't quite
expected things to go as they had.  At first, the plan had worked perfectly,
the stalking, the ambush, everything.  He had hoped, in vain, that Setsukage
would succeed in breaking the barrier.  In the end, however, it had worked,
and a man lay dead at the hands of one who had sworn not to kill, despite
(or maybe because of) the depths of his own feelings.
	Then, nothing...
What had gone wrong?!  His plan had worked perfectly!  His target,
irrational fool that he was, had done exactly what had been expected of him,
had been horror-stricken by what he had done in his blind rage.  What the
hooded one hadn't expected was that his target would fall into a state,
almost catatonic, in guilt.  The man laughed.  What a joke.  What an absurd
joke!  So a man was not to kill even to protect those he loved?  The
laughing turned bitter, humorless.  Well, he would eventually learn.  They
always did. The hooded one watched the dojo through sunken, golden eyes, as
he fingered his drenched cloak.  He had to leave otherwise they might just
find him.  Oh, they'd find him eventually, and, oh, wouldn't that be a
learning experience!  Himura Kenshin would learn.  Even if it killed him.
Still laughing, the hooded man turned and moved away.  Let the Game
continue.

	Kenshin stood, unmoving, in the rain.  He stood, barely breathing, as he
felt the soft droplets of rain cascade off his shoulders, soak into his gi,
and drip off the ends of his sleeves.  He stood, listening to the beating of
his heart, even as he pondered his own feelings.
	He waited...and waited...and waited...nothing.  He might have been waiting
for a merchant's cart.  His heart, his breathing, his muscles.  Everything
about him seemed calm and serene.  Even his mind was blank, unreacting.
	What was wrong with him?  Eleven years ago, born of blood and anger, he had
rose from that same red ocean he had helped fill, burnished and tempered in
four years of running battles and war, four years of blood and death,
determined to strive above his savage tendencies, and had sworn never to use
his blade again in the company of death.  From now on, he had decided, death
and I walk different paths, and the assassin will have to keep his sword in
a different sheathe, because I will not carry it.
	Eleven years of stoic denial, steel determination, and icy resolve.  In all
that time, he had fought with all of his mental prowess, and all of his
enormous physical strength, against the demon that walked behind him.
Hitokiri Battousai.
	And now, at last he had returned to the very beginning of his journey.  For
all his pretty words and idealistic preaching, he had revealed himself to
that demon and had destroyed, forever, one life.
	Why can't I feel anything?
	He knew that he had no reason to feel guilty specifically because of the
man he had murdered.  He didn't.  What he should have felt was the guilt of
having broken a promise he had made himself.  A promise that he had
determined, after the fight with Jinneh, not to break, no matter what the
cost.
	In that battle, just as in this one, Kaoru had been in mortal danger.  In
had frightened him how easily he had slipped back into being Battousai.
That shadow had been there when he had called it.  What was more frightening
was that, it had seemed that once called, Battousai had not cared at all for
Kaoru.  All he had wanted was to feel the shock in his arm as his blade came
into contact with Jinneh's neck.  All he had wanted was blood.  Kenshin felt
the hairs on the back of his neck raise in the cool air as the memory
chilled his spine.  Just like when he remembered the look in the dead man's
eyes as Kenshin's sword snapped his neck like a twig.
	It did not matter that it had been an accident.  What mattered was that he
had killed a man with his own hands, as Himura Kenshin.  It mattered little
if Battousai killed someone...because he would never let Battousai free
again.  Battousai was and had been a mindless killer.  A drinker of men's
blood.  A lurker, a spy, an assassin, a murderer.  A knife in the dark.  He
had never killed to protect the one he had loved.  Battousai had been
incapable of love, and for that he should remain buried forever, else he
would drench Japan in blood again.  Himura Kenshin should have been above
that kind of savagery.
	Kenshin grimaced.  And whenever he had avoided the touch of Battousai,
someone had died.  A scent of white blossoms bloomed inside his head for the
barest of an instant and then disappeared on the winds of his memories.
	Why can't I feel anything?
	All that time, all that anger, brought to nothing in a matter of moments,
and he felt nothing.  The last shreds of his idealism, gone in a flash of
rage, and he felt nothing.  Was that all his convictions had truly been
worth to him?  Mere delightful dreams that disappeared into nothingness with
awakening?  Was that all they had been?!

	"Kenshin?"
	Kenshin turned his head.  It was Sano, come to comfort him, to comfort the
poor rurouni, even when he did not know what to say.  Kenshin smiled
inwardly.  The name Battousai may have been one that he would have gladly
forgotten, but he couldn't deny that it was thanks to that name that he had
met the dearest friends he had ever had.
	Sagara Sanosuke, the self-styled successor of a kind patriot who had taken
him in and cared for him as a son.  Takani Megumi, a strong-willed young
woman determined to carry on her own battles against the pain and suffering
caused by war, herself a casualty.  Myojin Yahiko, a young boy resolved to
carry on the tradition of his family, long-dead.  And last of all, Kamiya
Kaoru, inheritor of a legacy that she would endlessly safeguard until the
end of her lifetime.  Brought together by a trick of fate, a chance meeting
in the streets of Tokyo, shadowed by the legend of Hitokiri Battousai.
	Kenshin's inner smile grew larger.  In the end, he supposed, he should find
the Hiruma brothers and thank them.  If they hadn't lied, murdered, or
coerced, he would never have met any of these people.  It would be worth it
just to see the looks on their faces.
	Kenshin still did not move, but listened, not even thinking, to the soft
sound of falling rain.  Silently, he let the sounds carry him away to
another place, another time, away from the violence, the suffering, and the
fear.  Without conscious thought, he closed his eyes, he fell back into the
training that his shishou had first taught him.  His first lesson hadn't
been the mastery of the sword or his strength, but mastery of emotion and of
conviction.
	His mind drifted.  His perceptions faded out.  His consciousness soared.
The wind took him in, cherished him, made him whole, made him one.  He was
one with the wind.  He could feel the drops of rain caress and traverse his
skin.  He could feel the warmth of the ground below him, covered with the
warm, gentle thoughts of those close to him.  He felt at peace, at the
center of a great balance between the heavens and the earth.  His skin was
warm and cold at the same time.  His thoughts crossed his mind like a breath
of wind over the calm pool of his emotions.
	He soared higher and higher until he was above the clouds of his existence.
In what seemed like an eternity for what took less than moment, he turned
on, and looked down upon the planet that he called his own.  Behind him,
stars twinkled in an endless void, and he floated, in his serenity, his gaze
locked on the small Earth below.
	...and he felt, rather than saw, a presence behind him, at his shoulder.
He whipped around, saw nothing, and then spun totally around.  Still
nothing.  Again he closed his eyes and blocked out all the light, all the
warmth, of everything that he felt, had ever felt, and would feel.  Then he
saw it.
	It was a dark shape, a shadowed shape.  In the blackness around him, it was
blacker still.  That shape...so like something that he ought to know.  He
reached for it, touched it, and cold seized his soul.  Then he looked
directly into, into golden eyes in a face that was the very image of his
own.
	Battousai...
	Kenshin's eyes snapped open and he started up.
	(What?)  He shook his head.
	(I must have fallen asleep...)
	The red-haired rurouni shivered in revulsion.  Why had he become Battousai
in the first place?  He was much different from what he was like under his
shishou's delicate tutelage, but Battousai was another being entirely.  A
creature born of darkness, hatred, and violence.  And ironically enough, of
idealism as well.
	A bubble of nearly hysterical laughter rose up his throat before he could
stifle it entirely.  As he fought down the false mirth which threatened to
overwhelm him, he was aware of Kaoru, Yahiko, Sano, and even Megumi (when
had she arrived here?) standing to him, watching him anxiously.
	"Kenshin?"
	Kaoru leaned forward, her beautiful blue-black eyes shining with concern.
She hesitantly reached out to take his hand in hers.
	"Kenshin...are you..." her voice died off, and Kenshin realized that while
he may be drained of his emotions, she certainly wasn't.  He glanced at
Yahiko's tight, trying-to-be-brave expression, and at Sano's non-chalant but
forced grin, and Megumi's twitching hands.  They were in almost as bad shape
as Kaoru, as much as they tried to hide it.  He felt flooded by at wave of
warmth that killed his worry and washed away his doubts.
	Without his ever asking them, they were showing him their support of him,
taking his cause for their own, and they would fight, each in their own
ways, to defend it.  He felt unshed tears gather behind his eyelids.  They
were his friends, they were his family.  He loved them.  What had he done to
ever deserve this?
	A little voice, one that had lain dormant inside of him for years, one that
he had believed buried forever, reared its head.
	(Liar...)
	(What?)
	(You have done nothing to deserve them.  You lie about who you are.)
	(What do you mean?)
	(Everything they are now, you have made them.  You have taught them to
believe in themselves, to believe in one another.  You have shown them who
they are...but then you lie and pretend that you are someone you are not.)
	(I know who I am.)
	(No, you don't.  If you do, then why do you carry that sword?  The nature
of the sword is part of you and your nature runs side by side with it.)
	(No!  It's not like that!  This sword was given to me to protect those
around me without killing.)
	(And you've done such a good job of that...)
	(What do you know of me?!  I left you dead on a field ten years ago!  I
don't want any part of you!)
	(WHAT do YOU know of ME?!!  I AM part of you...I am you.  And you are Me.)
	(No!  No!  No!)
	Kenshin raised his head and smiled at them.
	"Daijoubu de gozaru, Kaoru-dono..."

	The cloaked man smiled.
	Well, so things had gone perfectly after all.  A little more time, a little
more pressure and "Kenshin" would finally understand.  One way or the other.
	He laughed silently, sure that no one could see him where he lay.
	And laughed and laughed and laughed.

To be continued