From: "Jan Story" YOUKO A Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction by Jan Story Based on characters created by Nobuhiro Watsuki and situations created by Yoshihiro Togashi They were gaining on her. She’d never managed to get so far before, but even that wasn’t enough. She wasn’t going to make it. And she was wounded inside, bleeding – it was Inari’s mercy that she wasn’t leaving a blood trail for the hounds, but that wouldn’t matter once they crossed her track and scented her. A stream! The running water wouldn’t hold a scent, and she couldn’t leave a trail of broken branches and trampled undergrowth in its rocky bed. Upstream were the forests of her birth, kin who would shelter her. They’d be expecting her to go that way. She headed downstream instead. It was harder than she expected. The water was deeper than it looked, and the swift current threatened to sweep her away. She stumbled on the uneven footing of the rocky bed. Cold ate at her ebbing strength. /*Have to find a place to hide.*/ A hollow in the bank… too small to conceal her as she was, but maybe in true-fox shape… There was a risk. The fox-shape was small and fragile compared to her youko form. It might not be able to sustain her life. /*I won’t go back with them, no matter what. I won’t let them use me any more.*/ Pervert her healer’s gifts to distort creatures into living weapons, prostitute her skill with medicinal plants to make poisons… never again. She could hear the hounds baying… closer… /*Inari… I don’t want to die. Not without making up for the things I’ve done.*/ Then she remembered. She’d only seen the spell once. It offered a chance for escape – or certain destruction. She might die… she might be lost forever. There were searchers’ voices now. They had found where she’d gone into the water. It was now or never. Shift to true-fox in hopes that the transformation would kill her outright? Or… the spider-thread of a chance to climb out of hell? /*Inari…*/ with a last prayer, she cast her spirit into the void between the worlds. Something pulled at her. An emptiness. A need. It drew her disembodied essence, giving her direction in this place without up or down, forward or back. With no air, no landmarks, nothing to measure herself against, she still felt herself gaining speed, faster than light, faster than thought, and then she… Stopped? She was floating, almost as though she were still disembodied. She couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything beyond a sense of envelopment, couldn’t smell, and wasn’t sure about taste. She could here, though; she was immersed in sounds, rumbles and swooshes and a pervasive, pulsing rhythm that overwhelmed all her senses. Apart from that, nothing seemed to work very well. She couldn’t open her eyes, could barely move. There was only the floating feeling and that vast heartbeat. /*Heartbeat..?*/ /*Unborn.*/ Of course. The pull she had felt could only be a forming body’s need for a soul. The only bodies available to her would have been unborn ones, or perhaps the newly dead. She would never have displaced a soul from its home, such an action violated everything she believed in. Even if she hadn’ t believed it was wrong, she didn’t know how… and probably didn’t have the strength. Carefully she explored her new body. It was ningen and female. And then she found… At first she wasn’t sure. Ningen bodies were so fragile anyway compared to youko ones. But gradually she became certain. The tiny heart was misformed, there was an opening between its two sides that should not have been there. This happened in youko too, sometimes. Unless it was repaired, the body would not survive. Might not survive birth, certainly would not live to maturity. She didn’t know what would happen to *her* when that happened. She might go to the Reikai for judgment – or she might return to the Makai. /*It’s too soon for either. If I go to the Reikai, with all I’ ve done, I’ll be cast out into the dark. And if I return to the Makai, they ’ll be waiting to take me back.*/ She could repair it. But it would take everything she had, and there was a danger. She might merge with the body so completely that her soul would forget its Makai origins, she would forget she was youko and become completely ningen. But she didn’t see any other choice. This frail body was her only home, her only refuge. And so she began the long task of painstakingly untangling garbled instructions, reconstructing corrupt or missing sequences, teaching the tiny cells the proper way to grow. Little by little she lost herself in her work. Little by little she merged with the small body. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * “A strong, healthy girl!” the sanba beamed. She handed a fire-warmed knife to the father, who cut the umbilical cord with practiced ease. “Strong?” The exhausted mother sagged back against the rolled futons supporting her back. “She’s perfectly healthy,” Ryuusei Takani reassured his wife. “A beautiful daughter.” He held the baby so she could see, as the sanba busied herself with cleaning up. “Yokatta.” As tired as she was, and the birth had been long and difficult, he had never seen her happier. He gazed in fascination at the baby in his hands. For all the babies he had brought into the world, for all his doctor’s knowledge of the human body, the miracle of new life never failed to awe him. Even more so now, when the child was his own, a living, healthy daughter after so many disappointments. She scrunched up her tiny face, opened her mouth, waved her delicate fists. So beautiful. And so *noisy.* Definitely strong. “Here, anata. Give her to me.” His wife held out her arms for the baby. “I know what you want, little one,” she crooned as she opened her robe. She winced as the baby latched onto her breast. The pain ebbed quickly, her body remembering the trick of letting down milk. “Greedy little kitsune,” she murmured, snuggling into the clean bedding. “Aa, it’s a blessing you finally had a healthy one,” the sanba agreed. “A blessing,” Ryuusei Takani repeated. “That’s a good name. We’ll call her Megumi.” “Megumi,” the mother whispered. Little Megumi had fallen asleep in the sudden, boneless way of newborns, her mouth slack against her mother’s breast. Happy, content, and completely exhausted, the woman closed her eyes and joined her new daughter in sleep. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC. I got the idea for this from Siona Klassen’s “Brothers in Arms.” Please forgive any inaccuracies I have committed; I haven’t seen that much YYH yet and my knowledge of interaction among the three worlds is gained from other people’s fanfic. A sanba is a midwife. Information on Japanese birthing practices comes from The Great Pulse: Japanese Midwifery and Obstetrics through the Ages by Mary W. Standlee (Tuttle, 1959). --------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ---------------------------- CREATE Online PHOTO Albums of your favorite stars - Free. Share your favorite pictures with other fans from all over the world. Send Photo Greeting Cards with pictures of your favorite celebs. Click Here ------------------------------------------------------------------------