Subject: [kffdisc] [fanfic] Ohmikami no Omocha Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 23:25:45 -0500 (EST) From: Luriko-Ysabeth Reply-To: kffdisc@onelist.com To: kffdisc@onelist.com From: Luriko-Ysabeth This is part of an alternate-universe thing I'm doing, where you change *one* or *two* small things and project what the world would have been like as a result. I eliminated a few people, one of whom was an ancestor of Kajiwara Kagetoki. (If anyone by some chance wants some of the earlier stuff -- which has exactly nothing to do with RK~MKR -- e.mail me and I'll see about digging it up.) The thing is, nobody said I couldn't have some fun along the way... ************************* Although all of the Eight Islands acknowledged the Emperor as their spiritual head and source, they were not fully integrated until the mid-1800s. The Shogunate of Yamato closed itself off from outside influences except for necessary commerce with the Northlands, while the Shogunate of Oushuu and Ezo operated on a principle of tightly controlled interaction. In part as a result of clandestine interference by the Northern Shogunate, American ships sailed into the Edo Bay and demanded that certain treaties be made. This began a civil war of no mean proportion, with at least five sides at any given time, apparently for the purpose of giving any would-be historian of the period a ferocious headache. At its end, both the Tokugawa Shogunate of the West and the Imonoyama Shogunate of the North no longer existed, and government had been transferred to a rather clunky bureaucracy "centrally" located in Edo, which was renamed Tyuukyou. Of the many men who fought, spied, and murdered for the sides they believed to be right, the most famous was a man known as the Hitokiri Battousai. Near the end of the Kessoku no Douran, he disappeared and was never heard from again. Unless, of course, one knew where to listen. ------------- "I'm sorry, Neechan. I'm more sorry than I can say." "Personally," the dark-haired woman told the boy, "I am merely grateful that you still live." "But we were coming, Neechan, last month, when the Shinsengumi ambushed us." "Ah? Whose side are they on this week?" "The one-sun-one-ruler side, I believe. Neechan, that's not important! The Yaminobu were *massacred*!" "I share your grief at the deaths of your comrades." "Yes, yes, but Neechan! We had everything set up for our revenge, and now it's lost!" "Actually -- " "You'll have to endure your marriage bed for *months* more at least, I should think!" "It's no longer -- " "I mean, I'm not good enough to take HIM on yet, even if you have discovered the thing he values most -- " Realizing the futility of her earlier efforts, the woman stepped into the youth's way as he paced, grabbed him by the upper arms, and shook him sharply. "Enishi, LISTEN TO ME!" Enishi froze, staring at his sister. She hardly ever raised her voice, and the times she had done so to him could be enumerated on one hand. "I-do-not-want-revenge-any-more. It is a waste of time. It solves nothing. If revenge is taken, there would be a lot of dead bodies about. It is not easy to dispose of dead bodies. They have a very distinct scent that clings to places. Revenge will not bring people back from the dead. I am not sure that one would want to bring people back from the dead, for that matter, because they would have rotted in the meantime, and that would be a mess to clean up. It is hard enough to get blood out of clothes and floors and things of that nature. Revenge will not feed us for the next year or clothe us or make us happy. There has been quite enough destruction already, and I do not wish to have any more of it about." "But... but... but... " "Now, you really should have that wound looked to. I am not sure of the adequacy of that bandage; you had best come home with me and have it re-tended to." "But *Neechan*! Have you forgotten that he is our enemy? Can you no longer *see* him as such?" "Oh, Enishi. There are very, very few true enemies in all the Eight Islands. Just... different people, variously blind." "He robbed you of a husband!" "Then it is fitting that he should make the deficit up to me himself, is it not? He's a very nice person when one comes to know him, in fact. I quite like him." Given her usual understatement, that last had all the impact of a passionate declaration. "Saa... come home with me, now. Eat dinner with us; you can reserve your war and your judgement and your pain for the space of an evening meal, cannot you?" His cry poured directly from his heart. "When did you forget all you've learnt of proper duty and honor?" "When I came to realize that there is more honor in one life saved and in one moment of joyous laughter than in all the grim killing in the universe. When I noticed the difference between personal honor and worldly honor; the one is yours forever and none other may alter it, and the other means nothing in the world of the dead. When I remembered how to look at people for what they are, and remembered why I know you to be my brother." She turned for her house, then, trusting in him to follow. "At the same time as the soldiers all began to look like children to me." ------------- The evening's dinner was strained. She had calmly introduced her brother to her husband (and vice versa), finishing with "Although you are or have been fighting on different sides, that is no reason why you cannot behave and eat your dinner in peace like gentlemen. There is to be no discussion of politics at the dinner table. Insults to the cooking, however, will be taken in stride." The awkwardness of the setting had been momentarily lost in both men's hastily vehemently denying that they would ever insult her cooking. After all, it was GOOD cooking; she had taken some rice, some vegetables, and even a little of their precious store of dried fish and produced a culinary masterpiece. But after the food had been savored, the cooking praised, her fondness for the art of cooking commented on, and her reply ("Kitchens are a very orderly place. Kome goes in one end, and gohan comes out the other. I like that.") made, the tension was back, almost worse than before. "What am I doing wrong, Enishi-san?" her husband asked at last. "I'd like to get along with my wife's family. How have I offended you -- other than supporting the position I do, that is?" "How have you offended *me*, Himura?" Enishi laughed, attempting to sound bitter and mocking -- and sounding rather like a melodramatic adolescent. "Ask that of Kiyosato Akira!" "Who is Kiyosato Akira?" Himura Kenshin asked, genuinely puzzled. "I was pledged to marry him," his wife explained. "But he died." "Oh." The redhead looked down and then up. "How did he die?" "It was a sword, I believe," she told him. "They are long, pointed, and very sharp. But even though one can do quite a lot of damage with them, that idea some of the Ishin Shishi were tossing around about outlawing them is impracticable." "The Ishin Shishi want to *outlaw swords*?" Enishi squawked. "Why so?" Kenshin asked, curious and distracted, at the same time. "If I really wanted to, I could kill someone with a sock. I could suffocate the person with it, or use it to strangle my target, or cause my victim to choke on it, or fill it with wet sand and apply it forcefully to the back of the head. But nobody has yet dreamt of outlawing socks. A sword is a tool like any other, although slightly more limited in its uses. Outlawing one method of killing will simply cause people to move to other, possibly more dangerous ones; speaking of which, I do approve of regulating the ammunition for projectile weapons, because of the potential for disaster if some idiot should come into possession of one: remember Tamura-san?" Her husband nodded grimly. "At least with a sword, you need a certain amount of skill just to keep from stabbing yourself in the foot." He smiled up at her, suddenly. "Your relatives should come for a visit more often. You're talking more." "Because it's worth saying," Tomoe replied gravely, the hint, perhaps, of a smile in her eyes. "Stop *looking* at her like that," Enishi complained. "Why shouldn't I look at my wife?" "How *dare* you call her 'my wife'? She was my sister *long* before she was your wife! She was MINE first, do you hear?" "Ara, is *that* what all this is about?" the woman under discussion asked, unnoticed by either of the two younger men as they glared at each other. "I might give more credit to your family ties," the youth with the scarred cheek shot back, "if you'd act more like a little brother and less like a jilted suitor." That, of course, was the outside of enough, and the two began to insult each other's parentage, upbringing, morals, acquaintances, social life, character, skill, and reputation while the lady of the house, being older and wiser, quietly finished her rice and her husband's into the bargain. "Why," Enishi demanded, having steadily built to this climax, "should I count you as connected in any fashion with our family, anyway?" "Perhaps because he has gotten me with child?" Tomoe suggested equitably as she gathered the dishes. "CHILD?!" Enishi's voice cracked over the word as he stared, aghast, obviously never having considered the obvious corollary to the fact that his sister was, as he put it, 'sleeping with the enemy.' From the poleaxed look on Kenshin's face, it was obvious that he had never thought of it either, with even less excuse. And with a gurgle that couldn't seem to make up its mind whether it were 'are?' or 'oya?' and ended up coming out sounding rather like 'orooo,' he fainted all over Enishi. ************************** Notes: Oushuu and Ezo: Northern Honshu and Hokkaido. More or less. Ruled from Hiraizumi, which is (in our world) now a village in Iwate Prefecture. Tyuukyou/Chuukyou: Middle Capital. Kessoku no Douran: Unification Confusion. Eight Islands: Sort of a poetic way to refer to all of Japan. (So there are more than eight. *Now*, that is.) Kome: uncooked rice. Gohan: Cooked rice; usually used just to mean "meal." (Like "bread" in several places in the Bible, only more so.) Oh, and a thank you to Serizawa Kamo for that lovely explanation of the Bakumatsu no Douran, even though I got hopelessly lost about five paragraphs in. Sincerely, Luriko-Ysabeth, hon otaku | member in good standing of #WEIRD# Kendappa Clan | Sosai/Pooh-Bah for life of the Washuu-sensei Rules club #WASHU#, #SkAS#, #ALAS#, MADS, RFFC member; Rei-shuu junior priestess /|\ "Ii ka... warui ka... watashi wa juu no yatsu ze." --Atsuko, *Ankoku Taigun* "Never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence." --Father Thwaite, *Another Day, Another Dungeon* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come check out our brand new web site! http://www.onelist.com Onelist: Making the Internet intimate