(flashbacks are in Italics)

 SCARS
 


 
 

Battosai stepped lightly on the gravel shore of a small stream running in the middle of a plum tree grove. He stood for a minute, dazed, looking into the clear water of the stream, glittering in the spring sunlight, making the reflected plum trees look exceptionally fantasy-like. He gazed past the water, past the wavy reflections of blossoming plum trees...
 
 

Darkness. Danger. Cold. Frustration.
Light smell of white plums...
Unstoppable sword strike.
 
 
Glittering reflections of plum trees in the cool water of the stream.
 
 
Tomoe...
As Battosai’s eyes focused again, he noticed he was looking at the reflection of his cross scar. The slight waving of the water was just enough to make the cross scar look newly made, when in fact it was long since healed. The reflection was so convincing, Battosai instinctively reached his hand up to touch the scar as if to wipe the new blood away...
 
 
Tomoe...
 
 
...but all his hand touched was the dried scar tissue.

Looking away at other reflections in the water, Battosai noticed a pair of birds playing on one of the plum branches. Suddenly one bird lost its grip and in attempt to get balance back, seemed to put its bill through the other bird in the reflection...

Battosai sighed and closed his eyes.

Constant reminders...

But even as he closed his eyes, he couldn’t make the images of death leave. Images of death, death that he caused...
 
 

Losing his physical senses, one by one... It made him also lose his mind, fighting the last Yaminobu. He just wanted to kill him, to get to Tomoe... but if he’d known that she was right there when he was making his final strike, if only he hadn’t lost his senses, no – if only he’d smelled her perfume a second earlier... if only, if only...
 
 

Tomoe...

He thought he caused her so much pain... killing her fiance, then killing her...

He killed so many others as well...others that probably could’ve deserved to live, if it wasn’t for him. It was because of him...

What was he protecting? The new Meiji Era? That was no excuse for death...especially not the death of his loved one...

There was no excuse.

He made so many people unhappy...

 
I should’ve died, not Tomoe... I should’ve died...
 
But...
 
 
(Tomoe) "It’s all okay... so please don’t cry..."

It wasn’t okay. It could never be okay...

A single tear rolled down Battosai’s cheek, over the scar.

But...
 
 

(Tomoe) "It’s okay..."
Tomoe gave him one last smile.

A smile. A smile...

After all, there was one person that he did make happy somehow...

One person...

Even if it was just one person, then his own life was perhaps, after all, somehow worth living.