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nebuliaHere's a little bit of the RK oneshot I've been working on. Any critique would be really nice. I haven't really edited it yet. At all. There's definitely stuff that needs to be fixed. But...yeah. Anything at all to make the general whole better? I know a lot of sentences are awkward and the like; I'm working on that. But overall, does the voice work, how's Kenshin's character, etc.?
As a note, it's purely romance, though I tried not to make it sappy or cliched. It takes place directly (or actually, about a week) after Sano leaves in volume 28, and then on--the fic covers about three seperate moments stretching over the period of roughly a month. There are also some direct manga references in here that I haven't checked, so forgive that as well.
...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Yahiko’s gone, in the longhouse, and Kenshin is making dinner.
Yahiko is being stubborn. He insists he can take care of himself, but his cooking is worse than Kaoru’s and everyone knows it.
He made dinner after they got back from Enishi’s island, while Kenshin was healing. It was unimpressive.
And so, eventually, he’ll stay for dinner. He’s already coming early for breakfast.
Kenshin is making dinner and Kaoru is doing a kata in the dojo. It’s quiet now, Kenshin chopping vegetables and he can hear Kaoru’s feet as she lands from a jump. It means she’s doing the advanced kata, the one she hadn’t quite mastered before her father’s death, the one she’s been learning from a scroll.
He hears her swear and he smiles a little, and blushes a little, because not even Sanosuke swore like Kaoru does when she thinks no one’s listening.
He listens to her feet move across the dojo floor. He can barely hear them through the walls; her feet are quiet. The sounds she makes are tiny and his breath nearly makes them inaudible.
He listens until his lungs begin to burn and he sees spots in front of his eyes. He remembers to breathe.
To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
Anne-Sophie Swetchine
At dinner they eat in silence. Good silence.
ooo
The first few times he ate with Hiko were full of words. Hiko snapping at him about his posture (for the love of all things holy, sit up straight) and his hair (a good samurai combs his hair; just because it’s red doesn’t mean you get to leave it tangled) the food, about ways to make it better, because it was so bad. Too much miso. Not enough bean paste. The daikon need to be cut better. You forgot the tofu, you dolt.
He was making him a better cook, really. Now, Kenshin knows that Hiko loves him, like a son, and that a criticism was more often than not a roundabout compliment, usually referring to his determination because in those early years, before Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, it really was the only thing he had going for him.
ooo
The first few times he ate with Tomoe were full of awkwardness. The very first dinner in the cabin in Otsu, he cooked, and she knelt at the table, waiting for him to finish, watching him, expectant. He was nervous, jittery because her eyes were on him and he wanted it to be right. His miso was spicy and thick, more like cream than soup.
She cooked after that.
They ate in silence, always, but at first it was painful silence, the kind you feel when you don’t have anything to say. The kind that happens when two quiet people don’t know what to say but feel like they should say something anyway but don’t.
Later it became content. Sometimes they talked of the garden, but they rarely had anything to talk about anyway, because it always dredged up the past.
ooo
For thirteen years he ate alone. Three years were in corners, with people whispering behind his back, their eyes full of fear.
The last ten years were less lonely, even though he was always by himself. He never spoke to anyone then, even when they spoke to him. Just a smile and a nod and pleading “don’t talk to me” eyes. It worked, usually. When it didn’t, he whispered sayonara, paid, and left, moving as quickly as he could without scaring anyone.
ooo
When he first ate with Kaoru-dono, she chattered a little, not quite nervously, about nothing. Told him about Tokyo, about the winter, about the dojo. Little things. She never talked about her parents. She never talked about him being Battousai. She had this sense of what subjects to avoid, always. Sometimes she would look at him and flush, color spreading from winter-pale cheeks to nose and down her neck.
And then he talked sometimes, about equally light topics. He told her about tea, about how he knew a man in the Bakumatsu who loved tea, who loved to talk to anyone about it. He told her what the man told him while they drank the tea.
She brewed good tea. She liked it bitter but he liked it less so and she made it less so just for him.
He found that out, that she made the tea less bitter for him, when she made tea for herself early one morning and then he woke up and she poured him a cup and blushed when he asked why it was so bitter.
The thought—that she made her tea less strong just for him, even though she didn’t like it that way—made him feel warm and tingly inside, like a small child.
ooo
Dinners after Yahiko came were loud. Louder, with Sano, and then Megumi, and loudest when Misao and Aoshi were there. He thought, at first, that he wouldn’t like it, but he did. It made the room feel cozy and it made him feel loved. Like he had a family.
ooo
He eats dinner with Kaoru now in perfect and total silence. She smiles at him every once in a while, though she doesn’t blush anymore, like she used to. She doesn’t need to tell him that she loves him, because her eyes tell it to him all the time. He thought, at first, that it would annoy him, when he saw that light shining in her eyes. But it doesn’t. He likes it.
He smiles at her sometimes, even when she doesn’t smile at him, like when she eats her rice in these perfect little bites but slurps her miso loudly and spills some of it on her chin.
They don’t talk for the entire meal but it’s just right.
I cannot count the ways you have made my life so blessed
All I know is that you came and made beauty of my mess
Ayeisha Woods
Kenshin first knew he loved Kaoru when she looked at him after that incident with the sword corps and said, in response to his question (do you really have to buy the groceries all at once?): “Well, maybe not.”
The answer said that she bought them all at once, but today she hadn’t remembered that she was buying for two and forgot that it would be heavier now when she made him get the heavy stuff. The faint color in her cheeks proved his theory and the guilt in her eyes made him realize that he might have known her for all or two weeks but he loved her anyway.
Because it made her feel bad, that she made him do work he could have done but didn’t really want to (if you wanted to know the truth).
He had planned on leaving, really, but then Yahiko came, and then Kaoru’s students returned and he told her “you don’t get through to all your students.”
And she had foolishly thought that maybe he understood the responsibility of teaching and looked up at him with wide eyes, all full of tears and hope, and if Yahiko wasn’t there he might have kissed her.
He might have. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe.
And after that her eyes were always saying to him I love you. And he definitely couldn’t leave.
As an extra note, I certainly don't mean to belittle KT's relationship at all--I do think they loved each other, honestly, but I don't think, in the long run, that it would have worked. They always--even at the end--seemed to have the past between them, and their own guilt, and I don't think either of them could have ever let go of that.
Anywho, comments? Is it a load of crap?
nebulia out.
As a note, it's purely romance, though I tried not to make it sappy or cliched. It takes place directly (or actually, about a week) after Sano leaves in volume 28, and then on--the fic covers about three seperate moments stretching over the period of roughly a month. There are also some direct manga references in here that I haven't checked, so forgive that as well.
...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Yahiko’s gone, in the longhouse, and Kenshin is making dinner.
Yahiko is being stubborn. He insists he can take care of himself, but his cooking is worse than Kaoru’s and everyone knows it.
He made dinner after they got back from Enishi’s island, while Kenshin was healing. It was unimpressive.
And so, eventually, he’ll stay for dinner. He’s already coming early for breakfast.
Kenshin is making dinner and Kaoru is doing a kata in the dojo. It’s quiet now, Kenshin chopping vegetables and he can hear Kaoru’s feet as she lands from a jump. It means she’s doing the advanced kata, the one she hadn’t quite mastered before her father’s death, the one she’s been learning from a scroll.
He hears her swear and he smiles a little, and blushes a little, because not even Sanosuke swore like Kaoru does when she thinks no one’s listening.
He listens to her feet move across the dojo floor. He can barely hear them through the walls; her feet are quiet. The sounds she makes are tiny and his breath nearly makes them inaudible.
He listens until his lungs begin to burn and he sees spots in front of his eyes. He remembers to breathe.
To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
Anne-Sophie Swetchine
At dinner they eat in silence. Good silence.
ooo
The first few times he ate with Hiko were full of words. Hiko snapping at him about his posture (for the love of all things holy, sit up straight) and his hair (a good samurai combs his hair; just because it’s red doesn’t mean you get to leave it tangled) the food, about ways to make it better, because it was so bad. Too much miso. Not enough bean paste. The daikon need to be cut better. You forgot the tofu, you dolt.
He was making him a better cook, really. Now, Kenshin knows that Hiko loves him, like a son, and that a criticism was more often than not a roundabout compliment, usually referring to his determination because in those early years, before Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, it really was the only thing he had going for him.
ooo
The first few times he ate with Tomoe were full of awkwardness. The very first dinner in the cabin in Otsu, he cooked, and she knelt at the table, waiting for him to finish, watching him, expectant. He was nervous, jittery because her eyes were on him and he wanted it to be right. His miso was spicy and thick, more like cream than soup.
She cooked after that.
They ate in silence, always, but at first it was painful silence, the kind you feel when you don’t have anything to say. The kind that happens when two quiet people don’t know what to say but feel like they should say something anyway but don’t.
Later it became content. Sometimes they talked of the garden, but they rarely had anything to talk about anyway, because it always dredged up the past.
ooo
For thirteen years he ate alone. Three years were in corners, with people whispering behind his back, their eyes full of fear.
The last ten years were less lonely, even though he was always by himself. He never spoke to anyone then, even when they spoke to him. Just a smile and a nod and pleading “don’t talk to me” eyes. It worked, usually. When it didn’t, he whispered sayonara, paid, and left, moving as quickly as he could without scaring anyone.
ooo
When he first ate with Kaoru-dono, she chattered a little, not quite nervously, about nothing. Told him about Tokyo, about the winter, about the dojo. Little things. She never talked about her parents. She never talked about him being Battousai. She had this sense of what subjects to avoid, always. Sometimes she would look at him and flush, color spreading from winter-pale cheeks to nose and down her neck.
And then he talked sometimes, about equally light topics. He told her about tea, about how he knew a man in the Bakumatsu who loved tea, who loved to talk to anyone about it. He told her what the man told him while they drank the tea.
She brewed good tea. She liked it bitter but he liked it less so and she made it less so just for him.
He found that out, that she made the tea less bitter for him, when she made tea for herself early one morning and then he woke up and she poured him a cup and blushed when he asked why it was so bitter.
The thought—that she made her tea less strong just for him, even though she didn’t like it that way—made him feel warm and tingly inside, like a small child.
ooo
Dinners after Yahiko came were loud. Louder, with Sano, and then Megumi, and loudest when Misao and Aoshi were there. He thought, at first, that he wouldn’t like it, but he did. It made the room feel cozy and it made him feel loved. Like he had a family.
ooo
He eats dinner with Kaoru now in perfect and total silence. She smiles at him every once in a while, though she doesn’t blush anymore, like she used to. She doesn’t need to tell him that she loves him, because her eyes tell it to him all the time. He thought, at first, that it would annoy him, when he saw that light shining in her eyes. But it doesn’t. He likes it.
He smiles at her sometimes, even when she doesn’t smile at him, like when she eats her rice in these perfect little bites but slurps her miso loudly and spills some of it on her chin.
They don’t talk for the entire meal but it’s just right.
I cannot count the ways you have made my life so blessed
All I know is that you came and made beauty of my mess
Ayeisha Woods
Kenshin first knew he loved Kaoru when she looked at him after that incident with the sword corps and said, in response to his question (do you really have to buy the groceries all at once?): “Well, maybe not.”
The answer said that she bought them all at once, but today she hadn’t remembered that she was buying for two and forgot that it would be heavier now when she made him get the heavy stuff. The faint color in her cheeks proved his theory and the guilt in her eyes made him realize that he might have known her for all or two weeks but he loved her anyway.
Because it made her feel bad, that she made him do work he could have done but didn’t really want to (if you wanted to know the truth).
He had planned on leaving, really, but then Yahiko came, and then Kaoru’s students returned and he told her “you don’t get through to all your students.”
And she had foolishly thought that maybe he understood the responsibility of teaching and looked up at him with wide eyes, all full of tears and hope, and if Yahiko wasn’t there he might have kissed her.
He might have. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe.
And after that her eyes were always saying to him I love you. And he definitely couldn’t leave.
As an extra note, I certainly don't mean to belittle KT's relationship at all--I do think they loved each other, honestly, but I don't think, in the long run, that it would have worked. They always--even at the end--seemed to have the past between them, and their own guilt, and I don't think either of them could have ever let go of that.
Anywho, comments? Is it a load of crap?
nebulia out.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 02:22 am (UTC)Anyhow, thanks for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 02:36 am (UTC)Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 02:23 am (UTC)I forgot, you know, about lovely fics. I forgot, you know, that RK could have in character fics in the right time period.
The fandom... makes me forget.
Then I read the occasional thing like this which, you know, makes me come back to the VERY DEAD FANDOM?
It is lovely. Is it wonderful. It does not involve darkfic vampire sex or high school.
I love you dearly and you must finish!
Ok, critque, critque......
I can't think of any -_-. Doh.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 02:39 am (UTC)Thanks! It's mostly done, except for the very, very end (as in, the last paragraph), which I am struggling to finish without being to cliche or gross. The fic is romantic, but I worked really hard to make it not sappy, or at least not really regular sappy (because this is Kenshin, after all, and my Kenshin quite obviously thinks of quite random things), and I can't keep the ending in the same style. I'm working on it, though. XD
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 01:58 am (UTC)