31_days | [June 27th] [Rurouni Kenshin] [Determination]

Title: Determination
Day/Theme: June 27 - "The thrill of the kill becomes your only law."
Series: Rurouni Kenshin
Character/Pairing: Kenshin (maybe Kenshin/Kaoru if you squint and look at it cock-eyed while reading into the meaning way more than is presented)
Rating: PG-13....ish?

“The thrill of the kill becomes your only law.”

It starts slow, he knows, the slow decay of morality and compassion. They lose their minds and eventually their humanity to the bloodlust in which they all participate. That which separates Himura Kenshin, Hitokiri Battousai, from those who have given into the law of Bakumatsu and their inevitable madness is that he has already travelled that road and been forcibly dragged back from insanity. Though he kills, the act leaves a burning brand on his heart which burns up not his humanity and sanity as it does for others, but the honor he has sacrificed in its stead. He swears to the opposite of their law, burning up in what they take delight until the day he can leave it all behind, and slays day after day with the knowledge that each kill brings him closer to the last. The others watch him, fear the determination in his eyes, but never understand for what he fights so hard. They weave the legend of Battousai, of cross scars, red hair, and the darkness he lives in—a hell in which death is king and killing the law. They see the darkness which surrounds him so much that he may as well be as much a part of it as they are, but never that his heart is aflame: set on a day in which the only death left for him to face is his own.

When he finally leaves, his reputation as a demon precedes him wherever he goes, and behind him he leaves the doubtful whispers of his comrades in whom he had confided his dream for the future. Their doubts haunt him as much as his guilt, and every day he brands the law by which he lives into his soul until it becomes as much a part of him as the law of killing once was. These doubts of his sincerity, of the fierce devotion he has given to his own law, drive him further along on his journey even as they weigh down his hopes that he may finally be above the killing. He has long since determined that there is plenty worth protecting, but nothing worth killing for again. He swears his soul would become too heavy, the protective action tainted by the blood he would have spilled, were he ever to kill again.

This realization both emboldens and disheartens him, because on the same mark, he is concerned that he will never again find something to which he can truly devote himself, and as kenjutsu is all he knows he fears he can do nothing more. Shinta worries he will never find anything worth living for. Kenshin worries he will never find anything worth dying for. Battousai worries he will never find anything worth killing for again. None of them are evil, and none of their fears are unjustified. Collectively, however, they complete him, and he fears his life no longer has meaning; that he is an outdated relic of a chaotic time which has no place in a time of peace.

He wanders for years, searching for something worth his life, death, and heart. Just when Kenshin fears there truly is nothing left for him save that hated law of chaos, he wanders to Tokyo and finds something worth all three.