Part VI:  What You Don't Know...

    Ekkusu set the last of the platters on the table and shook her hair loose from the scarf she'd tied it with.  She looked just as Megumi had when she had first come to the dojo and had made them dinner.  She sat quietly, watching them enjoy the bounty she'd placed before them, her own expression wistful as the group around her happily argued and gorged themselves.  They made a family, and more than ever she missed much of the life she'd left behind.
    "Ah, Ekkusudono, this was magnificent," Kenshin sighed happily as he pushed back from the table.
    "Oiy," Sano mumbled around a shovelful.  "Way better than jouchan."  He didn't even stop eating (for long) when Kaoru decked him.  For that matter, neither did she.
    "Ekkususan, I think you should come back to the clinic and stay with us there!"
    "Hai, Ekkusuneesan!!!"  Ayame and Suzume chorused happily, echoing their grandfather's sentiment.
    Taesan had sent her regrets, but had promised to try and come for dessert and the remainder of Takani Megumi X's story.
    Kenshin watched her from beneath his thick red bangs, not letting his concern show too openly.  Megumi had told him what she'd said about not crying alone anymore, and immediately understood that the woman's desire to share was rooted deeper than a simple need to satisfy their curiosity.  She felt obligated, he could tell, indebted for the care they'd given her, the second chance at life, but she was tired of keeping it pent up inside.  There was much more to the woman they called Ekkusu than even he suspected, and he suspected a lot.
    "Oiy, don't be such a pig, Sanosuke!" Yahiko threatened around a mouthful as the taller youth grabbed the last of the onigiri.
    "First come first serve, kid!"  He was too involved in his food to take the effort required to argue.
    Yahiko took a swipe but Sano merely ducked without even pausing in his feeding frenzy.
    "Will you two ever grow up?" Kaoru glared at them, trying unsuccessfully to look as though she hadn't been eyeing the last rice ball herself.
    "After you!" Yahiko replied.
    Ekkusu's eyes betrayed her sadness.  Kenshin exchanged a glance with the old doctor.  He didn't doubt that her story was not dissimilar from Megumi's own, but the scars themselves indicated so much more had befallen her. He had to admit, if only to himself, that he dreaded the revelation she would bestow.  He knew too well what the anger did to him, and though the Hitokiri Battousai was long since conquered, it would not be easy to overcome the equally dangerous though righteous rage he felt at even the idea that such pain could be so inflicted on an innocent woman...
    It was much later that the dishes had been cleared.  Tae had come only briefly, to apologize for not being able to stay, before running back to the restaurant.  Some rich kids had come in and were ordering lavishly -- and paying generously.  They wanted her to stay open, and she wouldn't ask young Tsubame to work so late.  She did, however, make them promise to fill her in on the details.
    The girls had fallen asleep near the door, and Ekkusu led the others out into the moonlit yard.  While Kenshin sat in the doorway and Sano leaned on a post of the porch, the others found places to settle down and get comfortable.  This was clearly not going to be an easy story for the scarred woman to tell, and Kenshin wasn't the only one who felt certain it would be just as hard to hear.
    She wandered out a little further, her silhouette against the closed doors clear in the moonlight.  In the darkness, she could not be recognized for the woman from another dimension; any of them might easily have believed it was their own Megumi telling the story had they not known better.  That woman knelt on the porch between Sanosuke and Kenshin, her hands neatly folded in her lap and her eyes fixed on her doppelganger.  She had seen the scars and knew much of the story they told, but many of the details escaped her.  Why had this woman allowed it to happen...?
    "What you don't know, can hurt you," the soft voice broke the silence.  Ekkusu turned to them, her features all but impossible to see with the moon at her back.  She liked it that way; no one could see the way she was fighting her own anger and pain.  What she was about to tell them ashamed her, humiliated her beyond compassion.
    "I was a killer."  The words rang silently.  "I made opium for Kanryu, the way Megumisan did.  And it killed people too, but many more.  I couldn't get away.  I didn't have the courage to get away from him.  And things got worse."  Now she knelt, ducking her head.  Heavy bangs hid what the darkness didn't.  "He used me the same way, but when I tried at last to tell him off and run away, he let me go.  And when he caught me, I had already met Sano and Kennii and the others.  You know most of that part of the story," she said, looking up.  "It's not so different from what you did...  only instead of trying to kill myself, I was trying to cut out my eyes first.  I tried twice, which is how I got this."  Delicate fingers reached up to trace the reddened, X-shaped scar on her left cheek, near her eye.  "It's the only one that's my fault.  The others came later.
    "Kanryu was locked up, but he busted out and found me at the dojo.  He had his thugs drag me off again -- just your average Yakuza scum, but they were skilled scum.  By the time my friends found me, I already had been marked as an adulteress and cut up pretty badly again..."  Ekkusu's voice trailed off.
    "I think I'm getting ahead of myself.  During those first years when he'd had me serving him, Kanryu used me for sex.  But he was also into pain...  Both giving and receiving.  He trained me to be a whore as well.  Sometimes he would have me submit, and sometimes I would have to play the dominatrix, make him hurt the way he liked it.  And part of me learned to like feeling that control over him."  She stopped speaking completely, ostensibly to allow her words to sink in.  She had dropped her head again, though, and none of them missed the droplets darkening the soil in front of her.
    "Ekkusudono."  Kenshin's voice was quiet, but he said no more.  He didn't need to.  He spoke for all of them in saying her name; they were there for her, to listen and to help her.  Nothing else needed to be said, but much of this was coming to light.  Pieces were falling into place.
    After a long moment, she'd composed herself enough to speak once more.  "When I got away that second time, I was in bad shape.  I was married to Sanosuke before, but when I got away, he was dead.  You know that too.  I'd been cut again, lost a lot of blood, and was weak, and when I heard that I nearly died."  She spoke tonelessly now.  "I was already pregnant, but I didn't know it yet.  As soon as I was strong enough, I told Kennii I was going to kill Kanryu myself.  He tried to stop me, told me I was meant to save lives -- yes, I am a doctor also.  I told him killing Kanryu would save more lives than letting him live.
    "Kennii went after me, with Kaoru and Yahiko in hot pursuit.  They all thought I was foolish.  They were right.
    "He caught me, nearly killed Kaoru, had Kenshin locked in a dungeon, and left Yahiko to his guards.  I was there for a few weeks...  and he did his worst.  Nearly everywhere he hadn't already, he cut me.  He'd inscribed his name on me already long before, and other things, but as soon as he discovered I was with child...  Most of you know what happened.  He carved me again with the word for "mother" and threw me in the street -- after plunging a knife into my womb."  She was barely whispering now, though she still spoke without emotion.  "There was a storm.  I don't know how it happened...  I know I lost the child.  There was a bright flash, and then I woke up.. here."  She pulled a satchel from her kimono.  Kenshin recognized it as the one that had been hanging from her tattered sash the night he'd found her in the street.  She opened it and turned it upside down.
    "Oro?"
    "My sentiments exactly," Sano murmured as he stared at the tangle of silk, lace, and studded leather that had fallen from the bag.  Was that a whip...?
    "My paraphernalia.  I thought, if I lived through it, I'd have to make a living somehow...  And why not doing what Kanryu had trained me to do?  If I was going to life a live of sin and suffering, why not enjoy it?  Of course I don't think I need it now..."
    "Could we see you in it?"  Yahiko blurted out.  He looked surprised when Kaoru whacked him a few good ones.
    Ekkusu actually laughed.  Her voice dropped to something low, husky, sultry, almost compelling in a vaguely frightening way.  "I think not, little boy.  When you're more of a man, we'll see, but I don't play with children."
    Megumi spoke up before the topic got too out of hand.  "Why on earth did you marry Sanosuke?"
    "Oiy, Kitsune!"
    "No, Megumisan has the right to ask.  Your other self was hard to live with at times.  But in our way, we did love each other.  Not that you'd have known it to hear us.  We sounded very much like you two do, quite often, but when things got rough, we understood one another...  Until the end, anyway."  The smile that had crept across her features at first, when Megumi had asked her about her marriage, faded.
    An uncomfortable silence fell.  Megumi and Sanosuke were now eyeing each other warily, each head shaking slightly.  Yahiko looked away from Ekkusu and snickered at the two of them.  "I knew it!  You two like each other!"
    Years of practice had Megumi and Sanosuke's fists impacting on either of Yahiko's cheeks in perfect unison.
    "Stupid brat!"
    "Will you never grow up?!"
    "Maa, maa.  This is not the time for --"
    "Why not, Kensan?  What I don't need is to make all of you miserable.  I apologize for that."  Ekkusu looked down at the pile of kinky accessories and clothing.  "And," she said, looking up again, all Fox-woman, "if it really will make Yahikochan happy, I'll model the outfit for you!  Ohohohoho!"
    Yahiko was too stunned to complain about being called chan.  Kaoru whacked him another one.
   "You little pervert!"  Then, noting the expressions on Sano's and Kenshin's faces, she knocked them each with a solid THUNK! and glared.  "You two shouldn't be encouraging him!  Ekkususan is NOT here for your private entertainment!"
    "Well, it would cost..."  The scarred woman's smirk hadn't faded.  There was a moment of shocked silence.
    "Oiy, jouchan, can I borr--Itaitaitaitaitaitaii!!!!"  The bokken that flew into Sano's head repeatedly was wielded mercilessly by a fire breathing Kaoru.
    "Oiy, that breathing fire thing's a neat trick!  I don't suppose it's part of my training?"
    Kenshin backed away from Kaoru and wisely kept his mouth shut as she whaled on her student.
    "While this is all very amusing," Ekkusu interrupted at last, having fastened studded leather bracelets to her wrists and picked up the whip, "there's really no need for it to continue."  The whip flashed out, snaked around the wooden blade, and yanked it from a very startled Kaoru's grasp.
    "Now THAT," Genzaisensei marveled, "is a neat trick."
    Yahiko eyed Ekkusu with awe.  "Where've you been all my life?"
    It broke the tension and they all laughed.  Two small figures came to the door of the dojo.
    "What's going on?  Why is everyone laughing?"  Ayame led her younger sister onto the porch, each rubbing their eyes in tired confusion.
    Their grandfather reached out to them and they came to lean on either side of him, looking into the moonlit yard at the woman they'd come to call Ekkusuneesan.  There was no sign of whip or bracelets as she smiled at them.  "Nothing unusual.  Kaoru was expressing her displeasure with Yahiko and Sano in her usual fashion."  The three nodded wisely at one another while Kenshin and the old doctor snickered.  Ever since she had come on the scene, all sorts of colorful euphemisms for Kaoru's temperament (among other things) had become common use in their group.  It later occurred to several of the others that Ekkusu's words were born of less pleasant circumstances, though none of them would ever mention it.
    "I think it's time I took you girls home," the doctor said as he rose.  "Megumisan, will you do us the honor of joining us?"
    The younger doctor nodded.  "If everything's all right here, it would be nice to sleep in my own bed again."  She'd been staying at the dojo nearly every night since she'd first met her counterpart, and though she liked staying at the dojo, sometimes it was pleasant to wake up to find two little girls snuggled in next to her after bad dreams had chased them from their own beds.
    Secretly, she regretted the thought almost as soon as she had it.  Ekkususan would never be able to know that feeling the same way, now.  The woman had lost a child, who had never been born and now never could be.  The woman so like her could never know the joy of having her own children coming to her for affection, crying to her in need, calling her "mother" -- yet she ironically bore the word as part of her flesh, now and for the rest of her life.  The last thing Ekkusu wanted was pity, and none knew that better than the woman who might have been her.
    "I don't suppose I might borrow that sometimes," she asked the scarred woman.
    "We'll see, Megumisan."  They shared a knowing look as the two young girls each began tugging on Megumi's and Genszaisensei's hands.
    Yahiko offered to escort them back to the clinic, leaving Ekkusu alone with Kenshin, Sanosuke, and a still fuming Kaoru.
    Things were only bound to get more interesting....