RK Fanfic - Birth of The Red Rose

Birth of The Red Rose

(Revised from the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe by Ovid, characters from Ruruoni Kenshin)

Author: Yanagi



Once upon a time the blood-red petals of the roses were as pale as the soft curtain of moonbeams. The change in color came about strangely and sadly. The untimely death of two young lovers was the cause.

Kenshin and Kaoru, he the most feared and skilled slasher, and she the loveliest maiden with the kindest, most passionate soul, of all the east, lived in the City of Kyoto in houses so close together that one wall was common to both. Growing up thus side by side, their love for each other blossomed like the snow-white roses that bordered the two clinging towers where each dwelled. They longed to marry but their parents gravely forbade it. Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter is burns. The more the force is resisted, the stronger and more persistent it becomes. Also, love can and will always find a way no matter how insurmountable the odds. It was impossible that these two, whose hearts were ablaze, should be kept apart.

In this wall both houses shared, there was a little chink. No one before had noticed it, but there is nothing that lovers do not notice. These two thirsty hearts discovered it and through it they were able to whisper sweet melodies back and forth, Kenshin on one side, Kaoru on the other. The hateful wall that separated them had become their means of reaching each other. “But for you we could not touch, kiss,” they would say. “But at least you let the echoes of our love reach one another. You give a passage for loving words to reach loving ears. We are not ungrateful.” So they would talk, and as night came on they must part, each would press on the wall bittersweet kisses that could not go through to the lips on the other side.

Every morning when the sun caressed the green folds of the land, they would steal to the crack, and standing there, now utter words of undying love and now lament their cruel fate, but always in the gentlest of whispers. Finally, a day came when their hearts, chained for so long, could endure no longer. They decided that that very night they would try to slip away and steal out through the city into the open country where at last they could be together in freedom. They agreed to meet at a well-known place, the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, where a spring bubbled with cool, crystal-clear water and surrounded by a profusion of rosebushes bearing blooms as white as perfectly polished pearls. The plan filled their hearts with incomparable joy and it seemed to them that the day would never end.

At last, the sun was blanketed in a velvet cape of darkness and the stars crept slowly upon the inky pools. In the darkness, Kaoru crept out and made her way in all secrecy to the tomb. Kenshin had not yet come, still she waited for him, hear love making her bold. But of a sudden, she saw by the waning light of the silver moon a lioness, sleek, fearsome, and deadly. The fierce beast had just made a kill and her jaws dripped of fresh blood. She had only come to slake her thirst in the spring. Kaoru, in her horror, fled and in so doing, dropped her cloak of softest fawn-fur to the ground. The lioness came upon it and tore at the rich garment before disappearing into the woods beyond.

And this is what Kenshin came upon when he had appeared. Before him lay the shredded, bloodstained cloak and clear in the dust were the tracks of the lioness. The conclusion was inevitable. Kaoru was dead. He cursed himself, he, crowned as the greatest slasher in all of Japan; he who had slain the most dangerous and evil of foes, had left his heart’s flame, the tender maiden whom he had lived all his life for, to die such a beastly death. “It is I who killed you,” he lamented. Picking up the cloak, he kissed it again and again and carried it to the spring. “Now, you shall drink my blood too. I had never truly atoned for my past sins but you had helped me live a new life. Your wretched fate is the payment that I gave for your selfless love. I could never see a greater sin that my own.” With that, he drew his sword, glanced at the stars that seemed to sparkle with unshed tears, and plunged the sharp blade straight to his heart. The blood spurted and flowed in rivulets down the spring, coating the clear waters a rich crimson.

Kaoru now, although terrified of the lioness, was still more afraid to fail her lover. She ventured to go back to the place of the tryst, the spring covered with bushes teeming with immaculately white roses. When she came upon it, the roses were there but not one gleam of white could be seen. As she stared at it, something moved on the ground beneath. She started back, shuddering, but in a moment, peering through the shadows, she saw what was moving there. It was Kenshin, bathed in the pool of his own blood and dying.

She flew to him, eyes glistening with tears. She wrapped his weak body in her arms and kissed his cold lips, begging him to talk to her, to look at her. “Kenshin, it is I, Kaoru. My love, please hear my voice!,” she cried. At the sound of her name, he opened his heavy eyes and fixed his amethyst orbs on her sweet face. The light seemed to slowly fade from them. “Kaoru-dono, gomen nasai…gomen…” and with that, death closed all light from him.

Through her tears, she saw his sword fallen from his hand and beside it, her cloak stained and torn. She understood all. “Your hand killed you and your love for me. I too can be brave. I too can love. Only death would have the power to separate us. It shall not have that power not.” She plunged into her heart the sword still glistening with his life’s blood.

Kami-sama was pitiful in the end, and so were the lovers’ parents. They buried the bodies together near the spring where fate closed its doors on them. When springtime came, the people were surprised to see the rosebushes at the temple no longer bearing the same snow-white blossoms. In their stead there bloomed the petals of roses red as the blood from a fresh wound. The scarlet flowers are the everlasting memory of these true lovers whose hearts, so intertwined, could never be parted, not even by Death itself.



~~~~End~~~~~

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Posted on 30 Jan 2009 by lordcloudx

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