Leaving Home

Title: Leaving Home

Author: Makoto Sagara

Series: Rurouni Kenshin

Archive: the usual suspects; anywhere else, please ask first

Category: drabble, angst

Rating: G

Characters/Pairings: Kenshin/Kaoru

Warnings: spoilers, angst, ooc

Disclaimers: I don’t own Kenshin. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this piece of fanfiction.

Word count: 250

Prompt: RK: Kenshin: It was leaving home all over again, but it was for the best. He shouldn’t be a father.

Author’s Note: Almost as soon as Skeren Dreamera sent me this prompt, it’s haunted me to write it. So, I shall attempt to do some justice to it.

~ * * * ~

When Kaoru had shared the news of their impending parenthood, Kenshin had been numb. The past had just been laid to rest. Yahiko was nearly ready to be out on his own. Sanosuke and Megumi-dono were doing their own things. It was just the newly married Himuras that lived primarily at the Kamiya dojo, with Yahiko and Sanosuke visiting often.

His beautifully vital Kaoru had been extremely ill and it had taken a lot of near-nagging to get the woman to visit a doctor to find out what was wrong. She had returned with a look of utter bliss on her face, and it was then that Kenshin’s world seemed to drop out from underneath him.

She was pregnant. With his child. The child of a notorious man-slayer. A figure out of history that was partially responsible for the current Meiji government being in power. A man with so much blood on his hands that it was sometimes too hard to see beyond that to the skin.

The very thought of bringing a child into a world so flawed, to be raised by a father so scarred, was enough to force Kenshin to do the one thing he’d promised Kaoru he would never do again.

Leave.

He had to leave. Maybe then his child would have a chance at a normal life. A life without random men trying to kill him because they had something to prove.

Yes, he shouldn’t be a father. To anyone. It was better this way.