Genessia IC Journal

[willing_sheath]

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September 20th

[willing_sheath]

It is odd to write this date as such. The last I knew it was mid December. Even more disconcerting that I cannot remember what the exact date was with how diligent I have always been in record keeping. I cannot help but wonder if it has to do with the method in which we are brought here. I should be more alarmed about my arrival and the oddities in this place but all I can concentrate on is the gap in my memory and the way there seems to be something missing. It feels as if the memory is there but I just can’t seem to reach it.

I do not know what to make of this Genessia as a whole. I was fortunate enough to meet a woman by the name of Ayame Sasaki who lead me to a Japanese inn and offered to pay for my stay while I adjust to everything. Apparently I am not the first person to come from what most here would consider an early timeline. The advancements in technology are startling to say the least. There are horseless carriages called “automobiles”, I just foolishly admit I mistook one as an armored beast at first having nothing to compare it to. Still, even with such marvels to see what stands out to me is water running inside buildings and the sanitation it provides. There are flameless lights as well, run by “electricity”. It is apparently used for much more than that, but I cannot think of much more that is more useful than light. Even something so simple as the utensil I am currently using to write this entry is impressive. A “ball point pen”. It lacks the character and fluidity of a brush, but the ink is contained, will not dry out and will last for days if not weeks. I feel like a moronic child trying to move about with so many things I do not understand or do not inherently know like so many others here.

It would also seem that the powers in control of this place regularly pull people from the same worlds together, but as such I have seen no signs of anyone else—though of course I would only know if we were acquainted. I have seen no sign of my husband or more importantly the Yaminobu or the Ishin Shishi. For the time being it seems that I am alone.

September 30th

[willing_sheath]

My memory has still not returned. It is driving me mad. I approached the “network” anonymously to pose the question but no one was able to tell me anything new. Ayame-san has encouraged me to ignore it and let it come in its own time if I truly am missing time. Of course there is the chance it will never come back. I may be worried over nothing. Perhaps I am fretting over something that isn’t missing at all, but that nagging feeling will not leave me alone. I have gone so far as to visit the library in Genessia—and that in and of itself was shocking. I have never seen so many books. The wealth of information and knowledge available here is staggering. There are not only shelves but aisles devoted to every topic I could ever think of. I perused some of the books available involving memory and while much of it was interesting I did not find anything that explained what is happening.

October 7th

[willing_sheath]

My memory returned.

I read somewhere that the mind will protect itself from trauma it can’t handle by blocking it out.

…

No, it is too fresh… I cannot even write about it yet.

October 8th

[willing_sheath]

I do not know where to begin. How to disassemble everything that has fallen in my lap. I feel like I will go mad all over again, though now it is because I cannot reconcile my memory with my very existence. I should not be here writing this and yet I am. I breathe, my heart beats, I can feel my limbs…

Kenshin arrived here. I knew something wasn’t right from the moment I saw him—he was taller, unkept, fine lines in his face—but it was the sight of his scar that brought everything flooding back. A cross now instead of the long vertical mark, the new—“new”—slash from my own blade.

I remember now. How Enishi arrived on our doorstep. How he revealed himself to be the contact sent to me by the Yaminobu. That little fool… he had no idea what they would do to him when it was over… I at least had entertained no hopes of living past the end of their plot… but my little brother… I can’t even think straight enough to get my thoughts coordinated onto paper. There’s just too much. I can see what I should have done now… but it is too late. I should have kept Enishi by my side and I should have told Kenshin everything. Maybe could have run. Maybe we could have gotten away. Maybe I could have convinced him to break with the Ishin Shishi, to cease letting them use him they way they had… But what does it matter now? I did none of those things. I sent Enishi back to Edo. I told Kenshin as much as I dared. And I decided to go to the Yaminobu to protect Enishi.

I’m such a fool. I never once questioned what they wanted me to do. What they really wanted… but then again, at the beginning would I have cared? Back then perhaps I would have laughed. Hitokiri Battousai was a monster. He wouldn’t be capable of affection or love. But he wasn’t a monster, he was just a boy. A misguided, lost boy… But they knew that, didn’t they? They counted on that. Counted on his isolation, his youth and our proximity for something to grow between us so that they could use that connection against him… I can’t believe I never saw it… but I became so focused on saving him from himself… I almost completely forgot why I was really there…

They used me as bait to draw him into their territory where they would have the advantage. Tatsumi struck me when I tried to turn against them after he revealed the truth. I remember nothing until I woke to the sounds of he and Kenshin fighting. When I saw them… Kenshin had been injured so badly… He was nothing but blood from almost head to toe… barely keeping himself upright… barely keeping hold of his sword… He’d fought his way past Nakajou, Sumita and the Yatsume… and Tatsumi was fresh and strong… if I did nothing he would die right there in front of me… I did nothing to stop Kiyosatto-sama from going to Kyoto. I couldn’t bare the thought of another man dying because of my inaction so I…

…

I didn’t know what else to do… I wanted to give him an opening… I thought he would see me…

…

But he didn’t…

…

I can recall it now, even though I don’t want to… the bite of the sword slicing through me… it’s surreal… I felt it and yet I didn’t, as though there was so much pain that my mind couldn’t even register it all.

…

The rest is hazy… Cold… I was lying in the snow. His face was bleeding from where I cut him as I fell back against him… I touched his face and then nothing.

…

There is no mark, no scar on my body to prove the memories true. Were it not for Kenshin’s presence and confirmation I would not believe them.

The dead are supposed to remain dead... And yet I am here...

October 9th

[willing_sheath]

Fourteen years. He has carried the burden of my death for fourteen years. It is so difficult to conceptualize that phrase. It is over half the time I’ve been alive… I can’t even comprehend the distance between us now. He is so very different and yet completely the same… He is taller. Older. Fine lines around his eyes though they are so faint that he still looks ten years younger than he actually is. He has wandered since the end of the war, never settling anywhere for any length of time, trying to atone for the lives he took during the war. They call it bakumatsu now… the end of the bafuku…

Katsura Kogoro came to him personally not long after my death. The traitor amongst us had been Isuka. I always disliked that man from the beginning. I wish I could say that I am surprised by the news. Katsura apologized for what he did and admitted that Kenshin should never have been a hitokiri. He brought Kenshin out of the shadows to protect the rebel forces in the open. He became a nightmare legend in the streets of Kyoto and Hitokiri Battousai became known as well as any of the Shinsengumi captains... Kenshin agreed to go with Katsura with the understanding that when the fighting was done he was done as well. That he would keep the promise he made to me the night before I died. To find a way to protect without killing and to find a way to atone for the lives he had taken for the new era.

He fought on the front lines for four years until the Battle of Toba Fushimi in 1868. His answer was given to him by the master swordsmith Arai Shakku in the form of a sakabatou... a reverse-blade sword. He has carried it for ten years, wandering Japan and trying to find a way to atone for the lives he took to bring in the Meiji Era.

Just as he promised.

Still… I cannot help but think of how lonely this life must have been. To have no one. No home. Nothing but that ever-present remorse. He tries to hide it, but I can see it. Perhaps it fools others, but I see through it. Even as he smiles his eyes are haunted. Even this isn’t so different. When we first met he hid it behind a scowl and now he deflects…

I don’t know what to do now, with this man who was my husband, who is so far away from me. And likewise he doesn’t know what to do with me. I am a walking ghost, dredged up from nearly a decade and a half ago. I see the way he looks at me when he doesn’t think I see. Haunted. A waking nightmare, a walking reminder of his greatest sin. There is relief as well, joy that I am alive here, but that doesn’t undo what happened.

And of my betrayal, he says nothing. My pleas for forgiveness are met with ‘there is nothing to forgive’. But how can that be? I deceived him from the very beginning. And yet there is nothing to forgive… Perhaps I want him to be angry with me… to reflect my anger and disgust with myself. I don’t know.

October 10th

[willing_sheath]

Kenshin has no news of Enishi or my father. It is not surprising considering how little I told him. I never even told him Father’s name. How could I expect him to know anything? The only solace I have is that he tasked Katsura Kogoro to locating my Father in Edo using their intelligence network to at least give him news of my death and the location of my grave. I believe they would have found him. A retainer named Yukishiro with children named Tomoe and Enishi—runaway children at that… I believe they would have found him… Though perhaps it would be better if they hadn’t. He could hope that way… hope that one day I might come home again. And maybe Enishi did make it back…

I’ll never know. And that is something I will have to come to terms with…

November 2nd

[willing_sheath]

It has been several weeks and we continue to dance around each other. What are we now? Are we husband and wife? Is our marriage dissolved? Our vows were 'until death parts us', and death indeed parted us. We sleep in the same room if not in the same bed. He has reverted back to sleeping against walls with his sword propped against his shoulder. I imagine that happened almost instantly after my death and why would it change? Outside of our little house in Otsu he has had no where that has been a home. No where that has been safe.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what is proper. I want my husband back but do I even deserve him? And what does he want? I believe he is in the same state. This shouldn't be possible, we shouldn't be put in this situation at all. I believe he wants to touch me, to be close to me, and he can't bring himself to for the same reason.

Were I a bolder person, perhaps I would be brave enough to bridge that gap on my own... but I am a coward and a fool...

November 24th

[willing_sheath]

Kenshin is gone… sent back to his time in whatever way Genessia brought him here in the first place. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know how to react, and I am filled with regret that I didn’t do more to try to cross that divide while I had the chance…

But it is better this way, isn’t it? That he should be sent back to his life… to the Kamiya Dojo and the haphazard family that has cropped up around him. That is better than being here with a ghost…

November 26th

[willing_sheath]

Not long ago someone posed a question about moving on after losing someone important to death.

But this place offers a different sort of dilemma.

I am the one who died. I arrived without memory of my death only for it to return to me weeks afterward. I had been comforted at first with assurances that time is halted in our worlds, that no time will be lost in the interim--but that is not the case for me. If I leave this place I leave to nothing. I have no hope of seeing my family again. I have no hope of knowing what became of them--and the events surrounding my death do not indicate anything good.

What am I supposed to do? When the husband I had arrives fifteen years after my death with too much blood and time separating us to rekindle what we once had... and when that same husband is then sent back without a trace. He will not remember me. He will only remember the ghost that has haunted him for all that time. I am dead to him all over again.

And what of me? Do I continue trying to live as a wife whose husband may or may not ever return here? Who may return again years past and distant? Who may return re-married with a new family? Do I consider myself a widow? Because for me it is as though they have all died. My husband, my father, my brother, everyone I ever knew or loved--all of them out of reach with no hope of seeing them again aside from the whims of whatever these "gods" seem fit to play.

What am I supposed to do with this unwanted "second chance" where I am trapped in my own head to the point that I feel as though I've been consigned to my own personal hell?

What am I supposed to do? What is the right thing to do?