For a few horrible hours, he thinks he won't be able to find it. Maybe he's just forgotten how many trees there were on the mountain. He's spent a long time in Kyoto after all. But he has a nagging feeling that he used to dream of the place, and it shouldn't be so hard to find something that you dreamed about.
Right?
He grits his teeth and continues climbing.
Then, sometime around sunset, a clearing up ahead. He slows, one hand falling instinctively to the hilt of his sword. A two-day walk from Kyoto, a day's walk up the mountain, and somehow, he has not been ready for this moment. The confidence he always projects and sometimes believes in has never felt more like a mask.
In the end, it is the sunlight that decides him. He can't afford to spend an entire night waiting in the trees for it to be morning again, and he cannot stomach the idea of approaching in the dark. Not now. Not with all of night's associations.
Despite that, he keeps his swords.
And there they are: the graves. He stares at them in surprise; there seem to be more than he remembers. He wonders at the idea that a child, any child, could dig so many in so little time. Grief drove him, he remembers that. Guilt, that he hadn't been able to defend them when it really mattered.
Never mind that in his current condition, he could have taken down all the bandits by himself.
He touches the hilt of his sword, seeing it all in his mind's eye. A step here, and the leader of the bandits falls. A woman screams and he turns, his blade a perfect arc that slices neatly between the bones of the next man's neck and into the man behind. As that one dies, he thrusts, spins, parries. With every stroke, a new man dies.
Until they are all dead, and he is left alone with a handful of frightened women and a young child who stares wide-eyed at his sword. The child has hair the color of blood.
There must be no witnesses.
He starts back to reality. He cannot shake the notion that he has become no better than those men. Perhaps they too had been told by their leader that their own cause was more important than the lives of a few individuals. Perhaps their leader had told them, "They're only slaves." Perhaps they had then buried their consciences, content to accept his word.
Perhaps the hitokiri Battousai is just a better killer.
He stands there and stares at the graves.
"Shinta…" A ghostly voice drifts on the breeze. Kenshin stands stock still, listening, as another voice floats up from the ground. It covers the sound of movement in the trees.
"Shinta…"
The rush of confusion, half-mingled with fear, blinds him to his danger. He does not notice the swordsman's spirit that promises death, the sense of betrayal, or the cold determination that accompanies that promise. He can't hear anything but the voices of the women he once buried.
"Shinta…"
I'm sorry, he wants to say. But he doesn't.
"Live, Shinta. Until you are able to choose your own life, you have to live."
"I made my choice," he whispers to the graves. A single tear falls to the ground as he turns away. It's all he can do.
But seeing that tear, Seijuro Hiko removes his hand from his sword.