Scrub, scrub, scrub.

These familiar patterns, accompanied by their familiar sensations, are all that can keep Kenshin going in a time of such change. The iridescent bubbles rise, glowing in quick flashes of rainbow hues before returning to transparency, and drift away as his scrubbing becomes more vigorous. Weightless as he never has been, the antithesis of his darkening soul, they fly as far as they can till at last they give into the pressure and pop in little bursts of teardrops.

Kenshin continues to scrub, forcing himself not to focus on those spherical free souls. There are always more clothes to be cleaned, always other chores to attend to. He takes comfort in this, can feel secure in knowing that however long he lives, he will always have some small task to do. It makes Kenshin feel needed in a day and age where he is rusted; no longer an expertly honed blade, he is poorly crafted, rusted and dull. Someday, likely soon, he will be discarded, and make room for another, newer blade on the shelf.

Scrub, scrub. Lift, shake, scrutinize.

Violet eyes skim thoroughly over white cloth, ensuring that there is no remaining sign of untidiness before he rises from his place to hang it on the line with thin fingers. Kenshin is losing his touch, so many years later, and his fingers are not so deft and nimble as he might wish. They, like his sword, are no longer extensions of his strength; they are cumbersome, fumbling. Weak, though he dreads to admit it, and though the others deny it fervently. Returning to his wash, he dunks more clothes into the basin and begins the process once again.

Scrub, scrub, scrub.

Pausing, he glances over his shoulder and sees his son sitting outside the doorway in a manner amusingly - and yet frighteningly - reminiscent of himself when he was younger. In a matter of years, Kenji will forget his aging father, and venture away for a family of his own, leaving Kenshin like an old, hard pea in a shriveled pod, with no one else to accompany him. It has been years since the dojo has truly lived. Years filled with brushing away the rapidly encroaching dust, with sweeping and scouring. Carrying on insistently as though his loved ones will return through the old gates at any moment, sweep him up, and keep him playing mediator late into the evening. The heat now is not quite so comfortable as it used to be, when they were all here and when he had the energy to rise from his task and join the children in play. "Kenji-kun," he calls to his son. Kenji is nineteen years old, and certainly not a boy anymore, but it is a habit that Kenshin knows he cannot afford to break. The minute his Kenji is no longer "kun" is the minute they are forever divided, a trench of age and a line of their different generations hurled between them.

"Yes?" Kenji looks up from staring into space, an activity that has, sadly, become too common for him of late. His eyes glaze over, as blank as the white surfaces of the clean clothes on the line. A pure, but blinded, almost uncaring expression, and one that has always bothered Kenshin a little to see.

"Oh... It is nothing, I suppose. You looked so very far away," Kenshin says.

"Well, I'm here." Offering a soft little smile, Kenji rises and comes to kneel at his father's side, his pale hands joining Kenshin's pale hands in the sudsy water. The white foam of the bubbles, like a mound of untouched, glowing snow, surrounds their hands with its light warmth. Beneath the water, Kenji reaches for Kenshin's hands and takes them in his, squeezing them lightly. "You looked far away, too, otou-san."

"I suppose I was thinking." Kenshin squeezes his son's hands in return.

"Otou-san, is everything... I don't want to sound rude, but is everything going to be all right?"

At Kenji's hesitant question, an amethyst gaze flicks up from the snowy soap and meets concerned, clear blue. He cannot quite think of what to say. The words escape him, as so many things are slowly beginning to do. Piece by piece, he is falling apart. Finally, when all other replies have played over in his head, Kenshin says, "It must."

"I worry about you, otou-san. Without okaa-san, and without Sano -"

Mention of them makes Kenshin flinch. His face contorts in pain, no longer a mask of complacency, for he is unable to maintain such a falsehood when confronted with the past in so blunt a manner.

"I'm sorry." Kenji rises, releasing his hands, and retreats to the house.

Kenshin kneels at the washbasin in the wake of that wave of pain, the typhoon that has beached him and left him straining to return to the water, a fish in need of breath. A fish that, though it flops now, must give up eventually. He sighs and starts washing again.

Scrub, scrub, scrub. Pause. Blink back tears.

Years ago, he would not consider crying. Not because he found it degrading or humiliating. Not because he was so unfeeling that nothing could move him to tears. Simply because he had nothing to cry about, once he thought about it. He might have shed tears for the ghosts of the past, their cold arms wrapping around him, but those ghosts were nothing compared to those whose arms tighten around him now. His wife... His lover... His friends, his master, even his former enemies...

Like old water, stained and tainted with soap, they have all been thrown out to the street, scattered and splashed. Their drops in his life have long since evaporated, and he is left behind, a shriveling puddle, soon to disappear entirely as well. Kenshin wipes the water from his hands on his hakama, momentarily forgetting his own finicky hygiene so that he can brush away the persistent tears. In his eyes, they feel warm, even comforting, but once on his cheeks, they will burn, ache, and cause sure ruination. Once on his cheeks, he can no longer deny them, just as he can no longer deny that his body is aging, that he cannot keep up with this much longer.

Kenshin goes back to washing the clothes, a renewed vigor in his stiffening fingers. He has so many more to go before he will be done completely, and then he must prepare dinner for himself and Kenji. Even such a brief time ago as a few years back, he would be cooking for at least three; with Kaoru gone, Sano was there, and sometimes Yahiko and Tsubame would come.

It cannot be that way anymore. Sano is gone. Yahiko and Tsubame have forgotten him, abandoned him to the ages like the relic that he and his fellows are. Kenji, too, must evaporate, drifting away on a delicate wind only to leave a cold whisper in his ear.

He accepts it.

They have thrown him out with the water.