The only major thing I disliked about this story was Kenshi's assumption
that Death was coming to visit him, rather than Kaoru.  It just didn't at
all follow and because of that the whole struggle to keep himself from being
killed was rather annoying, since Death's real target was so obvious.  What
you could do to get around this problem is downplay Kaoru's sickness quite a
bit and have Kenshin wonder how exactly he would die if he was defeated.
Would his heart stop?  Would he have another accident such as the fat man
did?  Coming up with lots of possible ways for himself to die if he let
Death touch him would draw the focus away from Kaoru somewhat, to at least
instill the doubt in the reader that maybe Kaoru isn't the one who's going
to die after all.  As it is, Kenshin's relief that he didn't die and the
belated realization of what was really going on was just annoying and made
me think less of him for decieving himself so easily without cause to.

There was one additional thing that seemed off, but it's more of a minor
issue.  Death didn't let Kenshin see him on purpose, it was just that
Kenshin had been in his presense for so long and then become desensitized to
it through not being around anybody who died for years.  If this is right,
then it seems like an aweful big coincidence that Kenshin would run across
somebody who is about to die on the same day as Kaoru, giving him warning
and time to prepare for Death's coming.

Something that would avoid both of these issues would be to take the fat man
out of the story completely, and have Kenshin just catch glimpses of Death
over the course of the day, with Death always looking at Kaoru.  Kenshin
could then figure out what's going on when he looks to Kaoru, asking if she
knows the man who is watching her, and finds out that she can't see him.
This would raise the emotional stakes of the story a good deal, because he
isn't just fighting out of stubborness and a refusal to die without at least
putting up the best resistance that he can, instead he would be fighting for
his wife who he loves very much.  This would add a lot to the story, I
think.  Doing it this way would allow the fight to be much more emotional,
you could add little flashbacks of times Kaoru and Kenshin had together over
the course of thier marriage and the time covered in the manga to bring the
struggle to a higher level and increase his will to win accordingly.  It
would also make the loss all the more painful and would be far more
effective than Kenshin's realizing too late that he had fought for the wrong
person, which doesn't come across as being as large an issue as it should
have been anyway.  As it is, Kaoru's death and the ending isn't as
satisfying as it could be, nor is the fight itself.

Other than that, the story is rather good.  I've never made the slightest
attempt to look for Kenshin fics that aren't crossed over with Ranma, the
only one I have read is Madamhydra's That Which Lingers and Nightwitch
Tales, and I only read those because I liked her(?) Tiger Claw story so
much.  So this was a rather nice surprise.

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