A/N: This is going to be a very small collection of drabbles set at the beginning of Rurouni Kenshin, focusing on a different character in every chapter. I tried for something more friendshippy/familial this time, and I hope it worked. Tell me what you think.

First up: Kaoru, 500 words

Imperfections

Kaoru is vastly different from other girls in town.

It's the truth, not a revelation, nor something that would bother her when whispered behind her back. Gossip has always been wide-spread around her, and the way her father was adamant about raising her in a son's stead. It might have confused and irritated her when she was younger, but having strangers mentioning her acting and looking like a boy triggers nothing but a resigned smile from her now.

Everything that has happened to her and the dojo in the past weeks, however, has brought new fodder for the local tattletales. And while she should probably be more worried about their take on her strange living arrangements, she is still too hung up on the fact that people believed it when some stranger showed up and declared all the murders committed were in the name of her school.

People who had known her father for years, who had known what Kamiya Kasshin-ryu stood for, chose to believe defamation against her over her own word and sometimes Kaoru wonders whether it wasn't a cheap excuse for some of her students to get out of her lessons.

Wonders whether she is alone in her beliefs of her father's teachings, when, finally, her family's name is cleared of those crimes and none of her former students choose to return.

It's almost funny for it to take someone like Kenshin, with who he is and who he was, with what he says and what he does, to reassure her when even people she grew up training with won't take her seriously in her profession because of her gender.

But no matter how much she frets over this, there are more important issues to worry about.

There's Yahiko now who is a handful, but a diligent student nonetheless. There's Sanosuke and Megumi who take turns in teasing her and making fun of her. There's Kenshin who might just be up and gone if she doesn't watch him like a hawk.

There are bills to be paid and mouths to be fed. Clothes, food, the occasional repairs on the dojo. All the money she needs but doesn't have.

There are feelings she isn't all too certain about and wouldn't even begin to know how to communicate either way, insecurities she needs to overcome and things she has to straighten out with herself.

So she is loud and brash, with a wild temper and a streak for violence. She can't cook or sew and sooner knows how to treat a twisted ankle than how to use coal and ink to emphasize the blue of her eyes.

She loves with vigor and doesn't shy away from standing her ground, cannot bring herself to mind people slandering her reputation because she keeps close contact to two unmarried men of questionable reputation themselves, a former pickpocketing kid and a woman who was involved in a drug scandal.

Kaoru is vastly different from other girls in town.

But maybe that's alright.