Disclaimer: I blame marathons of Karate Kid movies on TV for making me writing fanfic of it, haha.
Story: John Kreese and Danielle LaRusso met under different circumstances. But he was still the sensei of a group of boys that hated her, and some things just don't change. Sometimes, they get even worse.
Set as a genderbent AU of the first Karate Kid movie.
Spoilers: Yeeeessss. Yes, yes, yes. Beware?
Warnings: Age difference, initial racism towards Asians, excessive drinking, some violence and language, PTSD, gender roles and gender expectations, societal expectations…
Pairings: John Kreese/fem!Daniel
Bruises
She was beautiful. The first time he saw her, he'd been struck by how beautiful she was, especially when she'd smiled at him.
"Danielle LaRusso," she'd beamed at him after apologizing profusely for running her shopping cart into his.
"John Kreese," he'd reached over, hoping she'd shake his hand.
She was and is the most beautiful thing he'd ever witnessed.
John had pulled her alongside him, running into a gamut of things to talk about. Eventually, somehow they began talking about karate, and he had been delighted by the fact she was knowledgeable and seemingly as in love about it as he was.
There weren't any women he knew that cared about it, and here was one that didn't just know and care, but loved it deeply.
Danielle wasn't a practitioner. She admitted she'd never formally learned, and had always tried to teach herself through books and whatever she could have on hand. But it wasn't anything like being taught or having a teacher.
It had been something of a brilliant plan to spend more time with her, while sharing in what was his first love, when he offered to teach her whenever she wanted. He didn't quite want her at the dojo, because he wasn't sure how his boys would take her, but there was also the fact she'd need to pay there and he knew that she wasn't big on money without having to ask her.
He'd only noted then that she was young, but he didn't ask how old she was. He'd avoided the question of how young exactly. John wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Weeks later, she lay in his bed, smiling impishly up at him. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard, but she was beautiful and bare underneath him. He kissed her again and again, and she'd arched up into him. He remembered how he'd spread her legs again and buried himself in her once more, breathing her scent in as he nuzzled her neck.
"You're beautiful," he'd told her hoarsely.
She'd laughed breathily, though her eyes closed briefly.
"Would you always think that?"
But she never let him give an answer as she wrapped herself more around him and clutched onto his body desperately, allowing him to drive into her body with a just as desperate need.
"No mercy," he growled out, walking around his students and watching them with hard eyes.
"No mercy!" they shouted back.
"Strike first, strike hard."
He moved to go in front of them, facing his class with a steely gaze.
"No mercy."
He fingered her short hair, furrowing his eyebrows. He'd liked it better long, but she was always going to be beautiful to him.
"You don't like it," she laughed at him.
"It's not bad," he told her honestly.
But he'd liked the way he'd threaded his hands through her brown locks and let them fall through his fingers like water, and more so when he'd fisted them and gripped as hard as he could while he drove into her from behind.
She kissed him. "I'll grow it longer again. I just felt like something new."
John wasn't too worried about it.
"You're beautiful. You always will be to me," he said firmly.
She gave him a lazy smile, but his eyes were drawn to medium-sized bruises on her knees and one to her shoulder. Before he could touch the one on her shoulder, she touched his fingers.
"It's nothing," she looked into his eyes and John frowned. "Don't worry about it, alright?"
And then she was leaning into him and pressing her lips against his, opening her mouth up and letting her tongue into his mouth, and he focused on entangling his own tongue with hers.
"Sensei?"
John blinked and looked up from the papers he had to sign, seeing one of his more softer students watching him carefully. Of his students, Bobby Brown had always had a bit more compassion to him than he should.
"Yeah, Bobby?"
Bobby stepped further into the office and John put down the papers to give his student more attention.
"When you tell us to give no mercy to our enemy, do you really mean it?" he asked him quietly.
John raised an eyebrow. "Yes," he said inflexibly. "You don't give any leverage over to the enemy. They'll use your compassion against you and you'll be the one sorry instead."
Bobby frowned. "But what if –"
"Bobby, I fought in Vietnam," John interrupted, looking his student seriously in the eyes. "You can't let any enemy have any chance to take you out. Any falter, any sympathy, and you'll just end up with a knife to the back. You just worry about your comrades and have their backs, like they should have yours."
Bobby still looked disheartened, but he nodded.
"Yes, Sensei. I understand."
"Pour me another," John grinned wildly, holding out his glass. His old Vietnam comrade snickered and held the bottle of liquor over the glass. Terry Silver, the rich bastard that he was now, had certainly hit it big after the war. "Damn it, Terry, don't be stingy!"
"I ain't stingy if I'm sharing this fine bottle of brandy with you, when I could have had it all to myself!"
"One, it's not brandy. It's whiskey," John snorted, swishing the alcohol in his glass. "Two, you're a little shit when you're drunk, aren't you?"
"M'not!"
John downed the whiskey in one go and watched his friend in amusement.
"Hey, Terry, you ever feel like being a Best Man?"
Terry blinked and straightened up, looking at him in shock. "You find a nice girl you want to settle down with?"
John thought of chocolate brown eyes and dark locks of brown silk, and olive skin that felt like heaven against him.
"I met a girl," he said. "I met a girl and she's beautiful."
'I met a girl and she's beautiful and I think I fucking love her.'
John's a little drunk, so he wasn't sure whether that was just in his head or if he actually said it aloud, but Terry just gives a large smirk at him.
"When's the wedding date?"
He laughed long and hard, but he willingly pondered that question.
"Your enemy should have no mercy," John drilled into his students. "Strike first, strike hard. No mercy!"
They yelled it back to him and he nodded, pleased. Still, he felt himself glancing over at Bobby, who looked despondent.
He felt a spike of irritation hit him. Why couldn't the kid get it? The enemy was always looking for an advantage, so it was better to never give them one!
If he made them do their drills a little longer and harder, then he was just trying to drive that fact into them.
John traced her bottom lip with his thumb. He smiled slightly to himself, leaning down to kiss her.
"I have something to tell you," she said solemnly after and he straightened up. "You…you probably already know I'm really young, but…"
"I figured," he murmured. "I didn't really want to know."
She gave him a pained look. "I'm –"
"I still don't want to know," he interrupted her, making that choice. "If you told me, I'd end up treating you differently, maybe like the age you are. We're equal now. So tell me when it won't matter anymore."
She gazed at him and smiled widely, before surging up to kiss him and grasp at his hair, pulling at it almost painfully.
John ignored the bruises that marred the area around her ribs, because she wouldn't look at him when he asked.
"What is it, Bobby?"
He tried not to sound exasperated, but Bobby was looking upset again and he wasn't sure what the kid wanted from him. He was doing his best to help, but he wasn't sure anything he said was getting through to the kid.
"If your enemy is a female, do you still give them no mercy?"
That made him give pause and look at his student in surprise. But memories and the lasting fear of a female sniper to dread in the grasses of Vietnam filled him then, and the echoing whispers of 'Apache' around his men and the others made him tense in the present.
"Women can be deadly too," he held back his snarl just barely.
He remembered another girl though, slender and pliant under his hands, and relaxed.
"But you should respect them too. Most of them are harmless, and you should always treat them right," he said, uncharacteristically soft and even a bit kind then.
At that, Bobby seemed to ease right in front of him.
"Thanks, Sensei. I'll keep that in mind."
Danielle seemed a million miles away right then. He frowned and decided to catch her attention, bending down and kissing a path from her belly to up between the valley of her breasts and to stop at her neck, spending time suckling at it.
"John!" she gasped out.
"You alright?" he asked softly.
She blinked. "What do you mean?"
His callused hands ran gently over the new bruises she had gained, and she winced and tried to move away.
"Danielle?"
"It's nothing," she tried to say again, but he gave her a look and she relented this time. "I've just been getting into it with a group of boys. They're just a bunch of jerks. Really."
He scowled. "They're picking on you."
John felt his blood boil and he wanted to go after these idiots. He'd make them hurt for hurting her.
"I'm fine," she insisted. "They're stupid bullies who think they can beat up whoever gets in their way just because they think they're entitled and they know how to fight."
She shifted a little and pushed him onto his back, going to straddle him. Even though he was distracted by her, he still felt this uneasy feeling grip him.
John was starting to feel amused, seeing Bobby once again in his office.
His amused smile fell off at the terrified look on his student's face.
"Bobby?"
"I'm so sorry, Sensei," Bobby croaked out. "Johnny was convinced she was our enemy. You always said to never give any mercy to our enemies and Johnny freaked out tonight."
Cold, cold dread ran through John.
"What did he do, Bobby? What happened?"
Tonight was Halloween. Horrors happened on Halloween.
And so Bobby, in his garish but suiting skeleton costume, drove John near an apartment complex, where four other boys stood in silent and terrified horror.
John had nothing to say. Not as he knelt by Danielle's side and stared blankly at her still figure. To the side, an old Japanese man watched gravely, though his slanted eyes watched John's students darkly.
"Sensei –" Johnny started in fright.
"Not another word, Johnny," he snapped out, focused only on her.
Danielle was still beautiful. Even with her face covered in black and blue bruises, with matching ones he knew lay underneath her clothing. He would never think any differently of her.
Sirens was heard in the distance, but they were muted in John's ears as he looked at the girl that he would've married. Would. Would marry.
She was too still and cold.
"Danielle?" he called out softly, ignoring the jerk of heads from his boys towards him, who hadn't expected their teacher to know her. "Open your eyes, sweetheart."
But she didn't answer him and it was his fault because these were the principles he taught.
No Mercy.
Started 1/23/16 – Completed 1/24/16
A/n: The end is more ambiguous than I originally had planned. 'Cause, you know, I was just gonna kill her off (shifty eyes). This is a one-shot (probably) and I hoped people liked it, felt sad, etc. Please review!