TRUE BEAUTY

Summary: Kaoru had loved Kenshin her entire life, and it killed her that she wouldn't be the one to break his curse. Especially since it was her curse too. Beauty and the Beast with a large twist.

Disclaimer: I don't own RuroKen, nor do I own Beauty and the Beast. This is just my interpretation of the fairy tale. Enjoy!

Author's Notes: This was meant to be a one-shot... but then The Bug decided to sink it's fangs into me and not let go! Anyway, this was born. I should be finished before New Years, but it also depends on reviews as well.

Act 1

Kamiya Kaoru had known Himura Kenshin since they were both young. He was a full ten years older than her, but that didn't stop the strange friendship that was forged between the two of them from the moment they had met. During those times, it was slightly unorthodox (yet not unheard of) for a commoner to be friends with a Crown Prince, but that did little to stop them from tormenting the stable-master whenever Prince Kenshin was free from his studies.

As the pair grew older, they grew closer... and yet apart.

Kaoru worked in the kitchens, but was being trained to be a lady-in-waiting (how that had occurred, she still had yet to figure out) and was constantly busy with either work or study. Kenshin had his own problems to sort out as well. His father, the King, was slowly getting ready to step down from the throne and hand it to him. With finishing his studies and getting to know the Kingdom that only a King could know, it left little to no time to play together as when they were children.

It was a great shock that just two weeks after Kaoru had celebrated her eighteenth birthday, that the King suddenly died in his sleep, and arrangements were made in haste to make Kenshin the new King. The coronation was set to take place two weeks after the Kings death, and the invitations were sent out to all the nobility and important people in the kingdom and nearby to celebrate the welcoming of the new king.

But one such individual was forgotten.

On the eve of Kenshin's coronation, in front of a huge hall of dignitaries, friends and family, the Witch Yumi, appeared, and cast a curse on the new king. Turning him into a frightening Beast, Yumi declared that the only way to break the spell was for a girl to marry him of her own free will. His subjects would suffer the same fate as their King; each and every servant of the King was transformed into objects of their trade.

This turn of events would last for many years, told to children from parents who had heard it from a passing traveller who had supposedly heard it from a real witness. People of the surrounding kingdoms would speculate as to the goings-on of the Himura kingdom, but dared not venture into the frightening woods that surrounded the castle and its inhabitants.

Some said that since King Kenshin had been cursed, so too had the surrounding forest: anyone who entered never came back out because of the terrible beast that lives inside of it.

But this is not a frightening tale. This is a tale of love, true love, that always conquers.

This is the story of the Beast and how he found his True Beauty.