This is a story that just popped into my head one day, and wouldn't go away. It danced around in my head, screaming louder and louder till I finally sat down and listened to it, and it turned out to be reeeeaaly interesting. Needless to say, I don't own Ruroken, and no one really owns East of the Sun, West of the Moon. And even if they did, the copyright would have expired hundreds of years ago.
Tomoe was running out of time. No matter how powerful a sorceress she was, once the spell was complete, there was little she could do. And she could not allow this spell to be completed.
Those fools thought that the Battousai would be easier to defeat if he was robbed of his humanity. What they did not understand was that it was that humanity that was their only hope of survival. A Battousai who still had his humanity was no less dangerous, merely more merciful. The Battousai was not merely a beast; he had cunning and intelligence, and a violent nature tempered only by human sensibilities. Taking those away would mean certain death for them, and the unleashing of a terrible force on the world.
But that wasn't all. She could not stand the thought of him being destroyed like that. She would most likely die trying to stop this, but she kept running. When she reached the clearing, she took everything in at a glance and made her choice. Kenshin stood there, clutching his sword, blind, deaf, and about to walk straight into their trap. Tomoe knew that this was her last chance.
With a cry, Kenshin dashed forward, aiming for a suicide strike and his opponent was chanting, desperate to finish the spell before the Battousai reached him. Tomoe had two goals; stop the man from completing the spell, and preventing Kenshin from getting himself killed.
Aware that his best chance of defeating his enemy was yielding to his beast, Kenshin let go and began to transform. The conspirators thought that this was what they wanted, but they had never seen the Battousai unleashed. Few had, and even fewer had lived to tell the tale.
They had planned to trap him in this form, and seal away his humanity thinking this would make him less dangerous, but seeing the small but ferocious redhead transform into a dragon before his very eyes made the man freeze, if only for a moment. It was that moment of fear that gave Tomoe her chance. She threw herself between them and stabbed the man through the heart with her knife. Not only would it cut through flesh and bone, but through magic as well. As it ended the man's life, it severed the spell just before its completion, and she felt Kenshin's claws rake across her back.
Realizing what he had done, Kenshin changed back and caught her as she fell. "Tomoe," he gasped out. "No, Tomoe." His voice broke. Smiling gently, she reached up with the knife and cut his cheek, intersecting the scar her fiancé had given him. She felt her blood soaking her kimono and dripping down her arm. Tomoe dropped the knife and reached out with her hand, wet with her own blood and caressed his newly wounded cheek, mingling their blood.
'There,' she thought to herself satisfied. She couldn't save him completely, but the spell would never be finished.
"Tomoe," he cried out, tears beginning to fall, his rough, bloodied hands caressing her face.
"Never give up hope," she whispered. Kenshin watched helplessly as the life drained from her eyes. When she was gone, he clutched her body to his chest and screamed his pain to the sky.