Disclaimer: If I owned either Ruroken or Robin Hood, I'd being enjoying my scads of money right now, not writing profitless fanfiction!

Also, since this website doesn't like it when I respond to reviews in-chapter, I've decided to just dedicate chapters to pairs of reviewers, starting with those that review most regularly. It's a lame substitute, I know, but hopefully it's something.

So this one's for Pterion and Caseyedith. Thanks for being so awesome, you two, and I hope you like it!

Chapter 1: Trust and Betrayal

Our tale begins, as so very many do, with a reluctant protagonist, a traitorous evildoer, and a call to action. Meiji Year 238 was one fraught with more than the usual amount of strife. A drought was beginning to scorch the land, made worse because the kingdom was at war with the Outlanders that once again threatened its borders. Back then, our land was known for two things: its rich iron deposits and the small but powerful military that protected them. Still, greed for the first was enough to abandon the caution made wise by the second, and raids were frequent. The king of this time grew tired of the threat to his domain, and so began the second Great Crusade, intended to thwart the invaders once and for all. This was not as easy as expected however, and the battles drew on for ten years, during which time Meiji grew politically unstable. All able-bodied men not of the royal blood were conscripted, and each served two years with the armies or until his death, whichever was first. For far too many of them, it was death.

Just as it seemed that things could not grow worse, the king himself disappeared from the field of battle, leaving a contested throne behind. And so we start with the telling of a pivotal event, one which would turn the tide of history, perhaps more than anyone present could have imagined.

"I don't suppose there has been any word from my lord uncle?" The voice was laced with heavy fatigue, and the words spilled out with no more thought than their source gave the air he breathed.

"No." The second voice was more controlled, but here, too, there was a weariness present that spoke of many sleepless nights in the recent past.

A wry smile twisted the first speaker's face. "It's probably asking too much to just assume that he'd come back and take care of all this himself, isn't it, Aoshi?" King Katsura had been missing for over two years now; the likelihood of his returning alive grew slimmer by the day. By now, it was probably too late.

"Aa," came the largely noncommittal reply, and the one called Aoshi resumed his work.

The two men sat on a balcony overlooking the palace gardens. Though the day was beautiful and the flowers in bloom, neither of them was inclined to notice or appreciate such things. Instead, they were poring over administrative notices from all the imperial holdings, as well as several ancillary reports from other lords, mostly on the general chaos plaguing a nation without an acting monarch. There were a few more personal letters amidst the papers as well, all addressed with respect to the crown prince, all asking, demanding or begging something.

Rifling through a few of these, the first man set aside an important note on a recent crop failure in the western provinces and glanced over a short missive in a sharp, angular hand, amber-colored eyes narrowing slightly. "Hn. Lord Takeda promises his support should the matter come to a vote. As if I didn't already know where the snake places his loyalty," he snorted, throwing the letter back onto the table before them in disgust.

The taller of the two picked it up, perused it briefly, and set it down carefully on top of an increasing stack of similar documents, shaking his head. "This does not bode well," he said simply.

"Of course it doesn't," his companion replied caustically. "Nothing about this situation 'bodes well.' If they finally decide to force a vote, either Shishio becomes king or I do. Seems hard to decide which is worse," he finished cynically, letting his eyes wander seemingly without care over the vista before them.

He was, however, completely aware of Aoshi's own light blue gaze resting steadily upon him. "I know you are reluctant to accept the title," his Second began slowly, "but I have said this before and I will say it again: you are, without question, far more suited to the job than he is."

The king's nephew worked to conceal his agitation. That had been an awfully long speech for Aoshi, and it was clear that the other man meant what he was saying. It was also most likely true. King Katsura had not named an heir despite lacking children or even a wife to rule in his stead, and so his disappearance was causing no small amount of strife. The man with the oddly-colored eyes was called the crown prince, but only because his blood relation to the current king was the closest, since he was the son of Katsura's sister. Truthfully, someone needed to be crowned soon, else the chaos would follow the soldiers to the battlefield and the small nation of Meiji would be overrun with Outlanders.

Aoshi's liege lord just didn't want it to be himself. There were any number of reasons why he was far from the ideal candidate, not the least of which was that he had no taste for the political games that others liked to play. He simply ignored the custom of phrasing everything he said as politely as possible, and had no patience for the sugar-coated promises of people who carried daggers just waiting to find one's back. This caused his closest adviser no small amount of headaches, but at least when he was at home in Loxley, the seat of his personal holdings, no one was particularly offended. His father, he was told, had been much the same way.

Deciding to just ignore the comment, he turned to Aoshi. "Leave this for a while. We will have another few days at least before the Council is called to force their vote." With that, he stood abruptly, without waiting for Aoshi to follow.

Behind him, he heard a muttered affirmative, but he knew that his Second would not leave it be quite so soon, which suited him just fine. There was one more matter he had to attend to today, and it would hopefully be a little less unpleasant.

Aoshi watched his lord leave, gaze fixed steadily on the retreating back until the man was out of sight. Though many people, perhaps reasonably, found Lord Kenshin difficult to work with, Aoshi himself suffered no such problems. Not having been raised at court, the lesser noble cared little for the lack of tact the man seemed to display, though the dark-haired Second himself was adept at blending in amongst those too cowardly to say what they thought.

No, Aoshi's concern was not with his liege's capability to be king, but his reluctance. Lord Kenshin had proven himself to be a military genius during the time the two of them had served together in King Katsura's Crusade. For Aoshi, the two years had been mandatory, as it was for any healthy male not of the royal blood. The other man, however, had taken up his sword voluntarily, and with it proven that he was powerful enough to slay most any foe, and wise enough to command others on the field.

Still, that had been three years ago now, when they were both the standard age of conscription, or seventeen summers. The years at court while King Katsura was away commanding the armies elsewhere had hardened his friend in a way Aoshi would not have thought possible. The battlefield had shown him a reality which the idealistic boy of seventeen had been shocked to discover, and it had changed him. But the political machinations of corrupt fools had done worse, transformed him into a cynic, and a bitter one at that. His reluctance to become the center of that world was understandable, if regrettable. Lord Kenshin's natural leadership was impossible to deny, even in spite of his inclinations to terseness and severity.

All the worse because of the alternative. Lord Shishio was as ruthless as he was fanatical, and almost impossible to predict. He had killed three of his own Seconds in a row, simply because he had decided they were too weak. Instead of selecting another from the ranks of heroes who had proven themselves at war, Shishio had instead chosen a mere child, and was apparently training the boy himself. Aoshi wondered idly how long it was going to take before he tired of this method and killed the young one, too. The thought of the damage such a man could do as king was something best not dwelt upon excessively, save that it was in Aoshi's careful nature to do so anyway.

The usually stoic warrior ran a hand down his face. Unstable as Shishio was, he was not without his appeal to certain sections of the nobility, particularly those who had risen to power recently, by virtue of their money and willingness to corrupt themselves as far as necessary to gain more power. The older noble houses generally favored Kenshin- if they did so without excessive enthusiasm- but there was no denying the promise of someone as untraditional as the imbalanced son of a king and a whore for those who could stomach the zealotry.

But I suppose it is my task to ensure that this appeal is debased. Aoshi again read through the stacks of documents. There had to be something here, something that contained the answer, something that would push people to support Kenshin with all they had. As Kenshin's Second, it was his job to act as adviser, bodyguard, spymaster, and liaison. As Kenshin's friend, he tasked himself also with doing as much as he could to ensure that the young lord met with success in his every endeavor. It was, after all, the least he could do.

He was about to reread the letter from the rather distasteful Lord Takeda when something caught his eye. Moving a small piece of paper out from underneath the rest, he read it over quickly, then again more slowly. It appeared to be from one of his contacts in the garrison. Shishio's personal host was being moved to the palace. Not so unusual, since their lord would likely be taking up residence until the vote was decided, but… he's moving all of them? That would be very unwise, to leave his own holdings unguarded. Unless…

Realization dawned on Aoshi, and he sprang out of his seat, not caring that he scattered several documents as he did. Grabbing those that seemed immediately the most important, he abandoned the rest, setting out at as fast a walk as could still be considered polite for the north side of the building, where he knew Kenshin was planning to be.

Kenshin wasn't nervous as he knocked on the ornate wooden door that marked the boundary between the hallway and the private chambers of his betrothed. He'd known Tomoe since they were both quite young, and though she was three years his senior, they'd practically grown up together, as was custom for children already in arranged marriages.

No, perhaps it was precisely this old familiarity, and the lack of it more recently, that made what he was about to do all the more important. The matter had to be settled, once and for all; it simply could not continue like this. Perhaps she would feel differently; he could not be certain anymore.

"Enter," called a soft voice from within. So she was alone. Usually Tomoe was one to have a servant answer the door directly, but he had told her to expect him, so perhaps she had simply sent away her staff. She cared far more for propriety than he did.

Either way, he complied, and the door gave easily to reveal chambers that were opulent in their luxuriousness. Several bookcases, most full of tomes given to the young woman by Kenshin's own mother, lined the walls of her sitting-room. The furniture was upholstered in the finest imported silks, all in the pale colors his betrothed favored, and rich carpets covered the bare stone floors. Tomoe had excellent taste, and the means to see it satisfied. To a lesser noble or a servant, this show of wealth was doubtless intended to impress and daunt in addition to the pure aesthetics. It certainly wouldn't surprise him; Tomoe was a master of political intrigue, and he'd called on her advice more than once when trying to decipher some court-speak he did not understand. Beneath all that though, she was a genuinely kind person, and had been a fixture in the early part of his life to whom he owed much.

"Tomoe," he greeted stiffly. This was not all to say that things were completely well between the two; indeed, they had been rather forced of late. Kenshin knew he was putting off the wedding, and also knew that Tomoe was in love with another.

Her answering smile was soft, if a bit disingenuous. "My lord," she returned formally. "What might I do for you?" Her stance was one of serene grace. Like her quarters, she was decorated to intimidate, in a completely different way from himself. Where Kenshin had merely to stare down a man to send chills up his spine, Tomoe radiated an air of such grace that superiority nearly leaked tangibly from her. The pale yellow brocade dress was tailored perfectly, but still modest, and her jewelry was lavish without being ostentatious. The rich dark brown hair was fashionably kept, making her face appear at once aristocratically angular and femininely soft. Such a balance was hard to achieve, though the result was impressive.

"I wish to discuss Sir Akira," he replied in the bald manner that those closest to him had come to expect. He was ever undeterred by such displays as Tomoe's, and it was one of the reasons that they had been so close. Only for a short time had he ever mooned after her in the way men were wont to do, though it was something that passed quickly enough. For the most part, it was not in his nature to be particularly impressed by the sort of fragile beauty that Tomoe cultivated, and his complete lack of tact was in a sense a reflection of this, one that she had grown to appreciate somewhat. Still, it appeared that his phrasing had been a bit much even for her; she flinched, and something in her face shifted, a slight hardening of the delicate features.

Silence reigned for a few moments while she collected her thoughts, and he waited as patiently as he could for her to speak. When she did, it was in a practiced voice, without a hint of the surprise that had slipped from behind her careful court mask. "If it is your wish to punish him, then you must know that I will not allow it. I am just as responsible as he." She looked like she was about to continue, but he shook his head and she stopped. She really is something, he thought absently. Even when she was attempting to defy the will of someone with a great deal more power than herself, she managed to make it sound like polite conversation.

"I do not want to punish either of you. Your obligation to me is a duty only, and I do not wish always to be a slave to duty," he replied. In truth, Kenshin knew this was far from a wise move, but if he had to accept the fact that he would be king, then he would at least rebel against the life chosen for him in this smaller way. Perhaps this was immature of him; in fact, some part of him knew that it was, but he'd been listening to that part for far too long.

To his surprise, it was her turn to shake her head. "I know what you're trying to do for me, and I thank you for it. But… you were right back then. We are not allowed to shirk our duty because we are above others in station. I was.. angry at you when you told me that. I wondered how it might be that someone only seventeen was pretending to be so wise to I, who had been like his older sister his entire life. But now… Akira is a good man, and I tell you honestly that I do love him." Here she stopped for a moment, and he considered it. The words certainly sounded like him; he had once been only too happy to do anything asked or required of him, and had extended this servitude even to those things which were not.

It had never been his intention to force her to the same, however. Before he could voice this particular protest, she pressed on. "It is for exactly this reason that I must fulfill my duty and marry you. Do you understand that, I wonder?" She asked speculatively, and fixed him with a questioning look.

"No, I do not," he replied flatly. What she had said was quite true; she'd been against his enlistment five years ago, enough so that his insistence on serving had driven a wedge between the previously-inseparable friends, one that still had not fully been removed, the cause for their distance now. Kenshin had been inwardly grieved at this, and so when he had returned to find that his betrothed had fallen in love with a knight, he had pretended not to notice. Now, he had come to free her to marry this knight, and she was refusing.

Tomoe's smile was genuine this time. "Of course you don't, for you do not know what it is to be in love. Perhaps, should you fall for someone someday, you will understand. I do what I do to protect the one I love." A thoughtful pause. "And to protect you, Kenshin, for I love you as well, in a way. The new king does not need a scandal like this to disrupt what will already be a tenuous reign, at least at first," she pointed out, and he had to agree that her logic was sound. Doing such an unconventional thing as releasing his betrothed from her obligations would be seen as the act of someone weak, or under the thumb of another at best, someone just as unbalanced as Shishio at worst.

Damn. How he hated that court could not be navigated in the same manner as a battlefield. With an inward sigh of resignation, he replied. "You are correct, of course. Please forgive me any insult. I merely wished for your happiness. It has been far too long since I bothered to consider it." He hated to admit it, but his last chance at doing something freely before he was committed to the gilded cage of a king had been denied him, and he was more than a little surprised by how easily this was done. Had he ever truly been free at all? Of course not.

Tomoe shook her head and crossed the room, drawing him into an embrace. At one point in his life, this would have thrilled him; now it was as if they were children once more, and she was protecting him from the older noble spawn who picked on him when the adults weren't watching, jealous of his status as the king's nephew. He did not return it, but did not reject her either. He knew that he was far different from the weakling who had needed protection back then, but if that was how she still saw him, he would consider it better than the black-hearted, warlike antagonist he had seemed to her for the past few years.

They were interrupted when the door opened after a hasty knock, and the two had barely separated and turned before Aoshi nearly burst into the room, a few papers clutched in one hand. "Assassins... Shishio's assassins are coming. We need to leave. Now. He means to take the castle by force," he said without preamble.

Tomoe's hands flew to her mouth, and Kenshin narrowed his eyes to amber-gold slits, adrenaline already making its way into his system. His hand flew to the sword he carried at his waist, but Aoshi saw the motion and shook his head.

"Too many. We have no time." His eyes flicked to Tomoe, and both of the others read the latent question there.

The elegantly-dressed woman shook her head slowly. "No… if I am not here, they will know you have discovered his intent. I will stay." Kenshin was about to protest, but she silenced him with a raised hand, and his mouth clicked shut when she continued. "There is a passage in the room next to this one. It is underneath the rug, but you must hurry. Through the connecting door, go!" The last was nearly shouted, which was so out-of-character that it immediately moved Kenshin to action.

He turned, and Aoshi opened the door connecting Tomoe's quarters to the room next door. How she had known about the passage, he could not say, but perhaps it had to do with Akira. He turned before stepping through the doorway, and found that she was looking straight at him.

"You said you wanted me to be happy," she said softly. "You should know that I've already found my happiness. I hope that you find yours, too, Kenshin, and also that you find the thing for which you would be willing to give up that happiness." With those cryptic words, there was an authoritative knock on the door, and she gestured at him to hurry.

He turned his back and fled then, but the words spoken from that room echoed to his ears even as he started down the passage.

"Please, Tomoe, just tell us where he has gone!" The voice was male, and rather than authoritative, it seemed to be pleading with her.

"I cannot do that, Akira. I'm sorry." Tomoe's voice was steady, but laced with what might have been regret.

There was silence, then the same male voice spoke again, more resolved this time. "I see… very well then. I will stand with you. Men, you have your orders, directly from Lord Shishio himself. You are to cut down anyone in your way. Don't tell me that all of you are as poor at being knights as I? Come at me!"

The last sounds Kenshin heard were the clash of steel, a scream, and the sickening contact of swords with unarmored flesh.

A/N: So this was up much earlier than I said. I couldn't resist. I've basically been writing this in every scintilla of spare time I can eke out, so I figured I'd share.

If you liked the "storytelling" tone and reviewed my trailer, you have yourselves to thank for the fact that I will be including background history information and other random tidbits in that style at the beginning of every chapter, so pat yourselves on the back. If you didn't like it… well, you probably should have said so, sorry. But if there's something you don't get, ask and I might make it a topic.

Secondly, yeah… I included Tomoe. I imagine a lot of you don't like her too much, being KK shippers, but I decided to include her and maybe Enishi, and I tried not to make her suck, because I dislike bashing characters. On the other hand, if you happen to be a fan, please do not bash me for making her and Kenshin not in love… this story needed a Maid Marian of sorts, and she just seemed logical for the role.

Anyway, there will be no regular update schedule for this, unless I fall back into old habits, which might happen, actually.

Also, I forget who asked, but a fletcher is someone who makes arrows. The feathers on the arrows are called "fletching."

~Kiku~

Reviews desired, but never required!