Disclaimer: Kenshin isn't mine, but I borrow him from time to time.
What was he going to tell Her? Kenshin only capitalized the pronoun in his mind when speaking of his mistress, the Elf Queen. He shivered, his ropey body cold with fear even in the balmy summer night. He wasn't ashamed of being frightened—what mortal man could claim he wasn't? Tomoe…He whisked the Queen's True Name out of his mind. She could be watching, and he wasn't supposed to know it.
He was ghosting through the undergrowth at a pace he could have never matched before he was captured, utterly silent, yet hounded constantly by a Lady he feared. He felt sick and tired, but fully and doggedly aware. His last dregs of mortal strength were being drained, and after that there would only be the frenetic energy of an elf-knight. Still, he was driven on to a duty he was loath to perform at a breakneck speed. As the fairest knight of his Lady's court, his presence was required nightly to warm the Queen's bed—and whatever else She could, and did, command. Make no mistake, his Queen was fair—but the petulant fury behind Her pretty face would be enough to sour any man's stomach. Worse, not only was he compelled to be Her toy, but during the disgusting parody of love She turned his mind against him, making him Her eager servant and sending him from her bed shuddering with spent pleasure. He hated her.
As he sped through the forest, forbidden thoughts filled his head. The girl… she had blundered into the glade, seemingly innocent of the danger she was in. Her innocence was so refreshing, so clean, after the years of tainted lust and jaded cynicism he had known as a member of the fairy court. Her blue eyes hovered just out of his reach, and at that moment he wished even harder for his freedom, even if it was only in death. I hurt her… He felt sick with guilt. It could have been worse, much worse. His…compulsions…when it came to guarding the rose-grove of the Queen were simple and powerful. He was to kill every man that entered, and to force himself upon every woman. He had killed several; that weighed heavily enough upon his conscience, but today was the first time his resolve had been tested against the second commandment of his mistress. He was glad he had resisted, but if she found out…He shuddered a second time. He wasn't exactly sure what the punishment would be, but he was sure it would be horrible.
He had just finished locking the offending memories away in the darkest corner of his mind when his unstoppable, compelled feet lead him to the deepest hallow of the elves' forest. The Queen was waiting for him at the entrance to the strange place, and as She touched him, Her changes swept over his body and mind. His hyper-alert posture relaxed into a supple, lazy grace, and his hard-edged amber glare, so angry with the world around it, became a retiring violet. His hair lightened to a more human red, and a stupid smile touched his lips though he was not truly happy. They walked through the fairy's Hill together, awash in the blue light of their magic. Tall trees grew in tortured shapes all around them, and eldritch forms peered out from between the leprous leaves. All of the elven-kin wanted to catch a glimpse of their Queen, with her stomach-twisting elegance and haughty beauty, but the chilling vice his mind was caught in and the icy hand on his arm were all that prevented Kenshin from fleeing for his life.
They were in her bower, now. He would have shuddered, but for the control his Lady held on his body. Cobwebs were woven together to be her blankets and tapestries, and the sickly glow that lit the rest of the Hill was intensified here to a nearly blinding glare. The Queen smiled, her beautiful face reaching for the sunny innocence of a maiden's as she led the hapless knight to her bed. Kenshin knew what was coming. He would be used, manipulated, drained of power and energy and left begging for more of the pleasure she gave him.
I don't want this! His thoughts turned to the girl, the blessedly human woman that he had met. Her…It's her I want. But it was too late, nearly seven years too late. He was the Queen's now, and as he lay in her bed, he could already feel his body responding to her magical touch. She snaked her arms around his neck, deftly stripping the clothing from his body and leaving him bare to whatever horrors she wished to wreck upon his body. Pale hands like moths ghosted over his form, eliciting groans of pleasure and sucking in his energy and life force. Thief! Rapist! But it was useless to scream at her in his mind. As she took his body completely, Kenshin willed himself away from consciousness and into a dreaming state of non-existence. It wasn't worth staying to watching his body and soul be degraded like this.
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For Kaoru, the next few days were blurred. She went through the motions of living, but her heart and mind were both centered on the stranger she had met in the elf grove. This is silly! She told herself. You don't know his name, he's obviously elf-kin, and he tried to force himself on you. Why should you care about him at all?
But it was useless. He was all she could think about, and questions that she had never before thought to ask about the elves and their ways burned through her mind. She woke every morning with golden eyes lingering, the last wisps of dreams, and found that she could only fall asleep wrapped in the memory of his hair and hands. She was distracted, careless…obsessed. She was sleepwalking down the path to the well, daydreaming about the forest and almost tempted to find the grove again when she walked into a well-muscled male chest. Startled, she looked up into the harsh brown eyes of the leader of the Dojo Louts, who leered down at her disgustingly.
"It's a little dangerous, isn't it? Walking this close to the forest, not paying any attention, and you such a pretty little thing…It would be a shame if the elves stole you away, wouldn't it?" He drawled the words out, obviously undressing her with his eyes. She snarled, filled with disgust.
"As if you would know! You never go ten feet into the forest—not even to gather firewood with the old women!" Judging from the expression on the thug's face, this had not been a smart thing to say. Kaoru blindly reached for her bokken, which should have been strapped to her back. It wasn't there. In her distraction, she had forgotten to bring it. Panic flooded through her, sharpening her vision and her hearing. Her heart thudded in her ears as the big man stroke closer and closer. She was left without any time to make a rational decision, and instead of fleeing for the relative safety of the town and her father's house, she turned and bolted for the woods. As she slipped through the undergrowth, she allowed herself one glance backwards. The Lout was staring at her as if she had suddenly grown horns, and was slowly backing away from the forest's edge. She didn't care. She just wanted to get away from the hateful man and stop feeling so sick.
Though she didn't know it or even intend it, her feet were carrying her down the same path she had taken just days before. The long, slender scar she had cut through the forest was still there, manifesting the power of the rowan-wood bokken she didn't have with her. This time, though, the journey to the rose-grove didn't take hours, it took mere minutes. When she stumbled out onto the velvety greensward she wasn't even out of breath, though she had been pushing herself as fast as she could go on the narrow path. She flung herself down onto the soft grass, shuddering and replaying what had just happened, but fighting back the tears for all that she was worth. She was so caught up in her own misery that she didn't even notice when the red-haired man materialized from the far side of the grove.
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Kenshin's life had become more painful since he met her—but not because of the Queen. She, thank the Lord, was still ignorant to the fact that Kenshin was dreaming of someone else. No, the life hadn't changed, but one important thing had been added: hope. He was terrified of it, knowing that he could only be hurt worse because of it, but every time he tried to return to the dull blankness that shielded him from any more pain, her blue, blue eyes, raven hair and lithe form taunted him back to awareness. Perhaps the most painful thing was the thought of never seeing her again. Not only did she tug at his heart in a way he had never known before, even when living in the company of other humans (that life was as distant as a faded dream, now), she was blessedly, blessedly human. The spark of warmth, of life and love, that was so blaringly absent in the elves was bright as a bonfire in her eyes. He wanted to bask in it and let the delicious heat soak into his tired form. To him, she was like a breath of air to a drowning man—but perhaps only to keep him alive a little longer, to suffer the agonies of drowning a second time.
Kenshin was mulling this over in the crotch of a tree when he felt the twin stirrings of rage and lust that warned him of an intruder in his grove. He grabbed his blade, slung it across his back, and was in his glade, a half-mile away, with a thought. Living with the elves had changed him. His blade was half-drawn, all the anger and frustration ready to boil out of him, when he realized who it was. His beautiful, precious human girl lay sobbing on the grass. Somehow, the black tide of twisted lust drained out of him. The same could not be said for the anger, but its motivation was changed. Instead of killing any man that entered the clearing, it now had one target—whoever had made his lady weep. He was content to wait for that killing until he could find out who exactly he was supposed to kill.
"Lady?" His voice still sounded hoarse from disuse. "Lady, what's wrong?" He squatted on the grass beside her, still feeling the desperate need to touch her, to make everything right for her, to defend her. He shoved it away. He couldn't have her. The girl looked up at him with fearful eyes. Mentally replaying their last meeting, he couldn't blame her. Backing up a few steps, he settled down onto the impossibly-smooth grass, looking at her with hungry eyes.
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AN: Hmm. People seem to like this story. What an odd feeling…Anyway, this time I don't have a really good excuse about how long this update took, just that this story isn't coming to me as easily as other things I've written. Including some essays for philosophy, which is sad, in a way. But hey, I've got this up and the next chapter started, so maybe I'll get that up in a more timely fashion.
And maybe Kenshin will ride up to my apartment on a white horse and whisk me away to a castle in the sky. Yeah.