Warning: This is a fusion of Rurouni Kenshin, Vivian Vande Velde's Dragon's Bait and several other dragon and maiden books and movies. If you don't like, don't read.
Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin. I also do not own Vivian Vande Velde's Dragon's Bait, Patricia C Wrede's Dealing with Dragon's and it's many sequels, Dragonheart, Dragonslayer, any fairy tales that may pop up or the dragon and princess book that I read in grade four that I no longer remember the name of (Although it may or may not have been called 'The Dragon's Princess'). In other words if you recognize it (and possibly even if you don't) then I don't own it. So live with it, because I do. RK and the other stories are the property of their respective owners. I'm just writing this for fun (it's fanfiction, it's supposed to be fun) and will make no money from it. Please do not sue me. You really wouldn't get anything anyway.
Summary: Kaoru is the Maiden, guess who the Dragon is.
Rating: PG-13
The Dragon and the Maiden
By Colleen
Part Two
The Dragon
The dragon in the shape of a man kept Kaoru in view from the mouth of the cave until he was certain she was not going to bolt. He relaxed when she went over to the waterfall to clean up as he'd suggested. The man watched as she stripped the top of her kimono down so she could wash and for reasons he couldn't quite understand found that he was tracing her skin with his eyes. He blinked and shook his head, shocked as always at his reaction to her.
He moved inside and dished up some of the rice and pickles he had had left over from dinner. She was lucky he had been in human form lately and had felt the need for such fare. As a dragon he was a pure carnivore and what food he could have offered her then would hardly have been palatable for a human.
After setting the food out on the table he went and dragged the two futons he owned out of storage and laid them out. His nose wrinkled at the musty smell of the beds and he made a mental note to hang them and the rest of the bedding outside the next day so they could air out. He had a tendency to forget to do that since he didn't use them very often.
With everything set out he went behind the screen to strip for bed and put away his clothing and sword in a chest that sat behind the panels. While doing this he heard the girl come in and he stepped out to meet her.
She had her back to him and was staring intently at the futons. Even with his human senses he could tell she was upset about them. Really, he didn't think they were that bad, musty though they might be. She would just have to make do.
"After you have eaten you can sleep there," he told her.
The girl gave a little jump. She'd been so interested in the futons she hadn't heard him come up behind her. She turned to him and opened her mouth. He suspected she had intended to say something but her jaw seemed to have lost its usual support as her mouth just hung open and she started making small noises in the back of her throat.
Perhaps she was just unwell. It couldn't be very healthy to have been tied to a stake all day like that and she did seem to have a case of the chills as her body was shaking. He reached out to touch her face to see if she had a fever.
The woman jerked away from him so hard that she went over backwards and landed fully laid out on the bed. He looked down at her, noticing that her breathing had become ragged. He knelt at her feet then crawled up her body so he could touch his hand to her forehead. She flinched, shuddering worse than before and he wondered if he had hurt her. Perhaps it was just the coolness of his hand as her face was hot and turning an alarming shade of red.
How did one care for a sick human anyway? He had never been unwell while he was in human form and illnesses in dragons were rare and usually only occurred in very old age. He did remember his godfather being sick and he was human, sort of. Now what did he do for it? Oh, right.
"Do you need medicine?" The dragon asked the girl.
Now she was looking at him like he was insane, and yet it seemed a perfectly reasonable question. She was sick after all.
"What?" She asked him, her voice hoarse.
"You seem to be ill. Your face is all red and you're shaking so I thought you might need some medicine."
Her mouth was doing that hanging open thing again but this time it didn't last long. The girl gave a shriek worthy of a banshee and planted her left fist into the dragon's right cheek. He really could have avoided it but she was angry enough already. He allowed the punch to land.
And land it did. He skidded backwards a good two metres and lay there staring up at the cave's ceiling idly wondering why it was spinning like that. He shook his head in an attempt to relieve the dizziness and lurched back to his feet.
The dragon rubbed at his sore cheek and frowned at the enraged maiden standing before him. Inside he was smiling, happy that his impressions of her were correct. She truly was a strong woman.
However, at his expression her anger seemed to bleed away and something else took its place, something that the redhead didn't like. He had seen that look on other faces before and at his worse enjoyed it. On her it felt as if someone had reached a hand inside his chest and was attempting to rip his heart out. He'd rather see her enraged than that.
"So, I take it that you are not sick then?" He asked her, smiling sweetly.
Really her temper was impressive.
"Sick," she shrieked, "That wasn't because I'm sick, that was because you're naked."
He looked down at himself, not understanding. "How does my being naked make your face turn red?"
That must have been the wrong question to ask because she had a resurgence of the open mouth problem and seemed to be having trouble breathing again. Worse her face was taking on an even deeper shade of red than it had before.
The maiden cleared her throat and looked away from him. "Could you please just not be naked?" She asked.
He considered it briefly but shook his head no. "I don't have anything large enough to sleep in," he said.
"But," she said, looking as if she was casting around desperately for a good reason (or something to cover him with) and coming up short. "I... I can't sleep there if you're naked," she said, waving a hand towards the futons.
Really this woman was perplexing. Tomoe had never been as strange as this when they were together. Of course she had been a dragon, not human. Human females were obviously more different than he had expected.
"I really do not understand why you would not be able to sleep there if I am naked. It is not as if I will be sleeping with you."
Do all human women have trouble with their jaws hanging open or was it just her?
"Then why," the girl asked him, her eyes cast firmly at the ground, "did you put out two beds?"
The dragon looked at the beds and then back at Kaoru. He shrugged, "because I had two of them so I put both of them out. Just one of them always seems too small to me."
"Oh."
The redhead was definitely getting tired of her looking at the ground and not at him. With a little sigh he brushed past her and went around the screen to grab his yukata from the chest. He quickly put it on and stepped back out, tying the belt as he did.
"Is this better?"
"Ah yes, thank you." The girl still wouldn't look at him completely, her gaze kept sliding away from him but at least it was better than before.
"You should eat and then try to get some sleep. If you need me I will be in the deeper caves. Just yell, the echo will reach me."
She nodded and went over and knelt down at the table. The dragon stood by the entrance, waiting for her to start before heading to bed. He watched as she picked up the chopsticks and carefully began eating the food. He left as soon as her hunger took over and she was shovelling it in. At least he wouldn't have to worry about her starving herself.
He padded his way through the cavern to the lair he liked to bed down in. The trip there gave him time to think, which really was a very bad thing to do just before trying to sleep.
That hadn't gone well.
It seemed humans had a bigger problem about clothing than he'd realized. True he wore them when he was in human form but that was just practical. People were rather fragile things. And he'd gotten use to the garments he wore when he'd lived with his godfather for a few years. The man had insisted he learn how to wear them, however he hadn't had any problem with the young dragon being naked before changing to go to bed. Of course the wizard was a man, maybe it was different for females?
The dragon let out a sigh. What was he going to do with her? He was more perplexed by her in the short time they'd been together than he'd been by anything in his entire life.
'Keep her,' a voice inside him said. 'They gave her to you, she's yours, so keep her.' He shook his head, annoyed with himself. They had no right to do that to Kaoru, no right to do that to anyone and he wouldn't use that as some warped excuse to keep her. The voice tried a new tactic. 'You've wanted her since you saw her, she's the reason you've stayed, despite the hunters, the reason your spending so much time in human form.' All true but it changed nothing, as he never intended to approach her. As much as she fascinated and drew him there was an equal force that seemed to push him away. She was a human and he was a dragon and the two didn't mix well. 'Your parents didn't seem to think so.'
ENOUGH.
He reached the sandy area that he liked to sleep in and yanked the yukata off, throwing it to the ground in a bunched up ball. He'd regret that in the morning but right now he was too angry to bother folding it properly. He gave his body a shake, trying to rid himself of the emotion. Then he changed.
It was a lot like stretching. At least that was how it always felt to him. And it wasn't just his body and muscles that moved but his mind and senses as well. As he grew from one shape to the other he felt his awareness expand. While the ki he could sense in human form would amaze and astound others it was poor when compared to what he could feel as a dragon.
The world sang with energy. All of his senses hummed along with the tune, happy to hear it once again. His mind followed the melody as it wound its way through his home until it reached the girl, now already asleep in the smaller caves.
He listened to the music her spirit made; fascinated by the strength that he could feel living in her mind if not in her body. Not that there was anything wrong with her body.
The dragon snapped that train of thought off right there.
Now incredibly huge he nestled down in the sand to sleep, closing his eyes and attempting to think of nothing. Instead he found his thoughts returning to the first time he had seen the girl. He sighed and let it play out, hoping that going through it once would be enough to for it to let him go so he could get some sleep.
************
Several months ago
Even though night had already fallen the streets were still busy. People shouting, drinking and playing games jostled him at every turn and he didn't know why he was putting up with it. For one of his kind the crush of humanity was annoying at the best of times but during a festivals it could be pure hell.
So why was he here?
Except in the case of mated pairs his race was a solitary one, not given to socializing with each other much less members of another species. So why, even though his entire body bid him to leave this village, did he continue to push his way further into the sweating mass of festival goers? It would have been much better to leave and head for the empty sky or the silence of the caves he now called home.
So what was he looking for?
Finally it got too much for him and he fought his way out of the heavily populated town square. Making it into a quieter part of the village he felt the tension held in his muscles relax in relief. He breathed in the calm before taking a closer look at his surroundings, blinking in surprise as he suddenly realized why this section of town was so empty.
Every village had a place like this. Anywhere where large groups of people lived had to have a place to put those that died.
There wasn't anything fancy about this graveyard, but it was well tended. The people here cared about those that had gone before them and kept these resting-places in good order. Stones and posts marked out where each person was buried and flowers adorned many of the sites.
The wanderer moved from stone to stone, reading of who was buried beneath. He suspected that it had been a very hard winter, as many of the graves were new. He gave each of them a silent hope for a better afterlife and was turning to leave when he saw a figure in white step into the moonlit graveyard.
Whoever it was hadn't noticed him yet so he quietly moved backwards until he was hidden by the shade of a large tree that sat on the edge of the cemetery. The mourner headed to one of the newer stones and placed a small posy of flowers in front of it. Moonlight struck her face as she knelt at the grave and started to pray.
The dragon had been planning to quietly withdraw until he saw the young woman's grieving face. She was beautiful. At the sight of her he froze, pinned to the earth by an emotion he didn't understand and would have fled from if he had.
Her skin was so very pale in the moonlight and her blue eyes seemed to glow like two sapphires struck by the purest light. Her blue black hair hung down her back, unadorned yet stunning in its simplicity. The wanderer would have stayed and continued to stare at her but the intensity of her grief made him uncomfortable, as if he were looking into her very soul. With that thought he found the ability to move again and carefully stepped away from the small cemetery, using the shadows that had piled up around the trees as cover. Once free of the girl's presence his common sense told him to get as far away from this village as he could.
************
The dragon smirked at that last thought as he shifted in his sandy bed. It wasn't the first time he had failed to listen to his common sense and it probably wouldn't be the last. Still, he could use a little of that now, as he really didn't know what to do with her. Since that first sighting he had returned to the village several times. He'd learned her name and watched as she cared for the house and garden that had been left to her by her father's death. He'd made sure that she never saw him and he'd hoped that his strange fascination with her would eventually have come to an end.
Then to find her tied to a stake, set out for him to eat.
Anger blindsided him for a moment. Visions of the village reduced to rubble and charcoal enticed him with the promise of revenge and a release from the hate that burned through his mind.
NO!
He shoved the vision and the anger into a ball and quickly thrust it behind a door in his mind. He locked it away as tightly as he could, his huge body shaking in horror at the thought of ever doing something like that again.
He wouldn't do anything to hurt the villagers. His last run against them had been born of that anger and he had done a lot of damage. All he had meant to do was scare them so they would stop sending hunters after him. Instead he had gotten a little too enthusiastic with his fire and had fried much of the town's food source.
They were scared now, so scared they were willing to sacrifice their own women to him.
Which brought him back to Kaoru. She couldn't go back to the village, they would probably either kill her or put her back out to be eaten. But, could he keep her?
Maybe if he did, just for a little while, he would lose the attraction he felt for her. She might only be interesting to him because she was something forbidden, something he could not have. If he spent time with her, learned everything he could about her, then perhaps this strange need would leave him. Afterwards he could find some nice town or city for her to live in and get back to his own life.
Plans made he nestled a little further into the sand and drifted off to sleep. If he had been paying attention to what his common sense had to say about his latest brainstorm he would have still been awake. That part of him knew just how futile his attempt to be rid of his fascination with Kaoru would be.
It was the first time that that part of his brain was happy to be ignored.
End of Part 2