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.

Summery: Kaoru's the Maiden, guess who the Dragon is.

Rating: PG-13

Original Post's Author's notes

Author's note: Hi. I'm alive (amazing isn't it?) and I'm still writing. Although I'll admit that a snail could probably write faster than I am at the moment. Anyway I finally finished at least one chapter in one of my stories. I hope it is still running all right as it has been written over a very long period of time. Give it a read and tell me what you think, even about grammar and spelling. I have edited it a few times but it may need more, I just don't want to read it over again (and again and again and again), at least not right now (my brain has had enough).

Another note: The confrontation between dragon and maiden may not go the way you thought it would, heck, it didn't even go the way I thought it would. Still, I hope it works.

Thank you: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed over that last few months (yes it's been that long). I don't know when the next chapter will be out but I will keep working on it.

The Dragon and the Maiden

By Colleen

Part Five

The Dragon

The dragon watched as Kaoru headed off into the caves. When it appeared she would be all right by herself he took her unfinished cup of tea into the kitchen area and set it down beside the small fire there to keep it warm. Then, since she was up, he grabbed one of the futons and blankets and dragged them outside, hanging them up on the clothing poles so they could air out. This way he could switch the bedding later and she wouldn't have to keep sleeping on the musty and no doubt damp quilts.

On his way out he practically tripped over the forgotten bundle of his sword and clothing. He picked them up on his way back, shaking his head over the badly creased and now dirty gi and hakama.

He pulled the sword out of the pile and set it on the table before once again dropping the rest on the ground. After he had Kaoru patched up and back in bed he would do the laundry. At that thought he frowned and looked off into the caves. She had been gone a fairly long time, surely it couldn't take her that long to go to the bathroom.

Worry gripped at him. Anything could have happened to her, well okay not anything but she could have fallen, or become too weak to make it back, or she might just have passed out again. The possibilities were endless and as the anxiety built in his mind his body grabbed one of the lanterns and headed off after her long before his brain even thought to suggest doing the same.

The Maiden

Kaoru planned her attack well. First she would have to keep him in the living area, the tunnels or the grotto. Having seen his true size twice now she knew that he wouldn't be able to fit into any of these spaces if he were to shape shift. Second, she would have to keep him off balance and attacking with a barrage of items seemed the best way to do that. Third, she would have to get to the sword, which was hopefully still in the trunk.

Other than the few knives in the kitchen the sword was the only tangible weapon in the place. While it was true that she didn't have any experience with a blade it was better than nothing and if she had it then at least he wouldn't be able to use it.

She took a deep breath and reassured herself that it could work. The dragon's advantage was his true form. If you took that away you were left with a man not that much taller or heavier than she was. It was also unlikely that he had any real fighting skill despite the sword. Why bother when you could normally crush anything with little to no effort.

Plans in place the horrible thoughts that had prompted them in the first place settled back around her like a heavy shroud.

He knew her name.

Had he, as a dragon, promised to spare the village for the price of a maiden? Had they agreed, telling him her name in passing, or had he ask for her specifically? For months now she'd had an off and on again feeling of someone watching her. At the time she had dismissed it as her imagination but now she wasn't so sure. What if he had been watching her? What if he had picked her out long ago?

And what would he do to her if she stayed much longer?

She had no intention of finding out.

The Dragon

The dragon quickly walked the path to the bath area with a growing sense of unease. The apprehension shouldn't have been surprising since he was worried about Kaoru but that wasn't quite what his senses were trying to warn him about. If he didn't know better he would have thought that they were trying to tell him he was in danger. But that didn't make any sense.

Neither did what happened next.

His foot skidded on ground made slippery by soapy water and a soft piece of cloth flew out of the darkness and landed on his face. He had a moment to recognize it as one of the towels he kept in the grotto before the rest of his soap supply followed.

All ten bars of it.

After the first four or five of them he wondered what had possessed him to store so many of them in easy reach. Kaoru had a strong arm and all of the bars hit their mark. Most of them were aimed at his head but a few took him in the stomach for good measure. Each hit was accompanied with a tiny oro or grunt of pain, depending on where he got it. True, he could have easily dodged them but instead he took the hits, thinking that she would become even more frightened or angry it she believed that she had no ability to fight against him. However when the first of the wash buckets glanced off the side of his head he really wished he'd thought to duck, just a little. Surely he could make it look like a lucky fluke?

With that thought in mind he leaned back as if he were once again losing his balance and narrowly avoided the second tub. He pin wheeled his arms comically in what appeared to be a futile attempt to regain his stability then seemed to lose to gravity, dropping to the ground in a heap just as the last bucket whizzed over his head. Eyes and head spiralling in a disconcerting manner he stayed down as Kaoru ran by. She gave him a whack with the water ladle for good measure then buried him under the rest of the towels before moving down the passage.

The Maiden

As Kaoru dashed down the tunnel she congratulated herself on the ambush. As expected, when confronted with physical resistance while he was human it was possible to get the better of the dragon. Still that didn't mean she could let up just yet. She hit the living area of the caves at a dead run and practically ripped open the lid of the trunk where she had last seen the sword.

It was empty.

The world greyed out around her for a moment as panic and illness fought to drop her where she stood. She concentrated on her breathing, letting some of her fear go before she found herself passed out in a heap similar to the one she had left the dragon in.

Right now, she reminded herself, the dragon is unconscious and the sword doesn't matter. Even if she had found it she really didn't know how to use it. Desperately trying to convince herself of that she walked around the folding screen to grab the table she had eaten dinner on, intending to use it and the screen to block the tunnel before she left. She gasped and felt faint again, this time with relief as she spotted the sheathed blade sitting on the wood surface, waiting for her.

She picked it up, surprised by its weight, and laid it on the ground before dragging the table around the screen and tipping it on its side so that it covered part of the passageways opening. She then closed the screen and manhandled it into position across the rest of the space and lastly she shoved the trunk up behind them to make sure they would stay where she had put them.

Sweating heavily and slightly dizzy she returned to the sword and claiming it once again turned to head out of the caves and down the mountain.

Which probably would have been easier if the dragon wasn't already standing, arms crossed in front of him, in the entrance to the living area.

The Dragon

He was trying so very hard not to be angry.

It wasn't working.

He wanted to be amused at the idea that she thought a table and screen would have kept him out even if he would have had to take that tunnel back to the living area. He wanted to smile at thought of her using his sword. She looked good holding one but it was obvious she had no training. Even sheathed she held the thing like it would cut her.

Truly he did want to be charmed by it all.

If the situation had been different he would have been. If she wasn't sick and in danger of being hurt or killed by the people of her village he would have let her go. He could have stayed hidden and watched from a distance as he made sure she returned to her home safely. Once she was gone he would have simply packed up and left. These caves were very nice but he could find others that were further away from people, towns, villages... and her.

But she had no place to go; no place she could reach that would be safe even supposing she could have made it down the mountain without passing out. Escaping him would just get her killed.

So even though he didn't really want to be angry with her he felt an overpowering need to shake her until she saw some sense. And because he would end up hurting her or worse if he gave into that need he stayed where he was. He crossed his arms, attempting a relaxed pose; unaware that it made him look more intimidating than he would have wanted. His eyes also kept flashing yellow with the ebb and flow of his anger and worry. Every line of his body was tensed against physical action as he waited for her to turn and notice him, to realize that she couldn't escape him.

He was angry enough that her fear of him when she turned to see him wouldn't have affected him if it hadn't been for her sudden loss of colour. He'd thought she had been pale before but the sight of him sent her skin searching for a new shade of white, one that made her look rather like a porcelain doll brought to unsteady life.

The part of him that wanted to throttle her for the stunt she had just pulled quickly lost out to the rest of him. One look at her and he knew he would always seek to protect her, even if it meant she hated and feared him forever.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" He growled out at her.

It was amazing how fast her face went from that dead shade of pale to an angry tint of red that even he couldn't confuse with a fever.

"I am leaving." She said, spacing the words out for emphasis.

"No, you are not." He said in an equal manner as he moved towards her.

She backed away one step then steeled herself and drew the sword.

A katana is a rather long weapon and not the easiest thing to draw if you've never done it before. Her angle was bad and the tip caught for a moment, giving the human dragon more than enough time to reach out and grab the sword's sheath. She quickly moved back one more step, pulling the sword free as she did, relinquishing the sheath to him as she moved away.

She levelled the blade at him and he had to smile again. She looked even better holding an unsheathed blade, and although her grip was incorrect there was something about the way she held herself that said she was meant to hold such a weapon. The dragon stepped into position across from her and holding the sheath like a sword positioned it so that it was tip to tip dead even from its partner.

The Maiden

Kaoru yelled incoherently and with a complete loss of common sense struck out at the obstacle to her freedom. The dragon casually blocked the blow one handed with the sheath, making the move look almost like an afterthought. One part of her mind registered the fact that even though she had just put all of her strength into that strike the dragon hadn't been budged an inch. The rest of her mind was caught at the point where the blade and the sheath had met.

The sheath was iron, which rather explained why the sword had seemed so heavy to her and while something odd about that whispered in her mind it wasn't that that had caught her attention. The blade that she had used had hit with a solid 'clang', the noise different enough from what she had expected to make her take a closer look at her weapon of choice.

It didn't have a sharp edge.

No, she noticed, that wasn't actually true. Assuming she hadn't drawn the thing upside down (and she didn't think she had) the cutting edge actually ran along the back of the sword.

That didn't make any sense. Why would someone even consider using a sword like this? It would be very difficult to kill someone with it, not impossible of course because the thing was heavy and the blade could be turned but still, it normally wouldn't be much worse than carrying a wooden sword.

Could he actually not want to kill? And if that was true did that carry over into not wanting to hurt her?

"Kaoru dono."

"Don't call me that." Kaoru startled out of her thoughts, shouted at him as she backed away. The dragon looked at her oddly for a moment before continuing.

"If you leave here where will you go? Where can you go?"

The girl just shook her head and continued to back up.

"You can not go back to your village and even if you could you are too injured to make it safely down the mountain," he said, following after her.

It wasn't until her back met the table blocking the tunnel that she remembered to raise the sword again. Although she wasn't sure how much good the reversed blade would be against the redhead as she realized with a start that she couldn't bring herself to actually turn the weapon and use the live edge against him.

Why couldn't she use the sharp side? He had brought her here against her will. Ok, he had rescued her before bringing her here but she wasn't sure that that hadn't been part of the plan. And he had gotten naked in front of her. Ok so he hadn't done anything, in fact he hadn't even seemed to realize that it was, well, inappropriate. And he had feed her and looked after her wounds and was obviously trying to be polite.

But he knew her name. And he shouldn't.

"Kaoru dono..."

"Arrrgggg." The use of her name along with the extra polite honorific sent her off again and she lunged forward, heaving the sword in front of her. The dragon just stepped aside, lightly batting the arc of steel out of the way as he moved. Off balance Kaoru's strike continued sideways until it struck the floor of the cave setting off a vibration in the blade that almost made her drop the weapon.

She was beginning to realize that her hope of his being an inferior swordsman had pretty much been shattered, swept up and deposited in the waste pile.

The Dragon

Things were getting seriously out of control and if he didn't do something soon someone, probably Kaoru, was going to get hurt. She was running on adrenaline and fear but it couldn't last forever and eventually exhaustion and her wounds would catch up with her and cut her feet out from under her. If he could just talk to her for a moment without her getting so angry and afraid then he could reassure her. He could let her know that he would find her a new and safe place for her to live. But instead she seemed intent on doing him grievous harm, and it got worse every time he said her name.

.....................Oh.

"Kaoru dono?"

"Stop saying that," the girl said in a voice that no doubt would have been an aggravated snarl if she weren't tiring so quickly. She did manage to raise the sword again but the tip never made it above her waist and it had a tendency to weave back and forward in an unintentional figure eight pattern.

Understanding finally having dawned the dragon frantically thought to explain how he knew her name when he shouldn't have. The answer came when he thought back to the first time that he had heard it spoken aloud. It had been such a simple moment that he decided to just tell the truth, or at least some of it.

"Did I get your name wrong?"

The girl blinked at him and stared, looking as if he had just turned into something even more unusual than a dragon, like a pink rabbit perhaps. "What?"

"Your name. The first time I was in your village, to buy a bale of rice, I saw you shopping at the stall next to me. I was certain that the seller called you Kaoru, but I could be mistaken, it was quite a while ago." Of course he wouldn't mention the fact that, while he had gone to buy rice, he had also wandered aimlessly around the village for a couple of hours before doing so, waiting so he could catch a glimpse of her again.

The tip of the sword dipped further towards the ground. "Rice?" She asked, her voice stunned. "You were buying rice?"

"Well... yes. In fact you ate some if it last night."

"Rice." The tip of the sword met the ground, followed by the hilt, which would have been followed by Kaoru if the dragon hadn't made it to her side in time to catch her. He quickly carried her back to her bed and laid her down. "You heard my name when you were buying rice," she mumbled as he tucked the top quilt around her.

The dragon retrieved the half-drunk cup of medicinal tea and brought it back to her. He eased her up into a partial sitting position just long enough for her to drink the brew then laid her back down and fussed with the blankets once more.

"So, you know my name, because of rice."

"Yes Kaoru dono, I know your name because of rice." The dragon was becoming a little worried, as the girl's mind seemed to be fixated on the name subject. "You should get some sleep now."

"I don't know yours," she said a little sadly.

The dragon looked startled for a moment and then nodded his understanding. "My human name is Kenshin."

"Kenshin," she said softly as she drifted off to sleep. "That's nice."

The Maiden

Kaoru slept the sleep of the completely exhausted, so tired that her wrists being salved and bandaged failed to wake her up. Her dreams were fragmentary but in all of them she kept happily rearranging Kanji written on pieces of rice. She spelled out her name, she spelled out Kenshin's name, and in a few, by mixing the letters up, she even managed to discover the name the swordsman had when he was a dragon.

Of course she would be very annoyed when she awoke to find that such information was unable to make the journey from the land of sleep to the waking world.

But that would be later.

End of Part Five