A very short Doctor Who / Rurouni Kenshin crossover by Heather Logan.
(Disclaimer: Written for fun, not profit. Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Rurouni Kenshin belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki; the first quote comes from the Viz translation of the manga.)
"One may tame a dog with food. One may tame a man with money. But taming a Wolf of Mibu... that none may do."
It wasn't the voice that made Rose stifle a gasp. It was the sound that immediately followed it, the sickening sound of steel slashing through flesh. The Doctor shot her a glance, his blue eyes wide with warning, and started back up the hallway the way they'd come, back towards the Tardis. Not fast enough.
"Pardon me."
Rose hadn't seen the man step out into the hall, hadn't even noticed him at all until he spoke. He was tall and thin, dressed in a blue policeman's uniform, and the naked sword in his left hand was covered in blood. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped it casually, then folded the cloth neatly and slipped it into a pocket. His uniform was perfectly clean.
"I heard a noise out here." He had pinned Rose with his eyes -- narrow yellow eyes in a narrow face. The strings of his bangs did nothing to hide them. And he was smiling.
Rose couldn't move, couldn't look away. She could see the Doctor on the periphery of her vision, coming forward a half step as if to intervene, his movements urgent and jittery. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words had caught in her throat.
"Hello there," the Doctor said. "I'm the Doctor. Who are you, then?" His voice was a bit too loud for the confined space. Rose knew what he was doing. He was trying to draw the tall policeman's attention away from her.
It wasn't working. Rose could see the candlelight reflecting off the killing edge of his sword. It glittered yellow in the other side of her peripheral vision, yellow like his eyes. Rose's heart had started to pound. "Doctor..." she breathed, soundlessly.
"A Wolf of Mibu, was it?" the Doctor continued. "Shinsengumi, then. And dressed like a Tokyo policeman. Eighteen seventy-eight. Let me guess." He turned away slightly for a moment, thinking, then spun back to point triumphantly at the policeman. "Saitou Hajime, am I right? Captain of the third squad of the Shinsengumi. The Wolves of Mibu. You're famous, you know that?"
Saitou Hajime's smile widened slightly, his eyes narrowing even further. His gaze was still on Rose. The sword was still in his hand.
Rose couldn't pull her eyes away from Saitou's slitted gaze. Why couldn't she move? Why was she so afraid? She'd seen worse, much worse; she'd kept her head in the face of big green bog monsters and a cruise missile, so why--?
"A wolf..." she breathed. Her lips were trembling. Ten seconds, she'd told her mother. Just ten seconds.
"You were antirevolutionaries." A trace of hardness had crept into the Doctor's voice. He was speaking faster, moving towards her very slowly. Trying to get Saitou's eyes off of her and onto himself. "The best of the best. The elite pro-Shogunate forces." He swallowed and looked directly at Rose. "They lost the revolution."
The losing side. It had only been ten years, the Doctor had said, just a few minutes ago as they'd come out of the Tardis. A captain of the losing side, dressed as a policeman, wiping blood off his sword in the dead of night.
"A bad wolf..." A shiver ran up Rose's spine as she whispered the words, her voice rising in an involuntary squeak on the last syllable. Why did those words sound so familiar?
It startled her when he spoke.
"A wolf is neither good nor bad," he said, almost casually. "A wolf is just a wolf. Yes, we were a pro-Shogunate force. But first, we were the defenders of Kyoto." He released Rose's eyes and sheathed his sword in a single fluid motion. She stumbled backwards a pace, coming up against the wall and catching hold of it for support. She was still trembling all over.
"This wolf brings swift death to evil." He indicated the room behind him with a brief flick of his eyes. "You are innocent, foreign woman. You..." He threw a glance in the Doctor's direction. "You talk too much."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows, and didn't say a word.
"The revolution is over, but this country still needs defending," he continued. "That's why this wolf is now a Tokyo policeman."
Saitou Hajime pulled his policeman's cap out of his belt and put it on, brushing back the strings of his bangs. "If you'll excuse me," he said politely. "This wolf has work to do."
"If you're a foreigner, then why have you got a Hokkaido accent?"
-conversations that never happened