And the story marches on. I love Soujiro. Such a cute kid. I wanted to give him a hug for that whole story arc in RK. I guess Kaoru got to hug him instead. Hope people are enjoying this.

My usual rush job sometimes displeases people, but you get the idea of what I was trying to do and someday maybe I'll learn to slow down and take my time when writing.

Thanks for giving this piece a look. Huggles, ya'll. Sorry the next installment took so long, but I moved to another country where I don't speak the language and it took a little while to find myself some internet access that allowed for uploading. You'll get a couple of chapters at a decent clip and then the school year starts here so I'll work as fast as I can. Really.

Disclaimer: (See Ch 1)

Chapter 3

This had been a horrible idea, Kaoru thought to herself. She had no idea what to do to survive in the mountains. Maybe it seemed to Soujiro that he was setting her free to live her life, but from her perspective he had set her free to die of hunger and cold and subsequently be eaten by all those not so fuzzy forest creatures. If it hadn't been the middle of summer she would have frozen to death after that first night, or so she felt, and to make matters worse at the moment she was as hungry as she was frightened. Kaoru had never had any training about how to survive in a forest, she couldn't tell what was edible and what was poisonous. There were so many strange forest noises, and she didn't know how close any of them were or how desperately hungry. At this point she thought she should make some noises of her own, like calling for help. But who lived in the woods in the middle of nowhere? And would that help turn out to be one of Shishio's loyalists? This close to the border it didn't do to take chances.

Home, even the little bit of security she had carved for herself at the castle, had at least been familiar. The sudden displacement, the sense of being alone, was an emptiness she had never had to deal with. Somehow that was worse than hunger. Besides, she had left Soujiro with a full belly and there was fresh water around so she wasn't thirsty at least. She wouldn't starve for a bit, yet. Hopefully no one had polluted the streams with wash water or household waste, but if she had tasted any soapy residue then that would have meant people. She could deal with foul water if a settlement were near. After a day of climbing, she was nearing the summit, tired as she was, and once she was there she could try to spot chimney smoke, or rooftops, or anything that would give her the energy to move on.

There was no turning back. Fine, then. The stubborn set of her jaw overruled her quivering lip and on she marched, getting dirtier and sweatier but glad for the goal of getting to the top of the mountain. She hadn't survived neglect, a fire, and an attempted assassination to be overcome by trees. To remind herself that she had enough spirit to come out of this alive she began to tell herself those things that had hardened her when her father hadn't been able to see her, so sorry, try again next week, your highness. . .A princess is strong, a princess is firm in her resolve. . .

An animal howled not too far away.

. . . a princess can run pretty fast when she had a mind to, even uphill.

The sky got dark far earlier than it should have, Kaoru thought as she continued going up. The snatches of sleep she had gotten were not satisfying but she was aware enough to realize that the encroaching darkness was not the result of a setting sun but of rolling clouds above the high forest canopy. It started out as an annoyance because she had hoped to see the sunset to realign herself going east. Then the thunder began and she experienced a twinge of acute irritation.

The rain started out in droplets, fat and warm dollops on top of her head as it oozed down the pine tree needles. At first it was welcoming, even refreshing, and the forest was filled with a delicious odor. Soon enough she wished it would stop once her clothes were soaked and her body shivering against the wind that blew ferociously through the trees. This was no little summer shower but a full on torrential downpour, and Kaoru was starting to feel too weak and tired to do much but be miserable and keep moving whatever direction up took her.

It appeared that the sun had set behind the clouds because it was getting dark again, and Kaoru tried to remind herself that rain in summer was a blessing and it kept things green and alive.

"Stop it! Just stop it already! Haven't you done enough to me!" She screamed at the sky, at the castle behind her, at nothing at all. There was a clearing ahead and she pushed herself forward to it. Now in the open, rain drenched anything on her that wasn't already dirty and wet. This clearing wasn't natural, but merely where a couple trees had been chopped down. That meant people to her tired mind, and any signs of people were good ones. Suspicions forgotten, she had convinced herself that simple mountain folk would welcome a visitor. There was still a slim muddy path down which water was running. This was where they had dragged the logs. Kaoru only stumbled twice in the darkening wood as she followed that thin line of mud like a lifeline.

Eventually it was too dark to see it so she continued going up since that was not only what she wished to do, but it was where the trail had led. At some point she found herself out in the open again, and then she was nearly tumbling down trying to keep her footing on slick ground. Had she come over the mountain already? She must have taken a wrong turn of some sort and ended up more on the side, and without the sun to reposition herself she might have even wandered back into her kingdom. . .

These were worries for another day; she saw light ahead of her. Anything seemed bright in this darkness, and she held out her hands so that the trees scraped her palms instead of her face. There was a light, it could be a cabin, and surely no one would deny a lost girl help and maybe a little food. At the thought her belly sprang to life again, reminding her that she hadn't eaten for a couple days. Even the needles on the trees were beginning to look good. They smelled so sweet, she had almost convinced herself a couple times she should give them a try.

It took ages to get to the large cottage, but Kaoru felt like her life couldn't get any more miserable and time ceased to mean anything to her. Numbed from the cold water from above, she bashed her hands onto the thick wood door, screaming to be let in at the top of her lungs. The rain was everywhere, and she thought it might drown her with how much of it climbed into her lungs as she yelled. While the coughing fit didn't do her in, it did put her head closer to the door so that when it opened outwards and not in like she had thought it would, it knocked into her hard enough to rattle her brains.

"Finally. . ." She said with a gasp as she collapsed onto the ground beyond the door. It wasn't delicate enough to be a faint, but she was unconscious just the same.

". . . who 'gets lost' this far up the mountain?" It was a nice voice, cultured and confident, but the equal parts disgust and suspicion didn't ingratiate it to her.

"She collapsed at our door. I think we should give her some time to recover before we kick her out again." This voice was a little deeper, slower and warmer somehow. She thought about cracking open her eyes to see who it belonged to but it would be better to play possum until she understood more about where she was.

"All I know is that she's in my bed, and I didn't appreciate having to sleep in the chair downstairs last night. Plus, she's covered in mud. Gross." This one sounded younger.

"Don't whine, Yahiko, you do laundry so rarely we thought you'd never notice the difference."

"Shut up, Sano."

"Both of you be quiet." Footsteps brought a form near her. "You might as well let them know you're awake."

She cracked her eyes open into a squint that quickly widened when the view turned out to be fair. Kaoru looked up into a pair of glasses and a shock of white hair. Pain throbbed through her head and she grimaced and coughed. The man who had been leaning over her pulled back quickly as soon as they made eye contact and marched out of the room.

"Man, what got into his craw?" The owner of the warm voice was a tall man with as equally unbelievably styled brown hair as the white haired man. A lazy smile greeted her and he stuck hands into pockets as he approached her supine form. "I'm Sano. . . well, Sanosuke, but Sano's more friendly isn't it?"

There was a kid looking daggers at her behind the man, although he didn't look like he'd be a kid for much longer. The teen years were awkward, and she should know being not out of hers quite yet. He had unkempt spiky black hair that fell over his face. This must be the owner of the bed who didn't wash his sheets.

"That's Yahiko. Don't mind him. Being a brat comes as naturally to him as breathing."

"You're going to wake up with spiders on your face one of these days." The kid tried to look threatening.

Sano turned back to face the probable teen who was practically sparking with the force of his enmity. "And you're going to find yourself doing twice as many exercises when I tell Aoshi about those little trips of yours to town to see that cute little waitress. . . what was her name again. . .?"

"You. . .I. . . she. . . you stay out of my business!" The boy had blushed bright red as he sputtered and he followed the white haired man in choosing exile from the room.

Kaoru was entirely at a loss to whatever dynamic these men shared. They acted like family, but none of them resembled one another. Maybe they were half siblings? But they were young enough so that their father and mother could still be alive. Curious. Adoption? Many families were broken when Shishio appeared on the scene.

"Now, little missy, I've got some questions for you. Before Angsty and Shorty left us we were discussing just how you ended up here." He was sitting at the foot of the bed, and Kaoru felt the sympathy radiating from him. Concern from another human being was almost too much for her to face after all the emotional ups and downs of the past days. "The nearest village is miles down the mountain. You get whipped one too many times by your boss and think that hopping the border was a better choice? Because it's another day up at least over the top, and you looked about ready to die at our doorstep."

"I—" She cut herself off even before some outlandish story could leave her lips. Soujiro had told her she was a terrible liar, something she already knew. "I had to leave. I didn't have a choice. Now I'm stuck and can't go back yet."

Sano rubbed his chin. "Well, if a border crossing was all you wanted, you got it, not that it matters much up here. Maybe you'll be more willing to talk after a little breakfast, eh? I'm starved, and whenever Aoshi is gone then we make Yahiko do the cooking. It's probably going to be overcooked eggs and burnt bacon, like usual."

Anything sounded good at this point. She leaned over and put a hand on Sano's arm, catching his attention away from his mental wanderings on breakfast. "Thank you." He got a look in his eyes, a funny one, before he focused on the ceiling in a fixed manner and Kaoru tried to think of what it could be that was so interesting. Then she felt the cold on her skin, and took a quick confirming peek beneath the covers.

Naked. These men had undressed her and she was naked. The pink of embarrassment on her cheeks was supplanted quickly by the red of pure rage. "Out! Lecher! Get out right now!" She threw the pillow at him, hard, as he backed out of the room. That was followed by anything else in reach, which consisted mostly of more pillows. She stopped when she found a dagger underneath everything. She wasn't that out of control, only pissed off.

"Look, I wasn't the one who. . . we had to do something. . . stop it! Hey! You were freez—oof, and Enishi was the one that finally. . . augh! Fine! You're nuts, girlie!" Sano closed the door behind him and Kaoru tried to get a grasp on her anger. She had to go back down sometime, face her lecherous saviors, and try to get some food. That burst of temper had been nearly all the energy she had left. And her head was reminding her of something having to do with throbbing pain. So long as she wrapped the blanket around herself it wouldn't be too indecent when she finally felt good enough to go downstairs.

Now that she was alone she had time to look around at this room, get her bearings, and try to get a handle on this headache before she went down and talked to people she hardly knew. Her clothes were in a soggy pile by the foot of the bed. They were ripped, muddy, and stuck together in a way that made her loathe putting them back on. Instead, she grabbed her belt and securely tied the blanket around her as a makeshift dress. That would have to do for now.

She had been lying in a bed that had been placed at one corner of this large room. There were four beds in total, one in each corner, and she suspected that she had met three of the house's four occupants. Yahiko's bed, where she had been, did look to be a mess as did his corner of the room. There were wooden practice swords and knife sharpening implements as well as pieces of paper with notes on them strewn about. Only one other bed looked as messy, but it was covered in old clothes rather than stuff. Both of those corners reeked of male scents that Kaoru didn't want to question. It seemed others needed to do their laundry as well.

The third bed looked neater, cleaner, but slept in. The covers had been hastily thrown back over it. There was a leather journal on a table at the head of the bed, and a glass of water. Kaoru thought about drinking the water, but the glass didn't look very clean or the water very fresh. She wandered over to the last bed and found it spotless, perfectly turned out with precision not unlike that which the palace staff used to employ on her bed when she had been a princess. Everything was clean in this corner, no object lying out in the open.

Between Yahiko's bed and the not quite so messy bed there was a mirror and Kaoru glanced in it on her way to the door. The first thing she did upon seeing her reflection was stop walking to the door. No one should see her like this! She was a mess! There was mud in her hair and on her face, and it had all caked and dried on, leaving the definite impression that she was wearing a strange uneven mask. . . not unlike a raccoon. The rest of her body wasn't so bad, probably saved by her clothing that had scraped off most of the mud upon removal.

Using the underside of her filthy shirt and that stale glass of water, Kaoru improved upon her appearance. Most of the mud shook out of her hair, and other than brushing the tangles that was the best she could manage at the moment in that quarter. With a clean face, and a dry improvised dress she felt like she could face her new acquaintances. Kaoru didn't think of herself as being particularly vain, but she knew she was pretty and that looking bad would drag down on her self esteem. Anything she could do to make herself feel better at a time like this. . .

At a time like what?

Well, she was banished entirely from the life she had been living. Someone, ok, the king of what should have been her land wanted her dead. The only friend she had in the world besides the old man who ran the stables she couldn't go back to was the boy who had originally been sent to kill her. And some stranger had seen her naked. Scratch that, several strangers had probably seen her naked. Hm, and there seemed to be a rather tender bump on her head from getting whacked by the door last night.

The smell of bacon wafted up to her, overcoming the gamey odor of her dirty body and the room itself. That meaty aroma was heavenly and she wanted some of that pork more than she had wanted anything in living memory. So what if she was stranded and nearly helpless? She would be fed and she was dry, and in the long run that seemed to matter a lot more.

That stupid ugly girl, she was going to ruin everything. Yahiko hated outsiders, he didn't trust them. He had been told to not trust them, because even the most innocent looking person could easily be a spy or assassin of Shishio's. This girl was as helpless before them as a babe, carrying nothing and half starved. Didn't that make her doubly suspicious? He wished Enishi would back him up on this, but while the man was eagerly suggesting that she be turned away, there was a haunted look in his eyes that signaled another one of his 'episodes' was not far away. If not for his clear mental instability he might have fought more successfully for leadership of their little group, and if he had been the leader then there would have been no argument about what to do with the girl.

Yahiko took down the pan from where it hung on a hook in the kitchen area and scraped off some of the old burnt bits before plopping in some meat to cook. Enishi had finished firing up the wood stove and Yahiko nodded to him. The man barely looked at him.

"We don't even know her name, and Sano is ready to practically adopt her, like some lost dog!" Yahiko tried to spur Enishi into a response. He looked like he was seconds away from being in a walking coma.

". . . Tomoe. . ."

"What did you say?" Yahiko had divided his attention to the bacon which would begin to cook soon. The burnt bits that he had not been able to scrape off started to smoke a tad, but this was the natural way of things in the house. The black spot on the ceiling was a testament to nearly two years of neglectful cooking and cleaning habits.

Enishi snapped back to reality. "Sano has a bad habit of thinking that resources at his disposal are endless. He was never a planner. The girl isn't a stray animal and we can't keep her no matter how bad he feels for her."

There was a screech and some rather animated yelling upstairs. A pillow landed in their field of vision, and Enishi and Yahiko tried to catch snatches of what the woman was complaining about or what Sano was trying to say in return. Around the time that they considered going up to help their colleague against the hellcat they had left him with, Sano appeared downstairs shaking his head.

"Should have left her in those rags she had on, Enishi. She'll be out for your blood next."

"If a mudspeckled runaway can defeat you then we're in trouble. Should I go get my sword?" Enishi deflected the conversation away from his actions last night with sarcasm. Yahiko laughed, glad that Sano was getting picked at after what he had said upstairs. So what if he visited Tsubame every once in a while. If he had to go into town for supplies anyway, then talking to the locals was good for their image. People thought they were weird as it was. Though Tsubame was so kind and didn't even treat him like an outsider. . .

Smoke billowed, making him cough. "Yahiko. Mind your task." Enishi didn't have to yell, from that tone Yahiko could tell he was going to be doing calisthenics in the mud outside for a long time before his regular training began for the day.

"When is Aoshi getting back?"

"Sometime this evening. It won't be a problem of finding work but rather who to agree to do work for." Enishi looked down at the brownish bacon pieces that Yahiko set on the table and put a piece on his plate without even a grimace. His ability to eat gross food had always amazed Sano, but then Enishi had always had a warrior's attitude. You ate when you could because who knew when you would eat again. Sano would have liked to enjoy some of the finer things, more quality than quantity. But if quantity was all that was available. . .

Sano picked out the least burned piece among the pile and listened to the eggs sizzle. "That conscription notice. . . Shishio is going to cause a famine this winter if he keeps dipping into his labor force."

Pushing up his glasses, Enishi grabbed another piece of bacon. "I think he's counting on grain grown by our neighbors to supply his troops."

"That would cost a fortune!"

"Won't matter if all that money he pays over becomes his again when he marches on them next spring. Makes sense to me. It's what I would do if I were him. With a war machine this large he has no choice but to keep moving forward."

They all took a moment to digest that information along with the overcooked meat when Kaoru finally joined them for breakfast. It was only by luck that Yahiko didn't drop a hot egg onto Sano's lap, and rather onto the tabletop instead.

"Am I too late? I smelled bacon."

Last night, in trousers, a shirt and leather vest, covered in mud, Kaoru hadn't been much to look at. Enishi hadn't even thought much about undressing her because she had seemed more wreck than person. It was true that she had been shivering and cold and staying in those clothes would have been a bad idea. At the time it had been a practical decision and he had approached it like any mission he had been sent on in the past. Now, he became fully aware that what he had touched and viewed was a flesh and blood woman, vibrantly beautiful. Sano, who had an eye for the ladies as well, was winking at Enishi in a way that made the younger man turn away with disdain.

While the mirror had not lied, and Kaoru was indeed the most beautiful woman who had been in the kingdom, it had been working more on potential than anything. In the stables she had been uncommonly pretty, but that was while covered from head to toe in grimy clothes, hair tied in a viciously tight bun, sweating and yelling at people, and more often than not also as dirty as if she had fallen into a mud puddle face first anyway. That stablehand was a far cry from the vision that had wandered downstairs in a blanket and belt.

It was even more shocking because Kaoru was almost entirely unaware how stunning she actually was. Sure she had been a cute kid and a pretty adolescent, but everyone in her life had made a point of ignoring her for the sake of her father and she had assumed that she was simply unremarkable. That had been fine by her. She wasn't trying to compete with the many beauties in the nobility. There had been no young men courting her, telling her that her hair was like the midnight sky, or that her lips were like blushing pink rose petals. For two years the only compliments she could expect on her appearance were when the old man who ran the stables told her she was growing up to be just as pretty as her mother, her real one. Those moments made Kaoru glow inside for she remembered those serene paintings in the long palace gallery. Those paintings were probably burned and gone now, maybe she was all that would be left of her mother after all.

"Have an egg." Sano handed Kaoru a plate and she nearly swallowed it whole in front of them before grabbing a handful of bacon, burned as it was, and scarfing that down too. Finally, the first pangs of her gluttonous hunger satisfied, she saw that she was being stared at rather oddly and mistook the reason for the stares.

"I haven't eaten in several days so you can stop looking at me like I've grown two heads." A calm voice in her head asserted that she should be at least a little bit grateful since they did take her in and they were feeding her. Tempering her voice, she bestowed them with a smile that made Sano and Enishi's eyes bug and Yahiko forcibly turn away to stop from blushing. "Thank you so much for the food. It tastes, umm, unique. What did you put on it?"

Enishi was the first to recover. "Salt and pepper." He stood up and smiled in a vaguely unfriendly way. "Yahiko, finish up with the food and meet me outside. You have a lot of practice to get through today to make up for what you missed yesterday."

"But it was raining! I could barely move without slipping in the mud!" Yahiko whined but Kaoru could see he was moving quickly. Training must be something that he liked to do.

The door slammed behind Enishi and Yahiko dumped the rest of the food on a plate in the middle of the table in various states of well done before running upstairs to get something. After some thumping and swearing he ran back down the stairs and followed Enishi with another slam of the front door. Kaoru assumed now that it had been built thick just to withstand the rough treatment it got from the inhabitants of this cottage.

"You're not going to start throwing things at me again, are you? There's knives and things on the table, and I'm the one who has to do the dishes today. . . . supposedly."

Once the original flush of her anger was gone, Kaoru rarely relapsed without giving it a bit of thought. "I recognize that getting me out of those clothes was probably for the best. Even if I'm not happy about it."

"Yeah, well. . ." Sano let the sentence trail off and took a bite of food to prevent himself from having to answer her in any real manner. Her eyes were glowing in that way that promised lumps to his head if he did anything wrong. Of course, her attack came from an entirely unexpected area.

"So is Yahiko your little brother, or your son?"

Sano began to hack violently as he attempted to dislodge all of the egg from his windpipe. He would be tasting eggs all day when he cleared his throat. And these were Yahiko's eggs. It would have been kinder if she had just thrown something.